I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 - Fourth Movement: Hunter Rose Benjamin D. Hutchins with Janice Barlow Anne Cross Pearson Mui (c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited TUESDAY, JULY 7, 2409 9:57 PM TAU CITY AMPHITHEATRE TAU CITY, TAU CETI /* Big Country "Rockin' in the Free World" _Kings of Emotion_ */ In many ways, it had become the Art of Noise's signature song, despite the fact that it was a cover of a twentieth-century rock number by an artist ill-remembered in the twenty-fifth. They first played it - angry, accusatory - as the Goldfish Warning which kicked off the Battle of Titan in 2406, when a single ship of the International Police Space Force took on an Earthforce battle group and emerged victorious. Despite the fact that most of its lyrics related to a situation far in the past and didn't map to the galaxy's current problems very well (what, for instance, was an "ozone layer"?), "Rockin' in the Free World" became something of an anthem for the dissatisfied youth of a galaxy, youth who saw the shape of the future and didn't like the looks of it. Audiences for the rest of the Irregular Projects Tour had demanded it as the band's opening number, and gotten it; it had been part of the Art's familiar repetiore ever since. Over time, though the anachronistic lyrics remained the same, the band tinkered with the musical arrangement, putting their own stamp on the song, developing their own particular way of performing it. The result, by the summer of 2409, was a song which was recognizably the same as, but markedly different from, the one which scorched the Earthforce tactical network on that day in 2406 - a song which had become uniquely the Art of Noise's own. They'd stopped playing it at the beginning of concerts, but now they often played it at the end. So it was at the Tau City concert. When the band returned to the stage for its third encore, and Kaitlyn Hutchins - who hadn't played an instrument all night because of an injury suffered in the afternoon's police-induced riots - came out minus her white jacket and with her black Stratocaster on, the true fans in the audience knew that this was really, truly the last song. They cheered all the harder as the brown-haired bandleader ripped into the intro. Where the original version of the song just -started-, the whole band full speed ahead, the Art of Noise version's intro had evolved into a lone, angry statement by Kaitlyn's guitar, the bandleader and her black Strat setting the tone for the song to come. Her arm was hurting - indeed, as she played, the bandage on her wound turned slowly pink - but after a show like this one, she couldn't make herself leave the finale to anybody else. She accompanied herself through the first four lines of the first verse now, before her band powered in behind her and kicked the whole thing into full, pounding life. From there, the pace never let up until the bridge before the third verse, when Kaitlyn and bassist Moose MacEchearn chopped their way through an odd alternating solo before Kate sang almost confidentially: We've got a thousand points of light for the homeless man We've got a kinder, gentler machine gun hand Then the rest of the band, led by drummer R. Dorothy Wayneright, exploded into the quiet behind her and, as the song surged to something slightly -faster- than its original pace, Kaitlyn raised her voice to a defiant cry: We got department stores and toilet paper Styrofoam boxes for the ozone layer We got a man of the people says "Keep hope alive" We got fuel to burn, we've got roads to drive Keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world Gotta keep on rockin' in the free world Keep on rockin' in the free world They drew out the outro for as long as they felt it was right, the guitarists trading impromptu solos while the rhythm section thundered behind them, finally drawing it all down to a series of mighty all-hands hits, the last of which blacked out the stage and left the audience alone with their applause. Backstage, flushed and breathless, the band members congratulated each other. Well, most of them did; while Kaitlyn sat in a chair with a towel draped around her neck, chugging a bottle of spring water and beaming, Miki Kaoru crouched next to the chair and changed the dressing on her injured arm. "Well," he said, "I hope you're satisfied, Kaitlyn, you've opened it up." "I kn-know," Kate replied mildly. "It's m-my arm, you kn-know. I c-can feel when s-s-something h-happens to it." "I still don't see why you didn't ask Liza to heal it," Miki grumbled as he bandaged the wound again. "If w-we hadn't b-been able to f-f-find another g-guitarist, I w-would have," Kate replied, "b-but it's r-really not that b-big a deal." Indeed, even though she'd stressed the wound - a glancing blaster burn - and made it bleed, it didn't seem to bother her much. She smiled and went on, "Anyw-way, it w-was worth it. Th-this was the b-best show w-we've done in a w-while." "Maybe we should hire Shiori full time," said Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan from her koala-like position on the raspberry-haired guest guitarist's back. "I wouldn't want to steal Miki's job from him," Shiori replied, grinning. "I'm just glad I was able to help." The others from the landing party - most of the crew of the starship Valiant - flooded into the dressing room, congratulating and hugging and high-fiving, and the place took on the usual post-show party atmosphere. After the initial surge of cheer was through, the group had to make their usual post-gig decision - go in search of food, or just head back to the Valiant and eat there? Normally the choice was made to seek food locally, so as to explore their latest stop, but tonight came after a long, trying day, and great show or not, the musicians and their friends were tired. They decided just to head home. Utena Tenjou, the Valiant's captain, was prepared to go along with that. She hadn't participated in the excitement on the surface, having still been seeing to the Valiant's orbital arrangements and so forth when the riot broke out in Tau City, but it was getting pretty late all the same, and she was tired and looking forward to a good night's sleep as she pulled out her communicator and hailed her ship. Nothing happened. With a grumbling sound of consternation, Utena fiddled with the dials on the device and tried again. Her second attempt silenced the conversations near her, and by the third time, everyone in the room had fallen silent to listen. "Tenjou to Valiant, come in!" She regarded the communicator with a look of mingled puzzlement and annoyance, then flipped it to a different band. "Tau Ceti ATC, this is Captain Utena Tenjou of the IPS Valiant." "Tau Ceti ATC, Lieutenant Collins. Go ahead, Captain." "I'm having trouble reaching my ship," Utena told the aerospace traffic controller. "Can you crosslink? I may be having a power problem with my transmitter." "10-4, Captain Tenjou, stand by." The hum of an open channel continued for a few seconds; then Collins's voice returned, sounding confused. "Captain, you say you're on the ground right now?" "Uh... yeah, Tau Ceti, that's right. I'm at the Tau City Amphitheatre. My passengers just finished their concert and we'd like to go home and get some sleep." Another pause; then another voice, this one more authoritative, replaced the original controller. "This is Major Brent Spencer, Tau Ceti Aerospace Defense Force. Captain, is there some problem? We thought you'd left with your ship." "Uh... " Utena gave the communicator a very odd look, then said, "Say again, Major Spencer? I thought you said 'left with your ship.'" "I did," Spencer replied. "Valiant left the system two hours ago." (At Tau Ceti ATC Headquarters in orbit, Major Spencer backed involuntarily away from the comm speaker as it emitted the sound of an entire roomful of people simultaneously saying, "WHAT?") When Utena had everybody shushed again, she added, "Left the system?! Control, there were seven personnel aboard, only three of them on duty. At least two of them were asleep. Where would they have gone?" "Wait 1, Captain, let me pull the departure clearance record. ... OK, departure clearance request was filed for Epsilon Indi." "Epsilon Indi?! Who filed that request?" "Er... well, according to the log, -you- did, Captain." Utena stood in utter silence, surrounded by her dumbfounded, shock-faced shipmates, for several long, silent seconds. "Captain?" said her communicator. At the sound of Spencer's voice, her jawline hardened, her eyes narrowed slightly, and her aspect instantly changed from tired and confused to sharp and businesslike. "Major Spencer, I am declaring an emergency," she said flatly. "IPS Valiant has been hijacked." A pause, and then Spencer's voice came back just as businesslike, "Roger, understand. We'll alert Starfleet." "Thank you, Major. Tenjou out." Utena closed the communicator and stood for a moment in silence, her face unreadable. Then everyone started talking at once - for a second, until Utena held up a hand and silenced them all again. "I don't know, dammit," she said. Then she flipped the communicator open again and dialed it to a special dedicated sub-ether band. Four seconds later, the voice of Lieutenant Luornu Durgo, yeoman to the Admiral of the Fleet, answered: "IP Space Force Flagcomm, Lieutenant Durgo." "Tenjou, Valiant," said Utena, her voice still no-nonsense and hard. "Broken Arrow. I repeat, Broken Arrow. Give me the Chief." It was a glum crew that made its way through the streets of Tau City at a little past ten-thirty that night. They weren't sure where they were going or what they were doing. All they knew was that they were dispossessed, dispirited, and hungry. The initial shock had given way to a sort of numb bafflement. They moved along one of the bazaar streets in a random cluster, all together but each alone with his or her dark thoughts. Some showed at least a cursory awareness of the food and other goods being hawked all around them, but despite their hunger, nobody seemed inclined to buy anything. Kaitlyn walked in the middle, surrounded by friends but alone, her expression more closed even than the rest. Then, as the group's ragged vanguard turned a corner, Kozue Kaoru (who had been trudging glumly along next to her twin brother Miki, lost like everyone else in thought) suddenly made a noise of startled recognition and bolted out of the formation. Ignoring the cries of consternation and query from behind her, she threaded her way hastily through the thronged bazaar, grabbed the shoulder of a man browsing at a Salusian shyam stand up ahead, and spun him around. The man, a shortish, well-built, dark-haired, casually dressed human of apparent middle age, responded by ducking from under Kozue's hand and taking a half-step back. The bazaar crowd, well-accustomed to the breaking-out of fights by now, pulled back along the sides of the lane, giving the combatants plenty of room as Kozue, still ignoring her compatriots' what-the-hell shouts, threw a punch at the stranger's head. He ducked and counterattacked, but Kozue weaved gracefully back from the swipe, settled for an instant into a martial-arts ready stance, then launched herself again at her unknown quarry. They went back and forth for about a minute in complete silence. Duelists, foremost among them Utena, Miki, and Corwin Ravenhair, pushed their way to the front of the crowd to watch as their friend and the unknown man she had attacked for no apparent reason fought. Kozue was a relative newcomer to the martial arts, not counting fencing, which she still considered a sport. She'd picked up bits and pieces here and there from a friend of Corwin's father, a man who stopped by the apartment Kozue shared with the young god in New Avalon whenever he had the time to show her another move or two. It was hardly what one would call serious instruction, but Kozue's natural kinesthesia, the same sense which made her such a phenomenal pilot, served her almost as well as R. Dorothy's positronic body memory in such matters. She remembered moves faster than most people, and what she didn't get exactly right, she had enough body control to make up as she went along. The result was a thoroughly haphazard-looking but remarkably effective fighting style all her own, one which set her apart from all others in the ranks of the Order of the Rose. She could fight with a weapon or without, and the weapon didn't have to be anything a regular person would identify as a weapon at first glance, either. The stranger she'd attacked was good too. Though his style was a bit less random-looking than Kozue's, it still contained features of a number of different formal styles to the eye practiced enough to recognize them. He was fast, damn fast, and he moved with great precision as he and Kozue traded blocks, kicks, and punches while maneuvering in rough circles around each other. After a few moments of watching this, it dawned on the observing Duelists, all of them fairly serious martial artists of one type or another themselves, that they -weren't- fighting. They were sparring, or not even that - showing off. It was like an impromptu pair kata, dynamic and flashy without any intent to injure. They knew each other... which made all this basically a complicated secret handshake. With that realization, everything became clear, at least to the Duelists among the observers. Though the man Kozue attacked hadn't stood still long enough for any of them to see his face, they all now knew who he was. A moment or two later, they traded one last double forearm block, spun as one to the left, each seized an object on one of the bazaar-stand trays and dropped another object in its place, then spun again, leaped past each other, whirled, and flung the objects they'd picked up at each other as hard as they could. "Ah!" said Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan brightly as the thrown objects unerringly found their marks - squarely in the combatants' mouths. "That's the secret Wudan technique of the Sweet Bean Manjyuu!" She blinked. "But that means -he- must be... !" Kozue scarfed down the manjyuu she'd caught in her teeth, then threw her arms around her opponent with gleeful sounds of greeting. Then she disengaged, grabbed his arm, and dragged him over to the rest of the group. Utena, along with the rest of them, got her first good look at the man's face. It was an unremarkable Asian face - a bit shopworn, in fact, though in an endearing kind of way - with a largish nose and a lot of laugh lines around the eyes. Like most people who watched movies not involving tragic love affairs, she recognized it immediately, or at least thought she did. "Uh, Kozue," she said hesitantly, "is this who I think it is?" "You better believe it!" Kozue replied, beaming. "You've never met?" Utena shook her head. "Well, then!" Kozue drew herself up into something vaguely like severe formality and said, "Captain Tenjou, may I introduce Grey Lensman Chan Kong Sang of the Experts of Justice. Master Chan, this is Captain Utena Tenjou of the International Police Space Force Reserve." The most powerful empty-handed martial artist in the galaxy raised his eyebrows, looked slightly embarrassed, hurriedly finished chewing his bean roll, swallowed hard, grimaced in faint discomfort, then grinned ingratiatingly and said, "Call me Jackie." Before anyone else could do much of anything, a uniformed Tau Ceti Military Police officer cautiously eased out of the (dispersing, murmuring) crowd and, with his hand well clear of his holstered sidearm, said carefully, "Captain Tenjou?" "That's me," Utena replied in a tone just shy of a you-wanna- fight-about-it? growl. "Governor Kallon's compliments, Captain, and he'd like to see all of you in his office if it's convenient." Utena gave a short, mirthless laugh and replied, "We've got noplace -else- to be right now." 10:47 PM GOVERNOR'S PALACE TAU CITY, TAU CETI Governor Charles Kallon was genuinely upset. This was plain to see. The portly little man was sweating and muttering, even more than he had been at the end of the riot. He stood behind his desk, a large and expensive one made of Salusian greelwood, and fidgeted with a pen while the grounded majority of the Valiant ship's company filed into his office. He didn't even seem to notice that one of his guests was accompanied by a full-grown and testy-looking Siberian tiger. Kaitlyn's face was pinched with worry and pain. Her wounded arm, which hadn't bothered her at all in the after-concert rush, now throbbed most disagreeably, and the new dressing was stained pink again. She had torn the wound anew in the process of punching a wall back at the Amphitheatre. Sergei followed her to one of the tall-backed leather chairs and curled up protectively at her feet. Seven of the Valiant's company had been aboard the ship when it was taken. One was a Lensman, and could not now be reached by the other Lensmen in the group - never a good sign. Seven people, seven friends and comrades, now in the clutches of... well, nobody really knew that yet, although everyone had a prime guess. Klaang tai-Kalaan, science officer, deck officer at the time of the hijacking. B'Elanna Torres, assistant chief engineer. Kanna Kirishima, chief of security. Dr. Aaron Ajlond-Mui, chief medical officer. John Hyatt, ship's AEGIS operative, in sick bay following a mysterious collapse after the afternoon's riot. Constable Janice Barlow, IPO CID, staying to find out what was wrong with Hyatt. And Juri Arisugawa, the Art of Noise's manager, who had had a very difficult, exhausting day and, as such, had gone back to bed once the band was all set for their evening's concert. Juri was also Kaitlyn's lover, a fact not lost on anyone there (except possibly Governor Kallon). It was her lover's unknown fate, not the throbbing of her wounded arm, which drew Kate's face tight with pain. The members of her band hovered nearby, seeming uncertain whether to get closer would be to offer comfort or to crowd their leader - all except Miki Kaoru, who sat on the arm of Kaitlyn's chair and was simply there, demanding nothing, offering whatever he could give. She surprised him by reaching up almost absently and taking his hand. Perhaps she didn't realize she was doing it; her eyes were focused a million miles away. That didn't bother Miki. Juri was his oldest friend, aside from his twin sister Kozue, and he was terribly worried about her as well. Kaitlyn, at least, he could help. The tall, blonde, brightly-clad form of Liza Shustal came in just after the Valiant's company, led by another uniformed cop and trailed by her exec and chief of security. As she crossed the room, she smiled a private, reassuring little smile for Kaitlyn, bent down, and kissed her on the cheek. Kate's eyes widened in surprise, her free hand reaching up to touch the spot where her wound had been; Liza winked and kept going, crossing to stand near Azalynn. Once everyone was gathered, Kallon sat down behind his desk, fidgeted for a moment more with his pen, and then said in a surprisingly strong and steady voice, "I want you to know, Captain Tenjou, that I had nothing to do with this. Something very unpleasant is going on here, and it's doing so without my knowledge or consent. As planetary governor, that makes me very unhappy. You and your crew are my guests, I invited you here with nothing but goodwill, and someone on Tau Ceti is taking grotesque advantage of my hospitality." Now that he'd started talking, the governor seemed to hit his stride. His face darkened as he put his fists on his desk, stood up, and said, "When we find them - assuming you leave anything - rest assured, I will make them pay." It surprised some of the Duelists a little how menacing that promise sounded, coming from this tubby little balding man in an expensive but crumpled suit. With that sentiment expressed, Kallon deflated a little; he sat back down and said heavily, "I cannot begin to tell you how embarrassed I am." Utena, who had come here fully prepared to read the riot act to another Earth Alliance politician who thought he could get away with something, blinked, thrown off her stride by the governor's blunt admission of embarrassment. This gave Kallon a chance to get hold of himself again, square up his sloping shoulders, and say, "If there is anything I or my -legitimate- forces can do to help you," (with a nicely done significant little emphasis on 'legitimate'), "please." Utena opened her mouth to reply, her fury completely defused by the governor's cooperative manner, when the intercom panel on Kallon's desk beeped. "Yes?" he inquired. "Your Honor," a voice replied, "ATC has a full hyperspace vector trace and course projection data set ready for Captain Tenjou's pursuit force." "Ah, excellent. Thank you, Winema. Tell Major Spencer to stand by, will you?" "Very good, Your Honor." Visibly pleased, Kallon turned his attention back to Utena. "Tau Ceti has no space fleet of its own," he said, "so I cannot offer you a pursuit vessel, but I can at least help with navigational data. We can transmit it to Starfleet, the IPSF, the WDF - whoever you please." "That sounds like my cue," said Liza with a faint smile. "Elisabeth R'tas Shustal, Your Honor, of the Ishkarat trading vessel Kuratai. Captain Tenjou and I are old schoolmates, and my crew and I would be happy to take her and a strike force in pursuit of the Valiant." Utena smiled. "Is your ship fast?" Liza's return smile was just slightly challenging. "Fast enough," she replied. Then she dropped the smile and said, "There's just one problem - our crew space is limited. I can't take all of you unless I leave a lot of my own people behind." "How many could you squeeze in?" "For a few days? Half a dozen or so." "How are you fixed for small craft space?" "Plenty. #1 hold is empty, and can be converted for that kind of thing in no time, if your small craft have magclamp landing gear." Utena nodded, scratching thoughtfully at her chin. Then she turned to address her crew and passengers. "OK. We shouldn't all go chasing after the ship together anyway; it'd be a hell of a note to catch her and then find out that our friends were here on Tau Ceti the whole time." Kaitlyn nodded. "Ag-greed. S-some of us should s-stay here and inv-v-v-investig-gate." "Right. So." Utena swept her thoughtful azure gaze across the group, then said in a crisp, commanding tone, "Corwin, Kozue, I'll need you two with me for two reasons - to help me run the ship when we catch her and to help me catch her in the first place. Anthy, I assume you'll insist on coming with me. Saionji, I assume you'll insist on coming to look after Anthy." She cracked the slightest smile as she said this, pleased even under the circumstances by the trace of color the observation brought to Saionji's face and the snickering elbow it got him from Wakaba. "The rest of you, stay here and see what you can find out. OK?" Nods all around. "Good. C'mon, Liza - there's no time to lose." Liza nodded, kissed Azalynn goodbye-for-now, nodded to the governor, and left the office with her crewmates. Utena gathered up her team. Saionji said a quick goodbye to, and got a hearty kiss and a "be careful" from, Wakaba. Corwin made eye contact with his sister and nodded to her, his face determined; such was their rapport, that was enough. Kozue turned to Chan and said, "Will you stay here and help Kaitlyn's group?" "Of course!" Chan replied at once. Then he smiled and added, "What do you think the Chief sent me here to do?" "The Chief sent you?" Kozue said. Chan nodded. "How'd you get here so -fast-?!" The Grey Lensman smiled a trifle smugly and replied, "Ancient Chinese magic." Kozue gave him a skeptical look, then muttered, "When this is over with, I -will- make you tell me. You realize that." Chan beamed. "I'm counting on it." "OK." They traded a quick one-hand punch combo, a shorter version of their "secret handshake", and then Kozue clapped him on the shoulder and went to join the assembling team. Utena looked them over as if satisfying herself that they were all up to the job, then crossed to Kaitlyn and leaned over her chair to speak to her privately for a moment. "If she's out there," she said softly, "we'll get her back. We'll get them all back. I promise." Kate smiled and patted her old roommate's hand where she was leaning on the arm of the chair. "I kn-know. And if th-they're h-h-here, w-we'll have them b-back by the t-time you get b-b-back." Utena grinned solemnly. "The Federation lives forever." Kaitlyn nodded. "The F-F-Federation lives f-forever." They clasped hands, and then Utena straightened, smoothed her uniform jacket, and led her pursuit team out. Kate looked at the doorway where they'd gone for a moment, then stood up and said, "I g-g-guess we'd b-better t-try to g-g-get some r-rest. W-we w-won't be any g-g-good to anyone if w-w-we d-don't." "Do you have accommodations?" asked Governor Kallon. "I assume you were planning to sleep aboard your ship." "We'll f-f-f-figure s-s-someth-th-thing out," Kate replied. "Despite all that's happened, I still consider all of you my guests," said Kallon with great dignity. Then he opened one of the side drawers of his desk and ceremoniously removed a fat stack of small rectangular papers, which he very deliberately placed on top of his desk and then pushed toward the front. Azalynn crossed the room, examined the papers, then looked at the governor with a puzzled expression and asked, "Why do you have a big wadge of cash in your desk drawer?" Governor Kallon smiled. "That, my dear, is the governor's discretionary evacuation fund." "Ahhhh," said Azalynn with a knowing nod. Kaitlyn looked in similar puzzlement at the money for a moment. Was the governor trying to buy them off? She really believed at this point that he was genuinely on their side... Then she realized what it truly meant. The cash enabled him to pay for their lodgings without knowing where they were - his way of tacitly acknowledging that they had no reason to trust him or his office. More than that - it might well be his way of silently indicating that they -shouldn't- trust his office by calling and telling his staff where they were staying. She met his eyes with her own, nodded slightly to show she understood his message, and picked up the money. "W-w-we'll b-b-b-be in t-t-touch," she said. Governor Kallon nodded graciously, then got up to bow them out of his office. "There's an art to hyperspace tracking," Liza told Utena as she led the way from the Kuratai's docking bay to the bridge. "Jandia is one of the best. We'll find the Valiant, have no fear." Utena nodded. "I believe it," she said. "This is some ship," she added appreciatively. While they walked down the ship's main stem-to-stern corridor, she'd been admiring the finish work and the richness of the materials. It looked more like a corridor in one of the buildings back at Tenjou Academy in Cephiro than the inside of a starship. "The finest in the Ishkarat fleet," Liza replied proudly. "Salusian architecture, Zeta Cygnan weapons, Corellian propulsion systems - all fused together with t'skrang genius. There isn't a warship of cruiser class or under that the Kuratai can't beat." "I hope we don't have to test that against the Valiant," Utena mused unhappily. "We won't," Corwin Ravenhair said positively. "Once Liza catches her, you and I and Kozue can stop her." Utena nodded, but didn't look quite