The Texas Renegade Returns

Sunday, February 17

Lights Rotation

Today's rotation was called Lights Rotation.

The first space was up on a mountain, all grass and tumbled rocks and flowers on a slope so high there was cloud below. We're settling into a routine for being a squad-with-useful-stray. Before going through each gate, Mara and Maze, who both have Combat Sight and Speed talent, touch my arm to enhance themselves, then take lead. They go through as close together as they can, and just like when I was with Ruuel, the rest of us only come through when they signal.

This time, as soon as Maze was through, he dived abruptly left – so fast it was almost like he vanished – and something flashed after him. Mara followed in a rush, and just as quickly ran right, her Light whip striking out from one hand. None of the rest of First Squad enjoyed staying put, but they did, very tense and prepared. I was wondering how long they had to wait before going without a signal, but Mara came back almost straight away and Lohn and Zee went through followed by me and my Ketzaran/Alay escort. Lohn brushed a hand against my arm and was off.

The things they were fighting were like gargoyles. Or bats with wolfish faces, all grey-skinned. The sky above the mountainside was thick with them, and they dived like hawks, incredibly fast. Ketzaren's Wind manipulation abilities were really useful there. It's not the same kind of instant-hit that Lohn's Light wall is, but if she sets up enough movement in the air, it grows to cyclonic levels. It made it incredibly hard for the gargoyles to fly, and funnelled them together really handily.

That space was huge, too. It took almost an hour for First Squad to chase down all the gargoyles, and I noticed a few escaped through other gates, and that one of the things First Squad were trying to do was prevent that, although they wouldn't chase them through the gates. It was also by far the worst time I'd had with First Squad, because there's no way slaughtering a couple of hundred animals could be anything but awful. The Ionoth might just be memories, but they still don't want to be killed. Being Setari is a really horrible job.

It was only when the very last of them was gone that First Squad said anything more than "There," or "To the left". Maze called for a break, and we all sat down on some rocks and had a drink and some of the molasses-tasting food bars. Using their powers takes an awful lot out of the Setari, especially over such a long period of time, and they were sweating and looking drained. In a way it annoys me that it doesn't take me any effort to enhance them. I'd feel less like a useless spectator if it at least made me tired.


"That was more than twice as many as the last time we did this space," Zee said, after drinking thirstily.

Maze nodded. "I'll recommend reclassification of the rotation."

"Don't understand how ecology work here," I said. "Do Ionoth need eat? Or just attack people out habit?"

"It varies," Lohn said. "In some spaces the Ionoth don't have any apparent food source, and we've never verified if they have to eat, but they often turn on each other or start to roam, preying on whatever they can find until separation from their home space causes them to fade. There are others, roamers and static, which are not aggressive and don't have any interest in us at all. If we do Boulders Rotation, you'll see the Tenders. They 'notice' but never attack us, so we leave them be, as we do anything not classified as a threat."

"It's a big job keeping up with all the known types," Alay said. "But a lot easier dealing with types already encountered than new varieties."

Maze called the end of the break then – they don't like to hang around in the spaces unnecessarily – and we went into the next space, which was a single short corridor with a couple of gates in it. All the doors were outlines, showing only blackness. and First Squad were really tense as they passed through it. They said that they'd occasionally encountered very unusual Ionoth in there, but there was nothing this time.

Next was the reason it was called Lights Rotation. It was a night time space with lots of huge overarching trees by a lake, and there were floating balls of light everywhere, about the size of two fists together. It was the coldest space I've been in yet, and everyone's breath came out smoky. The lake was black and mirror-still and reflected the glowing balls. Maze had explained before we went through that there were usually only one or two creatures in this space, but that they were fast, and clever enough not to just jump out and be killed. That was a rather nerve-wracking space, because after enhancing themselves, Lohn, Mara, Zee and Maze all disappeared off into the dark and Alay and Ketzaren and I waited by the gate. I turned on the names in my interface again, but could only see where Maze and Zee had gone. And then, while I was craning to see the others, Alay leaned forward and the chilly silence was ripped apart by a high vibrating sound, followed by a shrieking yowl accompanying a black shape falling out of one of the trees. Alay has a sonic talent which seems to only be useful when she can take a few moments to build it and, importantly, none of her squad are anywhere near what she's trying to take down.

The last space was like a ghost town in a Western: old, falling apart, little more than the shells of buildings on a dusty plain. In the middle of the town were square wooden frames, and tied to the squares with barbed wire were the shapes of people. Black shadows with no features at all, like a person had had all their skin had burned away and then been covered in dusty ink. They looked like they were in pain, being tortured like the shadows on the pyramids. First Squad approached incredibly cautiously, scanning every building as we approached the frames, making sure nothing was lurking, and stopped at the edge of the central square with the frames.

"These are seen in a number of spaces," Alay said. "Most notably on the Columns Rotation. They are one of the most dangerous of the Ionoth, and frequently reach near-space and sometimes real-space."

One of the shadows reacted to the sound of her voice, eyes opening to slits. And then a mouth appeared on the darkness of the face, out of nothing like the Cheshire Cat's does in Alice of Wonderland, but stretching up into the nastiest grin you could imagine. It was all light inside, the shadows burning white within. And what I'd thought was pain was a kind of exultation.

Then Maze set the entire thing burning, all the frames and the shadows on them. He was still enhanced, and called down a pillar of flame in an absolute Wrath of God moment, shocking me. First Squad, except for Mara who continued scanning the area for anything coming, all stood and watched in silence. It was pretty clear they hated these things.

