Chapter 2

Karista, 10 Shiaa, 4392, Orthodox calendar;

Thursday, 15 May 2007, Native regional reckoning

New Orleans, Gamia Province, American Sector

It wasn’t easy to study, but he managed it somehow.

All that insanity with Jyslin had completely ruined a day’s studying, and again, if it wasn’t for his habit of recording his classes, he’d be behind. Getting behind when he had seven classes was not a good thing. He felt lucky that she didn’t follow him home, but then again, she was probably still in the Plaid trying to find him. It was only about six, and he knew that when it got dark and curfew kicked in, she’d know where to find him.

He had that test in Advanced Plasma Fundamentals tomorrow, but he felt ready for it. They were studying conduits and PPG’s in a little more detail, and anything involving plasma interested him enough to study well ahead. Plasma conduit was made of crystallized silicon, and it was actually rather pretty. It looked like hollow tubes of glass, but surprisingly tough, and the high-energy plasma was carried inside. Silicon conduit could carry any kind of phased plasma, but not plasma in its raw state. That was the clever little trick the Faey had discovered, which was the only reason they could use plasma as a power source. They phased the plasma into different states, and when so phased and set up that the individual phases of it opposed one another, it made it safe. Just like how humans had learned to use three-phase electricity, the Faey used multiple phases of plasma. But it worked much differently, for they phased plasma into alternate states of material existence, spreading out its energy into many different quantum states. That was called metaphased plasma, and it was why plasma could flow in a glass tube and not be ten thousand degrees Fahrenheit. They had other types of phasing techniques, such as interphased, hyperphased, and polarity phased. Interphased plasma was used to power spatial drives, since metaphased plasma distorted the system. Hyperphased plasma was only mentioned but not explained, because it was a military application, used to make the plasma torpedoes fired from their battleships. Polarity phased plasma was very low-energy and worked very well in microscopic applications, and was what powered virtually all very small devices.

All this plasma was generated by the PPG, the Plasma Power Generator, and it itself was an amazing creation of ingenuity. He’d read the history of the device, and it showed the boundary from where the Faey were limited to their own star system, the Draconis system on earth charts, and when they were released to conquer and rule other planets. The PPG was, literally, a miniature sun. That’s exactly what it was. The Faey had technology that affected space itself, allowing them to stretch it, pull it, even tear holes in it, and that was the technology that allowed them to build the PPG. Inside the device was a “bubble” of stretched space, and inside that bubble of stretched space, isolated from the rest of space by the boundaries of its bubble, was a hot nuclear fusion reaction. Just like the nuclear fusion that took place in stars, that’s what was going on inside a PPG. Within the bubble were temperatures approaching fifteen thousand degrees Fahrenheit, but because it was in that isolated bubble of manipulated space, the heat and radiation could not escape it. The bubble was breached in two places so plasma could be drawn out of it, then be fed back into it after it completed its circuit. A PPG’s size and power rating varied, and that affected its shelf life. The PPG in the cutter he’d borrowed had a shelf life of about a year. After a year, the material in the PPG’s bubble would fuse into an iron core, and then the PPG would exhaust itself and stop working. It had a battery of sorts that kept the bubble intact until the PPG could be serviced, for the iron core of a spent PPG was larger than the PPG itself. If the bubble broke down, that volume would return to normal space, and make the PPG literally explode as something larger than itself suddenly occupied its fusion chamber. The device had a couple of very serious cascading safeguards to prevent a bubble breach when the device was fusing, because a breach would cause a cataclysmic fusion-induced explosion that would be about as powerful as five hundred Hiroshima-sized nuclear bombs. The bubble, or core as it was called, could be ejected from the PPG, sent through a micro-wormhole and out into deep space, and the PPG had protocols for doing that if it detected a disastrous breakdown in progress. It had several other conditional protocols that would lead to a core ejection, such as readings that went over certain limits or a disruption in the bubble integrity. The PPG could eject the core before a tear in the bubble led to a fusion explosion, but the backlash fed back through the tear and tended to destroy everything within ten feet of a damaged PPG.

Because of the danger a breached PPG could pose, they were heavily protected in the devices in which they were installed. They were always surrounded by a metal called vandirium, a Faey alloy that was about a hundred times stronger than titanium, armor to protect against some kind of catastrophic breach. Faey armor was made out of a variation of vandirium alloy that was even stronger, but was more expensive to produce.

It was funny that cost should even matter, but it did. The Faey had a good grasp on molecular-level physics, and that had led to the construction of matter replicators. But the problem with them was that they could only produce materials in base elements, and they couldn’t replicate any element heavier than the metal Palladium. Silver, the next element on the table, could not be replicated, nor could gold or many of the metals that the Faey used to construct armor and vessels. It was even funnier that the human table of the elements was similar to the Faey version. They had many, many more elements on their table than the human table, different variations of known elements because of the number of neutrons in the nucleus, but it was still organizationally similar.

That was why they Faey needed Earth for farming, because they couldn’t replicate food. It was also why silver and gold were valuable to the Faey. It was also why they didn’t give their occupational forces the real armor that they equipped their soldiers with. He’d seen some on CivNet somewhere, powered armor with flight packs, integrated weapons in the arms instead of external weapons they had to carry. That armor was much more expensive, its materials couldn’t be replicated, so they’d equipped their occupational forces with only the weapons and armor they needed to keep the technologically backwards humans in check. Their weapons, well, those were the real deal. Faey used tiny bursts of high-energy metaphased plasma as their primary weapon, which exploded on contact with solid matter and also tended to burn through as it penetrated. The result was like an explosive bullet, which punched into a target then detonated. Living things shot by a metaphased plasma weapon tended to explode from the inside out when blood vaporized from the heat and that steam applied pressure to the flesh, aggravating the explosive contact the plasma had with a much cooler material. The result was a charge of metaphased plasma only two millimeters thick could leave a hole nearly a foot across. It was quite gruesome; even a graze could blow a limb off the body. What made them very nasty was that the fact that because they existed in multiple quantum states, it allowed most of the energy of the blast to pass through coherent energy shields. Any plasma state that matched the state of the shield would be stopped, but the remaining energy of the weapon would pass through and hit what it protected. The Faey employed shields on their warships, but the shields on ships they attacked would be useless.

