Raven

The first thing he noticed was the silence. The second, almost simultaneous with it, almost certainly what woke him, was the hand over his mouth.

"Hush," a rough voice said very, very softly, and JD's eyes flew open to see a stranger in battle fatigues leaning over him. The man's other hand held a gun and JD swallowed and nodded awkwardly. "Good boy." JD tried to move and the man smirked as he saw him tug at the restraints binding wrists and legs.

"Who are you?" JD demanded. "Let me go! Don't you know--"

"JD, shut up!" Buck said urgently, and JD's head snapped up, eyes wide as he met Buck's.

"Buck?" His smile vanished as the gun pointing at him jerked up to press against his forehead, right above the bridge of his nose. He froze.

"I said shut up, fed!"

JD closed his mouth tightly, and risked a glare at Buck, standing across the room. Instantly the man pulled a second weapon and, without losing his lock on JD's forehead, looked around to see what he was looking at.

"He already knew," JD said as quietly as he could.

Buck shook his head. "Never, ever volunteer information. Especially when someone wakes you up holding all the cards and a gun to boot."

JD glanced at the intruder and back at Buck. He wanted to grin -- Buck was back, his nanites were back! -- and stopped himself. How long had he slept anyway? He looked for a clock or a calendar and then crossed his eyes in annoyance with himself, and checked in first with his internal chips. He sighed with relief, then held still as the intruder whirled.

"Don't move!"

He shook his head, eyes wide, and Buck sighed. "Kid, just lie there and wait for the real heroes to come and help." He looked around and hesitated. "Where are we anyway?"

JD glared at him. You want quiet or answers? he thought, irritated, and Buck's smile widened.

"There. Thought so," he said smugly, and JD clenched his fists in frustration.

"Thought what?"

"Thought they'd tried to make a cybe out of you."

JD felt the blood drain from his face, and shook his head. "No."

"Shhh," Buck said swiftly, but too late. The intruder turned his weapon and slammed the stock into the side of JD's face. "I said, shut up!" JD's head rocked, and for a long moment he could do nothing except blink tears from his eyes as the bruise puffed up and then slowly eased again.

Where are the others? JD asked silently once he regained control of himself. Buck shrugged.

"No idea," he said easily, and perched on the edge of the bed. "How you doing?"

JD stared at him, not understanding why the man was asking, then shrugged. Okay, I guess, he said hesitantly.

Buck looked at him oddly, then shook his head as if to say 'never mind.'. "Define 'okay'?"

JD closed his eyes, and shivered a little as Buck remained in view, reminding him that the man was a projection from inside his nanites, not the discorporeal ghost that he appeared to be.

"Kid?"

I'm checking, all right? Give me a minute. JD started sorting through his systems, sector by sector looking for updates on hard, soft and wet ware.

"Sure." But Buck was straight on to the next thing that occurred to him, without waiting, and JD felt oddly let down at that. "Can you get us in one of those virtual rooms again?"

JD shrugged, a little uncomfortable that Buck could read his mind or hear him thinking or whatever it was he was doing. Maybe he could. If he could get a line to a external processor it would be a snap -- if.

Buck waited, drumming his fingers until JD opened his eyes again and glared at him. to his surprise the soldier was standing at the doorway, almost exactly where Chris had been earlier, facing out, and talking to someone.

"...secured."

"Pity," the woman's voice was cool and clipped, and he shivered a little, closing his eyes to a slit. "Keep him quiet -- no mistakes this time, Nataweh."

"Yes, ma'am." The soldier saluted, hand to near shoulder, holding the position until footsteps faded. "Wasn't me made the mistake in the first place," he muttered under his breath. "And if Apman finds out, we're both dead."

JD and Buck looked speculatively at each other, then as the man turned to walk back into the clinic JD wordlessly closed his eyes again, and started feeding threads into the ether.

Buck was muttering next to him, and JD gritted his teeth, tuning out the man's voice as best he could. Everything was working just fine. The nanites poured data into his bios and he bit at the inside of his mouth to hide his smile. The patching could come off. The nanites were binding his injury, converting from blood cells to skin and muscle. He sighed a little. There was a thread... He reached out gently for it and was horrified when it wrapped around him and dragged him forcibly into some unknown grid.

"JD?" He knew that voice -- didn't he?

"Buck?"

"Nope." He blinked several times and slowly the room cleared -- if you could call it a room. The setting was open air, cool air seemed to flow over his face, and he looked around, horrified to see the cyborg. He backed away, reaching desperately for a way out.

"What've you done?!" He couldn't find a line out, and started to panic. Tanner had already gone for him once -- what if the cybe had changed sides on them, wanted to rip him again--

"What the hell--" Buck's voice was welcome, but JD didn't take his eyes off Tanner.

"Keep away from me!" JD said, but Tanner ignored him.

"Who the hell are you?" Tanner looked completely confounded at Buck's appearance and JD instantly tried to slam a thread back out of the room, taking advantage of his distraction. He nearly made it, finding his body with real relief, and dragging himself back towards it.

"Wait -- I need to talk to you!" Tanner said urgently. He grabbed at JD's arm. "Who the hell is that?"

"Let go of me!" JD jerked his arm away, but Tanner's grip simply shifted, and hard as JD tried, he couldn't break his hold. "I said let go!"

Buck grinned and stalked in close, "None of your business who I am, son. Now, I thought I heard my friend here ask you to leave him alone?"

Tanner barely gave him a glance and Buck smiled happily. "I have a theory," he said conversationally, and reached out. JD stared, then grinned as Buck's hands gripped Tanner's shoulders and dragged him away from JD.

"What d'ya know about that?" he added, and pulled an arm back and let fly. "Wow." He shook his hand out, still grinning as Tanner hit the ground. "That felt good."

Tanner shook his head dizzily, one hand at his jaw as he worked it slowly, and JD gripped at Buck in some way that he wasn't sure he understood, much less could describe, and dragged them back to the clinic.

"Wait!" Tanner said urgently. JD paused, shook his head, and slid away -- almost cleanly. A thin thread stretched out and over it Tanner called.

"Kid, kid. Don't you wanna escape?"

JD hesitated. A thousand things poured through his mind -- Tanner had hurt him; cyborgs weren't trustworthy, not ever; where were the others? What had happened? Why had he been left behind, abandoned? Was Casey okay? How had Buck followed him...

"Buck?" he asked.

Buck stood next to him. "Your call, kid," he said, eyes dark and solemn. His eyebrows twitched up for a moment. "I ain't apologizing though."

JD half smiled. "Wouldn't ask you to," he agreed solemnly, and they grinned at each other before he nodded. "Okay then."

He followed the thread held out and slid back into the virtual environment that Tanner had set up.

"No need to apologize," Tanner told Buck mildly.

"Well, that's real generous of you but-- "

"I'll take it out of you later," he added before Buck could finish, and turned to JD. "What the hell is he anyway? Private nanny?"

"Hey!" JD protested, simultaneously with Buck and they glared at each other briefly before JD turned the glare back on Tanner.

"He's Buck."

Tanner's eyebrows lifted and his eyes widened taking his face from sleepy calm to full alertness. "Wilmington," he said softly, nodding to himself. "Well, that would explain it."

"You know me?" Buck said, startled.

"Of. Know of you."

"And what do you know of me?" Buck asked. He slouched, his arms folded, looking as though he couldn't care less.

"Well, mostly, what Chris Larabee told me when he woke up in chains about two hours ago."

Buck's eyes widened, and then he grinned. "Well, now."

JD rolled his eyes. "Oh, please."

*~^~*~^~*

Chris woke with the vague dissociated feeling that he equated with drugs. He wondered if he'd taken them intentionally, or if someone had given them to him. He didn't much like drugs, unless they were the kind he could drink down or inhale to forget the past. A stinging sensation suggested that a patch had been ripped off his chest recently, and he controlled his reaction. Drugged then. Probably by that damn quack.

"Chris?"

He didn't open his eyes. He didn't see the point.

"Chris -- are you awake?" He knew that voice. Nonetheless he didn't respond. Buck had talked to him when he'd been cellstopped, he remembered. Maybe dead people would come and talk to him again if he nearly died.

That sounded good.

He'd thought Buck would be angry at him -- he couldn't quite remember why he'd thought it, but he had. But Buck loved him. Loved him and Sarah and Adam. Was Buck dead? It was harder to control his face, and tears leaked from his eyes before he could stop them. He made no move to wipe them away.

She'd told him it was good to cry. Good to mourn and weep, and plan ahead. What was her name? Hannah.... Doctor Sanchez. Priest Inquisitor Sanchez. He wondered if she was any relation to Josiah, and found the thought funny. She hadn't had his heavy jaw, or his madness. Buck was dead? If he was dead it wasn't his fault. God. All of them gone...

The stink in his nose...

He'd buried them, but he couldn't remember if it had been three bodies or two. He remembered seeing Adam; identifying him, barely marked, dead of suffocation under Sarah's protecting body. And seeing Sarah, a long lock of reddish hair, the unblemished shape of a pair of fingers saved, half buried under her body as the flames roared around them. The rest of her blackened and blistered. His stomach churned, but for once he didn't push it away. He watched the memory, let it play out, and somehow it was less painful than it had been. And he wondered where Buck was. Where was his body, if he was dead.

If he wasn't dead, he killed them, something whispered and he held still, let the thought drift through, pretending not to notice it, not to hear it, and it spoke again, maybe Buck did it. Maybe he was jealous of them. Murdered them... Just him and Chris, like it had been once.

It sounded like him, and he waited. Maybe Buck killed them, it said again, and he grabbed the thought and dragged it into the light. Abruptly he was in a quiet room, listening to a woman whispering words he couldn't quite hear. The words drifted into his mind, sounding like his own thoughts, his own voice, drifting through the confusion and misery. At one and the same time he was speaking them, knew them for his own, and also heard them and knew they were a construct, that the whisperer was feeding his fears, his nightmares, the darkest horrors of his fractured mind; finding cracks and driving poisoned knives into them.

Where was Buck? Had he really heard him in Last Chance? Not imagined that soft voice? Not imagined the man himself, walking towards him, a shadow in sunlight. A ghost.

So -- dead then?

Nothing left to stay alive for, some part of himself said, slowly, and when he examined the thought he could find nothing to disagree with. His gut said, yes, let us die.

Buck dead -- then time to let revenge go?

Revenge for Buck?

How did he die, he wanted to know, he needed to know it was as bad as Sarah and Adam, but Buck hadn't killed them, or if he had, he was dead too, and his mind tried to shut away the thoughts, not true, it can't all be true, something is wrong, something is the lie--

where is the lie?

Who lied?

Liar!

"Chris!"

He surged up, and his hands gripped at the throat of the man next to him.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Larabee, this is getting pretty fucking old, okay?" A strong pair of hands pulled his away from warm flesh. "We've got bigger troubles than your personal private fucking trauma."

"That's a little harsh," Josiah said and Chris blinked, deliberately relaxed. He did know that voice, though there was something wrong with it... he couldn't think what. He opened his eyes and met eyes that glittered with a scatter of tiny silver capillaries among the more normal red.

"You going to try to kill me again or can he let go?" Vin asked, faint grin on his lips.

He shook his head minutely, and Josiah released him. Not that he had much freedom of movement after. His eyebrows lifted as he felt the chains on his wrists and sat up. He lifted his hands, turning them.

"Don't knock it, Larabee," Vin said, and very gingerly lifted his own wrists. He couldn't see why at first, and then Vin shifted his hands slightly and hissed as a thin line of blood appeared and smeared on his wrist.

"Monofilament," he said. "Reckon they were more bothered by the idea of a cybe getting loose than a priest." He lowered his hands very carefully to rest on his thighs. "You feeling more awake now?"

Chris nodded once, and looked around. "Would someone like to explain?"

"Gas grenade," Vin said concisely.

Which explained why he, Josiah, Vin, Joche and the doctor were sitting in a line in a military style transport. Across the vehicle facing them were four mercenary guild members, guns trained on them. Clearly not under orders to intervene if the prisoners started fighting among themselves.

"Church has a standing agreement with the Guild," he started and Josiah snorted.

"I tried that." He lifted his manacled hands. "This was their concession." He nodded over to Nathan and Joche, who, like Vin, were sitting very, very still, the barely visible threat of monofilament wire holding them more securely than any manacles might.

They were moving, and Chris nodded. "When do we talk to who's in charge?"

"You don't," one of the mercenaries said.

Chris looked at him, and the man eventually looked away.

"What's our destination?" he asked, "Have you notified the Church you're illegally holding two of its priests?"

The lead mercenary gave him a disbelieving look, and Chris shrugged, smiling sweetly. "Just checking. Cybe testimony from encrypted memchips is still valid in court?"

Nathan laughed and tried to smother the sound with a cough. "Reckon it is," he said mildly.

Chris leaned back and closed his eyes, a small smile settling on his lips as the mercenaries shifted uneasily but said nothing.

The kid wasn't there. He wondered what that meant -- if it meant anything. No point asking. There was a chance the mercs didn't know about him. Not that he was much of a hole card. Though thinking of hole cards, that card sharp was with the cybes. Maybe he'd be able to help. No way this wasn't connected. Guild took Apman's money, they'd play the contract right out.

Seemed to him that they were most likely under death orders. Only reason that the Guild would refuse to follow standard terms.

But that didn't make sense. No one pissed off the Church. Leaving the kid behind sounded like someone, somewhere, was still operating on common or garden good sense. Strange. He was used to the Church outweighing the feds in terms of sheer terror. Although, this was a federal world. No church outposts. Apman was the closest to Hegemony interests. Maybe Apman or whoever was buffering his commands had had a bad experience with the feds and let the kid alone because of it. Not half as bad as they were going to have, he thought dryly. If they thought the Federation was dangerous, they had absolutely no idea what the Church was capable of.

If of course, they didn't just get paid off.

Shit. His jaw tightened, that could explain it. Sanchez was crazy; he himself was no prize. Less than a week ago he'd been pleased by the thought that the Church neither knew nor cared where he was or what he was doing. He hadn't sent in a report in nearly a year.

He wasn't exactly the most favored son when it came to Command. It took no effort at all to think of a dozen people in a position, and with more than enough motive, to disavow him.

He shifted his hands and the chains rattled dully. It had bought him something. Not enough. He drew a deep breath, and decided to try to sleep. Time enough to figure it all out later.

Maybe.

The craft's motion altered subtly, descending, slowing. They were about to land.

"What are you--" There wasn't long enough to identify the voice. His eyes opened just in time to see the mercs sliding nasal filters into place, and then the world darkened again. He hoped they had secured the monofilament carefully, or three of the prisoners would be hands free the next time he saw them.

*~^~*~^~*

Vin breathed slow and deep and lifted his hands to the female merc in front of him. She touched a tiny burner to the wire and it beaded for a second then slithered off his wrists, even that light contact leaving deep welts.

"Sorry," she said quietly. "Here." She handed him a tissue repairer and moved on to deal with Nathan's bindings. At the door her colleague watched them impassively, face hidden behind armor streaked in desert camouflage. His gun was set to disperse on a wide area. He'd probably catch her too if he had to fire on the room, but they could deal with that after the rest of them were incapacitated. Standard tactics.

He stared at his wrists as though fascinated by the rapid clotting and healing. He focused his attention on his peripheral vision, and the two mercenaries. Larabee was unconscious, or seemed so. He wondered. The man was unpredictable in too many ways -- it wouldn't pay to make any assumptions about him.

"Can I--" He silently passed Nathan the tissue repairer, but when the man tried to aim it at him, jerked away. "It'll heal faster," the doctor said, and Vin looked from him to his wrists.

"Yeah?" he asked, and casually wiped the still wet blood from his unblemished skin. "What makes you think that?"

Nathan swallowed visibly. "I, er--" He ducked his head and concentrated on using the tool on himself . Another meathead who was scared of cybes. Vin let it go. They were going to have to work together to get out of this.

He looked around instead, ignoring the doctor. The cell was about ten by ten. No furniture or fittings. Light came from solid panels in the ceiling. They might be able to get into them, but it would either be noisy or time consuming. Or both, if the mercs had wired the fittings.

He couldn't see any data ports, but he hadn't expected to. They'd planned on dumping the five of them in there; the last thing they'd do would be leave anything a cyborg could hook into. He wondered if they'd found the want on him yet, and if they'd turn him in. Depended on the terms on their contract, and he looked at the female merc who'd just finished burning through the monowire on Joche's wrists. The old man had better control than either Vin or Nathan, or better nanites than Vin. There was no blood on him.

The woman rose and backed away, keeping out of her colleague's line of fire until she was completely clear of them, then without a word, she left the cell, the other following her. The door clicked shut, and Vin heard the distinctive sounds of mechanical locks clicking into place. No chance to hotwire these.