"Most monsters my world are people," I said, feeling inadequate. "These memories of people?"

"Not anything I'd class as a person," Alay said, very firm and sharp for someone usually so quiet. "Time to head back?"

Maze nodded, and we went back through the same set of spaces, with Ketzaren pausing at every gate and enhancing herself before locking them as much as possible. Even though we'd just been through them all, First Squad stayed alert and ready for attack right up until we stepped back into real-space.

This time, an alert flashed in our mission display when we were being scanned. "You've got a stickie, Zee," Maze said, and she groaned and walked away from us to a corner of the box.

"Stickie is?" I asked.

"A very weak variety of Ionoth, but with an ability to conceal itself even from Sight talents. They're parasites, feeding off human hosts. When they're stronger, they can copy themselves to new hosts through physical contact, and–"

"Are a plaguish nuisance," Zee put in, arms crossed.

"If they're left too long, they begin to corrupt their hosts," Lohn added, grinning.

"They're removed using sonics," Maze continued, as if they hadn't interrupted, then gave Zee a sympathetic smile. "Also known as an Instant Headache Treatment. Hopefully the rest of us won't finish the day so uncomfortably."

We split up then. After missions, showers and rest are very high on First Squad's list of things to do, and I guess Maze gets to file a mission report. The rotations seem designed to last only a couple of hours, and there's never training or anything like that afterwards because it takes so much out of them. I showered, ever-amused by my nanoliquid uniform, and then grabbed some 'portable food' from the canteen and went up to the roof.

It's still night, but it was very clear and not too windy and it was nice to sit and watch the stars. I wasn't really surprised when Lohn and Mara showed up. They take babysitting as seriously as they do killing Ionoth.

"What's the attraction?" Lohn asked, sprawling down next to me. "Black, black, black and some stars?"

"The wind," I said, after thinking about it. "And there insects here – they sound crickets – insects from home. And temperature changes. And different smells."

"Not many would consider these things positive," Lohn said. "Besides, we had all that in Lights Rotation, didn't we? Except perhaps this chirping."

"Too busy being nervous enjoy."

"You hide it well," Mara said. "Maze wanted us to check how you're holding up to all this."

I like Mara for being very open about Stray mental health checks. She's a really straightforward person.

"Is awful," I said. "Killing things. Spaces very interesting, Ionoth horrible. Obvious." I shrugged. "But not overwhelm. First Squad not scared. Save panic for when First Squad is."

This made Lohn laugh. "Worse philosophies, I suppose."

"One night Muina, most scared ever," I said. "Been walk eleven days, sick eat bad fruit. Sleep on hill under mat made leaves. Something big walk up to me. Foot came down mat, right next head. Sniff me. Lay there listen to it. Then it go away. Lots panic. Watch very deadly Setari toast bugs easier."

They both shut up at that one, then Lohn slung an arm around my shoulders and squeezed tight. "You've a way of putting things in perspective. But you'll let us know if there's anything troubling you?"


"Sure." Since I'd succeeded in putting second level monitoring into perspective for myself as well, I thought about other things I could ask them, then said: "What Eighth Squad like?"

"Ah, you're due to do enhancement testing with them tomorrow, right? Well, Kanato's solid, very level-headed. Eighth is one of the 'big punch' squads, so we can expect some exciting damage to the test areas, I'd bet."

"Have decided long-term what do with me?"

"Too early. There's a lot of debate, and some competing interests. They won't have you actively working with the younger squads for quite a while, since having a talent set so increased and then reverting it might have a negative impact on them. In theory we're too old and wise to have our heads turned as badly." He laughed. "I gather Seventh Squad is not very happy with Eighth for being selected to test with you."

I drew my knees up to my chin. "Cloning legal Tare?" I asked carefully, and felt the depth of their silence.

"Cloning will not reproduce a talent set," Mara said eventually. "Kolar tried it not long ago, and although there's some pattern similarity, it seems that there's more to talents than simple genetics. Since they haven't found a way to make clones with an adequate lifespan, there's a ban on human cloning here."

But there'd obviously been 'a lot of debate' about quite a few things.

"Be really good way make me want be anywhere but here," I said softly. "That good thing to add today's report." And then, because I hated making First Squad feel bad, I added: "Six billion people my planet. Bet Cass not only one enhance skill. Hope they look harder for natural gate, get chance show First Squad my home."

Mara put a hand on my shoulder. "We'll do that. Besides, the real solution's the Pillars, not increasing our ability to kill Ionoth. You can be sure we'll be throwing all our resources into taking advantage of the stroke of luck your visit home brought."

It isn't necessarily an endless war. It's good to remember that.

Monday, February 18

Eighth Squad

It's a weird feeling to have a group of strangers all eager for me to show up. Or really eager to try out what their powers are like enhanced, anyway.

Eighth Squad is one of the Setari teams 'stacked' with high impact talents instead of being more all-round. They're not usually used for spaces that require close fighting: there's apparently some spaces where you don't want to go in and make things explode because parts of the spaces explode right back. Memories of oil refineries, perhaps. And there's some Ionoth that you have to kill by hitting them because it's a bad idea using psionics on them.

