Chapter 9

Chiira, 8 Toraa, 4393, Orthodox Calendar

Wednesday, 9 September 2007, Native Regional Reckoning

Chesapeake, Ohio (Native designation), Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector

Symone was driving him crazy.

She wouldn’t tell him what Jyslin was supposedly bragging about. The only kind of response he could get out of her the next morning was that “Jyslin obviously didn’t brag enough.”

The worry that what happened between them would change their relationship, or upset Tim, had been misplaced. Tim took him aside and had a talk with him the next morning, and assured him that he didn’t mind. The bond between Tim and Symone couldn’t possibly be threatened by something that trivial. Tim knew that Symone was just acting in her nature, he knew it wouldn’t change her love for him in the slightest, and in a way, Tim admitted that if he was going to find someone to fill the void left behind when he was separated from Jyslin, then he was glad it was going to be Symone. That didn’t make much sense to him, but the fact that Tim was willing to allow Symone to do with Jason things that she should only be doing with Tim, because that’s what she felt she needed to do to be Jason’s friend, said much for his dark-haired friend.

The night with Symone had also taught him an important lesson about telepathy, sex, and the Faey mentality towards them. When he and Jyslin made love, they joined their minds, which made it intense. He and Symone had shared a night of admittedly intense physical pleasure, but did not join their minds. That was not something that friends did, that was something reserved for one’s spouse or chosen partner, and that was the critical difference that made the two acts so completely different. What he and Symone had shared absolutely paled in comparison to what he and Jyslin shared in each other’s arms. It was absolutely not the same. When he and Jyslin made love, they made love. What he and Symone had done could technically be called making love, but it was almost sterile in comparison. They’d done nothing more than have sex, purely for physical pleasure…or gratification. “Buddy sex,” Symone had called it, sex just to relieve sexual tension.

And that was the great boundary, he discovered. That was why Faey were so casual about it. Making love and having sex were two completely different things to a Faey, and now he finally understood the difference. One was as intimate as intimate could be, while the other was just physical. Faey assigned the same importance and intimacy to the union of the minds as humans did the union of the bodies.

That day marked great celebration through the community the day after the delivery, for Steve got his cable service up and running. He had a little trouble getting the transceiver to send out the signal on the cable using channels, but once he got that figured out, anyone with a cable-ready TV could pick up 120 different stations. Steve picked the channels, and he did a good job picking ones that had everything most people would want to see. He made sure to include INN and CNN, the two major news channels for both Earth and the Imperium, as well as several Imperial channels that he thought would be useful to have on the lineup, such as an Imperial network dealing with technical subjects, like the old Tech TV channel. He found a home improvement channel for Earth, so they could learn how to build things so they wouldn’t be such hindrances to Luke, who seemed able to build or fix most anything, or Zachary Brolin, the community’s resident expert on construction and carpentry. Zach had been the second generation owner of a contracting business, and he knew his construction. Not only did everyone have lights at night, and refrigerators, and air conditioning (though that was becoming less an issue now, as the seasons marched into autumn), but now they could sit down after dinner at night and watch television.

They’d had three days to get used to that luxury, but things had been very busy, and besides, Jason already had television. Doc Northwood had both settled into a house, and also commandeered one of the stores on Route 7 to be his new clinic. He had Jason ferry him back and forth between Chesapeake and his house near Beckley for nearly a full day, as he moved all his medical equipment and supplies to his new building. After they finished, he had Luke and Irwin take him to all three hospitals in Luke’s Deuce, where he managed to scavenge some medical supplies that others had either missed or dismissed as having no use. He was still setting up his clinic, getting up early and going to bed late, sorting through boxes and boxes of material, and was going to open it in two days.

The city council had already worked out the procedure for that. Anyone was allowed to come to see Doc Northwood, but they had to surrender all their weapons, and Symone had to be on hand to scan their thoughts to ensure that was why they were really there.

Things were starting to look good. Temika had arranged a trade with the McPherson’s in Fort Gay, trading three cows and some goats for several guns and a portable generator. She’d also organized a trade with the a group in Crown City, four hens and a rooster for several boxes of Clem’s hand-pressed ammunition and two hunting rifles. Luke had gone out to get them yesterday with Symone riding shotgun in her new armor, so now they had some livestock. The cloth armor team had been working around the clock, and now everyone had at least one set of armored clothing, even Jenny. Jason had uploaded the railgun part specs into the replicator, and it had already manufactured the parts he needed for the first new unit. He’d even gotten about halfway through making it as well, finishing the flux cabling in the barrel, which was probably the hardest part. It had to be wrapped by hand, and it had to be exact, so much so that he had to get out a micrometer to check his work. He’d replicated the barrel so it had notches on the outside for the cabling, so that helped a great deal, but it still required steady hands and patience. The rest of it would just be like putting a model kit together. He’d also made a bunch of new magazines, so he didn’t have to worry about losing them, and a few thousand rounds of ammunition. Tim and Symone found themselves coating the iron rounds with titanium for a couple of days as they did their telepathy lessons.

There were some things to worry about, though. He’d finally called Jyslin back, and to his relief, he found out that the Secret Police wasn’t bothering her anymore, mainly because of her aunt Lorna. Lorna had had a meltdown when she found out that the Secret Police was harassing her niece, and a couple of calls to friends who had friends put a swift end to it. She also warned him that he’d been spotted. Her aunt Lorna had told her that he’d been picked up by an environmental research team’s study of a bear they’d tagged with a beacon. They’d been using an optical image to observe the bear, and Jason had literally flown right over the animal. They quickly started tracking him, but they lost visual contact with him when he went under a cloud, and they found out very quickly that the airbike was actively shielded from passive sensors. It was too small for orbital sensors to pick it up with active sensors, so they lost contact with him. They knew that Jason had airbikes, since they’d been in his skimmer, and he still had his skimmer, but the fact that they were shielded had baffled the sensor officers to no end. They could not figure out how he’d gotten his hands on shielded airbikes, or if he’d somehow done the shielding himself. Lorna had told her that they thought he had taken his skimmer apart to scavenge parts and equipment he needed to hide himself, because the only PPG signatures they could detect were signatures that they’d already known about. Jason’s group wasn’t the only people out in the wildlands that had Faey technology. The Faey generally ignored that contraband equipment, so long as they didn’t see someone stockpiling it. Every once in a while they sent out expeditions to capture the owners and inspect what they had and what they were doing with it, but that was usually only when someone was bored, or they thought that someone might have gotten his hands on a plasma weapon. Generally put, the Faey didn’t give a damn what happened out in the nature preserve, so long as the squatters didn’t start disrupting Faey-held territory, and they didn’t start getting weapons that could hurt Faey soldiers.

