Storiesonline.net ------- Children of the Light by Sea-Life Copyright© 2006 by Sea-Life ------- Description: The third story in the World of Light. Not quite Legion of Light:The Next Generation Codes: ScFi ------- ------- Chapter 1: School of Thought With the Birth of Andrew Alan McKesson, Dave and Ginny decided they needed to build their own home on Meadow. They began looking all across North America for the perfect place. It wasn't until Sheb Halliday suggestion it that they looked in the area of the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. When they saw Meadow's version of the Cataloochee River valley, the knew they had found their place. They picked a spot near the upland end of the valley, on a small rise that gave them a dramatic view down the valley. With the spot picked, they soon began looking at plans. After three months of endless changes, Dave's mom finally made a proposal. "Do you two trust me?" She began. They both nodded. "Then why not leave this to me? The two of you are too wrapped up in being parents, and the millions of details involved in getting the folks on Obsidian operating smoothly, being Legionnaires and explorers, its no wonder you can't make a decision about a house. I'll get together with your Grandpa A.J. and a few other people, and we will design and build your home, and present it to you. Everyone's happy, and we all get back to business. What do you think?" They should have known that Elizabeth McKesson was just acting as the front man for a larger organization. The plan to build a house for the new family was a joint effort of... everyone! Every member of the McKesson Clan, every one of the Holders of Rhel, everyone in the Legion, every one involved in Obsidian and with Obsidian Research. Everyone but Dave, Ginny and Baby Andrew McKesson were in on the building. And they built big! While Dave and Ginny had been thinking of a house just big enough to raise three or four children in, everyone else understood one simple fact. Wherever they lived would become the center of the universe for their friends, family and followers. There would always be company at their house. It would be a place where people gathered, groups met and decisions were made. So while there was a small dining table in a rear sun room near the kitchen, perfectly placed to catch the morning light coming up the valley, there was also a massively huge dining room which could seat a hundred. The kitchen was also greatly oversize, with room for a large cook crew to prepare large meals for the crowds that might fill the dining room. There were a dozen guest bedrooms on the second floor. The third floor was the 'private residence' part of the house. There was a basement, even a secret level of sorts, but there was no massive underground component like they had built for the first house on Meadow. Built of massive timbers and stone, but with all the modern amenities, as well as all the Seeker extras that Con and the Obsidian staff could hide behind and inside the walls, ceilings and floors, the house was completed and they were moved in within six months. A house that size was going to need a full staff to take care of it, and unlike in the past, they built the caretaker's house at the same time, in a side valley a few miles to the northeast. It was during this time that Arden Anderson and Alicia Jackson got married. Dave's prediction of a double wedding turned out to be oddly accurate as well. Pete Parkin and Sarah Granger were married in the same ceremony. Arden and Alicia honeymooned on the island of Maui in Hawaii. Pete and Sarah honeymooned on the island of St. Thomas in the Caribbean. Within a month, and only days apart, Alicia and Sarah announced that they were expecting. The applicants for the head caretakers position was limited to couples 'hitched or fixin' to get hitched', as Hoot Jenkins put it. Dave and Ginny selected their surprise preferred choice, Dwight Alvarado and his bride to be Shelaana Dru. The two had met during the basic classes all Meadow settlers were required to take. According to Dwight, they had walked out of the Garden on Obsidian at the same time, thanked their teachers, turned and saw each other. The attraction was instantaneous and mutual, and they stopped on one of the low benches that surrounded the garden and struck up a conversation. They were at the meeting-the-parents stage within three weeks. They were married in their new home in what everyone referred to as a combination wedding and house warming party. Dave, amongst others, had noticed the high incidence of romantic connections being made between McKesson and Rhellian candidates. It was hard not to notice, with his Uncle Ambrose and Ia Sardic now each very seriously disinterested in most anything that did not involve the other. The other nice thing about living in the Smoky Mountains was being able to stay synchronized with the folks in Chocowinity. They were regular visitors to the McKesson house, and Aaron, Ambrose, A.J., Sheb and Violet became regular benefactors of their Light rejuvenation treatments. This soon came to include Doc Aillard and Ia Sardic, as they became regulars at A.J.'s house as well. One pleasant morning, just before Andy's fifth birthday, Dave was sitting with his Dad and Grandfather A.J., Drinking tea in the sun room and watching Andy and Ginny playing, when A.J. Started an interesting conversation. "Dave, how difficult do you think it would be for Constantine to build an exact copy of my house in Chocowinity here on Meadow?" "Not much of a problem at all, grandpa. Why? Are you thinking of moving to Meadow?" "I'm planning on dieing, Dave. At least I'm planning for everyone on Earth to believe I'm dead." "What!" Dave exclaimed in surprise. When he realized his dad hadn't reacted similarly he turned to him "Dad, are you in on this idea?" "Yup." "Of course your dad knows what is going on Davey, he's my chosen successor after all." A.J. Said with a wicked grin. "Listen, I've been thinking for quite some time about how to handle the fact that I'm looking younger and younger every year. You rejuvenation treatments are not only working nicely, but the effects seem to be building some momentum. I'm starting to look too young! Hell, I'm 83 years old, but I look like I'm 40! I have to wear makeup to make myself look older when I go to any McKesson Group functions." "Wow! I hadn't thought about the age difference thing. Too involved in the process to think about the long term results, I guess." "Well the same problem is starting to worry both of your Uncles, Doc Aillard, Sheb and Violet too, although they have less to worry about since they're not quite the public figures your Grandfather and you are." "Thanks for reminding me Dad." Dave said with a laugh. "I assume, knowing the way the McKesson mind works, that you all have devised some sort of plan?" Of course they did, and it was dramatic. Three years after the triggering of Dave's original set of inspiration bombs, the publicly known research in the field was sufficient for Obsidian Research to announce the Obsidian Fusion Reactor. The oil and power industries on Earth had immediately tried everything in their power to suppress it. They dumped millions of dollars into the pockets of congressmen and officials of the Atomic Energy Commission and every other Federal agency who had a shred of control or influence. Legislation was introduced, PR agencies were hired, TV advertisements condemning the reactors as dangerous and untested blanketed the airwaves. The reactor technology was on its way to being bogged down in red tape for decades. Then Howard Dexter stepped forward. Howard was a senior aide to Senator Warren Remington of Virginia, and he quickly became history's most famous whistle blower. He stepped forward with digital video recordings of both the meeting between Senator Remington, three other senior Senators and a group of OPEC oil ministers, as well as another meeting between Senator Remington and the heads of three of the four largest American power companies. "I just had an epiphany that woke me up in the middle of the night." Howard was quoted as saying. "I realized how truly evil our actions were, in trying to suppress the fusion reactor, merely because doing so benefited those people willing to pay for the Senator's influence. So I decided to do something." A couple more whistle blowers came forward from the ranks of congressional aides and corporate assistants to confirm Howard Dexter's story, and the tide shifted. TV, radio and newspaper news organizations seized on the corruption story and ran with it. Obsidian Industries, Obsidian Research and the McKesson Group were all publicly the world's biggest Howard Dexter fans. But it took only a second of consideration to make us wonder about our benefactor. Obsidian Industries invited Howard Dexter to a symposium on fusion energy at Duke University, as a special guest of honor, all expenses paid. The Dave/Ginny full fusion gave him a thorough going over. Howard Dexter was definitely under the influence of a coercer, and one with much more finesse than Lyle Boyle. The compulsion that had been laid on him to reveal the actions of his employer, the former Senator and currently indicted co-conspirator Warren Remington, was still there. When the time came, Howard Dexter would testify, with utter truthfulness and an uncanny level of detail. Several other compulsions had been laid upon him. The simplest was one that compelled him to get as close to me, or the McKesson family as possible. Whoever he was, this coercer was infinitely more sophisticated than the sick combination of Dwayne and Lyle Boyle. Howard Dexter had no idea who controlled him, no idea he was being controlled at all. Faint traces, bare hints of a masculine touch lingered and nothing more. To find the coercer who held Howard's strings we were going to have to keep him as close as possible, and monitor him heavily whenever he was near any of us. It became a waiting game. The powerful men he had exposed had been quick to hire investigators and researchers to look for some dirt in Howard Dexter's past. We arranged to get the results of their efforts ourselves. More importantly, we looked for signs that the investigators themselves had been tampered with. Three months after Howard Dexter came forward, the Chinese physicist whose work had 'inspired' the development of the Obsidian reactor held a press conference to claim that the reactor technology was indeed safe, and that the Chinese government would immediately begin negotiating with Obsidian to open a plant in China to produce reactors for the global market. The rest of the world, and the rest of the U.S. Congress, took notice. It was in the midst of this chaotic series of events that we finally got a nibble from our surveillance of Howard Dexter. We were able to do a quick trace to an unknown face in the crowd during an independence Day parade in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We planted our faintest, most gossamer tag and then studiously ignored him. With our tag planted, and Howard Dexter's testimony before congress completed, Grandpa A.J.'s plans were enacted. To celebrate the recent good news, A.J., Ambrose, Aaron, Sheb, Violet and Doc Aillard took the Nereid out for a run up to Boston. After a stop in Ocean City, Maryland to pick up our new good friend Howard Dexter, In full view of at least 6 other vessels, as well as a large number of people on shore, the Nereid exploded in a blinding and deafening blast that completely and utterly obliterated it. Public opinion quickly placed the blame on the energy companies that had so recently been exposed. We definitely felt a little guilty when the President declared a national day of mourning. Of course there had been no one on board the Nereid when the blast destroyed her. They were all safe and secure in the new replica of A.J. McKesson's house on Meadow. Howard Dexter, freed of his compulsions was giddy with relief, and just a little awe struck. With A.J. McKesson having been 83 years old, nobody thought it odd that his estate was so well prepared for his demise. The transition of control of the McKesson group from A.J., Aaron and Ambrose's hands to Gerald Alan McKesson had already been in the planning stages for several years, and the various boards and subsidiaries had no problems with the sudden passing of power. Because of the loss of so many family members at once, everyone understood when the family announced there would be only a small private service at the family home in Chocowinity. Dave, Ginny and Eru were joined on their morning runs on Obsidian by Riah and Zaia. The twins had been the first success for the Ginny/Dave fusion in bringing someone else into a fusion. With the girl's deep reservoirs of power, and now able to follow them into the Light while in the fusion, it took only 4 months to tear away the barriers to their perception of the Light, as had been done for Ginny. It took another 6 months for their combined four way fusion to bring Eru to that same place. That brought the number of known Light sensitives in the universe to five. Dave had finally had to get together with Con and built a separate running track. They had begun to draw crowds every morning when they ran. Perhaps it was the sight of five people running at thirty miles an hour, or perhaps it was the sight of three beautiful women in relatively skimpy running gear running at thirty miles an hour. Con built them an interesting clover leaf out of the perfect running surface that was the ring material. The track was five miles away from the rings Their cool down period usually consisted of 45 minutes of mental sparring. Eru had built on the experience Dave and Ginny had with the Boyle brothers, as well as on his own experience, and they sharpened their offensive and defensive mental techniques on a daily basis. Two observers were always watching, in full fusion, ready to prevent any accidents. They were able to practice one on one and two on one as well as one on two. After the 'cool down', they just sat joined only lightly, and talked for a while. Today's chat began with a familiar topic. "Riah, Zaia, have you worked the kinks out of your love life yet?" Ginny asked them. "We're still stuck with the same problem." Zaia said. "Dave's already married to you, Andy is still too young, Eru simply says no, that it would be unhealthy to have a relationship with our teacher, and we still are always picking the same guy out of a crowd." "We've given it a lot of thought, and we are probably going to have to find someone who will be willing to have a relationship with both of us. Eru says it used to be a common thing for twins in the old days." Riah added. "There is one guy who has always made us swoon a little" "But he's never indicated any interest" "Probably because of the age thing, though we're all getting closer to the same physical age every year." The twins were usually pretty good about not slipping into their ping-pong speech mode, but they still did it now and then when they got nervous or excited. "Well that limits my guesses to someone in the Legion, since they are the only ones besides Eru and Dave's family who are getting regular doses of our anti-aging Light work." Ginny said. "Let me guess. Chet Alvarado?" The two glanced at each other and blushed. "Well, that's a yes, obviously." Eru added with a laugh. "Girls, if you are interested, you're going to have to make the first move." Ginny said. "In the society in which Chet was raised, multiple marriages were not just frowned upon, but were actually illegal. He will need a lot of encouragement to overcome those inhibitions." The Great Library at Ureda was already becoming legendary, and as its legend grew, so did the prosperity of Borthun's Rest. At first the Library's staff had been comprised of McKesson Clan and Rhellian volunteers, while Borthun's rest had been staffed completely by locals. As the bright young minds of first Ureda, and then other regions arrived, the brightest were quickly recruited, and the staff at the Library slowly shifted towards a greater and greater percentage of locals. Borthun's Rest actually went in the other direction, but only slightly. It had been no fluke, or freak coincidence that the mental gifts that Dave discovered he shared with Eru were awakened in Ginny and the rest of the Legion. Eru and Felicia had been set the task of picking other candidates for mental awakening. Stability, Integrity and 'depth of character' were the selection criteria. In the first three years since the establishment of the Great Library, 6 McKesson Clansmen and 8 Rhellians had been awakened. When it was realized that the volume of people passing through Borthun's Rest was at least four times greater than actually made the trip to the Library, Borthun was suddenly inspired to hire two 'hostesses', who met arriving patrons at the door and found them a table, but did not actually wait on tables themselves. The hostesses were Tavi Brek and Cuhi Sul, awakened Rhellians who had gone through the first year of Eru's soul diver school. They began screening every guest for those qualities which would make them candidates for awakening. Three months into the assignment, Tavi encountered the mind of Laik Hulin. For the first time since Dave met Eru, they found a fully awakened mind. Tavi was stunned to encounter an aware and active mind. Eru's Soul Diver classes had stressed the possibilities of encountering coercers, and with no other experience, she made that assumption, and called for help. When Cuhi touched this man's mind, she too panicked and sent out a call to Eru. When the alarm reached Eru, he was in the middle of observing a class. He sent a quick thought to Felicia that there was a coercer report coming in from Borthun's Rest and jumped to the spare room at the inn that was aways mysteriously unused. He made his way down the stairs and found Tavi and the newcomer standing, staring at each other, unmoving. "Well, this is interesting. Tavi, Cuhi, you may stand down, He is not a coercer." Eru said to the women. "I am Eru Jehn. May I invite you to join me at a private table?" "Yes, thank you. I am Laik Hulin of Espos. We Esposians are supposed to be renowned for our gastronomic sensibilities, though I confess to having fled the region as a child, well before my inner gastronome was revealed." Tavi escorted the two of them to one of the private rooms in the rear of the inn and told the waitresses that she would be waiting on these guests herself. The two hostesses were known to make this request for users of the private rooms now and then, so it was nothing unusual. "Tavi, I suspect our guest would not object to trying the house specialty, and if we could have a pitcher of the Ryennian Dark Ale to go with it?" "Yes teacher!" Tavi said, and spun sharply and exited the room. Laik's eyes followed her as she left. To be honest, most men's eyes followed Tavi when she walked away. "I was so stunned to encounter her mind as I entered that I did not quite have time to appreciate her beauty. Was she there specifically to catch me, or others like me?" "She is a beautiful young woman, as is Cuhi. Please accept my apologies, but they are here simply to screen those who pass through in the hopes of finding likely candidates to send on to the Library. We are currently seeking to fill a great many staff positions there. Her training made her assume you were a coercer, and act accordingly." "Ahh, I heard you use that word earlier, and I saw it in the young lady's thoughts, just before she was able to close them off from me. What is a coercer? And she called you teacher??" Laik asked excitedly. "Hers was the first mind I have ever encountered that was able to resist my probes. Quickly followed by the other woman's and yours of course. How is this possible that the world could seem so empty of others like me, and then I stumble across three of them at once!" "Coercers are people who are somewhere between the unawakened and awakened state. They are able to use certain aspects of the gift, usually very crudely. They are also set apart by their willingness to use the gifts to compel others to do their bidding. Where I am from, you or I would be called Soul Divers. We came by our gifts naturally. Tavi and Cuhi are what we call 'awakened'. Normal but sensitive people whose minds have been shown the way to the gifts. I run a school where we teach the skills of the Soul Diver to the awakened." "That it is possible to give the gift to those I've come to call the mind-blind is amazing to me. How did you come to be able to do this?" Tavi came back into the room with a large pitcher of the rich ale and two glasses. Cuhi accompanied her, carrying a tray with their meals. Cuhi walking towards a man was as much a magnet for the eye as Tavi was when walking away. "Lets discuss that after we finish our meal." Eru said. "Thank you Tavi and Cuhi." As Eru spoke to Tavi, he reached out with his thoughts to find Dave. "This is very fine glass work." Laik said, holding his up to the light. Dave thought back. "The people of Eruda are very progressive, and are perhaps the premier craftsmen of Eruda. This is, in part, the reason why the Library was established here." Eru thought back to Dave. Dave finished. Eru turned his attention to Laik's words. "Word of this legendary library is what brought me here of course. But by the smell of this marvelous food, there are plenty of other good reasons to come to Borthun's Rest. Certainly the quality of the staff would recommend it as well!" The two men tackled their meals then, and were interrupted only once when Tavi came in to see if they needed a fresh pitcher. Finally they had both pushed their plates away, full. "Laik, there is a simple solution to the dancing around we are doing here. You can let me into your thoughts." Eru said. "Will you then let me into your thoughts as well?" "I cannot. There are secrets there that are not mine to give you." Eru sighed. "But I can promise that unless your thoughts reveal you to be some hideous monster or diabolical villain, you will be in my thoughts before the day is out." "Very well." Laik answered. "To be honest, I have no idea how to prevent your from taking my thoughts anyway." The Esposian drained the last of his ale, wiping the foam from his lips. "Proceed!" Eru slipped, a gentle shadow, into the mind of Laik Hulin. He sifted gently through the man's thoughts before diving into his memories. The experience was memorable. Laik had a mind at least as ordered and deep as his own. Unless he was a master deceiver of a magnitude beyond Eru's comprehension, he was a decent man who had spent half his childhood and all his adult life looking for something he had come to think probably didn't exist. Others like himself. ------- Chapter 2: Knowledge is Thought Because I was sitting in as the Head Librarian at the Great Library this month, Ginny, Andy, Serenity and I were spending the month at the Montecristo station. Andy loved the beach, but for Ginny and I, being at Montecristo always reminded us of our honeymoon. Andy and I were on the plateau behind the cliff top above the Montecristo station using the debris-strewn expanse to expand and strengthen his telekinetic gift when Eru's thought came in. "Do you want to go meet Uncle Eru at the Great Library with me?" I asked Andy as we ran across the rugged and windswept plain. "You bet!" He said with youthful glee. "Can we go have a buffalo burger and see Borthun and Yela after?" "We'll see. Your Mom won't like it if I ruin your dinner. Here, catch!" I sent another piece of rock flying towards him. There were a dozen rocks circling him already. He caught the rock with his mind and held it for a second before adding it to the spinning ring that circled around him. The new piece jostled its way into the ring, and it looked for a second as if it was going to settle in, but suddenly it faltered, and the smooth progression of the stones faltered, as stones began to wobble in their orbits, dipping down or straying out away from the rest of the stones. "Ack!" Andy hollered suddenly, and the entire spinning ensemble flew apart before dropping to the ground around us. "Not bad Son, but you're still running into the problem of trying to steer each stone like you were flying a model airplane." We stopped and I began pulling rocks and pebbles from the nearby area, adding them to multiple orbits around me. "That works fine when you're dealing with only a small number of objects, or your objects are all on linear or ballistic flight paths, but the secret to doing multiple orbits is to tell the object what to do in a way that lets it continue on without needing constant input." I went from dozens of orbiting rocks to hundreds, until there was a blurry cloud of items whirling around me. Andy thought back after a while. I let my cloud of debris drop to the ground around us. "Good! On your next trip to the Garden, ask your teacher about orbital mechanics. Let's get changed and go wait for Uncle Eru and his guest." The Great Library was an imposing structure, with a central round and domed building somewhat reminiscent of the Taj Mahal on Earth. Our building was a true cylinder, where the Taj was not, and our dome was not so imposing, nor did it have a spire. The slender minarets of the Taj were replaced by a single tower that rose a hundred yards to the South. The tower contained the living quarters for the staff. The Head Librarian's quarters were the top two floors of the tower. After a quick change, and a stop by the beach to let Ginny know where we were going, I jumped Andy and myself to the Head Librarian's study. The room was lit with oil lamps, as most homes in Eruda were. Our lamps were not really using the local oil of course, but something much cleaner burning. I was showing Andy the wall map of the 'known world' when Eru and his guest arrived. "Well hello Andy, I wasn't expecting to see you today!" Eru said on arrival. "Hi Uncle Eru." Andy said. "Wow, that's some shortcut!" The stranger with Eru said with humor. I liked this man immediately. He reminded me of my dad. "Laik, I'd like to introduce you to Dave McKesson. He is currently serving as the Great Library's Head Librarian. Dave, this is Laik Hulin, Meadow's only known natural telepath." "Welcome to the Great Library Laik." I said, as we clasped forearms in the common manner on Meadow. "The gift that allows the use of that shortcut is what brought me to Eru's doorstep many years ago, and began a friendship that has lasted for many, many years now." "Dave, Laik has shown his trust in me, and allowed me to enter his mind. I have read his thoughts, and seen his memories and I find him to be a perfectly trustworthy individual. He awaits an offer from me to return the privilege, but of course the secrets I hold are yours to give, not mine." "Of course. Laik, will you extend that same privilege to me?" "Dave, I've already come to the conclusion that finding you all is going to turn out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. Go right ahead." I slipped into his mind, and immediately liked what I found. Here was an orderly and organized thinker with a desire to learn and a lifelong desire to find a place where he felt he belonged. A desire I saw in his thoughts that he felt he may have finally satisfied. "Eru, I think we've found the man we've been looking for." "I concur completely Dave. We will never find a better candidate than Laik." Eru said with a grin. We spent a while just letting Laik talk about his life, and the different parts of Meadow that he'd visited. He really had been traveling most of his life. "Laik, we enjoy surprises, so before Eru fulfills his promise to you, would you journey further with us?" "I would be happy to. I have spent a good portion of my life looking for something that would surprise me. I suspect I enjoy surprises as much as you do." I sent out. "Laik, what do you think of our map on the wall there?" I asked, pointing at the map Andy and I had been looking at when they arrived. "I am very much amazed by it, to be honest." Laik answered. "I've never seen a map that so completely covered the world in such detail. Most maps of the world that I've seen have blank areas, usually with 'unknown' or 'here be monsters' or some sort of superstitious drivel." "I have another map to show you." As I said this, I jumped the four of us to the living room of the Montecristo station. The back wall of this room was covered with a complete map of Meadow, done in bas-relief from chromed steel. "I met a man in the city of Hedera once, a mathematician and stargazer named Uris Peleka." Laik said, staring at the map. "He told me that he had done extensive calculations, based on what he had observed of the world and its movement within the heavens, and that based on those calculations the world should be more than twice the size of the world as men knew it. He would be amazed and very pleased to see this map." "Perhaps we should go find him, and invite him to the library. We built it to attract minds like his." Eru said. "In any case, Here is the reality of the world, which we call Meadow." "Why does the world need a name?" Laik asked. I knew he was anticipating my answer. "Because it is not the only one." We all stood staring at the map for a while, sharing in Laik's sense of wonder. "Andy, mom says there's fresh lemonade in the kitchen." That sent Andy zipping off to the kitchen. "Let's follow him. I'd like you to meet my wife and daughter while we're here." We followed Andy into the kitchen, and I introduced him to Ginny and Serenity. "Ginny, I have a job offer for Laik, do you have time to help me give him the company physical?" "Can we watch?" Serenity asked. "Yes sweetie, but if you have questions about what you see, ask your Uncle Eru. Your Dad and I will be busy." Ginny answered. "Lets all go back to the main room and get comfortable." With all of sitting and comfortable, Ginny and I joined our minds and slipped into the full Light-fueled fusion we used for our medical investigations. With the familiar world washed away by the familiar diamond and silver version our Light sight rendered, we sent our senses washing through Laik's body. Laik Hulin was an incredibly fit and healthy individual. We found nothing that needed correcting except for a slight bit of scar tissue that marked an old stab wound near his left shoulder blade. We quickly dissolved the scar tissue and pushed the memories of the healthy tissue into the Light signature of the surrounding cells, which quickly regrew the missing tiny bits. "You, Mister Hulin, are an incredibly fit young man, and you have absolutely no health issues. There was a little scar tissue that probably caused a twinge now and then when you rotated your left shoulder, but we cleaned it up and let healthy tissue replace it. You shouldn't be feeling that twinge any more." "Amazing!" Laik said, then he laughed and shook his head. "Somehow I expect I'll be saying that a lot in the near future." We sat and talked, went swimming at the beach with the kids, had dinner and talked some more. Laik didn't know it yet, but he was acing his interview for the job of Head Librarian of the Great Library at Ureda. That evening after the kids had gone to bed, reluctantly of course, Eru fulfilled his promise and Laik swam in Eru's thoughts and memories. He saw and experienced through Eru's remembrances everything that had happened since joining us, as well as Eru's own history as a Soul Diver on Taluat. Laik cried, as everyone had at the remembered end of the Guardians, and at the return and passing of Aya, Kes and Beloth. It was only late afternoon in North Carolina, so I jumped us to the grotto and we all walked between the statues, and wept. The next morning, Laik joined us for our morning meditation. We gathered in the main room, beneath the map we had been examining the night before. We sat together in a close circle, almost touching, as I preferred during my Spirit Master classes. We linked, and Eru gently pulled Laik into the link with us. He had seen us linking in Eru's memories, but now he was able to experience it for himself. We slowly ramped it up, tighter and tighter until he couldn't stay focused, and fell out. "Practice is required to be adept at the gifts. Once you begin your service as Head Librarian we will make sure to let the gifted there know to include you in the morning meditations. Tavi and Cuhi will both be delighted to assist you." Eru teased. "Andy, please list for Laik the gifts as we know them." "The gifts are those of thought and memory. We share our thoughts and join our minds." Andy recited. "They are sense and touch. We reach out to both the physical world and the world of thought. They are heart and soul. We share our feelings and our future, and strive to protect and promote those without the gift." Andy stopped, but I sensed his desire to continue. "Do you have more to add to that? Go ahead!" "The gift is Light, and Light is life." He finished. "Very good Andy!" Eru exclaimed. I thought to myself. "On Taluat, the world I come from," Eru continued. "people such as you and I were known as Soul Divers, and we once held a special place in the hearts of the people, for we offered guidance and knowledge and healing, even in the darkest of times. Those like Dave were known as Spirit Masters, and they were legendary as 'walkers between worlds', but they had long ago vanished from the world. Of course you have seen the reason why in my memories. Andy has just added to the standard Soul Diver recital the key difference between us and Spirit Masters. They wield the Light that flows between the worlds." "Except this Spirit Master has figured out how to turn Soul Divers into Spirit Masters!" I reminded him. "It is true. Dave has found the pathways in the brain where access to the Light lives, and he has been able to slowly free those pathways in a few of us. Ginny and myself and the twins Zaia and Riah Seco." "And then there are the children!" I said, ruffling Andy's dark mop of hair. It was my turn to chair the monthly Report the Legion gave to the Directors. We had already been at it for five hours, not counting the lunch break. I had let my thoughts wander a bit from the current presentation, and forced myself to focus in it. "... researchers are now concentrated on the rabbit hole, we've made substantial progress." The Legion had long since given over the exploration of the facet designated as Autumn to Sarah Parkin and a crew of trainee archaeologists. Sarah had pressed for the recruitment of other scientists in the field, similar to our recruitment of Porter Burgess, and we had finally found and recruited Jonathan Turley, PhD from Earth and Master Diyr Oli from Taluat. Sarah and Jon had spent the last five years organizing and carrying out expeditions to various locations across Autumn in search of some understanding of the mysterious ending to the advanced civilization which had once flourished there. Every location was as unrevealing as the last. Until they found the rabbit hole - similar to the old Strategic Air Command facility bored into the earth deep beneath a mountain on Earth. "The outer doors lead to a tunnel that runs more than a mile into the center of the mountain range. That's where we found the second door." Sarah told us, the assembled Legion and the Directors, gathered in one of the many meeting rooms on Obsidian. As she spoke we were getting the familiar holographic display of both still images and video from the scene. "A series of inner doors actually," Doctor Turley amended. "What we would have called airtight blast doors. The doors and everything inside them were engineered to be as basic and fundamentally tamper and interference proof as possible." "Whatever its original purpose, the entire area was air tight and moisture free. Every single room had been individually sealed and flooded with an inert gas and left behind by the people who once lived on this world" Sarah continued. "They buried their history in those chambers, every scrap. Scribed on plates of a beryllium alloy of some kind, intended to last forever. We called in Constantine Fylakas for assistance, and with his help as well as that of Diyr Oli, a linguistic anthropologist, we've been able to translate the language. We've invited Master Oli here to make the final presentation to you. Master Oli, you have the floor." Diyr Oli was a tall, thin man, bushy-haired and bespectacled. He stood and cleared his throat several times, clearly nervous, and began. "Thank you Doctor Parkin. The core fact which we can pass along to you, the piece of information which we know will be significant to you, is this: The people of Autumn, whose name for themselves and their world was 'Kri', were Light-aware." Chaos Bomb, executive version! Except for Con and the three presenters, everyone in the room went briefly nuts. Things finally calmed down and Master Oli continued. "The Kri were Light-aware, but it would appear they were also completely without the gifts. They were forever limited to a look but don't touch mode as far as personal interaction went. They did develop machines to use and manipulate Light, and their entire technology and the society which grew up around it was completely Light dependent." "Oh my God!" I exclaimed suddenly. "What? Oscar Alvarez asked. "Dave has anticipated the next bit of information, would be my guess." Con said. "Go ahead Master Oli." "We believe, based on the evidence, and the history left behind by the Kri, that the day that the Seeker probe struck the facet on Obsidian, and the Choctowineh Guardians were able to deflect it back to them, and in the instant of their sacrifice preserve the facets themselves from utter destruction, the Light disappeared from Kri, and some unknown other number of facets for a long but indetermined length of time, probably centuries. Without the Light, the highly developed technology of the Kri was rendered inoperable." The sure knowledge that indeed the Seeker's moment of arrogance had caused an entire people to die out, cut off from the Light, literally made me ill for a moment. "Keep us advised on the details, and thank you for your efforts." I said to the three scientists. "Con, are you finding any information on the Kri Light-based technology?" "There is a high amount of detail available, and in addition there are huge amounts of pre-disaster data stored on what appear to be a nano-crystalline composite material, similar to what our Seeker AI's use. It will require extensive study before we will be able to read data from them, and I continue to look within the beryllium plate data for specific information on the devices the Kri used to read them." "Very well, thank you. Folks, I propose we officially change the designation of this facet to Kri." My proposal was immediately approved. A decision to use the local name of a facet, when known, was something of a given anyway. "Cyrus, do you have a report on the triplets?" The three facets originally designated as Treeline, Mudslide and Possum were collectively referred to these days as the triplets, and for good reason. Their local names were Fohr, Onje, and Lirica. And the peoples who lived there shared a common language and culture. When Ginny and I had found them, we were initially struck by the coincidence of finding three facets similarly populated and of about the same level of advancement in a back-to-back-to-back fashion, but we thought it was just a wrinkle in the random distribution, not that I understand yet what my mind is doing when it brings new facets to the forefront of my consciousness. The common language and culture, our experts were telling us, after over five years of study, started differentiating somewhere between one and two thousand years ago. There was either large amounts of traffic between the three locations up until then, or the three facets had been settled at the same time by people moved from the same facet. We had also initially classified the three worlds as non-technological, but that was not true. All three were at about the same early industrial level of advancement. They had gunpowder and mild steel, as well as the printing press, steam engine and gaslight illumination. Electricity was in its earliest stages of development and understanding. We had close to fifty people operating on the three worlds, posing as locals, studying the current societies while at the same time trying to garner more information on the mystery. "We really have little to report from there." Cyrus answered. "Our teams on all three facets just keep running into dead ends when it comes to anything resembling organized history at about 1800 years back. Everything else is legend and superstition. There is some statistical data that suggests some of the commonalities in their respective legends and fables may based on actual events. But nothing we would be comfortable mentioning here." "Thanks Cyrus. Arden, how about you? How are our friends the Hurlons doing?" "Very well indeed!" Arden replied. "Riah jumped eight of their... senior leaders to Meadow six weeks ago." "I understand why you hesitated there Arden, why don't you share the reason with everyone?" I said, suppressing a chuckle of my own. "Well, the phrase they use to describe their 'best and brightest' literally translates as 'big fish', and I can't seem to say that phrase out loud without laughing. Those of them who've seen the thought in my mind have been quite happy to share the humor of it. Apparently the Hurlon sense of humor is quite flexible." The giant, bottom dwelling denizens of Cloudburst, whose name for themselves literally translated as 'hurtle on', we decided to humanize into Hurlon. The Hurlons had been collectively delighted with the concept of other beings especially when they understood we were from the 'Great Not-Wet'. When the collective chuckle had died down, I motioned for Arden to continue. "The eight Hurlon's were positively giddy when we showed them the Sea-swarm super colony on the surface of Meadow's oceans. I believe their collective official position was 'Yummy!!'" This got Arden a good laugh. "They brought their report back to the full Council of the Deep as I translate their governmental body's name, and we now have an official request from the council to seed the Sea-Swarms into the Mediterranean basin of Cloudburst. I am told they believe they can establish their own gravity curtain barriers at the Straits of Gibraltar, but I think we should offer to take care of that piece ourselves. They would have to station Hurlons there on a permanent basis to maintain the gravity curtain that they envision. We can do the same thing with a few totally automated field emitters place in strategic places." The directors took little time in discussing the proposal, and quickly voted to accept the proposal from the Hurlon Council, and to make our counter-offer for establishing the barrier. With the vote taken, Fred Sabarte stood next. "Also from Cloudburst, I can report that we have solidified our deal to include Hurlon's where appropriate in our advance teams. If you have not made the trip to Cloudburst since the institution of our treaty of cooperation, you should consider it." Fred flipped a switch somewhere and we got a visual of the Hurlon neural web. Their brains were not located in a single cluster as ours were, but rather composed a dense web of neural tissues in the innermost layer of their bodies, equally distant from both their inner and outer skins. "The Hurlon's are all born gifted, and communicate using the same mental linking that we use for our learning and other group stuff, and they seem to have a knack for tying in the senses. There is nothing like the feeling of linking minds and sharing the senses of a Hurlon flying across the ocean floor at 200 miles an hour. The Hurlons consider it an equally awesome treat to link to our minds and experience the joys of walking and running in the 'not-wet'. The mere concept of using what we call the 'visible spectrum' rather than magno-gravitic resonance for vision tickles their funny bones greatly, as does the concept of needing a sense of 'balance' to stay upright. Surprisingly, they had no problems adjusting to the senses of hearing or smell. They think of our reaction to sound waves and the directional nature of the sense as akin to pressure waves, which they sense through their skin. Smell makes perfect sense to them as well, although they consider us to be woefully under-equipped in the olfactory organ department, since their entire inner pass-through feeding chamber is their equivalent of our nasal cavity." "Have they tried extra-oceanic exploration at all?" Master Lev asked. "Can their bodies handle being out of the water?" "They can, and have, and in fact it is considered something of a rite of passage amongst the Hurlon young to make the journey to the surface and do so. It is our opinion, based on our understanding of their cellular structure and density, that they could probably withstand hard vacuum just as easily. They uniformly find the feeling of being out of the water unpleasant in the extreme though, and I've linked with one of them when they did it. I'd describe the feeling as like having bugs crawling all over every inch of your bare skin." "Thanks Fred." I said. "I'd like to call this meeting to a close unless someone has something else?" Thirty minutes later, as Ginny and I were walking out of the board room on Obsidian, chased out finally by the staff who had come in to clean up behind us, Ginny whispered in my ear "The kids are with their Grandmothers for two more hours, beggar boy. Take me home and make love to me!" Some duties truly are more pleasant than others. ------- Chapter 3: Therefore I am The Cataloochee House, as we referred to our new home, did become a focus of activity, but it was not the business of the Legion which focused there, it was the business of raising our gifted children. Every member of the Legion had shared my memories, as well as Ginny, Eru and Con's, of Aya, Kes and Beloth, the Ancient Guardians we had so briefly rescued from their fate. They remembered, through us, their stories of how the children of the Choctowineh were raised 'within the Light'. As much as possible, with only five Light-aware adults to share the load, we worked to give that experience to our children. The reality of it was that they soon were forcing us to live within the Light in ways we hadn't anticipated. <... Three. Two. One!