//------------------------------// // Chapter 31 // Story: Hegira: Eternal Delta // by Guardian_Gryphon //------------------------------// Earth Calendar: 2117 Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact) March 22nd, Gregorian Calendar As the sky began to fade back to its usual dull teal-gray, Fyrenn shook his head slowly. All around, the sound of agonized grunts and groans revealed the bittersweet truth. Salvation had come at a painful cost. The Gryphons and Ponies had been protected from the heat by their fur and feathers. In turn, they had paid with incalculable pain to their sensitive ears. Skye and Stan still had not moved, and tears were flowing freely down their cheeks. Fyrenn tilted his head from side to side and worked his jaw, trying to cleanse the phantom ringing in his head. While the Humans in the area had fared better, in terms of their ears, their skin's relatively weak defenses had left them blistered and seared. Some would need days in a nano-regeneration chamber just to complete the first phase of the healing process. Even Celestia looked worse for the ordeal. The Alicorn had taken up a kneeling stance in the center of a perfectly smooth crater of duracrete. Nothing else remained of the pier besides the peculiarly symmetrical gray bowl of slag, still red hot at its edges and steaming in a dozen places. Fyrenn's breath caught in his throat as his gaze swept upwards. The sky looked as if it had been gashed by a great and terrible sword. Layer upon layer of impossibly strange, and terrifyingly large cloud formations blotted out the usual droll vista. "My God... What have we done?" To his surprise, Varan answered quietly, his normally stoic voice tinged with a strong hint of awe, and relief. "What we had to do. And many millions will be grateful for it." The words finally broke through the icy layers of Fyrenn's shock. He shook himself, and bent low over Skye's shaking form. As he scooped the softly weeping creature up in his forelegs, Kephic bent over Carradan and duplicated the maneuver. Fyrenn cast about furtively for the nearest medical tent. The moment he spotted his quarry, he took off at the fastest lope his hind legs could sustain in bipedal configuration. The Gryphons found the inside of the triage facility to be no less chaotic than the outside. Most of the people within had been spared the heat of Celestia's spell, but the fabric of the structure had done nothing to blunt the force of the sound. Nurses and Field Medics dashed to and fro with bandages, swabs, and injectors. Most were still holding gauze to the sides of their own ears, even as they rushed to treat their charges. Fyrenn spotted a pair of open pallets, and made a beeline for the folded textile slabs, carefully picking his way around the moaning, shaking bodies of the injured. As Kephic laid Stan down on the first cot, he fixed Fyrenn with a troubled gaze. "Will they be safe here? If the impact has generated a large wave..." Fyrenn nodded, "It must have. But I don't think that's a concern for us here. The harbor is protected by a large land-break, and sea-gates. The water level will rise, but it's nothing the barriers and drainage systems can't cope with. They're well overbuilt." As the red Gryphon gingerly laid Skye out on her stomach, he glanced over his shoulder and tried to locate the nearest unused medkit. His brother beat him to the discovery, snatching the small red and gray case from an overturned storage locker, and tearing the cover off so violently, that the plastic split in two. Kephic held up the lower half of the disheveled container, and shrugged both wings. "Do you know anything about treating ear injuries?" Fyrenn shook his head. "I do." Neyla's voice gave the red Gryphon a start. He sheepishly realized that his nerves had been badly frayed by the sight of his two Equine friends laid low. Neyla stepped forward and gently relieved Kephic of the medkit, calmly and carefully selecting a series of chemical vials from a padded compartment in the lower left corner. "Load these for me please." Fyrenn and Kephic quietly did as they were told, while Neyla set to work cleaning blood and fluid out of the Ponies' ear canals. Fyrenn gulped, and squeezed his eyes shut momentarily as a particularly nasty blob of congealed mess came loose from Skye's right ear. Neyla spoke softly, as Fyrenn and Kephic handed her the loaded injectors. "You pick up useful skills working with Human fire teams. They have fragile ears, and Dragons have a propensity for creating loud noises." Fyrenn nodded as the Gryphoness swiftly administered the foul smelling gray chemicals to Stan and Skye. "Is the damage serious?" Neyla nodded, and rose. "Yes. But not permanent by any means. Their own bodies will do most of the healing work, and provide invulnerable infection defenses. I have simply given them something for the pain, something to stem the bleeding, and something to combat potential secondary injury from swelling." Kephic smiled wanly, his ears rising slightly as his mood improved. He jerked a thumb talon at Fyrenn. "Honestly, I don't know