Jyslin told him that they were fairly sure that Jason had plasma weapons, since it was now obvious to them that he had planned to run away, and that posed a special problem for them. That gave Jason a viable means of fighting back if they found him and tried to capture him, and he was willing to shoot at them to prevent it. Lorna told him that they intended to find him first, then study him long enough to find a way to get at him safely, which meant getting a Marine close enough to attack him with telepathy. They didn’t want open warfare, because they wanted him back in school. They were afraid that if they opened fire on him, it would make him so resistant that telepathic reprogramming would be required to permanently subdue him, and that was something they would prefer to avoid. Anytime that was done, there was a risk that his intellectual capability might be damaged, since they were in effect rewiring his brain, and the wiring of the brain was one of the contributing aspects of intelligence. They wanted his mind, and they didn’t want to have to tamper with that mind. They wanted to reclaim him a peacably and as gently as possible, then get him back in school without having to tamper with him. They didn’t want to earn his eternal hatred and be required to risk damaging his mind when making him more tractable.

But his cunning had already started getting on their nerves. They had done a sweep of everyone with a PPG, but they hadn’t found him. They’d found out from those squatters about a woman riding an airbike, which they figured had to be connected to Jason, but they couldn’t find her. That was when they realized that Jason had done something to the airbikes to hide them from sensors, and it was confirmed when he was spotted and evaded tracking. They knew he had left with his skimmer, they knew he had come prepared, and it was obvious to them that one of the things he had prepared for was hiding himself from their sensors. This drove them nuts. They could not figure out how he was defeating their sensors. Sensor officers were trying to recalibrate the sensors to detect smaller objects, and they’d sent some dropships over the preserve with sensor pods so they could get a more accurate reading off the active arrays, but so far they’d come up with nothing. That told Jason that his inverse phase emitter was working and working perfectly, killing their active sensor pulses and hiding anything that a passive sensor couldn’t detect from the active arrays…and since the passive arrays couldn’t detect anything either, his little organization was effectively invisible. They probably thought he had to be some kind of MacGyver to pull that off; little did they know that he had an outside contact that was supplying him with all kinds of equipment allowing him to do what he was doing.

That was a thought. How did Kumi get her dropship in and out the second time without anyone noticing? Or did they notice, and she’d just paid them to be quiet, or brought her noble clout about to hush it up? He’d have to ask her.

Jason also found out from Jyslin that politics was his friend. Lorna had told her that a representative of the Imperium, who had personally come from the Ministry to look at Jason’s school record and some of the documented technical stunts he’d pulled, wanted more manpower and resources committed to finding Jason, but he found himself talking to a stone wall. The Duchess of Terra wasn’t about to burn any more money and divert any more equipment and troops to hunting down a single runaway human, and to the Faey scientist’s shock, the Imperium wasn’t about to dispatch an additional units or give him any Marines to do it either. They’d looked for him, spent tens of thousands of credits in salary and maintenance costs trying to find him, and came up empty. The Duchess did have people looking for him, but she had mixed finding him into other operations, such as training missions, recon missions, and things like that. She wasn’t going to waste money just on looking for him anymore. She was getting some additional benefit out of it. The word from the Imperium was that the Duchess of Terra already had people looking for him, so it was redundant to send any more.

He was glad that Jyslin was going to be alright, and the information she gave him was very eye-opening.

Symone…well, Symone was being Symone. She’d had almost a month to worm her way into the community, and now everyone loved her. Symone had a bubbly personality that made her impossible not to like, and despite the fact that she was Faey, she quickly got to where she all but owned everyone in the community. Jenny absolutely adored her, following her around almost all the time, often ignoring her own mother. What drove him crazy about that was that Symone was trying to line Jason up a girlfriend. There were only five women in the community outside Symone; one was married, one was a child, and one was too old for him, so that left all of two women. Temika and Regina. Symone had been trying to steer both of them at him for a couple of days now, but he seriously doubted that she was going to have any luck. Regina already had a boyfriend—not even mentioning the fact that Jason didn’t find Regina attractive at all—and Temika’s phobia made it impossible for her to get close to anyone, even if she wanted to. And naturally, that was where Symone was concentrating her fire, on Temika. Temika did like Jason as a friend, maybe found him attractive, but Symone kept hitting the wall trying to convince her to ask him out on a date, because it kept coming back to her phobia. Even though she was very comfortable with Jason, and trusted him, Symone couldn’t fathom why she wouldn’t let him touch her. Symone didn’t understand phobias, because that kind of mental condition didn’t exist among the Faey. A phobia could be corrected with telepathic “surgery” by an expert telepath, correcting the mental state that caused it to exist. She couldn’t understand why Temika had let him touch her before, when she was wounded, but wouldn’t let him touch her now. Symone didn’t understand that rationality had no bearing with a phobia, since a phobia was by its very nature an irrational fear to a certain situation. And since only Jyslin or someone of her calibre would have the telepathic power or skill to correct that, even if Temika allowed a Faey into her head, that meant it was nothing that would change any time soon.

Jason knew she meant well, but he wished she’d just drop it and leave well enough alone. He was quite content being single, and outside that one episode with Symone, which had been triggered by his trick on Kumi, he hadn’t necessarily felt the need for female companionship. Jyslin probably had a lot to do with that, he figured. She’d totally spoiled him. His tryst with Symone was fun, but it wasn’t as intense as it was with Jyslin.

Luckily, things were quiet right now. Jason was in his basement workshop, assembling his new railgun, and he’d been unbothered all morning. Now that he got the flux cabling on the barrel and locked it down with a liberal coating of clear sealant in one half of the barrel carapace, the rest of it was only going to take about six hours to finish. The hardest part after cabling would be assembling the chamber feed and installing the magazine lock and backglass display. Everything else was just cookie-cutter stuff, anneal component A to unit chassis location B, then run datalines and/or microconduit between component A and component C.

He had the equipment on hand to build 20 railguns, but he wasn’t going to build them all at once. He’d decided that a railgun would be built for every person who had a set of armor, with two spares on hand in case of a breakdown. At the moment, they didn’t need everyone to be carrying around that kind of firepower; the conventional firearms they had on hand right now was more than enough. It only gave them 7 external weapons that would work against the Faey if they attacked, but he wouldn’t commit the people in his community to that kind of a fight. They would run from the Faey, but they would stand and fight against armed groups of roving bandits. That meant that the had to build three more railguns, and then he would move on to the next major problem.

The cloaking device.

He had absolutely no idea how he was going to do that. No fucking idea. But he had to come up with some way to get his skimmer back in the air, and do it without the Faey being able to detect it. Getting past the active sensors wasn’t a problem now that he’d come up with the inverse phase emitter, now the problem was getting past the passive sensors. He could just install the inverse phase emitter in the skimmer if it came down to it, but now he had to find a way to hide the skimmer’s energy signature, and its mass.

That little tidbit about scared his pants off. If he wanted to use the skimmer in space—which was an eventuality for which he had to plan—he had to find a way to hide mass. In space, away from the heavily distorting effect of the planetary gravometic well, Faey passive sensors would be able to detect the effect the skimmer’s mass would have on space, as well as its gravometric engines. Faey had mastered the manipulation of space, even using it as a means of propulsion, and that included the ability to detect the effect mass had on the curvature of space, detect spatial distortion. They could detect a stationary object, but they worked best when a mass was in motion, producing a dynamic alteration to the spacial volume…which he could understand. The human eye, after all, would detect an object in motion more effectively than they would an object at rest. A mass as small as the skimmer could be detected from the moon using Faey sensors, so long as the planetary gravity well of Earth didn’t get in the way. He’d found that data just surfing around the tech boards, and had found someone who had posted up some classified information about some of the secret things Faey sensors did. That he did not know, and it was something he thanked God above he’d stumbled upon.

