He kissed her tenderly and thoroughly and then smiled contentedly,

He finished her thought.

he conceded.

Sarida Jones looked down on the slumbering town of Parry Sound and scowled. She was annoyed at herself for not being able to locate the 7th suit and its host by now. Either the recipient had not put on the suit or they were playing it very cagey. She snorted with disgust. The person obviously had not put on the suit. But what kind of a person would not accept this gift, the power to right great wrongs?

The woman who went by the codename Sidestep concentrated and she was instantly elsewhere, hovering over her flat in Spitalfields, London E1, to be precise. The sun was just tinting the horizon as she landed lightly on the roof of the building at Brick Lane and Hansbury Street. Sarida looked quickly around her to make sure she had not been spotted and unlocked the roof access door. She walked down one flight of stairs and opened the door to the flat she shared with her friend and teammate, Carina Sanchez. As she put on the kettle to make tea, Sarida cast back in her memories of the time before she had bonded with the wonderful suit.

In June of 1980, a baby girl had been born to Peter Jones and his wife Rani. They had honoured Rani’s East Indian heritage by naming the girl Sarida Lakshmi Jones. Although her parents were well off, they were still very involved with the environmental, social justice and peace movements, so naturally this activism rubbed off on Sarida. By the time she was in university, she was active in most of the peace and anti-corporate groups, participated in civil disobedience on a regular basis and the first time she had been arrested, her parents had been arrested right alongside her. She did, however draw the line at actual eco-terrorism. It was bad enough that corporations seemed to have little or no regard for life, but she absolutely refused to endanger anyone through her actions. She had been politically active while studying political and environmental sciences to see if it was possible to blend the two. This led her to graduate Oxford with a degree in ecological law. Sarida spent most of her postgraduate year trying to get the government of Britain to enforce the environmental laws that were already on the books. Unfortunately, the current administration of Great Britain wasn’t any easier to shift then any of the previous administrations had been, but then again, few governments were.

It wasn’t until 2006 that Sarida began to suspect that the world governments were merely the pawns in a game controlled by someone or something else. There was no possible way for the governments to consistently ignore the will of their populations and turn a blind eye to what business and corporate interests were doing to the planet, there simply had to be another explanation. She started researching, but couldn’t find anything but ‘conspiracy theories’ and what appeared to be utter nonsense. Then, in mid-August of 2008, she received a package. There was no return address, only a fine mesh suit and a promise of the power to affect the world for the better. Sarida had carefully considered all of her options before making her choice. Could raw power be used to heal the planet? In the end, the opportunity to make a real difference in the world helped to make up her mind. Putting on the suit had been easy enough, and as soon as it had sealed, a recording started.

“Hello, my name is LIN GB. Please lie back on your bed and remain still. The beginning of the bonding process will be uncomfortable, but I urge you to ignore it and sleep. You will receive further instructions shortly.” There had been a click and the recording played again in Spanish, or perhaps Portuguese, she couldn’t tell for sure. She’d felt a tingly, pins and needles type of sensation and fell rapidly asleep.

By the time Sarida woke again, a week had passed and there was no physical sign of the suit. There did seem to be been some sort of built in teaching program that was almost alive and with its help, she quickly mastered the powers that had been granted her. The day she first took to the skies was one of the greatest days of her life. In late November of 2008, others who had received similar suits sought her out and Sarida decided to join forces with them. Adopting the codename Sidestep, she had done her best to steer them towards a campaign of eco-responsibility and of holding major corporations responsible for their destructive ways. The majority of the people on the planet loved what The SIX were doing and had cheered them wherever they had appeared. The governments of the world were not blind to The SIX’s popularity but stopped just short of endorsing them outright, while always trying to control them from behind the scenes. Dreamwalker and Watcher had taken care of that, though. They had all flown to the United Nations General Assembly building in December of 2008 and told the world leaders that they answered to no one but themselves. Dreamwalker finished up by a warning to the people who would do evil, to be on their guard for The SIX were watching. They flew off into the bright winter sky that afternoon leaving a world that would be, hopefully a little more peaceful and safe. After some searching, they had found a small pacific island that had been used in the 1960’s for hydrogen bomb tests and once Waverunner had cleaned it of radiation, it became their base of operations. In short order, they had begun assembling a headquarters and quickly settled into a comfortable hierarchy. The first challenge they faced was in late December 2008. it involved a pair of major world polluters who were located in Canada. The Sudbury incident, as the media began calling it, had been both a success and a failure.