how he survived all this time without you. He's a lousy medic, and an insufferable worrier." A flash of mixed emotions erupted behind Neyla's eyes. Fyrenn tensed internally as he watched her ears pin back, and her muscles coil. He knew she was angry, but he also thought he saw confusion, and even sorrow vying for expression in the downturn of her beak. Wordlessly, the Gryphoness stormed out of the tent, nearly knocking over a medic in the process. Kephic winced, and glanced apologetically at his brother. "Sorry... I had no idea that she would---" Fyrenn held up a claw and shook his head, "What have you got to be sorry for? I don't understand it any more than you do. Only Neyla 'gets' Neyla these days." The speckled Gryphon nodded sagely. "You two should really try to work that out. It was easier for the rest of us when you understood each other." Fyrenn rolled his eyes and sighed, shifting his wings nervously. "Sure. Tell her that. I've had about as much success so far as you'd have attacking a brick wall with a barley sheaf." Kephic shrugged once more, and cast a final glance down at Skye and Carradan. The two Ponies had ceased crying, and seemed to have drifted away into a peaceful doze. Fyrenn extended the edge of one wing, and softly brushed the latent tears away from Skye's cheeks, lowering his voice to ensure he did not wake her. "Come on. We've only got a couple minutes before the secondary effects hit. We might as well lend a claw in shoring up whatever we can." The siblings carefully made their way back out of the tent, and onto the remains of the pier. The chaos had slowly begun to settle into an uneasy form of organized milling-about, largely thanks to the arrival of more personnel from the Blue Ridge. Some of the crowd even managed a half-hearted cheer as a series of ambulances arrived from the direction of downtown, and disgorged teams of doctors and paramedics. Fyrenn shook his head and whistled as he took in the view of the city. Dozens of fires raged across the horizon, sending thick black columns of smoke up to join the already convoluted masses of gas, ash, and condensation in the upper atmosphere. The sounds of small transformer explosions intermingled with the dying rattle of a few fragmented firefights between remaining HLF personnel, and regrouped defensive troops. Above the lower frequencies of commotion, hundreds of sirens wailed in a mournful orchestra. The air reeked with the smell of fear, death, scorched duracrete, and spilled coolant. Fyrenn realized with a jolt that several of Vancouver's largest super skyscrapers were missing entire chunks of their interim floors. The gaping wounds had doubtless once provided a hidden home for missile defense emplacements. On any other day, the scene would have been one of pure horror and pain. But for Fyrenn, it was instead a relatively welcome sight. The death toll was absolutely nothing compared to the apocalyptic fires they had all been spared. Spared by a tiny margin. Though the conflict was all but finished, Fyrenn could see and hear signs that the HLF did not intend to withdraw quietly. The most obvious indicator was a fierce dogfight still in progress over the north quarter. Invisible at such range to Human eyes, the red Gryphon could easily pick out the sleek silver form of a Scythe battling the remaining YF-23 at knife-fight range. The HLF fighter was pouring smoke from one wing. Fyrenn knew the outcome was likely fixed, but he nevertheless maintained close scrutiny, until the Widow finally erupted in a satisfyingly large fireball. The FA-26 peeled off into a bank turn, and began strafing runs on a ground position almost immediately. Fyrenn surmised that the pilot had likely located the source of the initial missile bombardment. He tore his gaze away from the horizon in time to see Neyla complete a hurried conversation with Varan, and General Sorven. As he loped over to the group, the Gryphoness pushed off silently, and beat a hasty flight path out over the bay. Fyrenn raised an eyebrow as he closed to within speaking distance of the group. "Where is she going?" Sorven jerked a thumb in a south-southwesterly direction. "The electromagnetic falloff has shut down everything wireless across most of the state. She volunteered to deliver the Tsunami warning to regional emergency coordinators across the bay. They're in the most at-risk area." Varan nodded in agreement, spreading his wings and taking a step backwards. "I have volunteered to deliver information to General Lantry about the situation here." Fyrenn held up a claw, and narrowed his eyes, "You did warn her about the compression wave before she left?" His words were met with total silence, and a series of confused gazes. Kephic sidled up to the group, and raised an eyebrow. "Compression wave?" Fyrenn's eyes widened, and a rising note of panic injected itself forcefully into his words. "YES! COMPRESSION WAVE!" Sorven held up both hands in a conciliatory gesture, and reflexively leaned back. "Relax. I've had my ears treated already. You don't need to shout." The red Gryphon snapped his wings into the open position, and speared Sorven with a furious glare of white-hot rage, and abject panic in equal parts. "How would you suggest I react?! An impact like that creates an airborne compression wave powerful enough to SHRED AIRCRAFT! Anything, I mean ANYTHING that doesn't have a firm grip on TERRA FIRMA is going to be turned into sticky RED PASTE, in less than SEVEN MINUTES!" Sorven blanched. Her skin turned nearly as white as Kephic's snowiest primaries. "I... I'll pass the word to everyone else..." Fyrenn was gone before the sentence left her lips. "MEDIC! *NOW!