do the most damage, when his personal panel beeped with an incoming call. Jason didn't think much about it; Jyslin and Symone called his panel quite often when they were in Nebraska, and right now Jyslin was over there with Songa. Vultech-2 had to go out, and Jyslin was going to be the telepath riding shotgun while Luke took up Jenny Wilson to give her exposure to space flight; Jenny was very far along in the flight program, having already passed the written test and showing aptitude at the controls. Luke told him yesterday that Jenny would be signed off by him by the end of the week, and ready for Jason to give her her practical test.

Jason flipped up the monitor and accepted the call as audio only. "Hello," he called absently.

_"I loved the picture,"_ came an unknown voice.

Jason gave a start, and both Tim and Kiaari instantly fell silent. Jason moved to cut the call, for he had no idea who it was, but his panel suddenly shifted into video mode of its own volition, which caused the blond, freckled face of none other than Myleena Merrane to appear in the window of his call program. _"There, that's better,"_ she said absently. _"I do so love to see who I'm dealing with. So, you're the legendary Jason Fox. You need better security on your personal panel,"_ she told him with a slightly superior little smile. _"There wasn't much in it. I was kinda hoping to find some of your specs and designs in here, but you must have stopped using this panel for design. So much the pity."_

"And you are?"

_"Oh come now, you go to the trouble of putting my face on that picture and you don't know my name?"_

"I'm just being polite. It's not seemly to know someone when they don't know you in return, that's all."

_"True, it's only polite that we introduce ourselves properly. Hi, I'm Myleena Merrane, and I'm your opposition."_

Jason just had to chuckle at that. "I'm Jason Fox."

_"The one and only,"_ she chuckled humorlessly. _"You have quite a file, and I've read through it. A brilliant engineer with an uncanny aptitude for plasma technology, and you also happen to be one of only five known human telepaths,"_ she added quite absently. _"Trained by an AWOL Marine who, I'd bet, is there wherever you are right now. And now you're engaged in a clandestine war against House Trillane that I've been sent here to stop, since your talent makes simply overwhelming you with telepathy impossible. So, wanna do us both a favor and call it? I have better things to do back home than chasing you all over this rock. I can take you back with me, babes. You'd do well in Black Ops, and they can make all your legal problems disappear."_

"Ah, no," he said easily.

_"Well, it never hurts to ask,"_ she said winsomely. _"How in Trelle's name did you pull off that stunt at the station? I've never seen so much destroyed plasma conduit before."_

"You think I'm gonna tell _you_? I might want to use it again," he countered.

_"Oh, I'll figure out how you did it,"_ she said with a wolfish, eager smile. _"And when I do, I'll send you the specs to prove it. Now that I have your panel number, I can send you all my little victories just to prove I can keep up with you. I'll figure out how you destroyed the conduit, and I'll figure out how you're hiding your little toys from our sensors. As you can see, I've already started getting an understanding of how your mind works, babes,"_ she told him, leaning back and holding up one of his mines. _"It didn't take me long to crack this baby once I got past your self destruct trap. Though I'll admit, damn fine job with the program wipe protocols, you got me on that one. The memory crystals were as clean as a Templar's dick. But I got your hardware,"_ she taunted. _"You're fucking _brilliant_, babes, I'll give you that. Attacking Sticks with an ion pulse because they're not shielded? Brilliant, and a brilliant use of a design flaw against us. I'll toast you tonight. But tomorrow, I'll get to work fixing that little problem, so you can't use it anymore."_

"And I can tell you right now what they'll say when you give them your solution, hon. They're going to say 'that's too expensive!'"

She laughed. _"That's _their_ problem, not mine. If they don't want to fix the problem, well, those Sticks aren't coming out of _my_ budget. But I'll do what I can to counter your mines that isn't so pricy, so don't think you're gonna just keep walking all over us. I'll find a way to stop your mines, just watch. The pride of Black Ops is on the line now, babes, and we take our competitions very seriously."_

"It's your skin," he told her easily. "Faey have tried before."

_"Oh, but I'm _better_ than them,"_ she said with bright eyes. _"Oh, and about this picture, Jason. My tits are _way_ bigger. That was an insult!"_

"Hey, the only pictures I had of you were from the chest up, and you were wearing a Class A. It's hard to tell."

