Chapter 1

Chapter One

Terran Date: February, 2259

"Pretty, huh?" The private lifted his hand out toward the sun. Their open air observation tower was twenty meters above the surrounding buildings and gave them an unobstructed view of the Gulf of Mexico and the sunset. As it had for the past two months, the sun painted the canvas of dark blue sky with pinks, reds, and yellows. Mendez, his fellow guard, glanced at the vast panorama and shrugged her shoulders.

"Yeah, if you get off on that kind of stuff."

"Hey," Hansen countered, "it sure beats the other insertion point." They both laughed.

"I won't argue that," she conceded. "I've been on six of these in the last twelve years, and I don't ever want to see the Himalayas again." She glanced at the vanishing sun, now dropping below the horizon, pulling its celestial artwork with it. "You're right, Hansen. It is a pretty sunset."

They watched it quietly for a few minutes, then Hansen shook himself out of his reverie and lifted a hand to his ear. Mendez saw a small light flickering behind his lobe, meaning he'd been contacted by Sergeant Karumoto, undoubtedly to notify them of the arriving workers. Mendez turned her attention to the viewer at her right display, and sure enough, there were three hovs approaching from the northeast.

"Command gives fourth level clearance for transponder units 43-H784J, 43-H711R, and 44-D292R," Hansen said in a monotone, clearly relaying the message word for word.

"Acknowledged," Mendez responded. "Three bogies just passing the Hammer Point tower, 65 kilometers distant, approaching at 120 kph. Transponder identities.." she paused while the decoder received the multitone signal, then flashed white, "are verified. All three hovs are registered to Harting Enterprises."

"We have them, Sergeant," Hansen spoke aloud to his invisible superior. "Arrival in just over twenty minutes."

"Make that ten," Mendez interrupted. "They just accelerated to 250."

"Make that ten, Sergeant." He listened a moment longer, nodding absently, then signed off. He took his hand away and turned toward Mendez.

"Time to move to the launch point. Karumoto wants us down there in five."

"Got it." With skilled hands, Mendez shut down the display while Hansen armed the autosentry. They descended eighty meters by eledisc, then, since there was just enough light to see the ground, they slid the final twenty meters down the ladder railing, using their gloved hands for braking. Hansen hit first, then leaped back as Mendez plummeted toward him, nearly landing on top of him. She laughed at him as he stumbled out of the way. He brushed himself off.

"Geez, Mendez! Can't wait an extra five seconds?"

"Sure I can," she laughed again. "I just don't want to."

Hansen shook his head in disgust and annoyance. He'd worked with Connie for six years now, and she was always pushing. Pushing the rules, pushing the risks, pushing him. It irked him because he usually got into the same hot water she did. On the other hand, her risks often paid off, and he reaped the benefits as well. And she was one of the best looking partners he'd ever had.

He punched in the ladder lock down codes, then ran after Mendez, who was already walking toward Boot Key Harbor, where the hovs were due to dock. Marathon was one of the larger towns on one of the larger pieces of islands that made up Cuba's Florida Keys. Several kilometers long, the island was still than 200 meters wide from west shore to east shore. They were on the upper arm of the key, heading south. On their left, to the southeast, was Vaca Key Bight, but because of the huge factories and narrow, twisting alleys, it was impossible to see from ground level.

They wove their way quickly toward a massive, dark building and approached the only lit doorway. Outside stood a guard, dressed in the trappings of a Harting Enterprises shock goon. Hansen didn't particularly like working with Harting goons - they tended to be rude and unprofessional - but this was who the Colonel had contracted out to, so he followed orders and got his paycreds. It was a large enough sum to hold his tongue. Mendez felt no such inhibition.

"Check it out, Hansen," she pointed at the goon. "They look almost like people when they're dressed." The guard flushed and stood, towering over them. Mendez laughed at the bravado. "He can stand, too!" she exclaimed with mock surprise.

"Lousy rental creeps." He shoved a tabinal at them. "Sign in and go in. I can't your the smell any longer."

Hansen said nothing but took off his glove and pressed his thumb against the tabinal silver face. It flashed green. Mendez did the same and they both entered, Mendez giving a parting insult.

Inside was a fully operational freighter facility. Massive hovships, capable of carrying thousands of metric tons, were lying in dry dock, waiting for repairs. Others were in the midst of construction. There were even a few upper atmosphere jobs, able to dock with the orbital stations.

