FanFic: Jade Lure (COMPLETE in three chapters!)

[DezoPenguin]

A few of you read the previous fic in this series, "Jade Dancer," but don't worry if you haven't; there's nothing to connect the two except the characters and their relationship to one another, all of which I explain anyway. And, as promised, no ff.net links here, but just the actual text of the story!


CHAPTER ONE

It was the first time, Jade thought, that they'd had an android as a client. Not that they'd had all that many clients; the little team of hunters were all young and unseasoned, without all that many jobs to compare it to. Still, it was a new experience. Those were fun.

The android was of average height and not particularly bulky; it was a Type: NA, designed to work in conjunction with humans and Newmen in ordinary office settings where excessive size might be considered threatening. Geryne, the team's Force, had told Jade that when she first caught sight of their client across the Guild lobby. Ironically for a woman who specialized in the psychic command of Photon energy through Techniques, Geryne was something of an e-fetishist, an intent student of computers, electronics, and mechanization.

The pale blue android's eye-lights had skimmed over the hunters as they appreciated, but they'd lingered on Jade in a way they hadn't on the other three. She was used to those kinds of looks and enjoyed them; the way her skimpy green top and shorts revealed much of her dusky skin and clung lovingly to what little was covered hadn't been chosen by accident. Sensual appreciation made her feel like less of a freak, despite the patch that hid her useless and deformed left eye. She didn't often get those looks from androids, though, even the nominally male ones. It seemed out of character, too, for the client's cool, methodical speech.

"Good morning," he said. "My designation is Artos; I represent the Pioneer 2 Enterprise. This quest should be, if not necessarily simple, then at least straightforward."

"Sounds good to me," said Renn, the team's HUmar and nominal leader. His long green hair was styled in "pretty-boy" fashion, but his body and jawline were too square and blocky to pull off the look.

"As I am sure you are aware, when Pioneer 2 failed to establish communication with the Central Dome on Ragol, unmanned probes were sent to the surface. One such probe was sent by our laboratory with Council approval. However, we lost contact with this probe shortly after it entered the atmosphere."

"That was the usual result for such probes," Geryne agreed. "Often they were destroyed by native wildlife."

"Indeed. Our probe, if I may be permitted, was of an enhanced design created by our corporate laboratory, superior to the typical government and military reconnaissance devices. Photon shields insulate the data recorder, so that even if the transmission apparatus is destroyed, the recorder should remain intact barring extraordinary applications of force. We want your group to find the remains of the probe and, if possible, retrieve the recorder."

"Ragol's a big planet," Renn noted.

"Our extrapolation of the flight data suggests that the probe landed somewhere in Section 07 of the Residential Area near the Central Dome. We cannot be more precise, but that should be an adequately narrow area for your search. You will be paid 1500 meseta each for finding the probe, whether or not the recorder is intact, and five hundred each for good-faith efforts if you completely search every block of Section 07 without locating the probe. Are these terms acceptable?"

Renn glanced at the other hunters; when he received no complaints he said, "They are."

"Very well, then. I look forward to your report."

It was clearly a dismissal and they took it as one, leaving the reception lobby and then the Guild itself.

"All right, everyone. Go suit up and we'll meet at the transporter at the top of the hour for game on."

Jade shook her head in disbelief. She never understood how Renn could call the job of a hunter, with its life or death battles, a game.

Their client would have agreed with her. Even as the hunters were leaving the Guild offices, he had already sent a simple-mail message. Not being one for pithy allusions, he wrote only, "Quest accepted."


* * *

The air on the planet Ragol was cool, with the fatal heaviness that promised rain to come. It didn't have the crisp purity of the artificially maintained environment of Pioneer 2, and Jade loved it. It was natural and wonderful, with all the imperfections that gave it character, not the sterility of manmade life.