CivNet was like the human internet…someone with enough patience could find just about anything. It was all in Faey, and he didn’t speak or read the language, but his panel could translate everything into English, so it made it legible. He’d found the technical specs for plasma pistols and rifles on CivNet, as well as the internal technical schematics for a PPG. Given those, and the materials, he could build his own plasma weapon, and he had this wild idea about secretly building a stockpile of weapons and using them to try to overthrow the Faey, but it was a useless dream, and he knew it. Faey telepathy would crush any attempt before it got started. He hadn’t heard anything about it, but he was certain that some other student out there had had the same idea and had tried it, but been found out and stopped before he got off the ground.

That damn telepathy. It just kept coming back and coming back and coming back. Without that, the Faey would not have such an easy time of it here on Earth. It made them very relaxed about their new vassals, almost arrogantly dismissive of them, because what could they do? They sent humans to school to learn Faey technology, because what could they do? They didn’t censor anything, not even the internet, because what could people do? They could think about revolt and object to the Faey all they wanted, but the instant they tried to do anything about it, the Faey would simply swoop in, use telepathy to root out the plot, and crush it before it could even get started. And people caught trying to overthrow the system weren’t killed, they were “reprogrammed” by Faey telepathic specialists, turned into good little loyal subjects of her Imperial Majesty, the Empress Dahnai. Why kill a good asset of the Imperium when you could simply use telepathic reprogramming to make him a lapdog?

To Jason, death was better. To be reprogrammed like that, to do what they wanted him to do, but he felt that somehow, deep inside himself, to know what they had done to him…that was the ultimate torture.

He leaned back in his chair and looked at the clock. Six fifteen. Curfew was at nine, when all humans had to be off the streets or have a pass to move about…which were admittedly easy to get. All you had to do was call the Population Control Center and tell them you had to go out. You didn’t even have to give a reason. Tell them you’re going out, they send you a pass through your vidlink that you copy onto paper, and then you go. The curfew was installed more to rein in gangs of youths that liked to vandalize things more than anything else, and the news said that it’d probably be lifted next month. Jason couldn’t do that, of course. He didn’t have a vidlink. He was a student, and he had a panel, which served as everything, including a vidlink. He’d download the pass to his panel and print it out from there. His panel was everything; computer, organizer, vidlink all rolled into one. Besides, in his tiny, cramped room, he didn’t have the space for a vidlink. Those things were about the size of an old human personal computer, complete with a hard keyboard, and if he had one on his desk, he wouldn’t have room for anything else. Vidlinks did about everything a phone and personal computer did, and everyone got one, even farm workers in their little rooms at their farmhouses. There were still stand-alone cell phones, tied to the same system that ran the vidlinks, itself part of CivNet, but one had to buy a phone, where vidlinks were issued to people free of charge. It was just one of the little things that humans didn’t grumble too much about when it came to the Faey.

Bored, he paused studying to surf through CivNet’s news, which was of course biased and inflamed. There was only one news service, INN, the Imperial News Network, and it was but the mouthpiece of the Empress. But, he had to admit, they did cover what they considered news rather thoroughly. They just didn’t openly question her Majesty’s policies or decisions. He switched over to pan-empire, the real Faey news, where a blond Faey sat behind a desk, wearing a strange white robe, and talked in Faey about the news of the Imperium while three-dimensional holograms showed beside her. Earth even showed up in these broadcasts from time to time, such as last week, when an earthquake had rocked California. That made the major news, and they showed holos of Faey and human workers cleaning everything up.

Nothing he could make out. They showed images of some other planet somewhere where a storm had done damage to a seaside town-a green ocean, weird, that was-and other images that made little sense to him. Without the ability to speak Faey, it really would be a string of unconnected pictures, nothing more.

Wait, here was something. The Faey were at war with some other race, he knew that, and they were showing images of damage to a battle fleet that must have just returned from combat. They put up statistics over the images, probably how many were killed, how many of the other side were killed, probably none of it accurate, that sort of thing. He did remember seeing a picture of one of those people, big bipedal red-scaled reptilian things that looked pretty nasty, and he wondered how they stacked up against the Faey. He could imagine it now…big reptilian monsters that looked vaguely like guys in Godzilla suits fighting an army of dainty little female elves with big fuckin’ guns.

Now that was funny.

Not that it was right to trivialize war, but if they were fighting the Faey, then maybe he should toast them the next time he had a beer with Tim.

There was no knock at the door. It opened, and Jyslin came bursting through, again out of her armor. He glanced at her absently, then went back to watching his panel screen. Today she had on a black tank-top that showed off her generous chest and a pair of curve-hugging gray shorts, with running shoes on her feet. Her skin was shiny with sweat; she must have been working out. He could smell her sweat, and found that it was a strange spicy-musky smell that was oddly appealing. Damn Faey, even their sweat smelled good. “Well?” she said hotly.

“Well what?” he countered evenly, not bothering to look at her again.

“How did you do it?” she demanded.

“You think I’m going to tell you that?” he asked with a scoff. “Please.”

He expected her to rant at him or shout, but she instead laughed. “Fair enough,” she said generously, then closed the door behind her. “I thought you had a test tomorrow.”

“I do,” he answered. “I’m taking a break.”

“Watching the news, huh?” she noted, looking over his shoulder. “Damn, the skaa did some damage this time.”

