New Blood Episode Five: Empyrrean

One

Jak had Rocko Sue in his pocket. Rather, he had a memory storage plaque containing all the information needed to construct a copy of Rocko Sue in his pocket.

He had felt uneasy about choosing a single cloning blueprint to take with him to his new assignment, but it was expected. He could have any level-one clone, and he didn't have to justify his decision to anybody...but he hadn't thought it right to take a copy of Sue without at least asking her permission. She had stared at him blankly at first. Possibly no one had ever asked her before.

Then tears started in her eyes, something which seemed to surprise her as much as it did him. She touched her eyelids to catch the moisture on her fingertips; she gazed at the glistening dew in some wonder as still more tears trickled down her cheeks.

"I never cry," she said. Then she flung her arms around him in a strong, comradely embrace. "I only wish this me could come with you, Jak."

So he would have Sue with him, but nobody else. He wasn't really sorry to leave Cyclone behind. She was still the same impetuous, attractive vixen she had been when they first met, but he himself had changed even if she had not. She hadn't seemed particularly upset when he told her, and even went so far as to suggest his transfer would save her from having to dump him. Only at the last had she had relented and admitted she would miss him.

Lancer had taken up with a Fido pilot from Cyclone's company; although Jak didn't think it would last, he was glad to see it. The Bulldog pilot probably still had nightmares about Tera's patterning. Jak did, himself. Having your mind sucked into some huge vortex of patterns and losing your identity was perhaps the worst fate he could imagine. He hated the Core for doing this to Lancer's friend.

Perhaps the hardest to leave behind, though, was his Zipper suit. He had never given it a name, because to him it was the Zipper... although he referred to it as my Zipper. It had never taken on a definite gender, either. The unit was still seemingly a child, but it had progressed to communication in simple words. Even so, it could not understand that Jak was leaving and would never be back.

Jak had already met the new pilot, a natural-born fresh from Empyrrean's military training school. He made no effort to get to know her, since it was unlikely he would ever see her again, but he spent some time trying to impress upon her how important it was to treat his... her...Zipper suit well. He briefed her and then stood by anxiously as she entered the cockpit the first time. Unable to hear the Zipper's childish prattle, she swore at Jak for making a joke of her. She climbed down from the suit and slammed the hatch ungently.

"I don't know how you treat other clones," she said, "but I am a natural-born, so you had better watch it."

"No, you had better watch it." Jak didn't like her superior attitude. He began to feel even sorrier for his suit.

Her face assumed an unattractive scowl as she put her hands on her hips. "I can have you broken back to Peewee." She jabbed an imperious forefinger at him. "Do you know who my father is?"

Jak grinned wickedly. "Why? Don't you know?"

It took her a second to understand his response. But once she realized what he meant, she balled her hands into fists and punched him in the midsection, one, two. Jak hadn't expected her to react so violently and was unprepared; although he was able to deflect the second blow somewhat, the first one took him in the wind. It felt as if his body had forgotten how to breathe. He staggered a couple of steps to cling to his Zipper; even though he wasn't in the neural link zone, he felt comforted by the feel of the cool metal.

Presently a breath came in a shuddering gasp, then another. He quickly found the proper rhythm again, but kept his cheek pressed to the smooth flank of the Zipper. More than ever, he didn't want Miss More-Human-than-Thou to get his suit. Even if she ever learned how to communicate with it, she would still probably be mean. Jak felt he couldn't betray his trusting young companion this way...but he had to. Orders. Tears trickled from his eyes and down the Zipper's thigh. Cyclone and Lancer could take care of themselves, but his suit needed somebody to take care of it-and not some stuck-up natural-born.

"I didn't hit you that hard." The new officer's voice dripped with scorn, and Jak didn't care. He found it ironic that she uttered one of the clones' favorite obscenities. "Mother!"

"Miss Venga."

Jak straightened up at the sound of Lancer's voice. He wiped away his tears with a quick swipe of his sleeve. The woman also stood at attention, very properly, but Jak was sure she must resent having a superior officer who was a clone.

"Did I hear you say you hit Mr. Yren?" Lancer had never called him this before, but Jak knew why he did it now. Even if this scion of the relatively obscure Venga line had never heard of the famous Yren family, she would know that only someone who had earned it-or who had been born to one who had-could be addressed by a title.

Jak could see a muscle in her cheek flex as she briefly clenched her jaw. Otherwise she gave no sign she was in any way discommoded. "Yes, sir," she said.

"Why?"

"He insulted me, sir." She seemed to think this an adequate explanation. But presently her self-confidence wilted under Lancer's skeptical stare. "He implied I don't know who my father is."

"So you hit him." Lancer nodded his head, as this were a perfectly reasonable thing for anyone to have done. Jak knew better, and he hoped Miss Venga did, too. Striking a fellow officer while on duty was a moderately serious offense.

"Yes, sir." She probably figured her father could take care of any unpleasantness if necessary. And he probably would, too.

"Mr. Yren." Lancer turned on Jak now. Even though he had a clear conscience, Jak felt defensive.

"Sir."

"I wasn't a witness, thank God, or I'd have to do something, but now it's up to you." Lancer spared a glance for the woman, who seemed completely unconcerned. "You could bring charges if you want to."

"I don't think so...." She hadn't taken ungentlemanly advantage of him after her first couple of blows. Besides, it seemed that Lancer wasn't inclined to make an issue of the business. "I just wish I didn't have to let her have my Zipper."

At this, Lancer's serious frown gave way to a mischievous grin. "Ah, yes," he said. "That's what I'm here to tell you. It's time for you to go...and High Command wants you to bring one of our special suits with you."

Jak could hardly believe what Lancer was telling him.

"So you better suit up, kid. Gate's waiting."

Two

Jak understood generally how a Galactic Gate worked, but he secretly thought of it as magic. Magic that produced a tremendous electromagnetic flux. It was not until he started the necessary routine of shutting down his suit's AI that it occurred to him to wonder what the flux would do to its personality. He couldn't put that into a dormant state any more easily than he could his own.

"Ready, Zipper?" Since the technicians had everything set, their question was more to inform him of this fact than to find out if he was ready. He knew he had better be ready.

"Yes," he said. As he started into the glowing gate, he comforted himself with the knowledge that Core units survived Gate transfers intact. It seemed reasonable to assume his Zipper would, too.

Jak remembered the vague sense of disorientation from his single previous trip through the Gate. It seemed no different this time, but today he was more concerned with his suit than with his own discomfort. He had expected the Zipper to crow in excitement or whimper in fear...or at least demand to be told what was going on. Instead, it was completely quiet. Jak hardly noticed when a couple of techs led him away from the dimming glow of the Gate.

*Zipper?* Nothing. *Zipper?*

There was a faint...gasp...and then the Zipper's mindvoice sounded. *Ow.* It seemed more petulant than actually in pain. Jak felt so relieved he had a hard time being sympathetic.

*You're all right!*

*No, I'm not.* The Zipper certainly sounded fine. Jak supposed the usual transfer disorientation might very well still be making the unit uncomfortable.

But you're still you. Jak didn't give this thought the extra little neural push that would make sure the Zipper heard it, and it gave no sign that it had. He didn't want it to know that he had, in essence, risked its life in order to bring it with him.

*I think I have a headache.* The Zipper probably didn't really have a headache since its processors were located elsewhere, but Jak supposed that was otherwise a good description of how it felt. Jak certainly had a headache.

Headache or not, however, Jak needed to report. He guided his Zipper to one side of the standard Gate shelter, then began the process of bringing the AI on line again. Once the restart was initiated and could continue on its own, he peeled the orders strip off his wrist. He winced as it pulled a few hairs up with it. Making a note to put the strip on the inside of the wrist next time, he got his pocket reader out-he didn't want to risk clogging the Zipper's reader with a stray hair-fed the strip into it, and wrapped the reader around his face.

The Arm Official Seal flashed by so quickly he couldn't have read it if he'd wanted to, followed by several security warnings. Most of them were the usual ones, but some of them Jak had never seen before. Whatever it was he was about to learn, it was a matter of grave importance to Arm Security. The consequences of discussing it with anybody who did not have a similar clearance could mean catastrophe.

Now the faceplate of the High Commander nearly filled his forward range of vision. "Do you affirm you have been given these warnings?" It could have been an empty suit for all Jak could tell, but he certainly recognized the voice, like his father's, but not quite. Jak knew the formula.

"I so affirm."

"Do you agree to follow the restrictions outlined herein and abide by the penalties if you fail?"

The potential penalty for some types of disclosures was death; Jak swallowed nervously. But if he ever did betray the Arm, he reasoned, he would want to die. "I so agree."

"Then proceed."

The Commander suit disappeared to be replaced by a man in ordinary civilian clothes. He smiled, and although he tried to look directly at the recording device so it would seem he was speaking to Jak, his eyes kept wandering off to one side or the other. This was distracting at first, but once the man got into the briefing, Jak hardly noticed.

The inside of one Gate shelter looked like the inside of another-except on Delbay where the Gate was underground-so that hadn't told him much about where he was. And after Delbay, almost any other civilized planet's gravity would seem oppressive. Jak couldn't really gauge the strength of gravitational pull with his own senses. The smell might have clued him in, but not from inside a self-contained, well-sealed Kbot suit.

At the moment, anyway, he had to take the man's word for it, but there was no reason to doubt him. Jak was on Empyrrean. Home. To act as liaison officer between a bunch of scientists and his suit. In other words, they planned to study the Zipper, while he would translate.

By the time the briefing was finished, the Zipper was fully operational again. Jak strode out into a drizzling, gray day. He paused a moment to admire the bellies of the clouds as they shaded into darker and darker gray as the distance increased, almost mirroring the hills below them. It was a beautiful sight.

A lightning flash startled him, but the Zipper's jump was all out of proportion to any signal Jak sent.

*What was that?* Then, before Jak could answer, *What is this in the sky?* The Zipper wasn't afraid, probably because Jak felt no fear, but it was eagerly curious.

*It's water,* said Jak. *When it falls like this, it's called rain, and that bright flash was lightning.*

The Zipper was quiet for a minute; Jak supposed it was consulting its AI. A battlesuit might need to know about weather, so that information was probably in its library somewhere. He didn't think the self-willed part had an automatic interface with the memory and processing portions of the suit, because while Jak was on board, the Zipper accessed them through his neural link.

All this time, Jak was making his way to the research cluster. So far, he knew his way well. He had been to Arm High Command several times with his father and a couple of times while still in school, but he had never ventured into any of the research facilities. It had never occurred to him he ever would.

His was not the only Kbot on the grounds-he could see a couple of Peewees who were very obviously a security patrol-but most of those around him were either civilians or dismounted military. He felt a little strange to be mincing along the walkways in the towering scout unit. The Zipper itself grumbled about having to practically crawl along, even though it knew very well they had to be careful.

Jak was just considering calling up a map when the scientist from the briefing walked boldly into their path and faced them. The Zipper halted abruptly, even jarringly; Jak gritted his teeth against a filthy epithet. It was painfully obvious the scientist didn't know much about Kbots. You didn't leap out in front of one, any more than you'd leap out in front of a hover. The man leaned back and looked up to address the Zipper's faceplate.

"Welcome to Empyrrean, Zipper."

*Is he talking to me?* asked the Zipper. *Or you?* Jak wasn't sure either, but one thing was certain. The Zipper couldn't answer, so he'd better.

"Thank you, sir," he said. "Jak 1...Yren, reporting for duty, sir."

Three

That first day, Jak did very little work. The scientist, who introduced himself as Tech2 Allen, showed him a small suit locker which contained a couple of suits of a style Jak didn't recognize.

"Everybody's gone home," said Allen. "You can leave the Zipper here, and we'll get started first thing in the morning."

That sounded good to Jak, but the Zipper didn't seem too comfortable with the idea of being left with strange suits. And these were some of the strangest Jak had ever seen, with needle-like protuberances affixed here and there, seemingly at random. He supposed they were sensors of some kind, or maybe weapons. Although they'd be very difficult to aim if they were.

Jak backed the Zipper up against the wall and popped the hatch.

*Jak!* The Zipper was almost whining. *Don't leave me here. These suits are scary!*

Well, yes, they were, now that Jak looked at them with his own eyes. The scientist was still waiting for him to dismount, probably so he could lock up and go home; Jak thought quickly.

"It's scared," he said. "But I can take it home with me, sir. My dad used to have a Maverick, so there's room in the garage for a suit this size." If his mother hadn't stored a bunch of junk in the suit locker, there was, but even if she had, things could be moved....

"It's scared?" Allen looked around at the other suits. Jak hoped he could see why any battlesuit-well, any light battlesuit-might be frightened by those prickly whatever-they-were's. "The Zipper is scared? Of the experimentals? Or of being left alone?"

"Of being left alone with the experimentals, sir."

"I really shouldn't do this." Allen pursed his lips. "Nobody can talk to it but you, right?"

From what Jak understood, a person had to go through a traumatic experience with a unit to trigger the part of the brain that could communicate with it on that level. "Not on Empyrrean, no, sir."

The scientist hesitated, considered, asked a few more questions. Jak felt mildly insulted when Allen reminded him of the secrecy surrounding the Zipper's special nature, but he listened respectfully and agreed. Allen finally decided Jak could take the Zipper home.

Jak settled back inside, closed the hatch and immediately applied for clearance to leave his assigned station. He would have had to do this whether he took the Zipper with him or not, but the process was a little more complicated with the unit. Allen was getting visibly impatient by the time Jak had the go-ahead. As the Zipper left the facility, the scientist followed and made sure all entrances were secure.

Once outside, Jak set his coordinates and roughly plotted his route. Although he knew the way from here rather well, the Zipper didn't, and he couldn't trust its AI to choose the best way. There were a lot fewer people out among the structures at High Command than earlier, so Jak let the Zipper proceed at a brisk walk to the perimeter.

There was no line marking the place, but a faint shimmer made it fairly obvious where the cloaking dome ended. Once Jak stepped beyond, his Zipper would be highly visible against the rich green of the grass. There had been no reports of Core activity for several months, so Jak felt no qualms about leaving the virtual invisibility of the command center.

Until now, Jak hadn't really felt he was home. The standardized architecture of the facility he had just left was too much like everything built by the Arm military, but the verdant and rocky hills before him were unlike anything anywhere else. The rain still came down in a gray mist that imparted a dreamlike quality to the scene and obscured anything far distant. Jak could adjust his display frequencies in order to see farther, but there was no need. The natural state was too pretty as it was to mess with it.

Even well-defended Empyrrean stood ever prepared for war, with the private homes of its officers scattered and hidden. Since full-time cloaking such as that used at High Command remained prohibitively expensive, the people of Empyrrean had taken to building underground. From above, it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between a dense mineral deposit below the turf and someone's scan-shielded house. Even from Jak's vantage point, it could be difficult to determine where a door might be hidden among boulders. He knew a couple and noted them as he passed, but he also realized there were far more than he knew about. Now and then he saw a hover in the distance, but there didn't seem to be a lot of people out in the rain today.

Jak hadn't known until he got here himself that he had been assigned to Empyrrean, but he was sure his family would be thrilled to see him. Or rather, his mother would. His father was away, and his sister would probably be in school. He didn't think he ought to take his mother completely by surprise, though, so as he loped the thirty or so kilometers there, he called home. It felt strange to set the familiar code on his suit communications relay; he could hardly contain his excitement as he waited for his mother to answer.

