Chapter 13

Kaista, 4 Kiraa, 4393 Orthodox Calendar

Saturday, 31 January 2008, Native Regional Reckoning

Charleston, West Virginia (Native designation),Orala Nature Preserve, American Sector

Burying his father hadn’t even been this hard.

Jason stood silently over a mound of freshly lain earth, a hand barely holding onto the umbrella keeping the rain off of him as he looked blankly down at the simple headstone marking the 160^th victim of the Chesapeake disaster.

Arthur Jebediah Northwood, M.D.

1953 – 2008

For twenty days he clung to life, in terrible pain, drifting in and out of consciousness as Symone, Jason, and everyone else did everything they could to get him better. For a few days, he did begin to improve, but his severe burns became infected, and after that he faded rapidly. His last days were spent in a drug-induced haze, the only thing anyone could think of to help ease the horrific pain he was under from his burns, burns that seared off skin and flesh, and burned down to expose several of the vertebrae in his back. The dreadful severity of those burns, the lack of true medical facilities, and the fact that Northwood was the only person with any kind of medical training still alive, had been a lethal combination for him.

They had done all they could, but it hadn’t been enough.

Temika, on the other hand, was on her way to recovery. Her burns were severe, but they hadn’t been in the same places as they’d been on Doc; in a way, Doc had saved Temika’s life because he’d been riding behind her. Doc’s body shielded Temika from the brunt of the shockwave and flame of the explosion. She wouldn’t have use of her left arm for a couple of months, if she ever did again, but she was up and about now, her arm lashed to her side with a sling, her hair regrowing and her savage burns slowly mending as they applied the last of the Faey compounds that induced flesh to regrow and stimulated the body’s regeneration.

But being up and about was not the same as recovering.

Nobody really felt recovered. The destruction of Chesapeake and the loss of so many of their friends and family had put them all in a state of shock. Luke had not spoken a word to anyone since he’d discovered that his entire family had been killed, he simply sat on a bench in the garage across from the capitol building with a wrench in his hands, turning it over and over and over. Tom Jackson refused to leave the room where Jason had a TV set up, watching CNN every waking moment…why, Jason had no idea. But he was utterly obsessed, waiting for some news or picture or, something. Until then, he just stared at the TV with this strange, scary expression on his face. Quite a few people cried all the time, others wouldn’t stop talking about it. Some buried themselves in work, others slept virtually all the time, some withdrew from others, some talked endlessly with anyone around, afraid to be alone and in silence for even a second. Each person was trying to find his or her own way of coping with the grief. But Jason could only feel anger. Terrible anger.

Anger, and crushing weight. It had been his responsibility as town mayor to keep everyone safe, and he had failed. People had died on his watch, people that didn’t have to die. He’d known about the dangers, he’d started this plan to move everyone to safety, but he didn’t take it seriously enough to demand a faster timetable. Because of his arrogance in believing they wouldn’t find him, one hundred and sixty of his friends were now dead.

It was his responsibility.

But now there was a new responsibility. He was still mayor, and he had a duty to the people remaining to get them set up and safe, get Charleston up and running, and then he would leave here and go after the bitches that had done this. He had a duty now to ensure that their deaths would not be in vain, and that they would never be forgotten.

They wouldn’t forget it on the other side of the Frontier either. The cause of the explosion, according to CNN, now had an official cause, but Kiaari had gone out to collect information days after the explosion, to try to find out what had happened, and had returned six days ago with quite a different story than what was showing on CNN. That bit of news had been terrifying to Jason, because it directly concerned him.

The attack on Chesapeake wasn’t a raid on the town for slaves, or an attack on squatters…it was a direct attempt to kill him. Though Kiaari hadn’t gotten the complete story, what she did manage to piece together was that the decision to kill him was because he was a telepath, not because of his runaway status or anything like that. This Kiaari deemed as very important, and Jason had to agree. They suddenly feared him, a human telepath, feared him so much that they’d sent a military unit out on a secret mission to do nothing less than murder him and everyone around him, to totally destroy any evidence that he had ever been there. They had gone in there with orders to kill everyone, recover any technological equipment or information they could find, then hide the evidence of the massacre by burning down the town…ironically, the same idea Jason had had to hide the fact that the town was abandoned. But they were specifically there to kill him, and they were supposed to come back with ironclad proof of his death, in the form of his dead body. They’d deduced—correctly—that the town populated with technically savvy people also included Jason Fox, and they’d come down to assassinate him before the town completed its apparent dismantling and scattering. Jason’s plan to move the town had incited the attack before they had reliable confirmation that he was really there.

The explosion was thought to be his airskimmer, for his skimmer had a power plant in it of sufficient size to produce an explosion of that magnitude. Their speculation was that he had trapped the skimmer, soldiers had entered it and set it off, and that had caused the explosion that had vaporized all of Huntington and Chesapeake, wiped out the town, killed the inhabitants, and also caused the deaths of 74 Trillane soldiers and destroyed four hoverbikes, two armored hovercars, and two dropships.

The aftermath of the explosion was still in the process off fallout, according to Kiaari. The noble that had ordered the attack had been sacked, at least in the manner of Trillane nobility. The Zarina had been packed off back to the Trillane home planet of Arctus III, basicly sent to a minor land holding where she would be kept under a watchful eye, out of trouble, and forever out of the workings of the politics of House Trillane. Heads rolled within the Trillane Army ranks as well, as those who planned the attack were demoted and reassigned. They weren’t punished for the attack, they were punished because the attack caused a large section of the Orala preserve to turn into a mushroom cloud, which was a disaster in that it brought glaring, Imperium-wide attention to Earth and to that tiny town that was supposed to silently burn down without anyone ever knowing what had happened there. Had Steve not blown up the exomech and killed everyone, they’d probably have been given cash bonuses and medals. Instead, they were given the boot.

There was no way that such a thing could be kept secret forever, so Trillane had leaked selectively to CNN about Jason Fox and his renegade status, and the fact that he had fled with an airskimmer. CNN, naturally, picked it up, did a little research, and villified him once they had just enough information to back their hasty conclusions. The story about him had been predictably unflattering, as they painted him as a nefarious villain who had stolen from his school, used an elaborate network of criminal activities to raise the money to buy the airskimmer, ran away using it, then monkeyed with it in ways he shouldn’t have and proceeded to blow himself up. Officially, the Orala Explosion, as it was now called, had been his airskimmer, and the explosion was being blamed on him. The Imperium now believed him to be dead, and while Trillane highly suspected it, they still wouldn’t be convinced of it until they had possession of his dead body. Jason had squeezed out of tight spots before, and they were giving him that much respect so as to believe that he might have survived the explosion somehow.

Being listed as dead was good in that the Imperium now would stop looking for him.

It was bad in that with him now being officially dead and not simply missing, the royalty payments being sent to his secret bank accounts had been terminated, cutting him off from the primary source of funding for the town and for his plans for rebellion. His patents were now public domain, and that meant that they fell to the ownership of the Ministry of Technology.

