Walking With Dark Angels

by The Cat's Whiskers

In the future, Sentinels were tailormade for humanity's expansion into space, but Dark Sentinel Jim Ellison is doomed, unless he can find the semimythical only living Dark Guide. AU

2. Chapter 3 & 4

Please see disclaimers, notes, et cetera, for Chapters I-II. NB – Harness bull – colloquialism for uniformed police officer – of either gender – as opposed to plainclothes officer. This term is exclusive to the USA and is not used in Britain.

Chapter III – Digging Up Quite A Bit More Than Dirt Major Crimes Unit, Cascade PD Central Precinct, Cascade Enclave, Earth…

Simon signed again wearily as Rhonda stuck her head around the door and informed him curtly, "He's here!" Her tone blatantly showed her dislike of the new arrival.

Rising from behind his desk, Simon went to meet his new detective. The trouble was, many people wanted the benefits of the Police Department Simon Banks had re-created virtually single-handed without wanting to make the effort that went on behind the scenes. The "open secret" that Cascade was also a Sanctuary for Wild Empaths made people even more wary. Other, newer Police Departments praised pioneering Cascade to the hilt, but getting any officer with experience, as opposed to being fresh from the LEO Academy, to actually transfer here and work was like finding hen's teeth. Bryn Rafe, Henri Brown and Joel Taggart helped out to the max, but Simon was acutely aware of how little personal time they had left after pandering to his "freak-loving" ways. Henri Brown's last girlfriend had ditched him, what, eight months ago, due to the fact that Henri was never around. Simon was well aware that his own role in the Cascade PD and Sanctuary had been heavily responsible for the breakdown of his marriage and the fact that Darryl had chosen to live on Halfway Space Station with his mother. Joel's marriage was still rock solid, but largely because Mavis Taggart would mother the whole world given half the chance and she had become as deeply involved in the "Cascade conspiracy" to provide Sanctuary as her husband. That Washington PD had been only too glad to relinquish a senior detective on permanent transfer had been a godsend, but getting him here had been a bureaucratic "snafu" of epic proportions.

James Ellison stood before the check-in desk, exuding negative vibes for all he was worth. This time he had reverted to his natural hair and eye colour, and his torso bore no padding. He had intended to return to Cascade PD and investigate that tantalising scent as soon as possible, but finding that a new detective with a similar name to himself was due to transfer into Cascade PD had been like a sign. He had promptly requested permission of his CO to change his Dark Angel status to "inactive" - mandatory for long-term deep cover missions - and upon receiving permission, put this plan into motion.

The real Detective James Philip Ellis, a beefy, butch giant, had been intercepted en route from Washington DC, and offered a choice. Turning down the offer meant that High House Ellison lawyers would be examining just how he got such a good rate of convictions. Ellis was now very happily "working" as a security guard at Stephen Ellison's retreat on Eden – the most heavily defended planet in the universe bar Federation – with more money than he could have otherwise legitimately earned in several lifetimes.

The computer back-trail had been easy to set up and failsafe measures were in place. Any information sent from Cascade to Washington would arrive there with the real James Ellis's holograph, DNA profile, voiceprint and brainwave engram; anything sent to Cascade from Washington would arrive here with James Ellison's same details on under his fake Ellis ID.

Simon mentally groaned. Ellis looked every bit the macho hard-ass Captain Wells had admitted him to be. Noting the approach of the Captain, Jim deepened the scowl on his face and stepped up to the admission desk. "Ellis," he grunted, placing an expression of disdain on his features, "transferred from DC to this…rathole."

Sentinel Bonding Suite, a few days prior to this…

Being pinned back against a wall by a naked man when you are fully clothed is something that should be amusing for you and embarrassing for him, Gage managed to think with just a tinge of hysteria. The holdall was plucked from his hand and tossed casually aside despite its weight. Two shovel-like hands on either side his head trapped his line of sight directly into those storm-grey eyes that were now as cold as an arctic tundra in deep winter. Race's voice was low, calm, and very, very deadly, "If you ever run from me, I will flay you to within an inch of your life until you beg me for mercy."

Gage lowered his eyes; now was not the time to defy his Sentinel and try to assert independence. Apparently taking this as a gesture of submission, Race turned and walked gracefully into the bathroom, the shower coming on a second later. For a moment Gage hesitated. Pride was prodding, but common sense and a healthy dose of self-preservation hit the brakes. Race Keegan was a Dark Angel, and would be ruthless in his punishment. Deciding that the best thing to do was nothing, he remained where he was.

Less than a minute later, Race re-emerged, damp-haired, and began to pull on his own laundered all-black "intimidation special" garb with complete disregard for his nudity as Gage stewed in silence, a definite look of approval for his Guide obediently staying where he was told. "Is this "dig" that important?"

"It's my life!" Retorted Gage without thinking and instantly cursed his bitter tongue as he saw Race's eyes darken dangerously; to ever give your Sentinel any sort of rival was the biggest no-no in the "Guide's Guide to Self-Survival".

As he pulled on his T-shirt, momentarily hiding his face, Race mentally sped through his options. The Sentinel was already screaming with jealousy. No way was a pastime like digging in the dirt for old bones going to supersede his place as the centre of his Guide's universe. Ancient instincts jumped up and down, howling, demanding that he pin his recalcitrant Guide to his furs until he acknowledged that only his Sentinel mattered in this world. Race-the-man firmly shushed the Sentinel as he finished dressing and turned to Gage, seeing the defiant tension in the lines of his body. He'd done the research on his Guide over the past days while waiting for him to come into bonding heat. Gage was widely acknowledged as a brilliant and highly dedicated archaeologist who clearly loved his career. Taking that away when they were so newly bonded would just increase Gage's already extremely high level of resentment against him. He smiled. The Sentinel would lure his Guide into submission with honey, not vinegar. "When do we go?"

Gage blinked at this serene attitude, having expected a ferocious explosion of possessive declamations. "Go?"

"To this dig thing?"

"I should have been there yesterday," Gage admitted, still thrown by Race's calm acceptance, "um, but, don't you have," he waved a hand vaguely, "Dark Angel stuff?"

"I'm not a Dark Angel." Race corrected him.

"Huh?"

Suddenly adopting a tone of languid ennui, Race drawled, "I'm Race Keegan, of Oligarchy Lesser House Keegan, wealthy dilettante and playboy. I do whatever amuses me, and right now, archaeology amuses me."

For the first time a genuine smile tinged Gage's face at Race's high class, slow drawl. "Dilettante?"

"Absolutely. As far as 99.9 of the Inhabited Galaxies are aware, Race Keegan is a party animal, who flits from soiree to high to society party like a butterfly, spending his enormous wealth on frippery and fashion, who wouldn't know a phase rifle or a disruptor from a cabbage." He injected a tone of warning into the last part, but Gage wasn't slow on the uptake.

"Right, cabbage. Got it."

"Good." Handing him back his holdall, Race ushered his Guide out of the door. "Let's get going."

Cascade Major Crimes Unit, a few days later…

"Well, if it ain't slick!"

The derisive tone carried easily to Jim's Sentinel ears, even though he was having to be careful about how far up he dialled up his senses since he didn't want to zone or tip off Major Crimes personnel, none of whom were blind or stupid. Once again that tantalising scent drifted to his nostrils, albeit almost smothered by the rank chemical stench of suppressants. Bryn Rafe. Seeing a golden opportunity for James Ellis to "unclench", he moved.

Stalking forward through the parking garage, keeping to the shadows, he saw the tableau in front of him. The young detective had obviously just returned from Rainier University for the Dark Guide's faint scent was still fresh, but was being barracked by Sergeant Henman. A paunchy, pasty middle-aged uniform cop, Henman had taken a dislike to what he saw as an "uppity" kid with a superiority complex, taking Rafe's neatness of dress and stylish grooming as some sort of personal affront. Jim had quickly realised that Rafe was a genuinely nice, modest youth with no pretentiousness whatsoever. However, he did lack confidence, so let himself by taunted by the older, "more experienced" Henman instead of getting in the bully's face or enlisting the aid of his very protective partner, Henri Brown, whose buff physique and powerful fists were a good deterrent.

Strolling forward as if he was just happening past, Jim stopped and growled, "What's happening here?"

Henman smirked. "Just chatting, weren't we, Rafe?"

The young detective closely examined his shoes and mumbled an affirmative.

"Is that a fact?" Jim raised an eyebrow and there was a pregnant pause. "Don't let me keep you, Sergeant."

Looking irritated and faintly uncertain, Henman and his three cronies sidled away. Shooting Jim a weak smile, Rafe began to hurry towards the elevators, twitching nervously when Jim fell into step beside them. The doors opened as they approached and Henri Brown's frowning face lit on them. Halting his motion to step out, he remained inside as they stepped in. "Major Crime." Jim ordered.

"Where you been, man, you're late?" Henri asked his partner.

"Henman was heckling him." Jim cut across any answer the younger man gave as Rafe's heart spiked, indicating an imminent lie.

"What?"

Rafe shot Jim a furious look. "H., man, chill, it's nothing…."

"There were four of them surrounding him like jackals, with mega-mouth Henman sounding forth," Jim contradicted.

Henri Brown's black skin disguised it, otherwise Jim knew he'd have been beetroot with fury, as it was he could see murder in the brown eyes, usually as soft as melted chocolate, now hard, cold pebbles. "Whyinhell didn't you tell me!" He scolded Rafe.

Rafe flushed, "I don't need you to hold my hand, H.," he shot back, embarrassed. "Henman is just – "

"Green." Jim interjected

Both men turned to look at him. "Henman is so eaten up with envy and jealousy he ought to be emerald-coloured by now, Rafe." Jim explained. "He knows that you manage to be twice the detective he'll ever be just by getting out of bed in the morning." The elevator doors pinged and opened onto Major Crime as they stared at him. "Next time, squash him like a bug," was Jim's parting advice as he strolled to the break room for some privacy in controlling his reaction to that heady scent he'd been inhaling with Rafe so close to him.

An hour later, he mysteriously got a caramel-glazed custard doughnut with his coffee. Two hours later, his hunch that he had done the right thing was proven when Henri Brown came and personally thanked him for not only helping Rafe out, but bolstering his self-esteem. "No problem," he assured the grunge-dressed detective, "he's a good kid, he'll go far with the right kind of help, which you're giving him."

The rumour that deep, deep down inside Jim Ellis there was actually a human being struggling valiantly against the odds to get out was all over the building by five o'clock. Jim sighed contentedly to himself as he left for the day. Coming down with a log-sized chip on his shoulder was not his first choice of infiltration technique, but for Ellis to have arrived in Cascade with such a radical personality shift from universally agreed "bolshy hard-ass" to actual human would have been too suspicious. Relaxing the "mean mother" persona gradually, yet as fast as inconspicuously possible, was his initial goal, followed by getting Major Crime personnel, particularly Rafe, to trust him. He had made a giant stride today with his first effort.

Which was probably why he felt slightly less grim as he headed for Internal Affairs. Simon had encouraged him to come in early and leave at five for his "first" few shifts, but Jim knew that this was to get him out of the way while Simon et al did their Sanctuary work with wild empaths. Discreetly sensory scanning the building from a distance after he had "left" had quickly established that all Major Crime personnel and a large portion of the rest of the building were in on the Underground Railroad. As he watched thin, nervous figures sidle into the precinct, catching waves of their scent with the telltale "musk" signature of pheromones - though none was the scent of he who Jim was convinced was the Dark Guide - Jim had felt an irrational surge of anger. Thanks to monsters like Alex Barnes and meddlers like Professor Langehur, the disproportionate Sentinel/Guide ratio had led to this sorry state of affairs where a Sentinel had to hunt down his Guide and force him into bonding heat and where empaths went to great lengths to hide their abilities. It shouldn't be this way.

Entering the Internal Affairs building across from Cascade PD, Simon Banks having stopped short of sharing his precinct, Jim asked to see Captain E. V. Hunter. The desk sergeant gave him a "haven't-we-met-before" look and let him through. Jim bit back a smile. The first time he had met his half-brother, they had been as alike as twins; immediately after, Hunter had had cosmetic facial readjustment. Now the likeness between them still close enough to strike a chord of immediate recognition with people, but only when they were side by side was their strong resemblance apparent. Seeing that Hunter's secretary had momentarily left her position, he simply knocked and opened the door to his half-brother's office. "Evening, Hunter."

Looking up at the only name he acknowledged, Hunter raised an eyebrow at the sight of his half-brother standing before him in smart-casuals and wearing a detective's shield. "Going down in the world?" He asked casually.

Jim closed the door. "I'm in deep-cover. I decided to check in just in case you came over one day and enquired what your baby bro' James Ellison was doing in Cascade PD. It's Jim Ellis, by the way, transferred from Washington DC."

"And the real James Ellis is….?"

"Living in soporific luxury on Stephen's Eden estates." Jim supplied. "You can check if you don't believe me."

Apparently deciding to give Jim the benefit of the doubt and trust that he hadn't murdered the real Ellis and buried the body somewhere with Dark Angel ingenuity, Hunter asked, "So why are you here?"

"The Dark Guide is here."

Hunter blinked. Dark Guides had been pretty much debunked as "myths" along with Santa Claus until the late and totally unlamented lunatic Dark Sentinel Alexandra Barnes had captured a wild empath one. Her attempts to bond with the Guide had been futile, and the guy had eventually bashed her head in after she'd abused him one time too many. However, at least that situation had confirmed that there was a living Dark Guide out there, and since his half-brother was the only known living Dark Sentinel…."You do realise how unstable he could be?"

