Op: HomeFront
Authors: Will and Pers
Title: Dawning.

	Dawn came gently.  The clear sky gradually brightened from black to
nearly white over the eastern horizon, as stars faded to invisibility.
Mental pictures among the constellations lost shading, became mere
sketches, became stick figures, vanished.  The sun flashed brightly between
two rolling hills and began to warm the plain in earnest.
	Behind Will, the Sumner base woke up and started the process of
facing a new day.  He himself was tired for lack of sleep but floating
peacefully in a relaxed state of contemplation, leaning against a fence post
with hands in his lap.  Clangs, running water, footfalls, and people's
voices made a pleasant background to the slow sunrise.
	A set of those footfalls separated themselves from the rest,
growing closer.  Warrior Persephone sat down beside him, putting her lesser
weight against the mesh.  She offered a warm roll from which the smell of
cinnamon wafted invitingly, and Will gratefully took it.  Still without
speaking, she set down two tin cups and poured a measure of orange juice
for both of them.  The two broke their fast in companionable silence.  Only
when the last of the rolls had disappeared did Persephone speak.
	"So what do your orders call for now?"
	"Mission accomplished and information relayed.  I have no standing
assignment, so I'm at loose ends until the next orders come in, though I'll
return to TRES headquarters if I don't get anything before the day is out.
I guess technically it's 'stand by and await further orders.'  Yourself?"
	"Pretty much the same, although standing DE orders indicate I'm to
report to the commander of the base where I'm currently located until
orders from my C.O. are relayed."
	"I think Captain Adams would allow us a short while."
	"I think Captain Adams' medic would insist we get some sleep.  Zaph
can keep me going by adjusting metabolic rates, although we really
shouldn't for more than a day.  But you-"
	"An hour or two of meditation works wonders, although it's not as
good as the real thing.  I'll sleep deeply tonight."
	"Ah."  Quiet moved back in.  It had settled well, had changed the
curtains and was considering a home improvement loan when Pers said,
"Neither you nor I are going to waste a day lolling about, are we?"
	Will grinned.  "I thought you'd say something like that.  What say
we work over the Element in that truck?"
	"Sounds good.  Oh, it's not in the truck anymore, the troops
unloaded it and the guy took off after the mechanics removed the black box
and destroyed it."
	"Good luck to whoever he is.  Where's the Element now?"
	"In the storage bay over that way, same place as your mecha."
	"Let's go."
	They crossed the fence in sundry ways, Pers grabbing hold of a
fence post and doing a half-twist gainer as Will opened the gate and walked
through, impressed.  "Zaphyre must be quite adept at that metabolic
juggling act to give you such energy this early."
	"It's probably partially because I've experienced flight without a
machine around me - I just love being in motion off the ground."  They
reached the storage bay, basically a box on the ground that could be torn
down, loaded, unloaded, and rebuilt in a matter of hours.  Inside was
enough room for perhaps four to six large RV's, at this moment containing
one mecha/cycle, one troop transport vehicle, one heavy-duty
forklift/loader, and...
	...the Element.  To Pers, the tetrahedron squatted in the open
space like a protrusion from the depths, the point of some vast mountain
buried below the ground and not meant to see the open sky.  To Will, the
foggy interior - planned, he knew, imperfections in the crystal that shaped
energy bands into circuits finer than the best lithography - seemed to
drink light from the bright lamps illuminating the bay, making a space of
unnatural darkness.
	"Whoever thought it up, they weren't a Lyran," said Pers.  "This
thing is as non-alive as I've ever seen anything."
	"You're probably right."  He thought a moment.  "I'm going to try a
passive scan of the thing.  If anything happens to me or it, take...
whatever action."
	"Understood."
	Will knelt by the pyramid and brought his staff to within inches of
the top point.  It shimmered for a moment, then turned to a substance as
transparent as air.  He slowly brought the staff down, looking through it
at the crystal object.  He made a complete sweep of the Element.  "As far
as I can tell, there are no paranatural energies present in this device.
There are a few substances sensitive to such energies, and a few known to
emit them under certain circumstances.  But any arcane power it uses it
must get from wherever the Generator is."
