Chapter 15

Chiira, Kaitha (New Year’s Day), 4395 Orthodox Calendar

Tuesday, 13 July 2008, Native Regional Reckoning

Cheyenne Mountain (Native designation), Gorei Nature Preserve, American Sector

New Year’s Day on the Faey calendar.

The first day of the year.

The first day of the worst period in the history of House Trillane…at least if Jason had anything to say about it, because they were finally ready.

For nearly three months, they’d been preparing for this. This day. They’d worked feverishly to clean out, alter, and repair Cheyenne Mountain to suit their needs, and the official end of that work was today. But that was done now. Much to his surprise, the interior of the facility was enclosed in several large galleries burrowed out of the rock itself, a series of interconnected smaller galleries linking three larger ones, and buildings were erected within these galleries, erected on large springed platforms so they would not fall down if subjected to the shockwave of a nuclear explosion. Some galleries were connected to the main mazework by tunnels, and these splinter galleries contained some of the operational systems within the mountain, such as water resevoirs, power generation, and air filtering. Those buildings were retained, but most of what was in them was thrown out, stored in an unused gallery, raw material they could feed a replicator for making other things. Two galleries had originally been for operations, one for storage, one for living quarters for those who were permanently stationed within the base, and there was also a large hangar-like cavern with a passage leading outside as well, and currently the dropship was parked inside it.

The innermost gallery was divided up into two smaller areas. The innermost area, the one deepest within the mountain, was now the operations center. It held not just panels, but consoles, holographic screens, and an array of communications systems that they used to monitor gravband transmissions, television, old CB radio, FM radio frequencies, and images from all over the world via Trillane’s own camera network, which Kiaari had infiltrated and hacked. Thanks to Kiaari, they could listen in to 90% of Trillane’s military communications, with only the most top-secret protocols left unbroken thus far, could access Trillane’s own camera system, and had real-time data on the position of every airborne vehicle on Earth thanks to Kiaari’s breaking of the Terran Traffic Control system, which was displayed on a three dimensional holograph, including the locations of all military battle cruisers in orbit, and the orbital station. There were six people in that room at all times, watching, listening, and observing. That was Tim’s domain. Tim had a knack for being able to organize the large amount of raw data, corollate it, weed out the redundant information, and present it in a meaningful manner. Since the first time he had commanded the community intelligence, riding shotgun with a panel during the road gang fight in Chesapeake, Tim had been learning how to take in information, process it, then present it. Kiaari had taken note of it and had taken him under her wing and taught him the basics of intelligence analysis, and it turned out he was a natural at it. As a result, he was now the commander of the surveillance and intelligence efforts. While Kiaari theoretically was now answering to Tim, she still worked specifically for Jason.

A small secondary gallery, connected by a tunnel off the operations center, was originally an office complex for the base command staff. Now, it served as the domain of the telepaths. They all lived together, not because they felt the need to be separate from everyone else, but because of the Faey and their desire to be close to each other, the need to establish an area that they felt was more theirs. Jyslin lived there with Jason, and Symone wanted to be near her friend, so Symone and Tim lived next door. Kumi decided she wanted to be there, near Jason, and that put Meya, Myra, and Fure there as well. Songa, Rann, and Yohne ended up there as well, when Songa and Rann couldn’t find a room large enough to suit them, and Yohne came when she admitted that she felt uncomfortable being by herself, and felt the need to be around other Faey. The only telepath that didn’t live in the gallery was Temika, for she still felt not entirely comfortable around the Faey. Some of the offices had been converted into a shop and a lab where Jason could work on his inventions, as well as where the main council room was located where they met to discuss important issues, but most of the other areas had been converted to Faey styles. Homemade tapestries and paintings were on the walls now, as well as several throw rugs over the floors. Faey liked vibrant colors in their living quarters, be it paint or rugs or furniture. They also wanted art, in the form of paintings or sculptures, an aesthetically pleasing surrounding that seemed to resonate with them and made them more at ease. It was the doctors that had converted the gallery into a Faey domain, working in their off time to beautify any area Jason literally didn’t keep locked. Rann had even managed to figure out a way to build a fountain in the entry chamber leading into the gallery that held the buildings, using an annealer and other building tools to shape the fountain out of the native rock, and had put an abstract geometric formation in the middle from which the water poured in four channels down the structure and into the water pool at the base.

Jason didn’t exactly like what they did to the area and the idea that the telepaths had more or less sectioned themselves off from the rest of the mountain and the rest of the resistance, but he couldn’t talk the Faey out of the idea of living together, and he wasn’t going to force the issue.

The largest internal gallery served as a manufacturing center. It was here where a complement of twenty people worked to build whatever they needed, be it equipment or weapons. There were quite a few buildings in this gallery, and each one had been converted to be used to build and store certain things. One building was the armory, and also where railguns would be assembled. One building would be where their first nasty surprise for Trillane was being manufactured, in large numbers.

The other main gallery served primarily as a training facility. Here, the buildings on the north side of the gallery had been knocked down to create a large exercise yard, and the south side buildings were now props used to train them all in the arts of combat. This was the domain of Jyslin, Meya, and Myra. The three Faey soldiers were the ones whipping a bunch of squatters into a viable guerilla force, capable of fighting the Faey in different tactical environments, as well as where they learned the art of stealthy infiltration.

There was a smaller gallery off this one that had been used as housing in the old base, where people would sleep if they closed the blast doors and sealed everyone inside, and this was now the living quarters for everyone but the Faey.

There were quite a few smaller rooms, tunnels, and crawlspaces, and those were the domain of Tom Jackson. He was the operations manager of the mountain, both overseeing its reconstruction and responsible for maintaining the equipment that allowed it to run. It was his responsibility to make sure the power and water worked, and also his job to ensure that the equipment they had installed to hide the mountain’s occupants and signs of their inhabitation from the Faey above. From the air vents that had units that cooled the cycled air blown out of the mountain to exactly match the temperature of the external ambient air to the water filters and pumps that drew from the internal water reservoirs and supplied running water to the mountain, it was all Tom’s domain. He took his job seriously, and he was very good at it. Under his watchful eye, the mountain’s infrastructure hummed along in perfect working order. While Jason commanded the people within the mountain, Tom commanded the mountain itself.

Then there was the hangar. It was clear just by looking at the place that it was built long after the rest of the mountain’s galleries, dug out well after the rest of the place was built. It was a small hanger, looking to have been designed to hold five helicopters, which would be towed out of a set of large doors that connected to the main tunnel by a secondary passage that had another set of doors. With the rotors of a helicopter folded, Jason saw that one could just barely get one down the main tunnel. The tunnel was just barely large enough for his skimmer to fit in, but it could not maneuver, and it couldn’t come all the way in, for the tunnel narrowed slightly about twenty feet from the entrance, just enough to keep the wings of the skimmer from letting it go any further. But there was a smaller tunnel leading from that hangar directly to the outside, which looked to be just large enough for a truck to go down, clearly an external tunnel meant for maintenance vehicles or fuel trucks, trucks holding volatile, explosive jet fuel that they would not bring down the main tunnel, for obvious reasons of security.

That small tunnel was how they were getting the dropship and skimmer in. Though the tunnel was way, way too small for the dropship to use, they were also dealing with a species who had mastered the technology of manipulating space itself. Jason had found the specs for a bubble conveyor on Civnet, in a place where the military application should not have been, and he snapped it up. It was a system that created a bubble of stretched space into which the dropship was placed, then it was ferried down the small cargo tunnel and opened into the hangar using an array of gravometic generators that moved the bubble along like a conveyor belt without disrupting it. It had been surprisingly easy to build, and hadn’t cost much at all.