Jim nodded grimly, "I got the full lecture from Saran, with pictures. I know Barnes could have tortured him into serious mental illness, but, he's here, and I've got to try."

Hunter nodded, sympathising despite his many issues with the Ellison family. A Sentinel himself, he knew what it was like, that constant, underlying hunger. He'd thought long and hard about Simon Banks' offer to Captain Cascade's new IA Dept, aware that it could be his personal poisoned chalice. For a Bondless Sentinel, the fact that Cascade had a large population of wild empaths was in many ways like ordering an alcoholic not to drink then giving him the keys to every bar in the country. "Where, exactly?"

"Rainier, somewhere."

Hunter snorted. Rainier's population was several thousand students, coming from all corners of the Inhabited Galaxies like flotsam sucked into a whirlpool. Needle in a haystack didn't even begin to cover it. "Good luck," he muttered sarcastically.

"Thanks." Jim's tone was bland.

After a few minutes, they said goodbyes and Jim left, knowing his half-brother would not betray him. Ellison Vincent Hunter was often called "the Dark Side of the Force", but at his core was a wide band of honour and integrity. If he could help Jim claim his Dark Guide, even if just by doing nothing, he would.

LEO High Commissioner's Office…

Sometimes even the most self-aware people couldn't look back and explain why they did something even if their life depended on it. Saran Van den Mikhail vaguely realised he was about join that happy band. Possibly it was because he was frustrated after having to spend the day in a series of "top level" meetings which were basically forums for people who liked the sound of their own voice and those that could waffle for hours and say nothing, instead of actually doing – oh, say, law enforcement work? Not that it showed. Saran was claimed by many to be a cyborg in disguise. His cool, diffident manner never changed regardless of provocation.

The red-flagged tight-beam however, got his immediate attention. He'd had them before, and they were red-flagged because they were untraceable – Saran had tried, and Saran was very good. Opening the message, he read the list of "buyers" for kidnapped empaths, then downloaded the evidence against them before making a call and mobilising the special units based in the LEO Commission itself. Despite having no Guide, nor any interest in one, Saran came down with utter ruthlessness against those who preyed on wild empaths. Tonight the buyers would find themselves in a whole new world, literally – the prison planet Styx. The tight-beam evidence of complicity satisfied all the stringent requirements of the Judicial Bypass Act, wherein those arrested with overwhelming evidence of guilt against them could be sentenced without trial.

He sent a summons to Chief Justice Aman. Her son, Jared Aman, had been a Sentinel police officer going slowly insane from Fincham Syndrome until he took part in one of Saran's raids that destroyed an empath pornography ring. Many such criminals were killed by Sentinel cops sent immediately into Blessed Protector mode by the despair, terror, and empathic "calls" for help blasted out by the captured empaths – Saran himself had to vigorously fight back the ferociously protective instincts. Jared Aman had zoned during the shoot-out, but despite being badly beaten, a wild empath, Tommy Osaki, had not simply fled but got Aman out of the lines of fire, bringing him back from the zone even as bullets and plasma fire impacted around the injured empath. Officer Aman was now a Bonded Sentinel and in no danger of insanity. Fortunately Osaki had been newly captured and only beaten, not raped, in an attempt to subjugate him, but he still had nightmares. Chief Justice Aman had made it plain that she would always be instantly available should Saran need her to deal with such cases in future.

At midnight the raids would round up the buyers, by dawn they would have been sentenced and on their way to life imprisonment – maximum penalty courtesy of Aman - on the prison planet Styx, branded with the indelible symbol of sex attackers. Other prisoners on Styx took a dim view of rapists, paedophiles and their ilk. The buyers would experience exactly what they had intended to put their victims through, only without the merciful, dulling haze provided by the illegal drugs that negated an empath's barriers – and made them highly suggestible.

The tight-beam had been tampered with, as forensics had shown since the first one arrived. Identities of empaths who were to have been kidnapped and sold had been removed by an expert, the boffins had confessed to Saran. Nor had repeated tracing attempts proven successful, mainly because the tight-beam originated in Saran's home precinct – an impossibility. Saran gazed at the message, a never-before considered possibility popping up into his cerebellum. His home precinct.

Giving the LEO Commissioner a "home" precinct was just a PR exercise to give the rank-and-file the impression that he or she was of "us" not "them". Saran's home precinct was Halfway Space Station Central – HSS PD – and he'd been there only once in his teens just after his decision to forge a career in law enforcement. His mother, the Vicereine, had had a fit when her Body Heir informed her he had no intention of lazing around in soporific luxury with his billions of galacs until she finally shuffled off the mortal coil, since she had just entered her twelfth decade looking as lissom as a twenty-year old nymphet – he was after all, too much the brilliant, ambitious son she'd designed him to be – but law enforcement?

Having also inherited her steely determination and immovability, he'd persevered, and once accepting he would not be swayed, his mother had brought her own power solidly to bear on behalf of her firstborn, favourite child, to the extent that her sister the Matriarch Madjhuri Syal of High House Syal had publicly approved of his career. Well aware that his connections had got him the LEO Commissioner post, Saran always gave 250 to the job, aware that while his peers and subordinates rated him the best Commissioner ever to have the position, his mother simply expected nothing less from her children, indeed more from her Body Heir and favourite. They did not have an easy relationship, for her cool, unemotional diffidence was a mirror image of his own, but Saran remembered once as a child seeing, after sneaking into her forbidden private suite, a holograph of his father, her first husband, next to the bed, an out-of-place personal memento in a place utterly devoid of sentimental trappings. Certainly Aleksandr had been the only one of his mother's husbands ever to be accorded the title of Viceroy Consort.

He stated the code that brought up his "home" precinct's personnel records. Based like so many on the Banks Model, HSS PD had a few minor alterations – there was no Major Crime Unit, instead just divisions – Narcotics, Homicide, Vice, Juvenile, Robbery – and two unique to space stations: Contraband and Station Traffic. At his order, the screen scrolled through the records of officers starting with the Captain of Police, through the Captains of each division, right down to the cadet patrolmen and women and civilian employees, just as Saran had done several times before, hoping for a give-away on someone's part.

But none stood out as being the "type" to be part of the Underground Railroad, which was where the tight-beam had originated. Somewhere in Cascade, the notorious Sanctuary, the tight-beam would have gone to Simon Banks of fame, probably bounced off a few other places to muddy the waters further, before landing at HSSC PD where it "pretended" to have originated before landing in his mailbox. Unfortunately, the tech guys had never been able to do anything more than establish that it was actually sent to HSSC from somewhere else despite appearing as if someone had sat down in that building and created it. What they did say was that at least for the first time, there would have had to have been someone on the inside at the HSSC Precinct to direct the tight-beam on.

But that didn't mean they were still there, or had been there more than once. Halfway Space Station, named for it's position half way between Earth and Mars, dated from the earliest days of colonisation and was still going strong, a venerable elder statesman amongst its peers and a tourist attraction in it's own right. Untold billions of people went through it daily, and many people were only temporary occupants. The "insider" could have been a temporary janitor, civilian employee, or even someone who got himself collared on a minor misdemeanour felony just long enough to get inside one of the departmental bullpens and do his thing. But what if Saran went in person? His Sentinel abilities might pick something up? It was the one thing he'd never even considered before, which was why it might just work…

Dark Angel HQ, meanwhile….

It had taken less than two hours to get Gage and Race ready to ship out, the Dark Angels being one of the most efficient organisations in the Inhabited Galaxies. Besides, the whole point was for the Dark Angel to lead an entirely different life, "stepping into" his mission then stepping out again unobserved. Gage in turn had long had experience of travelling with the bare minimum of gear. Finally the archaeologist grabbed his holdall and cast one last glance around the bonding suite to check he hadn't left anything.

"Do you want a new coat?" Race suddenly asked, harshly.

Thrown by the non sequitur tossed into a conversation about shuttle flight times, Gage merely blinked. "Huh?"

Not really looking at him, Race waved a tense hand to his low-necked T-shirt, open collared over shirt and short leather jacket, none of which came close to concealing his neck. "A high collar coat, do you want one, for the tattoo?"

Gage gave him an unreadable look, then said firmly, "No, I don't."

Race relaxed as they left the bonding suite, smiling in relief, though he privately vowed that one day Gage would never even be able to give him so much as a glance he couldn't instantly interpret. It had been driving him crazy, wondering if Gage would want to hide the symbol of his bonded state; Race wanted to shout it from the roof-tops, which was why he had done the tattoo himself as his Guide slumbered in exhaustion rather than giving him a temporary collar and waiting a few days for a professional body artist.

Gage firmly squashed a tiny niggle of guilt at Race's pleased look. Yes, he would like to bundle up in the thickest scarf he could find, but he needed the tattoo highly visible. Anyone else from the Underground Railroad would take one look at it and know Gage had been compromised, so would be able to protect himself. At least he'd been able to delete the incriminating messages from his pager without Race realising they were anything more than Morris' twittering. Blair's tight-beam about the empath buyers had also gone, but he would have sent it to Van den Mikhail, who would wipe them out. The Underground Railroad had to be protected, and if doing that meant Gage Butler had to be humiliated by walking around like a prize bull just branded by his new owner, he would do that, for Blair, and Trey.

At least travel with Race Keegan the playboy was an eye-opener. "Luxury" didn't even begin to cover it; "opulence" was inadequate. The shuttle was grand enough, but the staterooms aboard the A-class Space Liner Byzantium were sybaritic.

Gage sank into his ankles in the carpet, and the chandeliers were made of diamonds, not crystal. The bathing suite sported a Jacuzzi you could have drowned a regiment in, with fittings made of gold. It took ten minutes to walk around the football field called a bed, covered in finest damask and overthrown with silken snowy furs. Good grief.

He didn't realise he'd spoken aloud until Race chuckled behind him. "A nice little place, isn't it?"

The trip was three days, most of which Gage spent in long conversations with Morris and others, sorting out the delays caused by his non-arrival, evading explaining the real reason behind his non-appearance. They'd see soon enough. Somewhat to Gage's surprise, Race hadn't bonded with him, although he always woke up cuddled next to his Sentinel, but Gage quickly figured it out. Race was waiting until they got to the dig – something that had become a threat in the jealous Sentinel's imagination. By bonding with Gage there, Race asserted his dominance and vanquished his "rival", as he thought. Newly bonded Sentinels and Guides bonded frequently during the first fortnight of their bond, and the abstinence on Race's part would only make the bonding more powerful, more intense the next time. Gage shivered involuntarily with mingled anticipation and trepidation – it would be almost as powerful as their initial bonding, and that had left him feeling branded to the bone.

A certain amount of time later, in a galaxy not too far away…

For the first time in a long time, Saran had to exert just a little bit of effort in keeping his indifferent mask from slipping. He'd arrived, unannounced, at HSSC Precinct duty desk. With his uniform's high, stiff collar hiding his Body Heir tattoo, introducing himself simply as Saran Van den Mikhail and flashing his perfectly legitimate but unused detective's shield, he'd actually gotten to wander around the precinct for twenty whole minutes, having some very enlightening chats with various of the other cops, before the Captain of Contraband – damn, sounded like a pirate in a Gilbert & Sullivan opera – passed by and suddenly recognised who exactly was sympathetically listening to two harness bulls explain just how the Station's Manager's budget cuts were crippling their ability to do their job properly.

Saran just wished he been able to take a picture of the panic on the Captain of Police's face when he came dashing down to greet him in the realisation that the LEO High Commissioner had had nearly half an hour of uncensored freedom wandering about the precinct talking to cops who told it like it was, not how it was in political fairy-land. Even as he sat ensconced with the Captain of Police in his very nicely appointed office, a fine cognac in one hand and an even finer cigar in the other, Saran's perfect memory made a mental note to try this approach again. People very rarely recognised even the most famous "celebrity" if they saw them out of context. The LEO Commissioner arrived in a stretch air-skiff surrounded by an entourage of flunkies, bodyguards and paparazzi, so no one had connected him with the quiet, tall "detective". The views and opinions he'd heard, even in only twenty minutes, were highly interesting, and he regarded the Captain critically. Pure politician, one of those smart ones who hadn't worked his way up through the ranks but sidled in at officer level, photogenic and always with the right sound-byte for the media, cutting budgets, keeping costs low and adept at fudging the statistics when people tried to look too closely at how those cuts and the bureaucracy prevented the police from doing their job. The Station Manager would also have to go, if what he'd heard a couple of grumbling harness bulls allege about the man's active interference in police matters, prompted by self-interest and politicking, was true. Abruptly, even over the aromatic, highly expensive cigar, an unpleasant chemical taint sent his nose hairs itching and his lips thinned in distaste. Taking another sip of brandy to rid himself of the taste, he tuned back in to what the captain of Police was nervously waffling on about, unaware of the detective who had unobtrusively slipped away from the bullpen outside.

Homicide Detective Trey Logan finally allowed himself to give way to his gibbering panic as he closed the door of the cubicle in the little used men's room in the basement. The low-key but definite empathic "marker" of a Bondless Sentinel had hit him as he was in the break room, trying to get the slowly dying coffee machine to work one last time. An empath's scent carried with it a "musk", an underlying scent signature that a Sentinel could detect from several miles away if need be. Empaths did not have the hyperactive senses of Sentinels, but they did have empathy, and in resonance to an empath's "musk", all Sentinels automatically and unconsciously broadcast a mental "signal" or "marker" that the empath's own mental power could detect. Only suppressant narcotics stopped either signal.