After approaching the giant smelting corporations about reducing toxic emissions, the companies’ executives had literally laughed at them. Driven to a blind fury, Sarida and the others evacuated the employees and the civilians from the refineries and surrounding areas, while Cossack had demolished the two largest super-stacks in Canada, pushing them down into the factories’ structures. The mission was a success considering the fact that the polluters were no longer spewing toxins into the air, but it was also a considerable failure as those same corporate entities had just walked away from the town, leaving bankrupt shells behind them. More succinctly, when the profits had dried up, the corporations simply disowned the City of Sudbury. The SIX had been stunned. They had anticipated some form of responsibility from the giant companies, but were sorely disappointed.

We did our best to help with emergency food deliveries, but the townspeople who had originally cheered for us were now much happier to see us go, Sarida thought bitterly to herself. She pondered this, realizing that this was exactly what Dreamwalker had said they might have to expect. It rankled her nonetheless.

“Sarida,” he said trying to assuage her, “everyone wants a better world, but you’ll find it rare that people are willing to pay the price of personal comfort to achieve it.” They had spent the next two and a half months delivering relief supplies and making sure that the supplies got to where they were needed, and not into the hands of the profiteers. It was during this time that Sarida had remembered something or had it been remembered for her? She wasn’t sure anymore. Something about a hero from Canada or a suit being delivered to Canada or… she couldn’t quite grasp the wisp of memory. She had taken it upon herself to find their ally.

But after these last four months of searching, all I have is a report of the U.S. Special Forces in the Parry Sound area. They could have been training for all I know, she thought, shaking her head. Sarida had her tea and went to bed, it had been a long night. She woke up when she heard the arrival of her flatmate and teammate, Carina Sanchez, who went by the codename Samba. Carina had moved in when both women had joined The SIX. The accommodations were more pleasant than their Spartan quarters on Island SIX.

“Wakey-wakey, Sleepyhead,” chirped Carina.

“Mmmph… oh, hey Cari,” Sarida mumbled, glancing at her bedside clock out of habit. She still wasn’t used to having a chronometer in her head. It was just after 3:00 in the afternoon and she was getting very hungry.

“Hey Cari? Have you had lunch?” she inquired.

“Hi to you too Sarida. No, I haven’t eaten yet and my systems are starting to get insistent,” Carina griped. Sarida grinned at the thought. One thing about these superpowers was that they had to eat enormous amounts of food to keep everything running properly. It struck her as odd too, that all of them previously had instructional voices in their heads for the first four months and then they had all abruptly disappeared last December. Occasionally though, a thought that didn’t seem to be her’s would drift through her mind like an echo. The use of her powers had become second nature to Sarida now and she figured that must be the reason why the pleasant British tutorial voice had gone away.

She got out of bed and quickly dressed for a late lunch. There would probably be no need for costumes this afternoon, and besides, she had fought in her civvies before. Anyway, the uniforms had been Dreamwalker’s idea. Sarida ‘ported them from the flat to the fashionable Soho district of London where they found a café that wasn’t too crowded. They women chose a booth far enough away from the other patrons so that they could talk without being overheard.

“OK Cari,” Sarida arched an eyebrow, “you have the look of somebody with something on her mind… spill Girl.”

“Not really, but kind of. David asked me to ask you if you had made any progress with your pet project,” Carina blurted.

“Oh did he now? He sent you to ask? Well, I’m not sure whether to be flattered or insulted,” she kidded her friend.