He waited until the sound of feet walking away stopped, and closed his eyes to better concentrate his hearing. The worst part about enhanced hearing was the lack of filtering. The breathing around him suddenly sounded like the roar of free road traffic, and their heart beats like the uncoordinated beat of death drums.

He slowly, painstakingly picked out the ones inside the room. beyond that, one still remained outside the door. It could be worse. He ignored the guard too, and tried for the hum of electrical apparatus. His own body whined and he sighed and tuned it out. Joche was next, and the doctor, and he blinked a little at that. People who lived in alu-glass houses and all that. He let his eyes open and follow the sound to its source. At the very least a camera in the light fitting. Possibly -- probably -- a passive pickup or two as well.

Which would make making plans... tricky.

He eyed Joche thoughtfully, and wondered if the mercs had damped the cell. At least he might be able to talk to him. And if the rumors were true and PIs were full blown psi, maybe the two of them could talk. Which left them with no means of communicating between the two groups, and no way to include the good doctor.

This was why he'd quit running ops.

"So, how do we get out?" Josiah asked, and Vin closed his eyes briefly. So much for discreet. "Chris and I have been discussing the situation." Oh, they had, had they? Vin thought, glancing at Larabee, who looked about as happy as he was to have Josiah blithely sharing with the group and any eavesdroppers, "And we came to the conclusion that our best bet would be passive resistance."

Vin blinked. Chris Larabee offered him a faint smile that was barely more than a twitch of his lips and a crinkling of the skin around his eyes, and Vin let his eyes widen a little in question, fractional enough that any camera would have to be higher res than they had -- than he hoped they had -- to catch it. He got a minute nod back, and sighed heavily. "Typical fuckin' priests," he said, scowling, and rose smoothly to his feet. "There isn't going to be any damn rescue, you know."

"Peace, little brother," Chris told him, expression and voice so bland -- the tone so familiar -- that Vin could barely manage to stop himself from reacting.

He stalked away to the door, examining it closely, as though he didn't know anything about it, then hammered on the door. "Hey! Anyone out there! You gonna let us die or you wanna get us some water in here?" he yelled. First rule. Stay believable.

"Shut up!" the guard yelled back and Vin allowed himself a satisfied nod. A reaction was good.

"Hey! We've got rights, you know," Nathan Jackson joined Vin at the door, and Vin threw him a tight grin when he saw the sharp intelligence in the man's eyes. Good. They were all on the same page here. "I've got an injured man here -- I need medical supplies, nutrients and water!"

Vin tilted an eyebrow at him, when Nathan grinned at him, Vin nodded back, and backed away from the door, leaving him to it.

"You'll get what we say, when we say it! And Apman says you ain't entitled to shit!"

The five of them looked at each other, and at the lack of facilities. Vin laughed under his breath.

"Guess that steps up our plans to bust out and find a dunny." Josiah said solemnly.

Vin snorted, and turned away, walking idly around the perimeter. He concentrated on the echoes that his footsteps caused. He paused for the briefest moment as his processors generated a map of the rooms outside their cell -- and told him that they had an external wall. The wall where Larabee was sitting.

He leaned against the wall next to the man, and then slid down it to sit beside him.

"So, crazy-guy," he said casually. "Tell me about this Buck guy you keep screaming about."

Chris looked at him sharply, eyes hard. Vin waited patiently until Chris's face eased, accepting Vin's gambit as the distracting move it was.

Besides, if he knew people, Chris Larabee badly needed to talk some of it out before his brain fried on its own circuits.

*~^~*~^~*

"Hold your fire! Hold your fire!" Corcoran ordered angrily. The shooting abated, and she looked forward again, covering her anxiety with more anger. "Teams, report in!"

"Sethera, holding position."

"Tallis, holding."

"Ngede, holding." Ulim's voice was clipped and angry, and she tagged him for review silently. He was unhappy at getting the blame on the primary attack's failure. They should have had better intel, but she had no hesitation on putting the fault squarely at Apman's arrogance. He had assumed that the cybes were the helpless techno-dependent babes in the wilderness that the Church spun them out as, then got angry when they behaved like the battle-trained experts they were. Typical meathead.

She shook the thought away. It wasn't going to help anything, thinking that way. Instead she absorbed the data streams that each team leader fed through with their acknowledgement. Ngede still resented being sent to the primary installation. Nothing there.

Tight relief strained her lips for a moment as she struggled to keep the smile off her face. Good. Nataweh must have masked the fed's biostats. Maybe she wouldn't get exited for shooting a fed. She squashed her irritation that she had to waste resources on it, and moved on. Tallis had scouted the rear of the new, secondary install, Halloran the front. She blinked a little at that, viewing through Halloran's eyes their slow crawl up over a ridge, camo-suits blurring them into the sand. She tilted her head fractionally each way -- not necessary, but a reflex she'd never quite gotten rid of when reviewing video files internally. Yeah. Sounds, a trail, but no sign of the people causing them.

This was why Apman had hired in guild. Not for firepower and prestige, but for the experience and expertise. She just prayed that he stayed doped out of his head long enough to execute the advice they were giving her, instead of interfering and getting more people killed. People that they would have to pay for, big time.

Ops flashed across her mind's eye, and for a second she couldn't tell the difference between the wet memory, and the recorded video feed, ops smiling at her from the desert wasteland that the cybes had hidden themselves in. She blinked and the illusion vanished.

The track played on, but she wasn't paying attention any more, until something caught her astonished eye, and she reflexively nudged Tallis again.

"For real?"

Tallis confirmed, and the thread even managed to convey some of his sardonic amusement before she shut it down and re-ran the scene.

One adult male, two juveniles. Playing. Outside. She stared as the group popped in and out of sight intermittently, playing some version of hide and seek until one of the children seemed to win, and the trio headed back inside through an entrance that hadn't been registering on any equipment until it opened and shut.

"So that's how," she said softly, and this time she allowed the slow smile.

*~^~*~^~*

JD slid back into reality silently, and kept his eyes shut, focusing deep inside to keep the illusion of sleeping. As he waited he heard the rustle of clothing as the soldier shifted near him.

Buck looked at him steadily, then asked, "Well?"

JD didn't move. I've got an idea.

Buck cocked his head a little. "Yeah?" There was a faintly indulgent tone to his voice and JD had to work hard to snap at him out loud.

He didn't want me talking, right?

Buck nodded, and then began to grin. "Neat," he patted JD's knee, not that it connected, but it made JD smile happily, a broad grin, "That cybe stuff must be pretty useful, especially when you can pass," he added, and JD's smile vanished. Before he could say anything though the soldier spoke, startling him enough that he physically jerked.

"You awake, fed?"

"Say yes," Buck said swiftly. JD rolled his eyes, then opened them, eying the soldier nervously. He nodded once, biting unconsciously at his lip.

"How you feeling?"

JD shrugged. "Okay."

"No! Don't tell him you're well, tell him you feel sick -- faint, don't give him any reason to think you're a threat!" Buck glared at him and JD ignored him.

"Well enough to get up?"

JD hesitated, he couldn't help darting a look at Buck who ostentatiously turned his back on him. "I don't know," he said. "I haven't tried in a while."

"Try." The man gestured with his gun, and JD's eyes widened and he nodded. He looked at his sheet covered legs for a moment. Well, he'd been walking for a long time. What could go wrong? He swung his legs to hang over the side of the bed, and then edged forwards cautiously, growing less careful as his injury made no protest.

He stood, and grinned.

"Whaddya know," Buck said softly, smiling. JD looked at him but said nothing, still grinning.

"Good. Now, walk," the soldier said, and JD made a face and carefully shifted his weight and took a step, then another.

"My feet weren't hurt," he said smugly, and the soldier grunted. "Hey, what's your name -- I can't just keep on calling you 'you'?"

The man looked at him from dark brown eyes, his narrow face inscrutable. "Need to know," he said finally.

"But I--"

"You want to know," he said, his slight emphasis on 'want' telling JD that he didn't see any need and JD thought furiously, trying to come up with another tack.

"Look, you're the good guy on this, right? You're saving my neck from this Apman guy. You might at least want me to record that. So when the Axe gets here he doesn't void your contract and have you up on charges of unlawful imprisonment."

The soldier hesitated, and Buck nodded. "Easy does it, boy," he murmured, as though the mercenary could actually hear him. "Don't push too hard."

"Well?" JD insisted, and Buck swiped a insubstantial hand at him, which JD withstood without a flinch. He was kind of pleased about that.

The soldier nodded once. "You will speak for me and the Captain?"

"Captain?"

"I am Nataweh, and Captain Corcoran detailed me to ensure your continued good health and safety."

JD shrugged. "I can't promise anything, but I will mention it to the Axe when he gets here."

"So recorded," Nataweh said, oddly formally. Nataweh paused, an air of expectation in his tilted head and raised eyebrows, which confused JD until Buck made encouraging gestures at him.

"He's making it a formal mercenary guild contract. He wants you to repeat 'so recorded' back. Be careful," he added helpfully.

JD looked away for a moment, wishing for the gift of five minutes to himself. He reached for info on guild contracts, and came up with far too much information to take in before he had to say yea or nay.

"Uh--" he looked at Buck who shrugged eloquently. "So recorded. That I'll speak for you, not exonerate you from any crimes that I don't yet know about, and that's a private contract, not a federal one," he added, and Buck rolled his eyes, but Nataweh smiled faintly.

"Agreed." He held out a hand, the silver streaks startling against the mid-brown skin. They shook and JD sighed with relief. At least he was making some sort of headway here.

"What about the others?" he asked, and Nataweh simply looked at him. "Look, I'm not going anywhere -- you've got all the cards," he gestured at the weapon cradled in Nataweh's right arm. "I don't want to see them or anything, I just want to know they're okay."

"Ask about Chris," Buck said swiftly, but JD ignored him. It seemed more important to get the complete picture, not concentrate on one guy.

"They're fine. Being kept away from the action," Nataweh said, and JD smiled at him.

"Thank you."

Nataweh smiled back, and JD tried taking a couple of steps, concentrating on watching his feet until he was sure that he was fine. He reached for his uniform and froze as he caught the motion of Nataweh's gun in his peripheral vision. "I just want to get dressed," he protested, and the gun lowered a little, but remained on him. The clothes had been cleaned, but there was nothing that could be done about the small, neat crescent shape bitten out of the side of his shirt and jacket. He shook them out, and then sighed, and pulled the shirt on. He reached for his pants and hesitated. "You mind?" he asked pointedly, and Buck snorted.

"Yes, actually," Nataweh said flatly. He gestured again with the gun. "Get on with it."

"Kid, he's not gonna give in. And what've you got that's all that special anyway?" he leered, and JD gritted his teeth, and concentrated on ignoring the fierce blush that spread over his face as he dropped his pajama bottoms and swiftly pulled up his blue-grey trousers.

"Never mind," he muttered under his breath. "Why should Tianya be any different?" "What's that?" Nataweh asked incuriously, and JD drew a deep breath and turned.

"What next?"

"We get the hell out of here."

"Wait -- where are you taking me?"

Nataweh shrugged. "Wherever the Cap tells me. Probably Last Chance," he relented, and JD nodded.

"Okay," he said, but looked anxiously at Buck.

"We need to lose him," Buck said quietly. "Gun ququ, and find Chris -- find all of them," he amended at JD's look.

JD nodded, and chanced a very soft, "How?" as he put on his jacket, shrugging it into place with a sigh of relief. Some of the uniform was more than just fabric, and the relief as he found his softs augmented again by a full Federal processing unit was immense. He hadn't even realised how vulnerable he'd felt without it until he found himself standing straighter, shoulders going back a little.

Buck shrugged minutely. "I'd suggest taking him out if I thought you had a fish's chance in a sandstorm."

JD threw him a look that even he knew was sardonic. "Thanks," he muttered.

"Anything you can do with your --" Buck waggled his fingers. JD supposed he meant JD's tech enhancements, but it looked almost like he meant magic. He slanted a surreptitious look at the mercenary, wondering exactly how the hell he could do anything to stop him. There was no sign of cybertech visible on him; the close cropped hair let him see the smooth line of Nataweh's neck and skull. Nothing.

He looked up to say as much and caught himself just in time. Waitaminute.

Soldiers had to have cybe enhancements. There was no way they didn't. They couldn't do half the stuff they were supposed to without 'em. So, Nataweh had them; they were hidden.

"What is it?" Nataweh had caught JD's sudden breath in.

"Side," Buck said even as JD said,

"My side," and clutched a hasty hand to it. "Turned the wrong way or something."

"Get your boots on," was Nataweh's only comment. He turned away and took up position to the side of the window. JD had an odd sense of déjà vu. Chris had stood there earlier, and before him, Vin.

He wished they were here. Still. He was a fed, right? He didn't need rescuing.

He jerked his boots on and waited the couple of seconds as the fastenings sealed, then straightened up again. Soldiers were kind of like feds. Nataweh had to be cybe, or at the very least, net enhanced.

A thought struck him. He was a fed. That gave him over rides on cyborg tech. Root level shutdown codes. His jaw hung open for a moment. He snapped it shut and could have kicked himself.

"You done?"

"Yeah," he said easily, and tried not to let any sign of his thoughts show. Buck must have thought of it too. For that matter, wouldn't Nataweh have thought of it as well?

He reached a delicate thread out and realized that it was as if Nataweh wasn't there, wholly invisible to all his technological enhancements.

Shit. He shook his head minutely at Buck, and Nataweh's gun was in his face.

"Don't try to hack me again," he growled. JD shook his head mutely, his hands reflexively lifting into the air.

"Leave it, kid," Buck murmured.

"I was just reaching for my counterpart," he blurted.

Nataweh didn't lower the gun. "Counterpart?" In fact, that seemed to make him more anxious, not less.

"My second," he tried to explain. "She's back in Last Chance."

The man relaxed fractionally, and lowered the weapon. "Don't."

"Okay. I get it. Okay."

"Good. Behave and you should get out alive."

JD clenched his jaw. He was a fed, not a kid. There had to be something he could do.

"Move!" Nataweh gestured with his gun and JD felt his hands curl into fists, and the tension rise.

"Don't, don't, JD," Buck urged, "We can take him down later. Easy."

JD ducked his head, relaxed his hands with an effort of will and walked to the door, trying not to see Nataweh's amused smirk.

*~^~*~^~*

Nathan took the offered canteens with a bright smile, and held a hand out for the medikit that the armored officer had clutched under their arm. In the armor it was impossible to tell man or female, height was no clue, neither was their voice, curt, and in that mid range that could be contralto or tenor. The kit was slapped into his hand, it was heavier than he expected, and there was a confused moment when he juggled it and the canteens before the medkit fell with a crash.

There was a blur of movement to his right and suddenly the mercenary was on the ground, Tanner's foot on his neck, and his gun already targeting on the backup in swift, silent bursts of hot light.

Nathan stood staring, jaw dropped as Tanner turned and nodded at the stuff on the floor. "Want to grab that? We could use it." He nodded hastily, still in shock as he dropped to his knees, sweeping the packs and vials together, and forcing them back into the field kit. They went in any old fashion, and he winced as sterile dressings tore and bottles kinked, losing integrity. Joche moved past him, and he watched, hands paused mid flight, as he swiftly stripped the armor from the downed soldier, taking weapons, communicator, emergency packs and chips.

A hand rested on his shoulder and he looked up. Josiah was looking at him, "Ready?"

He nodded once, and stuffed the last items into the heavy black bag, then accepted Josiah's hand up. He let go as he gained his feet and had to stop himself from reflexively wiping his hand on his pants leg. He couldn't stop himself from wondering if the priest taken that moment to scan his mind. It was one thing to think someone was halfway crazy, some sort of religious nut. But the others had pretty much said Josiah was a PI. Hell, the man had more or less said it himself, and he really didn't want anything to do with the Church.

He wasn't a phobe -- he wasn't, he insisted to himself -- he just liked to know that he only had stuff he really needed implanted. None of this tech-hancement for its own sake. He'd seen kids with spikes cresting their skulls, just to be in with the latest gadgets. He shuddered, then looked around.

Larabee was watching him, and he hugged the black bag closer to himself. He'd noted the seratinol; more than powerful enough to take down any troublemakers. Cybe or psi. Larabee's pale eyes seemed to look right through him, and he squared his jaw. "Can I help?" he asked quietly.

Larabee eyed him for a moment longer, then shook his head curtly.

"Opportunity knocks but once, boys," Joche murmured as he stood, tucking away his spoils. "Where to?" he asked Tanner, resting an approving hand on his shoulder.

Tanner nodded back into the cell as he spoke, "I give it fifteen seconds max before they realize there's a problem."

Nathan blinked. So little.

"Back in there." Tanner nodded to the cell, and Joche turned immediately.

"Wait -- we could get out--" Nathan protested, but urged by Tanner's glare, backed into the cell.