For an instant, Trey had genuinely thought he was going to have a heart attack as he peeked through the break room door and zeroed in immediately on a tall man casually wearing a detective shield, chatting to some uniformed officers from Station Traffic. The fact that the guy was really the Ultimate Boss, LEO Commissioner Saran Van den Mikhail, lessened his fear only slightly. At least he would leave and probably not return, but until the Captain had ushered him to his private office nervously, Trey was trapped – the break room had no other egress bar the door, and Trey's terror that Mikhail would hear his thundering heart had only spurred that organ to greater frantic activity.

Now as he sat on the toilet seat with the lid down, trying to calm his breathing, he blessed the cantankerous old vending machine and its furious din, which surely must have covered his frenetic bio-rhythms. Simultaneously, he sent up a silent prayer of thanks that he had his latest phial on him, ready to inject and that his scent was masked by the coffee machine, otherwise Mikhail would have detected the leaking musk. Taking a deep breath, he went out and splashed water on his face, before giving the man in the mirror a stern lecture. He had become complacent, shoddy with his shots, leaving it too long before increasing the dosage and even forgetting to keep checking that all his escape options were still open. Today he'd literally been trapped in a corner with no way out, and only sheer luck had saved him!

Rainier University, Cascade…

In the now deserted auditorium, the three freshman students surrounded Sandburg; with them a loose semi-circle in front and his desk behind, he had, in their eyes, nowhere to go. Blair eyed them calmly but with regret; throughout the Inhabited Galaxies there were still those who hated simply because of race or religion, colour and creed. Man had taken all his virtues into the stars, but sadly his vices as well. The future of humanity had become much more the political warring of Babylon 5 than the integrated, homogeneous harmony of Star Trek.

These three specimens were big, beefy, they thought they had him buffaloed as they sneered at the "bastard kike" who presumed to instruct his superiors. Blair Sandburg was regretful, but the Dark Guide firmly put him aside for the duration as he strolled out of his lair, shifting his weight to the balls of his feet and eyeing the three Neanderthals contemptuously –

The angry roar made the three snap their heads round with startled exclamations and instantly the Dark Guide was moving, all three put down with broken arm, wrist and elbow in a graceful ballet of lethal motion before they were even aware of what was happening. Not even breathing slightly heavier, the Dark Guide resumed his previous position in front of the desk. "Get out."

Whimpering, they clutched damaged limbs, somehow aware that they faced someone far more dangerous than Blair Sandburg, then scurried out, eyes flicking nervously for the now vanished huge black panther that had roared at them. As the door swung shut on them, the angry rumble sounded again. Suddenly reasserting himself over the Dark Guide, Blair shuddered and swore vehemently.

Not again, not ever again. Beside the eerily blue-eyed panther that now sat, growling at him in front of the door, shadowy but definitely there, was the translucent form of a wolf. With a curse, Blair spun round the desk and wrenched open a desk drawer, hastily injecting himself with nearly a full phial of Rezadrin. The panther roared, lashing his tail, but both animals immediately faded into nothing, though the wolf managed to give him a look of reproachful reproof.

Tough! Trembling, Blair sat down. The first time he'd ever encountered a "real" spirit animal guide – now there was a contradiction in terms – a golden spotted jaguar, had been just days before Alex had found him and lured him into her machinations with his own empathic naïve curiosity. His idiocy had led to months of physical torture, mental cruelty and sexual abuse by the psychopathic woman. At first delighted to have a Dark Guide to play with, her inability to bond with him had driven her ever greater heights – or depths – of sadism.

Luckily the whole damn nightmare had occurred during summer recess, and he had excused his late return to work with the excuse of his mother Naomi – as excellent a specimen of health as ever there was – being seriously ill for by then his physical trauma had at least healed enough for him to function with disguising normalcy before his peers.

Alex had been unable to see the jaguar, but Blair had seen it daily as her prisoner/slave, pacing her apartment with roars of frustration and pain because it's human counterpart wouldn't acknowledge it. In the region of the jaguar's heart was a wound that would not heal, which bled copiously, and, so faded as to be little more than a faintly sketched outline, Blair had glimpsed the ghost of a Maine Moon cat.

Blair the man wanted to forget the months of living hell had ever happened, the Dark Guide didn't give a damn as long as the hell-bitch was dead, but Sandburg the scientist needed to know. It had been difficult to research without tipping his hand, but finally the pieces had been found, one by one. Only in the last century and a half had the IFP become a tiger with teeth, and even so many frontier worlds were still dangerous. Alex had grown up on a wild, woolly frontier planet so medical reports were sketchy at best, but she'd been perfectly normal until she displayed her first example of psychotic behaviour very suddenly three months after turning twelve. It had been Trey who'd done the digging, despite the cautions of Blair and Gage at arousing suspicion, and came up with the answer: her first episode of violent psychosis coincided with the Ursa Major Spaceport Disaster, wherein 7,832 lives were lost. Buried in the back-sheets of some cyberspace tabloid was the peculiar report of one of the victims, seven-year-old Katja Nirek, who suffered no physical injuries but became hysterical, screaming that she could " feel" the people burning, dying. She had collapsed unconscious and slipped into a coma, dying without regaining awareness nine days later.

Maine Moon cats had been discovered to have almost perfect "inner balance", able to detect flaws in a ship's drive that not even the most sensitive equipment could. Carefully and rigorously bred, Maine Moon cats inhabited every ship that could afford them, for they warned of lethal cracks and fissures in a ship's drive systems long before the most advanced testing equipment. Trey's discreet check revealed that Katja's family were long-time, celebrated breeders of Maine Moon cats. Back then, nobody would have thought to link Alex's suddenly aberrant behaviour with the loss of her genetically predestined Guide, and untreated, her condition had simply generated into full-blown mania.

Blair understood, but could not forgive. Alex had been evil – and more sane than not. She had inflicted pain for the pleasure it gave her, raped him and verbally taunted him for fun, all because he was a Dark Guide that refused to bond, even though she knew perfectly well it was a matter totally out of his control. A Guide-strength empath only went into bonding heat with a genetically compatible Sentinel, and Alex was, by then, far too damaged on too many levels to have been able to re-bond with any Guide.

The panther was a blatant indication that a genetically compatible Sentinel was very much present in Cascade, one his own spirit wolf-guide seemed happy with. Tough, Sandburg decided again…..

Apartment 307, 852 Prospect Avenue, Cascade...

Jim jerked awake from his doze, heart pounding. Not ten yards away, sitting in front of the French windows that led to the balcony overlooking the city, was a growling, clearly miffed panther. By it's side, so faint as to be almost totally translucent, was the outline of an equally exasperated-looking wolf. Spirit Guides. Actual, real – metaphorically speaking of course – Spirit Guides.

He stood up shakily, but the danger to his Guide – and somehow, he instinctively knew that there had been danger, was no more. Abruptly both animals winked out, but Jim couldn't have had a bigger signal that he was on the right track if the astral plane had written it ten feet high in neon. Cause of constant debate amongst scholars, and to the envy of Bondless Sentinels everywhere, the famed "Guide Diaries" guide-author spoke casually about visions of animal spirit guides as if they were an everyday occurrence, as if sitting down in the a.m. for your eggs and bacon was an experience incomplete without laying eyes on some large feline, feral canine or other animal stretched out on the sofa that was invisible to everyone but you. Bonded Sentinels and Guides were ferociously insistent that they had spirit animal guides, despite repeated attempts by psychiatrists and so forth to debunk them as "manifestations of the subconscious Id" or whatever psychobabble was currently "in vogue". The Dark Guide was real, and he was in Cascade.

Jim eyed the spare room that was currently piled high with boxes and began making immediate plans to turn it into a suite for his Guide. He'd actually forgotten about the real estate the Ellisons owned in Cascade, not surprising since between them his father and mother's respective High House families owned about a two thirds of the known universe, but this had been a godsend. It was the best apartment in the block and was in one of those areas of Cascade close enough to Banks' Central Precinct to have benefited immediately when the man set up his "new" PD so many years ago. Fortunately the rent was just inside "James Philip Ellis'" legitimately affordable limit, though since he owned the building anyway…

He suddenly smiled, infused with an enthusiasm, a sheer joy, that he hadn't experienced in years….

HSSC PD, Halfway Space Station…

The Captain of Police seemed to sag with relief, like a slowly deflating balloon, the closer they got to the elevators, Saran noted with amusement. The man was obviously delighted to have managed to do so much damage control in their impromptu meeting. He honestly thinks he's got me fooled, Saran realised with even more humour, stepping into the elevator with his nervously smiling guardians, (and he's obviously never bothered to find out exactly what a Sentinel can do, because his heart and breathing shot up like a rocket every time he lied, whereas most people at least try to control them – uugh!)

Saran frantically dialled "down" his olfactory sense as the elevator doors closed, the strong stench of chemical making him react instinctively to the acrid odour. Then his conscious mind caught up with what had just happened, and he stiffened, his heart missing a beat. The chemical signature was instantly recognisable: suppressants.

Saran carefully directed the surge of excitement that came directly from his hindbrain, sending it flowing in tingles down his arms and to the hairs on his nape. Suppressants eliminated the "musk" of an empath's physical scent and the empathic "signal" broadcast by Sentinels, but most importantly they were undetectable by either party or anything but the most searching – extremely expensive - medical scans, which was why "suppressed" empaths and sentinels could work side by side unknowingly for years, except…

Except for the first thirty minutes after the Sentinel or empath had ingested/injected the suppressant. For those first thirty minutes, the musk scent or mental signal could still be detected, along with the scent of the chemicals before they "kicked in" and nullified everything, including their own smell. The scent that had assaulted Saran's proboscis meant that an empath – he had caught musk, not another mental blip on his Sentinel sonar – had taken another dose of suppressants in the last thirty minutes…and from the strength of the stink, a very powerful empath, Saran realised, for the stronger the empath or more powerful the Sentinel, the higher the dosage of suppressant needed.

The carefully anonymous tight-beam regarding the abuse of empaths had "pretended" to originate from here. Also here was a powerful, bondless empath. Coincidence? As Sherlock Holmes had said, there was no such thing. Saran turned to the Captain of Police, part of him wondering if the man was going to have a heart attack in a few moments when Saran informed him that he'd changed his mind. A flying visit wasn't enough…he had decided to spent several weeks in his "home precinct", getting a real feel of the work from a grassroots level…a desk in the Homicide bullpen would suffice…barely holding down a grin, Saran turned to the Captain of Police, and opened his mouth….

Planet Hyperion, in a galaxy quite close by…

The ancient ruins thrust up from the ground with geometric precision, perfectly at right angles to the ground even though they had been abandoned for millennia. The ancient buildings, crammed on every surface with the alien markings and pictographs, were constructed of various sorts of stone, some glossy obsidian black, others sandy brown, others a sort of pale green, in a subtle repeating pattern that was only obvious if you were more than a hundred yards away.

Gage walked over the dusty, crumbly stoned ground, acutely aware of his Sentinel shadowing him. There was a reasonably technologically-advanced human colony on Hyperion, underwritten by one of the Nine Ruling Houses of the Oligarchy, High House Ellison, if Gage remembered, so their arrival from the liner Byzantium to the up-to-date shuttle port had been smooth, as had the air-skiff ride that had dropped them right at the edge of the mandatory exclusion zone erected around all alien archaeological sites. Hyperion was a new site, only 18 months old. Most mainstream scholars had refused to even consider Hyperion as a possible site for the "Ancients", the term given to the aliens, because of it's arid, almost Sahara desert like barrenness. For all his proven reputation in archaeology, Gage knew he had been the subject of amusement and ridicule for going against the "accepted wisdom" and doing test digs on Hyperion. After five tests had come up blank, the academics had forgotten about him, secure in their knowledge that on this occasion the renowned Gage Butler had bodged it. But Gage had known with absolute certainty that there were ruins here, and the twelfth test dig had uncovered an archaeologist's heaven, for his lost city was the largest and most perfectly preserved site yet discovered, to the point where "ruins" were a misnomer.

Ahead of him he could see the students, volunteers and professors all digging in to help sift and uncover more stone, and despite his current predicament, Gage felt that tell-tale tingle of thrill he always got when he looked at an archaeological site just waiting to be explored. Rion, as they had christened it, had been built in a shallow, fertile valley basin that had been subject to extremely high flooding during Hyperion's sudden climate changes about 50,000 years ago, buried beneath silt and mud from the encroaching waters. When the currently dry, arid climate turned silt to dust and blew it away, the city had been progressively brought back to the surface of the planet, until Gage had had to dig only a few feet to find it. Another five or six decades and the ruins would have been revealed on their own. Gage grinned with an edge of malice; the nay-sayers and mockers were now hastily re-examining every desert world they'd eschewed as not being as temperate as the aliens – and humans – were known to prefer, in the hope of finding another once-green world turned barren with fame-promising ruins on it.

As with most people who loved their work, the working people were oblivious to the two newcomers, and Gage was able to literally walk right up to a frazzled Morris as he stood outside the big domed tent he and Gage shared, nose peeling from the sun, hirsute, bandy legs ridiculously pasty as they went down from his baggy khaki shorts, strawberry hair in such standing-on-end disarray as to appear that he'd just shoved his fingers into an electrical socket. For a long moment Gage stood in silence, watching with a smile as Morris finally looked up from the untidy bundle of paperwork he was cradling precariously against his chest with one lower arm, and actually focussed on who was standing in front of him.