Eighth's captain is Ro Kanato. He tracked me down about half an hour before I was due to meet them, to introduce himself, show me the way to a new test room, and double-check my preferences for people grabbing hold of me. He kept making references to the rules which had been set up regarding my 'handling'. I'd love to be able to read these rules, and the reports and things filed about me, but though I've access to the public parts of the interface, there's an awfully large amount of the KOTIS network which I can't look at. I'd like to be able to look up more information about the rotations I'm assigned to before going into them. Although maybe that would be a bad idea and give me nightmares. Hard to tell.

Kanato is about my height, with long black hair which he catches up in a ponytail, and he comes across as unfussed with a mild-mannered efficiency that turns mountains into molehills. I kept wondering where I'd heard his voice until I recognised it as the person who'd first spoken to Ruuel from Fourth when we returned from my 'excursion', just sounding considerably less surprised. He's not quite as correct as Zan, but all sensible and by-the-book, which kept me feeling less embarrassed than I might otherwise have been.

Test Room 2 is built for testing the high impact talents, divided into two by a massive amount of shielding, with the larger side full of angled walls of metal – targets – and the rest of Eighth Squad waiting on the 'safe' side of the shielding. Two girls and another three guys, all polite and professional, with an edge of underlying excitement. Kanato introduced them in the order they were standing: "Henaz, Kade, Trouban, Bryze, Hasen. We'll do a complete run of each skill set per person, starting with Hasen. Remember your instructions regarding contact. Anyone who fails to keep to the restrictions will spend the rest of the day on a training run."

Hasen was a tiny, bird-like girl with soft black hair cut really close to her skull, gorgeous dark brown eyes and darker skin than most Tarens. She stood before a hatchway which was the only opening to the other part of the test chamber and did the whole 'current strength' base level test first. Her primary talent is Electricity, and she shot a fat bolt of it at a target a third of the way down the long length of the test chamber. It wasn't like Lohn's Light bolts, which are short bullets, but a literal lightning bolt, stretching all the way to the target. It left her breathing deeply, and there was a sharp ozone scent in the air and if it wasn't for my uniform I think the hair on my arms would have been standing on end. The target made a thooming noise, and I watched through the thick, distorting viewport as some residual lightning played around the metal wall. There was an afterimage of it across my eyes.

"Now enhanced," Kanato said, after it had died down, and Hasen brushed the back of my wrist with her fingers. First Squad had decided it's better for the Setari to handle the contact involved in the enhancement because there's less communication lag, and they have far better reaction times than me. I was relieved that Eighth Squad had realised that they didn't need more than a slight touch to be enhanced.

I think she was aiming for the same target. It was a little hard to tell since instead of a bolt shooting from her hand this huge round ball of white appeared about a quarter of the way into the room, arcing and spitting and drifting slowly away from us. The noise and smell of it was incredible, and I turned away and covered my ears, but could still feel the vibration of each strike. It didn't last too long, fortunately, and died away to this stunned silence.

Kanato wasn't quite managing to hide that he was having exactly the same "Whoa" reaction which Jules would have to something particularly cool and unexpected, which all of them were having, I guess. But after blinking a couple of times, he said: "We'll target to the far end of the room in future, I think. Either of you experiencing any side-effects?"

I shrugged, and Hasen slowly shook her head. She looked so small and slight to have done so much.

"Re-test that at the far end of the room, then, so we can see if the result is the same."

It was. I did my usual weird things to Eighth Squad's talents, but again the distortion remained consistent whenever it showed up. Fortunately most only had three or four talents each, but I was still feeling hungry and tired by the time Kanato called it a day and sent me off to the medical exam they make me go to after test sessions. The medics couldn't decide whether I was feeling the impact of the enhancements or was just normally hungry and tired. Eighth Squad all looked exhausted after blasting all-out like that, so comparatively it's still a negligible impact on me. I did snooze for a lot of the afternoon though, and slept through when I was supposed to go jogging (too bad, so sad).

Even though Eighth is closer to my age, I'd rather stay with First Squad, given the choice. I know that Eighth Squad was being all business and distracted by excitement and whatever, but Kanato was the only one who said a word to me the entire time. They weren't being deliberately rude or anything: I think maybe they're not sure how I fit into this very structured world they've been raised to accept. Like they haven't been given permission to be social.


I didn't mind them, though. It was funny watching them being so excited and trying not to show it.

Tuesday, February 19

Maze Rotation

'Tsennel Rotation' actually, but tsennel means labyrinth/maze. I've found a proper dictionary, to supplement my vague injected one, and have taken to looking up words and trying to fix the real definition and making annotations to connect to English.

Breakfast was with Maze, Zee, Mara and Lohn, to talk about the day's assignment. Lohn, of course, thought it very funny when I said that in English 'maze' could be labyrinth or 'corn' if you just go by the way it's pronounced, though it was a bit hard to describe what corn was beyond it being a yellow vegetable. Or grain? The Taren alphabet is really strange with its 's', so I'm not entirely sure whether Maze or Mase is correct. They have an 's', but use it mostly at the beginning of words, and then they use this 'ts' letter a lot of the time, and there's an awful lot of 'z' when I would expect 's', like how they pronounce my name 'Caszandra'.

Anyway, Maze Rotation is what they consider a fairly tough assignment, partly because of its size and the need for close combat, and also because they've encountered new types of Ionoth there from time to time. Lohn was saying that the spaces we've worked in this week have been reasonably straightforward, and that now they were going to try me out in the 'weird and confusing' territories. The way he talked about it made me wonder if the spaces weren't so much the memories as the nightmares of planets.

