"Hey, Jim, congratulations on the record," Rafe called when Jim entered the lobby.

"Thanks."

"Where's Blair? We wanted to congratulate him too," Brown said.

"He had to perform emergency surgery," Jim announced.

The lobby got quiet. Preston broke the silence. "When he's here, you kind of forget that he has a whole other life."

Jim moved into the Retrieval operations room. The shift change was noisy as always. Jim concentrated and used the "multi-channeling" technique that Blair had taught him. It was funny, but using his natural hearing was actually more effective than his chip.

"Hey, Jim, they're making the rookie assignments. I wonder who'll get Tate?" Foley took his seat beside Jim.

Jim kind of hoped it would be him. The last rookie he had trained was Jet Preston, and Jim took extra pride in her fine career. "Whoever gets her will have an excellent officer to work with," Jim said as he pulled out his datapad.

Jim saw that Foley at least tried not to stare at the device. Ellison didn't have access to his chip anymore, and now he couldn't go anywhere without a datapad to assist him. Blair had gifted him with a state of the art pad that was compatible with the one the doctor used. They worked together, and it made sense that they be able to securely communicate from anywhere on the planet. Jim could only imagine how much the device had cost, especially since Blair had ordered the military version which could have an APV roll over it and still work. But with Blair, it was never about money. If Jim had made a fuss, he would have hurt his friend's feelings, which would have led to a pout. A pouting Blair had to be avoided, as the sight could easily bring the not inconsiderable might of the female officers down on Jim's head.

Simon called everyone to attention. He made the results of the Fox and Hounds official. The circumstances of each rookie's defeat was not for public consumption. That would be the first thing their senior officer partner would work on with them.

Jim was tapping the pairings and situation updates into his pad when he noted a message from Blair. "Don't forget to move some clothes into your room. Lunch is still on. How about dinner? I'm cooking. Blair." Jim smiled. Your room.

When he was doing his early training with Blair, he had lived in that room for three months, but he'd considered it as a temporary, albeit luxurious resting stop. When he returned to duty, he had given his keys to Blair. He hadn't considered that whenever he spent the night at Blair's, that he still slept in that same room.

Simon finished the pairing announcements with Tate. She had been assigned to Jim. He moved to stand beside her as they were herded into the debriefing room.

Jim had never seen so much brass in one room, ever. Every captain from every department in the region, the regional commander, Joel Taggart, along with his three counterparts from the United States, the Canadian RO General, and the Academy President. They were obviously none too pleased with all the little tricks Blair and Jim had pulled on the rookies.

"Where is Doctor Sandburg?" Megan Roberts, the Academy President asked testily. Maybe she thought she could bust Blair down from Doctor to Nurse-in-Training.

"Doctor Sandburg was called in to perform emergency surgery this morning," Captain Banks explained. "He alerted me first thing this morning."

"Can we establish a comm-link with him?" Captain Calvin Hu of Anti-Terrorism asked.

Simon was aghast. "In the middle of surgery? Have you lost your mind? What question could you possibly have to ask, that cannot wait an hour or two, and is worth risking his patient for?"

Hu had no answer.

"Doctor Sandburg operates in a zero-tolerance for communications links room. Many of his patients have new or damaged chips or other circuitry," Jim said harshly. He couldn't believe that these people didn't understand how vital Blair's work was. All they saw was that an outsider had made their people look foolish.

Jim's pad vibrated. "Ellison."

Blair's face formed on the tiny screen. "Hi, Jim. My patient is in recovery. Did I miss the meeting?"

"No, everyone, and I mean *everyone* is here." Jim tapped in the codes to send Blair's call to the room's communication set. For the next forty-seven minutes, all the time Blair could spare them, the doctor explained just what he had done to avoid the rookies.

At precisely 10 a.m., local time, Blair signed off. The brass were actually angry that Blair had left them with unanswered questions. But Jim knew Blair had a major experiment to review. Nothing he could share with Jim, but something important.

The rest of the meeting covered what Jim had done, what they could do to prevent others from doing the same, and how much of their budgets this would cost.

Maxine's clever tracking down of Sandburg and Ellison was the ending highlight of the meeting. Blair may have been in hiding, but he was still a doctor with a specialty that meant seconds counted when it came to the health of his patients. She had tracked him through his datapad; something you weren't supposed to be able to do.

Tate knew how many messages were waiting on Blair and where they had come from. When he had answered the last batch before going to bed, she'd had a maintenance signal to backtrack. It had taken over an hour of intense searching to find the pad. She still tripped Jim's alarms with her decoy when she sent it in. She used the flycycle to herd them and the car to trap them. The rest was history.