Morris' intended greeting was strangled into a croaked, guttural "urk" at the back of his throat, his eyes widened, rounded to the size of saucers as they clamped on Gage – or rather Gage's exposed neck – then processed the big, black-dressed and subtly intimidating shadow standing right behind him. For a moment Gage watched with interest, seriously worried that his assistant's eyes would literally bug-out as they fixed on the narrow tattoo around Gage's throat. "Ugh!"

Time to take control, Gage decided, aware through the mental bond, which really could be described as "psychic", with his Sentinel that Race was finding Morris highly amusing. "Hi, Morris."

With a visible effort, Morris pulled himself together, literally shaking his head, the deer-in-headlights expression being replaced suddenly by a gleam of speculative avarice as his mind finally moved beyond "Sentinel" and identified the individual looming behind Gage – the extremely wealthy dilettante and man-about-town, Race Rainworth Keegan. Lesser House Keegan, true, but Race was the favourite nephew of the Matriarch Kristijana Akureyri of High House Akureyri, a fearsome operator who was said to bring down the arctic cold of her ancestral Iceland on any who displeased her. Gage could practically see "Wealthy Patron" appear in a cartoon bubble over Morris's head.

Race had never seriously considered archaeology, apart from childhood enjoyment of the four classic 20th – 21st Century Indiana Jones adventure movies and a couple of crash-bang action adventure ones about a mummy called Imhotep, so he had vague notions of scruffy twenty-somethings in jeans spending their days digging very slowly through mounds of dirt and rambling on incoherently about some miniscule molecule of pottery. True, there was a lot of that going on, but these kids were digging out beautifully preserved floors, walls, doors and entire buildings that looked as polished as if someone had sneaked in during the night before and constructed them. Race had done some research whilst aboard the Byzantium, mainly to take his mind of his overwhelming urge to bond with his Guide, and was aware of Gage's theory, hotly disputed, that the aliens had deliberately abandoned all their settlements on every single world they inhabited simultaneously, for reasons unknown, before setting off en masse to a new destination, also unknown.

As Morris escorted them round the site, loftily ignoring the double-takes of the workers identical to what he had displayed with superficial sang froid, Race cautiously extended his senses while Morris filled Gage in on what had happened during his absence. Beautifully preserved the city was, but that was all it was, a collection of exquisitely carved stone. Race's superior olfactory senses could detect no strange, unidentifiable decaying biological matter, indicative of alien remains or gravesites. There were only a few artefacts such as vases and cutlery left in the buildings, and these had apparently been placed in the locations found by the aliens themselves. There was no sign of panicked departure or fire debris, nothing to indicate that the denizens had looked up from breakfast one morning to see a wall of water from the first of the great floods surging towards them. No foodstuff remains had ever been found either, and in an entire city there should have been some. In his most recent paper, Gage had asserted that Rion had long been abandoned by the aliens when the climate changes first flooded and buried the city, and on the evidence of what he could sense, even in just the first few hours, Race tended to agree. The entire city was just too clean with too many artefacts missing, like a hotel room after the previous guests have left and the new ones aren't yet in – the basic structure was there, but the minor details were missing.

Race "returned" as Morris wound up back at his tent where Gage had dumped his holdall before starting the walk around. "No!" he growled loudly, and Morris, bending down to pick up Gage's holdall and take it inside, jumped back as if bitten.

Gage winced; as Expedition Leader, he and his deputy had always shared the largest tent, but Morris was still cowering from Race's aggressive rebuttal, so Gage interjected smoothly, with a faint grin, "You get the tent all to yourself, Mo'."

"Umm, errr, s-s-s-ure!" Morris stammered nervously, recognising a Sentinel in "possessive" mode when he saw one. "I'll go check on dinner." He scuttled away at a fast clip, sneaking backward glances.

Race picked up his own baggage, marching firmly away to a smooth, cleared area that was close to the other tents yet definitely away from Morris's. Gage picked up his holdall and firmly bit down on the temptation to offer Race a can of coloured marker spray so he write MINE on Gage's forehead – the Dark Angel Sentinel would probably take him up on the offer. Blowing out air from his puffed cheeks, he followed Race; he could psychically feel the "edge" to Keegan's mental signature and regretted not coaxing the Sentinel into Bonding on the Byzantium to release the empathic pressure a little. Oh well, hindsight was a wonderful thing, not.

Archaeology had little to spend on fripperies, so the emphasis was on function over aesthetics. Race, however, had no such financial considerations to bear in mind, which was fortunate considering that "the self-erecting "Galaxy-sized" King Dome Luxury Camping Domicile by Yeomans FAS cost a cool 53,000 galacs for the standard model. Gage blinked as he realised that Race's "tent" was the Super-Deluxe top of the range edition that retailed at a cool 100,000 galacs. At the press of a button it flowed effortlessly together as the mini-computers inside did their thing and in twenty-three seconds a silver dome twenty feet high and just as wide dominated its inferiors. Gage shot those around him an embarrassed smile that dissolved into a stunned gasp as he looked at the dome and saw the telltale shimmer of Black Widow Spider-Silk that covered the construction. Impervious to almost all known weapons, anything made from or covered by BWSS was guaranteed to survive disaster. Ski chalets were covered in the stuff that would not be crushed even by a major avalanche, and really wealthy skiers made their suits out of it – one guy had been hit dead centre by a massive avalanche that had swept him over a forty-foot cliff, only to walk away with a mild concussion because his BWSS snowsuit had protected him. BWSS was standard issue for fire fighters and elite military personnel. There were even urban legends that BWSS had saved people from death due to low-grade thermonuclear explosions. The presence of Black Widow Spider-Silk quadrupled the price of the tent in one fell swoop. Morris stood frozen near the cooking pot, an expression of childish envy writ large across his face. Thoroughly embarrassed, Gage hastily ducked into the tent, feeling closed in even though the thing was big enough to hold a couple of elephants. Every modern convenience and then some had been added, including the height of luxury – the bed.

Literally "air-beds" - floating bunks that hovered above ground - orthopaedically contouring to the human body to provide a restful slumber, they were ideal for archaeologists, soldiers and others who had to regularly "rough it", the floating off the ground providing the added bonus of keeping the human sleeper out of reach of any alien critters that were looking for a midnight snack or just curious. At the pillow end where there was a head-board on a normal bed there protruded a long, thin filament, which, when activated, projected an invisible force-bubble around the whole bed, further protecting the sleeper from pests like mosquitoes and flying bugs. There was one legend of the xeno-palaeontologist, alone on a planetary excavation site, who awoke one morning to find himself in the middle of a bubble of absolute blackness. Realising just before he panicked that the bubble exterior was covered in trillions of black beetle like things, he managed to tight-beam a warning to his colleagues so a HazMat – Hazardous Materials – team with BWSS suits were sent in, which was fortunate, for the bugs turned out to be a nocturnal, carnivorous species that remained dormant for most of that world's annual orbit before suddenly swarming out, settling on something big, warm and juicy and devouring it alive. The bugs could not penetrate BWSS, and had been relatively easy to dispose of, but the teams found the carcasses of several huge herbivores reduced to picked-clean skeletons in a direct trail back to the rock fissure where the bugs lived; without the bubble, the palaeontologist would been a mysterious skeleton who would have gone down as space legend like the old Earth-type Marie Celeste mystery.

Most airbeds were fairly cheap, cheerful and amusingly inconsistent in the fact that the orthopaedics usually locked in one position after a couple of years instead of remoulding nightly, the levitating mechanism had a tendency to go on the fritz and suddenly drop the bed a foot before raising it again and the powering motor began to chug loudly like an asthmatic tractor. This airbed was a huge, Mega-King sized monstrosity that could have slept a couple of dozen, if you were into that sort of thing. Smugly it floated with perfect equilibrium in total silence, an exact six feet off the floor. Race was storing all their gear with sharp actions, his bristling attitude clearly challenging Gage to say anything. Wisely, Gage decided that discretion was the better part of valour – besides, Race's snores were soft and intermittent, while Morris ground his teeth in between doing his chainsaw impression. No thanks, Morris.

"Diiiinneeeer!" There came the banging of metal pans against each other in accompaniment to the yell, so Gage simply dropped his holdall and together they went back out to the camp.

At this point, Race turned on the charm, complimenting the stew and asking questions about the dig; within half an hour everyone was a lot more relaxed and chatting amicably, though they mostly respected the fact that Race had Gage sat next to him and there was a small "zone" of space into which no one intruded, until midnight and a little too much wine made everyone mellow – and Margreta bold. The lush, blonde researcher had had a fling with Gage the previous summer, however, Gage had rapidly figured out that Margreta viewed him as nothing more than a useful rung up on the ladder of her great ambitions and had ended the relationship. Margreta, used to keeping her pawns bamboozled until she was bored enough to walk away, had been mightily miffed. Now, however, Gage was again a useful prospect – he had a wealthy and powerful Sentinel backing him, who could do a lot for her. She had never paid any attention to anything that didn't boost her career so had no idea how to operate around a Sentinel and Guide, especially not understanding the fact that Sentinels were at their most possessive when newly bonded. Considering Morris as dirt under her feet when she thought of him at all, Margreta had not noticed the warning signs of Race's verbal aggression towards Morris earlier in the day, of how the Sentinel kept himself between his Guide and Gage's deputy and how the Sentinel had set "their" tent as far away from Morris as he could reasonably get.

Now she smiled seductively at Gage, conjuring up images of them in her tent the previous summer; she was very carnally talented and Gage Butler certainly knew how to please a woman. (Uh-oh) Gage, a lot more sober than he was acting, having pretended to drink a lot more than he had, tried to freeze her off with a glare. Sensibly he had decided that indulging generously in wine with his unpredictable, on-edge Sentinel in the vicinity was a no-no. Margreta was definitely tipsy, and the greed on her features was so obvious she ought to have galac signs tattooed on her cheeks. Did she really think he had so little common sense and self-control that he was going to let her jump his bones again to further her ambition, even if Race would allow it? Which the Sentinel would not, Gage knew, feeling the Dark Angel stiffen as he caught the lascivious gazes she was throwing at his Guide. If an empath was in a long-term relationship or married when they bonded to a Sentinel, the spouse/partner had to remain away for 7-14 days after First Bonding, for the Sentinel was at his or her most extreme possessiveness during this time. The instigator of an acrimoniously ended previous summer fling stood no chance.

Margreta sashayed over to Gage, acting as if Race was not there. (Big mistake, sweetie). "Hi, Gage," she pouted. "Would you like some more wine?"

Her next line would have been a request for him to help her get the crate out of her tent in expectation of him following her for an enthusiastic romp, but she never got there. Race surged to his feet, and instinctively she leaned back. Her inebriated state had incapacitated her sense of balance and, tripping over her own foot, she ended up sat on the ground on her backside, staring up owlishly at the looming figure, with those of the dig's team still awake giggling at the sight.

"We're going to bed." Utterly ignoring the woman, Race growled the command low in his throat, whirling round and marching Gage in front of him with a vice-like grip.

Margreta's face flushed an unbecoming purple as the camp fell into more giggles, but as Gage, pliant, allowed Race to steer them to the tent, he had no sympathy. Margreta used people for her own ends then dumped them the instant they were no longer of value. A little humble pie was exactly what she needed.

Gage half-expected Race to pounce the instant the tent was sealed behind them, but they both got ready for sleep with the Sentinel displaying unnerving equanimity. Deciding to eschew everything bar his old, faded sweatpants, just in case his Sentinel decided they were going to bond right now, Gage lay on the airbed and felt it mould itself to him. Being a Guide was hard on clothes – a Sentinel "sensory scanned" his or her Guide every morning, usually by running their hands over the Guide's body, during which any clothing the Guide wore was perfectly safe, but when a bonding was deeper or more intense than the daily mellow, shallow mini-bonding, that was it.

Though primarily a mental union, the merging of two minds, sharing emotions and thoughts, the Sentinel would also strip the Guide and "map" his or her body, using enhanced touch through the fingertips as they traced the Guide's form, plus scent to inhale the unique pheromone signature every person had, followed by taste as the Sentinel nipped, bit, and licked, tasting the Guide. Although bonding was not sexual, biology meant a person produced more pheromones from erogenous zones, besides which, to a Sentinel's hyper-sensitive touch, the finest gossamer would be as sackcloth – the Guide could not be properly "mapped" – that is, stroked, nuzzled, bitten, licked, tasted, cuddled, petted, caressed, hugged, fondled, squeezed, patted, massaged, kneaded, embraced, enfolded, nibbled, snuggled and generally cosseted – with coarse fibres blocking hungry Sentinel fingers and mouth. Since a Sentinel wanting to bond was about the most impatient creature in existence, the Guide's poor clothing ended up simply ripped off and dumped in tattered shreds wherever the Sentinel tossed them.

His musings ended as Race got on the other side of the airbed, also clad in comfy, baggy sweatpants, and activated the protective bubble, setting it from "clear" see-through to disguising "opaque". Settling down, Race simply reached out and pulled Gage to him, tucking his Guide securely under him, fingers entwining and stroking his hair.

Gage cautiously placed his hands on Race's back, gently rubbing the tension from his shoulder muscles. The Sentinel was obviously wide-awake but made no move to initiate Bonding. Gage wondered whether he should coax Race into a Deep Bonding, perhaps it would ease some of Race's possessive wariness?

"Um, Gage….Morris…."

(Ah, Morris, I thought so.) Gage had watched the "dig" being replaced by "Morris" almost instantly in Race's "Sentinel" persona as his chief rival, especially during the tour when he'd noticed Race imprinting the new scents on his memory and figuring out that Gage obviously occupied the same tent as Morris. He wasn't going to help, though. "Yeah?"