“Flattered, I think,” Carina smiled back. “He’s a little intimidated by you. He thought he was an eco-warrior until he met you. And between you and me, I think he just may have a little crush on you,” she winked. They both had a good laugh, then

Sarida proceeded to fill Carina in on her progress or lack thereof. The server came over and took their order with a puzzled frown. Never before had he seen two young women order so much food. They paused until the waiter had left and continued their conversation.

“No, seriously Cari,” Sarida asked, “do you really think David has a thing for me? I mean, I know that the guys are tripping over their collective tongues for you, but David? Over me? He always seems so serious and distant. I don’t get the slightest flash of interest from him, and that’s after you helped me to redesign my uniform to be sexier.” She giggled and smiled happily. She knew she looked good and had never been in better shape in her life, but she couldn’t hold a candle to Carina. Carina was absolutely stunning, and that’s as simply as you could say it. The Brazilian beauty had shown up when all of them had first met, and she had been only wearing a modified string bikini as her costume. The men had nearly dropped their eyeballs when they saw her.

Well, I understand their reactions. I know a knockout when I see one, thought Sarida.

Carina Sanchez was 27 and gorgeous. She was also very unselfconscious about it. She had been born in Sao Paulo, Brazil in November of 1981, to Carlos and Elizabeth Sanchez. Carina had grown up in a wealthy family but she wasn’t spoiled. Both her parents were lawyers and defenders of the downtrodden and indigenous tribes of the rainforest and they had brought Carina up to appreciate the world and its peoples. Nevertheless, she had also discovered she had a true talent for dance when she was still quite young. Her parents had reluctantly agreed that she could study dance as long as her education didn’t suffer. It didn’t. A straight ‘A’ student right through university, she also achieved acclaim as a Samba dancer of the first rank. Carina had managed to balance her law studies and hobby, receiving her degree as well as many awards for her dancing. It was at this point that she run into a quandary, which of her loves to pursue fulltime?

It was around the same time that had she received her mysterious package. This had helped to make up Carina’s mind for her. The ability to help the people of the world was all the choice she’d needed. Almost without hesitation, she’d put on the suit. Carina couldn’t help laughing every time she remembered her earliest abortive attempts to stop the logging of the rainforest. She had made chainsaws become rubber and turned the fuel into water. She’d made the felled trees extremely dense so the equipment was not be able to lift it, all to no gain. They had defeated her with a lawyer… her own mother. Thinking back to those early days, Carina now realized that her mother had been right. All that she’d been accomplishing was simply hurting the workers livelihoods. She hadn’t even made a scratch on the surface of the company they had worked for. She had needed to find a way to help the employees while stopping the destruction altogether. Then she’d had met the other five heroes and joined.

Her thinking patterns had seemed to change subtly as well. She was nowhere near as impulsive as she had been at first, but she’d put that down to a growing confidence in her developing powers. Besides, the fireproof underbrush in the Amazon that she’d left behind as a farewell present was slowing the rape of the forest, at least slightly. Sarida touched her on the arm and her thoughts returned to the here and now.

“Earth to Carina? Are you there?” Sarida prodded gently.

“Oh, sorry Lucky,” Carina responded using her pet name for Sarida. “I was just thinking about when I received the gift of gifts.”

“Who can forget that,” smiled Sarida, “but I was just remembering when we first met, all six of us.”

“That was really fantastic, at first I thought you were all speaking Portuguese, but I soon realised that the suit was translating for me,” she recalled.

“Yes and I remember how you floated in wearing that tiny bikini,” Sarida snickered. “I thought Nikoli was going to have a heart attack! I nearly fell down laughing.” Carina laughed at the mental image, but then she’d been raised in a culture of openness and Nikoli came from a society that was nearly the polar opposite. She had fun teasing him since then and he would always blush and respond with hearty good humour.

“Well, as to our fearless leader’s request for information,” Sarida continued, “I’ve hit a brick wall. If there is a 7th suit in operation, I haven’t been able to find it. All the information that Steve gave me seems to dead end just after that army training exercise.”

“That is annoying,” Carina said, “because I have the same nagging feeling that you do. We’re incomplete as a team somehow and I can’t figure out why,” she complained.