Jim took Maxine out to his desk and set her up an area of her own. Jet Preston came by and told Maxine outrageous stories of her own bumblings when she had been Jim's trainee. Jim just sat back and smiled.

After Jet left his desk, Jim turned to Maxine. "Any questions?" He was memorizing his new trainee. She was tall, as tall as Jim's 6' 2", well built, and muscular without losing any part of her femininity. And she was gorgeous. That could be both an asset and a liability. Some training officers liked to pretend they didn't notice whether their trainees were attractive. Jim couldn't lie that well. He always noticed beauty.

"It's about Doctor Sandburg. Do you think he'll think that I cheated since I had to use his true profession against him?" Tate asked, looking terribly young.

Jim snorted. "Blair? No, he's not like that. He'll applaud your ingenuity."

"What's he like?" Tate inquired. "It's hard to imagine someone from his circle being here."

"Blair is one of those people who are hard to define," Jim began. "For all his smarts, and he is damn smart, he can be kind of goofy at times. He's got a great sense of humor and of fun. For all his money, he *really* believes in the common man. You'll like him."

Jim's discussion of his friend had to wait; they were receiving a retrieval notice.

Maxine tried not to stare as she watched Ellison receive his information from the computer system, not into his chip but with a very fancy datapad. She knew he had no access to his chip, Captain Banks had explained that to her earlier in the day when he told her that she would be teamed with Ellison.

The captain gave her a chance to protest being assigned to an officer who had no chip. Maxine hadn't hesitated to accept the assignment. Ellison didn't lose his skills with his chip just his heightened senses and data interfacing.

That's when she found out that Ellison had naturally heightened senses. It was an amazing thing. He was just learning to handle those senses with Doctor Sandburg's help.

Then the captain told her that he expected her to protect the somewhat overzealous doctor. Like she needed to be reminded. Then he told her that there would be nowhere she could hide if anything happened to the doctor on her watch. Like she needed to be reminded of *that*. What Ellison left alive, the ladies of the precinct would take care of. Sandburg had many fans among the ladies. He was the talk of the steam room, the dressing area, and the snack bar. Apparently, a night of beer drinking and tequila shots had led to naked dancing and massive dating on the man's part. She wished she'd seen the show, and Maxine didn't believe for one second that there wasn't a single frame of film of the event. One day, she would track it down.

She flash-loaded the particulars of their case and raced to catch up with Ellison. The man moved like lightning.

Their target was Tracy Bingham, who had just returned to Earth from her eight-year sentence of hard labor in the Asteroid Belt some three months earlier. She was currently holding hostages in the Cyber-Neuron Research Facility in Tacoma.

Unlike citizen profiles, all criminal profiles carried photos. Maxine compared Bingham's prison release photo with the picture the C-N security system was sending to them. Bingham had received massive reconstructive surgery; going from what could generously be described as "aggressively plain" to stunning.

Maxine reconfirmed a voice check and a retina scan--it was a match. Where could Bingham have found someone to do the work? How could she have afforded non-medically necessary surgery?

"Lieutenant Ellison--"

"Jim. Call me, Jim," Ellison insisted. "By the time you yell out Your Most Exalted One, Lieutenant Ellison--I'll be dead."

"I'm *not* using that tone," Maxine insisted.

"Every time you call me Lieutenant Ellison, except to introduce me to someone else, I will be hearing 'Your Most Exalted One'," Jim reported.

Maxine snickered. "Okay, Jim, our suspect has had extensive surgery. Either she's committed other crimes for the money or--"

"The surgery was in payment for something else," Jim suggested.

"Exactly," she agreed.

Jim smiled. "I like the way you're thinking."

"What's our plan?" she asked. He was the expert and she was here to learn.

Jim used the finger controls near his flight stick. A floor plan of the area that Bingham was currently in appeared on the screen on the dashboard. "We can't gas because it might kill the cultures there."

Maxine agreed. Neuron replacement was expensive, time consuming, and prone to failure. A single destroyed dish could mean confining someone to a machine-dependent lifestyle for the rest of their life. The neuron-ganglia interface that made her chip enhancement possible may have started in that very facility.

She followed the blue lines of the shafts for air and maintenance. "I could come through the maintenance bot shaft. You would just have to man the shaft controls to keep the independent bots from coming after me."

"Why do I get the feeling you've done this before?" Jim asked.

"Didn't you engage in the Dorm Wars when you were at the academy?" Maxine asked as innocently as possible.