It had, however, required a little creative manipulation of the outside. The first rule of the mountain was that nobody went outside. Ever. They would not so much as leave a footprint out there to tip anyone off that there were people in the mountain. But they’d had to go out to install some equipment, and that had required a light touch and fast workers. The inverse phase emitter system was installed around the mountain, a three layered redundant system that covered the entire mountain to hide it from Faey active sensors, where the sheer volume of rock surrounding them protected them from passive sensors…up to a point. The bubble conveyor drew a great deal of power, and was on the edge of the mountain, so they’d been forced to install some additional masking around that side of the mountain to conceal the bubble conveyor when it was in use. They’d also been forced to clear some of the area around the tunnel mouth, which they’d had to do in stages so as not to present a sudden dramatic change in the topography. Over the course of a month, the area around the tunnel was slowly altered so the conveyor could be used, and also hidden from sensors.

Not everyone was in the mountain, though. At any time, there were three people in Lincoln, and Kumi was usually a fourth. Kumi wanted to return to Draconis and track down who tried to kill her, but Miaari would not allow her to return. It was just too dangerous, she told them. They knew she was still alive, and they were tearing Draconis and Arctus apart looking for her. If she returned to the Imperium, it wouldn’t take them long to find her, and then the assassins would converge on her like a swarm of bees around their queen. So Kumi was forced to remain in exile, where she got into everyone’s business, aggravated the hell out of everyone, but also decided to alleviate her boredom by taking over the financial operations of Vultech and the other enterprises that were funding the rebellion. Kumi knew how business worked, and knew how the Imperial Bureau of Taxation worked. It was her pulling the strings that got materials bought and shipped, redirected materials and funds for use by the rebellion while hiding it in Vultech’s records, as well as creative uses of the Faey banking system that hid what was really going on behind a complicated web of deceptive accounting and records. Kumi’s efforts was what caused a sudden river of material and equipment to flow into Cheyenne Mountain, bought by company capital, and those expenditures and material redirections were masterfully concealed within a stunningly complex web of shell companies, fake personas, and ficititious shipping invoices that made it look like everything Vultech did was legitimate. Thanks to her, Jason could be large amounts of raw materials, and then pull it for rebel use while Kumi did her magic to make that material disappear, but still exist on paper that would leave a trail that would make the auditors look somewhere else when they started trying to find who was funding the rebellion. He just told her what they needed, and she found it, bought it, had it shipped, redirected what materials they were going to use, and then sold off the excess at a profit and hid the loss of capital used to fund rebellion activities in a web of fake investments in both real and fake companies..

Kumi had the soul of a pirate, but she had the mind of a white collar criminal.

Much of what Kumi did wasn’t just illegal. There was a new dropship sitting on the tarmac outside the Vultech building. It was a used dropship, not refitted for stealth, but gave them a second method of moving cargo without tying up the stealth dropship. Vultech-2 was the dropship that flew to Draconis and other planets of the Imperium to pick up shipments and bring them back to the warehouse more than half the time. It was a Thrynne dropship, one of their largest models, nearly double the size of the stealth dropship, with powerful engines and a huge cargo capacity. It wouldn’t fit in the hangar, it had to be loaded and unloaded outside. Kumi had bought that dropship, having used some of her connections to track down a good deal on a good dropship. Kumi was more than her criminal bent and her connections, however. She was a good businesswoman educated by House Trillane in House operations, which were primarily financial matters, and knew where to invest company capital to make monetary gains. In just one month, she had turned a C13,748 profit, which was a respectable figure given the short amount of time she’d been doing it. That money made it easier to hide Vultech’s spending that couldn’t be accounted for because that money bought rebellion equipment.

While Kumi was the brain behind Vultech’s operations, Songa was its face. Rann and Songa were the only Faey among them without a price on their heads, since it was known that Yohne was Kumi’s personal physician, and where she was, Kumi probably wasn’t far away. It was Songa that handled the live interaction between company officials and the outside world, the smiling face concealing the true nature of the beast lurking behind her. Songa was the company President, a fancy title that basicly gave her signing authority on most transactions, and allowed her to handle the handshakes and phone calls while Kumi did the real work behind the scenes, and Jason maintained official legal ownership on paper using his alias.

It was even nearly legitimate now. Kumi was talking about hiring real employees at the company that would know nothing about the rebellion to reinforce the illusion that it was a real company and not just a front. It would make it a little more dangerous, but Kumi was confident that she could manage it. Jason wasn’t so sure about that, but it was something that he was sure they’d fight about later on.

And all the while, as they did that, the rebels trained, built, and got ready. They knew the risks, but it didn’t matter. They knew the plan, and they were ready for it. Even as they worked on rebuilding the mountain, they trained. Half of them had passed the written tests that Jason had demanded for flying, and now he, Luke, Meya, and Myra were training them in actual flight. Kumi had managed to procure a used flight simulator, and that was where they were getting their controls practice, mixed in with actual stick time behind the skimmer or dropship controls when flights were made to Lincoln and back. Jyslin, Tim, Symone, and Temika were on the fast track in the groups, for they were the telepaths and they were the ones that absolutely had to be able to fly…not because they were telepaths, but because they were Jason’s friends and family, and he would make damn sure they would be proficient. They were his personal students. He trained others every day, but he was the only one that taught the other telepaths, because he wanted to make absolutely sure that the most important people in his life got trained up to his satisfaction.

They trained in flying. They trained in combat operations, and had become proficient enough to where Jyslin said she wouldn’t bat an eye over leading them in a combat mission. They trained in Faey technology; generally, Jason, Tim, and Luke trained the others in the assembly of basic units using plans and pre-fabricated components. Given a blueprint and a supply of parts, his rebels learned how to assemble them into finished products, like factory workers. They weren’t experts in anything they trained in, but they knew enough to be able to function…and that was what mattered.

Because this was the day. This was the day they stopped preparing and started acting, at least in a limited manner. There would be no manned raids on Trillane targets, but the automated attacks would begin today. And the first blow against Trillane was already loaded up in the dropship, a shipment of little devices about the size of a volleyball that Tim had coined deathballs…and it was a fitting nickname. They were mines, but not quite like any other mine ever devised. These mines would lay on the ground, hidden from sensors by small inverse phase emitters, that would activate when they detected a Stick flying within their activation range. When it activated, a gravometric engine in the mine would make it fly up, lock in on the Stick, and then strike it. When it hit, it would attach itself to the hull and discharge an ionic pulse, kind of like an old EMP pulse. It was a non-explosive version of an ion cannon’s magnetic storm effect, generating an ion storm that would disrupt plasma flow, blow plasma relays, scramble moleculartronic circuitry, and cause gravometric engines to overload and shut down. After the pulse fired, the mine would destroy itself by overloading its PPG and blowing itself up, so Trillane couldn’t take it apart and learn how it worked. It wouldn’t be a fusion explosion like the one that destroyed Chesapeake, but it would be a big enough bang to obliterate the mine and punch a hole in the hull of the Stick where it was attached. That self destruct mechanism would be active at all times, and would go off if the mine was disturbed while laying on the ground waiting for a target.