Making their way to the southern end of the building, the two arrived as the first of the three hovs entered the large indoor bay. Mendez led Hansen to the front of the small crowd, their red-splashed gray uniforms alone in a sea of Harting dark purple. Mendez tolerated several crude remarks - Harting employed only men in their private army - then abruptly drew her pistol. Everyone pulled back, surprised. A faint smile on her lips, Mendez held the pistol straight up in a ready position, as was her and Hansen's duty while the hovs unloaded personnel. Hansen was unable to contain a smirk as he drew his slug gun as well. Although outnumbered and despised as contract warriors, the Colonel's army had the grudging respect of nearly everyone who employed them. Even in jobs like this one, where the only three were he, Mendez and Sergeant Karumoto, there was an element of fear. Fear of their individual abilities and fear because it was a well known fact that the Colonel was a very loyal and very vengeful man. The price of harming one of his people was far beyond what any sane person was willing to pay.

The last of the hovs pulled up onto the platform and opened its rear hatch. From each of the three hovs came nine people; a single Harting officer in purple followed by eight people dressed in plain gray, loose uniforms. All were in a festive and buoyant mood. Flanking the loose column of twenty-four, Mendez and Hansen escorted them to the insertion launch point, guarding against the impossible event that any of them might try to escape. Apart from the friction he had to put up with from the Harting muscle, this was the easiest of all details.

"Are we going to be starting soon?" A bearded man walking near him asked. Hansen glanced at him and nodded with a smile, marveling at the enthusiasm.

"Yeah. I think the insertion is in about an hour. I don't know exactly."

The man nodded in return. "I understand. I hear it's very difficult to calculate the exact moment to initiate the temporal field."

"Really?" Hansen was a little surprised at both the man's calm and his seeming knowledge.

"Yes. As I gather, they can only perform the final computations within a six minute window. The relay station on Mercury is able to send the Sun's gravitational variance data to us using a faster than light subspace carrier signal, but since it takes only eight minutes for variances from the Sun to affect Earth, that's the maximum time. The other two minutes are lost in both compiling and sending the data, and from the time used for the variances to reach Mercury."

A woman walking beside the man joined in the conversation.

"That's what I heard, too. I wish they could increase that time, though. I'd hate to look forward to spending a wonderful life trapped in a cavern digging stone and designing machinery and circuits, then get a one-way trip into solid rock." She made a face.

"But you're willing to take the risk?" Hansen asked, surprised at their placid demeanor.

"Of course," the man answered, giving Hansen an odd look. "This is a once in a lifetime chance to get buried under two hundred kilometers of rock and work myself to death digging out the cavern. Who wouldn't jump at an opportunity like that?"

"Are you coming along?" the woman asked.

"Me?" Hansen shook his head. Being used to hearing the question, he was able to make his voice sound gloomy. "Not this time. I have to stay up here and make sure you all get off okay." At their disappointed look, he added, "Maybe next time."

That seemed to satisfy them, for their attention drifted off to others in the group. Hansen looked at them in amazement. These people were soon going to be buried forever deep inside a cavern that had no entrance and no exit. They would spend the rest of their lives scrabbling the hard bedrock with inefficient tools, working, slaving and building something they would never see completed. After several years of being worked to exhaustion daily, they would be summarily executed and replaced by new workers.

And they couldn't wait to get there.

The launch point was located in an open area of the warehouse nearly two hundred meters from the hovs. As the riped worker had alluded to, hundreds of variables affecting Earth's absolute movement through space made selection of the optimum launch time more difficult, and while the general time was known to happen twice each year, it could be pinpointed only three to four hours in advance. Since both the insertions and the method used were extremely secret, the insertion area was always in a Harting facility, either here on the Keys or in the Himalayas. The equipment was fairly portable and simple to setup, but needed to be done quickly, so Harting kept a sizable crew on standby. As the general launch point approached, the supplies were gathered for transport. Every two years, the latest group of riped workers was shipped down. When the optimum time and location was determined, the Harting crews set up the insertion equipment and Mendez and Hansen were called down.

They approached the insertion area and he pulled open the loose canvas flap to let the ripes in. Mendez did the same for the other flap. A wall of simple canvas cordoned the area to keep it out of sight. The entire Harting Enterprises complex had a vague idea of what was going on, but no one had the details. Although ripes were very common in society, seeing a group of people go into an area and not come out would raise more than a few eyebrows. So the warehouse personnel were given an unexpected three day paid vacation and the massive building was empty save for those who were going to use the equipment and those it was going to be used on.