*" Shierel's voice brought an instantaneous halt to all activity in the room. The strut-rattling volume of the command was matched only by the predatory undercurrents of her tone. No one mistook the words for a request, and no one misapprehended the potential consequences of refusal, or incompetence. The Gryphoness was covered in blood; Her own, her enemies', and that of the misshapen lump cradled in her forelegs. The moment the senior medical officer tore his gaze off her red-soaked beak, and managed to take in the sight of her precious cargo, he lost sight of all else. The man rushed forward and gestured Shierel towards a clean biobed, barking orders to his staff as he went. "Get me a crash cart and prep an IV drip of Tetrasynthokar-four. I want a liter of coagulation nanites and a cellular regeneration chamber RIGHT NOW!" Shierel placed the barely-living remains of Lieutenant McBride on the proffered operating table, and stepped back. As adrenaline finally began to flush out her system for the first time in hours, she had to fight the impulse to shake from a combination of sorrow, panic, and exhaustion. Wisely discerning that the regional hospitals would be overwhelmed, the Gryphoness had carried McBride across the entire city, down to the Naval Station at Mare Island. Not even bothering to locate the base hospital, she had instead alighted on the nearest service tender, and sought out the sickbay. Shierel collapsed in silence onto another empty bed, taking her eyes off of the Lieutenant just long enough to take a proffered towel, and clean some of the blood, viscera, and grit off her face. The man's body had been completely severed at the torso, and left shoulder. All the remained was his head, neck, right arm, and part of his chest cavity. In Shierel's mind, it was a miracle she had been able to keep him alive with the tattered remnants of his vehicle's medkit, a blow torch, and an impromptu transfusion of blood from some HLF 'donors.' She swiveled both ears forward, watching and listening intently as the ship's medical staff fought to save McBride. After several minutes, during which the team pumped the Lieutenant full of nanites and coagulation chemicals, administered multiple forms of electrical shock, and passed him through a cellular regeneration tank, the doctor finally ceased his ministrations. Shierel knew the answer to her question from the expression on his face. She merely refused to accept it until the man spoke the words aloud. "I'm sorry. There's nothing else we can really do for him. He's suffered too much simultaneous organ trauma." The Gryphoness bit back tears, exerting every ounce of her will to keep her voice on an even keel. "How long?" The doctor shook his head. "Fifteen minutes. Maximum." The Gryphoness paused, her mind racing to combat the rising tide of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her faculties, and fill her chest with insurmountable pain. A plan sprang almost fully formed into her brain, and the fires of hope sprang anew. Wordlessly, she rose, and dashed to the access hatch. Almost as an afterthought, she turned, fixing the medical officer with a deadly serious glower. "Keep him alive until I return." Earth Calendar: 2117 Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact) Fourth Month, Twenty Second Day, Celestial Calendar "Your majesty... I hate to disturb you, but---" Luna interrupted the guardspony with a wave of one hoof. "I am disturbed enough by the incessant fussing of these doctors. Make your report in full." The stallion respectfully cast his eyes to the side and nodded. Though the royal physicians had protested stringently, she had insisted they examine her within the comfort of her office. The Alicorn had reclined as best she could on one of her couches, and submitted at last to a series of probing magical diagnostic spells. She felt as if the process was pointless, but she accepted that it was better to be certain in the present, than remorseful in the future. The guard delivered his information in a monotone, though Luna thought she caught a small hint of relief, even happiness, undergirding the words. She didn't blame the stallion for the lapse in control. She was quite relieved to be alive herself. "No deaths have been reported, nor any injury more serious than a gash from falling stones, or window shards. A few mothers have prematurely entered labor, but as far as I know, they are expected to bear healthy foals properly, with no serious risk. As for the structural damage... I saw no intact glass anywhere in the city during my rounds. Several buildings have suffered serious fault, but the rest seem to have been damaged cosmetically only." Luna nodded, and exhaled slowly. "Thank you captain. That will be all for now. Take a moment to find your family and reassure them that the danger has passed." The Stallion suppressed a smile, and bowed his head respectfully. "As you wish Princess." As he turned to exit the study, he paused. "With respect Highness... What of the... 