TUESDAY, JANUARY 14, 2414
		 HAUSER-02C1 (JISATSU), HAUSER SECTOR
			OUTER RIM TERRITORIES

	I made my way through the spaceport city of Danuu with all my
senses alert for trouble.  Actually, it's fair to say that I always try
to be alert for trouble, but normally that's more of a subconscious
thing; right then, though, I was consciously tuned in to the danger
frequency.
	It wasn't hard to tune into.  In Danuu it hums in the
background like the antimatter throb of a starship's warp engines.
I'm not a squeamish woman - freelance spacers can't afford to be
squeamish - but all the same, I knew I'd be glad when my current
customer took delivery of his shipment and I could get the hell off
this planet.
	Jisatsu had been a Japanese colony once, one of that Earth
nation's farthest-flung colonies from the homeworld; only Ishiyama was
a greater distance from Earth.  Unlike Ishiyama, Jisatsu had
maintained close contact with home base; unlike Ishiyama, Jisatsu had
thus not escaped megacorporate domination.  The shattered ecosystem,
teetering social structure, rampant corporate-government corruption
and endemic crime and violence were the results.  Where Ishiyama's
cities had a unique charm all their own, and its culture was like a
modern high-tech throwback to Meiji-era Japan, Jisatsu was a tangled
wreck of corporate strife, alien hustlers, and gang warfare - a
typical Outer Rim port city, but with the intensity jacked all the way
to the right.
	Even its name is menacing.  On the Galactic Survey charts,
it's just Hauser-02C1, planet 02C1 in the Hauser Sector.  "Jisatsu" is
Japanese for "suicide", and not the honorable kind, either.  It may
not be official, but it's appropriate.  Anyone who runs away to
Jisatsu finds out soon enough that she was better off wherever she
came from.
	So I was alert, but trying not to be ostentatious about it,
moving through the teeming streets with a calm awareness of everything
around me.  I was dressed to avoid attracting attention, in a sturdy
spacer's coverall and boots with a shapeless cape thrown over them, my
long dark hair braided back and hidden by the hood of the cape, my
eyes shadowed behind mirrored flashglasses.  Flash-suppressing optics
are useful for so many things: not only do they they protect your
eyes, they eliminate the need to avoid eye contact on the street by
making it impossible in the first place.
	A few of the more perceptive members of the throng I moved
through realized that I wasn't quite what I seemed.  I could feel
their reactions as their own predatory senses, hyper-alert to anything
out of the ordinary run of the street, registered my own zanshin
awareness.  They could tell that I wasn't a victim.  Most of them
probably took me for a bounty hunter.  None of them bothered to
confront me; none of them were hotheads looking to prove anything.
	That suited me just fine.
	I was on my way to rendezvous with my customer at one of
Danuu's more legitimate (read: less degenerate) eating-and-drinking
establishments.  Unfortunately, the shortest route from the spaceport
complex to the restaurant led through this particularly grungy section
of town.  While looking over the sputtering, half-functional map
terminal at the spaceport, I'd decided that it would be less risky
overall to plunge straight through the heart of darkness rather than
spend twice the time skirting it through areas more than half as
dangerous.
	I spotted the girl several seconds before I consciously
registered her: a pale, rather waifish creature in black rags under an
oversized black army cloak, with a tousle of blue-silver hair,
shivering in the mouth of an alley a half-block ahead.  It was the
hair, I think, that caught my attention, but she was too young.  She
could have been anywhere from a precocious twelve to a late-blooming
sixteen.
	Two men in bottle-green suits, too clean and nicely cut for
their owners to belong to the street, stood near her, one at right
angles, the other - the one doing the talking - in front of her.  Gold
glittered on the talking man's thick fingers as he made an emphatic
gesture.  The girl shook her head; the man repeated the gesture more
vehemently as his companion put a hand on the girl's shoulder.  She
flinched, tried to pull away, then winced as his grip tightened.
	I bit the inside of my cheek even as I gave a sad shake of my
head.  It was a scene all too common in the port cities of the Outer
Rim; runaway kids of all species, running away from gods know what,
into the arms of an "industry" that has to be worse than what most of
them are fleeing.  They turn up on gray-market vids of all
description, on port-city street corners, eventually on the tables of
port-city body banks, whatever organs that might have escaped the
ravages of disease and drugs cut out of what was left of them and sold
to some other sucker.
	When I was that age I was lucky, and I had I an uncontrolled
talent that kicked in whenever I was really threatened, though I had
hated to use it.  The odds had obviously never been in my favor - but
now that I was out of danger, I was left with the depressing thought
that I couldn't save everybody.
	There were days when the bigger problems swallowed all of the
smaller ones - Anthy had told me about her brother's effective death
through overwork, and though I desperately wanted to save every kid I
saw on the street... there was only me here.
	The bigger man gave the fair girl another shove, and my heart
caught in my throat.  I was forcibly reminded of any number of similar
situations I'd barely escaped during my two year stay out here before
the Experts had found me - but she wasn't having any of my luck at
escaping.  Ignoring the pale-haired girl's protestations, the two men
in green herded her into the alley.
	I bit my lip.  It would fix one life... 
	... Screw it.  I'm here, aren't I?
	I broke into a run, elbowing my way through the crowd,
projecting a sense of urgency intense enough that most of the scum
around me didn't need any more encouraging to get out of my way.  It's
a useful trick I learned from my kenjutsu sensei - using the low-level
telepathy I was genetically blessed (or cursed, depending on your
point of view) with to generate this non-directional field of feeling.
That trick has the perk of being nearly invisible to other teeps in
the crowd; if there were any, it wasn't likely they would realize that
I was consciously creating the effect.
	I broke free of the throng, skidded on wet trash in the mouth
of the alley and put a hand against filthy brick to keep myself
upright.  They were gone, already down one of the branching alleys.  I
closed my eyes, steadied my breathing, concentrated.  Center first, or
-you'll- be the one getting hurt, I told myself wryly.  There's no
need to get all overwrought about it and make some kind of damnfool
mistake that gets you both killed.
	I found the bright spark of the girl's fear and followed it,
my gait now a tight, controlled jog, into the alley and down a fork to
the left, the sphere of my awareness ready for anything that might
impinge upon it from any direction.  Just as I was about to turn
another corner, my hands reaching under my cloak for my blade, I was
almost bowled over by a sudden hot wash of rage and terror, stunning
in its unexpected intensity.  It was over almost as soon as it began,
with two bright peaks of fear and pain, then nothing but a quiet
undercurrent of dark satisfaction.
	Heart sinking as I realized what that pattern of forces must
have represented, I turned the corner, prepared to avenge if not
prevent.
	The girl in black noticed me without looking and turned,
flowing like an ink stain across the pool of yellow light cast by the
single feeble lamp set over one building's rear exit.  Her face was
thrown into a stark, black-and-white relief by the glow of a hard blue
bar of light shining from a metal cylinder she held in her right hand.
Her eyes glittered across the ten feet or so separating her from me,
brilliant blood red and glowing with exultation.
	I stopped short, gasping.  What I'd taken for a surge of
resistance from the girl, resulting in her offhanded murder by the men
in green, had been... this?
	With a whisper of cloth and a sputtering hiss, the blue light
was sucked back into its source and disappeared, leaving me blinking
at the sudden dark.  When my eyes readjusted, the girl in black was
still there.  The fierce joy was gone from her red eyes now; she
simply stood, feet apart, watching me watch her, her face so blank I
wondered if I had been imagining that joy.  At her feet lay the
smoking remains of the two men in green suits.  The air in the alley
was thick with the -presence- of her, cool and unruffled, centered,
calm, deadly.
	I remembered the last time I saw that lethal confidence, and
once again it had belonged to a woman with blue-white hair.  Something
inside me made a small noise at the recollection; I filed it away for
later.
	"Anta wa dare?" the pale girl asked, her voice soft and flat.
Japanese, not the local accent.  Who are you?
	I returned my half-drawn sword to its place, took my hands out
of my cloak, and made a formal bow.  I wasn't sure who this girl was,
but it was obvious that she was a martial artist of some kind, and she
was -good-.  And that light - I'd seen its like before, and I knew
that its wielders deserved respect.
	"Anne Cross," I said, "of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu."
	The girl in black returned my bow.  Smiling faintly, she
replied, "I am Rei Ayanami, of the Ancient and Obtenebrated Order of
the Sith."
	My pulse jumped again, and I quelled the spurt of excitement
fast (and the crooked smile I felt tugging at my lips).
	"I know of your order," I said, leaving out the fact that what
I knew of it was not anything particularly -good-.  (Obtenebrated?!)
	Rei nodded, acknowledging the facts both spoken and unspoken.
Then she tilted her head, a faintly inquisitive look crossing her face.
	"You came to help me," she said.
	I nodded.  "Your camouflage was excellent," I told her.  "I
didn't know you were anything but what you seemed."
	"I never thought anyone in -this- city would try to help,"
said Rei with a hint of ruefulness.  She kicked at one of the dead men
lightly with a square-toed boot.  "They aren't the ones I was looking
for anyway," she went on.
	My brows knitted as something touched my awareness; I tensed
as danger approached from somewhere beyond Rei.  A figure melted out
of the darkness of the alley behind her: another, larger man in a
green suit, raising a blaster, his face a mask of rage.  I was already
in motion, my sword in my hands.  I opened my mouth to sound a
warning, but Rei had already felt him - I could see it in her eyes.
Why, then, did she not react?
	A shadow separated from the rest of the shadows further down
the alley, a shadow with two glowing red eyes - and suddenly the
darkness and quiet of the alley were split by a volley of heavy
blasterfire, almost deafening in the confined space.  The short but
furious volley cut the man down where he stood; taken from behind, he
never had any idea what hit him.
	This sudden violence stunned me more than the eradication of
the first two men, because I'd felt -nothing-, had no inkling at all
that the shadow had been there.  I still felt nothing of its presence,
except for the evidence of my eyes.  As it approached, it loomed over
Rei, a spindly, attenuated humanoid figure perhaps two meters high.
Humanoid but not possibly human; it was barrel-chested but oddly
proportioned, its limbs much too thin.
	Then it stepped into the light, which glinted only a little
from its matte-black armor, and I understood.
	"A battle droid," I murmured, understanding now why I hadn't
felt its presence.
	"Of a sort," Rei replied.
	"Objection: Battle droids are simplistic machines lacking both
elegance and initiative," the droid replied in a surprisingly
human-sounding voice.
	"Well, you clearly don't lack for initiative," I observed.
	The droid spun the two heavy blaster pistols it held around
its trigger fingers, then holstered them.
	"Droid efficiency at its best," it - he, with that voice I had
to think of it as a "he" - replied in a tone of great self-satisfaction.
"Request: Permit me to introduce myself.  My designation is HK-47.  I
am a full-service translator, culinary artist, and personal security
droid."
	"Uh... huh.  Interesting combination of functions," I said.
	"Statement: The master finds me very useful."
	"I bet she does."  I turned to Rei.  "Can I ask you
something?" I wondered.
	"Yes," Rei replied.
	"What are you doing here?"
	Rei considered the question for a moment, then replied,
"Later."
	Without waiting for a response, she turned and moved off down
the alley, disappearing.
	I thought about protesting, but then her droid handed me a
card with a cordial gesture before turning and walking off after her.
	Puzzled, I looked at the card.  It contained an address on the
other side of town and a time several hours in the future.
	Boy, I mused to myself, tucking the card into a pocket of my
flightsuit.  I don't know about power-mad and evil, but Sith Knights
sure are a -brusque- bunch.
	I stood looking after the strange twosome for a moment, then
resettled my cloak, turned around, and made my way to the rendezvous,
feeling curiously oppressed and lonesome.


   /*  Big Country  "Your Spirit to Me"  _Driving to Damascus_  */


		     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			       presents

			      Anne Cross

			     Rei Ayanami

		UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
		    -=WARRIORS OF THE OUTER RIM=-

				BLADES

			      featuring
			        Ru-ah
				HK-47
				 and
			       Archie
			     as himself

			 Benjamin D. Hutchins
			   with Anne Cross

		(c) 2004 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


	I considered not going to the rendezvous with the girl in
black.  After meeting my contact, swapping the pickup information for
his shipment for my payment, and making it back to my dropshuttle at
the spaceport without further incident, I considered just boosting
back to the orbital dockyard and the Autumn Heart, locking down the
shuttle and getting the hell away from Jisatsu.  Danuu's palpable
atmosphere of sleaze was making me feel increasingly unclean, and the
cramped, metallic, utilitarian quarters aboard the old Orion-class
dropshuttle didn't help.  I wanted to be back aboard the Heart,
walking barefoot on the grass and feeling like I was outdoors.  There
was nothing stopping me from filing a flight plan and going...
	... but something about the girl who said she was a Sith
Knight made me curious.  For a while, lying in my bunk on the
dropshuttle with an arm draped over my eyes, I tried to analyze my own
motivations.
	They weren't all that hard to analyze.  The girl reminded me
of Ifurita; there was no getting around that.  Had Ifurita ever been a
child, she would have been something like the girl named Rei, except
for her eyes - and if you discounted the color difference, there was a
similarity there, too.  They both knew they were dangerous, not like
other people.
	The difference was that Rei seemed to enjoy it.
	I sighed.  Who was I trying to kid?  Everybody reminded me of
Ifurita in some way or another.  That's what being in love is about
sometimes.
	"I miss you, love," I whispered softly.
	Then I keyed the commset built into the little instrument
panel above my head and hailed my ship.
	"Go ahead, Anne," the voice of Ru-ah came back.  In a sense,
Ru-ah and the Autumn Heart are the same thing.
	"Ru-ah, I'm going back into Danuu," I told her.  "I met
someone when I was on my way to the meet, and I have to do some
followup."
	"A problem?"  Ru-ah's voice was tinged with concern.
	"I don't think so," I replied speculatively, "but it might
turn into one.  If you don't get an uplink from me in two hours,
call... "  I thought for a moment, then finished, "Call the Jedi
Temple on Naboo."
	"Kaitlyn-sensei's brother?" Ru-ah replied, her tone puzzled.
	"Right," I replied.  "Tell him I've crossed paths with someone
who claims to be a Sith Knight, and I might be in trouble.  But only
if you don't get a link from me.  OK?"
	"A Sith - "  She cut herself off, and then she sighed.  "I
understand, I guess.  Be careful."
	"I'll never be anything but, on -this- planet," I replied
ruefully.  "Talk to you soon, Ru-ah.  Out."
	I thumbed the connection closed, thought for a moment, then
got up and left the shuttle again.

