FanFic: "Tell Me a Secret" Part 7--The Epic Conclusion!

[DezoPenguin]

This is the second of the two Sejanus stories I wrote a few years back. Once I'm through posting this, then I can move on to the new one I'm writing. ^_^

It's interesting...most of the time when PSO revealed something, it kicked the traces out from under a fic (such as in "Soul of Steel" which gave the details of Elenor's relationship with Mags, thereby screwing up a major plot point in my "A Friend in Need"). This time, I actually seemed to get something right.

By the way, bonus points if you can guess who The Voice is. He/she's never named in the story, but it's pretty obvious after the concluding part.

__________________________________________________

TELL ME A SECRET
Part I

The shrill cry of an electronic summons brought me awake. At first I thought it was the alarm chron, summoning me to a new day, but after a couple of sleep-fuzzed gropings towards its off switch I realized that the sound was different, a less piercing squeal than the one specifically meant to rouse me from blissful slumber.

"Computer, answer link," I said, instructing my apartment's information processor-slash-entertainment center-slash-Data Link to connect me with whomever was trying to call. The blank screen across the room was replaced by bracketed words in light green reading "No Video Signal." Whomever was on the other end of the call either had a broken video pickup or didn't want their face known.

"Sejanus?" The voice was male, but that didn't have to mean anything. Communication was over a digital network, and computers could do remarkable things to the electronic code that made up a voice on the link.

"Who else would it be at this time of night?" Actually, since the colony ship Pioneer 2 had been in space for two years, it was always night, but it was also that time of the twenty-four-hour cycle which I used as my sleep shift.

"You're angry," the voice said. "Under the circumstances, that isn't unreasonable."

"I'm glad you realize that."

"What I have to tell you, however, is of vital importance to you. I'm sure that you will agree."

I scowled at the blank screen. There was a strong element of melodrama in all this, and melodrama wasn't something I liked at any time, let alone at four-seventeen.

"Cut to the chase," I said simply. Surprisingly, my caller did.

"There's a new quest being offered at the Hunter's Guild," he said. "It was received one hour ago, which means you're already late and getting further behind by the minute."

"If there's that much of a rush, I'm surprised you waited this long to tell me about it."

"I'm not omniscient, Sejanus, and I'm not in a position to act as freely as you might think. I'm risking my life just by talking to you."

Melodrama again.

"I can see by your expression that you don't think highly of my methods." Perceptive slag. I should have cut my video feed too. "I'm not much fond of them either, but this is the way it has to be, at least until...but that's not important. What is important is that you have to be the one to find her."

"Her?"

"'The Missing Scientist.' That's the name of the quest."

"That's handy to know. Otherwise I might end up looking for someone's dog."

"It won't be a dog you're looking for this time, Sejanus."

There was a pause, and I thought for a second that he'd disconnected, but the "Call Terminated" message hadn't flashed on-screen.

"What, then?"

"You'll be looking for answers. Don't be late, if you want to find any." With that, my caller did disconnect.

With a lead-in like that, I could hardly fail to have my curiosity aroused. The question was, did I want to give in to that curiosity or instead roll over and go back to sleep?

The voice had said I'd find answers, which was sufficiently vague to cover almost anything. Like almost everyone else on this spaceship, the burning issue at hand for me was, what happened to the thirty thousand men and women of Pioneer 1? They had been the initial colonization mission to the planet Ragol, and all had seemed well until Pioneer 2 had reached Ragol with the main wave of refugees and attempted to open communications with the surface.

Then...something happened.

No one quite knew what had taken place, but the upshot of it was that every last one of the colonists of Pioneer 1 had vanished and that the planet had become infested with hostile monsters not previously reported during the seven years Pioneer 1 had been on Ragol. Official government statements were few and far between, largely because they were as much in the dark as anyone.

I myself had a more personal reason to find out the truth of what had happened. Like a number of people, I'd had family on Pioneer 1, my sister Velaria. Vel had been a soldier, sent to protect the colonists in case they encountered trouble. The irony of that was the kind that made people reach for their liquor bottles.

Recently, I had been one of a group of hunters hired by the military to investigate the Ragol situation. The governing Council had already hired a team, but even in the face of a fearful mystery politics reigned supreme. The military didn't trust that the Council would keep them adequately briefed, and no doubt there were some officers who had their own agendas. A condition of our employment, though, was that when we were not working on a military-assigned mission, we had the right to accept other quests at the Hunter's Guild. In fact, it was encouraged, since we might learn something the army needed to know in the course of a quest.

So, were the "answers" offered by the mystery voice personal, professional, or both?

Awareness of the situation soon displaced my annoyance at being contacted in the middle of the night. Finding Vel was why I'd taken the military job in the first place. The quests I'd done so far on their behalf had been inconclusive at best. Strange link call or not, I'd be a fool to pass up any chance at solving part of the Ragol mystery and finding Vel. I didn't know what my faceless informant was up to, but for now, I'd play his game.

* * *

It took less than half an hour for me to dress, collect my weapons, and fly to the Hunter's Guild deck, where I docked my aerocar. The usual crowd was around, hunters looking for work; shopping for new equipment or selling off gear scavenged from Pioneer 1 storage caches on the planet; or just shooting the breeze about the way things had gone on their recent quests. On my way to the Guild, I caught sight of several familiar faces, one of whom I made a mental note to speak with after I took the quest.

The Guild's desk was staffed by the usual short-haired blonde wearing a blouse obviously designed by a teenaged male who spent too little time in the company of real females.

"Welcome to the Hunter's Guild, where we enrich the lives of hunters."

"Bad pun," I murmured, then asked to see the quest listings. Sure enough, "The Missing Scientist" was there.

"Another one?" I said as I reviewed the specifications. "Can't these researchers keep from misplacing their people? That's what, the third time a hunter has had to fetch one back?"

"Maybe it's the same one and he gets lost easily?" the secretary joked.

"Maybe so. Well, for five thousand meseta I'd fetch this one no matter how many times it's been. Sign me up."

"Very good. You'll want to meet with the client right away, I assume?"

Given the urgency I should have expected the client to be there waiting instead of following the usual procedure of setting up a later meeting, but it still caught me off-guard. I suppose that at least part of me didn't yet fully believe the mysterious caller. It all seemed too much like part of an online broadcast of an espionage thriller to be real. Every step along the way thus far, though, had borne out what was said.

"Why not? No time like the present."

