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Going home. Tech's words echoed Jacoby's desires. He was more than happy to leave this place. He was about to say so when amidst the sound of the building crashing down he heard a muffled detonation. Tech turned his back to them, and the building and then the shock wave hit them, along debris.

He was pelted with various size of permacrete chunks, and something stabbed his leg before he came crashing down. He coughed and getting to his feet was difficult had he had to shift a lot of rubble off him.

"What was that?" he grumbled.

"A class three power array," Tech replied. Rubble shifted and the Samalian sat. "From Albinel, or possibly Gardon."

"How can you know that." Jacoby saw the ragged piece of metal in his leg and cursed.

"They're the only two company who manufacture anything that could cause this level of explosion. It must have been in one of the larger carriers." There was a pause. "Hey, I didn't cause this!"

Jacoby turn, wincing at the pain. Alex was standing glaring at Tech. "Give the guy a break. It was probably the falling building that caused that one to blow up. The power core was probably unstable."

"Unstable because the initial core explosion you caused?"

"Alex, leave him--"

"Shut up Jacoby. Well, answer me Tristan. Would that explosion have happened if you hadn't blown up one of the power core beforehand?"

"Maybe?" Tech's voice was small and he couldn't look up.

Alex let out an exasperated sigh and went to rub his face but stopped, looking at his grime covered hand. "Are you okay? Are you badly hurt?"

Tech shook his head as he stood. "Bumps and bruises. You've given me worse in training."

Alex nodded, but his face didn't show how he felt about it. "Jacoby?"

"Just a cut in my leg. Don't worry, I've got a few Heals. If you have any you should take them too or you're going to feel those bumps for a while." He looked at the dust all around them. "Well, there's no way she's going to be able to say we didn't get the job done now."

Tech puffed out his chest a little at that comment.

* * * * *

"What have you done?" she didn't sound as grateful as Jacoby thought she should. They'd barely dusted themselves off, he'd cleaned the wound as best as he could and bandaged it, and headed directly back to this House of Worship of theirs. He was happy he wasn't the one dealing with her.

"What you hired us to do." Alex's tone was frosty at best. He didn't sound too happy about her attitude either.

"I didn't ask you to do that!" she pointed at a wall. Jacoby was pretty sure that wasn't the direction the building was in, but he didn't point that out. "Do you have any idea how many people you killed?"

"I didn't expect you to care about human deaths."

"There's a community of my people behind that building, did you even bother checking? How many of them have you killed?"

"You hired us to destroy all those machines, tell me, exactly how did you think we were going to go about doing that? Take each and every one of them apart piece by piece?"

"I could have done that," Tech offered, and was ignored.

"I didn't think you'd do that."

"Really? And why's that? Because Tristan is in the habit of keeping the collateral damage to a minimum? He's the guy who blows up space stations to get back at one guy. You knew exactly who you were hiring and what he'd do. Now stop complaining about getting what you wanted and pay us. Where does the Defender need to go."

She sat on the edge of her desk, her expression something Jacoby couldn't decipher, but her tone was a mix of anger and resignation. "When the representations are first made, the artist who does so paints them with colors that match where they are, so by his fur color, I can tell you that he's from the Sacaban Plains region. The shape of his swords is distinctive enough to mark him from the southern edge. There's a few Houses in that region, but there is one that was looted a long time ago. Your people keep going there because of the legend of Wathen." She took out her datapad and brought up a map, with coordinates.

Jacoby did the rough calculation in his head. "That's a few hours away, go orbital, then back down and we'll be there."

"We can't use that shuttle. They're corporate property, the moment we disable the tracking system they're going to send everyone to find out what happened to it." Alex didn't look up from the map. And Jacoby redid the calculations. "We're going to need something ground base but about the same size, because staying close to the ground will make for a much longer trip."

"Depending on how fast the hover we find is, it could take as much as two weeks to get there. That's almost literally on the other side of the planet."

"Do you need to be here to discuss what you need to do?" she asked.

"In a hurry to get rid of us?" Jacoby quipped.

"Yes. I would prefer you not be here when corporate security comes to ask me what I had to do with the destruction."

"You hired us," Tech offered.