> Andy finished counting, and began trying to find Zaia and Riah. They always found the most interesting places to hide. He went back to the place he found them yesterday, but of course they weren't there. He turned and took a new, unfamiliar path, reaching out with his senses for some trace of their passing. The fact that this game of hide and seek was taking place entirely within his own mind didn't bother Andy at all. The seven year old was already familiar with his mind, and was discovering more every day. He knew that these games he played were as much about learning as they were about fun, but he liked to learn. Learning about things was easy. Learning about your mind was much more of a challenge. A hint of something registered on his senses, and in an instant he was off in hot pursuit. ------- Felicia Poole stood in the doorway and watched as Maia and Jeni sat in the cool shade of the patio, looking at chalk markings on the patio tiles. Maia picked up the piece of chalk and added a little to what was there. She thought to her companion. Jeni looked at it for a bit, rubbed out a bit at the end with her shirtsleeve and picked up her chalk, adding a new figure to the end. And she added three more lines to the bottom. "Perfect Jeni! Lets try it!" Maia said out loud. "Okay, I'll play, and you sing the lead part. You sing better than me." Jeni jumped up and grabbed her Sonox. She stood above the simple score chalked into the tiles, and activated the Sonox, driving it with her thoughts. The simple but clear and pleasant tune was soon joined by Maia's voice, as she sang the words. With Maia singing, Jeni joined in. Together they sang in two part harmony. Whether its day, or whether its night The Light is there to make things right. Light is Life Life is Light At work or play Awake or dreaming The Light is there Constantly streaming. Light is Life Life is Light In the darkness Light will guide you Safe and warm Light will keep you Light is Life Life is Light As soon as they ended their song the two six year olds grabbed each other in a hug and jumped round in circles, giggling and laughing! "Jeni Jean Anderson and Maia Poole! What do you think you're doing?" Felicia Poole's voice called out sternly from the doorway to the kitchen behind them. The two girls, still in mid hug froze at the sound and turned their heads towards Felicia. All three of them stood still for a moment, before finally Jeni, giggled. When that brought a smile to her Mom's face Maia started giggling too. "We were just making music, Mama!" Maia said finally. "Did you like it?" "Yes I did girls. I liked it so much I had Ava record it, so we can let everyone hear it at family dinner tonight! Come inside now, its time to get cleaned up for lunch." ------- Sarah Parkin found her twins Ian and Grace sitting with Serenity McKesson in the sandbox near the raspberry bushes. Th three of them were sitting silently, focused on the sand between them. "Kids? Its lunch time! Go get washed up." All three of the children looked up. "Okay Aunt Sarah!" Serenity said. "We'll play some more tomorrow, okay?" she said to her companions. "Grace is ahead 3 to 1, don't forget!" "Okay 'Ren!" The twins said simultaneously, as they jumped up and ran for the house. As she watched her twin five year-olds run into the house, Sarah asked Serenity. "What was the game you were playing?" "I pick out a grain of sand, and they have to find out which one." "Isn't that hard?" Sarah asked. "Well Yeah!" Serenity said, as if it was obvious. "Looking at small things is hard enough, but then you have to get the part of the sand that is Light to show you what else is connected to it. That is really, really hard!. Andy says we need to get good at it though." Sarah stared at the six year old as she disappeared into the house. She looked at the sandbox again and shook her head. At dinner that night, the recording of Jeni and Maia's performance was received with great enthusiasm. When asked about the Sonox, Jeni said "My fingers are too small, so I couldn't make the music in my head come out right, so I asked Uncle Constantine if he could make me something." Serenity's explanation, at Sarah's prompting, of the game that she had been playing with Ian and Grace received a very different kind of attention. "Andy, having you been keeping secrets?" His mother asked. But from his dad it was "Andy, please share your thoughts with me." After a brief mental huddle with Andy, Dave announced. "Andy and I will be joining you at the sandbox tomorrow, Ren. Please give me a thought when you are ready to begin the game, okay?" "Okay Daddy!" Serenity answered back. Ginny, Con and I had begun using the little craft we called a hopper for our new facet expeditions just before Andy was born. Ginny had said we need to give her a name the first time we used her, and we had. We called her Dare. It was something of an accidental discovery, but we eventually noticed that the facets I picked were more wildly varied from Earth normal when we were airborne in Dare. This is how we found Archipelago. Imagine a world without major landmasses. A world of endless ocean, sprinkled thickly with endless chains of islands. That was Archipelago. There were a couple islands that were approximately the size of Madagascar, as well as a couple dozen the size of Taiwan sprinkled here and there. Smaller islands the size of Hawaii on down were too numerous to count. Two years of satellite survey data made Archipelago seem a paradise. The lack of major open oceans in the tropical regions must have had some effect on weather there. Not a single major storm was detected over the two year observation period. Steady breezes and light rains were frequent, and became heavier during the winter months, but major weather disasters seemed to happen rarely, if they happened at all. In my mind I saw it as a sailor's paradise, so when Uncle Ambrose and Ia Sardic announced their plans to get married, I decided to give it to them as a wedding present. Okay, I wasn't going to give an entire facet to someone as a gift. First of all, it wasn't mine to give. But I did immediately make plans to give them access to it. Step one of my plan was to introduce Archipelago to the Hurlon. Our new friends were not suffering from any kind of population pressure. They did not need to settle new worlds out of any kind of political or social pressure. They were simply endlessly curious and adventurous. The delicate negotiations to give the Hurlon permanent access to the oceans of Archipelago were only delicate because they had to be kept secret from Ambrose and Ia. We were able to keep the secret, and conclude the agreement in plenty of time to build our first underwater jump gate, keyed to the unique Hurlon gravity signature. When we first made contact with the Hurlon, we had thought them to be about as intelligent as a the average 8 to 10 year old human child. We discovered very quickly that we were actually dealing with the Hurlon equivalent of young adolescents. The adult Hurlon did not frequent the upper depths, and as a general rule, the truly old and wise Hurlon restricted themselves to the very deepest reaches of Cloudburst's oceans. They weren't obsessive about it though, and as word reached them of intelligent beings from the 'not-wet', they came up to say hi. The Hurlon did not use names, as we would think of them. They knew each other as unique thought and memory 'signatures'. We were not so adept, so were forced to make up names to use as a sort of shorthand that we used when we spoke of them amongst ourselves. The elder Hurlon who was assigned the duty of being our liaison we called 'Socrates'. Socrates asked us, shortly after we had met him, if we were from another one of the worlds in the sky, or if we were from 'another eddy in the currents of the world'. How many times now, had our self-assured assumptions crumbled around us when we were forced to realize that what we thought we understood about our discoveries proved incorrect, and that we were living a reality quite a bit different and more wonderful than what we thought we knew. The oldest and wisest Hurlon elders gathered in the darkest, deepest parts of the sea, and they slowly cruised the depths, feeding and thinking, linked together in thought. They were perhaps the universe's longest running program of theoretical research. As a pure exercise of mental perceptiveness and sheer, utter wisdom, without benefit of a single machine or tool, with nothing but their own existence to build upon, and utterly lacking in sensitivity to the Light, the Hurlon had long ago theorized the existence of the Light, and the facets. Talk about deep thinkers! The thought-sensitive interfaces of our Legion armor and devices like the jump bracelets and even the Sonox that Con had built for Maia and Jeni, were easily adapted to tie in to the Hurlon communications. With that connection made, we were able to turn our very good orbital survey maps of the oceans of Archipelago into perfect, accurate and detailed navigation maps of the oceans of Archipelago. It was merely a matter of time and commitment. With the Hurlon 'eyes' to assist us, we built detailed and accurate oceanographic navigational charts for an area five hundred miles across, centered on an island retreat with a cluster of palm-thatched buildings and a dock that we built for the honeymooning couple on one of the many tropical islands, complete with a fusion reactor and modern appliances. Our charting crew had been fifty Hurlon 'youth', whose work for us in this alien ocean was going to serve to complete their citizenship service. We were interested to discover that moving from youth to adult status in Hurlon society required a formal commitment of service to their society. This usually was completed by serving as messengers and as babysitters for schools of Hurlon young, as well as defending against what few predators existed that were willing to attack a Hurlon. Three of that crew were going to stay on, and provide escort service to whichever craft the newlyweds chose to sail in. The last piece of the puzzle was a bit more delicate. I would have preferred to have just given Uncle Ambrose an exact replica of his beloved Nereid, which we had 'blown to smithereens' as he described it, but the Nereid required at least three hands to sail her, and who wants a third hand along on your honeymoon? We solved the problem by tying up the Nereid II, as complete and exact a copy of the original as possible to one side of the dock, and the Perse and Tyche to the other side. The Perse was a 45 foot Jeanneau Sun Odyssey 45 and the Tyche was a 33 foot Schionning Wilderness 1030 catamaran. The Tyche could be sailed single-handed pretty easily, but the Perse was going to require close cooperation and coordination to be sailed two-handed, and in my mind that would be what Ambrose and Ia would really remember about their time on Archipelago. I absolutely intended to borrow the catamaran for family outings, and hoped to pass my love of sailing on to Andy and Serenity. The happy couple chose to have a Taluatan bonding ceremony, rather than an Earth style wedding ceremony. Like the best of Earth's rites, it concentrated on the harmonious bonding of two lives and souls with deep spiritual meaning, minus any specific religious dictates. With Ia having a large family and many friends, both among the Holders of Rhel and otherwise on Taluat, the wedding was held there, at the grotto. We had been to several bonding ceremonies in the past couple of years, they were just as beautiful and moving as anything on Earth. Towards the end of the evening, with all the speeches made, and toasts given, Grandpa A.J., Master Lev and I escorted the couple from the feast. Once we were in a safe location I jumped the five of us to Uncle Ambrose's house on Meadow. "Uncle Ambrose and Aunt Ia, congratulations again. As your wedding present, the three of us have gotten together, along with the rest of the Legion, and we've secretly replaced the Caribbean sailing adventure you expected to be taking for your honeymoon with something a little more unique." As I spoke these words I jumped all of us to Archipelago, to the living room of the cottage we had built for them. Ginny was waiting for us. "Welcome to Archipelago." All your clothes are in the Master bedroom, through that door." Ginny pointed. "You may be wondering where you are, and what this means as far as your honeymoon plans go." I added, walking over and opening the front door. "You may want to come out here and take a look before we leave you." As I knew he would be, Uncle Ambrose was ecstatic to see the Nereid II. But he and Ia were immediately struck by the Perse, and the fact that sailing her together would probably test their sailing skills at first until they got used to her. We let the two of them crawl over and through the two smaller craft for a while. Finally I interrupted them and said we had a few things more for them. I jumped a full set of the charts we had created into my hand. "There is another complete set of these in the Nereid II's chart locker, but these are for use on either the Perse or the Tyche. They are completely accurate, thanks to our friends the Hurlon." Grandpa A.J. said. "Its all in the navigation computer, and there is a complete GPS data system in place, which will prove helpful" "Speaking of helpful." I said, followed by a quick mental signal to the three Hurlon who had been waiting patiently off shore. They quickly raised their immense bulks out of the water, levitating themselves a good twenty feet into the air. "These three fellows will be your escorts anywhere you sail, and though we expect no problems, have agreed to stay here as long as you like." The three Hurlon sent us all a big mental 'Glad to see you'. And allowed themselves to drop, nose first back into the water, making a huge splash, which I knew could have been a lot bigger if they weren't using their gifts to direct it. We walked back to the cottage with the couple, watching them walk arm in arm, grins a mile wide on both of them. "You have your bracelets and the door into the Master bedroom is a gate. The fridge and freezer are fully stocked, as is the pantry. We have it on the good authority of the Hurlon mapping crew that these waters are teaming with fish. Congratulations, and we'll see you in a few weeks." With hugs and kisses all around, we left the newlyweds to their own devices. I jumped us all back to the same private spot we'd left from. "I'd bet even money that the first thing the two of them do now that we're gone is run back down to the dock and get back to exploring their fleet." Ginny said. "But I"m too much of a lady to peek in and see if I've won or not." Three months after the big wedding in the grotto on Taluat, we got word from Brin Dolin that Master Lev had been arrested for harboring a fugitive. The arrest had been made at the same time that 'Notices of Criminal Status' and 'Official Notices to Appear for Cause' had been published. The two documents were the Taluatan equivalent of an arrest warrant, and had been issued for the 'renegade' Soul Diver Eru Jehn, as well as his known students, Riah and Zaia Seco. We sat at the kitchen table over tea and coffee, discussing the news. My Dad had arrived with Grandpa A.J. and Formerio Sabarte to joined Cyrus, Eru and Brin, who had been with us for breakfast. We nibbled on some leftover breakfast pastries and sipped our drinks and mulled our options. Andy had quickly joined us sitting with his Grandpa, and Serenity was on her Great-Grandpa's knee, helping him eat a pastry. "Explain to me again, Brin, how its come that the revered and respected Soul Divers have wound up being hunted criminals." Formerio asked. "Eru has said it has been a new development since the end of the Dark Times, but perhaps its my not being Taluatan, but it seems so unlikely that your people could go from one end of the spectrum to the other in your treatment of Eru and his fellows, and do so in only a few generations." "That's just it. The common people of Taluat still have as much love and respect for them as ever. It is only the High Board of Governors and other top level politicians who fear them and hold them out to be evil." Brin said. "No one I've ever met felt that the stated reason: that Soul Divers were stealing state secrets from the minds of our government officials, and using their gifts to exert undue influence on the government's decisions, was true. Every time a secret was supposedly stolen, the accused Soul Diver was already dead, killed while trying to escape or some other convenient excuse." "At least we've got plenty of time to come up with something. The wheels of Taluatan justice grind exceedingly slowly, to borrow an Earth phrase." Eru said. "As long as Master Lev remains calm he will be fine for now. A case of harboring a fugitive could take years to work its way through the legal system. Of course we could always jump him out of there, but right now the rest of the Rhellians are being ignored by the High Board of Governors, and by their agents. We don't want to do anything at this point that might provoke an aggressive reaction." "Which brings us right back to where we started. Trying to understand why this is happening in the first place." A.J. said. "Maybe they have a sneaky one too." Serenity said quietly from his lap. "A sneaky what?" Cyrus asked. "A sneaky coercer, like the one we can't find." Serenity answered. "Andy says we haven't caught the coercer who made Mr. Dexter do all that stuff because he's sneaky. Maybe they've got a sneaky one on Taluat too." From the mouths of babes, chaos bombs can be launched! We immediately called a full meeting of the Directors, and I pulled in all the Legionnaires, as well as Zaia and Riah Seco. There was no hesitation in making sure to include Serenity and Andy in this meeting! Brin Dolin called Mor Grestain and Levella Ruk, who we quickly jumped in from Taluat. Ia joined the Taluatan's, and together she, Levella and Mor were floored, as we had been, by the thought of a high-level Taluatan coercer. With everyone agreed that, thanks to Serenity, we had finally pegged the source of the Taluatan government's antipathy towards Soul Divers, we began to explore our options. We were dependent on the Taluatans for our understanding of how their government and system of justice worked, but a couple Eru-guided memory dumps later, we all had the essentials. "At least in the West, Taluatan government is much more a top down system. The High Board of Governors is elected, its true, but they are elected for life, and most of the current High Governors were elected over fifty years ago." Mor Grestain told us. "The High Board then appoints the regional governors, as well as the heads of the National Police, the High Court and the National Administrator." "The High Court in turn appoints regional Chief Justices, who supervise the regional court system. The other judges, as well as the court's agents — what you would call lawyers, both for the court and for the defense, are appointed by the regional governors." Ia added. "There is something of a cascade effect here, as the Regional governors then appoint the local governors, head magistrates, police chiefs and city administrators, and they in turn fill the local court, police and administrative positions." Levella finished. "So no person is ever ruled directly by the person they elected, and they have no input into who does directly govern them?" Ginny asked. "That is correct. This is the system that came into being at the end of the Dark Times." Eru said. "Pardon me for saying so, but this entire system seems to have been designed as the ideal form needed for a coercer to impose his will on the most people while requiring the least amount of direct interference." Formerio said. "It pains me to say so, but it appears that you are right, and I wonder at how it managed to elude my notice all these years." Eru said. "Its okay Uncle Eru." Andy said. "At least it'll be easier to catch your coercer than to catch ours." After Serenity's having schooled us already, we were all ears instantly. "Why is that Andy?" Eru asked. "Well, that whole weird arrangement may have made it hard to notice what he was doing, but doesn't it mean he'll be easy to catch?" He answered. "Dad says we don't know who to watch, and its impossible to watch everyone, so its hard to try and catch our guy, but you just have to watch those High Governor guys to catch yours." Twice. Twice in one day my children have followed in their dear dad's footsteps and released full McKesson-grade chaos bombs on us poor unsuspecting, minds-stuck-in-the-mud, adults. ------- Chapter 4: One Headed Hydra We staged our operation on Taluat from a familiar little cabin on a hill near the western ocean. I had to fight back tears when we arrived. I could swear I heard a gentle little 'chirr' and felt a tail brush under my chin. I had to fight them back hard. Eru and I both were quiet when we first arrived. I'm sure there were even more memories here for him. We did a quick scan of the nearby area, but found nothing and no one out of the ordinary. We cleaned up the small cabin a little, mostly I played human vacuum cleaner and used a touch of telekinesis to quickly remove the thick layer of dust from everything. We cleared the table from the center of the room, piling it and the two chairs that had sat around it in a pile on the small cot that lay along the east wall. I jumped our meditation rug into my hands and laid it out in the center of the room. I did another scan of the vicinity, more slowly this time, and everything still looked clean. I sent. Cyrus and Chet jumped in with their Legion armor in full stealth mode, immediately followed by Ginny, Zaia and Riah. In stealth mode, the Legion armor reminded me of the 'sort of invisible' look of the aliens in the movie 'Predator'. You weren't really invisible, although you were close to it when not moving, but you were incredibly hard to see, and if someone wasn't looking for you, they were not likely to know you were there. Cyrus' thoughts came. We formed our circle, getting comfortable, letting the adrenalin subside and our sense of self settle. Calm and centered, we joined lightly at first, letting ourselves get comfortable this way too. Two hours later we were silently and invisibly present as Eldo Lev stood before the Regional Court in the coastal city of New Brise and plead not guilty to the charge of harboring a fugitive. After reading the plea to the court, it was handed to Marsel Jey, The Regional High Prosecutor, who handed it in turn to his assistant, who placed it in a leather case with the other official documents of the case. The Regional High Prosecutor was far too highly placed to risk scanning for now, but his assistant, the lovely and efficient Irini Fre, was another matter. We slipped into her thoughts, finding nothing but raw ambition and focus. She concentrated on the needs of her boss, all his needs — at least until she could find someone even further up the chain who wanted a lovely, efficient and willing assistant. We left behind the faintest of tags, enough to find her again quickly, and then we were gone. New Brise was Taluat's equivalent to San Francisco, both in size and history. It was one of the earliest places to be settled on the western coast, and had been a thriving port city for many centuries. We spent four hours ghosting our thoughts from mind to mind within the Regional Justice Center, then the Regional Administrative Complex in which it was located, then finally the city itself. We were a whisper, a stray thought, a whim, a glance. With Eru's part of our fused mind as guide, we were seeing for the first time what life in Taluat was like first hand, and experiencing the true nature of the people who lived there. And they were us. The people of Taluat, as Eru had told us before, were no better or worse than the people of Earth, they were petty and compassionate, wicked and pure, kind and cruel in the same measure. The next day we toured the city of Haredem, the national capital, through the eyes of Irini Fre. After a quick meeting with his superiors in the Justice Center, and a quick tour of the Chamber of Justice, which really got Irini's blood boiling - Marsel got very lucky during lunch in his luxury suite - We found her room, rented only for propriety's sake in her thoughts, and jumped ourselves there. Irini was sharing Marsel Jey's room of course, and made sure others knew it! With a physical location to base our operations, we called in Con and the rest of the Legion. With our five still running in full Light fusion, the Legion linked up and we let them tap our feed as we sent our senses through the Justice Center. We scouted the key locations and people we felt we could safely scan, until we had the layout of the complex down cold. We had been running in fully fueled Light mode for over six hours. We broke our fusion then, and we all jumped back to Obsidian to eat and sleep. We kept ourselves on Haredem local time. The morning of our third day we all sat once again in Irini Fre's unused hotel room in Haredem; Eru, Ginny, Zaia, Riah and I joined together, and the Legion lightly linked with each other, waiting. In Haredem, at the center of the continent, near what would be Lincoln, Nebraska on Earth, the High Board of Governors met. The regional High prosecutor who was in charge of the case against Eldo Lev, presented his plea. In every mind we'd touched that morning we saw that it was expected that the High Board would elevate the charge from harboring a fugitive to High Treason against the State. We ramped up the power of our fusion in stages until we were just touching the Light, not quite in it yet, and we let ourselves settle again until we felt comfortable. As soon as we felt ready, we reached out with our senses and found Irini Fre. With a thought, our minds and senses were there with her. We saw in her thoughts, and through her eyes that we were in the High Board's Chamber of Judgment, alongside the Regional High Prosecutor. We stood before the raised dais at which the fifteen High Governors sat in session. With our targets in sight we slipped fully into the Light, and once again the world dripped diamond and silver Light. We slid into the Prosecutor's mind first, and found our fears were unfounded. He was under no compulsion or coercion. He, like his assistant was simply trying to move up the food chain of Taluatan government. In his mind he saw himself sitting up on that dais someday himself. Next we examined the eight guards who were stationed around the room. Only the two senior guards were under a compulsion, and they were both wrapped in multiple heavy layers of coercion. For the last three months we had practiced what we were going to do next, using the members of the Legion as our subjects. In our Light-fueled fusion, they were unable to stop us, even when they linked together. They saw it as defensive training, but we had used it to prepare for this confrontation. We swept through the room and discovered immediately that six of our fifteen High Governors were coercers! Correction, five were coercers. The sixth person, Verisa Vers, was a fully gifted, fully functioning and fully corrupted and evil Soul Diver! This realization struck at Eru like a dagger to the heart, and we saw immediately which of our scripted plans we would follow, for his sake. Our first move was to remove the coercions and compulsions laid on the two senior guards and the other High Governors. We followed this immediately with a sweeping command that froze every one of them in their seats, unable to move, except to turn their heads. <> Eru thought to us. At his signal we jumped Con, Chet and Cyrus into a room several levels below us. The three technicians and one producer in the room were quickly immobilized and Constantine sat down at one of the consoles, and using knowledge pulled from the technicians minds, he brought the video cameras in the Chamber of Judgment online. Another quick series of keystrokes and their feed was being broadcast to every receiver in the Western hemisphere. Eru jumped himself into the High Chamber, and with a pause to allow his presence to be noted by all, spoke. "I am Eru Jehn, Soul Diver, and the true subject of this proceeding. I stand before you to make declaration, as the old traditions would have me, of abomination and evil. I accuse Verisa Vers, High Governor of the Western Alliance of crimes against society and High Treason. I further name her renegade Soul Diver, and invoke the ancient rite of trial by combat." "Traitor! Shoot that man!" Yelled Kel Medri, one of the five coercers. "Kill him! Kill him!" Screeched Yxi Hain, quickly echoed by the remaining coercers. As the five screamed and postured physically, something the remaining High Governors found themselves unable to do, they used their gifts to attempt to take control of the eight guards in the room. Verisa Vers, hoping to use their efforts as a distraction, attacked Eru's mind directly. "So the conspirators reveal themselves." Eru added. "Kel Medri, Yxi Hain, Gan Dafri, Ken Huru and Spiri Deneste, I name you coercer, and charge you with crimes against the people of Taluat." "Very well Soul Diver. You have made your accusations, but you will not leave this room alive to see them carried out!" Verisa unknowingly broadcast to the world, standing at last. With that statement the five coercers stopped their histrionics and fell silent as the corrupt soul diver pulled them roughly into a mental link. They joined their minds to hers and attacked! Their combined assault managed to break through Eru's defenses for a brief moment, before we pumped more Light into our fusion and refocused our efforts. To the eyes of Verisa Vers and her coven of coercers, Eru sagged and staggered back for a moment before recovering. "Your efforts were meant to surprise and overwhelm me, Verisa Vers, but you have failed, because just as you are operating with the aide of these five corrupt souls, I too am not alone!" With that word we jumped Riah and Zaia into the Chamber to join Eru. "You have tried to eradicate the Soul Divers of Taluat, but you have failed. Even as your efforts intensified our numbers have grown." "We shall see!" Verisa crowed, and with that the five coercers clustered around her, forming a circle with their clasped hands. The renegade Soul Diver pulled the five coercers tighter into the linkage they had formed, into a full blown fusion. Fused and functioning as one mind they assaulted Eru with illusion and fantasy and fear. They slipped tendrils of paranoia and panic at his shields. In our own Light-fueled fusion, the efforts were actually more tissue thin and pathetic than the direct mental assaults had been. Reality dripped with Light, but thought was not of the Light, and to use it to deceive the perceptions of the Light-aware was like trying to pass off a picture postcard of the Grand Canyon as the real thing. With the attacks on Eru diverted to a mode that posed no threat, Riah and Zaia were free to deal with the coercers. One at a time they dove into the minds of a coercer, battering his defenses aside and shut down the gifts in their brains, commanding them to sleep, unable to even watch the rest of the events along with the rest of Taluat. "You rage at me for what you see happening, don't you, Verisa Vers. You wonder at how an elderly and solitary Soul Diver, who had gone willingly into retirement has managed to return, younger and stronger, with students at his side to defeat you." The moment was rapidly approaching. Ginny and I deactivated our Legion armor and we slipped quickly into the garb worn by the Ancient Taluatans of legend. We built ourselves shields of Light-construct and wove them about us. All the time I had spent teaching myself this little trick was finally going to pay off. Within our fusion Eru felt us preparing and knew we were ready as well. "Every coercer's greatest fear has come true Verisa Vers, and most especially yours. The Spirit Masters walk among us again!" With those words Ginny and I jumped ourselves and the rest of the Legion into the middle of the room. We held ourselves three feet above the floor and slowly walked towards Verisa Vers. "For too long those you knew of as Spirit Masters were gone from all the worlds." As I said this we lifted the renegade into the air. "Verisa Vers, you cannot keep your thoughts from us, but we do not want them. We give them instead to Eru Jehn." As we spoke those words the five of us acted again in fused thought. <> We commanded. She resisted, but in the end, without the five coercers to draw strength from, her strength wained and she could not maintain her defenses. We had her thoughts, and then her memories. Even as her mind gave itself to us, she managed one last desperate attack, launching a dagger hidden in her sleeve. Eru dodged instinctively, but he had allowed himself to be distracted by the assault on her mind, and her dagger cut a gash in his side as the knife blade sliced him to the ribs. Eru cried out in pain and our fusion fell apart. "Hold her!" I said out loud. Arden and Mike grabbed Verisa physically while Riah and Zaia did the same mentally. With the threat contained, Ginny and I reconnected, jumping straight into our full fusion and began dealing with Eru's wound. A quick block to the pain centers, and a wave of Light-powered suggestion put Eru in a semi-conscious, warm and fuzzy place where he was unaware of our activities, and left us ready to work. We saw problems immediately. The wound was deep, and the renegade's blade had been poisoned. We attacked the poison first, flushing it from the blood supply and removing those cells it had permeated. Every few seconds a minute speck we had missed would begin to blossom into a new source of attack and we would have to stop and deal with it. As soon as we got a handle on that problem we were able to deal with the wound itself. Ginny began knitting the flesh back together, while I 'marshaled the troops' and got Eru's body to begin producing blood to replace what he'd lost. Con had been busy at his end, and made sure that an entire continent of viewers saw us heal Eru's wound, zoomed in, and even played back in slow motion. With the wound sealed, I eased up the pain blocks I'd put in place and eased Eru out of the fuzzy disconnected feeling. <> <> Ginny added. With Eru back on his feet we returned our attention to the world around us. The Legionnaires had collected the five coercers and brought them to the center of the room alongside the renegade Soul Diver Verisa Vers. We woke them all from their enforced slumber. "Verisa Vers, we accuse you of murder, treason, and the defilement of the gift you were given, and your duty to serve your fellow man. How do you plead?" As we spoke, we swept back into her mind and took her memories. There were three other coercers known to her who were not on the High Board of Governors. Verisa Vers was delivering an impassioned plea, aware now that the cameras were sending these events to the world. Using skills she probably stole from the minds of others, she was eloquent and insightful and compelling in her arguments. Enough!" I said. Commanding her to silence with my thoughts. Eru's thoughts came to me. "Here stand before you the Spirit Masters returned to the world. It remains then only to show you all the truth of it." Eru said. We released the Regional High prosecutor, his assistant and the eight guards from their immobility. We sent to them. I jumped us; Ginny, Eru, the twins and myself, along with our fifteen High Governors, to Pearl. The seemingly alien landscape of this facet was pretty convincing. "We are the walkers between worlds, and we are not returned, but rather reborn. We are not rulers or leaders. Neither are we judges or enforcers." "If you are not to be any of these things to us, what will you be?" High Governor Kadi Tres asked. "We wish to be friends, and friends offer their help and support when asked." "Will Eru Jehn then be placed in control of the government?" High Governor Ua Sprai asked. "We cherish our friendship with the Soul Divers of Taluat, as our ancestors did long ago." I answered, "But we do not wish to see them rule your people any more than they do." "Ask yourselves when in living memory a publicly practicing Soul Diver has ever expressed a desire to rule. You will find no such memory." Eru added. "Only coercers, and this abomination before you, working in secret, have ever threatened the right of the Taluat to rule themselves. With their compulsions removed, you are aware of what they have done to you. Can you deny their actions, while continuing to question ours?" "Of course not, we would be fools to even consider it. What do you suggest we do next?" High Governor Tres asked. "I suggest you let us destroy the ability of these monsters to use the gift, and we will all return to the High Chamber where you can begin proceedings to clear the names of Eru Jehn and Zaia and Riah Seco, as well as schedule the trials for high treason of these six." And so it was done. We were swift, and I let Eru, eyes ablaze, direct the probe that destroyed Verisa Vers' gift. When I returned us to the Chamber of Judgment, I brought our six former coercers together in the center of the room and held them there with a telekinetic touch. Kadi Tres took control immediately. We had made him aware, with a quick thought, of the worldwide broadcast being sent from the chamber. "People of Taluat. We nine remaining High Governors of the West stand before you as witness to these facts. The Spirit Masters have returned, and these six former High Governors were indeed coercers most foul. Regional High Prosecutor! We charge you to take these accused and place them in custody. We further charge you to begin preparing Charges of High Treason against the people to be brought against them. People of Taluat! We have been coerced and compelled by those accused before you to pursue and charge the Soul Diver Eru Jehn, and those like him. We were compelled to do this despite a lack of good and sufficient cause, as a means of assuring the continued freedom of these accused to rule over us, and over you. For that reason we formally decree that all charges against Eru Jehn, Riah Seco and Zaia Seco are hereby dropped. We serve notice as well that no law which specifically regulates the practices or rights of the Soul Divers of Taluat shall be enforced, until they have been reviewed by this body and determined to be reasonable and just laws." The fallout from our attack on the High Board of Governors took years to settle out. Two of the three coercers we'd found in the mind of Verisa Vers were her counterparts in the Eastern Unity, the government that controlled the Eastern Hemisphere. The rogue Soul Diver's machinations had spanned centuries, as she stole energy from countless victims to feed her rejuvenations, unable to tap the Light for the needed power as we could. Her trail of influence across the hostile border to her counterparts in the East we eventually traced to... Master Lev! The 'unofficial, but government supported' network of smugglers and spies that he had been a major part of had been responsible, he thought, for maintaining the lines of communication between East and West. They had actually been nothing more than a front all these years for the tightly controlled traffic between the Rulers of the East and West. Maintained from a strict distance, coercion had been used only where it absolutely had to be. As a secretly sanctioned government operation, little but encouragement and funding needed to be provided except at the very top of the structure. Master Lev was stricken with guilt at first, to think that he had played any part in it. But his grief only lasted as long as it took to take the two Eastern coercers out of action. Their web of coerced victims was much thicker and more heavy handed, and when their many victims shrugged off the yoke of it, there was a massive uprising. It didn't matter to the citizens that those above them had been coerced into their behavior, they were tried and sentenced in the courts of common outrage. An enraged populace fire bombed the armed fortress where they took refuge, and when those efforts failed, the military took action, bombing the fortress into a pile of smoking rubble. It was bloody, but brief. When the smoke cleared and more reasonable minds were once again directing things, the few people, like Lev, who understood the processes at both ends suddenly became very important, especially as open and free communications resumed between the two groups. Suddenly Master Lev was too time-committed to the process of normalizing relations between East and West to feel comfortable trying to maintain his role as one of our directors. He proposed and the rest of the Rhellians concurred that Brin Dolin would take up his duties. Fortunately for Eru and the twins, they were not faced with quite so absolute a choice. With the end of state sanctioned reprisals against them, Soul Divers on both continents began to resurface. From the Eastern equivalent of Finland came an entire hidden commune of Soul Divers and their supporters, who had been quietly remaining out of the way while they maintained the history and traditions of the Soul Diver. Eru and Master Lev rejoiced, and Eru immediately asked for several of their elder instructors to come to the West to assist in the rebuilding of that tradition and history. As weightier matters kept the rich, powerful and politically astute citizens of Taluat occupied, tales with a more tabloid interest kept the rest of the citizenry enthralled as three broadcast technicians and an assistant producer who had been kept isolated in the media control room of the Chamber of Judgment filled the home viewers screens with stories of the impossibly tall, handsome, and ever so virile and manly 'Spirit Warriors'. We did not let them forget it for a long time. Cyrus told me in private some time later that Felicia called him 'Spirit Warrior' at certain times. I told him I understood completely, and that mine was 'Beggar Boy'. Change takes time, it is true, but a desire to change can happen in an instant, and collectively the people of Taluat shifted. The deep cultural reverence they held for the Soul Divers exerted itself in strength, and only repeated protestations kept them from being installed on the spot as the new government of Taluat. But even when fanned by such flames, change takes time. A certain Chinese curse came to mind... ------- Chapter 5: Hide and Seek ~ Andy Andy didn't understand it. The rule was absolutely no presents. It had always been the rule. Birthday parties were for celebrating and for parties, but they weren't for getting presents. Birthday presents came from Mom and Dad, and always after the party was over and the guests were gone. No exceptions, that was the rule. This was what made the brightly wrapped package sitting on the table alongside the birthday cake such a mystery to Andy. He continued to eye the package for the entire party, waiting for the joke to be revealed. Or maybe it wasn't a joke. Dad could be unpredictable, and Mom was an unfathomable mystery. There were no candles to blow out on the cake. That tradition had ended when he was three and discovered how to use the gift to snuff them out. 'That was the year they stopped trying to hide the Christmas presents too' Andy thought to himself. Now all he did was reach out and suppress the holo-field that was generating the glittery, flashing '10 — TEN- 10' that hovered above the cake top. With cake and ice cream out of the way, Dad got everyone's attention. "Before we sing Happy Birthday, we're going to let Andy open his present." Dave said. "Everyone here knows that birthday presents aren't something Andy and Serenity are used to seeing at their birthday parties, so bear with us please. Andy, go ahead and unwrap your present." Andy reached out with his thoughts and felt the thin wrapping, he measured the uniqueness of it in his mind and with a quick thought, jumped it to the other end of the table, leaving the contents sitting in front of him. "Show off!" He heard his sister say with a giggle. The unwrapped object was... a solid 4 inch square block of granite??? "A present?" He asked. "A test." Hid Dad answered. "What kind of test?" He asked. "The kind where you have to figure out what kind of test it is." Dad answered. "You have five days." "What do I get if I figure it out?" I asked. "When you understand the nature of the test, you will understand the nature of the reward." Dad answered. Serenity snickered. "You'll be ten in two years Ren, don't get cocky!" I told her. "I already know the answer copper top, so there!" She taunted. "No you don't, and I've asked you not to call me that." I said. "Copper top?" Great Grandpa A.J. Asked. "As in Duracel, as in battery, as in Double A, as in A.A. McKesson." Dad told him. "Ren has discovered a new way to annoy her big brother." I stared at the cube for another moment. Ren probably didn't know what the test was. Probably. I jumped it to the dresser in my room. "I'll look at it tonight. Let's play football!" I said. We played football four on four, and the teams were pretty even. I was only eight months older than Trevor, and none of us were way bigger or stronger than the others. That was probably not going to stay true for very many more years. Ian and Kieran were both two years younger than me and they were both already as big as I was. Trevor and I were captains, and we took turns picking until we had our teams. We ran out the front door of the house where Uncle Con 'announced' the starting line ups. "Starting for the McKesson Marauders; Andrew Alan McKesson, Jeni Jean Anderson, Maia Patrice Poole and Grace Marie Parkin!" Con yelled, and we ran out on the grass. "Starting for the Parkin Prowlers; Trevor Paul Parkin, Kieran Oscar Alvarez, Serenity Elizabeth McKesson and Ian Dale Parkin!" Con yelled out their names and they ran out too. "Pick a number between 1 and 1 billion." Con said to Trev and I. "4,137,269" Trev called. "500,525,215.3175!" I hollered back. I heard Jeni giggle behind me. "The number was 4! the Parkin Prowlers win the toss." Con declared. We just laughed. Con always picked 4, and none of us really cared who won the toss. As we lined up to kick off, I heard Grandpa Carson lean over to Grandma Carson and whisper "Does Hyannis Port ring a bell?" I'd have to look that up later. Now it was time for football. We played with Legion rules. We were allowed to use our gifts on ourselves only, but not on the ball, and not on the other players. If we were carrying the ball we could do Light-jumps sideways or backwards, but not towards the goal, and the ball carrier couldn't do more than one per play. We started on defense, which was fine with me, because I had a new trick I wanted to try. We had a standard trick called the 'residual afterimage linebacker', where we jumped back and forth between two places while we waited for the snap. We cycled through the spots so fast that your eye couldn't really tell which image was live and which one was residual. Kinda like the trick of making circles in the air with Halloween glow sticks at night. My new trick was to add a third spot to the cycle of jumps, but I popped a Light shield between me and the line as I hit first and third spot. It kept the image from building in those spots because the Light was disguising it. It looked like I was just crouched in one spot, and when the ball was snapped I zoomed in from nowhere and sacked Trevor. "Good one!" Trev called as I helped him up. It only worked one more time for a good play before Ren figured it out, but any game where you could introduce a new trick was a good one. We played until the adults began to think we should be getting tired, and then we stopped, collapsing onto the lawn laughing and pretending to catch our breath. I did get a birthday present before dinner, and as usual Dad was sneaky about it. "If you want to see your birthday present Andy, we're going to have to take a little ride." "Okay!" I said. I stopped trying to peek in people's minds to find out what I was getting when I was four. That was the year I didn't get any presents. Dad still liked to be sneaky though. "On horseback!" Dad called out as he jumped out of the room. I jumped right behind him to the stables at Kieran's house. Dad was already sitting in the saddle of Copper, his horse. He must've jumped straight into the saddle. He was holding the reins of another horse that already had my saddle on it. I looked at Ranger's stall, the horse I usually rode, then back at the horse, then at Dad. He held out the reins to me. "Happy birthday son!" Whoopee!! My own horse! I danced a little happy dance in my head, but managed to only grin at Dad. "Awesome Dad! Thank you, thank you!" I took the reins and touched the horses mind with my thoughts. We tried each other on for size, and I think we were both pretty happy right off the bat. "His name is Slider." I said to Dad. I checked the saddle and blanket for fit and made sure things were cinched up tight. Uncle Dwight always said "Treat a saddled horse like a parachute and always double check everything before you strap it on." We only had an hour of daylight to ride in before dinner. But we road down to the Cataloochee, and followed it for a little while. Slider was happy to let Dad and Copper lead, but I could tell that he had bundles of energy he wanted to let go of, so I promised him a big ride in the morning. We picked up the pace a little on the way back and both horses were happy when we got back to the stable. WE got the tack put away and Copper and Slider cleaned and groomed. I got a nice nuzzle from Slider, and I patted his neck before we took off for home. Dinner that night was just family. Dad and Mom, Grandma and Grandpa McKesson, Grandma and Grandpa Parkin, Great-Grandpa A.J., Great-Grandma and Grandpa Carson, Uncle Ambrose, Aunt Ia and Uncle Aaron, Uncle Pete and Aunt Sarah, and Con and Eru. And Ian and Grace of course. Grandma McKesson made me Grilled Lime Chicken with black bean sauce. my favorite! Trevor thinks I'm weird, but Grandma is an awesome cook so its hard to pick a favorite around her. Last year it was Mom's curried lamb and rice. Next year it'll be Great Grandma Parkin's turn. I plan on having a new favorite every year until they stop throwing me birthday parties. Maybe by then they'll figure out that I'm rotating the cooks when I change favorites. That night, after bedtime rolled around, I sat in my room staring at the granite cube as I held it in midair in front of me, slowly spinning it around and around. The first thing I did was zoom in on it with a little augmented vision. I found it right away, as I'm sure Dad expected. Micro-etched into every side of the cube were the words. "This isn't the answer." I had only looked to satisfy my curiosity. Depending on the mood he's in, Dad's sense of humor can be very strange. Since I had used one of Ren's old sandbox game tricks, I decided to try the other, and I began trying to coax the cube's Light signature to reveal what was connected to it. That was the first big road sign that told me I was on the right track. This piece of rock didn't have the usual connections. If you can coax the information out, even a grain of sand at the mouth of a river can lead you back to the exact spot on the mountainside it washed down from. This one didn't have any connections leading anywhere, except one to Dad, and I expected that one. The only connection I could find seemed to just vanish into... nowhere! That oddness with the Light signature was the key, I knew it, but I wasn't sure why. I went to sleep with the image of the cube still spinning in my brain. We took Slider out for a ride the next morning after breakfast. We weren't a working ranch or farm, like a lot of the homesteads we visited were, so we weren't up before sunup doing chores, but we ate breakfast every morning at eight. Mom or Dad usually cooked, unless they were gone on a trip somewhere, then it would be Shelaana. I cooked once in a while, pancakes or French toast usually. Serenity made waffles once in a while, but not much else. I knew how she worked though. She would wait until she'd absorbed the whole 'being a chef' thing and then she'd offer to cook some day and we'd all get treated to a gourmet meal. Trevor and his Mom and Dad came over to go riding with us. Ian and Grace were going to go to a concert in Austin, Texas with Serenity, Mom and Aunt Felicia. Cyrus was going, along with an Obsidian Industries security team. Mom and Dad weren't allowed to go anywhere on Earth without a security team anymore. Trevor says its because Dad is the richest man in the world. Dad didn't say where he had to be, he was already gone by the time I got up. We followed the Cataloochee east again, but we crossed the river early in the ride and rode through a seemingly endless stand of tall thin alder trees that seemed to fill the flats on the south side of the river. Dwight said they grew thicker on this side cause the light was better and the alders preferred the sandier soil. "These alders go for the easy life, first to get the sun and right next to the water, but they pay a price for it." Pete said. "You almost never see one of these trees get much bigger than you see them right now, and a hard winter with some heavy rain raising the river out of its banks will wipe a good chunk of em out." As we rode, the light from the rising sun in front of us strobed through the trees, and at the same time the reflected light from the Cataloochee did the same from our left. Since we only saw light from the moving surface of the river as the angles caught the sun just right, the timing of the two flickering strobe effects were different. It was hard to watch them both at the same time because of it. Their phases didn't match up, except very briefly once in a while, and then it seemed for just a split second like the light was coming from everywhere at once. That's what triggered it for me. Suddenly I knew what I"d been missing last night, looking at that granite cube! I reached out to my room and jumped the cube to me, holding it in the air in front of me, letting it spin slowly. Slider sensed my attention shift from the trail in front of us, and he stopped. Trevor looked back at me and took it in. "Uh oh! Andy's having an elder Hurlon moment." He hollered to everyone. I didn't notice Trevor stop and his words didn't register. My mind was focused on the cube, and the Light signature that had puzzled me so much last night. I coaxed the Light to give up its Light trails again, and this time when the one that led back to where it had started, I didn't let it disappear, I just shifted my mind a little and followed it! It was a strange sensation, like Jumping, magnified! I fell into a spot of Light for just an instant, almost seeming like I'd gone all flat and one dimensional, just long enough for the sensation to register, and then the entire feeling slipped away, in exactly revered order. I blinked. I was still on Strider, and the two of us were on the edge of a mesa of some kind. There was a huge cliff to my left, where there had been a river seconds ago. Slider 'whuffed' a little snort, and I heard a hawk's cry from somewhere. The sun was much lower in the sky here, still in front of me, and it was barely past sunrise. I looked to my right and saw the mesa I was on stretched off to the horizon to the north. "Welcome to Hawk's Mesa." I said to Strider as I reached down to rub his neck in reassurance. It suddenly occurred to me after a moment that I probably had some confused and worried folks wondering what happened to me back on Meadow. I jumped Strider and I right back to where we'd started. "He's back! He's back!" Ian and Grace began hollering in unison the instant I reappeared. "Andy, you're not supposed to be jumping off on your own without permission, you know that!" Uncle Pete said angrily. "I'm sorry Uncle Pete, Aunt Sarah, I didn't go jumping off. Well, I did, but not on purpose!" "Looked like it to me, Andy!" Grace taunted. "What was this all about then?" Aunt Sarah asked. I realized then that in all the excitement, I'd left my cube back on Hawk's Mesa. I jumped it into my hand and held it up. "I solved the test Dad gave me for my birthday yesterday." We finished our ride, but with Ian and Grace along, I didn't really get to let Slider run. When we got back to the house for lunch, Dad was waiting for us. "Good Job Andy!" Dad said, thumping me on the back, followed by ruffling my hair. "Lets eat!" Lunch was one of Dad's usual concoctions, something he called 'Chicken Fried Steak Wraps". Chicken fried steak got cut into really thin strips and then mixed in with hash browns and wrapped in a big tortilla shell. We each got a little bowl of country gravy to dip them in. We also had some fresh pineapple, pear and peach slices in a bowl. Everyone headed home after lunch, and I helped Dad clean up the kitchen. We got finished and Dad jumped a big package onto the kitchen table. "Open that up." He said. Ren wasn't around, so I didn't feel the need to get fancy. I tore the plain white paper off with my hands. Inside the paper was a complete set of Legion armor. Except this armor had a deep emerald green everywhere that the Legion armor had sapphire blue. "Wow!" I said, stunned. "Take off your bracelet and try it on." Dad said. Like the rest of the family who weren't actually Legionnaires, I had one of the 'auxilliary' bracelets that let me use the gates, and the enhanced cell phones that we got from Grandpa's company. I pulled the bracelet off and tossed it to Dad. I had the armor on in a heartbeat. "This is no special privilege. Everyone who can demonstrate that aspect of the gift will get the same treatment. The armor isn't for showing off, its for protection. You now have the demonstrated ability to find and jump to facets unknown to anyone else. unknown and unexplored means we don't know if they're dangerous or not. You will wear the armor whenever you are on one, no exceptions. Understood?" "Yes sir." I said. Dad had an 'I mean business' mode, and he was in it. He locked eyes with me for a long couple of seconds. You can't say yes and not mean it when your sharing your thoughts with the person asking. Dad's stare wasn't about honesty, it was about character. 