They finished off their meals and paying the bill, they left. Finding a convenient alleyway, Sarida transported them to their island headquarters.

It was simply like opening a doorway in one spot and stepping instantly out into another place. Distance did not seem to matter to her ability at all. Steven Francis was lounging on a sofa when the women appeared, seemingly out of nowhere, and was startled, as usual.

“Oh Geez! I will never get used to people popping out of nowhere! It’s just too spooky!” he bitched as he picked himself up from the floor where he had fallen off the couch. The women looked at each other and broke out in peals of laughter.

“Oh hardy har-har. The boss man wants to see you in the council room, right now!” He gestured over his shoulder as he dusted off his jeans. Sarida and Carina went into the meeting room still giggling. David Andover looked up from his monitor and frowned as the women entered. After the debacle in Canada and all of the public relation nightmares that followed, he couldn’t understand why he seemed to be the only one of The SIX that was taking things the least bit seriously. They’d been given the power to reshape the world but were meeting nothing but resistance at every turn. And now, Sidestep was haring off all over the world looking for a 7th suit recipient based on what amounted mostly to a gut feeling and a few odd occurrences. Worse yet, she was coming up empty at every turn. The team needed to concentrate, to focus on a common goal. David believed they needed to turn up the heat on the moneymen and corporations, then the governments would follow. He couldn’t believe the way that the two companies had simply disowned the entire Sudbury Incident. They had taken absolutely no responsibility for the environment, and then when it looked like they would lose money, they simply walked away, and everyone now looked at The SIX as if they were the bad guys.

Well, this would have to be their new plan: they’d make it so difficult for the conglomerates to make profit anywhere, anytime that they’d have to come on side and help the world rather than strip-mining it. David expected resistance from the corporate world and the puppet governments they controlled, but he was sure the team could handle it. He was also vaguely worried about the disappearance of the voice that had been his companion since he put on the suit. One day last December there had been a loud burst of static and then nothing. It bothered him that so seemingly perfect a system as the suit would have such a dramatic failure.

David Andover was a citizen of Australia. That is, he had been born in Port Douglas, Queensland in 1977 to Norman and Allunga Andover. His father was a white farmer and his mother was aboriginal. David had cared little about farming, preferring instead to learn about his native heritage. His grandfather had taught him all that he knew and the tribal elders approved. They also taught him the skills that had been passed down generation to generation. By the age of 17, he was an accomplished hunter who could follow a trail for days and he’d found he had a talent for dream walking. He’d also gone to a whites’ school and learned the sciences of the western world. Once he’d graduated from Griffith University at age 25, he’d enrolled in police school to learn scientific detective methods. He’d used the knowledge of his mother’s people and the science of his father’s to become a fast rising star in the Queensland police forces. But there David had hit a barrier. His mixed heritage had held him back from promotion more times than he could count. He’d built up resentment that had only found an outlet in studying various philosophies, including those of Marx and Engle. They were flawed of course. The writers had never taken into account that any workers’ paradise would necessarily be overseen by men, who necessarily would be as flawed and greedy as all men were capable of being. No, there had to be a better way, and he’d vowed to find it. He was 31 when he’d received his mystery package. There had been no doubt in his mind that this would be the way to bring peace and plenty to all the peoples of the world and he’d put the suit on without hesitation.

His first plan of action had been to find any others that were similarly blessed. Though, he’d not had to look too hard because the suit seemed to have had the same idea. He’d tracked down the other five without difficulty, but the suit had continued to give him a vague suggestion that there should have been a 7th suit wearer out there. Gathering his comrades and setting up operations, they’d set out to make the world a paradise. Then the suit had stopped suggesting, in fact, stopped talking altogether. It had still functioned flawlessly, but something seemed to be missing.

Paradise was proving very difficult to create. Oh, they had the raw power to force their will upon the world, but that would make them no better than those that exploited the Earth. Given the fact that the very people they were trying to help were resisting them for the most part too… well… no one said it was going to be easy. He glanced up from his thoughts.

“Any luck Sarida?” he asked as the women approached his desk.