Renn and Geryne didn't appreciate it the way she did, but they were human. They'd grown up on Coral, their homeworld, before embarking with thirty thousand other colonists on Pioneer 2. Jade, though, was a genetically engineered Newman, grown in a corporate lab, then slated for disposal as a defective product because of her warped eye. She'd only been a month old when she'd been bought as a slave by an underworld figure who assumed that the clientele rarely looked at her girls' faces anyway, a figure who'd arranged passage on board Pioneer 2 to establish herself in a new market. Jade had been freed a year and a half into the voyage when a shadow war had killed her owner, and with the assistance of her rescuer, Malcolm Tane, had forged a new life for herself as a hunter. She appreciated the ability to stand free on a forest path and savor the air in a way the others just couldn't.

Not that Ragol was some kind of paradise, either. Just as Pioneer 2 had arrived and was beginning to make contact with the surface, something happened. No one could be sure what, but whatever it had been, it had been fast and lethal. There had been no trace found of any of the thirty thousand people of Pioneer 1. They had lived and worked on Ragol for seven years, taking the first steps to establishing a new home for the Coralians fleeing their shattered ecosystem, and they had all just...vanished. Investigating the mystery had fallen to the Hunter's Guild on behalf of the Administration, though other political factions certainly had their spoons stirring the soup.

Renn consulted the portable navigation system he wore on his wrist.

"Okay, it looks like we're in Section 07, Block C," he announced. "Anyone else been here before?"

Jade and Geryne shook their heads, while the fourth member of the team, a bulky Type:D RAcast, said, "I have not."

"It's too bad Pioneer 1 couldn't have sent back some decent maps of the settlement," Jade said.

"We have to search it all anyway," Renn noted, "though it would be nice to know what it is we have to search."

"Do you want us to split up?"

"And have a Hildebear land on that pretty head, Geryne? Not a chance. We'll stick together and do a standard sweep, keep to the left at all times."

It started almost as soon as the first security door opened. The hunters passed into the next block, a large, grassy clearing through which a small stream gurgled away placidly. From the undergrowth sleek, gray, wolflike creatures leapt while yellow-furred humanoids burst up from the ground. While the settlers may have vanished, the native wildlife of Ragol definitely hadn't, and it was extraordinarily, even unnaturally aggressive.

They weren't exactly a well-oiled machine, Jade knew. They were too young and inexperienced for it, but they knew each other, were learning and growing on the job. Geryne called upon the Jellen technique, sapping the power of the enemies' attacks. Renn swung his partisan, a long-handled weapon with a cutting blade, to slow the Goboomas' approach while Type: D fired his rifle into the cluster of clawed, fanged beasts.

Jade barely spun aside from one of the leaping wolves and swung her katana down in a bright arc. Her weapon was a gift from Tane, an artifact of the pre-Photon era but easily superior to anything else the team owned. The keen edge slashed down into the creature's spine and left it dead on the ground.

"We've got these guys!" Renn called. "Just keep the wolves off us!"

Jade and Geryne did exactly that, the Hunter closing to strike with her Agito and the Force using her Zonde technique to assault the savage wolves with electricity. Meanwhile, the boys kept the Goboomas contained, Renn slowly giving ground before their advance but slashing at their lines with every step while the android pumped rifle shots into them. It was kind of frightening, Jade thought, to consider how the animals would advance singlemindedly, not driven off by injury or by watching their pack-mates die next to them. What could cause that kind of fanatical attitude in an animal?

Still, it was better them than her, she thought pragmatically when the last wave was beaten. The lights over the security doors at the far end of the clearing turned from red to green as the sensors detected the absence of hostiles. They could move on, but they waited until Geryne had scanned the room for the probe recorder's Photon signature while the others searched with their eyes.

"Negative result," Type: D stated. Unlike many newer androids, he had been given the barest gloss of a human personality, retaining most of his processing power for combat-efficiency considerations.

"Nothing showing up on the sensors, either," Geryne agreed.

"All right, then, let's move on," Renn decided. "There's a lot of blocks left in this section and that money's burning a hole in my pocket already."


* * *

"Now, did you want that with one or two shots of milk?" asked the perky, pink-haired barista behind the Leeson's counter.

"None," Malcolm Tane replied.

"How about extra foam?"

"I wasn't aware that black coffee came with foam at all, unless you mean the cup."