The mission overview had only identified the client as a laboratory assistant, and the man's youth bore that statement out. He wore a sleeveless blue tunic, baggy yellow pants, and his bangs were cut in a straight slash a half-inch above his eyebrows. I put his age in his early twenties, but with that delayed-adolescence look that a life in laboratories and academic facilities gives to researchers. A soldier was with him, but staying uninvolved, some distance away.

"Hello, I'm Sejanus," I said, extending my hand. He shook it, looking up at me with some consternation.

In his defense, my appearance can be fairly striking, especially if you're used to seeing white lab coats all day. I'm tall, as much as some male androids, and a bit on the thin side. My standard field wear is a red bodysuit with armor plating around the chest and neck, and my hair is stark white, worn nearly to shoulder length. One of my fellow hunters had described the overall effect as being "scary," which although not quite how I wanted to be perceived at least made an impression.

From the way he looked, the young lab assistant definitely found me something not too far off from "scary." I made a mental note; maybe I could use that if I had to.

"Um, I'm Fersen," he managed to say after swallowing heavily. "I'm an assistant at...a laboratory."

That was less than useful. There were any number of labs on Pioneer 2; the ship was after all there to settle a new planet. In addition to the various Council labs, the military also had laboratory facilities of their own, and there were even private labs associated with various traders' groups.

"Which one?"

"Um...I'm sorry; I can't tell you what laboratory I work for," he murmured.

Great, I thought. It's one of those jobs. The ones where you were expected to be a good little hunter and do just what you were told without knowing why or for whom. Why was I not surprised?

The client seemed to recognize my frustration, because he quickly hurried on.

"One of our researchers is missing," he told me. "She quit her job at the laboratory some time ago, which made some of us--her friends, her boyfriend--concerned."

"Are you the boyfriend?" I cut in.

"No!" Fersen protested hotly. His cheeks flushed, suggesting that while he was undoubtedly telling the truth he wouldn't mind taking that position if she was willing to open it.

"Just checking; it matters how I hear what you have to say."

The corner of his mouth quirked upwards.

"I think I see what you mean."

"Good; you're already one ahead. Sorry for interrupting."

"As I was saying, some of us kept in contact with her after she left the lab. She seemed withdrawn and moody, though, and wasn't her usual self. We were worried. Then, one day, she vanished entirely. She wasn't at home or any of the usual spots, hadn't been seen in her favorite restaurants, didn't answer her PDL or even simple-mail. We contacted the military police, called the Medical Center, everything we could think of, but nothing turned up."

"It sounds like you took all the steps you could," I told him approvingly, then added something that I genuinely meant. "If anything ever happened to me, I'd which I had friends who cared as much for me."

"Eventually, we gave up the search, though. There was nothing we could do. The only chance was to hire a professional, a hunter, who might do what we couldn't, think of something that we had missed." He grinned sheepishly and said, "Basically, we badgered our superiors into sponsoring this Guild commission."

"I'm not completely surprised that they agreed. After all, whatever caused her to disappear might also have made her quit work, and talented personnel are worth protecting. Find her, solve her problems, and they may get her back."

"I never thought of it like that, but I hope you're right. She was a first-rate scientist, educated, responsible, thorough. A lot better than me, for example."

In truth, I was more suspicious of the lab's motives than I let on, but unless the man was a first-rate actor Fersen was telling the truth so far as he knew it. Then again, whatever was strange about this job might not be coming from the lab.

"I noticed that this was an open quest. You've hired other hunters?"

"Yes; since there will only be this one chance to find her, we thought we should allow several hunters to take on the job. The one who succeeds will collect the commission fee."

"Kind of like that three sisters job a while back," I said, more for my own benefit than for his.

"You're the fourth," Fersen commented. "Since we have to pay the Guild stipend on a per-hunter basis, succeed or fail, that was all we could afford on the budget we were assigned."

I nodded, wondering if that would make the job harder or easier. It was lucky, though, that I'd gotten there when I did. Another hour later and all four spots might have been taken.

"That's the background, then; how about the details--description, address, friends to talk to, that kind of thing?"

He produced two pages.

"This is a printed digital image of her," he said, passing them over, "and this is all the information we could collect, including a timetable of the significant events I've told you about. I'm afraid it's not much."

I had to agree with that, skimming over the list, but at least it was a place to start.

"What about her name?" I asked. "It's not on here, and you didn't mention it."

"I didn't? Oh, blast, I knew that I didn't know how to go about hiring a hunter. It's Alicia, Alicia Baz."





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-04 05:34 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-06 13:16 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-08 15:24 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-10 17:32 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-12 15:36 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-15 19:04 ]</font>


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: DezoPenguin on 2004-03-18 19:13 ]</font>

[Sagasu]

Pretty good, actually. You might want to mark this as a fan-fic, draws more attention

[DezoPenguin]

On 2004-03-03 20:38, Sarunakai wrote:
Pretty good, actually. You might want to mark this as a fan-fic, draws more attention

Doh! Yeah. That would be good. After all, attention for the story is the whole reason it's in a public forum. As an author, I'd actually rather have 289 page-views for a chapter than several hundred rave reviews...though if I got 289 page views and no responses at all I'd wonder whose browser was broken. ^_-

Oh, yeah...might be nice to post the next chapter!

__________________________________________________ _

TELL ME A SECRET
Part II

I studied the picture of Alicia Baz as I left the Hunter's Guild. She was an attractive woman, tall and slender with a pale face, long blue hair, and a thin diamond tattooed or painted in the center of her forehead. The latter, and the elaborateness of the dress she wore, marked her as a Force, one trained in the use of mystic techniques, in the same way that I as a Ranger had been trained in the use of various types of guns. A fair number of Forces could be found in research positions, I knew. The training demanded intelligence, and not everyone who received it found that they wanted the mercenary life of a hunter. In the picture, Alicia appeared to be laughing at something; her head was thrown back, her smile broad, and her eyes sparkling with merriment.

A faint wisp of sadness brushed me; wherever Alicia Baz was now, I doubted that she was smiling.

Thinking about Forces had reminded me of the man I wanted to talk to, so I scanned the crowd, hoping he hadn't left. Luckily, he was still around, and I approached him at once.

"Hopkins, can I have a word?"

Like Alicia, Hopkins was a Force. Unlike her, he wasn't human. He was identifiable as one of the genetically engineered race of Newmen by his elongated and pointed ears. An aptitude for technique use was one of a Newman's altered qualities, which was why many of them turned to Force training, including Hopkins. He also possessed the male Newman's apparent cultural bias towards overdone style, with a silk shirt, loose-fitting pants tucked into shoes with turned-up toes, and a tall, puffy, almost cylindrical hat, all in emerald green with gold embroidery.