Race minutely examined each individual strand of Gage's now dusted hair. "Is…er…Morris…um…gay?"

"No!" Gage retorted in genuine astonishment, gazing up at Race in surprise.

Race's somewhat stiff posture relaxed slightly. "Then why does he keep looking at me like a dog eyeing up a juicy steak?" He asked plaintively.

Gage had noted the lessening of tension. (It was Morris and me he worried were lovers), Gage realised wryly. Most Sentinel and Guide pairings were two people of the same sex, but the vast majority of Guides were heterosexual. Sentinels and Guides married and had children all the time once their bonding had been firmly established for a few years, but a Sentinel's possessiveness towards his or her Guide meant that they did not cope at all well if their Guide was sexually active with someone of the same gender but who was not the Sentinel, somehow viewing the person's sexual claim to/sexual possession of their Guide as a threat to the Bond. Race's verbal intimidation of Morris could easily have flipped into physical aggression if he sensed the man had - literally - had Gage.

Time to explain the wonderful world of archaeology. "You're rich and influential – he's drooling at the thought of "wealthy patron". Besides, you've shown a genuine interest in archaeology and you don't have an angle."

"What do you mean, "angle"?"

"Your first Science Lesson in the Real World, my Sentinel: forget the stereotype of scientists as dispassionate observers searching for universal truth. We're just as human as everyone and brim full of the same pre-conceptions, pet theories, prejudices and bigotries – and so are those that fund us."

"You mean you only get funding if you find stuff that agrees with their beliefs?" Race translated.

"Unfortunately, all too often." Gage pressed his fingers against Race's back, encouraging the Sentinel to settle down next to him and relax further. "It shames me to admit it but in the late 20th Century there were a plethora of racially prejudiced historians, so-called men and women "of science", who found plenty of rich neo-Nazi patrons to help them publish their "revisionist" claims that the Holocaust never happened."

Race paused in his nuzzling of Gage's throat and raised incredulous eyes to his Guide. "You're kidding?"

"I wish. Things got so bad that some European nations had to pass laws making it a crime punishable by imprisonment to deny the Holocaust. One Member of the European Parliament caused furore when he publicly claimed, during a televised debate, that the Diary of Anne Frank was a fake produced by the Jews. There are always some people who give into the lure of money or position, but every Edward Said and Rigoberto Menchu bring science into disrepute."

"Never heard of them."

Gage's mouth twisted. "I'm not surprised, the scientific community is very good at sweeping embarrassment under the carpet. In the 20th Century, Said and Menchu both falsified their data and materials to support each one his pet theory. Menchu actually won the Nobel Prize. Worst of all, they both got nothing more than a figurative slap on the wrist. Essentially, they got away with it, which casts doubt on the veracity of every other scientific discovery." Gage shrugged slightly, continuing, "Archaeology has always been more vulnerable than most sciences to those sort of pressures because it's never been a lucrative discipline. Archaeology was only financially rewarding to any significant degree when it was first invented in the 19th Century, when Austen Henry Layard found Ninevah and Heinrich Schliemann was digging up the gold of Troy by the cubic tonne. After that, you only got only got the four Good Ps - plaudits, power, profit and promotion – "

"Nice alliteration."

"Thanks…if you discovered a lost city or made some major breakthrough like Rohl's Chronology -"

"Whose what?" Race frowned down at his Guide. "Are you making this up?"

"No," denied Gage. "Do you want to hear this or not?" He suppressed the sensation of feeling that he was a parent telling an oversized schoolboy a bedtime story, but Race seemed genuinely interested.

"Okay."

"Twentieth Century archaeology's biggest failing was an extreme prejudice against the Bible. For centuries, every word had been taken literally, even though some scriptures themselves stated that they were symbolic. Then along came the Enlightenment and the Age of Reason, so people swung to the other extreme of the pendulum and debunked all of it as myth and fairy-tale. Agnostics like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells put the boot in - before they changed their minds - and Charles Darwin was a godsend to the sceptics –"

"I thought Darwin had been discredited?"

"He has now, but remember, back then no one knew he was a thief" Gage pointed out. "In the 20th Century, Darwin was god. The problem 20th Century archaeologists inherited was the fact that in the 19th Century, archaeologists had gone to Egypt - which shared a lot of ancient history with the Jews - taking a spade in one hand and a bible in the other. They excavated all sorts of Egyptian sites and dated them as being synonymous with biblical events, often on evidence that was downright flimsy or really existed only in their imagination. Even Jean Champollion, the Founder of Egyptology, fell into that trap – he claimed that the biblical pharaoh called Shishak at 1st Kings 14:25-26 and 2nd Chronicles 12: 2-9 was the same man as the Pharoah Shoshenk I, for no better reason than their names sound similar."

Race only needed a second to think about it. "Grenade and Grenada sound similar too, but one blows things up and the other's an island in the Caribbean!"

Gage teasingly reached up a hand and patted Race on the head, ignoring his warning growl. "Good boy, go straight to the top of the class - exactly right, exactly the problem. In the Bible, names have tremendous significance, and were often changed after an event of great proportions – Abram to Abraham is a famous example. "Nimrod", who's mentioned in Genesis, meant "great rebel" or "mighty hunter in opposition to God", and was not his birth name. "Saul" meant "chosen as king" and his real name was Lobihu. The Bible writer Jeremiah added the Hebrew equivalent of the letter "a" to the front of Queen Jezebel's name, changing it from meaning "Princess of Baal" in her native language to "Piece of dung" in Hebrew. The word "Shishak" is not a name at all, it's a description – it means "destroyer of cities."

"You're very clever, aren't you?" Race said in mock admiration.

Gage snorted and immediately closed his eyes and began to snore comically, only to open them with a yelp when Race tweaked a nipple sharply between forefinger and thumb. "Talk, Guide."

"Ouch." Gage rubbed the abused mammary ostentatiously, but obediently continued. "In 1993 a body was discovered – named Ozti – that archaeologists found had been dead for 5,300 years. Unfortunately Ozti made every history book in the world wrong, because he was found with a copper axe, a very well crafted copper axe that showed humans must have been smelting copper for up to five hundred years previously to get that good at it. But accepted archaeological "fact" said that humans hadn't been clever enough to smelt copper until a thousand years after Ozti had died. Copper smelting isn't the most inconspicuous trade, but the scientists hadn't just missed it by a century, they'd missed it by a millennium, probably closer to 1500!"

"I think I can see where this is going." Race murmured his understanding.

"Archaeology was still licking its wounds from the Ozti embarrassment, when Rohl published his A Test of Time theory in the year 1997. Basically, Rohl was researching something else and accidentally discovered discrepancies in the dating of Egyptian history. His book said that Egyptian history had been artificially extended – made too long – by three hundred years, and if you took those off, all those biblical events and people for which there was no evidence suddenly started turning up all over the place. They found an ancient dried up tributary of the Nile, which led to an undiscovered city inhabited by non-Egyptians, plus a cult statue that we now know was Joseph the son of Jacob, Egypt's great Vizier. He produced a plausible raft of evidence, but the clincher was the astronomy."

"Stars and stuff?"

"Stars aren't like people," Gage pointed out, "they have no interest in money or power and no reason to lie. If a historian states event X happened in Year A but astronomy tells you it happened in Year D you can guarantee that Year D is right. Rohl took 31 star positions and compared them to the "traditional" chronology – 28 were completely non-compatible and the other 3 were "significantly" out. Then he did the same with his New Chronology; 29 fitted exactly, 1 was a near match and one was out slightly."

"So what was the problem?" Race persisted. "Stars don't lie."

"Race, Race, I told you, mainly money followed by the four other Bad "Ps"- power, patronage, prejudice and politics. The world of academia is not ivory towers, it's street-fighting." Gage iterated. "We're not talking about a minor blip of twenty years either way. Generations of eminent, influential Egyptologists had goofed by 300 years and no one had noticed! Another embarrassment on top of Ozti! Added to that, there was a lot of prejudice against the Bible and many people didn't want it to be proven right. Alexander Pope said, "A man convinced against his will/Is of the same opinion still." A 20th century religious minister said that he could teach a man who did not believe, but the man who did not want to believe was impervious to logic, reason, or any other persuasion. In 1852 a German named Herzog declared the Book of Daniel fraudulent because Belshazzar was "fiction", only to be humiliated two years later when the Nabonidus Chronicle was found. Pontius Pilate was a fairy story until 1964 when a workman turned over a stone slab, and King David of Israel was equally mythical until a stone inscription mentioning a King of the House of David was unearthed in the 1990s. Instead of learning from past mistakes, 20th Century Egyptology and archaeology had spent decades rubbishing biblical history as fairy stories and Rohl was about to smear egg on their faces yet again."

"So what did he do?"

"The anti-Rohl reaction was almost hysterical, but he kept plugging away. Wisely he put the other evidence on the backburner and concentrated on the astronomical evidence. Stars don't lie, so eventually the sheer weight of mathematical fact vindicated him. But Egyptology dating had a knock on effect with Assyrian, which had a knock on to Babylonian, and so forth. It took fifty years of painstaking reconstruction and wholesale re-dating of entire world powers to get it right."

"And that's what you're doing here?" Race looked down at his Guide with alarm.

"Nothing so grand." Gage assured him, tugging the Sentinel back down to snuggle again. "But there is a faction of humanity that wants to think we're homo superior – xenophobic in the genuine sense. We use artificial materials like Plexiglas and plasticrete to build with, whereas the aliens' artefacts are always made of natural materials – wood, stone, metal – even though they're perfectly crafted. That faction is trying to use that to promote the idea that the aliens were primitive inferiors who died out rather than a technologically advanced culture that, for some reason, decided to move on into the unknown reaches of space." Deciding he'd kept Race dangling long enough, he finished, "That's why Morris is so keen on you – he's after an impartial patron when he leaves."

Race paused. "Leaves?"

Yes, there was surprise, puzzlement and pleased relief in the Sentinel's tone, and Gage hadn't missed the flash of jealousy when he'd said Morris' name. "Archaeology likes to think it's radical and cutting edge, but underneath it's conventional and worries what the neighbours will think. The sort of people archaeology prefer are rangy, corn-fed field types or vague academics who look good in tweed. Can you picture Morris in tweed?"

"I'd rather not."

"No one would hire him on a level higher than general dogsbody, but I knew he had the makings of a great expedition leader so I took him on as my assistant and he's now one of the most sought after people in archaeology. He's going to take up the offer of a promotion with Harvard & Yale Xeno-Archaeology Department as a full lecturing professor."

Race had been listening to this explanation, but now his eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Wait….how long have you known that Morris is leaving your employ?"

Gage blinked up at him innocently (here it comes). "About six months."

"And you didn't tell me!"

"I couldn't," Gage confessed, "you're just too cute when you pout." With that, he bucked sharply, throwing the unprepared Sentinel off him.

He scrabbled only a few inches, mainly because he was laughing too much, before he was summarily pounced on and pinned down immovably with a growling Sentinel's face only inches from his own. "Are you teasing your Sentinel, Guide?" The words were breathed in a deep, chesty rumble.

Gage smirked, (in spades!). "Wanna bond?" He taunted.

Race growled again, with delight as his Guide dropped his mental shields totally, allowing full connection between their minds; he sank joyfully into the enveloping mind-harmony of the bond, even as he nipped his Guide's throat in punishment for the teasing, chuckling at the whimpered moan of need it elicited. Gage's body temperature increased and delicious wafts of musk reached Race's waiting nostrils.

Vaguely smug at his foresight as his sweatpants were unceremoniously stripped off and hurled to bounce on the bubble, Gage wrapped his arms tight around his Sentinel, lowering his mental shields and gave himself over to the sensations as Race proceeded to thoroughly brand his Guide.

Planet Eden, Ellison Ziggurat…

"You're sure!"

Reading the hard-copy of The Times in his father's study, Stephen looked up at the edge of excitement, and hope, in his father's voice. Discarding the venerable British newspaper that had continued to publish in hard copy throughout the Inhabited Galaxies over the centuries and saw no reason to add any explanation of origin to its name, he waited patiently until William cut the vidlink.

As he finished, William's eyes glanced automatically towards the clearly heard squeals and shrieks of his son, daughter and grandchildren who were playing in the nearest garden. Instantly Stephen knew it was about one of his brothers, Hunter or more probably, Jim.

William said without preamble, "Jim has gone undercover at Cascade PD, as a Detective –"

"James Philip Ellis?"

"How did you know?"

Stephen shrugged. "Jim got in touch with me and asked if I could "create" a well-paid do-nothing position for a cop called Ellis, so I've got him security guarding my estate at Methylian. I did the Math."

"My contact with the Dark Angels," even with his son, William Ellison was always discreet, "told me that Jim has reported seeing his spirit animal guide – a panther – along with a wolf. It seems that Jim has found the Dark Guide!"

Stephen felt his own heart jump, but felt it best to be the voice of reason. "That's good, but dad, we have to be prepared here. We've both read the reports on what the Dark Guide suffered with Alex Barnes, which means that he's going to view bonding with about the same enthusiasm as bubonic plague. Jim is literally going to have to track him down, which could take months, possibly over a year. Cascade is a Sanctuary for wild empaths, and people from all over the Inhabited Galaxies teem through the city daily, making getting a fix on him more difficult. Plus, once he's got him, he's going to have to help the Guide work through all sorts of crap – who knows what issues the Guide will have after Alex –"

William waved a hand. "I'm aware of that, son. I've got the best counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists and shrinks in the Galaxies on retainer. The Guide will get all the help he needs. I'm just so pleased that at last there's some progress – we have definite confirmation of a Dark Guide alive, and the presence of animal spirit guides confirm that he's genetically compatible with Jim. I have to hope."