"Chocolate shavings? A dash of nutmeg? A cinnamon stick?"

Tane shook his head, bemused.

"Miss, I asked for black coffee. You take the pot, you pour what's inside into the cup, you put a lid on the cup, and you hand it to me."

"But that's so boring," she said in an anguished tone. The bob of the Newman girl's head made the three dangling rings studding her long, pointed left ear clink together. She looked to be about the same age as Jade, the Newman hunter he'd rescued from an underworld firefight (with considerable help from she herself) and sponsored into the Guild, and yet what a difference there was. This girl was probably a second or even third-generation Newman, with a mother and father instead of a laboratory bio-pod and a normal life that did not involve slavery and prostitution.


"S-sorry, sir; I'll get it right away," the shopgirl said, and scurried off to the coffee pot. Only belatedly Tane realized that the direction of his thoughts probably had been reflected in his expression, and the girl had interpreted it as anger at her. Tane wasn't a particularly scary-looking person: he had a lean build with blond hair spiked on top and in a long ponytail in back, and wore square wire-rimmed spectacles, but as an experienced Ranger he had that depth that said, this person has killed. "Getting serious" about something meant an entirely different thing to him than it did to the average citizen.

"Don't know how you do it, Tane."

"What? Oh, Kraft, I didn't see you there."

Rory Kraft grinned. He was shorter and younger than Tane and wore his hair in a military buzzcut as a habit left over from his days in the army. When the shopgirl brought Tane's coffee, he ordered a latte.

"Don't know why I bother. Synthetic milk in neokaf isn't exactly a gourmet drink."

"That's why I take mine black. The flavoring may be artificial, but the caffeine is genuine. You don't see how I do what?"

Kraft paid for his latte and winked at the barista, who just rolled her eyes at him.

"Get pretty girls to do what you ask, of course. Spent half my life trying to figure that trick. No success yet, though. Of course, my girlfriend's probably in favor of that."

Tane sipped his coffee, tuning out the other Ranger's babble as best he could.

"Now, you, on the other hand. Like that pretty Hunter with the eye patch? Man, you get all the luck."

"She's just a friend, Kraft, nothing more."

"You've got to be kidding. That is one finely-designed chassis on her. And she's turning into a real badass Hunter, too, which is twice as hot."

"Jade is coming along very well," Tane agreed. "Her swordsmanship was already more than adequate, and she's adding fieldcraft to it."

Kraft shook his head.

"You're not giving her enough credit, Tane. Her team's taking on Residential Section 7. That's no beginner job."

Tane stopped in his tracks and whirled to face Kraft.

"Residential Seven, you said?"

"Y-yeah, I was at the Guild earlier today, saw the taken listing on the board. Why are you flipping out?"

"You hadn't heard?"

"Heard what? Something about Residential Seven?"

"She probably hasn't, either," Tane muttered under his breath. "The information is still semi-classified and hadn't made it through the Guild's rumor mill yet."

"Tane, what are you babbling about?"

"A party of hunters in Residential Seven last week reported entirely new breeds of animals there, ones just as violent as the usual varieties but far more powerful and dangerous. If Jade's group stumbles across any of them, they won't stand a chance."




<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2007-05-15 17:01 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2007-05-17 16:57 ]</font>

[DezoPenguin]

CHAPTER TWO

"That's four blocks down," Renn said with more than a little satisfaction. Jade supposed he deserved it; just when they'd thought they were finished clearing the block, two Hildebears had jumped in from above. The impact had staggered Type: D, and one 'bear had promptly hit him with a crushing punch that stove in his chestplate and nearly incapacitated him. Renn had immediately rushed into the fray, keeping the creatures back with broad sweeps of his partisan, risking his neck with all their attention focused on him. This had left the Hildebears vulnerable, as Jade came in from the side, slashing with her Agito at their exposed sides and backs.

Now, Geryne was healing the damaged android with her Resta technique. Jade watched in amazement as Photon-based circuitry and carapace plating almost regrew and restored itself before her eyes.

"I'll never get used to that," she said. "I can't believe how an organic being and a machine can be healed in exactly the same way."