“Skaa?”

“The reptilians we’re fighting at the moment,” she answered. “On the other side of the empire. We’re in a dispute with them over a couple of star systems. The fighting’s more or less contained to battles inside the disputed territory. Neither side wants an open war.”

“Why is that?”

“Our technology is better, but they’re like uncountable,” she replied. “I think their home planet has something like ten trillion people on it. They can put an army on a planet fifty times bigger than anyone else and win by sheer force of numbers.” She looked at him. “Wait, why are you being nice to me?” she demanded.

“Because you’re not acting like an asshole,” he answered honestly.

She laughed. “Will you go out with me?”

“No.”

“Well, what good does it do then?” she asked with a laugh and a wink. “I didn’t know you speak Faey.”

“I don’t. But you can figure some things out if you’re patient enough to try.”

“Want to learn?” she offered.

“I don’t have time for language lessons.”

“Who said I’d teach you the long way? It’ll take about five minutes.”

He realized immediately what she meant. Telepathic instruction. The Faey didn’t do it to humans in school because of certain ways things worked with their power. They could use it to implant knowledge, like history or language or something like that, pure data, but not any information that required the use of motor control. It had to do with the way the brain worked, and it was too complicated for him to understand. All he knew was that was why the Faey had to teach people things the same way that the humans did. They couldn’t just “zap” that information into people’s heads-well, they could, but it really wouldn’t do much good, because they couldn’t really use what they were taught without practice, and having the knowledge to do something without having the skill to perform the task was an exceedingly dangerous combination. To prevent cataclysmic accidents, they didn’t teach any way other than the old-fashioned way. She could teach him Faey with telepathy, because it was purely a mental activity. It didn’t require anything other than thinking, and those were the only things that Faey could implant via telepathic instruction. If she taught him Faey, he’d be able to understand it fine, but he’d have to practice making those sounds to speak it, and practice to learn how to write it or type in it. Those were motor functions, and they had to be practiced until perfected.

“No,” he said adamantly. “I’ll learn it the way I learn everything else. You’re not putting your hooks in my head, Jyslin.”

“We’ll see,” she said with a wink. “I’ll bet you fifty credits you’ll be speaking Faey by next Friday.”

“Not even.”

“Easy money for me,” she announced.

“I never said I’d take the bet. I don’t gamble.”

“Be glad you’re not in the military, then,” she laughed.

“My father was.”

“Oh? What did he do?”

“He was a fighter pilot,” he answered, backing out of the Faey news broadcast and returning to his homework.

“It must be something to fly one of those hydrocarbon engine planes,” she mused. “No control at all. It would be scary.” She looked at him. “Almost any pilot with kids teaches the kids to fly.”

He nodded. “Got my conditional pilot’s license when I was twelve,” he affirmed. “Got my unconditional license at sixteen, just a month before my father died. It made him very happy to see me get it, and about that time, I’d do anything to make my father happy.”

“He was sick?”

He nodded. “Cancer.”

“It’s too bad we didn’t get here sooner. We could have cured him.”

“If you’d have gotten here when he was still alive, you would have had to shoot him out of the sky,” he said bluntly. “My dad wouldn’t have accepted the subjugation. He would have fought, no matter what the odds.”

“Sounds like a spunky fellow.”

For some reason, Jason took exceptional offense to the word spunky. “I think it’s time for you to leave,” he said stiffly.

“Fine, but now I have the plan for our second date,” she told him. “We’re going flying in one of those prop planes they have sitting out at the lakeside airport.”

“Keep dreaming.”

“It’s no dream,” she said, quite seriously. She grabbed the neckline of her tank top and fanned herself absently. “I need to go clean up. I’ll swing by later and see how you’re doing.”

“Don’t bother,” he said in a growling tone.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow after I get off duty,” she said easily, opening the door, stepping through, then turning around and looking at him. “Then again, I’ll know what’s going on. Lyn and Bryn will be escorting you tomorrow. They’ll keep in touch. See you later,” she said with a wink, then she closed the door.

“That’s what you think,” he said in a low, dangerous tone, glancing at the little cord sticking out from under his bed. He already had their little surprise ready and waiting.

He grumbled a little, still feeling a tad stung by her flippant remark about his beloved father, then got back to studying.

Lyn and Bryn were willowy raven-haired sisters, identical twins, who had managed to stay together from their conscription on. They were very patient, clever, and methodical women. They served as the squad’s logical reasoning, offering cool, sensible advice in stressful situations, and their powerful mental bond, the kind of bond only twins could enjoy, gave them an awesome range of telepathic contact when they were separated. This strong bond and the insane range it gave them was a useful tactical advantage in combat, allowing for uninterceptible communications between two elements of the squad when they split up. They were careful, almost timidly cautious women who never blundered into anything without thinking it through, and weren’t the kind of women who fell for stupid, inane little traps.

Except for today.

What made it even more embarrassing for them was that they’d been warned about Jason. They’d been there last night when he vanished from the Plaid, and they were rather impressed with his ability to foil an entire Marine squad. Jyslin and Maya had specifically warned them that Jason was a very clever and crafty man, and he knew that they were going to be out there waiting for him. She even went so far as to specifically warn them that he might have a little surprise waiting for them when he left his dorm, something to discourage pursuit.

But, like most Faey, when they got curious about something, they absolutely had to satisfy that curiosity. It was a racial trait, very nearly a racial liability, both one of the reasons they were so technologically advanced and a reason they’d gotten into a fair number of wars that could have been avoided if they’d just minded their own business.

What got their curiosity was a little silver egg that was sitting on the stoop of the dorm’s main entrance. It was on a little metal stand, obviously put there deliberately, just sitting on the top landing of the steps waiting. The humans simply stepped around the egg, as if it was supposed to be there, which made it even more unusual. Lyn and Bryn got out of their hovercar-century old piece of junk, why couldn’t they bring in some modern equipment!-and that little egg immediately got their attention. It just sat there, unclaimed, untouched, and completely ignored by the humans who stepped around it as they filed out to go to school.