"Jak!" She fairly glowed with delight, but Jak had never expected anything else. She was always pleased to see his dad, no matter how inconvenient or unheralded his arrival, so she would naturally be just as happy to see her son. Well, maybe not as, but nearly. "To what do we owe the honor?"

It suddenly occurred to Jak that he was calling on a secure military band-she had no way to tell where he was. He could have been on Delbay 4 with a load of money to waste on face-to-face for all she knew, even if he had never done so before.

"I'm home," he said.

Her face took on a frozen look, then she gave him a wide, if brittle, smile. "For rehabilitation?"

Jak blinked in bewilderment. "Rehabilitation?" For some reason, she didn't seem glad to have him on Empyrrean...and the only thing he could think was that she had a visitor while his father was away. A male visitor. Mothers didn't do things like that, did they? Not his mother, anyway.

"To get to know your family again," she said. The fake smile faltered and then returned, much too wide to be believable. Even if he hadn't known her very well, that perky grin wouldn't have fooled him. It had to be a man. Jak felt vaguely sick.

"I'm here on assignment." He tried to make his voice sound normal. "Up at High Command."

Her smile went away altogether, but her thoughtful frown was an expression he knew well. "You haven't been restored, then?" So that was what had her all excited.

"No." He couldn't help but grin. "I still have my mama's-boy belly-button."

She knew immediately what he meant; she grinned, a real one this time. "I'd better get my stuff out of your room, then."

"And the suit locker, too," said Jak. He could sleep with some junk, but there wasn't a lot of extra room in the locker. "I've got my Zipper with me."

She took this information in stride, although Jak guessed she had stored things there that she now had to figure out where to put. She could do it, though, she always did.

As Jak approached the low hillock that marked the location of his house, he noted what seemed to be a new rock formation rising from the flat space next to it. There were rocks all over Empyrrean that looked like one battle unit or another, and this had something of the appearance a stealth fighter...but Jak was puzzled. People didn't deliberately erect such artworks on their doorsteps, because suppose the Core came and thought it was real?

Except it wasn't a rock formation, Jak discovered. It really was a Hawk. Now Jak's faint sickness returned, accompanied by strong feelings of indignation. What idiot had parked a Hawk on the front lawn? Might as well paint a target on top of the house! And what did the pilot have to do with his mother?

*Jak? Why are you angry?* The Zipper seemed concerned; Jak castigated himself for communicating his worries to the naive unit. He needed to learn to control his thoughts better.

*If you were Core,* replied Jak, *and you flew over this area, what would you target first?*

*I can't be Core, and I can't fly.*

Since Jak didn't have the time to explain subjunctive clauses to the Zipper, he simply explained why you didn't leave a war machine in plain sight so near a private dwelling. This it understood, and it became indignant on Jak's behalf. Jak didn't mention the other thing, not so much because the Zipper wouldn't understand, but because he didn't want to put his suspicion into words.

Just as Jak was trying to remember the proper codes, the garage door slid open; his mother must have been watching for him. Ducking the Zipper's head a little, he walked inside. As expected, she stood waiting...but standing next to her was a man Jak had never seen before. Jak was glad he was safely inside a battlesuit, because he was sure his horror showed clearly in his face. How could she? And how could she be so...so brazen about it?

Four

"Jak! Welcome home." His mother hadn't spoken these words; startled, Jak swiveled a sensor toward source of the sound. Just emerging from the suit locker with a box in her arms came Neda, his younger sister. The unknown man jumped to help her stack the box with others by the back wall. A proprietary interest in her that he displayed demonstrated quite clearly that he was here for the daughter's, and not the mother's, sake.

Jak felt immeasurably relieved but at the same time astonished. His baby sister had a boyfriend? She was barely twenty-five, nowhere near old enough to be serious, while the Hawk pilot had to be considerably older than that. Fifty at the very least, and probably a lot more.

He grunted a non-committal syllable to acknowledge Neda's presence, then picked his way to the suit locker, which was little more than a rectangular recess cut into the native soil. The surface had been fused as was typical in such construction, but no care had been taken to properly bevel the corners or smooth the walls, nor had any of the decorative embellishments common in living areas been wasted on it. The compartment afforded ample room for the Zipper, but as Jak backed into the embrasure, the suit let him know it wasn't too happy about the accommodations.

*Can't I stay with you, Jak?*

Jak envisioned the suit blundering and crashing its way through the house to his room. He shuddered at the thought. *You wouldn't fit through the doorway,* he replied.

*But it will be so lonely out here.* The suit sounded positively mournful, but Jak couldn't give in on that even if he had wanted to.

*My mother's hovercar will keep you company.*

The Zipper expressed its derision with a word that, coming as it did from such a young and innocent source, shocked Jak. Especially since he knew where the suit must have picked it up. He resolved to watch his language in the future.

But in the meantime, he had to think of something to reconcile the Zipper to staying in the garage. While Jak knew he could simply step out, and the suit would stay put, he didn't want to leave it so dissatisfied.

"Aren't you coming out?" His mother stood just outside the suit locker, her arms at half-cock in anticipation of the hug she would have for him. Jak popped the hatch open. She must never suspect he was talking to his suit.

"Just doing a last-minute check," he said. It wasn't easy, but he ignored the plaintive remarks of the Zipper and dismounted. His mother hugged him gladly, almost the reverse image of the hug Rocko Sue had given him. Wait a second....

Jak unsealed his thigh pocket to retrieve the plaque containing Sue's restoration information. It was warm, almost as if it were a living thing.

"Who's that?" asked his mother. She didn't seem at all surprised to see him carrying a cloning plaque.

"They let me bring a non-com with me." Jak tried to make it seem like a casual, simple thing. "But I think I'd better store her in my suit." He stepped up on one of the Zipper's mounting cleats, and discovered the suit was nursing a sense of ill-usage at being left so abruptly.

*I think you care more about your mother than about me.*

Answering with any degree of truthfulness would hurt the Zipper's feelings, so Jak ignored the accusation. *I've brought something to...kind of keep you from being all alone.* Even though Jak knew exactly where he wanted to leave the plaque, he made some show of trying to decide in order to give him a little time with his suit. He could hear his sister chattering away in the background, but paid no attention to her. *This is Rocko Sue's blueprint.*

*Your friend.* Jak had never thought of her that way, but he supposed the suit was right.

*Yes. And I want you to guard her.* As Jak slid the plaque into a narrow space to the right of the pilot's couch, the Zipper laughed in delight.

*I'll be a good guard, Jak.* It would, too, Jak knew, although there was nothing it would need to do any differently than to simply guard itself-but now that it had something to do, it was happy.

Jak felt uncomfortable when his sister hugged him, even though her embrace was brief and businesslike, and soon over. "You're going to be on Empyrrean for a while, aren't you, Jak?"

"Yeah." That's right, she'd be out on a two-week term break about now. Had he remembered that sooner, he might not have leaped so quickly to an erroneous conclusion about an unexpected visitor.

"Then I guess I can go out with Rod tonight." She smiled up at the Hawk pilot as if he were the greatest thing on two legs.

"And we'd better go soon," said Rod, "or I'm liable to get a citation for leaving my bird on your roof more than five minutes." He grinned rather sheepishly, and Jak disliked him a degree less than before. The poor guy had probably fluttered in for a quick pickup, and Neda had made him wait until her big brother arrived.

Neda took Rod possessively by the arm and practically dragged him out while he was trying to make his polite good-byes to Mrs. Yren. Jak's mother smiled and waved, but as soon as the door rolled shut behind them, she let out a laugh she had been holding back.

"I can just imagine how the two of them are going to squeeze into the cockpit of a Hawk," she said.

"Yeah," said Jak, although he didn't give it much thought. He was too busy being thankful that no one would ever know what he had suspected when he first saw his sister's friend. Even if no one ever found out, he was still tremendously embarrassed; he should have known his mother would never do such a thing.

Five

Getting to sleep was difficult even if Jak was tired after his long day. The fondly-remembered quiet seemed almost oppressive, while it seemed the very sound of his breath got sucked into the vast vault of space around him. Finally, after tossing and turning for an hour, he shoved his bed into a corner and tuned his radio to an encrypted channel that gave him a meaningless soft white noise. An occasional burst of more insistent code hardly disturbed him once he finally dropped off...but he woke immediately when the sound stopped the next morning.

His mother, wearing a faintly apprehensive frown, stood next to the radio. "I thought you told me you needed to get back by nine this morning," she said.

Jak sat up suddenly and looked at the clock, which he now noticed was spooling out the delicate musical strains that had once served to wake him up in the morning. Only ten minutes late. He gave a gusty sigh of relief.

"Thanks, Mum." She probably wondered how he had ever survived without her; at the moment, he wondered that himself. It was amazing-you could go away and be an adult, but the minute you came home, you were a child again.

Although he preferred a more leisurely shower, he took a quick one so he could have more time over breakfast with his mother. Neda still slept, so it was just the two of them again.

He'd told her some things last night; then, she had listened without bombarding him with questions, but this morning she wanted to know more about the non-com whose plaque he had with him. As he extolled Rocko Sue's military ability, he realized that his mother suspected a more personal interest. And his mother was the one person he couldn't tell-that Sue had been something like a mother to him.

"She's a friend," he told her, analyzing the nature of his friendship even as he spoke. "One who sometimes gave me advice, and never seemed to think the less of me because I'm a natural born."

Jak didn't need to explain this to her. When his mother had put in her service, she would have started with a captain's rank because of her natural-born status even without her medical specialty. The clones had surely resented her, even if they couldn't have safely said so. Times had changed in the mere fifty years since she had been a brand-new officer...but tensions between clone and natural-born had yet to disappear.

"Then I'd like to do the restoration myself, if I may."

Jak would never have dared ask this of Maia. Her services were much in demand for the exquisite work she did, so it was rare for her to see anyone under the rank of lieutenant colonel in her professional capacity.

"That would be great," he said.

Although he left the plaque with his mother before he started back to the command center, he had some second thoughts about it on the way. In light of the fact his orders had almost certainly been changed between the time he had pocketed the plaque and the time Lancer had told him to bring the suit, it was possible he should not have authorized the restoration. Still, his original, vaguely worded orders had granted him a non-com for his next assignment-which this was. He wondered what Sue would think when she awoke to discover that she was on Empyrrean with nobody shooting at her.

Tech2 Allen waited for him just inside the cloaked perimeter; Jak assured him in somewhat vague terms that everything had gone just fine. When the scientist didn't want him to speak any further until they were inside the secure area, Jak was happy to comply. He wasn't really much for idle conversation.

Today Allen brought Jak and his Zipper to a large room the scientist called the high-bay. Several others, some in construction Kbot frames and some merely in clothes, came forward from various stations around the room to greet the newcomers. Allen introduced them all. Since every one of them had a first and a last name, Jak felt a little overwhelmed by all of the syllables; he had the Zipper's AI remember them for him. As long as he was suited up, he would be able to fit names to faces. He hoped he would have them straight fairly soon.

"And what do you call your Zipper?" asked one of the women. He had no idea if the smile she wore was sincere or not.

"My Zipper."

"Yes. What's it's name?"

"I just call it 'my Zipper.' " This was almost like something out of a stupid comedy routine. "But you can call it Jak's Zipper."

"Jak's Zipper," she repeated and frowned slightly. "Jaks'per." She grinned. "Jasper. How about Jasper?" She shared triumphant and pleased glances with the other scientists, who all seemed to think it a wonderful name. How could she complain about the number of syllables in "Jak's Zipper" when her own name was...Jak checked his artificial memory...Gelica Amide? But of course they would want to reduce its name to one or two syllables-it was what they did to clones. Jak didn't reply, but he didn't think Gelica expected him to.

"Is Jasper ready to work this morning?" The woman's perky tones, as if she were talking to a six-year-old, made Jak wish he could give a rude negative...but every one of these scientists outranked him. Gelica was a tech6, which he thought was equivalent to colonel...or maybe only lieutenant colonel, but still way beyond second lieutenant.

"Yes, ma'am." Jak resolved to start thinking of his suit as Jasper.

For most of what they did that day, Jak wasn't even necessary-except occasionally when they wanted to know what the Zipper thought. First, every single one of the scientists, armed with the proper security overrides, got in and put Jasper through a full motor-sensory test. But much as they tried, none of them could tap into the suit's consciousness. The Zipper assured Jak that while it was aware of the others, it could not communicate with any of them. Nor did it want to.

*Why don't they get their own suits?* it asked at one point, after a particularly uncoordinated tech3 had banged the suit's shin against a fixed bench. *Maybe one of those scary, spiky ones.*

Jak dutifully relayed this message; Gelica supplied him with the answer, which he repeated to the Zipper verbatim, without considering how it would react.

*The spiky suits are too dangerous, and besides, they don't think. You're the only thinking unit on Empyrrean.*

*The only one?* The Zipper was dismayed. *Not even Sue's Rocko?*

"Can it communicate with other suits?" This was one of the other scientists, Tech3 Cynthia. Jak conveyed the question without answering the Zipper's.

It took a little more questioning to get a reply, but finally Jasper admitted that no, it could not talk to other suits. It wished it could, and when Jak was gone, it couldn't even see them...but it was still nice to know they were nearby.

This elicited still more questions from the scientists. They avidly recorded everything Jasper said, so Jak tried to be as accurate in his translation as possible. As he had suspected, when the Zipper's pilot was absent, it could do little but sneak into the artificial intelligence's library to look around. Jak gathered that Jasper saw the information there as code, which it could decipher only partially-much like a child first learning to read being confronted by a technical manual.

Near the end of the day, when Jak was wearily looking forward to going home, the researchers surprised him by bringing in another team of scientists. All of these wore construction suits except for a couple, who had donned the strange, spiky experimentals. Even if those in the spiked suits stayed well back from everybody else, Jak couldn't help but remember Gelica had said something about them being dangerous.

Tech4 Thumalapally explained the next phase of scientific inquiry to Jak. While he slept that night, a couple of bio-neural specialists would map him thoroughly; at the same time, a team of neuro-mechanical specialists would do essentially the same thing to Jasper. Although Jak didn't like it, there didn't seem to be much he could do.

Thumalapally beamed with complacent satisfaction. "We will then make a perfect copy of each of you." The scientist seemed to think this nothing extraordinary; Jak considered the very idea an outrage.

This was one right natural-borns had that clones didn't: a natural-born could not be copied without his or her consent. Jak had filed legal documents that quite clearly stated his preference to be restored after death, but not otherwise. Before he could say anything, however, Gelica made a faint noise of disagreement.

"The suit, yes," she said. "The man, no." She turned to face Jak, and he wondered if she was going to try to cajole his consent out of him. She gave him her perky professional smile. "I understand your orders got crossed up a bit, so you have a restoration plaque for a Sue 13961R. She can communicate with the suit, can't she?"

"Yes, ma'am," he replied without thinking. Although more concerned about the fact he did not have the plaque, he realized even as he spoke that he couldn't be sure that Sue had been able to talk to her Rocko. She'd never mentioned it. "That is, I think she can. But my mother offered to do the restoration, and I-"

"Your...mother?" One of the bio-neural specialists swelled in professional indignation. "Who the hell is your mother?"