_"Well, alright, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that. But hell, babes, if you're gonna stick my head on some naked Faey picture, give me some credit, will ya?"_

"Fine. I'll find something more, suitable, to put your head on with the next picture."

She gave him a startled look, then laughed. _"Well hell, guess I'm just gonna be waiting in breathless anticipation the next time I crack one of your toys,"_ she said with a teasing grin. _"Anyway, I'd better get to work. I just wanted to call and say hi. I'll let you get back to your dastardly scheming and nefarious plots,"_ she said melodramatically.

And without another word, the call ended.

"Give me that thing!" Kiaari said in disgust, snatching up the panel. "How the _fuck_ did she do that! _I_ installed the security on this panel _personally_!"

"You said she was good, Tim," Jason said with a curiously amused tone. "I see that wasn't bullshit."

"With her inside the mine, won't she figure out" Tim asked, but Kiaari cut him off.

"Hush," Kiaari snapped. "If she cracked your panel, don't talk! She might have left a snooper in memory! Let me take it somewhere and check it. Arrogant, snotty little _bitch_," Kiaari fumed. "I'll give her something to laugh about!" she hissed as she stalked out of the office with Jason's panel.

"I think Kate's miffed," Tim said with artful understatement.

"Just a bit," Jason agreed. "That woman made all her security protocols look like chicken scratch, and that's what she does for a living."

"Well, won't she figure out the inverse phase emitter?"

Jason shook his head. "The transceiver it uses is stock, Tim. Everything in the mine is something you could buy at any tinker's shop, except the ion pulse module. That's not exactly spec. What makes it do what it does is _software_, and that all got wiped when she opened it. Since those are so small, the mine uses the same transceiver both for its sensors and for the emitter. For such a small device, the extra use doesn't hamper the emitter's workings. As long as she doesn't get one with the code intact, it's fine. She won't, though," he chuckled. "There's no way you can open a mine without making it wipe its core."

"How'd you pull off that miracle?"

Jason just smiled. "There's four separate anti-tampering systems in the mines, Tim, and all of them are software. I knew that they'd eventually find a way to bypass the self destruct, so I set them so everything they do I want to protect is software using stock equipment, and that software is quadruple protected. They do the final seal with the mine in a pressure box filled with nitrogen, and the sensors keep track of the composition of the interior atmosphere. If it senses anything other than nitrogen, it wipes the core and self destructs. The sensor checks more than just the air, though. They keep a constant watch on the molecular structure of the shell. If it detects any disruption of the mine's shell, such as being annealed, drilled, cut, or even dented, it realizes that it's being attacked, so it wipes its core and self destructs. If the mine is tilted more than fifteen degrees while inactive, it wipes its core and self destructs. The mines have GPS capability, too, Tim. They know where they are at all times, and they're programmed to know that if they're opened anywhere but in the mountain, then something's wrong. So, if the mine isn't _right here_ in the mountain when it's opened, if the other three protection protocols either fail or get circumvented, then it wipes its core and self destructs. So, the only way to open a mine without it wiping the core and trying to self destruct is to open it inside a pressure box in the shop where it was made."

"But that woman defeated the self destruct."

"That's easy," Jason shrugged. "That's just the mine overloading its PPG, and I can think of any number of ways to stop the mine from doing that without invading it. The main thing you have to remember here, Tim, is that the mine's core memory is _hot_. It's made of a different kind of memory crystal that returns to its original state when the power that holds in its altered state is removed, and that wipes the memory clear. They use that kind of crystal quite a bit in children's toys, so they reset when they're turned off and back on. It will remain stable and active only so long as it has power, kind of like RAM in old PC computers we used before the subjugation. No power, no memory. So, if they kill the power to the mine, like, with a spatial flux generator aimed at the PPG to make it shut down, then the mine loses power, and," Jason snapped his fingers, "the core purges. And all it has to do to purge is just kill the power to the memory crystals. After it does that, then it tries to detonate the PPG using its destruct program, which is in active memory at all time, not part of the code storage. If I ever turned off a mine, I'd have to reload its programming when I turned it back on. So, the only way to keep it from blowing itself up is to stop it from detonating its PPG. In order to do that, they have to disable the PPG, and if they do that, then the mine loses power and it wipes the memory. And since everything in the mine that I want to protect is software, all they really have is a ball filled with stock moleculartronic circuitry, an ion pulse generator, and a PPG, which you can run down and pick up at any Double D." Double D was a Faey retail store chain akin to the old Radio Shack, catering to tinkerers and amateur technicians.