It was more humane than it needed to be. Jyslin had rode him about that…she wanted him to build mines that destroyed the Stick completely, but he just couldn’t bring himself to build mines that would give the crews of those Sticks absolutely no chance to survive. At least his way, blowing out the power systems and burning out the engines, the crew could survive the crash when the Stick came down. He knew people would die, that was a given, but he just didn’t want to make it a certainty, just a possibility. In his mind, the crews of those Sticks weren’t soldiers, weren’t going to be actively involved in opposing him. They were truck drivers in his eyes, just civilians doing a job, and he wasn’t going to be merciless to them. Sticks had crash foam and crash mitigation systems, and that was enough for him to be alright with his approach. So long as the crews weren’t really unlucky, they would probably survive when the Stick crashed.

There were 27 mines finished, the result of three weeks of assembly line work by the rebels that weren’t actively training in other areas. Assuming that 75% of them worked, that was around 21 Sticks that would be taken out. That was barely a scratch to Trillane, but if they lost 25 Sticks a month for a year, the cost of replacing them was going to get very high. And that didn’t count the lost cargo, the price of trying to counter his mines in terms of equipment and personnel, and the cost of beefing up their military presence. And the beauty of his plan was that the mines had multiple ways they could lock on to Sticks and attack them. Every time they figured out how the mines were targeting Sticks and ignoring other types of ships and countered it, he could simply change their identification protocol. The mines were currently set on the easiest way, by using the Stick telemetry itself. Every airborne legal ship broadcasted a telemetry signal that identified it to traffic control, and the mines would use that signal to detect and lock in on Sticks, and only on Sticks. When Trillane countered, he would have them identify Sticks by their unique engine gravometric distortion signature, something that only Stick engines produced. When Trillane figured that out and installed maskers, the mines would use visual detection and comparison, and would attack any airborne vehicle that looked like a Stick. If Trillane got around that, then the mines would sweep the area above them with passive sensors and attack any vehicle above them that had the right inductive resonance, which was a function of the mass and metallurgical makeup of the ship within a certain tolerance. Unless the Stick was carrying metals as cargo, its inductive signature would be the same no matter what, and the mines could use that against them. He could come after the Sticks with his mines in so many ways, the only way Trillane could protect them from everything would be to have fighters escort them and shoot down his mines as they attacked. And that tied up Trillane’s resources and disrupted the current free-moving transportation network. If the Sticks could only move in convoys with fighter protection, it would bottleneck Trillane’s entire cargo transportation network, and that was exactly what Jason wanted.

And that was just the first weapon. He didn’t want to put every idea he had out on the field at once. He would throw them at Trillane one at a time, make them counter his current idea until he could no longer attack them using that device, then he’d just put a new device on the field and attack them in an entirely new manner. When they started countering that one, the old weapon would reappear again at the same time using a new method of attack. And when they defeated both, a third weapon would appear, and so on and so on. It would be an endless game of one-upsmanship between the rebels and Trillane, as the rebels sought to find ways around Trillane’s defenses, and Trillane worked to figure out how they were being attacked and counter it.

That wasn’t the only thing they were doing, though. Rann had finished his DNA scanner, and had built a small device that had sensors that sent data back to the main unit via threaded shortrange gravband. What was more, each unit had more than one sensor that would report back to it, allowing them to plant one device and then scatter sensors all over, up to a range of about half a mile. Each unit could support 15 remote sensors and 15 button cameras, and they’d already built 14 of them and set them up, scattering sensors and cameras through mass transit systems where a multitude of people would touch them and get scanned. Two were set in New York City, two in Los Angeles, and one each in Chicago, New Orleans, Washington D.C., Miami, London, Sao Paolo, Madrid, Tokyo, Cape Town, and Beijing. Each unit was set to transmit an image of anyone that matched the telepathic profile to a specific protected site on Civnet, which they could access. The site had nothing about what it was about, it was just a place where pictures of people would appear.

And while all that was going on, the rebels would be watching, using Trillane’s own surveillance system against them. They’d know where Trillane sent every ship, and know how to move their assets to keep them out of danger. And when Trillane eventually did find Kiaari’s tampering and moved to fix it, denying the rebels access to that information, well, the resistance would then attack key surveillance outposts and equipment to blind Trillane and give them more room to maneuver. The orbital sensor arrays and the cameras were first on the list of targets, for those couldn’t be captured or hidden from Faey sensors, since they were on the edge of the planetary gravity well. Gravometric sensors could pick them up. But if the rebels couldn’t use them, they’d deny them to Trillane as well. Jason already had plans for that, and those plans were sitting in his shop. Five orbital attack drones, literally nothing more than flying guns, that would be released from a ship in space. They were military-grade plasma cannons on gravometric pods, which could either be operated via remote control or programmed to fly itself around and attack pre-determined targets. Faey plasma weaponry had a long range in space, but the solar wind did cause the magnetic bottles containing the plasma to erode, which limited the range of the weapons to about 500 kathra, or around 270 miles. Jason’s toys would track down and attack the eyes and ears of Trillane, and since he would attack them with plasma weapons, the low-grade shields that the devices employed to protect them from space dust and micro-meteor strikes, shields that would have made using a railgun an uncertain one-shot one-kill scenario, they would have no defense against a plasma cannon.

And those toys would appear later on as anti-Stick devices, robotic drones that would roam the supply lanes and attack any Stick they encountered with their plasma cannons. They were cheap and easy to build, and the plasma cannon the device was using was an older model that wouldn’t penetrate military armor…but most commercial Sticks did not have military armor. Against a Stick, those older plasma cannons were still lethal.

When Kumi arranged a supply of the parts to build the cannon drones, they’d mass produce them. But for now, the only weapon they could produce quickly and in great quantity given the materials they had on hand were the mines. Now that the reconstruction was complete, people could devote more time on the line to build them, which would result in more mines being cranked out. The 27 mines they’d built were already deployed; Jason had scattered them all over central Iowa, Nebraska, and Kansas early that morning, before sunrise. No mine was within 25 miles of any other mine, and they’d been dropped near farms but away from areas frequented by people so nobody would find one, monkey with it, and get himself killed when the mine’s anti-tampering protocol kicked in and caused it to self destruct. All of them were incative right now, awaiting an activation signal. After that, each mine would attack the first Stick that got within its activation range. Jason’s hope was that they could complete at least one mine every day, which would be dropped and destroy a Stick, which would eat into Trillane’s profit margin that much more. It was nothing but nickels and dimes to a house as rich as Trillane, but Jason intended to literally nickel and dime them to death.

But none of that mattered if Trillane kept everything a secret. They could hide their losses of Sticks, they could increase output on farms on other continents to cover the loss of North American production, at least for a while. Their intent was to push Trillane off Earth, but using force and guerilla tactics was only half the battle, and he knew it. He had to make it clear to the rest of the Imperium that the people of Earth were very unhappy with their current administrators, and they wanted new people. And also make it clear that now the people of Earth could fight back, so they’d better be taken pretty damn seriously. It was also necessary to reinforce the idea that they weren’t fighting the Imerpium, only Trillane.

That was why he was here. He sat in a chair behind an ebony desk left behind, with the the insignia of the resistance, the phoenix emblem emblazoned on his armor, embroidered on a red flag behind him, the phoenix done in glittering gold. In both English and Faey script under that insignia was the word Legion. That was the official name of the resistance. Not the Terran Resistance Front or some silly multiword title that spelled out some anagram…they were simply the Legion. Jason had decided on that for that very reason…so they couldn’t be trivialized with initials. Anyone referring to them had to use their name, their full name, and the full impact that name entailed. In front of his desk was a single camera, and behind it stood Temika and Tim, who were running it. Standing behind them was Jyslin and Symone.

