efore,_ Songa sent openly. _Just using stargates. Is it scary?_

_Not really,_ Zora answered her. _The ship'll shake a little when we jump in, then shake a little more when we jump out. While we're in, time will go all screwy and you might get a little dizzy and may see things that aren't there, but it's normal._

_What do you mean, screwy?_ Jason asked.

_For some, it'll seem like time stops, to others, it'll look like time's going by at like years every second, but it's all just an illusion created by our three dimensional brains when they're in higher dimensional space. You also might see things you know aren't there, and hear and smell things, too, but they're just sensory ghosts where our brains are trying to make sense of things it can't understand. When we drop out, everything you see will vanish and it'll be just like it was when we jumped in. You'll see,_ she told them.

_We had to take training for it,_ Min told them. _Some people don't jump well, but Marines have to jump when we go to systems that don't have stargates. So we take training so we can control the illusions. They freak some people out._

_You had to tell us that_ right before_ we're about to do it?_ Jason sent hotly.

_Oh, did I do that?_ she sent, her thought dripping with vast insincerity.

_I'm gonna spank you, woman!_ Jason snapped at her as Myri broke in.

_Three, two, one, here we go!_

Jason wasn't sure he liked the idea of seeing hallucinations, so he simply closed his eyes as the ship started to rock and throb and vibrate, but he certainly knew it when they jumped out of normal space, because he felt... _different_. His thoughts suddenly flowed like the purest water, a cascade of crystalline awareness that poured forth in gentle waves. He found himself opening his eyes to a vision that some people would say was drug induced, as the interior of the dropship cargo bay seemed to twist and undulate, like the metal bulkheads were made of silly putty, and the air became warm and heavy. A tendril of Myleena's blond hair drifted lazily into view, and he turned his head to look at her. It was like she was moving in slow motion, her rose colored eyes turning towards his as her head tilted. There were... sounds. Murmurings, like a million billion voices all whispering at once, a wild cacophony that tickled at his consciousness in the strangest way, like he could almost understand what they were saying. He saw little sparkles of light all around Myleena, sparkles that flowed away from her and swirled around his eyes, then seemed to dance in midair before hurtling with startling speed out through the wall of the bulkhead, vanishing from sight.

It was like the snapping of a rubber band. The shifting walls shuddered, pulled taut, and then _SNAP_, they looked normal again. The ship began to shake and rock, and Jason felt that strange feeling in his brain fade quickly, returning to normal, telling him that their jump was complete, and they were there.

_Shakedown!_ Myri sent commandingly, and the Marines all started checking each other, and no less than four Marines put a hand on him and checked him using telepathy, making sure he was alright.

"Jason, that thing. Miaari told you to put it on as soon as we got here," Songa reminded him as Ilia unstrapped her from her seat, and she floated out of it.

Jason looked down where he had half of it in his pocket, then pulled it out and looked at it. He saw the two downward jutting tines, his ear supposed to go between them, and he oriented it so he could put it on.

He didn't hesitate, even though he had no idea what this thing was or why he had to wait to put it on here. He set it over his head, over his ear, then pushed it down. The top piece touched the top of his head just as the base of it settled against the top of his ear, and the tine that would jut out over his cheek slid past his vision and took up residence as a visible blackness just at the bottom edge of his vision.

It settled into place, and it felt cool to the skin of his face and head. Then it seemed to warm up, almost impossibly so.

_[Please be seated, imprint process will commence in five seconds.]_

That voice was _inside his mind_!

"Demir's sword!" Yana gasped in shock, putting her hands to her head, as Myleena visibly paled.

"What?"

"Get it off him!" she literally screamed, scrambling to get her straps off. "Take it off him! Hurry!"