As a hunter, Hopkins was a minor talent at best. He had other skills, though, and one of the things he was talented at was keeping his ear to the ground. Especially when it concerned the plots, cabals, and political interests that wound their way into Guild quests far too often.

"Oh, Sejanus. Yes, of course. What's up?"

"I'm not sure. That's my problem."

"That's everyone's problem," the short, stocky Force replied. "There's a lot more going on here than anyone can keep track of. Every time a hunter learns something about Ragol, it just leads to more questions."

"All too true," I agreed.

He looked at me assessingly.

"You're asking about something specific, though, aren't you?"

I nodded. Hopkins might not be the best hunter in the field, but his brain was sharp enough to read me like the proverbial book.

"Yeah, I am. There's a new quest at the Guild, about a missing scientist." I handed him the picture. "What's so important about her? Do you have any idea?"

"She's hot," Hopkins decided. "Nice taste in hats, too."

"That wasn't quite what I meant."

"Too bad. The face looks familiar, though..." He snapped his fingers loudly, which caused two hunters to turn and look at him curiously. "Come on, Sejanus. We'll talk, but not here. It's too public."

"Where, then?"

* * *

Of all the places I'd have called "private," the Hatless Dezorian wasn't one of them. Run by retired Hunter Tendall Grant, the bar featured decor in basic black, heavy crystal glasses, and the retro music style Grant had grown up with. It was popular among hunters, who gave it a good three-quarters of its business. The fact that it was open at five-thirty in the morning was a concession to the irregular schedules kept by its patrons and, in fact, it was about half-full.

Then again, maybe he had a point. Two people standing around in the open talking for a long time excited attention, possibly from the wrong people. Two friends talking over drinks in a bar was a different story.

"Alicia Baz, you say her name is," Hopkins said, swirling his brandy in its glass. "I didn't know that."

My own drink was coffee, hot and without sweeteners. Then again, Hopkins wasn't just starting a job, so he could indulge in the luxury of alcohol. I, on the other hand, needed something to tell that portion of my hindbrain which wanted me to go back to bed to shut up for the rest of the day.

"But you do know something."

Hopkins nodded.

"A while ago, not long after Ragol first opened up to hunters, she was a client."

"You worked for her?"

The Force shook his head, making his hat wiggle.

"No, I wouldn't take the job. I didn't trust her. She had an escort of soldiers who gave us the fish-eye every time we came near. I heard what kind of job it was, though. Native research. They rigged up the hunter who took it with some kind of bio-data device that would gather information about Ragol's animals during battle with them."

"So someone wanted to gather data about the creatures on the surface?"

"That's right. This was before the caves had been opened up so all we knew about were the animals in the forests and around Central Dome."

"That wasn't long after the first hunters went down to the planet at all," I mused. It was also roughly around the time when, according to the datasheet I'd been given, Alicia had become disenchanted and quit the lab.

"I don't trust a client who holds back important information," he said. "I actually applied for the quest, but when she wouldn't disclose whom she worked for or the purpose of their research, I walked. Hunters aren't just mercenaries, to do whatever the paymaster tells them without question."

I barely suppressed a wince. My current quest, after all, was being carried out on behalf of a man who wouldn't give the name of his affiliation. Too, while I believed Fersen's story as far as it went, I didn't trust that his superiors' motives for funding the quest were as altruistic as his own. Add in the fact that my real client was the voice on the link, who wasn't paying me a single meseta and whose identity was a complete mystery, and my situation on this quest was almost the perfect opposite to Hopkins's principle.

Which, I supposed, was why I was talking to him.

"Well, I see what you mean, although lately clinging to that principle means missing out on a lot of work, especially where the military is involved."

"I don't trust soldiers," Hopkins said. I already knew that; the military was his favorite candidate for the identity of the secret manipulators within the government he believed were tied in with the Ragol mystery--a theory that was sounding less like paranoia and more like the truth as the days passed. "Even the ones who aren't up to something would rather do nothing than risk making a mistake their superiors could call them on."

"Is Alicia's connection to the military all you know about her?" I brought the conversation back on point. Time, apparently, was not my friend.

Hopkins shook his head again, then took a sip of brandy to wet his throat.

"No. You see, that wasn't the only Guild quest she sponsored."

This was getting interesting.

"Oh? What else?" I asked, letting my curiosity show. There was no point in playing the cold fish with Hopkins; I wanted him to know that I valued what he had to say and was interested in his opinion.

"Well, the rumors weren't quite so frequent as they were about the initial job, and I didn't bother applying for it myself because I still didn't trust her, but I can tell you one thing. She didn't have her soldiers in tow that time."

My attention level shot through the ceiling when I heard that. The military always insisted on escorting their key people when they were involved in a quest--not unlike my current client's uniformed shadow.

"Hopkins, this is very important. Can you remember the exact date of this second mission?"

He frowned with displeasure.

"I don't know, Sejanus. I didn't take the job, so I didn't make a note of it--wait a moment." He fiddled with the wrist-computer all hunters carried and manipulated its log functions. "It was the day after the big to-do over the Gran Squall. I remember because Dacci was complaining that a flock of Rag Rappies chased him up a tree and kept him there for over three hours before he escaped. Aha! There we are."

He told me the date, and I checked it against the information given to me by my client. It fell right before the day Fersen had said Alicia had become withdrawn and moody. It also fell after she quit the lab, meaning that she actually had commissioned the second quest on her own initiative.

Just maybe, this second quest had led Alicia Baz to discover something. Something so terrible that it had driven her underground, hiding perhaps or just retreating from the situation.

Or maybe not. Maybe it was something more proactive than that. Alicia wasn't a shrinking violet, according to her past. When, presumably, there had been something she didn't like about the first quest, the one she'd run for the lab, she hadn't run away or stuck her head in the sand. She had quit her job and hired hunters on her own. Whatever answers she'd gotten from that second quest, she must have meant to do something with them, not just cower in fear.

So maybe that was why she was missing, I thought, taking a drink and letting the hot stimulant jolt my brain back towards full awakeness. Maybe she was taking the logical next step with whatever she'd learned.