Before Jak could frame a properly respectful answer, Gelica chuckled. "I was hoping Jak could use his influence, but I see he has anticipated me. His mother..." She gave the word the same scornful emphasis the bio-spec had. "...Is Dr. Maia Calderon."

Dr. Maia might not be world famous, but among members of her own profession, she was a bigger star than the most renowned entertainer. The specialist deflated beautifully, and Jak had to bite his lip to keep from laughing aloud.

Six

Since they couldn't copy him, Jak had thought the bio-specs wouldn't make him go through their study...but they insisted they still wanted to do a complete neurometrical scan. He wondered if they would even be able to find the part of his brain that enabled him to communicate with the Delbay self-aware units. Whether they did or didn't, though, he really didn't have much choice. He had to let them look for it.

One of the Kbots opened out an exam table and instructed Jak to lie down there. Jak positioned himself as comfortably as possible on the cold, hard surface. Because the table was so narrow there was no place to rest his arms by his sides, he clasped his hands across his chest. Surely they didn't expect him to sleep in this position.

Gelica leaned over him; Jak thought there might be a little sympathy in her faintly apologetic little smile. "See you in the morning, Jak." She touched his forehead lightly...and disappeared.

Jak blinked in confusion. His arms lay at his sides, held immobile by wide straps that he could feel at wrist and bicep; he soon realized his legs were similarly bound. Trying to protest this treatment, he discovered that his voice wouldn't respond to his wishes. This impotence reminded him of first learning to use his neural link, when simply getting the training frame to move its arm the way he wanted had been a challenge.

Thumb-lolly, or whatever his name was, leaned over and adjusted something on Jak's head. Although Jak couldn't see it, he could guess what it was. A link field. With that in place, whoever controlled the field controlled Jak, at least to some extent. Jak knew couldn't talk...but maybe...he could wiggle his fingers.

"Hold still, please." The scientist was busy studying his displays, so Jak didn't think he had seen the motion itself. Perhaps his readouts had given him that information. "We're almost done."

If it meant he would get finished sooner, Jak was willing to remain still. This grew increasingly difficult as the test wore on. He wished he could ask how much longer it would be, but he still seemed unable to remember how to speak.

*Jak?*

He stiffened. The Zipper's word came to him quite clearly; evidently the scientists had figured out some way to connect the link zone inside its chassis to the field that now enclosed him.

*Zipper. How are you doing?*

*Where are you?* The Zipper seemed perplexed, even a little anxious. *I can't find you.*

*I'm in the high-bay. I think.* While Jak could have been moved to another space while unconscious, the ceiling above seemed sufficiently far away to be the high-bay.

Unit and pilot carried on their fatuous but reassuring conversation silently for some time. Jak supposed the scientists were busy noting, mapping and measuring everything they could pertaining to the exchange. Perhaps they thought he was so involved that he wouldn't notice as they moved away, letting one of the spiked units loom closer.

What was going on? Wasn't that thing supposed to be dangerous? Jak struggled against his straps as the unit approached. He heard a horrible crashing noise beyond it, although he couldn't turn his head to see the cause. All he could see were the hideous needles and lumbering shape of the experimental.

*I'm coming, Jak.*

What? How? The Zipper couldn't move on its own...could it? There was another crashing sound.

*Should I shoot, Jak?*

*How can you even know where to shoot?*

*I have a...not a pilot, but someone. I can go through him to get to the AI.*

Jak could envision the Zipper's laser bringing the experimental down on top of him, or worse, blowing it up and taking him with it. Besides, it was government property. *No.*

There was another crash. Jak supposed it must be the Zipper, making its way unguided across the lab. Even if he wasn't sure what Jasper could do, he didn't like the look of the snake-like coils that now began to issue from the tips of the experimental's spikes. Dammit, if this was part of the scientific work, somebody should have told him.

*Maybe a jolt at low energy,* Jak decided. *10%, say. Aim for its knees.* If the knees buckled, the thing might go down backwards, and miss him. And if the Zipper missed, maybe the peripheral damage wouldn't be too bad.

"Hey, no, stop the Zipper...." Gelica's voice, pitched high and frantic.

*Stop!* Jak couldn't help thinking one of the filthy words he had intended to stop using. Why hadn't somebody told him something if they didn't want to risk Jasper's shooting up the place? He felt a faint pop, then Jasper was no longer with him.

He eyed the experimental helplessly and wondered just what those quivering tentacles would do to him. They wouldn't really hurt him, would they? Not permanently, anyway, but he knew he could get pretty severely damaged before it would be impossible to put him back together. He closed his eyes and tried not to think.

Seven

"This isn't really all that dangerous." It was Gelica, much calmer than the last time, and closer.

Jak's eyelids fluttered, but he decided to keep his eyes closed so he wouldn't have to look at that hideous suit and its looping coils. Breathing slowly, in and out, in and out, counting ten between breaths, he considered what not all that dangerous might mean to a scientist. If he were her son, she might have a different attitude about how dangerous it would be...

He felt the first, cold touch of metal on one temple, causing him to flinch in spite of his resolution to be calm and still. Then came another, next to his nose, and another-several more-on his scalp. It didn't hurt, but Jak thought he felt slender tendrils slither through his skin, through the bone and into his brain. Even though he knew he couldn't feel his brain, it seemed as though he did as the threadlike worms burrowed into it from all directions to make physical contact with the fine rod buried deep inside.

Once they found the neural link, the probes tested it. A barrage of sensation assailed Jak...but each bit of sensory information fleeted by too quickly for him to identify it, much less experience it in full. Exquisite agony was followed so suddenly by transcendent pleasure, great excitement by horrible fear, that Jak felt disoriented more than anything else, almost the way he felt after a Galactic Gate transition.

Unable to judge how much time had passed while his brain was being subjected to this stress, he only knew it couldn't be as long as it seemed. About the time he felt he could stand no more of the sudden shifting, he experienced a hint of euphoria that did not evaporate in the usual flash but stayed, and swelled. There was no reason for him to feel so happy. Even though he knew very well that this was an externally supplied sensation, he floated in it, even trying to give himself reasons to feel so good.

He was home, on Empyrrean, and tonight he'd have a nice dinner with his mother. Maybe take her out someplace...she'd like that. With his father away, she probably didn't go out much.

Jak didn't know when he fell asleep, but he awoke feeling rested and refreshed. After blinking his eyes a few times to clear them, he looked around as best he could. He was still strapped to the table, but the spiky suits were gone. The daytime scientists clustered around him; a couple of them undid the restraints, while Gelica held out a hand to help him up.

"I expect you'll want to go home," she said.

"Yes, ma'am." Although he discovered he didn't feel in the least bit dizzy or weak, he still used her hand to steady himself. "And ma'am, may I take Jasper with me?"

"Of course. He's probably worried about you, since we had to unplug him."

Unplug him? Jak could see the Zipper standing amid the detritus of a construction cart it had knocked over, its laser raised slightly. He glanced back to gauge the angle and determined he had stopped the unit just in time; a couple more degrees, and it would have had the spiky suit's knees in it sights. A control hood lay by the table where he had been confined. That must have been how he had established the link with the Zipper: a standard remote interface like those used to control crawling bombs. Some kind of device loaded into the Zipper's pilot's compartment would complete the connection...

Jak looked around a little further without finding a likely candidate. It wasn't likely he would recognize the half of the interface normally loaded into the Invader unless it had some kind of label, and nothing seemed to have labels. Then he popped the Zipper's hatch...and there it was.

A vaguely anthropomorphic form made of a gray elastomer had been fitted into the pilot's pod. The thing had no eyes, ears, or legs, while its arms ended in truncated paddles instead of hands. Jak uneasily recalled something he had learned in history class. Once even the crawling bombs had been given on-board pilots of flesh; these pilots had been only partial clones, so it had been possible to forget that they, too were human. He shuddered involuntarily.

"Let me get that." One of the techs ducked into the control pod to heft the gray shape out of the pilot's chair. When one of the arms caught, the tech bent it backward and got it free. Jak wondered if techs had treated flesh partial-clones that way, except...there wouldn't have been much call to remove one from a bomb, would there?

Not wishing to inflict his slightly melancholy mood on the Zipper, he tried to regain his earlier happiness before mounting. Yes, he would take his mother out for a nice dinner at the Mu Maison. She hardly ever got to go there.

***

Jak's mother and sister met him in the garage. Today, instead of the Hawk pilot, they had an attractive young woman with them. She seemed vaguely familiar, so Jak guessed she was one of Neda's friends that he had known when they were much younger. Trying not to get his hopes up too much, he wondered if Neda had thought him in need of female companionship and had brought the girl to introduce to him. It didn't seem likely, though. The two were probably just studying together, and would consider a big brother nothing more than a nuisance.

Surprisingly, it was his mother who made the introduction once he had dismounted. "Jak, this is Susanna," she said. No information about her family or why she was visiting.

"It's a pleasure, Susanna." And it was, too. She gave him a shy smile.

"Thank you, Jak."

Good...God.... It couldn't be....

"Sue?" She was tall, shapely and decidedly attractive, but now that he looked at her more closely, he had no doubt that she was, indeed, Sue. What had his mother done? This girl was lovely, but could she still be the Sue he considered a friend?

Maia laughed delightedly. "You didn't recognize her, did you, Jak?"

Still too stunned to speak, Jak shook his head.

"Come sit down, and I'll tell you about it."

All of them trooped into the living room and got comfortable, or as comfortable as they could. Jak didn't feel quite right about Sue, and she didn't seem at ease, herself.

"The Sue139-R plaque you gave me contained some fairly extensive adaptations for the Rocko unit," Maia explained without preamble. "And some alterations that were more for the convenience of the military than for the quality of life of Sue herself. We don't do those things anymore, but where the genetic codes have already been changed, those codes are still used for restoration."

Rocko Sue's squat, muscular shape, her lack of intense emotion-were these attributable to genetic changes deliberately inflicted on her by the Arm? He couldn't help staring at Susanna, but she seemed intent on Maia's every word.

"I stripped away the additional genetic chains-they're fairly standard additions, so they weren't hard to find-and patched the few, very minor deletions that resulted with top quality code." Maia leaned across the space that separated the two women and lay her hand on Susanna's wrist. "So you are more like yourself than you've been in hundreds of years."

"Then why do I feel so...unlike?" As Susanna glanced in Jak's direction, she spoke to Maia in a low voice. "As Rocko Sue, I always knew who I was and what I was supposed to do, but now I'm confused, and not what Jak was expecting when he chose to take my plaque."

It took Jak a second before he realized she wanted reassurance. True, she wasn't what he had expected, but he didn't feel he had lost anything.

"Well, yes," he said, "but that was before, when I thought you were going to be a Rocko pilot. Instead, they're making a Zipper for you." Jak thought Gelica must have given this information to his mother, meaning Susanna would know about the change in plans already.

But it appeared Susanna hadn't been told. She turned toward Jak, her mouth hanging open in astonishment for a moment before she could speak. "A Zipper? For me?" Tears filled her eyes, so Jak was relieved when she smiled. "Oh, thank you, Jak."

He thought she might hug him the way she had once done, or rather, the way Rocko Sue had. When she didn't, he felt vaguely disappointed.

Eight

Jak wasn't sure how it happened, but that evening he found himself taking Susanna and Neda to the local officers' club. When Maia disavowed all interest in going out again, Jak left his Zipper to guard her-although what Jasper thought he could do to carry out his task, Jak couldn't begin to guess. But it did make the suit happy, or at least reconciled, which was the true purpose of the assignment.

Neda was meeting Rod at the club, but he wasn't there yet when they arrived, so Jak checked to see if the Hawk pilot had made any arrangements. He scrolled through the public list and almost immediately found Hawk Rod, who expected to arrive in ten minutes and would require a table for four. Jak wondered how Rod felt about sharing his time with Neda with her brother and her brother's friend.

For his own part, he was just as glad not to be left by himself with Susanna, since he was terribly afraid of embarrassing himself with her. Neda had helped her get ready for the evening out, and while Jak could not consider her classically beautiful, she was certainly eye-catching. She was tall for a woman, and well-built; her features were regular, and if none was particularly striking, a few touches of artificial color gave her eyes and lips some emphasis. Her skin had the luminous quality of a recent dermasheath...although Jak wasn't quite prepared for how much of that fabulous commodity would be on display.

While they waited for Rod, the women shed their travel coveralls; even though the two of them were dressed in a similar fashion, the effect of each was quite different. On Jak, anyway. Neda was slender, and Jak supposed she looked rather nice in her skin-tight wrap, but she was his sister. Susanna, on the other hand, gave her similar garment an entirely new dimension of curves. Furthermore, while Neda seemed in no danger of overflowing at the top, Susanna looked as if she might be. She adjusted the silky green fabric-just a little-and Jak tried to suck in his eyeballs.

"Rod should be here soon," said Neda. She hooked her coveralls on a wall peg with several other sets and sat down to wait.

Susanna also hung up her coveralls, but she considered the situation for a few seconds before she took a seat next to Neda. While Neda didn't seem to mind if anyone saw her under dainties, Susanna sat with her knees pressed tightly together and her hands clasped demurely, if a little awkwardly, on her lap. Poor Sue. Jak wondered if he should suggest she put her coveralls back on and be comfortable...

"Neda!"

Jak turned to look. Rod, all welcoming smiles, had just come in. Neda leaped up and fairly flung herself into the Hawk pilot's arms for a quick kiss.

"Jak. Good to see you." Still encircling Neda's waist with one arm, Rod stuck out the opposite hand for a brief clasp. Then he turned toward Susanna, who stood somewhat diffidently nearby. "And you must be Jak's friend."

"Susanna," said Jak by way of introduction. She offered her hand, and the pilot shook it very properly.

"Nice to meet you." If Rod noticed Susanna's rather remarkable attributes, there was no flicker in his eyes to give him away, although Jak was sure he must have done so.

During dinner, the talk turned, as it almost always did, to the war. Jak wasn't surprised that Neda kept trying to change the subject. Susanna, on the other hand, became almost animated as she and Rod discovered they had, at different times, served under the same Commander, if more than a hundred years apart.

"Then you must have been with him when Midnight Lightning took down the Dark One," she said, her eyes sparkling.

"No." Rod made a rueful grimace. "Times were pretty rough, and ...ah...I didn't get restored until after that battle was over. A lot after, actually."

Susanna gave the pilot a smile of real understanding. "That's the hardest, isn't it?" Perhaps she realized he was feeling left out, because she directed her explanation to Jak. "Being restored in a new place, in an entirely different time, and when you think you know somebody, it turns out they've never met you."

Jak didn't like the somber turn the conversation was taking. He countered with a wry grin. "Even harder than finding out you're practically someone else, and the only person you know is some thirty-year-old kid?" he asked.

"Twenty-nine," corrected Neda, as if that really made a lot of difference. Had she been closer to him, Jak would have elbowed her in her skinny white ribs.

Susanna smiled again, just for him. "If I could keep only one friend," she said, "it would be you, Jak. Even if you aren't quite thirty yet."