"What toughest rotation?" I asked, as we walked to our assigned gate-lock.

"Unstables," Zee said. "Spaces which have moved up against Tare's near-space, but which we haven't encountered before. For everything else, even Columns, we know what we're going up against, and they choose which teams to assign based on that. If we sent Eighth into Maze Rotation, for instance, they'd kill themselves in the first few minutes. While Ninth couldn't handle Lights Rotation because you need strong ranged abilities for that mountainside. We can manage either, but at the same time neither is as easy as it would for a team with exactly the right talent set. It's been a big step forward, having specialist teams."

"How long, younger teams active?"

"About seven years, for Three to Six. Eleven and Twelve, coming up on one year. Thirteen and Fourteen will be made active in the next year. The aim is to have sufficient squads to keep the near-space clear, and increase exploration and searches for the Pillars."

It took me a minute to remember that a 'year' here was only four months. "How many Pillars are there?"

Zee lifted her hands, then let them drop. "We only confirmed three years ago that they truly exist. And, presuming that rotational space does realign, we're only just coming up to our first chance to properly examine one. The knowledge of how the things were constructed, and what exactly they're doing, has long been lost."

"Exciting days ahead," Lohn put in cheerfully, and then we reached our gate-lock and it was time for the mission to be officially logged and to call each other by surname and be all serious.

There were only two spaces involved in the Maze Rotation. The first seemed to be the inside of a house, all cramped walls and sketches of furniture and a shadow by a corner which might have once been an old lady. And then there was the maze.

It was exactly that: a huge maze of white stone covered in a climbing plant with small almond-shaped leaves. The walls looked to me to be really similar to the stone which the Taren and Muinan buildings are made of, so I guess it was a memory of one of those worlds, or another where the Muinans had gone. The walls were really high – twenty feet at least – and right above it the sky looked scratched and rubbed out. But there were clover flowers in the grassy paths below and it had an austere English garden feeling which made me like it despite it being dangerous.

"The walls have a resistance to talents," Maze said through the interface, once we were all through the gate. "Reflecting or dampening them unpredictably. We will be close-fighting almost exclusively in here, and keeping very near to each other. Avoid touching the walls; we've found that seems to draw increased attention from any Ionoth in the space. Follow Spel's lead, staying on her left, and communicate only through the interface."

I nodded, and he started off, getting even more focused. First Squad is always serious while in the spaces, but I could tell by how tightly concentrated they all were that they'd meant it about it being tough. Everyone except Mara made long blades out of their suits, the first time I'd seen anyone except Ruuel use that. I still hadn't figured out how to make any bits of the suit be more than tough rubber.

Staying on Ketzaren's left put me in the centre of the six of them, and I noticed that Lohn, on my left, had his blade on his left arm instead of his right. I was only just within arms-length of any of them, so that they could reach to keep up their enhancements without risking accidentally bumping me.

"Coming up, mark seven, twenty in," came Maze's voice over the interface. "Three rush."

Three rush apparently meant Maze, Mara and Zee would suddenly leap forward, while Lohn, Alay and Ketzaren closed about me and followed at a slower pace. We reached the corner just as something I couldn't properly see leapt off one of the walls at Maze. Maze, Mara and Zee all have the Speed talent, and unenhanced they move amazingly. With enhancement, they come close to blurring instantaneously from one place to another. Plus both Maze and Mara have Combat Sight, which so far as I can tell is an ability to detect attacks almost before they happen. The thing didn't really have a chance, in other words.

I only saw it properly when it was dead, and stopped being so difficult to look at. A lizard, like a gecko except with some uncomfortably humanoid lines to its scaly white body. And too much claw. Chameleons with attitude.

Even before it was still, Maze added: "Two coming fast from mark two," and they shifted about me to cover an opening on the opposite side.

It went on like that for way too long. The maze space is huge, and we weren't just walking through it to a certain point, we were systematically searching out all of the chameleons and killing them.

The bright spot of the space was in the centre, the heart of the maze. It was an open, circular garden, with lots of grass between us and the walls, and beds of purple and red flowers which looked like cosmos. We'd been going about two hours by that time, and had cleared most of the chameleons. Maze ordered a break, though still to stick to using only our interfaces, and we sat down in the very centre, resting but on guard, Zee and Maze watching in opposite directions. Everyone was looking worn, and ate silently, so I decided not to bug them with questions and chewed on my entirely unappetising molasses bar. And then there was this cat.

Half-grown kitten, really, long-legged but not properly grown up. It was one of the slinky, big-eared type I'd seen on Muina, smoky grey with unexpectedly dark moss-green eyes. It was just there, sitting in front of me, drifting into visibility in an eye-blink. And, yeah, I was stupid, but my automatic reaction to cats, even ones which pop up out of nothing, is to hold out a hand, fingers unthreateningly down, and see if it runs away.

It acted just like a cat should, delicately sniffing, touching a cold nose to one knuckle, then rubbing its face against my hand. I had scratched it behind one ear and under its chin and felt the slightest buzz of a purr before it even occurred to me that maybe I shouldn't, and carefully took my hand back.

"Can I pick it up?" I asked over the interface.


First Squad's reaction would probably have been comical if, well, if the Ena hadn't been a life or death thing for them for so many years. Ketzaren was closest to me, sitting at a right-angle, and turned her head only to leap up as if scalded. And then they were all on their feet, the nanoliquid blades appearing, along with Mara's Light-whip, and the cat very sensibly leaped away and vanished, leaving me sitting there staring up at them.

