I have a message from another time...

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                      - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 4 -

		Fifth Movement: Requiem for a Lensman

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
			     Martin Rose
			   with Anne Cross
			     Geoff Depew
			     Pearson Mui

                (c) 2003 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


		       SATURDAY, JULY 11, 2409
			       10:43 AM
		INTERNATIONAL POLICE STATION BABYLON 6
		       BAJOR, CENTAURUS SECTOR

	It had been a pretty thrilling week for Shiori Takatsuki.
First she'd gotten up on stage and subbed for Miki in an Art of Noise
concert to a packed and screaming house on Tau Ceti.  Then she'd
participated in a couple of very exciting actions as a sort of
quasi-official special deputy to the International Police.
	-Then- she'd been made a -Lensman-, and along the way had some
pretty solid confirmation of her long-held belief that she and Juri
had, indeed, salvaged something strong and beautiful from the awful
tangle their friendship had become back in the Ohtori Academy days.
	All in all, a pretty big week - and this morning, it was
getting just that last little bit bigger.  Not only had her
performance against the Black Omega datasystems gotten her noticed by
the Lensmaker, it had impressed the Chief of International Police
Operations as well; and now Shiori found herself invited to go along
with him on the forensic datadive to figure out how Black Omega had
compromised the Valiant's security systems so effectively.
	She knew the Chief already, like all of Kaitlyn's friends, but
she only saw him a few times a year, and always in unofficial
situations.  There was something a little awesome about being asked to
do actual -work- with the First Lensman, and important work, at that.
It had her hand trembling just a little as she reached for the big
green GO key on her Excalibur.
	Shiori's icon rezzed up in the staging area, a small "room"
which was, if anything in cyberspace could be said to be anywhere,
inside the system built into Gryphon's desk.  Looking around, she saw
she was alone.  While she waited for the the Chief to arrive, she
pulled up all her status windows and checked them out.  She expected
she'd need everything in her bag of tricks on this run - well,
everything except her really heavy-duty icebreakers.  She didn't have
room in even the Excalibur's vast memory for those today.
	As she ran the checks, she was struck by the contrast between
her sleek, modern Fairlight-OS menus and the look of the room she was
in.  The Chief's staging area was flat-shaded and very angular, with
smooth dark walls that had subtly pulsating slanted lines and chevrons
just below their flat, unreflective surfaces.  To a modern decker like
Shiori, it was the online equivalent of one of those chrome-and-
checkers 1950s hamburger joints - massively retro, but in a cool sort
of way.
	While she was pondering this, a disk of blue light rose up out
of the floor to a height of about seven feet with an echoing electric
sound, drawing in its wake the wireframed outline of a man.  A
half-second later, another one did the same, merging with the first
disk and filling in the surface textures of the icon at the same time.
The merged disks then flickered and winked out, and the Chief had
arrived.
	His icon was in the same old-fashioned style as the room.  It
was a man-shape wearing sleek conformal armor, something like Wedge
Defense Force CVR-7, but with a small visored helmet like a hockey
helmet instead of CVR-7's full-head environment helm.  The armor was
grey and covered with glowing blue patterns like circuit traces, and
though the face below the helmet visor belonged recognizably to
Gryphon, it was in black and white.
	He turned and regarded Shiori, in her "skin"-tight
semitranslucent suit of burgundy and white with its levitating
yellow-light buttons, her wine-red hair and violet eyes glowing
softly, and grinned.
	"Well!" he said, his voice flattened slightly.  "It's been a
while since I saw a genuine Shimas GS-type icon base.  That's pretty
old-school for somebody your age."
	Shiori grinned back.  "Thanks for noticing," she said.  "I see
your custom environments use the Lisberger protocols.  That's cool."
She winked one glowing violet eye and added, "I love a man who
respects the classics."
	Gryphon chuckled.  "In my case," he said wryly, "I'm helped by
the fact that I'm an antique myself."
	Shiori rolled her eyes slightly.  "Oh, what, just 'cause Utena
calls you 'Dad'... "  She shrugged.  "You want to go out sometime?"