“What is that?” Lyn asked a short brunette female human as she rushed out, obviously running late.

“Dunno, there’s a note on the board not to touch it,” she answered quickly and honestly. “It’s probably an experiment someone’s doing.”

Lyn let the girl go, and the twin Marines regarded the egg with curiosity.

Should we? Bryn asked mentally. They almost never spoke when they communicated with one another.

It’s probably a trap, Lyn returned.

We have to go get Jyslin’s beaux anyway. Let’s just take a look at it as we go by. We don’t have to touch it.

We’d best not. I still say it’s a trap.

I think so too, but the humans got very close to it and nothing happened. So long as we don’t get any closer to it than they did, we should be alright.

Lyn furrowed her brow. That’s a good point. Alright, but we don’t touch.

Lyn and Bryn went up the steps, their boots clacking on the concrete, and stooped over a little to inspect the egg, careful not to get too close to it. It was a featureless, perfectly smooth egg of a shiny metal, probably refined chromium or hardened mercury. Their reflections in the egg were distorted by its curvature, making them both look like they had eyes or noses ten times bigger than the rest of their faces.

“Good morning,” came a steady, almost amused call from the street, by their car. The turned and looked and saw the human Jyslin had set them on, the student Jason. How had he gotten out of the building without them seeing it? There was only one entrance to the dorm! He was in a simple white tee shirt with no decoration, a blue denim short-sleeved shirt worn unbuttoned over the tee shirt, faded jeans, and ragged old sneakers. He had his brown backpack slung over one shoulder, and the other hand held a small, featureless little device with a single flashing red button on its face. With a flick of his thumb, he pressed that button.

Bedlam!

Something smashed into them from behind, throwing them forward. Both of them tried to put their hands up to protect their faces from being planted in the sidewalk, but something grabbed hold of them and prevented them from reaching the bottom of the steps. Both Lyn and Bryn tried to move, but found that they were stuck fast in something!

Lyn’s head wasn’t stuck in whatever it was, so she turned and looked behind them. It was crash foam, a special foam that they used in vehicles that, on trigger from a sensor, erupted out and filled the volume of a vehicle’s cavity, then instantly hardened into a soft solid to restrict the passengers. The result was a springy, elastic material that absorbed shock and protected the occupants of a crashing vehicle from suffering serious injury, but also stuck fast to anything it was touching as it hardened, as securely as any glue, nearly as securely as molecular annealing. The foam was supposed to decay five seconds after the vehicle came to a stop, to allow the occupants to get out, but then Lyn remembered that it was decayed by a second device that deployed after the sensors told it that the vehicle was at a rest.

They were stuck fast, and they’d stay like that until someone brought a foam decay module!

“Have a nice day,” he told them mildly, putting the little remote in his pocket, then turning and meandering towards school at an easy pace that looked as if he had not a care in the world.

They sent to each other frantically to make sure that the other was alright, that the foam wasn’t blocking mouth and nose. Lyn and Bryn both were frozen in the foam with their heads lower to the ground than their feet, and all Bryn could see was the sidewalk just in front of the steps. The foam had hardened around her neck, and she couldn’t move it more than just a little bit, since fringes of the foam were attached to the lobes of her ears, and if she tried to move too much, she’d rip her ears off.

Lyn glowered in the direction of the retreating human, then she burst into helpless laughter. Bryn joined her seconds later.

What a man! Jyslin was lucky she found him first! Lyn and Bryn both were just a little bit jealous at Jyslin’s good fortune!

Well, do we hang here all morning, or humiliate ourselves and send for help? Bryn asked after she got control of herself. If I remember right, the foam will dissolve on its own in a few hours.

I’m not hanging here all morning, Lyn countered.

Well, it should be fun following him around the rest of the day.

No, Lyn replied. He beat us fair, so we leave him alone. He earned it.

That he did, Bryn agreed. I just wonder where he got the foam, she mused.

I don’t think we want to know.

You’re probably right, Bryn acceded, then she sputtered aloud and started laughing again.

For some reason, those two didn’t come back after he glued them to the sidewalk with crash foam, but that suited Jason just fine.

He took his test that morning and got the highest score in the class, then handed in his physics project after lunch. It still worked, despite what he did to it, a little sensor that measured flux in the spatial fabric that Professor Umera had everyone build as a lab exercise. It was nothing more than assembling pre-fabricated pieces, but it was still almost fun to do.

After lunch there was calculus, then came his second plasma-oriented course of the day, one of four such courses he took this semester, also taught by Ailan. Advanced Plasma Fundamentals, Introduction to Plasma Dynamics (the physics of plasma, which he had to take in conjunction with his physics class), Theoretical Plasma Systems I, and the lab companion class for Advanced Plasma Fundamentals, the class to which he was going. The other class was both lecture and lab, but this class was for lab, with only occasional lecture if Ailan didn’t get the lecture finished from the last class. Those were hard enough, but stack calculus, Imperial History I (ancient Faey history), and Xeno-Psychology I (basically the Faey teaching the humans learning Faey technology how not to insult the Faey when interacting with them).

After lab, Xeno-Psych was the next class for today, and it was held in the old Tulane building on the far side of campus, twenty minutes after lab let out. He always took his time walking over there, and as a result, he always got into the classroom about a minute before Professor Tia-the youngest of all his teachers and without doubt the cutest-was ready to start class. She was a little doll, fairly short for a Faey woman, with hair that was actually blue, a very dark shade of blue that was much darker than her skin, almost midnight blue. She had the cutest little face, very cherubic and a bit mischievous, with noticeable dimples in her cheeks. She also had a very raucous sense of humor. Tia could get downright dirty sometimes, and she loved to tell bawdy jokes during class. Tia was equal measure of angel and devil wrapped up in one insufferably cute little package.