"Not through the complex we can't." Tanner's face grew calculating. "I reckon we should try the back door before we start wandering through a high security maze."

"Back door?" Nathan asked.

"Push the door shut," Tanner said, and grinned wickedly. "I thought I'd redecorate."

Nathan frowned, but Tanner's meaning became more than clear as he raised the weapon and fired. He cut low a space wide enough for a man, high enough to crawl through, no more. Nathan couldn't figure out why he was cutting about a foot off the floor. It was the work of seconds, the lines so straight that he could have spent hours drawing them in with laser sights instead of five seconds with a hand held gun.

Joche was at the blackened outline instantly, and kicked firmly. The piece of wall scraped, horribly loud, and then fell away, leaving a hole barely big enough to crawl through, maybe thirty centimeters deep, a meter wide and fifty centimeters high. Tanner slithered through immediately. Josiah followed with a sigh.

"My penance," he murmured before he wriggled his way through, arms first to pull himself through the space that looked far too small to accommodate broad shoulders and barrel chest. It took endless seconds and then he was safely out.

"Priest?"

Larabee nodded, looking almost sane, and scrambled through easily. Nathan drew a deep breath and looked at Joche, who held out his hand for the medikit. Nathan held it out, and then jerked when a heavy thud rocked the room.

"Go!" Joche urged.

Nathan saw smoke starting to rise, held his breath and pushed through, his skin scraping on the rough edges. Larabee and Tanner pulled him out of the way with more speed than care. He was barely out when the medikit hit him, thrown through, then Joche was crawling out, dragged by the others the rest of the way. He had something -- a kind of wafer in his hand and he turned before he had even got to his feet, and flipped it into the room. Smoke was curling out of the hole, and Joche rose to his feet with more grace than any man his age should be able to manage and started running.

"What--"

"Run!" Josiah said, and they fled after Joche. The man wove through buildings swiftly, around the back entrances of two, waiting for a moment at a third, then urging them on. Nathan wanted to ask how he knew where to go, what was going to happen, but no one stood still long enough to even think about opening his mouth, never mind the small fact that they were, by common, unspoken agreement, moving absolutely silently. The cybes were like mist -- their feet barely left prints in the sand, while his own twisted in the soft sand, gouging deep marks in his wake.

Tanner glanced at Joche, who nodded, then changed direction, slipping towards the perimeters, brightly lit and edged with the faint glimmer that he knew meant some sort of energy fencing. Tanner turned back on their tracks, and Nathan watched him for a second, uneasily aware that they must have agreed some kind of plan in that weird sub-ether connection that cyborgs had.

"With me," Joche murmured, and Nathan startled, then followed after him. Josiah and Chris were nearly at the fence, it was a matter of seconds before they caught up with them. Suddenly the encampment lit up. People started to pour out of tents and huts. Nathan looked around, panicked. They were going to be caught! Standing here like moths sitting by a light, brightly visible and perfect targets for -- the lights went out.

Nathan gaped, looked around wildly.

"We go!" Joche said, so absolutely that Nathan's feet were moving before he could start thinking about the energy wall. By the time he did, they were past where it had been. He didn't look back, but bit his lip. Vin had gone back to give them a chance to get out. What it--

"All right?" Vin was jogging alongside him. Nathan's mind was a complete blank, and then he beamed at him.

"Thank you," he mouthed, and Vin smiled back at him, an oddly sweet, open look, as though not many people smiled at him and meant it.

"No trouble." Vin picked up pace and joined Joche up front.

Maybe they didn't. Nathan felt his skin heat, and was grateful for the night and the color of his skin. He meant it now.

*~^~*~^~*

JD sat silently in the passenger seat of the two man air car. He had briefly considered jumping, but they were high enough that landing would kill him. He couldn't stop the scowl that tightened his face. If he'd been a cybe, instead of a failure, maybe he could have made the jump. Vin could have made the jump.

"We'll be at Last Chance in thirty minutes," Nataweh said out of the blue, then fell silent again.

There had to be something he could do.

"Don't do anything crazy, kid," Buck said right into his ear, and he jumped in his seat, getting a quick irritated look from Nataweh, who by now had probably decided that JD had some kind of version of Tourettes between the random bursts of speech and the twitching. He flushed red and hunched down into himself.

He might look embarrassed, but he could at least check to see if there was anything his carefully acquired federal access could help him out with. He flipped idly through files and files of access codes, flitting from one point to another, his fed grid access updating on the fly, for all the good it did him as he meandered from topic to topic. Still nothing about blatting mercenaries, he thought, with a sigh. Pass codes, security clearance codes, emergency shutdown codes, emergency startup codes. Nothing for a free cyborg.

There had to be something. He sighed, and then bit his lip, and stared into the darkness.

A slow thought crept in. Maybe he was concentrating too much on the technological. Mom had called it a crutch. Of course, at the time, she'd had a particular reason for saying it, but that didn't make it less true. He looked uneasily around. Maybe he was focusing on it too much. But what else could he do?

Crash the car. The idea came immediately and he discarded it as fast. No. Some way that didn't leave him dead too. Seize the car?

That could work. He didn't need Nataweh to cooperate if he could talk the car into listening to him. He thought it through carefully. He was stuck in the car with him for now. If he did anything radical he had to be sure that he could end up in control of the car, without Nataweh subduing him.

That meant Nataweh had to go. Involuntarily he looked down. It was a hell of a long drop. It really would kill anyone to fall that far onto solid ground. From somewhere his mind produced the necessary equation, worked it out, and offered a probable outcome. JD felt his stomach churn.

Strawberry jam. He swallowed. But there were the others. And the cyborgs needed his help. There were kids there.

He struggled with the decision. Helping the cybes might make up for being such an idiot at the outset. Plus, he owed Chris Larabee. He'd nearly killed the man. Not Standish, of course. That was different. Standish was on the run, and he would arrest him as soon as he got -- he remembered the warrant was from Granot. The first Axe in thirty years to be executed for crimes against the Hegemony. It didn't make his warrants automatically invalid, he tried to tell himself, but could only think of how Travis had looked at him after offering him the job. He'd waited JD's ebullient acceptance out, and said, "I'm taking a chance on you. You've got courage, and you're willing to do the right thing, and I'm hoping that's going to be enough. Listen to your AI, and temper justice with mercy. And try not to do anything in a hurry." He'd paused, and half smiled, "You're on your own out here. Own this job, or it will own you."

It had seemed an odd thing to say, but now, now he wondered if he was starting to understand.

He could just do the job. He could follow the rules. Nothing said that he had to help cyborgs. Nothing said that he should do anything but arrest and deport Standish.

But... Standish might end up dead without a trial if he got into the hands of the people in Granot's sept. Discredited, disbanded, forbidden to trade. They'd kill him. Didn't matter what he'd done, if it was Granot's last wish, they'd honor it. And what if Granot had done it illegally.

That would make JD no better than a murderer.

Which brought him back to the main subject.

He breathed in slow and deep, and let it out on the count of four. In again.

"Kid?" Buck asked. "What are you up to?" But JD didn't answer, just concentrated on breathing in and out. He wasn't going to be sick. He pulled his legs up, feet on the seat, wrapping his arms tightly around his knees. Nataweh gave him a scathing look. JD knew what it looked like. He was huddled in the seat like the kid Buck called him. Even as he thought it, Buck was speaking again, his voice gentle.

"You okay there?"

Thinking, he thought firmly, hoping that however Buck was hearing him, Nataweh wouldn't.

"You sure?"

JD tucked his head down and offered a Yes, and hoped Buck would leave him be.

He reached, gently, carefully, for the car's controls. Sneakily, sideways, he inserted a thread into the main processing unit, and buried his sigh of relief in his knees. Okay. One thing at a time. Get control of the car onto automatic so he didn't kill himself in the process. Seize the telltales first, so Nataweh wouldn't see him grab the controls. Unsecure the pilot door while leaving his locked. Harder, but doable. Deal with the harness. Was there an emergency release somewhere?

Goosebumps ran from the back of his neck out over his body. Was he really going to do this?

He tightened his knees to his chest. Twisted a little in his seat. Twisted one hand through the emergency strip, out of sight of Nataweh. Okay. He took a deep breath. Checked everything again. Okay. All at once.

He set up a cascade in the car computer, held his breath, looked up, and maybe Nataweh suspected something because he looked sharply at JD, seemed about to speak, and JD thought Now!

The controls flipped invisibly to autopilot, locking everyone but a federal officer out of access. The door unlocked, Nataweh's safety harness popped open, the door opened and JD rocked back on his ass then rammed out with his feet, the full strength of his legs behind the blow, and Nataweh flew out without a word the last thing JD saw of him his face, eyes and mouth round with surprise. For a moment JD thought that was it, and then the car lurched, compensating. He leaned over and saw Nataweh clinging to the edge of the doorframe. He stared, horrified, and automatically told the door to shut. He could hear Nataweh screaming at him.

The door wouldn't shut for a moment, red lights flashing on -- an obstruction it warned monotonously, please remove the -- and he didn't stop to think, couldn't let himself stop to think and overrode it, and the door closed, and the screaming fell away. For a moment the car tipped the other way, still compensating for something no longer there.

He was shaking, gasping for air.

"Kid! Kid!" Buck was shouting, sounded like he'd been shouting for a while, JD looked around to meet his eyes, it felt endlessly slow, the movement, and he met those blue eyes too soon. "You're okay, you did okay," Buck said insistently, "Come on, don't wipe on me. JD?"

"I'm okay." It was a lie. He reached blindly for the controls and clung to the comforting non-emotion of the guidance systems. "I killed him." His stomach churned.

"Yeah. Probably." Buck leaned over to peer out of the window, moving through the pilot seat to get a better look, half leaning out through the steel and glass. JD had no idea if he could see anything. Was it too dark? Maybe they needed lights...

He shuddered and looked away sharply. When he looked ahead at their route, Buck was back inside, and he smiled shakily at him.

"Hey, at least we're alive," Buck tried to cheer him, and JD shook his head. "Well, at least, you're alive. I'm -- "

Buck stopped and JD looked at him again. Buck looked -- JD frowned. The man looked uncertain. "We'll fix it," he said, and reached to grip Buck's arm. They both winced when his hand seized only air. "Sorry."

"It's okay." Buck looked up, his face brightening. "Hey, shouldn't you be thinking about turning this thing around?"

JD scowled at him. He'd been about to do that. He had.

"Where to?" he asked, and then grinned. "Got a tracker for PIs anywhere handy?"

Buck glared at him. "You're the fed, you figure it out."

JD nodded. The cybe's fake village then. Maybe they could track the others from there.

*~^~*~^~*

Ezra stared into darkness. He'd found a way out of the Medjai base of operations. It was cold outside, the heat of the desert long since evaporated into the cloudless night. Even so, he pushed his shirt sleeves up. His jacket was on the ground, barely cushioning his posterior from the chill of the mountainside.

The landscape was inky black. Slowly, his eyes adjusted to the night after the bright lights of the corridors and halls of the mountain complex. Far, far in the distance, half concealed by rising dark shapes, an orange haze huddled close to the ground. Last Chance.

He snorted. Some Last Chance.

Somewhere over there, beyond the black and the orange was his ship. He could still leave.

He'd put Tors to bed, under her father's watchful eye. As the child giggled and teased him the man had slowly thawed, joining in. He could see why Tors so easily trusted him -- she adored her father.

He'd brushed a kiss over her forehead, hardly even noticing the cool touch of metal, already starting to lay striations on the softly rounded little face.

He flinched away from the memory.

He'd smiled. Smiled, and smiled, and yet...

His eyes drifted across the landscape uninterestedly. Mountains, desert. Night. He tilted his head back and watched the stars. They lay in great swathes. He tried to pick out shapes and his eyes burned. Looking too far, he told himself. And it was cold here.

So cold.

He'd missed his chance. He should have taken them today. Stolen a car. He could have been at Delivery before they could stop him. Could have been out of system before anyone was any the wiser.

He shivered. Perhaps he should put his jacket on again. He didn't move. So much money. He could bring -- could do anything. Be free. Go anywhere. Even start to rebuild what they had lost. Two cyborg children would be nearly a big enough stake.

Two. As easily say, 'a hundred', or 'a thousand'. The stars weren't for wishing on. Children weren't for using. Not for selling to the Church or the Feds.

Not for selling to the highest bidder, who wanted the resilience of a cyborg, and the sweet innocence of a little girl.

He'd made his decision already. He'd made it hours ago. He just hadn't been willing to believe.

He closed his eyes, his shoulders dwindling under the sense of relief.

Only so far, Mother. Only so far.

*~^~*~^~*

Joche looked up into the night sky. The stars were clear in moondark, and it was easy enough to judge distance, direction and triangulate their position.

Not that it helped in the desert. The foothills were close enough that they had a fighting chance of losing themselves there. The mountains, and real safety, were too far to even think about, Last Chance hidden far away, more than seventy clicks. About the only good thing was that they were all reasonably fit and it was the middle of the night -- one person slowing them down, or trying this in the heat of the sun would lose them their chance before they ever really had it. He looked left, then right. Vin was still pacing him, and he nudged. Keep the pace, I'm going to back track.

Vin shook his head. "Better me," he croaked, and cleared his throat, spat, and tried again. "You know where we're going."

Joche shook his head, not meeting Tanner's eyes. The man was so young sometimes.

What do you mean, no? he asked, underneath.

Joche didn't answer. He didn't answer to a double renegade.

Vin fell back, and Joche let him, still calculating the best place to go. He could hear the dull drone of aerial vehicles -- someone knew their job. Vin's sabotage had been rough and ready. Blow out the generator, take as many vehicles on charge as possible with it. Kill the power long enough to give them breathing space.

Vin had a gun, probably grenades. He had two weapons, the gun from the solider plus a knife and a number of cenemol strips. With a little luck -- time, a defensible position, a last minute rescue -- they'd see the night out.

He became aware of heavy breathing to his right and looked over to find the older PI running. The man seemed to be running at his fastest pace, barely keeping up, and Joche thought longingly of stretching his stride, blurring his pace, the strength of alu-glass and nanite-oxychange giving more than human resources to draw on. And held his pace. The man had made the effort to catch up. He glanced over his shoulder, and found Vin running alongside the other priest, and his eyebrows flicked up briefly.

Priest and cybe? Their paces had mirrored and Joche shook the knowledge away.

"Josiah?" he asked, calmly, not in the least out of breath.

"We should go that way," Josiah gasped out, pointing with one hand, the other clutching at his side, feet slipping in the sand as Joche headed them up hill.

Joche followed his hand and shook his head. "Nothing there."

"We need to go that way," he said again, and Joche frowned.

"Why?"

Josiah stopped, and leaned his hands on his thighs, breathing hard. In seconds the others were with them.

"Are you all right?" the doctor asked. Josiah nodded speechlessly, and Joche noted that the man wasn't above playing up his lack of fitness as his breathing grew harsher.

"Here--" The doctor was reaching for the medikit, and Larabee slapped a hand on his wrist.

"Leave it," he growled.

Joche blinked. Larabee's eyes were dark in the moonless night, and his pale face unfathomable.

"He's--"

"He's fine," Larabee snapped, and let go of the man's wrist with a disdainful flick. Jackson rubbed at it, Joche noticed, like it hurt. Maybe Larabee had been rough. "We don't have time for this."

"Agreed," Vin said tersely. He was standing facing away from them, turned towards Apman's camp. "He's going to be on us in minutes."

Joche nodded. Well. They'd tried.

Then Vin shifted, looking more westerly, face puzzled. The sound of an air car grew and Chris moved abruptly.

"Let's go," he snapped, and headed south, away from their easterly course, taking them deeper into the foothills. Underfoot the ground firmed, sand giving way to scrub, little ragged bushes that caught and clawed at their clothing, tripped them up in unexpected hollows and dips.

Joche followed, bemused, a hand on Josiah's shoulder. Seemed the priest hadn't been faking entirely. He really was losing speed, and with it, his determination to get away.

"Is this the right way?" Chris asked suddenly, and Joche frowned, realizing that they were jogging along the old man's heading. The one he'd refused to take. He glared at Larabee, but the man refused to turn around, though a psi had to have felt the weight of his disapproval like a blow.

Josiah nodded, then seemed to realize that Larabee hadn't seen and said, "Yes." He caught his breath for a second, then carried on blowing like a broken pressure valve. . "Good." Larabee picked up the pace. A light blazed out to the north, maybe a thousand feet up. A second later it was joined by another, then a third, a fourth. The searchlights were evenly spaced, quartering the ground as they swept towards them.

"Shit," Joche heard Jackson swear, didn't respond. He heard a fifth one, coming up from the west. Surely they hadn't sent anyone out after him, he thought in horror, even as he pushed Josiah harder, ran faster, desperate to get to whatever place it was that the priests wanted. Maybe they knew something he didn't.