Given the presence of soldiers, the chances were basically a dead certainty that Alicia's lab was military in nature, though it might be under the aegis of one of any number of divisions or subsidiary groups. The root cause of it all was probably the original native research she'd commissioned from the Guild, so whatever happened was based on a military research project.

All of a sudden it seemed obvious that any number of people would be after Alicia Baz. The military would definitely not want a private citizen running experiments with their data and possibly interfering with their classified projects, and that was without even factoring in the political considerations. Then, one had to consider the other parties who might want to get their hands on Alicia and her research--the Council, black market data-traders, anti-military groups, rival factions inside the army, maybe even the shadowy criminal organization called Black Paper.

My mysterious caller was right. I was already late.

"Where are you going, Sejanus?" Hopkins asked. "You're thinking so hard there's going to be smoke coming out of your ears in a second."

"Alicia Baz is missing," I told him. "As you can see from the quest listings in the Guild, someone wants very badly to find her."

"Wait a minute. You think..."

"She may be the key, Hopkins. Whomever finds Alicia Baz may learn all the answers to what's happening with Ragol."

Hopkins tossed off the last of his drink.

"Then you'd better watch your back, because there'll be plenty of people who don't want you to get there first."

* * *

I had to start somewhere, so I settled on Alicia's home. As a laboratory researcher, she had a decent-sized apartment, a bit better than my own, which I found the address for in the city directory. The door was, unfortunately, locked, but I got in by the simple tactic of calling building maintenance and telling them the truth. It would no doubt disappoint those who were addicted to adventure stories that I did not use some master passcode or electronically disable the door security, but often a bit of diplomacy was more effective than a bag of tricks. Besides which, I was a Ranger, not a burglar.

Alicia Baz had lived simply. She had done little to add any personal touches to the furnishings, which were sleek and modern. At first, I'd almost suspected that someone had been here before me and cleaned the place out, removing all evidence, which would have been an operation on a fairly impressive scale.

It wasn't true, though, I realized after a bit more searching. There were clothes in the closet, mostly long, flowing things in satin and lace. There was a small hologram on top of her computer screen, a mix of shapes and colors that shifted and twisted, designed to relax the onlooker. A library of music and literary disks was stored in her work desk. The key was that Alicia's apartment had not been cleaned for her; she simply preferred a Spartan existence that was at odds with the elaborate personal wardrobe.

After a couple of seconds, things fell together for me. The fanciest of her dresses weren't elaborate by choice; they were a Force's formal robes. While Newmen trained as Forces tended to set their own fashions, human Forces still tended to follow the traditions of the pre-technological wizards their role was descended from, and wore elaborate formal robes and mantles. Alicia herself clearly did not favor anything more than the simplest designs in her life, but had enough respect for the training that she followed its traditions. I should have realized that just from her picture, which showed her in a formal white-and-yellow dress.

I checked the wardrobe again. There was no dress in that color, and only one empty hanger.

"So that's what she's wearing," I thought aloud, "unless she's in some kind of disguise."

I didn't have much hope of finding anything on her computer, but I powered it up anyway. Since I had no idea what, specifically, she was working on, and it would probably be over my head, I searched by date instead, seeing what Alicia had done most recently. The search turned up nothing.

I stared at the screen, not understanding what I was seeing. For several days prior to her disappearance, Alicia Baz had used her computer only for its entertainment functions.

It was possible, I knew, for a skilled hacker to make a computer "forget" that it had performed certain operations. If that had been done here, though, it had been done very thoroughly. No copying, no analysis, no mathematical operations, no file access, not even the insertion of a computer-file datadisk was shown. Either Alicia or an ally was a skilled net-dancer with an attention to detail, or else she simply hadn't used the computer. Which couldn't be true, unless my idea about her working on the Ragol data was inaccurate, or...

Unless...

I had it, or at least thought I did. Like all the home units on the ship, this computer was linked into Pioneer 2's online net. If, and I had to concede it was a pretty big if, she was afraid that someone from her old job might be suspicious of her motives in quitting the lab or had learned that she'd hired a hunter for an additional mission to Ragol, she might be afraid of surveillance. If so, she would hardly want to carry out her data analysis on a computer that might not be secure.

The question was, where would Alicia find a secure computer, one not linked to a network where military specialists might be able to track her down and compromise her work? The army and the Council, of course, had secure computers for their data work. The most sensitive operations were done on unlinked computers not part of the net, with which data transfers had to be done physically by disk. Those would fit the bill perfectly, but there was no way Alicia could get access to one. I didn't know what her clearance level had been, but after quitting her job it would have dropped to that of an ordinary citizen.

Then a brainstorm hit me. The possible explanation was outrageous, but it fit with all the known facts as well as my suppositions. I know where she could find a computer that no hacker could touch. It even explained why she'd gone missing, seemingly disappeared, and I wondered if someone else had come to the same conclusion, resulting in the Guild quest.

I needed more data before I could be certain, but that would be easy to obtain. The only thing that worried me was, had I made a breakthrough, or had everyone else already figured it out?

My concerns along these lines were swept aside by more immediate worries, though, when I heard the soft beeping from the front door of someone inputting a lock code. The door obviously liked what it had been fed, because the next thing I heard was the soft swish of it sliding open, and the footsteps of someone entering the outer room.

[DezoPenguin]

I'd rant here about how no one is responding to this story, but nobody's reading this thread, which pretty much obviates the need for a rant and instead calls for a massive advertising blitz designed to draw people in.

__________________________________________________ _

TELL ME A SECRET
Part III

Whomever was at the door, it wasn't Alicia; the heaviness of the footsteps said it was a man. He had used a key code to enter, but unlike me someone hadn't let him in; the maintenance woman was chatty and I'd have heard her say something. The man's entrance was stealthy and therefore trouble.

Fortunately my brain took about a half-second to run through that analysis on a subconscious level; my autogun was in my fist and its Photon driver powered up by the time the man came into Alicia's bedroom/office. I'd pressed my back flat against the wall next to the door, so that I could only be seen by someone inside the room. By the time he got that far, my gun barrel was pressing a cold metal kiss against the back of his neck.

Paranoid? Maybe, but I had a right to be in that apartment. The other man was presumably breaking and entering, which gave him a fairly good chance of being the first of the "bad guys" I could put a face to.

Maybe it could even help me figure out just who the sides were supposed to be.

"If you so much as twitch without permission, I'm going to redecorate the inside of your skull with this gun. Got that?"

"Y-yeah."

"Now, very slowly, take two steps forward and make a quarter-turn to your right."