"_Ohhhhhhhhhh_," Tim said, then he laughed. "Damn, Jason, that's fuckin' smart."

"Thank you," he said modestly.

"So, what are we gonna do about this Merrane woman?"

"Right now? We let Kate vent a little, and then tomorrow's another day," he answered.

Tim laughed. "I'm surprised that Merrane woman had the balls to call like that."

"If Faey have anything, Tim, it's balls. Even the women."

Tim gave him a look, then burst out laughing.

                                        * * *

Myleena Merrane was a pain in his ass.

She was _that good_.

In four days, his mines had stopped attacking Sticks. It only took her four days to puzzle out that the mines were locking in on the Sticks' unique engine signature (having moved on from the telemetry mode earlier), and she came up with a simple engine harmonic they could hot-update into Sticks that created a ripple that made the mines not recognize them. Later that night, he got a taunting call from Myleena Merrane, complete with a data file that laid out how his mines were finding Sticks.

Well, chalk one up to Myleena Merrane. Jason simply switched modes on the mines so they detected the unique mass density and metallurgical composition of Sticks as the trigger that caused them to activate.

The next day, six Sticks came down, and he got a rather pissy call from Myleena that night. She was really angry with him for circumventing her fix so quickly, but he blew her off by hanging up on her. She couldn't hack his panel again, so all she could do was call back and endlessly let his panel ring until he either picked up the call or turned off the panel.

Two days later, Myleena Merrane had a fix. She puzzled out that the mines were now using active sensors to find targets, so she devised a simple program that the Sticks would run using their communication systems that generated a blanket of sensor frequencies. By using the belly transceiver antennas to generate the signals and pointing them down, that effectively blinded any ground-based sensor array with white noise, making it impossible for it to make any definitive determinations about any targets above. Though she didn't know exactly how the sensors were locking in on Sticks, her fix was a generic one that covered just about all the bases, and it was very effective.

Very damn effective.

That night, he got another call from Myleena, who lorded it up that she _had_ him this time, and his mines were now nothing but souvenirs sitting on the shelf in her office. Jason hung up on her again, but he cursed sulfurously afterwards, for he had no easy comeback this time. Now, he had to outplay Myleena, and that meant going back to the drawing board and out-engineering Myleena Merrane.

Jason couldn't come up with a way to thwart her fix without revealing more information than he was willing to give. He knew _how_ the fix worked, and to just slip by that would tip them off early that Jason was getting inside information. He wasn't ready to give that away quite yet. And since they seemed to be able to find the mines if he left them out in the open, it meant he was going to have to pull back and regroup and figure out some way that the mines could use their visual identification protocol without being exposed to detection by whatever it was Myleena had come up with to find the mines.

This forced a change in tactics, and the introduction of the next toy. Jason had been forced to land and plant this device himself, on foot and in person, and he did so in the town of Champaign, Illinois, a major hub for food production and transportation. He planted the device in a warehouse near the spaceport, one of the big ones where some of the smaller freighters directly landed to be loaded, instead of using Sticks and containers. He'd come on Vultech-2 that had been piloted by Luke, and it had been a relatively effortless affair. Though his face was still being hunted down, that was nothing a pair of sunglasses, a floppy straw hat, and a fake beard couldn't fix for a short trip down a ramp and into a building, then right back out. After planting it, he got right back on the dropship and returned to Lincoln. There, in his office, he used a little program that Kiaari had given him that let him do to Myleena what she did to him. His panel dialed a number, a number whose code showed it was a floating panel. The video picked up, and he got a look at the back of Myleena Merrane's head. "What?" she demanded in Faey, without looking at the panel's screen.

"Myleena," Jason said.

She whirled around and looked at the monitor. She had a smudge of grease or something on the tip of her nose and her right cheek, and she was holding an annealer in her hand.