“Afternoon,” she called, which was repeated rather unenthusiastically by her students. “Well, there’s been a little change in plans, people. They just handed down a curriculum change, and we have to put it into effect.”

That got everyone’s attention. They all looked up at her from their panels.

“Usually we do the language insertion at the start of Xeno II, but they’ve moved that to the beginning of Xeno I, effective today. Since we’re already halfway through the semester, that means we have to go back and get that out of the way now, before we continue on in our current chapter.

“Excuse me, Professor, what is an insertion?” a tall, spindly man asked from the back of the classroom. Jason didn’t know his name.

“We teach you Faey,” she explained to him. “Since it’s a language, we can insert it telepathically. We’ll do that today, and spend the next three weeks practicing pronunciation and writing. Then we’ll pick up where we left off, and shift the last three chapters we used to do in this semester into Xeno II.”

Jason’s eyes immediately went flat, and he remembered what Jyslin said last night. Had she known? Had she talked to the school and found out about this beforehand? It seemed so.

He realized that she’d tried to scam him out of fifty credits! Geez, how low could she go!

Then he realized that she didn’t do anything any worse than what he’d already done, and he had to chuckle ruefully.

The amusement faded when he realized what insertion entailed. A Faey would put herself in his mind, deeply into his mind, violating his innermost sanctity. And he had no choice but to allow it, to knuckle under yet again to the Faey Imperium, to be the obedient slave that he was being. He had no choice. He couldn’t refuse, or he’d end up on a farm, and that was a fate worse than having a Faey rake her grubby little claws through his mind.

“Since there are thirty of you and one of me, that means I’m going to have some help. So, pack up your things and come with me down to the lecture hall, where our assistants are waiting. After the insertion, you'll be free to go.”

“Umm, Professor, is this safe?” someone asked.

“It’s totally painless,” she assured with a dimpled smile. “There is some dizziness immediately afterward, and after you're over that, we'll tell you to go home and take a nap. That helps your mind sift through it all and digest it. If you’re worried about it, Stan, I’ll do it for you myself. That way you get someone you know and trust. Would you like that?”

“Yes ma’am,” he said immediately.

Jason was extremely unhappy with this, but there was nothing he could do. He packed his panel in his backpack and joined the others as they went down into the largest classroom in the building, a large auditorium-style room with raised tiers on which desks stood. It held nearly a hundred people, and lined up along the base of the wall were ten Faey, five of them in the black armor of Marines, the other five in the robes or long-tailed shirts that the professors wore.

Jason stopped dead in the door. One of those five Marines was Jyslin!

She gave him a smug, victorious little smile, then shooed him on as someone nudged him from behind. Jason stalked into the room and sat down in one of the desks on the lowest tier, and he glared at her murderously. That bitch. She had this all set up. She knew about the change, somehow, and had managed to finagle her way into being one of the telepaths that would perform the insertion. Marines were much stronger telepaths than the occupational forces that served as the majority of the police and other governing forces, so it was no real shock to see Marines being pressed into service as telepathic inserters.

"Now, everyone take a seat," Tia called as she came in, then waited as everyone did so. "Not beside each other. Leave one desk to either side of you." She waited as some students moved to spread out. "These helpers and myself are going to go around and perform the procedure. Don't worry, all of us have done this before, that's why we're here. After it's over, don't get out of your seat until I tell you that you can, alright?" She nodded to the others, and they all fanned out. Tia went straight to Stan, but Jyslin didn't come to him. None of the others did either, telling him that Jyslin was saving him for last, and had already warned off all the others from teaching him.

He sat there and fumed for nearly twenty minutes, not even looking behind him. She had this all set up. She'd played him last night, obviously in revenge for what he did to her yesterday afternoon. He had no idea how she knew, but she did. There was nothing he could do. She'd already fixed it so nobody else would teach him, and he couldn't get out of not going through with it.

This battle went to Jyslin.

She plopped down in the seat beside him, her armor going clack as she did so, then put her elbow on the desktop and gave him an amused look.

"Shut up," he growled at her.

"I told you, I cheat," she told him.

He gave her a cold stare.

"I win this time," she said in a teasing tone. "Now, turn and face me."

"Why?"

"Because we do have something to do here," she told him tartly. "And I pride myself on my work. When I'm done, you'll be absolutely fluent in Faey. My mother taught Faey in primary school, so I have a stronger grasp on the language than most everyone else here. So, turn and face me. Now."

He was surprised by the steel in her voice. He did so, and she put her hands on his desk. "Put your hands here," she instructed. "I'm going to put my hands on your face, and then we'll begin. At first, you're going to feel me brush you, as you call it, then it's going to get much stronger. The important thing you have to remember is not to fight with me," she said, quite seriously. "In order for me to do this, I need to contact your long-term memory and put things there. I promise you I won't do anything other than what I have to do," she said in an earnest voice, her gray eyes very serious. "I won't look at anything, I promise. I know how you feel about being probed. That's one reason why I arranged to be the one to do this. At least with me, it's someone you know, and someone you won't have any trouble finding and kicking on the other side of her head if you don't like what she did to you," she added with a wink.

Now that surprised him, quite a bit. In a way, she was more or less right. In an odd way, he did feel a little better about the idea of a Faey that he knew doing this. Because she wouldn't just disappear. She promised to stop in tonight after she got off duty, and if he was really upset about what she did here and now, he could always punch her in the nose. That declaration of recognizing the possibility of retaliation actually made him feel somewhat better about the idea of it. Not that the idea of it didn't set his teeth on edge and make him feel like he was about to be anally probed with a telephone pole, but at least with Jyslin doing it, he could throttle the administrator if it pleased him to do so.