	Gryphon blinked.  "That's direct," he observed.
	She shrugged.  "I tried to be clever once.  Almost cost me my
best friend.  Since then I've learned the value of the frontal attack.
So how 'bout it?"
	The First Lensman's icon regarded her for a moment, his face
thoughtful; then he chuckled, shook his head, and said, "You'd better
ask Kei before you ask me.  That's the way it seems to work."
	Shiori took this with equanimity.  "Oh," she said.  "OK, maybe
I will."  Then she grinned.  "In the meantime, wanna cyber?"
	Gryphon raised an eyebrow dryly, which made Shiori crack up
laughing.
	"Kidding!" she said, waving a hand.  "We've got work to do
anyway.  And I could never get into those programs - too weird with
all the colored light and stuff."
	Gryphon chuckled again, opened up a connect window, and
started prepping for transit to the isolation grid the Valiant's
system had been put on while he talked.  "You know, when I was your
age, we did that kind of thing with plain text."
	Shiori raised her eyebrows.  "No kidding!  Did it actually
-work-?"
	"Sometimes," replied Gryphon with a faint smile.  
	"FREAK-y.  Brings a whole new meaning to the term 'raw ASCII'."
She leaned over his shoulder, watching him work on the transit gate,
and smirked.  "Is that why one-handed typing methods got such a big
development boost in the decade immediately pre-Contact?"
	"Um, work time?" Gryphon replied, affecting to be more
distracted by the gate than he really was.
	"Sorry," said Shiori with something like real contrition.
"I'm just really interested in history."
	"I can see that," said Gryphon dryly.
	The gate blinked; across the top of the window, the words
"DIVE READY" scrolled in flashing red type.
	Gryphon held out his hand, Shiori took it, and, their sessions
thus linked, they dove.
	The isolation grid was small compared to the vastness of the
Internet, but just the fact that it was enclosed made it give a
sensation of hugeness that the Net, with its lack of boundaries,
didn't give.  It, too, was "built" with the Lisberger texture set,
giving it something of the appearance of a cavernous spacedock of
black glass, every surface flat, every angle right.
	Moored in the center of this dock, connected to its walls by
columns, shafts, and catwalks of light, was a beautifully rendered
photorealistic model of the Valiant.  If Shiori hadn't known she was
online, the only way she would have known that it wasn't the real
thing, besides the unrealistic surroundings, was by the fact that it
lacked the minor damage the real ship had suffered in being recovered
from its hijackers.
	"Wow," she said.  "IPSF didn't spare any expense on the system
icon... "
	"Vision does all the internal stuff.  It's a hobby of hers,"
Gryphon noted.
	Shiori took note of that, finding it odd, now that he'd
mentioned Vision, that the machine intelligence wasn't on this run
with him instead of her.  Surely for a major security audit of a
critical system, it would be better for him to be accompanied by one
of the galaxy's most powerful ACIs, one who knew him and his working
patterns intimately, rather than a well-equipped but largely untried
indy hacker who hadn't finished college yet.
	Gryphon didn't say anything about it, but Shiori wondered if
this were a test, or at least an assessment of a new Lensman's
capabilities.  Or maybe he just wanted to get to know one of his
daughter's friends a bit better.  Or maybe she'd earned the invitation
with her accomplishments on Tau Ceti... 
	She wasn't going to figure it out just by wondering about it,
though, so she gave up and concentrated instead on doing the best job
she could.
	Some distracted corner of her mind, though, wondered if he'd
been serious when he'd said she should talk to his wife... and if she
had the gall to actually do it.
	But right now, to work.
	She'd given up most of her Excalibur's memory capacity for a
reason.  That reason was a mingling of two desires: one, to show off a
bit for the Chief; and second, to perform a practical test of a
project she'd been working on, a test under something like controlled
conditions rather than the operational chaos of her intrusions into
the Psi Corps systems on Tau Ceti.
	Standing on the "hull" of the Valiant's systems icon, Shiori
opened a program-load window and tabbed "execute".