Many things a deeply unfamiliar voice murmured, and he stumbled, only long training keeping him moving. That didn't come over a thread, or over the radio.

"Out of my head, priest," he muttered. Josiah chuckled, and he couldn't tell if he was hearing it or--

A streak of light blazed down not a mile away, and he looked up, straight into Vin Tanner's eyes. They were out of time. They were raking the ground with lasers. Vin shook his head fractionally. And his eyes flickered to Larabee.

Joche looked away for an exasperated second. Orange fire blazed again, cutting closer. "We should contact them," he said grimly. He hardly recognized his own voice, so old and defeated. "Surrender."

Josiah shook his head, eyes oddly bright in the reflected searchlights. "Faith, lao peng yu," he said. He paused and Chris nodded as though he'd said something and turned sharply westwards.

"We're going to get cut to pieces." Jackson didn't sound panicked, just resigned. "We should--"

"Close enough, xiao gi gi," Josiah said softly. Joche sighed. If the man was going to break right now, they needed to act.

"Nathan -- " he asked. Nathan slid his hand into the medikit.

"Ni ta me de!" Vin swore when he saw. "We don't have time to listen to his plan," he snapped, "but you've got time to drug out the only guy who knows what it is?"

"Left! Left here, and down!" Josiah said abruptly, and dropped sideways, over the edge of the hill. Joche tried to grab him and nearly over balanced. "Here." Josiah reached up and seized Joche's arm and tugged him. Already off balance he fell, no more than six feet into a deep dry crevice in the hill face. Vin jumped in after them, landing lightly on his feet, his face upturned to the dim opening above them. A second later Jackson climbed down, probing with uncertain feet.

"Chris?" Vin called softly. The priest's head appeared briefly.

"You got anything I can borrow to cover up?" he asked. Joche shook his head.

"Get down here," he called. "You'll give our position away." Josiah chuckled, and pulled off the many-colored poncho and passed it up.

"It suits you," he said softly as Chris blinked at it, then pulled it over his head. He nodded and sat down, almost vanishing in the darkness. Chris's head disappeared again, and Joche held his breath, scanning as far away as he could.

"Go passive," Vin threaded, and he tightened his lips, but pulled back in. He couldn't even hear Larabee. Josiah's breathing had slowed to almost normal.

Jackson was rummaging quietly in the packaging, and Joche wondered how the man could tell what he was holding. Even cyborg eyes could barely make out anything.

Light flashed across the top of the crevice, revealing tense faces for a split second, staring upwards, frozen.

"What--"

Joche held up a hand, and no one spoke. The light swept again. This time he watched the shadows it threw. Elongated, pointing towards the mountains. The vehicles were still a good mile away. Vin had given them enough time. He closed his eyes in relief. If they sent foot soldiers out -- when they sent foot soldiers out, it would be a different story, but for now. He froze, felt like the blood itself halted. Orange light scraped over the edges of the rocks, He could smell the burning, feel the vicious heat of it.

Larabee was out there.

He moved convulsively, and it seemed Tanner had expected it, because he was stopped by an iron hard arm.

"He's okay," Vin said softly, face still upturned.

"How do you know?" Joche asked. How could he know? A priest?

Vin nodded at the placidly dozing Josiah and Joche nodded. Of course. Josiah would know if -- he paused. Vin had moved before he'd looked at Josiah. He'd known before--

He wasn't going to think about that.

"Faith," Josiah said unexpectedly, but appeared asleep when Joche looked at him. Maybe he was talking in his sleep.

Funny how much more sense the man made unconscious, he thought wryly.

*~^~*~^~*

"Only a fool fights a war on two fronts!" Frances yelled, out of all patience. She gestured at the air cars fruitlessly working a search grid across the desert. They were up to the foothills now, and there was no sign. They had probably had transport available minutes after getting out of the encampment. Worse, the old man was a native, he was going to know the country like no one else. Add two PIs into the mix and, "It's pointless!"

"What did you say?" Apman said slowly, one hand resting on the black box holding his narcs.

"You can either retrieve them, or win against the cybes, sir." She stood, ramrod straight. This was it then. "We don't have enough troops to do both." Especially not with all the dead.

Tanner hadn't been playing games. Both guards were dead. One larynx broken, right through armor. One shot in the head with her colleague's point S weapon. It shouldn't be possible. Somehow, Tanner had broken security on the dna locked weapon like it didn't exist.

Apman pointed at her jabbing the air angrily, "Enough! You're relieved of duty!" She drew a deep breath. Maybe -- "Put her in the holding pen," he ordered. "Shut her out of the nets or grids or wha'ever the fuck you're calling them. No, never mind -- " He grabbed a gun from the approaching guard, and she had the briefest moment of -- Jacob -- before he raised it and fired.

*~^~*~^~*

"Close your eyes," Joche said softly to Nathan as the drone of vehicles grew closer, and the sky above lightened in and darkened in rolling waves.

"What?"

"And your mouth," he added as soon as Nathan spoke. "Eyes and teeth show. Don't look up."

Nathan looked startled then snapped both shut, ducking his head to between his knees at the unseen ground. In the darkness all they could do was wait it out. Joche closed his eyes, absorbing the slower, safer data from his passive sensors. Vin was more or less invisible to Joche's -- visible to human eyes, of course, but fortunately for them, their pursuers were mostly cybes, and had the limitations of their kind. Josiah was muttering under his breath. Joche frowned, straining to decipher it as he listened but the words were a string of nonsense, a babble of syllables that meant nothing to him. Across the sandy floor he could make out Larabee, leaning against the rocky wall, seemingly asleep, unfazed by the imminent arrival of their pursuit. Even without guns a PI was hardly unarmed. The fair hair shone almost white as a bright light seared across the top of the canyon, and he frowned. Would they see-- maybe he should get him to cover up? He barely even shifted when a faint thread touched him despite the peril of communicating on the ether right now.

No, Vin whispered, and Joche drew a deep breath and looked away. Rumor had it that if a PI wanted to be hidden he would be hidden. And if not -- well, if not then he and his were doomed no matter what they did. Old fears died hard.

Footsteps up above.

The tumbling words spilling from Josiah's lips stopped. Joche concentrated on breathing as shallowly and lightly through his mouth as he could. The air was dry, dusty, tasting of sand, and he wondered if they would give themselves away by coughing. Easy. No sudden movements. Control the urge to look upwards. Don't see us, don't see us. Was that a prayer? Maybe he was praying. He wondered what a priest prayed to.

Closer. He slitted his eyes open as passive sensors saw a heat source. A light bobbed, swung into the canyon, sweeping over Larabee's tilted back face, picked out the back of Nathan's head, his face turned down, away from the light.

No one moved. The footsteps paused, and light pooled on the floor between their feet. He instinctively pulled his feet back, one two, away from the betraying light. He wasn't the only one. A minute scraping sound told him that someone else had moved, their feet less than perfectly cautious and careful. Breathe shallow; be hidden; nothing here; go away; nothing here...

The footsteps crunched, a careless step, maybe turning on their heel, and a barely felt burst of encrypted static. A cybe up there. Joche closed his eyes, pained. Another child missed, another adult hunting down sib. He couldn't save them all, he reminded himself. He had to accept, they couldn't save them all; and maybe this one was free. Maybe this one had chosen their life. He wished he knew what they were saying. It was almost more frustrating to only be able to hear the frequency, and not have the decryption software to understand it.

He wondered if Vin understood. He'd find out later, or not. For now, he breathed and waited. Waited and breathed.

The footsteps walked further up the edge of the crevasse, the light swinging along the floor and walls indiscriminately. Another burst of static, and the footsteps moved further away, the static dropping to a barely discernable hiss. They'd only caught the thread because the searcher had been directly above them. Out of line of sight, out of range, there was nothing to hear.

"Did--" Not even a whisper, but Joche could feel the tension rise near to snapping point even as he pressed his hand over Nathan's mouth swiftly, and the doctor subsided.

Wait. They haven't gone. Wait. Trust me.

He wished there was a way to say it directly, but Nathan made no effort to speak again and he lifted his hand away just a fraction, then all the way, hoping that his meaning was clear.

No one moved for what felt like interminable hours. He knew it to be nearly two hours before the search grid moved far enough away that they should get caught. Now they just had to hope that the mercenaries were too equipment conscious to scatter nanosensors in their wake.

Nathan shifted next to him, and he rested a light hand on the man's shoulder. It wasn't comfortable here, sat on cold, sandy ground, leaning against colder rocks. Vin gestured, waving his hand for attention then pointed first to himself, and then up towards the surface.

Joche nodded. They couldn't stay here forever. Maybe Vin, younger, newer, would be able to find any problems before they became disasters.

Larabee nodded at the same moment, and it was then that Joche realized Vin hadn't been looking at him for permission. He blinked again, and bit his lip. He was going to have to have a talk with the boy. Remind him of his proper priorities.

Vin rose soundlessly to his feet, then swiftly scrambled up the two meters of deeply pitted rock. Even Josiah would be able to make it out.

Which reminded him. He wanted to know how Josiah knew about this place.

*~^~*~^~*

Ngede kept directing the grid search, his face dark with anger. When the team leaders reported that the desert was clear for thirty clicks he didn't much care if they had turned over every grain of sand, or if they had peered outside with their eyes shut and their fingers in their ears.

He'd had an idea, before, of what Corcoran was filtering. He'd thought she was just keeping an eye out for her own position, making sure that she was the necessary go between.

He'd wished, from time to time, that they could cut the middleman and have the field officers talk directly to the client. He'd thought that surely Apman would understand their concerns better without the pussyfooting around that Commander Corcoran indulged in.

"Well? Where are they?"

"No sign as yet, sir," he said, voice and face neutral. Apman jerked away, a quick move full of angry energy. Out of the corner of his eye he saw hands twitch towards holsters, and shook his head.

Rate of attrition was going to get them if the cybes didn't.

"They must be somewhere!"

"Yes, sir."

"So find them!"

"We have not identified any hiding places in four hours, moving faster than any unenhanced human could. I do not believe that they could have outpaced us on foot."

"Then why aren't they here?" Apman demanded.

Ngede carefully didn't shrug or roll his eyes. These were the moments that the complete self control they had taught in the guild post-grad courses became essential. When the employer was a fucktard, or insane -- or both. "Sir, we have deployed all combat fit personnel; and we have scattered out sensor tags over a one six hundred square click area. It is merely a matter of waiting for them to break cover." Or they've already been picked up by their own friendlies; were picked up hours ago and this was just a complete waste of time and effort.

"What if that whore," Ngede flinched microscopically at Apman's description of the Commander "freed them?"

"I do not believe, reviewing the tapes of the break out, that that was possible."

"You don't know everything," Apman dismissed his opinion with a wave of his hand. At least it hadn't been a wave of his gun, Ngede thought grimly. Everyone's attention was on the man's gun hand, and its periodic dives for his gun. Apman began pacing. "If she was still alive we could--"

Ngede gritted his teeth. Apman would have tortured her for non-existent knowledge. "The commander would never betray the contract."

Apman glared at him --"But we'll never know. It makes sense, how else could they escape? Cybes and priests and a medic."

"Tanner is a high functioning military cyborg," he said steadily, and as though he hadn't already said this three times. "His capabilities are Church classified. We have no data on what he can do." Which in his experience meant take all the 'nice to haves' that had been floating as rumors for the last five years, double 'em, and run away.

Apman grinned. "How much was the Church bounty again?"

Ngede tried not to let his distaste show. "Half a billion cred." And what the hell Tanner had done to make them willing to put up that kind of reward... "Alive. Half a mill dead."

"Dead would be easier..." Apman said thoughtfully, turning to look out the door of the small office into the desert. The search squads were still working their way methodically across the foothills, some were nearly into the mountains, and the terrain was so broken that they'd either have to slow way, way down, or call it off anyway. "We could take him alive. If I took him alive, we could see what makes him so special."

Ngede turned his head slightly, unable to conceal his disbelief any other way. The alive reward was compensation against level of difficulty. If he'd known before the teams went out he'd've refused to send them. His people were good, but going up against an experimental military cybe sounded like a fast way to end up dead. "Sir --"

"Find me Tanner," Apman said cheerfully, as though he hadn't heard the doubt in Ngede's voice. Maybe he hadn't. Sociopaths weren't all that good at picking up verbal cues.

"Sir -- we don't have the capability to --"

"Forty mercenaries against one Church cyborg?" Apman looked at him contemptuously. "I'll add a percentage of the reward to the prize."

"The money is not at issue, sir," he said carefully, trying to think-- "This is not part of the agreed mission. We will have to consult with the Guild before proceeding to renegotiate--"

"No! No negotiations! You have a contract! Take it or leave!"

Ngede could feel Glau's eyes on him, and he drew a deep breath. "Sir, you are in fact in breach of a number of points of our contract."

Apman stared at him.

"The unlawful killing of Sergeant Timmons, chief of operations. The unlawful killing of Commander Corcoran. The utilization of contracted mercenaries to attack a lawfully appointed federation officer. The utilization of mercenary resources to attack and hold Church representatives." He paused. A vein was throbbing high in Apman's forehead, and the man's face was slowly turning red with fury. And his gun hand was twitching again. "I should notify you that," he activated his personal shielding, and felt rather than saw the others around him do the same in quick succession. The power drain was high, but he wasn't going to meet Corcoran's fate. "I should notify you that you are in breach of Clauses twelve, seventy three, seventy six and seventy seven. We are within our rights to withdraw from the contract--"

How dare you!" Apman drew and fired, but the shot splashed harmlessly.

Ngede waited, his eyes steady on Apman's panting face as fear slowly built. The man's eyes flickered, looking from soldier to soldier, as though only just realizing that he was the only human in a company of cyborgs; a civilian who had killed two of their colleagues. And just tried to kill a third.

"Shall we try that again? Sir?"

*~^~*~^~*

JD finished the conversation with Casey, and dropped his head in his hands. That had been hard, telling her he'd killed -- He shook his head convulsively. Nataweh could have survived. Maybe.

"What happens to the contract?" he asked abruptly.

Buck hadn't been paying any attention to him, standing outside the aircar, peering into the distance instead. JD followed his gaze, and slid out to lean against the cool metal of the aircar. The sun was starting to illuminate the backs of the mountains, giving them that peculiar outlined glow that made them look close enough to touch, but too hot to dare.

"Huh? What contract?"

"The mercenary 'so recorded' thing," he said impatiently. What other contract was there?

"Oh, that." Buck shrugged and turned back to the mountains. "Carry out your part of it, and you'll be fine."

"Fine? He's dead, if you haven't noticed. How'm I supposed to carry out a contract made to a dead man?"

Buck sighed. "The mercenary guild take the long view. If the man dies with the contract fulfilled, they don't have to come after you; if you go back on it and don't speak for him when the inquiry starts, they will."

"But I killed him!"

"That's a federal matter," Buck spread his hands as though it was obvious. Maybe it was to him, but to JD, whose only experience of contracts was buying goods with cred, Buck's insouciance was getting on his last nerve. "The Axe will rule on it, and either sentence or exonerate. Nothing to do with the Guild."

"They won't care?" JD asked incredulously. That didn't sound like the Guild of Mercenaries shown in Arena entertainments, or in newsthreads. Fact or fiction, the Guild looked after their own.

Buck looked away, then back, not meeting JD's eyes.

"You're lying!"

"No, no, son. I wouldn't lie to you." Buck's face seemed to be developing a twitch, which he covered with a hand rubbing thoughtfully over his face.

"No?"

Buck glared at him. "Okay, what do you want me to say? They're going to hunt you down and take it out of your hide? There's nowhere you can go, no place you can hide, no price you can pay to escape their justice?"

JD felt the blood drain away from his face. It was the most peculiar sensation.

"Oh for Jeshu's sake, boy!" Buck rolled his eyes. "Joke!" JD tried to hit him but got the side of the aircar, which just made Buck laugh the harder.

"You wait," JD scowled, "one of these days, Buck."

"Yeah? Yeah? You and what army?" Buck leaned back against the aircar, tucked his hands behind his head and grinned happily.

"Buck! This is serious! Even if you can't die, I can, okay? And then where'll you be?"

Buck lifted his eyes towards the mountains, and then back at JD. "Kid, trust me, it's okay. You fulfill the letter on the contract and they are going to be perfectly happy. Mercs aren't supposed to lay a hand on feds. One of them shot you. The Guild's just gonna be praying you don't come after them."

"Really?" It didn't seem right, somehow.

"Now, course, if he's got family -- maybe a sib; maybe a distraught companion, desperate to avenge their poor, doomed lover," Buck began, and JD couldn't help laughing.

"Okay, fine. They aren't going to care."

"They might care, but there's not a damn thing they can do about it." Buck's face sobered a little. "You're a fed, kid. That means a hell of a lot more than you seem to realize."