'There are plenty of people who will say yes and mean it. But men of character do not put time limits or conditions on their promises.' he told me the first time he asked me to promise him something. "Okay, lets go for a ride!" Dad said finally. But when we walked out on the front porch, there was Uncle Constantine standing in the open hatch of Dare, their hopper. "Greetings Andy!" Con said with a big smile. "I hear we're going to go add a new facet to the data banks today. Does it have an official designator yet?" "Hi yourself Con!" I said. "So that's what kind of ride we're going on huh? I don't know about official designator, but I've been calling it Hawk's Mesa." With Dare buttoned up and hovering 20 feet off the ground, I got to jump us through to Hawk's Mesa. We hovered in the air for a few minutes while the hopper took some initial measurements. The altimeter said we were over a mile above sea level, and the pressure and atmosphere readings confirmed it. "Thin but breathable." Dad said, "sort of like visiting Machu Picchu. We may have some adjustment issues if we spend more than a few minutes though. " Dad and Con both had their armor on, and as we walked down the ramp onto the grassy plain of the high mesa, Dad explained the procedure. "Your armor, just like what your Uncle Con and your Mom and I wear on missions, has built in sensors and recorders. I'll let Con give you a memory dump of the operating procedures. As soon as we were all off the ramp I got the dump from Con's memory, and saw how to start the recorders and sensor array. I got mine going right away. "The first thing I do is a quick scan with my mind, just to see if there are any other people in the area. We're looking clear here. Try it to the limit of your range." I did, and saw that there was nobody within at least a thousand miles of us. "Your suit is recording atmospheric composition, pressure, gravity, and temperature. You're also getting a reading on background radiation, UV exposure and other possibly harmful elements. Anything potentially harmful will trigger an immediate warning." Con told me. "The suits recorders are a passive system. Turn it on and forget it is the best idea. For long range scanning we use the Long Ear." Dad said, opening a compartment in the side of the hopper. Dad pulled a long cylinder out of the compartment. One end had three metal rods sticking out, and the other was smooth, with a flat end. "Pop the legtennas here" He said, showing me where he pushed an inset switch "and set it on the ground. It'll self adjust at that point if the ground is uneven." "Legtennas?" I asked. "They're legs before you launch it, but when it hits its operational altitude they get used as an antenna array for several of the sensor systems, so we call them legtennas." Con said. "At this point you hit the power-up here" Dad showed me "and then you can either manually enter a delay time or hit the go button to initiate an immediate launch." Dad hit the go button and the device zoomed off into the midmorning sky, disappearing above us in the blink of an eye. "Tell your suit to go into comm mode, like this." Con said, showing me his thoughts. I got comm mode going. "and tap into the Long Ear like this." I saw that procedure in his thoughts and followed it as well. I saw a row of telltales pop up into the holo-display the comm gear had popped up in front of my eyes. "It starts listening for radio broadcasts, radar nets, grav signatures and other signs of technology immediately. If it hits anything, your telltales will pop up a warning indicator, and an audible alarm will sound." Dad said. I followed them through the entire Long Ear deployment and evaluation procedure. It only took ten minutes. Dad said the original Long Ears took 30 minutes just to hit its target altitude, but the newer ones were much faster. We got a series of 'quick looks' on the way up. Low resolution still shots that popped up on the holo-display behind the telltales. The telltales went almost transparent when that happened, but Dad said they would go solid the minute they detected any change. By the time the ten minutes had passed we began to notice the thin air. "Its a good thing you didn't stay very long on your first visit. I doubt that horses would do well up here." Dad said. With good feeds coming in from the Long Ear we didn't linger any longer outside. With Dare buttoned up and the internal air pressure back up to normal levels we checked out the rest of the data. "Definitely no signs of civilization, high or low tech. We've got a strip of lowlands between this high mesa and the ocean that averages about a mile wide as far as the Long Ear can see, but this isn't intended to give global or even full hemispheric coverage." That would have to wait for one of the Legion teams to do a survey. I knew that. We hopped to Obsidian and went through the official process of dumping a new facet into the data banks. When it came time for the official designator, I decided to be brief, and just called it Mesa. Dad and Con shook my hand and congratulated me. Dad and I went to the Garden for a session after we were done at the admin center, and I got a good lesson on the use of my new suit and the hopper. At dinner that night I got congratulations all around. Mom, Dad and Con told me they made one trip a week, and I could go on one a month with them. "Because you can find and jump to new facets does not mean you have permission to do so Andy." Mom said. "Once a month, we'll let you do the finding, but for now that's it." Restricting my ability to find and jump to new facets was not that big a deal to me. I had a new Horse! After a week of going for morning and afternoon rides with Dad or Uncle Pete or some other adult, The decision was made that Slider and I were comfortable with each other, and I was finally allowed to ride alone. Once I had permission, I began jumping over to Darin and Esau Jacobson's farm to ride with them. Darin was the same age as me, and his brother Esau was thirteen. Their farm was in a nice stretch of country a little southeast of what would have been Meridian, Mississippi on Earth. They were growing some sort of barley or something I think, and raising a nice herd of Dairy cows. Darin and Esau rode the 'line' looking for strays and predators, but it was pretty easy work most of the time. Every once in a while they'd come across a piece of fencing that needed work, and we'd wind up pounding posts, digging holes or twisting wire. It was dirty, sweaty work when we found it, but most of the times it was just riding along, talking. Still, Mr. Jacobsen said we were earning our keep. Mostly I just enjoyed the riding and listening to Esau's endless line of jokes. Some of them weren't all that funny, but I laughed at the good ones and shook my head at the rest. Esau tried bullying us a little when we first started riding with him, but it didn't last too long after the first time he tried to get physical. Dad's right that being a McKesson doesn't mean we're born with special privileges, but being a McKesson does mean there are opportunities. Taking Uncle Cyrus and Uncle Chet's self defense classes since I was five was one of them. Esau turned out to be pretty happy to have us along once he got the idea that he wasn't going to have to babysit us. The thought of being saddled with two 'babies' was what made him try bullying us in the first place. If anything, Darin was probably more serious minded and hard working than Esau was anyway. Darin had been born right there on the ranch, and had never even seen snow, so I got to bring them up to the smoky mountains the next winter and teach him how to build a snowman. ------- Chapter 6: Trail of Stars The initial survey of Mesa was done by Team One. The data feeds from the survey platforms were spectacular. Mesa contained a single island super continent, and the entire coastline duplicated the small section we saw at our arrival point. There were seven other major river canyon systems that ran to the sea. None quite as spectacular as the one we'd spotted during our initial trip. The high plains were not featureless. There were hills and mountains, including a range with rugged peaks of near Himalayan magnitude in the far northeast. I was too busy with other events to pay much attention. That unknown face we'd left a faint tag on in Pittsburgh years ago during the Howard Dexter ruckus resurfaced in Dearborn, Michigan at the ground breaking ceremony for the first Obsidian Motors assembly plant. After ten years of refusing to compete against American auto makers, we couldn't ignore the closure of over half the Ford, Chevrolet and GM plants in the country. We decided to buck current trends by making cars in America with American labor. To be honest, we did it because we could afford to. First of all we were able to knock the costs of licensing the fuel cell and reactor technologies right off the top. We didn't have to pay to use our own patents and technologies. There were a lot of future long range plans that hinged on the production from that plant, and we didn't much care if we made a penny from it for the next ten years. It may have been Dad and I standing in front of the sign holding the golden shovels, but it was A.J. McKesson's hand and mind that had hatched this scheme and mapped out the road to achieving it. With Dad and I both there, we had security out in force, including both Chet and Cyrus as well as Sylvia and Tony Herrera. In the past ten years the couple had moved completely into our inner group, received the basic training on Obsidian and eventually moved completely over into the category of 'awakened'. Sylvia in particular had taken to the mind training, and was recently included in the small group of people who were getting Spirit Master classes. Eru and the twins were currently working with Sylvia, Laik Hulin, Porter Burgess and his daughter Ariana, and a young man from Taluat named Byl Thron. With Chet, Cyrus, Sylvia and Tony detailed as our security for the ceremony, we had plenty of traditional support, and plenty of mental support as well. That left me free to take advantage of the situation when the tag I'd left behind in Pittsburgh was triggered. The tag was a proximity trap wrapped around the little piece of consciousness that was 'interest in the McKessons'. It was active only when the tagged person was within 100 feet of me or Ginny. It was also very low power. So low that it wouldn't impinge on our conscious minds at all. We had set up triggers within ourselves to recognize and react to it without a conscious act on our parts. When activated our trigger jumped a tiny Light transmitter half as thick as a human hair directly under the skin, square between the shoulder blades of our unknown target's back. Based on some of the Kri Light technology we discovered buried in the 'rabbit hole' on Autumn, the transmitter picked up any surface thoughts within a 5 foot radius and converted them to a stream of modulated Light and broadcast them out to the world, and there is no such thing as distance or direction when it comes to Light. All limitations and weaknesses are in our weak flesh and limited minds. A person's surface thoughts generally convey all their verbalizations, sub-vocal or otherwise, as well as everything audible picked up by their hearing, even if its not consciously heard at the time. They'll even convey visuals if the person is really focusing on something. Our faint little tag was now an untraceable tap into not only the thoughts of our unknown enemy, but every word he spoke or heard as well. On Taluat, Eru and the twins jumped up in the middle of a lesson like they'd been poked with a cattle prod when the transmitter began broadcasting. Laik described it later. "They shot up like they were spring loaded, did a little happy dance like I'd never seen before, and then clammed up. Lesson over, time to go home now boys and girls, see you later and goodbye!" Two days later, with all of us back on Meadow, Ginny and I got filled in on the details along with the Legion and the Directors. "His name is Gordon Halsey. He lives on a ranch near the small town of Raton, New Mexico. This is in northern New Mexico, very near the Colorado border. He is the owner of a Colorado whitewater rafting business that offers 'luxury' guided tours of the Colorado, Snake, Rio Grand and other rivers." Eru said. "The actual Whitewater rafting operation appears completely legitimate, and its daily operations are under the control of Diane and Roger Turner, Gordon Halsey's sister and brother-in-law. They employ about 20 other people during the peak of the season" Zaia added. "The interesting wrinkle is the dozen or so 'ultra luxury' trips taken each year by the very rich. These are always headed by Gordon Halsey himself, and the charge is anywhere from a couple hundred thousand dollars to as much as 2 million. This is where he's getting his personal operating income." Riah continued. "So far this guy doesn't sound like quite the evil mastermind we were expecting." Formerio said. "No, he doesn't." Eru said, shaking his head. "And to be honest, His current situation suggests someone with a much more reasonable approach than what we've come to expect from coercers." "It looks like we can afford to take more time, so we're going to." I said. "Chet, Cyrus, Tony and Sylvia, I want you four to work on getting us the details. More background on the sister and brother-in-law and other family if they exist. We need to know what kind of security the ranch has, and whether we can get any other surveillance set up there. We have some other 'undetectable' Kri technology that we can call on, so get together with Con and Arden once you have an idea of what can be done. Unless its urgent, we wont expect an update until next month's meeting." On the first day of May, during the by now 'extended family dinner' at our house, Chet Alvarez and Zaia Seco announced their engagement. When they did, every eye in the room turned to Riah. Riah blew her sister a kiss, walked over to where Laik Hulin was sitting and slid into his lap and kissed him soundly. "What???" She asked, batting her eyelashes at the room. Once again we were the victims of a conspiracy. Chet and Zaia would be married on his parent's farm in three months, and Riah and Laik were planning a mating ceremony at the Great Library of Ureda exactly one day later. We considered the need to get involved in the planning of Riah and Laik's ceremony a good excuse to make a trip to Borthun's Rest and see Borthun and Yela. We did not get to see them very often, so imagine the surprise when we dropped in and discovered Yela showing a very nice tummy, looking about six months pregnant! Ginny went into Dr. McKesson mode immediately, and chastised the couple for not letting us know about the pregnancy. "Yela, there are always health issues with pregnancy, and I am a doctor! Who has been doing your prenatal checkups? What has your diet been like? Are you getting enough rest?" Yela had to have the concept of prenatal checkups explained to her. This caused even more Dr. McKesson indignation. Some things were said sternly in raised voices, and promises made and sworn to. Arrangements were made and when the dust cleared I was under instructions to see to it that a gate was added to the "special room" at the back of the inn. Yela would be visiting Ginny's office for a checkup on a weekly basis. Borthun quickly and efficiently raised some serious objections to Laik and Riah's ceremony taking place at the Great Library. "Dave, are you aware of how busy the library is these days? If you ask Laik, he'll tell you that there are an average of 300 to 500 researchers and students there every day. The visitors barracks are always completely full and a system of time-shifted sharing has sprung up all on its own to accommodate the overflow. Students are signing up 3 to a room and studying in shifts so that they can take turns sleeping." "Borthun, I had no idea!" I told him. "Laik has been reporting that things are going very well and that we needed to think about expanding our capacity, but I didn't realize it was this bad." "In some ways its better and worse than even what I just told you." Borthun added. "Since the library doesn't charge for the rooms, and they are available on a first come, first serve basis, we are currently seeing a large number of the homeless indigents of Ureda signed up to do research." "Your kidding!" I said, without thinking. "No, I do not jest. We are providing, unwittingly at the start, but with full support of the Library staff now, a complete adult and juvenile literacy program to whoever asks for it. We will soon have produced the most widely read generation of homeless Uredans in history." Borthun may not have been kidding, but he was making a joke with that last comment, and I laughed appreciatively. "What do you suggest then Borthun?" "With three months of lead time? Lets hold it here at the inn. I will reserve all the rooms starting two days before and running through the two days after the ceremony. That will give time to decorate, and allow whoever you hire to cater the event time to get familiar with the facility." "You don't want to cater it yourself?" "Are you kidding, and miss a chance to spend five days away from the kitchen? Laik and Riah were both thrilled with the idea, and I told Laik I wanted a complete report on the homeless student situation at the next Director's meeting. He had the grace to look embarrassed at having me find out the true nature of the situation from Borthun, but any reservations he had were wiped away when I told him that it was exactly these kinds of opportunities that we were looking for on Meadow. Borthun also let me know that he understood the real reason for Yela's frequent trips to Ginny's office for checkups. He had certainly heard us speculate often enough about the reasons behind the Light awareness of our children. "I will not mention it to Yela unless she asks." Borthun told me. "A pregnant woman should not be given new things to worry about." Ginny didn't have an office, but she would by the time Yela was due for her first appointment. I knew who'd be put in charge of making it happen to. So while the ladies were of for an initial examination, I gave Con a mental shout. I caught Con up on the reason we were adding an office, and a few other things, and I realized that outside of our more or less weekly scouting trips, I wasn't spending much time with Con these days. Not to mention Borthun, or Eru, or the guys in the Legion. I was firmly stuck in the world of fatherhood and David Alan McKesson, head of the Obsidian Technology Group. I was going to have to do something about that. Engagements and pregnancies and family time were going to have to get set aside for a guys' night out one of these days, and pretty darned soon. Obsidian Technologies could do without my smiling face for a day or two as well. I was more the wind in the sail than I was the pilot of that ship anyway. Over the next three days I stoked the engines and got the sails out of their lockers. The S.S. Guys Night Out was going to sail. With Con as my first mate, we soon had recruited the full original crew. Chet, Cyrus, Arden, Mike, Fred, and Pete were signed on. From my end I recruited Eru, Laik, and Borthun. We rounded out our crew with Chet's brother Dwight, Uncle Aaron, and Tony Herrera. I was going to suggest borrowing the island retreat we'd built on Archipelago for Uncle Ambrose and Aunt Ia's honeymoon when I was soundly vetoed by Brin Dolin and Eru. "Dave, what good does it do to have yourself a world full of admirers if you're not going to take advantage of it?" Brin said. "I am personally recommending we convene in a local watering hole in Sheye that Eru and I know of, and sample the Taluatan hospitality!" "The upside of this idea is that you can leave security up to The Soul Divers and their students at the school. It will be good training for them, and who could provide better security for us?" Eru added. It met with such immediate approval from everyone else, that I just couldn't say no. That's my official position, and I'm sticking to it. Probably due to the Soul Diver school connection, we quickly wound up adding Porter Burgess and Diyr Oli, our recently recruited Linguistic Anthropologist, who suggested we also invite his research partner, Jon Turley. This brought our number up to eighteen, and there it stayed until the night before our scheduled event, when I got a call from Master Lev. "Hi Dave! I hate to wait until the eve of the debacle to ask, but I just got back from another mission to Lesethe and heard about your plan from an old friend. Do you have room for one more thirsty old campaigner? I'll be a little late, and dragging my old friend along." Always room for more of course, and suddenly we were twenty in number, and we were thirsty! The 'local watering hole' that Brin and Eru led us to that night was 'The Event Horizon'. The city of Sheye, in addition to being a big commercial shipping port, was also a college town. Shipping via Barge and Ship were less important than ever on Taluat these days, now that the restrictions on commercial air traffic between the East and West had been lifted, but the shipping side was quickly evolving into a re-shipping center. Items going East came here first for consolidation into more efficient cargo units, and shipments coming in from the East came here where they were broken up and sorted into smaller loads for shipment to their final destinations. Sheye was home to RUAAT, the Regional University of Astrophysics and Advanced Technologies. And EULAH, the Eastern University of Language, Arts and Humanities. The Event Horizon was where the local science and technology geeks came to let off steam, and the local liberal arts students came in search of smart, soon-to-be-successful future husbands. Brin had managed to reserve an entire section for us. We had a straight shot to the bathrooms and were away from the band and the dance floor. We also had our own cadre of servers, but I suspect that that was more a management decision, since Brin said the reservation had been made for 'Spirit Master McKesson and party'. Our cadre of servers also included two imposing bouncers named Mat and Arom, who were under orders to keep the rest of the patrons away from us. We quickly got them straightened out. Their job was to guard the main door and prevent publicity seekers and media from entering. Regular customers were welcome, and they were free to approach us if they wanted. Any concerns for our personal safety were eased when Cyrus and Chet stood, activated their Legion armor and let themselves be punched in the gut. Just showing the armor would have been enough, but the guys loved that particular demonstration. We also made sure they knew we had Soul Diver's from the school on duty watching for things they wouldn't be able to deal with. I saw them give each other a look, and wondered what the owner was paying them for their services tonight. The final solution was to show them our bracelets, and tell them anyone with one of these, or a student ID to one of the schools they recognized could be admitted. All this got settled in the first fifteen minutes, when Cyrus, Chet, Brin, Eru, Con, and I arrived. We had decided to avoid the spectacle of jumping directly there, and instead we were all jumping in to the Soul Diver's school and being driven from there in groups of six, except for Eldo Lev and his friend, who would simply drive over from wherever Eldo was staying. I think he kept an apartment here, but wasn't sure. Of course we made a stir when we arrived, but it was early in the evening, and the Event Horizon had only a few customers when we first got there. Fifteen minutes later Arden, Mike, Fred, Pete, Tony and Dwight arrived. With a dozen of us there it was time to think about what we were going to be drinking. "What's the most popular item on tap here?" I asked Glova, our senior server. "the most popular is 'Lachon's Special Reserve Ale'" She said with a grimace. "It is popular mostly because it is the least expensive item on tap, and we serve mostly college students." "Of course, say no more!" I said with a laugh. "What would you say is the best of what you have on tap?" "I highly recommend the 'Black Ocean Spring Turning', which is a seasonal, or the 'Copper Cauldron White Cap', which is a 'hurish brewing. Both are from local brewers and are exceptionally good. "I looked at Brin when she said 'hurish', as the word didn't translate for me. Brin struggled for a second in an attempt to do his own translation before Eru saved the day. "It means it is brewed from wheat." "Bring us a tower of each!" Brin said. Knowing Eru's preferences as I did, I also asked her to bring a bottle each of their best red and white wines. A 'tower' it turned out was a tall, clear glass cylinder that held three gallons and sat on a stainless steel base with a spigot in the side. Very popular with the college crowds here, who would pool their funds and buy a tower to share at their table. We had just had a chance to sample the two beers when the third group arrived. Borthun, Laik, Diyr, Porter, Aaron and Jon. I hadn't really had much chance to get to know Diyr Oli or Jon Turley, so I asked them to sit with me at first, along with Porter Burgess. I had decided I really liked the Black Ocean brew, and recommended it to them. Arden and Laik joined us as well, and we sat sipping our beer and talking about their exciting work on the triplets with Jon and Diyr. Along the way I found that Jon had been an only child whose parents had died in a train derailment in West Virginia when he was a freshman in college. The life insurance and a liability settlement from the railroad allowed him to pay for college all the way through the doctoral program at Michigan State. Diyr Oli I learned was the youngest of five children of Pel and Kieli Oli. Diyr's parents were both still alive and owned a small store that sold bathroom fixtures and plumbing supplies in a small town in the northeast called Falle's Bluff. With the revelations regarding the Spirit Masters, and Diyr's recruitment by them, Diyr laughingly said he had gone from being the black sheep of the family to the favorite son. When we came up for air from our seemingly brief conversation, we discovered that the Event Horizon had swung into high gear around us. The place was half full now, and our tower of Black Ocean was gone. The tower of Copper Cauldron was barely touched, and a quick survey of the group told us that all the folks from Earth thought it tasted 'funny'. "Its the wheat, I think." Eru said. "I've always thought Earth bread was a little off as well." Mater Lev and his friend had not arrived yet, but we still had plenty of time left in the night. We ordered two more towers of the Black Ocean, but were at a loss with what to do with the Copper Cauldron. Finally I asked Glova if she could find us a table of underprivileged college students who might be willing to take it off our hands. She gave out a sharp, loud bark of a laugh. "Sir, with all due respect, these are college students. If there is alcohol in it, they wouldn't care if it had been used to rinse the dishes with, they would drink it." "Dave, how much socializing with these students did you envision would take place tonight?" Con asked. "Well, I assumed there would be some, these are fellow geeks after all, but I hadn't thought much more of it. Why?" "There are five tables here, with room for six people at a table. Even after our last two arrive we're going to have room for two more people at each table. Perhaps Glova can spread the word amongst the nearest ten tables that one person from each table is welcome to come fill their glass from the Copper Cauldron tower and sit and visit until their glass is empty, then they can return to their table and send up the next one?" "That sounds workable to me. What do you think Glova?" "That will work very well, I think." She said. "Although I think it would be better received if you were to make the invitations in person." "That's true." I said. "Very well, you lead me to the table to make the introductions, and I'll do the actual invitation." As we approached the first table, Glova told me that she had picked it first because this particular group of students seemed to be perpetually short on funds. Did I mention that Glova is an exceptionally attractive young woman, and her uniform was quite form fitting? With Ginny as my standard, I sometimes forget the effect a beautiful woman can have on a man. I was reminded of it immediately, as the entire table became instantly awash in the most basic of hormonal responses. "Gentleman, this is Spirit Master McKesson. Perhaps you recognize him?" She said to the eight young men at the table. It was a tribute to her beauty that until she said it, they had not noticed me at all. "He would like to make you an offer." "Gentlemen, as you may have noticed, some friends and I are having an evening out, and have been given a section of this fine establishment in which to enjoy ourselves. We have a tower of Copper Cauldron up there that we have discovered none of us are all that fonds of, and a few extra seats at every table." I bowed slightly in Glova's direction. "This lovely and charming young lady has reminded us how bare student pockets usually are, so we would like to extend an invitation. One person at a time can come up, fill their glass from the tower of Copper and join us at our tables until the glass is empty. When your glass is empty, return to your table and let the next person do the same. Would you be willing to accept our offer?" Of course they did, and as we moved on to the next table I whispered to Glova. "I have told my wife that she is the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, and I believe that to be true, but even if no man ever in your life has told you out loud that you are beautiful, the reaction you just got from these young men should be sufficient to tell you it is true." We repeated our task at nine more tables. At one of them I was even recognized, despite Glova's ability to distract the male eye. When we got back, I found that Master Lev and his friend had arrived while we were gone. The 'friend' was my own Grandfather, A.J. McKesson!! Our greetings were brief, a little backslapping and hugging, as well as a little teasing from Master Lev about having pulled one over on me. We were already greeting our student guests as they arrived. Also I had an empty glass, and that needed to be corrected. As we sat, A.J. asked me, "Are we socializing or recruiting?" "Socializing, definitely!" I answered. "But we certainly will keep our eyes peeled for potential recruits!" That earned a laugh, and with our glasses full, we shared a little toast and a good swallow of the Black Ocean. The first student guest at our table was Greg Halic, a third year student of Biochemistry. Greg was one of the rare Taluatans with a name which was a phonetic match for an Earth-English one. With Greg there, and the realization that we were halfway through our second tower of Black Ocean, I Caught Glova's eye, and she came over, menus in hand. "I was wondering when one of you bright guys would begin to realize that you would soon be needing some food to help absorb all the alcohol." "Glova, You are obviously here for more than decorative reasons, right Greg?" I teased. "Whoever they assigned to your group would be their very best sir, there's no doubt about that!" He observed. "But the ravishing beauty part doesn't hurt either!" Glova and I both laughed, and Greg got a pat on the cheek and a thank you from Glova. Bar food on Taluat, like bar food on Earth, seemed to be tilted heavily towards the deep-fried end of the spectrum. I asked Greg what his favorite item was on their menu. He blushed and said the only thing on the menu he'd ever had was the fried potato skins. I referred Glova to Brin and Eru, and told her to let them know they were to order for all of us. I did want to try something I'd spotted though, called the Farmer's Blanket. It was a bacon and cheese stuffed chunk of corn bread that was pan fried in butter until the edges were crispy. It sounded like a serious beer absorber to me. About the time the second wave of students started coming in, the band started up. We were sitting about as far away from them as you could get, but their amplifiers were the equal of anything on Earth and the sound was overwhelming, and made it difficult to talk. We struggled to talk over it, but I finally gave up and tried out one of the Light tricks I'd worked on over the years. I built an image of our reserved section in my mind, and once I had it solidly, I put a curtain of sound deadening Light all around its edges. We could still here the music, and the noise from the tables around us, but it was greatly reduced. "There! That's better!" I declared. Everyone in our section noticed the instantaneous drop off in the noise level, and my words immediately afterwards. "Nice trick!" Said the student who came to sit with me next. "I'm Eru Apric. A pleasure meeting you." "Eru, we have another Eru!" I said in surprise. "Get used to it!" Eru said with a laugh. "Its actually a very common name on Taluat. Probably like Tom or John." "Actually, my parents named me after you Eru Jehn. They were members of the Semexian Orchestra. The roof of the Haletine performance hall collapsed on them during a performance 25 years ago. You were their grief counselor at the crisis center." The young man said. "And can I say, you look remarkably fit for a man of your years." "I do remember that time. It was a great tragedy, but it does my soul good to know that my efforts produced some lasting good." Eru answered. "As to my fitness, lets just say that making invisible soundproofing with a thought is not the only trick the Spirit Masters are capable of." Our young Eru was a student of light science, studying laser science specifically, and actually confessed to wishing he had an opportunity to meet Ginny, rather than me. "No offense Master McKesson, but the vidcasts I have seen of Doctor McKesson announcing the introduction of dental and opthalmologic laser technology were fascinating." Young Eru Apric was only a year away from his official recognition for Mastery in the Light Sciences, and he was enthusiastic, well spoken and friendly. I scanned him lightly and found nothing inside the young man that disputed that impression. I jumped a blank piece of card stock from my desk drawer on Obsidian, along with a blue Sharpie. "Write down your name and contact information on this card." I told the young man. "My wife will be giving a lecture at RUAAT in a couple of months. I'll pass your information along, and unless I miss my guess you'll be hearing from her. She's always looking for local people willing to champion some of the causes she is working on. Medical lasers are high on her list." Once he'd put the info down on the card I jumped it back to my office on Obsidian, putting it on the desk where I'd see it right away. I let him keep the Sharpie, which he thought was much cooler than seeing the card disappear from my fingers. "If there's some chance I'll be seeing you again sir, I should finish my beer and get back to my table. Most of my table mates will probably wind up buried in some basement laboratory working for the government or some big research house. I should let them enjoy the moment." With that he drained his glass, thanked us again and headed back to his table. "If your wife doesn't pick this guy up, let me know." Grandpa A.J. said. "We should recruit him." "Even if Ginny does want him to get involved in the medical laser introduction we should recruit him." I answered. Cubal dazec was our next student, but he did not come alone. As he arrived, filled his glass and took a seat with a smile, three young ladies entered our section. They were immediately struck by the lack of noise. "See, I told you that if you have enough money, you can buy anything!" the girl in the lead said. "Even peace and quiet apparently!" The other two girls giggled in response. Each girl quickly approached one of the tables and asked someone to dance. Brin and John jumped up immediately, but Pete had been the third target, and he declined, saying his bond-mate back home would not approve. He offered up Fred instead, and away they went. A quick strategy session was held by those of us with spouses and significant others, and we instantly rearranged the seating to put the single men up front. I checked my internal clock and realized it was probably still early enough, so I sent a thought to Ginny. I sent. She sent back. I heard the laughter in her thoughts before she answered. I sent her a mental snuggle and thank you. It was only then that I realized I had no idea how Taluatans danced. ------- Chapter 7: Pride and Precipice The second half of our 'Boy's Night Out' was full of dancing and flirting. I managed to avoid most of both, but not all. I even managed a dance with Glova! The defining moment of the evening came when Ariana Burgess, walked into the Event Horizon and up to the table where Porter was sitting with Fred, Diyr, Aaron, Jon and two of our students. "Hi Daddy. Is there room for me to join you?" Fred was up and out of his chair so fast he almost knocked it over. He gave her a bow, and kissed her hand before offering her his seat next to Porter. "My Lady, please allow me to surrender my seat to you. I will be content to merely sit nearby and bask in your beauty." It should be noted immediately that Ariana Burgess was not just a beauty to rival anyone in the room, including Glova, but she seemed to smolder with sensuality and something else I can't really define. The closest I can come is to say that Ariana is the visual representation of the tone of Ginny's voice whenever she calls me 'Beggar Boy'. She had jet black hair that fell straight to her waist, with deep blue eyes and full red lips. She wasn't quite as curvy as Glova, but she seemed to radiate appeal. It should also be noted that Fred, while known for the occasional flare of chivalry, was acting so outside of his normal shy, quiet state as to be suspected of being under the influence of a coercer. We were collectively stunned by both of them. "Oh, I think not!" Ariana answered, looking him up and down. "I think I'm going to want you right where I can reach you. Ask me to dance." "Would you honor me with a dance?" Fred responded immediately. "Ooh, yes!" Ariana answered, and the two of them were off. Halfway to the dance floor we heard the band switch to something soft and slow. Fred's fate was sealed then, if it hadn't been already, I suspect. Ariana's arrival on Meadow, and being reunited with her father had been quite the event when it happened a couple of years ago. The initial giddy happiness he shared with his wife and children had faded after a couple years into something less. His wife Octavia adamantly refused all offers to join Porter wherever he was. The sure knowledge that this option existed and her mom would not accept it embittered Ariana, and she made sure she was far from home when she went to college, enrolling in Georgetown University's Microbiology degree program. Araiana remained at Georgetown until she had gotten her PhD. The money from our deal with Porter allowed her to lease a nice apartment near campus and live on her own while attending school. She only went home once in the six years she was there. During the summer of her fourth year, her little brother Karl was killed in a car accident. There wasn't even a drunk driver to blame, just a slick road on a rainy night. The final straw for Ariana was her mother's indignant insistence that Porter return for the funeral. To pay respect to their dead son. Porter did attend, heavily disguised, and said a prayer over his son, but Octavia railed at him afterwards for not joining her at the service to mourn their son. It didn't matter to her that Porter was officially deceased, and too many people who knew him would be there. Ariana, on the other hand was ecstatic to see her father again, however thoroughly disguised. They renewed their bond, and the day she left Georgetown, it was as an Obsidian Research recruit. "My daughter inherited my mind and sense of humor and her mother's looks and depths of emotion." Porter said. "As a father I am a bit squeamish in saying it, but she has far surpassed her mother in the beauty department, and I am glad we are not in the same fields, so I don't have to worry about being eclipsed professionally as well." The last two hours of our evening were spent in Ariana Burgess' orbit. She, it turned out, was a regular here. Half the students who came up to have their beer and spend their alloted time with us greeted her by name! We wound up finding three more students, after Eru Apric, that we thought deserved serious consideration as recruits, and they were given the opportunity to leave us their contact information as well. Ariana danced with everyone at the unattached tables, but Fred got every other dance, and all the slow ones. We had often wondered why Fred wasn't more of a lady's man. He had two thirds of the classical Tall, Dark and Handsome formula going for him, and with his flashing eyes and smile, good looks and old world mannerisms and manners, he had a lot of appeal, but he always seemed to go out of his way to avoid personal attachments. I don't think we were going to be wondering about Freddie's love life any longer. Most of us were either Light-connected, as Eru and I were, or had been through Eru's Soul Diver school, so keeping the worst effects of the alcohol at bay required only a simple bit of mental manipulation. We were all having a good time and none of us was in danger of becoming drunk. The tower of Copper Cauldron did not last long, and we quickly ordered a tower of the Black Ocean in its place, but kept the students coming. Spirit Master or not I was not about to attempt using my gift to empty my bladder, so I eventually had to head to the restroom. Straight shot to the restrooms or not, the Event Horizon was now officially packed. On my way back I asked Glova if it was usually this busy. "Not on Third Chantrim! I think it is your presence tonight that is drawing this crowd." She said. "If you're at capacity, would you object to turning this into a private party then, and barring the door?" Glova hesitated. "We have three hours left before closing, and I'd hate to turn away students with money to spend in favor of students who have already spent theirs." This is when it finally occurred to me that Glova might just be more than their best hostess. "Glova, are you actually the manager?" You seem awfully concerned about the bottom line. She blushed and leaned over to whisper in my ear. "I'm the owner. I have to worry about the bottom line." "I guess that means I can't hire you away from all this." I said, trying to hide my surprise. I hadn't been letting her beauty blind me, but I definitely hadn't been adding up all the clues. Her blinding smile in response to my offer immediately trumped all those thoughts. "You don't know how much even the suggestion of that offer tempts me, but I am quietly getting rich here, and making a lot of connections that will serve me well later on." We walked back to my table together, where I saw all tables had fresh towers. "A.J., I know I'm stinking, filthy, impossibly rich back on Earth, and that collectively we are as rich as we want to be called on Meadow, but how wealthy am I on Taluat?" Grandpa and Eldo put there heads together for a couple minutes before Eldo answered the question. "Dave, as far as bank deposits and hard assets go, you're relatively middle class. But the remnants of the Board of High Governors has ordered you personally, and us as an organization, be given an unlimited open line of credit. In support of that, I have personally provided access to hard credits up to the limit my accountants will allow, which means if you wanted to buy the Event Horizon, or some other successful business, you could pay cash." I knew Eldo was successful, but I had no idea he was that successful! Seeing the expression on my face Brin filled me in. "Dave it's to your credit that you are so unaware of things like this, but Master Lev is currently the third richest individual on Taluat." So I cleared the tab from every table in the Event Horizon, retroactive to our arrival and ordered a tower of Black Ocean for each. Taluat, at least in the West, does not use currency. Everything is payed for with credits and kept track of electronically. Thus it was very easy for Glova to credit every account with the amounts they'd spent, and transfer the charge to mine. When the towers of Black Ocean began appearing at the tables, Glova had to interrupt the band to explain. "Ladies and Gentlemen, your charges this evening have been credited back to your accounts, and covered by Spirit Master McKesson, who wishes to thank you for giving his party such a fine evening." Cries of "Speech! Speech!" began to rise from the tables, so I decided to have a little more fun. I walked to the front of our section, activated my Legion armor and called up the comm mode, setting it to public address. As I did the cries changed to wild cheering. "Thank you all, not only for the nice cheers, but also for the nice evening. Even a Spirit Master needs to unwind once in a while." That drew a nice laugh, so with the mood right I jumped in with both feet. "But!" I warned with mock seriousness, "You don't get anything for free in this world, or any other, so you are going to have to pay for this evenings festivities!" A smattering of good natured hisses, the Taluat equivalent to booing, quickly faded into laughter. "I declare a talent show! Every table has to enter one act. It can be one person with talent, or it can be a group, we don't care. Sing, dance, act, tell jokes, anything that won't get us all arrested, and the fine people here at the Event Horizon in trouble." When the chaos bomb my announcement created began to subside, I made my next move. "Since we are fine, fair folks, just like you, we will participate in the show as well, and to start things off, I offer from my table, the fine singing voice of Legionnaire Cyrus Poole!" The cheering went through the roof, and as Cyrus stood and came forward, he shot me a dirty look. "Give them Danny Boy, and do it in English, and you might even win the contest." I said. "I will get you back for this you know." He said as he came up to me. "I know, that's what makes it so much fun." I answered. "I can only assume you expect me to be the master of ceremonies, and the staff be the judges." Glova said, "So I must ask that unless you plan on sharing your public address system, all performances must be from the stage." Con and Arden put their heads together for a second, then Con jumped a couple of the ubiquitous black equipment carriers from Obsidian. "These should work nicely." Con said, holding up what looked like a little hearing aid that hooked over an ear. The box held a dozen of them. The second box was the remote receiver and speakers for the system that the little ear units fed into. Con took the receiver unit out into the middle of the room, pushed a couple of buttons and soon the unit was hovering just beneath the high ceiling. Unintelligible English or not, Cyrus has a fine voice, and Danny Boy, sung well, will evoke a response in those who hear it. The applause when he finished was impressive. Con had given Glova one of the earpieces, as master of ceremonies, along with quick instructions on how to use it. "The Spirit Master's table has set the bar high!" Glova said as the applause began to die. "Who shall be next?" We had singers and acrobats, jugglers and musicians. I noticed some frantic conferences and even a few folks jumping out of the room, only to reappear a short while later. I saw Ariana lean over and whisper something in Fred's ear. He appeared to be worried as he whispered something back. Ariana listened to his answer, then leaned in and laid a serious case of lip lock on him! My attention was drawn back to the center of the room, where two of the students from one of the tables had begun to sing a duet, accompanied by a member of the band, who played the melody on his instrument, a keyed instrument that produced a very 'synthesizer' kind of sound. The two singers were very good, and they had obviously practiced this song a lot, as they wove the melody and harmony in and out, switching parts occasionally. An hour later, I would have