Jason was waiting for the red light to come on on the camera. Jason was going to record a message, an unofficial declaration of war, and then Miaari was going to make sure it got into the right in-box at INN. If INN didn’t follow up on the story, though, then Trillane could cover up what was about to start happening on Earth, and that would make their job more difficult. Trillane needed to face pressure on both sides of the fence, both from the rebels doing damage to them and from the Imperium.

Okay, ready Jayce? Tim sent, and Jason nodded. Alright, in three…two…one….

The red light came on.

“Good day,” Jason began, speaking in Faey. He had no prepared speech for this, only talking points that he intended to get across without sounding like a politician. “I represent an organization called Legion. We are a group of Terrans who oppose the illegal actions of House Trillane and the crimes they have committed against Terra and the native Terran population. This recorded statement is an official announcement of our existence, and of our intentions. I am Jason Fox, and I stand as leader and commander of this organization.

“I’m sure some people recognize me, given CNN and INN plastered my picture all over their newscasts for three straight days. I’m the man that CNN and Trillane blamed for the Orala Explosion. Well, that’s what Trillane let slip out, but they certainly didn’t let the whole story slip. In short, the Orala explosion was caused by House Trillane, and it was a botched attempt to assassinate me. Why would they go to such extremes over a single Terran male, you might ask? Well, the answer is simple. I have personally witnessed House Trillane engaging in slavery, abducting native Terrans and selling them into slavery outside the Imperium, a crime that, as some of you might know, could lead to the revocation of Trillane’s noble charter if proved true. That is something that Trillane would definitely go to such an extreme to prevent.

“I cannot offer hard, documented proof, because shortly after the incident where I came about this information, they dismantled their slaving ring and buried it in the deepest hole they could find. However, I can state with full sincerity that I have seen it. This is only the largest grievance the humans of Terra have against House Trillane, though. We have been subject to, witness to, and on the receiving end of multiple instances where House Trillane has denied our rights as Imperial citizens, illegally seized our rightful property as defined by Imperial law, and have abused and mistreated us. And we’re sick and tired of it. Since Trillane has decided to treat us like cattle, treat us like slaves instead of Imperial citizens, we cannot in good conscious just stand by and do nothing and allow it to start again when the dust settles and Trillane thinks that nobody is watching them.

“We don’t believe that the Imperium knows the extent to which House Trillane has been abusing the native population of Terra, and we demand to be recognized as Imperial citizens, to be affored the same rights as the other six races of the Imperium. We are not slaves, and we are not property. Our homes are not the personal playgrounds of Trillane soldiers to ransack to their heart’s desire, and our lives are not commodities to be bought and sold on the slave markets!

“So, consider this a declaration of war against House Trillane. The forces of Legion demand that House Trillane leave Terra, and we beseech Empress Dahnai to revoke Trillane’s contract to run the farming operations of Terra and award it to another noble house, a house that will treat us like Imperial citizens and not like chattel. We don’t wish to break away from the Imperium, we only want Trillane off our planet. The Legion will not rest until Trillane has been evicted from Terra and a more just and fair house is brought in to replace them.

“Understand one thing. Our fight is with Trillane, not with the Imperium, and not against Empress Dahnai. We want nothing more than the same rights afforded to other Imperial citizens, no more, no less. And since it seems that the Imperial forces on Terra either don’t know what’s going on or are turning a blind eye to it, it has forced us to resort to this, the last option, which is armed insurrection against our oppressors. Let me make it clear once again, our fight is with Trillane, not with the Imperium. When the last Trillane ship leaves orbit, we will gladly lay down our arms. But so long as a single Trillane stands on Terran ground, we will fight.

“Because Terra can now be considered an active warzone, I ask that all Imperial civilians please refrain from travel to Terra until further notice. We wish no innocents to be caught in the crossfire of what will purely be a local affair. Please, if you wish to come to Terra, please do so after Trillane is gone and a new noble house is in charge.

“You can take this message seriously, or you can laugh at it. I’m sure some comic is going to find it on Civnet and put it on her show tonight to make fun of it. But know this. You may find it funny, but House Trillane won’t be laughing. They know what is going on. They know what they’ve done. They know I’m not trying to be funny. They will take this very seriously. They know exactly who I am, what I am, and what I can do. They won’t be laughing.”

Jason reached under the desk, then produced small golden ring, a ring with the relief of the phoenix symbol of the Legion engraved upon its flat top. “I read that in the old times, when a noble declared war on a rival, she would send the rival house’s leader her own insignia ring, a warning that she was coming to get it back. Ancient rites and customs dictated that the ruler of the house that received the ring would send her own ring in return, and carry the opposing house’s ring with her at all times. The winner of that war would take back her ring from her rival, and take the ring of her rival as a trophy…at least until that house managed to either take the ring back by force or pay a ransom to have it returned. Well, I’m not a noble, but consider this the official insignia ring of the Legion. And I’m sending this to you, Grand Duchess Trillane. Keep it with you. Feel its warmth and its weight in your pocket at all times. Never forget it, because we will be coming for it.” He set the ring on the desk, making a sweet ching as the pure gold resonated from the impact with the ebony.

“It’s your move, Grand Duchess,” Jason called. Okay, cut it, he sent.

The red light went out, and all four of them laughed and clapped.

How was it? Think I did alright? he asked.

It was fucking brilliant! Symone sent grandly, rushing forward. That thing with the ring will drive the Grand Duchess apeshit! Are you really gonna send it to her?

You bet your ass I am, Jason sent vehemently. There’s just one thing I have to do first. Jason reached into the drawer of the desk, and pulled out a small black rectangular object, upon which was affixed a single red button, the light inside it blinking on and off. Jyslin would recognize that remote, for it was the same one he’d used to activate all his traps when her squad was trying to force him to go out with her. “And so, it begins,” he declared in a stately voice, feeling a strange need to speak those words aloud rather than send, staring directly at them. “The mines are hot. There’s no turning back now. We are now at war with Trillane.”

Good, Jyslin sent with an audible snort. It’s about damn time.

Oh, Jayce, just so you know, I was piping that through the CCTV, so everyone saw us record it, Tim told him with a sly smile. Now everyone knows we’re really doing it. We’re not just pretending anymore, we’re now real rebels.

I think you covered everything, Jyslin told him. You made sure to stress that it’s Trillane and not the Imperium, you explained why we’re doing it, and you challenged Empress Dahnai to put a hand in before the real bloodshed starts. That was everything. And you delivered it perfectly, she added. I knew not giving you a script would work better. You’re much better at just going with what’s in your heart, not what’s on a teleprompter.

Thanks, love, he sent with sincere modesty.

Jayce, I’m sending it to INN now and I’m gonna post it in a few choice places where I know it’ll get some attention., Kumi’s voice came over the intercom for the small studio, for that’s what the small room was, a little studio for an announcer to make broadcasts over the mountain’s internal closed circuit television system, which Tom, Tim, and Jason had repaired and restored to working order.

Alright. I think I’m gonna go back to my room and try to calm down. For some reason, now I’m getting nervous.

It’s because now we stop planning and start doing, Jyslin sent, and they all nodded.

Jason did just that. He returned to the small apartment he and Jyslin shared, sat down in a recliner chair, and tuned everything out. It was on now. Those mines were hot, and one of them might have activated and attacked by now. Kumi had sent that video out onto Civnet as an open declaration of war, an open declaration that he was not dead, and now he couldn’t be seen outside of the mountain. Luke would have to be the one to take Max Sterling’s identity now; he’d have to change the licences. He was certainly good enough to fly the dropships, though he’d never be alone. Their standard procedure required a telepath to be a telepath on every flight. That was usually Jason, but he had the feeling that Rann and Yohne were going to see some of that action. Jason’s face would now be programmed into just about every face recognition program all over the Imperium, not just on Earth, so he couldn’t show his face much of anywhere.