Meya reached from her seat beside him for the device, but it was too late. Jason took in his breath as he felt his brain literally explode. The thing, the device, it was _telepathic_. It drove into his brain like a spear, quickly spreading its awareness through him like a tidal wave, and then it started analyzing, inspecting, studying. Jason's hands seized on the seat and he began to jerk and convulse uncontrollably, and Meya and Zora, who had been sitting on either side of him, tried to push him down into the seat, panic racing across their features, but there was more to it than that. Jason was sending, and his sending was chaotic, nonsensical, and it was so strong that it made everyone in the dropship wince and cry out, as they had to defend themselves against his disjointed open sending, so strong that more than one Faey's nose began to bleed as they tried to protect themselves from it. The device searched through his brain, it puzzled out the activity it found there, and then it seemed to orient itself to the patterns it discovered. A thousand garbled images and sounds flowed through his brain, but they slowly started to make sense, to be comprehensible, as the device assimilated itself to the unique aspects of the way Jason's mind worked, things that made him who he was, and then seamlessly and painlessly settled itself into those patterns, becoming a literal extension of himself, a part of his mind outside of his mind, as man and machine joined somewhere in the middle to form a new cognitive whole. The wild sending Jason was releasing on them toned down, settled down, became rational once again, and then it stopped altogether.

_[Imprint is complete. Gestalt Model 141B, Software version 2837A11.002, online and fully operational.]_

Jason panted, putting his head back. Holy _shit_! Was this the secret the Kimdori had been hiding all this time? Was this what she had sent him here to discover?

The thing on his face... it wasn't an ornament, it was a _computer_... and it was _telepathic_. It had established a telepathic communion with him, and he could feel it on the edges of his awareness even now, patiently waiting for him to give it orders to carry out.

Holy Lord above. Was this what Miaari wanted him to see? Was this what she wanted him to know, that the Karinnes had done what many considered impossible, and had created a machine that could interface with Faey telepathy?

No, there had to be more to it. She could have just given him this thing and told him to put it on, or told him about it. What she wanted him to see, what she wanted him to find, was out here. It was in this star system, in the ruins of the homeworld of the house of Karinne. That was what she wanted him to see. That was where he had to go. He just knew it.

"Jason! Jason, are you alright?" Meya asked, her face pale, concern all over her face as she put her hands on the device and prepared to pull it off him.

"No!" he said in a strangled tone, grabbing her wrist and seizing it in a powerful, desperate grip. He was aware of the device, it was like it was a part of himself... if she pulled it off him, he had no idea what might happen! "No, don't! Don't take it off!"

"What the hell was that? What happened?" Myri shouted as she floated in from the cockpit, tiny beadlets of blood floating away from her nose.

Myleena gave him a deep, searching look. "Is it? Is it really?" she asked in a whisper.

He nodded.

"Yana?" Ilia asked desperately.

"That thing, that thing is _telepathic_," she said, almost in disbelief. "I could hear it turn on when Jason put it on. It can _send_! It's a telepathic machine!"

"That's impossible!" Myri snapped.

"No, she's right," Jason said, getting his breathing back under control. "It, it had to imprint itself so it could talk to me, but it's working now," he told them as Meya let it go, and he traced light fingers along the warm metal. "It's, it's called a_ gestalt_," he told them as the machine told him exactly what it was when he wanted to know. It had heard his thought and supplied him with the answer. "It calls itself a personal assisting device, it's like a personal computer that interfaces with me directly with telepathy. It's talking to me right now."

"What's it saying?" Min asked as Myri barked "well, why did it do that to you?"

"It had to imprint to me," he answered Myri. "It's saying that there's a brief period of mental disjunction when a gestalt initiates the imprint process. That's why it told me to sit down before it started."

They were all silent, for a _long_ moment. "That's why she told you not to put it on until you got here," Myleena reasoned, breaking the silence. "If you put that on on Draconis, every Faey within fifty _kathra_ would have heard that."

"She knew what it was, that's for sure," Bryn agreed. "And now I wonder what other things we might find in this star system that shouldn't exist."

"And that's why we're here," Maya said evenly. "The Kimdori are going to reveal their secret, and they chose _us_ to show it to."

"I guess so," Jason said, shaking his head. The gestalt was very snugly attached to him, seeming to glue itself to his skin, but it was neither uncomfortable nor heavy. He really couldn't even feel its weight, the only hint he had that it was there was that light touch on the back of his mind from the unit and the little black bar that he could see at the bottom of his vision. He found it a bit annoying, and then, to his surprise, the color changed to a dull metal gray. The unit could change the color of its housing!