convinced. Corwin put his hand on her shoulder and gave her a reassuring smile. "Trust me." Utena nodded and smiled, a little shyly, duly reassured. To her right and slightly behind her, a quiet little smile crossed Anthy's face as well at the sight. The group climbed a ladder - no turbolifts on t'skrang ships - and emerged from the ladderwell onto the bridge - though it took Utena a moment to realize that it -was- the bridge. It looked more like an expensive restaurant which happened to have highly advanced warship controls in it. Utena had never before seen a starship bridge that featured bright-shined brass railings, dark wood paneling, a nice Oriental rug on the polished teak deck in front of the captain's chair (which appeared to be a brown leather Barcalounger), tapestries, or... "The chandelier adds just the right, oh, je ne sais quoi," Utena observed as Liza settled into her (nicely cleaned) conn. "Doesn't it, though?" Liza replied, pleased. "I took it from the grand ballroom of an Elasi novaliner that was carrying slaves conditioned to tell customs inspectors they were third-class passengers. Filthy bastards. I spaced their officers," she added conversationally. "Tea?" As a steward brought the Valiant team comfortable chairs and cups of tea with saucers, Liza settled back in her overstuffed conn, crossed her legs elegantly at the knees, and said, "It's your show, Jandia." "Aye aye, Captain," the tiger-striped green t'skrang replied. Jandia R'lajj Metolin Ishkarat was the Kuratai's executive officer, an unusually brisk and serious t'skrang. She did still have her whimsical side, but she was all business now as she went to the navigation station. "All right. We can pretty safely assume they -aren't- heading for Epsilon Indi. And it stands to reason they would have used the hyperdrive," said Jandia thoughtfully as she sat down and started tapping at controls. "They don't have an engineer qualified in the DDNG's warp system, so they're not going to play with that, and using a metagate would have been too obvious. "Now, they're too smart not to know that Tau Ceti ATC would be able to track their exit vector, so most likely they only jumped for a few light-minutes on that vector," the t'skrang officer went on. "Just long enough to clear Tau Ceti's long-range sensor net. Then they'll have jumped again on a different vector. They may have done this several times to try and shake off pursuit... " Jandia's jaws opened slightly, revealing her many sharp teeth. "... but they won't succeed." The Kuratai went to yellow alert and broke orbit just before 11 PM Tau City time, following the first of the hyperspace vector tracks provided by Tau Ceti ATC. The hunt was on. WEDNESDAY, JULY 8, 2409 1:31 AM DECK 3 (THE LIDO DECK) IPS VALIANT Psi Corps Enforcer (Cybernetically Augmented) Second Class Medrick Mutabi stood with his hands folded behind his back outside the locked door of the Deck 3 restroom, waiting. "C'mon, Jerry," he said in an irritated tone after about five minutes. "What're you, reading 'War and Peace' in there? I realize this is a small ship, but we've still got a lot of cargo space to search, and I -ain't- doin' it all -alone-." Mutabi thumped on the door with an armored fist. "So c'mon already!" Jerry Gillis's response was muffled by the door and unintelligible, but sounded argumentative. "Hey, man, don't cop an attitude on me!" Mutabi snapped. He banged on the door again, harder this time. "C'mon!" Something - it sounded like a booted foot - struck the door from the inside in response, banging not once but several times in a frenetic rhythm. For a second, Mutabi thought his comrade was just indulging in a bit of a tantrum - Gillis could be immature at times, a tendency not helped by the extensive cerebral modifications involved in becoming an E(CA) - but then it slowly dawned on him that there was something subtly wrong, something agonal about the rhythm. "Jerry? You OK?" No answer; just the muffled sound of something... moving. Metal against metal, a sliding, scraping sound. "Jerry? I'm comin' in, man, so you better not be foolin' around." No answer. "OK, I'm comin' in," Mutabi repeated. He backed off two steps, leveled his blaster carbine, and slagged the lock, then yanked the door open and aimed his weapon inside. He had just enough time to start screaming. 3:41 AM UNKNOWN LOCATION Mark 47 anti-intruder gas is a remarkable compound. It can rapidly and painlessly incapacitate almost ninety percent of the carbon-based animal lifeforms in the galaxy and a few other types besides - ninety-seven percent of the galaxy's known sentient species are affected by it. In humans, still the galactic baseline for sentient life, it generally takes effect in under 30 seconds and lasts for somewhere between eight and twelve hours. Most subjects awaken as though rising from a deep sleep, without the stereotypical splitting headache people always expected from tactical hypnotics. Janice Barlow did wake with a dull, throbbing pain at the base of her skull, but it wasn't from the gas. She sat up slowly, instantly wary. Her tactical awareness, born on a homeworld renowned for its dangerous fauna and honed as a member of the IPO's Criminal Investigations Division, reminded her instantly upon regaining consciousness that she hadn't lost it normally. People didn't just keel over in the middle of sickbay, not when they were just keeping an eye on a patient. Reflexively, she reached for her Varista, to discover that her sidearm was gone. She hadn't been wearing her Frame - there seemed little need for light powered armor in sickbay - and the rugged WDF flightsuit she favored for duty coveralls seemed undamaged, but all the pockets had been cleaned out. She couldn't tell anything much about her surroundings, because the place was pitch black. She switched her cybereye to night-vision mode... ... and had to suppress a surge of panic when nothing happened. OK, calm down, think, she told herself firmly. Your eye's probably just offline. Diagnostics aren't responding either. Your other eye's probably just fine; it's too dark in here to tell. She raised her hand to the back of her neck, where the low pain was, and felt metal. That was a point in favor of the "offline" theory; the device was a neuroprocessor inhibitor collar, a measure commonly used in holding prisoners so equipped. The pain was a sympathetic reaction to the electromagnetic noise with which the collar was flooding her neuroprocessor's primary cerebrospinal leads. That also explained why she couldn't raise Mitra. She hoped the remote hadn't been damaged; she knew it was just a robotic battleslave, but she'd become fond of the thing. Hopefully it was just locked up someplace, like its owner. She sat in the dark for a few minutes - with her processor disabled and her watch taken, there was no way to tell exactly how long - and fought against the waves of irrational fear that kept threatening to sweep over her. The little fatalistic voice in the back of her head kept whispering, Well, you're blind again - now what are you going to do? Janice gritted her teeth, growling, and then the grimace became a grin as a thought occurred to her. "Lights," she said, and to her surprise, a light turned on. She was still blind in one eye - her cybereye was, indeed, offline - but her organic one still worked just fine. It showed her that she was in a pretty standard-looking jail cell. The room was about eight by eight, with thermofused walls, ceiling and floor all the same dull grey color, several dull glowstrips on the ceiling, and no furniture. The bunk she was sitting on was part of the wall. It wasn't clear from a simple visual inspection where the door was. A button on the wall next to the bunk deployed a retractable toilet and sink from the far corner, then retracted it again. "Seexty days in ze coola," Janice murmured wryly. Then she thumped the wall with the side of a fist. It was solid, probably metal with a plasticized coating, and it didn't make much of a noise. "Hey," said Janice experimentally. "Hey!" A small rectangular opening like a Judas window slid soundlessly open in the wall opposite the bunk. "Yes?" a metallic voice replied. "OK, look," said Janice. "I'm not dumb enough to expect you to answer me if I ask who you are or why you've got me locked up, so skip that. But can you at least gimme something to -do- in here? A book or something? I'm not picky, but with my processor offline I can't even play Shanghai." A metallic chuckle replied, and then the window slid shut again. "Jerk," Janice grumbled. A moment later, however, the window opened again - slightly wider, this time - and an object fell through. Janice got up, approached the object warily, and then blinked in surprise. It was a baseball glove, quite well-worn, and when she picked it up, a baseball fell out and rolled into the corner. "Uh... thanks," said Janice, perplexed. "Don't mention it," the metallic voice replied, and the window closed once more. Janice retrieved the baseball, sat on the bunk, and then discovered belatedly how frustrating it was trying to play catch with oneself without any depth perception. "Jerk," she muttered again. 4:11 AM LIDO DECK IPS VALIANT E(CA)1 Lois Raghavan suspected her esteemed colleagues Gillis and Mutabi of, in the parlance of her native New England, dubbing off. They were 11 minutes overdue for their top-of-the-hour check-in, and, in fact, no on had heard from them in a couple of hours. They should have finished sweeping the cargo holds by now and reported to the lunchroom on Deck 2 for a patrol assignment, but there was no sign of them, and they didn't answer the com. Their transponders were still active, though, and showed them down here in on the cargo deck, in one of the forward holds. That probably meant that they'd found something which amused their tiny brains in that hold and were still playing with it, too wrapped up in their recreation to bother with little niggling annoyances like the chain of command. Raghavan was no rocket scientist either - it was hard to be, when significant bits of your brain had been removed as part of a cybernetic process immunizing you against telepathic attack - but she was brighter than -those- two nimrods. She keyed the door to the hold, waited for it to grind open (like most cargo hold doors in the galaxy, it was a big, reinforced power affair wide enough to drive a small truck through), and entered. The hold was dark and mostly empty; there were a few crates and boxes here and there, and a stack of what looked like luggage in the back, but the ship wasn't hauling anything special and most of the spare parts were stored aft, near the freight turbolift to Main Engineering. So much for the shiny-object theory, thought Raghavan as she switched on her searchlamp and moved further into the hold. The most interesting thing down here is a case of lube oil for the shuttlebay doors, and I don't want to think about what those two morons would find amusing about that. "Gillis? Mutabi?" she called. Her voice echoed eerily in the darkness, but she paid that no mind. Fear was another one of the things which went by the wayside with the surgery E(CA)s underwent. Near the middle of the hold, she tripped over something and nearly fell, performing a comical little dance to stay upright. Once she'd stabilized her position, she turned and shone her light on the object she'd tripped over. It seemed to be Medrick Mutabi... or at least most of him. "Holy -shit-," she grunted. Before she could key her comlink and inform the commander, Raghavan was startled by the sudden activation of a blindingly intense floodlight - a floodlight which abruptly lunged toward her. She instinctively raised her blaster and opened fire; the scarlet energy splashed against something behind the light, but before she could parse that this meant more than just the light was approaching her, whatever it was had struck her a powerful blow. Raghavan skidded backward on the deck as something ripped through her armor at both shoulders; then the aft bulkhead slammed into her back. She tried to wrench herself free, but whatever had penetrated her armor had gone all the way through and pinioned her to the bulkhead like a bug on a tray. Undaunted, she raised both legs, planted her boots against the front of whatever had pinned her, and shoved with all her powered strength. With a scream of metal on metal, the pinions tore from her shoulders and the whole affair went skidding away, then struck a joint in the deck plating and overturned with a mighty crash. Raghavan slid down the wall, panting, as her armor's automed system sealed the breaches and did what it could for her damaged shoulders. Her right arm still worked a little, but the left would need extensive reconstruction to be useful again. Still, the Enforcer felt no pain and was confident that she was still somewhat combat effective. On the other hand, her comlink was dead, its transmitter package ripped away. She picked herself up, found her blaster, and then turned to see what the hell had hit her. It was a compact fusion-powered cargo-handling vehicle, the twin prongs of its work fork gleaming dully in the light of her helmet searchlight. "... tried to kill me with a -forklift-?" she muttered incredulously. The operator's seat of the overturned cargo handler was empty; whoever it was had prudently dismounted when Raghavan kicked the machine over. Raghavan heard something clatter behind her and whirled, blaster ready. The last thing she saw was the edge of a spare deck plate, hurtling toward her head at a completely unreasonable speed. 6:17 AM INFIRMARY, PSI CORPS HEADQUARTERS TAU CITY, TAU CETI Carmela Sunderland had slept, but only because the infirmary staff insisted on it, and backed their insistence with drugs. Even then, she had only managed about four hours of full unconsciousness. The rest had been a sort of twilight haze studded with images that weren't quite flashbacks, but weren't dreams either. Sunderland had never seen anyone come unhinged the way the redheaded Duelist had after that psionic thrust. She'd read about the phenomenon - "neuroshock berserker syndrome" was the technical term - but it was exceedingly rare and almost never happened outside the laboratory. The experience, and not just the severe beating she had incurred in the process, had shaken the Psi Cop deeply. She'd spent her conscious time (and apparently some of her unconscious time) thinking it over ever since. Carmela Sunderland believed in the mission of the Psi Corps, truly believed that it was the best - the only workable - way of managing the human telepath population in a safe, equitable way for the benefit of all society. She had the arrogance of power that many high-ranked telepaths had, an arrogance cultivated by the Enforcement Division's training policies and corporate culture, but she was not an evil woman. Her reaction to seeing the Duelists again had been personal, petty and bitter, and lying in her hospital bed she recognized that and was ashamed of it; but when not acting out of knee-jerk personal hostility, she did what she did out of a belief that it was the best way she could use her gifts to serve humanity. But she had started to wonder now, her personal grudges aside, was hounding the International Police really serving humanity? Certainly, the IPO and its leaders misunderstood the Corps. The two organizations clashed frequently, especially since the Psi Corps had become a branch of the Federation government rather than that of the Earth Alliance. There was, Sunderland thought, a perception among the IPO's people that the Federation Corps still took its marching orders from Earthdome, and given the Intercops' several bad scrapes with the Dome back in the day, she supposed their attitude toward the Corps was understandable given that. Why couldn't two organizations with similar goals - the protection of society, defense of the rule of law - work together? Why the hostility and animosity? The IPO's founder was an old Wedge Defender, and the WDF had supported the Federation and its predecessor, the United Galactica, for centuries. Why this relatively sudden breakdown in relations between what should have been mutually supportive allies? Sunderland didn't know, but the questions troubled her more and more as the long, painful night went on. At a little after quarter past six, she felt a hand touch her arm gently and opened her eyes to see the familiar face of one of her colleagues in the Tau City Psi Cop contingent. Ahmed Garcia was a Spanish Moor in his late twenties, about Carmela's own age. He was a dangerously good-looking fellow, tall, thin-faced and dusky with his hair (prematurely grey, like that of many hardworking P12s) drawn back into a ponytail, and he was popular around the Tau City station for his easy charm and good humor. Like most of her co-workers, Sunderland liked him, though she fancied there was something faintly, subconsciously disturbing about him. That probably stemmed from her knowledge of his job. Like her, he was a P12 telepath, but his training specialties were in the black arts of deep interrogation and identity sublimation, not investigation and psionic combat. Garcia wasn't a field officer, he was attached to the headquarters division; and it was a winkingly open secret around the Tau City station that he was involved in the secret branch which didn't exist, though everyone at the grade of P10 or above knew damn well it did. All the same, in her current condition, Carmela was pleased to see him. She smiled with the small part of her face that didn't hurt. "Hey," said Garcia. Then he smiled and went on telepathically, Sunderland chuckled mentally. It required both skill and strength to keep the torrent of misgivings she'd been feeling all night from leaking into the superficial link she had with Garcia for this conversation, but Sunderland wasn't a Psi Cop for nothing; she managed it ably and replied lightly, Garcia added with a wink. Then, lowering his mental tone to a conspiratorial murmur, he went on, He laughed and added, Carmela grumbled reflexively. Then the full importance of what he'd told her sunk in. Once again she mastered her true reaction perfectly, keeping the tone of her link with Garcia light, and replied only, Garcia winked again. Then, breaking the link, he patted her arm and said cheerfully, "Rest up, OK? I'll stop in later to see how you're doing." "Thanks, Ahmed," she said, her physical speech blurred by the damage to her face. "Don't go anywhere," said Garcia with a grin, and then he left her with her thoughts. A silent arrest by the "special colleagues"; deep scans; God only knew what else. No; that wouldn't do. It wouldn't do at all. An experienced cop, Sunderland had unconsciously been timing the routines of the infirmary staff since her arrival. Now she knew exactly the right time to muster all her remaining strength, throw off the blanket that covered her, and slip painfully but silently from her bed. 6:38 AM KURATAI "Captain." Liza was awake and alert instantly, coming upright in her nicely padded conn. "Yes?" "I've just found the vector trace for their fourth course change," Jandia reported. "The pattern is nicely defined; I can now make a reasonable guess as to their destination." Utena, also awakened by the t'skrang first lieutenant's quiet summons, leaned over the back of Liza's chair. "Where are they taking my ship?" Jandia's response was unhesitant. "The Solar system. I can't be more specific yet, but I estimate a 92% probability that they're headed for Sol." "Earth," Utena muttered. Her fist clenched on the top of Liza's conn. "The bastards are taking her home." Liza nodded. "Earthforce?" "Or the Psi Corps. They both hate us, and they'd both like a good look at a DDNG. They'll probably take her to the Lunar Yards and get a crew in to dismantle her." The pirate captain looked pensive for a moment, then asked her police colleague, "Are you a gambler?" Utena glanced over her shoulder at Corwin and Anthy, who both looked significantly amused, and then grinned and replied, "Roll 'em." Liza's return grin was sharkish as she straightened in her conn and said briskly, "Secure hyperdrive. Rig ship for metaspace transition." While Captain Shustal handled her ship, Captain Tenjou pulled out her communicator, flipped it open, and said quietly, "Tenjou here. Give me the Chief." 7:02 AM IPS VALIANT Commander John Darien (Psi Cop, Black Omega) was fed up with Enforcers. He'd never thought the project was a good idea to begin with, and the performance of his prize crew's armored contingent was just proving him right as far as he was concerned. E(CA)s gained their immunity to psionic attack, in Darien's view, through being too stupid to be affected, and that also made them too stupid to be effective soldiers. Now he had three of them missing, one of whom had apparently disabled her transponder. Aboard a vessel this size, one secured by a team led by no less a personage than Jason Galantine! It was infuriating - unconscionable. He had nine Enforcers and three telepath junior officers left, and when he'd come aboard he'd thought this force more than sufficient - too big, in fact, but SOP required that he bring them. Well. Let the dumb bastards slack off if they wanted; there'd be -hell- to pay when they got to Lunarville VII and disembarked. Darien and Psi Cop Horace Umphrey, the only members of the prize crew not to be wearing J-series power armor, sat in the command seat and pilot's station, respectively. Umphrey had finally stopped making appreciative noises about the ship's drivetrain and stopped trying to talk the commander into letting him use the warp drive, for which Darien was grateful; though a hell of a pilot, the man's enthusiasm for his craft could occasionally get a bit stale. The same could be said of their engineering review officer, Psi Cop Kaela Kaloris. Kaloris was down in the engine room in something like ecstasy, looking over the ship's systems. Early on she'd tried to persuade Darien to let Umphrey take the ship to warp speed, but the prize commander wasn't about to mess around with -that- on a ship whose drive technology he knew nothing about. That hadn't dented Kaloris's mood much. She was still oohing and aahing over the engine room's fittings and systems, devouring technical documentation and generally acting like a kid at Christmas. Some distance forward of Kaloris, E(CA)2 Sergio Philips sat at one of the tables in the ship's messhall - which reminded him extremely of a particularly pleasant office breakroom - enjoying a Hungry Humanoid tray. Philips was noting to himself as he did so that International Police crews had it pretty cushy. Their staterooms were comfy, the decor on board was pleasant and businesslike, and the chow was first-rate. (The Enforcer would have been extremely impressed had he known that the food he was eating was the emergency backup "captain and security chief are both too busy to cook" food, not what the ship's company generally looked forward to each day.) As he ate, he noticed a movement out of the corner of his eye. Philips whirled, his blaster instantly at the ready, and then relaxed, laughing slightly at himself, as he saw what it was. A battleship-grey housecat was prowling into the lunchroom, looking around as though expecting to find someone. It seemed unimpressed by the hulking black-armored figure pointing a blaster at it. Philips remembered seeing a grey cat on the list of things one might encounter aboard, though he couldn't remember which crewmember the animal belonged to. The Enforcer put up his blaster, fished a little bit of chicken out of his tray, and offered it to the cat, who came closer with a look of faint interest. "Hey, kitty," said Philips, smiling. "Want something to eat?" The cat stopped advancing just short of the Enforcer's outstretched hand, sniffed at the chicken, then looked up at him with a startlingly intelligent look in its eyes. Then... "GYAAAAAAH!" John Darien blinked in slight consternation as the blood- curdling scream ripped through the prize crew's internal comm network. "The hell was that?" Horace Umphrey wondered aloud. Darien looked at his wrist computer, pulling up a display of his Enforcer team's ID transponders. Now there were two dark entries on the list, Raghavan and Philips. However, unlike last time, Darien knew exactly where Philips was, or at least where he was supposed to be. He keyed his communicator and said, "Ellsworth. Go check on Philips. He should be in the messhall." The prize crew's fourth officer, Psi Cop Harris Ellsworth, acknowledged. He and E(CA)2s Kohler and Katagawa were near the lunchroom anyway, sweeping the forward staterooms. The one they were looking into right now seemed to be the ship's library, which was surprisingly extensive but very poorly organized. The three went down the crescent hall and into the lunchroom, Ellsworth in the lead. He stopped short in the doorway, Kohler almost plowing into the back of him, and emitted a gasp of shock and horror. The lunchroom looked like somebody had painted it red, and very sloppily, spattering the paint all over the floor, the tables, and the vending machines in the process of giving the walls a patchy, uneven coat. Except... it wasn't paint. "Ellsworth. Report," Darien's voice insisted in his ear. "Ellsworth here, sir," said the Psi Cop, a trifle shakily. "What's the matter with you, Ellsworth? Did you find Philips?" "Uh... " Ellsworth advanced warily into the room and toed over the black-armored mass in the middle of the floor, then drew back in horror. "Uh... roger that, sir." "Well? What's he doing?" Darien demanded. "Nothing, sir. He's dead." A pause. "-Dead-?!" Darien blurted. "Yessir. He's been... partially decapitated." "By -what-?" "Damned if I know. There's nothing else in here. This ship is supposed to be deserted." There was another pause while Darien thought; then he replied grimly, "Perhaps Mutabi and Gillis aren't just screwing around after all. You three had better find them." 8:12 AM HOTEL METROPOLE TAU CITY, TAU CETI One of the things Kaitlyn's father had taught her - in between automobile maintenance, basic cuisine, and samurai swordsmanship - was how to sleep at times when people would ask, "How can you sleep at a time like this?!" - if she weren't asleep. He and her mother had also taught her the -importance- of sleeping at times like that; so, once the group of them had checked into a block of rooms near the top of the Metropole, that's exactly what she had done. So it was a clear-headed and rested Kaitlyn, if still one under a great deal of stress and worry, who stood at the window in the living room of Suite 2104 and looked out at the dingy concrete jumble of downtown Tau City, stretching smoggily off to the eastern hills. Somewhere out there were seven of her friends, one of them among the dearest people to her in the universe - out there in the city or out there beyond the hazy yellow-grey sky; either way, somewhere out there. Kaitlyn didn't know where; she didn't even know who had taken them. She had, therefore, no idea where to start looking. Purpose burned within her, but without direction, it was worthless. She clenched her fist on the smooth wooden grip of her zatoichi and fought down an urge to scream and smash the window. Behind her, the rest of the Valiant's company, aside from those who had gone with Liza to retrieve the Valiant, sat on couches, chairs, or the floor and watched her. With Utena, the ship's captain, gone on the retrieval mission, Kate was the group's spiritual if not nominal leader. The others looked to her for guidance; and they knew her well enough to be able to tell that she didn't know what to do either. They represented a remarkable force in themselves: Miki Kaoru, though known mostly as a musician and renowned for the gentleness of his nature, was nonetheless a Duelist of the Order of the Rose. He was an artist with a sword, and Juri was his oldest friend who wasn't a blood relative. R. Dorothy Wayneright was a student of the Kirishima Empty Hand School of karate - a martial art designed for the powerful people of high-gravity Hoffman. She was fearless, implacable, and damned near unstoppable when roused. Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan and Moose MacEchearn were nominally noncombatants, but neither would run out on a friend, and the super-swift Dantrovian and brawny (if untrained) Hoffmanite had contributions to make all the same. Shiori Takatsuki was a Duelist of the Rose as well, though untested in actual battle. She had known Juri even longer than Miki had, and she wasn't about to be cowed by enemies who weren't even man enough to strike openly. Her two years in Midgard since high school had given her other skills which might be of use as well. Mousy-looking Yomiko Readman was a Grey Lensman and an Expert of Justice with powerful (if quirky) psionic gifts. The day before, she had defeated a power-armored Tau City Military Police officer in single combat, armed only with a newspaper, a comic book, and some index cards. Wakaba Shinohara, the Green Lensman, was a fusion of Lensman and Cephirean mage knight whose unique abilities had earned her the underworld nickname "the Emerald Crusader". Gunnr Brynjelfr was a Valkyrie, one of the elite warrior maids of Asgard, and among those supremely martial women was the acknowledged grand mistress of the handgun. Anne "Juniper" Cross was Kaitlyn's student in the Asagiri Katsujinkenryuu, and though by her own admission she was only a raw novice, she had potential, she had power, and she had courage. She also had considerable street wisdom acquired in two years on the Rim and good instincts in a scrap. Sergeant Neal Krummell was a Lensman and an up-and-comer in the IPO Criminal Investigations Division, known for his stubbornness and intuition. One of the missing was his Ragolian colleague Janice Barlow, whom everyone aboard the Valiant except the Niogan sergeant himself understood implicitly to be Krummell's significant other. Jackie Chan was a contemporary of Kaitlyn's father (actually, if you wanted to get technical, he was a contemporary of Kaitlyn's -grandfather-, but after the first few centuries, such distinctions blur to meaninglessness), a former Wedge Defender, a Grey Lensman, an Expert of Justice, a movie star, and, just incidentally, a galactic legend. And, of course, Sergei was Kaitlyn's pet neo-Siberian tiger, a five-hundred-pound natural killing machine whose friendly, playful nature did not extend to people who kidnapped his humans for sport. Kaitlyn stood looking out the window for a moment longer, then turned around and said, "All r-r-right. L-let's think: W-w-who w-would have d-d-done this?" "Big Fire?" suggested Chan. "The Psi Corps," Juniper said without hesitation. "The Church of Man," R. Dorothy opined flatly. "Could've been the Cardassians," said Krummell. "Or House Klavaar," Azalynn added. "They never -did- find B'Elanna's Uncle Klayvor." "Earthforce Commandos?" Gunnr mused. "The Black Dragon Society?" Miki speculated. "Damn, man," Moose rumbled. "Y'know, I never really noticed before how many enemies we have." "We're very popular," said Miki ruefully. The door to the suite clicked, beeped, clicked again, and then, to the surprise of everyone concerned (since it had been set in 'Do Not Disturb' mode, which should theoretically have kept the housekeepers out), opened. It had taken pretty much everything Carmela Sunderland had left in her to get here without being spotted. As such, she didn't really notice the large number of readied weapons and whatnot being directed at her from the startled-looking contingent in the room before her. All her attention was focused on the nearest member of the group, the great orange-and-black creature which sprang to face off against her and roared a challenge through a gleaming forest of ivory. Sunderland smiled, reached out with her good hand, and poked the tiger playfully on the nose. "Aren't you cute," she said, and collapsed unconscious on the entryway rug. Serge, thrown completely off his stride by both actions, abandoned his combative stance entirely and blinked down at her with a puzzled, "Grmf?" 8:21 AM KURATAI The hardest part of gambling like this, Utena reflected, was the waiting time between the play and the payoff. The Kuratai cruised through metaspace, that most efficient but, paradoxically, least satisfying FTL method. Most efficient because it was much faster than hyperdrive or warp speed, without the tremendous power consumption of instantaneous spacefold; least satisfying because, unlike the blue-white, rushing chaos of hyperspace or the streaky rainbow starfield of warp travel, metaspace's shifting, lowering red-black void gave no visual sensation of movement. You didn't feel like you were getting anyplace, even though you were making much better time than you would in hyperspace. She stood at the forward end of the Kuratai's bridge, looking pensively out the bridge window, her thoughts half musings on metaspace and half on the situation she and the others had left behind on Tau Ceti. Liza came up next to her, looked out the windows herself for a few moments, and then said quietly, "You're worrying about Kaitlyn?" Utena glanced at the blonde pirate captain, then nodded silently. Liza nodded in return, then said firmly, "She'll hold up. You should know better than most that there's steel under everything else she is. She'll hold up... and may Shivoam have mercy on whoever did this if she catches them first." Utena cracked a little smile at the thought, which was what Liza had been aiming for. "At any rate," the blonde went on, "we'll soon be finished with our part of it. Then we'll know where to go next." UNKNOWN LOCATION When Juri Arisugawa had taken a couple of Tylenol tablets and turned in to sleep in Kaitlyn's bunk, she'd expected to be awakened at some point in the night by the arrival of her lover back from the surface, climbing into bed. Kate always tried not to wake her under such conditions, but she usually failed, and Juri didn't mind; it gave her a chance to say hello and enjoy Kate's presence as she went back to sleep. As such, it came as a bit of a shock when, upon waking, her slowly returning senses informed her that not only was she alone, she wasn't in bed. Her green eyes snapped open and she drew in a sharp breath as a number of wrong sensations all hit her at once, adding up to something which felt like the very edge of panic. The pain in her head had more or less gone, but she still had a sharp pain in her shoulder, a pain exacerbated by the fact that her arms were stretched above her head. The room was cool, just cool enough to be uncomfortable, and as her eyes opened she could see that it wasn't Kate's cabin on the Valiant by any stretch of the imagination. It was so utterly -nonsensical- that, having gone to sleep in a comfortable bunk on a secure, homelike starship, Juri should wake hanging from the ceiling of a large, gloomy room, its exact size and any other details about it obscured by harsh, angular shadows, that at first her newly conscious mind just couldn't grasp the concept. This, she thought, must be some sort of bizarre dream, though what could have prompted it was a complete mystery. The pain in her shoulder, which had been cut by the sword of a Psi Cop during the previous day's riot, put the lie to that notion, though. "Ah," said a voice off to her right. Juri tried to look, but the speaker was too far to the side, and in her current position, she couldn't do a lot of looking around. "You're finally awake," the voice went on - a soft, smooth voice with a trace of an accent she couldn't place. There was something about its diction that struck Juri as familiar, but she couldn't place that either. A moment later the owner of the voice walked into her field of view, and the redhead's heart felt momentarily frozen. He was tall, thin and dusky, with long silver hair pulled back from his aquiline face in a ponytail, and he walked with a lazy, arrogant sort of grace. He was absolutely the last person Juri Arisugawa would ever have expected to find mocking her, even under these surreal circumstances. For a few harrowing seconds, her still-awakening, understrength mind was paralyzed with the horrified, disbelieving notion that the dead walked. The speaker seemed to recognize this; his teeth gleamed white in the shadows on his face as he smiled, chuckling darkly. Then he took a step forward so that one of the irregular beams of light from the ceiling fell across his face and the gleaming badge on his chest. Relief flooded through Juri - most incongruous relief, from her confronter's point of view. Her body, which had stiffened visibly against its restraints at the sight of him, relaxed, sagging against the bonds that held her more or less upright. Ahmed Garcia didn't really know what to make of that. He had carried out a great number of interrogations and other such operations since his assignment to Black Omega, and never once had anyone, in waking and recognizing his uniform, had the thought, "Oh - it's only a Psi Cop." Who the hell, he wondered, did she -think- I was? That might be worth digging for once we get going. He recovered his aplomb as best he could - it wouldn't do to show how peculiar he thought her response was - and said calmly, "Now that you're paying attention, Miss Arisugawa, we may as well get started." Juri raised her head, meeting his dark eyes in the shadows, and did not reply, except to give him a look that contained no trace of the fear that had just gripped her. This is going to be a tough one, Garcia mused. Ah, well. So much the better. 8:37 AM IPS VALIANT "302, check in. Mutabi, are you receiving? 303? Gillis? Raghavan?" Harris Ellsworth listened, got back nothing but dead air, and sighed. "Shit. Sir, they're not answering." The voice of John Darien replied, "Well, keep looking, then. They can't have gone too far," the commander added sardonically. Ellsworth acknowledged, checked his weapon, and headed for the nearest turbolift with his pair of Enforcers lumbering at his heels. The lieutenant knew Darien hated Enforcers, but for himself, he was glad to have them. Something didn't feel right. Darien would have sneered at that, too - he despised such notions, which he held to be little more than superstitions - but he wasn't down here, about to climb down to a deserted cargo deck in search of three missing E(CA)s with a fourth lying inexplicably dead in the lunchroom forward. The three armored men walked around the curving corridor of the Valiant's lower-level living quarters, making for the lift at the circular main deck's widthwise axis. One of the two Enforcers lagged behind slightly, preoccupied with a weapons check. Ellsworth and the other Enforcer thus didn't see what happened to him. His radio suddenly clicked into band: "Hey, WHAT the - " Then there was a startled cry which ended in a burst of static, and then... nothing. By the time Ellsworth and his companion turned around, there was nothing down there but an empty hallway. It was as if the second Enforcer had never existed at all. Then the radio clicked again. "Ellsworth, this is Darien," said the commander testily. "The ship's status monitor claims we just ejected 280 pounds of mass into hyperspace. What the hell's going on down there?" Ellsworth blinked, feeling his face go pale. 280 pounds... "Uh... " Ellsworth swallowed, licked dry lips, and checked his squad status member for the identity of the missing Enforcer. "I'm not sure, sir, but I think Katagawa just got spaced." "What?!" Darien snapped. "You're in A-corridor, correct? There isn't an airlock for a hundred yards." The commander went on in an icily sarcastic voice, "You don't have a hull breach down there, do you, Ellsworth?" "Uh, no sir." "Then don't be an idiot. Wherever Katagawa went, it can't have been outside. What the -hell- is going on? Get a move on, Ellsworth. Now you have four Enforcers to find." Before Ellsworth could respond, the familiar bulky shape of another Enforcer appeared at the head of the corridor. "Hey!" it said. "Lieutenant Ellsworth! I think I found Mutabi." Ellsworth blinked. "Gillis! Where the fuck have you been?" "Head call, sir." "For three hours?" "I'm afraid I'm not feeling very well." "Never mind that right now! Where's Mutabi? Show me." "Will do, sir. But first I'd like you to shoot Kohler, please. It would really save me a great deal of trouble." Ellsworth blinked. "Shoot Kohler?" "That's right. If you wouldn't mind, sir." Ellsworth considered the request. It seemed reasonable enough. Kohler was an idiot anyway, even by the rather liberal standards of the E(CA) corps. He turned around, powered his officer armor's built-in blaster to its highest level, and blew Kohler's head to vapor. Turning back to Gillis, he made an impatient gesture. "There. Happy? Can we go now?" Then, before Ellsworth's horrified eyes, Gillis... -rippled-. The Enforcer's whole outer surface, face, armor, attachments and all, quivered like a reflection in a pool of windswept water, and then Gillis seemed to -melt-. As he did so, the fog which had settled over Ellsworth's mind cleared, and he realized that Commander Darien was bellowing in his ear, demanding to know what the FUCK he thought he was doing fragging Kohler. "Jesus H. Christ!" Ellsworth screamed, recoiling in horror as the thing he had taken for Gillis sagged and fell to its knees, its surface still collapsing, rippling, changing color. It hunched into a near-fetal position and emitted a racking, liquid cough which splattered something wet on the deck. Ellsworth raised his blaster, still jacked to its highest power setting. The creature kneeling on the deck - which seemed to have stabilized somewhat, and was much smaller, with what looked in the poor night-shift lighting like a fall of dark hair - looked up at him, fixing his gaze with whiteless, bottomless black eyes. Something inside Harris Ellsworth's mind flared star-bright and incinerated what remained of his sanity, and in the last second before he vaporized his -own- head with his built-in, he knew what the rest of his compatriots were up against. In his dying thought, broadcast throughout the ship, the other three telepaths all felt a word which chilled them to the depths of their souls. MARTIAN! 9:15 AM PSI CORPS COMMUNICATIONS RELAY STATION TAU CITY, TAU CETI It was business as usual at the comm station, a squat four-story concrete building surmounted by a vertical dish antenna up on a hill just outside the city proper. Comm traffic for the Psi Corps assets on Tau Ceti was relatively light right now, with the captured IPO ship in direct contact with Earth Central and the Black Omega teams back at their dirtside base. They wouldn't have priority traffic for Earth for hours yet, so all the comm station had to handle right now was the routine "white" traffic of the open Corps facilities in Tau City and the planet's other major population centers. /* Hide "Run Rabbit Junk" _Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex OST_ */ Outside, a small group of individuals moved quietly into position around the building, swiftly and silently removing the Enforcement Division guards posted at the corners of the perimeter fence from play. The event went completely unnoticed by those inside the building. They weren't expecting trouble - who would attack a comm relay? - and the guards were more or less only there to ward off curious citizens anyway. In the top-floor main comm room, this quiet, boring sense of routine was shattered quite abruptly when something ripped the antenna assembly clean off the roof, tearing out a huge, roughly round chunk of the roof in the process. The half-dozen personnel in the room below that hole looked up in shock and dismay as two figures dropped through it. Communications Manager (P7) Joanna Garson recovered her wits first, turned, and lunged for the master alarm panel next to the main entrance door from the security station outside. Before she reached the panel, one of the three intruders interposed himself. The slim, blue-haired, blue-eyed young man in black said nothing; his cup-hilt rapier, point leveled so that Garson would run herself onto it if she tried for the alarm, did all the talking. She listened, skidding to a halt and raising her hands. Elsewhere, others entered the building through more conventional entrances, immobilizing personnel in the lower level offices and disabling all of the land-line and wireless communications links the station had with downtown. With the hypercomm antenna destroyed, that cut the station off entirely - which was just the way the strike team wanted it. The takedown was fast, silent (except on the top floor), and perfectly executed. Not a shot was fired by the attacking team, not a person injured. It wasn't a situation that could be held onto for long; eventually the penned-up Psi Corps personnel would realize that they outnumbered their attackers about five to one, and even if the attackers -were- mostly Lensmen and there wasn't a Psi Cop on the comm-station staff, there was the possibility that a countermove would dislodge them. That was all right, though. The Duelists weren't staying long. "OK, you six," said the other intruder who had come through the roof, an auburn-haired girl in a bottle-green cavalry jacket and black trousers, to the main comm-room staff. "Nobody do anything rash. We're not here to hurt you." One of the commtechs in the far corner spun in his chair, yanked out his PPG sidearm, and let fly. The ring on the auburn-haired girl's left hand pulsed with a bright green light, and a square of the same light flickered into existence in front of her, deflecting the PPG pulse. It streaked back along a very slightly different vector and blew the monitor panel clean out of that tech's station. Yelping, he threw himself to the floor. "OK, that was rash," said the Green Lensman dryly. "My fault. I should've opened with 'drop your weapons'. Let's try that instead. Weapons on the floor, and move away from the consoles." She smiled brightly and leveled her glowing ring, which they all realized was a Lens. "Now, please." Slowly, the staffers complied, disarming themselves and moving into the open space in the middle of the room. A moment later, the main entrance to the room opened and two more unauthorized personnel entered. Both were women. One was a black-haired, buxom, bespectacled girl in a suit and trenchcoat; she entered warily, like a cop taking down a room, except that instead of a gun, her raised and ready hand had a fan of what looked like index cards in it. The other was a slim girl with raspberry-colored hair. Like all of them, she was dressed in an unlikely sort of way for a member of a strike team which had taken down a secure facility as quickly and professionally as this group had. She was wearing threadbare jeans and a man's dress shirt over a holographic Laughing Man t-shirt whose scrolling logo was a bit disconcerting on a real-world garment. If she hadn't been so well-groomed, the outfit would have made her look outright disreputable, and the dueling saber hanging on her belt added a particularly weird touch. "All yours, Shiori," said Wakaba, gesturing to the main console. Shiori Takatsuki gave her old councilmate a grin and a gracious nod, then sidestepped around Garson and seated herself at that console. She glanced over it for a few moments, getting accustomed to its layout, then unslung a beat-up leather one-shoulder pack from her back, delved into it, and pulled out a fistful of cables and a cybernetic interface deck. Shiori's native Cephiro hadn't had anything like the Internet when she was growing up; it was a completely alien concept to her when she moved to Midgard following high school, which she did mainly for the change of scenery, and because so many of her friends seemed to like it there. Upon enrolling at the Nekomi Institute of Technology as a civil engineering major, with the thought of possibly becoming an architect, she had shortly discovered the online world and, like so many other incoming students from essentially rural backgrounds, had been enthralled. In her freshman year at NIT, Shiori proceeded through the classic larval stage, doing things online which now made her wince with sympathetic embarrassment for the twink newbies who did them. These included, but were not limited to, failing all of her B-term 07 classes and all but ignoring her pre-existing circle of friends in favor of a crowd consisting mostly of computer science majors. Fortunately, those pre-computing friends, rather than getting huffy and abandoning her in return, had staged something like an intervention over the Christmas holidays, helping her bring her life back into balance. The result, in this summer after her sophomore year, was a Shiori who defied the social conventions of tech school cliques, hanging with the comp sci crowd and the Motor Club both. She kept up her course of study in architecture, avoided academic probation by working her tail off in C- and D-08, and mildly freaked out Juri, her oldest friend, by getting a neuroprocessor installed over the summer so that she could take a cybernetic interface theory course as an elective in A-08. With Edward Tivrusky and Ein somewhere else in the galaxy, it thus fell to her to get the information the Duelists needed out of the comm station's computer systems, if indeed it was there. "I won't give you any access codes," said Garson stiffly as Shiori plugged together the adapters she'd need to connect her deck to the master console. Shiori grinned over her shoulder. "If we thought you would, Wakaba would be doing this part," she said, then jacked in and started typing. Garson watched her work with bemusement. She had expensive equipment, that was for sure. Garson was an information technology specialist for the Psi Corps, which was not exactly an agency that operated on a shoestring budget, and she had never seen a Fairlight Excalibur in person before. Those inlined skull-base jacks weren't cheap either; most of Garson's own staff had wrist plugs. This kid's stuff was mil-spec. All the same, the system she was going up against was one of the toughest in the Federation, specially hardened against such intrusions. It had to be; it handled information about Black Omega, an organization about which only about ten percent of the Psi Corps itself was cleared to know, which was why it was buried up here at the comm station, not sited downtown at the public Corps headquarters. Garson was confident that this scruffy teenager was certainly not going to get anywhere with it, expensive deck or no. About most scruffy teenagers, even the talented CS majors with whom Shiori hung out when she wasn't running with the Duelists or the Motor Club, the Psi Corps member would have been right; but most scruffy teenagers didn't run icebreakers written by the goddess of technology. That said, it was no walk in the park. The Tau Ceti Center computer was the toughest one Shiori had ever gone up against, and beating it unscathed took all of her skill, talent, and software. There was also the time pressure to consider, since the Duelists knew full well that they couldn't hold the station for very long. The battle was a silent one. To the observers, it looked like nothing in particular - a girl sitting at a console, typing furiously on a keyboard, her eyes closed. A fine sweat broke out on her forehead as she worked, but there was no other outward sign of the struggle going on within the system. The minutes stretched. Wakaba kept one ear tuned for the sound of trouble reports, ready to order an abort and get the team out if the Corps personnel tried a revolt, but determined to give Shiori as long as she possibly could. Shiori spared nothing in her assault on the TCC computer. How could she possibly hold back, given what information she was after? How else would they find out where the bastards were keeping Juri? Even the source which had dropped serendipitously into their laps hadn't known that, only that it was somewhere on the planet - and Tau Ceti was a big planet. The raspberry-haired Duelist had a long history with Juri Arisugawa. Not all of it was good, thanks to some truly mind-boggling communication problems a few years back, but their friendship had survived jealousy, anger, unrequited romance, all magnified by the warped lens of the Grand Tournament. The physical attraction was one-sided, but Shiori loved Juri all the same, and she wasn't about to leave the redhead in these bastards' clutches if she had anything to say about it. And thanks to her misspent freshman year, she had. Shiori sat back abruptly, disconnected her deck from the console, and turned a slightly spacey smile to Wakaba. "Got it," she said. Then, blinking several times, she came fully back to reality. As she did, the spaciness and the triumph both faded from her expression, hardening it into a scowl of distaste. "You won't get away with this," Garson snarled. "This is a blatant act of terrorism. We'll be able to turn public opinion so far against you - " "You want to talk about blatant acts of terrorism?" Shiori interrupted sharply, holding up a datacrystal she'd just burned. "Piracy, hijacking, grand theft, kidnapping, and unlawful psionic probing. You bastards are going down for this." She pocketed the crystal, then started repacking her deck and cables with quick, angry motions. Wakaba turned to Garson and said conversationally, "You'll want to get all of your people out of this building now." "Why?" the Psi Corps commtech demanded. The Green Lensman smiled grimly. "Because we're going to blow it up," she replied. BLACK OMEGA DETENTION CENTER 12 MILES NORTHEAST OF TAU CITY After an hour and a half of work, Ahmed Garcia had to confess that he didn't have a hell of a lot to show for it. Oh, he'd learned all sorts of interesting things about the Duelists, their ties to the International Police, and the various mainstream IPO figures Juri Arisugawa knew. She was no more able to conceal that information from Garcia than a book is able to keep people from reading it. The information-gathering component of his assignment was thus proceeding quite well. The other part - identity sublimation, the first phase of a comprehensive reprogramming which would turn the redheaded Duelist into a Corps sleeper agent within the IPO - wasn't working out quite so well, and for the life of him, Garcia couldn't figure out why. It should have been easier than usual; after all, Arisugawa had suffered a psychotic episode not 24 hours before, as part of an attack of neuroshock berserker syndrome. Her mental strength and identity integrity should have been compromised already, making her easy pickings for a determined, well-trained, powerful telepath like Ahmed Garcia. Instead, she had a hard core of unbending steel, starting in her conscious mind and rooted so far down in her subconscious that Garcia hadn't yet been able to find the bottom, however deep he probed. However hard he hit it, he couldn't crack it with brute force, and there seemed to be no chink anywhere he could use to pry at it. The result was that, despite the fact that she was injured, chained to the ceiling, and completely powerless to resist her interrogator's telepathic powers, Juri was, in a weird way, the one in control of the conversation - and that rattled Garcia almost visibly. It had started with that look she gave him, calm and unafraid, once her initial spasm of panic had abated. (Garcia couldn't figure out what that had been caused by, either; whatever it was, it was buried in that steel core he hadn't been able to penetrate.) His initial attempts to undermine her sense of importance hadn't gone very well, either. "You know," he told her while she shivered and reeled with the lingering pain of his first resisted deep probe, "I'm really quite disappointed that our strike team only managed to capture you lot. I was quite looking forward to... conversing... with Captain Tenjou." Rather than its desired effect, which was to make his prisoner feel that she was second-best even as a prisoner (and also to play on any fear for her captain's sake she might have), the statement made Juri -laugh-, a dry, cool chuckle. "What," Garcia asked her coldly, "is so funny?" "I was just picturing," Juri replied thoughtfully, "what Captain Tenjou would have done to you, had she had the same experience on waking that I had. It's a most gratifying image." Ahmed Garcia prided himself on the fact that he needed only his knowledge of psychology, his telepathic abilities, and his force of personality to achieve results. He never struck a subject, and he wasn't about to start now - but he sorely wanted to wipe that sardonic little smile off this subject's face, and the ferocity of his suddenly renewed telepathic probe was certainly attributable to it. Garcia wasn't even a particularly cruel man, really - sadists didn't last long in the real business of interrogation and programming, contrary to popular belief - but there was something deeply satisfying about making this particular subject scream. 