He sat there a while, reflecting, hoping they were doing the right thing, and worrying about what was coming. This phase of the plan wasn’t that dangerous, just nightly stealth flights out to drop mines. But soon their combat training would be put to the test, when they conducted their first raid. That raid wouldn’t be for several weeks at least, after Trillane got it into their heads that the only way Jason meant to fight was using technology to fight them from a distance; mines, flying guns, traps, and so on. Once they settled down, were confident all they had to do was catch Jason to put a stop to the mines, got complacent about the physical security at their facilities, then the rebels would attack, and the gunfire would begin, and people would get killed.

They didn’t know how many rebels there were. Jason they would see, Jason they would identify. He was sure they’d include Jyslin as one of those rebels, and maybe a handful of humans. Trillane wouldn’t think that they could field up to 30 trained soldiers, armed and armored, protected from telepathic assault by the 6 telepaths that would be engaging in combat operations; Jason, Jyslin, Symone, Temika, Meya, and Myra. Thirty combatants attacking unprepared facilities could easily overwhelm the defenses and take the facility. He knew that they wouldn’t get many free shots like that, that Trillane would tighten security after the second attack, so they had to make their first two free attacks count.

And there was the grim knowledge that he’d lose some of his own in those attacks. They all knew the risks, they all knew it would happen. He had to face that, face the knowledge that he was going to be giving people orders that would lead to their deaths. But, he kept telling himself, they all knew the risks when they signed up for this. And to die in the pursuit of freedom was the most noble way to go.

It was a big joke to the Imperium. Just as Jason predicted, comics found the video on Civnet and used it for material. He’d been villified in the press after the explosion at Chesapeake, and those unflattering stories resurfaced after the video was noticed by INN, in conjunction with comics on TV making fun of “the little soldier,” as one Merat Feralle called him.

But, as Jason predicted, Trillane was not laughing.

They weren’t laughing when the video reached Trillane’s ears. They weren’t laughing when they realized just who was on that video, because they knew he was a telapath. That was one little fact that wasn’t common knowledge outside of Trillane and certain hallways in the Imperial government back on Dracora, that there were human telepaths. They weren’t laughing because they knew that Jason had engineering training and could build technological devices. Their infiltration of Trillane’s network got them a first-person view of the reaction, coming down from the head of Trillane’s military herself: look for sabotage. If one man was leading a self-proclaimed rebellion against Trillane, he wouldn’t put himself out in the open. A man with Jason’s training would stay in hiding and build sabotage devices to inflict damage.

And they were right. That’s exactly what Jason had planned…at least for now.

They really weren’t laughing when the first Stick came down.

One Stick crashing was an isolated incident. Two crashing on the same day was a coincidence. Three crashing in one day was a pattern. Four crashing in one day was an attack.

At first, they had no idea how they did it. Since the mines destroyed themselves after firing their ion pulse, it looked like some kind of conventional explosion had damaged the Sticks when they surveyed the wreckage, but the damage wasn’t enough to bring a Stick down. But they certainly had enough wrecks to inspect. Jason had planted 27 mines the night before, and all 27 activated and attacked Sticks within the first two days. What was a relief to Jason was that only 5 fatalities had been reported in those 27 crashes, that his merciful means of bringing them down did spare some lives, but the Sticks were totally destroyed, and the ones that had been carrying cargo containers had a total loss of cargo.

Jason’s intent was to have one mine finished every day, so every day, Trillane looked over the incident reports and saw at least one crashed Stick. That was the plan, and the crew didn’t let him down. They worked their asses off to build the mines, and every day at sunset, when Jason prepared his skimmer to go out and drop them, there was always at least one mine ready to go. Sometimes there was two, and occasionally there was three. Those mines usually only went a few hours before activating and attacking, because Jason put them in places where Sticks more or less had to go.

In the first week, Trillane still had no idea how it was being done. But finally, someone saw a mine activate, and they finally knew what they were up against. Now that they knew it was a ground-based device that somehow could not be detected by sensors, and it activated by some kind of proximity trigger. Armed with this information, they changed their tactics. They restricted Sticks to vertical columns directly over their destinations, coming down from 30,000 shakra in a controlled descent directly over the destination. This turned out to not be a good idea, for Jason just increased the sensor range of the mines, they activated and attacked the Sticks, and made them crash directly on the facilities where they were landing or taking off. This created a tremendous amount of collateral damage, and lots of ugly pictures on INN of farm storage barns burning. So, much as Jason predicted, they realized that the mines only attacked Sticks, and worked out how they were targeting the ships. They grounded the entire Stick fleet for two days as they encrypted Stick telemetry, and while they were doing that, Jason simply changed the setting on the mines, and it gave them two days to plant more mines. He also added a new little feature to spread out the attacks after a hiaitus, to keep the damage steady and in the eyes of Trillane. Jyslin wrote a little subroutine for him in the software of the mines that would cause them to randomly activate, which would let some Sticks pass over them safely, then activate and attack in a random pattern. The routine was weighted, so that every time it didn’t activate, it increased the chances of it activating in the next trigger, and if the random number generator got streaky, the weighted protocol would cause it to activate after the 20^th Stick passed by no matter what. He also started covering them with camoflage netting; since Trillane knew what they looked like now, they could use the cameras to look for them on the ground. So Jason started concealing them.

After the Sticks returned to service, Trillane was smugly confident that they’d defeated the mines…for about fifteen minutes. The very first Stick that approached a farm in southern South Dakota, one of the first that had come down from a freighter in orbit, was one that quite a few Trillane officials were watching. So they got a first hand view of a sudden puff of red on the starbord stern, and then the Stick dropped from the sky like a rock and crashed just outside a corn field, about four miles from the farm’s central compound.

It drove them insane. They were so sure that the mines were using telemetry to lock on to Sticks, but now it was apparent that that wasn’t the case. They again grounded the Stick fleet and used other dropships to try to move cargo, but it wasn’t even a quarter as efficient. They had plenty of other dropships, but their entire cargo delivery system was based on the launching and recovery of Sticks. They tried that for three days, but then the food distribution system was getting so backed up, as warehouses filled up, that they had no choice but to return Sticks to service and simply endure the losses with gritted teeth while they tried to determine how the mines were working and engineered a solution. So far, in just two weeks, they had lost nearly a half a million credits’ worth of Sticks and cargo. And if they couldn’t defeat the mines, then it would result in an astronomical bill as they equipped every Stick with shields and armor to protect them from the mines. That would take tremendous amounts of time and money, and that was something that they didn’t want to expend unless they had no other choice.

About that time, the next little headache for Trillane made its appearance. It was an old surplus-era plasma cannon attached to a gravometic engine pod and a power plant. It was invisible to active sensors, thanks to its inverse phase emitter, and had been planted in deep space between the Earth and the moon, and set so it would slowly drift in the direction it needed to go. That cannon activated when it drifted into the primary supply lane between the orbital station and the stargate, firing relentlessly on every Stick its onboard computer could identify, firing with a power rating much greater than what was normal for a plasma cannon of that type. It attacked the supply lane for three minutes; that was how long it took for Trillane to scramble a fighter to get there and destroy the device. But in that three minutes, the plasma cannon either destroyed or seriously damaged 7 Sticks. When the fighter entered the cannon’s sensor range, it immediately self-destructed, denying Trillane any chance that they could capture it and figure out how it worked, and thereby engineeer a defense against it.