The Dorm Wars were in themselves as much about pride as anything Jim could have done during his Ranger training. The dorms competed for highest student achievement scores in everything from shooting to least demerits. To not participate would have been to say that the rest of the students weren't good enough to circulate in his orbit, which would have left Jim without a friend. No one, no matter how good they were, could graduate without a friend. Being an RO was equal parts individual glory and working as member of a tight unit.

"Pinkerton Hall, hurrah," Jim said brightly.

"Christie Hall, rah, rah, rah!" Maxine shouted.

"Christie Hall was always full of wimps," Jim said levelly.

"Pinkerton Hall was always full of mouth-breathers," Maxine shot back. They laughed.

Maxine was pleased to see that building security had already evacuated all the floors. The building's security chief briefed them on the situation. Bingham had five scientists and two security personnel in the hub room of the propagation lab. Security had locked down all the other rooms in the lab. Now Bingham wanted the doors opened, and for the scientists to turn over several dishes of the chip interface ganglia. While they were being updated, Bingham shot one of the guards in the stomach.

They took the elevator to the 110th floor, two above the scene. Jim removed the maintenance shaft cover and snagged the first bot that sought to protest this action.

Jim gave her a boost, and she pulled up into the shaft. Going through the shafts would be very hard on anyone who had a fear of closed in spaces or that had a poor sense of direction. The turns were tight, but she had always been swivel-hipped. Unlike buildings built before 2230, the shafts of this building had to be wide enough so that the maintenance bots, whose duties covered everything from air filtration to firefighting could go through them. Thus Maxine could also go through.

Jim was quick on the shaft controls, and none of the proprietary maintenance bots interfered with her progress. She moved into position and waited for Jim to make it to the door of one of the lab rooms. While she waited, the guard started coughing up blood.

"Shut up," Bingham shouted. "Shut up! You made me shoot him. Don't help him!" Bingham moved to stop one of the scientists from rendering aid to the fallen guard. As Bingham leveled her pulse pistol, Maxine kicked the grill up, shot Bingham dead, then jumped down the almost 5 meters to the floor.

Jim came into the room a second later. Maxine went into automatic pilot, relying on her training to take her through the suddenly surreal scene. She had killed someone. Maxine had knocked people down, left them unconscious, and even broken bones, but she had never, ever killed anyone.

The guard was taken into the facility's medical center for immediate treatment. The other hostages, though terribly frightened, were unharmed. The other guard told anyone who would listen that Maxine had saved all their lives. All Maxine could think about was that she had killed someone.

They were heading back to headquarters and the paperwork, though no actual paper would be involved, that needed to be done. She hadn't realized that they had stopped until she was standing at the side of the Pursuit Vehicle throwing up her breakfast in a bag that Jim had handed her.

Jim had been waiting for the classic "rookie reaction" to a first time shooting, it was just Tate's bad luck that her first assignment had to be such a "no out" situation. Tate had no choice. Bingham's weapon was pushed to the highest setting, and there wouldn't have been enough of Doctor Angelo to identify except for DNA.

He had been skimming the rooftops, waiting for the telltale signs that Tate's breakfast no longer wanted to be inside her, when he heard "the churn". He landed, pushed her out of the vehicle, and gave her the bag.

The poor kid was pretty shaky when they made it back to headquarters. He went into his captain's office and found the man's son sitting at Simon's desk. "Hi, Daryl."

"Synchronist waves, Jim," Daryl responded.

Jim hadn't a clue what that meant. He decided to pretend that it was a 'hello'. "Right. Where's the captain?"

Daryl was almost as tall as his father, but much more slender. But as the kid grew older, Jim knew that muscle gap would be closing rapidly. "Making the world safe for Retrieval Officers from the evil hordes of button counters," Daryl reported with a very serious face.

"Are they still giving him budget grief?" Jim asked.

"Wait," Daryl got a look of 'other worldly' concentration on his face. "He's on his way and in a fairly good mood."

Jim was dying of curiosity to know what psychic rating Daryl had been given, but that information was strictly need to know, and unless he was sent to retrieve Daryl, he would never have a reason to know.

"I need to talk to him about Tate," Jim explained.

"She'll be shaky for a bit, but she'll be better after today," the young man said confidently.

Jim regarded the handsome young man, with his intense dark brown eyes and curly black hair. Daryl was Simon's pride and joy. A recruiter's dream for both Retrieval and academic academies. It was Blair's personal quest to get Daryl into a top university. "Is that a prediction?" Ellison asked.

"More of a fact," Daryl said smoothly. "Dad's coming down the main hall now."

Jim went out and cut off Simon. "Captain, Tate had to shoot Bingham to save the hostages."