_"You!"_ she gasped. _"How did you do that?"_

"Enjoy," he said, reaching into the pocket of his overshirt, taking out a small black remote, and pressing the flashing red button.

Back in Champaign, the small black box hidden in a small warehouse opened and fired. With a dull flash, the device detonated, which created an Electromagnetic Pulse of sufficient magnitude to overwhelm the basic shielding that Sticks employed to protect their system from ambient electromagnetic fields. Systems designed to protect from a planet's weak magnetic field or the solar wind were nowhere near enough to repel an EMP wave that was of similar strength as the ion storms generated by the mines. The EMP engulfed the spaceport, sweeping out to a radius of nearly a mile. Every Stick that was struck by the pulse shuddered as its power systems were disrupted, and it either dropped out of the sky or powered down if it was on the ground. The effect was spectacular, and it was devastating. Two airborne Sticks shuddered in midair, in the middle of maneuvers to enter an ascent vector, and then dropped to the ground in thunderous crashes. One landed on an open tarmac, and the other crashed into the roof of a warehouse, sending up a cloud of dust and blowing out every window in the warehouse. Another airborne Stick, which had been in the act of maneuvering for a landing, lost control and slammed into a neat stack of containers, sending the large metal containers flying like dominos thrown by a petulant child as the Stick plowed through them and into the ground, sending a cloud of dust into the air.

But Sticks were not the only victims of the pulse. Every unshielded plasma system overloaded and shut down, which killed the loader skiffs, the antigrav pods, and most of the industrial lighting and computers.

_"What did you do!"_ she demanded.

"Turn on CNN and find out," he told her with a level stare. "Have a nice day."

_"Bastard!"_ she shouted as he cut the connection.

That should keep her busy for a while. And give him time to circumvent her circumvention of his circumvention of her circumvention of the mines. That should give him enough time to work up something, because the more he exploited unshielded Sticks, the faster she was going to find some way to protect them completely and force him to shift to another tack.

God, this was getting complicated.

                                        * * *

While Myleena was busy cleaning up the mess Jason had created in Champaign, he got busy. He knew she'd only be there for a few hours at best, long enough to deduce that he'd used an EMP to bring the Sticks down, and she'd be right back to work thwarting him, so he moved quickly. That night, they dealt with all the mines that had been set and waiting and were now ineffective, which was itself rather tricky because Jason had no safety device to turn them off. They weren't _meant_ to be altered once they were finished, but Jason didn't want them left laying around ineffective. He decided to simply set them off, which he did without ever leaving his skimmer. Sure, the explosions would be picked up by Faey sensors, but that wasn't going to be a problem for long.

Damn clever woman. If she was going to monkey with the ships to make them impossible for the sensors on his mines to locate them, well, he had other tricks up his sleeve, and the mines would return later in a new form. And he would certainly use that against her.

In a makeshift shop in a corner of Vultech's warehouse, Jason pulled out dirty trick #4, a tiny disc about the size of an old silver dollar. These were something that he'd made earlier, and he'd made a stamp of the circuit so it could literally be cranked out by the hundreds by a single worker in a day. Encased in an easily replicated metal case was that circuit board and a small gravimetric engine the size of a walnut, a small device that was originally placed inside children's toys. Well, Jason had another use for them. These little bastards were going to drive Myleena Merrane absolutely fucking _nuts_.

If she read his file, then she'd know all about these.

He called a panel in the mountain, and Temika answered it. "Mika," he called.

_"Yeah, sugah?"_

"Tell the shop to start number four."

_"You got it, sugah. Want 'em to box 'em up?"_

"Yah, we're gonna be shipping them out soon."

_"Ah'll get right on it. See you latah, sugah."_

When he returned to the mountain about three hours before dawn, he found them ready. Even though they'd only been working on them for a few hours, but they'd already made over two hundred of them. "Need help, Jayce?" Tom asked as he came into the hangar with a clipboard.

"Not for this," he answered. "I won't be out more than an hour, and I'll be back before dawn."

"Alrighty then. Must be serious if you're not taking a student."

He nodded. "I'll be going somewhere where I can't afford distractions."