	Around her resolved a cluster of five small icons, hovering
around her own icon like small moons around a particularly nubile
planet.  It took a moment for Gryphon to realize what they were.
	Each one was a representation of a pint-sized, grim-faced,
comically proportioned man in a dark suit with matching tie and white
shirt, rather predatory-looking dark glasses, and a discreet radio
earpiece.  Tiny, super-deformed stereotypes of government agents;
Gryphon suppressed a snicker.
	They looked identical to him, but Shiori seemed to be able
to tell them apart as she started briskly giving them instructions.
	"Alpha, get me a complete analysis of the Valiant's dataspace.
Look for any points of compromise in the barrier elements.  Beta, I
want a complete network activity report for the last hour of the
concert, pull the exact times from my recording.  Gamma, search the
logfiles for any unusual activity, including gaps in the timestamps
where entries might have been erased.  Delta, run a sub-ether trace on
all comm activity for that same period.  It's a waste of time, but do
it anyway, you might get lucky.  And Epsilon, get me a danish."
	In eerie five-part surround, the five agents replied, "Yes,
Miss Shiori," their voices flat and so unaccented that it was almost
an accent in itself.  Then they flitted off on their assigned tasks.
	While they did that, Shiori pulled up a diagnostic window and
started running checks on the Valiant's systems herself; she'd been a
sort of unofficial assistant engineer for information systems on this
summer's run, and though the Valiant's datasystems had been locked
into security mode, she still had access to some of the secondary
diagnostics.  That would have to do until Epsilon completed his job,
which was to get his mistress administrative access to the core system
(legitimately or otherwise).
	With a challenge in front of her, Shiori settled quickly into
the routine, consulting with her agent subroutines as they reported
back from their tasks.  She got far enough into the groove that she
forgot the First Lensman was with her, watching her work.  For his
part, Gryphon just stood back and let her do her thing, watching her
technique, impressed with her efficiency and that of her agent
program.  He'd never seen one quite like it before, and wondered if it
was home-brewed.
	Suddenly, while consulting with one of the agents - Gryphon
though he'd heard her address this one as "Gamma" - Shiori smiled
nastily, and then vanished in a shower of silver sparks, taking her
cluster of agents with her.
	"Huh," said Gryphon thoughtfully.  A moment later, a
"maintenance hatch" not far from him on the ship's upper surface
popped open and Shiori leaned partway out, grinning from ear to ear.
	"C'mon in," she said.  "I think we've got it figured out."

	"They got in through an overrun on the MBTP port.  Alpha found
it and Epsilon confirmed that it's a known vulnerability in the
version of the listener we're using," Shiori said as the two walked
down one of the virtual Valiant's corridors, heading for the bridge.
Around her, her little constellation of men in black continued to
flicker this way and that, muttering quietly to themselves as they
continued checking the ship's systems.
	Gryphon chuckled ruefully.  "It's always some piddling little
thing like that, isn't it?" he said, shaking his head.  MBTP was the
Metaspace Beacon Tracking Protocol, a low-level communication protocol
which did just what it said: monitored the metaspace beacon tracking
network, the system of subether transmitters which provided
navigational fixes in the referenceless void of metaspace.
	One of the agents flew up and presented Shiori with a readout
window; she perused it for a moment, then slid it across to Gryphon.
"The exploit seems to have been discovered just that morning.  We
must've missed the CERT advisory on it."
	Gryphon tapped a key on the vambrace computer his old-school
icon wore; a comm window appeared in front of him, switching in a
moment from the IPSF "please wait" pattern to Vision's face.
	"Yes, Chief?"
	"Vision, would you reference this advisory - "  Gryphon copied
the readout window and dropped the copy into a slot at the bottom of
Vision's comm window.  " - and see if it's been implemented on the
rest of the fleet?  Better give the WDF a heads-up on it too, just in
case.  We use a lot of the same computer systems."
	Vision looked thoughtful for a moment as she parsed the
readout, then said, "Oh, sure, I remember this one.  The fix was in
place on all ships by 1630."