	The address on the card the droid had given me turned out to
be a cheap motel on the outskirts, one level up from the coffin stacks
that dotted run-down spaceport cities on human colonies all over known
space.  I made my way through the lobby, trying not to think about the
individual components that made up the place's rich and variegated
stench, my zanshin filling the space around me.
	Two drunken Gran (though the thought is uncomfortably racist,
I sometimes wonder if there's any other kind) got into a bidding war
over the prospective price of two hours with me - never mind that I
wasn't selling - and as I walked away down the main corridor I could
hear it escalate into a fistfight.  It almost made me smile.
	The door to room 124 opened just as I reached it, and there
was that droid again.  Funny, I thought it was black; here under good
light, its armor was a dull orange color.
	"Announcement: Your guest is here, Master," HK-47 said.
	The girl called Rei was sitting in a samurai's modified seiza
on the center of the room's single narrow bed, one foot forward, ready
to spring up at the first sign of danger.  She was naked but for plain
white underclothes, her cloak and rags sprawled on the desk in the
corner, but the gleaming silver cylinder of her lightsaber lay close
at hand, ready to be snatched up in an instant should she need it.  As
I entered, Rei's eyes were closed.  She seemed asleep, but I knew
better.
	Her red eyes opened as the droid closed the door behind me.
She nodded a greeting.
	"I'm sorry," I said, bowing.  "I didn't mean to disturb your
meditation."
	"I've finished," Rei replied, picking up her lightsaber,
rising smoothly to her feet and stepping off the end of the bed.  I
was struck then by how small she was.  She'd looked small on the
street, bundled in those rags and that cloak, shivering with feigned
apprehension, but stripped of all that she was even smaller, short and
very slender.  Fragile-looking.  It was an illusion made more
convincing by the porcelain whiteness of her skin and the delicate,
elfin lines of her face, and had I not seen the hardness in those red
eyes, the feral grace in the way she had moved over those two dead
men, I might have been taken in by it.
	I stood silent as Rei dressed, not in the rags but in garb
that I recognized as the traveling clothes of a Jedi Knight.  Black
monsuke-like tunic and trousers, those same sturdy square-toed boots,
a white inner robe for contrast, and a wide black leather belt - very
familiar, save for the colors.
	Clothed again, Rei turned to me.  "You asked why I'm here,"
she said, "but that isn't really what you want to know."
	I smiled, shrugged.  "One has to start somewhere," I said.
	Rei got back up on the bed and sat down at the head end,
looking thoughtful.  After a moment, I climbed up and sat down
opposite her at the foot end, taking my katana from my belt and laying
it alongside me as she had with her lightsaber, and listened.
	"This planet is the hub of a ring of slavers," Rei told me
flatly.
	I shrugged.  "It's the Outer Rim," I said grimly.  "That's
unfortunately nothing special."
	"Correction: This one is," HK-47 put in.
	"He's right," Rei replied.  "This isn't Hutts dealing in
Twi'lek dancers, or forced labor in Chiizatsu duotronics factories, or
Elasi drug runners.  It's different."  She fixed me with those crimson
eyes and said, "They deal in special interests.  Human children, with
sidelines into a few of the closest humanoid species, gathered mostly
from former Japanese colonies on the Rim."
	I didn't think I liked where this was going, but I had to ask
anyway.  "What... for?"
	"Anything the customer wants," Rei replied, her voice
unnervingly calm.  "Sex.  Biomedical experimentation.  Religious
brainwashing.  Special abilities."
	"Special abilities?"
	"Piloting aptitudes.  Force sensitivity.  Telepathy."
	I rocked a little on the last one; it struck a little too
close to home.
	"Where do you come in?" I wondered.
	She looked speculatively at me for a moment, then shook her
head.  "Not yet.  First I want -you- to tell -me- something."
	"What?"
	"Why did you want to help me?"
	I looked at her with my eyes and peeked out from behind my
mental shields, trying to get a read on her.  Not a surface scan - my
TP rating is only P3, I'm not strong enough to do that even if I
wanted to - but some sense of what she was feeling.  I got nothing
back but a cool undertone, mental static.  She either knew I was
reading her, or she was just very cautious.  I remembered the way
she'd feigned fear in that alley, so effectively that it was all I
could track her by.
	She gazed back at me, patient.
	Without thinking further about it, I told her: "You remind me of
someone I love."
	She absorbed that without any apparent reaction; then her eyes
slowly closed and opened again.
	"So," she said.
	We looked at each other in silence for a moment.
	"I had a friend," she said.  "A latent telepath.  He
disappeared six months ago on Ushitora.  I went looking for him and
found... this."  She spread her hands.  "I'm still trying to find the
core.  The people responsible.  I know they're on this planet, but I
don't know where."
	Rei looked out the window at the ugly dead-video light of the
city's nightglow.  "I thought to find my way into their system through
the feeder loop - be taken by their street sweepers as a likely
candidate - but there's too much small-scale vice on this planet.
I'll spend all my time killing unconnected local operators like those
three men tonight."  She gave a little, exasperated sigh, the first
real show of emotion I'd seen from her.  "I have to re-think my
strategy," she admitted, turning to face me again.
	Before I could respond, HK-47 interrupted.
	"Reminder: It's time for dinner, master," he said.
	Rei smiled a little.  "All right, HK-47," she said, standing
and stepping lightly off the end of the bed.
	I felt my crooked grin tugging at my mouth again.  "Your droid
reminds you of mealtimes?"
	"HK-47 worries if I don't eat regularly," she replied,
shrugging into her black overcloak.  "He thinks I'm too thin."
	"Statement: Organic meatbags require regular nourishment to
maintain what passes for their optimum efficiency," said HK-47
didactically.
	I raised an eyebrow.  "'Organic meatbags'?"
	Rei shrugged.  "I'm not sure where he picked that up," she
said.  "It's hard-coded into his programming."  Her lightsaber
disappeared somewhere under all that dark fabric.  "You can come along
if you want," she said.
	I wondered if it was only curiosity that led me to follow her.
We went out the back, into another of Danuu's innumerable identical
alleys.  HK-47's restless optics scanned the alley automatically.
	"Query: Are you going to eat the local food again, master?" he
asked.  With a trace of plaintiveness in his synthetic voice, he went
on, "I do wish you had selected temporary headquarters with a kitchen.
I hate to think what the local meatbags' cooking is doing to your
delicate fuel systems."
	"I'm fine, HK-47," Rei said, with the quiet resignation of
someone who has had this conversation many times.  "Watch mode."
	HK-47 stopped just short of sighing as he responded with a
hint of a grumble, "Acknowledgement."
	He scanned the alley once more, side to side, then look up.
His armored skin turned a deep matte black so suddenly that, for a
moment, it was as though he had disappeared.  Then, without a sound,
he jumped straight up, vanishing into the night.
	I looked a question at Rei.  "He'll be nearby," she said.
	"Ah," I said, doing my best to look like I saw that kind of
thing every day.
	We walked through the streets of Danuu.  I admired the way Rei
glided through the crowd.  I made my way with decent grace, avoiding
the oblivious types and gaining a bit of ground from the more
perceptive ones with the no-nonsense read they got from me, but Rei
passed through as though the rest of them weren't even there.  They
parted around her like a river around a rock.  In the three blocks
from the motel to the restaurant she picked, she was never bumped or
jostled, never had to sidestep, never got the glare from a youngblood
with an agenda.  She was going where she was going, and everybody else
had better just get out of the way.
	We sat in the back booth of a surprisingly clean shyamata, and
I was in a contemplative enough mood to wonder how it was that the
middle-aged Salusian proprietor had found himself running a noodle
shop on this godsforsaken rock, and what he thought about it.  I
wasn't feeling contemplative enough to ask, though.  We ordered and
ate in silence.  It's hard to have a conversation when you're sucking
up wide, flat noodles from a hot metal pan with the aid of a utensil
that looks disturbingly like an oil filter wrench, anyway.
	After the pans were cleared away and the traditional
after-dinner cups of trokai arrived, Rei looked at me over the rim of
her cup for a moment.  I was still keeping my almost-subconscious
watch on her, psionically, watching to be sure I didn't make a
misstep.  (She wasn't what I'd expected a Sith Knight to be, but I'd
heard enough about them that I certainly didn't want to annoy one.)  I
could feel her gathering her thoughts; then she looked away, busying
herself with a sip of trokai.
	I didn't push.
	We finished up, paid and left the shop.  Not knowing what else
to do, I kept following Rei.  As I walked along behind her, I
concentrated on making my promised link with Ru-ah.
	The intricately carved wooden ornament that enclosed the top
of my braid quivered softly, nestled against the base of my skull, and
Ru-ah's consciousness brushed mine.
	[All clear?] she asked.
	<So far.  I'll check in again in two hours,> I replied, and
broke the link.
	I felt the subtle wrongness at about the same time Rei did;
the slight pause in my step coincided almost exactly with hers.  It
was only for a fraction of a second; then she continued on, not
looking back.  At the next alley, she broke smoothly away from the
crowd on the sidewalk and went in.  It wasn't where we had come from.
I followed, wary.
	This alley was a bit wider than most; the building on our left
had a loading dock, which accounted for that.  It didn't look like
anything had been loaded or unloaded at that dock for quite some
time.  Too much garbage piled up in front of it for a truck to get in
there now, anyway.
	They appeared almost as silently as HK-47, but we both felt
them coming.  I turned to face the way we had come, watching them
dropping down from the fire escapes and entering from the street.  My
back touched Rei's, the span of her shoulders a few inches below mine.
The reaction was smooth, instinctive, and right in a way I can't
really describe.  We knew they were coming and we were ready for them - 
together.  It was just that simple.
	I was looking at sixteen black man-shapes, but really
humanoid, nothing like HK-47.  Each had one glowing red optic, but
they were offset: monocular battle visors.  Each had a weapon in his
right hand.  As they advanced, a dull hum filled the alley,
overshadowing the sputtering buzz of the fluorescent light above the
abandoned loading dock.  Vibroblades.  Considerate of them.  That much
gunfire or blaster fire would bring the police, even in this town.
	One of them came in from the right, but I was already moving.
Kurenaikaze, my katana, glided out of its saya like oil over glass.  I
half-knelt under the humming arc of a vibroblade and came up beyond
it, driving the strike with my legs and hips more than my arms.  There
was a solid sliding impact, and I knew without looking that that one
wouldn't be a factor any more.  I scratched him off my mental list and
kept moving.  There's an Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu kata that goes rather
like that battle, though it has a more picturesque and poetic name
than "Sixteen Thugs in a Filthy Alley".  As I flowed with the rhythm
of the fight, I could almost hear Kaitlyn-sensei chanting the count.
Ichi, ni, san, shi...
	... juuroku.
	I turned, blade lowered but ready, to see how Rei was making
out.
	For a moment I couldn't see her; another wave of them had
flowed into that end of the battlefield from one of the converging
alleys and encircled her.  I started toward them, but suddenly the hum
of her lightsaber was joined by what sounded like the snapping hiss of
a second saber igniting, and they all sprang back.  She came into view
with her robes snapping around her, just finishing a spin.  She held
the twin to the lightsaber I'd seen earlier in her left hand, the two
blades lighting the circle she'd just drawn around herself like a pair
of torches.
	That gleaming light was back in her eyes again as she feinted
first one way, then another, driving the blacksuited men back by turns
as they sought to approach her from one angle or another.  The sheer
confidence in her sliding steps as she moved dared them to try her;
she was the master of this tableau and everybody knew it.  To
interfere would have been an insult to her.  I swept Kurenaikaze
clean, sheathed it, and leaned up against a wall to watch the rest of
the show.
	One of them did try her, singly, from behind.  Without
looking, she reversed the blade in her right hand and drove it back,
punching a hole in her own cloak and coring out her attacker's heart.
When she pulled it free, turning the movement of her arm into a turn
of her entire body, she did a very strange thing: keeping the
right-hand saber reversed, she brought its butt together with the butt
of the one in her left hand.  There was a sharp click as they locked
together.
	A moment passed, elongated by my own fascination.
	Then Rei Ayanami exploded into motion, her attack pattern
shifting from sword to staff technique in the space of a heartbeat,
and the men in black died.
	She finished up on one knee, saber-staff extended to either
side, as though offering it to me.  She looked up, a bead of sweat
dripping from the end of her nose, and met my eyes.
	What else could I do?  I stood up and bowed deep, one warrior
to another.  She rose, separated the sabers, and made them disappear
with a sweep of her arms, then put her hands together and saluted me
in turn.
	She surveyed what remained of my own opponents and nodded in
satisfaction.
	"You really -are- of the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu," she said.
	"You really -are- a Knight of the Sith," I replied.
	She smiled.  So did I.

	"Change of plans," Rei said as we merged back into the stream
of foot traffic on the main drag.  "No point in going back to the
motel; they'll have it staked out.  Do you have anywhere we can go?"
	I smiled.  "Somewhere they'll never reach us," I told her.
"How will you let HK-47 know where we're headed?"
	"He'll know."
	"By the way, where was he during all of that?"
	"Watching," Rei replied.  "We didn't need him."
	I supposed I couldn't argue with that.