The ship shook slightly. Myri looked back towards the cockpit, then grumbled. "The ship's opening its cargo bay doors and releasing the clamps," she warned. "Everyone strap back in!" she barked. "Zora, come up and pilot this thing! It's off autopilot now!"

"I guess from here, we have to go on our own," Myleena said quietly. "We have to decide to go on, or we just have the cargo transport take us home."

"We have to choose," Jason said in agreement.

"Well, I say we go on," Sheleese said loudly. "Who knows what we're gonna find out here? If the Karinnes could build a telepathic computer, I wanna see what else they managed before they were destroyed! Hell, we might find the recipe for the perfect man!"

Jason and Myleena shared a long, personal, private look. They knew that whatever they found here would concern them. They were the descendents of the Karinnes, and as Miaari had said, this was their birthright, as much as the gestalt that was now attached to Jason's mind was. What else was here. What was here that was so important that Miaari would go to these extremes to show them? It had to be _very_ important, and that meant that it was something that they should investigate.

"We go," Myleena said, holding her hand out to him.

"We go," he agreed, taking her hand. "I'm going up into the cockpit. I want to see, and besides, I'm the second best pilot on this ship. Zora might need a seasoned hand in the second chair."

"Good point. Go," Myri ordered. "I'll take the engineer's chair."

Jason patted Myleena's hand before floating up front and pulling himself into the right chair. Zora was already strapped in and putting her headset on, then she tapped a series of buttons on the glass panel that enabled the controls on her side and took autopilot offline. "Alright, where are we going?" she asked as she inched the dropship down, out of the cargo bay of the transport. As soon as they were clear, the bay doors closed, but the ship did not move. It simply began to wait. Clearly, it would wait for them to return.

"Karis," Jason said. "That's why we're here, so let's start with that."

"If we're not cooked before we get there. I'm getting radiation readings already, and we're about four billion _kathra_ away. Karis is lighting up almost as bright as its sun on the radiation sensors."

"Well, let's go in that direction and see if we don't see anything interesting before we get so close that it gets dangerous," he said.

"We can get about halfway in before it becomes dangerous," she estimated. "We're gonna need shields to get much further than this. Check the ship's status, Jayce, see what she's got."

"Got it," he said, typing on a holographic keyboard on his side. He brought up an image of the ship as it listed its operational equipment. "Thirty megajoules, that console," he pointed to a panel on her side.

"Not bad," she nodded, tapping the display to bring it up, then activating them. "Those are some beefy shields for a ship this size." She glanced at him, as she pushed the throttle. They all sank a little into their chairs as the dropship began to accelerate, and out here, in space, they would continue to accelerate until she neutralled the throttle. They were using space protocols now, the navigation of ships by vectors, and they could get the ship up to about a quarter of light speed before they started overloading the engines, as their location in space changed too rapidly for the unit to be able to translate that space and then distort it to induce acceleration. "Alright if I send, hon?"

"Yeah, I'm fine now," he answered.

She nodded. _Alright girls, stay strapped while we get up to cruising speed, and then you're free to move around. We're gonna have four hours of cruising until we get to where we have to turn around because of the radiation._

The texture of her sending was... strange. Jason thought about it, and realized that her sending felt sharper, more clarifying than usual. He was sensing subtle textures and undercurrents of her thought he had never noticed before. He had no trouble understanding it, but he realized that he could sense _more_ than just the thought she was projecting. He could sense her excitement about the idea of exploring Karis, and more than a little fear, and worry that all that radiation was going to blind the sensors and make it impossible to get any reading, requiring them to be able to physically see... which would be way too close. He could sense that she was worried about him, and she was _wildly_ curious about the device on his ear. She wanted to know what it was, how it worked, and how the Karinnes had built it.

It was... bizarre. He gave her a curious look, and she just gave him a smile. _What?_

He gathered himself to send in reply, and then felt the gestalt _engage_. It seemed to gather up his thought, coalesce it, and then pushed itself behind it. When he did send, he distinctly felt it. He wasn't sending through the gestalt, but the gestalt was adding a little extra push behind it. The thing was _aiding_ his telepathy! It didn't just have the ability to understand telepathy, it was _amplifying_ his own power, acting like a bullhorn!