That was only a minor setback, though. He already had a plan for getting around that.

The anger had been useful for that, at least. While waiting for Kiaari to come back with news, Jason had sat down and drawn up some elaborate plans for the future. In that time had had worked out exactly how he was going to set up the rebellion, what it would do, how it would operate, how it would fund itself, and what it would have to do in order to secure its stated objective of kicking Trillane off Earth and petitioning the Empress for a new noble house to seated, one more attentive to the needs of the natives. Unlike before, when he hadn’t really known what he was going to do or how he was going to go about it, now he had a detailed plan of action, with great attention to detail and marked milestones that would govern how their activities operated and expanded.

And it would all begin in Colorado.

Kiaari’s suggestion of Cheyenne Mountain was, naturally, a solid one. After researching it, he found that she’d been correct in that it was everything they needed…and with him now being dead, he wasn’t as worried about them looking for him. Once the last of the Faey presence in the Frontier faded, he would be leaving for Cheyenne Mountain, where he would begin preparing it to become the new secret base of operations for the resistance movement. Once he was done, then it would be time to start attacking Trillane.

Jason sighed. That would be a ways in the future. He didn’t see himself leaving Charleston until he was sure that everyone would be alright, and they were ready to work without him. He’d probably be there until spring, at least. There was Tim and Temika to worry about, and not just physically. Her frenzied report of what happened in Chesapeake had revealed to everyone that she was also a telepath, and like Jason, had kept it a secret from everyone. They’d taken Jason’s telepathy at least moderately well, but now there was a hint of paranoia among the survivors, even in their grief, as they wondered just who else had telepathic ability. Because of the fear, Symone had convinced Tim to reveal himself as well…so now everyone knew that the tight little group of Jason, Tim, Temika, and Symone wasn’t just because they were friends, it was because they were all telepathic.

But at least there were no torches and pitchforks. Right now, the fact that the four of them were telepaths wasn’t exactly high on the list of priorities for the survivors. They still had to come to grips with the awful calamity that had befallen their tight-knit community, the loss of over two thirds of the population of the town in a single terrible event.

“I’m sorry, Doc,” Jason said in a muted tone, with nothing but the sound of the rain pattering around him reaching his ears. “I did what I thought was best, but I guess it wasn’t good enough.”

At least with his father, he’d been ready for it. He’d gotten worse and worse over time, and when that time finally came and he passed away, Jason had been prepared. In a way, he almost felt relieved, relieved that his father wouldn’t suffer with the terrible pain anymore. But this had been so sudden, even with the understanding that it could happen…but that was no consolation, no help when it did happen. He knew that the time before moving to Colorado would be for him as much as the others, to give him time to come to grips with the extent of the disaster, and let him properly grieve both for so many friends lost and for his own part in what had happened.

But now, at least, he had time for it. The increased Imperial activity would drive Trillane’s slaving operations underground, and since they all thought he was dead, he didn’t have to worry about them chasing him anymore.

Jyslin. She probably thought he was dead too. He’d turned off his panel completely since the explosion, afraid that Jyslin would call and that the Faey crawling all over the region would intercept the tightbeam on the panel somehow and use it to find them. For twenty days, she had probably been going crazy trying to find out what was going on, what happened, if he was alive or dead. It pained him to think she was upset. And right now, more than any other time in his entire life, he desperately wanted to be near her, wanted to feel her arms around him and help him make sense of it all with her calm confidence and her gentle love, wanted to feel that radiant presence in his mind that told him she was just a thought away.

He thought about it the rest of the day, sitting in a chair by his bed as he listened to the rain, cradling one of his railguns, endlessly loading the magazine and then removing it, loading then removing, loading then removing. The part of him that knew it was stupid to give away the fact that he wasn’t dead warred with the part of him that loved Jyslin and hurt deeply at the thought that she thought he might be dead or wounded. He struggled with himself all day, ignoring calls to come eat, ignoring knocks at his apartment door, even Symone’s insistent sending to come out. His mind raced with ideas and plans of how to safely tell Jyslin that he was alright without anyone else finding out. Several times he had to resist the powerful urge to just turn on his panel and call her.

That was was absolutely out of the question, because too many knew he had that panel…but he did need to get word to her that he was alive. He had every confidence that she’d never tell a soul that he was alive. He just had to make sure that he did it in such a way that he was certain that only Jyslin received that message.

Well, there was no reason for him to be overly stupid. He knew exactly how to tell her that he was alive, without calling or contacting her in any way. He just had to get close to her. If he was within five miles of her, maybe even ten given Jyslin’s power, she’d sense him. She knew his mind intimately, and his proximity would be like an alarm bell going off in her head. That’s all it would take.

And that was easy. Besides, he needed to make sure his airskimmer was undetectable at close proximity to Faey military sensors. If it wasn’t, then he had more work to do.

As the sun dipped towards the western horizon, Jason stood up, put his rail gun down in his chair, then pulled on his overshirt. He pulled his jacket down from the hook by the door and opened it, and found himself staring right into Symone’s eyes, her fist up and preparing to knock on the door. She flinched and stepped back, then gave a rueful chuckle. About time. You gonna answer me now?

No, he replied dryly, stepping past her.

“Well, you need to listen,” she told him. “We just ran out of accellerant for Mika. We need to send a team out to New Myrthan to buy more. It’s sold in any drugstore. We could have just gone and done it, but nobody wanted to do it without your permission. You know, given with what’s going on and all.”

“I’ll take care of it,” he answered aloud, matching her. “I’m going to go out anyway.”

Really? What do you intend to do?

I’m going to fly over Washington D.C. at low altitude, he answered.

Jyslin?

He nodded.

She’d sense you from fifty kathra away. You wouldn’t have to get anywhere near the city.

A kathra was a unit of measurement the Faey used that was roughly half a mile, a bit smaller than a kilometer.

That’s the plan. We’ll land somewhere and pick up the accelerant on the way back.

Why don’t you land somewhere near Jyslin so you can see her? I think it would do you some good.

No, it’s too dangerous, he answered. They think I’m dead, Symone. They even cancelled my royalty payments. I can’t waste this opportunity by letting them find out I’m not. They came down into the main conference room, which was empty. I’m not even leaving the airskimmer. You are.

Me, eh? I guess that could work.

I need you along anyway.

Why?

I’m going to teach you how to fly.

Really? And why do I need to know how to fly?

Because we’re not going to have one flying unit forever, he answered. That’s going to be one aspect of the training anyone who goes with me is going to receive. Everyone will have to be able to fly. I’m going to teach everyone everything they’d need to get a class three license.

Ah, so they’ll know Faey traffic protocols, clever, Symone agreed with a nod. Sounds like you’ve done some thinking.

I’ve done a lot of thinking, he answered soberly, picking up the CB handheld on a stand by the door. “I’m going to go pick up some medical supplies for Temika,” he called over the radio. “If anyone needs anything that we can buy from a drugstore, come to my airskimmer in the next five minutes so we can put it on the list.” Tim, come to the airskimmer, I need you.