	I smiled to myself as the lift stopped, partly in anticipation
of being back in my favorite place and partly because visitors'
reactions to the Autumn Heart's living deck, after the grungy utility
of the hangar deck, is always a pleasure to watch.
	The Autumn Heart's living deck is one large open space, about
a third of a mile square, built to be a very convincing imitation of a
nice patch of Jyurai.  Most of it is grassy land criscrossed with
footpaths.  There's a ridge running through the middle with a pond to
one side.  The sky is part holographic projection and part clever
light-manipulation, with the light from Jisatsu's sun standing in for
Jyurai's.  When there's no sun close enough to stand in, the system
improvises.  The walls are mocked up to seem like thirty-foot cliffs.
If you climbed to the top you'd find the projection equipment for the
holographic sky.
	The lift is located at the center of what the false sun's
movements shows is the south wall (it's actually aft), its metal doors
hidden from outside view by a shallow cave.  One of the footpaths
leads to the cave; others go to the captain's quarters (a cottage on
the far side of the pond), the little cluster of guest houses to the
east, the grove, the pond and the dojo, which stands opposite the
guest houses on the west side of the pond.
	The doors opened and sunlight glowed from the mouth of the
cave.  I stepped out and beckoned to my guests.
	Rei emerged into the light, and I got my first really good
look at her.  You can stare at a person for hours under the yellowish
artificial light of a nighttime city like Danuu and never really know
what she looks like, but sunlight, even filtered through the Autumn
Heart's environmental control system, reveals the truth.
	Her skin was white, not just pale but -white-.  Her eyes, seen
in natural light, were an even more startling shade of crimson than
I'd expected, bright and clear, like fresh blood viewed through a
diamond.  Her hair was just the color I thought it would be, and it
wasn't an affectation.  As the light breeze blowing through the
compartment ruffled it, I could see all the way to the roots.
	She looked around at the cavernous space, the azure
holographic sky, the breeze-blown grass, the pond, and all, and a
smile came to her face.  Not her mouth - her whole face.  It's hard to
describe.  The corners of her mouth moved no further than they had for
her ironic little grin in that blood-soaked alley on Jisatsu, but
everything about this smile was -different-.  It was a bright, sharp,
washed-clean kind of smile, as though she were seeing something dear
that she hadn't seen for a long time.
	If she'd been hunting the dealers in special children through
cesspools like Danuu for six months, she probably hadn't.
	HK-47 didn't look any different.  He also didn't look
impressed, but then, his faceplate had no expressions.  It was
permanently sculpted in a sort of slant-eyed gas-mask glower.
	Rei turned to me.  "It's wonderful," she said.
	"Thank you," I said.  I knelt down and unlaced my right boot.
"Would you mind taking off your shoes?  The grass doesn't like them."
	She took hers off without comment, putting them neatly next to
each other in the little shoehouse standing next to the cave mouth.  I
put mine next to hers.
	"This way," I said, leading her across the meadow toward the
guest quarters across the way.  Halfway there, I wondered if HK-47's
feet were going to harm the grass, so I let myself drop back a bit and
watched him walk.  I shouldn't have worried.  His tread was so sure
and careful he was hardly bending the blades; he didn't even leave
footprints.  I wondered yet again what he was.  I'd never seen a droid
like him.
	I showed Rei one of the guest cottages and told her to make
herself comfortable while I went to the bridge and took care of some
business.
	She nodded and asked, "Is there somewhere I can take a bath?"
	I pointed toward the back.  "Oh, sure.  There's a tub and
shower in there, towels, robes, all that."
	"Do you let clean people swim in your pond?"
	There's a question I don't get asked very often.
	"Uh... sure, as long as you don't mind sharing it with the
fish," I said.
	"I don't mind."
	"Well, then, enjoy.  I'll be back in about half an hour."
	She nodded, thanked me again.  I went across the meadow, past
the pond, to the cottage that made up my own quarters.  There, I
washed my face, hung up my cloak, and switched swords.  I don't
usually carry Kurenaikaze aboard ship; although the living deck is
spacious (big enough to put a small town in), some of the ship's more
businesslike spaces are too small for a katana.  I hung Kurenaikaze in
its place above my bed, took down its companion Kurenaishio, and put
that through my belt instead.  Then I went back to the lift and down
to the bridge.
	Ru-ah was waiting for me there.  Well, technically, Ru-ah's
-always- there; she's the tree growing out of the bridge floor at the
center of the room.  She has a humanoid persona she projects when
dealing with people, though.  In that form, she's a woman of about
my age, neither slender nor stocky, with cafe-au-lait skin and auburn
hair like glowing embers.  She has deep dark green eyes and a fondness
for jumpsuits that match them, and no need for pockets, since she's a
hologram.
	She was standing next to the captain's chair, a pensive look
on her face.  I took Kurenaishio out of my belt, stood it in the
little slot for it next to the seat, sat down and asked, "What's the
matter?"
	"I'm not sure bringing that girl aboard was a good idea," she
said.  "When you told me who she was, I did some research.  If she's
what she says she is, she's dangerous."
	I laughed.  "Ru-ah, I -know- she's dangerous.  An hour ago she
killed somewhere between fifteen and twenty battle cyborgs."
	"That's not what I mean.  We know what the Sith were.  If she's
really one of them, she's... well, -evil-."
	I shook my head.  "I guess we don't know everything we think
we know about the Sith," I said, "because there's no way that girl is
evil."
	"I'm not so sure," Ru-ah said skeptically.
	"I am," I replied flatly.  We stared at each other for a
moment, and I watched her realize that this was going to be one of the
Jyuraian cultural assumptions I was not going to buy into.
	This time, she had the grace to realize that I wasn't planning
to discuss it further, and rather than pushing, which she does
occasionally and which is annoying, or sulking, which would have been
worse, she changed topics.
	"Fine.  What's this about twenty battle cyborgs in an alley?"
	I told her about the fight, and then what Rei had told me
about her quest.  We'd discussed the attack on the way up and
concluded that it was probably a -good- thing.  Just by being in town
and looking around, we'd made somebody nervous enough to reveal to us
that we were on the right track.  Without it we might have gone on
floundering about for some time.  Now we had something to focus on.
	Ru-ah took that in without comment, then said, "Where do you
come in?"
	"Telepaths, Ru-ah.  Do I have to spell it for you?"  She
looked hurt; I sighed.  "I'm sorry, Ru-ah.  I guess I'm still a little
touchy from the last thing, and still a little wound up from the
fight.  I don't mean to take it out on you.  But these... people...
are dealing in unawakened or newly-awakened telepaths like some people
deal in black-market audiovisual equipment.  I may not be with the
Experts of Justice, but I can't just ignore that."  I touched the grip
of Kurenaishio at my side.  "I'm a samurai.  I'm an Ash Knight.  I'm
supposed to protect the weak."
	"I thought samurai were supposed to protect their overlords,"
Ru-ah said with a mischievous grin.  We've had this conversation
before, but she always pretends it's the first time we've ever
discussed it.
	And like always, I played along.  "Gryphon-sensei says the
Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu's overlord is justice.  He's the O-sensei;
what he says goes."
	"So he's the boss of you, then, O hard-ass space warrior?
This guy that you see, what, twice a year, he's the boss of you?"
	"No," I replied, "he's not the boss of me.  He's the boss of
Kaitlyn-sensei, and -she's- the boss of me."
	"And you're the boss of me," Ru-ah said, "so I guess I'd
better quit bitching, right?"
	"Right," I said with a firm nod.
	We always get about that far before we crack up giggling.
	"Anyway," I said when I could talk again, "you're right that I
don't know much about Rei.  Will it make you feel less worried if I -
wait, what time is it in Theed?"
	Ru-ah looked thoughtful, which is her mannerism for when she's
looking something up.  "Oh-nine-fifty-four," she replied.
	"Great.  Can you get me the Jedi Temple on Naboo?  If Len's
not out of bed by now he deserves to be rousted by a phone call.  And
he may know something we don't."
	"Right away," said Ru-ah, sounding happier.  She stepped out
of my field of view, taking up her station to the right of my seat; a
moment later, a six-by-four holofield popped up in the viewer area,
and the face of a girl I didn't recognize filled it.
	"Hello," she said.  "You've reached the Jedi Temple of Naboo.
My name is Eirtae, how can I help you?"
	"Hello," I said.  "I'm Anne Cross.  Is Leonard Hutchins
around?"
	"Master Len is with a student at the moment.  Do you need him
right away, or can I have him call you back?"
	"I'd rather talk to someone now, if it's not too much
trouble."
	She nodded.  "Wait a moment, I'll get him."  The screen
shifted to a "PLEASE WAIT" pattern.  I timed my pulse; assuming I was
at my usual resting rate, it took twenty-four seconds for the face of
Len Hutchins to pop up, slightly flushed and sweaty.
	"Hi, Anne," he said, scrubbing at his thick shag of dusty-red
hair with a towel.  "What's up?"
	"'Master Len'?" I said.
	"I have a Padawan," he said, shrugging.  "Didn't really set
out to find one, but you know how it is."
	I nodded.  "I know.  Who's the girl you've got playing
receptionist for you?"
	"Huh?  Oh, that's Eirtae.  She's actually one of the Queen's
handmaidens.  She answers the phone like that when she's here, out of
habit.  Usually we just say 'hello'."
	"Oh.  Why's she at the Temple?"
	"Attending the Queen, of course," Len replied as though it had
been a stupid question.
	I played along.  "What's the Queen doing at the Temple?"
	"What does one do at a Jedi Temple?" he replied.
	"Sit seiza a lot," I replied.  "Reflect.  Contemplate.
Sweat."
	He grinned at me.  "You see?  You didn't need to ask."
	"Are you telling me the Queen of Naboo is your Padawan?"
	"Well... "  He looked around, as if making sure he was alone,
then leaned closer to the pickup and said, "Listen, I won't lie to
you, but this is a big secret, OK?  If her cabinet ministers and such
find out what she's really doing up here, they'll have a -cow-.  They
think she's just doing conditioning exercises and like that."
	"Well," I said, impressed.  "She'll be one well-protected
royal by the time you're finished."
	He winked.  "By the time she's finished with the training, her
term will have expired.  She's looking at the long term, beyond the
throne.  Anyway, what can I do for you?"
	"Does Rianna Santova have a student?"
	"Uh, no... why do you ask?"
	"In that case, what do you know about a modern revival of the
Order of the Sith?"
	He frowned, but it wasn't a "bad things" frown, at least not
entirely.  "There are three that I know of," he said.  "One's a bunch
of idiots out in the Spinward Marches, beyond the ORTs, who think
they're badasses because they found a copy of the Scrolls of the Seven
Spheres and got a few of the Rites of Darkness to work.  They're
dangerous, because a couple of them have real talent and not one of
them has the faintest idea what they're playing with."
	"Not what I'm looking for," I said.
        He nodded.  "The second one's similar, but they have more of a
handle on things.  Their leader used to be the Federation Senator from
Naboo, Eidun Palpatine."
        "This is the one responsible for the mess on Naboo?  The one I
came and picked up Corwin - and Ifurita - after?"
        "Right," Len said.  "He calls himself Darth Sidious now.
Claims his teachings are on a direct line from one of the last two
Dark Lords of the Santovasku era - Rianna's grandfather, Quevas XIII,
the last Emperor of Santovasku."  He looked rueful.  "You saw me just
after I crossed blades with one of his students a year or so back.  It
still hurts when it rains."
        It was a figure of speech - Len's a Detian, a genetically-
modified immortal, so he can regenerate completely from wounds that
would kill a horse - but given that he'd been in a coma just before I
came to pick up Corwin, I knew how badly he'd gotten hurt.
        I thought about it, shook my head again.  "I don't think I'm
dealing with that either," I said.
	He looked interested.  "The only other one's the real thing,"
he said.  "The Ancient and Obtenebrated Order of the Sith.  Rianna's
part of that, if she's part of any group at all."
	"She has a more legitimate claim than Palpatine?" I wondered.
	"You could say that.  Her mother is Kahm Santova, Quevas
XIII's daughter.  She learned the trade from her father's
contemporary - Darth Vader.  As far as the Order's claim to
legitimacy, well... "  Len scratched at the back of his neck and
grinned.  "There -is- the little matter of it being led by Vader
himself."
	I stared at him and felt Ru-ah tense behind me.  "Vader's
ALIVE?!  He was born three -thousand- years ago, Len!  How the hell'd
he manage that?  He's not Santovasku royalty like Rianna's
mother... ?"
	Len shook his head.  "No, he's human.  He spent most of the
intervening years in hibernation.  Came back during the Civil War and
helped us out against Darth Sidious in the, ahem, aforementioned
incident.  We couldn't have saved Naboo without him."
	"He -helped- you?"
	"Yeah.  It's hard to explain - I'm not sure I really
understand it myself - but he says he's working on an... I guess the
best way to say it is an -evolution- of the Sith philosophy.  Light
and Dark in harmony, something like that.  You'd probably grasp it
better than I can, being a full samurai.  Yin and yang, light can't
exist without darkness to define it - you know, like that.  I dunno, I
have to reach all the way back to my training with Dad for that; my
Jedi training has kind of blurred it for me.
	"Anyway, he's got it together, I'll give him that.  Darkness
is his friend in a way I can't even begin to imagine, but he's stone
cold sane, and his moral compass is on 'green'.  I've trusted him with
my life, and would again.  He stays here off and on, but mostly he
wanders the Rim, righting wrongs, seeking deeper truths, scaring the
bejeezus out of people."
	Something clicked in the back of my head.  "Does he have a
student?"
	"Yeah, he does," Len replied.  "A girl named Rei.  I don't
know her full story - Dad could tell you.  She's tied into one of his
old cases somehow."
	"Is she an albino?"
	"Rei?  Sort of.  She's pale and her hair's kind of silvery-blue, 
but her eyes aren't pink like an albino's, they're red.  -Very- red.
Like blood through a diamond."
	The exact same thought I'd had.  Eerie.
	"Why, have you seen her?" Len asked.
	"She's with me now," I said.  "We're... involved in
something."
	"Something you need backup for?" he asked, his face serious.
	"I don't think so," I replied.  "If it turns out we do, I'll
call."
	"Do that," he replied.  From some guys, I bristle at that kind
of stuff - it's patronizing, protective, girls-shouldn't-be-on-their-
own-they-might-get-hurt stuff.  From Len, it's just an offer from a
Jedi Knight to watch his sister's back.  I'm not really his sister -
not biologically, anyway - but Kaitlyn-sensei is, and she adopted me
when she took me on as her student, and that was that.  Len understands 
about blood - that it counts for something, but not everything.
	"I will," I promised.  "I just wanted to check and see if you
knew who I'd run into.  It's not every day you meet a little girl who
says she's a Sith Knight and handles a lightsaber like she means it."
	Len grinned.  "Rei's no little girl, Anne."
	"What do you mean?" I asked.  "I mean, I know she's mature for
her age, and she can handle herself, but - "
	"Ask her about it," Len said.  "If she answers, congratulate
yourself.  She only tells the story to special people, and she
wouldn't want me telling it for her."
	I nodded.  "OK."
	"Anything else you need?"
	"No, not right now," I said.  "Take care.  Say hello to
everyone for me."
	"I will," he replied.  "When are you coming to see us?  We've
got the Temple almost completely restored.  It looks great, if I do
say so myself."
	"Maybe when we're done here," I said.  "I don't have another
job lined up, so if I don't eat up all my savings handling this, I'll
have some time.  And an original Jedi Temple with Jedi living in it is 
bound to be interesting."
	"Great," said Len.  His grin flickered off again as he said,
"You be careful."
	"You too," I told him.  "You've been in that temple less than
two years, your Padawan must be just getting to the Extremely
Dangerous stage... "
	The grin came back.  Good.  I didn't want to end the call on a
somber note.  "You can say that again," he said.  "Talk to you later."
	"Later," I said, and the call ended.
	I turned to Ru-ah.  "Satisfied?" I asked.
	"For now," she replied thoughtfully.  I could still feel her
concern, but it was much less overpowering than it had been, and like
most people, it takes her a while to get used to a new idea.
	I sat back in my seat and thought for a minute.
	"Ru-ah?" I said.
	"Yes?" she replied, moving back to stand in front of me.
	"Download from Master Key," I said.
	She nodded, closed her dark green eyes.  I closed mine and
concentrated, deepening my breathing, searching my memories of the
fight for the clearest image I could get of one of the cyborg
attackers.
	There.  Right in front of me, his blade back, preparing for a
punch strike, illuminated quite nicely by a flare of light from Rei's
saber striking something behind me.  A half-second later I'd parried
his thrust and taken his arm off at the elbow.
	Perfect.
	The Master Key vibrated softly; I held the image as Ru-ah read
it out.
	When I opened my eyes, it was on a holofield in the viewing
area, life size.
	She looked him over.  "Nasty-looking, isn't he," she observed.
	"Do me a favor," I said, "and run that by JIIS, see what they
make of his gear.  If you can get in touch with Vision, show it to
her, too.  Maybe the Experts of Justice have something on it."
	"I'll get right on it," Ru-ah replied.