Holy _shit_! If _all_ the Karinnes wore one of these, no wonder they were known as the most powerful telepaths in the Imperium! Their telepathy was artificially boosted!

_Wow_, Jason sent, touching the gestalt. _Myleena!_ In a second, the entirety of everything he experienced using the device was transmitted to her via sending; thoughts, feelings, sensations, things he could never explain or describe using the clumsy medium of words. This was best explained using pure thought.

_Incredible! How much stronger does it feel?_ she asked in reply.

_I can't really tell, but sending is sharper, more clear than before. I have a much better sense of the thought behind the sending. Does mine seem any different?_

_Not different, but you have more clarity,_ Yana answered. _More bandwidth. I'm getting more of a sense of your thought, and your emotions are bleeding into it a little more._

_I'm starting to think that that little machine is something we _really_ need to understand,_ Myleena told him. _I can't wait to find one and take it apart, see how it works._

_Miaari said you'd have to wait to get one of your own... I think she was hinting that we might find more of them. Maybe these gestalts are what she sent us here to find. If we put them on the other telepaths, they could protect whole units of troops from Faey soldiers._

_We'll find out soon enough,_ Zora injected, as she neutralled the throttle. _That's as fast as I'm gonna push her, cause I want plenty of time to back off in case we get bad reading ahead. You can move around now, girls._

_Alright, Jason, come here. _Now_,_ Myleena sent. _Let's explore that device._

_Oh, don't _even_ think of keeping me out of this,_ Yana sent urgently.

As the others looked on excitedly, Jason, Myleena, and Yana, the three strongest telepaths on the dropship, joined hands and entered into a willful telepathic communion, sharing their thoughts with each other willingly, opening themselves up to each other, and then all three of them turned to the alien presence attached to the back of Jason's consciousness. Jason asked it, quite directly, what it was and what its function was.

_[Processing. Command processed.]_

A detailed image of a menu appeared in his mind, a menu listing its programmed functions. From the programming of the device, it had three basic functions.

The first function Jason had already discovered. It helped to boost the natural power of a telepath by adding the machine's strength to Jason's mind, increasing his base level, in a way, giving him more power and more sensitivity, acting like a telepathic amplifier.

The second function was something Jason understood completely. It was a _computer_, and its purpose was to assist its wearer. It was like the panel he'd had back home, a personal computer, with most of the same basic abilities, but not as powerful as his panel... but this computer was directly linked to his brain, and it allowed him to control it with his own thoughts. Its interface was _telepathic_.

And, because it was a machine, it had the ability to interact with other machines. That was its third function. It could control other machines that were set up to receive hyperthreaded gravband on a specific frequency, allowing a Faey wearing a gestalt to operate a skimmer without so much as touching the controls, for example, or interface with another computer that had access to Civnet. He could surf Civnet using nothing but his brain... and that was a scary thought that brought memories of old movies like _The Matrix_ or _Ghost in the Shell_ back to him. The range of the gestalt's transmitter was only about five hundred _shakra_, which limited its ability to do this.

They had hoped to learn more about the device, maybe where it had come from and who had used it, but that was all that it had in its memory. The device had no stored memory, no manuals, nothing that might help them understand how it worked. Clearly, anyone who wore this device would be expected to already understand how to use it before imprinting it. All they learned was that the date of manufacture for the device was 2837, and that Jason was its first registered user. It had been factory fresh... but factory fresh, unused, for over thirteen hundred years.

But still, it was eye-opening. The Karinnes had built this device, and it was clear that this wasn't just some crude experiment. They had plenty of experience with them, and its software version told him that it had undergone multiple software upgrades to its operating system, as they refined the programming more and more and more. This was not an experiment. This was a _finished product_.

"I wonder how many years they were building these things, and the rest of the Imperium never knew," Yana breathed as they broke their communion. "Never knew what the Karinnes had."

"Maybe they did know," Jason grunted. "Maybe that's why they were destroyed."

"They wouldn't destroy something like _this_," Myleena said, touching the gestalt on Jason's face. Her stomach growled audibly, and she blushed slightly. "I think my stomach is reminding me who's in charge," she said. "I'm hungry."

"Me too," Jason admitted.

"I saw the Kimdori load some field rations in the storage bins. They prepared us for this."