	Gryphon looked puzzled.  "All ships?  It seems to be the
vulnerability that Black Omega used to compromise the Valiant."
	Vision blinked, thought some more, and then said sheepishly,
"All regular ops ships.  Irregular Projects isn't in the standard
TO&E and... um, I didn't think of it."
	Gryphon sighed, smiling ruefully.  "Neither did I.  We're
going to have to do something about that.  OK, that's all for now."
	Vision nodded and the window closed.
	"Well.  Slight loophole in our IT operations plan," said
Gryphon wryly.  Then, changing tracks, he nodded toward one of the
miniature men in black.  "That's a very efficient agent program.  Did
you write it yourself?" 
	"Kind of," said Shiori.  "He's a combination of the best parts
of several different agent programs I tried.  Like, he has the data
retrieval algorithm from Super System Agent, but the trace routine
from NetHound.  I did the porting myself, though," she added as they
entered the dimly lit virtual bridge.
	In the far corner of the room, near the darkened main viewer,
something stirred in the shadows, then hissed and lunged for them.
	"Attack sleeper!" Gryphon cried, but before he could react -
which, in this environment, was very fast indeed - the agent program
he'd just been admiring did something else.  The five small figures
all shot forward, converging in front of their mistress and combining
into a single entity.
	The new icon lacked the comical proportions of the individual
mini-agents; it was the icon of a tall, thin man with a humorless
face, narrow black sunglasses, and a neat black suit, rendered in a
photorealistic style rather than the retro neon of Gryphon's icon or
the showy light-clad webdiver style of Shiori's.  When he'd finished
resolving, the reinvented agent reached into his jacket, pulled out a
truly enormous handgun, and blasted the charging attack program
several times.
	Very nicely rendered shell casings tinkled to the Valiant's
bridge floor as the weapon routine cycled, savaging the sleeper's
operating image.  Halfway through its leap across the bridge, the
Black Omega program disintegrated, de-rezzing in a storm of yellow
sparks which scattered to the deck and vanished.
	When he'd finished with the attacker, the agent carefully,
professionally swept the bridge.  Finding no other sleeper programs,
he holstered his weapon and turned to his mistress.
	"Hostile program... neutralized, Miss Shiori," he said in that
same over-carefully-enunciated flat accent.
	"Uh... thank you, Agent Smith," said Shiori.  "Carry on.
Until we have the system fully secured, maybe you'd better stay in
priority mode."
	Agent Smith nodded once, with just the faintest hint of a
smile on his face.
	Shiori turned to Gryphon with a slightly sheepish smile.  "The
combat programming, Professor Ravenhair helped with a little," she
admitted.
	"Hell, you don't need me here," he said, laughing.  "I might
as well go back to my office!"
	"Don't say that!  I need you," Shiori protested as she sat
down at the virtual conn.  "You can fulfil one vital function that
I've never been able to get Smith to do right."
	"What's that?"
	"He's a rotten conversationalist," said Shiori with a grin.
"He tries, but he just doesn't get it.  Watch.  Agent Smith?"
	"Yes... Miss Shiori?" said the agent.
	"So how about those Knights?"  
	Agent Smith considered the question for a moment, then
replied, "Their offense is adequate, but the bullpen... cannot handle
the pressure.  Acevedo's best seasons are... -behind- him."  He shook
his head judiciously.  "They have no future."
	"See what I mean?" 
	Gryphon suppressed a snicker.  "You're right... that's kind of
sad."
	"He's a work in progress," said Shiori with a shrug.  "Aren't
you, Agent Smith?"
	Smith nodded in grave concurrence.  "I currently represent
approximately... 2,751 person-hours of programming work."
	Gryphon did a little mental math.  "You've been working on him
since last spring?"
	"Uh-huh."
	"No wonder you almost flunked out of NIT," said the First
Lensman with a grin that belied his critical words.
	"Pretty much," Shiori agreed, smiling.  "OK.  Let's see what
we've got here," she went on, becoming businesslike as she pulled up
the master diagnostic system.