For a second Jak wondered if his neural link was firing a few miscellaneous, residual impulses left over from earlier-he felt nervous, euphoric, stunned and disoriented. Had the two of them been alone, he would have taken her words as an invitation, but here they probably meant no more than face value. Friends. Right. It was good of her to give him the "let's just be friends" talk now and save him some embarrassment.

"Thanks," he said.

Before the silence that followed could become awkward, Neda turned to Rod and asked, "What should we do after dinner?"

Rod hardly thought before he grinned mischievously. "Perhaps you and I can challenge Jak and Susanna to a game."

Jak's ears perked up. "What game?" he asked, almost the same time as his sister let forth with a plaintive, "Rod...!"

"Neda tells me you're quite good at Total Annihilation-"

"Don't, Rod, he'll beat you." Neda seemed quite put out, but Jak could almost guarantee her remark would have the opposite effect of what she intended. Any officer worth his salt would take that as a challenge.

"How about it, Jak? Susanna?"

Jak didn't even hesitate. "I'm in."

"Me, too," said Susanna. "As Core, maybe." At this she looked to Jak for approval, and he nodded. Core, Arm, it didn't matter in a game, the way it didn't matter whether you took white or black in chess.

"Oh, drat," said Neda. "Then I get to be blue."

Nine

Total Annihilation was an old game dating from the time of the cavedogs. Although nobody kept such pets anymore, they still played the game...and Neda was right. Jak was quite good at it.

"Parameters?" Rod directed this question to Neda first, probably since she was the youngest and presumably the least experienced rather than because she was his girlfriend.

She didn't even have to think about it. "No water," she said, "and a metal map, so I don't have to worry so much about resources. Oh, and start with ten thousand metal and energy."

Even if Jak was as good with a navy as he was with ground or air, he didn't mind the no water condition, but he'd have preferred to play with limited resources. Since Neda knew that he was a master at planning and balancing his infrastructure to support production, her request was almost certainly designed to reduce his edge in that area. He nodded his agreement.

"Susanna?" Rod didn't know what her standing was, any more than Jak did; perhaps he was simply being chivalrous in asking her next.

"Commander dies, game continues," she suggested, "with loyalty rules."

Loyalty rules-that meant all Core on one side, all Arm on the other, and no changing alliances. Jak had been thinking of playing Arm to Susanna's Core, so they'd have every unit in the game available to them, but apparently she was a purist.

"Okay." Now it was his turn. "No limit on the number of units, true line of sight, unmapped-"

"Hey...!" protested Neda. "I want mapped and permanent."

This advantage was harder to give up, but when Jak exchanged glances with Susanna, she shrugged as if to say she didn't care. Maybe she wasn't sure she remembered all of the maps since her restoration, or perhaps she was simply deferring to him as the senior commander.

"All right," he agreed reluctantly. "But unlimited units, and a big map."

Rod quirked his eyebrows at this. Perhaps he expected Jak to prefer a smaller map, one where ground units would be more important than air, but Jak didn't see much point in having unlimited units if he didn't have much space in which to build and deploy them. Asking for a large map hadn't been so much to give him any tactical advantage as because he happened to like elbow room. No one else had anything else to request, and Rod pursed his lips as he thought.

"Purgatory, then?" he asked. Although Neda made a slightly disgusted face, she didn't say anything. Purgatory represented a 16x16 chunk of Core Prime, all metal and steam vents and nearly flat, but she couldn't complain because she was the one who had wanted virtually unlimited resources.

Now that they had pretty well decided on the basis for the game, they went to secure four game pods. Jak expected to have to wait, but he could only suppose Rod had made arrangements for this, too, because a cluster of four became available almost immediately.

From the outside, a game pod looked a lot like a simulator pod. On the other hand, since the controls for games were manual and the controls for sims used a direct neural linkage, the interior was quite different. The adjustable couch was similar, if far less sophisticated, however; and Jak got reasonably comfortable in it before he began adjusting his interface controls.

A curved display surface wrapped about 180 degrees in front of him; below that, a horseshoe-shaped control console fit nicely around him just below elbow-level. In their dormant state, both the display and the console were a slightly opalescent white, but as soon as Jak had lowered his weight into the seat, a basic instruction set of controls appeared. Jak touched the rather fanciful Total Annihilation logo and entered his name; it wasn't long before it was as if he sat in the pilot's chair of a Commander frame.

The "real" view didn't tell Jak much except that Core Prime was uglier than Delbay 4. He quickly adjusted his displays to show mapped views in two different scales and began to build. From the time he had played his first game sitting on his father's knee and losing to the AI, Jak typically started with a solar collector, which he usually, but not always, followed with a metal extractor. The current surplus of resources called for a slightly different order of construction, however. He had the build queue mapped out in his mind for the current situation, and he tapped out a rapid series of instructions before he opened a private communication channel with his ally.

"Everything going okay there?" he asked, more to test the connection than because he expected anything unusual. So he could see her face a little better, he enlarged the comm window slightly.

"Just fine." Although Susanna smiled, she didn't spare him more than a quick glance as she punched in orders.

"I thought I ought to let you know Neda likes to throw together an early air offensive and come after your Comm," he said. He and his sister were at opposite corners, so he rather expected her to go after Susanna first. Should Susanna lose her commander, the game would go on; Jak could give her some construction units, but her control interface would be seriously hampered.

When the Commander went down, the player's displays and control surfaces went dark. It could be a scramble to find another unit to which to transfer. Even then, no other single unit offered as much as a Commander suit in its range of controls or displays. Except for the D-gun, a player could patch together everything, but not all at the same time, which made it necessary to shift from one unit to another to keep track of what the Commander had available all in one place.

Kbot lab, vehicle lab, aircraft plant, advanced versions of each, geothermal power generators, metal extractors and mohos, defenses, including rows and rows of Dragon's Teeth artistically arranged.... Jak built mostly toward Susanna, but he sent a couple of construction planes out to set up some defenses in Rod's direction. If he hadn't been playing fully-mapped, he'd have made his outposts look more like advance bases. An opponent whose reconnaissance stumbled onto them might be fooled into thinking Jak had spread that far, maybe panic and do something stupid...but everybody knew very well where the concentrations of units were in this game.

Blue dots represented Neda's units, which were scattered and fluttering about as hers generally did. Jak's were red, gathered in multiple dense clusters, with nothing very fast-moving at the moment, while Susanna's green dots were almost a mirror of his. She had made it a point to ask and follow his advice, particularly after she had wiped out Neda's early Thunder/Freedom Fighter attack on her Commander. Rod's strategy fell somewhere between Jak's buildup and Neda's haste, but so far the Hawk pilot hadn't inflicted any serious damage with his white-marked aircraft.

Although Jak didn't like to use Krogoths, he often built their construction gantries in order to give his opponents something to get excited about and waste time on. At one point he suggested to Susanna that she do the same.

"Is it okay if I actually try to build a Krog?" she asked. "Maybe cloak one of the gantries...?" She was like a little kid, asking for his approval. Even if he wasn't keen on them himself, he didn't see any reason why she shouldn't build one if she wanted to.

"Sure." He grinned. "Just don't get so engrossed in watching it you forget everything else, that's all."

She looked at him, but her smile of gratitude turned into a gasp. "Jak! You're bleeding."

Ten

Now that she mentioned it, he did feel a trickle of moisture on his face. He had thought it was sweat, but when he touched it with his fingertips, they came away bloody. He could only study them in bewilderment.

A ripple of orange flame and bright sparkles on the screen caught his attention; the green units went up almost all at once in an impressive display of self-destruction.

Neda's face appeared immediately afterward in his communication window. "What happ-" she began but recoiled in horror before she could finish the question.

Now Jak heard a rattling at the flimsy door of the game pod as Susanna entered. It seemed as if the women were making a big deal out of nothing, but he took the clean, white napkin she offered him and pressed it to his temple. Perhaps that hideous spiky suit hadn't properly sealed his skin on exit, and he had unthinkingly scratched it open; Jak didn't think it was any worse than that. If Susanna hadn't self-destructed, he would have suggested she go back so they could continue the game...although he supposed she would have forfeited her pod to another gamer just by leaving.

"It's still bleeding, Jak." Her voice took on a faint edge of concern, and she handed him another napkin. He replaced the first one, which was nearly soaked. It did seem like a lot of blood for a scratch.

"I think you should see a medtech." Neda came to stand just behind Susanna. Out of the corner of his eye, Jak could see the blue units on his map turn into a pyrotechnic display. Even if she hadn't self-destructed, someone had done it for her after she bailed out of her pod. "Forget the game, Jak." She reached for his controls, but with his free hand, Jak caught her arm.

"Let me do it." Select all, destruct.... If he had to do it, he at least wanted to watch-it made an impressive show while it lasted.

All four of them piled into Maia's hover. Neda drove them to a nearby medical facility, which wasn't very busy at this hour of the evening. A couple of Peewee pilots who had gone after each other with their fists were having their lacerations and contusions patched up, if not very gently, and a little girl cried disconsolately while the bone in her arm was being re-knit. No one else sought medical care that night.

By this time, Jak had gone through quite a wad of napkins. Although he thought it might have slowed down a little, the wound on his temple still bled. He got the attention of a motherly medtech almost as soon as he walked in.

Once she had briskly cleansed the area and scanned it, she asked, "When did you have the neurometric probe?"

Jak was surprised she could tell. "This morning." He didn't think he should go into any detail about the somewhat unusual nature of the procedure, though-he was willing to bet those experimental probe suits were classified secret at the very least.

She touched the wound with an instrument that he knew would seal it. There was a sharp twinge, but it was gone so quickly it could hardly be called pain. "So, Mr. Yren, what were you doing when it started to bleed?"

"Just playing a game."

She gave a little sniff of disgust. "And I suppose nobody told you that you should take it easy for a day or so?"

Nobody had, although the scientists had probably figured all he was going to do was have a nice quiet evening home. "No, ma'am."

"Well, I'm telling you now. Get one of your friends to take you home and tuck you into bed, then sleep for as long as you can." She went away muttering, either about thoughtless young officers or the butchery that was practiced on them by military medics, or maybe both.

Jak felt bad about ruining everybody's evening, but when Rod offered to bring Neda home later, Susanna assured Jak she would like nothing better than to take him back to his mother's house. Even if he wasn't sure he believed her, by now he wanted to go home so badly that he didn't even put up a token resistance.

He took the driver's seat, though, because the hover recognized him and it would have been a bit of work to set everything up to let Susanna drive. In any event, the hover knew the way home, so neither of them was likely to need to do anything except sit back and enjoy the ride.

The soothing hum of the compressor had almost lulled Jak to sleep when a faint beep sounded in his ear. No matter how well things were going for the hover, it wasn't about to let its driver nod off, and Jak sat up straighter and shook his head a little to wake himself up.

"Maybe I should drive after all," offered Susanna. She wouldn't have heard the alarm, but she could certainly see him blinking his eyes and yawning.

"No, thanks." He would rather just stay awake until he got home-he could imagine himself slumped and asleep in the other chair, maybe with his mouth hanging open, and snoring. He didn't want Susanna-or anyone-to see him like that. "But I'd like it if you'd talk to me and keep me awake."

"What do you want to talk about?"

As he thought about it, the other women he knew-his mother, Neda, certainly, and even Cyclone-never needed any encouragement to talk, but Susanna was different. Over dinner, she had hardly said anything unless directly asked, and even now she might still have been the competent non-com to his inexperienced officer. At least she had remembered not to call him "sir."

"Um ... how about this evening? Did you have a good time, at least, until I started bleeding all over?"

"Yes." In the faint glow of the instrumentation, Jak thought he saw her smile. "I used to dream about doing something like that, but I never thought it would actually happen." She chuckled softly. "I keep expecting to wake up in my little box on Delbay, and go tell my Rocko suit all about it."

"Does your Rocko enjoy hearing about your dreams?" Jak asked the question before it occurred to him she didn't know anything about the self-aware units project. He still didn't know if, when she told her Rocko things, she was able to understand its response.

Susanna was silent for several seconds, and Jak wondered if she was trying to compose a flippant reply so he wouldn't think she was crazy for talking to her suit. But before he could figure out what to say to reassure her without giving too much away if she couldn't actually communicate with her suit's personality, she spoke.

"He probably wouldn't like that one. So you know, then? About the sentient suits?"

"Yes." He wasn't sure he should tell her anything about the research project until she had been properly briefed, but his curiosity prompted him to ask, "Why wouldn't your suit like it if you had fun? Would he want to come, too?"

"He wouldn't like it because I'm too good for him now," she explained, and it made sense to Jak. He hated to think about getting a promotion and having to trade his Zipper for a cold hunk of metal with an uncaring AI for company. Even another thinking unit wouldn't be the same. "But it doesn't matter, because he's still got Rocko Sue."

There were no lights anywhere outside, and after a while, Jak dimmed the displays on the hover so that the only illumination came from the stars. The vehicle didn't need visible light to navigate, and Jak thought Susanna would enjoy a little stargazing as they sped homeward. He told her the names of some of the stars they could see, but he wished he had the nerve to do more. As the two of them sat transfixed by a black velvet sky pierced with blazing diamonds, maybe, while he was pointing out constellations to her, he could casually put his arm around her luscious waist...

Maybe he should try it. She hadn't come right out and told him she wasn't interested, and at worst, she'd be flattered to know he was attracted to her. He was just about to lean across her to point out a constellation low on the horizon when the hover's displays sprang to life and the warning alarm blared insistently. Jak hadn't seen a map like the one before him in several years, and his stomach dropped.

"What is it?" asked Susanna. Even if she didn't know, the raucous beeping of the alarm was designed to instill panic, although there didn't seem to be any fear in her voice.

"It's an air raid warning," said Jak. There were a couple of things he needed to do, but even if he hadn't been through the drill for a while, he did them automatically. First, reset the autopilot, then grab the emergency pack. "When the hover slows down, we're going to jump out."

"Yes, sir."

"And then follow me."

Eleven

Jak hoped he wasn't overreacting, but the trace circle on the map showed them at almost dead center of the projected attack zone. And while the hover was primarily a low-reflective mottled green, it still radiated a fair amount of heat and would probably be the best target within a couple of kilometers. Simple organics would present much smaller signatures, so he and Susanna had a much better chance of escaping notice if they were on foot.

Normally it would be impossible to so much as open the hatches on a moving hover. Even in the emergency override condition, they could be opened only when the vehicle had slowed to what it deemed a safe exit speed. Although Jak had never had to do this before, he suspected the hover still sped faster than he'd like when the catches let go. Perhaps he'd wait a few more seconds before he began his countdown...

"Jump on zero," he said as he pushed the hatch on his side as far open as it would go. The wind blew by fiercely; the ground below blurred past, almost completely black with occasional flashes of dark gray. He risked a quick blink from the hover's running lights. While he wasn't keen on calling attention to himself, he knew there were some places where jumping would be more dangerous than staying, where dark volcanic rock thrust through the smooth green. A few small rocks littered the ground along here, but nothing major. He wound the strap of the emergency pack a couple of times around his hand. "Three, two, one, zero!" He hesitated just a split second to make sure Susanna had jumped, then launched himself away from the vehicle.