"We all have Photon energy in us," Geryne explained. "It's aspected differently in machines than it is in humans or Newmen, but it's still the same basic energy source, not like when androids and computers ran on electricity or wavelengths of visible light."

"You're the expert," Jade said. That's what being a Force meant, mastering the intricate flow of Photon energy and channeling it through techniques. It was why so many scientists and engineers working with aspects of Photon technology had Force training, because it gave them first-hand knowledge of Photon energy in ways purely academic study did not.

"There!" Geryne announced, patting Type: D's reconstructed torso. "You're good to go."

"Affirmative; structural integrity has returned to optimum."

"I like it his way better," Jade said with a chuckle. The Force stuck her tongue out at her.

"Then let's get going, already," Renn said.

"Got a hot date tonight?" Geryne teased. "You're in an awful hurry to finish this job."

"Hey, efficiency counts and we're trying to build a reputation as a team here. This is the first time a client's asked for us, and I want to make sure we're both quick and thorough."

"That's a 'no,' in case you didn't pay close attention," Geryne told Jade. The girls giggled and Renn turned beet red. He spun on his heel and stomped towards the exit, leaving the rest of the party to trail along after him.

The next security gate led to a winding path that curved around to the north and east. A couple of short, mushroom-shaped Photon transmission towers topped the ridge on the outside of the curve. The sight prompted Jade's curiosity.

"I don't understand it. The security gates and laser fences function, and we've seen these towers, radar disks, and so on, but where are the buildings? This is supposed to be the residential area, isn't it?"

"Maybe the monsters destroyed them?"

"Why?" Renn countered. "Sure, the animals attack people, but why buildings--and why only certain types of buildings?"

"Okay, then maybe that explosion?"

"What explosion, Geryne?" Jade asked. "I've never seen any signs of a blast zone on any of my trips to the surface, have you? It's as if some force just...erased the Pioneer 1 colonists and part of their settlement without touching anything else. What could do that?"

"It sounds almost like certain Photon techniques, like how Gizonde will arc to enemies but not allies when cast."

"Hmm..." Jade mused. Just then the promised rain started to fall, not a downpour but a steady spray of drops from the patchy clouds.

"Anyway, I think it can wait," Geryne said. "We'd better do like Renn wants and finish the job before Type: D rusts."

"Negative. My carapace is incapable of oxidization."

"I was joking, but good to know."

The gate at the end of the path led into an oblong clearing with a curve to its hilly sides, making it almost kidney-shaped. In the far corner, behind a laser fence, four metal crates sat invitingly. The Pioneer 1 military had been much better equipped than its Pioneer 2 counterpart, and its caches often yielded valuable goods to lucky hunters.

"Look for a switch," Renn suggested, though the others were doing so already. They'd moved out into the clearing, breaking formation, when the first creatures appeared. There were two of them, burrowing up from beneath the ground like the Goboomas had earlier, but these were completely different, reptilian rather than mammals. Indeed, with their beaked faces and shell-covered backs they looked like nothing so much as giant, ambulatory turtles.

Jade took one step towards closing with the nearest creature when she saw Renn put away his partisan in exchange for a handgun. He was right, of course; it was silly to engage in hand-to-hand combat with an unknown foe. Type: D was already firing with his rifle, while Geryne launched a ball of fire with her Foie technique.


"What the hell?" Renn shouted as he pumped three quick shots into the back of one monster without so much as scratching the outer coating of its shell. Their scaled limbs were equally resistant to damage. Jade had just put her Agito away when she realized there was no point in drawing her own handgun since it was no better than Renn's.

One way the monsters were not like turtles was in their speed; both quickly moved to attack the hunters who stung at them, gnatlike. One rushed Renn, who switched back to the partisan while backpedaling, while the other took after Geryne. The FOmarl slammed two more bursts of fire into it, the second delivered right into its face from five feet away, but the creature's advance was inexorable and it raised a clawed, flipperlike arm to strike. Jade took off running and dove, grabbing her friend by the back of her Force's robes and pulling her down out of the way of the scything blow.