"I realize!"

"Yeah?" Buck looked a little sad. "Well, maybe then it's just I'm not used to a fed with a conscience."

JD ducked his head, a little embarrassed, not quite sure why he should be.

"Or a fed whose so fresh green the paint smears."

"Buck!"

"Now, what are you planning on doing about finding the others?"

JD walked away from the aircar, away from the little building that he'd spent three long days in, out towards the open desert. Sand crunched under his booted feet, and he kicked at a small rock, grinning as it sailed away. It startled some small creature that bobbed up for a second, then skittered away into a burrow before he could get a good look at it. This was as far as he'd thought. Get back here and there'd be a note, or a message, or some way of finding the rest of them. "I don't know," he said softly, scanning the grey-purple horizon. The distant mountain tops cut ragged lines into the paling sky, almost clear at the peaks, still shrouded in night at their feet.

Were the others out there somewhere?

"Maybe you should head back to town," Buck said. "There's nothing you can do here." He stood next to JD, in that silent fashion that was the only thing that reminded JD, from time to time, that the man wasn't really real. "Ain't really federal business."

JD shook his head. Not that he hadn't thought it himself. The cybes -- Joche's people -- didn't want him around. He could take a hint, and no forwarding address was a pretty big hint. Which he didn't get, not really. Feds were the law, they were meant to help people. He wanted to help. And in any case, "Mr. Larabee and the others were kidnapped. That makes it federal."

"Then get help," Buck said emphatically. "You can't take on a mercenary company by yourself, or even with that little girl of yours. Not even an Axe would fault you."

Well. Maybe. "I'd fault me." he said finally. A thread of light slipped between the jagged planes of the mountainsides, and stretched a long hand across the desert, the sun a bright bead caught in the crook of the southernmost pass, the fingertips bright lines on the ground. "Range wars are everybody's business." He'd heard someone say that in the saloon a while back. Right before a brawl broke out between two groups of hired hands. He and Casey had had to resort to gassing the lot of them. The bosses had paid the fines, and he shivered a little, remembering the cold enmity they'd not cared enough to hide from him or each other.

"This ain't a range war, kid." Buck said seriously. "You better pray you don't never see any kind of war."

JD grimaced. The edu-dramas had been very hot on the horrors of war. Their stories stung a little more now he knew-- Well, no need to dwell on it.

"Still. I took on the job. There weren't any limits on protecting and serving. Besides, I can't leave them to Apman's people. I've got to help if I can." It tugged at him, and he could see it in Buck too. "Don't you?"

Buck kept his eyes on the bands of golden light spreading steadily across the dark sand. "What good's it going to do?"

"You were the one who was so mad to go after Larabee!" JD protested. "And now you've changed your mind?"

"Ain't a game, kid. You've gotta learn to accept when you're outclassed. Folks that don't learn that, end up dead." But JD could see the look in his eyes, still looking out into the desert.

"If you're chicken, then stay." He grinned humorlessly, "Except oh, that's right, you can't. I'm making the travel decisions around here. Besides, cybes are federation citizens too. Even if it wasn't a federal crime to kidnap people, I'd still have a duty to try and help 'em, stop Apman."

Buck actually looked startled at that, then his expression settled into a sort of speculative satisfaction. "How'd you buy out?" he asked casually.

JD frowned. "Huh?"

"Out the Church?"

"And again: huh? I've never been in, how could I buy out? Why would I buy out? Why would I need to?"

Buck scratched at his head. "You make no sense at all, boy."

"I don't make any sense?!" JD shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I'm going after them. You're along for the ride, like it or not."

Buck actually laughed at that. "Well, kid, you've got sand, I'll give you that. Now, where are you going to start looking?" He swept an arm out at the vast expanse of the desert. "Any ideas?"

JD smiled smugly. "Actually, yes."

*~^~*~^~*

Travis sighed with relief. The maintenance crew had finally brought a portable airlock to his cabin, and once they'd gotten inside and had a good look at the damage, they'd helped him out, assuring him that he wouldn't know they'd been there once they were done.

He shook his head as the airlock door shut, leaving him trapped in the little plastic cocoon until the air pressure light by the second door blinked green and the door opened.

"I rather hope I will be able to tell you've been there," he said to himself. "I'm not entirely keen on coming back to find that I still have my one eighty star field viewing platform."

Leah chuckled, and Orin frowned a little. "Orin, have a little faith in my boys and girls."

Orin snorted. "I leave faith to those foolish enough to trust in our friends out there." He could almost feel Leah's eyebrows lift. The captain made no comment, but changed the subject.

"If you aren't leaving us, would you do me the honor of dining with me this evening?"

"Of course," he agreed. He'd been heading to the tiny mess hall, and paused, "I was actually on my way--"

"I'm in my cabin at present -- if you would like to come over?"

He nodded. "I'll be there in a moment. True enough, it took barely two minutes to walk around the curved corridor to the door at the ship's bow, only a floor below the bridge. "Leah?" He called softly. The door slid open and he stepped inside.

The main area functioned as an officer's mess as much as her own living quarters. A sofa, upholstered in utilitarian dark blue, piped with the gold trim that recalled the symbols of the Federation, sat in one corner, a desk with a small fold out chair leaning against it occupied another. She had pulled out a larger table, and set a chair on either side.

He breathed in deeply, and smiled. "Dinner smells delicious," he said.

Leah shook her head at him. "You know as well as I that military rations only go so far."

"Military rations supplemented by Federation Justice department subsidy however." Orin pulled out her chair and she shook her head.

"Orin--"

"I can pull it away if you prefer?" he teased, and she pursed her lips disapprovingly. "If my staff could see you--"

"They would see a display of good old fashioned manners," he said brusquely, and settled himself in the other chair. "These really are very uncomfortable," he added and she snorted with laughter.

"Astonishing good manners!" she murmured, and rose to get a cushion from the sofa. She handed it to him and he tucked it under his behind with great dignity.

By mutual , silent agreement they ate first. Orin didn't ask what exactly the variously textured lumps in the brown sauce were, though the white fluffy doughy thing was almost palatable, and he chased the last piece around the plate through the gravy before popping it in his mouth with a sigh.

"That was --" he paused, and she grinned. "Edible."

"I'm disappointed Orin. You are usually so much more inventive."

Orin sighed and pushed the plate away. Truth be told his stomach was feeling a little tender. Something about coming within merely inches of death in the void of space, either by vacuum breathing, or by drifting out of the ship, or by being impaled, blown up or otherwise injured had clearly had a poor effect on his digestive system.

"I'm not feeling at my best."

"I'm not surprised." She pushed her plate back and wiped her lips with her napkin. "Orin--"

"Captain?"

She frowned. "I have a couple of squirts from Tianya for you." She handed him a splinter chip. "Standard fed encryption, so--" she paused and he nodded. So the Church vessel sailing on ahead of them to Tianya was probably busily reading them too. He tapped it to his wristband and started reviewing. He stopped almost immediately.

"I'm going to have to take some time for this, Leah," he apologized.

"Fair enough. It's not like we don't have plenty of leisure at the moment," she added ruefully. She pushed her chair back and started to rise to her feet.

"As you say, no hurry," Orin shook his head. There was a third message embedded in the first, better encrypted than Federale Wells' message. She'd flagged it emergency, but the AI had changed the tag to death notice. The girl probably hadn't known that was an option. He made a face. He'd hoped Dunne would last a little longer than two and a half months.

"Bad news?"

He nodded absently. "There's no way to speed things up?"

"No," she said regretfully. "We're going flat out as it is, and I have a limited amount of staff to spread around."

"Anything we can skimp, do so," he ordered, and then sighed. "My Tianya first federale is dead."

"I'm sorry." She had met JD -- had brought him out from Celaeno after he'd accepted the job. "He was a nice kid."

Orin felt old. He was only sixty, barely halfway through his life, he wasn't old. But JD had been so young. But there had been no other applicants that he was willing to accept. A Church backed federale was unacceptable for Tianya, and that cut out almost all the applicants right there. Anywhere else it wouldn't matter.

And selecting JD had had other benefits. It deflected interest from Tianya; those whose business it was to know his business might be led to think that he thought Tianya was unimportant. That he wasn't connected to the FoldPath.

Now, though, the kid was dead, and the circumstances as he knew them worried him. He should have picked someone older, meaner, better able to cover their own backs when faced with conflicting factions. Well, he'd have that chance now.

"I'll leave you to read," Leah said softly, and he barely noticed as she removed the remnants of dinner.

Maybe Miss Wells would be able to handle a promotion. He frowned. She didn't have half the advantages of JD. Some of those could be rectified -- and some could not. But she was next in seniority, such as it was, and on the spot. He would read the rest of the messages and decide how urgent it was that he tell her -- whether he could wait to do it in person, or if she needed the authority sooner.

If she needed the authority sooner, then it might be too late by the time they got there, whether he gave her the promotion or not. And how would he be able to face her mother?

He leaned his head in one hand and closed his eyes. He needed to read the reports. He could make any decisions after that.

*~^~*~^~*

Vin scowled at Chris. There really wasn't space to pace; if anyone had a right to feel cramped it was him, or Nate, or Josiah. Larabee was just pissed because he couldn't do anything. And why he was bothered about that now, when he'd spent the last six hours asleep, or near as dammit, was anybody's guess.

"What the hell bug's got up your ass anyway?" He squinted up at the man, who paused and probably was glaring down at him, although with the sunlight behind him his face was entirely in shadow.

"We should move," Chris snapped, and Vin looked away. This again?

"Not yet," Joche repeated from across the way, and Vin rolled his eyes. Yep. This again. Even against the bright light he could see the sudden bunching of muscles in Chris's shoulders.

"Not yet! Yet ain't never going to come, the way you're going." He didn't sound angry, which was, in its way, scarier than if he'd yelled. Vin wondered if he really was that tightly wound, and decided, with a second glance at Chris, yes, he probably was. Maybe he should tell him about 'meeting' Buck. Maybe not.

"If we don't move, we're gonna die. How long is that canteen going to last, Doc?"

Jackson looked up. "It isn't." He looked around, "Larabee's got a point. The sun's climbing. By the time it hits noon we're going to be too dehydrated to know up from down, never mind walk out of here."

Vin sighed. "I'll go."

He stood and turned to look at the wall. It would be easy enough to climb up. Rock, not compacted sand. He gripped a handhold and tugged, relieved when it didn't break away. Weathering might have made it friable and unsafe, but this seemed a pretty good bet.

"Vin, it's not safe," Joche said, and Vin bit back his first retort. Joche seemed to think that he had the right to tell cybes what to do. Well, Vin had made it here without Joche, or any of the foldpath bleeding heart saints, and Joche didn't have that right. He hadn't even known about them before he got here. Not for sure.

"That just makes it more interesting," he grinned over his shoulder, and stepped up lightly, testing another hand hold before trusting his weight to it. The rock face wasn't high, and it took him little more than a minute to reach the top.

"Don't go too far," someone whispered, and Vin gritted his teeth. Was there anyone down there who didn't feel obliged to tell him the blindingly obvious?

He twisted around slowly, peering over the edge, letting battle tech sensors survey further than any mere human could. The infra-red glow of tiny power sources was everywhere, like millions of tiny red eyes staring up into the early morning. Okay. They were trapped. He dropped lightly back into the hole in the ground, stumbling as a stone shifted under his foot. Larabee looked at him expectantly as he settled himself.

"Vin?"

Vin shrugged.

"We set foot out there, they're going to know it and come running."

"We can't stay here!" Jackson seemed agitated.

"Got another way to get us out of here, I'll be glad to hear it," Vin said, but he was watching Larabee, who was watching Josiah.

"Well, Osanchez?" Chris gave Josiah the honorific, but it sounded mocking. "You going to get us out of this hole?"

Josiah clasped his hands in front of him and looked up at the gash of clear blue sky above them. "I used to come out this way every now and again. Fell in here once."

Chris turned his head to look straight at him. "That so?"

"Yes, jiao shi," Josiah said quietly. He looked up at the sky, and sighed. "Home isn't so very far away, Christopher. You will return there one day."

Chris's face was expressionless. Maybe the words meant something, maybe the lao tou was just sideslipping off the sanity track again.

"Home's all very well," Nathan said, with some irritation, "but that's not getting us out of here, or me any nearer to Delivery."

Vin glanced at him. Delivery, the landing port -- not Last Chance? The doctor was planning on leaving then? He wondered why the man had come with them at all, if he was so all fired keen to quit Tianya. Nathan shifted, uncomfortable at being the center of attention, and muttered, "Well, we all want to get out of here, right?"

"Any ideas?" Chris said, coolly sweeping the others with greenish-grey eyes. There was no reply, and Chris paused, his eyes on Vin. "Tactical advantages?"

Vin shrugged. "Right now, virtually nothing. We got a couple of weapons; no water--"

"There's still a little left," Nathan sounded surprised. "I thought you knew?" He lifted the canteen from where it was hidden by his side, and passed it to Joche, who took a long draught and passed it on.

"So we've got water." Vin said dourly. The canteen slapped into his outstretched hand and he took sip of the warm hyper-sterile stuff.

"I snagged some cenemol from one of the mercenaries," Joche noted. Vin grinned abruptly. Cenemol and a laser could make a pretty sort of exit. One way or another.

Chris was grinning too, a glint that was as mad as anything he'd seen so far, but a controlled madness. On second thoughts, cenemol and this guy were going to be a bad, bad idea.

Looked like being fun.

*~^~*~^~*

Ezra stared at the group waiting for him as he left his room. "Mareen?"

Mareen didn't smile back, and he started calculating the odds of getting out. Poor. Very, very poor.

"This is Zhou Yu," she said, her face and voice as blankly indifferent as any mask he could produce. A tall Asiatic looking woman nodded unsmilingly at him.

"We have some questions, Mr. Standish," she said. He inclined his head.

"Of course."

She turned and walked away, apparently in no doubt that he would follow. Considering the two armed cybes who fell in behind him, he took no issue with her assumption.

"Am I under arrest?" he asked mildly, pacing her. She glanced at him, slightly taller, and blue eyed. It was a strange experience. Twice under arrest in a week. he was definitely losing his edge.

"No, of course not," she smiled.

"So if I chose to depart --"

"I would urge you not to make that choice."

"I see."

"I'm sure you do, Mr. Standish."

He wondered where he got that name from, but forbore to ask. In its own way, Standish was as much of an alias as any of his names. The mere fact that it was the one registered with his dna actually had very little bearing on its legitimacy. It wasn't as though it was the only one so registered.

She held open a door for him, and waited for him to go through. A swift survey of the room revealed nothing extraordinary. Some sort of office. A round table, four chairs arranged three and two.

"Mr. Standish, we understand that you left the complex last night."

Ezra tensed muscles -- what good it would do against cybes, he didn't know, but maybe --

"Take a seat, Mr. Standish. We have a proposition for you."

*~^~*~^~*

JD drew a deep breath, and reached, as lightly as he knew how. This might not be an arena tournament, but he'd been the best three years running on stealth in the planet games. How different could it be?

"What are you doing?" Buck asked.

JD shook his head minutely, closed his eyes.

The desert lit up.

"There's sensors everywhere," he murmured. "Where -- there you are."

There was at least one cyborg he was never, ever going to forget the scent of. Tanner wasn't moving. Wasn't doing anything. "I see you," he whispered, and opened his eyes again. "Tanner and at least one other is out there."

"Chris?"

"Is he a cyborg?"

Buck shook his head, then paused. "Church doesn't usually do adults."

JD shrugged. "Don't ask me. I'm not the one married to a PI."

Buck rubbed absently at his throat, and JD rolled his eyes. He shouldn't have reminded him. "Not in this lifetime, I'm not," Buck said softly that JD wasn't sure if he'd heard right. He thought about asking, but Buck looked almost sad. He didn't know what to say, so said nothing.

He jogged back to the air car, and eyed it thoughtfully, then nudged at the federal transport Casey had left behind when she'd gone back to Last Chance on his two man vehicle. If he slaved the mercenary four seater to the fed six seater, there'd be room for everyone without squashing anyone, or having to throw stuff out. Assuming that the rest of the men were out there with Tanner. And then he could go after Standish. Maybe.

The fed transport purred quietly up to him, and parked itself beside him, ready to go. He told it to slave the mercenary car, and left the two machines to figure it out.

"What do I need?" he asked as he hurried back into the building that had served as a small clinic. He looked around. The medical supplies were still here, including a densate pack of alu-glass. He thought about ignoring it, but he probably wasn't up to full strength, and if Tanner -- any of the cybes got hit, they'd need it. It wasn't like they could eat dirt and hope to extract it from the ore.

"That the doctor's kit?" Buck nodded to a dark pack on the floor, and JD nodded. He opened it. It seemed mostly empty -- no vials or packs of drug patches -- he figured the mercenaries had cleaned it out when they attacked the second time, leaving him and Nataweh -- he ducked away from the thought even as it formed. No time to think about that.

