Questions About Sprite Tasks Options

[Oregwath]

I have a couple questions I haven't been able to find answers to in the book. Can a sprite do more than one task at a time? For example, can a paladine sprite sustain a threaded complex form and defend the technomancer at the same time? If they can, would they go away when they didn't have anymore tasks due to sustaining or when they finished the task of defending? What are the general time lines for longer tasks. I know it says 8 hours for an unregistered sprite, but could you give it the task of defending you until the 8 hours was up, or would it be considered to have finished the task after it defended you in the first combat?

I know that having one sprite do several tasks would be a horrible ineffecient way of doing things, but we are going to be doing our first run this week and my techno didn't take any registered sprites in chargen, so he is going into this first mission with an empty stable. I may have to make due with just one sprite in a combat if I screw up the matrix stuff and the drek hits the fan.

**All mention of combat in this post refers to cybercombat, obviously**