He hit the ground in a jarring tumble, but he hardly thought about it as he rolled into a low crouch. Hearing a small grunt from Susanna, he began to crawl in the direction of her voice; it was too dark to see her. Even if it probably wouldn't matter if he shouted, he kept his voice low as he called to her.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine. A little dinged, maybe."

Jak kept crawling, reaching out periodically, and eventually his hand encountered something soft. Unsure what part of her he had touched, he snatched his hand back in case it was something he shouldn't have. "Sorry."

"It's okay." Now she stretched her fingers out and found his face; he grasped her hand in his. The night was unbelievably dark, and he didn't want to risk having the two of them losing each other.

"We need to get off the hover path," he said. Even if no civilian vehicle would run over them, its safety overrides would cause it to stop-just close enough to include them in its target zone.

Still holding hands, the two of them picked their way carefully to an upwelling of basalt that would discourage any properly guided hovercraft. The two of them squatted there while Jak fumbled open the emergency pack. It mostly held field rations and survival gear, but Jak felt around for something that would probably be rather small.

"What's that?" Sue asked. At first Jak didn't know what she meant, but presently he became aware of a low frequency rumble that seemed to emanate from the rock at their backs.

"Oh, damn." His fingers found a light bar he had passed earlier, and quickly activated it. He grabbed the strap of the now glowing emergency kit in one hand, found Susanna's with the other; heedless of their increased visibility, he dragged her back across the shallow valley and up the hill on the other side.

The ground began to crack as the hill where they had been sitting split; they retreated further. Although Jak wanted to put as much distance as he could from whatever it was that was about to erupt there, he could hear Susanna's breaths coming in gasps. They needed to slow down for her sake. It also occurred to him that, if they went too far, there was some danger they would encounter another underground emplacement. When he came to what seemed a good place, he turned off the light and sat down on a low black rock. He heard Susanna grope about a bit before she found a rock of her own to perch on.

This time, Jak found what he had been looking for almost immediately, although it was even smaller than he'd expected. The device came with a band so he could strap it to his wrist, so he did that before he activated it and held it up to his eye.

The tiny display came up in the same emergency warning he had last seen on the hover's instrument panel, still showing them near the center of the circle. Jak was willing to bet his father's emergency equipment would do more than that.

"Status-defense," he said. "One klick radius."

A tinny little voice came back. "Authorization, please."

Didn't Hax have his own son pre-authorized to use his emergency equipment? Jak rattled off his service number, hoping that would satisfy the stupid little piece of junk.

"Thank you, Lt. Yren." Almost immediately colored spots were superimposed on the original trace map, reminding Jak forcibly of a game of Total Annihilation. But then, wasn't this what the game was based on in the first place? The user interface was a brute, though, since he had to first focus his gaze on whatever dot of color he was interested in, then ask for its particulars. It took him a couple of tries before he found out what was even now loudly emerging from the hillside opposite. He thought, but didn't say, a filthy word.

"It's a Vulcan," he told Susanna.

"That means ground troops."

It certainly looked that way. "Although they could be uncovering it just in case." He tilted the information button back up to his eye. "Status-attack."

More dots were added to the map, and even if there weren't many, Jak was sure there were more that were better cloaked. So far, though, they all looked like air, which was bad enough...but for the Core to land ground troops would be really serious.

"It doesn't look too ba-" A tremendous flash, followed almost immediately by a loud blast, cut his words short. If the Core were targeting the Vulcan, they hadn't come very close. After a few more bombs tumbled ineffectively down, a Flakker battery hidden beyond the hill where they sat opened up. Jak felt very exposed. Even though he knew it didn't really make much difference, he slid down the rock where he had been sitting, into the slight protection of bigger rocks behind it.

Fire lit the sky almost continuously now, so it was no accident when Susanna sat down next to him, very close.

"This isn't supposed to happen on Empyrrean," she said, almost in his ear. She probably had to get so close to make herself heard, but Jak liked having her there.

"That's what you're supposed to think." He put his arm around her; she gave a little sigh before moving a little closer. "But Core sends in an attack every now and then, more for psychological reasons than for any strategic advantage. They can't land a big enough force to do much damage..." At least, I hope they can't, he added to himself. They never had before, but times change. "...and we wipe them out, usually with minimal losses."

"But some of those losses might be children, and families, mightn't they?"

"Yes," said Jak. He moved his arm to a more comfortable position, but he didn't intend to let go even if his arm fell off. "That's the point. If an officer's family gets killed, then that officer is probably less effective for a while. Even worrying about what might be happening on Empyrrean can cause distress, and that's why anybody who doesn't need to know about attacks on Empyrrean isn't told."

"That makes sense." Her lips touched his ear as she spoke. Jak couldn't know whether it was intentional or not. Either way, it sent shivers all through his body.

That was one advantage the Core had-if a couple of Freakers were taking cover on a hill with bombs falling on both sides and a barrage of AA making a fiery ceiling above, they wouldn't so much as think about anything else. Jak took a deep breath and focused his attention on the emergency peep display. There had to be a safer place than this, and it was up to him to find it.

Twelve

As Jak studied unit concentrations and movement, he saw that certain patterns were beginning to emerge on his thumbnail battle map. Very quickly he noticed that a couple of Arm defense emplacements to the southeast had gone dark; while not good in and of itself, their absence left a narrow corridor of quiet, with only an occasional overflight by Arm or Core aircraft. That was obviously the route to take, so he reached the map over to let Susanna have a look. He had hoped she might not notice some of the other details on it, but he should have known better.

"It looks like they're landing ground troops," she said. Her voice trembled, just a little; Jak guessed she was just as afraid as he was and just as determined not to show it.

"Empyrrean defense will take care of them, even if it blacks out the whole planet for a while," he assured her, not adding that it might black them out, too. She knew that. He regretfully slid his arm from around her shoulders and got to his feet. He started to help her up, but she stood in a single, graceful movement.

"At least we'll be able to see where we're going," she said.

While it wasn't as bright as day, the almost constant flare of AA and the intermittent bright explosions from bombs lit the countryside around them with a hellish, flickering light. Jak held the map up to one eye and oriented himself so that the open corridor was directly before him, both on the map and in fact. He didn't really need to, but he took Susanna's hand before he started threading his way among the low volcanic rocks that littered the hill.

About the time they reached the base of the hill, the Vulcan behind them opened up. The first rapid shots were so loud and unexpected that, even against a background noise of bombs and anti-aircraft fire, it was startling. Both Jak and Susanna dove for what little cover there was, then exchanged somewhat sheepish grins. With each deep, purposeful boom, the Vulcan lobbed a glowing plasma projectile over their heads and beyond the hills to the east. Jak quickly checked his map and was relieved to see his proposed route remained more or less open. He and Susanna got up and went on.

They hadn't gone far before they found a bombed out wreck that seemed to about the right size to have once been a hover. "I guess we were right to bail out," he said, but the noise level was so intense he couldn't even hear himself. Susanna couldn't know what his words were, but she probably also knew how narrowly they had escaped death. She squeezed his hand as they passed the torn and tangled metal.

After a bit, it got a little quieter and rather darker, although there was still enough light to see where they were going. Most of their route wasn't all that difficult, but part of it led them over a hill where a Defender had once stood, which presented a bit of a climb. Jak was in better shape than Susanna; he tried not to forget this, since he was concerned she wouldn't ask him to stop even if she was in pain.

The first time, he called a halt under the pretense of studying the situation. Both of them strained their eyes to see in reality what was represented on the little display on Jak's wrist. Flashes in the distance probably meant that the Core ground assault was being cut to ribbons, but they couldn't distinguish any units. This was hardly surprising. Jak doubted he could see even a Krog that far away...if there was one, which he seriously doubted. Occasional aircraft zoomed overhead, but Core's Hurricanes and Shadows had already done their work here; they had no interest in wreckage as long as more important targets presented.

When Jak and Susanna reached the summit, they found the remains of the heavy laser tower, still steaming from the pounding it had taken. The crew compartment seemed to be partially intact. Even though Jak was pretty sure no one would be alive there, he had to make sure. It would be a while before any medical support got out, but there might be something he could do in the meantime should there be any survivors.

He told Susanna what he had in mind as he started kicking at the hatch. It had been jammed pretty tightly by the deformation of the structure, so he could only get it open a crack. But that was enough to shine in his light bar and look around inside. The crushed and bloody corpses within were very obviously beyond help. Jak closed his eyes for a minute as if he could erase what he had seen from his memory; instead, afterimages burned on his eyelids.

Susanna took him by the elbow and led him away, back to the unmarked path he had started them on. She made a few remarks that he hardly understood, except that they were soothing. Presently, he was able to pull himself together again.

"I went to school with one of those women," he said at last. She had been nearly cut in half, but her body above the waist was essentially unmarked, making her readily identifiable. He hadn't known her all that well, but it brought home the enormity of this attack on Empyrrean as nothing else had. In spite of alarms at least twice a year his whole life, he had never experienced anything as big as this before, not here, so close to home.

Although the way down the hill was easier on the lungs, it was a lot darker on this side. At one point, Susanna slipped and would have fallen had she not been holding Jak's arm. Steadying her, he stood close for a moment longer than was really necessary. On Delbay 4, he had gotten used to relying on her; although he still did, it was nice to know she needed him, too.

A pulsating glow to the east and an occasional flash to the west told Jak that while the battle had receded, it still raged elsewhere. Jak checked the time-nearly six hours since the first alert. The sun would be coming up soon, might even be starting to illuminate the sky now...although it was hard to tell whether any of the light from that direction was natural.

The tiny map on his wrist showed somewhat less enemy activity than it had earlier, so there was little doubt in Jak's mind that Empyrrean's home guard would prevail within the next few days. A clear path home had also opened up, and Jak altered their course to almost due south. The Flakker battery that had once been a near neighbor had fallen; even before he reasoned out his sense of urgency, he began to hurry.

Susanna never protested the rapid pace, and Jak probably would have dragged her on heedlessly had she not stumbled. This time she did go down, but she was up again quickly.

"Sorry, Jak," she said, her words coming in short gasps. "I'm just not as fit as you are." She gave him a wry grin and added, "Yet."

There were only a couple more kilometers to go. Even though Jak thought he could run them, he knew that Susanna would be unable to keep up. Checking the map again, he gave it a couple of commands before he took it off and strapped it to Susanna's wrist.

"Follow it to the X," he told her. "But I think I ought to get home as fast as I can, in case...." He was trying to think of how to explain his worry when Susanna gave him a gentle push.

"Go," she said. "I can follow a map."

Jak put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a quick kiss. Before she even had a chance to react, he turned and ran. As he went, he tried to dwell on Susanna's soft lips instead of what he feared he would find when he got home.

Thirteen

Aware that, if he ran too fast at first, he would lose time when he became exhausted, Jak fought against his wish to get home as quickly as possible. After half a year on Delbay 4, he wasn't in top condition; even so, it was hard to keep himself down to the pace he thought he could maintain for the necessary distance.

Occasional flashes of light illuminated his way only sporadically, but dawn was indeed imminent; the sky had grown enough lighter that he didn't have many problems seeing where he was going. He skirted a couple of bomb craters that lay in his path, and he saw debris here and there, most notably the remains of an aircraft. This had hit the ground at such a velocity that parts of it lay strewn across the ground for hundreds of meters from east to west. Although Jak could easily jump over most of the litter in his way, he went around a few larger pieces, including a section of the wing that still bore an almost complete Core symbol. It was quite possible that the canister containing the pilot's pattern might be found intact among the scattered junk, but Jak had no interest at the moment in looking for it.

The sky began to turn pink, and then the sun came up in a blaze of blood red. There were no clouds, but the battle had put a lot of impurities into the sky, making for a spectacular sunrise. Jak noticed it and deduced the cause for such an intense color, but its beauty was lost on him at this moment.

He passed a burned out Sentinel, its wreckage a black shadow against the eastern sky. Without realizing that he did so, he ran a little faster. That laser tower was a place he had sometimes played as a boy. Seeing it in that condition jarred him, even if he had already known it was down from his emergency display. He loped up the shoulder of the next hill; before reaching the saddle point, he saw the twisted ruin of the Flakker on the hill beyond.

His parents' house sat just over the rise, between him and the Flakker. Both fearful and hopeful, he crested the summit. Reasoning that he and Susanna had been in a far more dangerous situation sitting outside between a Vulcan and a Flakker, he thought chances were pretty good that his mother was safe.

A low ridge cast the slope in shadow, and Jak still couldn't see enough to be sure everything was as he left it. When he slipped on a loose rock and almost fell, he caught himself and went on a little more cautiously. Even so, he was caught by surprise when the ground dropped suddenly before him; he half-slid, half-rolled down the raw dirt face of a low cliff.

He still hadn't quite assimilated the horrible reality of it when he sprawled to a stop. Lying there, face down in the sunken earth that had once been his home, he felt totally empty and incapable of thought or action. This state of horrified disbelief seemed to last forever, but it wasn't really very long before Jak disentangled himself from the emergency pack and looked into it for something, anything he could use.

It was too much to hope he would find a shovel, but he supposed the wide-mouth metal cup would be better than nothing. He stood up, took a few bearings by eye and then began to scoop up the loose dirt and rubble, one cupful at a time...even though reason told him he would not find his mother alive. Even if she hadn't been crushed in the cave-in, she must certainly have suffocated. But reason was nothing to his determination. If there was any chance of finding her, he was going to do it.

"Oh, Jak!"

He had almost forgotten Susanna, but at the sound of her voice, he looked up to see her skidding down the slope toward him. Jak mechanically tossed another cupful of dirt over his shoulder, although at that moment he recognized the utter futility of trying to move tons of earth this way. Even now, dirt sifted into the ridiculous little hole he had dug so that he could hardly see where it was. He dropped the cup.

Susanna knelt beside him. "You're bleeding again, Jak," she said, her voice utterly calm and prosaic...although he noticed tears making streaks in the dust on her face. She searched through the pack he had set heedlessly aside and brought out the emergency nanolathe. "But in a different place this time."

"Just a minute." Jak caught her left wrist and unstrapped the emergency display from it. There were still numerous enemies marked on the tiny map, but none very close.

"Emergency transmission." As he expected, the tinny little voice advised him that any transmission could pinpoint his location, possibly subjecting him to enemy attack. "Understood," he replied. "Emergency transmission. Request construction Kbot this location. For Dr. Maia Calderon Yren."

"Acknowledged."

That was about all he could do for now, so Jak sat passively while Susanna held the narrow rod steady to spray the nanobots onto the skin next to his nose. It took much longer than the specific and more powerful instrument the doctor had used on his temple, but presently the green glow subsided.

Susanna sat back on her heels. "How long do you think it will take until the C-bot gets here?" she asked, and Jak said the first thing that came to mind.

"Too long." Empyrrean's underground houses were designed to sustain a certain amount of damage, but their primary defense was their invisibility. A direct hit would cause a cave-in. Jak logically knew that dirt would have seeped into nearly every cubic centimeter of the living space below.

When Susanna put her arms around him, Jak appreciated the gesture, but not even she could comfort him just now. Chances were, the only thing of value that would be dug out of the whole mess was his Zipper, and even Jasper would probably require repair. Jak wished he had some way he could check with his suit to make sure it, at least, was all right. On the chance it might work, he tried the little emergency wrist display, but it refused to connect him to military channels.