	The rest of the sweep took them two hours and passed
relatively without incident.  By the time it was done, Gryphon had all
the information he needed about the ways in which Black Omega had
compromised the Valiant's data systems - and a good deal of data on
the abilities, working habits, and personal style of Shiori Takatsuki.
	He anticipated that all of that would be useful, though in
some cases he failed to predict exactly how as he thanked her for her
help, congratulated her on her abilities, and punched out.
	Back in the Lisberger-rendered "staging area" where she'd
started, Shiori watched his icon de-resolve, leaving her alone except
for the five miniature components of Agent Smith, back in normal
operating mode.
	She looked around the empty staging room for a moment, unable
to keep a grin off her face after such a successful afternoon.  There
was just nothing like the feeling of pulling off a cool hack when it
mattered most, and having such an audience for it made it all the
sweeter.
	Then she punched out and went to see if she could find anybody
to have lunch with.

	Gryphon figured his next errand probably wouldn't be quite so
enjoyable, but he was trying to keep an open mind... so to speak.
	He jacked his arm computer out of his dataterminal, tidied a
few things up at his desk (not much to do there; he hardly ever -used-
his office on Babylon 6), and then concentrated on his Lens.
	<Lu?>
	<Yes, Chief,> replied the mental voice of his yeoman,
Lieutenant Luornu Durgo.
	<Is Officer Sunderland here?>
	<Security just brought her down,> Lu replied.  <Are you ready
for her?>
	<What's your take on her?>
	<She hasn't said much to me - I'm only the secretary, after
all,> Lu replied wryly.  <I don't think she has any aggressive
intentions.  Anyway, that would be pretty stupid, considering, and she
doesn't strike me as stupid.  We'll just have to see.>
	Gryphon nodded mentally.
	<Well, I guess it's time, then,> he said.  <Send her on in.>
	<Will do.>
	A moment later the door opened and a woman entered the room.
She was of average height and slender, olive-skinned and dark-eyed
with curly dark-brown hair to her shoulders and an aristocratic sort
of face.  If there was anything wrong with the face, Gryphon decided
after studying it for a moment, it was that the mouth was a little too
wide, but he suspected that would be nicely offset by how mobile and
expressive it was, if she'd only let it be.
	Having been trained from childhood to look severe and
uncompromising, however, Carmela Sunderland had never really learned
to do that, and so she ended up wasting her natural charm by looking
dour all the time.
	She was accompanied by a Babylon 6 security officer, one of
the thirty percent or so of the B6 security force who were IPO Tac Div
blue-suiters.  He didn't have a weapon, but Gryphon, recognizing him,
realized with a private little smile that this was because he didn't
need one.
	"Thank you, Garth," he said, nodding.  "I think you can leave
us alone."
	The redheaded security officer, barely out of his teens, eyed
Sunderland dubiously, but the Chief was the Chief.  With a nod and
another significant glance at the Psi Cop, he said with palpable
emphasis,
	"I'll be -right outside-, sir."  Then he turned and left the
office.
	Gryphon let the door close behind him before smiling, then
shook his head and said, "Kids these days.  Have a seat, Officer
Sunderland.  No need to stand on ceremony.  What's on your mind?"
	Sunderland blinked.  This wasn't the way she'd imagined her
encounter with the legendary First Lensman would go at all.
	She sat, trying to gather her thoughts back up from where the
surprise had scattered them; then, slowly and haltingly, she started
to tell the story of what had happened and, as far as she knew, why.
	Sunderland left nothing out.  Gryphon sat and listened
attentively, not interrupting, as she ran through the entire story,
from her early days in the Psi Corps through the sudden, shocking
disillusionment she felt during her telepathic conversation with Ahmed
Garcia.  (He didn't tell her that AEGIS operatives had been carefully
disassembling Garcia's memories of the entire incident all night;
their report, when it arrived in a few hours, would provide some
corroboration for what she was saying.)
	At the end, she repeated her request for political asylum and
her assertion that she could be useful to the International Police,
then waited on tenterhooks for his reply.