Once inside, the ripes formed a single line to be issued their work clothes, exchanging the loose gray shirts for similar ones that had the date stamped on them, as well as a number assignment. They excitedly changed their shirts, giving no attention to modesty, and marveled at the broad, black numbers that all started with 2259, the year, then followed by a numbered designation. The woman who had spoken to Hansen earlier saw him looking at her. She smiled and walked over.

"I've got a name now," she said proudly, showing off the 2259-18 that was stamped on her shirt. "I'm 918." Since no one lived longer than six years, and ripe insertions were only done every two years, only the last digit of the year and the designation were needed to differentiate everyone.

"So I see," Hansen answered, but found it more difficult to keep a smile on his face. In less than an hour, this woman, in her mid-twenties with short blond hair and brown eyes, would never again see the sunlight. "You'd better get with the rest of your people. You don't want to miss transport."

A flash of fear came across the woman's face at his comment, and she hurriedly stepped back with the others, who had begun to gather in the center of the area.

The center was marked by a stand that stood a meter high and was mounted on a heavy metal base. On top of the narrow stem sat a blue black sphere that was about one meter in diameter. Though he didn't know what the exact measurement was, Hansen knew it did have one. The ratios between that sphere's mass and diameter and the Earth's were precisely calculated, a requirement when performing a temporal transport. To that was added the size of the temporal field and all mass inside it. An error of less than one thousandth of a percentage point could shift the arrival point by one hundred meters. Although the cavern was large, and some of margin of error would seem acceptable, it wasn't. For while it was possible to transport safely to a different location inside the cavern, it could be fifty meters in the air. And even a fraction of a meter into the floor of the cavern would be crippling at best and fatal at worst.

"Yo! Earth to Hansen!" Mendez's voice cut through his musings. She was walking up from the other side of the temporal transport zone, grinning at him. She had exchanged her projectile pistol for the laser. "How about we up the brain voltage a little and get with the program?"

Hansen shook his head and grinned sheepishly. He holstered his slug gun, drew his energy weapon and snapped on the charging cycle. If it was necessary to shoot one of the ripes, it had to be with energy since the weight of even a single slug could throw off the computations. He took position just outside the zone and raised the gun to ready position. The ten second charge completed and the indicator flashed green and yellow for heavy stun.

The flap on the far side moved back and three people entered. They were all marked as high level psitechs by the interface plug embedded in their temples. One had a portable interface unit, the others carried the access grid. The Harting officer in charge stepped up to them.

"About time!" he barked. "Temporal shift's in less than fifteen minutes."

The closest psitech glanced at him, then continued working.

"Fifteen minutes is plenty of time," she said coldly, "As long as we're not distracted by idiots who feel compelled to make obvious and useless statements." The Harting goon fumed but fell silent. Talking to psitechs was hard enough. Reasoning with them was impossible.

They quietly and efficiently set up the grids, ignoring everything and everyone else. Within three minutes, one of them was seated in the middle of the grid, the access panels emitting a low hum. He pulled a plug from one panel and inserted it into his right temple. Immediately, his body became rigid.

A second psitech - the woman - sat just outside the grid, paying close attention to a hologram composed of seemingly random lines and planes of light. She made several adjustments and the planes floated together to form a box. There was a loud popping behind Hansen and he turned back to his charges. A blue mist hung between him and them, marking the boundaries of the temporal zone. They were only minutes from insertion.

The third psitech leaned over the shoulder of the female psitech and began nodding in agreement. They were connected via temple cable and were communicating silently. He nodded and turned to the Harting officer.

"Your organic and non-organic mass reports are within acceptable tolerances. You will now clear the area for five meters beyond the canvas screens." He did not wait for a reply but instead turned back to the other psitech.

The officer looked like he was going to blow a blood vessel, but did as he was told. Soon the area was vacant except for the psitechs, Hansen and Mendez. The psitech looked at them icily, and opened his mouth. Mendez stared right back and gave a short laugh. Hansen saw the pale blue eyes flicker briefly and rest on her insignia. He closed his mouth and returned to work. The Colonel's reach extended even into the high levels of the puterverse. Nobody messed with his people.

"Ten minutes to insertion point. Begin initialization process."

Hansen turned toward the shift zone. Taking up the edge of the perimeter were large mounds of food and equipment, intended to maintain the workers until the next supply insertion six months from now. Forming a loose circle were the ripes themselves. Through the blue haze, he noticed that all of the ripes were staring at the orb, which had come to life and was flashing a brilliant green, sending out thin tendrils of ionized vapor. In its flickering, otherworldly light, the ripes moved back and forth, reaching out excitedly as a tendril passed close beside. It was mesmerizing, a savage dance of corrupted innocence.