	"Which means that it must be using a natural power source.  Let's
see..."  Pers went over to the tool bench and selected a magnetometer.  "If
it's electrical, then currents will set up a magnetic field."  She set down
the main unit and knelt beside Will.  Probes in hand, she made sure the
cable shielding was intact so that any stray readings from herself or Will
wouldn't contaminate the data and touched the probes to the surface of the
Element.  "Yes, there's definitely current moving through the Element, but
not much.  I wouldn't say it's anything more than maybe a clock, or a very
low-level sensor.  It might even be an ELF transceiver, but if it is the
information package is virtually nil."
	"It's not doing anything spongifying, as far as I can tell.  You?"
Pers ran the phrase "super-dee-duper" through her head and concluding from
the resulting faint revulsion that she was still normal and told Will so.
"Good.  Then since we know there's current running, the next thing to do is
find the source."
	Pers slowly ran the probes over the surface of the Element.  "We
might be able to deduce the probable position of a power source if we took
enough data of this sort, but I-"  Will touched her arm.
	"We may not need to.  Look."  He pointed at the pyramid, about
halfway up.  "See the pallet through the side of the Element?"
	"Yes."
	"Now, take a look at the pallet *below* the Element."  There was
not fog but opacity - something was obscuring the bottom.  Pers lowered the
probes, and the reading jumped in the area of the base.
	"Confirmed.  There's a lot more current running through this
section, so they must have several different circuits getting powered from
the area of the base."
	Will readjusted the staff, which faded in until it was a light
green(a pleasant verdant green, of course), and held it so that he could
observe chemical reactions in the base.  "You were right.  There's a
regular chemical battery here in the base, reacting just barely to produce
electricity.  I'd never have been able to read that amount of current.  Now
that we know it's there, we should be able to determine how to destroy the
Element without blowing it up in our faces."
	"Can you tell what kind of chemical reaction is going on?"
	"Nope, just that it's motivated by crystal burn - breaking the
covalent bonds of a crystal releases considerable energy."
	"What if we sped up the burn?"
	"Don't know how the components of the Element would react.  If we
caused a short -"
	"I get the picture.  Wait a minute - there's a simple way to do
it."  Pers put up the probes.  "You have a knife with you?"
	"My sword's in my cycle."
	"Guess that'll do."  Will fetched it and returned.  "Now, you
remember that we detected only a small portion of the current over on this
corner?"
	"Yes."
	"And if the power generation is motivated by crystal burn, there
are no chemicals to leak, right?"
	"True."
	"So, cut off a corner and we'll go analyze it at the nearest chem
lab.  When we determine its components and the resulting compounds after the
burn, we'll know how much energy would be released if we forced the burn to
happen all at once."
	*Kit, I suddenly got very excited.*
	*Was it the science?*
	*The physics, to be exact.  When it's being quoted by an attractive
female, I just get goosebumps.*
	*To quote the dragon, humans are weird.*  Will chuckled.
	"Ready, Will?"  Pers braced the Element on one side, and Will took
aim at the lower left corner near him.  He raised his sword and it whistled
down.
	The moment he hit the tetrahedron, a loud ringing sounded
throughout the bay.  It continued even afterwards, and Will momentarily
looked in confusion at his sword, then at the unmarked crystal edge he had
tried to cut.  He finally figured out the source of the ringing when Pers
yelled, "Base alarm!"  and dashed out.
	By the time he joined her a moment later, she was outside holding a
shouted conversation with Captain Adams while base personnel scrambled
about, bringing out vehicles and quickly loading equipment and files.
	"...going on, Captain?" Pers shouted.
	"I don't know what all they've got at that base you found, but it
looks like they're throwing it all this way!"
	"Black box!" yelled Will.  Both of them turned to look at him.
	"What?" said Captain.
	  A look of understanding crossed Pers' face.  "That's what it was
doing..."
	"What?"
	"I'm terribly sorry, Captain," said Will, "but it appears that the
Element we captured was something of a Trojan horse.  How soon will the
invading forces be here?"
	"Aircraft'll be overhead in minutes, we're taking out the vital
stuff now.  Ground forces will get here in about an hour."  He looked at
the two unattached soldiers.  "Looks like you two better get while the
gettin's good."
	"We won't just abandon you when enemy forces are on their way,
Captain," said Pers.
	"She's right, sir - let us help."
	"We're all getting out of here, not just you - this base can't hold
up under prolonged assault, and you know that."  Just then, the first jet
screamed over the blackened plain, low to the deck, guns blazing.  It drew
twin lines of pockmarks in the ashen fields until it hit the storage bay,
whereupon a ball of fire erupted.  The Array Element careened out of the
explosion, propelled at high velocity into the air.  The incoming Luv
Fighter failed to maneuver away from it in time, and collided head-on with
the hard, sharp object.  It tore a hole through the canopy and the upper
frame of the plane, caroming off and exploding no more energetically than a
hand grenade.