"Water."

JD nodded,. The water itself was easy enough, but how he was going to carry it... Oh. He ran back to the fed transport and rummaged in the back. The equipment box shifted and moved as he asked the car AI for water carriers, and three flat plastic packs slid into view. He ran back with them and filled the first one, then the other two at the faucet. He had to carry them back one at a time, the ten liters sloshing awkwardly, knocking him off balance with every step. They went on the back seat; he threw the remains of the doctor's kit in, then frowned. "Buck?"

Buck shrugged. "I didn't see any weapons in there."

JD shook his head. "I guess anything the cybes didn't take, the mercs did."

"Where are they?"

"I don't know if your Chris is with 'em," JD reminded him, and Buck grinned at him infectiously. JD smiled back.

"Oh, he's out there," Buck said comfortably, the brief sadness gone. "Just gotta find him, and get my body back, and I'll be done."

JD walked away to his transport. That was all, huh?

Buck followed him as he sat in the pilot seat and powered up. The mercenary vehicle powered up too, and JD ran through the pre-flight, frowning a little.

"Problem?"

"Boards are lighting up..." JD ran a hand over the tracking screen, and the display blinked, then showed two red spots on course to his position. A third blinked into view, and he slowly smiled.

"Kid--"

"It'll be fine, Buck."

"That's five hostiles there!"

JD's grin spread wider. "Bet it's easier than getting past Derenquin of Maia in the tri-system games."

"Oh, no, now, kid--"

But JD ignored his protests and took off, screaming along as close to the ground as he dared. The sensors on the ground might report him moving, but the radar wouldn't see him, and -- he reached away up to the satcoms -- neither would planetary gps. There really were days he loved this job.

He whooped as he skimmed a dune, picking up speed.

"We're gonna die," Buck said morosely, but when JD spared an irritated glance he was grinning, hands behind his head.

"Make your mind up," JD grouched, but he was smiling again when he turned back to the business of hedge-hopping sand. Not too close to kick up a cloud. Not too high to get picked up by their instruments.

One eye on the converging pursuit, one on the sensory fuzz that he'd tagged as the good guys. One eye on the ground... Not enough eyes.

A fireball blew past and he was already twisting upwards, then curling up and over to dodge the follow-up intended to catch him as he evaded the first. The plasma ball exploded and the vehicle shook. It felt like the arenas.

"One life, though," he whispered to himself, concentrating. Just the one life, and if he lost it there was no way to reset this game. No prizes for coming in second.

The AI nudged him sharply and he told it to evade the incoming electrical fire. Even as he did the whole car faltered in the air and he felt cold. Buck flickered out of existence for a second, then everything came back.

"Fuck!" The car couldn't stop all of it, but it had stopped enough.

"What the hell was that?"

"EMP," JD said. "It's the only -- but that means they've got dirty weapons." He twisted and tried to get a visual on the nearest incoming attacker.

"The ground! Eyes front!"

The car swooped up and over, and JD whipped back around just in time to see the front screens blacken briefly. A concussion shook them, and he could feel the heat as they went straight through an explosion.

"Ai ya, wo mun wan leh!"

"Ya think?" Buck snapped. "Left!"

JD yanked the car over, bit his lip as their second, slaved vehicle swung around and caught the edges of the missile intended for him. "Why are they --"

"You smell like cybe, boy!" Buck said sharply. "I don't know what / are, but they think you're a legit target."

"What if I put up the fed beacons--"

Buck looked torn. "Too late. Should have thought of that sooner. How close are we?"

"Nearly there.."

"Don't get them killed."

"You mean don't get him killed."

Buck acknowledged the jab with a nod, and added, "How much hell do you think your life will be if you kill him, and I'm still stuck in your nanites?"

"You ever thought of doing motivational talks?" JD muttered.

"You feeling incentivised?"

"Put it this way." He jerked them over hard, and the harness bit into his shoulders as they rolled through three-sixty while yawing through one fifty. The ground flashed far too close above his head, and he fought to straighten up, corkscrewing back onto the level as he got to the place where the others ought to be waiting.

Tanner?

Kinda late, aren't you, kid?

But I brought company, if that makes you feel any better, he said brightly. You want out of there or what?

"Doors -- open the doors --JD! The doors!"

JD nodded, and dropped both the cars as close down as he could.

Scant seconds later every seat was filled. JD winced as Tanner slid into the seat where Buck was, the overlay deeply weird, as though the cybe had a ghost wavering over his shoulders.

"Go!" Larabee snapped.

"I'm going, I'm going," he muttered, the car was so much heavier now -- "Some of you should have taken the other car--"

"What, the burning lump of shrapnel that's following you?" Joche asked mildly. JD spared a glance over his shoulder at the slaved vehicle and shook his head. It must have caught most of the shots that had been intended to hit him. Just that fraction behind him, the vehicle's responses a split second after his own -- He was amazed it was still running.

"Where to?"

"Can you lose them?"

JD shook his head. "Too many."

"Let me," Tanner said quietly, and JD hesitated before nodding.

*~^~*~^~*

"You--" Ezra shook his head, entirely unable to process their standpoint. It was like his own decision, the decision that he'd spent the night angsting over was completely worthless. He couldn't bring himself to sell the kids -- but they would kill one?

"She is failing, Ezra," Fenna said quietly.

"We have a chance to strike against these people. Nathalie has a chance to help. Would you deny her a way to have her death have meaning?"

"She's six years old."

"Six years old does not mean she doesn't understand that she is dying. It does not mean that she does not understand that her family -- not just her sibs and parents, but her wider family, if you understand this, ha Standish -- may die if we do nothing. And she can do something that none of the rest of us can. You can do that."

"No." He shook his head again. "I can't believe you would do this, I can't believe that you would ask me to do this."

"How is this different from using a friend to break the Ex Corp? How is this any different to abandoning your mother to die under Granot of Borealis?"

He stared at them, brain moving desperately fast. Maud might be dead. He thought she was probably dead. But it wasn't like that -- they'd both betrayed each other, if you wanted to put it like that, but it wasn't like that. It was more complicated than that -- and she had never tried to stack him with high density explosives and send him directly to her enemies to obliterate them. At least, never in quite such a literal manner. And never when he was younger than about eight years old.

Okay, so maybe the difference wasn't that great.

"She's too young, she can't possibly know what she's getting into." Better to ignore the side swipe about him and his betrayals completely.

"She's going to die, no matter what," Zhou Yu said softly. Ezra glanced at her. The woman looked sad, and it bothered him. She was the person who had come up with this idea, she was the one that had been callous enough to suggest that it was acceptable to pack a child with cenemol and send her out to their enemies. And she looked soft and sorrowful, her strong, decisive face clouded.

"No. I won't do it," he said, and stood, pushing his chair back more violently than he meant to. It gave away more of his feelings on the matter than he wished... but dammit, it was monstrous. Inhuman. At least what he had contemplated would have left the children alive, fed, clothed, warm.

He shied away from the little voice that asked, for how long? Until they got too old to be of use? Until they were too worn out to be interesting? And what if federation or church chose to test their capabilities with a zero sum protocol?

He'd decided not to do it anyway.

Zhou Yu looked away. "We're not monsters, Ezra Standish. We are people driven to the very edges of existence." She rose also and leaned her hands on the table between them. "You think we choose to live like this? That we choose to hide on Tianya, away from civilization, away from every good thing that makes life easy? No money, no work, no resources. No hope? You think we wouldn't go back if we could?"

"There are laws--" He was cut off by her short sharp snort of laughter.

"Law. Yes, of course." She turned away from him, folding her arms. "The law has always been such a well observed part of your life."

There wasn't much to be said to that.

"Law is for the very rich, or the very stupid. A fairy tale for children, nothing more. Like justice and equality, and all those things that our ancestors believed in and we paid lip service to back there. We wouldn't go back if we wanted to. And we don't want to." She stopped, breathing hard, and started again, more quietly. "You think we're monsters. Not human."

"No, I just --"

"Yes, what we want to do is monstrous, but so was what was done to Nathalie -- to all of us. Experimented on before we are even born, our dna manipulated and twisted in an attempt to make a brighter, stronger, better cyborg," she spat out bitterly.

Ezra frowned. He'd never really thought about it much more than that the Church owned and ran breed farms, where they created and grew cyborgs. If anything, he'd thought of them as the happy, well adjusted servants of the state that they were created to be, without individual will, without individuality. It was as though the whole world shifted on a single axis. The federation guaranteed the freedom of the individual.

"They redefined individual."

"Yes." She nodded curtly. This was clearly nothing new to her for all it was an epiphany for him. But he still wasn't going to help them commit infanticide no matter how noble the cause or well informed the child.

"Nathalie was a high risk for rejection," Fenna said quietly. "I'd already dropped one who rejected in the first six months."

"But -- "

"They wanted to have children who would potentially reject the adaptations," she went on, as calmly as though it was some other thing entirely, a shopping list, a recitation of the daily arena scores. "They couldn't cure it without having test subjects. It was a peculiar kind of honor."

Ezra couldn't think of anything to say.

"So they bred her, knew she would reject, and then experimented on her until they knew they had failed." Fenna glanced across to one of the men watching impassively. "Until we had had enough."

Zhou Yu leaned forward, and Ezra was vaguely surprised to remember that she was even in the room. "Nathalie is dying. There is nothing we can do about it. And she wants to help. In her six years she has suffered more than any person should. She wants to get a little revenge."

Ezra's stomach churned unpleasantly. Six years old, and a terrorist. They were all terrorists. Thieves and kidnappers and 'freedom fighters'. Flip a coin -- pick a cause, be a hero; be a martyr; be a fugitive, a criminal, a wanted murderer.

"And what do I get out of it?" he asked easily. Because in the end, it was all just semantics and spin.

"Freedom. And our gratitude."

Ezra snorted. "Freedom to get arrested for child endangerment and manslaughter; gratitude of outcasts and terrorists. That kind of fringe benefit I can do without."

"You really won't do it?"

He shook his head, with an odd feeling of freedom. Maybe they would still kill the child -- he stilled his fleeting impulse to try to save her aborning -- but he was better than that. Better than them.

Zhou Yu laughed under her breath, and Ezra's head snapped up.

"This was a test?"

She shook her head. "No. If we could have persuaded you, then we would have done it; but you were our last hope." She shrugged, "We had hopes that the man who left his own parent to be executed on Borealis would be willing to help us out."

Ezra blinked at the second reference to his mother, actually hearing it instead of wrestling with the idea of using child as suicide bombers -- how did they know what had happened to Maud? Besides, "That was different," he couldn't help the small amused smile that stretched his lips. "Besides, If Maud Standish is dead, I'm a cyborg."

"She was executed publicly."

Ezra's smile became a grin. "I make it a rule to never underestimate my dear, departed mother." He sighed, and sobered. "So, if the child is not an option, what else can we do?"

Zhou Yu's smile turned feral, and Ezra's heart sank. "Oh, now, no, you can't be serious --"

*~^~*~^~*

Lose the slave, kid.

JD nodded, and untangled the second, destroyed vehicle from their own. "I can hold it like this."

"What for?" Buck asked, as Vin glanced at him and nodded once.

JD concentrated on keeping the machine behind them on course when all it wanted to do was tumble to the ground and die. He didn't blame it, it was a fucking mess. He was way impressed that it was even moving. "This military stuff is tough," he mumbled, and got an amused look from Vin and a snort from Buck for his pains.

"No shit, Sherlock," Buck said dryly, and JD had to squelch an urge to stick his tongue out at him -- not least because he'd have to explain it to Vin, and sticking his tongue out at Vin didn't seem like such a good--

"Keep your mind on the job, kid!" Vin snapped, and JD grabbed control back from the faltering aircar behind them.

"Sorry." He could feel his face reddening, and kept his eyes straight ahead, hoping no one would notice. "Shut up, Buck," he muttered as softly as he could. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Vin tilt his head, frowning. He kept his eyes forward.

"I think you an' me are going to have a talk soon, kid," Vin said as though to nothing in particular, quietly enough that no one else would hear. JD looked around nervously. Larabee was frowning directly at him from his seat behind JD, tightly wedged between the side of the car and Josiah's bulk. Behind them fire burned, and he gasped silently, taking in the burning vehicle, and the dots of light that were incoming attackers in one swift look, forgetting Larabee.

JD turned hastily forwards again, "Vin, behind--"

"I see 'em, kid." The car jinked high and right and JD dragged the spare behind them, swinging it wide and catching the worst of the incoming fire. "Good work. Can you keep it up?"

JD could feel the strain pulling at him -- his shoulders tightening, the weird blood nausea of over taxed nanites, but said jauntily, "Yeah, no problem," and hoped that he'd be able to hold on long enough.

"You're never going to be able to hide with that thing stringing along," Buck said casually. JD sighed. This was going to be so much fun. Buck without any curb -- or the chance to explain to everyone how insane he really was.

"Buck?"

JD froze. That wasn't him. He snatched a look at Vin, who hadn't moved, his eyes on the readouts before them, his hands lying lightly on the controls.

"Chris?" At least this voice he knew. "Chris, do you hear me?"

Behind him, Larabee's voice dropped to a whisper. "I hear -- Buck? Where...?"

"Right here... Chris--gods, Chris I've missed you--"

His voice faded out of JD's awareness as an explosion ballooned, brilliant white and orange within meters of them. The mercenary's car behind them slammed out of his control, tumbling towards the ground, and he closed his eyes to better absorb the data streaming from it into his net.

"JD, let it go."

He didn't know the voice, and didn't care for the moment. "I've dragged it around this long -- needs to count--"

Two attackers approaching on nearly the same vector. If he could just -- he slowed the engines, let it fall back. He risked a quick look back. Everyone else was looking back too, watching the rapidly closing aircars. The vehicle between them was no more than a ball of flames. Insistent warnings told him that explosion was imminent, the fuel cells were over heating rapidly. He grinned tightly and laid in a course for it, turning it, letting it tumble and swerve as though completely out of control.

Slowly...

"They're closing in, Vin--" One of the older guys... concentrate, concentrate.

"I know. We're good."

"Good!" The doctor. JD flinched a little at the man's squawk of outrage and nearly lost control of the faltering car behind them on it's wild trajectory.

"Hope you know what you're doing, kid," someone muttered, and JD thought it was Vin, but it might have been Buck -- he really couldn't spare the brain power to figure out which of the two men sitting on top of each other was talking.

Just a little more, and the course was set, drifting away from them, tumbling, and up...

He let go the threads that held it and turned in his seat to look back, just in time to fling his hand up against the glare as the burning car slammed into the lower of the two attackers and the momentum carried both up into the upper one, and all three exploded.

"Yes!" he whooped.

"More coming," Vin said calmly, and JD slumped a little. Vin slid a look at him, "Not bad though," and he brightened.

"Anyone got an idea on somewhere to hide out?" Vin said casually as he wove a route through more incoming fire.

JD shook his head. "Last Chance?"

"Follow the crows," Josiah said abruptly from behind Vin, as wedged into his corner, between the door and Joche, as Larabee was between Jackson and his side of the car.

Vin and JD looked at each other, and to his surprise JD saw in the cybe's eyes the same faintly rueful amusement that he felt -- Josiah never could say something straight if there was a screwy way to do it instead.

"What's that supposed to mean," Buck asked, and JD shrugged.

"Dunno. Hey, lao ye zi, what's that supposed to mean?"

Joche laughed suddenly, and JD sighed. Great, another one had lost his mind. Give it enough time and Josiah would have driven every last one of them crazy.

"Laogua Pass. You sly old bastard." There was a note of respect in Joche's voice that JD didn't get until the map on the screen changed res and shifted focus. Vin nudged at the federal aircar and they turned towards 'Crow pass', still covered by the smoke from the explosion. That wouldn't last of course.

There camo on this thing? Vin asked on a thread, and JD shook his head.

You think they'd give me anything worth having out here in the edge of the universe? he said, a little bitterly.

"Thought so." Vin pushed the car harder, redlining the speed until JD's hands clenched into fists with anxiety. He shook his head, it felt like someone was talking -- arguing really -- in the back of his skull, and it was fucking distracting.

"Shut up," he snapped abruptly, and as quickly shook his head. "Not you!"

Vin shrugged. I didn't say a word.

"Someone is." He glanced at Buck who pulled an innocent face, a ghostly image out of step with Vin's presence: confusing as all hell. Talk about your fucking cognitive dissonance. When this was over he was going to hide in a nice dark room, with everything unplugged, and enjoy the damned peace and quiet. He grabbed at his seat as they swooped down, lower and lower. The rocky ground was coming up scarily fast.

"Vin?"

"I have--"

"Federal vehicle, are you in need of assistance?"