had to call it a close race between Cyrus' opening performance and the duet. Eru had gotten up when his table was called upon, and with his own fiddle, or the Taluatan equivalent of a fiddle, played a rousing tune that would have been at home in any square dance hall in America. That took care of the two 'attached' tables, and uncle Aaron surprised me by getting up and juggling four plates, even managing some variations and between the leg and behind the head moves. "Last, but not least, we arrive at our final table for the night, from our Spirit Master's section." Glova announced. We turned and looked at the table. Ariana and Fred were still missing. Porter got up and came top stand between Glova and me, sliding an ear piece over his ear. "Ladies and Gentlemen," Porter said, doing a credible impression of that deep voiced boxing announcer who made the 'lets get ready to rumble' phrase famous. "If you would please all clear the dance floor, it is my pleasure to present to you, performing a traditional Earth dance, Fred Sabarte and Ariana Porter, dancing the Tango!" Porter nodded, and I saw Con flip a switch on what appeared to be a standard portable CD player from back home. At the same time, Eru nodded as well. A spotlight hit the center of the dance floor, and in the cleared area suddenly appeared Fred and Ariana! Fred was decked out in his best Tuxedo, with white tie and tails, while Ariana wore a dress that went to her ankles, but it was red, clingy and sheer! They had the long stemmed rose and everything. Their performance was incredible, and the contest was over ten seconds into it. The applause when the music and the dancers stopped was thunderous. Fred and Ariana maintained a long passionate kiss through the applause, which lasted several long minutes. "I believe we have our winners!" Came Glova's voice at the end. Once the congratulations were done and the winners had made the rounds of the tables to shake hands with the other contestants, I saw Fred whisper into Ariana's ear, followed by her nod, and the two of them disappear in mid stride. I did not expect them to return. As the crowd milled around, finishing their drinks and food and just generally enjoying the moment, I sat with Glova, thanking her again for such a fine evening. "I believe I should be thanking you, Dave." She said. "Half the people I've spoken to asked if this was going to be a regular event, and I think the Event Horizon will be featuring a talent night in the future. I would also be more than willing to cancel the charges to your account tonight if you told me I could keep this incredible audio system." I sent to Con. "Glova, you will be keeping all the credits the Event Horizon is due, however I will be happy to give you the unit as a personal thank you for the fine service you personally have given us this evening." "Thank you! Thank you!" She squealed, leaning over and hugging me with enthusiasm. As she broke the hug, she whispered in my ear. "While I'm close, would you tell me the name of the deep voiced gentleman who introduced Ariana and Fred at the beginning of their dance? His voice makes my panties damp." "Glova, his name is Porter Burgess, and he is Ariana's father." I pulled back slightly and looked her in the eye with disapproval. "Did you just lie to me?" "What?" She asked in confusion. "My hands were all over your ass when we had our dance, and you were definitely not wearing panties!" That got me a big laugh and another hug. Something in Glova's lap chose that moment to chime loudly. She reached into a pocket I didn't realize until then she even had and flipped open a Taluatan portable communicator, their version of a cell phone. "Mat, you and Arom open the doors, its closing time." Another button push was followed by "Reda, closing time, bring up the house lights and kill the music. Tell the staff they'll all be getting a bonus from me. That includes the band. As the lights came up and the music died, I dropped the sound deadening field I'd put around our section of tables. "Glova grabbed one of the ear pieces and walked over to Porter, leaning down and whispering in his ear. I saw him nod and slip the piece over an ear. He spoke, once again in his 'announcer voice' "Ladies and Gentlemen, the management thanks you for your patronage tonight, and would like to take this time to announce that Third Chantrim is now officially Talent Show night at the Event Horizon!" While the crowd cheered, Glova grabbed the ear piece back from Porter and put it back in the box. I raised an eyebrow as she went past me on the return trip and she blushed, then grinned big, before walking back over to slide herself onto Porter's lap. "Dave tells me your name is Porter." She said. "Yes it is." Porter answered with a gulp. "Can you talk in that announcer voice even when your concentrating on something else?" She asked him. "I think so." He said, a little puzzled. "Mmm goody!" Glova replied, before pulling Porter into a steamy kiss. I let Ginny relive the highlights of the evening in my thoughts. She was extremely happy to see that Fred seemed to have found someone at long last, and between their steamy dance, and my deja vu inducing line about Glova lying about wearing panties, Doctor McKesson's motor was definitely running! "Okay Beggar Boy. You let me see the action at the Event Horizon, and now its time to provide a little action right here." Ginny said in her throaty purr. It had its usual effect on me, and as always, Blossom's wish is my command. We awoke the next morning to my cell phone ringing. It was Porter. "Dave, whatever I do for the rest of my life, no matter what else happens in both our lives, I officially owe you, big time!" I heard some sounds in the background, followed by "Thanks again, I've got to go, I still have to call Sarah and let her know I"m taking a day off." The conversation, which Ginny had shared, as our minds were still wrapped together, set us both to laughing. Ten minutes later the phone rang again. "Dave, all I can say is thank you, thank you, thank you! Dragging me along for Boy's Night Out has changed my life! Could you tell Arden I'm taking a day off today?" It was Fred of course. After Ginny and I got the laughter from that call under control I sent a thought to Arden to pass on Fred's message, which Fred could have easily done himself, and then Ginny and I got busy in the shower. We even got clean. It may have been the morning after, but it was also a mission day. We had breakfast with Andy and Serenity, and jumped to the 'office'. Con already had Dare prepped and ready to go when we got there, and we each had a cup of tea poured and waiting when we climbed aboard. I shared my two morning phone calls with Con, and once his laughter had died down we took off. Our first jump took us to a facet I immediately designated 'Terrace', due to the terraced hillsides, similar to the terraced rice fields of Asia. Alarms went off immediately upon arrival, and Con slipped the Dare into stealth mode immediately. "We've got saturation in all the E-M bands, and the grav detectors have been tripped as well. I'm trying to dump as much of this traffic to the recorders as possible." Con said. Ginny and I quickly jumped into a full Light-contact joining, and sent out our senses. There were thousands of people nearby, and most of them were slaves! More amazingly, their overseers were not human, and not local. We let the recorders run while we expanded our senses farther and farther out. Finally we jumped Dare to Obsidian and dropped ourselves out of the Light. The three of us sat there in shock for a moment. I sent out the thought. He thought back. That's what I loved about Brin. I know he had a million questions, but he shoved them aside instantly in favor of getting the job done. I had a decision to make, and with Ginny and I still more or less thinking together, made the call. "Con, I want you to get to work on this data right away, but first, were there any audio broadcasts that you can play? I'd like a language sample from whatever is being broadcast." Con pulled up something that sounded like a human voice speaking in a dry monotone. We listened for about five minutes before we took off. We jumped to Taluat and quickly found Eru, Riah and Zaia, along with the morning class of Spirit Master students. "Eru, we have a situation." I said as soon as we had their attention. "We need to go into full Light with as large a fusion as we can manage. That means the five of us. Anyone else at that point yet?" "Outside of the kids? No." Eru said. "But would you mind these students monitoring us from the outside? It would be an invaluable aid to their understanding of where these classes are headed." I looked at the five 'students' Eru referred to. Three of them were the elder Soul Divers from the East who had come to help restore the Soul Diver traditions in the West. The other two were Laik Hulin and Byl Thron. "Do you all agree to participate in this?" I asked them. I got serious nods from all of them. "You'll need protection, just in case." I jumped five of the 'special' bracelets that Con and I had built. The were not blue like the Legion armor, or green like Andy had, and which the other kids would get when the time came. These were black, and had the basic comm modes only, along with the stealth mode. "Put these on." I said, tossing each of them a bracelet. Five minutes later we were all suited, in full combat and stealth mode and sitting in a circle at the Meadow focus. I wanted to be in my place of strength when we made the jump to Terrace. It was time to fill in the troops. "This morning, Ginny, Constantine Fylakas and I went on our weekly scouting mission. Once a week, we visit one or two new facets and do a quick look around to check for signs of people and technology. The interesting ones get a follow up visit from one of the two Legion teams who do a more complete survey, including putting an orbital surveying system in place. The really interesting ones get teams of scientists or other explorers, as appropriate. All of this is in support of our mission, which is to resume the task the ancient Spirit Masters, who were known in their own language as the Choctowineh, had to leave behind all those countless years ago. That task is to protect, preserve and advance the people of all the facets, wherever they are found in need. This morning, we found a facet I named Terrace, a facet with a people enslaved. Enslaved by masters not from Terrace, but from another world. Alien beings who traveled through space to get there. Now, we will be going back. Now we use our gifts as Soul Divers and Spirit Masters to learn more about those who would make slaves of the people of Terrace." We let our five observers form their fusion before Ginny, Eru, Riah, Zaia and I linked ourselves. We went straight into full Light mode immediately, and we jumped to the facet on Terrace, taking the observers with us. The facet on Terrace was a pool of boiling mineral water, which shortly proved itself to be a geyser. A small cluster of three huts dotted the shoreline, and when we swept the hut we found one old man, fast asleep! We did a quick sweep of his body while we walked over to the hut he slept in. He was suffering the effects of advanced old age, but nothing else seemed wrong with him. We took the time to give his body an initial rejuvenation session, and then with a surge of energy to give him some immediate vitality, dropped our armor out of stealth and combat mode, and woke him up. The old man took one look at us, standing around him in our Legion armor and smiled. <> We sent to our five observers. We focused again on the old man, who was now jabbering away rapidly to us. The language seemed to be the same as the one Con had played us the audio of, but it was spoken much, much faster. We dove into the old man's mind and found the knowledge of it in him. He felt us in his mind and stopped talking! "Please speak more. We learn!" I said, very roughly in his language. He resumed speaking then, and we actually understood him now, more or less. As he told us of his life here at the focus, we concentrated on diving deeper, and pulling the muscle memory needed to speak the language well from his body's Light signature. "It was always known by those who lived by these waters that this was a special place. Sheltered and somehow outside of the worlds events. Legend said it was a special place of the ancient guardians, who were lost to us in the dawn time. When the aliens arrived in our skies and began their bombing attacks two hundred years ago, my people fought them valiantly, but our aircraft and missiles proved no match for their weapons, nor were our minds capable of resisting their mental control. Small groups struggled to remain free, but their situation grew more and more desperate and their numbers fewer and fewer with each passing year. When things grew too perilous for the group my parents were in, they and four other families built rafts and made their way to this place, praying to find sanctuary, as the legends had suggested would exist here. Their prayers were answered, after a fashion." The old man's tale was interrupted by the entrance of Laik and the rest of our observers with food. We dropped ourselves out of the fusion we had been in, and Ginny spoke to the old man in his own tongue. "We have food here for you. You must eat, and then we will talk some more." The soup was one of Borthun's Rest's favorites, Potato and Bacon chowder, and the old man gasped and murmured his appreciation with every spoonful. They had brought a small pot of it, enough for three bowls, as well as a half dozen slices of the buttered and toasted bread and a small earthenware jar of the preserves. While the old man ate, we returned to our Light fusion and passed the language on to our observers. <> Rather than learning about conditions on the surface of this facet, we chose to satisfy our curiosity about what might be orbiting above us. We rose up into the near space above us, and began to search. If we had not been fully in the Light, it would have taken a long time to find anything in the vastness of the space that surrounded us, but being in the Light, every object which was not void, glistened and swam with Light, and stood out like beacons. When a shuttle craft of some kind passed relatively nearby we discovered that even from a distance the minds of the aliens stood out like beacons as well. Their thoughts seemed to form as harsh, bright globes around them, incredibly strong for twice the distance one could reach, and then fading quickly to nothing. We found eight craft in low orbits around the facet, and a ninth, larger vessel orbiting further out. We tracked their orbits, letting our joined mind grasp the mechanics of them, until we knew we were tracking their positions in our own minds. With this accomplished, we pulled our senses back to our bodies, and dropped out of the Light and out of our joining. We had obviously been gone for longer than we had thought. The food was gone, and so was the old man! "Did we miss something?" I asked. "TeJon had been existing on fish and berries for so long that the richness of the chowder got to him a little. He's visiting the outhouse." Laik said. Nodros went with him." TeJon, as we now knew his name to be, returned from his duties dressed in some ragged old clothes. He saw that we were 'back' from our search and walked up to me and bowed deeply. "I have learned that you are indeed the Ancient Guardians reborn, the protectors out of legend, walking the worlds again. I greet you as a son of Precipice, as a son of the last of the believers, as a son of the people enslaved, and beg your aid for my people." I reached down and touched his thin shoulder. "Do not bow to me, Tejon, son of Precipice. The Ancient Guardians asked obeisance from no one when they walked the worlds, nor do we now." I held out my hand, and he took it. "We will not remain any longer here than we must, though as your parents suspected, it does appear the Light shelters this place. You must come with us. Gather up whatever you would keep close to you." He reached out to the locket he wore around his neck. "This was my mother's. It was said to be the insignia of one of the brave defenders who stood against the first wave of invaders. One in my family has carried it since that day. It is all I want or need." With that we were gone. ------- Chapter 8: Minds of Iron Thoughts of steel. That's the impression I had of the Sh'kxu. TeJon proved to be a wealth of information about the aliens and the Preci, as his people called themselves, but it was all at least fifty years out of date. Even old information is a start, and slowly we pieced together a picture of the aliens and their impact on Precipice. Two hundred years ago they had appeared in the skies above Precipice, and began bombing without warning or prelude of any kind. This was not some real life version of the movie independence Day, they did not crowd the skies with huge ships with impenetrable shields. They dropped their bombs from orbit, safely above the effective range of the Preci military aircraft and weapons. The people of Precipice had not ventured even so far as their own moon, and had only a small number of peaceful satellites in orbit, aides to navigation, weather, and communications. Every major city and military installation on the entire facet was bombed into oblivion within the first year. Still the ships remained in their high orbit, hunting hidden bases and pockets of resistance. This lasted for five years. When the alien ships finally slipped into lower orbit, they were met by a barrage of missiles, long kept in reserve in underground locations, but the attempt was frustrated by completely accurate antimissile fire. The hidden locations where the missiles had originated were tracked and bombed, practically before the missiles they'd launched had been destroyed themselves. Only then did the troop ships begin to land, and the true nature of the aliens become known. This had been the story we had heard from TeJon, and which he shared with the Director's at our emergency meeting. We were fortunate, with the urge to 'do something now' pervading the room during that meeting, that A.J. McKesson and Eldo Lev were not as young as their current appearances made them out to be. Men who have experienced a long life and contemplated its end are not prone to making rash decisions. Even old Tejon understood. "We cannot hope to undo a horror that has been two hundred years in the making in an hour or a day. Better to take our time now, so we can do it right." Our first step was to expand and realign the Legion. We created a third team consisting of the four people we knew with the most military and combat experience. Chet, Cyrus and Tony and Sylvia Herrera became Team Three. Ariana Burgess took Chet's place on Team one and to fill in for Cyrus on Team Two we tapped Byl Thron. Until we began any kind of full scale military operations, Team One and Team Two would continue their duties as usual. Team Three we gave the role of gathering intelligence and formulating a plan for the freedom of Precipice. The development of a force for large military options became a big question, and it was one I wasn't sure yet how we would answer. I did something I hadn't felt the need to do in a long time. I sat down with my Dad and asked for his advice. "Dad, I don't know where to start on this one. I need help." Dad was a Director, he knew the details, as I did. He thought for a long time after I finished, before speaking himself. "Dave, when did Lincoln make the Emancipation Proclamation?" "!863." I answered automatically. "And when did the Civil War end?" "1865." "Over 150 years later, have we eliminated the problems the Emancipation Proclamation sought to address?" I thought about that. "Politically? It depends on whose version of Lincoln's intent you adhere to I suppose. Socially and morally? I suppose not, if the elimination of bigotry and prejudice were the intent." "Martin Luther King used the phrase 'I have a Dream' instead of 'I have a goal' for a reason. He knew that the ultimate end would not happen in his lifetime. Instead he dreamt of what his struggle might achieve for his children or his children's children. He saw change happening across generations and lifetimes." Do you see where I"m headed here?" I did, but it was a difficult shift in my thinking to make. I had to stop thinking of rescuing the people who were alive on Precipice today, and begin thinking about how to free her future generations. Dad must've caught it written on my face, because he hugged me, and I saw he too had tears in his eyes. "You are not signing death warrants here Dave, you are seeking a path to the future. A future where these people are free again." It took us two months to decide we had enough information to safely take one of the Sh'kxu. To visualize a Sh'kxu, think of an ostrich. Now imagine that ostrich had arms instead of wings and a hump the size of a basketball where the ostrich's long neck would have been. Imagine also that the hump had its own set of smaller arms, and on top of that hump imagine you saw a cone of white feathers, and inset into that cone were four eyes. Bright green eyes, with dainty delicate eyelashes. They had a highly sophisticated communications technology, and used a modulated gravity wave carrier that allowed almost instantaneous point-to-point communications, but they did not monitor themselves, or track each other's locations, and now and then, one of them died in some stupid accident. Our arranged stupid accident cost two Preci lives, and destroyed a grain silo in what would have been Fairview Heights, Illinois on Earth. The explosion was spectacular, even deafening, and certainly deadly for a couple of unfortunate farmers who fate put too close to the blast. For our prison we used a facet I had found years earlier and designated as 'Dust'. A dry, barely breathable atmosphere and an occasional thin wisp of a cloud gave false hope of normalcy, but Dust was a dead world, its oceans dried and gone, and its surface an endless sea of dust and rock. Utterly, utterly lifeless. We built an open dome of force fifty feet across, similar to the honeymoon retreat we had once built on Meadow's moon. Inside that dome we made breathable air. Inside that dome the harsh and ever present solar storm that had brought Dust to its dry end was held at bay. Inside that dome we jumped our stolen Sh'kxu. Thoughts of Steel, I thought. We five stood, in the Light, and held him with our thoughts, unmoving. If any one of us had gotten within a body's length of him, we would have been lost. The Sh'kxu mind was an eternal and unblinking generator of coercive force. A generator of awesome, incredible, irresistible force. And it was always on! When two Sh'kxu met, one of them took control. It was not an option, no decision was made to coerce or be coerced, There was no protocol. It was completely automatic, completely unnoticed, as natural to them as breathing. When a Sh'kxu met a mind that was not Sh'kxu, he had a slave, when he met a mind that was Sh'kxu, he had a slave, or else was a slave himself. A Sh'kxu's best weapon was proximity, so natural selection made them fast. A Sh'kxu's best defense was his wit, so natural selection made them smart. With our joined minds we wondered at just how close to the edge of extinction must these creatures have skated along the way to achieving a technological society. Given the nature of their existence, to have become this starfaring race without destroying themselves was almost admirable. Amazingly, despite the unstoppable strength of their 'zone of coercion', they were utterly ungifted. Our captive couldn't feel even our most heavy-handed efforts to sift through his thoughts. We almost had to stop the first time the phrase 'zone of coercion' sprang into our thoughts. Ginny and I had been big fans of the Legendary author and Space Opera icon E.E. 'Doc' Smith, and had read his entire Lensman series multiple times. We had compared ourselves to the heroes and heroines of his stories on more than one occasion, and that phrase had such a Doc Smith over-the-top feel that we almost laughed when it sprang out of our combined mind. Our captive's name was Lark's Bright Song. There was no other way to translate it. He had been born and raised on Precipice and was only thirty years old. He had never been to the ships in orbit, and had no expectation that he ever would. He was in charge of Grain storage in region 22093. The growing, harvesting, grinding and shipping of the Seed of Life to the great ship in its far orbit was the high purpose of every Precipice born Sh'kxu. Lark's Bright Song had 5000 Preci slaves and five Sh'kxu 'wives'. Once we understood that the Sh'kxu mind was defenseless against any of the awakened, we shifted the task of keeping our prisoner immobile to Team Three. With that burden removed we were able to dive more deeply into the mind of Lark's Bright Song. We took his language, and every memory and thought he had ever experienced. When we had that we began to explore his brain and body. When a mental joining such as ours holds an internal dialog, it is not quite the same as talking to oneself, but it is close. <> Ginny directed our senses. <> <> <> We worked until we sensed our approaching exhaustion, and we finally broke out of our Light fusion "I don't think I can actually replicate their spoken language with my vocal chords, but I do not want him to know we can send our thoughts into his mind, so that rules out mental speech. Any ideas? Cyrus was the inspired thinker in the group today. "How about that Sonox thing that Con built for Jeni? Isn't that what its supposed to do, allow you to produce the sounds you can't make?" "We'll come back with one in the morning. We're all dead tired, to the point where Light boosts are barely having an effect." We jumped back to Obsidian, sending a quick thought to Shelaana that we were jumping straight to our room for a four hour nap, and asking her to wake us if we weren't up in time for dinner. Exhaustion claimed me before I could even muster a pretense of other bedtime activities. Even so, I think Ginny was asleep before me. The next morning, before breakfast, I gave Con a shout and asked him if he had any more of the Sonox device's he had built for Jeni. "A simple matter! He said. "Would you prefer it to tie in to your suit's Comm suite? We can produce a version that will fit in the palm of your hand if we let the comm suite handle the actual audio output." I did, He did, and so I had one of my own in very short order. Of course there is no hiding things from Andy and Serenity. They both knew we had captured one of the aliens yesterday, and were curious, as usual. At breakfast, we were asked a million questions, Andy begged and pleaded to come with us. Serenity said nothing, but I knew she was simply biding her time and letting Andy test the waters. To show them the seriousness of what we were about and that it was too dangerous to allow them anywhere near our captive, we gave them all our memories of the alien exam. "Even our group of five, fully linked and in the Light would have found it difficult to resist these creature's coercive field if we had been close enough to feel its effects. You are staying home!" Ginny finally said, putting her maternal foot down. Andy fumed over the rest of his breakfast, but Ren just gave us one of her little Mona Lisa smiles. Sometimes I really did wonder about my daughter. She was far more the mystery to me than her mother had been. We gathered on Obsidian, and I tested the Sonox a little before we made the jump. "Hey Boss, I've been thinking." Chet said after the demonstration. "What's gnawing at you today, Chet, and please don't call me boss!" "Well, the Legion is expanding, and you have three groups of us now, and we get to be called Team Three, but what about you spirit masters? Are you going to have names for your groups? Are you guys going to be like 'Mental One' or something." Even the snickers from the twins didn't prevent yet another niggling detail to worm its way into my brain. "Suit up, link up, lets get ready to go." I said without answering Chet's question. "Here's what I want to try to do today. I want him free to move, but restricted to a ten foot circle at the center of the dome. Can you guys manage that?" "Sure, if you allow us a body thickness margin of error." Cyrus answered. "Absolutely, and I will not come close to approaching that ten foot area, believe me. We will not be running a tight Light fusion ourselves, we will only be in a normal tight link. This morning is not interrogation, this is diplomacy." "Do you really think diplomacy can work with these creatures?" Zaia asked. "No, I think it will fail utterly. But we will try, because we are not them." Linked and ready, we reached out with our senses to Dust, and found our prisoner pacing the edges of the dome. We jumped him to the center, and the rest of the group began their task while I approached within twenty feet of him, my mind already in his, monitoring his thoughts. "Peace to you Lark's Bright Song. I am Dave McKesson." His reaction to being addresses in his native tongue was impressive. The limp feathers that hung from his body went stiff, puffing him up suddenly, and his larger set of arms waved wildly. "Tell me what you know of this place. Tell me how I came here. Tell me how is it possible for slaves to speak as Sh'kxu. Tell me what you intend to do to me." The Sh'kxu it seemed were incapable of asking questions. There was no way in their language to ask. Every sentence was either a statement or a demand. The closest they could come to a question was to demand information. "This place is a dead world we call Dust. We brought you here with a thought, just as we kept you from moving yesterday, and just as we keep you within a small area today. We are not slaves, but free beings, as the Preci were before you came to their world and took that freedom from them. I speak as Sh'kxu because it is a simple thing, easy to learn. You are here to teach us about the Sh'kxu." When his situation could no longer fit the world view he lived within, Lark's Bright Song went berserk! He launched himself in my direction, screaming and flailing with his attack arms. Team Three was on the job however, and they caught him up short, right at the edge of the limit I had asked for. Diplomacy ended right there in that moment. We realized with stunning sadness that the Sh'kxu were incapable of negotiating for anything. Their entire existence was built upon a chain of coercion. Sh'kxu existed in a constantly fluctuating state, swinging from coercer to coerced and back again. I thought to Ginny, Eru, Ria and Zaia. So with the Light surrounding us, and the cool power of the Light flowing between us, we dove back into the body of Lark's Bright Song and once again examined those curious twin organs which were responsible for the immense coercive field. <> Ginny pointed us towards a single large blood vessel that fed each nerve cluster. There is no tie in to the digestive system, and I can see no controlling gland or secondary organs.>> <> I hadn't noticed it in the flood of new ideas and information, but while the Sh'kxu were technically omnivores, they were mostly vegetarian by habit and preference. Lark's Bright Song's favorite food was celery. He personally preferred it over any of the expensive and to him exotic home world delicacies available from the 'ship born'. We jumped a bucket of celery into the dome, and another of water and we left Lark's Bright Song to wonder. Life was cheap these days, on Precipice. The entire arable surface of the planet had been converted over to the cultivation of the Sh'kxu plant known as the Seed of Life, and the Sh'kxu would not farm them with machines. They had to be hand planted, hand tended and hand picked. The seeds were hand dried in the sun and then hand ground into flour. Only then did a machine come into play, as the flour was packed onto transport ships and lifted into high orbit to the largest of the Sh'kxu ships. The Preci were ordered to breed, and so in their unrelenting slavery they did, raising their children in communal batches to be sent out to the fields at the age of eight. On Preci these days, death was unremarkable, so the Preci were not carefully counted and numbered. Who lived and who died did not matter to the Sh'kxu, as long as their were enough hands to tend the crops and keep the transport ships flowing. Silently and invisibly, we watched and learned, and came to a decision. We would raise our army from among the Preci themselves. Uncle Ambrose, Cyrus, Chet, Tony and Sylvia Herrera, Mor Grestain, Brin Dolin, and I became the War Council. Mor got recruited because he was retired career military commander, and had been the a high ranking officer in the West's Air Defense Force when he retired. Ambrose got the call because he had been a naval officer during his youth, having served on a carrier in the Mediterranean sea. We met in my new office on Obsidian. I now had two executive assistants. I had a desk a dozen people could sit at. I had messages when I got there. I had a schedule. I had to worry about agendas and reports. I was trapped in the very world I had moved Heaven and Earth to escape. I could feel my neck tightening and my teeth grinding. But I thought of the twelve billion Preci, and about being a Guardian. I remembered the words Aya gave me, the future Guardian on the night of her passing. "Let the Guardian you are to be heed those words. Widen the circle of your compassion to include all, and extend your care and concern to all of nature and the universe without favor." I swallowed my pride and frustration, rolled up my mental sleeves and sipped the tea which appeared unasked before me and read my messages. "Ava, dim the lights and display an image of one of the ships in low orbit around Precipice." I said into the darkened room. The image blinked into existence above my desk. These low orbit ships were Long rectangles, the surface a blur of projections and oddly angled extensions and recesses. "Ava, display the U.S.S. Ronald Reagan alongside the current image, at scale." The Nimitz class aircraft carrier, the largest military craft of any kind ever built, was dwarfed by the Sh'kxu ship. "The Sh'kxu ship and its seven sister ships masses ten times the Reagan, and is itself dwarfed by the larger ship in far orbit by almost the same degree." I told them. "The question I ask is simply this. Can we devise a plan of attack against these craft in a manner swift and decisive enough to eliminate the chance of reprisals against the Preci?" I let them think about that for a second. "Alternatively, can we devise a planetary defense against the ship's that will protect the surface of Precipice while we attack the ships at a more reasonable pace?" Uncle Ambrose managed to foil my next meaningful pause. "Or can we do both?" "These are only some of the questions we need answers to." I said. "Mor, Ambrose, you two have the best contacts in the upper echelons of the military commands of Taluat and Earth. Get us military minds who can answer our questions and lead an army that doesn't exist, using weapons they have never seen." "Legion Team Three. You know the elite fighting units and the kind of men who fill their ranks. Find us the instructors and squad leaders who will help us create our new army." "Brin, you and I are going to grab Con and Arden, and I'm going to turn the three of you loose someplace special. The Seekers left behind a very thorough history and knowledge of the tools of war. You guys are going to thumb through their Catalog and see if there's anything there we like." "What are you going to be doing while we are so engaged?" Mor asked me. "Well right now I'm going to go home, have a nice meal with my family, and then I think we'll go for a little outing with my son and see if we can find us a place to house and train an army." Andy, Ginny and I took Dare for an unscheduled scouting trip after lunch. "Son, I want to try something new." I said, turning to Andy after I'd lifted us a mile straight up from the house. "We going hunting instead of fishing for a change Dad?" Sometimes the curse of having bright children is a blessing. "You pegged it, Andy. Good job!" The two of us linked, and then jumped into high Light fusion. Andy couldn't keep it up all day like we could, but he was getting stronger, and could manage an hour at a stretch now. Ginny stayed out of the fusion to monitor Andy, and avoid interfering with our facet finding 'trick'. <> We pulled that thought to the center of our consciousness, and with one mind we reached out with our senses. A thread of Light seemed to pop to the forefront of our perception, faster and surer than I'd ever experienced. We jumped. Riverbank was what I first thought of as a designator. We arrived on a high riverbank, looking over a wide river. The far bank marked the edge of a heavy forest, while behind us ran a wide, grassy plain. We ran the usual checks, ran up a Long Ear and did a jump or two to other locations around the planet. Except for out arrival point, we didn't come close enough to the surface to worry about local wildlife, but except for a wide variety of animals grazing on the grassy plain, and plenty of birds, we saw no signs of large predators. What the forests or tall grasses along the river held remained to be seen, but so far so good. With no signs of technology or human presence, and given the special nature of this particular survey mission, I made the next logical decision and jumped a PSP over from the Hall of Gifts. We switched ships temporarily and ran the survey platform through her usual paces. Andy hadn't been aboard one of the PSPs before, let alone seen one in operations, so he was asking a million questions. We had global satellite surveillance and navigation set up and running its internal adjustment routine within an hour. We locked the ship into a permanent orbital position and jumped back to the hopper. Ginny and I got busy getting Dare's displays tied into the new system and calibrated. "Hey Dad! Take a look at this!" I heard Andy say. I looked up and saw three large, wolf-like creatures sitting on their haunches outside Dare's open access ramp! My hand was halfway to the emergency close button when Andy yelled. "Don't! They're friendly." I looked back to see Andy standing next to the largest of the three specimens, scratching the ruff of his neck. "His name is Titan. Can I keep him?" Andy asked with a crooked smile. Ginny did not quite manage to stifle her scream, but she was able to cut it short when she saw the creature's large tongue come out and give Andy a big swipe across the side of his face! Titan, which was a semi-decent translation of his name, was the leader of this scout patrol of the 'Long River-Plain Hunt' of the people who called themselves 'Yaru'. He and the two scouts with him would have been content to watch us from the concealment of the high grasses, except they saw us jump. Stories from Yaru legend came to Titan's mind, so it was decided to reveal themselves and learn more about us. Twenty minutes later I was convinced that the Yaru were the equivalent of Hurlon with legs. They were almost universally bright, cheerful, inquisitive and friendly. To describe a Yaru, imagine a wolf, perhaps the dire wolves out of legend would be more appropriate. Titan, who was considered almost a giant by his Hunt, could look me in the eye while on all fours, and I was now a solid 6'2". The other two scouts were quite a bit smaller, but could still do the same with Andy, who at 5' even was slightly taller than the average boy going on twelve. Once you had the image of a very tall wolf, beef up your image. Yaru legs and shoulders were much more heavily muscled than a wolf's. Shorten the long thin muzzle a bit and widen the face a little as well. Once you've got this large, slightly odd but otherwise normal looking wolf pictured in your head, replace the fur with greenish feathers/scales. Yeah, my mind did a double take too. They seemed to be scaled, like a lizard or a fish, with long scales that ran towards the back end of them, like a fish's would. While they were just sitting there waiting for us to react, those scales seemed very stiff. Once we had all decided to be friendly and get acquainted, those scales seemed to relax somehow and they became soft enough to be ruffled by the afternoon breeze blowing on top of this riverbank. When I got the chance to touch 'Noser', one of the other two Yaru, their coat, whatever it was, seemed incredibly soft. Titan said after we had made our introductions. The third of the scouts was called Mongoose. Well, that is how it I translated it. It was really more like 'quick and clever snake hunter', the Yaru names were usually very wordy and descriptive. He was the oldest of the three, and seemed the most reluctant to join the conversation, but when Titan spoke of the Harim, he finally joined in. I thought about that for a moment. Titan asked. Andy asked. We had to give the three of them a mental picture of what a horse was. And of us riding them. ------- Chapter 9: Brotherhood and Blood Andy and I made our return trip to Aruh right after breakfast. Titan and his two patrol mates had been joined by another three person patrol, and we met Shaker, White Foot, and Eclipse. These were the abbreviated versions of their names that we used amongst ourselves. Their actual names were much longer and more descriptive. Eclipse was the oldest of the three in the new patrol. Copper and Slider had no problem with the Yaru. In fact, Slider went over and nuzzled Titan as if he suspected him of hiding an apple somewhere. When I 'looked' through Copper's senses, I realized that the Yaru just smelled like family to the horses. We had our introductions and then took off across the plains. Titan was setting a quick pace, for his patrol because waiting for us to arrive had put them a couple hours behind, and he was worried about making his scheduled arrival time. As soon as we established a line of travel I sent my senses ahead, spotting a small rocky outcrop with a few fallen trees on top of it that appeared to be directly on our path, to the northwest, and a good thirty miles ahead of us. One of the Yaru sat in the shade of the fallen trees. Obviously a sentry. I asked. Titan answered. So I jumped us to the edge of the outcrop that faced us. We caught Greytail looking the other direction, and Titan made a low 'Hruff' sound, deep in his throat to alert the sentry. The relatively thin Yaru Jumped and spun in mid air to face us. His coat went black and rigid as he did, and he started a loud snarl, until he caught site of Titan and the rest of the patrol. We 'heard' the mental laughter of the three Yaru as they enjoyed Greytail's embarrassment at being caught unawares. I thought to him. < these tricksters are merely enjoying the benefits of my being able to do this.> I jumped myself and Copper to the other side of Andy and Slider. Greytail's amazed thought shouted out. "indeed, Greytail. You may not have long to remain here after we arrive at the den. There may be a calling." Titan said in the Yaru speech, followed by a thought to us. I said and did. I asked, seeing them through his eyes. Using my own eyes, I zoomed in on the cliffs, another twenty miles or so further to what we would say was the northwest. I could see the caves and more Yaru, as well as the 'Hurim-built' structures, which seemed to be relatively crude wooden buildings of some sort. Zooming out from there, I saw that there was a river a few miles to the south of the caves that ran east and west. Another Hurim built structure marked what might have been a river crossing. I sent the image I was seeing to Titan. So I jumped us again, and this time we caught the Yaru looking our way when we blinked into existence. He still jumped a little, and his coat made the same amazing transformation that Greytail's had. "Greetings Boomer!" Titan said out loud to the sentry. "Could you announce our early return, and announce that we are escorting welcome guests? Warn those ahead that we will be coming in at speed, only for the fun of it. There is no emergency." "At speed?" The sentry asked. "Are you trying to be funny again Titan? You know what Long Night Running thinks of your sense of humor." "That I do, Boomer. That's what makes it so much fun. You already have a clue what our guests are. No ruining my surprise now!" "Very well, boy. But you're the one who has to survive the next council meeting, not me." And then I heard a Yaru speak in the Long Voice for the first time. Think of wolves howling at the moon, and then imagine the howling is language. In the case of the Yaru, a complex, rich descriptive language. Perhaps this is how Boomer got his name. I thought to myself as his long call echoed back off the cliff wall a few miles away. Titan thought to us, and we ran! Copper and Strider were in horse heaven, as we ran through the shallow rive crossing, up a shallow dirt bank and onto a stretch of hard packed prairie. At first I worried about how Andy would handle such a hard gallop, and then I worried about how I was going to keep up. Judging by the expressions on the Yaru faces as we went by, assuming I was correctly able to judge the expressions of a species I had known for a total of one day, we were expected, and a shocking surprise, all at the same time. As we slid by the wooden blur of the buildings I had spotted with my long vision, the terrain suddenly changed to a hard, flat-packed dirt, and then a long shallow climb up a terrace-like slope of rubble, where the brakes got thrown on. Slider showed where his name came from as he did a controlled skid in the gravel, coming to a stop right alongside of Titan. Copper's stop was a little less dramatic and dignified, which apparently did not make him happy. As soon as we had come to a stop he reared up on his hind legs and let out a long whinny. Yes, I managed to stay aboard and preserve my own dignity, thank you. Long River-Plain Hunt's leader, Long Night Running literally stood before us, unmoving when we made our dramatic stop, as if waiting for one of us to falter and slide a touch too close and make contact. None of us did, and as soon as the dust settled, Andy let out a huge whoop! Of joy and jumped feet first to the ground before launching himself at Titan's neck and hugging him fiercely. "That was the most wonderful ride I've ever had, Thanks Titan!!" It took me a second, but I realized he had spoken in the Yaru language! I thought at him. And he showed me in his thoughts the simple little adjustment he made, using the Light on his vocal cords. I thought to him. "Greetings Long Night Running, I am Dave McKesson, and this is my son Andy." I said to the Yaru leader. "Welcome back to the land of the Yaru, Walker. We have been waiting a very long time for you to come back to us. Are we at war again?" The Yaru leaders words stunned me so completely I blacked out for a split second. My ears were ringing and my heart was beating a mile a minute. Andy's hand on my shoulder brought me out of it. "We asked for a world where we could raise an army. I guess we weren't thinking that it could mean a world that already had an army waiting to be raised, huh dad?" The Yaru had long memories indeed. It was what could be called racial, or species memory. Every Yaru born remembered the 'Yaru Stories' and could recite the 'Yaru Knowledge' Within a couple of hours we had a deal. What a laugh! The first thirty minutes I spent giving my memories to the Yaru elders. The next fifteen minutes was them absorbing what they'd seen, and recovering from some of it. I gave them my entire life, every minute of it. The next hour was spent listening to the Long Night Running tell us what they expected us to do, and the last fifteen minutes were me thanking them profusely and asking if their was anything we could do for them. "Is there anything I can do for you?" I had said. When he heard this question I actually saw the leader's eye twitch, followed by a very wolfish grin. "Yes! You can take Titan with you. Perhaps you can keep him out of trouble, and I can sleep peacefully at night." So Andy 'got to keep him' after all. I really did want to do something to celebrate our new allies, and to thank them. I was thinking about that as Titan was getting his 'marching orders' from Long Night Running. I thought to Andy. I heard the giggle in his thoughts and knew he was just teasing me. Idea explored and plan in place, we made our farewells and prepared to take our leave. Copper and Slider had gotten a raw deal from us when we first arrived. After such a strenuous two mile run. We should have given them a good rubdown and some water at least. But we soon discovered that they were well tended. During the two hours we were with Long Night Running and the other Yaru elders, the horses had been running, drinking water from the nearby stream, eating some of the local foliage and enjoying the company of a half dozen young Yaru. "Babies!" Said Titan. "The oldest of them is barely thirty cycles." Titan was fifty cycles himself. That made him only a boy, the Yaru equivalent of Andy, a pre-teen adolescent. No wonder he and Andy became such fast friends. I sent the thought. Somehow without a word or thought, or any invocation of the Light, I could sense my wife, in the midst of the silence that ensued, shaking her head sadly. We had a lot of practice in recent years recruiting the best and brightest of the academic community, but in some senses the techniques we had developed where wasted on the kind of people that Legion Team Three wanted. Secrecy was a fact of life for them. Jobs with big payouts and no guarantees were par for the course. So were jobs where you didn't know where you were going until you got there. If then. They started with people they knew. Former teammates. Those who had instructed them, and those they had instructed. Tony was the most connected of the four of them, and his first thought was the unit once known as 'Fat Eddy'. Tony and Cyrus met the six surviving members of Fat Eddy at the Mad Cow Bar and Grill, in Porter, halfway between Muskogee and Tulsa, Oklahoma. A couple beer's worth of how the hell ya been's later, Pea Nichols got the real conversation started. "Obsidian Research, huh?" "Yup." Tony answered. "Money's good?" "Depends. Cyrus and I signed up for a long term gig. We do pretty good." "Good enough he finally convinced Sylvia Porter to marry him." Cyrus added. "She signed up for the same gig." "Don't suppose you can tell us where?" Joe Meier asked. "Nope." Tony answered. "Don't suppose you can tell us how long?" "Nope." "What can you tell us?" Tree Simmons asked. "Tree, if you sign up, we take care of the 200,000 you owe your ex wife and wipe out the rest of your outstanding debts. Same for the rest of you. When you get on the bus you owe nobody from your old life anything. Chili, that weapons charge they keep hanging over your head down in Natchez will be history." "What about my kid?" Long Bob Thompson asked. "Who takes care of him while I"m gone?" "Christ Bob, I'm embarrassed you tried that one. Everyone here knows your kid's in his 3rd year at Indiana State on a full scholarship! What the hell kind of taking care of are you thinking?" That got a good laugh around the table. They'd been hearing about 'poor little Robby' for years. "He's a bright kid with a head on his shoulders. How about Obsidian pays for graduate school if he wants it?" Cyrus said. That was enough to seal the deal for the Fat Eddy crew. "Listen up!" Tony said after the hubbub began to die down. "For Cyrus and me, Sylvia, Chet alvarez and a lot of other good people, this is a 'Death before Dishonor' kind of deal. I want each of you to look me in the eye and tell me you are prepared for that level of commitment." They looked, and they swore, and Tony and Cyrus watched the honesty of their thoughts as they did. "Okay! Cyrus?" Cyrus pulled out his cellphone and hit a quick dial. "Team three. We're a go." Cyrus said into the phone. The rest of the table got to listen to one side of a quick phone call. "Yes, all six. The scholarship for the kid too, just like we figured... Okay, where?... 