10:10 AM HOTEL METROPOLE While Shiori hastily prepared a briefing for them based on the data she'd ripped from the Comm Center's computers, the Duelists, the Art of Noise, and their Lensman allies prepared their equipment. Neal Krummell sat at the kitchenette table, running a cleaning swab through the barrel of his dismantled sidearm. As he did so, radiating clear ill-temper waves, Gunnr Brynjelfr slid into the chair across the corner from him. "Hey," she said. "Hey," Krummell grunted. "Is that an A&K Mark 23?" she asked. Krummell nodded. "Sweet. I always wanted one of those, but they only make 'em for CID Lensmen. May I?" The Niogan Lensman glanced sidelong at her, then shrugged. "Sure," he said, and slid the placemat with the field-stripped gun's parts on it toward her. Gunnr picked up the frame, looked it over with a critical eye, and then quickly, deftly reassembled the gun. As she held it up, trigger finger laid along the side of the frame, and looked over the hi-vis semi-holographic sights, she said offhandedly, "By the way, when you get Janice out, you might want to acknowledge that you're in love with her. We girls aren't as high-maintenance as all that, but a little positive reinforcement now and then... " Neal regarded her silently for a moment, and then said in a tone of admission, "I wasn't planning on doing anything about it." Gunnr blinked, then put the Mark 23 carefully down on the table before looking Neal straight in the eyes and saying in a conversational tone, "That is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me. And I hang out with Svanhvit Icebinder, the ditziest demon ever to be spawned in the Pit of Ice." To Krummell's dumbfounded expression, she went on, "This is a woman who came face to face with Odin Almighty at her Trial of Defection and said, and I quote:" Gunnr's normally mellow voice took on an alarmingly squeaky quality as she adopted a vacantly happy expression and burbled, "Oh wow! I always thought you'd be taller!" Then she returned to her normal expression and voice and said, "Seriously, man, talk to her. Don't be a moron. It's a dangerous galaxy and you live dangerous lives - you have to learn not to put stuff off. You may not get to it later. If this incident teaches you -anything-, that should be it." Before he could reply, Shiori sat back from her work on the coffee table, capped her black Magic Marker, and called, "OK, you guys! Gather 'round." The group did as instructed, clustering around the crude diagram Shiori had drawn for their reference. "This is the Black Omega detention center just outside the city," she told them, pointing. "It's disguised as an office building at the end of a cul-de-sac in a mostly deserted commercial park - two miles from the nearest other building - but it's really a fortress: duracrete walls, concealed security weapons, the works." "It's geared more toward keeping people in than keeping them out, though," Wakaba noted. "Most of the weapons and security systems on the perimeter face inward, and the building itself shouldn't be much harder to get into than the comm station was. It's tough, but they're not expecting it to be attacked." "Don't the people there know by now that you took down the comm station?" Moose wondered. "We're hoping not," Wakaba replied. "The manager there told me that they have connectivity problems from the station and Tau City Center to the Omega station pretty frequently. Hopefully the people out there and at the Center will just assume this is another line failure." "What about the comm station's crew?" asked Azalynn. "Won't they tell anyone what happened?" "Not from Governor Kallon's basement they won't," said Shiori with a nasty grin. "Now. Here's a rough floorplan of the building. It's laid out kind of like a mall, with three wings and an underground part. These two wings are detention cells; this one is the barracks for the security detachment. They'll be our biggest problem - a full company of security troopers. Fortunately they're not the cyborg tank kind, but still, that's about 300 heavily armed goons." Jackie Chan smiled. "I'll take care of them," he said. That got a few is-this-guy-serious looks from some of those gathered, but Kaitlyn just smiled a small, dark smile and nodded to him. "The interesting part is underground," Shiori added. "Down these stairs here, there's a tunnel which leads a hundred yards away from the center gallery, under the courtyard, to this hill here. Inside the hill is an interrogation center, one main room and a couple of offices, which can be sealed off from the rest of the complex in the event of an attack or riot." She paused, as if not certain she should say the next part, then looked at Kate and said slowly, "According to the prisoner database... they're working on Juri right now." Kaitlyn said nothing; she looked down at the diagram for a moment, traced her fingertip up the underground corridor, tapped the main interrogation room once, and then nodded. Then she turned to Anne, looked pensively at her for a moment, and drew her aside. "I d-don't want you to t-take this the w-wrong way," she said, "b-but - " "Don't worry, Sensei," Anne said, saving her the trouble. "I'll stay right here. Don't worry about me - just go and get Juri and the others back." Kaitlyn put a hand on her junior student's shoulder, looked into her calm grey eyes for a moment, then smiled, kissed her on the forehead, and turned to the others. "Let's g-go," she said. 10:10 AM DEEP SPACE 2 LY COREWARD OF SOLAR SYSTEM Kuratai held station, weapons deployed from their normally hidden bays, systems charged for battle. On the bridge, Liza Shustal sat upright and alert in her command seat, gazing intently at the tactical plot being projected on the main window. "Final course and speed calculations complete," said Jandia R'lajj Metolin Ishkarat at the helm station. The tiger-striped t'skrang seemed tireless; she had tracked the Valiant all night and into the morning, and now she kept her station as the "merchant" ship prepared for action against her quarry. "Fire on my mark," Jandia continued, keeping her eyes firmly on the chronometer display of her panel. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One. Mark!" "Fire gravity torpedoes!" Liza barked. T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat, chief of security and fellow Duelist, plied the weapons console. The uppermost two of the six torpedo tubes built discreetly into the Kuratai's bow spat glowing greenish-blue projectiles which streaked off into space before the ship. "Torpedoes away," the gas-flame-blue t'skrang reported. "Detonate on my mark," Jandia replied. "Four. Three. Two. One. Mark!" "Detonate torpedoes!" called Liza, and Sky jabbed a foreclaw down on a flashing red button. Some distance ahead of the hovering Kuratai, the two speeding torpedoes exploded in twin bursts of eerie purple light, the shock discs rippling outward and meeting in a brilliant interference pattern as the two warheads' effects interacted to create a zone of massive but transitory gravitic disturbance. An instant later, a second starship burst out of nowhere with a rush of pseudomotion, yanked forcibly from hyperspace by the pulse. "Ha HA!" Liza crowed, slapping her chair arm. "G Flight, this is Kuratai - the game is flushed. Go!" "What the hell was that?" John Darien demanded angrily over the howl of the hyperspace emergency alarm. "Gravitic pulse," Umphrey replied, silencing the alarm. "Hyperspace motivator is offline while safety systems recycle." "What ship is that?" "Looks like the Barsaivian merchantman that was one orbit track over at Tau Ceti, sir." Darien clenched a fist. "How the hell - no matter. Get us out of here, maximum impulse. Don't let them engage us; go back to hyperspace as soon as the drive restarts." "Aye aye, sir." Darien knew that Umphrey thought this move unnecessary; the helmsman had remarked several times on the power of the Valiant's weapons systems, which had been well-documented by Earthforce in the Battle of Titan at any rate. Umphrey would have preferred to fight the Kuratai rather than turning tail and running - but John Darien was not about to try fighting a ship-to-ship engagement in an unfamiliar vessel, -against- an unfamiliar vessel, with a -Martian- loose inside his hull. Of the seven remaining Enforcers, two were on the bridge, one at either entrance; one was aft of the bridge in the T-corridor where the turbolifts were; and the other four were below, two securing Main Engineering with Kaela Kaloris, the others sweeping the living spaces. It wasn't entirely certain that Ellsworth had been right when he declared his attacker a Martian, but what else would so terrify a trained, armored Psi Cop that he would kill himself rather than face it? The Martians were the most feared, most powerful single enemies the Corps trained its people to assume they might face one day. On Darien's arm computer, the transponder icon for one of the two sweeping Enforcers went red, then black, and he heard the other calling for his partner over the tactical band. No; now was definitely not the time to get into a starship battle as well. "Damn, that ship is fast," Jandia grumbled. "Captain, we cannot overtake Valiant." "I expected as much," Liza replied unconcernedly. "That's all right. We don't have to." "What are they doing, dumping cargo? That won't help them with -our- speed advantage," Umphrey observed as the t'skrang merchantman's forward hold doors opened wide. A moment later, three fightercraft streaked out from within the bay, bearing down on the fleeing destroyer with wide-open thrusters. "What the hell are those?" Darien wondered. "Unknown, sir. Never seen anything like them." "Corwin," said Utena Tenjou, "how long do we have before the hyperdrive comes back online?" Corwin glanced at his watch. "One minute... mark." "Damn! We're not going to catch them at this rate." "Oh yes we are," Kozue Kaoru's voice crackled. "You ready, Corwin?" "Always. How about you, Utena? Just like we played it in the simulation." Utena grinned. She'd been wanting to try something like this for a long time; who would have thought that the theft of her ship would provide her with the opportunity? "Let's do it." As one, all three reached to the instrument panels of their respective craft and threw the central of an array of three levers into battery. As they did so, they arranged their trio of ships in a careful formation and then hung on grimly as the semi-automatic systems kicked in to guide them through the tricky part. "CHANGE!" Kozue declared with gusto. "GETTER RYGER!" Ryger came together flawlessly, the Getter G unit's first fully piloted combination maneuver; then the Inertia-Vector field came online, the thrusters screamed, and the spindly blue robot streaked forward with a speed nearly double that which the red or yellow Getter Machines could achieve alone. The Psi Corps helmsman saw the robot approaching and tried to take evasive maneuvers, but it was too late; Ryger was upon him before he could finish registering the change. The blue robot pulled up short of intercepting the stolen destroyer, matching its speed, and before the startled Umphrey, unfamiliar with the weapons systems, could power anything up that might be able to attack, Kozue struck. "DRILL HARPOON!" she cried, and the wickedly pointed drill that formed Getter Ryger's left forearm spun up to full speed, then rocketed out on a stream of fire, trailing a heavy chain behind it to the robot's upper arm. Its point and edges glowing with emerald Getter radiation, the drill bit through the Valiant's shields and then plowed into the armored hull plating to port and a bit aft of the bridge. It penetrated partway, then stopped, buried deep in the tough composite-alloy armor. "Got 'em!" Kozue declared. "You're up, Corwin!" Corwin, in the cockpit of Getter Machine #3, flipped down the folding console for his unit's onboard computer and patched through the inductive connection to Valiant's hull. This was a tricky maneuver, and one that couldn't have been tried with systems less sophisticated than those on board the Getter Machine prototypes; even so, he wasn't sure it would work. "OK, we are hardwired. Attempting to send prefix code for main power override and shutdown," he said through gritted teeth, his fingers flying across the keyboard as the violent maneuvers of the Valiant's Corps helmsman tried to shake off the attached robot. "Connection's lousy, but we expected that. I think I've almost got it - " At that point, Umphrey figured out how to operate the ship's targeted weapons. One of the strip-collimated phasers glowed to life and then slashed up and back along its track, seeking the unwelcome passenger. Kozue evaded it perfectly, but she couldn't elude the laws of geometry; the phaser beam intersected Ryger's chain and severed it, breaking the robot's connection to the starship. "Slag!" Corwin snarled. "OK, plan B," said Utena. "Corwin?" "Go!" Corwin replied. "The transmorphic systems will compensate - fifteen seconds!" That was all Utena needed to hear. She was unable to keep a grin from stretching across her face, even under the desperate circumstances, as she seized hold of a control lever. "Open GET!" The Getter Machines separated, falling slightly behind the still-fleeing Valiant, but Umphrey's now-unnecessary evasive maneuvering was using up enough energy that the ship wasn't speeding away from the Getters like it had before. They didn't remain separated for long, either; Utena's next transmission was, "Change! Getter DRAGON!" The Dragon configuration wasn't as fast as Ryger, but that wasn't the important thing for the team's second hastily conceived plan. All of them, especially Corwin, had been hoping they wouldn't have to do it, but the Psi Corps pirate helmsman's weapons skill, better than they'd expected, had forced the issue. Getter Dragon boosted "up" relative to the Valiant's bearing, then fell into a pursuit course above and behind the hijacked destroyer. Utena bent over her controls, pressing her right eye to a targeting scope which had extended on an arm from the panel above her. Her hands worked a pair of the Getter's many control levers with quick, deft movements while Corwin's voice in her ear guided the last of the fine adjustments. Below, in Getter Machine #3's cockpit, the God of Mecha had his eyes closed, his brand glowing, as he drew on his intimate knowledge of the Valiant's mechanisms for the next very delicate move. Listening to them coordinate the move from the center cockpit, Kozue reflected, Damn, they really work well together. It's like... like me and Miki, at our best. "OK," said Corwin after eight eternal seconds. "We get 'em now or we don't get 'em at all. Ready?" "Ready." Utena closed her eyes for a moment, murmured, "Sorry about this, Valiant," and then opened them, thumbed a control, and declared, "GETTER BEAM!" The coruscant green energy beam shot arrow-straight from the central horn of Getter Dragon's crown of spikes, focused down to a tight, brilliant ray no thicker than a hand blaster's bolt. It spiked through the fleeing Valiant's shields and hull like a needle through hide and transfixed the ship completely at a very carefully calculated point, well away from the inhabited spaces, and did a miniscule, carefully metered amount of damage to the ship's internal structure. Horace Umphrey blinked in disbelief as the yellow hyperdrive indicator on his helm panel, which he'd expected would turn green at about that time, flared red, then went black. "WHAT the - ?!" he blurted. Hurriedly, he ran a diagnostic, regarded it with continued disbelief, then turned to Darien. "Sir, the hyperdrive... they've destroyed it!" Darien gritted his teeth and made an angry growling sound. Umphrey's unwelcome news had been accompanied by the disappearance of another Enforcer ID token on his onboard tactical plot. "Yes!" Corwin cried, punching the air. "PERFECT shot!" "Couldn't have done it without you," Utena replied, grinning. "That's great, but, uh, how do we stop them?" Kozue inquired. "They can still outrun the Kuratai and two out of three of our modes, and Ryger's running out of arms." Corwin's grin turned a little fierce. "That's my job, once you get us ahead of them... " Kozue raised an eyebrow at him on his intercom screen, then smiled nastily herself as she realized what he was getting at. "OK, here we go! Open GET, change RYGER!" Getter Ryger, minus most of his left arm, streaked past the Valiant at full throttle and kept right on going, disappearing from sight on the main viewer in seconds except for the glow of his thrusters. "-Now- what are they doing?" Umphrey wondered, annoyed. "I don't care. Can you operate the metaspace jump drive?" "I think so," Umphrey replied. "Do it. The op's blown anyway, but if we can make it to Earth, these punks will never get their ship back even if they -do- know we have it. They haven't seen us; they can't prove anything." "Aye aye, sir." Umphrey reached to obey, but as he did so, an alarm wailed. "What the - incoming missile!" It wasn't actually a missile, though the Valiant's threat analysis system, being unfamiliar with kaiju-class weapons, registered it as such. Umphrey saw as much when the oncoming attacker got near enough to resolve on the viewer - at which point he rose from his seat and gaped in complete astonishment. It was another robot, far different from either of the configurations that had attacked the ship already, but sporting both of their colors and yellow as well, the component vehicles' full three-tone color scheme. It was quite beyond Umphrey how three fighters could combine to form such radically, bizarrely different robot types, but there wasn't any other explanation - this had to be the same ones again. The oncoming robot would have been shorter than the other two, standing on a level surface, but it was much, much wider, with a barrel body, massive arms and legs, and a squat turret for a head. It sported two enormous canisters on its back which might have been missiles. It had no feet; its thick round legs ended in huge thruster exhausts. /* Kouhei Tanaka "Crisis M-17" _Sound Collection of Gunbuster_ */ Getter Poseidon plunged through the brief storm of phaser fire Umphrey threw at it and collided with the Valiant's blunt shark-mouthed nose at full speed, smashing into the starship with a jolt that shook both vehicles. On the face of it, the move looked like a suicide maneuver; despite its great size, the Getter Robo was still a great deal smaller than the destroyer, with a miniscule fraction of the ship's mass. It was like a man trying to stop a train. Poseidon, the mightiest of Getter G's three forms in terms of absolute physical strength, was up to the challenge. Though it was knocked backward, the robot's initial collision did cut the Valiant's speed considerably, and neither vehicle was particularly damaged by the crash. The nose module was the toughest part of the Defiant-class destroyer, built with the eventuality of ramming in mind, and Poseidon's armor was by far the heaviest of the three Getter G modes. At the controls of Poseidon, Corwin gritted his teeth, clutched the master control levers, and threw all his mount's tremendous power into the effort. "This is it - our last chance," Corwin grunted as Poseidon shuddered and fought, pushed onward by the Valiant's mighty impulse thrusters. "They were powering up - the metadrive - as we came in." "If they get away now, they'll take her to Earth and tear her apart!" Kozue cried. "Right," said Utena. "The IPO can lodge all the protests it wants after that; with no evidence, there'll be no case." "It'd be like - our ship - never existed," Corwin agreed. Three pairs of eyes opened as one, burning with indignation and determination. "Not - " Two pairs of hands seized control levers and slaved them to the master controls in #3 cockpit. "- going - " The fires in the Getter pilots' hearts resonated with the green fire at the heart of their three-as-one machine. Poseidon's power doubled, then tripled. " - to HAPPEN!" The robot's huge main thruster nozzles opened to full diameter and roared, emitting green-white shock cones whose light could be seen with the naked eye from the bridge of the Kuratai. The t'skrang vessel was charging down on the oddly lopsided battle at somewhere beyond top speed. The canisters on Poseidon's back were, in fact, missiles, but Corwin's mastery of the machine turned them to a different purpose; with their warheads and launch systems disabled and their thrusters at full bore, they added their enormous energy to the Getter Robo's own massive thrust. Poseidon's fingers dug into the super-thick armor of the Valiant's prow, bending the surface plates, and, to the utter astonishment of everyone involved except the furious Getter pilots themselves, the Valiant slowed... slowed... and stopped. "That's it! There's our chance!" Liza cried, coming out of her conn, lit up with glee. "Tractor beam, stand ready! Torqq - more speed!" If Corwin's eyes had been open, he would have kept one on the time display for the missiles' fuel supply and the other on the stress indicators for Poseidon's structure. They weren't, but he didn't really need them anyway. He kept the count of the fuel time in his mind, and his innate rapport with machines told him more about Poseidon's structural integrity than any gauge could ever have done. What that rapport told him was that Poseidon was doing a fantastic job, fueled by the wrath in the hearts of his crew, but it couldn't keep it up forever. No machine, not even a Getter-powered creation of the Lord of the Great Machines himself, could take this kind of punishment for long. "Time to tractor range!" Liza barked, her eyes fixed on the star-bright green-edged glare of Poseidon's thrusters. "20 seconds," Jandia replied. Too long! Liza thought, but she didn't say it out loud; her crew and her ship were working as hard as they could, and telling them they weren't going to make it wouldn't help. With a shuddering BANG, Poseidon's left main thruster ruptured the leg's outer armor, streaming green fire. The thruster still ran, but poorly; the robot faltered, slipping against the Valiant's prow. The armor of the Getter's left arm started to buckle visibly as Corwin re-braced his grip and tried to find better purchase with the now uneven thrust he had to work with. Well, he thought, this is it; Kuratai can't get here quite fast enough. The best we can hope for now is to hang on and go to metaspace with them - and then make as big a mess as we can when we get to Earth... Suddenly, the insistent, crushing pressure against Poseidon's arms and plastron ceased as though someone had thrown a switch, for the very simple reason that someone had. The Valiant had abruptly gone dark and silent, all energy systems shut down. On the bridge, John Darien rose from his seat, his jaw set in annoyance. He'd been expecting this since the icons for the Enforcers in Main Engineering had gone out one by one, and then Kaloris's after them. The gravity failed, but that didn't bother Darien; he was a trained spacer and could handle it easily. The same went for Umphrey, who floated free of his console, cursing. "Come on, Umphrey," Darien said, "we've got work to do," and he kicked himself toward the corner where he'd left his powered armor stowed. 