If he couldn’t find a way around that, he’d have to stay within the atmosphere, inside the gravity well of the planet, where he was presented the same problem…finding some way to defeat both passive and active Faey sensors. Active, he had a system for, but he would prefer a single system to handle it all, because the power generation in his skimmer wasn’t endless. Power consumption would be an issue for any system he put into the skimmer, because it only had so much power generation ability.

He was almost afraid to start it. That was going to be a massive headache, and the most complicated thing he had ever tried to invent. He was afraid to start it because he knew that once he did, he would relentlessly pursue his goal until he achieved it. That was something he thought to try over the winter, when the cold would limit his outdoor activity. The fact that he had no idea where to start probably factored in there somewhere too. With everything else, he had generally built on someone else’s idea—well, maybe not so much with the inverse phase emitter—but this would come completely from him.

It had to be done, but the idea of it was very, very intimidating.

But that was three railguns away, so he had time to ponder how that was going to get started. He deftly installed the sight/rangefinder laser to the barrel of the weapon, just below the muzzle, then quickly annealed on the front sight before running the twisted pair of dataline fiber and microconduit back to the back of the weapon. The microprocessor for the weapon was just behind the loading chamber just under the display, and the PPG was only about six inches away from that, located in the base of the stock. Neither had been installed yet, though he planned to install both once he finished installing the laser. The processor had to be in first because the round feed system went in underneath it, and it was too tightly packed to try to install it after that was in place.

He installed the processor and hooked up the datalines from the laser and the barrel cabling, then started assembling the round feed system outside; it would be installed as a unit. The door upstairs opened, and footsteps started down, quickly. That didn’t concern him, because Tim and Symone did live in his house, and besides, he left his doors unlocked. Anyone was welcome in his house at any time so long as he was home. Since he was the mayor, there were times when people wanted to talk to him about this or that, and he had an open door policy. He glanced up to see Regina coming down the stairs with someone else, almost running, a tall, willowy young man named James Harold. “Hey Reg, what’s wrong?” he called in concern as he finished half of the loading frame, then reached for the plasma magnet that would draw the next round into the chamber.

“Jason, we have a problem,” she told him.

“What is it?” he asked.

“Well, Mayor Jason, I was hunting up on that ridge north of 52 about up to Ironton, and I saw a large group of people,” James told him. “They were coming up the road there in trucks. They were all armed to the teeth, and moving this way. It’s a road gang, Mayor. I think I’ve seen a couple of them before, they hit Huntington about four months ago. I had a dirt bike Luke got working for me up on the ridge, so I jumped on and rode like hell.”

“Why didn’t you call ahead on the radio?” he asked.

“My batteries musta died, Mayor. Sorry, I should’ve checked them.”

Jason stood up. “Call everyone in right now,” he ordered.

The call went out quickly after Regina and James left the basement, and Symone rushed into his room just a minute after the word was spread that attackers were approaching. Jason was already working on getting his breastplate ready to put on, his emotions mixed. It had finally come. Jason now had to fight to protect himself, protect his freedom, and protect those who depended upon him for protection. He might have to kill someone today; actually, he was almost positive of it. That worried him some, but more for how it would make him feel afterward instead of how he felt now. He had already accepted the fact that taking this course of action would eventually require him to kill. Well, that day was here. “I saw Jimmy coming in, I lifted it off him,” she said quickly as she started pulling off her clothes. She kept her armor in his room, mainly because she felt it safer to keep the expensive equipment in a central location and keep the people who came into his house away from the armor. His room was absolutely inviolate unless he was in it, and everyone knew it. How we gonna play this?

Not sure, depends on what they do, he answered as he threw her her codpiece after she got her shirt off. They’ll either come from the north on the bridge road, from the west off old 52, or they’ll split into two groups and try to pincer us. We’ll have to fight, there’s no way around that. There are too many to try to take down with talent.

Radio, she ordered, and Jason tossed her his handheld after she got her boots off. “Everyone make sure you’re wearing your armored clothes!” she barked into it. “Temika, get your happy ass to Jason’s house right now!”

“Ah’m almost tah the front door, sugah,” she answered.

Me and you could just go meet them and take them out, you know, she told him.

No, I want them to come in, he said. They won’t be that much of a danger, and this is a good opportunity to see how well we can protect ourselves from an assault. Besides, if they’re raiders, then that means they’re either carrying everything they have with them, or at the very least, everything they’ve managed to steal from others. I’m not turning my back on the chance to capture that much stuff.

Now you’re thinking like a general, she grinned, working on getting her jeans off.

I wonder why we didn’t hear about these guys coming in from the people up in Ironton, Jason fretted.

They might have slipped by, or they might have taken the Ironton group by surprise, Symone replied grimly, whisking off her panties and quickly stepping into her codpiece.

Let’s hope not, they’re good people up in Ironton.

Temika rushed into his room as Jason was attaching one of his thigh guards, and Symone was just getting her codpiece into position. “Ah always wondered how you got that on,” she said.

“Right now, quickly,” Symone said with uncharacteristic seriousness, reaching for the front section of her breastplate. “Hand me that piece right there, would you Mika?” she asked, pointing at the back.

“Sho’, sugah,” she said, picking it up and handing it to her. “What did you need me for?”

“Recon,” Symone told her. “Go up and keep an eye on them and see what they do. Don’t attack them, we want them to come in. Where we set up depends on what they do.”

“Gonna take their stuff?” Temika asked, and Jason nodded. “Good, about time they got theirs,” she chuckled.

Tim, get up here! Jason sent loudly. You’re gonna ride the panel and watch the sensors for us!

Aww, I want to help you guys! he answered.

You’ve got a broken arm, you dipstick, Jason growled at him. And you’ll be much more help tracking them and manning the panel to activate traps more than you will out there gimping around with a broken arm. Now get up here.

You’d better get your ass up here, baby, Symone sent with a very threatening undertone. No way is my man fighting anything more than a chair-chafed butt with a broken arm.

Alright, alright, I’m coming, he sighed.

“You tell him, sugah,” Temika chuckled as she handed Symone the stomacher of her armor, then she looked at them with shock, blinking several times. “Wait a minute,” she said.

Symone laughed. “I see it woke up,” she grinned. “Welcome to the new world, Mika.”

Jason chuckled, but Temika just gave an excited squeal, jumping up and down like a little girl. “Ah can’t wait!” she said breathlessly. “What do Ah do now?”

“Right now you get your ass on your hoverbike and keep an eye on them,” Jason told her. “Then, after it’s all over, we’ll explain what happens next. Just make sure you keep well clear of other people until all this is over. If you can’t already hear them thinking, you’ll start very quickly, and that’s the part that’s scary. And trust me, right now you do not want to be distracted. Just stay a couple thousand feet up until it’s safe to come down.”