"You take the far side, Hansen," Connie said.

"Geez! I always get the far side!" he complained. He pulled his eyes away from the scene and skirted the zone, moving to one flank. The view was considerably poorer from there, the center area being cut off from sight the backs of many of the ripes. To the left of them, the zone was marked by the high pile of supplies. In the event of trouble, Hansen would cover the rear while Mendez guarded the front. It was a poorly thought out arrangement. How were Hansen and Mendez supposed to know what the other was doing if line of sight was blocked? Nothing ever happened. But that wasn't the point; something might happen.

"Eight minutes," he heard announced over the atmospeakers. He double checked that his gun had retained its charge - the latest technology in energy weapons allowed for guns to fully charge in half the time but could on occasion bleed off that charge into the air - and was satisfied it was still at full power. If everything went as planned - and had gone as planned for countless years - Hansen could now take a nap; he was that useless. He never would, though. The whole process would be over in a few minutes and he and Connie would be released from duty, report back to the Colonel, then take a couple weeks furlough. He was going to head up to the Alaskan Commonwealth for some fishing and relaxation in a cabin he owned north of Fairbanks. He'd decided to ask Connie to come, and was hoping she'd…

"What's she doing? Stop her!"

Hansen heard a loud commotion coming from the midst of the ripes. Several of them stepped back quickly, acting as though there was a struggle going on. He heard a woman's shout and thought for a moment it was Connie, then realized it was too hysterical to be her.

He stood there, rooted to his spot, undecided. To step into the zone was a risk he wasn't sure he wanted to make, but he had to find out what going on. He shifted position closer to the crates, stepping to the very edge of the zone. Just as he did, several more ripes stepped away from the power ion globe.

He caught a brief glimpse of a woman yanking free from someone. She spun in a circle as though to get her bearings. Seeing the three open ways occupied by people, she ran toward the crates. She was one of the ripes - the woman he had spoken to - and she was trying to escape!

Moving quickly to head her off, Hansen ran behind the supplies. The top crate tipped over and the woman's head and shoulders suddenly appeared. Her face was a contortion of fear and confusion. Damn! he thought savagely. The ripe hadn't held and she was a different persona, maybe even the original. She probably didn't know what was going on but he wasn't taking any chances. Hansen holstered his pistol and stepped up quickly, grabbing her in a headlock. He felt a stab of guilt and pity, knowing this woman would have to spend the rest of her life in a place she no longer wanted to be, but he had his orders. The mass was very finely tuned for each insertion, and she would have to be placed back into the temporal zone for transport.

Securing his hold on the woman, he had began twisting to pull her free when he was suddenly and brutally hit in the head. His vision became blurry and he was thrown back, dragging the woman with him. Mendez had fired her weapon just as he'd stepped up. Instead of hitting the woman, the beam had hit him.

He fell to his knees, still trying to hold the woman, but his coordination and strength were gone. She wriggled free, then slugged him in the jaw, knocking him unconscious. He fell soundlessly, landing heavily on the glassmac.

Mendez swore and started after the woman. Behind her, a cold voice called out.

"This is unacceptable! You have failed in your duties and will be reported!"

Ignoring them, she ran straight into the zone. The others were still looking after the now vanished woman, talking excitedly. She shoved two of them aside and jumped over the crates, using the path the woman had made. Landing like a cat, she quickly looked around. To one side, she noticed Hansen fallen over and unconscious. Other than that there was no one. She ran for the canvas flap and dove through it.

Empty. There were several hovs nearby, but they were only framed hulls, and could be seen through easily enough to tell the woman wasn't cowering behind them. Connie lifted her gaze across the open area and saw a figure racing for an outside door thirty meters away. It seemed impossible the woman could run that far that quickly, but fear could be a great motivator. The woman hit the door on a full run, slammed it open, and disappeared into the night. Connie broke into a run, knowing there were less than seven minutes remaining.

Wild with fear, the woman burst outside and into the night. She didn't know where she was, but she knew where she didn't want to be. Looking quickly around, she could make out a long, thin alley branching in both directions. Overhead, several lights mounted high on the walls provided a feeble light.

Left or right? Panic nearly overwhelmed her, but she knew there was no way to figure out the correct direction in the few seconds she had remaining. With a sob, she turned to her right and began running.