'Condition' of the sky? The clocks read half past noon, yet the Moon is full and the stars are out." Luna allowed herself a small grin. "At present, I am exhausted beyond the capacity to remedy the situation. The night shall last... For a few hours longer." Earth Calendar: 2117 Equestrian Calendar: 15 AC (After Contact) March 22nd, Gregorian Calendar "No! I don't want your hypothesis, your best guess, or your god-damn opinion! I want boots on the GROUND and CONFIRMATION!" Mr. Stalin slammed his fist down on the touch panel, abruptly terminating the communique. He swiveled his head to the form filling the doorway to his office. "WHAT?!" To her credit, the Sergeant maintained absolutely perfect posture and tone despite the verbal assault. "Sir. I'm here to deliver the communications, and intelligence reports you asked for." Mr. Stalin gestured silently for her to enter, and laid his head in both hands. He had been awake for almost thirty hours straight, and he knew the strain was beginning to sap his control. "Make your report Sergeant." The young woman nodded, clasped her hands behind her back, raised her eyes to the middle distance, and began to spout off in a perfectly atonal fashion. "Signals Intelligence has identified definitive references to an impact in the northeastern Pacific Ocean region at fourteen-forty-five, Greenwich mean time. Confidence is high. Reliable sources within Northcom indicate that the assault on Fort Hamilton was ultimately a failure, citing the appearance of... Unexpected assets in the combat zone. All field units in the area have missed scheduled check in." Mr. Stalin sat up, and swiveled his chair around one hundred and eighty degrees. He stared blankly into the display case on the wall, allowing his eyes to rove back and forth aimlessly over the antique firearms contained there. The Sergeant continued unabated. "The Retribution reports moderate damage sustained in its action, but they were able to depart the impact zone in advance of the event, as planned. The projected impact area is still under total wireless silence, and is expected to remain off the grid for at least another two hours. Visual inspection from Retribution, and radio intercepts from the Yorktown indicate with great surety that Vancouver was not severely affected." Mr. Stalin sighed, and spoke without turning to face the officer. "Is there any *good* news?" "Reports from San Francisco indicate our assault there did a great deal of damage to military infrastructure. The Conversion Bureau was destroyed completely, though some local agents believe, from a rough headcount, that an overwhelming majority of the on-site personnel and civilians were evacuated first." Silence descended on the room. After an uncomfortably long period, the Sergeant began to shift her stance from one foot to the other. At last, Mr. Stalin nodded, keeping his gaze fixed on the display case. "Dismissed." The woman returned the nod, spun on one heel, and marched out of the office, pulling the hatch closed behind her. Mr. Stalin sat in total silence, and relative darkness, for the next half hour. His mind required most of the time to simply come to terms with the scale of the failure he had presided over. At last, he rose, and carefully straightened his uniform. He perused the display case of weaponry once more, but with a more critical eye. Carefully, almost reverently, he slid back the glass partition, reached out, and hefted a soviet-made Makarov semi-automatic chemical round driven pistol. Beneath each weapon in the case, a series of clips or loose shells were arranged in an aesthetically pleasing fashion. All were completely functional historical surplus. Some had cost more than a small tank to procure. Mr. Stalin slid the Makarov's clip into the butt of the pistol, and quickly cycled the action, chambering a round. With a small, wry grin, he reflected that it was a perfectly ironic, even poetic choice of weapon given his code-name. He placed the cool tip of the barrel to his temple gently, and brought his gaze up to the room's security recorder suite. He spoke directly to the small black half-sphere. "I have faced demons... And I have lost. I am an unsuitable warden to Humankind. I have failed my species." Then without further ado, or preamble, General Clarence Atherton, third highest ranking officer in the entire Earthgov military, known to the HLF only as Mr. Stalin, pulled the trigger. Fyrenn was used to flying at break-neck paces. He was even used to a constant, insistent worry, that often accompanied him into dangerous situations where the lives of innocents