	He gazed at her for a few moments, his eyes calm, steady,
unreadable.
	Then he frowned thoughtfully and said, "Hmm.  A puzzle.  On
the one hand, I believe you may be genuinely sincere; but you're
certainly doomed either way if you go back to the Earth Alliance, so
you're well-motivated to convince me.  And then there's the little
matter of your treatment of my daughter and her friends - especially
Juri."
	Sunderland looked back at him, not challenging, but not
backing away either.  "I've made my peace with them," she said.  "I
was wrong and I've admitted it."
	Gryphon nodded.  "So I've been told.  All the same... "  He
looked back at her for another moment or so, then sighed and stood up.
"Well, I'm the Chief, and that means I get to take the occasional
calculated risk.  Miss Sunderland, I'm going to grant your request for
asylum - but provisionally.  You're going to have to do a bit of...
community service, you might call it, to demonstrate the seriousness
of your intent."
	Sunderland cocked an eyebrow at him.  The man couldn't
possibly mean... although, now that she got a good look at him, he
wasn't unpresentable, and it -had- been a while... that might not be
so bad - 
	"I'm assigning you, or sentencing you, as the case may be, to
the Irregular Projects Division."
	Oh.  What?!
	"You're to serve six weeks aboard the Valiant - the rest of
her summer tour.  You'll be expected to do heavy lifting, pass tools,
help in the galley, whatever needs doing.  You'll be the lowest
creature on the ship, and that includes Dorothy Wayneright's cat and
Utena and Kaitlyn's pet robots.
	"You're going to have to demonstrate that you can play well
with others, take instructions, and get your hands dirty before I'm
going to take a permanent chance on a Psi Cop," he explained to her
dumbfounded expression.  "If you come back without a complaint against
you, and your performance reviews are good, well... then we'll see."
	Smiling slightly to himself, Gryphon sat down and started
working on a bit of paperwork.  "That's all," he said, not looking up
again.  "Dismissed."
	Carmela sat slack-jawed for a moment, then pulled herself
together and said hesitantly, "Sir, I'm... I'm grateful for the
opportunity, but... do you really think the Valiant's ship's company
will -accept- me after what I've done?"
	Gryphon looked up from the form he was filling out and
observed matter-of-factly, "You said you'd made your peace with them."
	"Respectfully, First Lensman, making one's peace is not the
same as living cheek-by-jowl for six weeks," said Carmela.
	"Well, then, we'll find out just how adaptable you all are,"
Gryphon replied, unconcerned.  "It'll be another great Irregular
Projects experiment.  On your way, now.  See you in September."
	Realizing that this was all she was going to get, Sunderland
slowly got up.  Not knowing quite what else to do, she came to
attention and saluted, then turned to leave.  The redheaded security
officer who'd escorted her in gave her a suspicious look but didn't
try to stop her as she left, and Carmela realized that Gryphon must
have informed his yeoman of his plan via their Lenses.
	Hmm.
	Well, she hadn't thought it was going to be -easy-, but... 

	Liza Shustal was accustomed to having people stare at her.  In
the first place, she was beautiful, tall, blonde and athletic, moving
with a swordmaster's easy grace - and she knew it.  In the second, she
was colorful, dressed in the bright silks and leathers which comprised
almost all of her wardrobe.  In the third, she was bold, wearing those
colors and materials in styles that accentuated her other attributes.
	There was an extra reason for people to stare, or at least
give her a double-take, as she walked the corridors of Babylon 6
today.  Though it wasn't unusual for people to be carrying on
conversations with other people while traversing the station's
hallways, they generally didn't carry their conversational partners on
their backs as they did so.
	Liza didn't mind.  For some reason, possibly because she was
by nature arboreal, Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan liked to cling to people's
backs, and Liza didn't object to the practice.  Her Dantrovian lover
was warm, and soft, and not heavy, and there was something reassuring
about her embracing grip.  They were apart for so much of the year
because of their divergent lives that both enjoyed spending what time
they had together, as -close- together as possible.