I’m on the way.

Several people answered that they had items they needed, and Jason put the radio back as Symone grabbed a coat from the coatrack by the door and pulled it on. They stepped out into the icy sunset and padded across the lawn of the estate to where Jason’s airskimmer was parked, on the old helipad behind the building. It was safe now to park it out in the open, because the hologram above hid it from cameras, and the Faey that had been crawling all over the place had all left. There was only a single Faey unit in the area now, a research team that was here to study the aftereffects of the explosion, its impact on the geography, the earth, and the environment. It was a scientific expedition, not a military one. They only had four soldiers with the ten scientists to serve as guards, and they were fifty miles away. They had no vehicles other than a single dropship and a flying platform for moving equipment around. Jason reached his skimmer as several people rushed towards it, and he went in as Symone intercepted them at the steps. “Alright alright, someone give me some paper so we can make a list,” she called to them.

“Mister Jason?” Luke called, pushing past Symone and into the skimmer. “Mister Jason?”

“Luke?” Jason asked in surprise. “It’s good to see you, man. What do you need?”

The burly man stumped up the aisle and to the cockpit seats, then sat down in the copilot’s chair. “I just wanted to ask you something.”

“Sure, go ahead.”

“When do you plan to leave?”

“I haven’t set a solid date yet, Luke,” he answered. “When I’m pretty sure that everyone’s going to be alright, and I’m sure the defenses we have here are going to work, I’ll be ready to go. I just can’t leave right now, not after—“ he broke off. “Not yet. Not until I know everyone is going to be okay.”

“Well, Mister Jason, when you go, I want to go with you, if you’ll have me,” he said resolutely. “They killed my family, Mister Jason. I thought I’d be torn up with hatred, but, but it ain’t like that. I just wanna get them off my planet so they don’t do it to nobody else, that’s all.”

“The plan isn’t to kick all of them off the planet,” he warned in a gentle voice. “The plan is to force the Empress to remove Trillane and replace them with people we can trust. People we can work with, who’ll treat us like people and not like property.”

“I understand that and all, sir. I just don’t want nobody who did what they did to us to be here. Not all Faey are bad. Miss Symone could never be that way, and if she can’t be that way, then there gotta be other Faey like her. If you’ll have me, I want to help you kick the ones that did this off our planet and find someone like Miss Symone to come in and replace them.”

Jason saw the look of sober adamance in Luke’s large eyes, and nodded silently. “Welcome aboard, Luke,” he said, holding out his hand. Luke took it and shook it firmly, and gave him a wan smile. “Sit there,” he said, pointing at the co-pilot’s chair. “If you’re gonna be with me, we may as well get started.”

“Started with what?”

“Your training,” he answered. “Anyone who joins the rebellion has to be able to fly a hovercar, airskimmer, or dropship. So, welcome to your first training flight.”

“I’m here Jayce,” Tim called from the back of the airskimmer. “What did you need?”

“You,” he answered. “Take a seat.”

“Alright,” he said, filing in and sitting down behind Jason’s chair. “You don’t have this thing started yet?”

“Not yet,” he answered. “Symone!”

“Just a sec,” she called from the back, where people were either telling her what they needed or were handing her pieces of paper. She finished up, then closed the hatch and came in and sat down behind Luke.

“Alright, the three of you have told me you’re going with me, so welcome to your first official act as rebels,” he told them, which made Symone chuckle.

The hatch opened again, and Kate rushed in. She closed it behind her and scurried forward. “We’re just going to get some supplies, Kate,” Jason told her.

“I just want to get out of Charleston for a while,” she answered, sitting down behind Tim.

Jason gave her a curious look, and she returned it with a serious one that told him she had a reason to be here.

“Next time we do this, you’re all bringing notebooks,” he told them. “I’ll get my study manual and let you borrow it too. Now, let’s start with the basics, like turning it on, and work from there.”

“Do what?” Tim asked.

“Teaching you to fly this thing, Tim,” Jason answered. “Anyone going with me when I leave has to be able to fly. It’s going to be mandatory.”

“Ohhh, okay. Teach on, then.”

Jason walked them through the entire procedure of startup, then explained how the controls worked in great detail before they lifted off. Once they did, he started going over the basics of the Faey traffic control system as they started off to the east-northeast. “Begging your pardon, Mister Jason, but why do we need to know about Faey traffic control?”

“Because, Luke, you may not always be flying a shielded skimmer. I intend to steal more skimmers, and even dropships, and whoever’s behind the controls had better know Faey protocols, or you won’t get the ship off the ground. The idea behind stealing one isn’t to charge in, jump into the cockpit, and fly off like a police chase. It’s going to be about quietly getting into the ship and acting like you’re supposed to be there, then dealing with traffic control like you’re any other pilot. Then you just take off and fly away.”

“Ah, yeah, that makes sense.”

“When I’m done, any of you would be able to walk into any Faey air facility and pass the Class 3 license exam,” he told them, glancing back. When he did so, he saw Kiaari’s approving nod, and he gave her a slight smile. “Tomorrow morning, I want all of you in the conference room at eight sharp. You’re going to be taking classes on flying. And expect to be getting quizzes,” he warned. “I’ll quiz you every day on the rules and regulations. Nobody’s getting behind the controls until you know the rules backwards and forwards.”

“Sounds reasonable,” Tim said. “Where are we going? We’re not going to New Myrthan?”

“No, I’m going to check something before we find a place to set down and get supplies,” he said. “And there’s someone I need to let know I’m alright.”

“Jyslin?” Tim asked.

He nodded. “I’m not going to land. I’m just going to fly close enough to Washington so she can sense me, and know I’m alive. She’ll never tell a soul I’m alive, but I don’t want her to worry anymore.”

“Yeah, she must be going crazy,” Tim said, then he sighed.

Jason kept a sharp eye on the sensors as they flew closer and closer to Washington, and he also opened up his senses and reached out in a passive way, looking for that one mind out there which he knew better than any other, a mind that knew him just as intimately.

And there it was. He looked down at his positioning system and saw that he was about twenty miles west of Washington, coming up on a city called Manassas, when he felt that familiar mind at the very edges of his consciousness.

Jyslin!

His heart leaped into his throat, and a confusing tidal wave of emotions rushed over him, causing his hands to shake. He felt her, felt that glorious presence, and then he sensed the texture of that presence shift radically, and suddenly strengthen. True to her title as one of the strongest telepaths on Earth, she had sensed him without looking for him at a distance almost as great as his ability to find her when looking for her. Jason veered the skimmer sharply to the north, running parallel to that sense of feeling in front of him, a move she would certainly sense because he would stop moving towards her.

Jason?

He gasped audibly. She could send to him from twenty miles away? God, what power!

JASON! her mental voice struck him, with incredible power given how far away she was. Thank Trelle! I thought you were dead! Jason, answer! Can you hear me? Can you reach me? Oh Jason, just send to me, tell me you’re alright, please! She was silent, obviously straining to hear. She knew that he was not as strong as she was. Move towards me if you can hear me, love, that will let me know you can hear me! I just need to know, I just need to know you’re alright and you can hear me!