"Sure dad." Stephen agreed and grinned back at his father, sharing the ebullience of the moment. When Jim got his Guide and hopefully mellowed, maybe the Ellisons could become a real family again. His musing was interrupted when William spoke.

"What's the sit-rep with de y l'Almonté?"

Stephen sighed regretfully. "I phoned Alphonse and explained, and he got in touch with Ruis."

"And…?" William's tone suggested he already knew the answer.

"Complete waste of time. Ruis just carried on – he never thought his father would really do anything. The night before I was going to sack him, Don Alphonse's men picked him up and bundled him off home. The official story is a medical emergency, that Alphonse is ill. I got our people to corroborate. I've got Mara-Kaur Imran Van den Mikhail of High House Syal as the new manager, she's one of the daughters of Matriarch Madjhuri Syal, and cousin to the LEO Commissioner, Saran van den Mikhail. The Vicereine of Olban is the Matriarch's sister, Saran's late father and Mara's father were brothers. She's laser-sharp and hungry - I think we should keep her and promote her as rapidly as we can."

William nodded approvingly, knowing Stephen's ability to judge character. Stephen had taken an instant dislike to Ruis, and only William's long-time friendship with Don Alphonse had let him ignore his third son's sound advice. "Is she the Matriarch's Body Heir?"

"No, Saran is. He's her sister the Vicereine's only child by her first husband, Aleksandr Van den Mikhail."

In the world of the Oligarchy, all the players were memorized by the time you could crawl. "The Van den Mikhails?" William checked, meaning the Lesser House family whose members were scattered throughout IFP politics like confetti – the Van den Mikhails had a self-confessed love for being ministers, senators, royal courtiers, diplomats, ambassadors and all that swanky intrigue. The current Queen-Empress Consort of the Second British Empire was a Van den Mikhail.

"The very same." Stephen acknowledged. "Most people were very surprised that Patriarch Khan Singh Syal IX would arrange the Vicereine's marriage to a Lesser House son when she was his favourite child and could have had one of us from a High House." In the Oligarchy, arranged marriages decided upon by the family's head – the ruling matriarch or patriarch - were normal. Stephen's own marriage to Karen had been arranged by William; Suzette, Kia and Edmund were already formally betrothed. "But the old Patriarch knew what he was about. The Vicereine was his favourite child by his favourite wife, and her personal happiness was of importance to him."

"It turned into a love match." William estimated, with a certain wistful regret that meant he was thinking of Stephen and Jim's mother, Grace van Zant.

"Yep. They designed Saran within about a week of the wedding, but were sexually active with each other too. The Vicereine's first anniversary present to Alexsandr was making him Viceroy Consort of Olban, an honour she's not conferred any of her subsequent husbands or co-parents of her other children. Sadly, Saran was barely toddling when Khan and Aleksandr were killed in that ground car pile up on Ganymede, making Madjhuri the Matriarch since of course she was Khan's Body Heir, but the Vicereine is her only sister, and they've always been close – according to rumour, the Vicereine was inconsolable when Aleksandr was killed and Madjhuri was a great strength to her. Mara's father was – I think – the Matriarch's fourth husband, one of Alexsandr's brothers. Mara is his Body Heir; the Van den Mikhails are an up and coming family, quite enterprising, lots of potential – their star is rising."

"Right." William nodded, effectively rubber-stamping any future decision Stephen chose to make. New, vigorous blood was always welcome in the Oligarchy; the High Houses had kept their power not by crushing the young Turks but by co-opting them.

High House de y l'Almonté ziggurat, other side of the planet…

Ruis piloted the force bubble jerkily, rage making his movements uncoordinated, easing closer to the T-Rex and watching with atavistic satisfaction as it ripped chunks of flesh from what appeared to be a brontosaurus calf. He was still in shock and his fingers trembled with the need to batter the old fool who resided in the house behind him. How dare his father have him grabbed by those goons and marched back home like a child? And for what, the tittle-tattle of those whores at Demos, who ought to have been grateful he noticed them? Flat chested, dishpan faced cows, who should have been grateful to augment their meagre pay checks with the baubles he'd have given them! The old bastard had forbidden him – actually set the guards to stop him – from leaving the estate. All staff were under strict instructions: no alcohol, no narcotics, no women. Ruis could see the secret smiles on the faces of those peasants, secretly laughing at him even as they called him "sir"!

Attracted by the sunlight glinting off the bubble, the T-Rex approached and Ruis viciously activated one of the electro-defences before hitting the booster, soaring up and away, uncaring that he had burnt the creature badly when he could easily have evaded it, seething and stewing in self-pity and venom. Stephen Ellison, too, how dare he criticise him, a Body Heir, when he was nothing but a younger son, neither Body Heir to his mother or father! They had even replaced him with a woman – as if women were any good for anything other being in a Y-shape! Mara-Kaur Imran Van den Mikhail of all people. Prissy, frigid little bitch, she'd dared to look down her nose at him when she was only one of the Matriarch's platoon of brats. If only she hadn't knocked her drink over at that embassy do, the drug would have obliterated her memory and motor controls and he could have sneaked her up to one of the bedrooms for some fun and no one been any the wiser. Now she was doing his job in his factory with his father and the Ellison family's blessing!

Ruis narrowed his eyes; it was too much. His father had to go! The old fool had outlived his worth decades ago, and was interfering far too much. But not yet…the Ellisons first. He thought about it for a moment, then reluctantly abandoned Stephen as a target. The Patriarch took his family's safety far too seriously for Ruis to be able to get rid of Stephen, or the youngest two. Even Stephen's brats were safe. However, Ellison did have children he couldn't protect…that bastard brat…Howard, Hugh, Huntley – no, Hunter….no, not him. James Ellison. Ruis sneered to himself as he turned the bubble back to the ziggurat. Yes, the famous grim Jim, supposed Dark Sentinel. Not that there was any such thing. Ruis shook his head at the fairy tales some people believed – Dark Sentinels were as mythical as the Easter Bunny, but Ellison was a Bondless Sentinel, which should make things easier. Get Jimmy to zone out on some flashing lights, then Ruis could simply walk right up to the big goon and fire a disruptor into his face while Ellison stood there blank faced and drooling. Ruis smiled, broadly.

To everyone's astonishment, including Gage's own, he found the Big Discovery, the Temple, only six days after his and Race's arrival. The intensity of their Bonding had left both men tired the morning after their arrival and Gage hadn't managed to get his butt out of bed into the shower before nine a.m. To Gage's vast lack of surprise, no one had commented on his late rising as he strolled to the spot he'd earmarked for his personal excavation the previous day. To his amusement, Race was not hovering at his shoulder with every step; the Sentinel had gone straight towards the large coffee pot.

Although still nervous, Morris relaxed when Race displayed a much more jovial attitude towards him than the day before, assured that his rival for his Guide's affection would soon be leaving, although Race still did not allow Morris any time alone with Gage, not just yet. Margreta superciliously ignored Gage, a tactic that failed because, to Race's observant amusement, the archaeologist simply didn't notice, too wrapped up in the new wonders that the excavators were practically tripping over every hour or so. But still, he kept his Sentinel ears perked. It had been only a day after all.

But generally there was nothing to complain about. Margreta's nasal voice was sharply snide, and also salacious in its implications of the "real" relationship between Race and Gage. By lunchtime Race had decided that not only would Margreta be leaving the dig, she would never work in archaeology again, and her career was definitely down the toilet. To Race's surprised relief, however, he was not required to put out any damaging fires of gossip caused by her spiteful tongue. Even those on the dig who did not know Gage personally knew him or of him professionally, and accurately judged his character and proclivities against Margreta's far less likeable personality and known vindictiveness. Those who did know him firmly refuted her spite and her insinuations. Besides, everyone there had read the famous "Guide Diaries" and knew that the relationship between Sentinel and Guide was emotionally intense and that bonding involved physical intimacy, but was totally non-sexual in 99 of Bonds.

More importantly, Gage seemed to have lost his resentment at being captured and bonded; he was much more relaxed since they'd been here than he'd been since the beginning. The second night of the dig, Gage himself instituted a gentle bonding that left both men refreshed and content. Relaxing even further, the following day Race allowed Gage to go off to his "patch" of the dig by himself, while he helped some of the students sift dirt and flirted jokingly.

Coming back to the tent in the evening, Race looked down at himself ruefully. From scalp to sole he was covered in the fine silt dust that got everywhere - time for the second shower of the day before dinner. Grinning, he stepped into the tent and stood as the automatic filters around the entrance sucked the grime and dust off his clothes and exposed body, leaving his clothes clean enough to wear for two consecutive days before washing. Ah, the wonders of the Deluxe model, which included state of the art sonic showers. Not as tactilely satisfying as good old H20, but just as cleansing. Once the air circulators had dried him off, he went back into the main tent and began to dress in fresh jeans and a cool cotton shirt, carefully extended his hearing. That very morning, one of the students had stuck her head in to ask if they wanted one egg or two with breakfast and got a close up and personal view of a naked Race's vital statistics before she fled, flame-cheeked. If he could hear approaches, he'd be prepared.

Instinctively his senses gravitated towards Gage's steady heartbeat and easy respiration, automatically sensory scanning his Guide. Then he picked up Morris, speaking in what could only be a furtive whisper, indicating a clandestine conversation. Dark Angel instincts kicked in, and he dialled up the volume, eavesdropping shamelessly as he finished dressing and putting his boots back on.

"Man, what happened?"

Gage smiled as Morris proved you could hiss words that did not contain the letter "s". "It's okay, Morris."

Morris snorted. This was the first opportunity he'd had to speak privately with Gage without the big Sentinel lurking ominously close by and he flicked nervous glances about. "How did it happen?"

Again with the hissing but no "s". Gage's heartbeat remained steady and his voice good-humoured as he admitted wryly, "I went to the Artefact Exhibition on Sentrus IV, but I forgot before I went that I was due to up my suppressant dosage again. Race was there and the rest is history."

Morris digested this, shifting twitchily from foot to foot, his voice taking on a hushed edge. "Look man, Gage, buddy, are you okay? I mean…I mean…he doesn't…hurt…. you?"

Eavesdropping Race's amusement abruptly evaporated as he realised that "hurt" was a euphemism for "rape". Unconsciously growling he began to move towards the door, focussing on where his Guide and the little pipsqueak were, but then his Guide's low laugh and still relaxed vital signs stopped him.

"No, Morris." Gage repudiated firmly, then his voice softened. "It's okay, Morris….it's…. good."

A part of Race that he didn't even realise was wound tight suddenly slackened deep in his gut at the admission. So, not a ringing endorsement, but it was the first time that Gage had made any sober indication, outside of Bonding - which could be dismissed as pheromones and brain chemicals - that he was actually content with what happened rather than just being resigned to it. Race hadn't realised that he needed to hear Gage verbalise it. (Morris, you're forgiven). Switching off his enhanced hearing, he went out of the tent and was blandly eating dinner when his Guide and Morris finally appeared round the fire.

After four consecutive days of bland stew that teetered dangerously on the edge of being "broth", i.e., weak and watery, plus coffee that was frequently chewable, Race took firm charge of rations, ditching the rota and ushering the expedition members back to their trenches on the grounds that they were doing work much more important and much less likely to result in mass salmonella outbreaks. He then made some urgent tight-beam calls to his private caterers. On the morning of Day Five, the camp awoke to the rich seduction of filtering Arabica coffee beans, that drifted into the tents, caressing noses, easing silkily up nostrils, down into lungs and stroking lushly across taste buds that stood to attention with zeal. Hard upon the heels of that came more olfactory orgasms with the sizzle of frying bacon, sausages and other goodies. Race went from being uncertainly accepted to universally adored. He basked, smugly, aware of Gage's unhidden chuckles, even as his Guide shovelled thick slabs of fresh bacon and biscuit down his gullet.

Mid-morning of day six, Race was considering what to do for lunch, automatically monitoring Gage as usual, when he felt his Guide's heart, pulse and breathing skyrocket. Startling Morris and those near by, he went from standing start to full sprint as he sped through the camp towards whatever threatened his Guide.

"Gage!" Race didn't even slow down as he jumped into the square excavated hole, seven by seven feet wide by six deep, that Gage was standing in.

His Guide was covered in a thick layer of freshly billowing silt dust, turning him completely beige, but his eyes were wide and staring and he stood stock still.

Fearing Gage was in some kind of traumatic catatonia, Race ran his hands over his Guide's body from head to foot, ignoring the feelings of disgust – from Margreta – and embarrassment from the others who had followed his headlong dash, that impinged against his mental barriers, protectively shielding his guide from the wild, negative emotions. There were no physical signs of injury. He pushed against Gage's mind with his own empathic power, but all he got was the image of a massive, carved stone edifice. "Gage, buddy, please. What is it?" Race was starting to panic.

Silently, Gage raised one dusty hand, cupped Race's chin, and gently pushed his head around so he was looking over his shoulder at what Gage was looking at. Obediently turning his entire frame, Race looked blankly at the opposite wall of the pit, crumbling silt dust, a large portion of which had obviously just collapsed into the bottom of the trench, explaining Gage's grimy state – wait a minute….

Sentinel eyes picked up easily what they had anxiously missed before. Reaching out a hand, Race brushed off the silt, instantly revealing a black obsidian stone wall covered with carvings that his Sentinel enhanced memory recalled were not replicated anywhere else on the site. His enhanced sight easily picked up the hair-thin cracked bisecting the "wall". "It's a door," he murmured.