"Now," she said in a gentle, mollifying, cooing tone, lightly grabbing his hands and setting them on the side of the desk. "You're going to feel me brush up against you, then press in, like putting your hand into water. Don't fight me," she warned. "If you do, it's going to make it very hard, and it might hurt you. I'll just press in and sit there a minute so you can get used to it. I won't do anything, I promise, not until I feel you calm down. Are you ready?"

"Let's get this over with," he grunted in a low, ominous tone.

"Close your eyes," she told him. "It will make it easier. Concentrate on what's inside, not on what's outside."

He nodded and closed his eyes, bowing his head slightly.

"Alright, here we go," she said, reaching out and putting her slender, work-calloused hands on the sides of his face, over his cheeks.

He instantly felt her brush up against him, and he did his best not to resist that feeling, but it was not easy. It was an automatic, almost reflexive reaction for him to close up his thoughts when he felt a Faey doing what she was doing. He felt her feel around the edges of his instinctively raised barrier, and even as he tried to figure out how to allow her through it, she found a weakness in it and punched through. It was not a pleasant experience to have her breach the boundaries of his mind and invade him like an attacking army, like a disease. Immediately, he felt her presence inside his own mind, a strange thoughtless presence, like an alien object lodged within the pathways of his thoughts. He violently reacted to that contact, the first time a Faey had ever breached his defenses and actively entered his mind, so violently that his hands snapped up and closed around her wrists, seeking to rip them away from his face. But Jyslin's strength surprised him, holding her hands fast against his strength as she rode out his reaction to her, as the hands holding her wrists slowly stopped trying to pull her away. His reaction was a reflexive one, and as the seconds passed, Jason got less and less resistant to her presence, as he tried to get used to the feel of a presence in his head other than himself.

See, it wasn't that bad, her thought emanated from that alien presence, and he could hear it clearly within his own mind. I'll hear what you think, just to warn you. Oh, you can loosen your grip on my wrists now. I'd like to keep you from squeezing my hands off.

Sorry, he thought to himself.

It's alright, she answered. I had to literally attack you to get into your mind. I hope I didn't hurt you.

It wasn't pleasant, but I think I'm alright, he thought in answer.

I'll wait a bit, let you get used to the feel of it, she informed him. When I start, you'll see a dizzyingly fast blur of images, sounds, concepts, and even pure thoughts. I'm literally going to take everything I know about Faey and put it in your mind, sending it into your long-term memory. When I'm done, you're going to be a little confused and dazed, but it'll pass. You won't make much sense of what I'm going to teach you at first, it's going to take your mind a little time to go through it all and piece it together. I'm going to put everything there, but your brain's going to have to work out how it's going to store it all.

What do you mean?

I'll put it where I can, but your brain's going to take it all and move it, rearrange it the way it wants it, she explained. If it doesn't, you'll never be able to use any of this, and you'll forget it in about a week. That's why you'll need to go home and take a nap after the dizziness fades. An hour of sleep gives your brain a chance to rearrange things to its satisfaction without dealing with all the things it has to do when you're awake.

That made sense, or at least it seemed logical, after a fashion. Since he really didn't know how it worked, it certainly sounded like it was possible.

Ready?

Do I have a choice?

She seemed highly amused. Alright, here we go.

She wasn't lying about what happened next. An absolute avalanche of alien, bizarre images, sounds, sights, concepts, even pure thought poured into his mind, so fast that he couldn’t' make out anything but a confused cacophony, unable to see the individual parts because they made up a confusing and bewildering whole. It was like a school of fish, or a waterfall. He couldn't make out any one part, but he could see the whole. The problem was, the whole made no sense to him, even though he made no effort to try to make sense of any of it.

He had no idea how long it took. It seemed that one minute she was filling his mind with dizzying information, and then she simply stopped. He felt her presence ghost around the fringes of his memory, coming close but not close enough to make him feel worried, almost as if she were checking her work. He could feel her drawn to the darker tunnels of his mind, where all those things she wanted to learn about him lurked, but she stayed away from the temptation, keeping her word of not going anywhere or seeing anything he did not want her to be, or see.

I'm finished, she announced. I'm going to pull back now. It might make you a little disoriented for a second or two, but then again, what I put in your mind's going to do that anyway. Oh, by the way, the next time you imagine me naked, get it right.

Just before she withdrew from his mind, she shared with him an image, a visual memory, one that almost made him blush. It was a very, very detailed memory of Jyslin looking at herself in a full length mirror, in what looked like a bedroom behind her.

Wearing nothing but combat boots.

It wasn't a dirty pose, or even very provocative, it was just the idea of it. Had Jyslin got up from that desk and stripped naked right there in front of him, it would have been no different than this. She showed him her full glory, and the knowing little smile on her face told him that she planned to do it when she stood in front of that mirror and memorized how she looked, just so she could show him. She stood there, one hip raised sensually, and posed for the mirror, posed for a mental picture she shared with him now, and she was enjoying every second of it, both when she made that memory and now, as she shared it. He could tell. And he could only go over that memory with what could be called a fine toothed comb, admiring her ample chest--but not too large--and her sleek, flat belly, and her curvy hips, and her quite splendid legs, and being a male, he could not ignore that neatly trimmed patch of dark red pubic hair which stood out against her soft blue skin.

But she wasn't done. Quite deliberately, she turned around and looked over her shoulder, showing him her sleek, willowy, thoroughly sexy back and a marvelous heart-shaped backside, with long, long legs that seemed to go all the way down to China.

She was absolutely gorgeous, both in face and body. Jason never thought blue skin could be so damn sexy before that.