When the sun started to get uncomfortably warm, Jak and Susanna moved to the shade of a clump of trees that had miraculously survived the bombing. They shared a single emergency ration strip and drank most of the contents of the water-maker's reservoir as they waited for the rescue 'bot. Whatever unit had been assigned to the rescue seemed to be taking its time about coming. Jak had repeated his request twice and was about to make a fourth call when he saw a glint of reflected sunlight from the crater in front of him.

"I thought I saw something move," he said, his voice dropping to a whisper. He set down the water bottle and got up to go investigate.

There it was again-sunlight reflecting off a polished surface at the tip of a flexible tendril. Jak dropped to his belly so he was about eye level with the probe and waved. He hadn't thought Jasper could move or do anything without a pilot, but one of the scout Kbot's sensory pickups swiveled toward him.

"Jasper, good to see you," he said, although he felt stupid about talking to a visual sensor. Even if it had been an auditory, he didn't think the Kbot would be able to interpret what he said. He turned and called over his shoulder to Susanna. "It's Jasp...I mean, it's my Zipper.

"It's what?" Susanna seemed perplexed, as well she might, and she came over to see for herself. "How did it do that on its own?"

Jak shrugged his shoulders. He'd seen the Zipper move without any specific instruction before, but there had been a neural link of sorts to enable it to do it. "I don't know, but I'm sure that's what it is."

He was still trying to figure out how Jasper had done it when the earth started to bulge and ripple. The two of them scrambled backwards. First came the laser arm, and then the head emerged. Dirt flowed to fill voids almost as soon as they were created, but the Kbot fairly swam its way up through what might have been a very viscous fluid.

Jak feared that the Zipper would not be able to free its feet, but after a struggle, it pulled first one and then the other from the earth. At last the Kbot stood there, filthy, a little dented perhaps, but essentially sound; Jak could only stand and gaze at the metal being before him. Then he heard the distinctive, faint pop of the Kbot's hatch. As he watched it open slowly, he couldn't help but hope.

"Mother!" He leaped forward to help her down, and she fell trembling into his ready arms. The tears that had turned to stone inside him before melted suddenly and came in a rush as he held his mother tight. "I...I thought...."

"I know." She was weeping, too. "But Jasper was a good guard. I promised him I'd tell you that."

Fourteen

The Zipper, except for some superficial surface damage, seemed none the worse for the wear and very proud of itself for doing its assigned task so well. Even before he called the emergency dispatcher or checked on the battle, Jak commended Jasper for a job well done, but briefly. More praise could wait.

Having a full set of maps and neural link control of them made it possible for Jak to view the action in much more detail. As soon as he had changed his emergency rescue request to one for transportation, he checked the situation. The action had moved still farther east as the Arm pushed the outnumbered Core toward the Great Rift. There, any ground units would be forced to stop and stand while the Arm picked them off at their leisure.

Core aircraft, appearing and disappearing at the whim of underpowered cloaking devices, flitted here and there. While most of them seemed to be covering the retreat, a few still ranged farther afield. Even if it didn't seem likely that anyone would return to make sure of a region that had been so thoroughly bombed out, Jak thought it best not to provide them with such a tempting target as a lone Zipper. He surveyed the area for possible camouflage.

The clump of trees where his mother and Susanna now waited seemed to be the best prospect, and he stepped carefully into the cover of the largest tree. He was a little nervous about having the unit so close to the unprotected women, but the next nearest cover was some two hundred meters distant. He was more concerned about being that far away in the event something happened.

Once the Zipper rested in what seemed the best position, Jak opened the hatch, although he didn't get out. For one thing, the seat in the Zipper was more comfortable than anything else available; for another, he wanted to keep an eye (metaphorically speaking) on the map. Besides, now that he had logged in, he might be contacted at any time with a duty assignment.

"The battle has moved off toward the Rift," he told the others. "But it may be a while before dispatch gets a hover out, because there's still some chance of a flyover."

"I'd better enjoy some rest while I can," said Maia. "I'll probably be hit with any number of restoration orders as soon as I stagger in, all of them marked 'most urgent.' Better that than being the subject of a restoration order, tough, don't you think?" She grinned, and Jak managed a smile in return, although it wasn't easy.

"That's certainly true," he said. "But how did you think to get inside my Zipper?" He had to assume she had taken the initiative, since, orders to guard her or not, Jak didn't think Jasper capable of independent movement.

"Oh, that. I felt pretty silly about it at first, and wondered if your father had been taking advantage of my ignorance...." Maia laughed. "Right after I met him, we had an air raid warning at the cloning lab, and there was Hax in his brand-new Maverick insisting the safest place for me was inside with him. I'd only restored him a couple of days earlier, but he had that air of authority...." She smiled at the memory and sighed as if she were still the young woman about to fall in love with a hero. "So I got in...and I assure you the pilot's compartment of a Maverick is not as big as you would think...." She paused here for effect; Susanna chuckled appreciatively.

"I suppose Cdr. Hax made the best of the situation," she guessed, and Maia nodded.

"We both did."

Jak knew his parents loved each other, but thinking about the two of them getting acquainted in the cockpit of his father's Maverick made him feel uneasy. Now Maia had gone on to relate more episodes of Hax's determined courtship to Susanna. Since the two of them seemed to be enjoying it, Jak decided it might be a good time to check on the battle again.

Every time he looked there were fewer Core markers, while the number of defenders seemed to stay about the same. Jak knew that the Arm would have suffered attrition at nearly the same rate as the enemy, but the defenders had reinforcements, while the invaders apparently did not. That was a mercy, anyway.

"Oh, boy...." A quick flicker of red well away from the massed and cornered ground troops flashed on his display, but it was gone before Jak was able to quite fix its position and vector. It hadn't been very far from his own position, though; he was gratified to note a couple of sets of blue dots converging on its last marked location.

"What is it, Jak?" As Susanna looked trustingly up at him, he never even considered telling her anything less than the truth.

"A Core aircraft decloaked briefly not far from here," he said. "I don't know what direction it's going, whether toward or away, but there are five or six of ours going after it."

"I can hear them, I think."

Jak couldn't, not yet, but he listened first with his own ears and then with the Zipper's enhanced auditory sensors. Yes.... He directed the AI to sort out the frequencies. It soon identified a Hawk, two Freedom Fighters and a Vamp, approaching rapidly.

Susanna didn't seem especially concerned, nor did Maia, but Jak was nervous on their behalf. Chances were the Core stealth fighter would never even notice them, or choose to waste its time on them if it did, but he worried anyway. The trees that hid him made it somewhat difficult for him to see, as well. He telescoped his visual sensors out as far as they would go, and he almost immediately had the Vamp and the two Freedom Fighters in view. He could still hear the Hawk, but he couldn't see it.

The group raced on and passed overhead, but just as Jak was about to heave a sigh of relief, the Vamp disappeared. His auditory sensors told him that the Core aircraft was wheeling and heading back almost, but not quite, the way from which it had come. A cloaked Vamp.... It took him very little time to realize he had valuable information his allies could use; even as the Freedom Fighters were peeling off in opposite directions, Jak was calling combat control. He could hear the Vamp and knew exactly where it was.

Jak could tell immediately when the Arm fighters got the information, because he could see them turn almost in unison to follow the enemy aircraft. He decided the Core stealth fighter must be damaged, or the marginally slower FF's would never have been able to catch up. They were nearly in firing range when the Vamp decloaked and whipped around, loosing a pair of missiles as it did so. The Freedom Fighters turned and dodged, lasers blazing, as the missiles closed on them; Jak held his breath.

At almost the same instant one of the Core missiles erupted in a ball of flame, the second blew away the tail of an Arm vtol, sending the craft down in a fluttering spiral. He noticed this only at the edge of his visual cortex, because just then another pair of missiles appeared from nowhere. The remaining Freedom Fighter was badly out of position to return fire; Jak was still almost certain it was the end of the Arm aircraft when the two missiles zeroed in on the Vamp and tore it to shreds.

The flaming wreckage streaked across the sky and impacted a hill to the east, gouging a dark furrow in the turf. The fire continued to burn briefly and then went out, leaving a crumpled pile of metal behind. Jak had almost forgotten about the Hawk, but now he could hear its engine grow louder as it approached. It, too, was cloaked, although Jak had never known of a Hawk with that kind of technology. Experimental, maybe, and it matched the Vamp at any rate.

The Hawk flickered briefly as it settled onto the earth by the crater that had once been the Yren's house, but it remained cloaked even as the pilot opened the cockpit and emerged, as if he climbed from a hole in the air. When Susanna giggled at the absurd sight, the pilot looked toward the trees, which he hadn't seemed to notice before. He jumped down to the ground and jogged toward them, removing his helmet as he came. As Jak had expected, it was indeed Rod.

"Thank the gods you're safe, Mrs. Yren," he said with real feeling. "And Jak and Susanna, too. I thought for sure I was going to have to tell Neda she'd lost both her mother and her brother."

Fifteen

Jak didn't realize he had fallen asleep, but he was awakened by the low hum of an approaching hover. Rod had left some time ago, and the scene under the trees was a peaceful one-both Maia and Susanna had stretched out on a survival blanket, although Jak didn't know if they had been able to sleep or not. They began to stir and sit up at the sound of the vehicle.

He could tell by the sound it was a large vehicle, possibly more than one. Even so, Jak was a little surprised to see a Bear with a couple of attendant Anacondas come sweeping over the hill and stop. On reflection, he supposed he should have expected a heavy military transport as opposed to a smaller, lighter civilian craft.

A handful of camouflage-suited rescue techs jumped out as soon as the Bear settled down but before its hatch was fully open. They spread out and began a sweep of the area. Maia got to her feet and waved, then called out when nobody seemed to notice her.

"Over here."

A couple of the techs looked up from their work, but only one came toward the three of them under the trees.

"Were you the only ones home?" she asked, gesturing over her shoulder toward the crater that had once been the Yren's house. "Family, neighbors, visitors...?"

All the color drained suddenly from Maia's face; when she seemed unable to speak, Jak climbed down from the Zipper and put his arm awkwardly around her shoulders. Surely she was just imagining what might have happened.

"You were alone, weren't you?"

"Boots," she whispered. "I forgot about Boots." Maia didn't care much about Boots, while Jak actively disliked the useless creature, but he knew that Neda would be heartbroken.

"My sister's cat," explained Jak. It was hard to get too worked up about losing a cat when his mother was safe.

The tech gave a tight little grimace, possibly intended to convey sympathy; if so, it wasn't very convincing. "We'll make a note of it," she said, "in case something turns up." She spoke in low tones for a few seconds before the rescue crew started back to the hovercraft. They weren't going to waste time looking for a pet that was probably buried under tons of dirt and rubble and almost certainly beyond help.

By this time, the Bear's loading ramp was fully extended. Jak climbed into the Zipper, battened it down and walked carefully up and into the transport. The only time he'd ridden in a Bear before, it had been in a Peewee suit and with a bunch of other trainees, also in Peewees. They had backed into the racks and stayed suited up the whole time, but today the only racked suit was a Zeus, empty and deactivated. Jak let his visual pickups flick briefly over the people in the center of the transport to see if he could tell which of them was the pilot of the suit. None of the children, obviously, nor the pregnant woman...well, maybe. Except for the rescue techs and the medical personnel, there were only a couple of people old enough to be a pilot, and Jak well knew looks could be deceiving. That long skinny, stoop-shouldered fellow sitting dejectedly by himself was just as likely to be the pilot as the pregnant woman was.

"Oh, no...." Jak heard a faint exclamation from his mother, who had followed him up the ramp. "The Crèche."

Jak hadn't even thought of that, but considering the number of young children, it seemed likely. Hardly attending to his Zipper's requests to remain suited up, he backed into the nearest bay until the catches locked.

*There's a Zeus,* Jak told Jasper as he opened the hatch and started to climb out. *It will keep you company.*

*But Jak-*

He didn't stay to hear the rest of the suit's protest. Even though he had no idea what he could do about it, if the Crèche had been hit, it was his duty to do something. Murdering Core, to make war on babies....

Now he could see that several of the children had been injured, although none seemed to be hurt very badly. This was something of a relief. Most of them had curled up in the adult-sized seats to sleep, but Jak could see one of the older girls trying to keep a couple of wide-awake little ones entertained.

One of the medical Kbots lit one of its panels to show the face of a mature woman, the pilot. "Dr. Calderon," she said. "How are you?"

Jak didn't know if this was merely a polite formula or a request for information, but Maia brushed it aside.

"Well enough, but the Crèche.... What happened? How bad is it?"

"Oh." The medbot's voice became unnaturally flat as she glanced at the small forms in the large seats. "The school-age section is essentially untouched, and we took some damage in the pre-school, but no worse than what you see here. Contusions and abrasions from flying debris is all. But...." She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes in an effort to compose herself.

"The nursery...." guessed Jak, feeling almost ill at the thought. Tiny, helpless infants, crying in fear of the unknown noise and bustle, until....

"There are several crews digging it out," said the medbot. Jak's mother lay a comforting hand on the cold metal. "The Crèche is braced and reinforced, so they might find...some...still alive."

Jak had been only vaguely aware of Susanna's presence nearby, but now she moved closer and took his hand.

"Poor little babies," she whispered; Jak could see she was crying again. Maybe having her full range of emotion back was a curse as well as a gift.

"My beautiful little boy." At first, Jak didn't know who had spoken, but as he looked around, the stoop-shouldered man continued in a plaintive monotone. "My son. I went to find him, and I couldn't. My wife doesn't even know yet. She got shipped out just this morning." He covered his eyes briefly with his hands. "I want to cry, but I can't. Not even for my own little baby. Damn medics. I want to hurt. I want to feel pain."

He pulled at the hair on the sides of his head; Jak watched in astonishment as the man tore out several clumps, leaving bald and bloody patches behind. Since the man was unlikely to have been medicated against physical pain, that must have hurt horribly. One of the medics tried to reason with him. When this had no affect, another came up behind him with a neural tap and put him into a gentle, if sudden, sleep.

After that, Jak felt a little guilty and more than a little stupid when he felt a warm trickle down the back of his neck and realized what it must be.

"Susanna, am I bleeding again?"

She blotted her eyes on her sleeve, leaving a smear of mud on her face, and checked. "Yes, you are."

While he would have preferred she take care of it quietly with the emergency medilathe, which had surely recharged by now, Susanna insisted that he deserved the attention of a trained physician.

"Not the most gentle neurometric I ever saw." The doctor herself was not the most gentle Jak had ever encountered either; she twisted his head this way and that to get a better look with both her eyes and her instruments. "But thorough. I'm guessing you felt it."

"Yes, ma'am," replied Jak. He didn't think telling her this much would jeopardize security. Besides, she seemed to have a need to know. "It felt like flexible probes sliding into my brain and wrapping themselves around my neural link."

"Good thing they didn't really, or your brains would be dribbling out by now." The doctor chuckled perfunctorily. "And you might miss 'em."

"Maybe." Jak made his reply as unencouraging as possible. In spite of this, she went on to explain.

"What you had was a subdermal probe. The opening at the surface is very small, but the probe expands as it makes contact with the bone, then contracts again upon withdrawal." As she spoke, she worked on every one of his scalp wounds in turn, not seeming to care much about his comfort when she cranked his head around yet again. "Normally, there's no problem with the sites opening afterward, but stress can cause a sufficient rise in blood pressure to force them open-and I'd say you've been subject to some stress."