4 weeks... Okay." "Congratulations meat. The deal is sealed. The money men are taking care of things as we speak." Cyrus pulled a thick envelope from his jacket and began handing cell phones similar to his own to each person. An Obsidian branded credit card was also handed to each of them "Your lives are now on Obsidian's dime. Four weeks from now we will be having lunch at my Uncle Chunk's place. You show up there and the show begins. Anyone need directions?" "What do we do in the meantime?" Tree asked. "We on vacation?" "Each one of you needs to recruit two more people. Our kind of people. You call me or Tony to arrange a meet with them. We're on quick dial in these phones already. If you find 'em tomorrow, then you get three weeks and six days of vacation at our expense." "Don't anyone bother trying Pinky Wallace and his crew. He's our next stop." Tony said. Ambrose McKesson had no problem finding his candidates, they too were a unique bunch. In the military organizations of the worlds major powers, you rose up the ranks on utter merit. To a certain point. To advance beyond that point required a willingness to play politics. Ambrose wasn't interested in the men and women who liked to play politics anyway, so he just set his sights on those of high ranks who hit that ceiling and bounced. Ambrose's principal targets in the United States were Commodore Stephen 'Ducky' Brenneman (retired), Colonel Haywood Covington USMC (retired), and Brigadier General Randall Tyler USAF (retired). Those three, along with his top British candidate, Commander Admiral Geoffry Butler Symington of the Royal Navy (retired), and the now bitter and unemployed former soviet submarine commander Victor Emanoff were now sitting with him at a corner table in the back of Bull Feeney's in Portland, Maine. The good natured banter between Symington and the Americans was countered by the seemingly perpetual glare of Emanoff. Ambrose had made his arrangements through a third party, seeing as how the world thought of him not only as dead, but as spectacularly dead in that dramatic and supposedly deadly explosion at sea. So when it was Ambrose who walked up to their table and sat down, rather than their expected host, they forgot their banter and their bad mood and simply stared. "Welcome gentlemen! I suppose you are all wondering why I"ve asked you here today?" Ambrose began with a chuckle. "I've always wanted to be able to say that. I finally got my chance." "Ducky and I assumed someone was trying to form a think tank of some kind to tackle a military problem." Haywood Covington said. "But you're dead, so I guess not?" "A ghost must have interesting tales to tell." Victor Emanoff spoke suddenly, with far more spirit than before." "I suppose Howard Dexter isn't dead either then?" Randy Tyler asked. "I am not in a position to answer those kind of questions until we have a deal, if we can reach one." Ambrose said to them. "You all know me only because I made a considerable effort many years ago to stay connected to the services after I left. I missed the life and enjoyed the people. Even you Victor!" That drew a laugh, and their waiter arrived in the middle and waited for it to die down before placing their drink order on the table. "No vodka, Victor?" Ambrose asked. "Beer is to keep the hands busy now. Vodka is for celebrating after the deal is done." "Very sensible!" Geoffrey said, raising his glass. "To honorable service!" They drank their toast, and as the glasses touched the table, Ambrose had five pairs of eyes on him. "Gentlemen, those I represent are in need of military thinkers, it is true, but we are not looking to start a think tank or craft a position paper or any of the things dry old retired officers of your rank and experience get asked to do. What we need are men who can still be strategists and tacticians and commanders. We need leaders of men who can build a military force and wage war with it." "You are asking us to help you create a military force for some third world country? Is this where you've been hiding?" Stephen Brenneman asked. "No, I"m not." Ambrose answered. "Then is this the final corporate takeover, is this a Blackwater on steroids kind of deal where the McKesson Group or Obsidian Technologies gets a private army?" Haywood asked. "No, its not that either." Ambrose answered. "Here's the dilemma, and the reason your five were picked out of all the possible retirees of our acquaintance. You're good at what you do, you're very much not political, and you all have nothing to loose." "I still have hopes of getting my daughter and her children out of Kyrgyzstan." Victor said angrily. "That worthless husband of hers betrayed our people and her, and paid for his mistakes with his life, but the petty tyrants in charge there will not release them!" "We all understand your problem Victor, but we all know there is little chance you will succeed on your own. I will tell you that we will aid you in those efforts once you sign on." "What's the catch?" Randy Tyler asked. "There are multiple catches gentlemen. One: You will be asked to create a force using tools unfamiliar to you. Two: You will face an enemy you are not familiar with. Three: the theater of operations is completely outside of your experience. Four: Failure could well mean many deaths including your own. And Five: Even if we succeed, it could mean never returning to the places or people you know." "You paint a rosy picture!" Geoffrey said. "There are things I cannot tell you at this time which would make this picture seem better than it does at the moment. Here's the only hint I'll give you. Say yes and A.J. McKesson will personally thank you." "We are all naval and air force. No ground action?" Victor asked. "I am not the only recruiter." Was all Ambrose said in reply. It took three more hours before Victor switched from beer to vodka, but he was the last to be convinced. Ambrose pulled a cell phone out of his pocket and hit a quick dial. Everyone at the table listened to Ambrose's side of the conversation. "Ambrose, its a go... yes, all five?" Good... Yes, and the daughter and grandchildren. Of course." Ambrose put the cell phone back in a pocket and pulled out a heavy paper envelope from which he began pulling cell phones and credit cards, handing one each to the five men. "You are now on the payroll. My number is already entered in each of these as the first quick dial. Mr. Symington, you could, if you tried, use that card to pay off your considerable debts back home, but they have just been taken care of. The post-it note on the back of the credit card lists the address of where we will be meeting in three weeks." Mor Grestain had the enviable ability of just contacting the Board of High Governors and saying "The Spirit Masters need our best military minds." "Make your selections. Take who you need. We will officially reassign them to detached status." Was the word that came back. The Governor's took all of ten minutes to debate the issue before making their decision. "Arden, welcome to the biggest, most impossible to miss secret in the universe." I said. Con, Arden and I were standing in front of the infamous 'fifth ring' on Obsidian. The Arena, our Hall of War. The Arena was a single open space almost a mile wide and almost fifteen stories tall. The thirty feet of space between the inner wall and the outer wall included an observation ring, a row of seats that ran completely around the inner surface. Four control rooms were spaced equidistantly around the perimeter. I led the three of us to one of the control rooms. Arden's eyes moved back and forth across the many displays and view screens that showed the open space beyond. "Its like we have our own Danger Room!" Arden said suddenly. "I've always thought of it as the world's biggest Holodeck!" I argued. It is also the worlds biggest cooperative simulator array. The observation ring contains a total of 300 simulator stations, all of which can be tied into the same interactive holo-projection. Here is where our military geniuses will teach themselves about the weapons we give them and develop the strategy and tactics that best use them. Before they can do that, you two will bury yourselves in the Arena database and find those tools. Don't try looking for the perfect choice, include anything that looks promising. We'll let the military types decide which of your choices are best suited. If you find a category that looks promising, just flag the entire thing. Con, for the moment I don't want anyone else in here except you guys. Can you set something up?" "Of course. I'll activate the palm scanner screens at the doors, just like the ones we had back at the old house. You'll both have to do the activation routine, but you're used to it. Quick and painless. One of us will have to let the warriors in when the time comes." We did the scanner routine and I left them to their work. As I left, I heard Arden telling Con, "Okay, what kind of menu options does this thing have. Can we pick categories, like 'battle cruiser', and just see what we get?" I jumped back home in time to see Serenity riding Titan across the front lawn, chasing a running Andy, waving her arms and squealing with joy. Ginny was sitting in the porch swing watching. I sat beside her and leaned in to kiss her cheek. "How are you handling it?" "I send you off to do a simple little thing. Find a world to train your army on. Instead you return with a second adolescent male to add to our household. A 500 pound, eight foot long adolescent!" "I'll be taking him with me as much as possible, if that helps. Titan's not breaking things or scaring the help is he?" "No, its the young boy mentality and enthusiasm more than anything. Andy keeps him pretty busy during the day." She sighed and smiled. "Andy said something about the three of you making a shopping trip?" "Not exactly shopping. We're going to go pick up a present for Titan's kin back on Aruh after lunch. We shouldn't be gone more than a couple of hours unless the Yaru need us for something." We watched the kids play with Titan for an hour or so, until Shelaana came out to get us all for lunch. Titan sat out on the back patio while we ate. ------- Chapter 10: Balance and Time We had identified more than a dozen worlds so far that were habitable but not currently occupied by a society of intelligent beings. Some, like Mesa were habitable but impractical. Some, like Pearl, were habitable but dangerous. And then there was Kite, habitable but doomed. Of these worlds two had untouched buffalo herds like Meadow. Shrike was an otherwise gorgeous world, but one with a predatory and lethal bird species that hunted in swarms. We left it alone. The second of the two was Cascade. Cascade was one of the worlds we had designated for settling when and if the time came that we could let the people of Earth know of the existence of facets, and of our ability to travel to them. In the meantime, there were the buffalo. We jumped to Cascade at midmorning, local to the region the buffalo were currently moving through. I put the three of us on a high bluff overlooking a sea of grass and within it a great, wide brown river of flesh. Titan's coat went hard, and the colors cycled through dark blue to mint green and back several times. "These are the creatures whose meat I tasted last night?" Titan said. "They are called Buffalo." I said, "We have a herd like this on the facet where we have our home as well." "I know the meat of these creatures is the present you wish to give my people." Titan said. "But if you were to let the Yaru elders come and hunt these creatures themselves, it would be a present that could never be equaled." "We had these animals in numbers like this on the facet of my birth as well Titan, and we managed to hunt them almost to extinction, as did our allies the Taluat on their world. We would have to manage the herds here so this could not be repeated." "You would not get any disagreement from the Yaru in that regard. We learned this lesson at our own hands long ago, though the Strilem were nothing like these magnificent creatures!" "Perhaps the hunt could be used by the Yaru as a rite of passage, to mark the entry into adulthood?" Andy said from beside me. I turned and gave him a stare. "What?!" He said. "I read books!" "Titan, I know you a little, after these past few days, and I know that if there were a path to this place that was always open to you, but the elders told you that you must have permission to come, you would honor their request. But I do not know the Yaru as a people. Do you have lawbreakers and thieves? Do you have those who would take what was not theirs?" "Yes, we do." Titan said, his coat going all white and ruffled. There is great shame when a Hunt produces a rogue, but the greater shame would be in not bringing them to justice and making an example of them to the young." "Then we need a gate with access that can be controlled by the Elders." I said. "Andy, any ideas?" "Well, how about something like the Sonox necklace we've given to Titan? Something they could wear, like we do with our bracelets." "I was thinking the necklaces would be combat gear for all the Yaru who saw action against the Sh'kxu. They'll need it if they are going to keep millions of Preci calm in the middle of a war." I said. "Still, that's a practical idea. We should check with Constantine. The necklace idea was a good quick solution for Titan, but with time to think about it he may probably come up with something better suited to the long haul." "In the meantime, we have the buffalo question to deal with." Andy reminded me. "Titan, what if we take back one of them now as a sample, and offer to bring the elders here to show them. We can discuss options with them then." "That would be best. The elders are not overly prideful, but they do have their pride. They will appreciate being consulted from the beginning. And it would be a singular honor to be given the chance to make the first hunt." "You should have the honor of the first kill, Titan. But not the first hunt?" Andy asked. "A wise distinction, Andy. Yes, having the first kill would improve my standing, while leaving the elders the honor of the first hunt." So I culled one of the stragglers from the back of the herd, jumping it to the rock and shrub covered slope behind the bluff we stood on. Titan made a quick kill, which made Andy's eyes go wide. Hell, it made my eyes go wide. It is one thing to know someone is capable of such carnage, but another to see them wreaking it. Titan stood, his forepaws on the hind haunch of the dead buffalo, his eyes gleaming with the feeling of the kill, and his coat stiff and jet black when I jumped the three of us to the dry packed dirt approach to the rubble slope in front of the den. The second we appeared Titan roared word of his kill in the Long Voice. Long Night Running and his second in command Mudfoot came immediately in response to Titan's call. Seeing the three of us, and the buffalo, and Titan hovering over it, he shook his head in almost a human way. Some small little rituals of the pack happened then, probably of more importance than the casualness with which they seemed to happen would indicate. Long Night Running approached Titan and the buffalo, and Titan backed away at last from his kill. Long Night running gave the buffalo an examination with his nose, and finally reached down and tore the heavy hide over the neck with his sharp teeth. He then howled in the Long Voice. Finally he approached Titan and the two Yaru stood nose to nose for long moment until finally Long Night Running turned, and faced back to the den. Titan 'whuffed' something and walked up to stand alongside and just slightly behind his leader. Long Night Running said as the two of them passed us, joining Mudfoot and walking slowly towards the den. We met with the Elders, in council. Titan, as a member of my party was attending his first Elder's council as something besides a defendant. Long Night made a quick presentation, and turned things over to me. "You have called us Spirit Masters, and we are, but we are people first, and as people who have made new promises and new friends, we sought a way to mark this with a gift to commemorate our rejoining. In my family, food always seems to wind up associated with memorable events, and so perhaps this is why we thought of food as the gift we might give." "My nose is telling me it is a fine gift too, even from this far away!" Red Nose thought to us all, causing a chorus of the peculiar whuffing/howling noise that is Yaru laughter. "Not wishing to make a poor choice in gifts, and since Long Night Running had so generously allowed Titan to join us as his representative... ' That statement produced an even louder, longer round of laughter. Even Titan thought it was funny. "... we allowed Titan to sample the meat of the buffalo, and he did think it would be a fine gift, as the meat was a delicious and different taste. This was when my son Andy, who is young, but wise for his age, and quick thinking, suggested we might want to let you have the buffalo itself, rather than just the prepared flesh, as we had given Titan." I bowed slightly in Andy's direction. "Your child is wise indeed, having the animal is much more satisfying to our people than just having the flesh." Another of the Elders said in response. "We took Titan then to a place where a herd of the buffalo could be found. He took one look at them as they stretched across the plain and asked us to change our gift. He asked us not to give you one of these animals as our gift to you." This news had the Elders looking at Titan with a little confusion. He had been the one who stood over the kill when it came, so there seemed to be a conflict in what they knew and what I had just told them. "Instead, he asked that we give you the opportunity to hunt the buffalo yourselves. Our gift to the Yaru shall be the gift of the hunt." This produced what could only be described as the Yaru version of a chaos bomb! When this died down I nodded at Titan. "You should speak now." I looked at Long Night Running and he nodded in agreement. "When I first suggested that the chance to hunt the buffalo would be a better gift than just the meat of the creature, my friends saw the worth of that idea immediately. But the idea of the elders having a hunt was only the initial thought. In our discussions we began to consider the thought of giving the Yaru access to these herds so that the hunt could become a part of our Hunt. I have made the first kill, but it was not a hunt. It was simply the taking of one of the herd who had already been separated from it by Dave. The honor of the first hunt I asked be left to you." The excitement this brought to the council almost matched that of the previous one. When it had died down it was Long Night Running who stepped forward this time. For the first time in the meeting he spoke in Yaru, rather than the thought speech. "We have long gnashed our teeth and fretted over the seemingly boundless energy of 'Child Born in the Image of the Elder Legends Who Strode the World as Gods'." Long Night Running used Titan's full, formal name. I saw Titan's ears perk up as he did. "We forgave him in the past for his recklessness and his impetuousness, because we saw that someday he would become a powerful adult and a wise leader, if only we could survive long enough to guide him there. He was a trial to us all as a child, but no longer. Today I declare him an adult, and announce to the Elders gathered here, and to the Hunt that this is so." This pronouncement was answered by a very loud and very synchronized howl from the Elders, followed by one from Titan. In the silence that followed, Long Night Running's voice came clearly. "But you are still taking him with you when you leave, aren't you Dave?" 'Howls of laughter' indeed. Even with the need to switch ourselves to a war footing in response to the situation on Precipice, Legion Team One and Two were busy working on an older problem. Gordon Halsey, our mysterious coercer benefactor who had used Howard Dexter to expose the energy companies who opposed the Obsidian Technologies Fusion Reactor. We had finally gotten a handle on Gordon, after years of patience, and tracked him back to his business in Colorado and his home in northern New Mexico. With Light-based tools we had learned of on Kri, a facet I had originally designated 'Autumn', we had been monitoring his home, and his conversations and surface thoughts for a couple of months now. With Team Three's diversion to the war effort, we had switched Team One, minus Arden, and Team Two to the Halsey operation. Titan had been my shadow since our return from Aruh, so I took him with me to meet the two teams and get an update. Plus it was fun watching everyone react to the big guy. We really had a big problem with Gordon Halsey. He was a nice guy who happened to be a coercer. He seemed to be using his abilities to help those he encountered, and when he helped himself, it was to back up honest efforts. His ranch in New Mexico was chock full of beautiful women in skimpy outfits, its true. But it proved to be a little less of a coercer's harem and more of a therapist's reward. "Gordon Halsey is considered to be a miracle worker among the Vegas Showgirl crowd, as well as the 'girls' who work in Nevada's legal prostitution industry." Ariana told us. "He offers to cure their drug addiction, 100% guarantee, no questions asked. If the client is satisfied a year later, they owe Gordon a month at the ranch." "With his coercive ability, that lifetime guarantee is as good as gold. They couldn't fall off the wagon if they wanted to." Mike said. "He must be really working through a lot of showgirls then, to have six living at the ranch at a time." I said. "Well, there's the next part to the puzzle." Alicia said. "Two of the girls currently living at the ranch have already completed their month's service. They liked the life there so much they asked to stay on after their month was up. Four of the girls are waiting their turn to 'work' at the ranch, but are staying there in the meantime because they have no place of their own to go to, and are worried about returning to abusive relationships." "It's not a harem? He's really only involved with one girl at a time?" I asked. "Yes, and as far as we can tell, there is absolutely no coercion involved in these girls' decisions to stay." Pete added. "Either that, or this guy is the most subtle operator we've ever seen." Fred offered. I thought about the entire situation for a while. "What's your recommendation?" I asked them. "He's home right now. We snatch him. Take him off to someplace secure and we give his mind the thorough going over we'll need to make sure we're not being deceived, and then let him know he's got us out there watching to make sure he keeps playing it straight, and then we let him get back to his life." "Alright." I said after a moment's thought on that idea. "Possible problems with this approach?" "His knowing about us changes his thinking or behavior in some way and he becomes more of a problem than he is currently." Alicia offered. "His exposure to the awakened is enough to perhaps awaken him as well." Byl suggested. "But that's not necessarily a problem if it doesn't cause a change in his behavior." "If we snatch him, where do we put him and what do we do with the residents of the ranch if it turns out we can't use the 'catch and release' scenario?" I asked. "Catch and release? That's cute! Evidence of a youth misspent on the banks of New Melones Lake." Sarah said. "It shouldn't be too hard to convince the women there of Gordon's coercive abilities. All we have to do is demonstrate it to them. If we can do it, then obviously so could Gordon, and it would explain his miracle cure." "As for where to put him, how about that dome on Dust we used for the Sh'kxu we grabbed from Precipice?" Fred suggested. "We're still holding our Sh'kxu prisoner there, so that's a minor complication. But I've had the dome controls modified so we can create internal force fields however and wherever we want them." I dumped the knowledge of the dome setup, along with the new internal force field controls to everyone. "Today is for getting the scene set. I'd like you all to take care of getting the dome set up for our new guest. Use the new controls to move Lark's Bright Song to the wall of the dome and then build a small area for him to be able to move around it, but separate it from the area we'll be using by at least twenty feet. Give us some amenities in the area we'll be using, food and drink. Whatever our Mr. Halsey' prefers should be on hand." I gave everyone my patented evil grin. "Do you all remember the scene in 'The Matrix'. Where Neo meets Morpheus, and they do the blue pill, red pill thing? Try to duplicate that as closely as possible. I want to have something that is familiar and unreal to balance out the unfamiliar but very real. Keeping our guest off balance at the beginning will be to our benefit." "Team Two, you're going to take care of the other residents at the ranch. We will do this in the middle of the night. I want them to all be asleep when we take Gordon, and kept that way while we're busy. Once they are asleep I will jump our target to the dome. I want you all to be there ahead of me, both teams. Try to achieve that casual 'we've done this before' look you are all remembering from The Matrix. We will meet back here when it is 2am in New Mexico." I had to explain The Matrix, and the entertainment industry and devices in general to Titan, but he took it in stride. He understood the concept of theatrics and pretending for fun. The idea that a story can be told that wasn't true as a means of entertaining people struck him as just an expansion of what the Yaru often did for amusement. The highest form of entertainment on Aruh was the well executed practical joke, or at least sp Titan would have us believe. With an offer from Titan to recount for me the best of his own practical jokes, for entertainment purposes of course, I decided a nice nap would be a better choice, so we headed home. As soon as Ginny heard the plan for the evening, she invited herself along. So did Andy and Serenity, but I vetoed that very quickly. Since naps were the order of the day for those participating, Ginny and I napped together. We did! Eventually. We slept until just before dinner time, and came down to the living room to find Andy and Serenity sitting with Titan. The living room was one of the few rooms big enough to allow Titan into, and since his coat was not hair, and did not shed, Ginny and Shelaana had agreed that he could spend time there with the kids. As we entered the room, an excited pair of kids spotted us. "Hey Mom, Dad, check this out!" Andy hollered. Titan stood and his coat shifted from its soft mode to its hard, defensive mode. When it did, we saw a transformed Titan! Titan's coat shimmered and glistened with points of reflected light, like sunlight on water! "Titan! What happened?" Ginny blurted out. "I only took a short nap, and when I woke, I asked Andy if there was a sand pit around. I was feeling a little dirty, and we Yaru generally prefer a nice pit of loose sand or gravel to roll around in to clean our coat. It gets the coat all hard and really satisfies the itch that builds up as it gets dirty." "I took him out and showed him the sandbox in the garden, but it was way to small." Serenity said. "So I took him to the shop on Obsidian and ran him through the sandblaster." Andy said, with a triumphant grin. "You ran a guest through a sandblaster because he was feeling like he needed to get clean?" Ginny almost shrieked. "Well, yeah, it seemed appropriate in this case, and Titan loved it!" Andy said in his own defense. "I have never felt so clean!" Titan said, "And the sensation of this sandblaster! I should like to sell tickets to my fellow Yaru, if only we used money, and I would get rich!" "You should feel the soft coat now too Mom, its like the softest thing you've ever felt." Serenity offered with a giggle. Dinner that night was corned beef, boiled baby potatoes and Irish soda bread. Dwight, Shelaana and Kieran ate with us, and Titan was a big hit with everyone. Andy and Serenity were going to spend the night at the Alvarado's house, and of course all three kids pleaded to have Titan spend it with them. It was Titan who finally put an end to it. "Children, I am going to be going with Dave and Ginny and the Legionnaires tonight, and I will not be going as a friend or companion or playmate, but as a warrior. Tonight's mission will mark the first time in many thousands of cycles that one of the Yaru has been able to stand with a Guardian and fulfill the role of War Hound and honor the memories and sacrifices of our ancestors. You do not wish to deny me this honor do you?" Of course they didn't, and after a round of hugs, they left with Dwight and Shelaana. Our sudden decision to finish the Gordon Halsey situation tonight, one way or the other, had not altered the rest of the events going on around us. Zaia and Riah had their weddings scheduled for only a month from now, and Ginny was busy for a couple of hours of phone calls and jumping back and forth between the Library at Ureda and the apartment on Taluat where Zaia was staying, by herself now, since Riah had decided to move to the Library in advance of her wedding there. I made a few calls myself. I had a few things to arrange for this evening as well. Titan and I also had an appointment to keep. Long Night Running had arranged a meeting for me with the leaders of the Hurim, the nocturnal forest dwellers who so far I knew of only as the builders of the few structures the Yaru had. Apparently the Hurim began expressing an urgent desire to meet with me as soon as they learned of my existence. We met at the river where Andy and I had first arrived on Aruh. Here in the moonlight, the river represented neutral territory. Even using the mind speech, as the Yaru and Hurim called it, the Hurim seemed to speak in whispers. Their leader's name was Shaa. Unlike the Yaru, the Hurim did not have long, descriptive names. Unlike the Yaru, the Hurim were interested only in peaceful coexistence. Shaa said. The long standing deal between the Hurim and the Yaru ended, just like that. "We will continue to patrol the rivers." Long Night Running said to me as we left. "We didn't really do it just to protect the Hurim fishing platforms anyway." The Hurim had been honoring an agreement they didn't need for many millennia, apparently because it was the neighborly thing to do. We got back to the house in time for a second nap and a late snack, then it was time to go. Gordon Halsey woke in the middle of the night with a cold, clammy feeling. He sat up and tried to clear the cobwebs, but couldn't seem to shake them, so he went into the bathroom and splashed a little cold water on his face. The cold water only made the clammy skin seem more objectionable, so he stripped off his boxers and stepped into the shower and tried to let the stream of hot water wash the feeling away. The shower helped, but there was still an antsy feeling of... something that the shower had not cleared away. He threw on a fresh pair of boxers and a t-shirt from the walk in closet. 'Maybe a snack will help.' He thought to himself as he turned to leave the closet. Only suddenly the closet wasn't there. The bathroom wasn't there! In their place stood a tall man wearing a blue, form-fitting suit with blue highlights that seemed to glow in the dim light. Standing next to him was a monster! Dave and Titan stood in the dome, near a familiar looking pair of chairs, and were arranged to be facing Gordon Halsey when Dave jumped him in. Dave saw the look of surprise, then fear on the coercer's face, and suddenly Titan disappeared! Except that Titan was still standing right there, and with his senses, Dave realized he was instead almost invisible. It was like the stealth mode of the Legion armor! Dave asked. Titan answered. Slipping back into full visibility. Dave walked over and sat in one of the chairs, motioning to the other one with a hand. "My name is Dave McKesson Mr. Halsey, but I assume you recognize me?" "Yes of course." Gordon said as he sat in the chair across from me. "I recognize the scene you have built for our meeting here. The beast doesn't fit, but I assume I am to be Neo in this drama, and you are Morpheus. Where does the Wolf monster fit in. "I am the audience. I am enjoying the story so far too." Titan spoke aloud for the first time, using the Sonox. " "Titan has a part to play in a bigger story. One that brings us together to find the answers to the Gordon Halsey story quite a bit sooner than we had anticipated." Ginny chose that moment to jump in, directly onto the arm of my chair. "My wife Ginny." I said. As I did, I sensed the rest of the Legion jumped in behind us. "And these are the members of the Legion of Light. "Mr. Halsey, we are not here to rescue you from a false reality. We are here because someone such as you would have once been considered our greatest enemy. But we have recently encountered a much more terrible foe, one who has already enslaved an entire world, far more completely than the make believe world of The Matrix." I sent into his thoughts. "My kind?" He said out loud. "Coercers." I said. "Those with the ability to lay a compulsion up a person, a permanent command that changes their behavior, their actions, even their very beliefs. The talent that allows you to give your house guests a permanent cure from their drug addiction. The talent that allows you to compel people to do things they would normally never do." I jumped Howard Dexter into the dome, to stand beside my chair on the side opposite Ginny. "Right Howard?" "Oh my god!" Gordon said. "You're alive!" "Yes I am." Howard said. "And I feel like I should be thanking you for what you did, even though it was a violation of my very being. Wrong as it was, what you did wound up setting events in motion which have changed my life in amazing ways. I cannot thank you for what you did, but know that I do not hold you any ill will." "Thank you." Gordon said. He looked at me. "You grandfather and Uncles? The family retainers?" "All perfectly fine. Their disappearance actually had little to do with what you had done. The energy companies had nothing to do with it either. That turned out to be the perfect excuse for the explosion, and we didn't even come up with it, the media did." "But what I did was wrong." Gordon said, more to himself than to Howard or me. "Mr. Dexter, for what I did to you, I'm sorry. I'm happy at the results, but I'm sorry about what I had to do to you to achieve them." "Thank you Howard. I'll get you home now." "Just a minute Dave." Howard said. Walking over to where Howard still sat, he reached out with his hand extended, and shook Gordon Halsey's hand. "I appreciate why you did what you did to me. Thanks to Dave and these people, I am also able to appreciate how little you actually did to me, to get me to do what I did. I wish you well." Gordon Halsey shook Howard's hand, then stood and hugged him. "I am the one who owes you thanks Mr. Dexter. Thank you for your forgiveness." I jumped Howard back to his home, and to his family. "You presented us with a real problem when we detected signs of your tampering in Howard's mind." I told Gordon. "Signs of that kind of tampering are usually left by those we call Coercers. We once believed that to be a coercer was to be evil, and the first coercers we met were horribly so, with sick, perverse needs that they used their abilities to satisfy." "But I'm not like that!" "No, it is evident to us now that you are not. But imagine the caution which we exercised in trying to find you, thinking that you might be. Do you remember the Fourth of July parade in Pittsburgh?" "Yes, I came to watch you and your Grandfather ride in the parade, but I chickened out when you started to get close." "You actually did let us get too close. We were able to get a tag on you, but just the faintest of one. We played it safe and let you go. In the meantime we prepared for the day when you would get close enough to one of us again for that trace to trigger a trap that we had set within our own minds. That happened when you came to the grand opening in Dearborn." "You've known about me since then?" "When you showed up in Dearborn our automatic trap was sprung. It implanted a device under your skin, between your shoulder blades. You have been under almost constant surveillance since that day." "My God!" Gordon said. "How much?" "Every surface thought, every word you spoke or heard. Eventually everything that went on in your house in New Mexico as well." Gordon sat there for a while, just letting it all sink in. Finally he looked at me with a look of determination. "Okay, I'm ready. What have you decided to do with me?" I stood up, and Gordon stood up with me. I reached out and shook his hand, as Howard Dexter had. "Nothing. Not a damned thing. We will ask you not to use your talent in inappropriate ways, and remind you that we will always be watching." "Nothing? That's it?" "Well, one thing does have to happen first." I answered. "What's that?" "Gordon Halsey, let me into your mind." "Of course." He said. ------- Chapter 11: Steel and Light Several days after the events on Dust, and the 'catch and release' of Gordon Halsey, I sat bolt upright in the middle of the night. That brief moment when Gordon Halsey had instinctively tried to coerce Titan, and the amazing reaction Titan had to the assault had obviously got my subconscious to working overtime. "What is it?" Ginny asked from beside me in the darkness. "Something that happened on Dust when we brought Gordon there. In all the excitement I missed something I should have followed up on. I need to go to Aruh in the morning." "Okay. Now go back to sleep" Ginny said from the darkness. I sent off a quick thought to Eru, and snuggled back down into bed. With a hand comfortably cupped around Ginny's warm, smooth breast, I let sleep take me. On Aruh the next day, Titan and I were taken by Mudfoot to the Hurim-built stockade. I saw once we got close that the building was not the crude structure of wooden poles as I had thought, but merely designed to seem so. The building was made of some synthetic material, intended in this case to be able to hold a grown Yaru who did not want to be there. "This is White Toe Splashing the Cold Water of the Night River." Mudfoot introduced me. You really had to love these descriptive Yaru names. "And White Toe's crime?" I asked. "Murder. Out of anger and jealousy, he took the life of another. His life is forfeit, and as the Elders have decreed, he is now yours to deal with. You may not return while he lives." I thanked Mudfoot and moved to stand beside Titan, to stare at White Toe through the barrier. I thought to titan, and jumped us to Dust. The sudden change of location didn't phase White Toe at all. He must have been preparing for this instant, because he launched himself at Titan immediately, his coat flashing into armor mode in mid jump. We were not there when he landed. I jumped us to the spot White Toe had just left, reorienting us in mid jump so we remained facing White Toe. The Yaru murderer slid to a stop and spun around, snarling in rage as he launched himself at us again. This time I reached out with my mind and caught him in mid-air, holding him there, five feet off the ground. "You are here so that we can use you to test something. We do not require your cooperation for this. You will die soon, no matter how you struggle." I jumped White Toe into the section of the dome where Lark's Bright Song was held, still separated by a barrier that kept him restricted to an area near the outer wall. I signaled Eru with a thought, and several hundred sensors equipped with high-speed motion capture filters went active. As soon as they were, Eru, the twins and Laik Hulin, joined me in a high level fusion. <> With a flick of remote touch, I dropped the barrier between the Sh'kxu and the Yaru. Like a bolt of Lightning, Lark's Bright Song ran immediately for White Toe. The instant the Sh'kxu got within ten feet of him, White Toe's coat went into that stealth mode I'd seen Titan's do for that second when Gordon had attempted to coerce him. We watched the visual replay later, in slow motion and from all angles. While it was happening our five person Light-fueled fusion was in the mind and body of White Toe, observing, measuring and recording a different kind of information. The visual replay showed a very one-sided battle. The Sh'kxu lost his target, and stopped, screeching in frustration. In that moment White Toe simply stretched out his neck, grabbed the Sh'kxu in his jaws, and with a sickening crunch, ended the life of the captured alien. With our main goal accomplished, our fusion turned to one last task. We took the thoughts and memories of White Toe. "We have learned what we needed to know." I said to Titan, once we'd dropped out of our fusion. Eru said in parting. "Now there only remains White Toe's final fate." "Let me fight him!" Titan said. "No Titan. I have no doubt you would prevail, but White Toe knows he will not live long, even if he were to defeat you, so his desperation will give him an edge in the battle. There is no need to expose yourself needlessly when all we are doing is carrying out the sentence of the condemned." "What will you do to him then?" "I will give him what he wanted, the right to run free without barriers. I will give him to Dust." "This planet?" "Yes. Outside the dome, White Toe will be free. But Dust will not let him live free for long. Its atmosphere will not support life for more than a few hours, and even if it did, the very light from the sun here is deadly, and it too will kill him eventually." So with Titan watching through my eyes, we gave the freedom of Dust to White Toe. Seeing the barrier of the dome gone, White Toe ran. He ran free for hours across the dunes and dusty plains of Dust, until finally Dust took the freedom back, and the sentence of the Yaru Elders was complete. "You are an interesting person, Dave McKesson." Titan said at the end. "That was a far kinder death than White Toe would have ever received from the Yaru." We met that evening in the large meeting room on Obsidian and reviewed the data from the confrontation in the dome. Both that captured by our sensors and what we gathered from our observations while in fusion. We had the entire 'War Council' there, including all three Legion teams and the Spirit Master teachers and students. I even managed to drag Con out of the Arena to attend. We watched the slow motion video playback of the encounter. "It seems obvious from what we see here that the Yaru are essentially coercion-proof." Eru said. "This is in no way associated with the defensive reaction of their protective coat. That reaction seems to be an instinctual reaction designed to give the Yaru time to act in finding and attacking the coercion source while maximizing their safety from physical attack." "The mechanism that provides this defense is biochemical, believe it or not." Laik added as the display changed to show a model of the Yaru brain. "This gland secretes a chemical which is carried by the brain's blood supply throughout the brain, where it coats the synaptic gaps. When anything matching the signature of coercive signals is detected this chemical does a state change." "This state change of the areas of the synaptic gaps acts like a instant reset." Zaia continued. "Every mental state change from the previous moment is instantly negated, as everything snaps back to the original state." "There is some concern that this means while assaulted by a coercive field, the Yaru cannot have a new or original thought. They can only act on instinct and existing memories." Riah added. "We are not sure how significant this might be to the Yaru's effectiveness in a battle where there are many Sh'kxu." "You've heard me mention that the Yaru have a racial memory, and that they recognized Andy and I as Guardians, or 'Walkers', as they call us." I said. "They remember serving in the army of the Guardian's of old, and that information is unaffected by the chemical reset that protects them from coercion." There was a long silence as everyone looked for a new angle, a missed detail, or some possible flaw in what we had seen. Titan himself broke the silence. "Guardians, you have found your shock troops, we who call ourselves War Hounds. We can close on this enemy and kill him. When you begin looking for our partners in battle, perhaps you should look for those who can protect us from those things that can strike from a distance, and who can themselves strike from a distance." The facet of Cascade, and the rolling hills, plains and forests of what would have been Western Europe was where we decided to house our army. Our growing core of Obsidian staff, along with a large number of volunteers from the Taluatan and American settlers of Meadow did the building, assisted by the tools from the Hall of Gifts. As the building on Cascade progressed, I took Long Night Hunting, Titan and Constantine with me to visit the leaders of the nine other Hunts on Yaru. Titan insisted that Con come with us after meeting him at the meeting. "It may be a matter of the Yaru senses and our racial memory, but he smells of the Ancient Walkers." Titan said. "No Yaru will question your authenticity with him present." And so it was that the four of us journeyed to the other Hunts and met with the elders of each. The Great Hunt was declared, and the adult Yaru, and those seeking adulthood answered the call. We set up a gate near each Hunt's 'capital', and built ourselves a recruiting station around it. On Cascade, our camp was loosely divided into ten sections, matching the Hunts of Yaru. We had an Elder volunteer as Camp Leader, and each camp was named for them. Mudfoot, Longeye, Sharptooth, Springrunner, Skyseeker, Hawknose, BrightRiver, Howler, DawnVoice and Moondancer. Of course Mudfoot we knew, but it was interesting meeting the rest of these Elders. Free from their traditional duties and the company of their fellow Elders, their behavior began to convince me that Titan was not just building a defense for himself when he told me the practical joke was the highest form of art and entertainment among the Yaru. One thing I made sure of was that each camp was equipped with an industrial strength sandblaster. Our nine Elders spent the intervening weeks, before the recruits started coming in learning the basics of life with the Guardians. They visited Obsidian and received the same basic session in the Garden that everyone had. Everyone of them met TeJon, the Preci fugitive we had found at the focus on Precipice. The decision to pick Cyrus' Uncle Chunk's restaurant near Arlington, Texas was mostly a matter of giving Cyrus an excuse to stop by and see his Uncle. The restaurant did a decent daytime business, but we reserved the entire restaurant for the whole day. The proximity to the Dallas-Fort Worth airport was another plus. It gave all our recruits a location to fly into that was common enough that it drew no additional interest from those who might be tracking them. Of course for the most part, the people Cyrus and Chet recruited were used to avoiding attention. Ambrose's recruits were less concerned to begin with. By the specified time, all the recruited individuals were there and in the private dining room that had been set up for them. It was interesting, watching the two groups of recruits mingle. There is no denying the ability of Texas barbecue to overcome cultural and social differences though, and with piles of ribs and cold beer beckoning, mingle they did. As the pile of ribs dwindled, and the beer finally started sending them to the restrooms, Cyrus caught his Uncle's eye. "Okay Uncle Chunk. We're going to be leaving in a minute, but there will be bus loads of veterans showing up starting about an hour from now. Run a tab on whatever they order, and let them have what they want. We'll settle the tab tomorrow." Cyrus handed him a thick envelope, stuffed with cash. "Divvy this up amongst the staff as a tip. See you soon, okay?" As soon as the door closed behind the departing Uncle Chunk, Cyrus turned to the table. "Gentlemen, if you will all stand at attention?" As soon as they were all standing, I jumped them to where I was standing with the entire Legion arrayed behind me. The center ring of Obsidian. "Good afternoon gentlemen. I am David Alan McKesson. Welcome to Obsidian." It is said that the truest pragmatist you'll ever meet is the solider on the battlefield. These warriors, as different as some of them were from each other, proved their mettle in those first few moments. "This is Obsidian, as in Obsidian Research?" Pinky Wallace asked. "Yes it is. This is what all the Obsidian companies were named after. It both is and is not a different planet than Earth. We would describe it as a different facet, rather than a different planet. You will understand why I say that once you've heard more of our story. "So we have been hired to fight a war on one of these alien facets?" Ducky Brenneman asked. "Exactly, and it will be a battle unlike any you have ever imagined." I answered. "We are prepared to answer all these questions and more, but not here. This was just a relatively convincing location. Oh, and there's Titan. He can be convincing." I said. "Who is Titan?" Pea Nichols asked. I jumped Titan in to stand beside me. "Hello. Welcome to the war." Titan said. I saw several hands grasping for weapons that weren't there. Funny how Titan produced that reaction. "Titan is an ally, and our best ground weapon against the enemy you have been recruited to help us defeat. You'll all get a chance to meet him and talk more in a moment, first, lets get to someplace we can get comfortable and get you all oriented." I jumped us all to the meditation chamber, where the by now familiar how-we—got-here story was told, mostly