That single attack sent a shockwave through Trillane. They analyzed what data they had feverishly, both trying to figure out a way to detect the object that their space-pointing sensors had simply classified as a low-grade anomoly, which was a small meteor, and how the cannon had been altered to fire such a powerful shot. Again, it was because it was meant as a suicide weapon. Jason had overloaded the power rating, which would let it fire at a greatly increased power, but would burn out the gun in the process and make it unusable. Rigged the way it was, the weapon could only fire about twenty times before it burned out its power systems and became unusable. That was irrelevant, since the gun would self destruct anyway, and it wouldn’t be shooting that long before it blew itself up.

About then, they realized they weren’t just dealing with a single man with a large toy box. The mines they could explain given he was a notoriously clever engineer, and was using what parts were available, but he had gotten his hands on a plasma cannon, and that, he had to buy. Now they knew that Jason had to be buying the materials to build these objects, and he had to be getting it from somewhere, and he had to be getting his money from somewhere. So, while the military arm was trying to work up defenses against the two attacks they’d seen so far, the intelligence arm started turning Earth upside down and shaking it to see what fell out. Accountants and financiers hired by Trillane tore through all the financial records of every company doing business on Earth, searching for anything that might indicate that the company was doing business with Jason Fox, or was somehow funneling materials to him. They already knew he had a skimmer, and that he had somehow altered his skimmer to hide from sensors, so they concentrated instead on the point of interface between his skimmer and the outside world; the companies that were selling him his equipment. They didn’t think he was directly getting his supplies offworld, for nothing could go through the gate with its active systems going, and that would include any kind of stealth device. They believed they had him pinned in this system, and that was where they were concentating their search.

Actually, that was a smart way to go about it, and naturally, they’d already had taken that into account. He’d been expecting it, but now that Kumi was hiding Vultech’s illegal activities, he knew they’d never find out it was Vultech doing it. Surely, it would get some heated attention because the company was listed as being owned by a human, but Kumi’s books were ironclad, and they would be forced to admit that this human-owned technology company, a prime suspect for being a rebel sympathizer, was totally legit. Everything, even down the the titanium board mounting clips, could be accounted for with receipts and inventory manifests. They could look at Vultech’s books with a magnifying glass, but they’d find nothing but what looked like perfectly legitimate transactions, all tracked with meticulous care and documented in triplicate.

They even visited Vultech in person. Songa was there, of course, and Jack Brewer was also there…or who they thought was Jack Brewer. It was actually Luke. And unlike before, where the human simply relied on the telepath to protect them, this time who they were dealing with was someone who really thought he was who he was. That was Jyslin’s doing. Luke had volunteered for it, and Jyslin had used her telepathic gifts to create a new persona in Luke’s mind, named Jack Brewer, complete with his own personality, memories, and history that matched the “official” records on Jack Brewer that existed in the databanks…thanks to Kumi. What she had done was very advanced, and very delicate, and only a telepath of Jyslin’s power and training could have pulled it off. But it was utterly convincing, for the Faey that interrogated Songa and Luke found a human that believed everything he told them. He was Jack Brewer, and they’d never believe that they were dealing with a construct called a psychic clone. When the inspectors left, Jyslin sealed away the part of Luke’s mind that was Jack Brewer away in the back of his subconscious, so Luke could be Luke again, but all that work was still there and ready to be brought back out if the Imperium wanted another face to face meeting with Jack Brewer.

It said a great deal about Luke’s commitment to the cause, that he would volunteer to let Jyslin literally fragment his conscious into two parts and then shape the fragment into a completely new personality.

They lost 17 more Sticks in the two weeks that followed. After a month, the tally wasn’t something that would make a military woman grumble that much, but the economic toll it had exacted was not something to laugh about. In the first month since Jason had started a seeming one man war against Trillane, they had lost 48 Sticks, and were looking at a financial loss in equipment, cargo, and supplies of C3,948,932. Trillane’s monthly total operating budget was around C1,500,000,000, so this was less than 1% of their monthly budget…but Trillane knew that it was going to add up, and add up fast if they didn’t put a stop to it quickly.

And it was more than just materials. Stick pilots were now demanding combat pay for flying to and from Terra, and quite a few of them had simply quit and gotten jobs as pilots for other noble houses. After the first month, Trillane was dealing with a pilot shortage, as well as facing the reality that they were going to have to raise the pay for the pilots that were willing to fly Terran space in order to keep them on the job, which would cut deeper into the profit margin.

And thanks to that damned INN story and the posting of the declaration on Civnet, the Stick pilots knew it was a combat theater. Had he not done that, had he simply started blowing up Sticks in silence, they could have explained it away or covered up what was going on. But thanks to that video, the whole Imperium knew that Trillane was dealing with an insurgent, and what was disconcerting to the Imperium and embarrassing to Trillane, and insurgent that Trillane could not find, who continued to attack Trillane interests with impugnity, almost at will. It was much a public relations issue as it was a security issue, because just as Jason Fox once embarrassed the Imperial Marines, now he was embarrassing House Trillane…and that was about the worst thing one could do to a Faey. Their standing was very important to them, be it an individual or a noble house, and Jason was threatening that standing.

It also had other repercussions, one that Jason found on his desk one morning in early August, after returning from his minelaying duties. He usually did that in his skimmer, because it was small and it was an easy affair, and it was a perfect chance to give the trainees some real time behind the controls of something that wasn’t a simulation. That night, Symone and Temika had been his helpers, and Temika did most of the flying while Jason watched and Symone prepped the mines.

“What is this?” Jason asked as he sat down at a small desk off the main control room, where a small handpanel holding a picture sat waiting for him. Tim came around the desk and put another handpanel down by the first. For some odd reason, when Jason and Tim were alone, they almost exclusive spoke. It was almost as if they were simply continuing their friendship on the grounds upon which it was formed, and that meant using their voices. They had no qualms about sending to each other in groups or when distance separated them, but when they stood face to face and they were alone, they almost never sent to each other.

“This is the Imperium’s answer,” he answered. “Meet Myleena Merrane. She’s an Imperial attachè sent by Dahnai herself, sent to help Trillane deal with us.”

Jason picked up the panel holding the picture. It showed a young Faey woman wearing a Class A uniform, a Lieutenant Commander by her rank. She was actually a pretty young lady, with blond hair, dark blue skin that showed she spent a good deal of time outside, and pattern Faey features. She had large, expressive eyes with rose-colored irises, a dark pink that bordered on red, which was a bit unusual, and she had faint freckles under her eyes, high on her cheeks. Kiaari and Tim had clearly done their homework, for the handpanel Tim handed to him was a full biographical history of this woman. She was a minor noble within House Merrane, the lowest rung of the hierarchy, not even a Zarina. She was a morana, a noble-born in no official position within the house, basicly a noble in name only. She had given up her Zarina title when she entered into the Imperial service. She worked in Black Ops, and was the head of a unit within Black Ops called the Skulkers. They specialized in unconventional warfare.

“A Merrane?”

“Yeah, but she gave up her house duties to go into the Imperial goverment,” Tim told him. “Kiaari dug up all the dirt on her. She’s a Black Ops engineer, active duty Navy, that’s required for Black Ops positions, but she specializes in unconventional technological warfare. The mines and shit we’re using is right up her alley. She even commands a unit within Black Ops that handles making it and countering it. They sent her unit to figure out how we’re doing it, and stop us. From what Kiaari dug up, she’s good. She’s real good. Top of her class at Dracora Engineering Academy, below the zone promotions, commondations and meritorious service awards out the ass. She’s only 35, and she’s already a Lieutenant Commander and has more medals on her chest than Admirals three times her age. She’s also rich. She has 13 patents out and rakes in over two million a year in royalties and residuals. She doesn’t do what she does for the money, that’s for sure.”