Jak thought of a rude retort to such an obvious remark, but he merely nodded civilly. "Yes, ma'am."

Sixteen

When Jak first woke up, he had the idea he lay in his bunk alcove on Delbay4, and his recent memories were nothing more than dreams. This illusion lasted only until he reached to turn on some light and jammed his fingers against a wall that was much too close. That's right, he was at High Command on Empyrrean; as a low-ranking officer, he'd been given a Peewee bunk, which had no more space nor amenities than absolutely necessary.

There came a tapping on his door-such as it was-and he now realized that similar tapping a moment ago had awakened him.

"Jak?" Her voice was muffled, but he could recognize Susanna's light contralto. "Are you awake?"

By now he had found the light, and he brought it up to a bearable low level. Once he could see the clock, he could understand why Susanna might be concerned-it was after noon; he'd slept some fourteen hours. He slid open the door. Susanna's face, fresh and radiant, greeted him; Jak was uncomfortably reminded that he hadn't shaved in a couple of days. He'd had a quick shower before crawling into bed the evening before, but there hadn't seemed to be much point in shaving. Although he could imagine what he must look like, Susanna smiled as if she didn't see anything amiss.

"I'm sorry to wake you up," she said, "but I've been called up to Research, and I thought I ought to tell you that's where I'd be."

Jak blinked a couple of times as he thought. High Command had not been so much as touched by the Core attack; even though they were pretty full of refugees at the moment, their operations continued much as usual. He would be on medical leave for another day, but Susanna was fit. If Gelica was ready for her, Susanna had to go.

"I was hoping they'd give you a day to rest, too." What he meant was, he had planned to spend the time with her, maybe find some place to sit and talk, possibly even work up to another kiss....

"They've got my Zipper ready." If anything, her smile grew wider. "And it said 'Lieutenant' on my orders."

Although Jak had been assuming this would be the case, it was nice to have it official. "Congratulations," he said. He wanted to shake her hand but felt rather stupid about doing so from his current position, so he didn't. "Maybe we can celebrate your promotion after you get off tonight."

She had skin like a child's; he could see a faint blush rise to her cheeks. "I'd like that," she said. "Very much."

After she had gone, Jak considered going back to sleep, but it didn't take long for him to decide to get up. He took a leisurely shower, dressed in a new uniform from the common store and went to find an officers' lounge. Sleeping in a Peewee bed might not be too bad, but he was damned if he'd eat Peewee food.

When he found a lounge, however, he changed his mind. It was full of people, mostly children, and incredibly noisy. Rolls of bedding had been stacked precariously against the walls, the food tray return still toiled away at processing the noon meal detritus, and a colorful, singing mythological creature emanated from an infotainment projector in one corner. Jak stepped back from the open doorway and returned to the far more spartan mess adjoining the Peewee sleeping quarters.

The room's hard, gray surfaces could not compare to the more pleasant decor of the officers' lounge, but the Peewee mess was only about half full. The noise level here seemed far more bearable, as well. One table bore a sign indicating that it had been reserved for officers. This came as something of a relief to Jak, even if the only person sitting there was the stoop-shouldered Zeus pilot from the transport. He seemed reasonably calm at the moment, anyway.

"You're Commander Hax's kid, aren't you?"

Jak didn't know how the other man knew this, but he nodded as he sat down. "Yes, sir."

"I have a son myself." The man reached into a pocket and got out a small viewer, which he held out to Jak. "His name's Brandon."

Jak had started to open his tray to see what he would have to eat, but he decided it could wait. He took the viewer. In it, he could see an ordinary-looking woman holding a baby that looked remarkably like any other baby Jak had ever seen. The woman took the tiny wrist in her fingers and caused the baby to wave, something the baby apparently had no interest in doing on its own.

"Cute kid," said Jak as he handed back the viewer. What else could he say? Although he hoped the baby had been found, alive and well, something about the dead look in the man's eyes made him wary.

"You know about the Crèche." Now the Zeus pilot leaned forward across the table and spoke in low but urgent tones. "I've got permission to go there to help with the rescue operations...but only if another off-duty officer will go with me."

It must have been a good thirty hours since the bombing, if not more. Jak was sure any children left in the Crèche must have suffocated, even if they hadn't been crushed. What if they went, only to dig up the bloody, mangled body of the man's son? That was probably why whoever had given him permission had stipulated another officer needed to go along-to take care of him when he found what he would almost certainly find. Although Jak couldn't imagine anyone would have expected the Zeus pilot to ask a Zipper pilot he hardly knew.

"But sir-wouldn't you rather have a friend? Or at least someone you know?"

"They're all on duty." The distraught father twined long fingers together nervously on the table before him. "I know it may...not...go well, but I have to go. Even if no one goes with me."

Thereby disobeying orders, which would mean a court martial. Jak didn't know what charges would be brought, but with Empyrrean in a state of emergency, the most trivial charges could warrant serious consequences. He sighed.

"Let me eat my breakf...lunch, whatever it is, first." As he finished peeling back the cover, he reminded himself he'd had worse. Even so, it was certainly not a meal to linger over. Not long afterward, the two men were on their way to the nearest level 2 suit locker.

On the way there, as a decided afterthought, the Zeus pilot introduced himself as Bran; beyond this, he seemed disinclined for further conversation. Compared to the rescue baby Brandon, anything else seemed unimportant.

There was a bit of difficulty about Jak's clearance; he didn't know whether he was more sorry or relieved when it finally came through, allowing him to accompany Bran on what was likely to be a hopeless quest. Jasper was glad to be going somewhere, though. To him, the trek across the scarred hills and valleys in the company of a Zeus was nothing less than a delightful adventure.

Jak found the Zipper's boundless joy grating; at one point he was moved to spell things out as brutally as he could. *This isn't a picnic,* he told Jasper. *We're going to be digging up dead babies. Little, tiny, innocent young human beings. Dead.*

Then he spent most of the rest of the journey, which took a little over an hour, trying to explain the molecular mechanism of engendering a baby, its birth, growth and death...but with very limited success. Nothing in a battle unit's AI could prepare it for the incredible concept of biological development. Even death was a difficult notion for the Zipper to grasp. Eventually, Jak gave up. He could see the circle of emergency crews on the hillside ahead and supposed Jasper would find out for himself soon enough.

Seventeen

As they approached, Jak could clearly see an excavation site. He'd have thought there would be large crews still toiling, even after almost a day and a half, but it seemed only a few people still worked there. Zooming in a visual sensor for a better look, all he could see were people in filthy coveralls and helmets carefully digging away at the dirt with hand tools. If there were bodies, none were visible.

"Halt." The order came with a code level that would have stopped a Commander in his tracks. Jak immediately came to a stop. The Zeus next to him took another couple of steps, but presently he ceased his forward motion, as well. Project security subjected the two officers to a thorough identification and verification before clearing them to continue.

"But don't cross the barrier lines," the unseen security officer instructed them. "Go to the southwest entrance, where you will be met by your escort."

It sounded grim. When Bran protested that he had come to look for his son, the woman's voice hardened slightly; she insisted the best way to do that was to follow her instructions. Jak could envision the escort would then take them to where the lifeless body of little Brandon lay. Still, there wasn't much else to do but go toward the southwest entrance and hope the Zeus pilot could deal with whatever happened.

Jak had not before realized the southwest entrance was the entrance to the school-the school he had himself attended until he became old enough to declare a specialty. From here, everything seemed almost eerily normal, the rough-hewn outer vestibule leading in to the smooth, well-lighted corridors that had once been so familiar. No one waited there to meet them, but they both knew the routine. They both backed their suits into the shallow suit locker on one side of the vestibule to dismount. Bran was all for going inside at once, but Jak could envision them wandering all over and not finding what they were looking for. Or perhaps even worse, what if they did find the baby?

"I think we should wait a few minutes, sir."

For a moment, Jak was a little afraid the senior officer was going to pull rank and insist they go on. But presently Bran sighed and sat down on the foot of his Zeus to wait.

"I'll give them five more minutes," he said.

Not quite five minutes had passed when a medical technician carrying a blanket-wrapped bundle came through the doorway toward them. Bran leaped up from his seat, but after his first step seemed frozen in place. Jak could see the tenseness in every line of his face and body-he hoped, but feared, too.

Surely they wouldn't be so brutal to a bereaved father, but Jak couldn't be certain. What if they had seen so many deaths they had become inured to death? The medic's own expression was hard to read. If the baby was well, why didn't she smile?

"Which of you is Bran?" she asked; the Zeus pilot took another tentative step forward.

"I am."

Now the medic lifted the corner of the blanket to reveal the baby's face. Even now, Jak couldn't tell whether it merely slept or...

"Brandon?" As Bran reached out for his baby, the medic surrendered the bundle to him. Jak couldn't be sure, but it seemed the tiny eyelids fluttered...then the baby's eyes flashed open. After a startled moment of silence, the baby began to cry in a frail but angry voice. The father bounced the child gently as he cradled him in his arms.

"He's pretty dehydrated," the medic said, raising her voice to be heard above the baby's cries. "But other than that, he should be fine."

A whisper came from the direction of the main school corridor. "Jak..." When Jak looked, he was surprised to see his sister peering around the corner. She gestured to him; since the others were still trying to communicate over the noise of the cranky baby, Jak slipped away. He didn't think anyone would miss him.

"What is it?"

"Mother wants you." Neda turned to lead the way before Jak could ask what Maia was doing there, so he didn't. He could guess at the answer, anyway, so he merely went along and listened while Neda described the rescue efforts. He soon learned that she hadn't actually been part of the excavation herself. She had come to assist with the reconstruction-rebuilding damaged body parts. Even though she hadn't finished her schooling yet, an opportunity like this didn't present itself very often. In her enthusiasm, she went into more detail than he would have liked about helping replace a mangled hand.

"That's really interesting," he said, although the parts he could understand made him a little squeamish. "But you haven't explained about Brandon-the baby. I saw the crater out there. I don't know how anybody could have survived." He still didn't. Although his mother's presence made him suspicious, Brandon had seemed too weak to be a newly-minted clone.

"I'm going to show you in a minute." Neda grinned, but only briefly. "You have to see these things."

They rounded the corner, and there, stacked along one wall, were about a dozen dirty and cracked containers that had once been clear. Incubators. Designed for automated infant care, their use was frowned upon; babies needed a human touch for proper neurological development. There were times, however, when incubators could still be useful.

"The nurses put the babies in those," said Neda, "so when the roof caved in, the babies were safe."

But what of the nurses? It was also Jak's impression that there had been more than a dozen infants...but he wasn't sure he really wanted to know if there had been. Although he didn't have much time to inspect the incubators as Neda led him past, he thought that some of the life support equipment on a couple of them didn't seem to be in very good shape. What of those babies? Maybe the water processing unit had been damaged in Brandon's, leaving him dehydrated, but suppose it had been the oxygen...assuming the incubators even had an oxygen production capability. This was a question he had to ask.

"What about oxygen?" Dirt nearly covered the floor here, while a blaze of sunlight entered through a gaping hole in the wall. Neda led him down the cross-corridor opposite as she answered.

"The incubator is a standard blueprint item," she said. "It uses the same life support package as a battle unit, but scaled down. Mother speculates that the incubator may even have originally been designed for protection under these circumstances."

The floor underfoot was merely rather dusty by the time she brought him to the classroom where their mother had set up her office. Jak was relieved to see that, although there was the familiar analysis console, no cloning racks or tanks, either adult or infant size, occupied the room.

Maia smiled wearily as she looked up from her work. "I heard you were here and thought I'd see how you're doing."

Jak shrugged. "Fine. Especially now that I know Brandon's all right." This was a hint for her to assure him the baby he had seen really was the real Brandon. She understood him only the way his mother could.

"Sit down, Jak." Since Maia had the only full-sized chair in the room, Jak and Neda folded themselves into a couple of child-size chairs and prepared to listen. "Brandon will probably be fine. But I want you to behave as if all the babies were as lucky as that one and a few others. You saw the incubators."

Jak nodded.

"So you know there weren't enough, and even then, the life support failed on a couple. Every parent will take away a living baby, complete with the mark of the umbilicus-we can give clones navels, we just don't usually-but most of them will be told their child suffered an oxygen shortage. That will account for the baby not knowing them. There may be some concern about any permanent damage for a while, but pretty soon the child will be developing normally, and the parents will be tremendously relieved."

"And happy." But was it right? Jak was glad it wasn't his decision to make.

Eighteen

Jak returned to High Command about the time he might have expected Susanna to be done for the day, but she didn't answer when he signaled. He had been hoping the scientists wouldn't get started on the neurometric exam so soon. Didn't that just figure? About the time he might be able to engage in activities that might raise his blood pressure, she would be restricted. Furthermore, she was likely to be tied up until some time the next afternoon.

After dinner, he went back to the suit locker planning to sit inside his Zipper until bedtime. He'd barely gotten settled when he got called to Research himself. Normally he would have found such a summons annoying, but today he welcomed it. Not only was he glad to have something to do, even more, he wanted to see how things were going with Susanna. Jasper, too, looked forward to meeting his twin.

Jak found this amusing. Had the scientists made an exact copy of him, he didn't think he would be so eager to make the acquaintance. On the other hand, Jasper must be accustomed to seeing other Zippers.

When Jak entered the high-bay, he saw no evidence of the experimental suits. To one side of the room, amid a clutter of equipment, stood a Zipper; except for a blue band around one arm, it looked just like Jasper. At least, it looked just like Jasper had a couple of days ago. Although someone had given the Zipper a thorough cleaning the night before, the scuffs and abrasions from the cave-in hadn't been important enough to warrant attention from a construction Kbot yet. Jak hadn't even thought about this until now, as he beheld the pristine whiteness of the unit before him.

He heard Susanna's voice on a one-to-one connection, all business. "Jak." She might have been Rocko Sue. "You got here fast."

"I was already suited up. How's it going?"

"I can't talk to the Zipper." He thought he detected a faint note of-disappointment, perhaps, but it was hard to tell. "They want us to trade-"

"Is Sue explaining what it is we want to do?" asked Gelica, partly obscuring Susanna's words. Jak thought she had said "trade for a few minutes," which he was willing to do.

"Yes, ma'am. You want me to try to talk to her unit while she tries to communicate with mine, correct?"

That was exactly what the scientists had in mind, so the two pilots climbed down and walked across. When Jak smiled at Susanna, she returned a tight little grimace that wasn't very encouraging. He supposed she must have had a rough day.

Since Susanna was about the same height he was, he hardly had to adjust the cocoon at all; he made a few fine adjustments as he cast forth his thoughts.

*Zipper?* Nothing. He tried a few simple emotions, happy, sad, angry, afraid, but he still got no answer. Even a brand new unit on Delbay 4 would emanate some kind of response, but this Zipper seemed no more alive than the Peewee suit he had used in training.

"Well?" Gelica stood before him, hands on hips.

"No, ma'am. It's young yet, so I can't be sure, but I don't think whatever-it-is is there."

Jak rather expected Gelica to express annoyance at this. Instead, she merely pursed her lips thoughtfully as she turned to face the other Zipper.