He obeyed, which put him squarely facing the mirror. I looked over his shoulder and got my first glimpse of his face. He was a broad-shouldered man with a square jaw and a visage that looked as if it had been hewn from granite. His hair was cut very short in an army buzz and was a light green, nearly chartreuse in shade. There was a Photon saber clipped to his belt, so I reached around and disarmed him.

"Who are you?"

"Jophar. I'm a Hunter, with the Hunter's Guild."

"How did you get in here?"

"M-master code."

"Why?"

There was no answer this time.

"Why?" I repeated harshly.

What he'd have said or not said I didn't know. Just then the door slid open and two hulking androids stormed in. Each was equipped with a handgun and saber.

"Building security!" one barked. "Photon detectors reveal the presence of an active weapon!"

Stupid, I thought. I should have figured there would be Photon-dets.

Since they could see me just as easily as I could see them, now that I'd moved in front of the open door, I lowered my weapon.

"Explain your presence here."

"I was admitted by Ms. Maril, of building maintenance. This trespasser entered using an illegal key code, but I caught him before he could do any damage."

"Don't believe him!" Jophar exclaimed. "He's the trespasser. If you hadn't come, he was going to kill me!"

"Call maintenance and verify my story," I suggested.

"We will do that."

The android who'd spoken made a quick connection to Maril over their security net. I'd been hoping he would; Jophar's desperate bluff couldn't help him unless he could generate confusion by it. So far, by contrast, I hadn't had to lie. True stories are so much more likely to be provable.

Unfortunately, it was just about then that I got stupid, smug over the success of my explanation. I stopped paying attention to what I was doing, specifically the fact that I had a charged autogun in my right hand.

Jophar did not forget this fact.

I wasn't even looking at him at the time; my attention was mostly on the androids. He, on the other hand, had been paying plenty of attention to me. He spun and dove, grabbing at my hand with both of his and wrenching the gun away. Jophar hit the floor prone and rolled away from me, coming up into his crouch inside the bedroom, away from the door so he was out of the line of fire of the security androids. That gave him only one target of opportunity.

My brain checked back in after its momentary vacation about then, and I flung myself aside. Two sizzling blue Photon pulses crashed into the wall inches from me, but an inch is as good as a mile when talking about handgun misses. My shoulder struck Alicia's desk, hard, and the shock sent disks clattering out. I snatched one and threw it at Jophar as he shifted his aim; reflexively he fired at it instead of me, blasting the harmless missile to dust. My follow-up attack wasn't quite so harmless, though; even as I'd thrown the disk my other hand had seized the leg of Alicia's desk chair.

The flying chair caught Jophar just below the knees, cutting the legs out from under him. By the time he got his balance back and his gun up, the androids were there. The hunter fired anyway, blasting a smoking hole in one's lower right abdomen, but they returned the fire with their own guns. This time, when Jophar hit the floor he didn't get up.

Nor would he.

"Thank you for your assistance in apprehending this burglar, Hunter Sejanus," said the injured android. The damage looked bad, but I knew it could be easily repaired. Not unlike my shoulder, I thought as I got to my feet. One dose of Monomate and the growing bruise I knew I had would vanish instantly. Until then, a dull ache was an extremely minor price to pay for a mistake that could and perhaps should have cost me my life.

"You're welcome," I said.

"Do you have any idea as to his purpose?"

I shook my head.

"He claimed to be a hunter, but didn't explain what he was doing here. Maybe he was looking for Alicia Baz, or maybe it was just a case of simple theft."

"Tenant Baz has not been present in the building for six days," the android provided helpfully.

"Well, if this guy was looking for her, it's a good thing she wasn't here. He was carrying this." I handed him the saber. "Do you mind if I retrieve my autogun?"

This time he was the one to shake his head.

"I am sorry, but the weapon will need to be kept as evidence until a formal report is issued by the military police. If you will provide us with your identification and Section ID, however, we will see that it is returned to you at that time."

I nodded. It was annoying, but there was no point in complaining to the android; he was only a functionary. Besides, the law was the law, and a properly filed police report would clear me of any responsibility for having a gun pointed at Jophar's head when security walked in.

On top of which, where I was going, I didn't need the autogun. I had a much different weapon for that sort of situation. I gave the information to the android and left Alicia's home.

As my aerocar skimmed its way through the city back to the Hunter's Guild deck, it struck me that hunting Alicia down could get much easier if I had some background information. With that in mind, I called a friend on my PDL.

"Hey, Sejanus, good to see you!"

"You too, Jeromy. How's the project going?"

"Same old, same old. Had some military goons sniffing around, asking to buy my data and get me to stop."

"Seriously? You didn't take them up on it, did you?"

Jeromy cackled.

"You're kidding, right? I told those uniformed scumbags what orifice they could stick their ideas up."

I probably shouldn't have thought it, given my own connection to the army, but I couldn't help but like what he said. Like Hopkins, Jeromy was no fan of the military, but his dislike was a bit more active...or at least his language was.

All hunters, when down on Ragol, carried radar units that tracked and mapped the terrain around them as an aid to their missions. These maps, though, were only sketches, with the details needing to be filled in by eyewitnesses. These were the basis of Jeromy's work. He was compiling a complete map of the Pioneer 1 settlements on Ragol for the use of the Hunter's Guild. This included not only the forests and residential area around the Central Dome, but also the caves underneath the settlement, which showed indisputable signs of technological excavation, to the subterranean industrial complex known as No Man's Mines, both of which could only be mapped by exploration and which had not been mentioned in any known message from Pioneer 1. Known being the operative word there, of course.

I'd been in the mines once myself, and from the reports of other hunters as well I knew that some of the things that had happened there were secret research projects. Underground projects, if one will excuse the pun. So it was no surprise that the military would be interested in Jeromy's map, either to root out misdeeds or to cover up what the army on Pioneer 1 had been up to.

Possibly, without knowing it, I was after the same thing.

"In that case, I need some help."

"It's yours, pal."

"I'm looking for a woman, Jeromy. I think she may have gone down to Ragol, to the mines. I need a map, and something more."

"More?"

"A location. I need to find out where there's an intact computer laboratory, probably connected to biotechnology."

"Gotcha."

He disappeared off-screen when he set the PDL down, and I heard the beeping of a computer screen. A couple of minutes later, he came back.

"Okay, Sejanus, I've got something for you on the second sub-level. I'll shoot you the data by BEE, 'kay?"

"Okay."

There were a couple of other beeps, and Jeromy said, "There you go."