10:10 AM BLACK OMEGA DETENTION CENTER TAU CETI Ahmed Garcia was starting to get good and frustrated with this assignment. It should have been an easy one, and it had turned into a nightmare, the hardest job of his career. This woman, whoever she was and wherever she came from, had the toughest ego he had ever encountered, and after an entire morning of relentless probing, taunting, questioning, and mental battering, he hadn't found so much as a crack anywhere. She certainly looked as if she'd been through a wringer by this point. Her head lolled forward; she lacked the strength to hold it up for more than a few seconds. She had dark rings around her eyes, as if from sleep deprivation, and there was blood dried on the lower half of her face and matted on the chest of her white prisoner's coverall from the multiple nosebleeds Garcia's psionic lashings had induced. But whenever she did raise her head and look at him, there was that same dark sardony in her deep green eyes, and Garcia was becoming more and more unnerved by it every time he saw it. He finished another deep, agonizing probe and withdrew, disgusted with himself. Juri sagged against her bonds, blood trickling anew from her nose, and for a moment, the interrogation room was silent. Then she asked a question which Garcia was accustomed to hearing: "Why are you doing this?" It wasn't asked in the pitiful, hopeless croak he was used to hearing it in, though. It was just a question, asked out of curiosity, or perhaps just to pass the time, by a woman who was undoubtedly in great pain, but nonetheless sounded... rather bored, really. Without quite knowing why he was doing so, Garcia answered the question in considerable detail. Perhaps he was just glad for the excuse to do something other than bash his will against hers. He explained to her the Psi Corps philosophy - the real one, not the "to serve mankind" garbage the public relations people spewed across the galactic airwaves. Telepaths, he explained, were the future of humanity, the next stage in human evolution. As more highly evolved, superior beings, they belonged at the top of the power structure, even if the more numerous normals weren't ready yet to accept that they'd been left behind by Nature. Normals were sheep, stupid and easily manipulated, and it was the destiny of the telepaths to rule them. The Psi Corps existed to refine the telepath race and help that process along, and Black Omega was the secret fist of the Psi Corps. Soon the black tide of the Corps would sweep aside all that stood before it, and human telepaths would take their rightful place in control of everything. For a few moments after Garcia finished this passionate discourse, Juri didn't respond. Her head remained bowed, and the Psi Cop wondered briefly if she had had the temerity to fall asleep; but then she started making a soft sound. For a second, Garcia thought she'd started to cry, a sign that she was finally giving way to the hopelessness of her predicament and falling into despair. That would be just the crack he needed to drive in a wedge and break her mental discipline wide open. But she wasn't crying. She was, he realized with a mixture of horror and indignation, -laughing-, a dry, dark chuckle with real mirth mixed into the bitterness. Before the Psi Cop could regain his composure enough to demand to know what was so funny, Juri made the effort to lift her head, raising her eyes to his. Garcia recoiled visibly from the black merriment that danced in those green eyes as they met his, at the cold irony of the little smile on the redhead's bloody lips. "Well, then," she said softly, "I suppose you have no choice but to revolutionize the world." Then she threw her head back and laughed at him, amusement wracking her whole body. "Stop that," Garcia said softly, his voice quivering with rage. She didn't stop. "STOP IT!" he roared, launching his most violent assault yet. That had the desired effect - the laughter stopped, replaced with a choking scream - but it didn't make him feel better, and it didn't accomplish anything meaningful either. All he managed to do was knock her out. He stood in the silent interrogation chamber, fists clenched, breathing hard, and wondered just where this session had gone so very wrong. 10:17 AM HOTEL METROPOLE As they watched the Duelists leave for the second time, heading for the "mall" at the edge of town, Gunnr turned to Anne. "You really don't mind us getting left behind like this?" she asked. Anne shook her head. "Not really," she said, in a tone that indicated pretty clearly that she was telling the truth. "I'll admit I'd love to be in there, helping rescue Juri and B'Elanna and Janice, but I'm not ready and I know it. And I'd rather they be successful at this than held back by worrying about me." "And the thought of that many Psi Cops scares the living daylights out of you, right?" Gunnr added. Anne sighed. "Yeah, it does," she admitted. "Frankly, staying here to guard -one- Psi Cop, defector or not, doesn't really give me a warm fuzzy feeling either," she added, gesturing toward the bedroom where Carmela Sunderland, having awakened just long enough to spill her guts, slept once more. "But if I can't cope with guarding one who probably isn't going to try to scramble my brains, then going into a compound -full- of them isn't a good idea either." Gunnr grinned. "I'm impressed. I probably wouldn't have admitted that to one of my teachers." The young samurai-in-training smiled ruefully and rubbed the ears of R. Dorothy's cat Peril, who was sleeping on the living room's window seat. "One of the lessons I learned -very- hard and very fast once I started running was to know what my limitations were. Being cocky was very nearly a nasty form of suicide. But it doesn't mean I like it." "Well, you're -visibly- better with your bokken now than you were when I met you. If you keep progressing like that, you won't have to worry about them for too much longer." "Against slavers and pimps, maybe," Anne said, climbing up onto the window seat next to Peril and resting her wooden blade across her knees. "The mental discipline that I need to learn is going to come slower, I expect. Shielding's one thing - I don't pick up stray emotions anymore, thank the gods, and Devlin says I could probably block a P8 probe if I was -really- motivated." Gunnr grabbed one of the hotel chairs and flipped it around sideways so that she could still look at Anne while she talked. "So you're mostly OK," she pointed out. "How many P9s or better are there, anyway?" Anne laughed. "In this crowd? More than enough. And blocking a Psi Cop or another strong telepath long enough to close to melee or shoot them takes abilities I don't have yet." Anne looked over at the sleeping Psi Cop on the bed. "Kaitlyn-sensei took her on without -any- psionics except Katsujinkenryuu, and won. Someday, I'll do the same thing. I just have to be careful not to get cocky." The Valkyrie looked between Anne and the sleeping Psi Cop. "Maybe," she pointed out. "But you also have to not get in the habit of thinking you -can't- take one on and win. Oh, sure, you can't do it yet, but if you keep thinking that you can't handle one, you'll never be able to." "Point taken," Anne sighed. "It's a balancing act." "Hey, you're doing OK so far. You downed that cyborg when he was going to deck me, and you couldn't have done -that- before." Gunnr grinned. "-I- was impressed. And grateful, too. That would have hurt." Anne got somewhat pink over the bridge of her nose. "Um... thanks." Gunnr's grin turned a little sly. "You're welcome. You're cute when you blush, you know." Anne was saved from having to reply by the sound of a knock on the door. She frowned and uncurled from the window seat. Gunnr's mischievous expression faded to a very businesslike look of concentration. "Stay by the window," the Valkyrie said. "If it's a Psi Cop, you can back me up from there." Anne reached to the end table next to the couch and picked up the .32 automatic Gunnr had given her earlier, then nodded. Gunnr went toward the door, careful to stay out of its direct line, and called out, "Who is it?" "Housekeeping," came the cheerful answer. Anne shifted her pistol in her grip slightly. "Just checking if you need any more towels? Does the room need cleaning?" "Um, we're a little busy in here... " She shot Anne a gleeful look that made the younger girl's blush come back with a vengeance, then winked, which didn't help. "Can you come back later?" "Oh, uh..." The voice sounded embarrassed. "Certainly, certainly." The sound of footsteps and a squeaking cart rolling down the hall was muffled by the door, and Gunnr backed up slowly. She was squinting at the door, then glanced at Anne and cocked her thumb at the door, wavering it between down and neutral, while her other hand strayed behind her to the holster across her back. Anne continued to squint at the door, listening with all her might. The nervous, twitchy feeling for a bad situation that she'd honed to an art on the Rim itched ferociously. Peril seemed to agree. With an air of moderate concern, the cat jumped up onto the back of the sofa, thence to the armoire that contained the TV, and then up onto the glass bowl of the ceiling light fixture. That was enough to convince Anne, who had seen Peril in a similar place the last time things went non-linear. She cocked the hand with the gun it, then thumbed the safety off; in doing so, she pointed her thumb straight at the floor. Gunnr nodded her agreement. Then the door imploded. Carmela Sunderland -had- been asleep. The sound of an explosion, followed by the smell of burning carpet and the loud crack of handgun fire close to her feet, sent her surging to awareness faster than she would have thought possible, given her condition. She sat partway up, wincing and gasping at the pain this brought from her fractured ribs, and opened her eyes. It took a moment for them to focus and another for her mind to catch up and explain to her what she was seeing. It was the teenage girl with the dark hair - Anne Cross, the infamous Jutekh blip - kneeling at the foot of the bed, facing toward the double doors leading into the suite's sitting room. She had a wooden sword in one hand and a small autopistol of a distinctly antique-looking type in the other, and the look on her face was one of concentrated displeasure. There was no fear in it, though, and most people, blips especially, would have shown some to what burst through those double doors in pursuit of her - a fully armored Enforcer, blaster carbine in hand. They found out the blip was here and staged a raid? Carmela thought. Bold of them... The Enforcer opened fire on his quarry, spraying the end of the room with blasterfire. The Cross girl moved like smoke, an evasion very reminiscent of her sensei's, and the fire ravaged the bureau in the far corner. Anne came up from her roll on one knee and, without really thinking about it, leveled the .32 and fired, her sighting eye glowing with a light like flame. Sunderland and the Enforcer were both fully prepared to find this effort pathetic. A 500-year-old .32 Colt automatic could still quite easily punch a deadly hole in a human being, but an Enforcer armored against modern small arms was another thing entirely. Fortunately, both the .32 and the girl wielding it were -also- another thing entirely. The .32 was a Valkyrie's weapon, with the runic credo engraved in the side of its slide and a techno-mystic ammunition feed supplying it with cartridges prepared by the Armorer to the Forces of Asgard. And as she fired, Anne Cross was unconsciously applying a skills integration technique originally taught to her by Kaitlyn for use with her sword. She hadn't considered whether it would work with a gun, but the effect spoke for itself. As each bullet left the Hammerless's muzzle, the pyrokinetic novice samurai's furiously concentrated will shrouded it in fire - not just a little match-head of a fire, but the essence of the flame, superheated plasma, radiant chaos itself. The shroud of plasma, the minor enchantments, and the jacket of Asgardian iron on each bullet combined to make each shot from the little automatic roughly equivalent to a bolt from a hot-rodded blaster like the Enforcer's own. It was a very surprised E(CA)2 who stumbled back with three smoking craters in his armored plastron, roaring as much in shock and indignation as pain. Sunderland heard the deeper BOOM of a much heavier weapon from out in the living room, followed almost instantly by the piercing SHRAK of armor giving way. The Enforcer confronting Cross dropped to one knee and crossed his left arm across his chest, deploying a glowing powershield from a projector mounted on his vambrace. It absorbed two more of the flame-charged shots from the girl's pistol before he lunged up and charged, taking another shot in the shield and losing his blaster to another before sweeping his armored hand around and smacking the weapon from the girl's hand. Undaunted, she coiled back, added her freed gun hand to the grip of her bokuto, and exploded up from her own crouch with a kiai that sent a spike of pain through Carmela Sunderland's head even as it impressed what of the Psi Cop's faculties were watching. The wooden blade smashed into the Enforcer's shield. He deployed a vibro-bayonet from his right vambrace and struck back with great speed and agility for a creature of his bulk. Anne was ready and blocked the strike, then riposted and counterattacked, going for his head with a blade that trailed a crackling arc of fire. The blow dented the side of the Enforcer's helmet and sent him reeling. Anne pressed her advantage; her next blow overloaded her opponent's shield, blowing out the projector in a spray of blue-white sparks. Sunderland's eyes widened; the girl's face was a mask of fury, but -controlled- fury, similar to the look Arisugawa had worn before Sunderland had snuffed her conscious mind and released what lay beneath. The Enforcer parried another attack with his bayonet and gave it a twist that sent the much lighter Anne stumbling back to retain both her weapon and her balance. Then his dented helmet turned quickly to the side, turning the blank red gaze of his optic slit on Sunderland. To her astonishment, he raised his left arm and triggered one of his vambrace weapons, sending a rocket-propelled explosive dart straight for her head. In what she fully expected to be her last second of life, Sunderland realized what should have been obvious all along - that SHE was the dangerous blip the Corps had sent this Enforcer (and from the sounds out in the living room, at least one other) to destroy. Then Anne Cross released another full-power cry, but this one wasn't focusing her strength for a sword attack. The rocket dart hit nothing at all three feet from Sunderland's face and detonated, all its explosive power bursting back to wash the Enforcer briefly in a black-orange fireball and leaving the fugitive Psi Cop unmarked. The Enforcer turned back to confront his young adversary. She sprang forward. He lunged, bringing his bayonet around in a hissing arc which would divide her in half at the waist if she kept on her current path. She jumped up, impossibly high, hovered in the air for a long count with her wooden katana raised above her head in both hands, its edge lighting up the room with yellow-white fire... ... and then, with a final explosive kiai, brought it smashing down on the top of his head with all the force her body and mind could muster. The Enforcer's duraplastic helmet -exploded-, out and back, peppering the wall next to the doors with black shrapnel as a cloud of acrid smoke rolled toward the ceiling. Anne Cross tapped one foot lightly against his chestplate and sprang backward, landing in a ready stance. Her ribs heaved, her face was bathed in a mixture of sweat from her forehead and blood from her nose, but her sword was raised and ready. The Enforcer, his ugly face and bald head patched with soot and angry red burns, stared at her with wide, white-rimmed eyes for a moment, then gathered himself up and charged. She let him come, then flowed into a classic Katsujinkenryuu counter - slipping the charge to the side, then whirling and laying her blade squarely across his back. The impact carried him straight through the French doors, onto the balcony, over the railing, and 208 feet straight down to the service alley behind the Hotel Metropole, where he became the single oddest piece of refuse ever found in the hotel restaurant's Dumpster. Anne stood panting for a moment, then turned to look for her gun. Spotting it in the far corner of the room, she held out her hand. The gun twitched, then flew to her grip as if on a wire. A moment later, another Enforcer crashed through the double doors from the living room, but he wasn't a new threat; he came in backward and sprawled flat on his back at the foot of the bed with a large, smoking hole dead-center in his plastron. Gunnr Brynjelfr strode into the room, jacked open the long-barrelled, single-shot pistol she held (which ejected a large, smoking shell casing), plunked another round into the chamber from a pouch on her belt, flipped the weapon shut with a flick of her wrist, and kept the Enforcer covered, but it was pretty plain he wasn't getting up to renew hostilities. Anne crouched down, puzzled out the locking mechanism, removed the man's helmet, and confirmed that he was, in fact, dead. Then she straightened, turned to Sunderland and asked breathlessly, "You OK? Aside from what you came in with." That struck Carmela as quite witty under the circumstances. She chuckled painfully, then said, "I think so. I... thank you." Anne safed her Hammerless and tucked it into her belt, then pulled a wad of tissues out of her pocket and started trying to stanch the flow of blood from her nose. "You're welcome," she told the Psi Cop. "S'why I'm here." Gunnr grinned, rounded the Enforcer, and ran her hands quickly and expertly up and down Anne's limbs and body, then stepped back and said, "Seems like you've still got everything you came in with. Where's your dance partner?" Anne jerked a thumb toward what remained of the French doors. "He decided to wait outside." Gunnr went out onto the balcony, leaned carefully over the bent part of the railing, then emitted a low, impressed whistle. "That's one Dumpster that will never threaten society again," she remarked. Then she came back into the room, picked up the phone, and said, "Hi. Housekeeping? This is Brynjelfr in 2104. The room definitely needs cleaning now." Anne cracked up laughing, then went back to the living room to retrieve Peril. 10:23 AM MAIN ENGINEERING IPS VALIANT Of the sixteen Black Omega personnel, four Psi Cops and twelve cybernetically-augmented Enforcers, who had boarded the Valiant as prize crew, only four remained. The others were scattered around the ship in various states of disrepair (except for the one who had been spaced), all of them brought down by a single individual. The remaining four were in no position to attempt a restart of the ship's unfamiliar reactor systems, but they had restored auxiliary power, which turned on the emergency lights and restored gravity to the ship. Now they moved cautiously into the ship's dark, silent engine room, weapons at the ready. The two telepaths, Darien and Umphrey, had all their senses extended, searching, knowing their quarry was near. Like all Psi Corps personnel, they knew full well how dangerous a Martian could be; but this Martian had ruined Darien's op, a high-prestige job that was supposed to be a milk run, and killed a dozen of his people, including two promising lieutenants. He wasn't about to let the thing get away with -that-. In the far corner of the room, something moved. Callaway whirled and opened up with his blaster, throwing sharp, angular shadows with slashes of scarlet light as a humanoid shape crossed the compartment, heading straight for Umphrey. "Umphrey, NOW!" Darien bellowed, and he and his subordinate both capitalized on the mistake their alien adversary had made by revealing himself. Martians were remarkably powerful telepaths - the best of them were more powerful than any human yet observed - but not powerful enough to stand up to a pair of P12 Psi Cops with special training in dealing with them. The creature screamed, its motion checked as its mind was assailed from two directions at once. It tumbled to the deck, losing motor control, and moved fitfully, trying and failing to get up. "What the... ?" Callaway murmured. He turned his light on the creature, and all four Black Omega troopers backed away slightly with exclamations of surprise and disgust. Martians were shape-shifters, that was well-documented; but that shape-shifting was a well-controlled, disciplined thing, not like the quivery amorphousness of the Dralasites or the ever-changing, restless polymorphing of the Durlans, who had forgotten what they were originally supposed to look like. Once a Martian assumed a shape, that was it until the next one - unless he lost consciousness, and the best among them could maintain an assumed shape even then. Even those who weren't that good at it would just revert to their normal spindly green shape and stay there. This creature was in flux, its surface rippling and changing colors. It remained roughly humanoid, but its dimensions and texture kept changing, a phenomenon which the human observers found most disquieting. All but Darien, that is; he was too busy feeling satisfied. He strode up to the prostrate, writhing Martian, drew back a boot, and kicked it as hard as he could. This sent it tumbling up against the far bulkhead, made a most satisfying sound in its own right, and drew a thoroughly fulfilling yowl of pain as well. (The yowl was almost polyphonic, the creature's voice changing as its appearance did; the Enforcers drew back in revulsion.) Darien crossed the engine room, reached down, seized the Martian's throat in one powered gauntlet, and straightened up. The sensation of holding the alien up was a fascinating one; his armor's servos clicked and whirred as they compensated for the Martian's ever-changing weight. That in particular was a Martian ability which bent the laws of physics and had fascinated non-Martian anatomists for centuries - from a safe distance. Perhaps the Corps would get a chance to investigate this one, though there seemed to be something so profoundly wrong with it that the effort might be wasted. It seemed to stabilize somewhat in Darien's grip after a few moments, its surface solidifying and its weight changes stopping. The Omega leader switched on his shoulder-mounted floodlamp and took his first good look at its face. The form it had settled in looked, to his surprise, more or less human - pinkish skin, long, dark, wavy hair. If the human form it had taken were any indication, it was a she, if such things even applied to Martians; Darien couldn't remember offhand if they did or not. She looked -remarkably- human, come to that... at least until she opened her eyes, which were solid black without white or iris, and ruined the effect. "What's the matter with you, then?" he asked her conversationally. She tried to speak, but his grip was too tight; all that came out was a sort of rattling sound. "Not that it matters, I suppose. You've caused me a lot of trouble, probably cost me this operation, and I don't know how the hell I'm going to get out of this... but don't think you're going to get away with it." She reached up and took hold of his vambrace with both hands, but her strength, that incredible Martian strength Darien had read about in the briefings, had deserted her. She could no more dislodge him than could a kitten. He smiled sardonically and started to close his gauntlet. Off to his left, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a splash of golden light. This light was accompanied by a shimmery 'pop!' noise, and then there was a blur of motion. Darien turned his head, just starting to relax his hand so that he could drop the Martian and deal with whatever was coming toward him - The ancient Asgardian spell called Dimension Step had nowhere near the range of Corwin Ravenhair's mystic gate ability. Corwin, and most other Aesir, could traverse interstellar distances in moments with concentration and focus; Dimension Step was good for maybe five miles. But it did have the advantage that it was damn near instantaneous, and combined with a bit of judicious prejump scrying, it delivered its cargo ready for instant action. Anthy Tenjou had been hoping for an excuse to use it ever since she'd learned it more than a year before. Captain Utena Tenjou sprang into action the instant she and the rest of her boarding party materialized in the engine room. She dove forward with a great booming yell, the Heart of the Rose glinting black-traced gold in the residual light of the Dimension Step's energy bubble, and brought the blade down with all her strength on the vulnerable junction between vambrace and spaulder. With a sharp WHRANG and a spray of orange sparks, John Darien's right arm parted at the elbow and both Hyatt and his forearm fell heavily to the deck. "AAAGH!" the Psi Cop bellowed as he reeled back. Only a little blood spattered the deck before his armor's autosealant closed the wound, and the automeds kicked in almost immediately, but by that point Utena had the point of her sword at his throat and was glaring fiercely at him with her azure eyes. The wounded Psi Cop looked around and saw the rest of his whittled-down prize crew surrounded by Duelists and t'skrang, all of whom looked to be spoiling for a fight. Umphrey looked most uncomfortable with the humming point of Kyouichi Saionji's lightsaber hovering just off the tip of his nose, and the two Enforcers were almost entirely boxed in. Behind Captain Tenjou, a slim, dark pirate girl in bright silks and a kerchief stood looking pleased with herself, with a rosewood staff in one hand and what looked like a flintlock dueling pistol in her belt. Next to her was a young man Darien recognized as Corwin Ravenhair, the ship's chief engineer, with a scowl on his face and a slightly newer-looking gun in his hand. Callaway saw the damage done to his commander and roared, lunging forward. The t'skrang surrounding him attacked, but his armor shrugged off their blaster bolts and vibro-cutlasses, and he plowed through them like a truck through trash cans, making straight for Tenjou. Until, that is, a shape even larger and lumpier than Callaway intercepted him and, with a roar that seemed to shake the compartment's walls, leveled him with one great swing of what looked like a stone club roughly the size of an astromech droid. The E(CA) hurtled across the engine room, banged into the bulkhead next to the portside exit hard enough to dent the durasteel, rebounded forward, and smashed down on his face, arms outflung, completely immobile. Bessmer, the last Enforcer, made as if to break out of his own cordon of t'skrang and rush to his buddy's aid, but the hulking form which had laid Callaway low rounded on him and bared jagged fangs in a dreadful snarl. Faced with this monster, now hefting his intricately carved stone club again, the Enforcer backed down. "Nice job, Torqq," said Kozue Kaoru with a smile as she held down on Umphrey with her blaster pistol, a chopped-and-rodded old Bryar carbine which had been a gift from an admirer in the world of starpiloting. The enormous troll chuckled seismically, but said nothing, keeping his baleful eyes pinned on Bessmer. "I'm guessing you're the guy in charge," said Utena to Darien. "In case you didn't know, I'm Captain Utena Tenjou, and this is my ship. Now you guys have two choices: You can give up, or you can walk home." 11:02 AM BLACK OMEGA DETENTION CENTER TAU CETI At 11:02 AM, the only person at the Black Omega detention center (aside from the thoroughly frustrated Ahmed Garcia and, of course, the prisoners) who had any particular cause to be annoyed about anything was the communications manager. This unfortunate soul, a P5 commercial telepath by the name of Loring Drake, had a number of system failures on his hands which added up to a picture he didn't think he liked, but had limited authority to do anything about. Drake checked the link to the Tau Ceti communications center, but it was still down. That wasn't all that surprising - it happened all the time. The telecom infrastructure around Tau City was just not up to the challenge of modern distributed data networking. What -was- surprising was that whatever the problem at the Comm Center was, it seemed to have taken the phones down too. He'd tried calling over there for the last couple of hours to ask for a time-to-repair on the latest line failure, but he kept getting a fast busy. The Center downtown had no better luck. Portables weren't getting through either. Drake was just about to get up and go see about actually heading over to the Comm Center when he heard a muffled crash through the ceiling of his office and alarms started going off. The Duelists and friends burst through the breach in the main entrance which Wakaba had made for them, each one with a specific goal in mind. Some broke off and headed up the northeast detention wing, others up the