“So, they can’t figure out the mines.”

“Actually, I think it was the gun that brought her here,” Tim told him. “They don’t want to see what we think up next, so they’re gonna try to hamstring us by sending in a professional. That gun scared the hell out of them, Jayce, way more than the mines.”

“That’s about when they started looking into Vultech,” Jason recalled.

Tim nodded. “That was when they realized this isn’t a one man operation. They’ve pieced together that you’re getting help from other squatters in the preserve, but they haven’t quite figured out we moved, or how much help we have. But the point is, they know they’re dealing with a group, not a person, and they want us stopped fast. They don’t want our successes giving anyone else any bright ideas, especially not now, when they know that some humans are telepaths.”

“And they send this girl,” Jason mused.

“Well, given she’s older than us, we can’t really call her a girl,” Tim chuckled. “She is cute though.”

“Symone would box your ears for saying that,” he grinned.

“No, she’d make me compare her and this girl. If I said she was cuter than Symone, then I’d get my ears boxed.”

“Kind of like that time you told Symone that Jyslin had a cuter ass?”

“Just about,” he said blandly. “Anyway, she just arrived in Washington about an hour ago with a team of ten engineers, and after they meet with the brass, they’re gonna be getting to work. There’s that, and there’s this.” He handed Jason one more handpanel. “Remember that operation Trillane was planning for the preserve before Chesapeake? Well, they’re going in. I already warned Charleston. They’ve shut everything down and went to ground, cause Faey are swarming all over the forest, looking for us. They’re searching in a radial pattern with the ruins of Chesapeake in the middle.”

“Are they going to be alright there?”

Tim blew out his breath. “I’m not sure. They’re not just doing a sensor sweep from dropships, Jayce, they’ve got soldiers on the ground, and they’re not paying attention to what their sensors are telling them. They know we can hide from sensors, so they’re doing it the old fashioned way. I warned Charleston about it. They’ve shut everything down, even the hologram, hid everything they’re not supposed to have, covered the projectors, and now they’re hiding out in the caves southwest of the city. They have plenty of food, and it’s summer, so they don’t have to worry too much. They just need to stay out of sight and let the Faey pass by, that’s all. As long as they stay underground, they should avoid the sensors, and I doubt the Faey will find them in the forest.”

“I hope so,” Jason said quietly. “We tried to make things safe for them.”

“We never expected a ground search like this one,” Tim grunted. “But we should have. I’m glad we listened to Kate. It’s why I had a plan ready just in case.”

“She expected this?”
“Not exactly, but she said we should be prepared for it if it did happen…and it looks like it is. I should have paid more attention to it, but with all that’s been going on—“

“If we could see everything coming, we wouldn’t be where we are now, Tim,” Jason chuckled.

The door opened, and Kumi sauntered in. She was wearing a simple black haltar and a pair of shorts. She had a towel over her shoulders, holding onto it with a hand on either end. Hey babe, she sent. Kumi, like Jyslin, never spoke aloud to him. She always sent. But where Jyslin did it because it was more intimate, Jason felt that Kumi did it just to revel in the fact that he had talent. Whatcha up to?

“Looking over the daily mail,” Jason told her as he sat back down. She came over and sat on the desk, and picked up the handpanel with Myleena Merrane’s picture on it.

Who’s this? A Merrane, eh?

“How can you tell, Kumi?” Tim asked.

See this tassel right here, how it has gold filaments in it? That marks her as a member of the Empress’ noble house, so that means she’s a Merrane, she answered, holding the panel up and showing it to him. She picked up the other panel and scanned it. A Black Ops engineer? I guess we pissed them off, she said with an audible giggle. They sent her to stop the mines?

I guess so, Jason answered. If she’s as good as what Kate dug up on her suggests, it means it’s going to get interesting. What are you up to?

Getting ready to go down and use the swimming pool. Tom got it cleaned up and its usable now. I’m not sure how much I’m going to like swimming in a sport bra and shorts, though. I might just take them off and swim naked. I certainly don’t want to get wet shorts bunched up between my ass cheeks. Wearing shorts would be just fine for playing in the pool, but I’m going to swim laps. So, think you can call Songa and have her track down a swimsuit for me?

I think she can manage, if you give her your size, Jason told her. You won’t get it until tomorrow, though. And you certainly don’t want to call her right now. We dropped Rann off in Lincoln last night.

Ohhh, I’ll bet my panties he’s giving her an exhaustive pelvic exam right now, she sniggered. It’s been a few days since they’ve been together.

So don’t interrupt their private time, Jason warned. Call this afternoon. I think I’m gonna be busy for a while, he said, picking up the picture of Myleena Merrane and staring at it. Was she really that good? If so, then things were going to get very interesting. In a way, in some masochistic fashion, he was rather looking forward to the idea of crossing swords with one of Black Ops’ best in a battle of wits. She would try to foil his plans, and he would try to get around her. He gave Kumi a look.

What?

“Tim, you think Kumi and this woman are about the same size?” he asked.

Tim looked her up and down, then picked up the handpanel holding her bio. “About. She’s a little taller, but I’d say Kumi’s about her size.”

“Good. Still have that camera, Kumi? And mind taking your clothes off?”
For you, babe? Never, she sent with a slight leer. You want a sexy pic of me to hang on your wall and remind Jyslin just where you’ll end up if she doesn’t treat you right?

“No, this is something else. Just to warn you, the pic I intend to take won’t be…proper.”

Oooh, you want a dirty pic, eh? Well, I think I can put aside my sense of moral outrage if it gets you off.

It’s not to get me off, silly. We’re going to welcome Myleena Merrane to Earth in true Legion fashion. With a little photo doctoring, that is.

Kumi gave him a look, then exploded into laughter. Jason, that’s evil! Where are you gonna put it?

I’m going to embed it in the programming of the mines. If they ever capture one without it exploding, the mine will wipe its memory, but it’s going to leave this. She’ll find it when they analyze the mine. We can’t let her think we didn’t notice her arrival, can we? At least without making it common knowledge we have our hands in Trillane’s comm network. This way we send a personal message.

“I’ll say!” Tim laughed.

The picture was an easy enough affair, and they decided to take it in the same briefing room where Jason had delivered his message. Kumi had a blast, maybe enjoying the idea of it a little too much as she splayed herself on top of that ebony desk in a very graphic pose, giving the camera a wicked smile. Once they had the picture, Tim doctored it by finding another picture of Myleena Merrane from the Civnet archives, isolated her head, totally removing Kumi’s head in the picture, obliterating the underlying imaging so they couldn’t possibly extract the true head attached to that body, then they pasted it on. Tim smoothed the edges enough to make it look more or less continuous, and the result was a picture that was obviously doctored, but looked just real enough to pass muster on a casual glance.

All in all, Jason was satisfied. He converted the picture to raw code and embedded it in the mine. They’d open it up and find the main memory crystals wiped, but there would be this one crystal left with data. They’d analyze it, find it was a picture, and being curious engineers, they’d just have to look at it. They’d bring it up on a monitor…and there would be Myleena Merrane, doing something best left undescribed for the benefit of a camera.