"What the--"

JD laughed, more from sheer relief than anything else. "Standish?"

"I have that honor, Mr. Dunne. If you would care to move a little...?"

Vin dropped the car and jerked it sideways. "Ni ta ma de!"

A bolt of light roared past.

"Mei guanxi," Standish said dryly.

JD twisted again to see the result. "Holy -- you got their dropboat! That's amazing!"

"I'm an amazing sort of fellow, Mr. Dunne. Now, since I've been so kind as to save your life, perhaps we can come to some sort of--"

"Federale Dunne?" A woman's voice.

"Zhou Yu!" Joche exclaimed, and leaned forwards to better listen in. "Xiao nu, I am glad to hear your voice. If a little surprised."

"Not as surprised as I am, believe me, lao weng."

"Can we skip the family reunion till we're out of the firezone?" Chris said tersely, and everyone fell silent for a moment, then JD looked back at his board, trying to smother a grin, while Vin silently set a course heading in line with the coordinates that were sent, as silently, by Standish's signal.

The coordinates seemed to lead to a solid wall, and JD drew a deep breath, trying to reassure himself that if they'd wanted to kill them, they'd've left them to the mercenaries outside. The tangle canon shot searing light past them again, and he didn't even look this time.

Then they were through the apparently solid stone wall, and landing, staggering out of the overcrowded vehicle, and Chris Larabee was standing in front of him, a look like the end of the world on his face, and Buck standing next to him, and it felt like his brain was being torn in two, and he blacked out.

*~^~*~^~*

Chris barely noticed JD collapsing on the ground; he was too torn with conflicting impulses to move, or speak, or even think until Buck seemed to flicker and vanish for a moment. "What the gui --"

"I'm all right--" The kid was protesting as Jackson and Tanner helped him to a sitting position, and Buck flickered back again.

Chris shook his head, trying to dislodge the phantasm. "I'm seeing things!" He closed his eyes and turned away, but Buck was still there until he slammed down shields and shut down his psi awareness of the external world. The constant murmur of other minds faded and so did Buck.

"What the fuck is going on?" he snarled, and in two quick strides reached the fed and dragged him to his feet. "What are you doing to me?"

"Nothing!" Dunne looked pale and as confused as he felt. He shook him, hard enough to make his teeth rattle. Hands grabbed at him, trying to drag him off, and the effort to push them out of his awareness grew exponentially.

"Get off me!" He took a couple of long steps and backed the kid against a wall, one arm across his throat. "Well, fed," he said softly, "Want to play games? Try this one."

Dunne shook his head, "Get off me," he choked out, and Chris just grinned into his face. Dunne's breath was hot on his skin, and he could feel the kid's thoughts battering at his worn defenses. He reached in, trying to break through.

"Tell me," he ordered softly. "Tell me now, or you won't live to regret it."

"It's not me," Dunne tried to say, the thoughts rather than the words coming through. He stared into the hazel eyes, but the kid didn't give in, or look away. His concentration flickered, surprised. Maybe he wasn't playing games.

"Not game--" Dunne whispered, as though he heard Chris's thoughts. Maybe he did. This kind of proximity, with his control frayed like it was it was a wonder that the entire planet wasn't overhearing him. "Nanites."

Chris blinked, and loosened his grip on the kid's throat. "What kind of a trick is this?" he demanded. He looked suspiciously from side to side, and found Buck beside him, a ghostly layer woven over the crowding others. He let their grip on his arms pull him away from Dunne, and the sharp focus softened, Buck's face becoming a little less immediate beside him. In a daze he reached back, touched a hand to JD's face without looking at him, and swallowed as Buck came into full focus. "How is this possible?"

"I don't know, Chris--" Buck said softly, and reached out to touch him. It hurt, actually wrenched his soul in a way he thought would never be possible again after they had told him on Resantia, when his hand passed through Chris's instead of touching flesh and bone. He'd known, but still hoped.

He shook. A distant murmur of voices, Josiah telling the others to let go, argued protests that he wasn't safe, demands to see to JD, and he didn't hear a word of them. "I missed you so much."

It didn't even sound like his voice.

"Chris..." He couldn't even begin to name the emotions staining through Buck's aching voice, his dark eyes, his whole world. So close. So close, and still he couldn't have him. This was almost worse than finding a grave at the end of it.

"Are you alive?"

Buck made a small sound, even he, who had known him for longer than any man in that place, longer than any person yet living, couldn't tell if it was a laugh or a sob. "I don't know, Chris. I don't know."

Buck's hands surrounded his free hand. There was nothing there. Not even a chill of air, or a breath of wind to hint that this wasn't some sort of hallucination. "Have I gone mad?" he breathed, staring down at their hands. He twisted his hand, and it might as well have been cupped by empty air.

"Not mad." Chris looked up into Josiah's face, and waited. "Or if there is madness, it isn't yours alone."

"You see him?"

"I see him."

Chris looked over his shoulder at the fed. "And you see him." Wisely, JD just nodded, rubbing cautiously at his bruised throat.

Chris turned back, and Buck was still there, a tentative smile on his face, "It's not the kid's fault."

"But he's doing something. What?"

"Nothing," Josiah said gently. He stood behind JD and held Chris's eyes until Chris looked away. "It's you." he paused, and added, "And a little him." He pulled JD away from Chris, and Chris suppressed a protest as Buck's image lost clarity again as he lost contact with JD, and stepped to follow after him. Josiah turned the kid towards him and shook his head. "I told you to dump the data."

"I didn't think it would matter." Dunne protested. "You can't just ask me to do stuff like that and not ask any questions. And besides, you never said to dump it. Not exactly."

"I assumed you'd be smarter than that!"

JD reddened, the color startling on his grayish skin. "Smarter? Smart would have been saying, oh yeah, JD, you're slicing an entire person for me, don't store it in a cascade medium. Because that might result in a coalescent personality, and you'll start seeing avatars in your head!"

Chris stared at him, and then back at Buck. "An avatar?"

"If you hadn't--" Josiah paused, watching Chris.

Buck nodded, ignoring the others. "Not real, Chris. I don't even remember them dying -- first I knew was when the kid went looking for your history, and we found --" his voice roughened. It was hard to believe that there weren't any vocal cords, no tear ducts, no lungs, no breath to hitch in just that way...

JD jumped in. "That whole 'secret file thing', and you wouldn't tell me what it meant, and--"

"That should have told you it wasn't safe to keep!" Josiah snapped, and JD grinned recklessly.

"That made it interesting enough to hang on to, old man, I thought you knew me well enough to know that."

Josiah ran a hand over his face and groaned. "Stupid."

"Stupid? Stupid? San-shi liu ji, zou wei shang ce," JD said sourly and dodged the hand that came up to clip him.

"I'll give you 'quit'!" Josiah moved suddenly and JD visibly flinched and tensed.

"Not out here," Vin held his hand up sharply. Chris nodded. The people around them tried not to look riveted by the proceedings.

"We need to talk," he said. "In private." He looked at Joche, who nodded.

"This way."

*~^~*~^~*

Casey chewed at her lip uneasily as she reviewed the daily landing data. No flight plans, so whoever then hell he'd been, it had been an illegal flight that dumped him out onto the desert.

"Why the hell would a Mercenary Guild private get out here? And why did he end up dead?" She fiddled with the end of her braid, absently sticking the end of it in her mouth and gnawing on that instead. "I'd understand if he'd been with the rest of 'em--" her pile of bodies in the cryo morgue was threatening to get out of control, but they were under mercenary contract, and Guild law, not her problem, in the long run, more of a transient courtesy. "--but I got nothing on him." Until this last set of messages she'd been looking forward to passing the whole damn mess on to Travis. Let him rule on who the hell got jurisdiction and whether there was a criminal case or if it all sat under Guild law.

Now, it looked like even if he got here, and there were no longer any guarantees about that, she was still going to have some major shit to handle. "Wo da ma," she dropped her head in her hands and tried to think.

"Federale, there is a more immediate issue," Nettie said finally, and Casey threw her an irritated little glare.

"I know, I know." Delivery pretty much ran itself. Butterfield had a actual person manning it part time but his job was more CYA for the staging corp insurance than actual work. So the daily reports were automated, and uninteresting, incoming traffic, outgoing traffic... And they only sent a report on once a day. Especially when it was from a Church ship; encrypted, not marked as urgent so no one knew to flag it to her. Nothing important, leave it to last. And when she opens it, it's word of a pirate attack on the Pentecost, with unknown casualties, and no word on the status of the Axe himself. Typical. Co-operation at its least co-operative.

"It's your job, Casey--"

"I know!" She closed the document, pushed her chair sharply away from the desk and ran her hands over her face. There was too damn much for one person to handle. And this last thing... "God, what am I going to say to her?"

The AI shrugged. "Federale West said fast was better than slow."

Casey gave her a sour look. "Federale West is dead."

"I never said it was foolproof."

She sighed and stood. "I packeted the whole shebang to Celaeno." Nettie nodded encouragingly. "Everything -- the cyborgs, the Guild being out here, all those dead people..." She slumped in her chair. Being in charge sucked. "I shoved in the news about Travis, tagged the Manassi's report in there as is, that should stir some shit up. JD too..." Her throat closed up. How annoying was that? She'd been irritated the whole damn time at him, running the damn show when she knew this place better than any smart ass central-worlder could. Then he goes running off like that, leaving her behind; when she thought he was dead she hadn't known what to think, half furious half terrified, and now he turned out to be alive after all, and god help her, that pissed her off more than any of the rest of it. She didn't like thinking that it would have been simpler if her so called boss had turned up dead.

She flicked back to the latest dead body. "Nataweh." She bit down on the band holding the end of the braid and worried at it. "How soon before we hear back, you think?"

"Could be weeks before we hear anything." Nettie shrugged. "Could be the Guild will send a team out to investigate."

Casey looked sharply at her. "Really?"

"Unless you can come up with more information on why Guildsman Nataweh wound up dead from impact injuries, and missing all the fingers on his right hand, I'd say almost certainly." She added dryly, "They like to discourage independent contractors."

"I know." She brushed herself down nervously, the uniform was pretty resilient but after a day and a half on duty... "Should I change? Before I go see Travis tai tai?"

Nettie walked around her, frowning. "Probably best. You got food on yourself, couple of days ago looks like, and the creases -- you could lose whole armies in some of them and never notice."

"Nettie!"

"You asked." The AI put her hands on her hips and glared right back at Casey, who looked down herself, and then sighed.

"Fine." She stripped swiftly, and decided at the last moment to shower before getting into clean uniform. The shower was hot and beat the sand and dust off her until she could almost forget the news that she had to take to Travis' sept-daughter.

Shouldn't be her job anyway.

She glared hotly in the direction of the comm station. There was no rounding JD up to do the job for her, even if she could get through to him. She bit her lip. The way JD had looked the last time she saw him... No. He was in no state to help. Best she let him get well with the cybes out at Camp Hugo. That left just her between whatever the hell was going on out there, and the town. Nettie kept saying that she should leave the gang war going out in the desert for Travis to deal with. But if Travis wasn't coming...

She started making inventory of the remaining weapons in the building. If she was the last line of law when the gangs decided to come through Last Chance, then she was going to go down fighting.

*~^~*~^~*

Josiah frowned as he eased himself into one of the flimsy memplas chairs. He hated these things. Hit the wrong point and the damn things folded themselves up underneath you. Very funny in the arenas. Less funny when it was your rear end getting bitten off by over intelligent furniture.

The others were still arguing among themselves, and he narrowed his eyes at Chris, who was still riveted on that damn avatar. He ought make JD close it down... but the kid had been so excited, and then there wasn't time. And it wasn't as though he had any authority over the boy.

JD still looked pale. Paler. Two months in the blazing sun and he was only a milky color. If he rolled his sleeves up you could see a faint tide mark showing the disbelieving that yes, he really had tanned. For a certain value of 'tan'. Josiah cocked his head at Nathan, who was still watching the kid, though JD had waved off his help. Josiah wasn't the only one keeping an eye on him, which pleased him, and he smiled faintly.

The smile evaporated as he looked at the map of the area that dominated the table. The damn mountain was on Crow Pass. Far too close for comfort.

He traced the distance to his little sanctuary, barely a stretch of index and forefinger apart. Maybe a click, a click and a half. Why hadn't Joche said something?

Why hadn't he?

Too close.

He pursed his lips. Maybe the battle would overlook the little chapel. Or maybe a stray crater-maker would obliterate it entirely. He winced. Measured the distance off again. Considered the odds. "My poor house," he said, and sighed. No use repining.

"It'll be fine, old friend," Nathan said, a comforting hand on his shoulder, and Josiah patted it. Nathan meant well.

"Ah, well. One way or another, we'll all end up cheek by jowl with the dead. A grave matter to be sure."

"Oh, I'm so glad we have an optimist along," Ezra muttered. Josiah smiled beatifically at the wall.

He could leave, go watch over the sleeping souls buried in the quiet of the old, half ruined sanctuary. Or he could stay and take his chances. At least here, he had a chance to fulfill some part of his penance. If Chris died, that would be an end of any chance to fix this. And there wouldn't be much point bringing the other one back at that point.

Chris's face was strained and grayish, bones tight against lined skin, and his eyes were wide, fixed on an unseen vision, like a man in the first throes of ecstatic revelation.

Two dangers, alike in risk. A cascade of misery.

No. Better not to say, better not to make any hint of where, how close, how much danger there was.

Though if the worst happened, if all that was left was the avatar and a blood marked splinter in a hidden pocket ... he'd feel responsible for what happened to the boy.

*~^~*~^~*

Mary smiled at the video and pressed her fingers to her lips and then to the middle of the screen. "Love you, baby," she said softly. "I'll see you in a couple of months." She flipped the recorder off without even looking, and sat back in her seat, her eyes closing. In some ways, it was as bad as talking to a grave, though she had to hope that he heard her whispered words, and somehow, Stephen didn't ever send back dutiful weekly letters, with pictures, smiles, scrapes, bruises...

She closed her mouth tightly, the pressure on her lips so painful that tears started to her eyes. That was what hurt. Truly.

She wiped carefully at her eyes, and turned the screen off decisively. She wasn't going to give in to missing Billy. He was safer with his grandparents and cousins on Celaeno than out here in the middle of a quiet war. And anyway, Orin was due in any day now. She frowned. In fact -- she checked his schedule, and her frown deepened. Shouldn't he be insystem by now, and contacting her again?

The door warned her of a visitor, and she opened it with a thought, and rose to her feet, automatically straightening her tunic with a tug at its hem.

"Casey--"

Casey wouldn't meet her eyes, and somehow, the petite red-headed girl merged with Federale West, holding his gloves in his hands, twisting them, unable to meet her eyes either, and even their words blended in her memory... I'm sorry...

"... there's been an attack on the Pentecost about two days out."

Mary nodded, keeping her face calm, stoic. Caesar's wife was never so straight backed and steady as she. "An attack?"

Casey looked confused, as though she'd expected -- something else. "Yes. Um. The -- I received a message from the Church ship Menassi. They uh, they engaged approximately fifty AU out, and--"

"Wait, wait, a Church ship attacked--" Oh god, no... God, he'd been talking about bringing Billy out; what if he and Evie--

"What? No! No. They saved them. The Church -- the Manassi -- drove off some pirates or raiders. They thought they were pirates of some sort."

She sat down abruptly, her heart slowing gradually. "Orin's not dead?"

Casey shook her head. "Not as far as I know, ma'am. They -- the Pentecost was severely damaged, and The Axe refused to leave it -- they said they'd offered, but --"

Mary shook her head immediately. "No, he'd never leave his ship." Or its cargo. God, the thought of the Church Guard finding-- Jeshu. "No, Orin's old fashioned like that. He'd be the one standing on the burning deck as it sank into the waves." Casey looked blank, and Mary rolled her eyes and bit back a sigh. "He'd never leave while there was life in the Pentecost." While there was life in him -- but she wasn't going to think about that.

"Oh." The fed clearly found this incomprehensible, and Mary felt contempt, and a little pity -- the girl had never been space side; never seen the stars unfiltered; never put her hand to steel-glass and known that the vacuum of space, glittering and dark was a scant twenty centimeters away. "The comms officer on the Manassi said it would be at least another day on present speed, before the Pentecost arrives." She looked doubtful, "He said they were pretty beaten up, and they haven't managed to establish full communications with them yet, so they don't know for sure if -- how many --"

"I understand." No way was Orin dead. Leah would never go to these lengths if there was... nothing to hide. "Is he -- do you know if anyone was injured?"

Casey shrugged and shook her head. "I don't know," she said, a little impatiently, "they haven't got communications. Captain Averill promised he'd call as soon as ship to ship was restored --"

"Yes, I heard you the first time." Mary stood and walked swiftly away, her path blocked only by the walls of her little room. Communications damaged? Or blocked? "Have you asked Federale Dunne--"

"Federale Dunne is -- unavailable," the girl said roughly, and her knuckles whitened on her clenched hat.