by Ginny and Eru. Since it is essentially my life story, I always feel a little awkward when its being told. When that story had been told, with the resulting emotional response regarding the Choctowineh sacrifice, we moved on to more recent events. We introduced TeJon, who told his story, and we showed them the recordings of Lark's Bright Song, including the Sh'kxu prisoner's final fate in the jaws of White Toe. "Gentlemen, we are raising an army. We are raising it from the Yaru, who are happy to resume what they see as their traditional place at our side. The rest of our army will be made up of the untrained and untested Preci who we will soon begin rescuing in large numbers from their coercive masters on Precipice. That army will be responsible for defeating the Sh'kxu on the ground on Precipice. Those of you recruited by Cyrus and Tony will be the trainers and leaders of this unbuilt army. Please come forward and join us. Colonel Covington, would you join us as well?" Tony and Cyrus walked to the center of the meditation area. "You are the seed upon which our army will be built. Our next stop is a trip through something we call the Garden of Knowledge, for a little instant background knowledge." Cyrus, Tony and the twenty three men disappeared in the blink of an eye. I looked at those remaining. "Gentlemen, as you have probably already surmised, the ground is not the only place where this war will be fought. It is time to meet your counterparts from Taluat." I jumped in Mor Grestain and eight senior officers. Four from the Western Alliance of Taluat, and four Eastern Commanders who had also volunteered their services as soon as they heard of the need. Ambrose took the center spot in the meditation circle and addressed them. "You will all get a chance to meet each other in the coming days, but rest assured that you are all of comparable levels of advancement and experience. While our Taluatans have the advantage of being here with the full knowledge and support of their governments, those of you from Earth have the advantage of some relatively recent combat experience." "What none of you have is experience in the theater of operations in which you will be performing." We played the video and ran the images we had of the Sh'kxu ships in orbit. With those cards on the table, the group settled back into their cushions and began a little brainstorming session. I let them run, and gave a nod to Ambrose as I sent a quick thought. I made a few quick stops here and there, checking on the arrangements I"d made for the dinner tonight. I peeked in on Arden and Con in the Arena. I checked on the reception I had planned on Cascade for General Covington and his crew. Finally I jumped back to Obsidian and met Tony and Cyrus in the garden as they waited for their charges to finish their training. They began coming out of the garden, one or two at a time until they were all gathered in front of us. "When I call your name, come forward." Tony said. Pea Nichols. Pinky Wallace. Joe Meier. Tree Simmons. Arty Landis, Chili Cruz. Sven Wallace. Bob Thompson. Lee Wharton. John Blackwell. Red Collins. Rob Jones. Chesty Price. Keith Dieter. Aaron Sweet. Hank Craft. Pete Green. Nettie Meyer. Tony Perez. Jack Nguyen. Tiny Armonk. Matthew McAllister. Haywood Covington. As each person walked up, Cyrus jumped a package into his arms and tossed it to them. "These are your uniforms, your armor and your new best friend." Chet said as he handed the last package to Colonel Covington. "Suit up!" Three of the group were women, but nobody even blinked as they shed their clothes and donned the green glowing armor. "Blue glowing armor like mine means a member of the Legion of Light. Green glowing armor means a Warrior of the Guardians. There are some differences as you may have noticed. Cyrus thought to them. "Legionnaires are not just 'special forces' for this army. We are a whole different animal, and there are things we will be doing during this war because we are the only ones who can." Tony said. He lifted himself ten feet in the air as he said it. "Colonel Covington, you are now General Covington. You will have ten training groups at our facility. You will have two weeks to assign twenty of these people in teams of two, to each of the ten training groups. The two who remain will be your command staff, so choose wisely." "Now that the Bean counters and the guys with the rubber stamps are happy, its time to go see where you will be living and working and meet your Sergeant Majors." "Sergeant Majors?" General Covington asked. "We understand that the system of ranks you will use have yet to be determined, but these people will be filling that position on at least a philosophical level for the duration of the training period, so I use the term loosely." With that I jumped us all to Cascade. The building crews had been busy. We arrived in front of the Commandant's Office, which with the abbreviated structure we envisioned made it the army Headquarters as well for now. At first the buildings looked just like every army movie you'd ever seen on television or in the theater. Until you noticed the size of the doors. They were built to be Yaru accessible, as was everything in the camp. "Let's go meet the unofficial 'First Sergeant' of this army, shall we?" I said. We walked over to the Mudfoot group. By careful arrangement I knew to lead us to the observation window of the Mudfoot group's sandblaster, where Mudfoot had just begun his weekly cleaning. Everyone quickly crowded around the glass and watched the Yaru elder as he stretched and preened and rolled within the supersonic stream of 'sand' which was an engineered material which we had been jokingly referring to as 'Carbonite', after the stuff Han Solo got embedded into in the Star Wars movies. It was as effective as the best silicon carbide, but did not have any of the failings of that material, especially the tendency of silicon carbide to shatter into sharp-edged pieces. "It looks like Mudfoot is getting his weekly coat cleaning." I said. "You can ask Titan, but the Yaru consider these sandblasters as an amazing luxury, and love the clean feeling it leaves behind." "This was nicely arranged Mr. McKesson. We will have a much nicer appreciation of what the Yaru are capable of after this." Chili Cruz commented. "Thank you, that was my purpose, but I'm not going to ask Mudfoot to cut his session short, so why don't we go ahead and head over to the parade grounds. Dinner is being served there." ------- Chapter 12: Orbits and Influence The dinner with the 'Fleet Officers' as I was thinking of them went well. Arden and Constantine were besides themselves with the excitement of finally getting to share their research with military thinkers, and the newcomers, though they had heard him speak during the history part of our presentation, were amazed to get a chance to meet an artificial being. Andy and Serenity were also a big hit, and not just because of their precociousness and their uniqueness. In addition to Stephen Brenneman, Randall Tyler, Geoffry Symington and Victor Emanoff from Ambrose's recruiting, the Officers from Mor's efforts included Alic Resta, Hav Sheye, Tri Deov, and Grig Steprev from the Western Alliance and Franz Frel, Gurid Sprec, Iala Ianda and Tymon Bru from the Eastern States. Dinner was the same fare as the crew on Cascade were getting. Prime rib, baked potato and salad. Pretty standard stuff, as was the dinner chatter. We did not linger long after dinner, and we were soon all ensconced in the Arena. I had made everyone run through the security access ID process as we arrived. I wanted them to have free access, and encouraged them to take advantage of it. Con and Arden had reconfigured one of the control rooms to something resembling a war room. We had what I could only call a Holo-Sphere, a globular holographic display that rose high above our heads. On one side of the room a more traditional flat display hovered above a long tabletop littered with displays and readouts. The walls as well were covered with monitors of various kinds. "Welcome to the War Room." Con said as we gathered around the table. "The central display can obviously be used to project spacial data, and that is its normal use, but we're going to use it as something of a 3D modeler for now." Arden said. "First, in order to give you some idea of the range of information left for us by the Seekers, here are some examples of a few ships we won't be building anytime soon." Con said. As he did the display flickered and shifted, revealing a globular ship. "We call this one the Death Star, for obvious reasons. A reference to an Earth American movie, for our Taluat officers." The screen flickered again and a long rectangular ship was on display. "We call this the Super Carrier, and it is comparable to the ships the Sh'kxu have in low orbit." Con added. "There are dozens of other ships in this range which we could show you, and they all suffer from one flaw." Arden said, as the display flickered through a series of ships of various shapes and sizes. "We would first have to build an orbiting space dock of almost unimaginable size and complexity in which to construct any of these ships. These ships represent the products of an advanced and existing space dwelling civilization, which we are not." "Even with the advantages the Seeker gifts give us, we do not have the time, the resources, or the manpower to build a fleet that could challenge the Sh'kxu ships, assuming their ships do have weapons beyond the bombs which were dropped on the people of Precipice." Con said. "What do we have that we can build then?" Victor Emanoff asked. "We can build engines. We can build missiles and bombs of our own. We can build smaller craft, up to 1200 feet in length by 300 feet in diameter. We can provide stealth shielding for everything we can build, and if we have a Guardian aboard we have their ability to jump those ships instantaneously from point A to point B." "And can any of the ships we can build take out any of theirs?" Tri Deov asked. "No." Arden answered. "I'm sorry, but No." "God Dammit!" Randy Tyler spat out. "We need some damned intel, and we need some time to think, and we need some serious alcohol intake. In inverse order!" "I agree comrade." Victor said into the silence. "Lets go get drunk." As they left, I looked at Arden questioningly. "You seemed so bursting with good news during dinner. What happened?" "They asked us the wrong question." Arden answered. "They asked us what we could build, not what we could do. If I'm ever going to be considered one of them, I'd better go get to getting drunk with them. Are you coming?" I declined, for a couple of reasons, but mostly because I felt a little defeated by the meeting, and I didn't want to let these men see that. Instead I went home to my wife. Ginny consoled and comforted me. Passionately. It was my turn to be awakened in the middle of the night. My internal clock said it was 4am when my cellphone began ringing. I grabbed it off the nightstand next to me and answered it. "Dave!" It was Arden. He sounded very drunk. "How big an object can you jump?" "I've always assumed that size didn't matter, as long as I could make contact with the object. And size probably doesn't matter if I can actually see the object, but I've never tried anything larger than a fully loaded PSP." "Great! Okay! We'll have to do some testing then. See you in the morning! Thanks man!" "Good night Arden. Get some sleep!" Hung over, and with only four hours of sleep, if that, the entire group was at my doorstep at eight am sharp that morning. Only Con was his normal sharp and efficient self. I took pity on them all and used the Light to flush their hangovers away and give them all a wake-up boost. "I can see why all these people like working with you Dave, if this is the kind of service they get!" Ducky Brenneman said over coffee and waffles. Over vodka, beer nuts and karaoke last night - Karaoke! - they had hatched an idea, but that idea required the Light jumping skills of the Spirit Master class individuals. Right now that meant Me, Eru, Ria, Zaia and Ginny. I intentionally excluded Andy, Serenity and the other children who were Light aware. Andy and Ren quickly re-included themselves. "You need us there for the testing, if not for anything else." Andy argued. "What can you provide that makes you necessary?" I asked. "Point of view. Perspective." Ren answered. "Don't forget that none of you were able to solve the sandbox problem until we showed you all the proper way to see." The curse of precocious children strikes again. I looked at Ginny. "All right." She said. "But only during the testing phase. You are not going to be involved in any aspect of the operation itself! And just you two. I will not make this kind of decision about anyone else's kids, and that includes yours Arden." We had to stop there and explain the old sandbox game, and how we had learned to use the techniques that the kids were developing as part of a self-invented game, to build more subtle tracing and tagging mechanisms than we had thought possible. "The Light signature of any object can be considered to be an information engram that is fractal in nature." Andy said. "The level of information does not degrade as you follow the levels of recursion. Since it is Light, and not matter or normal energy, the recursive levels carry new information that is just as complete and accurate as those at the preceding level." Ren added. "In theory you could follow the recursive layers of Light information back to the origin of the universe itself, but we found the work tedious and time consuming, so we haven't pursued it." Andy said. With a straight face. With those precocious pronouncements, we entered the real research phase of what we called 'Operation Slingshot'. The idea had begun with a semi-drunken comment from Iala Ianda, who had been in charge of The Western Alliance Near Space Defense Net, the Western Alliance's version of NASA, whose mission on Taluat was asteroid defense. According to the story as the group collectively told it, Iala had sighed and offered with bitterness tinged in her voice, "We have an entire sky full of potential missiles, all sitting out there in the asteroid belt. Too bad we do not have a way to accelerate them to lethal velocities undetected. Too bad we don't have a way to deliver them close to their targets undetected." Franz Frel had agreed immediately, pointing out that even the Taluat technology could provide motors which could turn an asteroid into a lethal missile, if only we could deliver it undetected. Con had pointed out that the Seeker anti gravity engines we could build were at least three times as efficient as the Taluat ones and without the range limitations, and we did have the Seeker cloaking technology, but that it wasn't perfect, and couldn't cloak the gravity drives while they were in use. "It is too bad we cannot build engines that can perform these facet jumps, like the Spirit Masters can, then we could do the accelerating in one facet, and then jump them through when they get close to the target." Geoff Symington had slurred into the conversation. That had sobered Arden instantly, and refocused Con's attention. They had been forgetting about that possibility. "We don't need to build jump engines." Arden had said into the despondent room. "We've got human jump engines!" A PSP was modified that morning, its engines augmented to provide maximum thrust, and was launched for the asteroid belt around Pearl. Even with the speeds possible with the gravity engines, and crewless, minus the need to keep the speeds within the abilities of the g-force compensator, it was going to take a week for the PSP, designated 'Trebuchet', to arrive, decelerate and be on station. In the meantime, things began to happen, and quickly. Several of the facets unfit for settling, were mineral rich and easy choices as sources for our raw materials. We added two more teams to the Legion, full of familiar faces who had made it through the Soul Diver and Legion training sort of on the sly, as long term family projects. Team four was A.J., Sheb and Violet Halliday, and Brin Dolin. Team Five was Doc Aillard, Porter Burgess, and Nicco and Gianni Sabarte. Particularly the folks from Chocowinity were a big story in a way. They had found that being retired and the rejuvenation treatments we had been giving them didn't mix. It was also becoming apparent that the repeated exposure to the Light during the extensive rejuvenation sessions did indeed flip the switch in people when it came to the gifts. Now that our Fleet Officers were on the job I sent Arden back to Legion Team One. With as many bodies and minds in place as possible for the moment, we began 'stealing' Preci from the Sh'kxu. We assigned a 'Spirit Master' to each of the five Legion teams and began working a random pattern across the face of Precipice. Ginny had a medical station up and running on Cascade, at a separate receiving station that had been built for the purpose. The initial reports were that the Preci were a bit of the proverbial blank slate. There was just no predicting how the individual Preci would react to being free from their Sh'kxu masters. None of them had ever known anything else. At first, fully half of those we rescued were deemed unable to serve, and given a gentler path to reintegration. Most were farmed out the settlers on Meadow, where they could work at farming, something most of them knew, even if the crops and work conditions were not quite what they were used to. The farmers and ranchers of Meadow were urgently bumping their production up to the maximum to meet the needs of our growing army. Half of those eventually 'came through' within the first six months of freedom and asked to join the army. We would have been stuck with that percentage if it wasn't for Eru and Andy. They came up with something they called a persona recording of one of our earlier successes. If there had been one among the Sh'kxu who tracked such things, he would have noticed that in the spring of the 197th cycle since conquest, the infant mortality rate among the Preci rose two whole percentage points, and accidental deaths and disappearances among adult Preci rose five percent. But no such being existed. When there is no chance to resist, why should you be looking for signs of resistance? ------- The only speed bumps in the blur that my life became were caused by four events. The first was the birth of Borthun and Yela's baby, a boy they named Dave. I missed the actual arrival of my namesake by a couple of hours, but by the time I got there the baby and both parents were doing fine. Borthun was still a bit deer-in-the-headlights when I got there, but Yela was serenely happy. Ginny, Dad, Grandpa A.J. And I had been quietly filling a little nest egg for them from the Obsidian patent profits, and with Little Dave's birth we immediately doubled it, setting up a separate account for him. Actually two accounts, as we were building fortunes on Earth and Taluat now. Less than two full weeks later, the second and third events happened back to back. It was time for the twins' weddings. Chet Alvarado and Zaia Seco were married by the Reverend Willam Peterson on the Alvarado family farm on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. Cyrus stood as best man for Chet, and Felicia Poole stood as maid of honor for Zaia. The ceremony was beautiful and touching and the reception was fun and fattening, if a bit restrained. The fact that we would all be taking off first thing tomorrow to repeat the entire wedding experience for Riah made the friends and family who weren't in on the entire truth a little more understanding. The events the following evening at the Great Library of Ureda were every bit the equal of the previous days and the reception at Borthun's Rest, we were assured, would be remembered by the local and visiting VIPs for a long time. In fact Borthun began fielding requests from those VIPs and their families for similar receptions for their own mating ceremonies. Borthun began quoting an inordinately high price, in hopes of discouraging such inquiries, but to his amazement he still began holding a half dozen receptions a year. "Dave, we charge so much for them that we could operate the inn at a loss for the rest of the year and still make a profit!" He confessed to me later. Of course I pointed out that he was getting all his buffalo for free. This of course immediately started another chapter in our endless argument where Borthun insisted on paying, and I insisted it was part of our plan, and so was a business expense we should bear. These arguments usually ended after enough beer had been consumed by both of us. This time it ended when Yela informed me it was my turn to hold the baby. While we were there, we discovered that the great numbers of the homeless we had been educating at the Library were urgently looking for something to do with themselves, so we began actively recruiting them for our army. That got Dad thinking, and he decided that recruiting the homeless of Earth made sense as well. It might have been undesirable for most people looking to hire, but we had the advantage of being able to use Soul Divers to screen all our applicants. While they were never more than a small percentage of the army's recruits, the two groups added differences in experience and perspective that helped to create an army that saw itself as something other than just a group of rescued individuals. The fourth event was my trip to the Sh'kxu mothership. 'We need some damned intel' Randy Tyler had said. I was the guy who wound up getting it. For three weeks we watched one of the shipping centers. We jumped in thousands of the sliver thin Kri Lightmitters. We had them clinging to the walls and ceilings of every building and vehicle in the port. We watched the tankers make their deliveries of ground and processed 'Seed of Life', pumping it into the bellies of the cargo ships, and we watched the cargo ships lift off into space. Eventually we slipped a few into the belly of a cargo ship itself, past the high-powered and sophisticated bio-filters that were meant to detect contamination, bacteria and insect infestations. Like the Taluat, the Sh'kxu used magno-gravitic drives, which produced an antigravity field within a balanced magnetic field of sufficient size. These drives were incredibly stable and efficient, but they were self-limiting. Outside of a planetary gravity well they lost efficiency and effectiveness to the point of uselessness. For Earth, the distance where the diminishing returns began to be a problem was about three times the distance between Precipice and its Moon. The Mother ship was sitting precisely at a distance of two lunar orbits. Transit time for the cargo shuttles was 30 hours each way, and each ship spent exactly 8 hours before detaching and beginning the return journey to Precipice. After three of our Lightmitter-tainted cargo ships had made the round trip, we decided to start seeing what we could get away with. Our fourth cargo ship was not tainted, it was infested! We slid 30,000 Lightmitters into the hold of that one, and once the ship was out of atmosphere we began putting them through their paces. With each unit smaller than a human hair, it took a lot of them combined together to form any sort of useful device, but that was what we had them do. We shifted, we nudged, we moved. The reliance the Sh'kxu placed on the bio-filters back at the port seemed complete. Their were no in-hold sensors. We had been using Trebuchet, our modified PSP currently hurdling towards Pearl's asteroid belt, as our testbed for long range jumps. Intuition had told me in the past that distance was not something which influenced the Light, but those intuitive assumptions had dealt with planetary distances. It was nice to have confirmation, and again I was the one to perform the tests. With the cargo ship docked and half empty, and the Lightmitters as a beacon, I jumped into the hold. I was fully suited and in full stealth mode when I arrived. The Lightmitters had built me a little geodesic dome of Seed of Life flour, stuck like glue to the inside wall of the ship near the out-feed pipe where the flour was being pumped out. I took a little time to meditate, calming and centering myself. I reached out and touched the Light and let its strength flood through me, and then I opened my mind. I don't know how many minutes I sat there. I know that when I contacted my first mind, some twenty feet from where I hung suspended, I shuddered in relief. Our greatest fear was that I would wind up within the coercive sphere of the nearest Sh'kxu. I scanned the nearest couple dozen minds lightly, before picking one and taking everything. I reached farther, deeper into the ship, feeling for something new, something different. I took mind dumps from two others before I decided that I was pushing my luck. My instincts told me there was something there though, something waiting to stir, and I decided it was time to go. I jumped my little seed of life flour dome and the bundle of Lightmitters that had collected themselves together and jumped. I jumped straight into my Blossom's arms, and I got the hugging and kissing of my life. I then insisted on and got some time. Five days later, I stood before the Directors, the War Council, the Legion, the Fleet and Army Command. "I will not share the memory dumps I brought back with everyone. We will start with the other Spirit Masters and see how it goes. The reasons are obvious. It took me three full days to integrate the lives and memories of the three Sh'kxu into something I could fit into my sense of reality. The shipboard Sh'kxu were so completely different from those on Precipice that for all intents and purposes, humans and the planet-born Sh'kxu were practically the same species in comparison to the ship-born. Life, for a ship-borne, is a blurred, emotional whipsaw of demand/submit, demand/submit, demand/submit, repeated endlessly. And bundled in the cusps between each cycle of submission or mastery are bright, burning bundles of anger and rage, triumph and elation, fear and panic, joy and accomplishment. Those little pieces of real consciousness, scattered like bright bits of diamond dust within an endless sea of black sand, constantly struggle to integrate with each other and build a whole consciousness, a sense of self, a wholeness of being. To be ship-borne was to be an almost-person, tantalizingly close to awareness, achingly close to finding sense and perspective and meaning, but damned, dampened, dulled, drained and almost destroyed by an endless, unblinking and merciless sea of compulsion. Except while they slept. For the ship-borne, to sleep, to dream - that was the real life. Every ship-borne Sh'kxu sought sleep, and struggled during every moment found at the peak of the demand/submit seesaw to maximize their sleep time. And somehow, in this sea of madness, within this shattered-mirror-on-concrete reality, they managed to live and grow, and bear and raise offspring. They managed to maintain their ship and the technology that it contained. They manage to travel between the stars, seek out and find new worlds." I was met with stunned silence when I finished speaking. What we didn't find in the minds of the Sh'kxu was perhaps more important. Our three sample minds contained not a single iota of information regarding ship functions, weapons, communications or defenses. Over the next three months I made three more passages to the ship. And did twelve more memory dumps, including four from the deepest heart of the ship. Not a one of them, once you could make sense of their memories had a clue how anything worked. ------- Meanwhile, the mix of beings on Cascade was becoming what we had hoped for, an Army. The staff on Obsidian was working overtime cranking out collars for the Yaru and armor/uniforms for the Humans. And weapons. The first two viable products of the Arena's weapons database was what we were calling the Zombie gun and the Zombie grenade, and they were going to be the primary weapons for our ground forces. Technically they were best described as 'synaptic disruptors'. Bottom line was that if you took a shot from one, you were pretty much left to count sheep or some other purely mental exercise for the next hour or so. The Zombie grenade did the same thing, but over an area of up to 30 feet. They were easy to make and easy to use. To augment these close combat weapons we had a long range rifle we called the sonic needler. Unlike the Zombie guns, the needlers were lethal, and they were intended for taking out the planet-borne at a safe distance. Close air support was provided two ways. An unmanned gun and sensor platform we called the flying hedgehog was both our primary air-to-air support unit, with high speed rail guns and grav cannons; and our primary air-to-ground support unit, with two Zombie Guns and a launcher which could selectively fire either Zombie grenades or explosive percussion grenades, which we called 'door knockers' - designed to blast open doors and knock out windows. The grenades had mini gravity drives, which at their size were only good for 30 seconds before they burned themselves out. Our manned close air support unit we called Falcons because they looked something like the Millennium Falcon. Smaller though, with crews of seven, a pilot, and two three person gun crews who manned the Falcon's array of missile, projectile and energy weapons. All the close air support units used the Taluatan Magno-grav drives. Mostly because they could be produced on Taluat from existing manufacturers, easing the load of the staff on Obsidian, who were already busy cranking out the Seeker based items we couldn't make anywhere else. Logistics, logistics, logistics. Between the time the plans are made and the bullets begin to fly, the most important officer in any army is the supply officer. The common, ordinary, everyday stuff that every soldier needs we bought from Earth. Soap, shampoo, toilet paper, medical supplies, a thousand little things that could be solved without a high tech solution. Countless miracles were worked by those we'd counted on before. In the asteroid fields of Pearl's facet, we ran our tests. I was able to jump even the largest of Pearl's asteroids with no effort, as long as I was 'touching' it. The fact that my Legion armor was actually between me and it didn't seem to matter. The real hurdle came when I discovered how difficult it is to identify a spot in space that my mind could latch onto as a destination. That became a hurdle I spent quite some time overcoming. Or perhaps I should say I spent considerable time fretting over until Andy set me straight. "Dad, consider this an apology in advance if I insult you, but why the hell are you being so blind and stupid?" Advance apology or not, I did feel insulted. I once again showed Andy the problem I was having with identifying raw spacial coordinates because they didn't give me enough unique locational clues to ping a jump location to. "Dad, are you trying to attack a spot in space, or a Sh'kxu space ship?" I gave him the 'Dad look', to suggest he get to the point. "Do each of those ships have a Light signature?" To my nodded yes he responded, "Then stop worrying about finding the ship in space and start thinking about finding it in the Light!" ------- Chapter 13: Chain of Command My name is Kru, and Camp Covington is my home. The camp doesn't have an official name, but that'll do until they come up with one. I hear the commandant wants to call it Camp McKesson but he keeps getting voted down. You can do whatever you want here. There have been people all over the place here yelling at me and telling me to go here, and go there, and do this and do that. Some of the guys here complain about that all the time, but not me. Because each time they yell at me to do something, I can choose not to. I've been here for three months now. I spent the entire three months in the PC processing camp fifty miles from here. PC stands for Physical Conditioning. Three months devoted to getting in shape, and getting my head around the concept of being free. It wasn't easy, but it wasn't inescapable slavery either. Today had been my first at Camp Covington itself. We were brought in on transports immediately after morning mess and dumped in front of the regimental headquarters. I spent the entire day running around, getting processed and evaluated and placed by some exacting and mysterious formula into my assignment within First Division. It had been explained to me, somewhere during the blur that was the day just past, that the organizational structure was still 'collapsed' because we were not yet at full strength. Sergeant Yashida told us that if the Preci Free Force ever reached 'full strength', there would be exactly one million, eight hundred and sixty six thousand, two hundred and forty warriors in 'this man's army'. Sergeant Yashida said it would take twenty years to build an army that size. Sergeant Yashida was my company commander. He was also my platoon leader. Part of that 'collapsed' thing. Right now platoons were companies and battalions were regiments. "Tomorrow won't change that men." He said to us as we were gathered around him in the barracks. "Tomorrow wont change that, but it will change everything." After morning mess, which we discovered to our amusement was exactly as good, or bad, depending on your point of view, as what we'd been getting at the PC camp, we were quick marched back to the regimental HQ, where eight of us at a time were led inside and told to sit in a line of chairs until we were called. A couple minutes later they called the first name. Three minutes later they called the second. I was called third. The room I entered was bare except for a table, a box, a man in a skin tight blue suit and Colonel Mudfoot, the Regimental Commander. Colonel Mudfoot wasn't the only Yaru I'd seen here, but he was the first one I'd seen up close. "At ease Warrior Kru." The Colonel said. "Strip off your fatigues and put them in the box on the table please." The boots were the hardest things to get off, but not that hard. I'd often wondered how well those self-closing running shoes would do as combat boots, especially with the stories some of the Earth guys told about their military. The guy in the blue suit pulled a bracelet out of thin air and tossed it to me. "Put this on over your right wrist. Don't worry, it will stretch to fit." It did slip on easily, which was interesting, because it seemed to be a solid metal band, and not stretchy at all. The blue suit reached out and put his hand on my shoulder, I looked him in the eye, and suddenly the room got warm and I got dizzy and disoriented. Then something seemed to move in my head and suddenly everything was back to normal. Except I now had a full working knowledge of what the bracelet on my wrist was and how to use it. I reached down and touched the bracelet, and with a sharp thought I was dressed in a suit like his, only mine had green highlighting. "Spirit Master Hulin has given you the knowledge you need to use the suit you are wearing." Colonel Mudfoot said. "This is the official uniform and armor of the PFF. Please exit through the open door behind me." I saluted the Colonel, and threw the Spirit Master one as well. I'd heard about those guys, no sense taking any chances. "Thank you sir!" I heard myself saying in a gung ho voice. I stepped smartly through the door, and I wasn't at Camp Covington anymore! I was standing in a small clearing that was completely surrounded by what appeared to be very heavy forest. Judging by the height of the sun in the sky, it was late afternoon wherever I was now. "Hello partner." I heard from behind me. I turned and there was a Yaru. "Hello!" I said. "I'm Kru. Who are you?" "You can call me Skid." The Yaru said. I had heard that the Yaru names were more stories than names. I figured I'd hear the story before too long. "Any idea where we are Skid?" I asked. "Good! I was worried I'd get one of those guys who was so busy talking he never thought to ask a question, and you have indeed asked the correct question. Where are we? I have no clue." "This is some sort of test, at least that would be my guess." "Mine too. We should spend a minute looking for any clue we may have been left. You have the eyes and I have the nose, shall we sweep the clearing?" Skid suggested. We began a sweep, and as we neared the shadowed western edge of the clearing, I activated the 'high beams' in my suit. Two spots on each shoulder began to emit a bright beam of light, which I focused on the ground in front of me with a thought. "Man I wish all the instruction we got was done the way this armor knowledge was. I know everything about using this armor, like I'd been using it my whole life!" "Yeah, I got the same treatment for my collar. Pretty impressive. But didn't you get some of that kind of treatment when they first pulled you off of Preci?" Skid asked. "Yeah, that was probably part of the program, but to be honest, I was so confused and dumbfounded by what had happened that I didn't realize it was happening." That gave me a thought. I activated the comm functions, and sure enough, there was a message flag shining in my Heads Up. "Skid, does your collar have the same kind of comm functions my suit does?" I asked. Yes, it does. Oh, thorns! Good thinking Kru!" Skid said, his coat rippling blue for a second. I'd heard that the Yaru scale/feather coat could change color, but that was the first time I'd seen it happen. We both had the same messages. The first was from the gear itself, warning of high altitude and thin air. I immediately kicked in the suits face mask and let it feed me normally pressured air. I looked over and saw Skid's entire head now covered as well. The other message was an ops bulletin. Meet at the beacon. When I pulled up the nav feeds there it was, showing a distance of 20 miles. "That doesn't seem very far away. I expected the test to be tougher." I said. "It is. There's map data in the navcom. Overlay it on top of the range display." Skid answered. I did, and saw why a twenty mile hike was our test. The beacon was only twenty miles away, but it lay at the bottom of a half-mile deep canyon. We'd wasted twenty minutes already, but we took another ten to map out a line of travel on the map and mark in some way points so the navcom would alert us to our progress. The forest we were in the middle of thinned out after only a couple of miles, and then it was a good thing my suit had the exoskeletal enhancers it did. I was barely able to keep up with Skid, even using them at full power. "Damn Skid, can you run!" I commented at about the five mile mark. "Thanks Kru, but I suspect when we get to the canyon part of this little vacation, you'll be hearing me saying 'Damn Kru, can you climb!'." we both laughed out loud over that, and I liked Skid's laugh, it was deep and rumbled like distant thunder. We had a river to cross in about a mile, and I decided now would be a good time to take a closer look at the map. When I pulled up the comm gear again though, I got some telltales immediately. "Pull up Skid!" I said immediately, sliding to a stop. It looked like our test included a few obstacles, or else we were about to meet a few more travelers like ourselves. There were two moving blips on the tactical display. When I'd pulled the comm gear up again it was busy warning me that it had detected heat and movement a mile ahead. "Skid, we've been pretty dumb Warriors so far. Running across an unknown world and we had all our electronic eyes and ears shut down like we were on vacation!" With the comm gear and the security features engaged this time, we headed for our river crossing again. It looked like our two blips were headed for the same spot, and that we would get there a little more than a minute ahead of them. Skid said Over the 'private' channel of our suits. We were getting too close to risk being overheard, so I answered back the same way. The terrain map we got through the navcom had made this place seem like an ideal crossing point, but it wasn't exactly designed for an ambush. There was almost no cover to be had, and what little did exist was not going to hide Skid, he was just too big! That's when I found out that the color shifting properties of the Yaru coat could serve as camouflage. Skid crouched down in the sand near the river and his coat swirled for a second and he was gone! MY armor's stealth mode didn't work the same way, but was just as effective. I sat myself on top of a rock, big enough to sit on but too small to hide behind, grabbed a couple of rocks as improvised weapons, and cloaked and calm we awaited the arrival of our two blips. A scrambling cascade of dirt from the edge of the riverbank about ten yards south of us signaled their arrival. That was followed seconds later by the sounds of a Yaru tongue lapping at the water in the river. "The water's good Vic! And the map was right, this looks like a good spot to cross." "Great, Frost" came a man's voice, "We've still got a ways to go though." I watched the man bend over upstream of where the Yaru had taken his drink. His armor retracted from his face and he dipped his hands in the stream to get a drink. That's when I hit him with the first rock. He reacted instantly, launching himself in my direction. I dropped the second rock and met him halfway in a flying tackle. I was sitting on his chest, trying to decide what to do next when the Yaru snarled and launched himself at me from fifteen feet away. I saw Skid blur into visibility and intercept that leap in mid air, knocking both Yaru into the river. For a small period of time there was some very energetic splashing around in the water and rolling around in the dust. Finally I decided we'd had enough fun. "Stop!" I hollered. Everybody froze. The fellow beneath me began to laugh, and a few seconds later I heard the sounds of Yaru laughter coming from the river. Soon I was laughing as well. I stood up and deactivated the stealth mode of my suit. Skid came splashing out of the river to stand beside me. "I'm Kru, and this is Skid. We're first Company, Mudfoot Division." "I am First Frost and Clear Air of the Season's Shifting. Call me Frost. This is Victor Greene. First Company, Mudfoot Division." I stood corrected. This Yaru was a female, that seemed obvious. "I suspect that since the basic unit of our organization is a Quad of two Warriors and two War Hounds, the four of us are intended to form a Quad. If so, I have an immediate problem with the two of you." I said. "Which is?" Vic said, bristling. "Which is that on an unknown world, and with no knowledge of possible foes or other dangers, you ran all this way without your comm or security gear active." Skid said. "You had no idea there was anyone in the vicinity. We were able to set up an ambush, which you both walked into without any thought to the possibilities." Victor Greene blushed and I saw Frost's coat ripple a dark red. "If it makes you feel any better, we didn't figure it out immediately either. I would guess that that is half the lesson that they hope to teach us today." I said. Properly chagrined, our two new team mates joined us in looking over the map again as we compared the routes we had chosen. Until we got to the edge of the canyon there was no practical difference, so we decided to save the descent planning for when we got there. We talked as we ran. Vic Greene was from Earth, and had been living in and out of a homeless shelter in a city on Earth called Oakland with his dad and sister when he was recruited. Actually the entire family was recruited. His sister Vivian was a year older than he was, and his dad had been an electrician. "Vivian is in 2nd Company, Springrunner Division. I'll introduce you sometime when we get some R&R." On Preci, my love life consisted of regularly scheduled visits by my Sh'kxu master which signaled a trip to the brood units to fulfill the breeding schedules of my masters. I had never even learned the names of any of the females I had been made to couple with, nor did I know if there were offspring as a result. Just saying hello to a female as a voluntary act seemed strange and new when I'd encountered them at the PC camp. By the time we got to the canyon rim and began scouting around for likely places to make our descent, it was mid evening. I didn't want to be halfway down the canyon when night fell, so I suggested we spend the night on the rim. We began looking for a place to make camp. Once the decision was made, I discovered that I was what Vic called a 'literal babe in the woods'. Thanks to Vic and an organization he called the 'Boy Scouts of America, troop 9', we had a decent spot to stop for the night, camp fire included. Of course starting a fire is easy when you have a micro-laser in the tip of your armor's finger. My freshly acquired understanding of the armor and its functions gave instructions on using it to cut wire, chain link fencing, restraints and the like, but a campfire seemed a reasonable adaptation. Skid and Frost seemed happy to join us around the fire, and indeed fire was one of their most preciously guarded possessions. Without hands, fire was hard to get. We didn't need a fire, or even shelter really, not with our armor, and Skid and Frost were certainly used to sleeping under the open sky, so it was mostly a sense of security and the perception of warmth that it gave us. Neither Frost or Skid were from the same Hunt as Colonel Mudfoot, our Regimental Commander. Skid was from the 'Blue Lake Hills' Hunt and Frost was from the 'Long White Sand' Hunt. Neither of their respective Hunts were close enough to each other on Yaru to have ever had contact. To the best of their knowledge, this was the first time two of their Hunt had ever met. We finally got to hear what Skid's real name was. "Long Day's Joyous Running Through the Hills Brought to an Abrupt and Happy Stop by his Mother's Call." What a mouthful. No wonder everyone just called him Skid. With no dinner on the fire, and my strong objection to testing the edibility of the local wildlife, we were satisfied to take care of nature's call, set up a watch schedule and get some sleep. One thing no Preci has problems with is falling asleep. Given our own wills to follow, we could drop off to sleep anytime, anywhere. I had the last watch, and so was awake to see the sun rise from the direction of the mouth of the canyon and slowly make its way up the length of it, climbing the walls until it broke across the plain behind us. It was beautiful. Moments like that were the only possessions I had to bring with me when I was rescued. Once everyone was up and alert we began mapping out our path down the canyon wall to the river below. Several likely routes had to be eliminated, either because they required stretches of climbing the Yaru couldn't handle, or jumps or drops that Vic and I couldn't quite manage, even with the armor's boost to our abilities. We used the navcom to map our route, and locked it into the system. Vic fell once on the way down, but only a drop of ten feet or so, flat onto his back. We discovered that the armor could absorb a ten foot drop without causing any distress. Nice to know! We were at the river in three hours, and we stopped for a break, drinking a little water, answering nature's call again and taking some time to check our route against the beacon. The river was going to lead us right to it. We were also able to drop the masks, as the atmospheric pressure was quite a bit stronger. The banks of the river seemed easily navigable as we looked down river, so we just began a steady run. There were a couple places where the river ran right against the narrowed walls of the canyon itself, and for those we swam. Vic had learned to swim in the Boy Scouts organization, and I had learned at the PC camp, but the Yaru were amazing! With their coats fluffed up to their softest they bobbed along, 'like beach balls', Vic said. Whatever a beach ball was. At one point we both clung madly to a Yaru as we shot through a narrow rapid. At the end we decided it was so much fun we were trying to think about how to do it again. We ran at top speed, ours not the Yaru's, every chance we got, and for the last ten miles that was pretty much non-stop. We were at the beacon by mid-day. We were the third team in and the first of the teams that didn't make a night descent of the canyon wall. Three of the teams that did had to call a medical emergency and ask for rescue for one of their team members. The only fatality was a Yaru, surprisingly. Apparently we were wise to avoid testing the local wildlife's edibility. The Yaru had picked something poisonous and had died in convulsions within a half an hour. Sixteen Quads had made the same run we had, starting at the same time we had. We were ushered into a tent where we were met by our new company commander, Major Sweet. He congratulated us on our excellent time and asked the four of us to point at whichever one of us we each considered the leader of our Quad. I pointed at Frost, and the other three pointed at me. That was how I became Force Leader Kru. I suddenly found myself in charge of three Quads in addition to my own. So did the three people fingered by their teammates in the other three fastest finishing Quads. I reported to Major Sweet and I got to exchange my bracelet for a new one that added a little extra juice to the comm suite so I could talk on a separate circuit to the members of my force, my quad and also my platoon leader when I had one. Right now the only guy between me and the Major was Sergeant Yashida, who was currently standing in as Company commander so Major Sweet only had to be Brigade and Battalion commander for Regiment Alpha. Major Craft was doing the same thing for Regiment Beta. Every Division had two regiments at the moment, but when we were at full strength each division would have four full regiments. I thought about all of that as I listened to Major Sweet tell me all the reasons I had been selected as Force Leader. "Kru!" The Major said to me at last. "Your thoughts?" "Sir, I suspect that my three team members have conspired in advance to avoid extra duty and responsibility by recommending me in this fashion." "While probably true, can you deny any of their claims?" I kept my silence for a moment, but saw no option. "No sir!" "Very well Force Leader Kru! Congratulations, you just lost an hour of sleep a day. "You're new schedule should have already been dumped into your PerCom. Check with Sergeant Yashida immediately, as he may want to get you and the other four Force Leaders together during evening mess. Dismissed!" "Yes Sir!" I said along with my best Warrior salute. As I walked out the door I tapped my PerCom, and sure enough there was a contact flag from Sergeant Yashida. I stopped in the middle of the parade grounds and brought up my ComSig. I had pipes to three Quad Leaders and fifteen Warriors showing active along with the pipe to Sergeant Yashida. I set a contact flag for the other three Quad leaders and then sent the Sergeant a com request. He came online almost