would be at risk. Yet, aside from a few Wisp-related incidents, and the case of Skye's 'death,' he had never felt quite so strong an emotional impetus to push himself beyond his limits and into dangerous territory. He had always known, from the moment he had awoken on the Conversion table, that he was capable, under duress, of forcing his body to harm itself in the process of accomplishing an otherwise impossible task. But he had rarely ever had need of that capacity. He could count the number of times on both front claws. He ruefully decided that once the disaster was well and truly over, he would have to begin counting on his back paws as well. While Pegasi were the undisputed record-holders for pure speed in a straight line, by a factor of ten, Gryphons were certainly the closest runners-up. Fyrenn had known truly skilled flyers to overtake small aircraft with relative ease. He didn't consider himself to be an especially skilled master of his wings yet, but he had managed to develop several unique tricks and tactics by leveraging his love of all things fighter jet related. Much to Kephic's chagrin, he had used and thoroughly abused ground effect in conjunction with gravity to gain enormous bursts of speed within city environments. The red Gryphon beat his wings furiously, remembering everything Sildinar had taught him about using elegant strokes to get maximum force for every last erg of expended muscle energy. Vancouver whipped past at an alarming rate. Fyrenn had been forced to maintain a straight line close to the surface of the bay at first, but as soon as he crossed over into the south-west quarter, a plethora of tall buildings became available as potential avenues for his clever maneuver. Fyrenn selected the closest, and began to shed speed slightly in favor of altitude, denying his body the right to slacken its pace as gravity began to fight him in earnest. At a slower pace, a Gryphon could fly for days at a time without the need for prolonged rest. At the speeds Fyrenn was travelling, he decided it was a divine gift that he hadn't fallen from the sky dead of exhaustion and hypoxia. The entirety of the city spread itself out for him below and beyond. If he crossed his eyes and ignored the smoke, it was almost possible to imagine that it was simply another normal morning in Vancouver. Half a mile up, and moving faster than a VTOL, with the wind whipping through his ears, it was possible to drown out the sounds of chaos below. The Gryphon's ears were mostly filled, in-fact, with the insistent tattoo of his heart as he stressed the organ to its theoretical limits, and beyond. He hadn't been sure what he thought about Neyla. Fyrenn hadn't been sure for three years. He reasoned that, in total, he still wasn't completely sure. But he knew, with absolute certainty, that he cared enough about her to dread the thought of losing her. To dread it in the same way he had dreaded the loss of Skye, or any other member of his small family circle. Whatever confusions, frustrations, fears, and anger he felt; They were instantly subsumed and crushed utterly by the overwhelmingly primal imperative. 'Save your loved one.' A tiny part of Fyrenn's brain noted, with some interest, that he was now in the area that had once been the city of Richmond. Before it became absorbed into Vancouver's megatropolis. The most tell-tale indicator was the Richmond Building itself. The mega skyscraper which Fyrenn was doing his best to summit at full speed. He estimated that he had traveled almost twenty kilometers in a matter of five minutes. That put his average speed at something just shy of one hundred and fifty miles per hour, a velocity he normally sustained in a climb for less than a single minute at a time. The fastest he knew he had traveled for a fact, clocked with pitot tubes, a GPS, and an accelerometer, was just over two hundred and eighty six miles an hour. That had been under ideal test conditions, on a perfect day, down the side of the tallest building in New York, with a half mile 'run up' from directly above. He knew he could have reached over three hundred, but the idea of such a harsh turn into level flight at the bottom of his trajectory had frightened him. He wasn't sure he could manage it without injuring his wing joints. But the fear of what might happen to Neyla, should he fail to reach her in time, far outweighed any mere concern for his own bodily safety. The concept of holding back for his own sake never even crossed the darkest thresholds of his survival instinct, let alone his conscious mind. With a start, and therefore an added rush of adrenaline fluids, Fyrenn realized he had less than two minutes left to reach Neyla. After what seemed to be an eternity, he finally reached the top of the Richmond building. He spared barely a tenth of a second to glance out at Tsawwassen district, and plot his route, before he began his dive. He knew that if he lost focus, or missed something, he would likely end up knocking his brains loose against the side of a building, or garroting himself at speeds high enough to fracture his neck