“Nope, not this time David. That last lead held the most promise, but it seems that the U.S. military was simply conducting training exercises near Parry Sound. Normal activity, I gather. The U.S. has been on high alert since Sudbury.” Sarida explained.

“I’d figured as much,” David fumbled his attempt at consolation, “and my conclusion is that if there is another suit, it’s inactive. We should stop looking,” he finished gruffly. Sarida sighed disappointedly,

“I guess so. Well, what’s next?” she brightened. David straightened the dossier in front of him.

“Watcher has brought me information about a ring of poachers hunting the white rhino and the mountain gorilla. I think that bringing these criminals to justice will go a long way towards repairing our tarnished image with the U.N. and the world. We are leaving in the morning at 0800 hours. Cossack and Waverunner are still on their cleanup mission, so I’ll brief them when they get back.” David was all business again.

“It sounds like a good plan David, have you decided whether we dump them at the U.N. Headquarters or The Hague?”

Sarida’s enthusiasm was rapidly returning.

“I haven’t made up my mind yet, though, if the world court is alerted to our intentions early enough, they’ll have the time to get the necessary media in place for a proper trial. In addition, we may be able to get Watchers’ files established as acceptable evidence in a court of law, World or otherwise. Go get some rest and read the mission brief in your quarters,” he directed. “I’ll see you both in the morning.”

The women nodded in unison and stood up to go.

“OK David.” Sarida answered. He glanced at Sarida again, fleetingly.

“Oh, and please send Watcher in, would you?” David requested and Sarida grinned evilly.

“Your wish is my command,” she announced while bowing with an exaggerated flourish. Steven was suddenly standing there in the room with them.

“JESUS! Don’t Do That! AAAAHH!” he yelped. David had to work hard to keep a straight face, as Sarida adored playing with the boy. He quickly managed to get his face back under control.

“OK, enough fun and games. Ladies, good night.” Carina and Sarida exited the room laughing.

“Oh man!” Steven whined. “Why do you encourage her like that? It gets weird enough around here without all the practical jokes. I mean, I saw Theo nuking popcorn without a microwave oven the other day,” he pointed out.

“Steven, sometimes I think you’re just a little jealous of the flashier powers around here. I mean, here you are, practically the CIA on legs and you get freaked out by a teleporter,” David smiled gently. “Relax and take a deep breath, we have bigger things to worry about. Sarida’s hunt came back negative again, so I’ve decided, on the basis of your information that we’ll take out the poachers,” he informed the young man.

“All Right!” Steven whooped. “Finally a little action that I can get into. I’ll have ID’s on the poachers almost before we get them.” Steve broke into a huge grin.

For Steven, being the youngest of the adventurers, it sometimes felt like he was the odd man out. He was as strong as any of them, except Nikoli, but he felt like he was always being treated as a kid most of the time, or at best, a souped-up search engine. Granted, his talent wasn’t as sparkly as Carina’s, or as obvious as Niki’s, but he was the ‘go to guy’ that got all of the information, on time and accurately.

The man who called himself Watcher had been born Steven Jefferson Francis to Ira and Jessie Francis in Atlanta, Georgia in 1985. His parents had been heavily involved in Information Technology at Coca Cola while he was growing up and so he had taken to computers and IT as naturally as a duck takes to water. He had built his first PC at the age of 8 and had constructed his first parallel array by 15. In between, he had learned coding and had built his own internet search engine from the ground up. Steve had always been fascinated by information and had frequently amazed his parents with new finds from the ever-expanding internet. Some had been useful, most, frequently had not been, and he’d rarely cared about the relevance as yet, for it had been the information that had been most important.

Steve had received his suit the same day as the rest of The SIX had but he’d been too distracted by his graduate thesis on artificial intelligences to even look at it until the following week. He had bonded with it by his graduation from Georgia Tech and had then discovered a level of access to information he’d only ever dreamt of before. Everyone is on file somewhere and by 2008, most of the files were electronic. Steve could now simply look at you and garner every piece of information that was available on you, sorted by relevance. He had pretty much cleaned up Georgia’s most wanted list by the time Dreamwalker had found him. Steve ended up joining The SIX just before the FBI had attempted to recruit him.