I remembered, at least, to keep talking over the interface. "Kittens are evil?"

None of them answered immediately, but Mara touched her hand to my shoulder and stared about, searching. "Nothing," she said.

"Checking the log," Maze said. When we're on mission, as well as second level monitoring I'm on mission log, which he can access as team captain, so he meant he was looking at my recording of the cat. And then he looked at me a moment before scanning the area again. "Gone now, at any rate. Or completely undetectable." He looked back at me, and though his voice wasn't angry his mouth was a flat line as he said: "If anything approaches us, no matter what it looks like, warn us immediately. We can't judge by appearances here."

I felt a prize twit, of course, and could only nod and try really hard not to screw up any more on the mission. Which took another hour of tense maze-trekking and by the time we finally got back to KOTIS everyone looked like they had stress headaches.

"Another increase in population," Mara said, after the scan had cleared us of stickies. "I'm starting to reconsider the proposals to double-team."

"Dealing with swoops on top of that?" Lohn pulled a face. "I'll pass."

"The trade-off is too great," Maze agreed, sounding terribly tired. He gave me a worn smile. "You made a big difference to that space's difficulty. If it wasn't for the population increase, we would have easily set a record completion pace."

"And you claim to disapprove of the pace records," Lohn said, heading to the showers.

"Lunch with me?" Zee said as we followed him, and I knew I was in for a talk well before we were sitting in a quiet corner of the canteen.

"Are kittens evil?" I asked, as soon as I'd swallowed enough of some yellowy mashed stuff (which tasted a lot better than it looked) to no longer feel painfully hungry.

"I've not read any reports featuring them," she said. "But there are Ionoth which can disguise their shape, and Ionoth with appearances entirely innocuous and intentions which are not. The problem with that one was that we did not detect it. There's very few things that can get anywhere near as close as that to someone with Combat Sight without notice, threat or not." She reached over and rapped the back of my knuckles with her spoon. "And petting the thing was entirely idiotic." But she smiled at me, and shook her head to take the sting out of the words. "He was angry at himself, not you. Just be sure to be more sensible in future."

I nodded, still cringing internally. There was no way I was going to upset everyone like that again if I could help it. I watched her eat, not missing the shadows under her eyes, and finally managed to ask: "What happen third senior Setari squad?"

"A kadara." She said the word so softly I could barely hear her. "One which broke into real-space three years ago. We lost nine, most from the senior squads. They renumbered us all afterwards. The original First Squad captain, Helese, was Maze's wife. He's been very hard on himself ever since."

"Very sad guy," I said, and could only promise myself to not be entirely idiotic in future.

Wednesday, February 20

Third Squad

Third was a difficult squad to test with. Not because of any attitude, but because they had such a range of talents, which required three test environments to get through. I'd been a little nervous about working with their squad captain, Taarel – the spectacular one with the unlikely hair – just because I'd taken the impression she was really intense about Maze. But she was totally professional, so either it was my imagination or she's not a petty sort.

But before Taarel there was Eeli. After breakfast I'd gone up to the roof because I'd figured it was around time for dawn, and on Tare dawn lasts a really long time and is well worth watching. I was sitting through a lesson on Taren geography, keeping an eye on the horizon, when a girl a year or maybe even two years younger than me arrived. Eeli Bata, according to the interface, looking like a string bean in her Setari uniform.

"Sorry to interrupt you," she started out, her voice high and enthusiastic. "I thought I'd introduce myself since we're working with you today. I'm Eeli. I'm the path finder in Third Squad. I've really been looking forward to this. We all want to see how far you can take us."

This was definitely a different sort of Setari. "Hello."

"I can show you the way to the test room, when you're ready," she continued. "Why are you up here on the roof? Are you not used to being inside buildings? Is this much like your world?"

Eeli is what Nenna would be if Nenna had uber psychic powers. She'd sometimes stop asking questions in the hopes I would remember them all to answer them, but then new questions would bubble up and she'd be off again. I wanted see if she would act like that once the training session started, and was pleased that, though she shut right up and did exactly what she should, she kept looking really excited the entire time.

We started in Test Room One to go through the combat talents. In terms of sheer fire power Third Squad is nothing compared to Eighth, but they're not shabby either. We moved on to testing sights next. There's six sorts of sights: Combat, Path, Gate, Symbol, Place and 'Sight Sight', which is two different words, but both mean sight. Third Squad has all but 'Sight Sight', which is really rare and is apparently something to do with divining the 'nature of things'. According to Eeli, the bluesuit who came down in person to look at me, Selkie, has Sight Sight and so does Ruuel. Eeli is a great source of information. I don't even have to ask her questions.

I could tell Taarel's squad really adores their captain, the way First Squad respects Maze, but with an extra level of worship. She's definitely one of those people like HM, a tiny sun, though she leaves HM in the shade. She has the strongest Ena manipulation talent, and when we went into the Ena to test my enhancement on her talents, she was able to partially close one of the gates. She has a calm reserve, but I can really picture her giving a Battle of Agincourt type of speech, inspiring everyone around her to follow and admire and commit great acts of nobility.