	Pers remarked, "Answers that question," just as the Luv Fighter
crashed into the plain beyond, engulfed in flames.
	Will cried out, "My cycle!"  He and Pers, followed by Adams ran
back to the bay as the walls fell outward, to find that the cycle had been
shielded from the brunt of the troop transport's fuel tank explosion by the
mass of the loader.  Only a few bullet marks dented the armor.
	Captain Adams said, "I've got to oversee which equipment is going
to get left behind and how to get the men organized onto equipment trucks
without a troop transport.  You two beat it, you'd even be a hindrance to
me."  He ran off, shouting orders to the men grabbing objects to retreat
with.
	Will and Pers looked at each other.  "Um... it can hold two," he
said, pointing to the cycle.
	Pers shook her head.  "You'll move faster as a mecha and I'll move
faster as a dragon."  Will nodded.  "Oh... here.  Our orders came through,
Captain Adams passed them on."  She handed Will one of the two papers he
hadn't even noticed she'd been carrying.  He took a quick look at it and
was unsurprised to see that TRES personnel without current urgent
assignments were ordered to choose and take out a close-by Array Element.
He'd already seen Austin on that list of locations, and as his state
capitol and the city of his alma mater he'd been planning to ask for an
assignment there.  Austin...
	He asked her, "Where will you be?"
	"Minnesota.  All DE Personnel have been recalled to our home bases."
	"Oh."
	Silence.
	"Pers, I...  I mean, it's not something I often..."
	Silence.
	On mutual impulse, the tension was quite suddenly resolved.
	*Wow,* thought Will.  *I hope I'm doing this right.  Sure feels
nice...*
	*Zaph,* thought Pers, *what am I getting myself into?*
	Some unknown time later, Pers and Will parted for breath.
	"I know," said Pers.  "I know.  Look, both of us are going to go
defend our homes, and then we're going to meet again after all of this is
finished, right?"
	"Right..."
	She tossed her head towards the cycle.  "Well?  Get moving,
unless you want to still be here when /they/ arrive..."
	"Right."  Will replied, turning away to suit up and lift off.
	Meanwhile, Persephone, not wanting to waste time, tossed control
to Zaph.  Hidden behind a shield of blue energy, the Change[tm] itself
went unobserved, but tattered remains of the Warrior's clothes left no
doubt in anyone's mind what had happened.  The dragon took to the skies
heading for home.
	Several miles away, Will stopped to look back.  Below, the main
contingent of equipment was leaving.  A blue dragon was heading northwest,
apparently intending to make a wide circle around the incoming troops en
route to Minnesota.  Did she turn her head for a moment, to look South?  He
couldn't tell.  Instead, he turned himself and headed South, flying for
Austin.

	Back in the Purple Forces base, a figure watched the scattering of
the Jihad troops on monitors showing views from several battle cameras.
His main goal had been accomplished - that the idiot sponge had managed to
kill himself in such a unique fashion while destroying the Element had
actually been one of the more amusing parts of his day.  He knew that there
was only a handful of troops at the base, and apparently the truck and
driver had been allowed to leave, for there was no sign of them anywhere.
Consign Moset to eternal pain, anyway - it was almost certainly his fault
security had been breached.  The listing was out, and the Jihad knew where
every last one of those Array Elements was - well, except for the minor few
which had been misplotted.  They might even miss several distribution
centers, which hadn't been listed.  He consoled himself somewhat with
several pieces of information they had failed to get, such as the location
of the Central Generator, but resolved to beef up troop levels in the area
anyway.  The Jihad barely had enough personnel to take out all of the
Elements, and in doing so they would have to leave themselves open on some
of the other fronts he had so carefully balanced beforehand, and still even
a moderate handful of the Elements would serve their purpose devastatingly
well.  That the location of his base was out was a disappointment, but the
place was defensible enough, just like TRES HQ or any of the other bases.
	He leaned back and sighed.  So many factors, and he one of the few
people on Earth truly capable of weighing them all and forging them into a
coherent plan of action.  It was *imperative* that he succeed.  He shook
off the moment of reverie and turned his attention to other equally
pressing matters.  Soon enough, his plan would come to fruition.  Soon...