	When I got back to the living deck, the "afternoon" shadows
were lenghthening and the breeze picking up in anticipation of
evening.  Rei was in the pond, not swimming, just soaking, near the
big rock in the middle.  She raised a hand out of the water in
greeting as I topped the little knoll near the pond; I waved back, sat
down, and turned my attention to the tableau in front of me.
	HK-47 was standing near the edge of the pond, looking down
at a black and white cat which sat a few feet away from him.  The cat
looked back with unimpressed green eyes.  I watched them for several
minutes; they didn't change positions.
	"They've been that way for twenty minutes," Rei called to me.
"I don't think they know what to make of each other."
	I smiled.  Guardians, sizing each other up, neither planning
to make the first move.
	"It's all right, Archie," I said.  "This is HK-47.  He's
Rei's friend."
	"HK-47," said the cat.  "Rei?"
	"Yes," I said.  "Rei is my friend.  She's the one in the
pond."
	Archie cocked his head, thinking that over.
	"HK-47," he repeated, sounding satisfied.
	HK-47 looked toward the pond; Rei nodded.
	Then I got the latest in today's series of surprises, as HK-47
dropped smoothly to one knee, reached out, and petted Archie's head.
Archie, who plays tough but is really just fishing for attention,
almost immediately rolled over on his back and demanded a tummy-rub.
HK-47 dutifully administered one, with all the same smooth and
unhesitating competence with which he'd gunned a man down earlier in
the day.
	"Query: You're a good miniature organic, aren't you?" he
inquired rhetorically, then answered himself: "Yes you are.  Yes you
are."
	I smiled and let myself fall onto my back, hands behind my
head, looking up at the holographic sky.
	"Nightfall" came, and the false sky over the living deck
slowly darkened to a deep purple.  Stars began to pop out, mimicking
the positions they would have had when seen from Jyurai's capital at
this time of year.  The Jyuraians love their world so much that they
build their ships to make them feel as though they've never left.  I
sometimes tried to imagine what it would feel like to love Orron IV
that much.  I'm a fairly imaginative person, but I never could.
	Rei came up from the pond wrapped in one of the white guest
robes, her hair dripping water onto her shoulders, and sat down a
respectful distance away.  She drew her knees up, folded her arms over
them and rested her chin on her forearms, and looked through the grove
at the purpling mock horizon.  I looked up at the stars and wondered
which ones of them were shining on my friends around the galaxy.
	It had been good to talk to Leonard again.  When this was all
done, I really would have to take him up on his invitation.  I
wondered if he'd realized yet that his Hyelian Jedi partner was ears
over heels in love with him, smiled, figured probably not.  He could
hear a piece of silk fall to a carpeted floor, but the messages Emmy
Kyn'o'bi kept sending him were on a frequency outside his reception
band.  I had to smile, but at the same time it was kind of sad.
	Fortunately, he's immortal and she'll live for at least a
thousand years, so they've got time to work it out.
	I sighed, already seeing where -that- line of thought was
going to lead me.
	"Did you check me out?" Rei asked softly, jolting me out of my
mental rut.  I wondered for a second what exactly she was talking
about, felt my face get hot as I momentarily thought she was talking
about the pond, then felt silly when I realized she was talking about
my call to Leonard.
	"Yes," I replied truthfully.
	"Good," Rei said.
	"Do you want to use my commset to check me out?" I asked.
	"I don't need to check you out," she replied.
	"Why not?"
	"I saw you fight.  Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, just as you said.
You couldn't have learned that form unless you were the kind of person
I can trust."
	I hitched up on an elbow and looked at her.  "Leonard said you
know his father."
	She nodded.  "He saved me."
	"From what?"
	"My makers," she replied, confusing the hell out of me.  Then,
realizing that she must have done so, she went on calmly, "I'm an
engineered life form.  I was created by a biotechnology company on a
planet called Yamaki.  The company was a front for the terrorist group
called Big Fire.  They had samples of Detian blood and wanted to
reverse engineer Omega-2 - the Forever Virus.  I was... test
equipment.  They made me out of an averaging-together of the two
samples they had, trying to identify the common strings that would
give them Omega-2."
	I swallowed.  I thought the prospect of being experimented on
by the Psi Corps was so damn horrifying?  If this girl was telling me
the truth - and everything I had to judge with told me she was - she'd
been -born- to be experimented on, by people worse than the Corps, if
such a thing is possible.
	"I'm sorry," I said.  "I shouldn't have asked."
	"It's all right," she replied.  "It doesn't hurt me any more,
but I'll stop if it bothers you.  Do you want to know the rest?"
	"I...  Yes.  If you want to tell me, yes."
	She nodded.  "I was defective," she said.  "How old do you
think I am?"
	I averaged out my earlier guesses.  "Fourteen or so."
	She smiled sadly.  "Try thirty-five.  Even that's a bit
inaccurate, since I was decanted in 2381, just as I am now.  The part
of the Detian code that makes me immortal is... stuck.  It's called
Edgerton's Syndrome.  Normal Detians stop aging at whatever age
they're treated with the virus.  Second-and-subsequent-generation
Detians do it when they've hit their full growth, and can age back and
forth within their adult span from there.  But not me.  In a way
you're right - I am fourteen.  I was born fourteen.  Someday, when I
get particularly careless, I'll die fourteen."
	I couldn't think of anything to say.
	"My makers were disappointed," she said.  "They ran their
tests, shook their heads.  I was too expensive to throw away, so they
put me in storage in case they thought of something else to try, and
moved on to Prototype Number One."
	One?  Oh, of course.  Scientists.  They'd start numbering
at...
	... Zero.
	Rei.
	I closed my eyes, teeth clenched.  The rage boiled inside me
at the offhanded, sneering dismissal that must have been in some
terrorist researcher's heart as he gave her that name.  I caught
myself and breathed through my nose, forcing the coiled anger to
unwind.
	"Gryphon came to Yamaki in 2395 and stumbled across Big Fire's
local operations," Rei went on.  "It was the first big case for the
Experts of Justice.  They blew the whole thing open, eradicated Big
Fire's presence on the planet, wrecked all the schemes they had
cooking there... and rescued me.
	"I wasn't much of a person then," she said matter-of-factly.
"All I knew was that I had been made for a purpose and failed in that
purpose.  I was defective equipment.  Prototype Zero.  Less than
nothing.  Gryphon-sensei took me in.  He and his family - Kei, Yuri,
MegaZone, Martin and Eiko Rose - they loved me when I did not even
love myself.  I studied the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu under him,
alongside his own children.  Leonard was five, Kaitlyn seven.  Do you
know Kaitlyn?"
	I nodded.  "She is my sensei," I said.
	Rei smiled.  "So," she said.  "She taught me something, too.
At half my effective age she was already wiser than I.  One day she
told me that if I stayed, it would be a mistake.  That the way of
Katsujinkenryuu was close to my soul, but there was another path out
there which would match it perfectly, if I only dared to seek it out.
I left after five years to do just that."
	I looked over at her, smiling.  I knew about Kaitlyn-sensei's
out-of-the-blue bursts of wisdom, and about daring to seek the path of
truth and how hard it could be.  How much harder if I had been
surrounded by love instead of indifference and sinister, manipulative
intentions?
	"It took you a long time to find it," I said.  "Leonard told
me that Lord Vader only returned to this life last year."
	She nodded.  "I have been with him fourteen months."
	"You've come far in such a short time.  What you did in that
alley... it was incredible."
	"It looked better than it was," she said, then admitted,
"Those cyborgs were strong, but slow and stupid.  There was no need to
use the second saber, to be so acrobatic about destroying them.  I
was... showing off."
	I shrugged.  "We all like to show off for our friends once in
a while," I said.
	She glanced at me sharply, as though surprised by my choice of
words; then I saw her shoulders relax a little, and that private
little smile came back to her face.  "I suppose we do," she said.
	"Where's your master now?" I wondered.
	"I'm being tested," she replied.  "When Shinji disappeared,
Lord Vader told me that if I could track the evil that had taken him
to its source, master my fear, channel my anger, and destroy them
without being taken by the Dark Side... he will have nothing more to
teach me."
	"... And if you can't... ?" I asked, wondering if I really
wanted to know.
	She gazed at the pond's glassy surface in the starlight and
replied calmly, "I've tracked the evil to Jisatsu; they will not
escape me.  What remain are the fear and the rage.  If I fail to
master my fear, I will merely falter at the wrong moment and die.  If
I am unable to control the hatred and rage I feel for the people who
would do such evil, the Dark Side will overcome me, and I will go
hopelessly, irretrievably mad, becoming a creature of evil myself."
She looked up, her gaze locking with mine.
	"If that happens," she said, "you will kill me."
	I looked back at her, absolutely lost for words.
	"I'm sorry.  I'm disturbing you," she said, and made to get
up.  "I'll go."
	"No, it's all right," I said hastily.  "I was just...shocked.  
Stay if you want to."
	She paused, then sat down again, a little nearer.  She looked
at something nearby and smiled.  I followed the line of her eyes and
saw HK-47, still kneeling in exactly the same position, waiting
patiently as Archie stalked imperiously up one of his arms and down
the other, then back up.  The cat perched on his head, using the
vantage point to get a better look at the territory.  Rei chuckled.
	"I don't know why HK-47 likes animals," she said.
	"I know why Archie likes HK-47," I replied, grinning.  "He's
a sucker for an old-fashioned tummy rub.  Actually, it is a bit odd
that they've hit it off.  Archie doesn't tend to like droids.  They
bother him."
	"HK-47 is a... special droid," Rei said.  "Big Fire had him,
too, in a different wing of the same lab, but I don't think they made
him.  I think they found him somewhere and were studying him, trying
to replicate him.  His armor is a unique alloy and he has self-repair
systems beyond anything I've ever seen in a conventional droid.
Whatever he's made of, the secret died with his makers... whoever they
were."
	I studied the dark shape of the droid, all I could see of him
in the starlight, with the white splashes of Archie's paws and chest
visible above the gleaming scarlet optics, and wondered what was going
on inside that metal skull.  I still got no read on him at all - there
was only Archie over there.  Psychically, everything else was empty
space.  He acted so lifelike, I couldn't quite accept the idea that he
was just a machine.
	"You're a telepath," Rei said, startling me out of my reverie.
	"Uh... yes," I told her.
	She smiled.  "You've been scanning me since we met," she
said.  "I'm not one myself, but the talent creates ripples in the
Force."
	"I'm sorry," I said, feeling my face grow hot again.  "I don't
mean to intrude - hell, I'm not -strong- enough to intrude - I've only
been reading your surface feelings.  I wanted to make certain I
wouldn't say or do something to offend you."
	"It takes quite a lot to offend me," Rei replied serenely.
"More than you can manage, I think, unless it turns out that that
cargo hold we passed through on the way down here has carried slaves."
The smile vanished from her face and her eyes glittered coldly as she
added, "Slavers offend me by definition."
	"Never," I told her, startling myself with my own vehemence.
"Not on my ship."
	She nodded gravely, and we subsided into silence.  She lay
down as well, mimicking my own posture with her hands behind her head,
looking up at the sky.  Minutes passed in silence, save for the
crickets and pond frogs, the breezy sounds of a summer night.
	I was almost asleep when I heard her say, "Is your homeworld
like this?"
	"Hum?  Oh.  No... "  I chuckled wryly.  "Not at all.  I'm from
Orron IV."
	"In the Corporate Sector," Rei said, thoughtful, as though
that explained everything.  Maybe it did.
	"Yes," I said.  "Paved from pole to pole.  The only place you
get anything like this on Orron IV is in the Museum of the Holographic
Arts.  No, this ship came from Jyurai.  This is what Jyurai is like."
	"Hmm."  There was another lengthy pause; then she drew a long
breath, let it out slowly, and said rather dreamily, "I'd like to go
back there someday... but my kind aren't welcome."
	Knowing what I knew about Jyuraian history, I couldn't argue
that.  I wondered what Funaho would think if she knew I'd brought her
aboard.  Probably similar things to what Ru-ah thought.
	I also wondered when Rei'd been there before.
	I wasn't drowsy any more; what she'd said had me thinking of
where I'd come from (I never call Orron IV "home" any more), and that
made me restless.  It was like some reflexive desire to escape, felt
by some buried part of my mind that didn't know I already had.
	"Are you hungry?" I asked.  As I did, it occurred to me that
it had only been three hours since we'd left the shyamata in Danuu.
It felt like so much longer that the realization startled me a little.
	"I could eat," Rei replied.