“What is it?” Kate asked. “Are you alright?”

“It’s Jyslin,” he answered, turning the skimmer towards her in response to her plaintive plea. “She’s sending to me.”

“Where is she?”

“Way outside of my own range to respond,” he answered, not entirely truthfully. Though it was a knife in him, he was not going to answer. He was not going to acknowledge her directly. Her own sending could be taken as a desperate woman casting into the darkness, but if he answered it was tangible evidence that he was alive, that some mindbender down there might intercept. He probably could answer her, spanning the distance with his intimate familiarity with her mind, but he wouldn’t risk it. Symone could pick up private sendings, her own personal little trick…there had to be other Faey who could do that.

“I knew Jyslin was strong, but Trelle’s garland,” Symone said, putting a finger to her temple and closing her eyes. “That she can reach you from that far away, hell, I can’t even sense her, and I know her mind very well.”

“What does that mean?” Luke asked.

“Luke, Jyslin is one of the most powerful telepaths on this planet,” Symone told him as Jason moved towards Jyslin. “What she’s doing right now is proving that she deserves that title. She’s doing something that no other telepath on Earth could probably do. She’s sending to Jason from a distance that would make any other Faey faint to even attempt.”

YES! I knew you could hear me, my love, she sent to him over that vast distance, but Jason turned away from her, leaving the area. I, I understand, love. You just wanted me to know you were alright. And that’s enough for me. I’ll wait for you, until you think it’s safe to contact me. Until then, be careful and be well, and I love you.

Jason closed his eyes and gunned the throttle, racing away from the area, racing out of Jyslin’s sending range, racing out of his ability to sense her. Touching her mind had opened old wounds he thought long healed, and the ache inside him to be with her erupted in him once more.

God help him, he loved that woman like he had never loved before. She may be the forbidden fruit, but he loved her all the same.

The next morning, after a sleepless night filled with memories and images of Jyslin, Jason went down to teach his first class on flight procedures, and received quite a surprise.

Instead of three students, there were sixteen people sitting in the conference room waiting for him, all of them with notebooks.

“What’s this about?” Jason asked.

“Well, Tim told us that anyone who’s going with you had to come to this class,” Cindy Barker answered. She was a petite little woman with red hair, but though she was small and wiry, she was deceptively strong, her little body toned and fit. She was a welder, and one of the best welders Jason had ever seen. Her welding skill had put her on the build team, and that had saved her life. “You can guess why I’m here.”

“So, all of you want to go with me? Despite the fact that you know how hard what I’m doing is going to be? There’s a very good chance none of us will survive it.”

“Honey, after what happened in Chesapeake, we’re never gonna be safe anywhere unless we do something,” she told him, which made everyone else nod. “I’ll take my chances doing something about it than just sit here and hide under a rock and wait for it to happen.”

“Well said,” Taylor Mason, a burly black man who was quite a good carpenter, one of Luke’s original builders, agreed aloud.

“I think more would be here, but some people have jobs to do and couldn’t make it,” Tom Jackson said to him. “We’re just the ones who had the time to be here this morning. I’m sure they’re gonna come talk to you today about it.”

“So, all of you are stating here and now that you intend to go with me and start a rebellion?”

They all rumbled in agreement.

“You fully understand that it’s going to be very dangerous, and odds are we’re all going to die?”

“That doesn’t matter anymore,” someone called.

“If we don’t fight, then who will?” someone else said.

Jason couldn’t suppress a relieved smile. “Alright then, let’s get started. It’s gonna be a stretch getting all of you time behind the controls of my skimmer, but we’ll work out a schedule. Not that that’s going to happen any time soon. Nobody’s gonna sit in the pilot’s chair until you pass the written exam for a Class 3 license.”

And so he began. He spent almost all day going over the rules and procedures of piloting a skimmer, both procedures in the cockpit and protocols for dealing with traffic control. And Tom’s words turned out to be true, for new faces showed up in the conference room as others vanished to go get some work done. The attack on Chesapeake had dealt them a huge blow physically and psychologically, but it also had seemed to instill in the survivors a burning desire to do something about it.

Much to his shock, by the end of the day, he had been approached by every single resident. All of them, even Temika. Every single one. The entire build team wanted to join the rebellion, wanted to strike back at Trillane for what they had done to their friends, what they had done to Chesapeake.

He talked about it with Kiaari that night, after he finished teaching, while the two of them enjoyed a quiet dinner in his apartment. He had copied the manuals and regulations into extra panels and into handheld readers, little tablets that held data that were small enough to put in a pocket, and the entire town was quietly studying about how to become a pilot.

“The attack really affected everyone, Jayce,” she told him as she passed him the salt. “Some of them want revenge. Some of them were frightened into action. Some of them have seen what Trillane is capable of, and want to put a stop to it. And some, like poor Luke, they just want to find a reason to live, something to put into their lives that give them purpose and direction. For all of them, it seems that joining you and fighting against Trillane seems the best way to go about it.”

“I guess. I just hope they all fully appreciate how serious it’s going to get.”

“I’m sure they do. But this is going to change a few things.”

“How so?”

“Well, first off, you were building this town to give those not going with you a safe place to live. Well, if everyone’s going with you, then what reason does this town have?”

He blinked. That had never occurred to him. “This place will serve as a good temporary base until we’re ready to move,” he answered after a moment’s thought. “And we can let all the other squatters know about this place so they can move in after we’re gone, so they always have a safe place to be.”

“You should start collecting them now,” she said. “Get a government in place and get things set up so you don’t have to be here.”

“Yeah, that’d probably be best. I’ll have Mark start working the shortwave tomorrow to find out who’s coming.”

“It’d be better if you sent someone out.”

“I know, but with Temika injured, I don’t think anyone else has her savvy or her knowledge of the region,” he replied. “Mika was a real gem for that, since she’s smart enough to stay out of trouble and well known enough to be able to go almost anywhere without being shot at. She’s the best diplomat we have.”

“How’s her arm going?”

“Well, we think it’s going to heal,” he answered. “She says she has feeling in her fingers again, and I think that’s a good sign.”

“I’ll do something about that,” she said. “I’m going out tonight. I’ll go find a doctor, lift some knowledge from him, then come back and see what I can do.”
“I’d appreciate that,” he said gratefully.

“I should have done it earlier,” she grunted. “I’ll have to tell her about me to do it, though. But I think she’s trustworthy.”

“I agree with that.”

“But I had to make sure of things. But, since it looks like we’re going to be relatively safe for a while, I can take the time to fix it. That reminds me.”

“What?”

“Since everyone here is going with us, I think I’m going to reveal myself. Not as a Kimdori, but I think it’s good that they know that you have a professional spy on hand to help gather information.”

“That might cause more trouble than it fixes,” he said after a moment. “They find out Mika’s a telepath, then Tim comes out of the closet. If you admit you’re not the shy little Kate they all know and love, it might not go over very well.”