Simon frowned. "On her first day. Poor kid. That means administrative leave for the rest of the day for the two of you. Staff counseling for Tate. Starting with some kind words from her commanding officer." He looked over at the desk where Tate was sitting. "Is it me, or are they getting younger and younger?" Simon went over to Tate and escorted her to his office door.

Daryl exited the office, just before his father could walk in, and introduced himself to Maxine. Daryl closed the door behind the two officers, gave Jim the thumbs up, and made a beeline to the desk shared by the magnificent Henderson twins. Naturally the twins started making a fuss over the young man. Lucky kid.

The twins were just over average height, with honey-bronzed skin, green eyes, and faces that put those old Greek goddesses to shame.

"Daryl, you have to come to our place this weekend," Linda Henderson suddenly announced. Though the ladies were identical twins, it was easy to tell them apart. Even in uniform, their distinctly different personalities shone through. Linda had the more aggressive, more bubbly, more outgoing personality of the two.

Laura was more thoughtful and likely to be introspective. Jim was convinced he'd be quite happy with either lady, but they held fast to their rule of not dating fellow officers. But Jim had to ask, who else would understand them?

"Our cousin is coming in from Perseus," Laura explained, "and she's your age."

"The kid will be on a strange planet with low gravity, smelly air, bad water, and no one her own age to talk to," Linda added.

"We're hoping that you'll introduce her to some of your friends and help her get acclimated," Laura added.

"Why would she leave Perseus for Earth?" Daryl asked, putting into words what Jim was thinking. Perseus was a paradise compared to Earth. It had some of the most spectacular beaches, snow-capped mountains, and lush jungles you could hope to find. Many of the hottest entertainments were filmed on Perseus.

Retrieval got a lot of officers from off-world, but only because Earth provided the most diverse training ground an officer could hope for. Those off-world recruits returning to their homeworld with at least four years experience could expect instant acceptance into their home program and rank equivalent or better than what they'd had on Earth. It was a good deal for everyone.

"She's coming here for training at the Pyramid Group," Linda explained. "We don't know what her rating is, but it was so high that they didn't have anyone on the planet who was qualified to take her to the next phase of her training."

Daryl nodded thoughtfully. "I'd love to meet her. I have a lot of friends who are also in training there, and we're kind of a loose support group for teenaged psi-talents." He smiled. "Don't worry, I'll keep a close eye on her."

Laura and Linda gave him stereophonic kisses. Lucky kid.

"Thanks, Daryl, we knew we could count on you," the ladies said in perfect sync.

Jim found that hopelessly sweet and sexy. 'Somebody hose me down.' Ellison decided to sit down and tackle his paperwork while he waited for his trainee. It would keep him out of trouble.

Simon was really good at this part of the job--motivating and reassuring his people. He could be as tough as they came, but Banks had a soft spot for the people who worked under him.

Simon was the youngest captain Retrieval had ever had. He was almost ten years younger than the average new captain, and he had held the job for four years. Jim and Simon were only a year apart in age. Simon had pushed Jim to take the lieutenant's exam, stating that as a lieutenant he would be better able to pass on his superior experience and training. Jim had been promoted just nine months earlier.

Tate emerged from the captain's office looking much better than she had when she went in. That was good to see. Jim waited while she sat at the computer and completed the shooting review. The "justifiable" verdict took less than two minutes.

"Come on, Tate. We're on administrative leave for the rest of the day." Jim headed toward the doors with Tate close behind him.

Jim wasn't quite sure why he had brought Tate to the Rainier Institute, other than that Blair was there. He had planned to have lunch with his friend, but that was before he had been assigned his trainee. It was so close to lunch time that he couldn't just drop Blair without an explanation.

"This is one place I never thought I would be at," Tate remarked as they entered the campus.

"Don't worry, they still put on their trousers one leg at a time, then debate the significance of choosing the left or right leg to start," Jim quipped. "Hanging around Blair has gone a long way toward making me more relaxed around academics."

Jim led the two of them to Blair's building. Chuck, the receptionist, was begging details of the big chase as he had been grilled by three different trainees.

"Lieutenant Ellison, they were relentless--poking, prodding, and trying to trip me up on what I did and didn't know. I spilled my guts in fear," Chuck grinned. "It was the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me."

"Really?" Jim asked dryly.

"Who would have thought that *I* would be working for such a master criminal? I mean *12,000* library books. Now *that* is a crime spree," Chuck declared. He finger-combed his dark brown curls and gazed earnestly at Jim, his brown eyes almost dancing. "Do you think he would let me be in his gang?"

Jim paused. "You'd have to wear sexy clothes and show your legs," he warned.

"I can do that," Chuck insisted as he lifted the hem of his pants to expose his slender legs. "These are first rate calves. They were meant to dance the night away on other peoples' ill-gotten gains."