	We sat at the little table in my captain's cottage, I in my
coverall and Rei back in her black silks.  Archie wandered around
under the table, getting underfoot.  HK-47 stood near the door, erect
and alert, ready for trouble even here, although he did at least pause
in his endless scanning to take approving note of the food I was
providing his mistress.
	I'm not sure Rei was really all that curious, or if she just
sensed that I wanted to talk and wanted to make it easier for me.
Between spoonfuls of fresh gazpacho (very fresh; its constitutents
came from the vegetable garden behind my cottage perhaps an hour
before serving), she asked me point-blank,
	"How does a ronin from Orron IV become the captain of a
Jyuraian ship-of-the-line?"
	I didn't handle the surprise as well as I might have, but at
least I didn't choke.  I looked at her over my glass, gathering my
thoughts back together, and replied,
	"That's good.  Not many people realize she's a warship.  It's
usually a pretty good cover."
	"I've been to Jyurai once," she said.  "I saw the Battle of
Jormundgand.  This is a Ryuuoh-class battleship, isn't it?"
	"Officially, they call her a battlecruiser," I said.  "She's
not quite a ship-of-the-line, but yes, she is a Ryuuoh," I replied.
"Slightly modified - but only slightly.  I... "  I shrugged.  What the
hell.  I was at the Battle of Jormundgand too - Ru-ah and I were right
in the thick of it.  If I closed my eyes sometimes, I could still see
the USS Kasimar dying under my guns.
	"I'm sort of an agent for the Jyuraian Imperial Intelligence
Service.  When I left Orron IV, years ago, I was looking for telepath
safe-havens.  At first it was enough to go to the Rim, but then that
damned Amendment to the Psi Act passed and opened the Territories to
Psi Corps conscription."  I seethed briefly, then controlled myself.
	"I'd had enough time to get my bearings, so I wasn't as badly
off as, say, the children that get grabbed in places like Danuu, but I
was still pretty desperate.  I had a few narrow escapes, but I was
-just- lucky enough and prepared enough to get away.
	"Finally, I ended up on Carida, in a tangle with a
particularly nasty Psi Cop and completely out of options.  But the
gods help those who help themselves, and I guess they figured I'd
proved enough... because they sent me some help.  It turned out there
was a pair of International Police investigators on the planet,
looking into abuses of the Corps' expanded conscription powers.  They
stepped in and got me out of there, spirited me away to New Avalon...
and then to Kaitlyn-sensei."  I paused, went over some of my history
mentally, decided what to leave out, and continued.
	"The summer after I made journeyman, I got out of school a
couple of weeks before everybody else, and Kaitlyn decided it was
probably safe for me to travel alone again.  One of her friends
arranged for me to go to Jyurai for my first holiday alone.  I met one
of the other Ryuuoh captains while I was there, and he mentioned me to
his superiors, and apparently the JIIS liked what they saw because
they decided to make me an offer I would have been nuts to turn down."
	"What's their interest in Jisatsu?" Rei wondered.
	"None," I replied.  "For the most part I'm really what I seem
to be: a freelance spacer, making a living on the Rim.  The retirement
plan's not the greatest, but you can't beat the hours, and I find all
sorts of weird, neat, forgotten lore and knowledge out here.  Jyurai
sends me a mission every now and again, usually an observation or
courier job, but most of the time I work for myself.  I'm part of what
the JIIS like to call their 'strategic reserve'."
	She nodded and fell silent.  There was an awkwardness to this
silence that had been absent from most of the others.  I felt a
hesitant... something... from her, but it was gone almost as soon as I
noticed it.
	After a moment, she put down her spoon, stood up, and bowed.
	"I have to rest," she said.  "Thank you for your hospitality,
and for helping me earlier.  Good night, Captain."
	I watched her go, puzzled by her sudden drop into cool
formality, and a little hurt, too.
	"Was it something I said?" I asked Archie.
	"Dunno," Archie replied.
	I cleared away the dishes and went down to the bridge, feeling
strangely desolate.  It was getting late and I felt alone.  I don't
like that feeling.
	The bridge lights were dimmed for nighttime running when I
entered; Ru-ah brightened them slightly, but didn't appear, sensing my
mood.  I racked Kurenaishio and sat down, looking glumly at the dark
blankness of the display field twenty feet in front of me.
	"Ru-ah," I said.  She appeared in that artful way that she has.
Rather than just popping suddenly into existence, she walks out of one
of the shadowed corners of the control room, as if she'd been there
all along.  With the lights up and no shadows, she comes from behind
the tree.  It's a small thing, but it makes life less jarring.
	"Here," she said, her voice hushed.  The control room under
night-shift lighting has a certain cathedral feel to it, with the
vaulting for the ceiling disappearing into the dark and Ru-ah's tree
spreading out overhead.  It encourages hushed voices and respectful
silences.
	"Did we get anything from JIIS or the IPO?"
	"JIIS drew a blank," she said, "but the IPO came up with a few
things.  It's 18:12 in New Avalon right now, but Inspector Bailey said
he'd be there until 20:00.  Shall I call him?"
	"Please," I replied, sitting back in my chair.  A video pane
opened in the display area, and the usual twiddling stuff from an
interstellar call negotiation flickered across it; then it fizzed with
static that resolved itself into the face of Detective Chief Inspector
Donald Bailey, my main contact in the International Police.
	Inspector Bailey must be around sixty, which isn't that old
nowadays, but since he's spent most of that time pounding the pavement
doing old-fashioned investigations, solving crimes with dogged
determination more than brilliance or special abilities, he looks
every minute of it.  He is tall, and he gangles.  His face is
weathered and lined and looks like it's made of worn leather draped
over the Old Man of New Hampshire.
	I said he solves crimes without special abilities, but that's
not really true, now that I think about it.  His determination -is- a
special ability.  On Carida I saw him subdue a Psi Cop with nothing
more than his fists, a pair of handcuffs, and the relentless iron will
that hides behind his kindly, craggy face.  After seeing that, even
though he wants me to - even though I cherish his friendship, and he
knows it - I can never call him 'Don'.  He'll always be Inspector
Bailey to me.
	"Hullo?" said Bailey; his face brightened when he saw mine on
his own commset's screen.  Behind him, I could see the clutter of his
office at Experts HQ.  "Well, well!  I was wondering if you'd be
getting back to me tonight.  How's life on the Rim?"
	"Nasty, brutish, and short, for the most part," I replied.  I
realized then that I must be in an awful funk if the old familiar face
of Don Bailey couldn't cheer me up.
	He frowned, which pulled his whole long face down and made him
look more comical than upset.  "That bad, is it?  You'll be wanting
your information double-quick, then."
	"I'm sorry, Inspector.  I've just got a lot on my mind
tonight, I guess.  What did you find out?"
	Bailey sat back, lit a cigarette, and tapped a couple of keys
on the console in front of him.  The viewpane divided, a narrowed view
of his office now sharing the space with the image Ru-ah had pulled from
my mind.
	"Your boy's a cybernetic assassin, and a very expensive one,
too," he said.  "100% vat-grown, probably from New Chiba or Chiisai
Hatamoto."  The picture of the assassin grew to fill the whole pane,
which flipped long-axis-up to show it better.  Green indicator arrows
pointed out parts as Bailey named them.  "Thermoptic combat visor,
probably Sendai-Coronis.  Retractable vibro-bayonet, Schlessinger,
most likely.  Subdural nano-armor.  Custom-tailored reflex
enhancements.  Chipware for at least half a dozen martial arts."  The
viewpane returned to its original orientation and went back to showing
me Bailey and his office.
	"It's a configuration we're quite familiar with.  Your friend
in black belongs to Big Fire."
	I blinked.  "Big Fire the terrorist organization?  Ties to the
Mysterons and the Psi Corps puppet government?"
	"That's the one.  There's no mistaking this bloke.  They've
got millions of them.  How many did you see when you took this
picture?"
	"I'm not sure.  We didn't bother to count the bits.
Thirty-one or two."
	Bailey whistled.  "And you're not even scratched.  Lord, girl,
Kate said you were good, but damn me!  Our field teams have the very
devil of a time with these bastards."
	"I only accounted for sixteen," I said.  "The rest were
handled by an... acquaintance I've made out here."
	"'Only' sixteen!  Christ!"  He blew a smoke ring, shook his
head in mock sadness.  "It seems like only yesterday you were crawling
through a garbage chute to get away from one man with a sonic stunner.
They grow up so fast... "
	"Cybernetic assassins aren't in the same league as Psi Cops,"
I told him.  "If I saw a Psi Cop today, I'd probably -still- crawl
through a garbage chute to get away from him."
	He regarded me thoughtfully, then said, "I'm not so sure.  At
any rate, if Big Fire is after you, step carefully, my girl.  They're
nobody to take lightly, and these cyber-goons are only their first
line of attack.  If you get one of the Magnificent Ten on your
case... "  He shrugged.  "I don't need to tell you this.  You're an
expert at stepping carefully, been doing it since before this old man
met you."
	I smiled at him.  "Inspector, that old man is the reason I'm
still around to step, carefully or otherwise.  I always listen to what
he has to say."
	He grinned, which did as many entertaining things to his face
as his frown had done.  "If you find you're stepping in something a
bit too deep, call.  Gryphon's got a new protege who's itching for her
first field assignment, and it wouldn't take too much to persuade him
to send her out."
	"Another samurai?  His student?"
	"No, she's a power agent, just come up to SA7 from Tactical
Division.  You might've met her, she used to be a security officer on
Babylon 6."
	"Ayla Ranzz?" I asked through an involuntary yawn.
	"That's the one."
	I nodded.  "I've run into her a couple of times at B6.  She
finally jumped out of the uniformed divisions, huh?  I was wondering
when she'd get around to it.  It'd be nice to see her again, but I
hope it won't be necessary this time out."  Another yawn.  "I'm sorry,
Inspector, but I'm about worn out.  It's been a long day."
	He smiled.  "Good night, Anne.  Sleep well."
	"Good night, Inspector Bailey."
	The signoff screen faded away into blackness as the projection
system shut down.
	I yawned once more, retrieved my blade and headed for the
lift.  "Good night, Ru-ah."
	"Good night, Anne."

	When I got back to my cottage, I felt a certain masochistic
enjoyment in forcing myself to put my coverall in the hamper properly
instead of just tossing it vaguely toward the corner where the hamper
was.  I was still feeling childishly proud of myself for that feat
when I turned and saw the armored, red-eyed shape next to my bed.
	In half a second I was fifteen feet from it, Kurenaishio's
saya clattering to the floor next to me as I presented the blade; half
a second later I realized what it was.
	"HK-47!" I burst out, almost slumping from relief.  "What
the hell are you doing here?" I went on crankily as I retrieved the
saya and sheathed my blade.  "Shouldn't you be lurking around the
guest quarters watching over your mistress?"
	"Statement: The master instructed me to secure your quarters,"
HK-47 replied.  "Although I don't know what sort of trouble she expects 
there to be in a place like this.  It's almost depressingly pastoral."
	I stared at him for a few seconds, then realized he wasn't
going to move unless I kicked him, and maybe not even then.  He'd been
told to watch over me tonight, and that was what he was going to do.
	Whatever.  I was too tired to argue about it.  I climbed into
bed.  If Rei wanted her droid to protect me from the mysterious demons
that inhabited my dining nook, that was his problem.
	It wasn't until just as I was dropping off that it occurred to
me why Rei might have sent him.  It might be a peace offering for her
rudeness, letting me know that it wasn't me that was bothering her by
sending her guardian to guard me in the night instead of her, purely
symbolic though the gesture was in a place like this.
	"HK-47," Archie announced as he jumped up onto the bed.
	"I saw," I murmured blearily, looping out an arm to snuggle
him in.  "Shut up and go to sleep, Archie."
	"OK," said Archie.  Good old Archie.  At least I always
understand why -he- does what he does.