"Yes. Fortunately for me, there was no exchange of money, so they can't track that, and unless you happened to come here under your own name, to which multiple bounties are attached, they have no reasons to know you are more than a pair of tourists being guided by a local Samalian."

Jacoby looked at himself, still covered with permacrete dust. "Dirty tourists. We're going to have to clean up."

"We can do that elsewhere," Alex said. "Thank you for the information." He turned and left. Tech was right on his heel while Jacoby took his time, both because of his limp and because he didn't trust her.

"You know he doesn't take well to betrayals, right?"

She sighed. "You have nothing to fear. I will not reveal that you were here, or where you went."

"If you do, just remember that he isn't the only one who knows about this place, and I'm no more fond of being betrayed than he is."

"You have my word," she said, sounding tired. "That may not be something humans understand, but for a Samalian, our word binds us. Or do you need me to make a promise over the Defender?"

Jacoby shrugged as he turned to leave. "Wouldn't mean anything to me, I don't believe in any of that crap." He hurried to rejoin Alex and Tech and as soon as they were back on the main street, Alex led them inside a building and then one of the apartment there, where Tech headed directly for the shower.

Jacoby expected Alex to join him, but he sat in front of the computer and started talking to it. When Tech came out, naked and fur damp, Alex didn't move so Jacoby showered, properly cleaned his wound, closed it and rebandaged it. Alex went in when he was done.

Tech was busy at the computer so Jacoby left a message on the apartment system so Alex would know he was going to the shuttle to get their stuff. They didn't have much left there, but there was no point in not centralizing everything.

He came back to the apartment to find a knife to his throat.

"Where have you been?" Alex growled. "Where's Tristan?"

"He's here," Jacoby looked around, but the Samalian wasn't there. "He was here when I left."

"You left! Are you out of your mind? You left Tristan unsupervised?"

Jacoby dropped one of the packs and as gently as he could pushed Alex's hand away from his neck. "You were here, he was at the computer. I just went to get out stuff."

"That could wait. Tristan is out there, and you have no idea what he can do, what he might be up to."

Jacoby inched away until there were no chances Alex could cut him with a flick of the wrist. "I've read his file I know what--"

"He's broken! You think that means anything right now? He could get angry at a stranger and decide to kill an entire neighborhood! You didn't see what he was like on the Sayatoga."

And who's fault is that? Jacoby thought, but he didn't say it. Alex was worried and scared. "You said it was the drugs."

"I--I thought it was. I thought he'd be better once they were out of his system, not right, but better." He sat at the table and put his head in his hands. "But you've heard him. He's talking to imaginary people. He wasn't doing that before the drugs"

The door opened and Alex was on his feet, knife in hand.

Tech strode in without a care in the universe.

Jacoby saw the relief on Alex's face, the fear the anger and then there was nothing. "Where have you been?"

"Out," Tech replied evenly.

"Out? You just went out? Are you insane? What could have been so important you'll leave and not tell me?"

"I left you a message." Tech tapped the control next to the door.

"Alex," Jacoby's voice came from it. "I'm going to get our stuff from the shuttle. I'll be back in a few."

Alex's face darkened, but Tech raised a finger.

"Alex," came the Samalian's voice. "I'll be back shortly. I'm going to go take care of our transportation issue."

The shock on Alex's face would have been funny, if it hadn't been accompanied by the childlike pride in Tech's face. "See, I can do something right."

Alex didn't seem to know what to do with that, so Jacoby took over. "What did you get?"

"A Portilo Esperansa," he said with pride.

"I have no idea what that is."

"Really? Don't you know your vacation hovers?"

"Why would I know anything about that?"

"Because you might have a need to travel to the other side of the planet and you'd want to do so in some level of comfort?" Techs' said that as if it was the most obvious thing in the universe.

Jacoby raised a hand. "Never mind. Where is it?"

"In the parking space for the apartment."

Jacoby looked at Alex, who was still shocked. "I'm going to check it out. You want to come?"

"I'm going!" Tech said, to which Jacoby almost snapped he wasn't, but he looked so eager to show him what he'd brought he couldn't find the heart to say no.

"I better go too," Alex said, eying Tech warily. "I'm done leaving you to watch over him."

Jacoby straightened at the accusation in the tone, but left the apartment instead of replying.

