Dakk chuckled at Captain Dokka Tkaro, "I can NOT believe you swung the use of a trans-orbital shuttle! Nedjer class, no less!" Dokka smiled. "It wasn't THAT big of a thing. The spine fusion drives are off-line. They are directly tied into the Molecular Motion Inducers now in some kind of bizarre configuration. No one ever saw anything like it. That Trow woman, Ahirini, designed the engines from scratch, for greater efficiency. She is the same one that crashed on the surface, several hours ago. Apparently there is one circuit-card missing to complete the main drives. Apparently she was testing the card, when she was shot down." Ragdoll,the Scav pilot answered from the pilot seat,"It handles like a dream, just on the plasma-diffusion jet! I have never handled such a responsive craft!" Dakk looked over at Ragdoll and winked, "You'd never know this thing was four hundred years old!" Dokka looked over at the telepath, Tall-lady. "Anything from 518? Anything at all?" Tall-lady looked very agitated. "There is SOMETHING down there. It draws me in. 518 is alive and in a ruined church with a preist and a... dead woman who doesn't want me to disturb him!" Dokka blinked. "What in HELL do you mean by that? 'Dead woman!' You mean a ghost?" The telepath shook her head. She blinked with bright eyes. Her electronically reproduced voice sounded tinny, and small as she said,"I DON'T KNOW what I mean. She IS there and she is long dead. She has no physical form, but she has power! Such power!" Dokka frowned. He was going to rescue his man, whatever the cost, but this is getting very weird. Perhaps too weird, for his mandate to investigate the crashed lander across the river from where he was detouring to. He looked over at Lieutant Dakk. Dakk shrugged. Tall-lady looked at Dokka and said with quiet intensity, "We MUST go there! It is connected to the lander and Ivor and what is happening. I feel it. I cannot explain it. Please trust me. I could not save my son from what befell him, but someone's child needs saving down there." She spread heer hands and whispered to him, "You will regret it if we do not go! I feel the threads of destiny pulling us there. It is the 'Butterfly Effect.'" Dokka shook his head, and retorted, "I do not believe in 'destiny'." Tall-lady spoke urgently, "Call it what you will. 'Choosing of path-ways' or whatever. The best for all of us here, lays there ahead of us, across the basin from the atmospheric purifier. I can guide us in. We must go now!" He remembered when he was fifteen, some thirty years ago, when he met Tall-lady and she told him that death would come for his father, if he stood with the city guard that awful night when the spirit of destruction came to city 64. His father stood with the city guard and he died. Niether Dokka or his father listened then. Dokka blinked. He addressed all in a tone of command, "Tall-lady, guide us in! Dakk, check for weapon fire and energy expendatures, Ragdoll find us a place to land down there and be ready to evade. We go, and may god have mercy on those who stand against us, for we'll have none." The shuttle glided down toward a small warehouse, where Neon watched the shuttle whisper down over her. She jumped off her bike and hid under the stairs. --To be continued! Media Wings3d and Poser 6