Jade hit the ground easily, absorbing the fall so as not to be hurt, rolled, and came up with her katana in hand. As a relic of a past age, the thousand-year-old Agito replica was as powerful as some of the most elite modern Photon sabers, unlike the team's low-grade weapons. If they had anything that could hurt these monsters, Jade's katana was it. She darted forward, slashing at the monster's side, and felt the shiver of the impact run up her arms. Though the resistance to her edge was much more than she was used to, Jade felt the scales part and when she completed the stroke a line of red blood welled up in the shallow wound. A surge of triumph welled up within her, but she still was all too aware that the injury was minor at best.

Then she didn't have time for reflection, as the monster was turning on her, swinging its claw with a speed she wouldn't have believed possible. Hadn't it been slowed even a moment by her attack? Jade barely got her left hand up to block, taking the shock off her Photon barrier. The force of the blow smashed her down to the ground despite her defenses, leaving her twitching, stunned.

Someone screamed; Jade couldn't tell if it was in pain or fear. She managed to roll her head away from the ground so her good eye could see, and wished she hadn't. Renn lay crumpled on the ground, while Type: D was desperately trying to fend off the second creature's attacks, using his rifle as a crude mace. The monster she'd been fighting rose up above her, insane rage in its tiny eyes, and it raised its claw for the finishing blow. A bright spark of lightning hit it--Geryne, trying the Zonde technique since her Foie had been ineffective--but it didn't even catch the reptile's attention. Then, a small red dot appeared on the side of the monster's head. A trick of the light? Jade thought. Or a new technique?

Then the drumbeats echoed, three loud, sharp cracks, and three bursts of blood exploded from the side of the creature's head. It staggered in a circle and crashed to the forest ground, dead. Salvation!

Jade turned her head; the shots had come from a Ranger, his build masked by heavy torso armor and his head enclosed in a helmet with an amber faceplate. The outfit was unfamiliar to her, but the handgun in his fist wasn't. She knew it for a Yasminkov 2000H, a relic of the pre-Photon days and the apex of what had then been military technology. It was something she, herself, wouldn't be able to handle; Jade knew it because it was a collector's piece belonging to Malcolm Tane.

He'd saved me with it that time, too.

"Tane!" she cried joyously, even as she sprang to her feet, driven by the adrenaline rush of new hope. Jade snatched up her fallen sword and charged the second monster even as it smashed Type: D back into the hillside with a blow that split his rifle in two and nearly severed his left arm. Tane's gun barked again, pumping bullets into the creature, but it was Jade who struck the killing blow, ramming the chisel point of her katana through the monster's scaled side and thrusting up into its heart. The second monster staggered forward one step, then two, and keeled over, its suddenly weight nearly ripping the Agito out of Jade's hands.

"Type: D, are you all right?" she asked.

"Affirmative. Injuries are susceptible to self-repair systems or healing."

"What about Renn?"

"Negative."

Her head snapped up.

"What?"

"Negative," the android confirmed. "I attempted restoration via Monomate during the fight, without result."

"What's going on?" Geryne asked as she and Tane came up to them.

"Renn needs a Moon Atomizer; hurry!"

There was a technique called Reverser which acted in much the same way as emergency medical resuscitation, capable of healing the injuries of and "jump-starting" the bodies of the technically deceased. Geryne wasn't far enough along in her training as a Force to use Reverser, but a Photon-based medicine was available that did the same thing. Geryne fumbled through her robes and fished out the small green tube, then began to spray Renn with the glittering mist.

"It isn't going to work," Tane said quietly before Geryne was even done.

"Don't say that," the Force exclaimed. "It has to work. He's...damn it, Renn can't die like this!" Even so, her hand shook as she finished with the treatment.

"Reverser and Moon Atomizers can deal with most trauma to the purely mechanical workings of the body, but the brain is different. He's taken a serious head injury."

Jade shuddered; she'd been trying not to look at the way the side of Renn's head was caved in like Type: D's shoulder.