	When I woke up the next morning, with a cool breeze blowing
through my cottage and bright sunlight pouring through the windows, it
was hard for me to believe I'd been so melancholy the night before.  I
ran my mind back over the last half-hour or so of the previous day,
wondering if the light of day would give any of it a clearer meaning.
	In a few moments, I decided it did.
	After my morning bath, I got dressed.
	HK-47 was still in the doorway, still vigilant against the
unknown forces evil to be found in the kitchen area.  When he heard me
approaching the door he turned.
	"Greeting: Good morning, Captain Cross.  I trust you slept
well."
	"Very well, thank you, HK-47," I replied.
	"Statement: My assignment is now complete.  Unless you would
like me to prepare breakfast?  I am programmed with knowledge of a
wide variety of cuisines and can also adapt improvisationally based on
ingredient availability."  He leaned a little closer and added
confidentially, "Expansion: I can do some very nice things indeed with
bantha.  I once defeated Iron Chef Morimoto with that ingredient."
	I blinked.  I must have missed that episode.
	"Well, you won't find any bantha, but if you want to give
breakfast a try, the kitchen's that way."
	"Statement: Oh, very good, Captain.  Just leave everything to
me."
	I'd never seen a droid bustle before.
	"Weird robot," Archie commented from his sunbeam on the
windowsill next to the door.
	"Come on, Archie," I said, gesturing to him as I went outside. 
He jumped down and followed with a great show of reluctance.
	I found Rei in the dojo, which stands by itself near the west
side of the pond.  She'd taken a staff out of the rack of weapons that
dominated the long wall and was performing kata with it.  I leaned
against the doorframe and watched in silence, arms folded, listening
to her tightly controlled breathing and the slap and shuffle of her
bare feet against the polished oak floor.
	The kata she was doing were complicated, advanced ones.  As I
watched I realized that they were mock combats against a single
opponent, an imaginary adversary armed with a sword.  I'd done
something like their opposite numbers, mock sword battles against an
imaginary foe wielding a staff or naginata, too many times not to
recognize them.
	She must have known I was watching, but she gave no sign of
it, continuing until she'd finished.  Then she turned, bowed, and said
softly,
	"Good morning."
	"Morning," I said, rather than what I really wanted to say,
which was something along the lines of, "What the hell's the matter
with you?  Why did you go all cold on me last night?"
	She went and put the staff back into the rack.
	"Staff exercises, huh?" I said, walking into the dojo.
	She nodded.  "I was sloppy yesterday.  If my opponent had been
someone knowledgeable instead of those puppets, I would have been in
trouble.  I hope you don't mind."
	"Not at all.  In fact, if you like, I'd be willing to spar
with you."
	She gave me another one of those speculative looks, then
glanced away.
	"I've imposed on you too much as it is," she said.  "Thank you
again for your help yesterday, and your hospitality last night.  If
you could please take HK-47 and me back down to Danuu, I - "
	"Rei," I said, interrupting her.  She stopped, looked back at
me.  "Did I do something to offend you?"
	A touch of color came to her pale cheeks.  "No," she said.
"Not at all.  It's not you... it's me."
	I frowned.  "I don't understand."
	"I've been stupid," she replied.  "I involved you in my test
without thinking of the possible consequences for you.  I'm setting
dangerous forces in motion, and now my enemy knows your face and
connects it with the trouble I'm causing.  I've placed you in danger
through my own thoughtlessness.  I'm sorry."
	"For a Force user, you're being more than a little
unobservant," I told her. "Maybe this wasn't my fight to begin with,
but if my presence isn't going to interfere with your test, then I'm
-making- it my fight."
	She gave me a puzzled look.  "Why?"
	"Because I believe in what you're doing.  Because I hate
psi-talent exploitation.  Because I have an obligation to help the
weak and oppressed.  Because any way I can buck the damn Psi Corps is
a personal victory for me.  Or because I -like- you, damn it.  Pick
any one you like."
	Rei actually -blushed- at that, which was quite a sight through
her colorless skin.  Then she said, in a tone even more hushed than
usual, "It seems a strange thing, to risk your life out of regard for
someone you've just met and barely know."
	I grinned at her.  "Then pick one of the other reasons."  I
sobered, then, and added seriously, "Besides, I have to stick around.
If you fail, I have to kill you, remember?  I know a foretelling when
I hear one."
	She looked me in the eye, startled; then she smiled her quiet
smile.
	"All right," she said, and her voice was stronger.  "You're
certain you want to go through with this?"
	I nodded.  "I don't want to interfere with your test.  Tell me
when to stand back and I'll stand back - but you'll have to give me a
better reason than 'it's not your fight,' because now it is."
	"Fine.  I won't ask again," she said.
	"Good," I said, grinning.  I took my swords out of my obi, sat
down in front of the weapons rack, and got the cleaning supplies out
of the bottom drawer.  Rei sat opposite me, watching with interest as
I drew Kurenaikaze, set the scabbard aside and started cleaning and
oiling the blade.
	"That's a beautiful sword," she said.
	"Thanks."  I'm a sucker for compliments about my swords.
"They're not old - Kurenaikaze was made for me just a few years ago,
when Kaitlyn-sensei said I was ready to handle things on my own, and
Kurenaishio was made to match later."
	"I've never seen one like it before."  She pointed to the
blade, its steel streaked with the random dark-light interplay of
elaborate multilayering.  "Is it Damascus steel?"
	"More or less.  It's made the same way, but the only person
who knows for sure what's in the alloy is the guy who made it, and he
won't tell anyone until he chooses a successor."  I smiled at the
memory.  "That won't be for a while.  Dannen Ironbridge is too set in
his ways to retire, let alone die."
	Rei drew out one of her lightsabers to contemplate it.  "I
made mine myself," she said.  "Every Jedi does, dark or bright - it's
part of the training.  Another of the tests... if you press the switch
and your hand doesn't blow off, you passed."  She tucked it away
again, then looked back at Kurenaikaze.  "May I?" she asked.
	I don't hand over my swords lightly.  Rei must have known
that; she was cut from the same cloth.  This, then, was another
gesture, her way of reaching out when that strong reserve of hers
wouldn't let her do it openly - trying to make something out of the
odd connection we felt.  I stood, reversed the sword and thrust the
grip toward her as she stood also.
	She took it gently, regarding the carved silver dragon's head
that made up the pommel.  Its ruby eyes winked back at her as she
turned the sword upright and took it in both hands, working her
fingers into a firmer grip around the scaly-patterned metal of the
handle.
	Kaitlyn had considered it odd that Ironbridge had made
all-metal weapons for someone as attuned to nature as I am - two
swords gleaming in silver from tip to pommel without a scrap of wood,
hide or cordage, their scabbards formed from burnished light-grade
durasteel rather than the traditional wood.
	I had thought so too, until I took hold of Kurenaikaze for the
first time and felt the sword's tremendous rightness; then the stubby,
grizzled Asgardian dwarf's brilliance made itself known to me, and I
had no further doubt.
	Rei's face took on that slight but striking smile of hers, and
she turned, holding Kurenaikaze before her in a mid-level en garde.
She stood still for a moment, then rocked back and lunged, pivoted,
and entered a kata which was recognizably the Seven Sons of Akiji
Tashiko, but with a slight alienness to it.  It was like hearing a
beloved poem read by someone with a faint foreign accent.
	She completed the kata, turned, and handed back Kurenaikaze
the same way I'd given it to her; then she put her hands together and
bowed.
	"Thank you.  It is a wonderful weapon."
	I returned the bow to acknowledge the compliment, replaced the
sword, and we both sat down as I started work on the shorter blade.
	"So," I said as I worked.  "I got some information last night
after dinner that may help us plan our next move."
	Rei looked interested.  "Oh?"
	"Those cybernetic assassins who came after us last night
belonged to Big Fire."
	Her crimson eyes narrowed.  "Big Fire," she murmured, barely
audible.  Then, louder, "How sure are you?"
	"Sure enough.  The information comes from the Experts of
Justice.  If anybody ought to know Big Fire, it's them."
	Rei nodded; she knew the IPO's reliability on the subject as
well as I did.
	"I understand why Big Fire would be trolling the Outer Rim for
special talents," she mused, "but why would they then sell them to
third parties?  Their goal is galactic domination, not profit."
	I shrugged.  "It must take a lot of money to operate a
criminal enterprise the size of Big Fire.  Each of those cyborg we
wrecked last night had to cost at least a million credits, and if Big
Fire throws them away by the dozen on capture jobs like that one... "
	She looked thoughtful.  "Yes, I suppose you could be right.
They may be keeping the extremely special cases they bring in for
themselves and selling off the rest to some third party - to make
something back from the part of the operation that doesn't benefit
their cause directly."
	"There's certainly a market," I said ruefully.  "With the Psi
Corps fragmented, trying to impose its writ on parts of the Outer Rim
through force of arms, there must be a lot of enterprises, criminal
and otherwise, that would pay a lot for a telepath without any
connection to the Corps.  No chance of a sleeper persona or a
political agenda tied to any of the Corps splinters for a rogue teep
who was never part of the Corps to begin with."
	"So Big Fire gets the exceptionals they're looking for, and
pockets the cash for the ones they didn't want."
	"It makes sense," I said, sheathing Kurenaishio.  "Then what
we're really looking for is the Big Fire operations center on Jisatsu."
	"Looks that way," said Rei.
	"Well, then, I guess we'd better go back down, start kicking
over rocks, and see what crawls out."

Date: 22 Jan 2414 21:45:33 -0900
From: juniper@autumnheart.ft10298.galnet.net
To: kyouichi.saionji@alum.nit.edu.td
Subject: Kicking over rocks...

Dear Sempai,

There are weeks when I feel like there's not enough soap in the world
to get all the grime off me.  Today was a day in one of those weeks.
You know the kind, where you go grubbing about in the muck hoping to
find somebody who might have a clue as to what's producing all the
slime.

In the past five days, we have:
  - busted not one but TWO drug smuggling rings
  - nearly trashed up a rental car in the process of breaking open a
gang of car/flyer thieves (I'm sure Ani-chan would approve, you can
tell him if you think he'll behave ;)
  - determine that the price for my services is higher than anybody on
this planet can afford
  - maimed, rended and incinerated gods know how many small time
thugs, punks, protection racketeers, pimps, ganglords, razorboys,
chippers, drug czars and corrupt cops

Today, for our crowning achievement, we knocked out a small ring of
orbital pirates, of all things.

I'm getting -really- bored with this whole exercise - I suppose the
people of Danuu might thank us (the Cops, I'm sure, think we're
another gang coming through and trashing the place) - it's good
practice for my combat reflexes but it isn't pushing me at all.  And
when we're done, there'll just be another gang to move in and take
over.

Hopefully, the tip-off we got this afternoon from the Pirate Captain
might lead us somewhere useful.  There's supposedly another "big-time,
outside rival gang" who's shipping valuable cargo off-planet tomorrow
night, so we're off to check it out.  (This guy had records going back
eight months about this 'gang' and their behaviour - if he hadn't been
such scum, I would've said he was a good captain.  There aren't many
pirates that thorough about their records.)

I don't know how Utena keeps going all the time with small-time crap
like this always popping up in her way.  Or maybe she just doesn't
notice the little impediments anymore.  Yeesh.

I've got an invitation from Len Hutchins to come visit him after we
finish dealing with all this crap; he's apparently got a Padawan now.
So the next time you and Ani-chan go visit, there'll be somebody he
can spar with who can parry that Big, Scary Weapon of his and be
offended by his temper.  Hope things are going well with his training - 
I haven't had much news from the Inner Sectors lately.

I'm going to go spar with Rei now, and see if we can actually get
something other than adrenaline practice in.