“Oh come off it Dave, those two tease me just for the sake of teasing me and you know it!” he griped.

“Then, little brother,” David patted the boy on the shoulders, “it occurs to me that the best way to get them to stop treating you like a little brother, is to either not react or use your rather frightening talent and scare them off with information they’d prefer was not bandied about. Or, you could just laugh along with them and stop taking yourself so seriously,” he advised the younger man.

“Think that would work?” Steven asked cautiously.

“It worked with my adopted tribal sisters. Once they stop getting a rise out of you, they will treat you with more respect. Anyways, I’ve sent a recall signal to Waverunner and Cossack. They’ll be here by midnight. I’ll take monitor duty till they get in and then catch some sack time. You should get some sleep too… and no internet, OK? I need everyone fresh for tomorrow,” David warned. Steve smiled ruefully.

“OK, I’ll sleep. I am sort of tired. And I’ll take your advice and lighten up. I just get sort of ‘geeked out’ when I’m researching.” Steve left the room and Dreamwalker retreated into his thoughts once again.

Dreamwalker’s recall signal found Theo Baht and Nikoli Rasmussen deep in the former USSR, cleaning up the damage caused by the cold war arms race. Specifically, there were cleaning out former nuclear missile silos of the deadly radioactive contamination left from over 50 years of poor maintenance. Waverunner would artificially speed up the radioactive decay to a point that the lethal elements would become inert and then Cossack would collapse the silos in on themselves. The results were not particularly pretty, but in as little as 10 years time, only curious depressions in the landscape would be evidence of humanity’s psychotic drive to destroy itself. Theo was eager to try to reclaim the Chernobyl area of the Ukraine, however, Nikoli laughingly reminded him that they should leave some work for another day. Nikoli Rasmussen looked down at his former homeland with a pang of homesickness. It was such a great land, full of unfulfilled promise, and only now starting to heal its wounds.

He had been born in 1972 under the rule of Leonid Brezhnev’s communists. He had grown up watching the land of his birth decay until Mikhail Gorbachev had the book closed on communism in 1991. Niki’s parents Samuel and Karen Rasmussen had been party members and had paid lip service to the party line, but had raised their child to be open minded and curious… but also cautious.

He had graduated from the finest university that the Soviet Union had offered and he’d been allowed to do post graduate work at Oxford in Great Britain. When he’d come back, he had been inducted into the Russian air force and had been fast tracked for the cosmonaut training program. It had been at Oxford that he’d earned his two nicknames, Great Bear and Cossack. Great Bear was a reference to his size, Cossack, to his tendency to be loud and boisterous. He’d served with distinction on several MIR missions and on the ISS project as well. He had just begun his training in early 2008 for the U.N. Moon Base and had been chosen as an alternate for the team. In the fall of 2008 however, he’d received his mysterious gift. He had taken a leave of absence then, putting on the suit and telling no one about it. He’d rarely confide in anyone else due to his cautious upbringing. He had made headlines as Cossack however, when he’d stopped a crashing fuel carrier from exploding and setting a training field on fire, by breaking off the cockpit and lofting the rest of the aircraft over a mile into the frozen wasteland surrounding the base. As the security forces had approached, he’d quickly flown off to the east before doubling back to his barracks. Nobody had connected him to the flying man, thank God. He’d resigned his commission shortly afterwards when he’d realized that leading a double life may have been a good idea in the comics, but would’ve been difficult to pull off on a high security installation like the one he’d been based at.

All of a sudden he’d found himself at loose ends so when he’d been contacted by the leader of The SIX, he’d joined immediately. His one true regret, however, was losing his temper and destroying the industrial facilities in Canada. He was now working hard to repay his perceived crime and complete a self-imposed penance with the hope of regaining the full trust of the world and his team-mates. As the eldest member of the team, and the only one with any military experience, he should have had more discipline. He glanced over at the younger man flying alongside him at supersonic speeds. He liked Theo and thought of him as the brother that he’d never had, but the boy was still shy around him. Theo, on the other hand, was slightly standoffish for reasons that Nikoli couldn’t have even guessed at.