Reading back that last paragraph, it sounds like I have the hots for Taarel. Funny. I guess she impressed me. This whole entry is really confused and out of order and I think that's because of Eeli's gossip and because Taarel really reminds me of Ruuel. I haven't had any reason to write about him, but I've developed a tendency to look closely at any squad I happen to see, hoping it might be Fourth. I think about him a lot more than I've written about.

And it occurred to me, while I was watching Taarel and being impressed and seeing Ruuel in the shape of her eyes, that I might be on second level monitoring for the rest of my life. No wonder none of the Setari want to have informal conversations with me.

Thursday, February 21

Let's try that again – Third Squad

Yesterday's entry reads as amazingly garbled. The shorter and less confused version is that Eeli collected me and we went to Test Room One. We tested combat skills and Combat Sight and then went to a smaller room where we tested Symbol and Place Sight. Then we went into the Ena and tested Path Sight, Gate Sight, and Ena manipulation. The fact that, enhanced, Taarel was able to partially close a small gate was a fairly major thing apparently. There's a few gates in very inconvenient spots and, though it sounds like it would take a lot of sessions to do it, I had a strong impression that I'll be assigned to Third Squad at some point in the future to go and close one or two that they really don't want open.


Path Sight is a tracking ability: not seeing footprints, but knowing the direction of something. Gate Sight allows you to tell how long a gate will remain open. Place Sight is a very vague and all-encompassing sight that lets you see invisible things including things like auras, "the remnants of touch", whatever that means, or the way things used to look. Sometimes Place Sight will even show stickies. It's considered a difficult Sight to cope with: painful, with bonus nightmares. Symbol Sight is a "specific interpretative" ability that reminds me of my injected language: see a word, and have an impression of meaning, while 'Sight Sight' is a vaguer but more profound comprehension. They're all called 'Sight', but it's really more 'awareness'. Combat Sight, for instance, means you're aware of creatures around you, even if they're behind walls, and gives you a strong advantage when trying to anticipate movement and attack. Both Third and Fourth Squad are Sight based exploration squads with duties focused around establishing new paths through the spaces to 'hot spots' where Ionoth are infesting Tare's near-space and real-space. But also trying to find and investigate the Ddura and the Pillars, and even to do investigative work for real-space crimes (psychic detectives!).

I suppose I must have some form of Path Sight, to have found my way to Earth's near-space, although Eeli made it very clear that what I did was way outside their idea of the talent. Back when I first returned, and was in medical again, their attempts to test me for Path Sight were a complete failure, and I think they're a little wary of pushing me too hard to do it in case I have another 'excursion'.

There's been no suggestion whatsoever that I try and train or focus my ability to jaunt off to Earth, no matter what Maze said about finding Pillars.

Castle Rotation

Today was my last scheduled rotation with First Squad, though I think that may be because they haven't decided yet how to allocate me next week. Tomorrow I have nothing scheduled and to my delight Ketzaren said she was going into the city and asked if I want to tag along. Then I have a training day and a few more squads to be tested with (Fifth, Seventh, Tenth), but no more Ena rotations listed, just blank days every second day where they're probably going to put missions once they've decided what they will be.

I feel strange about being a resource which is shared between dozens of people. There's some teams I'm not looking forward to working with, but now that I'm not being kept in a box it sometimes feels like a positive way to live. I'm making their job a little easier, even if all I actively do is follow them about. I managed not to make an idiot out of myself this rotation, too, and First Squad were looking quite cheerful at the end of the day.

Lohn says that Castle is his favourite rotation. It was definitely different from the ones we've already done, and for the most part made me feel more than ever that I've strayed into some kind of computer game. It had NPCs! Maze explained beforehand that there would be two types of Ionoth in the Castle space, and that one we would be attacking while the other we would avoid. This would require me to move quickly whenever Ketzaren told me to, and there would probably be occasional levitating to different spots so I needed to be ready for that.

They didn't warn me about the stairs though.

Castle Rotation is literally that – a castle. On a cliff-like rock. And we started at the bottom and worked our way to the top, chasing a mass of invading shadow people and cutting them down wherever possible. There were defending shadow people fighting against the invading shadow people and I see why Lohn likes it because it's like you're helping them. They even react sometimes as if they're surprised to see the Setari and one looked like it was thanking Zee.

But, gods, we went up a lot of steps.

I think Ketzaren did a lot of extra unnecessary levitating, for which I will be eternally grateful. I really don't know if I can get as fit as everyone else, and talked to Mara about it afterwards, especially about the way I keep falling asleep after the testing sessions instead of doing the jogging I was supposed to. She pointed out that I'd been hospitalised twice the previous month, and that walking up all these stairs probably counted for more than the jogging anyway. The interface lets them monitor my heartbeat all the time, and they're really more interested in keeping me alive than trying to make me into a watered-down version of a Setari.

Not that this let me out of dodging practice the day after tomorrow. Mara says she's planning to make sure I at least have a chance to survive if a bunch of children try and beat me up. I gather she thinks I'm pretty hopeless so far.

Saturday, February 22

Can I keep it?

I'd made a list of things to look for during my trip to the city, like throw rugs for the lounges, and some snacks to keep in my apartment. Although I'd realised I could purchase most things through my interface and have them delivered, it was more the idea of going out and looking around which had me excited. Besides, I wanted a haircut, and Ketzaren hadn't seemed at all bothered about the time involved in taking me to a hairdressers, even though it meant she would have to sit around waiting for me. She has long, shiny black hair which is super-straight and neat and makes my current collection of split ends look even worse by comparison.