And then she pulled away from him, and he felt that presence of her, that suddenly seemed much less hostile now that she had shared so intimate a memory with him, vanish from within his mind. She had done everything she said she would do. She had behaved herself, had kept her promise not to invade his mind any more than what was necessary to do what needed to be done, though he could clearly feel at one point that she had been sorely tempted. Then, as she broke contact, she gave of herself freely, shared with him something private, intimate, personal, something she did not have to do.

If she did that to curry his favor, well, it worked.

Then came the dizziness. The ceiling traded places with the floor, and he felt himself sway dangerously. She slid her hands down to his shoulders and steadied him, and his grip on her arms gave him a foundation on which to cling while the earth seemed to bounce around wildly. "There, now," she said in a low, gentle voice. "Better?"

"A little," he said woozily. "I think I'm getting sick."

"It'll pass in a second or two," she said, then she giggled like a little girl. "You're speaking Faey. It sounds very nice to hear you speak a real language. English is ugly."

He wouldn't be able to tell her one way or the other what he was speaking, because his brain felt like it was smothered in day-old mashed potatoes.

The dizziness did ease, and it did so with amazing speed. In a matter of a minute or two, he felt stable again. It was a little hard to think, like he was on medication, but at least he wasn't dizzy anymore. He blinked and looked around, and saw that he was the last student in the lecture hall, and all the instructors except for Professor Tia were gone. She must have waited to make sure things went smoothly. "Is he alright, Sergeant?"
"He seems to be a bit sensitive," she answered. "But I think he's alright now."

"Are you alright to get back to your dorm room, Jason?" she asked him with sincere concern.

"Yeah, yeah, I think I'll make it alright," he said in a disjointed manner, which made Tia give him an amused look. "What?"

"You're speaking Faey," she chuckled. "You're suffering from a case of mnemonic transposition, where your brain can't figure out if your implanted memory or your natural memory is the one that's supposed to be accessing, so it's sorta jumping back and forth between them to try to make sense of it all. Don't worry, it's a common enough side-effect for it not to be too much of a surprise. While you're suffering from it, you're going to jump back and forth between English and Faey, and you won't be able to read anything. Even English will look like gibberish to you. So, go back to your room and take a nap, and your brain will straighten everything out. After a nap, an evening of rest, and a good night's sleep, you'll be just fine."

"But I have a test tomorrow in Plasma Dynamics," he objected.

"Postponed," she told him. "The waiver's already on the schedule. All homework and tests due tomorrow are pushed back, so you can recover. No studying tonight, Jason, and that's an order."

"Yes, ma'am," he nodded.

"Now go home," she told him. He stood up, and his legs felt a little weak. "Woops, I think I'll have a car take you," Tia said quickly.

"No, I'm alright," he said quickly, getting his legs back under control. If everyone else walked out of the classroom, then dammit, so would he.

"I'll make sure he makes it safely," Jyslin offered.

"I appreciate that," she nodded. "See you on Monday, Jason. Enjoy your weekend."

Jason felt better after taking a few steps, until his strides were confident and long. Jyslin scurried to keep up with him as he made his way out of the building and onto the sidewalk leading to the dorm, which was the next building over. It was a walk of only about thirty yards. Jyslin followed him quietly, into the dorm, up to the third floor, and literally right into his room, closing the door behind her. "I'm here," he told her. "You didn't have to follow me into my room."

"Bed," she commanded, pointing imperiously at the narrow bed hugging the right wall of his cramped dorm room. "Now!"

"Don't order me around, woman," he said jerkily, unsure of what language he was speaking. "Trust me, as muffled as I feel right now, taking a nap is exactly what I intend to do." He sat down on the edge of the bed and slid his hands over his face in a slow, deliberate manner to try to clear the sand out of his thoughts. It was so hard to think!

"Well, I did what I promised," she said with a smile. "Think you'll trust me a little more now?"

"A little," he admitted.

"Want to go out with me?"

"No," he said immediately. "No matter how I feel about you, you're a Faey, and I'm a human. You represent something I protest, so I can't socialize with you. End of story."

"So, it's not personal," she pressed. "If I were human, you'd go out with me."

"Probably," he admitted again. "There are a couple of professors I'd be friends with, if it wasn't for the fact that they're Faey."

"I'll change that," she promised with a wink. "Remember, a week from today. You, me, fancy clothes, and a Faey opera. It's already been set."

"In your dreams," he scoffed. "I don't care what you do, Jyslin, I will not go out with you. Period. End of story."

"They're so cute when they think they have a choice," she said in a lilting manner as she opened the door. "Tomorrow it's Ilia and Sheleese. This time, try not to make such a mess," she said, then she leaned against the door. "So, what did you think of my little gift to you?"

"I think you need to get out in the sun more," he said boldly.

"I was in your mind when I gave it to you, Jason," she purred. "I know how you reacted to it. You think I'm dead sexy. You like me, and you like me a lot, you're starting to get interested in me, and you want to get to know me better. The only thing standing between us is a stupid point of technical philosophy, and I'm not going to stand for it."

She gave him a very serious look. "I'm Faey. I admit it. But don't hold that against me, Jason. Don't blame me for what happened to your planet. I'm stuck here, where I was placed, the same as you are. What is it your people say? Oh, yes, I just work here. And when I come back when I'm off duty, I won't be Sergeant Jyslin of the Imperial Marines, upholding her Imperial Majesty's honor, I'll be Jyslin Shaddale, a single girl trying to get a date with a mysterious, fascinating, handsome boy," she said with a wink. "You think about that. And keep thinking about it as you do whatever unholy evil things you're going to do to Ilia and Sheleese tomorrow morning. I'm dying to see it," she laughed and winked again.

"I'll make sure it's suitably entertaining," he said dryly.

"Good. I'll see you later. Get some rest, and think about what I might look like out of those boots," she said with a naughty little smile just before she closed the door.