Abruptly Morris let out a yip and then he started to hyperventilate and stutter incoherently. Suddenly finding himself looking up at a mass of excited people gazing down at him like dogs eyeing a marrow bone, Race pulled Gage behind him and glared ferociously at the archaeologists, Sentinel senses instantly on full alert. Gage tried to break free and he brought his Guide to heel with a sharp telepathic command. "What the hell is going on?" He demanded aloud as his Guide obediently stilled.

"It's The Temple!" Morris breathed reverently. "It must be huge." He fastened his eyes on Gage. "If the temple is so big, Rion could have been the capital city of their species!"

Tanny, the youngest and a freshman student at Rainier, made to lower herself into the trench only to freeze as Race snarled. The Sentinel was in control now, unsure of the danger but knowing it did not like these people crowding in above and avidly staring at his Guide. His Guide, no on else's! Mine!

"Everybody back off!" Gage' sharp tone had them all easing away. "Morris, start digging, everyone concentrate on this area. Race, Race, listen to me, climb back up the ladder, yeah, that's right, I'm behind you, promise…come on, Race, they don't want me!"

The Sentinel practically bounded up the last rung, standing tensely at the top and glaring at the people who wisely stayed back. He shot out a hand and hauled his Guide up the last few rungs virtually by the scruff of his neck. Taking Race's hand, Gage firmly led him away from the trench, nodding sharply at Morris in command and approval for keeping his head. A Sentinel was never so dangerous as when protecting their Guide and anyone who panicked and made a wrong move too close to the Sentinel could easily end up seriously injured or killed. The instant they were clear of the throng, Race surged forward, gripping Gage's arm and dragging him, stumbling into their tent. Once inside he sealed the door and began to pace up and down, checking for danger, his senses hyper-alert. He stopped in front of Gage and yanked him close, breathing in his scent, running his hands over Gage's shoulders, down his arms, across his torso and abdomen, round his back and buttocks, back to his groin and down his legs, stroking his hands down then back up from Gage's shoulders to his wrists, clearly agitated.

Gage had to act fast or he would be kept prisoner in the tent for the rest of the day, coddled in quilts and pillows, constantly brought things to eat, drink and wear, cuddled, petted and hugged by the anxious Sentinel in what the Guide Diaries termed either his "Blessed Protector" state, or more irreverently, the "Mother Hen from Hell mode". He had to put the Sentinel back in its box, quickly.

"Race, Race!" He raised his hands and placed them gently against Keegan's cheeks, focussing the Sentinel's attention on him and rigorously keeping his heartbeat and respiration down, as the Sentinel would only interpret his excited need to get back to the temple as fear or distress. "It's alright, Race! They didn't want me, they didn't want to take me away from you, they know I belong to you."

"Mine." The Sentinel affirmed, pulling Gage close, but he was listening, focussing on what Gage was saying rather than just hearing the 'Guide voice', "Claimed and marked, Guide."

"Claimed and marked." Gage repeated. "I'm safe, Sentinel, I'm yours, only yours and I'm safe. I need Race, please, I need to talk to Race, okay?" He repeated his soothing assurances and finally watched as the Sentinel persona suddenly faded, Race Keegan leeching back into the eyes.

"Damn, what happened?" Race frowned, his voice tightening again, "Your vitals spiked, you were frightened –"

(No Sentinel, down boy) "No, I was beside myself with joy" Gage corrected. "When that wall collapsed in the trench I spotted the markings and knew I'd just found myself the biggest temple ever discovered at an alien site."

"It's a major discovery?" Race guessed.

Gage pulled free of his hold with a whoop and actually did a little jig of glee, watched by his bemused Sentinel. "Major, it's the discovery of any lifetime! It's the Tomb of Tutenkhamun, KV5, the Dead Sea Scrolls." Seeing Race's blank expression he explained, "We've found what appear to be small, religious sites at most of the excavations, but nothing absolutely conclusive. But this thing – if I'm right, and I know I'm right – is the Vatican of the alien world, their St. Paul's or Westminster Abbey, the Statue of Christ over Rio de Janero, the Dome of the Rock, Mecca, Angkor Wat…"

"I get it." Race cut off the litany. Taking a deep breath, firmly quieting the Sentinel, he nodded. "Okay, get back out there and dig it up!"

Chapter IV – The Hunting Of A Dark Guide HSSC PD, Halfway Station…

Crystal dumped another set of flimsies on Trey's desk before sauntering off to make her usual unauthorised two hour personal phone call to the latest blonde bimbo – could boys be bimbos? – who was her boyfriend. Trey scooped them up and put them in his in tray; Crystal was unfortunately nowhere near as sharp as her name. The PD had hired her as one of the civilians temps because she was a grand-daughter of Ella, the fearsomely efficient, universally adored Personal Secretary of the Captain of Police – who did a far better job of running the PD than he, and consequently had outlasted the last four incumbents of the job. Crystal was pretty and bubbly and chirpy, but unfortunately woke up in a whole new world every three minutes or so.

Trey didn't care a toss. He would willingly marrying Crystal today for all the work she kept giving him, work that kept him safely down here on the Lower Ground Floor, in Juvenile Crimes, far, far away from Homicide on the Seventh Floor where the LEO Commissioner had decided to have his desk.

Escaping from the precinct on that fateful day for "lunch", Trey had gone home and thrown up the contents of his stomach courtesy of a panic attack, but when he'd returned to the PD he'd expected the fuss to be over. What he found was total chaos. Saran Van den Mikhail had decided that he needed to watch the grassroots cops in action and co-opted a spare desk on the Homicide Division floor. He would start a "desk job" the very next day. The Captain of Police was almost fainting with terror, the Commissioner and others having conniptions, the rank and file both suspicious and baffled.

Trey was utterly petrified. Sentinels avoided Halfway Space Station, which was why Blair, Gage and Simon had wangled him a permanent position on the PD there. Sentinels did not cope well Halfway – the harsh, artificial light, constant din of billions of bodies and machinery on the move 24/7, the odour of billions of hygienically dubious bodies, the dry mouth and unpleasant metallic taste you got after breathing recycled air. For Trey it was ideal; for reasons wild-empath-friendly physicians had not been able to ascertain, he suffered from similar reactions to medication that Sentinels did, in the sense that they didn't made him physically ill, but in that they were unpredictable in duration or effect. Medicine that warned: "can cause drowsiness", could either put him out cold or imbue him with narcotic-fuelled euphoria. Suppressants could either work longer than they should or fade out after only a week. He'd doubled his dosage and increased the frequency of the injections. He could only hope it would be enough.

His outstanding success rate with Juvenile Crimes, especially his ability to deal well with child victims of paedophiles, had led him to be permanently kept there instead of going through a rotation of the other divisions as was usual. Juvenile Crimes was the poor relation of HSSC PD, not having the glamour or media-potential for the Captain and Commissioner that Vice or Homicide had. The Anti-Drugs League donated heavily to the Station Traffic division for their efforts against the flow of narcotics. Even robbery was popular after it failed a jewel heist against a diamond-encrusted matron of a Lesser House, who rewarded them with regular donations. In crimes against children, there were all too often no winners, only victims, and such reports made uncomfortable vid-viewing for the public. Although Trey found such work emotionally draining, sometimes devastating, he was driven by his own nightmare to protect as many as he could, but right now he was desperately thankful that "Juvie" was shoved away in a glorified sub-basement. If he was careful, he need never even meet Saran Van den Mikhail.

Used to a daily diet of calm, controlled, dull meetings, Saran realised suddenly that the unfamiliar feeling in his stomach each morning was anticipation. He was having fun. He hadn't lied when he fed the Captain of Police that line about wanting to gauge the reaction of the rank and file officers about new proposed legislation being considered by the IFP Senate, Parliament and Juristconsulate - it just wasn't going to happen for a couple of years. Neither the Captain of Police nor Commissioner could attend him every second, nor did they have any minders they could lumber him with, as budget cuts instituted by themselves had pared police personnel both LEO and civilian to the bone. Hoist by their petard, they had been foiled before they began.

With few exceptions the vast majority of division Captains had started off as harness bulls working their way up through the ranks and thus knew how the real world worked, not politically ambitious desk-warmers seeking a high profile route to Mandarin Minor Grade level, the next step up after Captain of Police. After the first few days, since he also wore his chained snow-leopard spirit guide badge of Bondless Sentinel status, the cops twigged that they didn't even have to draw the unwelcome attention of superiors by approaching him. Any wanting to express their views simply chatted away to each other in the corner in the knowledge that Saran could pick them up. The Captain of Homicide was a street veteran, whom Saran had already earmarked for promotion, long overdue since, not being one of the CoP's cronies, the man's career had stalled. A frown dinted his forehead thoughtfully. The Captain of Juvenile was a desk-warming crony, and their success rate stats had remained adequate but unimproved for the past few years, mostly because of the work of a few dedicated officers who toiled 24/7 to maintain the status quo. Saran decided that he would take a stroll down there and undertake a little exploration of the department that the Chief of Police – CoP - was so eager for him not to notice….

Rainier University car park, Cascade, Earth…

(Oh no, not now!) Blair turned the key again, but the Volvo wasn't having it. Chewing his lip, Sandburg tried to calm his breathing, giving the car a few moments so he didn't flood the engine. The old Internal Combustion ground cars had enjoyed a brief fad about seventy years earlier. They were dirt cheap to run, the only reason Blair could afford one, but extremely volatile.

This time the Volvo started and he slowly chugged away at a crawl, cursing his folly. He'd crammed everything carelessly in his backpack that morning, intending to take his phial of suppressant at lunch, only to open his backpack and his fingers touch an ominous, damp stickiness. Recovering the phial from the base of his backpack revealed the crack where the suppressant had leaked out and he'd spent the rest of the afternoon in quiet hysteria until he'd been able to reasonably leave. He checked his watch as he went. The suppressant was gradually fading and would disappear altogether any time soon.

The problem with using suppressants, for both Sentinels and empaths, was the "rebound effect". If a Sentinel or empath used suppressants more or less continually, then suddenly stopped taking them for any reason, their abilities "bounced back" much more strongly than before, like a spring compressed in someone's palm that was abruptly released and went all over the place. Admittedly it only lasted a few days before evening out, but for those few days the Sentinel/empath was "broadcasting" his or her respective Sentinel mental signal or empath pheromone musk at a much greater level than before. The only way to avoid the rebound was to gradually decrease dosage, like the person gradually opening their palm and letting the spring de-compress bit by bit. If Blair did not replace his lost dosage, his body would start pumping out pheromone-laden musk scent like a heavy-metal music station suddenly turned to top volume – even a weak Sentinel, never mind the Dark Sentinel he knew to be in Cascade, would scent him a dozen blocks away.

Abruptly the car lurched, throwing him sharply forward, then veered to the kerb and shuddered to a halt with a definite finality that told Blair it wasn't going to move until after receiving a visit from a mechanic. Blair checked his watch then anxiously got out of the car. The huge warehouse in the old business district was all he could afford, but the neighbourhood could only be described as unsavoury. Blair shared his warehouse with rats the size of Great Danes and there were innumerable drug labs, chop shops, sweatshops, porn factories and brothels in every other building. Once there Blair felt very little alarm, for he had nothing worth stealing bar his already very out of date laptop whilst most of his criminal "neighbours" drove an expensive Lexus XXX Super-skiff and could hardly stand up for the weight of the gold they wore. The walk from his car back home though, was an entirely different matter. It necessitated perambulating some of the most deserted, darkest back streets of Cascade, the sort of journey only someone heavily armoured or desperate would undertake on foot.

Glancing at his watch again, Blair heaved the backpack over his shoulder, doing up the front of his battered rain mac. Carefully he removed his combined watch/wristcom and his vidphone and secreted the miniaturised items in his waistband seam in the little pockets he'd made for just that purpose. Into the palm of his hand he glued a small, dull disc, coloured to match his skin so it could not be seen with a brief, first glance. He had no choice. He must already be "leaking", and if he was unlucky and the Sentinel was abroad, he might pick it up. Walking quickly but with his head high as if confident, he left the Volvo.

Agitated, growling, the panther appeared on the hood of his old blue and white truck as Jim crossed the PD parking garage. Fortunately there was no one in front of him to see the look of shock that flickered across his face at something they couldn't see. All the hairs on his nape prickled as, next to the panther, the wolf, much more solid this time, also arrived. The Dark Guide was in peril. Without speech, both spirit animal guides nevertheless managed to convey the succinct command: move your ass, Ellison.

As casually as he dared, Jim got into the truck and drove sedately out of the parking garage, waiting until he was out of sight of the precinct before slowing down. The wolf and panther suddenly appeared in the cab with him, sat side by side on their haunches, tails tucked around their legs. The panther growled sharply and Jim obediently set off at a fast clip. At the first set of lights his intent to go straight ahead was halted as the panther snarled.

"Left?"

Silence.

"Right?"

Approving growl.

He drove quickly but expertly, manoeuvring down tight alleyways and narrow roads according to the panther's directional snarls or growls. Being prepared as the good little Dark Angel he was, he had memorised the map of Cascade as it used to be, and the present day sections of the city that were now re-occupied, and realised that they were heading towards the warehouse district, where 90 of the drug deals in town went down. What on earth was his Dark Guide doing here? Memory of a thousand pessimistic trauma counsellors supplied multiple-choice unpleasant answers. Drug addiction was one of the least things the Dark Guide could have turned to in order to obliterate the memories of Alexandra Barnes. Shooting down a side street parallel to some old factories, he did not glance through the gap to the road going the other side, and did not spot the dark green Volvo parked askew near the kerb.