northwest, dealing with the light on-floor security detachments as they went. Three headed straight north, bound for the stairs to the basement. One stayed in the lobby. When the intruder alarm started howling, the bulk of the complex's company of security troopers was in the barracks wing, kicking back and waiting for the call to transport the prisoners up to the hidden Omega spaceport in the mountains north of Tau City. From there they would be taken to Earth - well, actually, the Moon - by special transport for further processing. At the sound of the alarm, the troopers sprang from their bunks and chairs, grabbing up their armor and weapons, and hit the corridor running, forming up into loose squads as they ran. By the time they reached the central lobby they were mostly suited up and had their weapons mostly ready. They poured out of the south corridor expecting to see an assault force of IPO bluesuiters. Instead, their foremost elements skidded to a halt in surprise as they saw... one unarmed man. He stood in the middle of the lobby with feet planted shoulder-width apart and his arms slack at his sides, waiting for them, dressed not in combat gear but in a dark suit; a thoroughly ordinary-looking man. While the security troopers stood there trying to figure out what to make of him, he smiled pleasantly at them. Then he very deliberately removed his red necktie, folded it carefully, and put it in the inside pocket of his suitjacket. Then he folded the jacket double and tossed it into the corner of the room, unbuttoned the cuffs of his black dress shirt's sleeves, and rolled the sleeves up to his elbows, revealing his IPO Lens. His preparations for battle completed, Jackie Chan gave the troopers another pleasant smile, shrugged nonchalantly, and waited for them. With a nicely rehearsed parade-ground intimidation yell, they charged. Loring Drake was just about to call the control center and ask about the status of the alert again - they'd brushed him off last time, much to his annoyance - when something hit the door to his office, which was also the machine room for the complex, with a sharp WHANG. Drake whirled to see a white triangle jutting through a rent in the metal door, just in the gap between the doorknob and the edge of the door. As he looked at it, trying to figure out what it was, it curled slightly in the constant circular breeze the cooling fans kept blowing through the room, and he recognized it. It was the corner of a sheet of white paper, the kind used in copiers and printers throughout the standardized galaxy. While Drake was trying to figure out how in the -hell- a piece of copier paper came to be -driven through his office door-, the door opened, its severed lock bolt clattering to the floor, and two young women barged in. One, a raven-haired girl with glasses, had a fan of copier paper in one hand; the other had wine-colored hair and a cocky grin, and wore a sword at her belt. "Hi," the latter said, unslinging a leather pack from her shoulder. "I need to borrow your console." Drake had always felt a bit silly packing a PPG pistol in his office, since nothing ever, ever happened there. Today he reconsidered that viewpoint as he drew the weapon and thumbed its charge inducer. "I don't - " he began, but the black-haired girl moved. She threw one of the sheets of paper at him. Instinctively, Drake whirled and fired; he got off two shots before the sheet of paper hit and wrapped around his hand, sealing hand and weapon up in a painful, crushing grip. Drake gasped and dropped to his knees, prying ineffectively at the paper. It felt like his hand was being squeezed in a vice. Yomiko Readman lowered the fan of papers from her face, regarded the one sheet with two charred spots on it glumly, then put it in an inside pocket of her coat. Shiori slipped past the kneeling administrator (beads of sweat now standing out on his forehead as he grappled with the paper wrapped around his hand) and seated herself at his console, then quickly unpacked her deck, cabled it up, and dove in. It's impossible to tell what a person really looks like online. This has been true since long before virtual reality, let alone neural interface. The cute girl with glasses, a tie and no pants on across the online chat room table from you may well be a thoroughly hairy steelworker named Bud. Hackers, crackers, w4r3z d00dz and phreaks throughout the ages have idealized themselves for their online audiences. In a simulated-sensorium virtual reality setting on a galactic Internet encompassing uses from thousands of species, this effect is even more pronounced. It's pretty much impossible to tell -what- you're dealing with in real life from an online icon, let alone whom. That said, Shiori's icon was pretty straightforward. It was based on her residual self-image, like the icon of a person plugged into a stand-alone simsense playback, with a few embellishments she'd coded in with a simple Ihara-Grubb script. Thus, it looked more or less like Shiori herself - same face, same basic body proportions, same hairstyle. It even wore a slightly modified version of her old Tenjou Academy student councilor's uniform, with its wine-red jacket and white pants. Except, of course, that the real Shiori's hair, while an eyecatching raspberry-maroon shade not commonly seen in humanoids who weren't Zentraedi, did not actually -glow-. Nor was the real Tenjou Academy student councilor's uniform constructed of skin-tight, slightly translucent data membrane. The real uniform's buttons and epaulets were likewise not made of gold light, nor did they levitate, fully independent, an inch or so away from the wearer's skin. After resolving, Shiori opened "her" eyes (they, too, glowed, in a bright variation on their natural violet shade) and looked around. She was in the familiar offline-prep space within her own deck, a small room whose walls, ceiling and floor were composed entirely of scrolling blue text against a silvery background. Status messages and program load indicators hovered in a small constellation around her, each conveying some important piece of information. She checked each one; then, satisfied with the ready status of her deck, she took one of the round windows, this one containing a connection status indicator for the deck's link to Drake's console, and flipped it over. On the back of it was a bright red pulsing bullseye surrounded by the words "DIVE READY". Shiori cracked a small grin and put her palm against the bullseye. It pulsed, sizzled, and then seemed to rush toward her as the deck's intrusion systems rammed her center of perception into the Psi Corps computer. Like the Communication Center's system, the detention mainframe was a pretty dull place, design-wise. It was basically just a virtual representation of an office complex, each item in its place, each system properly configured to work with the others. Boring. Shiori sought out the databanks, moving through the illusory halls of the deserted office complex with a speed and precision that put the lie to the place's dry, dusty photorealism. She found them without difficulty, dispatched the rather rudimentary security surrounding them easily, and set them to downloading for later perusal while she sought out the security system. This was guarded by a protection routine, an automated attack program whose icon had been imaginatively designed to look like an Enforcer (Cybernetically Augmented). As Shiori approached the security node, it shifted its stance and turned to face her. "IDENTIFY," it demanded. Shiori smiled, a little nastily. In her field of view, a status update scrolled past in glowing red letters: >> modload MILLIONSWORDS.ICB .... ready: GO Probably overkill, but she was in a hurry. Janice Barlow had just about gotten the hang of playing toss against the wall with only one eye when, with a sudden, thoroughly disorienting lurch of reality, her other one came back online, causing her to miss her aim entirely and bean herself squarely on the forehead with the baseball. "Ow!" she grumbled, rubbing at the point of impact. Boot-up messages scrolled through her field of vision as her neuroprocessor restarted. She reached up and tugged at the inhibitor; it was powered off, its magnetic locks inactive, and came away easily. She waited for the system to come fully online, which only took a couple of seconds, and then send a startup and diagnostic command to Mitra. To her delight, the remote came online immediately. Tying across to its visual sensor accomplished little; wherever the Mag was, it was completely dark. Radar wasn't much more useful - too much interference. Ultrasonic imaging showed that Mitra was in a small room, not much bigger than the Mag itself. Janice smiled and triggered Mitra's built-in beam weapon, which blew the door off the evidence locker the Mag had been locked inside. "OK, boy," she murmured, her neuroprocessor translating the command into something the Mag's rather primitive command intelligence could understand and follow. "Come find me." The Ragolian constable was still watching Mitra's progress through the corridors, following the homing trace in her cybernetic link to it, when she noticed, up ahead of the Mag in the hallway, the back of a wide, long-coated figure she thought she recognized. The figure was running up the corridor, away from Mitra and toward a pair of black-fatigue-clad security guards. As they turned, startled, at his approach, he raised his hand and something in it flashed - no sound, Mitra's pickups didn't reach far. The two guards fell, one of them spinning, to the floor, and then the figure skidded to a halt next to a door. Mitra had just caught up enough for the man's face to resolve into recognizability when he drew back and applied a boot to the door. POW! A section of the featureless wall of Janice's cell detached itself from the rest and crashed into the room, ricocheting off the far wall and clattering to the floor at the foot of the bunk. Made of duraplastic with an energy-absorbing facing, it was designed to be almost indestructible from -inside- the cell, but from outside, it was just a plastic door. Sergeant Neal Krummell followed the door in, his big black sidearm at the ready. He'd covered the whole room as drilled in Tac Div training, making sure it was empty except for Janice, before he relaxed slightly and put the weapon away inside his coat. Janice killed her visual link to Mitra before the Mag could reach the doorway and give her the mindbending experience of seeing Neal from both sides. She didn't have time to do much of anything else, because before she could get up or say anything, the Niogan Lensman had engulfed her in his arms, almost crushing her. "Uh... whoa, there, big guy," she said, pushing semi-effectively at his shoulders. "Gotta breathe here. I'm glad to see you too." "Are you all right?" Krummell asked, his voice strained and rough with emotion. "Did they hurt you?" "Me? Nah. Haven't done a thing. They just slapped a neuroprocessor cutoff on me and locked me in here. Didn't even ask me anything." Krummell nodded wordlessly and crushed her again. She thought to try and get him to back off again, but then decided what the hell; he was normally so bad at expressing his feelings, she might as well enjoy it while he had them on tap. It surprised her a little, therefore, when he loosened his grip after a few seconds, leaned back, looked her in the eye, and said gruffly, "Everybody says you and me need to talk." Janice blinked, glanced toward the door, and said hesitantly, "Um. This might not be the best time or place... " The Lensman cracked a slight smile, breaking up the tension on his face, and said wryly, "It won't take long." The Honourable J. Maurice MacEchearn the Fourth was a peaceful man. Though he hung around with the Duelists and had been a friend of Kaitlyn's since their freshman year in high school, and of Utena's since her appearance in Midgard back at the beginning of sophomore year, he had never learned a martial art and had no particular interest in doing so. He didn't like violence, though he was no blind pacifist; he acknowledged that it was a necessary and even important thing, and that the people who could do it and do it responsibly were needed in the galaxy. He was just generally pleased not to be one. Thus, in most of the engagements of the International Police Starship Valiant, he was a non-combatant, a true passenger. He had taken a hand to help defend the ship during its first encounter with rogue Klingons, some years back, but that was different. That was self-defense. Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan had much the same views on violence, though her temper was a bit shorter and, as a native of Dantrov - a planet with native fauna nearly as dangerous as those of Ragol but without the inflated technology base in weapons - she had considerably more skill in self-defense than had Moose. She, too, had taken a hand in the defense of the Valiant, backalong; but for the most part she was content to serve as a sort of mascot and morale officer, her sunny disposition outweighing her great speed and formidable natural weaponry in people's mental estimations of her. All the same, the both of them were here today, as one of the teams ranging up a corridor in Cell Block B, seeking a particular room whose location had been provided by Shiori. Neither had a neural processor, though Moose, an electrical engineering major, had been considering one off and on throughout the previous school year; so they were getting their data from the netdiving Duelist by radio. "21... 23... 25," Moose murmured under his breath as he walked briskly up the corridor. He looked around. "No guards?" "They're inside this one," Shiori's voice said in his earpiece. "Two of the cyber-enforcer type. Dangerous prisoner." Moose grinned a small, dark grin. "They ain't seen nothin' yet." Then he took several steps back, set himself, and rammed his massive Hoffmanite frame at top speed into the door. The two E(CA)s in the cell beyond recoiled in surprise from the exploding portal, raising their weapons. Moose kept right on coming, barely slowed down by the flimsy door; its frame behind him was now rather comically bent to match his rather spherical profile, and the wall around it had rippled into interesting wave patterns. The Enforcer on the left got off a shot which sizzled into the wall behind the charging Hoffmanite and to his left. Then Moose was upon him, and E(CA)2 Helmut Walcott reacted without thinking (a thing E(CA)s were, by and large, suited to doing). He abandoned his blaster and threw up his hands as the Hoffmanite lunged for him, and their hands locked together in a classic contest of strength. Walcott wasn't particularly worried. This guy was -big-, but a quick thermoscan indicated that he was just meat. Walcott's cybernetically enhanced, power-armor-boosted limbs were the best money could buy, and they were damn near tireless. He increased his internal power levels to maximum and both drove his arms forward and closed his gauntlets with all his strength, looking forward to the sounds of cracking bones. His teeth gritted and bright green eyes narrowed, Moose gave no ground. The soles of his boots squeaked against the plastic deck matting as he hurled all his bred-for-three-Gs power against the Enforcer's challenge, the muscles in his back and arms bulging and quivering. Moose MacEchearn's was not a pretty face on the best of days, with its bald pate and bulbous, crooked nose, but right now it was downright hideous, distorted by effort and anger. Moose's stretchy black shirt exceeded its stretch limit and burst across his back with a sound like a gunshot. The Enforcer, blinking inside his helmet, had the thought that this should all have been over with by now, or at least that Sanderson should have backed him -up- by now. From where he was, his field of view dominated by the wrathful Hoffmanite, he couldn't see that Sanderson had a dance partner of his own already. Walcott sent all the power he could muster into his gauntlets. C'mon, dammit, he muttered in the privacy of his own head. Break, damn you - break! With a sharp POP and a shower of sparks, his right hand obeyed, its armor structure buckling like a Buick against a bridge abutment. The sudden unbalancing effect was as much a problem for Moose as it was for Walcott. The two men spun around the axis of Walcott's right shoulder, which meant that Moose was slammed violently into the wall as much by his own strength as the Enforcer's. Fortunately, that wall was a bit more substantial than the one with the door on it, and only caved in a few inches. Walcott yanked his good hand free, popped his bayonets, and went for Moose's head. The mildly stunned Hoffmanite ducked, allowing the Enforcer to ram his blades into the wall; then Moose rose to his full height, drew himself back with a huge, malevolent grin splitting his coal-black face, and smashed his broad forehead down on Walcott's. The Enforcer was wearing a duraplastic helmet proof against small-arms fire and light energy weapons, but it didn't help him much here. Hoffmanite bones, in addition to their specially engineered high-load structure, have a natural metal content high enough to set off security systems; they are among the strongest natural substances in the universe. Walcott sprawled flat on his back in the middle of the cell, his helmet in shards around his head, his consciousness someplace in the middle of next week. Moose looked around, saw nobody else in the cell with him except its designated occupant. That meant Azalynn and her dance partner must be out in the hall. He went to the doorway and looked out just in time to see the other Enforcer spraying the length of the hall with automatic blasterfire. The man's armor was looking seriously dilapidated, as if he'd been through a car wash whose felt flappers had been replaced with machetes. What he was shooting at was not immediately apparent. Whatever it was, he apparently didn't hit it, for a moment later he staggered back, more chunks flying from his armor and the still-partially-flesh body beneath it. All that could be seen around him was a dark, flickering blur. As it flitted around him, the blur occasionally resolved itself into the lithe form of Azalynn; the Enforcer tried to engage her with his bayonets, but she was too fast for him. The people of Dantrov were commonly regarded around the civilized galaxy as a nice, weird, rather trippy people who were not in favor of clothes, had good singing voices and were into a lot of odd but benign sexual entanglements. They tended to be small by human standards and weren't generally viewed as particularly dangerous. What most people didn't realize was that, as mentioned before, Dantrov was a terribly dangerous planet. The Dantrovians were, it was true, geared more toward the flight than the fight, but if forced to it, they were ferocious fighters who could move faster than a chipped cheetah and carve steel with their tree-climbing claws. They held nothing back; in crisis mode, their biochemistry was specifically tailored to burn all available resources, boosting their strength and speed to levels well beyond those attainable by a human of similar build. All of which is a convoluted way of saying that a roused Dantrovian is like a tornado full of circular saws. With a snarl that evolution gave her to ward off creatures capable of eating cars, Azalynn threw herself at her adversary again, her eyes and claws glittering in the corridor's overhead lights. He flailed like a man trying to ward off a swarm of bees as more of his exostructure was shredded away, then whirled, lunged, and drove his bayonets straight into a power junction. Azalynn skidded out of her high-speed attack pattern and watched as the Enforcer's barrier elements overloaded and blew out. He stood rigid for several moments while the hall lights flickered; then they went out, replaced by the emergency battery lights, and he keeled over backward, smoke pouring from the vents in his armor. The diminutive Dantrovian stood panting for a few moments, her claws slowly retracting below her fingernails. Then, having determined that there was no more danger, she collapsed, unconscious. Moose tsk'd indulgently and went out to collect her before seeing to Kanna, who seemed to be connected to an electronic sleep inducer. That was good; it meant she would be much easier to revive than if she had been drugged. Janice was pretty sure she knew what was coming here. After all, she'd been down in the Valiant's shooting range with Gunnr Brynjelfr just a week ago, emptying a couple dozen clips into the holotargets and complaining bitterly about goddamn Niogan boys and their unreadable mating rituals and where WAS Kei Morgan when you needed her to translate anyhow? She didn't often go on a complete tear these days, having left a lot of that behind her in the rehab hospital on Pioneer 2, but when she did, it tended to attract a lot of attention. Someone must've told Neal something. She kept herself as composed as possible and met his gaze. "I love you," the Lensman said quietly. "And I was an ass not to tell you before now." With that, he scooped her up in his arms and kissed her very thoroughly. It took Janice a minute to get her bearings back enough to realize that he'd set her back on her feet, unholstered his pistol, checked the clip, and ducked out the door, but when she did, she clucked under her breath, grinned like a fool, and followed at a half-run. She caught up with him just as he encountered Moose MacEchearn (stylishly adorned with a sleeping Azalynn) and Kanna Kirishima in the hallway, grabbed him by the arm, and asked firmly, "By the way - what in the HELL took you so long? I've loved you for three years now, dumbshit." Krummell turned a satisfying shade of pink and Moose chuckled. Kanna shot Janice a wink and a thumbs-up as soon as Neal's back was turned; the Ragolian just grinned and waved them all down the hall, Mitra bobbing along behind her. She still had to get her Varista back, after all. The relationship could wait. In Block B, Dr. Aaron Ajlond-Mui had just finished working out a complete course of treatment for the Valiant's stricken AEGIS operative in his head when the door of his cell was opened. "Opened", that is, in the same sense that a tin of sardines is opened - a slim, pale hand, fingers held rigidly flat, punched through the invisible seam at the top, then tore vertically down, crumpling the door into an accordion shape, before pulling back and ripping the whole panel clean out. Ajlond-Mui heard it clatter on the floor as it was discarded in the corridor. Then R. Dorothy Wayneright stepped into the doorway and inquired calmly, "Ready to leave, Doctor?" "Without a doubt," Ajlond-Mui replied, uncoiling from the meditative position he'd taken up on the cell's temperfoam bunk. "I was wondering when you'd stop by. I need to get to Agent Hyatt immediately. Where is she?" he asked as he left the cell, joining Dorothy and B'Elanna Torres in the hall. "Unknown," Dorothy replied. "Psi Corps records don't indicate that she was captured. She may still be aboard the Valiant." "Oh, dear," said the doctor, looking worried. "That's not good. If I'm right, and I hope I'm not, John Hyatt will need medical attention posthaste." As the three of them started heading for the emergency stairwell at the end of the hall, Dorothy cocked her head. "Oh?" "If what I suspect is true, she's done a very rash thing indeed. Where are we?" "Tau Ceti," said Dorothy. "There'll be a full debriefing presently," she added to forestall any further questions. The doctor nodded and returned to his thoughts, the look of worry on his face deepening. The two E(CA)2s guarding Klaang tai-Kalaan, who was fitted with a sleep inducer just as Kanna Kirishima had been, listened to the unfolding situation on their tactical band with more than a little trepidation. Now -two- Hoffmanites were loose in the base, along with a rogue robot, who knew how many Lensmen, and assorted other unsavory types. This operation was turning into a complete disaster. The Enforcers glanced at each other, nodded, and then trained their blasters on the door, ready to open fire the second somebody opened it. They didn't get the opportunity to do so, however, because it didn't open the way they were expecting it to. Instead of sliding in its tracks or being torn out or ripped through, it suddenly glowed with a brilliant green light and then... wasn't there any more. When they'd recovered from their shock, the Enforcers opened up, spraying autofire through the empty doorway into the corridor. It glanced off what looked like a green conformal bodyshield around a slim female figure, spattering the ceiling and floor out in the hall. When they paused to let their blasters cool, the completely unharmed Green Lensman raised her left hand, the ring-set Lens she wore there flashed, and first one Enforcer, then the other, was punched back against the wall by a tremendous blow to the chestplate. It felt a bit like getting hit by a truck, and though it did neither of them any permanent harm, both slid to the floor unconscious with their powered systems shocked offline. Smiling quietly to herself, Wakaba entered the cell and set about reviving Klaang. Kaitlyn, Serge, and Miki arrived without incident at the bottom of the stairs, then found their progress stymied by an immense blast door. Kate, her lips pressed into a thin line, looked the door up and down, then muttered darkly, "W-where's K-Kyouichi-kun when you n-need him?" Miki turned to the control panel set into the wall just before the door, but it was dark; the access controls to the underground complex seemed to have been shut off. Kaitlyn put a hand against the door, then took a couple of steps back and put her hand on the grip of her zatoichi. Hypothetically the Blade of the Inviolate Soul technique, which normally permitted her to block blasterfire and energy blades with her plain steel sword, should also enable her to use that sword to cut through this door; but she'd never tried it against anything this -big- before. Still, given what was on the other side of it, she wasn't about to let -that- stop her. Just before she drew, however, the voice of Shiori Takatsuki spoke in her earpiece: "Whoa, hold on. Let me save you the trouble. You're going to need all your strength, anyway - there's about twenty guys in that corridor. Regular security troops, not power Enforcers, but all the same... you sure you don't want to wait for backup?" Kate looked from Serge to Miki, then smiled tightly. "I have all the b-backup I n-need. J-Juri can't w-wait." Then she had a thought and asked, "C-can you s-see her?" "Hold on - I've just got the camera in the tunnel itself at the moment. And there's another one of those doors at the other end. Wait one... got it. Man, don't they have any -lights- in this place?" There was another pause, and then Shiori's voice cried, "Holy SHIT!" Kaitlyn tensed visibly. "What?" "Oh... oh, nothing," said Shiori's voice, the flood of relief audible. "It'd take too long to explain, but it's nothing to worry about. OK, I see her. She's chained to the ceiling, midway into the room and a bit to the left of the entrance. She doesn't look like she's having a good day, but she's OK as far as I can tell. There's one Psi Cop in the room, just about in line with the door, halfway in. I can't tell