"The brain damage," Tane continued, his gentle voice proceeding with the ruthless inflexibility of a machine, "is too serious to allow for resuscitation. Or in metaphysical terms, a Force friend of mine claims that the soul lingers by the body after death, waiting to be put back in, but when the body is too damaged to be repaired, the soul stops waiting and moves on. I don't know about that, but I do know that it won't work."

He laid a hand lightly on Jade's shoulder.

"No; you're wrong, you have to be!" Geryne protested, but there was little heart and no belief in it. She could see that the atomizer was having no effect. All at once, she burst into tears, burying her face in her hands as she wept.

"Were they...?" Tane asked Jade, who shook her head.

"No," she told him, her voice equally soft. It was doubtful Geryne even heard them. "I think...it may just be that she's never seen a person die by violence before, enemy or friend."

Tane nodded. They were different, he and Jade. They were too familiar with death now, could recognize it for what it was instead of seeing it as unthinkable and alien.

Jade stepped forward and slipped a supportive arm around her teammate's waist.

"Come on, Geryne. Let's get out of here. Renn wouldn't want us to leave him on the surface."

"We may have a problem with that," Tane said. "I tried to use Ryuker to open a portal back to Pioneer 2, only it didn't work."

"Wait, but that's not possible."

"Actually it is, the Photon aspects of certain areas can prevent teleportation, and jamming fields can do the same technologically. If we want to get out of here, we'll have to do it the hard way."


* * *

The simple-mail message transmitted from Ragol over the BEE network was short and simple, only six words long.

The rats are in the trap.

The uniformed figure leaned back in her seat and smiled.

[DezoPenguin]

CHAPTER THREE

"It can't be coincidence," Jade said. "First we're hired for a job that brings us to monsters we can't possibly handle on our own, and now we can't make a rapid escape?"

"Jade, what are you saying?" Geryne protested. The Force wasn't doing well; she wasn't coping easily with the shock of losing Renn. She was too young, emotionally speaking, without the shell around her emotions that only experience could provide.

"I'm saying that someone wants us to die."

Since Geryne was in no shape to do it, Type: D used a monomate to repair his damaged arm. Jade gave the RAcast her handgun since his own rifle had been destroyed.

"But why? We're just starting out as hunters! We don't have professional enemies or know any dangerous secrets."

"Take cover!" Tane shouted, flinging himself forward against the hillside. Type: D reacted instantly, having no emotional considerations to prevent him from following the much more experienced Ranger's instructions. Jade was a step behind. Geryne, though, didn't move at al, and in the next instant her Force's robes were stained crimson as a golden shell of Photon energy pierced her through from behind. She toppled forward, landing facefirst in the rain-slicked grass.

"Geryne!"

Jade made a move towards her fallen friend, but Tane grabbed her wrist, holding her back.

"Don't! There's a sniper covering that side of the block, and we've got other problems. he tapped his navigational unit, then pointed ahead towards the north exit from the clearing where Jade's group had entered by. The gate opened, and three figures advanced into the area.

Two were hunters, one android of each sex, together with a male Newman Force in green, his pointed shoes and tassel cap making him look like a demented elf from a kid's fairy tale. They had weapons out and charged to attack at once, only to walk straight into Tane and Type: D's gunfire.

It was ironic, in a way. Tane, Jade realized, had seen the three enemies coming on his nav screen and had reacted. The sniper had reacted too fast, giving away his position if he hadn't been spotted too. The three survivors were closed off from the south end of the block because the hilly divide was the only cover, which had essentially forced them into a defensive line perfectly situated to meet the charging attackers. The enemy hunters' own trap had been turned on them.

Jade sprang forward, charging the enemy; without a gun she needed to get to close range to be able to contribute. Tane had focused his shots on the nearer, female android, who went down sparking from several wounds. The HUcast looked to be the inferior threat, though Jade had no desire to be on the receiving end of any sweep of its massive claymore. She ducked and rolled under one such swing, then kicked out, catching him in the back of the knee joint, making him stumble. She continued her motion to swing herself back to her feet and moved on the Force, but he had acted first. Shimmering pulses of light suffused her, and then the sudden explosion of the Grants technique blew her off her feet.