"_Now_ you tell me there's food on this tub? Thanks a lot!" Min snapped from the row behind them. "I'm starving back here!"

"Seems our timeliness with information about matches yours, Min," Myleena said coolly.

She laughed. "Ohhhh, that's right, are you gonna spank me now, Jason?" she asked, starting to undo her waist strap, which was all that was holding her to her seat. "Let me get my armor off, so we can both enjoy it! We can even let the others watch. It'll be fun!"

"Min, you are weird," Jason told her.

"No red blooded Faey girl turns down a spanking from a handsome boy," she winked at him. "Once you get his hand on your ass, you don't have to urge him to move it very far to get it where you _really_ want it to go, you know."

"I'm married, Min."

"So?"

Lyn came up behind Min and smacked her on the backside with her armored glove, which made her pitch forward. "Was it good for you, baby?" she asked as Min pinwheeled out over the seats and towards the forward bulkhead.

The exchange was light and playful, but in a way, it told Jason that the Marines weren't going to let this revelation and the new piece of hardware resting on Jason's ear change their core idea of him, and for that, he was grateful. To them, he was still just Jason. Husband of one of their squad sergeants, focus of their current orders to protect him, and friend.

They all took a needed break for lunch, digging into the field rations the Kimdori had put on the dropship. They were Faey rations, so Jason found himself eating something called _dokar_, which tasted something like pork. Myleena traded him her dessert for his, because she didn't like _koya_ cake, but he found he rather liked it.

_Jason, Sarge, come up here,_ Zora sent from the cockpit.

They floated up, Myri pushing him from behind has he handwalked his way through the hatch, and they both looked at an image she had projecting between the two pilot chairs. It was an ovoid mechanical device. _There's a string of these about fifteen minutes ahead of us. None of them are giving off any energy signatures. I think they're relics from Karinne, old early warning satellites, maybe._

_How many are there?_

_Not so many that we have to worry about getting past them. Maybe one every thousand _kathra_ or so. I just didn't think we should go by them without letting you know._

_You sure they're dead?_

_No energy signatures at all, at least I can see,_ she answered. _The radiation from the interior of the system is making it hard to get accurate sensor readings. They're covering all the channels with radiation snow. That's only gonna get worse as we get closer to Karis._

_How far are we from that line of safety you were talking about?_ Myri asked.

_About an hour,_ she answered.

_Alright, let's go ahead and go on, then. But keep an eye on them._

_Will do, boss. Jason, up here with me. I want another seat to keep an eye on those things as we get close._

_Sure, Zora,_ he answered, floating over to the copilot's chair and strapping himself in. _How was that field ration?_

_How are any of them? Tasteless, but sickeningly nutritious,_ she answered, which made him laugh. _Every time I open one, I wonder if I'm ever gonna find someone's finger inside. Then I wonder if it was put there on purpose or by accident._

_Eww,_ Jason sounded.

_Yeah, eww._

Jason was assigned the task of tracking the drifting satellites as they approached, and watching the sensors to see if any of them started giving off any energy signatures. None of them did, none of them changed their orbital tracks, none of them did anything. Zora angled them safely through the line, about halfway between two of them and about five hundred _kathra_ over their line. As soon as they cleared the line of old satellites, Zora gasped and looked at her sensor window. Hard.

"What?" Jason asked.

"All the radiation readings are _gone_," she told him, giving him a confused look. "Wait a minute, we just passed that line"

"They were sensor jammers?" Jason asked in confusion.

"That was just way too sudden for them not to be," she told him. "What I'm reading now is much more _normal_ radiation readings. I'm getting a little return from where Karis is, but nothing like before. It looks within Faey tolerance."

Myri was called up to assess the situation, and they decided to keep going. But they couldn't get back to cruising speed, because the suddenly different sensor readings were warning of a large number of inert objects ahead. Myleena slowed down even more, slow to a speed where they could maneuver, and they found out what the strange readings were on their scopes as they reached the first of them.

Debris. Floating debris so thick it looked like an asteroid field, all of it twisted metal.