The four dark lumps had spotted their prey and watched for several minutes before beginning to shadow the youth with the curly brown hair to ensure he was alone. He looked poor, but his backpack might have a vidphone or wristcom, and if he had nothing material, there were other ways to have fun. Lacking a very muscular build, he was only medium height and slender, and even under the mac, they glimpsed what appeared to be a buff pair of buns. Vicious grins creased the features of creatures that were devoid of humanity except in the purely biological sense. They would take it in turns, three would hold him down, while the fourth raped him. At the corner of a particular alleyway they materialised, as if out of the ground. One blocked the entry to the alley, the second blocked the way behind, the third the way in front, the last to his right. So intent were all five on the impending crisis, that they did not hear the distant rumble of an approaching engine, or hear that engine cut out. The four predators were so intent on their victim that they forgot the importance of remaining aware of their surroundings in case something even nastier than they decided to muscle in.

The Dark Guide smiled with equal viciousness as Blair Sandburg, eagerly this time, sprinted to the hindbrain and let the Dark Side of the Force come to the fore. The problem with being a criminal was that they were snakes, and the problem with being a snake was that one day, the small, furry animal they trapped in a corner could turn out to be a mongoose. He balanced himself lightly on the balls of his feet; there would be no Hollywood telegraphing of moves or three of them standing back while one tried to batter him to the ground, all four would jump at once.

Blair estimated distance and methods of attack - the one behind was too eager, he was inching closer than the others; the one on the right had his hand in his pocket, clearly someone who relied too much on weaponry. The one in front of him was the leader, another error in positioning, for Blair simply had to watch him to know when they would attack. As if on cue, the one in front of him tensed, hunching his shoulders and shifting his stance.

Jim slid out of the truck and everything was instantly forgotten as he took his first breath of the cold night air, rich, cloying, sweet with musk, lots and lots of musk. For an instant he teetered on the edge of zone out, until a painful nip to his calf made him yelp. The wolf looked up at him scornfully. He moved forward, speedily but in utter silence, all senses alert. He was barely aware of the wolf and panther near him, pacing him, for every breath he took brought more and more of that wonderful scent to him.

Blair cursed inside his head. As he had hoped, he'd rendered one attacker hors de combat in their initial attack. The one on his right lay in the gutter, the blood pooling underneath his head indicating it would be a long time, if ever, before he got up again. But the other three were more wary now that their worm had turned. He had only seconds before they got over their uncertainty and attacked again, more brutally than before. Of more importance to Blair, however, was his unsuppressed state. His heart was thumping, pulse jumping, breathing elevated. Adrenaline only burnt the suppressants out of his system even faster, which meant that at his current rate of adrenaline production they were almost, if not totally, gone already.

He ducked as the remaining three lunged simultaneously, Behind missing altogether, but Front managed to strike his face, sending him staggering into the road, just missing tripping over the unconscious/dead Fourth. But that was as far as the trio got; the night air was rent by the howl of a wolf and the hideous shriek of an angry cat. The one in the alleyway quite literally never knew what hit him. A single blow from behind snapped his neck and sent the corpse to smash against the wall. As Front and Behind whirled to deal with this new threat, the Dark Guide moved, lashing out not with fist but the rigid edge of his hand into Front's throat, crushing the larynx and setting him to the blacktop to choke to death. Behind was dead from a crushed skull a second later.

Even as the last two fell, dying, the dazed Dark Guide was snatched into a strong embrace, gasping from the adrenaline rush as his face was hugged against a rock-hard chest, a chest from which emanated urgent, wordless, soft croons of comfort. One large finger wrapped an amber curl of hair around it while the others made little stroking motions across his scalp. The Dark Guide swayed toward the shielding mental warmth of the bright empathic beacon, drawn to it, craving it, needing it, barely aware of the large form moving it's other hand to tilt his head back to expose his throat –

Blair Sandburg reasserted himself and, for one frozen moment, found himself clasped with a strong hand supporting his nape, about to be lowered to the floor…pinned….claimed.

A thousand Alex-induced nightmares exploded in front of his mind's eye, and in wild panic he brought up his hand, slapping the palm against the cheek of the larger shape holding him.

Jim screamed as liquid fire tormented every nerve ending for a single microsecond, jerking his body away from his prize. He fell to his hands and knees, ears ringing, spots dancing wildly in front of his eyes, pain shooting through his body. Dimly he was aware of racing, fading footsteps, then he was alone in the night, gasping, on his knees.

For an instant he concentrated on breathing in and out, sucking air into his hurting lungs. Pushing up against the wall he leaned against it. A micro-disruptor, obviously, and highly illegal – they delivered a debilitating, agonising shock to every nerve in the body, which was why their only approved use was in field resuscitation kits or in hospitals as a last ditch measure to kick start the body. The guide had only used the micro-disruptor for a split second, but it would be ten minutes before Jim was capable of doing a slow walk, never mind run, by which time the slight breeze coming off the bay would have dissipated the musk of the empath, and, assuming he lived close by, the empath would have been able to reach somewhere safe enough to promptly inject a mega dose of suppressants. Swaying slightly as his disturbed nervous system finally settled down, Jim let out a snarl of frustration, clenched his fists helplessly…he had been so close! Underneath the musk there had been other, gradually increasing pheromones that every Dark Sentinel gene in his body recognised and howled for…the beginning of Bonding Heat. The suppressants would negate that with the tell-tale musk, but who knew how long the Guide had been on the edge of Bonding Heat, simmering just under the surface? Aware he was digging his nails into his palms in anger, he eased his grip, becoming aware of a tension around one finger. Puzzled, he raised his hand and stiffened as the dim street-lamp glinted weakly off strands of hair. When his body spasmed from the disruptor hit he had obviously torn the curl from the roots. Slowly, Jim smiled – strands of hair. DNA. All Oligarchy worlds had DNA profiles on every citizen, for without one it was as impossible to function as it had been without a social security number back in the 20th Century. It would take him all of ten seconds to run this through the PD database. Quickly, he set off back.

Gasping, Blair ran into the warehouse, slamming the heavy metal door and throwing the bolts. Dumping his backpack he yanked off his coat and shirt with total disregard for the icy dankness of the place, went to his little micro-fridge and yanked out two phials of suppressant, injecting both one after the other. They made him feel slightly nauseous, but the dosage would protect against him being tracked. His scalp stung where the hair follicles had been brutally removed and he allowed himself a second to rub it, but time was of the essence.

Worst case scenario was that the Dark Sentinel, and Blair had no doubt his saviour/captor was a Dark Sentinel, had immediate access to a DNA database, in which case Blair had only hours to escape. The database would list his address as Rainier, but his office had documentation listing his home address. If he wanted to avoid being caught, he'd better be off-world by dawn. Thankful that he'd decided to risk carrying his laptop in his backpack, he quickly gathered all his essentials, his peripatetic childhood with Naomi teaching him how to travel light but well prepared. Just before 11:00 pm he left the warehouse, after burning anything that might incriminate or expose the Underground Railroad or give clues to his destination. Slipping past the other warehouses he walked back into Cascade city via the waterfront along the bay, accurately guessing that the sea breeze would make it too cold for evil, like the four examples that had accosted him.

By the time he got to the Space Port it was 1:30 am and he was nearly blue with cold. Buying the first available first-class carriage ticket to Luna City 7, he bought himself a coffee, then went to the men's washroom. Slipping into a cubicle, he pulled out a miniature single-hole punch and downgraded the plastic token to Second-class, changing the destination to a through trip to Halfway Station in the process, a trick he'd learned from the old Stainless Steel Rat books by Harry Harrison. According to the book's character Jim DiGriz, officialdom wouldn't believe that a person would willingly lose money, so by downgrading the ticket after buying a higher priced one guaranteed that even if the tampering was detected, the bureaucrats would simply assume the issuing machine had been faulty. Amazingly, the 20th Century author had been right, for the Underground Railroad had got many wild empaths off-world by simply purchasing slightly higher priced tickets then downgrading them; the ruse had never been exposed.

At 3:00 am, he was watching Earth recede below him. He shivered. His flight would expose him as an empath but he had no choice. Now he had to decide whether to find some far-flung frontier world to hide on, or whether to go deeper into the IFP civilized worlds and hide there. It all depended on what Trey could fake for him in the ID line. He rubbed his face wearily; Gage's secret tight-beam message that he had been caught and Bonded had been a blow to Simon, Blair, but especially Trey who had been closest to the archaeologist. Gage would still do anything he could to help the Underground Railroad, and wouldn't hesitate to assist Blair in any way, but Blair didn't want to try and contact his friend unless it was unavoidable. He knew little of Gage's Sentinel, Race Keegan, except that he was the idle rich son of some Lesser House, but the Sentinel might deal brutally with Gage if he caught him helping wild empaths. Hugging his backpack on his knees, he let his eyes close, just for a moment.

Rainier University, Earth, next morning…

Jim had made it back to Cascade Central Precinct, finding it suitably bereft of personnel, particularly curious Major Crime people. Accessing the database was no problem as it was simply assumed he was doing some work on a case. Carefully, he fed the strands into the machine, ordering the computer system to filter out any alien DNA, including his own or any that had belonged to the four perps who'd tried to jump the Guide. Seventeen seconds later, a 3D holograph appeared on screen: Blair Jacob Sandburg, Teaching Fellow of Anthropology at Rainier University, currently working on his doctorate on "Closed Societies: LEO personnel". Jim touched the screen with his fingertips as the head rotated around. Gentian blue wide-set eyes, gently softer than his own laser-blue chips of hard ice, gazed blankly out. Ringlets of different coloured amber, bronze, walnut, chestnut, chocolate and golden brown hair reached to his shoulders, and Jim's fingers itched, remembering caressing the satin-soft strands. Unless cosmetically altered, no human had hair that was the same uniform shade or colour; Jim wanted to spend hours combing each hair, watching light glint of gold, rubbing chocolate between his fingers, wrapping amber curls around his fingers…

Shaking his head sharply as he realised he was perilously close to zone out, Jim returned his attention to the Holograph. Blair's skin was dusky gold – his mother, Naomi Sandburg, was a Jewess by birth and still listed it as her "official" religion, though non-practising. Blair's father was unknown, but the beautiful hue of skin, that rich honey gold only mulattoes seemed able to achieve, also hinted at possibly black, American Indian or Polynesian ancestry in the distant past. His nose was slightly broadened at the end, over a wide, smiling mouth, giving him an expression of boyish charm and youthful enthusiasm.

Boyish indeed – he was just twenty-five years old, several years younger than Jim, but he had been at Rainier since he was fourteen on some geek genius scholarship. He spoke forty-two languages and computers loved him. Jim's eyes narrowed as he accessed more records, sending the details to his own terminal at his desk. Blair Sandburg was the Dark Guide, ipso facto, he was the Dark Guide slave to and eventual murderer of, Alexandra Barnes. Yet his medical records were clean. There was no hint of treatment for any traumatic physical and sexual injuries that Alex had inflicted, nor any record of counsellor visits or therapy sessions. The sum total of such notes was a brief notation that Blair had returned to Rainier "run down" due to spending summer recess caring for his seriously ill mother. The summer recess coincided with the time that Alex Barnes had had her slave, and Blair had returned a fortnight after the psychopathic woman had been killed. Jim was willing to bet that Naomi Sandburg, wherever she was, was as fit as fiddle and always had been.

Jim frowned and checked his watch: 0400 hours, and the file's only address for Sandburg was the university. Quickly he made a decision – go home, shower, eat and then get to Rainier. He had no doubt his Guide had already fled or was in the process of doing so, probably off-world, but James Joseph Ellison had an adamantine will, a diamond determination that he would have his Dark Guide, whatever it took, or how long….

To be continued…

© 2002 C. D. Stewart

NB – Yes, Charles Darwin, "founder of evolution" really did steal the idea. He had been working on a "natural selection" idea for 20 years, but Darwin simply wasn't a writer. His prose was confused, long-winded, turgid, verbose, tedious and unreadable. Then in the 1850s, he was sent a manuscript by a young naturalist named Alfred Russell Wallace who was seeking a patron to help fund his expeditions overseas and thought that Charles Darwin, wealthy, famous and influential would be ideal. Concise, clear, informative yet easily understood by the layman, Wallace's work expounded "A Theory of Evolution": "natural selection" and "survival of the fittest", in elegant simplicity. By now middle-aged, the temptation was just too much for Darwin as he read the much younger man's work. While Wallace was overseas, Darwin presented the paper as a "collaboration" between himself and Wallace, the unknown youngster being subsequently eased out of the credits with the help of Darwin's friends, such as Hooker and Lyall, and family who closed ranks around him. Today, Darwin would be doomed, but in Victorian society class distinctions were rigid: Darwin was an old, wealthy, influential and eminently respected middle-class scientist, whereas Wallace was young, working-class and poor. Exposing Darwin meant ruin and being blacklisted by powerful Darwinist allies, keeping his mouth shut ensured a lifetime of easier funding and patronage, plus having one of Victoriana's most eminent scientists "over a barrel". Unsurprisingly, Wallace became complicit in the theft of his own work. Charles Darwin's eventually published "Origin of Species" (1859) is in large parts unreadable due to the atrocious phraseology – for a detailed description of the theft, see the book "A Delicate Arrangement" by Arnold C Brackman.