And that place was over Washington, D.C. He flew over the city, careful to avoid the traffic lanes, for Washington was always a busy place no matter what time it was, and dumped the contents of those boxes out into the air about one thousand feet over the city.

They didn't fall. They spread out in the air, thinning out, moving laterally without ascending or descending.

"Take that, Myleena Merrane," Jason said under his breath, then he closed the hatch and returned to the cockpit.

                                        * * *

Jason's stunt over Washington wasn't an attack on Sticks. It actually did no damage whatsoever to any Trillane equipment or assets.

But it drove the entire city of Washington absolutely _insane_.

The discs were subsonic inducers, modified so they didn't need a metallic host to act as a speaker. The devices were designed to float at a set altitude, and they were so small that no sensor, be it in space or on the ground, would detect them. They floated using directional plasma magnets, but had tiny gravimetric engines on them that caused them to slowly spread out, but not exceed more than five miles from the point where they were initially activated, and also with on-board software that kept them at least 500 yards from one another. This set of conditions kept them over a set location, but allowed them to spread out. And since the skimmer that seeded them always had to be out of the area by dawn, they were light-activated. When the sun rose, it triggered the inducers.

And being inducers, what they did was generate a _massive_ field of subsonic interference, which was directed downward.

At sunrise, the entire city of Washington D.C. woke up, whether they wanted to or not, for everyone in the city felt like ants were crawling all over them. There was no hiding from the effect unless one was underground or deep inside a large building, isolated by the absorbing qualities of the buildings or the ground. This was all well and good for some people, but the vast majority of the residents didn't have that kind of protection, and were _very_ rudely awakened.

It was pandemonium. People in nightclothes were running through the streets screaming. There were over 3,000 traffic accidents almost simultaneously, and within 20 seconds, there was not a vehicle moving anywhere in the city. Faey and humans alike writhed and screamed in frustration, scratching at themselves, running in circles, dunking themselves in water, doing anything they could to make the maddening itching cease. High-ranking nobles, including the Baron of North America, were caught up in the effect, and it drove them utterly nuts. The Baron was on his vidlink seconds after the sun rose, screaming and cursing at anyone he could call even as he shimmied and fidgeted, scratching and clawing at his skin while chewing out any official he could get to answer.

It took them nearly an hour to figure out exactly how it was being done, when they brought in equipment to determine the direction from which the field was being generated, but it wasn't easy to locate the tiny devices hovering high in the air over the city. It took them two more hours, hours of agony for those below, for the Faey to destroy enough of the devices to weaken the field sufficiently enough to make it at least tolerable. It took them another three hours to locate and capture or destroy all the devices.

The news was all over it, naturally, since INN had an office in Washington, and their staff had been subjected to the attack. They tried to do a live feed, but found it impossible to concentrate long enough. The cameraman did manage to mount his camera on a stand and take video of the chaos in the streets, however, which was broadcast just as soon as the crew could get their story out. Oddly enough, the reporter that Jason watched after waking up from a nap that was talking about it found it strangely funny... but then again, he was Faey. Faey loved a good joke, even if it was on them.

House Trillane, on the other hand, was _not_ amused. Going by the reports Tim and Kiaari put on his desk, the Baron of North America had a complete meltdown, and put some heads on the block and threatened to drop the blade if Jason Fox wasn't found, and wasn't found _now_.

Oh, sweet mercy, he just loved it when they begged for a sequel.

While Jyslin and Tim did a little research for him, Jason decided to continue his assault on the sanity of Baron Reth Trillane, governor of the continent of North America.

It required a little panache.

He sat in front of a console in the workshop just off his apartment and typed up a little engineering plan for something that Reth Trillane was just going to _adore_, when the door opened. To his surprise, it was Fure. Fure almost never left Kumi's apartment. He was uncomfortable in this place, and felt that he had little to do or little to offer, because unlike everyone else, he had no real interest in being an active participant in this war... and besides, Kumi would never allow him to fight. He was a male Faey, and the very idea of it was an anathema to him. He had no special training, no special skills outside of his role as a butler and personal servant. All he did was keep things clean and run errands, and there just wasn't much for him to do here. Kumi didn't need him as much here as she had back home.

"Fure," Jason said with a nod as he entered. "Everything alright?"