_A ship. A big one, from the look of it,_ Zora sent as they carefully picked their way through the debris field. _Looks like she got hit right in the reactor and blew._

_Why are the pieces all right here? Wouldn't they have drifted away?_

_Some have. What's here is probably about thirty percent of the ship,_ she answered. _But the debris has its own gravity field, and that pulls back all the larger pieces and the ones with low energy. And remember, Jayce, all this junk is _moving_. We're going, what, about twenty thousand? This debris is moving at the same speed we are._

_Why do you say something hit it?_

_This ship was destroyed. See the blast burns right there on that piece of outer hull?_ she asked, pointing at a lazily spinning piece of flat metal that looked like bacon fried in a pan along its edges. _This ship was destroyed in combat. From the looks of it, it had to be a really long time ago. All the ship's markings have faded on the outer hull pieces. This might be the remnants of one of the ships that originally attacked Karis and destroyed the Karinnes._

_[Contact. Relay beacon. Responding.]_

_What do you mean, respond? What contact?_ Jason thought at the machine.

_[Karinne relay beacon is querying. Interfacing.]_

What happened next could only be called an out of body experience. The gestalt on his face reached out and made contact with some other device, and that device made a connection. It reached right into the gestalt and then read the machine's memory, then withdrew.

_[Message found. Accessing, please wait.]_

"Jason, what's happening?" Zora asked, looking at him.

Jason had his hand on the gestalt. "It received a signal," he answered. "It tried to answer, but it couldn't find some code. It just talked with whoever contacted it, and now it's downloading something. I, I think maybe some parts of the old Karinne system are still working, Zora. Something called a relay beacon just made contact with the gestalt."

_[Download complete. Message, all Karinnes, emergency priority. Reading.]_

In his mind, an image formed, almost like looking at a monitor. It was a Faey woman with long white hair, wearing a gestalt, and there was smoke behind her. _Anyone who receives this beacon broadcast, turn around immediately!_ she seemed to say. _We are under attack by Seditionist forces! All Karinnes_

And the message ended.

That was _sobering_. That message had been waiting for a thousand years to be delivered, but it had been for nothing.

Jason sighed. "One of their beacons is still working, even after all this time" he told Zora. "It had a message. It was a Karinne, warning that they were being attacked." He sent her a memory of what he saw in his mind's eye, and his solemn sense tinted the thought. Such a waste.

"Wow," Zora breathed. "But it makes sense that it may still be working, since there's no radiation."

They accelerated back to a cruising speed, but Jason didn't leave the cockpit. He and Zora stayed in the chairs, and others drifted in and out to look, see what was going on, as they got closer and closer to the not-so-irradiated planet of Karis.

That explained a great deal. Miaari had to know the truth, know that Karis wasn't as destroyed as the Imperium believed.

They were within functional sensor range, capable of reading more than just radiation... but it wasn't a good start. The place was devastated, that was clear, and they were also now close enough to get an extreme distance telescopic image of the planet. It was disconcerting. Vast craters where cities must have been, nothing but a planet of brown and blue, bare rock and earth and oceans, covered in bands of white clouds. All the plants and animals, gone, nothing but sterile earth and water. As they approached, they saw that there were some intact ruins, ruins of smaller towns that hadn't been directly bombed, and as the planet rotated, new tracts of land and sea became visible.

"Still no energy readings," Zora noted. "No satellites in orbit outside of its natural moon, none at all. That's weird. There should at least be some satellites up, even if they don't work anymore. Not unless they were all shot down."

They looked out the windshield, and saw a tiny little brown dot in the distance, which was Karis. On the monitor, however, they had a very detailed view of the planet, so detailed they could focus on a single building sitting on the surface. That's where it was now, focused on a single building, with several vehicles laying on the sterile earth around it. No plants. No animals. Not even any skeletons or clothes. The place was uninhabited.

"Hold on, I'm getting a faint energy signature," Zora said as she panned back, getting back to a planetary view, and her eyes locked on the lower right corner of the planet, at a new part of the planet that had rotated into view. "Look at that!" she gasped, then she quickly focused in on that area, and zoomed in.

It was a large island in the southern hemisphere, with a large volcanic cone mountain in its center. What separated this island from everything else they had seen so far was that it was _green_.

There were trees there! Trees! Zora zoomed in and managed to get individual trees on the monitor, then panned out and showed that the entire isl