and spine. Even the tiniest guy wire, or the slightest bad air current would be certain death. Fyrenn pressed himself as close to the side of the building as he dared, allowing physics to take over for him as he pulled his wings into a tight, drag reducing configuration, and began to augment gravity with shallower beats. The plexiglass of the tower's myriad floors passed by at a colossal rate, a mere two inches from his paws, claws, and wingtips. The sound was something akin to the passage of a maglev at full throttle. The reflection of the ground below in the tinted glass produced a dizzying effect, as parallax and pure speed met in a way no Human had ever directly observed. To any outside onlooker, it looked as if a bolt of red lightning had struck the side of the structure. Fyrenn knew he had long since shattered his old speed record. Possibly every Gryphic speed record ever set, given that there were relatively few spaces in Equestria where his unique maneuver would be possible on such an epic scale. He knew, because condensation had begun to visibly compress on the leading edge of his wings, a phenomena he had only observed on aircraft, and Pegasi, in the past. As the final ten floors of the building flew up to meet him, he began to flare his wings, doing his best to take a shallow, long arc into level flight. The immense pressure, and pain, caused by the stress almost caused him to lose focus. In mentally decelerated timeframes, pain had a way of taking on a whole new meaning. Much of a Gryphon's most important and difficult battle discipline stemmed from learning to maintain 'bullet time' in spite of major injuries, or emotional trauma. The great gift of bolstered perception was sometimes a great curse in its own right. Fyrenn knew he could ill afford to loose even a tiny bit of the time dilation occurring in his brain. He would wake up in pieces on the street, to find that Neyla was little more than ashes on the wind. If he woke up at all. At last, he completed the turn, his wing joints screaming for relief with an internal force so powerful that he lost track of the seconds he had been counting since the start of his trip. He found himself in level flight, less than ten feet above the roadway, making subtle adjustments to his wings and tail within the space of microseconds to correct his course on a macro level. Block after block fell away at a dizzying pace. As Ladner road blew past, he realized that he had traveled another twenty kilometers. Some swift mathematical estimates, nearly at the expense of his life as he dipped to avoid a low bridge, told him that he was travelling at almost three hundred and fifty miles an hour. An inter-city Maglev would be hard pressed to keep up. He had long since given up beating his wings by the time he spotted Neyla against the backdrop of the sky. The motion, he realized, was actually slowing him rather than aiding any attempt to conserve his forward momentum. He slowly began to spread his wings out from their intake-like configuration, into a more traditional flight shape. His velocity began to drop radically, but he still maintained a comparatively blistering pace. Shedding a few more miles per hour in favor of altitude, he rose to the same flight level as his companion. By his now-skewed estimations, he had only seconds left. He had no desire to discover how much 'give or take' his pain and emotion muddled mind had introduced to the ticking clock. He simply spread out both foreclaws, and let out the loudest shout he could muster. "DOWN!!! NOW!!!" He snapped his wings open into a drag-inducing posture, in spite of the strain he knew he would be feeling for days to come. Neyla barely had time to turn her head to the left an inch before he struck her. The pair fell like a rock towards the top of the nearest building. No sooner had they impacted the concrete surface, than the world seemed to invert in a series of impossible twists. With a sound akin to a passing freight train, the compression wave arrived in force, robbing the Gryphons of consciousness almost instantly, as the building simply shattered around them. Shierel reached the remains of the San Francisco Conversion Bureau in a state of absolute exhaustion. With nothing but the power of her will, and her desperation, she overrode her body's desire for reprieve and began digging feverishly in the rubble, towards the center of the compound. In the distance, she heard, and vaguely acknowledged, the sound of some kind of warning horn. Whatever it was, it held no concern for her. She had only one objective. Failure would mean a total loss of Lieutenant McBride's last, and only hope. It was, in the end, the subtle glow that led her to her goal. By some incredible miracle of providence, a single glistening specimen of the object she sought remained intact, despite the fact that its housing chamber had crumpled around it. As gingerly as a mother might hold her newly hatched fledgling, Shierel withdrew the object from its resting place, and examined it carefully for cracks or nicks. It was intact. She smiled. Hope lived still.