Ja mata,
Juniper

                      THURSDAY, JANUARY 23, 2414

	The next night we slipped through the spaceport's inter-hangar
security.  HK-47 stayed behind - he would have been too obvious.  Even
without him, breaking into the cargo area was a cakewalk.
	I'll say this for lightsabers.  They're hard to build, a lot
more obvious than a drawn blade in the dark, and a lot more dangerous
to their own wielders than steel, but there aren't many doors that can
stand up to them.  We were inside Hangar C-11 before you could say
"Level Two electrolock".
	Unfortunately, what we were looking for wasn't.  Except for
maintenance machinery, an unattended heavy cargo loader, and a lot of
dust, C-11 was empty.
	"So much for that," I said, and just as I said it, something
fizzed across my zanshin, a sinister, sparkling presence that set my
teeth on edge.  Rei felt it too; we turned toward it in the same
instant.
	At the other end of the cavernous room, a man stepped around
the back end of the cargo loader, walked with a slow, measured, almost
insolent tread to the front of it, and stopped.  It took me a major
effort of will to suppress an instinctive urge to blast him with fire,
throw every loose object within sight at his head, and run, in that
order.  Not that he was a particularly threatening-looking man; he
wasn't.  He was tallish, broad-shouldered and strong-looking, and
dressed all in black, but that wasn't cause for panic.
	What made me want to panic was the gleaming golden badge on
his chest.  Even at this distance, unable to see the details, I knew
what it was: the crest of the Psi Corps.  The man in black was a Psi
Cop, a telepathic enforcer, one of the most fanatical and powerful
agents the Corps possessed.
	Since childhood - when they were a legitimate arm of a
legitimate government - I had hated and feared the Corps, and
especially the Psi Cops, beyond all rational thought.  Even now, the
sight of one set me to quivering, gritting my teeth with the effort it
took not to fight or flee instantly.
	"So much, indeed," he said, his voice surprisingly high for a
man of his size, in a pleasantly conversational tone.  "I presume you
were looking for the next shipment?  Well, as you can see, they're not
here.  Your informant got his consonants mixed up."  He smiled and
started walking slowly toward us, then stopped again about thirty feet
away.  He had close-cropped blond hair and a rather bland,
uninteresting face.  A person would walk right past him in a crowd and
not think anything of him, if he weren't wearing that uniform.
	"I believe," said the Psi Cop affably, "you want _G_-11."
	Rei's eyes flicked to the open door behind us; she took a
quick step back, but the Psi Cop smiled at her and made a dismissive
gesture with his right hand.  Behind Rei, the door swung of its own
accord, banging shut and staying that way despite the ruined lock.
	I blinked, fighting down another surge of alarm.  That wasn't
telekinesis he'd used.  I'd have felt something if he'd used a psi
talent... and that meant - 
	"Rei, look out," I said, moving to the man's left.  "He's a
Force user!"
	The Psi Cop smiled again.  I wished he would stop doing that.
"Very good," he said.  "You can tell the difference between the Force
and telekinesis?  Tell me - how do you do that?"
	I gave him a smile of my own.  "TK feels like this," I
replied, and flung my will against him.  The composed calmness of his
face broke for just a moment as the force of my blow shoved him back a
few feet, the soles of his shoes scraping loudly across the dirty
concrete.  A trickle of blood came from his left nostril.  He reached
up and wiped at it with one gloved hand.
	While he was occupied with that, I concentrated on the Master
Key, hoping he wouldn't scan me.
	<Ru-ah.>
	[Yes.]
	<A ship will leave Hangar G-11 in the Jisatsu spaceport soon.
Don't let it leave the system.  It has Big Fire's latest group of
captured children aboard.  Let it get out of the planetary authority
zone and then stop it.  Cripple it if you have to.  And call the
Experts of Justice.>
	[Will do.  Are you in trouble?]
	<Yes, but I can't be two places at once.  Go.>
	[I'm on my way.  Be careful.]
	I broke the connection, relieved.  The Cop hadn't tried a
telepathic probe; he was too busy having a Psi Cop's usual reaction to
a telekinetic.  I could tell that from the covetous glitter in his
flat gray eyes.
	"I see," he mused, his tone still pleasant, as though I'd
only drawn him a helpful diagram rather than attacking him.  "Thank
you.  I found that most informative."
	"Who the hell -are- you?" I demanded.
	"Oh, I'm sorry.  How terribly rude of me.  My name is Roger.
You've already guessed that I'm with the Psi Corps, I'm sure."  He
straightened his slightly rumpled uniform jacket, adjusted his gloves.
	The story of how Saionji-sempai had gotten his lightsaber,
fighting a Dark Jedi Psi Cop named Roger Tremayne, rushed into my
mind.  How could he be alive?  Saionji had all but disemboweled him
and damn near cut his head off!  And here he was.
	That fact and his cold eyes nearly choked me on my own fear
before I got it back under control again.  He smiled nastily at me as
he felt it.
	"And you must be the two young women who I've been told are
trying to ruin the good thing I have going in this area."  He raised
his voice a bit.  "Oh, Asuka dear... "
	Something dropped from the interconnected network of metal
rafters that held up the hangar's roof high above us, landed softly
next to Roger, and then slowly rose to stand beside him.  It was a
girl, about the same apparent age as Rei, dressed in the same hateful
uniform as the man who'd called for her.  She was slender, a bit
taller than Rei, and strong-looking, with a lot of bright-red hair
drawn back into a heavy fall and kept out of her eyes with a red metal
band over the top of her head.  Her eyes were a dark blue, and as she
looked at me, I had the unnerving sensation that they were made of
glass.  They were blank, utterly without expression.  They didn't even
appear to have pupils, just flat expanses of blue nothingness.
	"This charming young lady is Asuka Langley Soryuu," said Roger
conversationally, "one of my network's very first success stories.
Five years ago, when we were just starting up, one of my agents found
her in Neubaeden, on Niogi.  At the time, she had just turned nine
years old.  Her mother was one of those sad telepaths who cannot
accept their gift and struggle against it all their lives.  Rather
than join the Corps, she opted to take the sleepers and live a gray
and pointless existence.  At one point she tried to brighten that
grayness by having herself inseminated by a clinic specializing in
what they call 'bright normals' - screened non-telepaths of unusually
high intellectual capacity.  She hoped her daughter would not be born
with her 'curse', as she called it.
	"Fortunately, -that- plan failed.  When the second round of
compulsory tests came, they showed young Asuka to be possessed of
considerable intellect, yes, but also considerable telepathic
potential.  By then, of course, the Extension to the Psi Act had
passed, and opting out of the Corps was no longer an option for
minors; so the girl was to be taken from her fool of a mother and
inducted."  Roger smiled sardonically.  "The stupid woman was so
deeply touched by this great honor that she terminated herself."
	I clenched Kurenaikaze's grip until my knuckles cracked,
wondering if it was possible to kill a man with nothing but the desire
to see him dead.
	"Asuka here didn't take that very well," Roger went on,
putting a hand on the girl's shoulder in a parody of affection.  She
didn't react at all as he went on, "She ran away from her induct team
and tried to disappear into the Niogan underground.  Fortunately,
she'd been found by the Corps, so my network already knew of her.
Finding her was a simple matter.  I was going to turn her over to the
Corps, but then I realized that there is something very special about
this girl."
	Roger's mocking smile became weirdly, twistedly paternal.
"You see, Asuka has a rare mixture of talents - the same mixture I
myself am blessed with.  She is a telepath, the next level of human
evolution... and she hears the Force.  There are only a few of us; my
own teacher, Palpatine, was one."  At the shocked look on my face, he
looked solicitous.  "Oh, you didn't know the Senator was a telepath?
Ah, I suppose you wouldn't - he was always so vocally against the
Corps on the Senate floor, after all.  Quite an inspired cover,
really.  He was one of our best and brightest.  But now is not the
time to talk of glories faded," he went on, looking a bit sad.
	"At any rate, in Asuka here, I had a golden opportunity: my
first student, my first opportunity to pass on the modest martial art
I've synthesized out of my Psi Corps telepathic combat training and
the ancient Jedi teachings of the late Senator Palpatine.  I was never
sure if Turhan Kai was a viable fighting form or not, since I was the
only person I had ever found who could learn it.  This darling girl
gave me the chance to pass it on and see if it would stand up on its
own."  He smiled broadly.  "I'm pleased to report that the process,
though not without the occasional hitch, has produced complete
success.  Since then I've only found one other person capable of
learning the art, and though he progresses more slowly than dear
Asuka, I'm sure he'll be equally successful in time."
	Then he fixed me with his intense eyes and said, "And now I
have found a third."
	I stared at him as if he were crazy.  OK, he -was- crazy,
but... anyway, I stared at him.
	"You're out of your mind," I told him.  "I'm not Force-sensitive."
	He shook his head.  "Your eyes may not have been opened," he
said, "but if they were, you could see."  He stepped back, giving the
redheaded girl's shoulder one more pat, and then said cheerfully,
"Asuka, my pet?"
	"Yes, Master," Asuka replied, her voice flat, almost mechanical.
	"Do you love me?"
	"Of course I love you, Master," she said, with about as much
passion as a toaster oven announcing that the waffles are done.
	"Deal with these two, then," he said.  "You may kill the Dark
Jedi girl if you like, she's of no use, but I want the other one.
Bring her to me."
	Asuka turned and looked through me with her blank eyes, then
nodded.
	"You will have her, Master," she said, and sprang with a sharp
hiss.
	I backpedaled, bringing Kurenaikaze up, and then realized that
the hiss I'd heard had not been Asuka, but her weapon.  She had a
lightsaber, a scarlet one.  I felt a curious lack of fear, given that
I was about to die; Kurenaikaze is a strong blade, but it's still only
steel, and steel can't block a lightsaber's beam.
	There is a Katsujinkenryuu technique, the Blade of the Inviolate 
Soul, which enables a fighter, through focus and concentration, to back 
his blade with something akin to TK and make it do so.  Only the most
skilled, experienced, and powerful could achieve it.  Kaitlyn-sensei
could do it; it was one of the requirements for mastery.  I had heard
stories from her of her father, Gryphon-sensei, making his plain steel
blades all but indestructible, parrying blasterfire like a Jedi could
and cutting through armor and even force fields.  But he was something
like five hundred years old, and Detianism enhances the powers of the
mind anyway...
	... the point is, I couldn't do it, and without it I was about
to die, and the irony was that it probably wasn't her intent to kill
me.  After all, her master wanted me alive.  She had probably just
assumed that I would have a lightsaber too.  Some part of me hoped
spitefully that she would get in trouble for that, so that I could at
least jeer at her from the afterlife.
	A blue-white streak of light sprang across my vision, stopping
Asuka's strike cold, and then Rei shouldered me out of the path of the
redhead's weapon.
	"Maybe I should handle this one," she said softly.  "No
offense."
	"None taken," I said with a grin, and ducked around them to
run toward the other end of the hangar, where Roger was walking calmly
toward the back exit.  "Hold it!" I yelled, rage at what he'd done to the 
girl drowning out the fear as I chased him down.
	He paused at the door, turned, and smiled.
	"I'm sorry," he said.  "You've got courage, and I'd normally
honor that by dealing with you personally - but I've a ship to catch,"
he observed.  "At any rate, we'll have plenty of time to get to know
each other."
	"Like hell we - "
	I didn't get to finish my statement because somebody came up
and hit me in the forehead with a sledgehammer.  At least, that's
about what it felt like, except that a sledgehammer blow would
probably have hurt less.  I reeled; I probably gasped, but I'm not
sure, since my body and my mind were suddenly not on speaking terms.
I was still conscious, strictly speaking, but blind, deaf, and without
feeling, as a brilliant shriek blotted out everything that might have
been crossing my synapses, leaving me standing there staring at the
doorway without seeing as Roger left the building.
	I must have been even more worked up by his little speech than
I thought.  Normally I would have remembered that Psi Cops get to be
Psi Cops by having a P12 telepathy rating, and that was a good part of
why I, as a measly P3 teep, was afraid of them.  But that fact had
momentarily slipped my furious mind, allowing Roger an opportunity to
sucker-punch my cerebral cortex.
	Still, though it was a stunning blow, its effect didn't last
long; my disorganized consciousness jumbled itself back together
fairly quickly.  It lasted long enough, though.  By the time I could
think again, Roger was long gone, the door locked behind him.
	Cursing, I turned, intending to cross the hangar again and see
what I could do to help Rei.  There was a boy standing behind me.
	He was human or close to it, and like the redhead he looked
about fourteen.  He was thin, almost wiry.  He wasn't wearing a Psi
Corps uniform.  Instead, what he had on looked almost like a school
uniform - dark dress slacks, black leather shoes, a dark jacket with a
mandarin collar.  He had unkempt black hair and brown eyes that were
disturbingly blank, just like Asuka's had been.
	"Roger says I'm to subdue you," he said in a soft, husky
voice.  His tone wasn't as robotic as Asuka's had been.
	He had a lightsaber, too.  Damn.
	I put Kurenaikaze away and backed slowly away from him as he
raised the weapon and ignited its yellow blade.  I would have thought
that yellow would be a bad choice for a lightsaber, but it was
actually quite beautiful.  It glistened with a metallic golden sheen,
like a blade of molten gold.  I scowled at myself for -admiring- the
damn thing.
	He walked slowly toward me, the saber held almost vertical in
his hands, as I backed away slightly faster.  When it comes to
almost-certain death, I'm not too proud.  As soon as I had a good gap
built up, I broke to the right and ran for the other end of the
hangar.
	He ran after me, matching my pace easily.  Speedy little
bastard, I thought as he caught up and took a hack at me.  He missed
by a mile, so far that I didn't even have to duck or dodge.  I
resigned myself to dealing with him, since he was too fast for me to
run away from.
	Katsujinkenryuu does have empty-hand techniques.  They date
back to the form's predecessor, the Asagiri Shinjinkenryuu, and were
designed for dealing with other samurai if one has lost one's weapons
somehow.  They're not the bread and butter of the form, to be sure -
desperation tactics, more than anything else - but this was just the
kind of situation they had been designed for.  
	Except for the part about the enemy's blade being a
superheated plasma field capable of cutting through starship hulls,
anyway.  On the other hand, the early Asagiri weren't telekinetic - and 
they hadn't trained (briefly) with Aeryn Stonefist one summer.
	The kid took a few more wild swings at me, telegraphing them
so widely in advance that he might as well have stayed home.  I stole
the occasional glance at Rei's ongoing fencing match with the
redhead.  It was obvious from their differences in fighting style that
the kid I was up against was much the less experienced of the two, for
which I was grateful.  I had about as much experience with the
empty-hand techniques as he showed with that saber.  At least he
didn't seem to be in any danger of cutting his -own- legs off, let
alone mine.
	The next time he lunged I let him come, steeling myself, and
then thrust my TK against his saber.  I didn't know whether I could
affect the blade, but the saber itself had enough surface area that I
didn't really need to; all I had to do was deflect it a few inches to
the right, so that it passed me instead of skewering me.  I wouldn't
have tried that trick against an experienced opponent, but against
this kid it worked just fine.  He missed me by six inches and stumbled
past me with the unspent force of his strike.  I grabbed his right
wrist as he passed, gave it a yank to help him along, and jammed my
left elbow up under his chin.  The impact smacked his teeth together
with a painful-sounding crack, and the lightsaber dropped from his
hands, clattering to the floor, its blade vanishing.
	I quarter-turned, grabbed the front of his jacket, ankle-swept
him and bore him down to the concrete floor on his back, pulling my
right fist back for the knockout blow, when he raised his hands and
said,
	"Wait!  Don't hit me!"
	I blinked at him in surprise.  The tone of voice had been
bright, frightened, completely natural.  His eyes were clear, too, not
dull and flat like they had been when he had announced his orders for
me.  Cautiously, I stopped the blow from flying, but still held him to
the floor.
	He struggled, but not as though he wanted to resume the
fight.  "Please, you've got to let me up!" he pleaded, incipient panic
in his eyes.  "He had to push her harder than he's ever done before to
get her to fight the Jedi girl.  Her mind - it isn't strong enough -
the strain will drive her mad, maybe even kill her!  For God's sake!"
	He put both hands around my left forearm and strained at it,
trying to pry my hand away from his jacket, his teeth gritted with
effort, but it didn't avail him anything.  He wasn't a very athletic kid.
	"I'm not letting you up until you tell me what the hell is going 
on here," I said.
	"I can explain everything later!" he cried, thumping at my arm
with his fists.  "If you don't let me up right now Asuka will - she's
going to - "
	I looked up at Rei and Asuka, who were standing almost nose to
nose, glaring at each other through the glowing X of their lightsabers.
The redheaded girl was sweating profusely, a lot more than she should
have been in such a cool space even with the fight going on, and the
corners of her blank eyes were twitching with more than just exertion.
Her teeth were gritted, the muscles at the corners of her jaws bulging.
	It was at that moment that I became aware of a strange
undercurrent in the room, one similar to the unconscious telepathic
sense of local feeling I usually get, but different.  It was coming in
on a different "frequency band", like crosstalk on a communications
line, murmuring indistinctly in the background.
	Where each individual person's surface feelings had distinct,
identifiable sources and everything else was silence, this underlying
sense was like its converse: there was a constant background hum, into
which each individual person's state of mind injected interference
that created patterns.
	It was fascinating, but frightening.  What the hell was going
on?  What -was- it?
	Then it hit me.
	"Goddess," I whispered, inadvertently letting go of the kid as
I stared at Rei and Asuka and the interplay of energies I could now
see and hear around them.
	Roger was right.
	It was the Force.
	It murmured darkly around Rei and Asuka, touched by them both,
both dark but in very different ways.  Rei shaped it, directing it
into the patterns she needed, but Asuka was merely being pushed around
by it, like a puppet being driven by a tuned forcefield.  I used what
telepathic talent I had to try a surface scan on Asuka while I
listened to the snarling chorus of the Force around her.  What I got
back was mostly frustration, with a hard edge of desperate fear, all
of it drowning in the rage and hatred that were the Dark Side of the
Force at its worst.
	While I watched, it drowned completely, and something inside
Asuka Langley Soryuu broke with a palpable snap.  I winced in
sympathetic pain.
	"No, oh no!" the kid under me cried.  With strength born of
desperation, helped by the fact that I'd kind of stopped paying
attention to him, he threw me off him, scrambled to his feet and ran
toward them.  I sat where he'd thrown me, not caring, just staring at
the two young women.
	A howling shriek bubbled up out of the redhead's throat.  She
flung herself at Rei, her fighting style transformed in an instant
from mechanical competence to vicious excellence, the inspired,
ferocious brilliance of the utterly mad.  Her eyes had changed from
mindless blankness to glittering insanity in that brittle instant.
Foam gathered at the corners of her mouth as she hacked and drove at
Rei's defense, snarling like an animal.
	The pale girl's eyes had gone wide at the sudden transformation 
of her opponent; it was clear she didn't know what to make of it.  She
had been fighting down to Asuka's level before, not wanting to turn
loose her full strength and probably kill the girl.  Obviously Asuka's
life story, as related by Roger, had touched a chord somewhere in Rei.
	Now, though, I saw her scarlet eyes narrow grimly, and knew
she'd resigned herself to the kill.  My heart sank, even as I realized
she was probably right.  I had been looking right into the redhead's
mind when it had snapped.  The awful pressure of the Dark Side,
bearing down on top of the stress fractures of her mother's death and
five years of Roger's tender mercies, had crushed her sanity to dust.
Just feeling it happen had stunned me so much that I felt as if Roger
had teep-blasted me again.
	The change had Rei off-balance, too.  The sheer fury of
Asuka's assault drove her back, made her falter.  Her saber spun out
of her hand; she had another, of course, but there was a chance Asuka
might nail her before she could get it out.  I lunged, readying my TK
to try knocking her back - the shock of feeling her mind break had
left my own feeling like it was buried in tar, but I had to try -
	With a WHOOMP underscored by the sound of rending metal, a
hole six feet across appeared in the roof above us.  HK-47 dropped
through that hole like the proverbial ton of bricks a moment later,
his feet knocking inch-deep craters in the concrete floor as he fell
the thirty or so feet from the roof.
	Asuka snarled and whirled into an overhand strike, intending
to bring her blade down on the droid's head and destroy him in a
single stroke.  HK-47 swung his torso back, raising one arm to protect
his head.  That won't do any good, I thought, cursing the heaviness of
my head as I struggled to muster enough concentration to harness my
powers.
	The scarlet blade crashed down on the droid's upraised arm -
and stopped there.  Sparks flew in all directions and there was a
tremendous sizzling noise, like a giant arc welder.  As Asuka gritted
her teeth and drove harder, the armor plate under the blade began to
glow a dull red.
	"Ultimatum: You will cease this attack on the master or you
will be destroyed," HK-47 informed Asuka flatly.  His right hand was
full of heavy blaster, and at that range he could hardly miss.
	Finally, my head cleared, and I knew what I had to do.
Gathering my strength, I flung it against the redhead.  She wasn't
ready for it - she wasn't even really aware I was there - and the body
blow catapulted her backward.  Her lightsaber flew out of her hand as
she slammed into the tin wall of the hangar, rebounded, and crumpled
to her knees.  That inhuman snarling sound was still coming from her,
and even as she hit the floor she was trying to get up.
	HK-47 had both weapons out now, and stepped forward, leveling
them.
	"Query: Shall I blast her?" he asked.
	With the faintest sad shake of her head, Rei stepped past him.
Asuka jumped up and lunged for her barehanded.  Rei knocked her down
again with a deceptively powerful punch, then drew her other lightsaber.
Standing over the redhead, she leveled the point of it at Asuka's
throat.  A tear gathered at the corner of one red eye and rolled down
her pale cheek as she raised the blade.  Her lips moved in a whisper I
was too far away to hear, but I knew what she was saying nonetheless:
	"I'm sorry."
	"STOOOOOOOOOP!!!" the boy I'd fought screamed, reaching them
at a dead run and throwing himself between them, his arms outflung in
the universal gesture of protection.  "Don't kill her!"
	Rei jerked back as if slapped, her eyes going wide with
surprise well out of proportion with his unexpected appearance.
	"Shinji!" she gasped, and then the reason for her surprise was
clear.  This was the young man she'd come to Jisatsu to help.
	Should have known, I mused to myself.  These things always tie
back on themselves somehow, especially when Big Fire is involved.
	Rei composed herself and said softly, "Stand aside, Shinji.
She's beyond help.  It... "  She bowed her head, letting another tear
fall.  "It will be a mercy," she finished, meeting the boy's eyes
again.
	Asuka recovered her wits, what remained of them, and scrambled
to her feet, her wild blue eyes searching for her weapon.  She saw it
and lunged to Rei's left, tucking into a single forward roll across
the concrete and coming up with the blade springing to life in her
hand, then took one bounding step toward her opponent, screaming in
incoherent defiance.
	"Statement: You had your warning, meatbag!" HK-47 barked,
raising his blasters.
	Shinji turned, interposed himself again with his back to Rei
and HK-47 this time, and shouted, "Asuka, STOP IT!"
	His mind smashed into what remained of hers like a wrecking
ball; I could feel the telepathic impact from where I sat and it made
me wince.  She stopped dead in her tracks, the lightsaber falling from
her hands.  The crazed spark faded from her eyes, and for a moment
they were just normal blue eyes as they looked at him.
	Then they went blank, consciousness fizzling out of them
completely; they rolled up, showing the whites, then closed as she
slumped to the floor.  Shinji jumped forward with a gasp of dismay and
caught her, then lowered her gently down, dropping to his knees and
cradling her against his chest.
	Rei stared at her friend, surprise again written on her face;
then she extinguished her blade and put it away.  At the slightest
gesture of her hand, HK-47 holstered his blasters, but from his body
language, he clearly didn't like the idea.
	"Shinji," she said softly, a note of something like wonder in
her eyes.
	I got shakily to my feet, picked up his lightsaber, and walked
over to them.
	"What did you just do to her?" Rei asked him.
	He started at the sound of my voice, turned toward me with a
little cringe, as though he expected me to hit him, and held her
unconscious form a little tighter, protectively.  "I-I stopped her,"
he said.  "I wish I could've been gentler, but... there was no time."
	"I've only seen somebody just -drop- like that," I said
softly, "when a Psi Cop's hit them.  What's your P-rating?"
	He looked at the floor and mumbled something inaudible.
	"What?" I asked.
	"P14," he said miserably.
	I blinked, eyes wide.  P14!  That was two levels higher than
the requirement for becoming a Psi Cop, -four- levels higher than the
standard level of Psi Corps instructors!  Maybe two percent of the
human telepath population could claim a power level that high.
	Rei put her hand on his shoulder.  "How long have you known?"
she asked.
	"Since a couple of weeks after they grabbed me," he replied.
"When they brought me to Roger and he found out I have Force
potential, too.  He wasn't able to awaken it, but he's sure it's
there.  While he was trying, he unlocked more of my telepathy by
accident.  It hadn't fully awakened yet, but once it did... well, I
was more powerful than he was, but without any training... I could
convince Roger that I was really his slave, but I couldn't... fix
what's wrong with his mind."  He looked at her with horror joining the
fear in his eyes.  "He's the craziest person I've ever seen."
	"Oh, Shinji... " said Rei, shaking her head.  "I'm sorry."  So
she understood, then, as I did, what a curse Shinji's power could be.
I thought I'd had a hard time keeping the feelings and voices at bay
as an untrained P3.  What must he be going through?
	"He doesn't know what you are," she said, not really a
question.
	"No," said Shinji.  "If he did he'd never have tried to teach
me Turhan Kai; it's too dangerous."  He looked at me.  "I'm sorry for
attacking you.  I couldn't be sure that Roger wasn't monitoring
me... I had to make it look good."
	I mustered a smile for him.  "So you're really better than
that?" I asked.
	"Not much," he replied wryly; then the pleasure vanished from
his face.  "Anyway, like I said... I haven't had the power long.  I
managed to stop Asuka from being so angry, but... "  He shook his head
sadly, and then the sadness turned to anger.  He dashed irritably at
the tears forming in his eyes with one hand, still holding her with
the other.  "That -bastard-," he spat.  "She never wanted to be a
killer.  He made her into that, and it... it broke her."
	The Master Key vibrated softly against the back of my skull.
[Anne,] came Ru-ah's voice.
	<Yes.>
	[Are you all right?]
	<Fine.  Pissed off, but fine.  What's up?>
	[The ship is secured.  It's a Corellian, 2000-series, two
crew.  They took to the escape pods when I tractored the ship.  I'm
entering a parking orbit with it right now.  The International Police
are sending a jumpship from New Avalon; they should be here in five
minutes.]
	I was impressed.  Ships equipped with jump drive, as opposed
to hyperdrive or warp drive, can go anywhere in the charted universe
almost instantly, but they're incredibly expensive to operate.  If the
Experts were sending one here, then that meant they were taking this
very seriously indeed.
	<Good,> I told her.  <We'll be there presently.>
	Then I turned to the others and said, "OK, come on."
	Shinji nodded, then surprised me by gathering Asuka up in his
arms and getting to his feet.  Looking at his skinny body, I wouldn't
have thought he'd be strong enough to carry an athletic girl like her,
but though the effort showed on his face, he didn't betray it with a
sound.