"Thanks, I appreciate it."

"The whole point of the project is to help hunters, right? It's no good if it can't be of use."

"Guess you've got a point. Thanks, anyway."

"Good luck." He disconnected. I immediately called up my simple-mail access and, sure enough, there was the file. Before I had a chance to look at it, though, the PDL beeped. I switched the unit's function and answered.

I probably should have guessed who was calling.

"You're making quick progress, Sejanus," the voice informed me. "Faster than I'd anticipated."

"I'm sorry to disappoint," I said sarcastically. "Exactly how is it you know how much progress I'm making? Do you have your little spies out?"

There was a soft chuckle by way of response.

"You're refreshingly blunt. Circumlocution is more the order of the day."

"Yeah, well, you never get anywhere, in talk or in life, by just going sideways, so in the words a friend of mine might use, why don't we cut the crap and start moving forward?"

"You're quite right, but what you overlook is that while you can't advance by lateral movement, it is also an effective way to block others from advancing."

"So no one gets anywhere. How productive."

"Most of the time, that's exactly what people want. That's what makes Alicia Baz so important. She might get things moving."

I gave the screen a wry smile.

"Not that I'm privileged to know how, or in what direction, or whether I want her to."

"Find her and find out, Sejanus. If you let your rivals get there first, no one will learn. Or did you think the attempt to kill you was just a mistake?"

"You're saying that it was deliberate? That Jophar intended to murder me from the moment he entered the apartment?"

I caught sight of the Hunter's Guild deck and let the autopilot take the car down before docking.

"I'm saying that your death is a useful step in the plans of those who seek to hide the truth. As long as you keep looking, they'll want to stop you. Their methods may be direct or indirect; regardless, they will make further attempts. Be on your guard, Sejanus. You cannot afford to lose."

"Why? What makes it so important? What has she found out that people are willing to kill over?"

There was a long pause, during which the aerocar came to rest and I powered it down.

"Sejanus," the voice finally said.

"Yes?"

"I don't know."

"What?"

"I don't know what she's found out. What I do know is that others are fully aware, others who are quite willing to use lethal force to act on that knowledge. Watch yourself, Sejanus. You can be certain that they will."

[DOG21313]

Doh! Sorry, i havent been in Fanworks in a while, and i gotta do math homework now... =/ Next time im here, im gonna catch up on your works. =P

[EdenJurai]

EXCELLENT story! Bravo! MORE! MORE!

[Solstis]

I lack the mental energy to finish reading the rest of the chapters, but I feel... "stirred(?)" by Chapter 1 so far.

I'll finish later with indifference, as perscribed by the title.

[DezoPenguin]

This chapter gets us into a bit more action...and a major turning point in the course of the story. And thanks, those of you who assisted in doubling the page views after that chapter. ^_^

__________________________________________________ ___

TELL ME A SECRET
Part IV

My stomach lurched, and then the moment of transition passed. When my vision cleared, I found myself in a world of circuitry and electric green light. The Mines were not truly a mine in the traditional sense; they'd been equipped to excavate tons of ore but this had been done not to retrieve valuable minerals but simply to dig deeply into the planet's surface. Why this had been done, I had no idea, nor did anyone else admit to knowing. The very existence of the place, though, was clear evidence that there was far more to Pioneer 1 than a simple colonization mission.

No Man's Mines themselves weren't just a road to whatever lay beneath, either. They contained laboratories and industrial factories, advanced computer resources for projects that were as mysterious as the mines themselves.

What they also contained was trouble.

Just as the surface and the caves had been infested by monsters, so too did the mines have theirs. Somehow, industrial robots had been customized--some very effectively--for battle. These roamed the mine, seeking out and attacking any intruders. My second mission on behalf of the military had been to clear an area of these robots so that army scientists could check things out. As usual, my employers didn't trust the Council's hunter team to do the job right--or to offer a full report.

Paranoia was such an entertaining diversion.

There were robots in this area of the mine, too. In fact, four attacked in the room just past the transporter from the Pioneer 2. Luckily, I was ready for them.

As I'd indicated, the loss of my autogun was no barrier to my performance in the field. I'd switched over to a high-powered military blaster, a combat rifle used by soldiers. It was good to have army contacts, who could tap military supply channels. This particular weapon had had its Photon output adjusted so that it would be even more effective against mechanical enemies, precisely what I needed under the circumstances.

The robots were basically humanoid, a bit shorter than I was, nightmares of glistening steel and tangled cable. Their crude design and ill-defined faces hinted at how much less advanced they were than the androids of Pioneer 2, or even most computer systems. They could only process and carry out simple tasks, their current orders apparently being to seek out and kill all intruders.

I wondered if the scientists who'd used these corridors had given the orders, or if instead it was someone else, someone more recent, who was using these machines to keep us from fully investigating No Man's Mines.

My blaster spat Photon energy at the nearest robot, the bursts of violet destruction hammering into its midsection. The thing was thrown back, top half separated from its legs by my attack. It self-destructed, detonating in a small, contained explosion that blew its shell to scrap and slagged down its microcircuitry. I was already turning to the next robot, sighting along the barrel and sending three shots into its "head." Bereft of its main sensor array, it spun in a circle and went down as well.

Fighting multiple enemies in an enclosed space was never an easy thing, and although the robots were slow-moving, they were still able to get around the small chamber quickly enough to cause trouble. One's clanking footsteps alerted me to its proximity, and I ducked low under a swipe of its hand. I knew from unpleasant experience the power of those clubbing blows; it was like getting hit by a very heavy steel bar in the hands of a very strong person.

Since I was already ducking, I dropped and rolled forward to open up some distance between myself and the robot. As I did, a searing energy bolt passed just behind me, reminding me of their second method of attack. Whomever had customized the machines for combat had gone the extra mile and equipped them with long-range weaponry for dealing with people like myself who preferred to fight enemies at a distance.

I spun on my side and fired low at the shooter, my repeated attacks scything it off at the knees. I pivoted back to the last robot just in time; its right arm was extended and the muzzle of its beam weapon was pointing directly at me. I fired first, catapulting the robot off the wall with repeated direct hits to its torso.

Four up, four down.

An irksome feature of the mechanical killers was their habit of self-destructing upon taking serious damage. While the blast was not powerful enough to cause damage to enemies (or nearby robots) or to send shrapnel flying lethally through the room, it did a very good job of destroying the robot's internal electronics. That meant there was no way to analyze their programming in search of answers as to who had created the robotic army and why.