"What?" She gasped. Again? Another ? Once was bad enough, but twice was definitely starting to look like -- "Dead?"

"No!" The girl's head snapped up. "God. No. I thought -- but he's going to be fine. Doctor Jackson said so." Mary wasn't in the least reassured, and waited, braced for the news. "He was shot by some guys out in the desert."

"Who?" She was already composing a version of this to log, maybe even load up to the inner worlds in her head as she spoke. "Why? What was he doing out there?" she frowned, "Why aren't you going after them?"

"I -- we're working on that, ma'am --" she said, and Mary thought she saw a crack, a way in.

"On your own? Casey," she stepped closer, smiled, pushed inside the girl's comfort zone, "Can I help at all?"

Casey stepped back, "Thanks, but it's a federal matter. We'll be just fine."

"Can I see him?"

"No!" Mary blinked at Casey's panicked near-shout, and waited, sure there was something else. Big. Dunne taken out. Travis 'incommunicado' and under Church control... and Wells? Suborned? Covering up something? But what?

"Why not? I'd've thought he'd like a visitor -- must get pretty boring on your own in a med box."

"He's not -- he's fine where he is, I just can't say where that is." Mary gave her that much: she recovered nicely, and dodged the question with a hint of 'federal security'. Well, well.

She was going to need to talk to Joche before their scheduled chat. Tonight.

*~^~*~^~*

"JD? You okay, JD?" The doctor's insistent voice broke Chris's reverie, and he glanced over at the man, wishing he'd shut the hell up. The kid didn't seem to appreciate the attention any better, for all he meant well. He shrank in on himself, stepping away from Nathan though even Chris's disinterested eyes could see him shaking. The room wasn't all that warm. Maybe the kid was cold.

"I'm good," JD insisted. He hesitated, then added, "Can I, is there anything to eat?" Nathan dug into a pocket and produced a wrapped candy bar, which he wolfed down.

"Now that's stretching the truth if ever I heard it," Buck muttered as the kid disposed of the chocolate in two gulps. Chris had to work to prevent his amusement showing. It didn't work so well -- Buck grinned at him. "I knew you were in there," he said softly, and Chris glanced away, then back, unable to look away for long.

"What happened?" he whispered. He wasn't even sure which 'what' he wanted first.

Buck shook his head. "I don't know, Chris." He looked as serious as Chris had ever seen him, solemn and worried. Chris flinched -- it was like memory grown cruel, too close to brush away and too far away to touch. He rubbed his hand rubbed over the scars at the base of his throat without really thinking about it, watching Buck. Buck frowned. "Chris, what happened to--" He stepped closer, his hand reaching out and brushing unfelt over Chris's skin. He looked up sharply. "You burned it?"

Chris flinched at the betrayal in Buck's eyes. "I..." He let his hands drop, and Buck laid an intangible hand over his double scar, his eyes closing.

"Oh, Chris." Chris couldn't help looking down at Buck's other hand; his left hand. His index finger, for all it was illusion carried a bone ring still. "You fucking moron. What good did you think that was gonna do?" he breathed, the tenderness in his voice was without end. Chris tried to move the shirt out of the way, and his hands slid through cool space, empty of the body he wanted to be there.

"Here." Buck undid the couple of buttons at the collar of his shirt. The scars there were white and thin, a pair of overlapped circles only barely visible against the tanned skin. "You always had the worst way of over reacting." He reached out again, carefully laying his hand over Chris's throat. "You do that yourself?"

Chris tried not to answer, looked around him. The others were watching him warily, and for a second he saw himself as they saw him, a gaunt man in black remonstrating with thin air.

"Chris, what's going on with you?" Nathan asked quietly, looking worriedly at him. His hands twitched and closed again, the good doctor wanted to help. Of course. He flicked a look at JD, who was leaning against the wall, his eyes half closed, Vin lurking close enough to catch him if he fell, as he seemed likely enough to do.

"Nothing," he said tersely, and turned away, his eyes still on Buck. This was what was important.

"Since when was I nothing?" Buck said. The soft tone did nothing to hide Buck's hurt.

"Since you left me." He hadn't meant to say that and Chris wished he hadn't at the instant pain on Buck's face.

"I can go away."

"No! Don't go!"

"That might not be a bad idea," Nathan interrupted. "Going. If that's what you were suggesting?" He looked uncomfortable at acting as though Chris's hallucination -- shared with JD and Josiah or not -- as a real thing., but he stood his ground. "This isn't good for him."

"I'm fine," Chris said tersely, but Nathan was already shaking his head.

"Not you. The fed."

Chris blinked. "That's not my problem."

Nathan raised his eyebrows at him, "No?"

"Don't we have more important things to worry about?" He waved at the map and the milling people. "Shouldn't we be making plans, not coddling the children? If you're that bothered, send him off to bed early."

Nathan gritted his teeth and walked away.

"Zhangfu, the kid is the only reason we're talking," Buck said softly. "Don't you think--"

"No. I don't," he snapped. "Don't, Buck. Just... don't."

Buck smiled sadly. "I can't change who I am. Or what I am."

"What are you? Answer me that, Buck." His voice cracked, and he looked up into Buck's eyes. "Tell me what are we going to do?"

Buck's smile faded. "I don't know, Chris." The silence stretched out between them, no ending, no meaning, nothing but a vast divide, void of hope.

*~^~*~^~*

Garen leaned over Joche's shoulder and murmured, "You've got a call."

Joche looked at him. Garen wouldn't say any more in front of strangers, and he held his eyes for a long seconds, then nodded. "Ask them to hold, I'll be right there."

Garen nodded, and slipped away.

"Josiah, gentlemen, a local problem has come up," he said calmly. "It shouldn't take long. May I suggest you make use of our facilities? We can reconvene in," he made a show of considering the time, "let us say, an hour?"

"We don't have time to--" Larabee started, and Joche raised a hand.

"Not all of you are so -- hardy -- as yourself to survive on neither food, nor sleep, nor good health." He looked around them. Dunne was visibly wilting, and Jackson looked like he was torn between saying something and biting back his own yawns. Josiah's eyes were burning, and Joche reminded himself to talk to him. Soon.

Garen had found him an empty room a couple of doors down, and saw him settled, complete with a plate of sandwiches and a glass of water.

He eyed it with distaste and keyed the terminal.

"Mary?" He took a quick look at the corner of the screen. The lock symbol promised a secure line, but-- "Now's not a good time."

"I know," she said grimly.

"You know? What do you know?" Word was out already?

"I heard about Federale Dunne getting injured."

Joche stared at her blankly. "Mary, what does the damned fed have to do with anything? We've got more pressing worries right now than three day old news." Was that the latest news she had? Because --

"Yes, I know, Casey told me about the mercenaries -- you're under attack again?"

"Not right at this minute but, Mary," he hesitated and she broke in before he could tell her to go away and quit bugging them for the latest story.

She shook her head sharply. "Joche, I've got some bad news, I just heard -- it's Orin." She looked angry, like she was itching to do something, but didn't know what.

He froze. The Axe? "What about him?" he asked. Dead, discovered, arrested...

"Pirates. They attacked the Pentecost about three days out. Leah fought them off, but..."

"Oh, thank god," he whispered, but she wasn't finished. "But you've heard from them, Captain Friedricks has been in contact?"

"No." She looked away, then back up, clear blue eyes meeting his gaze steadily. "Joche, I haven't heard anything from Orin or Leah -- I haven't been able to contact them since they crossed into the system. The news came from the Manassi. It's a Church gunship out of Resantia."

It only took a second for the name to register, and they just looked at each other.

"The Church homeworld? What are they doing out here? Where's the Pentecost?"

"Limping home. They won't be here in less than four or five days, Casey tells me."

And the Manassi, unfettered by battle damage, could be here in a couple of days. Maybe even less. A Church battleship, here. He felt like his brain was creaking at the attempt to think. This day was bound to come, but now? It couldn't be coincidence. Could it?

"No communications with Leah at all?" he asked, hopelessly, hoping. "Nothing?"

She shook her head.

"It's over then," he said. He looked around, wondering what there was left to do. To come so close...

"No! They might not know. It could just be coincidence. Joche, not even the Manassi can get here in less than two days -- and they're probably pacing the Pentecost. If they are, she'll be another four days at least. We've got time."

"No we don't." He hesitated. If the Church had broken this encryption and knew to listen to this frequency, then they were in more trouble than he could cure with mincing his words. "We had to move to the back up facility. We're surrounded. I'm expecting an attack any minute."

"What? Who?"

"Apman."

She shook her head, not following. "I don't know the name -- "

"Cross it with Hou."

Her eyes widened, and he wondered if she'd made the connect herself or found it on a secondary thread while talking to him. It didn't matter really, although it fascinated him, wondering how meatfolk managed to function without cybernetic implants. "Sept Apman. Why here?"

Joche shrugged. "Revenge. Random boredom. Kidnapping and slavery for fun and profit. Take your pick."

"The children." She sat heavily back in her chair and Joche shrugged. No one ever said Mary wasn't sharp.

"Probably," he said. "How's Billy?" Not on the Pentecost? And that was as close as he dared get to asking the question that tore at him, that couldn't be said, not even if this were secure, and there were no enemies at the gate.

Her face tightened. "Well away from here. I hope." So. She didn't know anything about -- the cargo. He passed a hand over his face, trying to wipe away the horrors behind his mind's eye. They would have seen an explosive decompression. They would have mentioned bodies, if there were any...

"No word on the condition of the Pentecost?"

"No. Nothing. They lost comms and their sublight system took a hit. This is all third hand, Joche," she cautioned him. "No pictures -- Casey didn't say anything about pictures anyway." She paused, "I've put in a newsreq for the official report. Should get a copy under FOI."

He nodded. Hit comms and engines -- silence them, disable them, and unpack them at their leisure. "That makes sense, if it was pirates. Though, the Manassi might say that anyway."

"I know."

"You have word on who's in charge up there?"

She shook her head. "I can find out."

"Do that."

"Is there anything else I can do?"

He started to say no, then paused. "Pray."

A reluctant smile broke out on her face, appreciating the irony. "Just in case there's someone out there, listening?" she said dryly, and cut the connection.

He laughed softly, then sat back in the chair. Orin on his way, but delayed. Possibly injured or incapacitated.

Would it even matter if Apman's people prevailed tomorrow? The Church could sweep in to find nothing but a crater, the children gone, the adults killed. He'd always known it might come to this, but not now, when they were so close to getting some real good done here.

He shut the terminal down, setting the deletion protocols off, waiting for the promise that the system had erased the conversation. And he tried very hard not to think about the Pentecost, bringing its first run of federally assisted emancipated cyborgs to Camp Hugo.

*~^~*~^~*

God, he was cold. Surely the benefit to living on a desert planet was getting to be warm. He wrapped his arms around himself and shivered, one hand clutched to the heat that was the bandage over his side, half grateful for the heat coming off it, half afraid of it. A hand held a jacket in front of him and he took it gratefully, only looking up after he'd pulled it on. The owner was leaning against the wall beside him, facing the room, his arms folded, seemingly uninterested in his actions. "Thanks," he said softly, appreciating the warmth.

"You're welcome." Tanner spared a second for a quick look at him. "You look about ten seconds away from crash and burn, kid. You sure you're okay?"

"Yeah. I'm good." He shut his eyes and tiredly forced his biostats into view. It took forever for them to run, scrolling against norms like semi-liquid coolant, viscous and slow. Half the tell tales were lit up with warnings of one sort or another. Blood sugar was climbing after the candy he'd wolfed down, though he knew it would crash straight back down again, lower than ever in half an hour or so. Plus, his stomach was churning as nanites tried to locate more alu-glass, and failed. The nanites were in the wrong place -- not in his blood, and in turn that was flashing urgent warnings for anemia and a calcium deficit that was going to bring down the whole house of cards if he didn't get it sorted pretty soon. And oh yeah, his side still hurt. Just peachy, apart from that.

Next to him Tanner chuckled. "Funny definition of 'good' you got goin' there."

Shit. Was he listening -- "Are you reading my mind?"

"Leave that for them," he jerked his head towards the priests. "Just adding up the bill. Reckon you're going to be cashing it in pretty soon."

JD straightened. "I'll be fine."

"Best get some rest."

JD shrugged.

"Away from him. Both of them." Vin was watching the space in front of Chris. JD could see Buck there, but wondered what Vin saw, if he was just following Chris's line of sight, or if there was something... else.

JD looked at Vin and then at Chris, who was still talking urgently to Buck. "Why?"

"Haven't you figured it out yet?" Vin turned his head to look at him, and the faint thread that hadn't really gone away since -- since Camp Hugo -- tugged at him. How much power do you think running that avatar takes?

"You can see him?"

Vin shook his head. "Nah. Chris can. That's good enough for me. Come on, how much?"

JD shook his head. "I -- I don't know." He hadn't thought about it like that. His voice tailed off as he started thinking about the numbers. "I used to need to lean in on the bio generators for anything in the arenas -- at least, back on Celaeno I did." He stared blindly across the room, really thinking this through, figuring out the power draw needed to run a coalescent program containing twenty teraflops of base data, and accumulating information every second. Shit. No wonder he felt tired and hungry the whole damn time. And sick.

"The nanites run my hemoxychange too," he said absently. "They ain't just extra processing and memory." Among other things, he thought again, and shivered. Which would explain the anemia, and the blood sugar, and--well, everything. It had seemed so cool at first. Buck, his own in house friend, a guest avatar hooked to him. And then there was the story and the mystery, and dammit, having Buck around had been good when he was light years from home, and further than that from the only person who'd ever cared if he lived or died.

"And soak up your glucose and eat the 'glass bases." Vin pointed out with an air of someone using small words to get through to the idiot.

"I know that." JD gritted out.

"So? What are you going to do about it?"

That was pretty unanswerable. Except -- "Look at his face," he said softly. Both their faces although Vin could only see one of them. Taking Buck away from that was -- unthinkable.

"You better start thinking it or you ain't going to be no good to anybody when Apman comes back. Come to think of it, you're not doing Chris any favors either. Not really." Vin glanced at Josiah and JD shook his head, thoroughly confused.

"Comes back?" he repeated, dizzily. God, it was as bad as being drugged. He just needed to think. There was something important... "But Apman--"

"Oh, he'll be back. He's not lost enough to give it up. He probably reckons that if he just gets a couple of us he'll re-coup all the losses." A lop-sided grin slid across Vin's face -- for a man predicting an armed incursion of unknown ferocity, he sure didn't seem too bothered.

JD stared at him. Frowned. Wasn't there something, something else?

Didn't he have some kind of -- "Wait..." Tanner's face slid across his memory, and he blinked. What the -- oh.

"There's a Church want on you!"

"Hell, tell the universe, kid." Tanner didn't seem too troubled by this either. "I haven't got enough people out there trying to take me down already."

JD shook his head. "Don't you care?"

"Sure I care, kid. That's why I'm out here in the back end of beyond, where Church writ don't run, and Fed writ is ..." he hesitated, to JD's surprise, "Fed writ -- is different out here." He slid a look at JD.

"I don't understand."

"Hmm."

"What do you mean, 'different'? I follow the Federation rules and Laws."

Vin's smile slipped a little more. "You follow Travis's version of 'em."

"What -- but -- " JD smothered a yawn and tugged Vin's jacket more tightly around himself. He was starting to feel a little warmer. The thin leather wasn't exactly insulating, but it smelled good. "Travis is the System Axe. What difference does it make -- his rules, Fed rules? It's all the same thing. Isn't it?"

Vin turned a long, steady look on JD, seeming to weigh his words. He shook his head once, and instead of replying, said, "Go to bed, kid. You're asleep on your feet. It'll make more sense after a meal and some downtime."

"I'm fine." But he didn't protest when Vin shifted to guide him out of the meeting room, and he tumbled gratefully onto a narrow, utilitarian bunk with a sigh of relief, and closed his eyes, drifting almost instantly.

"Come on, you need to drink this." A dark hand shook his shoulder after some unmarked time -- it felt like eons, but it could have been mere minutes. He blindly reached for 'this' and a glass was guided into his grasp and then to his lips. Alu-glass, sugar and salt, other stuff -- drugs, anti-bact, stims, vitamins... whatever it was, it was glutinous and foul tasting. He pulled a face, swallowing hard to keep it down.

"Gimme a minute."

"All of it," the doctor insisted.

"Yes, Mom," he muttered, but struggled the rest down. He was rather more than half asleep, curled up on his side, when something brushed lightly over his cheek, then the light dimmed and the door closed.

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Disclaimer: I don't own any of the fandoms listed herein. I am certainly making no money off of these creative fan tributes to a wonderful, fun show.