It was also nice to have a reason to wear something other than my uniform, and to see Ketzaren in a pretty dress. I often wonder if First Squad does much socialising outside of KOTIS. Do people not in the military seem annoying or refreshing? How do they get the chance to meet them? Are there rules about whether you can date someone in your own squad? I guess it must be okay to get married, since Maze was.

I was toying with the idea of seeing how many of these mysteries I could unravel while spending a day just with Ketzaren, but when we met up she was with Jeh from Second Squad, so I shelved the idea for the moment. Jeh is so comfortable and relaxed that I didn't mind her coming too, though having to be escorted about does mean that shopping is always going to feel like wasting someone else's time to me. We were just at the big doors which mark one of the exits out of KOTIS, and are one of the few places which are actively guarded by greensuits, when an alarm (bip-bip-bip) sounded. Actual noise, not just in the interface, which is really rare here. The emergency space of the interface abruptly filled with 'Lockdown' and 'Incursion 1' messages. And the doors to 'outside' began to close.

I'd really love to know what would have happened if I'd been up on the roof when the lockdown started, but I'm hoping no-one else thinks of that because then they'd probably tell me not to go out there all the time. As it was, Ketzaren and Jeh both froze and looked really surprised for a second, then went very alert.

"In here," Ketzaren said, pointing to a waiting room area just to one side of the entrance. She and Jeh had flanked me, looking all dangerous and prepared despite the nice dresses. Jeh touched me on the shoulder as we moved, and said: "Nothing in my range," when we stopped in the centre of the room. They stayed on either side of me, scanning for movement.

"Is Ionoth in KOTIS?"

"Not confirmed yet," Jeh said, but then the message change to 'Incursion 2'. "Confirmed now."

Then there was an exceedingly tedious period where Ketzaren and Jeh stood guarding me and obviously talking to people over the interface. I didn't like to ask any more questions when they were tensed for attack, and after a while I gave up and started playing around with interface settings. I still hadn't decided on the decoration for my rooms, and had found a vast array of images I could purchase to use, and yet couldn't settle on any of them.


Ketzaren made a sound, so I stopped playing with the interface and looked at her only to find her looking back at me with a strange expression.

"They found the incursion," she said. "That Ionoth cat from the Maze Rotation must have followed–"

She broke off. I guess I must have done some sort of major colour change. I certainly felt sick right through: lightning nausea. "It hurt someone?"

"No." She gave me a quizzical frown. "Don't jump to conclusions. Here, have a chair." She steered me into the nearest and shook her head at me.

"Probably simplest to show her rather than explain," Jeh said. "I'll route it."

Perhaps the oddest thing ever about living on Tare is that when you watch what people have recorded with their own eyes and ears, you not only have it filtered by factors like bad hearing or red-green colour blindness, but you also see it through the frame of their face. Just as how you can see the edges of your nose but usually tune it out. Whoever had made the recording Jeh sent me blinked a lot, had a long fringe, and wore a stud in their nose.

The recording started out with the Ionoth cat, sitting on top of a high cabinet in a huge and busy industrial kitchen, staring down at something below it. It was all coiled and intent, tail twitching, and the person who was recording called out to the other people in the kitchen, drawing attention to it. The cat didn't seem to care, staring down at this guy standing just beneath it. Some girl made a joke and the guy looked up and looked confused, and stepped away. The cat's tail twitched even faster and then it leapt at him, making a lot of people shout and shriek, and it would have landed right on his chest, except it went right through him. And he gasped and shuddered and sat down in a heap and there was the cat on the floor on the other side of him, with something in its mouth that looked like a big silverfish with octopus tendencies. The cat shook the thing briskly, then held it down with a paw and bit it in a particularly final way, crunch. Then it picked the body up, jumped up to the nearby counter and on top of another cabinet, and vanished.

"Is stickie?" I asked, still feeling sick about the whole thing. The Ionoth cat had followed me home because I'd petted it. If it had attacked the cook instead of the bug-octopus, then it would have been my fault.

"A new type." Ketzaren sat down with a sigh, apparently deciding we weren't in immediate danger of attack. "One that's beyond the current scans, which is a huge problem. It's too much to hope that that's the only one. It's far more likely that there's a more developed originator, and that we're looking at a minor or even major plague of the things. And that could get extremely nasty. Stickies don't kill you quickly, but they're fatal left unchecked, even if the host doesn't have a psychotic break. And if we can't detect them, we can't even tell how far they've spread."

"What happen now?"

"We stay in lockdown. They'll start with the kitchens and try every kind of scan available to see if they can detect any Ionoth. If that fails, they'll randomly treat some unlucky volunteers with unpleasantly painful sonics and see if anything falls out. And if it does–" She wrinkled her nose. "More attempts to find some way to detect them. And if they don't, a very high chance they'll treat everyone in KOTIS with sonics, and issue a general health alert so civilians have the option of being treated, which most of them won't because it's unpleasant. And then people will start to sicken and die and the majority will get treated but a few won't and there'll be an endless cycle of infection and outbreak hotspots."

I stared at her. I think she meant it.

"Lohn was right," Jeh said, placidly

Ketzaren lifted her eyebrows and said: "Only rarely. What this time?"