	By the time we got to the Autumn Heart, the IPO jumpship had
arrived and was in the process of sorting out the escape pods from the
ship Ru-ah had captured.  While HK-47 showed Shinji where he could
stow his unconscious payload for the time being, Rei and I went to the
bridge.
	"What's going on?" I asked Ru-ah as we left the lift.
	"The IPO starship is hailing."
	"Put them on," I said.  A moment later, the forward
holographic display fuzzed and displayed the face of another redheaded
young woman, this one in her early twenties and rather less crazed.
	"Hi, Ayla," I said, smiling.  Under the circumstances, it was
always good to see a familiar face.
	"Hey, Anne," Ayla Ranzz replied.  "Looks like you've shoved a
stick in a hornet's nest.  These guys didn't even wait to get out of
the escape pods before they lawyered up."
	"Was there a Psi Cop aboard the ship?"
	"Nope.  Just a couple of Detrek mercenaries.  My team's
sweeping the holds now, but our telepath isn't picking anything up."
	"Damn.  That means he's still loose down on the planet
someplace.  I guess we're gonna have to go get him."
	Ayla's face fell.  "I wish I could come with you," she said,
"but half of these guys are trainees.  We thought this was a routine
smuggler intercept."  She sighed, running a hand back over her short
orange hair.  "Guess I should've figured otherwise coming from you,"
she added with a rueful grin.
	"I do seem to attract them, don't I?" I said ruefully.  "Well,
if we get into too much trouble, we'll try to find a way to call."
	Ayla nodded.  "We'll be keeping an eye out.  Ranzz out."
	Rei and I went back to the living deck, to the guest cottage
where Shinji had tucked away Roger's erstwhile apprentice.
	"Looks like Tremayne got away," I said.  "Do you know where
his base is?"
	Shinji nodded.  "Sure.  He and his Big Fire contacts run the
network out of an abandoned fort, or castle, or something like that,
up in the Danuuvii Mountains north of the city.  Are you going to
fight him?"
	I glanced at Rei; she nodded, once, something unpleasant in
her eyes.
	"Yeah," I said with a slightly tired grin, "it looks like we
are."
	"I'll take you there," he said.
	"No," I told him.  "You have another job to do.  You stay here
and look after her," I said, nodding to the sleeping girl.  "I don't
need a crazed, Force-wielding telepath running loose on my ship."
	He hesitated, obviously torn between wanting to help his
friend and wanting to do the more obviously brave thing and help us
attack his tormentor.  Finally he nodded, impressing me again with the
fact that he had more common sense than bravado - unusual in a teenage
boy.  (Or a teenage girl, for that matter, I shouldn't be sexist.  I
know -I- had more bravado than common sense at that age.)
	"You can count on me," he said.
	I smiled.  "If you need help with anything, just ask Ru-ah.
She'll be around."
	"Can you show us on a map where the castle is before we
leave?" Rei asked.
	"Yes," Shinji said.  "But be careful!" he added as we heading
for the door.  "Big Fire has a lot of agents there, and the woman who
runs the network along with Roger is really scary.  Her name is Atros
somethingorother."
	Rei blinked in mild surprise.  "Atros Eternas."
	I made eye contact with her.  "One of the Magnificent Ten," I
said; she nodded.
	"Oh boy," I said.
	As we left the hangar, I linked with Ru-ah again and got her
to patch me through to Ayla.  This was a neat trick we'd figured out
early in our partnership: By linking with her through the Master Key
and having her access the ship's comm system, I could present the
illusion that I was on the bridge talking to some outside person, like
Ayla, through the comm system, when I was really somewhere else
entirely and the conversation was happening in my head, brokered
through my link with Ru-ah.
	As I had expected, the good news made Ayla no happier than it
made me.
	"Maybe you ought to wait for reinforcements.  I can have
another team here in half an hour if I speed-charge the jump drive."
	"Or you could end up in the Greater Cloud Galaxy," I pointed
out.  "Anyway, if we wait, they'll get away.  They're probably getting
ready to bug out right now."
	Ayla paused, then sighed.  "... Dammit.  You're right, but...
OK, go, but be careful."
	"Against these guys?  Never anything but."
	I broke the link and went to my quarters to dress for the
occasion.
	Deciding what to wear isn't a process that nomally takes me
very long.  Most of my days are spent aboard ship, and for shipboard
wearing I have a number of more or less identical coveralls.  The
pockets can be indispensable.
	For this, I thought it was important to make a statement, so I
opened up a drawer I don't open all that often.  I put on my old blue
jeans, hunted around and found an Art of Noise T-shirt from the
"Destination: Earth" tour, put on my sneakers instead of my boots, and
then dug around in the closet for the jacket Saionji had made for me
when I passed my journeyman's test.
	It was made of soft grey leather, now a bit battered with hard
traveling.  On the back it had a unique symbol embossed into the
leather, an ash-tree holding up the Seal of the Order of the Rose with
its branches.  It also had an Order of the Rose blood chit - a small
piece of sturdy silk marked with the Order's flag and a short message
from the Grand Duelist instructing all Cephireans to treat the bearer
with the respect due a Duelist - sewn to the left shoulder.
	This was a special garment to me, and I generally refused to
wear it into cesspits like Jisatsu... but this was a special occasion.  
The jacket with its Duelist's rose and the Art of Noise T-shirt with
the tongue-in-cheek acknowledgement of our involvement in the
Federation Civil War would combine to send a very distinct message to
Roger Tremayne:
	Hey, jackass, guess what?  Kaitlyn's crew isn't finished with
you yet.
	Before putting on the jacket, I belted on the holster rig for
my Colt .32 pistol, then made sure the gun was ready and secure before
strapping on my swords - both of them, another rarity for me.  I
braided up my hair, then bundled the braid up in thirds and secured it
to the back of my head with a hachimaki.
	Having long hair is all well and good, but I've been whipped
in the face by my braid too many times to leave it to its own devices
when I know I'm going to be fighting.  (Kaitlyn-sensei has longer hair
than mine, and yet that sort of thing never seems to happen to her.
Maybe someday I'll figure out how she does it.)
	Then I called Archie.
	"Ready for some action?" I asked him.
	He smiled, as much as a cat can smile.
	"Any time," he said, and trotted out with me to the lift.

	We rented a speeder to get us into the mountains.  HK-47 did
the driving so that the two of us organic meatbags could rest up and
center ourselves for what was sure to be a trying experience.
	If I had known then just -how- trying it was going to be, I'd
probably have stayed in bed that morning.

	I won't bore you with the details of how we got into the
castle, which was right where Shinji said it was.  His memory of the
internal arrangement was a bit sketchy.  He hadn't really been paying
attention to that; most of his mental bandwidth was spent on keeping
Roger from realizing his deception.  And of course he knew nothing of
the security that might exist outside the castle itself.
	As such, once we got to the mountain itself, we were more or
less on our own.  Between Rei's connection with the Force and my
low-level telepathy, we managed to avoid patrols and perimeter
security systems.  As for penetrating the building itself, that was
easy.  The castle wasn't just abandoned, it was in ruins.  The outer
walls had big, crumbling holes in them.  The trick was getting inside
without pulling anything else down, not finding a place to get
through.
	It was hard to tell, Rei being Rei, but I think I surprised
her a little bit by bringing Archie with us.  She didn't say anything,
but I caught a whiff of faint puzzlement.  I could understand that.
Sure, Archie can -talk-, but apart from that he doesn't seem to be
anything particularly special.  Certainly not the kind of companion
animal you'd take along with big trouble expected.  Not like, say,
Sergei, Kaitlyn-sensei's 500-pound Siberian tiger.
	So when we slipped into the castle and I called quietly for
Archie, Rei turned and had just started to raise an eyebrow very
slightly when he went to work.
	He took two running steps toward me, then leaped, almost as if
he were attacking.  In mid-air, his body changed, flattening and
elongating, almost seeming to become plastic.  When he struck me, he
flowed around me, wrapping around my torso and settling into a
snug-fitting solidity again.  It was a peculiar sensation, and one I
never quite got used to, but once he was in place, the feeling was a
warm and comforting one.
	Archie came from a planet called Roshtaria, where his kind
were genetically engineered in ancient times to serve as protectors
for the royal family.  Today, not many people have heard of Roshtaria; 
it's beyond the Outer Rim Territories, off on the Coreward Rim, and
almost impossible to stumble across by accident.  I'd spend a couple
of months there, years before, and when I left, Archie went with me.
	Roshtarian armor cats are handy creatures.  Not only are they
smart enough to be pretty good company, they're also much stronger and
tougher than they look, with claws capable of scratching concrete.
And, of course, they have this body-morphing trick, which makes them
damn good body armor.  I'd been assured that Archie was proof against
small arms (bullets and blasterfire) as well as most melee weapons,
and on a couple of occasions he'd proven it.  He didn't -enjoy-
proving it, but it wouldn't do him any lasting harm.
	A person looks a little weird with a slightly shaggy,
flattened housecat wrapped around her body, its head near her right
shoulder.  At the very least, it makes a statement.  In this case,
having Archie in place would also obscure part of the statement I
-wanted to make, which I hadn't thought of when I put on the T-shirt,
but that's life.  I'd take missing that part of the message in return
for not ending up with a hole in me.
	We slowly worked our way through the castle's ruined
corridors, making our way ever deeper into the building.  There didn't
seem to be anything or anyone a