"No one left to hide behind, Tane!" the FOnewm shouted while Jade tried to collect her senses. Tane? she thought. They know him? Then this trap isn't for us, it's for him! That meant the young hunters were the bait.

No, I'm the bait. Tane wasn't there to rescue Renn, Geryne, or Type: D, after all.

The thought sent mingled guilt and fear rushing through her. Jade forced herself to her feet with the sudden surge of emotion. The Force had obviously dismissed her as dead or at least out; he was casting techniques at Tane and Type: D in support of his hunter. Fury consumed her as she stared at his back. How dare he use her as a pawn against the person she was closest to in all the world? How dare he put her friends in Death's way just as window dressing?

She screamed as she swung. Blood fountained, drenching the Force's fancy suit. His head bounced once, then rolled about six feet away.

"Reverser that," she spat.


* * *

Geryne groaned in pain. Her eyelids fluttered, then slowly opened to reveal eyes still clouded from the aftereffects of recovery.

"Where? I thought...I was dead."

"Affirmative," noted Type: D. "A condition of clinical death was present for eleven minutes and forty-eight seconds. You have remained sedated after recovery to enable repair of brain damage owing to oxygen deficiency."

Sudden emotion cleared the clouds from her gaze.

"Then, Renn--?" she started to ask hopefully, but her hope was quickly quashed.

"I'm sorry, Geryne," Jade told her. "Some things can't be fixed, even with the best medical technology."

The Force sighed and let her head fall back on the pillow.

"What happened?" she asked plaintively. "I don't understand any of this. What were those creatures? Who was that man? What happened to me?"

Jade sighed.

"The man was Malcolm Tane," she said.

"Oh! I've heard you talk about him." A hint of Geryne's usual personality shone through for an instant as she said, "He swooped right in like a knight in shining armor, didn't he? Pretty romantic..."

Jade turned her head, looking down and away so that the left side of her face, with the eye patch, was turned towards Geryne.

"He did come rushing to save me, didn't he? But the question is, how did he know? It was a deliberate trap, Geryne. Remember how Renn said the client approached us specifically instead of just posting an open quest on the Guild board? We were deliberately given a job that we couldn't handle, and then they let Tane know about it so he would come rushing to help us...me."

"You mean, the whole job was a put-up?"

"Affirmative," indicated Type: D.

"A hunter team attacked us," Jade said. "That's what happened to you; you were shot by a sniper. Three other hunters attacked us on the ground. We beat them, so we were able to get you here in time, but..." Jade sighed. "But Renn's still dead, just because he had the bad judgment to let me onto his hunter team."

She slammed her fist against the wall.

"Negative," Type: D contradicted her. "Proximate cause of Renn's decease was native animal, designate Bartle. Cause-in-fact of decease was ambush initiated by unknown third party. Renn's association with you constitutes link in chain of causation only."

Jade looked up at the android in surprise.

"He's hell on self-pity," Geryne said. "I think it's why I hang around with him."


* * *

The rifle Rory Kraft handed across to the clerk at the Hunter's Guild cloakroom was about half again the length of a normal rifle, with a needle-this barrel.

"Wals-MK2. Good gun, especially for playing sniper."

"Sheesh!" Kraft jumped in surprise. "Hell, Tane, I guess that makes us even in sneak-ups."

"Actually, you're still one up. As I said, the Wals-MK2 is a good gun, for a Photon weapon."

"Well, we don't all like those antique toys of yours."

"True, but my antique toys do have one advantage, Kraft. They aren't affected by the Photon suppressors that keep weapons and techniques from functioning on the Guild deck."

Kraft swallowed nervously, a not unreasonable emotion since Tane was pointing his Yasminkov squarely at the other Ranger's midsection.

"Hey, hey now, take it easy..."

"I'm taking it very easy, Kraft. For example, I didn't bring Jade along. You can ask your friend the FOnewm about how she feels about revenge. The hunter who got killed, Renn, was Jade's friend and team leader, and she's taking things a little more personally than I am."

"Look, man, you're gonna have to start making sense here."

Tane sighed.