“Whatever you think best,” she shrugged. “But with the smaller numbers, now it’s a little harder for me to disappear days at a time. You’re probably running out of diseases I’m coming down with.”

He chuckled. “It is getting a bit hard to explain, especially recently. After Chesapeake, everyone wants to make sure everyone else is alright.”

“I’m just saying it might be easier to break it to them that I’m not who they think I am. I’m sure they’d understand the need for the secrecy, and them knowing at least some of the truth of me shows you trust them.”

“I’m not sure,” he hedged.

“It’s up to you, Jason,” she told him. “I can just suggest.”

“I’ve come to find out your suggestions usually end up being the best course of action,” he admitted.

She smiled. “That’s what I’m here for, Jayce. You need me to bring anything back?”

“I can’t think of anything. What are you after this time?”

“Well, we now know who ordered the attack, and what happened. Right now I’m trying to gather information on what Trillane is doing in the wake of the scandal.”

“Scandal?”

“It’s quite the scandal,” she nodded. “Oh, not about the attack, the scandal is about the catastrophic failure of the attack. Dozens of soldiers dead, equipment lost, all the press covering the explosion, the need to leak classified information to throw off the investigation, questions questions questions about an operation that was supposed to be totally secret. I told you about the Zarina and the generals. Well, the dust hasn’t settled yet. I’m just keeping track of it, and I’m still digging for some hard proof about the slaving. But, I must admit, they’ve done a good job keeping that buried. Nobody knows about it, and I can’t find any information on it anywhere. It’s probably being held in hard storage, and those involved are being kept isolated from everyone else.”

“Hard storage?”

“Computers not connected to Civnet, or being held in physical records, you know, paper and ink. Hard storage, where you have to physically be there to access it,” she explained. “It’s the safest way to store dangerous information, because not only do you have to know where they’re keeping it, you have to penetrate their defenses to reach it.”

“Ah. I doubt they’d hold any information like that on Earth.”

“On the contrary, this is the perfect place to keep it,” she countered. “It’s a planet on the very edge of the Imperium, it has only one stargate that can only link to a stargate at Draconis, there’s nothing here but farms, and it’s almost entirely under Trillane’s control. They have more control here than they do on Arctus, if only because there’s not members of other houses running around. Spies have no reason to come here, unless they want to steal information about how much food the planet’s producing. Spies would have trouble sneaking in, since there’s only one stargate, and virtually all the traffic through it is nothing but military vessels and cargo ships. This planet’s Faey population is almost entirely made up of commoners living under Trillane, and that means they have total control. If you had records and data that could get your Duchess executed and your noble house’s charter revoked, where would you keep it?”

“Good point,” he acquiesced.

“You’ve dug quite a hole for yourself.”

“How so?”

“Training sixty pilots? You’re going to be frazzled,” she winked.

“Tell me when I’m not frazzled,” he sighed. “But it needs to be done. Any of them might be called on to pilot a skimmer or dropship at any time. They have to be ready.”

“I certainly agree with you,” she nodded. “You’re training guerillas, Jayce, and guerillas have to be resourceful and self sufficient. I think you’ve done the right thing in deciding that all of them need to be able to fly a dropship.”

“Or a skimmer.”

“Specifically a dropship,” she grinned, putting her chin on her laced fingers and looking at him.

“Okay, okay, a dropship,” he admitted.

“Let’s not be secretive with each other now, Jayce. We’ve shared those plans in our touch. I know what you have planned.”

“And?”

“I think you’ve done very well,” she answered. “You’ve targeted your objectives precisely, and you certainly have a keen understanding of the problems and limitations you’re going to be working with. Your idea of going after cargo dropships moving from farms to spaceports is a good idea. They’re hard to defend since there’s so many of them, and you can hit one and disappear before fighters can be scrambled and sent in. You can capture one with just a couple of people, meaning that you can spread out and attack multiple targets at once, so long as you always have one telepath in the unit. And though they’ll just seem like nuisance attacks at first, when you start really cutting into the dropship fleet, Trillane’s going to start feeling the pinch. Sure, they have a few thousand of them, and they’re not going to be too concerned when they lose two or three. But after they’ve lost a couple hundred of them, they’re going to be feeling the fangs you’ve been sinking into their ankles. A small-scale battle plan that will eventually cause huge supply disruptions, and will be very hard to counter. I think it’s brilliant.”

“Thanks. I’m not very good at this battle planning shit. I’m no general.”

“I think you could be a good one, with a little training and some experience,” she said earnestly. “You certainly have an, inventive, mindset when it comes to business.”

“Well, it made sense,” he shrugged.

“It does indeed. Now that you’re not getting money from the Ministry anymore, we need another source of income.”

“Kumi spent all that time setting up those shell companies for me. It was all right there waiting to be used.”

Jason’s idea for money was both simple and rather ingenious. It was a two-pronged strategy involving scavenging and marketing. Jason was, quite literally, about to become an honest businessman, using the shell companies that Kumi set up and the fake identity that she had had set up for him, and it was something that they were already in the act of starting. The first phase of the plan involved selling Terran objects over Civnet, utilizing Civnet auction sites and barter houses, where people could buy and sell just about anything in private transactions. Things that Faey liked to buy that came from Earth were jewelry and guns, which were considered collector’s items because of their primitive technology. This would provide moderate amounts of income, but there was a ton of scrap metal laying around out in the wilderness, and much of it had material worth. There was enough gold laying around out here to make them huge amounts of money, if they were just patient enough to gather it all up. Silver, iron, tungsten, and lead also had market worth.

The second prong of the plan involved honest business, and not what they could scavenge or steal. Jason had two ideas for that, both of which were relatively simple, would take almost no time, yet would have the potential to earn money.

The first idea was cookbooks.

There was this sudden influx of Terran food into the Faey system, but thus far, Jason had found very little information on how to prepare the new foods outside of safety precautions and attempts to adapt Terran food to Faey recipes that used similar materials. There was no definitive cookbook out in the Imperium that dealt specifically with Terran food, or more to the point, adapting Terran foods to Faey dishes. Jason felt that releasing a cookbook that dealt with Terran foods would be well received, especially if he made it very cheap. A five credit cookbook that covered all the Terran foods available in the Imperium had potential to make money. For that, he’d need the help of Maya and Vell, because they were both quite good cooks, and Vell had already done some work in experimenting with using Terran foods in Faey recipes. Jason didn’t expect the cookbooks to make a large amount of money, but all they had to do was make a modest amount.

The second prong had to deal with issues that might involve his rebellion, so it had to be a business venture that would require the use of a large warehouse that could be used to funnel supplies and equipment to the rebellion. And so, as soon as he had access to his panel again, VulTech would be born. It would be a technology company, dealing in virtually any kind of technical equipment, but it would also sell some of Jason’s inventions that he felt comfortable releasing into the Imperium.