if he's armed." "G-get me in there," Kate snapped. /* Drowning Pool "Bodies" _Sinner_ */ The first sign the security troopers gathered in the underground tunnel - assembled there by order of Ahmed Garcia when the intruder alert came down from the ground floor - had that something was going wrong in their particular corner of the facility was the lights going out. Then the blast door at the building end of the tunnel clicked, hissed, and opened. Silhouetted in the light pouring in from the aboveground stairwell, the startled guards saw two figures standing in the doorway - a person and a large animal of some kind. Then the person dropped into a combat stance, drew a sword, and disappeared. Bright slashes of blasterfire lit up the corridor like lightning as the troopers opened fire. The person with the sword became visible here and there, for half-seconds at a time, as she swept up the hallway like a cold wind, but though most of the troopers at least recognized her as a woman from these glimpses, they could never draw a bead before she disappeared again. Every time she moved, one of the troopers fell with a cry and a spray of blood. They had no better luck hitting the tiger, whose patterned coat blended into the slashing shadows in the tunnel, making him no easier to track than his vanishing mistress. He ranged up the opposite side of the corridor, flattening troopers with swipes from his huge, razor-clawed paws, which hit hard enough to shatter helmets and bend blasters into uselessness. Ahmed Garcia could hear all this going on in the earpiece he wore, which was patched into the security force's tactical band. Juri couldn't, but she could see the anxiety mount on his thin face and knew that something was going on. The smile that knowledge put on her face made him even -more- nervous. "I've warned you about smirking at me like that," he growled at her, trying in vain to wrest the initiative back. Juri shook her head, not even bothering to look at him. "You really don't understand, do you?" Garcia took three quick steps, reached up, and seized the side of her face in one slim hand, forcing her chin up so that she was looking at him. Moving very close, close enough that his face almost touched hers, he hissed, "I understand this, my dear, and so should you: What you've suffered so far has been just the warm-up. Your friends' rescue attempt will not succeed. They'll never get through that door," he added, pointing to the heavy blast door sealing off the room. "In five minutes, a transport will be ready, and if you think I've been hard on you now, just wait until you see what awaits you once you get to Earth." Juri's dark little smile only broadened slightly in reply. Garcia could no longer stand it. Forgetting his perfect record, he drew up his hand and backhanded her, snapping her head around hard enough to jostle the chain she hung from. It made a soft musical sound in the soundproofed interrogation room as she swung gently back and forth a few degrees. Slowly, she turned her head back to face him again. Her cheek was reddened, a trickle of blood running from the corner of her mouth, but the dark, amused dismissal in her emerald eyes was undamaged. Garcia gathered himself for his most vicious telepathic assault yet, one in which he would throw all the power of his frenzied anger against the still-unbent core of her ego. He would destroy her if it took every ounce of strength in his body, he would see her whimpering and broken before ever they left this room! By God, if ANY normal thought she could treat AHMED GARCIA this way, then - The sound of the blast door unlocking cut through his fugue like a flare cuts night. Garcia whirled, eyes wide, as the door ground open, its servos protesting. The corridor beyond was filled with a swirling grey-white mist, the product of a smoke grenade one of the troopers had used in an attempt to even the visibility odds. For a moment, that was all Garcia and Juri could see. Then a humanoid shape moved up through the smoke, pausing a moment before emerging from the doorway and into the dim light of the interrogation room. Garcia felt a rush of relief - it was Sergeant Fuchino, the commander of the security detachment he'd put into the corridor. If he had opened the door, which surely he must, it had to be to report that the intruder had been dealt with. So why wasn't the man -saying- anything? "Well?" Garcia demanded. Fuchino said nothing; he merely took another step into the room and then toppled forward, sprawling prone on the floor. Another figure emerged from the smoke behind him, one who, as she came into the light, Garcia recognized instantly from a thousand briefing holos. It was the IPO Chief's daughter, Kaitlyn Hutchins, dressed for battle in a tiger-trimmed black dogi over black hakama. Her eyes were invisible behind the reflections on her glasses as she stepped silently into the room. With a quick, almost mesmerizing motion, she swept her straight-bladed zatoichi clean of blood on her hakama and returned it to its concealing scabbard, which was thrust through the belt that kilted her dogi jacket at the waist. A moment later, a blood-spattered tiger appeared from the mist behind her, strode up to her side, and snarled, its baleful amber eyes fixed on Garcia's own. As Psi Cops invariably did when confronted by Kaitlyn, Garcia sought her consciousness with his own, to size it up preparatory to an attack. As Psi Cops invariably were at such times, he was taken aback to realize that he couldn't lock onto it. It was there, but almost invisible, its location and boundaries indistinct - just a soft background hiss like an empty radio channel. Kaitlyn took one more step. The reflections slid away from her glasses, revealing her hard, angry brown eyes, which bored into Garcia's as she spoke three words, separately and distinctly, like pistol shots. "Let. Her. Go." Garcia had seen the holos of Carmela Sunderland's duel with Kaitlyn the previous day, as part of his preparation for his day with Juri. He'd seen that steel sword of hers parry volleyed blasterfire from an entire company of Tau Ceti Military Police for several seconds before a pulse got through and clipped her. He had no illusions that the standard-issue PPG pistol on his belt would even slow her down. If he applied it to -her-, that is... He snatched the weapon from its holster and trained it, his arm straight out at his side, to his right. "Don't come any closer," he said, pleased at the composure he was able to maintain in his voice. "If you do, I don't have to spell out the consequences, do I?" The muscles at the corners of Kate's jaws bunched and released. She stared straight into Garcia's eyes and said, slowly and clearly, "Look into my mind. See what will become of you." As she spoke, the hiss disappeared, her mind snapping into focus in his own mind's eye like a distant radio station suddenly tuning in clear. He did as invited. For almost a minute, in total silence, Psi Cop and samurai gazed at each other across the thirty or so feet which separated them, Kaitlyn's hand on the grip of her zatoichi, Garcia's PPG aimed straight at Juri's nose. Neither spoke; neither even blinked. Thirty seconds in, sweat broke out on Garcia's forehead, rolling down in heavy beads. After fifty-four seconds, the PPG clattered to the floor. Without prompting, Sergei sauntered arrogantly across the room and collected it, then returned and dropped it at his mistress's feet. Kate turned her head slightly to the side, not taking her eyes off Garcia's drawn, defeated face for an instant, and snapped in a voice that carried to the other end of the corridor, "Miki!" /* Seat Belts "Too Good Too Bad" _Cowboy Bebop_ */ There was a certain rhythm to a fight like this. Jackie Chan had first noticed that phenomenon back in the days when most of his fights were fake, carefully choreographed for the motion picture screen, but it proved just as true for real ones. When you were one man going up against a horde like this, you took them one at a time. Not necessarily through to completion, and you had to keep an eye open for the others trying to gang up on you, but in between the tradeoffs and attacks of opportunity, you had to pretend your current opponent was the only one in the room. It was the only way to keep from being discouraged. If you stepped back and looked at the whole room full of bad guys, you might not be convinced of your ultimate defeat, but you'd at least think, Aw, MAN, this is gonna take all day. So, Jackie didn't think about how many he was up against, or how many he'd already clobbered, or thus how many were left. He just switched off that part of his mind, kept smiling, and let his exceptionally-well-trained body do what it did. There were a lot of people in the galaxy who thought that Chan was a cyborg. With his speed, strength, precision, and endurance, there was no other logical explanation. The guy seemed like he could fight forever, running and jumping, ducking and weaving, taking the occasional hit that got through his guard, never faltering, never slowing down. He had to be a machine! Of course, he wasn't; just a superbly trained and conditioned man, sustained at the absolute peak of human condition by the effect of a retrovirus from another world. On the other hand, against ordinary men given cursory hand-to-hand training and taught to rely on weapons, brute strength, and numbers, the difference was academic. They swirled around him like a black nylon tide. Some had truncheons, some battle gloves, some shock rods. Ranged weapons had been abandoned after the first charge. Jackie fought them with everything at his disposal: their own truncheons and shock rods, ill-secured bits of armor, a helmet (quite devastating, in the right hands), the lobby telephone, a potted ficus tree, other security troopers, and foremost and most powerful, his own fists and feet. So deep into the rhythm of battle did he fall that it came as a genuine surprise when, all at once, he ran out of opponents. Chan's final movement left him standing in the perfectly clear center of a maelstrom of carnage. Scattered in a near-perfect ring around him, the unconscious security troopers were sprawled in poses that indicated many of them had broken limbs or snapped tendons. Jackie Chan looked around, shrugged, walked gingerly through the debris of unconscious troopers, picked up his jacket and tie, and had just rendered himself presentable again when the first platoon of power-armored Tau City MilCops barged into the lobby. "Holy CRAP," the one in the lead blurted tinnily through his PA speaker. "Next time leave something for us, willya, Lensman?" "Sorry," said Jackie with an affable smile. "You're late." 1:17 PM IPS VALIANT With the prisoners securely stowed in the Kuratai's ample brig and the Getter Machines tucked away in the Valiant's small-craft bay (where they barely fit), the two ships streaked back toward Zeta Cygni under warp power. Aboard the Valiant, the captain and chief engineer stood in the corridor outside sick bay, having just completed a walking tour of their ship. What they found was shocking. The ship's corridors and compartments had clearly been the scene of some stunning violence while the vessel was in Psi Corps hands. Utena and Corwin had found blood in the -oddest- places, including liberally spread around both the lunchroom and the Lido Deck's main head. They'd only found the one actual -body-, the one in the lunchroom, but that had been quite enough. They'd both seen death before - Corwin was a Valkyrie and Utena everything but - but all the same, the tour of the ship had left both shaken. They didn't immediately realize they'd taken each other's hand as they walked through the shadowed, blood-spattered halls of what had been, until Black Omega came along, their cheerful summer home; but when they did realize it, they just hung on tighter. Anthy, who was waiting for them inside sickbay, was pleased to see that they didn't jerk their hands apart when she turned to greet them. Perhaps, at last, they were beginning to learn? Or perhaps, she countered herself as she saw the lines around their eyes, they're just that upset. "How is she?" Utena inquired. Anthy shook her head sadly. "See for yourself," she said, gesturing. John Hyatt lay on the biobed she had occupied before the Black Omega takeover. At first it seemed like she was shivering - until they looked more closely and saw that it was actually her surface rippling, the slim girl-shape which had become familiar to them over the weeks of the tour become an almost fluid thing which quivered with the subtle vibrations of the spaceframe at warp speed. It was a startling thing to see in a person one was accustomed to seeing and thinking of as a human being, and from that standpoint it was also a bit revolting; but Utena pushed that reaction down, replacing it with concern for a member of her crew who was well on the way to becoming a friend, as she went to the stricken telepath's side. "Hyatt? Can you hear me?" Hyatt's face still looked mostly like it should, except for its wildly fluctuating skin tone and that disturbing ripple effect. She slowly opened her eyes (these, at least, were black and unchanging), and then, in a quivering, unstable voice, replied, "... yes... captain... i hear you... " "Look, we're heading back to Tau Ceti as fast as we can, OK, but it's going to be a few hours. We don't have any medical training to speak of, but we'll do whatever we can to help you - but before we can even try we have to know what you are." "... told you before... " Hyatt whispered, an unpleasant gurgle coming into her voice. "... martian... " 2:25 PM NORTH OF TAU CITY, TAU CETI The Duelists and their rescued crewmates stood or sat on a rocky ridgeline overlooking the Black Omega facility and watched the last of the MilCops clear out, taking the last APC-load of Psi Corps personnel with them. The dull grey building lay empty below them, stripped of everything the MilCops could carry off, its computer cores likewise gutted and then trashed by Shiori. Aaron Ajlond-Mui knelt next to a flattish rock and ran a medical tricorder borrowed from the MilCops over Azalynn, who lay unconscious but in no apparent distress on that rock. As he did, noting the readings, he glanced across the brushy little clearing to the other side. There Miki Kaoru tended to Juri, who looked in rather a bad way, while Kaitlyn stood silent and grim behind the redhead with one hand still on her sword. Moose MacEchearn, who sat on the ground next to the rock which held Azalynn, caught the glance and the mildly disapproving look on the doctor's face and chuckled seismically. "Don't like amateurs treading on your turf?" "It's not that," Ajlond-Mui replied mildly. "It's just that Miss Arisugawa's injuries are clearly the most severe here - she's the only one of us who's really injured at -all-. As such, you would think that they might at least want the medical officer to check her over." Moose smiled. "You underestimate the importance of simple acts of interpersonal bonding, my good doctor," he said. Ajlond-Mui raised an eyebrow, heightening his usual resemblance to a Vulcan, and the Hoffmanite sighed with good-natured exasperation. "Look, have I got to draw you a map? Just... worry about Azalynn here. Let Miki do his thing." The doctor clearly wasn't convinced but he relented all the same. Sitting back, he put the tricorder's probe away and said, "I'd be more comfortable if I could check Miss Arisugawa's neural patterns for any abnormalities her ordeal might have introduced, but I suppose you're right. As for Azalynn, there's nothing to worry about. This is a perfectly normal reaction for a Dantrovian after a high-stress crisis. She'll sleep for a few hours and wake ravenous, but she'll be fine." Janice Barlow hustled over from one of the other groups, knelt down, and said, "Doc. Dorothy said you said you know what's wrong with Hyatt." "Well... I'm not -certain-," said Ajlond-Mui, the worry lines in his face deepening, "but I think so... and if I'm right, it's not at all good. Are you looking for an explanation?" "If it's not too much trouble," Janice said with a barely- omitted "DU-uh!" "Hm. Well, she's a Martian - a genuine native Martian, unless I miss my guess. They're shape-shifters, you know." "Yeah, I know. But if Hyatt was a green Martian, wouldn't she have turned back into Revenge of the Asparagus People when she passed out? Anyway, I thought they were tough." Ajlond-Mui nodded. "Apparently - perhaps in an attempt to fit in better with her human colleagues, perhaps for some other reason, she's the only one who knows for sure - she underwent an illegal medical treatment which was supposed to change her 'default' form to the human one she'd adopted." "Why illegal?" "Because," the doctor replied, "about 40% of the time, it doesn't -work-, and when that happens... " He shrugged. "The Martian transmorphic process is poorly understood, even by the Martians. That's why the process is imperfect. In about 40% of cases, the subject's shapeshifting ability is damaged - the base form destabilized instead of changed. "If that's happened to Hyatt, she felt sick and eventually collapsed because, thanks to the procedure she's undergone, her cells literally don't know what they're supposed to do, what shape or type to revert to. I don't need to tell you how catastrophic that is for a shape-changer. There is, however, something worse: If that's what's wrong with her, and she isn't stabilized - and soon! - she will undergo total cellular degradation." Janice looked uneasy. "That doesn't sound good." "It isn't. The Martians, unsurprisingly, have a more eloquent term for it. They call it 'the Melting'." The doctor looked up at the sky. "I hope they make it back in time. I hope it's not too late already... " Janice looked up too, but said nothing; her only outward reaction was the convulsive clenching of her fist where it lay on her thigh. Juri Arisugawa was lying on a rock, but she didn't care. It was a smooth rock, a relatively flat rock, and just the absolute nicest rock a person could ever hope to lie on after the sort of day she'd had. She had the quiet inside her head again, the soft cool breeze blowing across her face, the reassuring presences of her lover, her best friend, and a very large, worried tiger. She had Miki tending to her hurts with his gentle artist's hands while Kaitlyn stood sentinel and Sergei lay alongside the rock with his furry head under her hand. Juri opened one eye a bit and looked up at her lover. Standing there with her jaw set and her hand on her sword, looking northward toward the detention center's empty shell with grim eyes while the wind ruffled her long, slightly curly brown hair and her tiger-edged black garments, Kaitlyn looked like a figure out of time, a wandering warrior from another age. Juri noticed the patch of dried blood, stiff and slightly brownish, against the black of Kate's hakama where she'd wiped her sword before sheathing it, and the slight smearing of blood on her face which she hadn't wiped off. It was a side of Kate she rarely saw. Though she knew her lover was a deadly master martial artist, Juri commonly thought of her as the gentle, fun-loving musician, not the ruthless, disciplined warrior she was also capable of being. Knowing that this force had been unleashed for love of her made Juri's heart ache with a combination of pride and fear - pride that Kaitlyn could love her so much, and fear for what it might have cost her. Slowly, painfully (for her arms were very sore after the punishment they'd received), she reached up her free hand and touched Kate's sleeve. The samurai blinked, coming back from wherever she had been, and looked down; and as she did so, the planes of her face all softened, her eyes thawed, and she became once more the Kate Juri preferred to think of, human and warm. She took her hand from the grip of her zatoichi and clasped Juri's hand gently, smiling as she knelt to be nearer the battered redhead's face. "Kaitlyn... thank you," said Juri slowly. "You... of all people... should know that it's not easy for me to admit that I needed help, but... " She smiled, a little painfully. "I could hold out against that man... for as long as it took... because I knew you were coming for me." Kate bent down and kissed Juri's forehead gently. "Rest," she said. "We'll talk later." Juri nodded, acquiescing, and Kate squeezed her hand, then straightened and walked away. Before closing her eyes, Juri turned them on Miki, who took the opportunity to dab at the bloodied corner of her mouth with a bit of bandage from the medikit he carried. She winced at the sharp sting of the antiseptic liquid it was soaked with, but made no protest; when he was done, she smiled at him as she had at Kate. "And you," she said quietly. "You're still... here for me. After all this time... aren't you?" Miki smiled, a trace of color coming to his cheeks. "Of course I am," he said. "Outside my own family, you're my oldest friend." Juri chuckled. "Not... too old... I hope," she said wryly. Then she reached up and touched his goateed face, and mused, "I think... I liked you better... clean-shaven." Before he could round up some kind of a reply to that, she'd gone to sleep, her hand dropping away. He caught it before it could fall to the rock, then carefully lowered it, placing it gently on her stomach. Then, tsking thoughtfully, he bent to the task of cleaning the blood from her face. Kate walked along the ridge for a few yards, stopping next to Wakaba Shinohara, who stood with her arms folded, looking down at the building. Wakaba glanced over as Kate came up beside her; the two girls made eye contact, and then Wakaba smiled. "Shall I?" she asked. "G-go for it," Kate replied. Wakaba nodded, raised her hand with its ring-Lens (fist clenched in front of her face), and concentrated. A fierce light came into her eyes; the ring's usual soft glow brightened, then brightened further, until a visible corona of emerald light flared from it, dancing in front of Wakaba's face like an electric arc. A low growl began in the auburn-haired girl's throat as the muscles in her arm started to quiver. Then she turned the arm outward, her Rose Seal leaving a brilliant arc of green behind it, and unleased a defiant yell and the building light at the same time. Instead of shooting out in its usual narrow beam, the green energy -poured- forth, fanning out at the ring's face in several tendrils which arced out and then reconverged on the fat central beam as visible shockwaves rippled outward, coplanar with the Rose Seal. Had Anthy, or Corwin, or Mia Ausa been present, they would have recognized it as very like the discharge pattern of one of the most powerful of the Old Sorceries' destructive spells, the mighty Dragon Slave, and the blast's effect was very like that spell's as well. The bolt of power punched into the detention center's roof dead-center, driving the structure down like a tremendous fist. The center's windows exploded outward as the walls collapsed, the whole building smashed down and back by the angled blast. Surprisingly little dust arose as the emerald energy spread through the cracks in the concrete like water, eating the material away even as it collapsed until the whole building was consumed in a torrent of bright green light. Then it was over, the light flaring and dying out, and nothing remained of the Black Omega detention center but a smoking hole in the ground. Wakaba stood there, eyes closed, fist extended, for a moment, a smoke-like wisp of energy rising from her ring with a soft sizzling noise. Then she drew her arm back to the previous position, fist raised before her face, opened her eyes, and grinned. "Bitchin'," she said, and her comrades on the ridgeline broke into applause. 