"He said Caszandra is lucky. Which she is, to have survived Muina. To have been rescued. To have put Ruuel in the right place to find that Pillar. And now for meeting a cat which eats stickies." She smiled at me, but then added: "Not that you should ever go petting any other Ionoth which come walking up to you. That truly was–"

"Dumb." I sighed. I can tell I'm never going to live that down.

We stayed in the waiting room for three hours. Ketzaren and Jeh told me about the last major stickie outbreak, which happened nearly fifty Tare-years ago, and then a few stories about stupid things they'd done early in their training. Jeh had been really good at falling off things whenever she went into the Ena and Ketzaren had once walked through the gate next to the one everyone else went through.

When they finally figured out a way to scan for the new type of stickie, we had to report to be scanned and I was really glad to learn there was no octopus-silverfish living in my chest. But they've found something like five hundred infected people so far, and have extended the scans to the rest of the island and they'll be part of 'elevator security' on all of Tare in the future.

But they haven't found the cat yet. And I'm glad.

Saturday, February 23

Bring out the whips

Mara took my training seriously today. Dodging right after breakfast (ow), and then we went jogging slowly around a running track which had an obstacle course in the middle which a bunch of kids were scrambling their way through in a terrifically professional kind of way. Setari of the future.

The whole squad met up for lunch, and talked about the progress of the stickie cleansing. KOTIS have found what they think was the original infection point – a food supply place out in the city – and the number of cases has risen to thousands. KOTIS only had a secondary infection hub. I'd already seen some of this on the news, but the real numbers involved aren't publicly announced, and all of First Squad were looking relieved and worried both. From their point of view this is just another sign of the increasing strength of the Ionoth, in numbers or in ability, and no-one understands what's changed which has made the problem increase so much these past few years.

I feel more a part of the team rather than a guest now, settling in to that caddie-type role I was thinking of earlier. But my assignment to First Squad isn't going to last, which sucks. I've got testing with Seventh Squad tomorrow. Their Captain was the one pretending to be nice to Zan at the pool, the one who called me 'it', so I'm not looking forward to having anything to do with them. I'm really not sure what I'll do working with squads who have people I'm not comfortable with or who make me feel bad. Especially if we go out on rotation in the Ena. What I said to Lohn and Mara is close to how I feel: going out there is scary, but I'm not panicked by it because I trust First Squad. I wonder if I'll ever be given any choice about who I work with?

After lunch, all First Squad did swimming training with me. Maze says we might do some of the flooded rotations, and so we swam in our full uniforms with the breathers, and had little races through the underwater obstacles. Underwater battles have whole new levels of complications: talents like Fire and Wind are useless. Telekinesis is still viable, but you handle it differently, since picking up a rock and throwing it has an entirely different effect underwater. Lohn and Mara's Light powers still work pretty much the same, and there is apparently a water manipulation talent, though no-one on First Squad has it. But most water environments are close-combat, except harder.

I was so tired afterwards. I keep having afternoon naps, and then waking up in the evening. Hopefully when I'm fitter I'll be able to handle all this better.

Sunday, February 24

Seventh Squad

I shouldn't have been surprised that the Seventh Squad captain, Atara Forel, was totally professional. Back when she was being nasty-sweet to Zan I'd already seen that she was the type whose attacks aren't open, and she definitely wasn't the sort to show herself in a bad light during an official testing session which was being recorded. So when I reached the testing room, all she did was nod at me and say: "Good, we can get started now. Same routine as Kanato's squad. We'll start with you, Mema."


Seventh is another of the big-hitter squads, and just like Eighth, were caught up in the sheer excitement of being enhanced to super-destructive levels. It's spectacular to watch the big-hitter tests, but at the same time kind of dull, so I spent my time studying them instead.

Forel is like a cat: lithe and slinky, with a pointed chin and big eyes. I can just picture her purring and digging in the claws. Her primary talent is Lightning, and she saved her testing for last. It was important to her, I think, that her overall result was higher than Hasen's from Eighth. When she's pleased her eyes go all slitted.

The other guy who was with her at the pool is Pol Tsennen, primarily an Ena manipulation talent, with a secondary in Fire. He seems mainly interested in watching Forel. Then there's the smug twins, Mema and Residen. I don't think they're really twins – they don't look precisely alike, and they have different surnames – but their hair is cut the same way and they seem to use the same mannerisms and they're very pleased with themselves and keep exchanging looks. They had a swag of talents, with a primary of Ice for Mema and a variation of Light manipulation for Residen.

Dahlen is their Sight talent, with both Gate and Path Sight, along with Telekinesis. She's tall and strong-looking and I don't know if it's just because of her height, but I kept thinking of her as a tree. Cats might sharpen their claws on trees, but they've got plenty of bark, and don't really care.

The last squad member, Saitel Raph, was the only one who caught me watching them. Him I couldn't make out at all, other than an impression that he's smart. He's also the only one who spoke to me outside Forel's strictly correct instructions, and then just to say "Thank you," before heading off.

Is it really the second level monitoring that makes the younger squads so disinclined to interact with me? Or do they think of me as human machinery, there to perform a task? With the notable exception of Eeli, the younger Setari never seem to consider the possibility of just chatting with me.

Or – just occurred to me – they're all competitive with each other, and there's an advantage in having me assigned to them. Maybe they're all determined not to be seen 'pursuing' me, so to speak. But...no. No-one's ever acted like any of my assignments will be my decision.

Speaking of which, when I woke up from my inevitable after-testing nap, I had another bunch of rotations assigned. All with First Squad, so I have something to be happy about.