_Well enough, Master Jason,_ he answered in his stately manner. Despite being male, Fure was a _powerful_ telepath. He hid that power around Kumi, but Jason had the sneaking feeling that Fure was stronger than her. Kumi's talent was above average as Faey measured it, but she wasn't overly strong. She was very well trained, but she lacked raw power. All three human telepaths were stronger than her, but Jason had the feeling that Fure was about on the same level as Tim. _Miss Kumi returned to Lincoln last night, and she asked me to bring you this. It's got some ideas she had on it, she wanted you to look them over and call her in Lincoln sometime today so you can discuss it._

_Jason took a handpanel from the male and nodded. Thanks, he said, setting it down. I might not get to it today, though. I'm kinda busy._

_Working on another device?_

He nodded again. _Seems that the Baron of North America took extreme offense to my attack on Washington, so naturally, I'm gonna do it again as soon as I have something._

_Fure laughed. Well, far be it from me to interfere in your fun._

_Oh, this is fun, Jason sent eagerly. I love doing this._

_Inventing new things?_

_No, being an ass, he answered with an outrageous grin. Just knowing that I'm making life unbearable for Trillane nobles makes me all warm and fuzzy inside._

_Fure exploded in delighted laughter, having to lean over with his hands on the desk until he regained his composure. Well, I'll call Miss Kumi and warn her you might not be calling her today._

_Thanks. I'll try to get to it, but if I don't strike before the Baron calms down, I might not get him to pop a blood vessel._

_I think you may at that. Nobles don't take it very well when things don't go their way. It's a flaw in upbringing. They're very impatient._

_I've noticed._

It didn't take Jason long to come up with something, and it was something he could build and unleash by midnight. What he settled on was taking one of the little pod harnesses he'd built for flying guns and setting another unit on it that dealt with sound. Jason had a knack for frequency-based energy engineering, it seemed. Sound, wave-type energies, harmonics, they were just easy for him, and he tended to fall back on what was easy for him when he was pressed for time. This device was going to generate a ELF pulse, basically a super-booming bass, and it was going to be a shaped pulse. The pulse would shatter every window in front of it when it fired. It wasn't quite as good as the itchers, but it would aggravate the hell out of the Baron when he saw all those windows they'd have to replace.

It took him all of two hours to build the unit, and another hour to program it, including the ever-present self destruct that was integral with anything that left the mountain. His panel on the back table beeped, and he glanced back at it. The calling number was hidden, unlisted, so he had a sneaking suspicion who it might be. He turned the panel around so the screen faced the wall, so nothing could be seen, then reached over it and accepted the call.

_"You son of a bitch!"_ Myleena Merrane's voice raged at him almost immediately. _"Do you have any idea how much hell I caught from _fucking_ Trillane over that stunt in Washington?"_

"Poor baby," Jason said calmly, maybe a little smugly. "Guess you didn't have me covered as well as you thought, did you?"

_"That was _cheating_, you asshole!"_

"Deal with it."

_"You bet your happy ass I'm going to deal with it," _she said hotly. _"Just _try_ to do that again. I _dare_ you."_

"I hope you have armor," he told her. "You'll need it once the Trillanes beat down your door and come after you with pitchforks and torches."

_"Bastard!"_ she screamed one more time for good measure, then she hung up.

                                        * * *

It wasn't quite as shocking and dramatic as the subsonic field, but it really got Reth Trillane _furious_.

Jason's little toy was released over Washington at 2am, and it went right to work. The cone effect of the pulse was about two hundred feet wide at its terminus of operation, and that was wide enough to do some real damage. The device ran amok in downtown Washington for nearly twenty minutes, because it stayed low to the ground and it was shielded from active sensors. It shattered windows all over the southern part of the city, in almost every government office, but it did actively avoid the Smithsonian. There were delicate exhibits in there that Jason did not want to destroy, so the device was programmed to actively avoid the mall. But good Lord, did it nail just about everything around the mall with reckless abandon.

By the time they finally found it and scrambled a trio of combat airbikes to shoot it down, it had done its work, and Jason sent the command for it to self destruct. _Thousands_ of windows all over southern Washington had been destroyed, and the cost to replace them would not be easy to dismiss. But that really wasn't what it was about. It was about sla