immediately. "Force Leader Kru! Congratulations." "Thank you sir." I answered. I figured I didn't need to be quite so 'gung ho' over a comm link, so I didn't try shouting my responses. I even managed to avoid saluting whenever I said 'sir'. "You are officially leader of Red Platoon, Force One, which for the moment is all of Red Platoon. We will be eating in my office at the company bivouac tonight with Major Craft, Red Platoon Force Two Leader Gomen and Blue Platoon Force Leaders Woj and Sanderson. In the meantime you have four brand new Quads wondering what's going on. The time between now and dinner is yours, don't waste it." "Yes Sir!" I answered, slipping back into a more forceful mode of answer. "Excellent, Kru! Carry on!" "Yes sir!" I replied, and let the link drop. I quickly tapped a link to my three Quad members and told them to head to the parade grounds on the double and meet me under the flagpole. I waited until I saw The familiar figures of Skid and Frost, sandwiching Vic between them as they hit the far side of the parade ground, before I tapped the contact flag for my three Quad Leaders. I had all three of them linked in seconds. "Listen up!" I said. "This is Force Leader Kru. I am standing under the flag pole on the parade grounds. Assemble your teams here on the double." "Yes sir!" I could hear the respect, and the salute, in the chorus of voices. As I dropped the link I wondered to myself if the respect would be there tomorrow. My Quad mates pulled to a stop smartly in front of me. "Well team, thanks to your treachery I am now Force Leader Kru, and the three other Quads that you must share me with are on their way." I cut the congratulations short. There was one thing I wanted to take care of before anyone else arrived. "Frost, you are hereby appointed as Quad Leader whenever my other duties leave me absent or too busy. I expect you to do as you think right and check with me afterwards, not the other way around." "Yes sir!" she said with a growl. I could hear Skids low, booming laugh, even though he was trying to hold it in check. He cut it short because the rest of the Force was showing up, pretty much at once. I had my PerCom tap their public data. My other three Quad Leaders were Ali, Bel, and ColdRun. Ali was a Taluat volunteer, Bel a fellow reclaimed Preci and Coldrun was a Yaru who seemed a bit older than Frost or Skid. I did a quick check on the time before I dropped the PerCom display. "Welcome to Red Platoon. I am Force Leader Kru." I said. "First of all, to my fellow Quad Leaders, congratulations. "This is all very new to all of us, so I am not going to stand here and act like I know more than the rest of you, because I don't. I will by this time tomorrow, but for the moment, I don't." I got a small laugh at that, and it did what I had hoped for, it relaxed everyone a bit. "Right now there are twelve other Quads getting bored off their asses by their new Force Leader, just like you are." I followed with. "We appear to have the parade grounds to ourselves and we are free until dinner, so lets take a seat and get acquainted." Dinner with my fellow Force Leaders, Sergeant Yashida and the Majors was enlightening. Gomen and Woj both seemed to be regular guys, like everyone I'd trained with so far. Gomen struck me as pretty sharp actually, but Sanderson began to irritate me five minutes into the meal. He had something to say about everything the Majors said, and seemed to have an angle on every situation. I kept my mouth shut for the most part, making notes in my PerCom using the subvocal pickup. At the end of the meal Major Sweet stood up and gave a parting comment. "We will meet over dinner like this at the end of every week. You have just completed the physical conditioning phase of your military career. During that time you learned what you need to know to be a soldier. Tomorrow you start learning how to fight, and earning that title you wear so proudly, Warrior. Good night Warriors." ------- Chapter 14: Feathers and String We spent our first day of training climbing back up the walls of the canyon that we had climbed down the day before. We were issued rock climbing gear: ropes, pulleys, clips, fasteners, wedges, a whole new world of tools I'd never seen before, including harnesses for everyone to wear over their armor. Our Yaru teammates even had harnesses designed especially for them. The first time through we were assigned a mountaineering specialist. Ours was named Dave. He helped us learn how to use the new gear we had been issued. Everything from tying knots to how to use the pulleys, clips and other items we had been given. We learned very quickly that two people, even with armor boosted strength could barely pull a full grown Yaru up a cliff. Even with tools, it took us three hours to climb the canyon. At the top our mountaineer told us we would have to wait until all four quads were on the rim before the transport would pick us up. Each quad would be dropped off in a new location and we would make a second climb. We were the second of our quads to make the top, and it took another hour for the transport to show up. Ali told me her Quad had had it easy. They practically walked all the way to the top. On the ride down I looked at the sixteen of us and realized I had messed up the first time through. "Listen up!" I said into the passenger bay. "Its my fault, but we did this all wrong. We should have tackled this problem as a Force, not as four Quads. Once you're at your drop off point, Make an evaluation of your possible climb routes then check your PerCom for my flag. We will link up and look over our four routes. We'll form up on the one we agree looks like it has the easiest assent and we'll tackle this canyon as a team of sixteen." We were dropped off in the reverse order in which we finished. Only Ali's Quad had beaten us to the top, so they got dropped off last. It became apparent very quickly that our location was not a good one. We had several really difficult spots, no matter what route we came up with. We picked the best one we could find and prayed that one of the other Quads had a better site. Once we had a link up between us, the other three Quad leaders and I looked over the route data. It looked like Coldrun's Quad had the best route, not quite as easy as Ali said there's had been the first time, but certainly easier than our Quad's first. I had Coldrun set his beacon and we dropped the link. "Coldrun's Quad has the route we want, so were homing on him. Follow me." Coldrun's drop point was up river from us, and as we started out I mapped the fastest route I could find and we ran! It took twenty minutes to get all four Quads relocated to Coldrun's section of canyon wall, but this time, with four Quad's worth of rope and eight pair of arms, we were up the canyon wall in less than an hour. We were back at the base in time for midday mess. The Yaru have an odd digestive system. As big as they are, they only eat every three days. Granted, when they do eat, its a very big meal! Because of that they don't really share the mess with us, but they usually hang out during the meal to participate in the chatter, and certainly the mess is laid out to accommodate them, just like everything else in camp. Skid tells me they prefer their food 'fresh', which is the currently acceptable euphemism at camp for alive. I will go watch them at one of their feedings before we leave camp, but not yet. After the midday mess we were given a new set of ropes and lines and hustled aboard another transport. This time we were taken to a heavily forested mountain valley somewhere and dropped beside a deep, fast running river. "Find whatever floats best, build a raft and get yourselves twenty miles downstream." Sergeant Yashida said from the hatch of the transport. We began examining the trees of the nearby forest, but as we were, I had a thought. I looked at Frost. She saw me looking and decided there was something going on. "What?" She asked. "It'll probably piss you off, I shouldn't even suggest it." "What!" She repeated with some force this time. "Well I was just remembering our trip down the canyon river the day we met. You and Skid struck me as the most buoyant things I'd ever seen." "Oh my!" She said before she began laughing in that Yaru thundering rumble. She called Coldrun over. "Kru remembered something we did the other day when the Quads were formed, and it gave him an idea. The most buoyant things in this valley are us Yaru, when we choose to be." "Shit!" Coldrun spat in surprise. "He's..." "Yeah, I know, He's right!" Coldrun said. "I'm just pissed because I've been a Yaru a lot longer than he has, I should have thought of it first. So that's what we did. We gathered a bunch of the small thin trees that seemed to grow only near the river and used them to make two flat pads that would fit atop four Yaru, puffed out to their most buoyant. The trick was making harnesses that we could fasten the pad to so it wouldn't slip off their backs. It took us an hour. Once again Vic's not-so-ill-spent youth in the Boy Scouts came in handy. He remembered knots the mountaineer hadn't shown us that really came in handy in lashing the saplings together. The nameless river was fast, deep and cold. Fortunately, the more buoyant the Yaru made themselves, the more insulated from the cold they were. We had one small waterfall, fifteen feet or so, and we dealt with it by simply lowering the pads first and then jumping in after them. It took us only ninety minutes to cover the twenty miles downstream to the beacon. As the first team in, we wound up eating evening mess by ourselves in the mess hall. We saw Force Leader Gomen and his Quads marching up to the mess hall as we were leaving. He pulled me aside for a moment and we had a quick chat. "It sounds like we had the same idea about the Yaru, you just thought of it quicker than we did. Congratulations." I told him how my Quad had happened to have a chance to experience the Yaru buoyancy on assignment day, explaining away our ingenuity as luck. "I hear the other two Forces are still climbing the canyon walls." Gomen said. I let him take off to get a meal with his crew, caught up with my own and headed back to the barracks. Sergeant Yashida must've been waiting for us, because as soon as we walked in the door he put us all on spit and polish detail. This meant the Yaru mostly got to haul bags of trash or containers around for the rest of us, and it was frustrating them, I could see. "Its too bad we don't have some way to give the Yaru hands, or something that could serve the same purpose." I said to Seargeant Yashida. "When the fighting starts, their advantages will serve them well, but there seems to be a lot of frustration involved in not being able to participate, even if it is sweeping and mopping." "It may be grunt work, but they are grunts after all?" The Sergeant asked me. "Yeah something like that I guess." I answered back. Then I got busy again. Being Force Leader didn't exempt me from cleaning. A couple of hours later, with the barracks and our new gear cleaned and inspected, the Sergeant called us all together. "As of today, I am officially moving myself and my duties to the Battalion HQ with Major Sweet and Craft. Force Leader Kru, you will take over my quarters and assume responsibility for this facility, just as you have for these four Quads and the Warriors in them." "Yes sir!" I answered. "You may have already heard that the other two Force teams led by Sanderson and Woj were still being run up the canyon walls. This is now only true for Sanderson's unit. Force Leader Woj finally saw the light about an hour ago, and his Force just completed the climb as a unit. Perhaps it is obvious now, but that was the real point of the entire exercise." "Yes sir!" we answered together. "Janes! What was the real point of the river exercise?" Janes thought about it for a second. "Sir! That Yaru can float?" He answered finally. "No!" Sergeant Yashida yelled. "Frost! What is the correct answer!" "Sir! That we need to acknowledge our own weaknesses and understand each others strengths!" "Correct!" The Sergeant yelled one last time, then in a softer voice, continued on. "We are assembling an army here, and the pieces we are using have very different characteristics. You do well to ignore the differences when they don't matter, but you do even better to remember them when they do." He turned to me then and smiled! The first smile I'd ever seen from him. "Force Leader Kru, you and your Force, as well as Force Leader Gomen, s crew have now officially completed your introduction to Basic. Combat training will commence the day after tomorrow. Do you know why that is?" "No Sir!" I answered. "That is because as of this minute, you and your Force are on leave." Man, that got a spontaneous cheer from the room! Sergeant Yashida even ignored the fact that we had interrupted him. "Check in at the transit pad, you will get instructions there. Those of you from Precipice, please follow me. The rest of you are dismissed!" "Yes sir!" The room answered. Eleven excited Warriors were off like a shot for their bunks. Sergeant Yashida led us to his former quarters, where I would soon be depositing my meager possessions. "We understand that you Preci are looking forward to the day when you too can go home. Since you cannot join your fellow Warriors, we have families on Taluat, Meadow and even Earth who have asked to host you for your day of leave, and treat you to home cooking and perhaps a day of fun and relaxation." I saw my fellow Preci looking at me, waiting for my decision. "Of course." I said. I took a shower and brushed my teeth, just like the rest of them, but while I was moving my gear to my new quarters I tapped a link to the Sergeant, and told Him I wasn't going, I only said yes because I saw the others wouldn't go unless I did. He said that was fine, and we would tell the rest that I was going with him in a separate transport. I actually did wind up going with the Sergeant. "Kru, I will not have my Force Leader eating in the mess hall on the eve of what may well be his only day of R&R between now and the fall of the Sh'kxu!" I got to go eat dinner with a room full of Sergeant. A room full of Sergeants. I said a ROOM FULL OF SERGEANTS!!! I might as well have been struck blind, deaf and dumb for about the first half hour or so, but then something dawned on me. These people seemed to be acting like regular guys! Well, except for Sergeant Fernandez. You would never mistake her for a guy, coming or going! The place they took me for dinner was on Taluat, a club in the city of Sheye called the Event Horizon. Dinner was rather a drawn out affair compared to what I was used to. First of all, there was something called 'Green Hills Spruce Tip Amber'. Then there were the women! This wasn't normally a dinner place, it served alcoholic drinks and had a band that played music, which people danced to! I found out very quickly that my uniform made me a special guest, and that meant there were an awful lot of women here who were interested in dancing with me. With a dozen Sergeants grinning at you and telling you to get out there and give it a whirl, I found it hard to say no. Between the food, and the beer, and all the dancing, dinner took four hours! As Sergeant Yashida was helping me to the transport when it was time to go, I really got him laughing hard. All I did was mention how I thought some of those girls really liked me. I discovered why people do not drink alcohol for four hours every night when I woke up the next morning. Man was I miserable! By the time I made it through my shower, a morning run and the mess hall followed by my second shower, I was feeling better though. With the entire day to myself, I laid in my bunk in the luxury of my new private room and read the operating manuals for the gear we would begin using tomorrow during our training. I saw that Sergeant Yashida had also flagged several texts on basic military strategy and tactics, as well as a book from Taluat called Principles of Combat Leadership and Command and two books from Earth called Command in War and The Art of War. Some of what I read made sense to me, but a lot of it had me stumped. Maybe it would start making sense when we began our combat training. I grabbed my midday meal from the mess hall and took it back to my room, a luxury I was allowed since I was technically on leave. I was halfway through my meal and almost finished with The Art of War when Sergeant Yashida tapped me with a direct link, already open, and asked me where I was. When I told him I was eating in my room and reading, he told me to stay put and that he'd get back to me in a little while to let me know when I was free to move around again. Sergeant Yashida didn't call me back, he just showed up at my door about an hour later. I had my door and window open, getting a nice cool breeze flowing. To be honest, I was also not too comfortable yet with the concept of having a door that I could close. "At ease Warrior!" He said as I scrambled to get to attention. "As you were!" It turns out there had been a bit of a scuffle in the mess hall. After I'd picked up my lunch and left. Woj and Sanderson had gotten into a shouting match, which had turned into a fight, which had turned into a brawl between the two Force Teams. "Kru, you're on leave, and you're not an officer or an NCO like me, so I shouldn't be eating into your leave by bringing up business, so if you'd rather I didn't, say so." "Sergeant, I'm not too used to the concept of having time that is my own yet, so as far as I'm concerned, business feels a lot more comfortable than non-business, especially now that I've discovered there's a price to pay for certain kinds of fun. Thanks again for the dinner invite last night, that was a very new experience for me." "You're welcome. You are going to eat dinner with the Majors and I tonight, but it will be more business than pleasure this time, okay?" "Yes sir." I said, managing to stay relaxed and low volume as I did. "Kru, You have been acting Red Platoon leader, and Woj has been acting Blue Platoon leader. Woj has requested a transfer out of Blue Platoon, and that he be relieved of command of Blue Platoon. I want you to think about what we can do about that situation and be prepared to talk about it at dinner tonight." "Yes sir." I went back to reading after the Sergeant left, finishing The Art of War an hour later. I pulled up Command in War, but it was quite a bit more impenetrable than the previous book, and I was feeling restless by that time anyway. I decided to go for another run. While I ran I thought about the situation with Woj. I hadn't really left the dinner with the other force Leaders and the Majors with much of an impression one way or the other about Woj. Gomen had impressed me, Sanderson had irritated me, and Woj had managed to fly under my radar. It surprised me to have to be thinking about Woj. I had expected to have problems with Sanderson long before anyone else. The running track at Camp Covington is a rectangle with rounded corners that marks the circumference of the parade grounds. There always seems to be someone running there, and today was no exception. Despite the usual crowd I ran in silence and within myself, and for longer than I had planned. I was tired and sweating, even inside my armor. With the barracks to myself, I enjoyed the luxury of a long, hot and uninterrupted shower. I went back to Command in War until it was time to leave for dinner. It was much slower going than my other reading so far, but I expected there would be more and worse reading in the future. Dinner tonight was just Major Sweet, Major Craft, Sergeant Yashida and me. We had something called Swedish meatballs and rice. There was also a nice beer to go along with the meal, but I was careful to keep it to only a couple glasses. I'd learned my lesson! We talked about the events of the past couple of days, and the individuals in my Quad and in my Force, and we talked a little about the books I had been reading. I told them I had already read The Art of War and was now reading Command in War. By the questions they asked me, I could tell that these men had read the books too, so I decided I should read them again when time permitted. "Kru, Sergeant Yashida reports that he has asked you to consider what we might do about Force Leader Woj's request to be relieved of command and transferred out of Blue Company." Major Sweet said, finally. "Yes sir." "What would you recommend we do to resolve the situation?" "Well sir, I did give this a lot of thought this afternoon. I have what I think would be the best solution to the problem, but I don't know what you will think of it." I said. "Force, This is not a test. This is your superior officers asking for your opinion. The only bad answer is no answer." Major Craft said. "Okay, then I think you should swap Force Leader Gomen and his Quad for Woj and his, make Gomen the new Force Leader for Blue Platoon and promote Coldrun to Force Leader for Team Two." The three of them sat there for a moment, digesting my suggested solution. Finally Major Sweet stood, and walked over to the window. "What is your reasoning Kru? Why Gomen?" "He's simply the best candidate for the job." I answered. "Ali is his equal, but in this situation it has to be Gomen." "What is there about this specific situation that makes you pick Gomen over Ali?" Major Craft asked. I hesitated in answering - my conclusions here were based on more than logic. "Perhaps its not my place to say this sir, but I consider Force Leader Sanderson to be argumentative and disruptive. Whoever has to oppose him in Blue Company will have to be someone who is physically capable of going nose-to-nose with him when he learns he is not being given the Blue Company command. It also has to be someone who is absolutely confident in his own decisions. Ali is intelligent, insightful and a good leader, but she has a tiny bit of self doubt that Sanderson would seize on and use as a weapon against her." Once again I had the three of them doing an eyeballs and eyebrows conference call with each other. I had to remember to thank Vic Greene for that phrase. There sure are a lot of colorful Earth phrases. "Alright, but if Ali is Gomen's equal, why aren't you promoting her to lead Force Team Two?" Sergeant Yashida asked. "Because she's in Force Team One. If I promote her over anyone already in Force Team Two I'm telling every man in it that I found them unsuited to command. Coldrun is easily capable of commanding Force Two, so it should be a promotion from within the team." "Very well Force, thank you for your thoughtful consideration." Major Sweet said after another long moment of silence. "There will be an assembly of the regiment on the parade ground in the morning. We will make our decision known at that time. Dismissed." "Yes sir!" I said, saluting the three of them. ------- It was our third day on the weapons range, and the consensus of the entirety of Red Platoon was that the Zombie gun was a beautiful, efficient, effective pain in the ass. 'As accurate as throwing dirt with a shovel' was how Woj described it. The Mark I Zombie Gun was a marvel of streamlined simplicity. When not in use we carried it in a pocket/holster on the leg of our armor, either side, there was no bias against right handedness in the PFF. Actually, according to Vic, right handedness dominated on Earth just as left handedness did on Preci. To visualize the Zombie gun, imagine a solid cigar shaped rod within a hollow two foot long cigar shaped barrel, with a quarter inch gap between the inner rod and the outer barrel. The back end of this barrel is solid, but machined to accept an angled grip and trigger mechanism, The bottom of which held a fuel cell which could be released very quickly if a new cell needed to be loaded. Where the grip met the barrel there was a large trigger guard and a dual action trigger. The flat back of the barrel has a power level indicator and a malf light. Halfway down the barrel was a spring loaded gripper ring which folded flush into a grove in the barrel when the gun was thrust into the holster. The gripper ring acted as a secondary safety, preventing accidental discharge while in the holster. The thing that made the gun a pain in the ass was the lack of any kind of sights. The curve of the barrel that gave it its distinctive cigar shape made sighting down the barrel very imprecise. Still, we had been working on improving our ability to fire it that way for an entire morning and afternoon. At this point I was confident we could do well if only our foes chose to stand close enough together. To be honest, we hadn't been allowed to touch a real Zombie Gun equipped with a charged fuel cell yet. Our three days on the range had bent spent firing 'training' weapons which fired little beads of paint that accurately simulated the range and ballistic properties of the Zombie gun's ionized cloud of metal plasma. We had spent the entire first day of our combat training in a classroom, learning all the details on what a Zombie gun did to a human body, a Yaru body, and a Sh'kxu body, how to treat someone who had been shot by one, and other potential complications. Believe it or not, you can perform CPR on a Yaru, but isn't easy and it requires tools! They were part of our standard issue. Our second day we spent in weapons familiarization, working with discharged fuel cells, as we learned to field strip, clean and repair our weapon. Strip and clean we did, repair really was a misnomer. There was a fine-toothed steel rasp that could be removed from an internal pocket when you detached the outer barrel, and that rasp could be used to smooth any burrs or creases that were caused by jamming the barrel against something that penetrated into the small gap between inner and outer barrel. But we were told that that kind of damage would only impact the weapon's efficiency slightly, and perhaps increase the noise level produced by firing. Since the noise a brand new, mint condition Zombie gun made was a slight hum accompanied by a slight 'wuft' of decompressing gas. No, a slight increase in noise was not considered a problem. AS I lay my head on my bunk that night, my last thought before I slept was to wonder about tomorrow. We should have known. The next day on the weapons range, they turned on the targeting and control systems and showed us how to tie the weapons into our Heads Up Display. ------- Chapter 15: Wings and Ribbons ~ Serenity I knew what to expect on my tenth birthday. One present, a brightly wrapped cube. I even knew what to do with it. Now. I'd only been teasing on Andy's tenth when I told him I already knew the answer to the test. But having knowledge and knowing how to use it are two different things, Daddy always says. The birthday party was fun, even with the distraction of the cube. Maia and Jeni sang me a special birthday song that they wrote me. We played our usual game of football on the lawn, but I think this may be the last birthday we play it. Andy and Jeni always seemed to wind up tackling each other, no matter what play was called. Everyone was excited and happy. Dad and Uncle Con were particularly happy that day because of some passing comment one of the soldiers training to fight the Sh'kxu had made to his Sergeant. It got passed on from person to person until it got to Con, and it made him think so hard he actually took three or four seconds to thank the messenger who passed the note to him. Con had figured out how to give the Yaru Warriors hands! I waited until the middle of the next day to officially 'solve' my cube. The facet I went to was full of waterfalls and flowering vines, and there were large, bright red birds with long tails that seemed to fly by in a series of long swooping glides. I didn't find any minds within my range that qualified as 'people', but that didn't mean they couldn't be here somewhere. I touched the mind of one of the graceful red birds, and saw a gentle, happy little mind, just content to fly around and eat the tiny little fruits of one of the vines that grew near the waterfalls. I jumped back home, sent a thought off to Dad that I'd finished the test, and got one of his warm and fuzzy thoughts in return. I spent some time arranging the vine I'd pulled from the new world in one corner of the wall. I made a bowl of soil from the backyard, and fused it into a waterproof container with a little of the Light. More soil from the garden fill it, and a piece of Light attached that told it to stay floating in the same spot all the time, and I had a planter for the vine. I encouraged it to grow into the soil, and made sure a spur of it grew out at just the right spot to give Rose, my new pet bird from the facet of Waterfall, a perfect spot to perch on in her new home. I used the Light to build a thick pad on my right shoulder that Rose could grip with her claws, and she rode happily there as I went downstairs to see if Mom was still home. Mom was sitting at the kitchen table in the sun room with Grandpa Paul, Grandma Mary, Shelaana, and Andy, Trevor, Kieran, Ian and Grace. "Hi Grandma! Hi Grandpa!" I said as I ran over and gave them both a hug. "Serenity Elizabeth McKesson, just what is that on your shoulder?" Mom said, in her MOM voice. "Mom, this is Rose. Rose, say hi to Mom!" Rose said hello with a low, melodic cooing sound that almost sounded like an old low-pitched steam whistle. "I solved Dad's test." I said, answering the silent question that still remained out there. "That was fast." Grandma Mary said. She had been there for the party yesterday, so she knew I'd only had the 'test' since then. "well, it was no big deal. Andy was the one who had to work out the hard part when he did his. The rest of us already know what has to be done, its just a matter of figuring out the how, right Trev?" "Yeah, its no big deal." Trevor said. "Ian and Grace will be the interesting ones. We're all wondering how Mr. McKesson is going to do it. One cube for the both of them, or a cube each?" "One more month and we'll all know, won't we?" Kieran said. "Then we'll all have our armor, and maybe we can start going places together." "There are enough of you to form your own Legion teams." Grandpa Parkin observed. "Well, I doubt that Dave is going to let that happen for a while, and that is just this batch. The next is already arriving. Borthun and Yela's little Dave, Arden and Alicia are expecting again, as is Felicia and Cyrus." Mom said. "I even hear that Fred and Ariana are planning a Taluatan bonding ceremony next week and that Ariana is already expecting. So are Porter and Glova Burgess." "I'm not sure if its public knowledge yet," Andy said, "but so are Riah and Zaiah. "Darn!" Mom said, automatically substituting the word because we were there. "Here we go again, huh? Did someone slip something in the water?" "Its the coming war on Precipice, honey." Grandpa Parkin said. "War always seems to trigger the human need to have children." "The war has got us all going, and for a lot of different reasons." Mom said. "I guess Dr. Virginia McKesson and Mrs. David Alan McKesson have both been just as caught up in it as everyone else." "Its going to get worse before it gets better, you can count on that." Shelaana said. "They're just now really ramping up the military side of things, and I'm sure there are lots of things we don't know about that are keeping Dave and the Legion busy." I looked at Andy and saw him looking at me. He sent me. "You know Mom, us kids could be helping out a lot, and freeing up you adults for other work." "Ren, its just too dangerous." Mom said, her standard answer. "What is dangerous about helping to process the people that are rescued from Precipice? We don't even have to be in the same room with them, and you cannot tell me that those poor people are a danger to anyone." I countered. "We'll have to talk about it later sweetheart, it looks like your Dad and Uncle Con are here to take us on your first facet survey mission." I took Rose back up to my room when I went to put on the new armor Dad handed me. I put her on her perch and told her to stay there until I returned, tickling the vine with a little Light until it had produced a couple pieces of fruit for her. The mission to Waterfall, as I called the facet, was fun and it was interesting to finally get to do the things I'd heard about and seen in the thoughts and memories of the others. Oddly enough, Waterfall was another facet that featured plateaus, just as Andy's birthday discovery had. Mine was not a single continental plateau, and it was going to be much more hospitable it appeared, than Mesa had been. Of course the canyon systems of Mesa were prime training grounds for the Warriors who were becoming the Preci Freedom Force. I used that conversational link to once again lobby for inclusion in the war effort. Reminding them again how suited our talents were for the work of acclimatizing the newly rescued Preci. I wasn't expecting a victory, merely planting the seeds for the future. We finished our survey and dropped off the data on Obsidian. While we were there Con took us over to his workshop in the Hall of Gifts and showed us his work on giving hands to the Yaru. "Waldo is an Earth Science Fiction story by a writer named Robert H. Heinlein." Con said. Uh oh! I detected lecture mode engaged! "In that story, the main character, whose first name was Waldo, suffered from a crippling genetic disorder that left him so weak that he had to live in a space station in orbit, so he could move around in zero G. Earth's gravity prevented him from doing almost any normal human activity, even something as simple as holding a spoon and lifting it to feed himself. A brilliant inventor, Waldo designs and has built remote manipulators that receive the feeble movements of his own hands and translates then into useful, even powerful action. This idea, from this short work of science fiction was such an evocative image that years later when scientists actually began to build remote manipulators for handling radioactive and hazardous materials in laboratories and harsh environments, they called them 'Waldoes'." Titan came walking down the corridor next to the workshop, wearing a combat collar, similar to those the War Hounds in training on Cascade were being assigned. Titan's was wider, and had a tapered extension that ran down the neck and between the shoulder blades. What was really cool was that Titan was juggling three balls as he walked, using a pair of hands that floated in front of him. They looked like somewhat large human hands wearing thick gloves. "This may look cool, but this is just a parlor trick.!" Titan said with glee. "The important thing is, now when I get an itch in that place I can't reach? I can reach!!" We were all still too stunned and impressed to remember to laugh. Instead, titan got, in triplicate, "Wow!" ------- As soon as we got back home, I ran up and checked on Rose. She was doing fine, but I let her hop onto my shoulder and then sent out a thought to Andy. He was with the rest of the kids in our usual spot. We had, Andy and the rest of us 'Legion Kids', appropriated a spot as our special place that we thought Mom and Dad would either find amusing or upsetting. Our secret spot was 'The Ledge'. "How did it go?" Andy asked as soon as I got there. "Great!" I answered. "Designation 'Waterfall', a world of plateaus, sort of like your was, only the plateau's aren't a mile high, and they aren't all part of one big continent like yours was." "No, how did the convincing Mom and Dad go?" Andy asked, obviously exasperated. I giggle back. "I think it went well actually, they listened, didn't argue, and did not say no at the end. They didn't say yes, but they didn't say no, so that's a first. Oh! And guess what!" "What?" I got back from everyone at once. "I got to see the new hands that Con has invented for the Yaru! They're called 'Waldoes', its from some science fiction story from Earth. Titan was juggling three balls in the air using them." This was exciting news for everyone, and it distracted them for a while with excited talk, but after allowing the distraction to carry on for a few moments, Andy got everyone focused back on our purpose. "C'mon. We were waiting for Ren, and now she's here. We can't afford to wait any longer." We quickly formed our familiar circle on the meditation rug Eru had given us for our 'clubhouse'. We merged our minds quickly, settling into a comfortable familiarity. With our fusion complete, we moved ours mind into the Light. We stretched our awareness and our perception, and we felt the world within the Light, and aware, we chose to be... somewhere else. When Dad and the Legion heard the story of the Seekers and the Choctowineh, and how they finally grew to be one people, and with their new skills and insights chose to seek adventure and understanding in some new place, moving in some new way, beyond reality, they did not understand and knew that they couldn't follow. The Children of the Legion understood. We had not found the path they took, but we found the place where the path must start. Our future surely would lead us into those places, but for now there was one place which did not require finding. The Dream World. We went to the Dream World because the Sh'kxu sleepers were there. The ship-borne Sh'kxu had been dreaming so long together that they had built a dream mind powerful enough to reach back into the real world. If, in their dreaming, their dream mind's awareness found Dad, or any of the Spirit Masters and Soul Divers working to defeat them, it would have been the end of everything. The dream mind would have reached back into reality and killed them, probably all of us, with a thought. So every two days, we joined our minds, slipped through the world of Light and into the Dream World. Even though we joined our minds to enter the Light, we entered the Dream World as individuals, and as individuals we spent a couple of hours building a new bit of dream, and letting the Sh'kxu dreamers chase it through the endless corridors of their own minds. There are others there, in the Dream World. For the most part they are very happy to discover others able to journey there with them, but they are all afraid of the Sh'kxu dream mind. They see it as an aberration, and are afraid of its power. They have been watching them for a long time, long before they came to Precipice. A lot of them were helping us keep the dreamers distracted. The Dream World is not hard to find. It is where everyone goes when they dream. It is malleable to the extreme, and each dreamer crafts it without effort. It is incredibly resistant to certain things though, Conscious dreaming is one, and finding and contacting other dreamers is another. But a strong mind is a strong mind, and within the Dream World there are those who seek out the company of others like them. That was how we met Spinner and the Wood Wise. Spinner was a person, an individual, almost as old as reality he said, but we thought he said that as a joke, because we were kids. He was really old though, we could tell that. The Wood Wise were more like the Sh'kxu, a group mind that shared their dream. Unlike the Sh'kxu, they were one mind when they were awake too, except they were seldom awake. "Let the bud-lings roam the world, and spend it waking. We have settled into our places and now we dream." They said in their single voice with many echoes. In their thoughts I saw the bud-lings, and they were sort of like the 'Ents' in the Lord of the Rings. Walking trees, except they were all limb and vine and coiling root, with nothing like a tree trunk. And fast! They moved like lightning, swarming over their prey like tumbleweeds in a hurricane, battering them with limbs as hard as the hardest oak, cutting and slashing them with their wicked sharp thorns, choking them within the grip of their clinging, coiling vines. They were mindless and unaware - merely plants reacting on the most basic of chemical and cellular levels of response. They moved, they killed, they fed. It was only when they stopped and chose their spot along the growing edge of the Wood Wise, only when they 'went rooted' as Spinner described it, that eventually, over the centuries, intelligence and wisdom came. The Wood Wise were ancient too, old enough to have outlived one world and begun again upon a second. It had been Spinner that had led them through the Dream World to a new place when theirs was dying, and so Spinner was their friend forever, if Spinner liked you, the Wood Wise liked you. Spinner's thoughts were not so revealing of his past. Every time he shared them, he seemed to be someone or something new and different. Meeting us gave him joy and purpose he said. We sensed his love for us, but also felt his worry, that we were here too soon, and that we were too young. He would share thoughts and memories with us, but would not let us share his mind. "It is too much." He said. "I have lived too long, and have too many memories. Your young minds shouldn't have to try to hold it." The Wood Wise told us that Spinner was not always proud of things he had done in his long, long life, and that he perhaps did not want us to think less of him for some of them. Spinner had been inhabiting the Dream World so long that he had created a permanent home, or so he said. We might be kids, but we understood the malleable and impermanent nature of Dream, so we were skeptics at first. His home was a stone and wood cottage that was built into the bottom of a hill with a huge wide limbed Oak atop it, and a babbling brook that sprang from the side of the hill. His fireplace was a crevice in the rocky face of the hill that was his cottage's back wall. We would visit, and sit together beside the brook and talk about dreaming and the Dream World, and about what Spinner called 'Magic', which was how he described our gifts. And always we would plan and scheme against the Sh'kxu, and plot out our strategy. We came together at Spinner's house, to prepare our next session with the Sh'kxu dreamers. We sat today, the eight of us and the Wood Wise at a picnic table, covered with a red checkered table cloth and teacups and teapots and a tray of scones and cookies. Spinner sat at the head of the table, looking for all the world like the Mad hatter. The Wood Wise was having fun pretending to be the Cheshire Cat, and making parts of himself appear and disappear. Only Ian and Grace joined in their fun, making themselves appear as Tweedledee and Tweedledum. As always, we did not speak of the Sh'kxu immediately. Both Spinner and the Wood Wise considered every meeting in the Dream World a social event, and to speak of the Sh'kxu without first having had a pleasant conversation was the height of rudeness. We argued, as always, about what the Dream Stuff really was. We did not see the Dream Stuff in the same way as the Wood Wise, and they did not see the Light as we did, and with Spinner as our referee, we argued back and forth continually, and with good humor, about the nature of each other's reality, and the paths that you could follow, either within the Dream or within the Light. We were seriously handicapped in these arguments by our lack of perspective and experience. Only our youthful refusal to see limitations and barriers, Spinner told us, and our inherently imaginative natures allowed us even a chance of competing in the debate. "You call yourselves Children of the Light, and children are indeed what you are, and so, so young yet." Spinner said, and it was true. Even we thought that. "But You and I and the Wood Wise, we are the only ones who can do this, and it needs doing." We knew how our parents would react if we tried to share this experience with them. Dad would probably see the truth of it in our minds eventually, and still try to forbid us from doing what we did, but there was no way yet for them to follow us there, so the Dream World, and what needed to be done there was left to us. Of all the people of all the facets we knew, there were none to help us. So we entered the World of Dreams, not as Lords or Warriors, but as children, and as children, we danced and played around the edges of the Sh'kxu dream mind, and led it, like laughter echoing down a foggy street, into distraction. ------- We had been working on the problem of the Sh'kxu and their original attack on Precipice, because everyone is so worried about not knowing what kinds of weapons the Sh'kxu will wield against them, what kind of defenses they will have. Spinner understood about Light signatures, and being able to trace their connections. He showed us how to tap our trace into the Dream Stuff. To get it to display the scenes that existed around the object during the time and at the place where we had followed the trace. We practiced on bits of this and that, things of our own, while trying to find something of the Preci that would lead us to the right time and place. It was Jeni who thought of it first. "Doesn't TeJon have a necklace that comes from someone who was in the battle itself?" Jeni asked one day while we sat at the table with Spinner and the Wood Wise. So began our latest secret plan. Cute little Grace Parkin, all curls and dimpled smile, asked TeJon one day if she could borrow his keepsake, to show to some friends. We only kept it a couple of hours, but it was enough. ------- "General Covington, this is Titan, and he is wearing the Yaru Battle Collar, Mark II." Con said, addressing the General, but really speaking to the entire assembly of officers in the room. "It offers a significant advantage over the Mark I model. Titan?" "The Mark I battle collar offered the Yaru Warrior access to our communications and computer net, and with that, access to the security, navigation and tactical tools of the PFF. This was a great advantage for us, but it still meant that the only weapons we could bring to bear in combat were our own physical gifts." Suddenly a pair of hands appeared to form on the new collar's extension, like bubbles foaming into existence on the surface of a puddle,, and once formed, they lifted up quickly, floating in the air, one two feet to the left and one two feet to the right of Titan's shoulders. "This is the default 'Waldo' remote manipulator mode, and with practice, you can learn to use these hands with a startling degree of finesse and control. With a little Spirit Master assistance, I've been able to get to the point, after six weeks of practice, starting with the initial proof of concept models and working through to this version, that I can juggle, shuffle and deal playing cards, I can even play the piano!" "Ahem!" Con cleared his throat and raised an eyebrow. "Okay, some people might not exactly consider it good playing, but I do not believe the piano is going to be a part of the standard equipment issued to the Warriors of the PFF." Titan said, drawing a laugh from the audience. "This version, while the ideal, is going to be impossible to release to every Yaru with a battle collar. We simply don't have the manpower, Spirit Master personnel or time to train every Yaru sufficiently. We will give them to the units who are already in combat training, as well as the class after them." Colonel Mudfoot and Colonel Longeye came to the front of the room then, to stand alongside Titan, also wearing a battle collar, but unlike Titan's theirs did not include hands. "The remaining seven classes will receive these." Colonel Mudfoot had a pair of Zombie guns, each floating off to the left and right of his shoulders. Colonel Longeye had twin Zombie grenade launchers that also floated in the same position. "The Zombie guns that Colonel Mudfoot is equipped with are identical to those carried by our human Warriors. The trigger and grip module have been replaced by a remote manipulator interface. Any standard Zombie gun can be field stripped and adapted to use this interface. The Zombie grenade launcher unit that Colonel Longeye is wielding are also the same as those carried by our human Warriors. The rear grip and trigger unit for the launcher has been field stripped and replaced with the remote manipulator interface." "Where do they carry them when they are in camp, or some other non-combat location?" Major Sweet asked. Titan didn't even have to answer. Mudfoot's Zombie guns and Longeye's Zombie grenade launchers zipped quietly behind them, coming to rest nestled against the collar's extension where it tapered down their backs. The tapered lines of the devices themselves lent itself well to the fit, as the interface reformed itself into smooth tapered clamps at the grip end, and a portion of the collar itself reformed around the fronts of each, until the units seemed to become a pair of smooth blisters within the collar extensions themselves. "We will be pulling most of the Spirit Masters who are currently engaged in processing our daily catch of freshly liberated Preci off that task so that they can do a PNM integration dump of my hard earned skills with the new Waldo unit to the current Yaru War Hounds who will be getting them. A similar but less involved dump will be done for the new classes" Con said. "Remember that these dumps will still require reinforcing with practice in order for the skills to become permanent." "You lost me there with one thing." Chili Cruz said. "What is a PNM dump?" Oh, my apologies. I know how you military types like acronyms, so I threw in one of ours." Con said with a grin. "PNM stands for 'Physio-Neuro-Mnemonic'. PNM Dump is shorthand for the transfer, by a Spirit Master, of the Physical muscle memory, neural conditioning and mental memory and knowledge associated with a practiced use of something from one individual to another. Its something Andy and Eru came up with and originally called a Persona Recording." "This is the same sort of process we're using now to give our freed Preci a foundation for existing outside of their old lives?" Major Green asked. "Exactly, except that this is much more narrowly focused." Con answered. ------- Brigadier General Tyler found the abbreviated command structure adopted for his Preci Air Command forces amusing and terrifying. As the supreme commander of the PAC, he had exactly three ranks below him. Four Majors and sixteen colonels were the entirety of the command structure, and who in the hell had decided that the Preci had to reverse the ranks of Colonel and Major? Below those twenty officers were the one hundred and ninety two Captains of the Tactical Air Wing and the one hundred and twenty eight Captains and one hundred and twenty eight Master Sergeants of the Close Air Support Wing. Less than five hundred pilots to take on a world. Less than five hundred, and no idea what the enemy had in the way of air assault or defense capabilities. They practiced in the Arena every day, in various combinations, against pretend enemy with pretend capabilities, using pretend scenarios. Wing Leader Captain Liala Lanam was considered one of the best Falcon pilots in the PAC, and she loved her Falcon. All the pilots did. These craft were so far beyond what they had been used to in the Western Air Defense that there seemed to be no comparison. In terms of maneuverability, rate of