“You got it, sugah,” Temika said, her wild hair bouncing as she nodded vigorously, then she turned and ran from the room to perform her task.

She jiggles a lot when she gets excited, Symone sent slyly to Jason.

“Ah heard that!” Temika shouted from the stairs.

You were supposed to, Symone sent impishly. Oh yeah, here’s your “welcome to our world” present, she added, then she sent an image, a memory, of Jason naked.

Woo! Go you sexy beast! Tim sent with an outrageous glint of amusement.

Jason flushed, then fixed Symone with a withering glare. Hey, maybe that now she can see the merchandise, she might be interested in sampling it, she told him with an unashamed grin, but she sent openly, which meant that both Tim and Temika had heard it.

You are on the list, Symone, Jason sent to her darkly. And it’s not the good one.

Despite that good news, they still had a job to do. Jason and Symone came down into his yard, where the entire community was gathered, except for Jenny, Temika, Tim, Mary, and Doc Northwood. All of them but Temika were in Jason’s house. Tim would be their remote operator, Jenny would stay in his house because it was safest, Mary had been excused from most violent action because Jenny needed her mother, and Northwood would remain there until his medical skills would be needed, when Mary would escort him to where he needed to go.

“Okay, Tim now has the ball,” Jason called over the radio. That meant that they were all now under his direction, for he was the one that could see everyone and everything in the vicinity with the sensors.

“Okay people, I have all of you on sensors. Mika’s just taking off—“ Jason looked up and saw her rise up from her house on her airbike, angling out over the river so she could get altitude and observe the incoming raiders without them seeing her—“and I just picked up a fast mover at the edge of sensor range. Looks like a scout on a dirt bike.”

“Here,” Ruth said to Regina, who was loading a Tek-9 clip, handing out what looked like riot gear helmets, part of the equipment they’d absorbed from the east end gang. “Take this, honey. Here you go,” she continued to say, taking helmets out of a large box that Luke was carrying behind her.

Luke gave one to Mary, who was standing beside him on the porch, and Jason got a look at it before she put it on. They’d sewn phase cloth into the inner lining, which draped down over the shoulders, protecting the neck. It even had buttons on it so it could be buttoned up under the chin, leaving only the face and hands exposed and vulnerable. The outer shell also had armor cloth taped to it, which was painted black to conceal the fact. The visors had also been covered in armored cloth, painted black, with only a wide strip over the eyes gone to give the wearer the ability to see. That setup would sacrifice a little peripheral vision of the wearer in exchange for more protection.

“Nice, Ruthie,” Jason said in appreciation as Mary held it up to him when she saw him looking at it.

“We figured it might come to this hon, so we prepared.”

“Clever girl. Irwin, take the other airbike,” Jason called, pointing at the burly young man, then he put his helmet on. He tuned his internal radio to the same RF frequency that they were using, then had the armor’s onboard processor emulate RF transmission. “Check one two three,” he called, pressing his finger to the transmit button on the side of his helmet. He could set the armor to transmit anything he said, but the frequency he was using was a one-way deal, where nobody else could talk if he was talking, so that wasn’t smart. “Is this transmitting?”

“I got yah, sugah,” Temika called.

“You’re loud and clear,” Tim answered.

“I hear you loud and clear,” Leamon replied.

“Okay, everyone get your earpieces in and make sure that you’re wearing your armored clothes. We don’t want any gunshot wounds. Let’s give Doc nothing to do today. And everyone thank Ruthie and the sewing club for those damn clever helmets after this is over.”

“Amen,” someone called over the radio.

“Right now we’re waiting to see what they do. We’re going to move and meet them at the roadblocks when we see which way they come. If they split up, we’ll divide up accordingly and hold them at the blocks. Just everyone remember to that that armor you’re wearing doesn’t make you invincible. If you get hit, it will hurt. It might even break some bones, and if you get shot in the right place, it’ll kill you armor or no armor. So just treat this like the guns those guys are carrying can kill you, because they can.”

They waited outside his house for almost a half an hour, because the incoming column of raiders stopped. Their scout had gotten within about a half mile, then he pulled back. Temika, who had an eye on them from high above, reported over the radio that they seemed to be arguing about something. But then they all got their guns out, and a large contingent of men on dirt bikes were dispatched from the main host coming down old 52, while the caravan of trucks continued on new 52. They were going to split up and hit them from the west and north.

Tim, you find anything on the radio frequencies yet? Jason sent.

I’m still looking, he answered. They’ve gotta be using radios to coordinate, they’re moving too good. Wait a minute. Found it! There was a pause. They know we know they’re coming, but they’re attacking anyway, he relayed. They do not have our radio frequency. They do know about Symone—shit, they have a bazooka. They’re going to try to hit Symone with a bazooka. Their leader just reminded them that knocking Symone out of the fight was the key, so they have to find her and single her out.

Well, I’ll have to make sure they can see me then, Symone sent with an amused tone.

“Okay, they’re splitting up,” Tim called aloud over the radio. “We’ve got a group of dirt bikes coming in on old 52, and the main force just picked up speed along 52. Looks like they’re going to try to hit us from both sides at the same time.”

“Symone, take Luke and four other people and hold the west roadblock,” Jason ordered over the radio. “Everyone else with me to the north. Irwin, hang around just out of sight, then hit them when I call you in. Mika, drift down and be ready to support Symone if she needs you. Try not to blow up any vehicles people, we want to capture as much as we can. That means no plasma if you can help it,” he barked.

“Ah got my Tek-9 and Ol’ Betsy,” Temika called assuredly.

“I need to come in for a gun,” Irwin reported. “All I have is the plasma rifle and a nine mil pistol.”

“Doc, grab something suitable out of the armory and pass it to Irwin when he comes in,” Jason commanded as he ran towards the north roadblock with his group of defenders. “Tim, get the traps up when Doc gets back in. The traps will be hot people, so you know the danger zone.”

“Shit! Jason, there’s a Faey dropship about ten miles south of us!” Temika shouted over the radio. “It ain’t movin’ this way though, it’s just hanging in the air, way up there. Ah can jus’ barely see it.”

Jason cursed. “There’s nothing we can do about that, we have more pressing issues at the moment,” he replied. “Tim, ETA?”

“Bikes will hit the west roadblock in about two minutes.”

“They’ll slow down, they’ll want to hit both sides at the same time,” Symone called.

“Don’t count on it, the bikes might be a diversion to pull us off the north roadblock,” Jason grunted as he reached the roadblock. It consisted of a zig-zag of about 20 cars arrayed on the road in behind a bridge, that would allow vehicle through if it moved very slowly, but would stop any attempt to rush through quickly or try to ram through. The creek would force any vehicle to come through that roadblock, mainly because they had junk cars lined up along the creek’s near bank, stretching all the way to the woods on either side of the road. It was an impenetrable barrier for any vehicle, no matter how off-road capable it was, and absolutely forced any vehicle to come through the roadblock. Jason rushed to the end of the roadblock and pulled a car with flat tires out to cover the entrance, forming a solid barrier, and the defenders all got behind the second row of cars. That put two layers of steel between them and the incoming opposition, very effective cover. The west end roadblock wasn’t quite that effective, mainly just cars lined up in a similar manner between two buildings, but they had trashed cars and junk piled too high for a vehicle to get through along every street in or out of their enclave, forcing any vehicle to come that way. That was their wall, with its two gates open to ground approach. Luke had been very busy since they’d arrived.