	They were having the kind of conversation - totally frank and
personal - that was only possible between true intimates.  No one
around them was paying any attention to their words, though they might
spare a startled glance or two for their appearance; but they wouldn't
have minded much if anyone had listened.  Their overhearer's
discomfiture might even have amused them.
	"I'm not saying I feel any different toward -you-," Liza said
as she followed the well-remembered path from the command area to the
docking sector.
	"Uh-huh," said Azalynn, nodding agreeably.
	"I'm still as much in love with you as I ever was."
	"That's good."
	"And it isn't just that I get lonely out there on the
spacelanes without you, though God knows I -do-."
	"Understandable."
	"It's just... I don't know exactly how to put it," said Liza,
and Azalynn knew what a painful admission that was.  If there was one
thing Liza hated, it was being at a loss for words.  The condition
wounded her pride as a storyteller as well as her swordmaster's
fondness for witty repartee.
	After thinking on it for a moment, Liza said, "I just feel...
I feel as though there's something -missing-.  Not -instead- of you,
never that, but... perhaps -beside- you.  Does that make any sense?"
	Azalynn chuckled.  "Well," she said pragmatically, "I -can-
think of at least one thing I don't have to offer you... "
	"I'd like to think," said Liza, just a trifle stuffily, "that
my problem is a little more sophisticated than 'what that girl needs
is a good sound rog - '"
	Busy being half-jokingly indignant, and still preoccupied with
the train of thought which had led her there, Liza rounded a corner
without any of her usual grace or physical wariness.  At full, brisk
walking speed, her head turned aside in an attempt to make eye contact
with her giggling burden, she slammed full-force into somebody coming,
and coming fast, the other way.  Both victims rebounded and fell in
matching heaps.
	Azalynn, born of a race accustomed to getting out of falling
trees before they hit the ground, jumped clear and landed lightly off
to one side.  Then she knelt at her fallen lover's side and asked,
"Dvhil, Liza, are you OK?"
	Liza sat up, groaning with a combination of annoyance and
pain, and put a hand to her head.
	A couple of feet away, the person she'd hit did likewise, with
a mirror image of Liza's semi-sprawled posture which Azalynn felt free
to find quite amusing now that she knew Liza was all right.
	For her part, Liza shook her head to clear away a mild stunned
feeling, then opened her eyes and gasped faintly at the sight of her
unfortunate victim.
	She wasn't sure what species he was, but he didn't look human.
He was dressed in a very human fashion, in a natty navy-blue
three-piece suit and silver tie under a flappy black trenchcoat (now
rumpled, his tie askew); but his slightly unfocused eyes were bright
yellow, his skin was dark blue, and the hand he had pressed to his
forehead only had two fingers and a thumb.
	"Ach," he said, shaking his head.  "Are you all right,
Fraulein?" he continued.  His voice was mellow, with a touch of an
accent - Niogan?  Indeed, as his eyes came back into focus, he looked
momentarily surprised and muttered something to himself in what Liza
thought was German, though she couldn't quite make it out.
	(Unfortunately, Liza didn't -know- German, so even if she'd
heard him clearly, she wouldn't have known what "Hallo Apfel, nenn
mich Adam!"  meant.)
	Liza blinked several times; her head was perfectly clear, now
she was just trying to think of something to say.  At length it
occurred to her that he was speaking to her.
	"Oh, uh - yes, sure, I'm fine."  She got to her feet, dusting
a bit at her clothes for effect, then offered her victim a hand.  He
seemed to hesitate for a moment, then shrug internally before clasping
it and using it to haul himself up.  With this, she discovered that,
aside from itself being blue, his skin was also covered with dark blue
fur, short and very soft, like velvet.
	"Sorry about that," he said, brushing at his coat.  "Should
have been paying better attention to where I was going, ja?"
	Something moved behind him as he straightened up, and it took
Liza a moment to realize that he had a tail - one about as long,
relative to the rest of him, as Azalynn's was to her, but one which
ended, unlike the Dantrovian's, in a point.