She had run fifty meters when she heard the boom of the door behind her as it crashed back on its hinges. Someone was chasing her! Panic did overwhelm her now, and she ran even faster, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

She heard a woman's shout behind her, but ignored it. Suddenly, a metal container on her left gave out a massive boom as something slammed against it. She was being shot at! She continued running, dodging around the many large bins, hoping for any form of cover. The temptation to look behind her burned, but she continued on.

The alley ended after one hundred meters and by then she could hear the footsteps of her pursuer. She burst out of the alley and cut to her left, all but exhausted. Before her was a vast darkness, made deeper by the quiet crumbling of waves upon the shore. An ocean? she thought in even greater confusion. It didn't matter, the nameless dread in her screamed. There was a pier less than fifty meters in front of her. Running toward it, she glanced behind her quickly. A woman about her size had stopped and was looking in the wrong direction, giving her a few seconds.

She reached the pier and began running up its length. Another beam of energy slammed into the boards just in front of her, the discharge field numbing her lower right leg. She fell with a scream, but quickly rose to her feet and continued, limping badly.

She staggered for another hundred meters, but then stopped. She had to, because it was the end of the pier. Feeling terror rising in her, she faced her attacker.

The other woman was quickly closing and had to brake hard to stop about three meters away. She brought up her gun. With her free hand, she tapped a finger behind her ear.

"This is Mendez. I've got her on the end of the pier. Send a couple of your apes over to give her a ride back." She nodded. "Very well. Mendez out." She smiled at the woman and shrugged her shoulders.

"Sorry, lady, but orders are orders. We've got only five minutes to insertion, and you are going to be on that ride."

"You've no right! I was taken against my will and you can't do this to me!" Her voice was broken and rasping. Mendez shrugged a second time.

"It's not my place. I just get paid to prevent things like this. The people you want to talk to work for Harting Enterprises. Take it up with them." She motioned with her gun. "Now, c'mon. Let's get back."

Fearing the unknown more than the gun, the woman stepped back, then jerked forward when her foot stepped into empty air. She was at the end of the pier. She turned around and stared into the deep, dark waters. The light of a small hover vehicle illuminated them as it turned up the pier and moved toward them.

"Don't even think it, lady!" Mendez spoke sharply. Her gun gave off a high whine. "I've just set my gun to lethal. You don't have to be alive when they transport you." Then, with a more pleasant tone, she continued. "Look, it doesn't have to be this way, but I will shoot. Let's just go back and you can talk it over with Harting. They can always push the insertion off a couple extra hours to clear this up."

Here was her chance. Knowing she could make them understand, the woman smiled a little and took a step toward Mendez.

"That's all I ask. I only want to know what happened, and I'm willing to not press charges. I just want to..."

She screamed suddenly and stumbled. Something had grabbed her ankle! In the glow of the approaching hov's head lamp, to Mendez it looked like a human hand, but the coloration was different, and the fingers seemed too long.

The woman fell to the pier and was being dragged off the edge. She threw her hand out at Mendez, who moved forward to grab it. Their fingers touched, and then she was gone, disappearing beneath the surface of the ocean.

Mendez stood up and looked into the depths. She was sure of what she had seen; she'd been a little girl up in New York the last time she'd seen such a hand. But she was also sure nobody would believe her. They never came this far south, nor this close to shore, without good reason.

"Geez! Did you see that?" One of the Harting men jumped out of the hov and stared into the water. "Didja see who it was?" When Mendez shook her head, he snorted in disgust, more at the situation than at her. "Gotta be some local boys. I don't know how they find out, but they know we bring ripes here, and not just for the transport. One of 'em musta been under the pier and took advantage. If he's got gear on, we'll never find them. No time, anyway. We got orders to get back right now. "

Mendez said nothing, but returned to the open hov and took a seat. The craft turned toward the right and sped across the water to a large bay door two hundred meters distant. Fortunately, the men getting out of the small hov had seen someone grab her as well, so Mendez was off the hook for the woman's escape. They could report that another person, hidden in the waters, had pulled the woman under. Mendez saw no point in complicating things further by telling Harting that their ripe had been abducted by a Pisces.

The water was very warm, but Emily still felt the chill of terror shooting through her. Only minutes ago, she was returning home from her position at Ghan Digital, where she was an advanced press operator. She'd picked up a six pack of Wondaire and was entering her home when she suddenly appeared in the warehouse, surrounded by people dressed in rough clothing and staring at an ionic power globe. At least that's what she thought it was. In that moment of confusion before fear set in, she remembered thinking that it looked very different from a standard globe. Then the terror had overtaken her and she could only think to run.