“The bikes are speeding up. Looks like Jason wins the raffle,” Tim called with a chuckle. “Get ready Symone, they’re about a half mile out.”

“I can hear them,” she called.

Instead of rushing to the attack, however, the bikes quickly broke up and started rushing around the outer fringes of Chesaepeake. Jason heard a few distant gunshots, probably taking a shot at the riders as they rode around and came into view. “I think the bikes are doing a fast scout,” Tim said as he studied them from Jason’s house. “They’re looking for a way in.”

“Or testing the defenses, or both,” Symone added.

For almost ten minutes, they all heard those dirt bikes rampaging around the area outside the perimeter of the enclave, then they all pulled back. “Okay, I have ground movement now,” Tim called. “We got about fifty men milling around the vehicles, and about five trucks are moving forward.” They were all quiet while Tim watched, and Jason amplified the audio on his armor, to better hear the trucks as they approached. “They just sent out a group of about twenty men on foot, moving due south from the main group. The bikers are with them. Looks like they’re moving towards the west end of the wall. The rest are starting to form up around the ten trucks that advanced. Okay, they’re leaving most of their trucks behind, they’re leaving most of their trucks behind. They got men guarding them, but they’re leaving them behind.”

“Irwin, Temika, there’s what you’re doing,” Jason barked. “Take those trucks, but try not to blow anything up. Wait for them to engage with us, then hit them.”

“You got it, sugah,” Temika replied.

“Roger, I’ll swing out way east and circle back so they don’t see me coming,” Irwin acknowledged.

“Irwin sugah, tune yo’ bike radio tah local one, so we can set this up without clogging this channel.”

“Local one, roger.”

“Tim, can you get a count of who went where?” Jason called.

“I got twenty people on foot and ten dirt bikes coming through the woods. Five trucks are moving towards your position surrounded by, um, ten guys on foot. I can’t count the people in the trucks.”

Jason quickly added it up. “Clem, take six people and go reinforce Symone, she’ll need more people than she’s got.”

“You’ll be undermanned, son,” Clem warned.

“We’ve got open space and they can’t flank us. Symone’s going to be dealing with people on bikes and on foot that have cover. She needs the manpower. Now get your asses over there before they get to her.”

“I get it, son. You three, you, you, you, come on,” Clem called, pointing quickly in succession.

They waited in tense silence for several moments, but Jason breathed a sigh of relief when Symone called that Clem had reached her, and she’d redeployed her people to deal with a dual threat. Symone was the better choice for the west roadblock because she had actual battlefield experience, and would be better suited for handling a more complicated situation.

“The force moving towards the west side of town stopped. I think they’re waiting for the trucks to get into position,” Tim reported.

“I can hear their bikes,” Symone said.

“Try to capture those bikes,” Jason reminded her. “Remember, no plasma fire if you can help it. They’ll blow up stuff we can use, and I don’t feel like cleaning up the bodies with a wetvac.”

“I got one of those archaic pistol thingies, Jason, and Luke showed me how to use it. I don’t much plan on shooting anyway. I’m just gonna run out there and cause hell and let my unit do the shooting.”

“Be careful woman,” Jason ordered. “You get hit with that bazooka, and you’re gonna feel it.”

“Pfft,” she snorted. “In this armor? They’ll be lucky if they make me stagger back.”

“No stupid stunts,” Jason ordered flatly, then he heard the faint rumble of a large diesel engine. “The trucks are closing in,” Jason shouted to the people around and behind him, then went back to the radio. “Trucks are advancing,” Jason called.

“There’s a group of men breaking away from the trucks,” Tim called. “Ten of them, running into the woods.”

“They’re going to try to flank us,” Regina warned.

“Jesus, how many men do they have?” Jason growled, going to radio. “Tim, if that group passes us by and goes for the enclave, you’re going to have company. We’re out of people to deal with them—“ he stopped, looking behind him. He had nine men and women behind him, more than enough to deal with that group of men. It just meant that he was going to have to hold the trucks himself. “Shit,” he growled. “Reg, we can’t let them into the enclave. Pull back to Route 7 and wait to see what they do.”

“But you’ll be alone here, Jason,” she protested.

“I have this,” he said, slapping his breastplate meaningfully. “And if it comes to it, I can blow up their trucks if I have to. I’ll be alright. Trust me, nobody’s getting past me.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, go ahead,” he ordered, going hot with his railgun, then putting a hand to his helmet. “I’m sending Reg and the others at the north roadblock to head off those men, Tim,” Jason called. “I can probably hold off the trucks myself.”

“You can easily, Jayce,” Symone told him assuredly. “Just run out there and attack the trucks right now. They can’t possibly hurt you, and you can scare the shit out of them,” she added with a chuckle.

“No,” Jason said, leaning down behind the car as the first truck started creeping around the distant curve. “I’ll let them get much closer. Let’s let them all commit before we start.”

“Where am I goin’, Tim?” Regina demanded over the radio.

“They’re coming right towards Route 7, they just crossed the creek. They’re going to come out right behind the old Sav-a-Lot if they don’t turn.”

Jason activated the strength augmentation system, felt the armor moving with him, moving for him, as he ducked down more behind the car and increased the magnification on his visor until the lead truck was clearly visible to him. It was a military Deuce, and it had a snowplow or some kind of bladed plow attached to the front. A roadblock buster, something a mobile raiding gang would need to assault fortified positions. Jason brought up his railgun and increased magnification again, until the driver was clearly visible to him through the cracked windshield. A blinking red arrow at the bottom of his field of vision warned him his weapon’s targeting crosshair was below his field of vision, so he angled the railgun up until the red crosshair appeared in his visor, wobbling a great deal because of the distance of the target—nearly 420 shakra—and the magnification he was using on the visor.

“Here they come!” Tim shouted over the radio, and almost at the same time, the Deuce’s engine roared loudly in Jason’s ears, and it surged forward. “Reg, the group you’re on is turning to flank Jayce!”

“We’ll get ‘em!” she called as distant gunfire reached his ears, augmented by his armor’s microphones. There was the loud reports of hunting rifles mixed in with the staccato reports of automatic weapons firing, and it quickly got very steady. Symone’s group had opened up on the men assaulting the west roadblock.