Thinking over my experience, the notion came to me that even if I was right and Alicia had come down to the mines to work on her data, I might not find her. A single individual, especially one who wasn't an experienced hunter, might well not survive the exploration of the area. Alicia Baz's corpse, together with the answers she promised, could well be lying in some unknown corner of this technological pit.

With that grim thought in mind, I called up Jeromy's map and synched it with the one in my radar unit. They meshed neatly, and I headed out to the next room. The trip wasn't an easy one, owing to the variety of robots I encountered along the way, but the map allowed me to take the most direct route possible. That and my skill with weapons got me through unscathed to what Jeromy had designated as Bio-Technology Lab C, a large, square-shaped room with cylindrical tubes mounted along the walls. They were empty now, but each was easily large enough to accommodate a person, or perhaps a large creature. Bio-engineered animals, perhaps, to be added to Ragol's ecosystem?

Somehow, I didn't think it was anything that benign. My eyes scanned the room, taking in the details, looking for any sign that someone was here. There were none, only the faint greenish glow of the lights that were present in every room.

At the other end of the lab was a second door, which according to Jeromy's map led to the computer room. Each lab like this would have its own sub-computer for faster processing of data than if they had to fight for mainframe time with all of the other labs. If Alicia was working here, that's where she'd be.

Luckily, the door was not locked; it slid open at my approach. I could see that the small chamber was dominated by a multi-screened computer bank about eight feet wide. The computer was active, its screens displaying a variety of charts and graphs, and stuck in one corner next to it was a bedroll.

"Alicia, are you here?" I called, stepping through the door. I didn't have time to see any more, though, because the side of my skull seemed to explode in pain. I swayed, toppled, and the floor came up to meet me but I never saw the end result because darkness swallowed me before I hit.

* * *

Consciousness returned slowly and dimly to my brain, pulling me back from a world of phantasmoragic dreams. I was sorry to make the return at first; my head throbbed like it had been through a week-long drunk, albeit only on one side, and that pain was added to because my hands had been lashed to my ankles behind my back, not only drastically inhibiting my movement but also being an annoyingly cramped position. As for my gun, there was no sign of it.

"Who sent you?"

Dizzily, I looked around, moving my head slowly.

"I know you can hear me. Who sent you?"

"Fersen," I said. It's probably a bad habit, but when I'm not quite sure what's going on I tend to respond to questions with the truth. Or in this case, part of the truth. I figured "Some guy who won't give me his name or even show his face on the link" probably wasn't quite what the questioner wanted to hear.

Then again, the response to my actual answer turned out to be a high-pitched, barking laugh.

"What do you take me for, an idiot?" The voice was feminine and sounded strained, even brittle. Then my vision decided to stop showing me two of everything and I realized that "brittle" was no more than would be expected.

It was Alicia Baz, all right, but she definitely wasn't the composed, elegant scientist I knew from her picture. On the contrary, she looked like a woman who was about twelve seconds from a mental breakdown of epic proportions. The white and yellow Force's robes were dirty and stained with blood and a variety of mechanical fluids. Her elaborate hat was gone, and her long blue hair hung bedraggled around her shoulders. The dark circles around her eyes were nearly purple; she'd obviously pushed herself near exhaustion, and little tremors ran through her body.

The physical strain I could understand. She had obviously had to hunt room by room through the mines until she found a lab with suitable computer facilities. Alicia, while a Force, was neither a trained hunter nor a soldier and as such was not used to combat. The struggle to get this far must have been brutal.

As for the mental strain, I could only guess.

"Your friends are worried about you, and from what I can see, they've got good reason."

Her hands clenched and unclenched spastically.

"You're saying that they, Fersen and Alex and Delilah and all the rest, actually got together and hired a hunter to find me? They hardly have two meseta to jingle in their pocket."

"The way Fersen tells it, they nagged your ex-employers into posting the reward. If I bring you back successfully, I get the nice ripe sum of five thousand meseta."

A shiver ran through her, and she grabbed up her cane, a Force's weapon with a clubbing head. No doubt the Photon charge in its head was responsible for the throbbing pain in my head.

"My...ex-employers? They sent you?"

"No, Fersen sent me. They, as you call them, just put up the money. There's a difference. As a hunter, I work for my client, not the person paying the freight."

"That doesn't matter," she spat angrily. "Fersen is a boy. He may be worried, but he'll turn me over to the senior officials and the soldiers when they come to interrogate me."

They would come, too; I knew that much to be so if even half the suppositions I'd come up with were correct.

Of course, that was a big "if."

"So what is it?" I groaned. "What's the big secret that makes you so valuable?"

"You think I'll tell you?" she exclaimed with a hysterical laugh that felt like a spike being driven into my aching head. I sighed heavily.

"Look, Alicia," I told her, using her own name. "There are two possible options here. Either I'm lying to you or I'm telling the truth. If it's a lie and I really have been sent by the bad guys, whomever they are, then I already know what you're up to, or at least my bosses do or I'd never have been sent here in the first place. So it wouldn't matter if you told me or not. On the other hand, if I'm telling you the truth then I'm here to help you, and I can't do that if I don't know what kind of game we're playing. I swear, trying to keep score in this mess is giving me more of a headache then your cane!"

It was a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one. She didn't respond at once this time, so I tried a little more truth.

"My sister Vel was on Pioneer 1, Alicia. I want to know what happened to her and you may have the answers. That's why I took this job in the first place. I couldn't pass up the chance to learn the truth."

She looked at me with wide, lost eyes.

"The truth?" she said incredulously. "You want to know the truth?"

Something inside Alicia seemed to snap, and she collapsed, crumpling to a seated position with her back to the wall, and began to weep into her hands. The sobs wracked her body for several long minutes, and I inexplicably wanted to go across to her and hold her reassuringly like I would a frightened child. Of course, trussed up as I was like a fowl ready for roasting that wasn't an option for me.

After at least ten minutes, the crying began to die away, replaced by the deep, heavy breathing of one who was exhausted, worn down beyond bearing. I looked at her and listened, and then I realized something important.

"This has been going on for some time, hasn't it?" I asked. "Not just the few days you've been down here, but long before that. Probably from the day you quit working for the military lab, whichever one it might happen to be."

She raised her head slowly from her hands.

"Do you know why I left that laboratory?" she asked.

"No, I don't."

"It was because I didn't think it was right to kill animals to collect data from them. It was pure sentiment. Isn't that crazy?"