"Protests of wounded innocence? How amateurish. Traps require bait. Jade was hired for what amounted to a suicide mission so I would run to her rescue and could in turn be killed, ideally by monsters but an assassination team would do in a pinch. The catch is, the ambush doesn't work if I don't know Jade's in danger. So I have to be told about this mission she's on, and that's why I'm now pointing this gun at you, Kraft." He reached out with his free hand and patted the other Ranger on the cheek. "You were the shill."

Kraft's eyes dropped to the gun barrel, then rose back to Tane's face. He started to tell another worthless lie, but it died on his lips; Tane wouldn't have believed him and anyway, he was a gunman, not an actor or spy.

"So what happens now? You shoot me and ruin this pretty lady's day?" He nodded at the clerk.

"No, I turn you over to the Hunter's Guild for interrogation. A hunter who takes on an assassination job against other hunters is going to be of great interest to them."

Kraft paled. The Guild was by its very nature a laissez-faire kind of organization, but when it chose it act it could wield nearly as much power as the military or Lab.

"I'd say you and your fellow survivors can have all kinds of fun seeing who's going to confess first and with the most information. A rat race, if you will."


* * *

"So she really did work for Pioneer 2 Enterprise all along?" Jade asked.

"Uh huh. I'd just assumed as a matter of course that your Artos was lying about his affiliation, or at least that someone was using him as a blind, but no. Of course, that's actually clever. Since that was the only name listed openly, everyone would assume that the real instigator's affiliation would be with a different faction."

Jade finished the last bite of her neomeat cutlet. Really, it was amazing how good Tane could make such things taste. She supposed liking to cook was linked to his love for archaic technology--spectacles, kinetic firearms, katanas, and frying pans all had that in common. And like any afficionado, he was always eager to show off, which is why when he asked to discuss the results of the Guild's investigation it had been easy to convince him to do it over dinner at his residence unit.

"I still can't believe it," she said. "It's not...professional."

Tane grinned.

"You mean, because revenge doesn't pay, or because she might have ended up hiring me for the next job she contracted?"

"Either. So what if you'd been responsible for destroying the last operation she ran, costing her a promotion? You didn't do it personally; you were just a hunter hired by the Lab on that job. You didn't even know her by name."

Tane shrugged.

"She took it personally. She shouldn't have, I agree, but there you are. We don't always act as professionally as we should."

"She was stupid. Now she has no job, no position, and the only real question is whether she'll be executed as an accessory in Renn's murder or just imprisoned for the theft of company resources she used to set up the assassination. People are worth risking that, not wounded pride."

Jade supposed that given her own history, she'd had more opportunity than most to learn not to take things personally.

Tane nodded.

"I'm sorry, though."

"Oh?"

"That my problems bled over into your life."

Jade nodded back.

"I was thinking that way myself, at first. Guilty over Renn's death."

"At first?"

"Geryne and Type: D helped change my mind."

"Did they," Tane mused.

"It's really hard to argue with an android when it comes to assigning blame, although lowering when he says to your face, 'Your emotional considerations are not based on objective reality and are therefore valueless.' He really could use more tact in his personality matrix."

Tane laughed; he couldn't help himself. Jade smiled with relief at what was a very good sign. She had trouble measuring the quixotic side to his nature, sometimes, and how far his overdeveloped sense of responsibility would go. Then, just as suddenly her stomach clenched with another quick knot of tension. She didn't have any excuse now, for taking the safe path and not doing what she planned next.

"There is one thing, though, that is quite real." She slipped out of her chair and came around to his side of the table. "It's been firmly established that there's a link between us. Your plotter was counting on it, and it's been verified now by your actions."

He looked up at her.

"So?"

Jade took a deep breath.

"So, if people are going to assume it's true..." She turned away shyly, unconsciously turning to her left so her flawless right profile was towards him. "Isn't it about time we admitted it, too?"

She reached down, her left hand covering his where it lay on the table. He turned his palm, taking her fingers in his, and stood. Tane may have murmured something against her lips as he kissed them, as he pulled her against him in an embrace, but if he had, she didn't care. "I love you" could be a lie in words, but never in actions.