Theo was gay. It was as simple as that. For as long as he could remember, he had preferred the company of boys to girls and had grown to find himself sexually attracted to men. He had been born in 1981 in Phnom Penh to Akara and Bopha Baht and he’d grown up with four elder sisters. His early life had been happy for the most part and he’d received a well-rounded education, finding physics the most fascinating subject of all, but he’d sublimated his emerging sexuality with his studies. Culturally, homosexuality had not been seen as a normal development but rather an oddity, like troubled karma. The resulting responses to this anomaly had usually been a mixture of pity, scorn and confusion, which only evoked silence and avoidance from friends and family alike. There had been a much more playful tolerance among his siblings and peers, although his parents had tended to express a much stronger disapproval because his queerness might have meant that they wouldn't have been able to arrange that all-important marriage for their son. Even though violent gay-bashing had been virtually unheard of, such a strong show of culture and conformity (coupled with a complete lack of any homosexual support network) had virtually assured his homosexual tendencies had been kept deeply hidden in the closet. He’d kept his feelings very close to his heart.

The economics of Cambodian life had been even more prohibitive toward openly gay living than any cultural proscriptions. It had been a matter of practicality. Two, or six, could live much more cheaply than one. Multi-generational and extended families had always taken care of each other. However, being openly gay meant being single and probably alone and very likely poor as well. So, for Theo, as daily survival had been more important than personal emotional expression, practicality had prevailed. The sharing of food and shelter had been essential when a month’s pay was often less than $60 USD. Additionally, gays did not fare very well in the political climate of Phnom Penh. The military-backed government had still been in recovery from various brutalizing internal and external wars and at best, the prevailing tone had been conservative. Some Buddhist tolerance could be found among the common people however, and homosexual activity did not encounter the same harsh police opposition as it had in years past, but democracy and human rights had not been highly regarded elements of the political pulse. He’d had little courage to take personal or public risks by being out and obvious. Homosexual behaviour may not have been technically illegal, but it had been far from being openly acknowledged. So Theo had lived his life quietly but secretly he’d prayed for his miracle.

It had come in the form of the suit and its wonderful promise. As soon as he had learned to fly, he’d bade farewell to his family and had headed off to the United States of America. But, he’d discovered, the fear of homosexuality still raised its nightmarish head there too. Dreamwalker had discovered Theo delivering gay-bashers to the police and had immediately recruited him to The Six. To date, Theo still hadn’t ‘outed’ himself to the others, mostly due to conditioning. He still feared the reactions of the people who were closest to him but he was now much more open about his lifestyle on his own time.

The two men arrived at the base around 11:00pm local time. After getting out of their uniforms and into their off-duty wear, they went in to see David.

“Good evening Theo, Nikoli. Please sit down,” David invited. “How goes your reclamation work?”

“We cleansed and sealed 24 former silos. Life will return to those lifeless spots. I still grieve for Mother Russia, but she will heal, thanks to young Theo here,” Nikoli reported.

Theo simply nodded his thanks. He was a man of few words and was still unused to acceptance and praise. Niki laughed and buffeted his compatriot on the shoulder.

“The lad wanted to tackle the great poison, but that can wait a while longer,” Niki continued. David smiled and nodded his approval.

“True. We take on poachers in Africa tomorrow, but I stress that there must be no casualties. Nikoli, you will be in reserve, these are normal humans we face. We must deliver them unharmed to the World Court. I’m sorry if I sound harsh, Niki, but we’ll not be smashing down any walls this time. You’re far too strong for this mission. If however, they resist too much, you can try out your tremor trick on them.” Nikoli smiled sheepishly and nodded his agreement. David continued,

“Theo, you have monitor duty until 0400 hours, then Steven will relieve you. Nikoli, grab some food and some sleep. Good night,” he finished dismissively. Nikoli and David exited the conference room and left Theo to his own thoughts.

To be continued