VulTech would start its business by patenting a modified version of his liquefaction inducer that would work on Faey plascrete, their basic building material, which had been a modification that had taken him all of six hours to work out, and another five hours to redesign the unit so it was encased in a single chassis. This little device had some impressive potential as a moneymaker because it would allow builders and others to utilize the liquefaction effect to implant into or soften sections of plascrete, letting them make significant changes to it without having to tear it up. It couldn’t be used on a wall without endangering the entire structure, but it was more than usable on a floor, sidewalk, free-standing object, or ceiling. Jason had already drawn up the blueprints for building this new model, a stand-alone device about a meter tall and with leads that would be placed around the area to be affected. The user would just turn on the device, do what they needed to do, then turn it off. When they were done, the plascrete would again be hard and stable.

Jason already had the plans ready to send off to the Ministry of Technology to be patented…but this time they would be patented in the name of the company, not in the name of an individual. By doing that, he could legally defend his invention without having to reveal the fact that he wasn’t dead.

The inducers weren’t going to be produced by VulTech. What Jason was going to do was put the design out there, let companies see it, and then let them buy rights to produce the unit. Just as had been done with the subsonic devices Jason had invented—just without his input on that one—he would negotiate an initial payment and royalties, for initial capital and a steady source of income.

And that was how VulTech was going to work. Jason would patent ideas through Vultech, stick them out on Civnet and offer to sell the rights, then wait for an offer. This way, VulTech could generate income without having to actually produce anything. And once they had a sufficient amount of working capital, Jason would start buying and selling technological devices to make it look like VulTech was a technology company, when actually all it would be doing would be buying supplies for the rebellion, buying extra junk, then reselling it on the open market to give the illusion that it was a viable business.

And the income from the cookbooks, filtered into the company under phony sales, would hide the losses of buying supplies and handing it off to the rebellion, thus shielding the company from scrutiny once the Faey figured out that the rebellion had to be getting money from somewhere, and started looking for that source. And that was what the cookbooks were for. A radically different product sold by another company whose profits were written off as personal income of the cookbook writer, funneled into VulTech to hide the money loss from equipment and supplies channeled to the rebellion.

He had little doubt that he’d come up with several viable ideas that would make money, because he’d be forced to come up with things in the future on the fly to deal with the Faey, and then he’d find a way to adapt it to a use that would make him money. It was an ironic little circle, once he thought about it. The Faey would invest in ideas owned by VulTech, unwittingly funding a rebellion against one of their noble houses, even while that noble house pushed Jason and caused him to come up with new ideas…that would end up at VulTech.

“Yeah, we need to give her a big kiss next time we see her,” Kiaari chuckled.

“I doubt that’s ever going to happen,” he answered. “Kumi’s in her conscription now, working on Draconis. She can’t really help me anymore, and even if she could, she might not. I’m not entirely sure how much I can trust her once I start cutting into her noble house’s profit margins.”

“You can trust Kumi.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Of course. Miaari told me so.”

And for Kiaari, Jason had noticed, that was that. Her trust in the word of her sister was absolute. It was almost blind. “Sometimes I wonder why you trust Miaari so much.”

“Jason, she is my older sister,” she said, as if that was all that needed to be said. “If I can’t trust my family, who can I trust?”

“Well, I didn’t say you couldn’t trust her. It’s just that, that—“

“You’d understand if you were Kimdori,” she said with an enigmatic smile.

“I guess so. Humans aren’t that trusting.”

“I’ve noticed. Just one of your many shortcomings,” she winked.

“Well thanks,” he said dryly.

“Hate to say it, but it’s about time for me to go, if I want to get back at a decent hour.”

“Alright. You be careful out there,” he warned.

“Ever the worrier,” she chuckled. She wiped her mouth with her napkin and pushed away from the table, then patted him on the shoulder as she filed past towards the bedroom. There, he knew, she would remove her clothes and shapeshift into a bird, then fly off to do her work. Watching her shapeshift was something he didn’t particularly want to witness while he was eating, so she made sure to close the door.

Jason sighed and put his elbows on the table, looking out the window, lost in thought. He didn’t think about the rebellion, or the city, or the work that had to be done, or even Doc Northwood. All his thoughts were instead fixed on Jyslin. He wondered if she was alright. He hoped that getting close enough so she could sense him had helped ease any worries she had. He longed to be near her, with her, to touch her, to—

Well, pining over her wasn’t going to fix anything…but he just couldn’t help it. Being close enough to hear her sending, to feel the touch of her mind, it had reopened old wounds he thought long healed. He had left her to come out here because it was what he felt he had to do, but it certainly didn’t make it any easier. He was out here, she was there, and that was just the way of things. And with what he intended to do, he would either end up dead or in some Trillane prison somewhere. But maybe, just maybe, if everything happened just right, there was a chance that they would be together again.

And that chance, no matter how remote, was what he could cling to right now.

The days blurred by after that, because Jason was almost eternally busy. His days were filled with the efforts of training his neophyte resistance movement in the art of flying, by starting with the worst part of it…the regulations. He taught people in shifts, as they had time to come in and learn when not busy with other tasks, and those tasks had multiplied in number. Some of them picked up the regulations quickly, others struggled, but to his surprise, Luke had managed to memorize virtually the entire manual in just a few days, and had started his practical training behind the controls. But in a way, Jason shouldn’t have been surprised. He had lost everything in the attack, and now the rebellion and the work to be done around the city was all he had left. He spent every waking moment working or studying.

In addition to the efforts to establish power, water, and communications, Jason now had the people of the build team out scavenging the city and surrounding area. They were to bring back guns, jewelry, silver, gold, and any large-scale construction equipment they could find. Those things were inspected, cleaned, cataloged, and stored, as they prepared to sell it off or use it. Jason helped as much as he could, but his schedule was totally packed, between teaching the rules during the day and giving Luke his practical training at night, and squeezing in time to help fix power lines and clean out water pipes in between.

He was exhausted most of the time, so much so that he barely noticed the days fly by, but he never got too busy to keep tabs on Temika’s recovery. Kiaari had lifted enough medical knowledge from some doctor somewhere to be able to monitor her healing and apply medicine to best effect, so her progress had rapidly increased. She regained sensation in her entire arm and regained limited movement, but still had it in a sling. Kiaari had put her on rehabilitation exercises to strengthen her arm, and that was the only time it was out of the sling. The Faey mecical compounds they’d brought back had gone far in mending the skin of her arm, but she would always have faint burn scars from the tricep to the wrist.

Temika had taken the truth of Kiaari rather well, but there had been one issue that had been…messy. Like she had to Symone, Kiaari had revealed the truth of herself to her, and Temika had made the mistake of asking to see her change shape. Jason had never believed Temika capable of fainting.

The busy schedule kept his mind busy, and kept him from brooding too much about the deaths of his friends and being separated from Jyslin, but every day, in quiet moments when he had a moment, he managed to somberly reflect on those he’d lost in Chesapeake, and lament his separation from the woman he loved.