3:02 PM IPS VALIANT Utena sat in her command seat, tapping a finger against one of the armrests, willing the ship to go faster - though she knew that with Corwin stoking the furnaces and Kozue at the helm, no ship could ever go faster than her wonderfully willing Valiant was already going. They were tearing through the stars at a furious pace, leaving the Kuratai - no slowpoke herself - far behind. The t'skrang trader would follow the Valiant to her destination, though, for several reasons - not least of which was the fact that the Valiant had the Kuratai's captain aboard. Liza Shustal was in the speeding vessel's sick bay, using her anodyne talent to keep Hyatt alive - or, at least, trying to. It was a tough job, probably the toughest she'd ever faced, even with Anthy Tenjou's sorcerous power to back her up. Not only was she not very familiar with the sort of lifeform Hyatt was supposed to be, Hyatt wasn't really -being- one at the moment. As far as Liza could tell, that was the -problem-; and she was too worried about doing the wrong thing, harming instead of helping, to do much more than try to maintain the situation until they could get to a real doctor. Liza sat on a tall stool next to the sickbay biobed the stricken Martian occupied, holding onto one of her hands, concentrating on the sputtering flame of Hyatt's life. It kept slipping through her mental grip, as elusive and indistinct as Hyatt's own form. Sometimes the hand in Liza's felt as if it would run right through the blonde's fingers, like water or sand. She fell deeper into the trance that sometimes came with using her power on particularly difficult cases; it was a little like diving the Net, the sensation of falling out of her own body and into another space. Hyatt's lifeforce was a dark and shifting place; Liza's mind interpreted it as resembling metaspace. Faintly conscious of her body sitting on the stool and Anthy's warm hand on her shoulder, Liza fell further, heading toward the flickering light in the distance. At first, she thought she wasn't getting nearer to it; then she realized that she was, but as she approached, it was shrinking, its glow dimming. The whole thing was a hallucination given context by Liza's own semiconscious mind, but since it was all her own symbolism, she knew full well what it meant: The battle was drawing to a close, and Liza was losing. Liza Shustal didn't like to lose. She threw her uncertainties and worries about doing the right or wrong thing aside. Degrees vanished. The wrong thing would be to let Hyatt die; everything after that could be dealt with later. Liza gathered all the strength she could find and dove toward the fading flame with every ounce of it. Utena watched the distance-to-destination counter tick downward and knew that she should find something else to occupy her mind. Watching the clock never did anything but -increase- tension. But what else was there to do? If she got up, she'd just pace. She couldn't go down to the lunchroom and get a snack, not until somebody cleaned up the mess, and she wasn't feeling up to attempting -that- right now... The intercom beeped, nearly startling her out of her seat. She stifled a curse (and Kozue, despite sharing in the tension of the moment, stifled a giggle), then punched the channel open. "Yes?" "Utena," said Anthy's voice, "could you come down, please? We have something you should see." Utena thought to ask for more details, but decided it would be easier just to go and see. "I'll be right there," she said, and then matched deed to word, pausing only to give the conn, for whatever it was worth, to a faintly-bemused-looking Saionji. She reached the door to sickbay to find Corwin arriving from Engineering almost simultaneously. They glanced at each other, shrugged to indicate that neither had any more information than the other, and entered with mild trepidation to find the biobed Hyatt's unraveling form had occupied now empty. Aw, no, Utena thought, but then she realized that Anthy and Liza were standing near the door to Doctor Ajlond-Mui's office. Liza was looking a bit pale and worn, and was leaning on Anthy's shoulder, but both were smiling. "Captain Tenjou, Chief Ravenhair," said Liza formally, sketching a bow (had she done it properly she'd have fallen over, and that would never have done), "may I introduce your shipmate, J'onn Hy'aat of Mars." The two women moved aside, the doctor's office door opened, and another figure, this one dressed in a white patient's coverall, emerged timidly into the light of the big main sickbay room. Utena and Corwin blinked at her in surprise. She was humanoid, and indeed looked very like the Hyatt they had known these last few weeks. She had the same lithe-but-buxom (or, as Gunnr Brynjelfr had irreverently dubbed it, "spathic") build and the same heavy fall of curly ebon hair, and the lines of her face were the same as well... but her skin, instead of being pale white, was a pleasant medium green, and her eyes were slightly larger and entirely black, with no whites or visible pupils at all. "Uh... hello, Captain," she said, and her voice was Hyatt's voice, high and sweet, almost a whisper. It sounded stronger, though, not as breathless as they were used to hearing from Hyatt. For that matter, she was standing a bit straighter, too, her shoulders a little squarer. It took a moment for all that to come together, and then Corwin and Utena glanced at each other in silent concurrence again (which made Anthy smile faintly as she caught it). Hyatt might be green, but the change in her carriage was the really striking thing, and it dawned on them both simultaneously what it meant. Before, she had always carried herself as though she were -sick-. Everyone had commented on it, how the new girl looked peaky; it had been attributed to her Martian background. They'd all thought she was a -human- Martian, which meant that the gravity and air pressure aboard the Valiant were higher than she was accustomed to. Utena grinned. "Hi, Hyatt," she said. "You're looking better." Hyatt blushed slightly, her green cheeks darkening, and glanced down. "Do you really think so?" she inquired softly. She smoothed her patient's tunic self-consciously. "When I volunteered to be the first Martian to join AEGIS, I was afraid that the others wouldn't like me. A lot of humans are afraid of Martians... " I can't imagine -why-, thought Utena wryly, remembering the carnage of the cargo bays and break room, but she said nothing as Hyatt continued hesitantly, "... so I had myself... changed." Utena looked puzzled. "Aren't Martians shape-shifters anyway?" "Yes, but I was never good enough at it to maintain a new shape when I went to sleep, and AEGIS trainees share bedrooms. The operation is illegal... it's -dangerous-, as... as you've seen. But... at the time, I thought it was the right thing to do." "So... you've been fighting the effects of -that- all this time?" said Corwin, astounded. Hyatt nodded hesitantly. "Yes. I... thought it would be worth it... " She looked down at her toes and continued softly, "... if people liked me." Anthy made an indulgent "tsk" sound, embraced her green shipmate, and kissed her on the cheek, which brought her black eyes up in surprise. "People like you anyway, Hyatt," she said, releasing the Martian and stepping back next to Utena with a smile. Hyatt blinked, then changed, becoming taller and thinner - downright spindly. Her head elongated as well, hair disappearing, as her eyes enlarged further. She was still basically humanoid, but it was now impossible for the others to tell by looking whether she was male or female. "Even if I looked like this?" she asked softly. Her voice, too, was thinner, a bit hollow and unearthly, though deeper in pitch. "Of course," Anthy replied firmly. "To our human eyes you're not as -cute- that way," she admitted with an impish smile, "but you're still our friend Hyatt." Hyatt seemed to relax, and in doing so shifted again, first back to the hybrid form they'd first seen her in, and then to the familiar fully-human shape that they'd all come to identify in their minds as John Hyatt since June. "That's nice to know," she said, smiling, "but I'm used to looking like this now, so I guess I'll keep doing it." She turned to Liza. "Thank you, Captain Shustal. It's not adequate, really, but it's all I can say... you saved my life." Liza smiled, a little sadly. "Sorry I couldn't do it -right-," she said. "Wha - oh, you mean my base shape? Don't worry," said Hyatt, smiling brightly. "I can still go back if I have to. I'd already given it up once, remember?" 8:19 PM HOTEL METROPOLE When the strike team finally got back to the Metropole, none of them could tell that a firefight had taken place in the suite while they were gone. That's the kind of service you get at Tau City's finest hotel. The lobby full of MilCops was hard to miss, though, and Wakaba had spotted several others on the roof. They entered Suite 2104 in a subdued group, showing not so much jubilation as a sort of grim, weary satisfaction. Those who had slept the night before had slept poorly, and all had exerted themselves pretty thoroughly over the course of the day. As they entered, Juniper, who had dozed off in an armchair with Peril in her lap, blinked awake and looked up to see the group filing quietly in. Peril woke up as well, shook his head, and then ran to Dorothy, who smiled slightly as the cat jumped up on her shoulder and rubbed, purring, against her face. "Hello, Peril," she said, reaching up to scratch his ears. "Were you a good boy?" Anne got to her feet, her brain still fogged with sleep. For a moment, given the quiet, sagging way in which the others were entering, some part of her mind outside her conscious control entertained the notion that they had failed. Dorothy was looking chipper enough (well, for Dorothy), but Wakaba looked almost grey and Shiori's face bore the distinctive marks of a stress headache. Even Moose MacEchearn was drooping a bit, and Azalynn, slung over his shoulder, was completely inert. Juni stood and watched them enter - Yomiko, looking thoughtful and distracted; Jackie Chan, looking quite serious - and felt her heart sinking even as she said to herself, No, it can't be true... Then Kanna Kirishima followed Chan in, grinning broadly. After her came a dour Klaang, a tired-looking B'Elanna, Janice and Mitra with Neal Krummell behind them, and a faintly fretful Dr. Ajlond-Mui. After them came Serge, and then Miki, and after him - "Juri!" Anne cried as the tall redhead entered the room and the relief which had been roaring through the novice samurai peaked. Forgetting herself entirely, Anne darted across the room, threaded expertly through the little crowd of people who had come in before Juri, and met the redhead with a joyful embrace. Only a moment after doing so did she realize what she was doing, at which point she flushed bright crimson, tried to back away, and blurted, "Uh - I'm sorry - I just - I'm so glad you're safe... " (Over in the kitchenette, where she'd been sitting on one of the barstools playing Klondike, Gunnr Brynjelfr snickered behind her hand.) To Anne's surprise, Juri didn't react badly to this blatant invasion of her usual calm, elegant remove. She wasn't a particularly touchy-feely person, it was true, except with some of her closest, oldest friends, and then only in quick, offhand moments. Still, she was feeling charitably disposed right now, and she was touched by the obvious sincerity of the girl's relief. Juri knew that Kaitlyn's younger student had a little bit of a thing for her, and the thought gave her a certain amount of pleasure. Though it certainly wouldn't do to encourage it too much, that didn't mean she had to crush the poor girl with rejection, either. Juniper was a level-headed young woman, wise beyond her years. She could be counted upon to keep to her corner under most circumstances. So Juri surprised her, and pleased her, by raising one weak, tired arm and giving her shoulders a little squeeze, smiling down at her scarlet face, and saying quietly, "Thank you." Anne stumbled back when Juri released her, since she'd been trying to pull away anyway; going even redder, she fumbled through a you're-welcome-thank-YOU and only regained her composure when the appearance of Kaitlyn in the doorway behind Juri snapped her into something like dojo routine. Then she pulled herself together, bowed, and said, "Welcome back, Sensei! Congratulations on your successful mission." Kate smiled and indulged her student's formality, since it was helping her recover from her (most amusing, and quite touching) lapse. "Th-thank you, J-Juni-chan. Anyth-thing to report?" Anne tried her best (but mostly failed) to look nonchalant as she answered, "The Corps sent a strike team to take out Sunderland, but Gunnr and I dealt with them. Um, nobody on our side got hurt." She turned a little pink, then continued, "Aside from that, the news has been blacked out all afternoon, so I have no idea what's going on outside." "Governor Kallon has mobilized the Military Police and arrested all Psi Corps and Earthforce personnel on the planet," Miki told her. Anne raised her eyebrows. "That won't sit well with Earthdome." Miki nodded. "The governor has something planned, but we don't need to go into it right now. He wants to see all of us at his office at midday tomorrow - you included," he added with a little grin. "Can we trust him? He might sell us out - wait for the Dome to send a force to investigate and then pin the whole disturbance on us." "I d-don't think so," Kate said, shaking her head. "I'm n-n-not a t-telepath, I adm-mit, but I th-think Governor K-K-Kallon is for r-real." Anne nodded, a little dubiously, and said, "You're the boss. Have you heard anything from the others?" Miki smiled. "Utena and Liza were in on our debriefing at the governor's office by remote this afternoon. They got the ship back intact and took several prisoners. They're going to rendezvous with a couple of other ships, transfer the prisoners, and then come back to Tau Ceti in the morning." Dr. Ajlond-Mui horned in as gracefully as possible. "Excuse me. Did they find Agent Hyatt?" Kate nodded. "Sh-she's f-f-fine. L-Liza asked me to ap-p-pologize for s-stealing your j-j-job, b-but there w-wasn't time." The doctor smiled. "I'm not particular," he said gracefully, "so long as the patient is all right." Kaitlyn turned to Anne, a thoughtful frown crossing her face. "T-tell me about this s-strike team." "Three of their big cyborg troopers busted in a few minutes after you left," Anne told her. "W-what happened?" "Gunnr killed two in here; one made it into Sunderland's room, but I, uh... handled him. The hotel did a nice job cleaning up, but if you look off the balcony in there you can see where he wrecked the dumpster on his way down." Kate looked thoughtfully into her student's eyes. "Are you O-k-k-K about it?" she asked. Juniper nodded slowly. "I...got a little nauseated afterwards," she admitted, "but I'm OK now. It was him or us...and I wasn't going to lie down and let it be him." Kate considered this, then nodded. "A-all right. G-good work, Juni-chan." She smiled, a tired little smile. "T-take the rest of the d-d-day off." Anne smiled and went to say hello to some of the others. Gunnr hopped down from her stool and did the same. Under normal circumstances, she might have zeroed in on Neal Krummell, to ask him if he'd followed her advice - but the fact that he was standing over by the window, looking thoughtfully out at the city with his arm around a weary-looking Janice, spoke for itself, so Gunnr left him alone. With everybody worn out and more work to be done tomorrow, everyone went to bed early. By nine they had all dispersed, those not staying in Suite 2104 heading to their own rooms scattered down the hall. As the group was breaking up, Wakaba wondered to Kaitlyn if they should put a guard on Carmela Sutherland, who was still sleeping in the second of Suite 2104's three bedrooms. Kate shook her head. "Sh-she's not our p-prisoner," said Kate. "She c-came to us of her own w-will, and if sh-she wants to l-l-leave... " She shrugged. "I dunno," said Wakaba dubiously. "I don't like the idea of her hanging around here unsupervised while we're all sleeping." Janice paused as she and Neal passed, heading for the hall. "I'll put Mitra in with her," she suggested. "He doesn't need to sleep. If she gets up to anything, he'll wake me up, and me and Neal will handle her. We're right next door, after all." "Not in the same suite, though," Wakaba noted, which made Janice chuckle. "There's a shared wall," said the Ragolian with a wry look. She put a hand on her Varista and added, "With Mitra in there, I won't -need- a -door-." Kate smiled slightly and nodded. "J-just like b-b-being an RA again," she said, and Janice laughed. "I didn't actually use remote surveillance devices when I was an RA," she said, "though you know... " She looked exaggeratedly thoughtful for a moment, then grinned. "G'night, you guys." Ten minutes later, Juniper stood in the sonic shower of 2104-3's tiny bathroom, wishing it were a real shower and working at a knot which had developed in her hair at some point during the past day, when there came a knock on the wall and Gunnr's muffled voice: "Hey. You want a hand scrubbing your back or something?" Anne gave the wall an odd look. "This is a sonic shower," she reminded her roommate. "Well," replied Gunnr offhandedly, "I guess that just leaves 'or something'." Anne blinked twice, feeling her face get hot. "Err... " Does that mean, she wondered, what I think it means? "(Oh goddess,)" she muttered, then raised her voice tentatively and replied, "Um... sure. Just so long as you realize that I'm, uh, kinda inexperienced at... or-something-ing." "Oh," Gunnr replied. "Well, y'don't have to. I'm not trying to pressure you or anything - I was just wondering. I'm not gonna get all weird on you if you'd rather not, or anything." Anne chuckled wryly. "Um, well..... I figured if I didn't want to get shot I probably shouldn't ask, so... but, you're gorgeous, you know... " "Really? Y'think?" Nervous as she was, Anne had to smile at the genuine delight in Gunnr's muffled voice. "Hey, thanks! Now hold that thought while I figure out how to hack this lock." "You, uh, might as well just wait 'til I come out," Anne pointed out. "It -is- just a sonic shower in here." "Mm, true. Hey, we could go use the real one in the suite's main bathroom." "No we couldn't!" Juni squeaked. "What if Kaitlyn-sensei or someone came to the door?" "Why would she? She's got her own mini-fresher too, and I don't think she's gonna want a shower." Juniper considered that for a moment, some part of her mind blinking in amazement that she was considering it, and then switched off the sonic shower. "You've got a point," she said. Over in 2104-1, the suite's big master bedroom, Juri Arisugawa was at last sleeping the sleep of the just. She'd been a little worried when she'd told Kaitlyn that, though she was more grateful than she could say for her rescue and loved Kate just as much as ever, she wasn't sure she could stand too much human contact tonight - but she shouldn't have been. Kate was familiar with space requirements; she'd been with Juri for three years now, and she had some similar issues of her own from time to time. Not only had she acquiesced gracefully to Juri's request, she'd been magnanimous about it, providing all the extra support she could without pushing it directly on the weary redhead. Truth to tell, there wouldn't have been much room for Kate in the room's main bed anyway, with Serge curled up protectively at Juri's back. Kate had added an extra touch, and demonstrated her goodwill beyond question, by volunteering the services of her senior tiger, an elderly, threadbare stuffed example named Seven, as well. Few indeed were the people Kate allowed to sleep with Seven in their arms. For her part, Kate was over on the fold-out in the corner of the room, lying face-down with her head pillowed on her crossed arms and a little smile on her face. She'd been so tense and wound up, even after the day's main actions had come to a satisfactory conclusion, that she couldn't get to sleep - but Miki was seeing to that quite nicely. Such a gentleman, and such a trusted friend, was Miki Kaoru that Kaitlyn, who had some very unfortunate history with young men, thought nothing of letting him kneel astride her hips and work the kinks out of her back while her lover slept a few feet away. Despite the suggestiveness of the position, it was a perfectly innocent situation. Miki was Miki, and he would no sooner take advantage of Kate's trust in him than he would step in front of a speeding bus. It wouldn't even occur to him to do it, and both Kate and Juri trusted in that fact implicitly. Relaxing under the warm, rhythmic pressure of his hands, Kaitlyn mused to herself through the pleasant pre-sleep fog that was settling over her mind that she hoped that didn't mean he would balk when she -asked- him to do more. Not that she was going to do so tonight; she and Juri hadn't had a chance to work out the details, and anyway, they'd all been through too much, been wound too tight, today. But it was nice to have him this close, and it would be even nicer when the day came that his kind restraint became unnecessary. It had taken Kate a long time to get to this place from where her first boyfriend had left her, and she indulged herself in a moment of smug satisfaction at the knowledge that she'd gotten there anyway. That's for you, you bastard, she thought. I'm finally going to take back the last of the things you took from me, and then give it away as -I- choose. As she slipped away from that thought and into a familiar, deeply satisfying lassitude, a kind of sleepy boldness which had overtaken Kate a few times before welled up in her. Smiling a little wider, she shifted slightly under Miki's hands and murmured, "miki?" "Yes?" he replied, his voice hushed for Juri's sake. "i want you to know... juri meant what she told you at dad's birthday party." Miki's hands paused for a moment, then resumed their work. "Er... that's nice," he replied, uncertain exactly where she was headed. Kate didn't really know either - she was barely still awake - but that didn't bother her at all as she continued dreamily, "and i'm ok with that. 'cause i've been in love with you myself since the day liza stuck that picture of your sister on the bulletin board at school." This time Miki stopped and didn't restart. He was momentarily paralyzed as the memory swept over him - the shining point of light at the end of that awful day. Liza Broadbank (not yet reborn as Liza Shustal) had tormented him by defacing a sketch of Kozue he'd done in his music notebook, which Liza had stolen. In trying to console him, Kate had ended up explaining why Utena had inadvertently brought him to Midgard from Cephiro - which turned out not to be very consoling news, since it had to do with Kate having been raped some time before. She'd apologized for telling him, he'd apologized for... well, he wasn't really sure what, anymore, but it had seemed like the thing to do. They'd cried for a while... and then they'd played the piano together, and their nascent friendship had been cemented into the bond it had become. They weren't lovers - before Juri came along, there was Kate's history with males to consider, and after, well, there was Juri - but their music and their trust bound them together at a very deep level all the same. Miki had always found her attractive, but he'd never done anything about it. He fancied he saw similarities in the bond between Kate's brother Corwin and Utena Tenjou - except that their unconsummated attraction was very much mutual, and Miki had never really been sure that his to Kate wasn't one-sided. He knew she loved him, and there had been occasional moments when he'd entertained the thought that there might be more there, but she'd never said one way or another, and he'd never felt it his place to ask. But now, she'd come right out and said it - not "I've loved you," but "I've been in love with you," which had a whole different set of connotations. All this poured through his mind in only a few seconds, and then his reverie was broken as Kate's voice floated petulantly up to him: "hey. no stopping." A moment later, the fact that he -had- stopped broke through the happy fog surrounding her mind and made her realize that she might have gone too far. She stirred; Miki backed away, toward the head of the sofa-bed, to give her room to sit up and face him. Her glasses lay folded on the end table by the arm of the sofa; she was still slightly farsighted, despite having passed through Detian aging freeze at eighteen, but she'd been told it was nothing to worry about, odd but not ominous. She didn't bother to retrieve them. She could see him well enough, even in the dim light of the turned-down couchside lamp, to read his expressions, and that was all she needed. "L-listen," she said softly, mentally cursing the stutter that had returned with full wakefulness. "J-Juri and I t-talked yesterday." She paused for a moment, remarking with surprise to herself that it really -had- been just yesterday, and then plunged on, "W-we haven't really w-worked out the d-details... it's n-n-not like there's a r-reference m-m-manual for t-this kind of thing... but... w-we ag-greed to be hon-n-nnn... " She sighed in mild exasperation at herself. "Honest ab-bout it and s-see where it l-l-led us. I'm n-n-not sure w-what happ-p-happens n-next, if anything d-does... b-but... we kn-know we all c-care ab-bout each other, and w-we all h-have a m-mutual attraction g-going on... I think?" Miki blinked, then replied hastily, "Uh, yes! I'm sorry," he added with a wry little smile (she could see a blush touching his cheeks in the dark). "My usual aplomb seems to have deserted me." Kate chuckled. "I kn-know the f-f-feeling. Anyw-way... we'll all n-need to t-t-talk about it tog-g-gether, once all this m-mess is d-dealt with and we have some t-t-time to b-breathe. But I w-want - WE w-w-want - you to kn-know that we're w-willing to g-give it a try... if you are." Miki considered for a moment, deeply thoughtful as he considered all the years he'd known Juri, the relatively few but rich years he'd known Kaitlyn, the times he'd known them separately and together, the complex web of emotion that made up everything around him. He'd studied the Dantrovian way of looking at these things for a couple of years before branching out to seek his own path, and he knew that Azalynn would rejoice to see them all brought closer together. Love and happiness for others was her greatest joy, and there was something to be said for that attitude. He finished these thoughts in a few seconds, aware that he was keeping Kate on tenterhooks; then he smiled his beautiful, guileless smile. "I'd like that," he said. Kate slumped a bit with the release of this new tension, her smile vivid even in the dark. She crawled across the sofa bed and embraced him, her head on his shoulder, and said nothing for a few long moments as he returned the hug, stroking her back. Then, very quietly, she murmured, "Miki?" "Yes?" he said. She hesitated, then went on, "I'm n-not sure how to ask th-this... but... c-can you s-stay here ton-night?" She sat back, looking him seriously in the eye, and went on, "We're not g-going -there-, not t-tonight, b-but I... " She glanced over at the main bed, where Juri slept, and smiled. "J-Juri has my t-tigers." Miki smiled. "Well, I'm not sure what sort of substitute I'll be," he replied, "but I'm willing to try." Juri woke a little after nine the next morning, warm and snug, surrounded by tigers. She didn't really want to get up, preferring to luxuriate in the warmth, the security, and the immense relief it was to wake up where she'd gone to sleep; but after twelve hours in bed, she didn't really have a choice. She carefully extracted herself from the cocoon of covers, noting with a smile as she did that Serge, who had started out on top of the covers, had migrated underneath at some point without even slightly waking her despite his 500-pound bulk. Chuckling, she rubbed his thick neck affectionately before turning to head for the bathroom. As she did, she was momentarily taken aback by the sight that awaited her on the sofa bed. It was Kaitlyn, which was expected enough, curled up on her side like she always did in her tiger-striped pajamas; but behind her, to Juri's surprise, was Miki, with one of his arms curled under his head and the other wrapped snugly around Kate's waist. Juri stood by the sofa bed and gazed down at them thoughtfully. They looked so... so -natural- together, and so comfortable, too. The look of peace on Kate's face made the redhead's heart feel warm, and so did the little smile on Miki's. The two of them looked as if they belonged that way - but Kate's free arm, thrown across the sheet in front of her, seemed to be keeping a place for someone else as well. Juri's eye was caught by a white object sitting on the dark-stained end table, next to Kate's glasses. She turned, saw that it was a hotel notepad, picked it up, and read the scrawled inscription on the top sheet with a smile: NOT WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE! ;) LOVE, K Juri chuckled, put the pad down, and then bent and kissed both of them, first Kate, then Miki, on the cheek. Neither woke, but both smiled a little, as Juri left them and headed for the bathroom to get ready to face the day. Maybe, she thought to herself, this will work out after all... /* L. van Beethoven Sonata No. 8 in C Minor, Op. 13 "Pathetique" */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - Symphony of the Sword No. 4 - Fourth Movement: Hunter Rose The Cast (in order of appearance) Kaitlyn Hutchins The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn IV R. Dorothy Wayneright Miki Kaoru Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Shiori Takatsuki Utena Tenjou Terry Collins Brent Spencer Luornu Durgo Kozue Kaoru Corwin Ravenhair Jackie Chan Charles Kallon Sergei Elisabeth R'tas Shustal Anthy Tenjou Kyouichi Saionji Wakaba Shinohara Jandia R'lajj Metolin Ishkarat Medrick Mutabi Jerry Gillis Janice Barlow Lois Raghavan Carmela Sunderland Ahmed Garcia John Darien Horace Umphrey Kaela Kaloris Sergio Philips J'onn Hy'aat Harris Ellsworth Martin Kohler Forrest Katagawa Yomiko Readman Gunnr Brynjelfr Anne Cross Neal Krummell Juri Arisugawa Joanna Garson T'skaia Vorokoshiga'ar Ixtixtaaqitl't'chl'Vraihelt Ishkarat Torqq Gar'Kera'Stol of the Clan Forgefist Peril Hollis Callaway Loring Drake Mitra Helmut Walcott Goran Sanderson Kanna Kirishima Aaron Ajlond-Mui, MD Klaang tai-Kalaan Ross Fuchino Huntsman Benjamin D. Hutchins Cooler Queen Janice Barlow Houndsman, or Whatever Anne Cross The Next Dr. Mui by Pearson Mui Beaters The EPU Usual Suspects Told us what a manjyuu is called Kentaro Kurahone Credits compiled by Geoff Depew Some BGM wrangled by Rob Shannon The Symphony will return E P U (colour) 2003