Jason lined up the driver in his sights, then he realized that if he missed and hit the truck, he’d cripple it, and they needed that truck. Symone had said that he’d be virtually untouchable in his armor…if that was the case, he could just rush the truck and stop it without doing it any damage. That might work. Jason shouldered his railgun and activated the antigrav system, and set it so he’d skim along the ground. That was “travel mode” for the armor, allowing him to hover just over the ground and move at a surprisingly fast speed…somewhere around 100 miles an hour if he remembered right. It was almost like roller skating, though his direction and speed were controlled by how he shifted his weight. He put his hands on the car in front of him and swung over it, then surged forward on a cushion of distorted space, quickly picking up some impressive speed. He was going almost 50 miles an hour before he cleared the bridge. The passenger in the Deuce swung out the window on his side and pointed an AK-47 at him. Jason almost flinched when he saw the flare from its muzzle, heard the sharp sound of it firing, but felt nothing but a slight tink-tink-tink as the rounds struck his armor and were thoroughly rebuffed. He silently blew out his breath and leaned fully forward, hurtling at the Deuce in a grotesque game of chicken, three tons of steel against him and his 260 pounds of flesh, bone, blood, weapon, and armor.

Well before he got in danger of being rammed, Jason jumped, soaring high into the air. He landed lightly on the hood of the Deuce, and found himself staring at two very shocked men, both wearing old army BDU uniforms. “Good morning,” Jason said casually, sliding to the edge of the hood on the driver’s side. The driver slammed on the brakes, but Jason just grabbed hold of the side of the doorframe. As the truck’s brakes chattered, trying to bring the huge vehicle to a stop, Jason slid off the hood and onto the footrail of the truck. He reached into the cab and grabbed the driver by the shirt, then bodily yanked him out of the cab through the open window. The truck veered off the road, almost tipping over, at least until Jason grabbed hold of the wheel and righted it as the guy in the passenger side realized what happened. Instead of sliding over within reach of Jason, he fired his AK-47 directly at him. Jason felt them hit the armor, even saw a spark as a round ricocheted directly off the visor, but it was like he was being pelted with marshmallows for all the good it did the fellow to shoot at him. Jason opened the door and slid in just enough to jam his foot on the brake, which made the Deuce bounce to a halt just before the engine stalled, and brought the vehicle to a stop.

Men were boiling out of the other trucks, nearly twenty of them, after the trucks screeched to a halt. They realized what was going on when the man who had shot at him ran back towards them screaming, and screaming “Faey! Faey!” They thought he was Symone, probably because of the armor. Geeze, didn’t the guy have eyes? How could he possible mistake him for a woman? Sheesh. Jason slid off the truck and came around it, seeing them all shoot at him, but all their rounds simply bounced off his gleaming black armor like they were nothing. He charged right into the middle of them and simply started smacking them around, swatting any head, gun, or conveniently available body part that was within reach.

That was about when he understood the elegant simplicity of Symone’s plan. With him right in the middle of them, sending men flying with swings of his strength-augmented arms, totally invulnerable to their weapons, he sent the attacking force into complete chaos and disarray. His targets were still the trucks, so he smacked enough people out of his way to reach the second one, which was now stopped, and it was clear to the driver that he meant to reach in and pull him out. The man reacted to that by piling out the passenger side door with his passenger…which served Jason’s purpose just fine. It got them out of the truck and caused the vehicle to become a roadblock for the trucks behind it.

He smashed a man in the head, sending him reeling to the ground, then turned just in time to see someone running up from behind with a rocket launcher of some kind already on his shoulder. Jason felt a moment of panic and dove behind the cover of the truck, unshouldering his railgun. He went hot and blew out his breath, then swung around with it already up to his shoulder. He didn’t bother aiming, but pulled up short and dove back the other way when he saw that missle launcher fire. The rocket sizzled by the side of the truck, missing him and the truck, but it sailed over the bridge and impacted one of the cars in the roadblock on the far side. The explosion was violent and loud, sending flaming pieces of car flying all over the general vicinity and sending a boiling ball of fire and black smoke into the sky.

“You maniac!” Jason shouted in surprise as he glanced a look out, and saw that he had no more of those damned things. Totally forgetting about the railgun in his hand, Jason streaked out from behind the truck like a black blur, then impacted the man with the empty rocket tube with such force that he bounced off and went flying, sailing nearly 30 feet before he hit the ground behind the second truck. He slammed the barrel of the railgun into the face of the man that was beside the first one, then he screamed right towards the third truck to rip the driver out from behind the wheel. He raced out between the second and third trucks, and glanced to his left just in time to see another man with a rocket launcher. And he was already firing it!

He had no chance to dodge. It hit him in the side and detonated, washing angry fire over his visor and feeling the concussion rattle his bones a little. But the explosion and the heat could not penetrate his armor. It did, however, send him flying about ten feet, and he landed on his shoulders and back on the soft grass as smoke wafted up from his armor. He shook his head to clear the cobwebs, then climbed back to his feet as a critical malfunction error flashed on his visor display, coming from his railgun. The explosion had damaged it, and rendered it inoperable. The titanium casing had withstood the explosion, mainly because Jason’s body had shielded most of the weapon from the blast. The blast did burn through the shoulder strap though, so he held the weapon like a club as he singled out the bastard who had had the nerve to hit him with a rocket at such close range. He wasn’t the only one to take some of that, he saw. The second truck, a big Ford F-250, had some fire licking at its back left tire, and it was a bit scorched. The third truck, a Dodge Ram, had its driver’s side headlight blown out and some shrapnel holes in the hood and left fender, as well as a shattered windshield that, to Jason’s disgust, was smeared and spattered with blood. The explosion had killed the driver of the truck. There were also three men laying on the ground not far from the explosion, none of them moving…and since one of them was on fire, Jason assumed they were probably dead. That idiot had panicked and fired the rocket while Jason was in the middle of his own men, and killed them.

Jason roared forward as the man stared in stunned disbelief, then hit him dead in the face with the stock of his railgun. The blow sent teeth and blood flying, and the man almost did a backflip from the force of the blow before flopping to the ground on his stomach, where he did not move. He moved to club another man who ran out from the truck’s passenger side, who was covered with the blood of the driver, but he spun and dropped as Jason heard the chatter of gunfire behind him. He glanced back to see Regina and the others back at the roadblock, running over the bridge towards him while firing at the people around the trucks. He saw a few still forms at the treeline, telling him that they’d met the enemy and had overwhelmed them.

The two trucks that still had drivers quickly swerved off the road and moved to turn around, as the men on foot turned and started to run away. Those men started dropping to the ground as they were hit from behind by the advancing defenders, but it wasn’t necessary now. He jacked up the volume of his armor so it would make his voice boom, and he shouted out.

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS AND SURRENDER!” his voice thundered across the clearing, but the men did not obey. They continued to flee, some of them turning to fire back at the advancing defenders as the two remaining trucks were almost completely turned around. Well, if they didn’t want to surrender, then that was their decision. It was senseless killing, but if they wanted to be stupid, so be it. Jason couldn’t afford excessive mercy when the lives and security of his own people were at stake.

“That’s the last bike!” Symone’s voice called over the radio. “The men on foot are runnin’!”

Jason growled, then blew out his breath. “Nobody gets away, but try to get them to surrender,” Jason ordered. “I don’t think we need to slaughter them all unless they refuse to give up.”

“Ain’t nobody gettin’ away from us, sugah!” Temika called. “We’ve taken the trucks, and we got who’s left on the ground dead in our sights! They already gave up!”