After some number of days that Jason couldn’t remember, the lights finally came on in Charleston. There was the predictable celebration once they got the power grid working for fifteen city blocks, but there was still much more to do, and there was still the issue of water. But at least now they had power to more than the goveror’s mansion, and Jason could pull the PPGs that were powering the building out and use them elsewhere.

And just like in Chesapeake, once the lights came on, people started to show up. Murphy from Hurricane was the first squatter to show up, in a badly misfiring one ton truck hauling a trailor with all his worldly possessions. When he got there, he was taken immediately to see Jason, who was in between stints as teacher and was elbows deep in the motor of a rooter that he and Tom Jackson were using to clear a water pipe on State Street. Jason explained what would be the rules of living in Charleston, which Murphy agreed to immediately. Devin Jones was going to escort him off to find him a place to settle in, but Murphy instead rolled up his sleeves and helped Tom and Jason fix the rooter motor. This endeared him to quite a few people right off the bat. Murphy hadn’t moved to Cheseapeake because he was quite content in Hurricane as the lord of his little domain. He was well known in the region because he was an ex-Marine with a large arsenal of weaponry, a steady hand, and nerves of steel. He did not intimidate, and if you even tried, he’d shoot you from a mile away with his sniper rifle if you survived getting that far away from him. He had a reputation for being a mean cuss, but Temika had always liked him. She called him a “roughie,” someone who was more reputation than reality, but some of that reputation was indeed well deserved. But, after the explosion in Chesapeake, now Murphy didn’t feel quite so secure in Hurricane, and was more than willing to move to a place where he was promised that the Faey would have serious trouble finding him. Murphy was much like Luke, a rather handy fellow with skill in fixing many different things, from diesel engines to televisions, and he made a name for himself quickly as a no-nonsense fellow who could fix almost anything put in front of him.

Murphy was the first of several, and they started drifting in to Charleston not long after the power was restored. Many of them had been preparing to move to Chesapeake, but had been delayed or had to travel a long way. Others were like Murphy, people who had been secure in their fortified homes, but had been rattled by the explosion and the Faey presence, and also by the warnings about raids that Jason’s people had circulated. But some, knowing what happened in Chesapeake, were afraid to congregate, afraid that the Faey would discover them and attack. And for that, Jason could not blame them. It had happened once, and it could happen again. Jason could offer no guarantees, he could only explain that this town had better protection, hidden using Faey technology, and the chances of the Faey finding it were more remote. Some 38 people had moved into Charleston, ten singles and seven familes, and Jason had reconstituted a city council and mayor, though no one in the build team was a member of either. They had already warned them that they were all leaving, though they didn’t tell them where or why. It was decided earlier that nobody that was part of the rebellion should know about the rebellion.

It seemed that he had just blinked and it was already February. It felt like yesterday they were working on power lines, and today they had power going to fifteen blocks. It seemed that yesterday the streets were deserted, but now there was a person here and there, and not just members of the build team. There were even children playing in the streets, but it was almost too painful to watch when Luke saw them, saw that haunted look drift over his features, to which Jason could do nothing but put his hand on the big man’s shoulder and reassure him that there were still people that cared about him.

There was progress on other fronts as well. After a few weeks, Jason finally dared to turn his panel back on, and he got to business on the other side of things. Through the magic of email, Jason had renamed one of the shell companies Kumi had set up VulTech, and then submitted his liquefaction inducer to the Ministry of Technology for a patent. They got back to him quickly, approving the patent, and naming VulTech Enterprises as the patent holder. Once that was done, he simply placed the design on VulTech’s Civnet site and offered it for sale to the highest bidder.

It did not take long at all.

Merrane Macrotechnology had been the first to show interest, which surprised Jason quite a bit. He’d had no idea that the arms company had a construction equipment division, but it did. The executives he dealt with seemed a bit unsettled that the mysterious owner of VulTech flatly refused any visual comminucation, and when he communicated over Civnet, he clearly was using a voice masker to hide his true voice. But he had all the proper documents to prove ownership of VulTech, and that meant that he did in fact have the power to sell the patent.

Sixteen days after getting the patent for the liquefaction inducer, he sold it to Merrane Macrotechnology for C10,500,000 and a .7% royalty on every unit produced. For Merrane, it was an absolute steal. At first they thought they had duped some small-time inventor with just enough sense to start his own little company with a sum that would seem large to him but was basicly chicken scratch to them, but then realized they were dealing with someone who had a pretty good understanding of what it was about. Jason had taken the very small initial payment for two reasons: firstly because he didn’t want VulTech to get too much money too fast, which would alert people; and secondly, it was the royalties that were much more important than the initial payment. But on the royalties, Jason wouldn’t budge from a relatively large .7% per unit, no matter how large their initial payment offer was. He, just like 2M, was banking on the success of the device and selling it in quantity, and what was more important, he needed a moderate income that was steady, not a large initial windall followed up by small income afterwards.

All in all, it was a good deal for both sides. Merrane Macrotechnology got a good piece of construction equipment to produce and sell, and Jason got a steady income to fund his rebellion.

That initial windfall was spent almost as fast as it was made. That C10,500,000 was used to buy the one thing that everything else would absolutely depend upon, and that was a warehouse. This time he did not rent or lease, he bought it. The warehouse he settled upon was on the outskirts of Lincoln, Nebraska, in an industrial park about ten miles south of the city. It had once been a small convenient store chain’s distribution center, and it was absolutely perfect. The warehouse was literally out all by itself, far away from any population centers. It had a fenced in perimiter, lots of interior storage space, and what was most important, the warehouse itself was a renovated airplane hangar, and the doors in the back worked. Those doors were wide enough to allow his skimmer to fly into the building, and were even large enough to accommodate a large cargo dropship. If that wasn’t good enough, the doors were motorized, and it took all of two hours to rig a remote so the doors could be opened from the skimmer, or even using his panel. He could open the warehouse doors from literally anywhere.

His only visit to the warehouse had been to look it over and make some modifications, and in some kind of need to establish the place, he’d painted VulTech’s logo over the door. He guessed it was his only conceit to put his name in the company, but naming it FoxTech would have been a glaring klaxon going off all over the place that this small company was owned by someone other than a Faey. The closest thing to a fox in the Imperium was a vulpar, so he had named the company VulTech. The black silhouette of a seated vulpar, its two tails sweeping out two the right, now graced the wall over the door of the office of the warehouse, with [VulTech] written on the door in both Faey and English.

The warehouse was an absolutely critical part of the overall plan, and much to his relief, that was no longer an issue. The warehouse was totally paid for, no mortgate, and it had only cost him C7,750,000. That left C2,750,000, all but C5000 of which was immediately deposited into his private numbered account and wrote off in VulTech’s records he was keeping for tax purposes as a business investment. What that money would be used for, he did not want traced back to VulTech.

That money already had been partially earmarked for one thing that everyone was going to need…armor. Real armor, not that century old surplus junk the Faey used. Armor like his, that could take punishment, and with the antigrav in it. That, more than anything else, was Jason’s primary need for his people, the ability to survive.