Kumi wandered off to get her swimming in as Tim and Jason finished up the code changes. “Good god is that woman nasty,” Tim said in a low tone, full of wonder, after Kumi left.

“Kumi’s a noble, Tim,” Jason chuckled. “She’s more worldly than everyone in this mountain put together.”

“Worldly my ass. When she—fuck,” he breathed, shaking his head a little. “Right in front of us! And I thought what Jyslin did in Hawaii was hot because she was so fuckin’ fearless about it.”

“She did that on purpose, Tim,” he said calmly. “You know Faey.”

“Yeah, I know, she was doing it on purpose to get to us. Well, it worked on me,” he admitted. “I think I’m gonna go find Symone, right now.”

“Have fun,” Jason told him.

“I knew you were calm, but you must have ice in your blood,” he laughed.

“It’s not about that,” he chuckled. “Kumi is a very beautiful girl, she’s funny, she’s got a great personality, a very hot body, and I love her as a friend. But let’s be honest here. She could make a eunuch horny. She gets to me too.”

I heard that! Kumi’s sending reached to him, almost dripping with both sensuality and victorious smugness. She was standing on the other side of the door.

Too bad that’s all you’re getting, Jason sent calmly.

Bull shit is that all I’m getting! I told you before, babe, I will have my revenge! I’m just waiting for the right moment. And the licensing rights for the pay per view, she added.

Jason laughed aloud. Suuuure, he drawled.

Now that I know I can get you hard, it’s just a matter of time, she shot back.

Too bad for you there’s two girls standing ahead of you in the line, he answered evenly.

Asshole! she grated, then stalked off.

Tim looked at him, then laughed. “You’re playing with fire.”

“Since when am I not?”

Myleena Merrane’s introduction into the equation, like any Faey calculus problem, changed everything. In just two days, she made her presence known in ways that Jason didn’t fully appreciate. Within hours after arriving, they were already analyzing the wreckage of Sticks, going over them literally with microscopes, Kiaari had reported. Once they were done, they ranged out in a dropship over the midwest, hunting for a mine. And it only took her team two days to track down a mine, waiting for a target to pass by, and capture it.

That was their first lesson. From what Jason read from the report Kiaari sent back, the technician that had been tasked with securing the mine was going to live, but he was going to have new arms. They had no idea that the mines were set to self destruct if they were tampered with after placed. Now they knew, and they’d be much more careful next time.

But the speed with which they had found a mine told Jason that he had to be more active in how he placed them, more clever. Just dropping them in fields and covering them in camo netting wasn’t going to be enough. So he started getting more clever. The mines were capable of full flight, so he started hiding them under bridges, under logs, in groves of trees, in drainage pipes, even in small holes he dug with a shovel and then covered over. The mines would avoid obstacles once activated and in the air, and were capable of using their simple sensors when in an enclosed area to determine which way to go to get out.

And every day that went by, at least one more Stick came crashing down.

The Black Ops team also got to see chaos in action, as Jason unleashed another of his little toys on Trillane. This one Tim called Sauron’s revenge, for it was a metal ring about ten feet across that Jason had seeded in orbit around the planet. In fact, the ring was the same size and shape as a piece of debris that the Faey had not yet captured and removed, for it was in a relatively low-risk orbital pattern, and that piece of debris had been removed and replaced by Jason’s device. It didn’t cross any heavy traffic lanes for dropships, but it did pass close to the orbital station about once every 90 days, coming within 100 miles.

On that close-passing track, the ring suddenly veered from its orbit. The sensor officers took note of it, but since it was an already identified piece of space junk, they didn’t pay it as much mind as they would have if it was something else. At first, they thought that a dropship that had passed through that area earlier had caught the debris in its gravometric wake and had altered its orbit. When they calculated its trajectory, they saw it was going to pass by the station, and one sensor officer quite nonchalantly called down to have a Faey go out and retrieve it after it went by. When it was within a mile of the station, however, it actively changed course and headed straight for it. They tried to activate the station’s defensive weaponry when it became clear that the debris was moving of its own volition, and it was heading right for the station. They got their shields up and their guns active, but not before the ring slipped through and struck the station low on the port docking pod…and when it struck, it annealed itself to the hull instead of simply bouncing off.

The ring wasn’t a bomb. If it was, the sensors would have marked it as a dangerous device by going on its atomic composition…but there was nothing dangerous or explosive about the device. It was simply a piece of metal. In actuality, the ring was a large-scale version of a hypersonic agitator, using a modified phase emitter that only returned the energy patterns that identified as nothing but a piece of aluminum and titanium, which was the makeup of the original piece of debris. The true nature of the device was hidden from the sensors. The instant it was annealed to the hull, it emanated a hypersonic frequency that conducted through the Carbidium hull of the station, using the metallurgical signature of the hull as a loudspeaker, which amplified the signal. That composite signal had two functions. The first, lower-energy signal was nearly in the auditory range, and just like his subsonic inducers, it induced tremendous physical discomfort to everyone in the port docking pod. Hundreds of Faey dropped to the deck and began to squirm convulsively when it felt like someone had dropped them in a vat of needles tipped with acid. As they thrashed helplessly, the second component of the composite attacked not the Faey, but the silicon conduit that transported hyperphased plasma through the pod. The composite frequency introduced a fatal harmonic vibration into the molecular structure of the conduit, so great that the self-reinforcing energy of the plasma flow through it couldn’t retain the conduit’s structure, which caused the conduit to tear itself apart at a molecular level. Within two seconds, every conduit in the entire docking pod shattered along its entire length, venting plasma into open air. After only three seconds, there was not a piece of plasma conduit left in the docking pod larger than a grain of sand. The entire pod lost power and was plunged into darkness.

After five seconds, the ring that had attached itself to the hull shot away from the station, releasing itself. They got a camera on it just in time to see the device overload its PPG and vaporize in a fiery explosion in space, but the device had done its work. It would take them days to replace all the plasma conduit that the device had destroyed, and that meant that the station would be operating at reduced efficiency, relying on its other docking pod and the main cargo bays in the main body of the station. Until then, there would be no lights, no automatic doors, no elevators, and no life support, and all the cargo currently in the pod was either stuck there til it was fixed, or if it was food, it was now useless. The Faey already in the pod during the attack would have time to evacuate before the conditions within it became deadly, but when it came time to go back in there and repair the damage, they’d be doing that work in E-suits.

Sure, it was something he’d used before, but they hadn’t figured out a way to stop it before, they still had no way to stop it, so why not use it?

That little stunt put the fear of god into Trillane. With one tiny device, Jason had disabled a significant portion of the orbital station, the primary hub of the Faey cargo transportation system. Jason and Tim listened with rightfully smug smiles as they listened to the station commander give a frazzled, almost hysterical report to a Trillane admiral. What was the most satisfying was that general’s response when the commander told her that the conduit in the port docking pod had been destroyed.

“It shouldn’t take that long to replace damaged conduit,” she’d said, then the commander gave her a venemous look. “I didn’t say it was damaged, General Mero, I said it was destroyed. It’s all gone! It’s nothing but sand laying in the void spaces between the walls! It’s going to take my engineering section two days to lay enough conduit to get life support back! So I’m not being fucking timid with that repair estimate, you ass-kissing bitch!” she screamed. “Either I get more people over here who know how to lay plasma conduit, or the port docking pod’s going to be down for twelve days! So send that on to Duchess Iria Trillane!”

Tim and Jason had exploded into laughter, and he had a beautiful still image of the station commander, her face screwed up in rage, pointing an imperious finger at the monitor.