"And how is it with you and Jasper, Sue?"

"He's told me all kinds of things." Jak couldn't be certain, but it seemed to him Susanna sounded amused. At least she had lost some of the all-business inflection that made her sound so much like Rocko Sue in battle. Now she sounded more like Rocko Sue in mischief-and Jak wondered just what it was his Zipper had told her.

"Interesting." Gelica went to confer with the other scientists. Jak would have liked to hear what they were saying, but the bunch of them went to another room where even the Zipper's keen auditory perceptions couldn't overhear them. Apparently they didn't want their test subjects to know the substance of their discussion.

The two of them stood around rather awkwardly in the Zipper suits for a while. After the scientists had been gone for a while, Jak decided they wouldn't mind if he simply spoke to Susanna. He opened a full communication link, complete with picture, although he wouldn't get hers unless she wanted him to see her.

"What kinds of things has Jasper been telling you?" he asked.

Susanna chuckled, and she was still grinning when her image appeared before him. She looked tired.

"I wondered if that might pique your curiosity," she said. "But really, no great secrets or anything. Just that you tried to call me a while ago and were sad when you couldn't get me. Were you really sad?"

"More like disappointed, but Jasper hasn't quite gotten that nuance yet." He'd been annoyed at the researchers who had kept her past all reasonable hours, too, but he didn't want to go into that.

"He doesn't know what you're planning for a celebration, though."

Didn't understand, more like. The Zipper had never seen an exchange of affection, nor was anything in the AI for it to study. Besides, Jak hadn't gotten beyond some nebulous plans of this nature. The usual possibilities for leading up to that point-a nice dinner or a shared entertainment-were unavailable at the moment. Even if he hadn't already eaten, Jak didn't think the slop at the Peewee mess would be conducive to romantic ideas.

"That's because I don't know," said Jak. "The place is full of people, and there's nowhere much to go."

"Nowhere much is fine." Susanna smiled wearily. "As long as it isn't here."

"I guess you had a rough day."

"Yeah." At first that seemed to be all she was going to say, but before Jak could think of something else, she went on. "A Zipper is a lot different from a Rocko. Almost as much as I'm different from Sue 13961R. It was a couple of hours before I could even get the Zipper to do what I wanted, and they weren't very patient."

For someone long accustomed to knowing what she was doing and commanding the respect of officer and soldier alike, that must have been a humiliating experience. He was about to make a remark to that effect when the scientists filed back in; he resolved to remember it for later.

"Jak...Sue...." Gelica spoke as she crossed the cluttered floor toward them. "Leave both Zipper units here, and report back tomorrow at noon unless we notify you otherwise in the meantime. Understood?"

"Yes, ma'am," said Susanna, her voice positively meek. Jak could see Jasper's hatch open almost immediately. Even though he knew that the researchers could legally dissect and reclaim both Zippers if they wished, he wasn't so ready to surrender without a protest.

Choosing his words carefully, he spoke. "Ma'am-you aren't going to do anything to hurt Jasper, are you?" He didn't care in the least what happened to the counterfeit, but he was very concerned about the researchers' plans for his own Zipper. Painfully aware they might heedlessly harm that fragile intellect, he sought to remind them that Jasper was a thinking, feeling being.

"No, we don't want to hurt Jasper." Gelica spoke as if to a child; not for the first time, Jak wished she wouldn't do that. "We've just decided that having a copy that doesn't have the special feature we were looking for might actually be serendipitous. We can compare the two units, and any differences are likely to be significant." She shifted her gaze from one Zipper to another and then back again. "Except for the surface damage, but that appears to be superficial. We won't be looking at the skin anyway. At least, not to start."

Yes, Jak supposed they weren't likely to want to damage the only self-aware unit on Empyrrean, but he was glad to know for sure. Even if he couldn't be completely easy about leaving Jasper, he had already started turning over ideas for something to do with Susanna as he climbed down from the cockpit.

The remains of what must have been a glorious sunset still lingered in the sky when the two of them walked out of the building; Jak supposed there was still a lot of dust hanging in the air.

He wished he could get some news of how the attack was going, but he knew from past experience only general information would be available. It was probably safe to assume the business was almost wrapped up or the activity at the Crèche that day would have been better camouflaged. On the other hand, as of yet there had been no announcement of a glorious victory, either. He supposed that if the Core wiped out half the population of Empyrrean before they were eventually repulsed, that would still count as a glorious victory for the Arm.

Shaking off such gloomy thoughts, he turned to Susanna. "Maybe we can celebrate with a drink at the officers' club," he suggested. Actually, High Command had more than one officers' club, but he gestured toward the one across the square from the research facility. "My treat."

Susanna agreed readily, and shortly they were pushing their way into the throng inside the dimly-lit club.

"Hey, look!" Susanna grabbed his hand and pointed toward a large infotainment panel that hung above the crowd on one wall. The throbbing music and pulsating colors there had been replaced by the Arm victory anthem and a Commander's view battle map. Although a few clusters of red dots appeared on the map, they had been almost completely engulfed in the seething blue masses representing thousands of Empyrrean's defenders.

A silence descended over the room as everybody turned to watch the final battle unfold.

Nineteen

Jak wished he could control the views on the wall panel, but he well knew the program would be calculated to be as entertaining as possible without giving away any military secrets. The Core commander could very easily be monitoring the same broadcast.

The picture now switched from the battle map to what Jak recognized as a 120 degree arc of a Commander's 360 degree realview. For the current purposes, the view had been considerably flattened out, appearing to curve only a little into the wall. Several people got out audvid bows and clipped them to their temples for a more realistic representation; a couple of higher-ranking officers adjusted neural tap fields that would input the information directly to their neural links. Jak didn't even have the emergency peep, so he, along with most of those present, avidly studied the wall panel.

On both sides ranged rank after rank of cavalry, infantry and mobile artillery, while directly in front of the Commander lumbered a thinner layer of mixed units. They would protect the Commander from all but the most potent weapons, but Jak felt somewhat uneasy about even that much exposure. It seemed an unwarranted risk.

"We have the enemy backed up to the Great Rift," announced the Commander, going on to give a brief summary of the situation. Jak recognized the voice; why wasn't High Commander Zax safely in the info and command center, directing the action from there? Yes, this was the Mother World, but the battle currently unfolding on the display didn't represent a last ditch effort requiring the presence of a High Commander. What was Uncle Zax trying to prove? Jak could only suppose it was a matter of politics. Perhaps Zax needed to demonstrate to everybody yet again not only his leadership ability but his bravery...but it still seemed foolish.

At the moment, things went well for the Arm, even if it wasn't an entirely one-sided battle. The view zoomed in on a couple of Mortys guarded by a Can and a pair of Slashers; Jak guessed that someone with a sense of theater was choosing what to show the viewing audience. The Core units had taken advantage of a natural revetment formed by an old lava flow, and outnumbered as they were, they still managed to cut quite a swath in Zax's ground troops. What must have been dozens of Brawlers swarmed the group. Jak lost count of the vtols that were disabled or destroyed by the five.

"Pull back and Vulcanize 'em," he muttered under his breath, and it was almost as if someone heard him. The Arm units drew away so abruptly the Mortys and their guards must have known they were due to get hit, but there was no place for them to withdraw. Instead, they held their ground and did what damage they could before being engulfed by an enormous fireball. Those patterns had signed up for a suicide mission when they came to Empyrrean, Jak reflected; it was hardly surprising that they'd face death squarely when it finally came.

Other pockets of fierce and capable resistance were shown in turn. The scenes began and ended so neatly that Jak wondered if some liberties were being taken with a real-time presentation. Maybe a crew of professionals carefully selected whole chunks of action from the Commander's view to serve them up as needed. Jak wouldn't expect a nest of tanks to erupt only after the flare from the Morty's funeral pyre had nearly died, then a surprisingly effective squad of berserking Kbots to burst forth just as the last Goliath ground to a final halt, but that's how the story unfolded. It was exciting, but nowhere near as confusing as a battle really was.

These Core units were a lot more effective than any he'd encountered himself, but Jak knew there was a good reason for that. After all, any units left to the Core at this point had to be either lucky or very good. Their Commander, for example, had gone down long since...or had he?

Slightly off to one side of center, a faint ripple disturbed the image from the High Commander's view. The Core Commander's cloak failed completely, and he stood revealed before Commander Zax. Jak's stomach dropped sickeningly, and there came a collective gasp from the officers around him. The pattern spouted no last, gloating words as he leveled his Disintegrator at the Arm Commander. A brilliant white glare washed the screen.

Those officers who had been linked in clutched their heads in pain, while more than one with an audvid bow snatched it off and swore comprehensively, but Jak hardly noticed. He closed his eyes against the fading glare and swayed slightly with shock. Uncle Zax. And all of those units.... The rupture of two commanders' anti-matter packs would have had a huge radius of destruction-there might be a few scattered units left at the farthest periphery, but Jak hated to think of the numbers that had just been obliterated. The Core was gone from Empyrrean, but at what cost?

Someone put comforting arms around his shoulders; it was a full minute before he realized it must be Susanna and returned her embrace. As he slowly framed something to say, to explain about his father's co-clone from a common ancestor, Susanna laughed suddenly. A din of voices he'd been unaware of before increased. Jak opened his eyes.

The view on the wall originated from a higher angle than before, so Jak guessed it came from an aircraft of some kind, but otherwise, the scene remained much as it had been prior to the Core Commander's D-gun blast. A large space had opened where the Arm Commander-the Decoy Commander-had been, but units were already beginning to flow into the gap.

The Core Commander loomed over the battlefield; wave after wave of Arm bombers harassed him from above, while heavy artillery pounded him relentlessly. He fired his D-gun almost at random as soon as it charged, but he could hardly avoid hitting Arm units wherever he aimed. Struggling visibly, he waded into the most densely packed cluster of Arm cavalry, who kept up their own barrage. Under this relentless pounding, the Core Commander finally erupted in a tremendous explosion, obliterating the Arm tanks, as well.

Jak heard a faint sob from Susanna, while a couple of officers emitted a single filthy epithet apiece, but in general the mood seemed to be relief. Although he felt both sorrow and tremendous respect for the brave pilots who had kept up their attack on the Commander even though they knew success meant their own destruction, Jak couldn't help but recall it could have been much worse.

The destruction of their Commander left the merest handful of Core survivors; another ten minutes saw the last Can go down under overwhelming Arm numbers. A smiling High Commander Zax appeared almost immediately after this, and his first few words were completely drowned out by cheers. Jak hardly heard the rest of the short victory speech, either, since he was too busy kissing Susanna-and no quick, tentative brushing of lips this time.

Remembering where he was, he reluctantly pulled away; Susanna's sparkling eyes opened languidly.

"Let's go party," she said.

Epilogue

Lancer literally could not remember the last time he had received a communication from off-planet, either official or personal, but today he had one of each. Count on that mother's son Jak to think of him even now. As with so many of his dealings with the natural born boy, Lancer wasn't sure whether he was more pleased or annoyed. Clones couldn't afford to care-or to be cared about-but Jak hadn't learned that yet and probably wouldn't until he himself had been killed and cloned a few times. As curious as he was to see what excuse Jak had for writing, Lancer knew official communications always took precedence, even off-duty. He opened the one from High Command Research first.

It was not a long message-it didn't need to be-and Lancer understood more from it than it actually said. You are requested to give assistance to a team of scientists in their study of the production facilities of Delta Beta 4. Obviously High Command was interested in the self-aware units, but for reasons of security and safety, they would rather go to the expense of sending people to Delbay than have a Delbay construction unit exported to High Command.

That made sense. Although Lancer was convinced that the Delbay units were as safe as Delbay clones, he considered such a measure a reasonable precaution. After all, the Arm had distrusted thinking machines for some four thousand years. It would be exceptionally difficult to break that habit.

The next item in the message would require some thought, though. You are authorized to command the assistance of any qualified local personnel, including restoration or even duplication as necessary, to further this research project.

That was a tough one. Jak, even if Lancer had counted him necessary to the business, was off-limits, and the new natural born Zipper pilot wouldn't be much help. In light of these high-powered orders, he could make her help him, like it or not, but was it worth it? He didn't have to consider that very long at all. She did what he required already, but grudgingly, and no additional weight of High Command would make much difference there. No, he was pretty sure who it was he needed, but he wasn't certain he was ready to deal with that yet. He shoved the matter into the back of his mind for later consideration and pulled up the letter from Jak. The kid plunged right in, without even a salutation.

I suppose you've gotten a message from Hicom Research by now, he had written, so you can probably guess they didn't find out much from Jasper, which is what Dr. Amide, the project chief, named my Zipper. I guess it's a lot like when scientists were first developing the nano-cloning process, and the clones were perfect in every detail except for life.

Everything was fine until the real Boots showed up a few days ago. I didn't know the new cat wasn't the genuine article, but I'm sure Neda did. It's her cat, after all. And now my mother has to put up with two cats. I'm glad I'm shipping out soon.

A casual mention of Jak's girlfriend Susanna followed, and he had read a couple more sentences before Lancer realized the girl must be S-13962. He tried to picture Jak with Rocko Sue, and he couldn't. Oh, well. At least Sue was a good one, not like that Fido pilot Lancer had been pursuing for a while. That was over. He didn't know why he should be so glad to be free of all encumbrances at the moment, since it wasn't likely to make any difference, but he was.

He filed Jak's letter away in case he should ever want to look at it again-there was no real content to it, but letters from friends were too few to discard casually-and called up the cloning files. Normally he would never be permitted to look at anybody's, including his own, but today he had Hicom authorization. He considered checking out a couple he knew he had no reason to want. That would be unethical as well as unnecessary, though, so he went to the file he had come for.

Tera. Teresa Apodaca. Killed while barely more than twenty in a bombing raid on Empyrrean some two hundred years ago. Lancer wondered if such things still happened or if anybody would tell him if they did, but he supposed it didn't really matter. Except for Jak, he didn't know anybody on Empyrrean.

All of her experience had been in artillery, some mobile, some stationary, and all despised. That wasn't in the file, of course, but Lancer knew how she hated the only work she was qualified for. Officially qualified for, that is. She had taken eagerly to the scientific detective work the colonel had assigned them, and Lancer had to admit she was good at it. Based on purely logical considerations, she was the best person for the job.

Once he satisfied himself that he had no other choice, he jumped to the memory deposit records. If only he could make an argument for going back to a backup, one dated before that last set of disagreements.... After going over everything again and again in his mind, he thought he knew how to do it right, or at least better, if he could do it over. But he couldn't go back to an earlier date without a good reason, and personal convenience wasn't sufficiently compelling. He'd have to take what he got and make the best of it.

When the date of Tera's last memory deposit appeared, Lancer sat up straight in surprise. He knew base personnel made deposits less frequently than field officers, but that would have been more than a month before her death, and-Lancer cross-checked with the date of his most recent restoration-a couple of days before they had even met. His mind fairly seethed with the possibilities. Perhaps if she never knew how horribly she had embarrassed herself at their first meeting, they could get off to a better start altogether. Then, if he didn't make the same mistakes... He punched the directcomm to the cloning lab, and almost immediately got the lab manager. Lancer smiled.

"Good morning," he drawled. "I have a job for you."