Maxine was still smiling as they were ushered into Blair's classroom. A 3-D simulation of a gigantic brain cell was the center of everyone's attention. At least until some of the women caught sight of Jim.

"Bless the Divine One who steered that man my way," one of the students whispered. "Do you think that he likes blondes?" she asked.

"I'm hoping that redheads do it for him," the other woman responded. "He is stunning. I wonder why they are here?"

"Probably consulting Doctor Sandburg on something, otherwise, they would have thundered down the stairs and cuffed someone," the first one suggested.

"He can cuff me anytime he wants," the second one responded in simulated heat.

"Miss Butterfield," Doctor Sandburg interrupted. "Can you explain the steps necessary to code an interface for this theoretical patient."

The blonde student blushed furiously. "I'm afraid not, Doctor Sandburg."

"Miss McCoy, can you enlighten the class?" Sandburg asked.

"No, Doctor Sandburg," the red-haired student replied.

"Then kindly pay attention while I explain it," Blair said sternly. Obviously the students feared the wrath of Sandburg as they all quieted down and returned their attention to the front of the classroom.

Maxine listened but was thoroughly lost by the third step, and they only got more complicated after that. Blair got the questions and answers going fast and furious. When the classroom bell rang, the students left reluctantly.

"Hi, Jim, Officer Tate," Doctor Sandburg said as the two Retrieval Officers walked up to the podium. "I hope you're joining us for lunch, Officer Tate. I want to hear how you were able to end my life of crime."

"Thanks." Maxine hurried to catch up with the doctor as he took off down the hall.

She thought he was talking to Jim, until she realized that Blair was dictating a letter. Nothing sensational, just a 'thank you for your interest' letter. How could he compose a letter, answer students, and navigate through the crowded hall--all at the same time?

They hopped the train and zipped to the Cascade Zoo. Lunch at the Zoo? That would be different.

"Officer Tate--" Blair began.

"Maxine, please," she insisted.

Blair graced her with a beautiful smile. "Okay, Maxine. You must call me Blair. I should warn you, actually both of you, my father will want you to pose for him."

"Your father is an artist?" Maxine asked. She was sure the elder Sandburg was supposed to be an academic.

"Among other things. Mainly, he's a xenobiologist. He's just finished updating the 'Alpha Proxima Alien Seas' exhibit. I promised to stop by. We can have lunch at The Gardens afterwards."

Blair then launched into an 'Evolution of Zoos' lecture, explaining how zoos started as small private collections of captured animals. The next stage was public displays of live animals in small cages. During the late twentieth century, zoos made miniature habitats for their animals and eventually eliminated cages all together. Now zoos held no live animals. What used to be just simulations of natural habitats with robotic animals had emerged to become the full sensory experience that zoos were today. Now the visitor traveled in a fully recreated natural habitat of the animals they wanted to view. The data collected from the actual site fed the computers that performed the simulation.

As a child, Maxine literally had to be dragged out of the House of Stewart Zoo, which was within easy walking distance of both her primary school and her home.

Professor Marcus Sandburg, XI, Blair's father, looked enough like the younger man for Maxine to immediately spot him. He wore his hair longer, his braid hit him almost mid back, talked slower, and wore a goatee, but he was as exciting to listen to as his son.

"So, you're the young officer who brought my desperado son to justice?" Marcus inquired with a slight lift to his eyebrow.

"Yes, Sir," Maxine responded quickly. "He was a dangerous man, and I feared for the public."

"I'm still dangerous," Blair put in.

The elder Sandburg laughed, hugged his son, and kissed Blair's forehead. "Very dangerous, Son. I knew it the first time I held you, and you stole my heart."

Blair grinned. "And I'm not giving it back."

"Would you all like to see the ancient seas of Alpha Proxima?" Professor Sandburg asked Jim and Maxine after he released his son.

"That would be great," Jim said enthusiastically.

They stepped into the large domed room. Two seconds later, the room was transformed into a majestic seascape. The water was more purple than blue, the sea life was alien and wondrous, and even the sea floor was different and dramatic.

"When will this be opened to the public? I'd like to come back," Jim said after they had left the exhibit an hour later.

"Not for another two months, Jim," Professor Sandburg said. "The students will have it exclusively for study first. It's part of our charter as a teaching facility." Jim frowned. "But a friend of Blair's would always be welcomed. Perhaps, you could bring several of your fellow officers for the official unveiling next week."

The older man put his arms around the waists of Jim and Maxine. "Now tell me, you beautiful people, have you ever modeled? Please tell me you're not ashamed of your bodies."

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