That, naturally, would require basicly a running account with ZPS, because he had 59 suits of armor to buy. Vehicles and equipment he could steal, but armor, that had to be custom fit to each person. That was not something he could scavenge or steal, not if it was going to work the way it was supposed to work.

Not everything else they needed could be stolen, though, at least not yet. Jason had to buy a new replicator, for their old one had been destroyed in Chesapeake. He also needed the materials to make more railguns, at least 100 of them, and he also knew that it would only be wise to have some MPAC rifles on hand. Railguns were cheap to produce, but MPACs had their uses, for they had explosive rounds where rail slugs were penetrating rounds. Besides, an armored figure carrying an MPAC would look like a Faey from a distance, where railguns had a radically different appearance. They were going to need more basic supplies to build what they needed, and they were going to need more for when they started work on Cheyenne Mountain. He wanted everything ready for that, not having to keep running to Lincoln to pick up shipments he had to have brought in because they didn’t have what they needed.

One thing he certainly wanted on hand was everything they’d need to refit skimmers, dropships, hovercars, and airbikes the same way his skimmer was outfitted, to be invisible to sensors. Just one skimmer was a liability, and they were going to need at least two dropships in order to complete the move to Cheyenne Mountain. Trying to ferry everything in his skimmer would be impossible, and unlike the move to Charleston from Chesapeake, it would be absolutely impossible to move things overland. That refit would be done in the warehouse in Lincoln.

And thanks to VulTech, he could buy it all without any eyebrows being raised. And with a war chest of C2,845,392, he could buy a large portion of what was required.

The armor was going to be expensive, as were the dropships. The armor was going to go at C60,000 per suit, on the average, and with 59 suits to buy, that meant that he was looking at a price tag of C3,540,000, which was considerably more than he had on hand. He wouldn’t be able to buy the armor quite yet, at least not all of it. The best course of action with that would be to only buy armor for those who passed pilot training, which would restrict the armor costs and still get armor on those people that would need it.

Dropships came in all shapes and sizes, but what Jason needed was fairly specific. He needed the largest dropship he could find that would still fit through the doors of the warehouse, whose dimensions he already had written down. He would have liked to have found a dropship capable of fitting in the tunnel at Cheyenne Mountain, but it was just too narrow. It would just barely fit his airskimmer, and the wingtips might scrape against the walls of the tunnel at that. The only real option he could see in that regard would be to build a shelter to hide the dropships, or keep them in Lincoln. A little Civnet research showed him which dropships fit his requirements. He winnowed through the candidates, until he came up with three models that fulfilled his requirements. The JS-290 Cargo Dropship, made by Folenne Transport, was listed at a starting price of C450,000. The V-10 General Purpose Dropship, built by a Makati-owned corporation named Advanced Vehicle Solutions, was listed at a starting price of C390, 000. And finally there was the ARL Space-Ground Transport, an old and reliable design built by the ancient warhorse of Faey vehicle producers, the venerable Thrynne Corporation, which was listed at a starting price of C500,000. All three were within the required physical dimensions, at least once its wings were folded in the case of the JS-290.

After a short period of researching maintenance histories and message boards, it became clear that the Thrynne dropship was the best. It had a proven track record of solid dependability, replacement parts were abundant, it was easy to maintain, and was well known for being able to take a beating and operate even when maintenance was neglected. It was more expensive than its competitors, but it would be cheaper in the long run. Jason would gladly pay for that kind of dependability, because his dropships might not be able to receive regular maintenance. The newcomer V-10 was lauded on some message boards for its toughness and ease of repair, but its replacement parts were more expensive than the ARL.

He was also going to need piggyback dropships, dropships that picked up and carried standard shipping containers, which was what the Faey used to ship food from farms to cargo transports in orbit. Those, he would need for the operations against Trillane as container hijackers, where the cargo dropships would be used to carry equipment or personnel. He’d need at least eight of those, but those he could steal, so he didn’t need to buy all of them at once. He had the idea to start with two, and then steal the rest. The plan was to refit the two he bought, and then steal new ones, one at a time, refit them, and then put them out and into service. When one was done with its refit, another would be stolen, and the refit process would start again. He wanted the refit team to be constantly busy in an endless rotation of refitting vehicles, and what was thankful to God to Jason, the core of the refit team that had refitted his skimmer had survived. That had been a major project, and the men and women in Charleston were his technical people, so naturally they had been involved in the refit.

There was only one piggyback dropship that anyone ever cared to buy, and that was the Wynne DCU. Usually referred to as the Stick, a reference to its long, narrow shape, it was the dominant piggyback dropship. It was powerful and could carry tremendous loads, it was exceptionally sturdy and durable, and it had a service life measured in decades, not years. There were Sticks still in service that had been built a century ago. The entire Faey merchant marine system was designed around launching and capturing Sticks. Their cargo bays were designed around them, the spaceports were designed around them, everything dealing with container transport was designed around them. There were different models of the Stick, smaller ones and larger ones, but they all had the same basic shape, they were almost all exactly the same length, and they had the same design. Only their width, height, and hauling capacity varied, though there were a few speciality models designed for carrying things other than containers, but those fell outside the accepted Stick genre. The DCU-19 was the largest of the Sticks, a double-decker piggyback, designed to carry containers both underneath and on top at the same time by connecting them together like Lego blocks and then picking them up, and having another Stick load the containers on top. A single DCU-19 had carried 36 containers at once, but it had done so without entering an atmosphere, where all those containers would interfere with wind resistance. Most Sticks carried one or two containers at once in an stacked-under configuration, since it was the weight of the load that mattered, not the size. If a Stick could carry two containers and stay under its load rating, it would do so.

Sticks were as plentiful as grains of sand, and were the backbone of any transport system. They were the tractor trailors of the Faey, all over the place and hauling goods from point to point, and they were going to be the focus of his attacks. Sticks were plentiful, but they were not cheap. The average Stick went for C75,000. After Jason started taking out Sticks, and those numbers started to mount, that bill was going to start piling up on Trillane as they were forced to replace them…and that was because civilian Sticks were not designed to withstand combat. Certainly there were military models of Sticks that were heavily armored, and even armed, but the average Stick you’d see flying over a spaceport was literally nothing but a flying engine, stripped down to maximize carrying capacity. Yes, they were heavily reinforced, but that reinforcement was internal, designed to deal with the stress of carrying a heavy load, not enduring strikes from MPACs, and their systems were not shielded to protect them from the ion storm generated by ion cannons. In layman’s terms, he’d have trouble breaking a bone on a Stick, but he could certainly take off big chunks of flesh, or give it a heart attack without leaving a mark. They were the achilles heel of the Faey system, and that was the weak spot that he was going to exploit. A single rebel could inflict real damage on Trillane with nothing but a high-powered sniper rifle and a good vantage point to shoot at Sticks. Run up some hill, fire off a couple of shots, bring down a Stick, then run away before anyone could get there, just like how the Minutemen used to do it back in the Revolutionary War.