Jason surged forward, and in mere seconds he was at the fourth truck and already had his hand inside the cab. The driver pulled out a pistol and shot him squarely in the visor, but the round ricocheted off and hit the driver in the outside of his shoulder. Blood spattered the seat of the cab as Jason grabbed the gearshift and yanked it into Park, which made the engine stall, then grabbed the now wounded driver by the arm and dragged him bodily out of the truck. Men continued to shoot at him as he quickly raced to the last truck, then got to the driver’s side door. The driver, a woman wearing a camoflage cap, put her hands up and jammed the brakes. “I give up!” she said fearfully, raising her hands and putting them on the roof of her truck’s cab. “I surrender!”

She wasn’t the only one. Several combatants were stopping and throwing down their guns and then putting their hands up, but a few were still shooting at Jason and the other defenders. Jason told the girl to stay in her truck and don’t move, then barked for the others to drop to the ground, if only to avoid getting shot while rounds sizzled through the air around them. Jason fearlessly zipped into the crossfire, bearing down on the closest man still shooting. He grabbed the man’s AK-47 with one hand and elbowed him in the face with the other arm, then slid backwards with great speed until he was further behind everyone else. He levelled the assault rifle with one hand and his damaged railgun with the other on the running men (though they didn’t know the railgun was broken), and again shouted in a thundering voice to surrender right now or be shot.

It finally seemed to sink in that they weren’t going to get away. One by one, they slowed to a stop and dropped their guns, then raised their hands. The chatter of gunfire ceased quickly, returning the region to the quiet of relative calm. “We got the north roadblock secure,” Regina called over the radio as Jason kept the weapons trained on the men who now had their hands up. “Had some stubborn assholes that refused to surrender, but Jason knocked the fight out of them.”

“West roadblock is secure,” Symone reported.

“We got their trucks,” Temika said with a wicked chuckle.

“I think that’s all of them, I don’t see any movement on the sensors that I can’t account for,” Tim informed them.

“Anyone injured?” Jason asked over the radio, dropping his railgun for the moment.

“Just a few bruises here,” Symone answered. “A couple of people got shot, but the armor took it pretty well.”

I think Leamon has a few broken ribs, but that’s about it outside of some nasty bruises,” Regina added. “This armor is the shit.”

Me and Irwin are just fine, sugah,” Temika added. “We didn’t get a scratch. Can’t say the same for the other guys, though.”

“Okay, secure the prisoners. Mika, Symone, march yours to the north roadblock. Let’s gather them up here where we have lots of open space to keep them out of trouble. Doc, report to the north roadblock, cause I know we’ve got some wounded here.”

“I’m on the way, Jason,” he replied quickly.

They were a sorry lot, Jason noted as they were marched in. Some were obviously wounded, but they had that shell-shocked look about them that often graced the faces of people who had just been steamrolled. Only now did some of them understand that their opponents were wearing body armor that stopped bullets, only now did they understand the utter act of futility their assault had been. Not only had they been crushed, but their opponents had not suffered a single major casualty. They were placed well distant from the trucks, where they sat on the ground, staring at each other woodenly after they were searched and relieved of all their weapons. The more seriously injured were laying on the road, where Doc Northwood was attending to them with brisk efficiency, with the help of Mary. Once they were all searched and sat down, Jason regarded them. Out of the attacking force, 52 had survived, though 9 of them were seriously wounded. Others had blood on them here or there, but they didn’t have life-threatening injuries. There were 47 dead, meaning that they had defeated a force five times larger than themselves.

After dispatching some people to put out the fires the rockets had caused, Jason took off his helmet and shook his hair free of the matting, then regarded them as they gawked at him. “That’s right, I’m not a Faey,” he grunted in their direction darkly. “And you just lost. Needless to say, I think you have a good idea what’s going to happen now.”

That same woman who had surrendered gave a stifled sob.

“Oh please, we’re not ruthless,” he growled. “But you can kiss all your possessions goodbye. They belong to us now. After the doc checks you out, you’ll be given a week’s worth of food and marched across the bridge into Huntington, and then you’re on your own. You can do whatever you want, so long as you never bother us again.”

We gonna screen these? Symone inquired curiously.

I was thinking about it, but I’m not sure how we can keep them under control. We had the bingo hall last time, and all of them tied up. I don’t want to leave them unfettered like this for long, they may get bad ideas.

We just put them in the jail down in Chesapeake, she answered.

That’s an idea, Jason agreed with a nod and slightly pursed lips. “Now, we’re going to get you all up and march you into town, where you’ll be put in the city jail until the doc can give you a once-over, and we can keep you out of trouble without tying up all our people to keep an eye on you.”

“What about my wounded men?” one of them demanded in a strong voice.

“Doc’ll take care of them,” Jason answered. “When they’re healthy, they’ll be put out, but we won’t leave them to die. That’s just not right. Now then, everyone on your feet. We’re going for a hike.” He looked to Northwood. “You need any help, Doc?”

“You can take those men to the clinic,” he replied, pointing to the men behind him. “A couple of these men aren’t stable enough to move yet, so I’d like four men to stay with me so we can move them when they’re ready.”

“Luke,” Jason called, and the burly young man nodded gravely.

They used a captured truck to transport the wounded, while the rest of the prisoners were marched to Chesapeake. They were put in the city jail, which was in the police headquarters that was just on the edge of the area claimed by the community, just inside the roadblocks. There were only eight cells in the jail, so each cell was crowded with six or seven men. Jason left Irwin, Regina, and Symone to guard them, then they took the injured men to the clinic and set guards on them while the rest of them collected up all the weapons, dirt bikes, and trucks that were now the spoils of war. It took them almost three hours to gather it all up, then drive it into the community and park it all along the block outside Jason’s house. Jason set the others to sorting through the catch to separate it into categories, then he and the city council went back to the jail. While they were walking up that way, Jason explained what was going to happen. “Any possible candidates will be voted on,” he assured them. “But Symone is going to screen them.”

“That may be a hard sell, Jason,” Regina said. “I don’t think anyone’s gonna be voted in that was shooting at us a while ago.”

“Well, if you don’t recall, most of the community is made up of people who shot at each other for years,” he pointed out.

“Yeah, but that didn’t happen the day we formed the community,” she answered evenly.

“True,” Jason acceded.

Clem chuckled. “Sometimes I wonder why you don’t shoot at each other now,” he said.

“Well, we were doing it to survive,” Regina shrugged. “But we don’t have to do it to survive anymore. It was never personal with me, Clem. It was just business.”

“Yeah,” Leamon agreed. “I didn’t hate any person in the other gangs, just the gang as a whole, cause they were a threat to us. When the gangs got busted up by Jason, there wasn’t nothing left to hate no more.”

“I’d dare to say that the reason you’re here is because Symone was careful only to pick people who shared that mindset,” Jason chuckled.

“Most likely,” Regina nodded. “I think she did a good job.”

“A damn good job,” Clem agreed. “Does Doc have any help over at the clinic?”