climb and top speed, the Falcons were in a class of their own. When you added in the grav-cannons, the belly launched smart zombie bombs, and the high speed, rapid fire rail guns, they seemed an imposing force. With the Magno-Gravitic shielding that prevented most of even their own formidable weaponry from causing damage, they seemed unstoppable. General Tyler and Captain Lanam were going to Meadow today, to the very home of Spirit Master Dave McKesson himself, because there had come word that some information on what weapons the Sh'kxu used during the original invasion might be retrieved. ------- Chapter 16: Red Wing One Kru followed Major Sweet through the doorway, which was one of the Obsidian gates, and into a bustling room on Obsidian itself. Kru had been here twice before now, having been ordered to the Garden for educational opportunities. This time, rather than walking over to the Garden, they went to the Spirit Master's executive offices. A very pleasant older woman there asked them to wait a moment, and soon they were joined by a Legionnaire, who was obviously a soldier. Kru could recognize that this man was trained in war, just by watching him walk. "Good morning Major Sweet, its good to see you again. Captain Kru, my name is Cyrus Poole. I'm here to take you to the meeting with Spirit Master McKesson." They shook hands, in the manner of Earth, and in the blink of an eye they were standing on a raised porch, outside a large home overlooking a beautiful valley. A small group of children were playing on the lawn in front of the house. A voice spoke from behind them. "Major Sweet, a pleasure seeing you again. Captain Kru, I'm Dave McKesson, welcome to my home!" Kru found himself shaking hands again with a tall, slender man with a boyish smile, followed shortly thereafter by a second handshake, followed this time by a kiss on the cheek from his wife, Doctor Virginia McKesson, who insisted he call her 'Ginny', and who was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. Until the introductions that followed. He saluted then shook hands with General Tyler, followed by a salute, handshake and kiss on the cheek from Captain Lanam. Kru's blush brought out a smile on Captain Lanam, which brought out the dimples on her cheeks, and suddenly Kru was looking for anything that might serve as a distraction from the mesmerizing focus that was Liala Lanam. Fortunately the introductions were not over, as first the McKesson children, Andy and Serenity were introduced, followed by Elder Tejon. No free Preci could be introduced to this man without wide-eyed wonder. The only living Preci to never have suffered the weight of the Sh'kxu coercion was a legend! Focus quickly shifted away from the adults when the other six children were called forward, and together, they led the adults into the house, to get settled in the large living room. "General, Major, Captains, you are all aware that it is our awareness of the Light, an energy that underlies everything in our universe, that makes us Spirit Masters, or Guardians as we really prefer to be called." Ginny began. "Our children, those of the Legion, and our closest friends, are gifted with what we have begun to consider the next level of Light-awareness. They are also, every one of them, what can only be called inordinately precocious." "Because of their precociousness, and their demonstrated sensitivity to the Light in ways the rest of us find difficult to follow, we tend to listen to our children when they come to us with ideas or concerns." Dave continued. "Last night they showed us something that you will want to see." With a little edge to his voice, Dave continued. "My children — all these 'Children of the Light', as they've been called, have violated the spirit of the rules we, their parents, laid down regarding the use of their gifts. But in doing so, they have given us something priceless. They have found a way to show us the first and only air battle at the beginning of the Sh'kxu invasion. All I ask is that you get as comfortable in your chairs as you can, because you will soon be asleep, 'for in that sleep of death, what dreams will come'." ~ The Battle of Estirem The Preci were living solidly in what would have been the 1960's, technologically, when the Sh'kxu dropped without warning from the sky. Their ground and air defenses were all based on rockets and missiles that used chemical propellants as well as gunpowder based projectile weaponry. They had suffered the same kinds of international arms build up that Earth's technological nations had gone through, although there was no sign of the development of nuclear weapons. The build up of conventional weapons and military did mean that the response to the Sh'kxu was massive and quick. ... and almost utterly futile. "Red three, Red three, break off, break off!" The night sky over the city of Estirem was alive with a cloud of bright sparks, moving like they were being swept about by a giant, invisible hand. In the midst of the swarming mass of bright spots there flitted dull black triangles. Whenever the little triangles flew the defenders suddenly became attackers. Except for the little black ships, the sky was full of Estirem, battling each other. "Red Two, Red Two! Red one. Watch out for friendly fire! Our own ships are attacking us!" "Green Six, Green Six! Green Two. They're flying the little black ships! Shoot the little black ships!" "Red One, Red One! Green Two. The little black ships have some sort of anti-missile defense! I've had two missiles burned at the last second by some sort of defensive weapon." "Confirm, confirm Green Two! Green Twelve. I saw one of them crash and burn after taking fire from an auto-cannon! We can hit em, just lay off the missiles! They're useless!" "Red One, Red One! Green Six. Green Two is now hostile! Don't let the little black ships get close, or your suddenly fighting for the other side!" "Red One, Red One! Red Command. Target the... Bombs on the ground! They've got another wave of bombs coming in! They're targeting our comm centers!" Green Seven, Green Seven! Red Nine! Splashed one! The Auto-cannons are effective, just don't let them get close. The wild scene before us jerked suddenly, and was washed out momentarily by a bright light from behind our point of view. "Green Two, Green Two! Red One! I'm hit! A missile from Red Ten just clipped my wings! I"m going down! I"m riding this dying bird as far down as I can before I pop the cork. Good luck flight! Blessings on you!" Our view slowly shifted, until we were seeing the clustered lights of the cities and towns below. Slowly the lights drifted to the left of us, and the darkened land below grew closer and closer. Suddenly there was another abrupt jerking, followed by a second or two of wildly spinning scenery, followed by blackness. ------- "That, was a piece of what we are calling the battle of Estirem. It appears to be a manifestation of the visual and auditory experiences of whoever was called 'Red One' in the air battle which took place over the city of Estirem." Dave said. "There are several important pieces of information in this brief snippet. Who wants to begin?" "The only enemy ships spotted were the tiny black triangles." Kru suggested. "And they were fast!" "Those little black ships had some sort of anti-missile system." Liala offered. "The defender's auto-cannon's, whatever those were, were capable of shooting down the little black ones, if they could get them in their sights." Major Sweet added. "What do those things, taken as a whole suggest?" General Tyler asked. "Our Falcons are much more vulnerable if used as a front line option, but the Hedgehogs may be invaluable, if we can keep their remote operators safe." Major Deov observed. "We're going to have to switch our training emphasis to the hedgehogs for the new classes." Commodore Symington said. "Will we be able to throw up a canopy of Hedgehogs that will be of sufficient strength to allow the Falcons to operate as bomb defense and ground support?" Commander Emanoff asked. "Those are the things we will need to work out in the next six months. In six months time we will begin our Preci operations." Dave told the assembly. "To that end we are prepared to take some shortcuts. Major Deov, Major Sweet, we asked you to each bring these particular Warriors, not because we wanted their opinions here tonight, although their opinions are valuable, and we were glad to get them, but because we want to use them as our new 'models' for the PNM Dumps into our newest recruits. We need everyone who comes into the PFF from now on to be able to hit the ground running." Captains Kru and Liala spent a night at the McKesson home, It began with a two hour session sitting in a small meditation chamber with Dave and Ginny McKesson, Riah Hulin and Zaia Alvarez, and Master Eru. The meditation session was followed by a nice run on a fancy track on obsidian, and another two hour meditation session. Finally they had a very nice dinner followed by a couple of hours of interesting conversation with the McKesson's and their friends. Later that night, with everyone in their own beds for the night, Kru lay in bed, with his hands behind his head trying to fight off the buzz of the day's events. It was rare for a freed Preci to have problems getting to sleep, they were usually able to fall asleep practically at will. So it was that Kru was wide awake and wide-eyed when Liala Lanam slipped through his door, out of her robe, and into his bed and his arms. ------- By the time Ian and Grace's birthday came around, everyone in the McKesson house was wound up as tight as a drum over what we had been referring to as P-Day. Dad's solution to the dilemma of how to handle the twin's test was finally revealed, as separate packages were presented. By mutual agreement of the rest of us kids, Ian and Grace both solved their cubes immediately. 'Redwood!" Ian said when he popped back into existence a minute after disappearing. "Salmon Falls!" Grace said when she returned, only a few seconds after Ian. Dad came through with Ian and Grace's armor, and the rest of the day's events followed the usual script, football and food, although the fact that all eight of us had armor now made the football game more interesting than ever before. ~ Andy The events of the next day could have been classified as 'A Tale of Three Armors'. Dad and Mom were scheduled for a meeting with the Legion Teams at 1 pm. Our time. There were five of them now. Even Great-Grandpa A.J. was on a legion team now that he was fully awakened. He was on Team Five, along with Sheb Halliday. The first Armor Tale of course was ours, the Children of the Legion, all of us now able to wear our bright green armor. We met with Spinner and the Wood Wise. We had a plan of our own for making the eight near orbit Sh'kxu ships less effective in attacking our forces in the air and on the surface of Preci. Our plan depended on the mindless fury of the Wood Wise bud-lings. But it remained to be tested, and the only way to do that was to capture another Sh'kxu, and see if the mindlessness of the bud-lings made them immune to the Sh'kxu coercion, as we believed. As confident as we were in our plan's workability, we were not prepared to violate our parent's wishes again so quickly, especially since this time it would not be a mere violation of the spirit of their wishes, but a complete violation. So we asked if we could go to the dome on Dust, and asked Mom and Dad to meet us there at noon, before their other meetings of the day. We got permission, and met no resistance in doing so, which was suspicious in and of itself. As soon as we got to Dust, we set up the dome's internal fields to partition the dome into four sections, a small section at one end for us, two evenly divided partitions at the end opposite us, and a large middle buffer area. We built a construct of Light, a focus that the Wood Wise consciousness could dwell in while they were here. We made contact with the Wood Wise, and with their cooperation, created a link to our Light construct. Once the Wood Wise were in the construct and able to focus their consciousness on Dust, we were able to jump a bud-ling through to one of the far partitions in the dome. Up close and in person, the Wood Wise Bud-ling was the very definition of furious death on the move. The Wood Wise thought to us. We took turns trying to influence the Bud-ling with our minds, but we found nothing there to influence, not even the most basic of urges. Mom and Dad arrived right on time. They were stunned when we introduced them to the Wood Wise, and shocked when we showed them the Bud-ling. Their shock turned to euphoria when they discovered their inability to coerce the Bud-ling when we asked them to try. "Dad, we need to capture another Sh'kxu, just to be sure. If the Wood Wise Bud-lings are immune to the Sh'kxu coercion, we have a weapon we can jump into their ships with impunity once the battle has begun." "Andy, how can we ask the Wood Wise to send their children to what will probably be the eventual death of most of them." "Please do not think of the Bud-lings in that way, Mr. McKesson!" The Wood Wise responded. "They are of no more consequence to the Wood Wise than are the cells of your skin that you wash off in the shower every morning, or to the individual spermatazoa with which you humans reproduce. Do you concern yourself with the fate of every single one, or do you only worry about those which are successful?" We kids hadn't been prepared for that particular nuance of argument. I think we collectively blushed. Dad certainly noticed our reaction. "Other than embarrassing our children by that reference, do you really consider it an apt comparison?" Dad asked. "Yes, it would be exactly how we consider it. Bud-lings are only a potential, they do not really represent an immature Wood Wise, and cannot, until they take root and begin to grow." The Legion meeting was scheduled to begin in the dining room of our house. It was there that we tried explaining to Dad, Mom, Con our parents and the rest of the Legion that our new allies were from a place they couldn't go, and which was not just some new facet, and that it would be us kids who would have to do the transporting. It took hours, and there was a lot of heated argument. Finally we had to prove it to them. We linked up in our normal fusion, and invited them to join us in it. As soon as they were comfortably meshed with us, we challenged them to follow us if they could, and stepped into the Light, and then into the Dream World. Of course we were alone when we got there. We waited a full minute before we stepped back into the Light and then back home. "Okay." dad said. "But when we tell the troops about these new weapons, we are not calling them 'Bud-lings'!" Dad said. "We've actually thought about that aspect of it already." Ren said. "We're thinking it should be 'Wood Furies'. What do you think?" And that was what we called them, especially after sharing the recording of our new Sh'kxu captive, Spring's Deep Flowing and his encounter with the Wood Fury, which lasted mere seconds when the partition separating them was removed. The Five Legion teams, complemented by the twenty Soul Divers, our six and the fourteen from the East who had been members of the hidden commune that had come forward after the end of the coercer conspiracy, made up the second of the three Armor 'tales'. The twenty Soul Divers had been issued Legion Armor, and the two groups had been training with each other for several months. Today they met on the Trebuchet, in the asteroid belt of Pearl's facet. "These are the primary payloads. eight asteroidal bodies of mostly nickel-iron composition, which have been building velocity since practically the first day that our decision was made." Dad told those gathered."Each of those bodies has been fitted with Seeker Gravity Drives, and have been blasting at full thrust through a looped pair of gates. They are currently moving at 75 percent of the speed of light. All eight of the jump gates have had their spacial coordinates micro-adjusted so that the payloads are completely synchronized. Their arrival on target will be within a microsecond of each other. "These are the secondary payloads, targeted on the eight ships in near earth orbit." Dad continued, as the displays in front of everyone shifted to a second set of coordinates. "There are 48 of these, two for each of the three targeted areas on the eight ships, the primary launch bay, the primary bomb port and the main propulsion systems. They are all currently moving at 50 percent of the speed of light, and their targeting is being done with great care to ensure that we do not put Precipice in any danger from our own attack." Once the attack began, and the expected retaliation against the surface of Precipice began, these 40 people became the safety blanket for all our pilots, in space and in atmosphere. We had Lightmitters embedded in the Falcons and their space counterparts, the Phoenixes, though there were only four of the Phoenix, each about 4 times the size of the Falcons. These Lightmitters were designed to trip when the minds in the craft felt the effects of coercion. Our Legionnaires would be flying in special hedgehogs, and would jump the hedgehog to the vicinity of the tripped Lightmitter and free the minds of the coerced crew. No one outside of this expanded Legion knew of the existence of the Lightmitters. It was one of our secret defensive measures. The third of the Armor tales belonged to the PFF ground forces, in their military gray/green Armor. The Warriors and the War Hounds. They were at only a fraction of the strength the fully complemented military organization that had been drawn up would carry, but it had never been intended to get to full strength before the start of the war anyway. 50,000 human and Yaru warriors met today to get their final briefing, as did the 3,000 members of PAC, the Preci Air Command. 2,000 Hedgehog operators and 1,000 Falcon pilots. They were shown video of the asteroids orbiting Pearl, and told of how those kinetic weapons would wreak havoc on the Sh'kxu, destroying the mother ship utterly, and greatly crippling the eight orbital vessels. Then Dad showed them video of the Wood Fury and Spring's Deep Flowing, brief as it was. After ten minutes of 53,000 voices chanting 'Pre-ci! Pre-ci! Pre-ci!, they broke up the meeting, and let the two groups go off to their own individual briefings. ------- On Meadow, P-Day began with breakfast. The mood at the McKesson table was sober, and the only conversation consisted of repeated admonishments to Andy and Serenity to be careful, and the reassurances that they would be in return to their parents. Titan was delegated to be their chaperon and bodyguard, which Andy and Serenity saw as more a way to calm their mother than as an addition to their security. Finally it was time for Dave and Ginny to report to their stations, and with them gone, Andy and Ren jumped to the dome on dust with Titan in tow. Soon all the Children of the Light were gathered and fully within their fusion. The Wood Wise were back in the construct, and the first load of 100 Wood Furies were in the dome, held motionless by their combined telekinetic touch. On Cascade, P-Day began with the sounds of bugles, piped out over the long rows of barracks, and the endless long lines of fighting men and women entering and exiting the mess hall. Chatter at these tables was much more upbeat and energized, as the Warriors put on the hard faces and rough edges that would help get them through the coming battle. Finally with everyone fed who wanted to eat, and all their gear checked and ready, they assembled at their jump stations. On Obsidian, P-Day began with thousands of support staff making last minute calls, checking and double checking, then checking off this detail or that, then with their list of tasks completed, those needed to help maintain the vast communications web, those who manned the warehouses of supplies and those who would monitor the gates which would be used for most of the transportation began reporting to their stations. On Taluat, P-Day began with the men and women who would fight what everyone prayed would be a brief space battle, eating their breakfast and then riding the shuttles to their ships. Each of the hundreds climbed, or walked, or rode to their stations. In the depths of Pearl space, P-Day began with the flipping of a switch, followed, in the blink of an eye, by the disappearance of eight huge asteroids. Two minutes later, another switch was flipped, and forty-eight smaller asteroids disappeared, just as quickly. On Precipice, P-Day was foreshadowed by the great collective dream mind of the Sh'kxu sleepers shuddering, as for just an instant, their Dream World selves sensed some wrongness. Then P-Day itself began and the blossoming of a new star in the night sky over what would have once been called Estirem obliterated that consciousness, and the sleepers behind it. For a brief moment only, a light greater than the Sun's flashed across the face of Preci, lighting up the entire planet for one long heartbeat, before it vanished. In the depths of space, Three unmanned ships of the Preci Space Command watched, as 5 billion Sh'kxu bodies and minds were vaporized in an instant of light and heat and energy unbound. The energy released was powerful enough that the sensors on board the three remote ships were ruined in the next moment of time. Just as the silent wave of destruction seemed to settle, and as those aboard the eight ships in near Preci orbit began to comprehend what had just happened, each of the eight ships were themselves struck, in specific locations, and then struck again mere seconds later. This was witnessed by the senses of the fused minds on dust, and with a thought, the first 100 Wood Furies were aboard one of the eight Sh'kxu ships. Another 100 popped into existence inside the dome, and they were jumped to the next ship. Eight ships were infested with a batch of Wood Furies, and then they started over, this time at the other end of each ship. On Precipice, streams of Warriors and War Hounds began streaming through freshly opened gates, into the fields and streets and parks across the globe. 50,000 Warriors is not a large number if you are sprinkling them across an entire planet, but the planet-borne Sh'kxu were not large in number, and the Preci themselves were only as aggressive as their last command made them. ~Kru My platoon of 28 Warriors and Warhounds, accompanied by 2 snipers and a team of 6 engineers had been assigned the task of securing the port of Remen, one of the three major space ports on Precipice. While these ports were normally a blur of activity, with cargo ships busily loading the processed Seed of Life, today the entire field seemed frozen in motion like a still picture. The engineers got to make the first move, slapping their 'Pooh' on the tail and sending the barrel shaped grav platform streaking towards the port's perimeter, its high speed cameras and vid sensors running and linked into our PerComs. The Pooh was designed to draw fire from defensive emplacements and well guarded installations, and allow the operators to map the locations. Ours drew no fire at all. It was called a Pooh because it was a honeypot, designed to draw attacks from the enemy. That was the engineer's explanation, but Captain Kru sensed it was yet another Earth reference that he wasn't getting. Skid went next, running along the fence line in front of the port's Fueling station. Again there was no response. Because the port was an important target, one of our engineers was Ryan Bellamy, one of the awakened. It was his turn now, and he quickly spotted the three Sh'kxu who were inside the Fueling station. He was able to flag their locations on our maps, and with that we decided it was time to stop fooling around. Frost led three other Warhounds into the station, followed by their human Quad mates. I didn't wait for them, I led the rest of the unit towards the port control complex, and here at last the battle was fully joined. There were a full dozen of the Sh'kxu in there, and these had their slaves armed and waiting for us. Our snipers took out two of the Sh'kxu through the windows before they realized the danger and took cover. I signaled to Skid, and he and Coldrun launched a full spread of Zombie grenades through the shattered windows. I heard a projectile of some kind zing off of my armor and into the distance to my left. I took a deep breath then and felt my world go calm and focused. ~Eru Apric The Hedgehog, Eru Apric thought, really operates itself, and I'm only along for the ride via remote. He covered the search pattern of the 1000 square miles of near-space upper atmosphere he had been assigned, watched the readouts for signs of incoming missiles or enemy assault craft, and occasionally spotted something on the sensors briefly before the Hedgehog had reacted. Mostly he got to see distant puffs of smoke or bursts of flame in the video sensor display. Twice he saw a little black wedge ship get close enough to be grateful that he was operating the Hedgehog by remote. Each of those times he overrode the automatic targeting system and fired the cannons manually. "Heavy activity reported in sector RZ121. HC273, HC314, divert to sector RZ121 and support." Came the familiar voice of Hedgehog Flight Command. He was HC273, so he found the new location in his NavCom and sent his Hedgehog towards the new coordinates at maximum speed. "Affirmative Flight Command, HC273 responding." he answered automatically. HC314's response echoed his, coming through his Comm Link immediately following his own. ~Liana Lanam I silently cursed my starboard side gun crew, and cheered at the same time the auto-tracking rail gun, as I saw it once again take out a Sh'kxu bomb that slipped past our Falcon on the starboard side. "Pick it up Miera! Pick it up!" I hollered into the Ship's comm. It wasn't really Miera's fault, or her crew's. the 'Kru', as she unofficially referred to her Falcon, officially designated LC94, was on the edge of the heavy bombing, and her starboard crew just had more targets and less time. Even as she had these thoughts the call came in. "LC94, we've got bomb defense units on the ground, shift your flight pattern NNW twenty miles and resume. Repeat, shift your flight pattern twenty miles NNW and resume." "Affirmative Flight Control, LC94 responding." Liala said in response. On the ship's channel she gave the warning. "Okay people, we're shifting into the thick of it! Sorry Petra, but no more easy duty for your crew. It'll be coming hot and heavy from all directions now!" ~The Cruiser Lermontov Commander Emanoff, aboard his ship the 'Lermontov' sat in deep space near the spot where the Sh'kxu mother ship had once been found. A large Sh'kxu craft, designated S2-Alpha, twice the size of his 'cruiser' was making its way towards the location, having launched from one of the Sh'kxu ships in near Precipice orbit. As soon as the Lermontov was in operational range, He ordered a pair of missiles launched. As expected, the anti-missile defenses of the Sh'kxu ship destroyed them with quiet efficiency, but the Lermontov's NavCom made note of the distance at which the first two missiles had been destroyed. "Begin Operation pincushion." He said to Major Reid, his weapons officer, and with that word a salvo of fifty missiles were fired at the approaching ship. Just before they hit the distance where the Sh'kxu anti-missile system had destroyed their first two missiles, the fifty missiles in the second salvo each spat out a thousand tiny projectiles of their own, which quickly boosted to twice the velocity of the original. Brief sparkles in the darkness marked where the tiny missiles were being destroyed by the Sh'kxu defense, but as hoped, the sudden onslaught of so many small targets overwhelmed the defenses, and very quickly, the tiny missiles began striking the hull, where they clung and did nothing! When the sparkling died out, Commander Emanoff nodded his head and Major Reid triggered the thousands of units now clinging to the hull of the ship, and a massive Zombie field washed through it. "We appear to have been successful." Commander Emanoff said to the two women who stood behind him. "The rest is up to you, ladies." Riah Hulin and Zaia Alvarez grinned back for a second, before their Legion armor expanded to cover them completely, and in the blink of an eye, they were gone. ~Bunker Ship A4 Hovering a hundred feet in the air above ground cleared by PFF ground troops, Felicia Pool and her team sat, eyes closed in comfortable seats. The cabin of the A4 was darkened. Each of the eight people in the A4 weren't really there. Their minds were busy, flitting from ship to ship in the air above them. They would sense the signal of a tripped Lightmitter, and one of them would shift their mind to that target, and free once again the coerced mind the Lightmitter had detected. Every ten minutes one of them, in set rotation would jump the ship to the next sector. There were eight bunker ships in all, to cover all the skies of Preci, and those aboard them were continuously busy. On schedule, Felicia took her break, bringing her mind back to her body, refocusing on the cabin of the bunker. She took a quick drink of some sports drink or another, imported from Earth specifically to keep the bunker teams, and other groups who were spending long periods of time outside their bodies, hydrated. She took a couple of bites of a protein bar while she checked on the bodies of her team mates, looking for any signs of problems, then when her ten minute were up, she slid back into the chair and let her mind return to the skies above and the next bright signal of a Lightmitter sending its alarm. ------- Chapter 17: Wide open Spaces The battles of Precipice angered and elated us. It left us feeling glad and empty at the same time. We were still kids after all, and even though we admit we are precocious compared to others our age, we still see life through young eyes, and young hearts. The mighty Sh'kxu technology had been a shell, covering the ultimate truth. Everyone had wondered how a race with such an extreme ability had developed a technological society advanced enough to travel between the stars. They hadn't. They had simply latched onto the technology of their captors turned slaves, and with their absolute command of their subjects, demanded knowledge and service. Through the Dream World, we were able to follow the Light signature of the ship's hull back through time and space, and see the people who called themselves 'The Children'. The words in their own language were 'Moz Tai', as we might say it. Inhabitants of Moc Credeq, their generation ship, they were explorers and collectors, until the day they visited the Sh'kxu home world, and on a wide and open plain, they found, stunned and collected a cluster of Sh'kxu. Later that day, when the Sh'kxu woke up, the nearest Moz Tai became slaves, the first of many non-Sh'kxu slaves to be bound in the generations to come. The Moz Tai strove, with all their skill to do exactly as their masters commanded. When asked to teach, they did, when asked to demonstrate, they did. But the questions - ah, the devil is in the details, the saying goes, and it was the details unasked that wound up meaning everything. It was the answers never sought that spelled the Sh'kxu doom. After the last of the Moz Tai died, the following generations of Sh'kxu could operate and repair any and every part of the Moc Credeg, and the lesser ships which traveled with her, but they understood not a whit of the how or why of her. On they flew, endlessly efficient, and endlessly ignorant. Until finally they came to Preci. Destroying the ship-borne Sh'kxu turned out to be far easier and quicker a process than we had imagined. The Wood Furies were horrifically efficient in rooting out the Sh'kxu on board the eight heavily damaged ships. Within what they thought of as their home, they were almost completely helpless in the face of something hostile which could not be coerced. In the end, hundreds of thousands of them died where they stood, unable to comprehend a being who was neither slave or master. Being neither slave or master, the Furies became their doom. We were glad at last when we were able to return the remainder of them to the planet of the Wood Wise, untainted in their pure, mindless vegetable hunger. With the ships now being swept in an inch-by-inch follow up pattern by teams of the awakened, accidents happened here and there, and people died. Space was not a safe environment, especially not in ships so badly shattered. It was only going to be a matter of time before they were cleared. When that happened there would still be years of research and investigation ahead. But it would be many years before more than a token amount of time and personnel could be invested in the effort. As dangerous as space was, it was on Preci that we had the two losses that hit us the hardest. If war is harsh and cruel, then chance can be crueler still. After having cleared a hydro-electric station in an isolated river gorge, Mike Weiker and a dozen PFF warriors and War Hounds died instantly when a shunt on an electrical relay failed, and a tower support arced white hot, the suddenly molten supports gave way, collapsing it onto a nearby support structure, and sent almost the entire electrical output of the dam's eight massive turbines through the catwalk they had stopped on for a quick break before leaving. Doc Aillard's death was a more calculated act of war, as a single nameless Preci slave, still under the last desperate compulsion laid down by his Sh'kxu master at a nameless Industrial Salvage complex, managed to hit him in the head with a shot from an industrial laser from almost a quarter mile away. Doc had his head cover down to take a drink of water after what his team had thought was a completed operation. The war left other marks upon us, though mostly temporary to those we knew well. Ia Sardic and Sheb Halliday, along with eighteen others in their team, were sent to the hospital for several months when a percussion wave from an air burst ruptured their eardrums and caused other tissue damage. It was one of the few times when Mom and Dad showed some personal favoritism, and dropped in and used their Light healing skills on the two of them, shortening their stay by several months. During war, warriors will die. There is no escaping the brutality of it, and there is no rhyme or reason to its pattern. But that knowledge does not lessen the heartache when you lose a friend. ------- There were eleven billion confused and mostly non-functional Preci wandering the surface of Precipice, without a clue of what to do next. Dad, the Legion, the PFF, the volunteers from Taluat and Meadow, not all of them combined could come close to fielding a force large enough to keep all of them safe and healthy while their world returned to some vestige of its former self. Though the losses had been light, there were losses. Five hundred and thirty three Warriors, eighty of them Yaru, and twenty six Falcons, along with all their crew. With all the forces, land air and space, diverted to relief efforts, it was still barely more than 38,000 people. There were still deaths, still tragedies, still sad stories to last a lifetime. The infamous Seed of Life, which the Preci had been slaving to prepare for the ship-borne Sh'kxu, turned out to be our biggest surprise victory. The soporific nature of the highly processed final form of the Seed of Life was not naturally present in the grain, and when processed normally, it was an amazingly complete and efficient food source. It was going to take years to get the Preci diet to something approaching a normal variety of foodstuffs, but in the meantime, the Seed of Life was aptly named, and would keep the Preci alive and healthy during the period of transition. Beyond that, it was hoped that it could solve some of the problems we had feeding the hungry on Earth, when the time was right to introduce it. ------- We sat with Spinner and the Wood Wise beside the stream that ran past Spinner's Dream World home, and we talked about the Preci and their fate. "We know that millions, perhaps even billions of the Preci will die, even if they do nothing but simply stand and wait for help to come. Not a single living Preci, save those we've rescued to build the army, and the miraculous TeJon, is able to function on anything more than a short term basis without the direction of their master's commands. They were born under a system that has conditioned them so severely that it will be a miracle if even half of those living are saved." Trevor said at one point, after enough light and pleasant conversation had taken place to satisfy Spinner and the Wood Wise's sense of social propriety. "The Legion, and all the Soul Divers and Spirit Masters combined, working twenty four hours a day will not be sufficient to do PNM dumps, even basic ones, into the Preci in time to save them all." Maia added. "Adding the eight of us to their effort would not even make a measurable difference." "Mom, Dad and the rest of them will try to save the children first, but even limiting themselves to the children will not allow them all to be saved." Ren added. "You do not have sufficient numbers, this is true." The Wood Wise said. "But you children have sufficient gifts, and sufficient strength, if you only knew the way." This set us all off at once, and the Wood Wise stood there, in today's guise as the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz, and waited for our outburst to subside. Once were were all quiet again, and looking at him with the question in our eyes, he tilted his head, a little straw falling from the neck as he did, and looked at Spinner. Spinner let him stare for quite a while. "As usual, my friend the Wood Wise is finding ways to involve me in things I prefer to remain separated from." Spinner said. "My friends, there are things about me that, away from the Dream World, you would find... unpleasant. Perhaps even abhorrent, so I avoid those kinds of contact which might pull back the curtain which hides those aspects of my real self from you." It was funny he said it that way, since he was currently wearing the Wizard's visage from the Wizard of Oz. "We understand that you hide a part of yourself from us Spinner. We accept it. But, if it will solve this problem, then we need to know what it is that the Wood Wise are hinting at." "Very well. I will compromise. I will show one of you. But you must agree before I name one of you that you will accept my choice." We thought about it for many long moments, and the thought that it might be Ian or Grace, our youngest, left an unpleasant taste in all our mouths, but we accepted. "Serenity." Spinner said. Ren had always been the 'mysterious' one of us, the one who couldn't be predicted, who saw things before we did, and thought in ways the rest of us didn't. Her time with Spinner seemed to amplify that aspect of her, but she wore it proudly. And spinner remained our friend when we were done. But after their session, Ren gave us the tools we needed, and we wove the Dream Stuff and built a path, using TeJon, and Kru, and all the other Preci we had met who had found their way through the battles and the indecision, and doubt and come out whole on the other side. We wove and molded out of the things that existed as pieces of the Dream World. We started with some Still of the Night, and in it bound together threads of Longing and Hope, and sprinkled in bright flecks of Promise and Family. And when we had it built we stained it's framework with shades of Tejon's enduring thoughts, and washed it's surface with bright swathes of Kru's cheery pragmatism. And when we were done, our creation seemed to fade quietly into the Dream Stuff from which it had come. But the Preci, lost and unformed, hungry and afraid, eventually found sleep, and in their sleep they did dream, and dreaming they were found, and touched and... filled. Not everyone could be saved of course. Some were beyond hope, untouched by longing, or already wrapped too tightly in a Nightmare from which our Dream could not break them free. A great many were just too weak and tired to respond. When the People of Preci began waking, and were found to have been given a foothold in reality, and a path to normalcy, it became an official 'miracle', even among those of Precipice, Earth, Meadow and Taluat who were not the type to believe in anything spiritual. It officially became a holiday in all those places, except Earth of course, though those on Earth who knew and remembered observed the day in private, or else joined those they knew on Meadow for the celebration. They called it 'The Day of Grace'. A beautiful obelisk was built on Preci, in the center of the city of New Estirem, and on it, in English, Taluat and Preci, was inscribed a familiar four lines. Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me... I once was lost but now am found, Was blind, but now, I see. We tease Grace unmercifully any time she gets too full of herself, and someone simply says 'You're not that Grace!'. But to be honest, we are seldom full of ourselves, individually or collectively. It is hard to be when you have stared into the face of insanity, and stood against a surging sea of madness. It is also close to impossible when you have a friend like the Wood Wise constantly reminding you that there are so very many things you do not yet know or understand. What do you do the day after you save a world? Don't answer, its a trick question. You don't save a world in a day. Three months after the Day of Grace, we, and everyone else who could possibly be spared, were still busy. Six months after, it was the same. Almost a year after the Day of Grace, Eldo Lev came to us and told us we were free to go back to being kids again. Three months after that we finally listened. Everyone had gone through at least two birthdays, if not three, during the run up to the battle against the Sh'kxu and the rescue of the Preci that followed. We attended funerals and weddings, memorials and vigils, parades and ceremonies on five worlds. We not only experienced our own joy and grief, but shared those same emotions in support of countless others. The eight of us had lifted ourselves outside of life, outside the Light and into Dream, and we had worked what every other being on this side of the Light saw as a miracle. We needed to reattach ourselves to the reality in which everyone we knew lived and died. We went camping. Eight teenage kids and their parents make for quite a crowd. Throw in a few friends and acquaintances, and it is quite a logistical challenge. Do it on a new, barely explored facet, and it is amazing how quickly you can get reattached to the minutiae of living. Redwood was the world that Ian had found, the designator proving to be truer than even Ian thought at the time he gave it. Redwood was a forest world, as Cascade was, but Redwood was dominated by a single species in many guises. If you guessed Redwoods, you too may be a winner! From the giant version to the more mundane sizes, they filled the landscape everywhere that trees could grow. Dad, being the Star Wars geek that he was, compared it to the Forest Moon of Endor from Return of the Jedi. As long as we didn't have to suffer any Ewoks, the rest of us were happy to let him live out his movie fantasies. Our campsite sat snugly on a promontory that dipped south in the center of the northern shore of a crescent shaped lake. Long arms running East and West gave us beautiful sunrises and sunsets, and the sun was on the camp area most of the day. We put up our tents under the shelter of the slightly sparser, slightly smaller Redwoods that covered the promontory. The rocky tip of the promontory gave us a perfect place for swimming and sunbathing, while the shore to the west of the promontory was smooth and sandy, with a nice grassy strip between the sand and the trees. We swam, we dove, we cooked hot dogs and marshmallows, we hiked and ran, we fished and paddled, and we slowly sorted out our lives, the lives of the children we had been merely one war ago, in preparation for whatever we were to be in the long after. I sat, a couple miles down that shore three days into the trip, with my back resting on a log and my legs planted in an upside down V, making a backrest for Jeni, who lay back against my right leg, watching me watch her. "We've been kinda throwing ourselves at each other for a few years now Andy. Why hasn't it stuck?" Good question! And one I'd been asking myself lately too. "Dunno Jen. Chemistry?" I offered. "Or lack thereof..." She added. "Yeah, your sweet, gorgeous and very nice to be around, and I know you don't think I'm an eyesore either, but it just hasn't clicked has it?" "No, and we've given it lots of chances." Jeni added with a sigh. "Are we just too young yet?" "I don't think that's the reason, and I'm guessing that you already know its not the reason, don't you?" "Yeah." She said with a blush. "Truth?" "Always." I answered, which made her smile. "I think the chemistry is there, just not with you." "Trevor?" "Yeah... Yeah! He makes me... squiggly!" "I think there's plenty of squiggly running in both directions, JJ." She giggled at that and I laughed, and we stood up and hugged. "Go get some squiggling in. No time like the present, right?" I sighed myself as I watched her run back towards the camp, Trevor Parkin firmly locked in her sights. I was going to turn sixteen in a few weeks, and that was the one thing I still wondered about, finding someone to share the kind of magic connection I knew my Mom and Dad had shared since they were young. Younger than I was now. I turned to other thoughts, and sought out Titan. Titan, being from a more arid and relatively treeless locale was completely fascinated by the giant trees and the cool, quiet of the forest. We had spent an hour together each afternoon we had been here so far, just running through the forest. Titan sought out the pure pleasure of the run, and the pseudo-hunt, as we chased down one or another of the unsuspecting local wildlife. While I ran, I struggled with what I hoped was going to be a new tool in my arsenal of weapons with which I confused and confounded Mom, Dad and the rest of the Legion. This afternoon's run was up the Eastern arm, along the northern shore of the lake, and around the lake itself, following the shoreline from a quarter mile into the forest. As we ran I struggled with a little pipe I was building between the Dream World and my Light signature. With the things Serenity had been able to show us after her sessions with Spinner, we all had a decent handle on the basics of linking manipulated bits of the Dream Stuff back into the real world. What I was trying to do was almost the opposite, reaching out from the real world to link aspects of my Light signature to the Dream Stuff. I ran, and as I did wisps of Dream Stuff and gleaming slivers of Light collided and merged. For a brief moment, there were two Titans, running side-by-side in the cool shade of the forest. I held it for that moment and let it go, satisfied. It was not time to play that card, now that I had it in my pocket. The morning of our sixth day, Ian walked on water. We had all played little levitation tricks in the past, but in this case he used the Light to make the water's surface tension under his feet sufficient to hold his weight as he walked. Because it was a Light trick, and not a use of 'the gifts', it was a valuable trick when scored using the set of internal rules we kids had created to judge ourselves. Pretty soon we had a game of hackeysak going in the middle of the lake. The parental annoyance value alone was priceless. Ian felt like he had truly found a home, so Serenity used her little Light trick of tickling plants to encourage them to grow, and had a very tall cluster of Giant Redwoods grow an interesting and very large home for him in the high reaches of their combined branches and foliage. The view out over the vast and seemingly endless expanse of forest was awesome. I flashed briefly on a vision of an older, solid-looking Ian, dressed in dark leather clothing, staring out over the forest, as his younger self was doing now. A quick glance at Serenity confirmed that she had seen it too. Sitting around the campfire that night, Dad announced that Obsidian Research was about to announce the 'scientific breakthrough of the Millennium' on Earth, and they would do, with the Guardian Gravity Engine, what they had done years ago with the Obsidian Fusion Reactor and the Obsidian Fuel Cell. They were doing it this time through a separate company, held by key recruits, who had formed 'Guardian Gravity' to develop and market their anti-gravity engines, and later, the gravity drive that would open up the rest of the solar system to the people of Earth. "The time seems right." Dad said. "We're currently in a period of widespread international peace and cooperation. There seems to be a lot of willingness, even from the usual extremists, to just get beyond politics and do something to make life better." The eight of us kids managed to have no reaction to that statement. It was better if no one knew the truth. Our parents, and the people of Earth would not respond well if we were to mention that we were encouraging an era of peaceful cooperation and progressiveness from the Dream World. Just as we had eased the Preci into their new lives after the defeat of the Sh'kxu, so were we easing, in a much more gradual and minor way, the people of Earth. Preparing them for the truths we knew Dad and the rest of the Legion hoped to reveal to them some day. After that bit of news was digested by everyone, Dad threw out the real chaos bomb, as far as I was concerned. "Andy, you will turn sixteen in less than three weeks. Back on Earth you are seen as the heir to the McKesson fortune, and a home-schooled mystery with a high school diploma who hasn't been seen at a public event in almost eighteen months. We have another week here to relax and be carefree. When we get back home, its going to be time for you to pick a college and start your public life." Oh Crap! ------- Epilogue We never confirmed directly for anyone that we were responsible for the Day of Grace. I know that Mom and Dad believe, as do Constantine and Eru Jehn. There were many, many moments when 'Significant Looks' were sent our way, and where 'Little Smiles' sought to evoke a response. We consistently refused to respond to the bait, in its various forms whenever it was offered. If any of them ever come once again to the ledge on Meadow, our special place, they will see the only clue we are willing to provide. On the back wall of the cliff face, in the deepest recess of the cliff's overhang, you will see carved into the rock. Through many dangers, toils and snares... we have already come. T'was Grace that brought us safe thus far... and Grace will lead us home. ------- The End ------- Posted: 2006-10-13 Last Modified: 2006-11-13 / 01:26:48 pm ------- http://storiesonline.net/ -------