Confusing woman. Or was she? Jason laid down and closed his eyes. It was hard to think, but not too hard to consider what she said. In a way, she was right. She was in the same position as him, and it wasn't her fault. He was blaming her, and every other Faey, for what happened to Earth, and to him personally. It really wasn't fair.

But, on the other hand, she was a Marine. She was in the military, a direct representative of the power that had conquered them. And then there was also the telepathy.

Quite simply, he just couldn't bring himself to trust any Faey because of that overwhelming advantage. At any time, all Jyslin had to do was put a hand on him and find out everything he was thinking, everything he felt, and violate the utter sanctity and personal domain that was his own mind. Jason had an intense hatred of that, burned into him after two years of having Faey try to burrow into his thoughts every day, day after day. Faey telepathy was the only reason nobody had managed a rebellion--not that it would really work, given the formidable Faey weapons and armament--but at least someone could try.

Part of that was his own self-loathing, he guessed. If his father could see him now, he'd slap him. He was cooperating, being a good little slave, because he didn't want to end up on a farm. Or even worse...being shipped off planet like some humans were, off to work in mines and other equally unpleasant and dangerous places. His father would have stolen an F-16 and taken on the entire Faey military by himself.

And now he'd been taught their language. Just another step down the road of making him an obedient subject of her Imperial Majesty.

He drifted off to sleep with that image floating in his mind...wearing one of those flowing robe-like upper garments the Faey favored, loose shirts with tails that dropped to their shins and flared sleeves with tails on them themselves nearly a foot long, and those loose-fitting pants, or robe-like skirts that both sexes occasionally wore. That would have been even worse. Wearing Faey clothes, speaking the Faey language, and standing in front of the featureless figure sitting on the throne of the Empire, bowing like an obedient lapdog.

That was a nightmare.

Jyslin did in fact stop in to see him after work, wearing a red tank top and shorts this time, but not sweaty. She'd stopped in before her workout, and she didn't stay long. Only long enough to see how the implantation went.

Perfectly. He had a complete and utter command of the Faey language. Jyslin wasn't joking when she said she knew more about Faey than most, for her vocabulary was immense, and her understanding of the intricate nuances of the musical language was profound.

He didn't have to study, so he spent most of that afternoon watching INN, which made it more interesting now that he could understand what they were saying. They talked about a surprising range of topics, covering the important news from many of the seventy-two planets in the Imperium. An earthquake on Aurile, a hurricane on the ocean planet of Jaxan, an explosion at a metals facility on Denet. Then they went into the arts phase, and he was surprised that they spent so much time on it. They tracked the movements of many theater troops, singers, and musicians, telling people where they were headed and when they would perform. The arts seemed rather important to the Faey for the movements of the performers to be covered by INN.

Earth even made it into their news. "The Empire-famous Triellian opera company is making its first visit to the newest addition to the Imperium, Terra," the roguishly handsome news anchorman said in a voice that feigned enthusiasm, which made Jason look at that corner of his screen. "It's the first visit from a famous performing company for our newest member of the Imperium. If you’re in that part of the Imperium and would like to make reservations, access Terra’s Civnet. There are still tickets available at most of their venues.”

Jason was about to drift back to the other side of his panel, where he was going over tomorrow’s little surprise, when the news distracted him once again. “For those of us in the Imperium who haven’t heard much about Terra, we here at INN think that your interest in our newest planet might increase. The Ministry of Agriculture has announced that the newest shipments of Terran food have passed bio inspection, and will be hitting your local markets by the end of the cycle,” he announced. “In addition to all the more common plants and grains, a new group of Terran-specific products will be made available, as will all the old. This includes a large crop of the newest food craze among Faey, strawberries,” he said in English.

“Oh, I know, Deren,” the female anchor said with a laugh. “I tried some at the unveiling of the new Terran foods last year, and they had to take the plate away from me!”

“I’m partial to their lobster myself,” he replied. “In other Terran news, the Ministry of Security has announced that certain areas of the planet have been approved for tourist passes. If you’re interested in seeing our newest farming planet in action, or you’d like to soak up the local culture and mystique of the indigenous population, contact your nearest travel agent and Ministry of Travel offices.”

“And here with a report on what you might want to see on Terra is Lini Timira,” the woman called.

Jason watched as INN ran a report on the “vacation getaways” of Terra, showcasing most of the places that humans liked to visit on Earth. Hawaii, Alaska, Yellowstone, the Alps, Africa, the Himalayas, they all rated on the natural scenery, and to his surprise, the reporter suggested visits to Paris, London, Hong Kong, Sao Paulo, Tokyo, Johannesburg, New Delhi, and even New Orleans for people curious about the culture and customs of humans. The reporter, a sharp-featured woman with dark blue skin-tanned from her travels-and hair the color of mud, made sure to point out that the local population was not telepathic, and virtually none of them spoke Faey, so a certain amount of care and caution when interacting with the natives was required.

Jason frowned and cut it off, then absently turned on the television, and switched it to the same channel. He had no idea why he was watching it on his panel when the TV carried the same stations. He wondered absently if they had stories on Earth every day, or if it was just starting to get into the news because the Imperium was about to allow civilian Faey to visit the planet. He had no idea, because up until now, all he could really go on were the pictures.

He wasn’t sure if he liked the idea of the Faey getting so…cozy with Earth or not. They’d taken it over, and now they were going to have Faey tourists milling around. Faey developing tastes for Earth food, Faey getting more and more common…it was like the beginning of the end of the fact that Earth was the home of the human race.

There wasn’t much he could do about it, so he blew out his breath, changed it over to the local station, and went back to his plan.

It was ready and waiting for when Ilia and Sheleese arrived promptly at seven the next morning. They’d parked their hovercar on the other side of the street, and came boiling out of it with their helmets on a