The hover was a vacation hover, alright. It was twice the length of the parking space available and twice the width. The vehicles on each side, two persons personal hovers, had their doors open and had been moved aside just enough this one could fit.

"How did you move those?" Jacoby asked.

"I pushed them."

"Why are the doors opened then?"

"I had to disable the security system." Dumb ass wasn't said, but it was in the tone.

"So you got into the hovers, worked within the dash enough to disable the safeties and then just pushed them? Why didn't you just start them and move them that way?"

Tech shrugged. "Didn't need to." He bumped one with his hip and it moved a few inches. "They aren't heavy."

"We have to leave now," Alex said. "The moment one of the owners come and sees this we're going to have corporate security on us."

Jacoby opened the side door to their hover. "You two go get our stuff, I'll make sure it's ready to go." He saw the wires handing out from the dash. "What did you take out?"

"The tracker and override." Tech answered. "Everything else's fine."

Jacoby cursed silently. He wanted time to go over the damage Tech had caused. Normally he'd trust him to have done only what he said, but in his current state he couldn't. He'd have to hope everything would work at least long enough to get them somewhere safe to do whatever repairs were needed.

* * * * *

Jacoby looked at the injector in his hand and wished he could do without the stim injection. He was going to be paying for this when they got to their destination, but what choice did he have? It wasn't like he could let Alex at the controls, not with the way he and Tech could get in screaming matches over the simplest thing. And he certainly couldn't let Tech do it. He might get all depressive and curl up in a ball.

One of them needed to be at the controls at all times because without the tracker it meant they couldn't put the hover on automatic piloting. And there was always the chance they'd be seen by one of the satellites and someone would wonder why this hover wasn't registering on the planetary grid.

So he'd been sitting here for five days. Five days without any sleep, that had to be a record, he thought as he injected himself again. He chuckled. "A personal one, anyway." Neither of his two passengers commented. They'd just finished a shouting match over how to prepare the meal and now Tech was in the back of the hover, talking to himself.

Alex was stretched on the couch, trying to convince them he was sleeping. Jacoby couldn't wait for this trip to be done. A few more hours and he would be able to get some much-needed sleep.

* * * * *

Tech was sobbing when the town came into view.

"We're here," Jacoby said relief making his eyes tear up. The town wasn't much to look at, three dozen buildings, fields for crops and some for grazing animals. There was nothing other than a larger building maybe a mile away.

"There's been fighting," Tech said, making Jacoby jump. Too much stims, way too much. Tech pointed to the small patches of burned earth around and in the town.

"Who would bother with them?" Alex said. "There's nothing here. We'd have to travel for at least a day in any directions before we reached any settlements."

"That's blaster fire, from a shuttle or hover mounted gun."

"You can't tell which one?" Jacoby said in a derisive tone.

Tech shook his head. "There's sixteen companies that manufacture weapons that can be mounted. And all together, there's over two hundred models that could do that kind of damage."

"Land us close to that building," Alex pointed to the one in the distance. "That's got to be the House."

"What's left of it, anyway." The building was being rebuilt. Rubble was strewed everywhere, some looked like grass had started going over them, giving an indication of how long they'd lad there. Further away was the edge of a forest.

As he landed, a few hundred yards away, he watched the workers hurry inside the structure. "They aren't happy to see us."

"Those blaster marks were recent," Alex said. "As far as they're concerned, we're here to attack them again. We're leaving our guns in the hover."

"But what if they attack us?" Tech asked, pain in his voice.

"Then we subdue them without hurting them. We're here for their help, so we need to convince them we aren't their enemies."

"Everyone's the enemy," Tech grumbled as he went to the back and undid his gun belt.

"Alex, I'm going to stay with the shuttle. I'm too jumpy from the stims to be any good if something happens. Ideally I need sleep, but I guess I can take it when we get out of here. Tech's going to be better so he'll be able to take a turn at flying, so will you."

"His name's Tristan," Alex replied, distracted.

"How long do you expect this to take?"

"It'll depend on how defensive they are. A few hours maybe."

"I'll be good until then."

Alex took his gun and placed it on the table, then he removed the knife harness. Jacoby noted that Alex hadn't removed any of the knives he had hidden on his body as he exited the hover.