"Well, I'll admit that I'm not all that squeamish about kllling the animals of Ragol, but that's because about everything on this planet seems to want to kill me on sight. As for the general principle, though, you might have a point."

"I hated it," she said. The whole attitude of the lab was, 'how can we use Ragol?' and 'how can we change Ragol to better suit us?' It was all one-sided; there was no respect for the environment here at all. That's why I quit; it had nothing to do with secrets or mysteries or Pioneer 1."

Another deep sign, almost a moan, escaped her lips.

"So how did you get tangled up in this?"

"Curiosity," she said bitterly. "Pure scientific curiosity. I've studied large mammals all my life, and was looking forward to research on Ragol's indigenous species. The data brought back by the hunter on that last mission, though..." She shook her head. "It was strange, so strange that I couldn't believe it. So, after a couple of days away from the lab, I couldn't resist trying to verify that data with my own eyes."

"What did you find out?"

Alicia smiled sadly.

"The results were absolutely correct."

"Well, that's informative," I said sarcastically. It probably wasn't my best course of action, but no one has ever accused me of having a temperate personality. I just hoped my lack of diplomatic skill didn't get an ice blast shoved somewhere unpleasant.

It didn't, though. Instead, it won me an apologetic smile, which was not precisely what I'd expected from the woman. Apparently the fit of crying had helped her to release some of her emotional tension and relax.

"I'm sorry. I'd made up my mind to talk to you, but it's still hard. The truth is, it's very hard to explain to a layman what had taken place as it is a genetic issue."

"Genetic?" I asked. There are some words which grab at the imagination, catching people's attention, and that's one of them. At least for me. "You're saying that the animals on Ragol went crazy and started attacking people because of their genes?"

"It's not that simple." Her voice was much calmer now, even pedantic, and I started to get a glimpse of the skilled researcher she had been before the trouble had taken over. "Something has been done to them...well, except for the Rappies."

"Yes, but the question is, what?"

"Well, the biology of the animals on Ragol, while obviously different in certain ways, is essentially similar to that of our homeworld. Because of that, there are distinct parallels in our basic makeup. One of those is that their genes follow certain patterns. Their DNA is constructed of basic building blocks. However, these animals show a completely foreign material inserted into their genetic makeup."

"You mean, someone did some kind of genetic experimentation on them?"

"Yes, but it's more than that. Gene therapy alters the DNA in certain targeted cells, but in other cells, the previous genetic structure remains the same. Like, if someone has a disease of the pancreas, doctors can correct the defect in pancreatic cells, but they won't change every skin cell, every bone, and so on to match. These animals have had every cell in their bodies, so far as we can tell, altered to include the foreign matter."

"So how do you know it's foreign, then? Maybe it's supposed to be there--part of Ragol's ecosystem?" I suggested. "It's not like you have a lot of samples."

She shook her head.

"No, and there's two reasons. One is that this foreign matter appears exclusively in the part of the genetic code affecting the brain, even though the DNA makeup of each species is different. Each 'monster' type, if my understanding is correct, would have extraordinary sensitivity to emotions and empathic impressions."

She looked at me as if to make sure I'd understood what she had said. I did, perhaps a third of it.

"So every single cell in each animal carries the genetic information for the changes in the brain, even though most of those cells have nothing to do with it and aren't altered in function by the foreign genetic matter?"

Alicia nodded.

"That's exactly right. What's more, during the quest when I went to the surface personally, the hunter and I encountered a young Hildebear. The baby was injured and had been neglected by its parents at a stage in its life when it could not fend for itself. This would not be unusual for insects, fish, reptiles, or amphibians, but is completely out of character for large mammals. It also wasn't aggressive."

She paused, and I could tell what was coming next, but I let her have her dramatic moment.

"I scanned the young Hildebear. While the scan was preliminary, as we did not kill the animal, I found no signs of genetic alteration."

"So something changed these animals, making them violent and aggressive in ways which they were not before, and which they wouldn't be naturally?"

Alicia nodded, then smiled at me.

"Exactly!"

"And that's what you came down here to study," I concluded, "because you needed a computer no one on Pioneer 2 could hack into or spy on."

The look of fear flickered back into her eyes.

"How did you know that?"

"It's why I'm here in the first place. I looked at your computer--it was too clean. I am halfway good at my job, you know, and I was hired to find you."

"By Fersen, you said, who doesn't know anything about secret data or genetic research!"

The tremor was starting to come back into her voice, and that worried me.

"No, he doesn't, but he's not my only source of information. I wasn't dumb enough to think that's all there is to this job, and I checked around. I already told you as much. I just didn't know the why of it until you explained things."

She shook her head.

"No, you still don't know the why of it."

"I don't?"

"I haven't told you what I learned here"--she waved a hand at the computer--"by analyzing the data."

"What did you find?"

"At first I thought it might be some kind of plague, an unusual disease organism attacking its prey on the subcellular level, and there do seem to be some distinct similarities in the way this foreign material proceeds from cell to cell until the entire organism is altered. That wasn't the root cause, the reason the foreign matter was present in the animal originally."

I knew it was silly, maybe even juvenile, but my emotions were strung to a fever pitch. Under her emotional strain, Alicia Baz was doing as good a job as any professional storyteller in building suspense in her captive audience.

Melodrama, I thought, but the cynicism couldn't quite touch me--not really. I truly was interested, even excited, about learning what Alicia had discovered.

"Did you find that root cause?"

"Oh, yes."

She licked her lips.

"Upon further analysis of the data taken from the native animals, I found faint but distinct traces of standard genetic engineering methodology. There's no question but that these animals were altered by the scientists of Pioneer 1."

[Solstis]

3 hours later

Alright then, I finished reading chapters 2 through 4! Nicely spaced out, easy to follow (unlike my fic), and enjoyable.

Funny: When you mentioned "Forest of Sorrow", I liked to think that I was the hunter that went with Alicia.



[Edit]: Due to brain-sleepyness, "funny" was misspelled.





<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Solstis on 2004-03-10 18:18 ]</font>

[DezoPenguin]

On 2004-03-10 18:17, Solstis wrote:
Funny: When you mentioned "Forest of Sorrow", I liked to think that I was the hunter that went with Alicia.

Actually, you're more or less supposed to. Sejanus isn't the player character in his stories, but a different hunter working on different cases for different clients. You'll notice, for example, how he's "heard about" quests from the game but never did them himself (well, except that one Mop-Up 3 job...).