Jason nodded. “Mary and Ruth, and I’ll bet he commandeered Luke, James, Pete, and Larry. I haven’t seen them. They’re the ones that stayed behind to carry the stretchers.”

Regina raised her handheld radio to her mouth. “How’s it going, Doc?” she called.

There was an extended silence. “I’m sorry to say that one of the men has died,” he answered. “There just wasn’t anything I could do for him but make him comfortable. The other eight I think are going to make it. The only problem I have is that I have to get the slugs out of them, but I’m still not set up for surgery of this magnitude yet.”

He held his hand to Regina, who nodded and gave him the radio. “We’ll figure something out, Doc, just do your best,” Jason answered. “Do you need more help?”

“No son, I’ve got plenty of hands. I think I’m going to steal Mary, she seems to have a knack for the work. She’d make a good doctor.”

“Well, that’s between you and Luke, I guess,” Jason told him. “After you get to a point where you can leave, Doc, could you please come over to the old jail? I’d like you to check the other prisoners.”

“I can do that, son. I have these men stable for now. Let me get my bag and I’ll be right over.”

Still in his armor, Jason came down into the jail. Irwin and Symone, bearing Tek-9’s, kept watch over the eight cells as the captured men and women remained very, very quiet. They had had quite the operation, and the sheer manpower to assault and conquer just about any enclave out in the hills. He doubted that they killed indiscriminately though…something just told him that. Their thoughts mirrored their subdued demeanors, shock and incredulity overwhelming their states of mind, as well as a healthy dose of fear at what was to come. Most of them honestly believed that they were going to be executed. Jason stepped into the hallway holding the eight cells, four to a side, and handed his damaged railgun and helmet to Symone. “Our town doctor’s on his way over here,” he called. “He’s going to check those of you who have injuries and treat them. While he’s got you, she is going to screen you,” he said, pointing at Symone, who was walking with him. “This town isn’t about revenge, it’s about living and working together to better the community as a whole. She’s going to screen you to see if you have the mentality to live here, and if we can trust you to live and work among us without trying to screw us later on. If you pass that screen, you’ll be voted on by the town as a whole as to whether we invite you. If you get voted in, you’ll be offered a place in our community. I wouldn’t hold much hope for that, though,” he said grimly. “You guys just tried to kill us. I’m not sure too many of the townsfolk will take very kindly to that. But we will give you that chance, and we will give them the option to vote on those of you who might have the temperament to live here. Those of you who either fail the screening or are voted down will be released across the bridge into Huntington. You’ll have a week’s worth of food, clothes, and most likely a knife and some other basic survival gear. Like I said, we’re not about revenge. What you do after you cross that bridge is entirely up to you, so long as you never bother us again.”

“What about my wounded men?” that same man called, coming up to the bars. Jason looked at him and saw that he was about thirty, with dark hair and a wide face that had a scar on left cheek. He was a burly fellow, wearing BDUs and a black Atlanta Falcons baseball cap. “How are they?”

“I’m sorry, but one of them died,” Jason said with a somber frown. “Doc said there was just nothing he could do for him. But he did say that the other eight are stable, and they should make it. He’s got his nurse keeping watch over them while he comes here to check the rest of you. Have you people eaten yet?”

“Just breakfast this morning.”

He snorted. “Irwin,” he called. “Arrange for some lunch for these people.”

“Already did, Mayor,” Irwin called. “Ruthie’s already working on it.”

“You guys are lucky,” Jason chuckled. “Ruth’s one hell of a cook.”

The dark-haired man, obviously their leader, sighed, then he laughed ruefully. “Well, this certainly didn’t go as planned. We had no idea you had a second suit of Faey armor. My scouts spotted you, so we brought our rockets to you without knowing that the Faey was actually somewhere else. We just assumed that the armor was the Faey. And we thought rockets would take you down.”

“Maybe if I was wearing the armor that the Faey occupiers wear, but not this,” he said, rapping his knuckles on his burn-stained armor. It was completely undamaged, just a bit dirty. “This is real Faey armor. What most Faey occupiers wear is ancient military surplus junk.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t use your plasma weapons. I fully expected to lose all five trucks.”

“Blowing them up means we can’t use them,” Jason told him. “We planned from the beginning to capture as much of your equipment as we could.”

“Smart,” the man said, thinking it over. “And since you had two people in that armor, you could just rush right in the middle of us without fear. That explains why you went after the trucks instead of concentrating on my men.”

“I don’t much like killing if there’s any possible way around it,” Jason said bluntly.

“How did you capture my other trucks?”

“I have two airbikes,” Jason told him. “They ambushed your trucks after you committed to the assault on the town.”

“And how did you know we were coming?”

“One of our hunters spotted you up near Ironton. We had eyes in the sky watching you since you got to the far side of South Point. We saw you deploy, so we knew exactly where to place our defenses to stop you.”

He chuckled grimly. “Damn clever,” he said appreciatively. “You saw us coming like lambs to slaughter, didn’t you?”

“That about sums it up,” Jason agreed evenly, nodding his head.

“Well, we tried,” he said with odd pride. “We came to try to capture your plasma weapons. We knew if there was a Faey here, then there had to be at least one plasma weapon, and that was worth attacking the town to get.”

“Why be so crazy?”

“Because just one plasma gun would make us all but unstoppable,” he said. “I’ve seen them in use. You can sit a half mile away and just systematically blow walls apart with one. It would have made raiding fortified compounds much easier, without risking the lives of my men.”

“Too bad it wouldn’t do much for the lives of the people on the other side of the wall,” Jason said with an accusing glare at the man. “They’re men and women, just like you. Did it ever occur to you to just go up and trade for what you needed?”

“This is reality, my friend,” the man said with a scowl. “If they’re not with us, they’re against us. The survival of my people takes precedence over the survival of outsiders.”

“Your philosophy just landed you on the other side of that fence,” Jason told him. “How does it feel to be the guy looking down the barrel of a superior force, not sure if you’re going to live to see tomorrow? Doesn’t feel very good, does it? That’s what you inflicted on other people. I hope you really understand it before we let you go. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

“Fine for you to say that, boy, with your armor and your weapons,” the man sneered.

“That’s right, I have the armor and the weapons. But so did you. Do you see me out there preying on the other squatters with my superior firepower?” he asked pointedly. “I decided to build something with my resources. You chose to go kill people, when you could have done exactly what I did. But you chose the easy way out, killing other people for what you need. Don’t try to compare us, or try to justify it in your own mind, because you had the same choices I did, and you chose to walk a different path.”

Angry, Jason stalked away from the man, then marched out into the cool September air and let it clear his head. Why couldn’t these people understand that so long as they fought each other, they reduced everyone’s chances of making it out here? When the raiders killed all the people who grew the food, then what? Slow starvation, feeding off each other until there was nothing left? If everyone would just remember what they used to be, how Americans had pulled together to overcome obstacles, they could make life better for everyone. They could build a little slice of civilization out here, work together, help everyone through collective effort and the American spirit. The Faey had abandoned these people, let them fight like starving dogs in the wildlands because they refused Faey society, but that didn’t mean that they had to abandon their humanity.