After disabling a guard with a lucky punch, she'd run to the pier, where she'd been grabbed and pulled under the water. Whoever had seized her shifted his grip and held her securely around her chest. Her head was tight against his stomach and he was contorting his body violently as he swam through the water at high speed.

Her breath exhausted, she began to struggle with him, hoping the creature would release her, or at least understand that she needed to breathe. She felt his other hand come down and begin squeezing her throat. There was a sharp stab in her neck, just below the Adams apple, and she tried to fight him off. He didn't seem to notice her feeble attacks and continued to swim on, his powerful legs and lower body occasionally striking her in the stomach.

Finally, unable to fight the urge to inhale, she gasped and sucked in a huge lung full of water, waiting for the darkness of death to replace the darkness of the deep, black sea.

Instead of choking on the sea water, she felt a deep satisfaction as her body accepted the water and her lungs began drawing the oxygen. From her neck she felt a machine like pulsing. She realized only then that the being holding her was a Pisces - a human capable of breathing both water and air. She'd seen them of course, whenever their congress met on land and the events were holoized, but had never actually touched one. She'd expected their skin to be cold and clammy, like a sea creature's, but it was very warm and comforting.

She took another tentative breath, and felt relief at being able to breathe. She understood now what had happened. He'd attached a device to her neck that allowed her to temporarily breathe water. The sensation was very alien.

They continued on, going deeper into the water, and Emily felt the extreme emotions and exertions of the past thirty minutes catch up to her, and she slipped into a peaceful unconsciousness.

The hov returned to the insertion area in silence. Mendez jumped out before it came to a stop and ducked under the canvas.

Hansen was on his feet, but was clearly still more out than up. He was standing near a psitech who was coldly explaining something to him. From his glazed eyes, it seemed unlikely he understood what was being said. She approached the two.

"Sorry, but she was grabbed by someone in the water. We looked but couldn't find a trace of either of them. Guess the insertion is off, huh?" There was a murmur of discontent from the zone where the ripes were listening in. The psitech turned toward her and stared.

"Just because you have failed does not mean we have failed. Two minutes to transport." His eyes shifted slightly to behind her, and the awful realization hit her.

She moved to her right, her hand dropping for her pistol, when one of the Harting goons slammed into her. Her gun flew free and they fell to the ground. The struggle was brief and one-sided, with Connie being the victor. But her attacker was quickly joined by three others, and they soon had her pinned and stripped her of her second gun. Hansen, though still too groggy to be effective, was also being held by two Harting men. The psitech stepped up over her and smiled coldly.

"We have your last registered mass measurement on verse and were able to make the proper adjustments. Although your weight will have varied some since the last measurement, we should still be able to insert the majority of the transport safely."

"You bastard!" she yelled. "When the Colonel finds out about this..."

"He already has and has approved the substitution for the purposes of maintaining his contract. He wishes to inform you that your name will be lazed onto the Plaque, and he will honor your name each year on this day. A waste of time, if you ask me, but I nonetheless fulfill my pact and relay the message to you." He motioned and she was hauled to her feet and taken to the zone. The psitech stopped just outside and addressed the ripes.

"You will listen. One of your own has escaped and this woman has been chosen to replace her. Her mass is similar to the escaped ripe, but does not precisely match it. As a consequence, a number of you will no doubt be killed at the conclusion of your transport. Those surviving will be able to begin work immediately." He waited a few seconds for the group to understand. They nodded their heads in complete agreement. The psitech smiled. "Good. We need you to hold this woman in the zone until the transport is initiated. Her presence greatly increases the chances of you surviving."

Again they agreed and Mendez was carried into the zone. Many hands held onto her and the Harting men cleared the zone. The psitech took his position near the others and reconnected.

"Thirty seconds."

Hansen looked on helplessly, still being held by two Harting soldiers and the effects of the stun, which were fading very slowly. He watched in numbed fascination as the field slowly built up around those inside the zone. Connie was now twisting and straining against those holding her, but there were too many. Her screams had become hysterical. Only dimly aware of what was happening, Hansen heard the female psitech speak in a clipped voice that was edged with hard satisfaction.

"Transport was successful, with 54% survival."

"Excellent," replied her partner. "Transport."

The field expanded suddenly, then collapsed in on itself and its cargo. The zone was clear, leaving behind only the fading echo of a despairing scream.

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