	He smiled self-deprecatingly as he spoke, revealing slightly
enlarged canine teeth.  Then, with a nervous sort of gesture, he
pushed some of his long, straight blue-black hair back, revealing that
his ears were pointed like a Vulcan's.
	Liza had no idea what the hell he was - he looked a bit like
one of the standard interpretations of the Devil, except he was blue
instead of red - but whatever he was, he was certainly handsome.
	"Oh, uh, no," she said.  "My fault.  I should have taken that
corner more carefully."  With the initial awkwardness over and her
mind falling back into its accustomed patterns, Liza felt her usual
aplomb returning; she smiled and introduced herself.
	"I am Elisabeth R'tas Shustal, master of the t'skrang trading
vessel Kuratai," she said with a slight bow.  "And this is my - "
	"Hi, I'm Azalynn," the Dantrovian interrupted, nudging Liza
gently with an elbow.  "Nice to meet you."
	The blue-furred man smiled again, rearranged his tie, and
bowed to the waist.  "A pleasure also to make your acquaintance.  My
name is Kurt Wagner."
	A thoroughly non-alien name for such an alien-looking fellow,
thought Liza.  Perhaps his parents emigrated from... wherever... to
Niogi?
	"Well, I was just leaving," said Azalynn airily.  "Liza, I'll
catch up with you at the Marche tonight, OK?"
	Liza did her best not to look surprised - Azalynn didn't have
anywhere to be this afternoon - then leaned down and murmured softly
to her grinning partner, "(Azalynn, what - )"
	"(On Dantrov we have a saying,)" Azalynn replied in a murmur
that didn't carry past Liza's ear.  "('Lightning is random, but not
much else.'  Don't worry about being the only one without a tail,)"
she added with a wicked little grin.  "(We'll make do.)"  Then, as
Liza flushed slightly and searched in vain for a reply, Azalynn said
in a louder voice, "Right.  The Marche at 6, I won't forget.  See you
there!  Nice meeting you, Mr. Wagner!"
	Wagner waved, looking faintly bemused, as the Dantrovian
trotted off down the corridor, humming.  Liza stared after her with
open puzzlement on her face, then turned back to Wagner.
	Well, OK, she thought, you're an adaptable soul; adapt.
	"So," she said.  "Where were -you- headed in such a hurry?"
	"The IPO offices," Wagner replied.  "Reporting in.  I just
arrived."
	Liza smiled.  "You're an IPO officer?  What branch?"
	"Experts of Justice," said Wagner, returning the smile.
	"I work with Irregular Projects sometimes," Liza told him,
falling into step as he headed for the sector elevator.  "I'm a
classmate of Captain Tenjou's."
	"Ah, of course.  Your ship mounted the recapture operation.
That was nicely done."
	"Thank you.  I'm surprised you've heard of it so soon."
	Wagner smiled, raised his left hand, pushed back his sleeve,
and tapped his Lens.  "I keep pretty well informed," he said.
	Liza laughed.  "So I see.  Are you just coming off a mission,
or in for a briefing?"
	"Probably both," said Wagner with a rueful grin.  "They keep
us pretty busy these days.  I had expected to be sent to Tau Ceti to
back up your group, but the crisis ended before I could get here."  He
shrugged.  "That's the way it goes sometimes."
	Liza nodded.  "We thought we were going to -need- some serious
backup, but it worked out.  We're all still a little stunned by the
Earth Alliance's reaction.  Not that I'm complaining," she added with
a smile.  "But it would have been an exciting way to spend a weekend."
	Wagner chuckled.  "Ja," he said.  "It would at that."
	"Have you had lunch?" Liza inquired, seeing that that
conversational thread was about played out.
	"Hm?  No," the blue man replied.  "I just got here."
	"Well," said Liza, her blue eyes twinkling merrily, "I was
just on my way back to my ship for some.  Once you're finished with
the office, how would you like to join me?  It's the least I can do to
make up for knocking you down."
	Wagner smiled.  "That's very kind of you, Captain Shustal," he
said.  "I'd be delighted."
	"Please - call me Liza," she said, taking his arm.  "What do
your friends call you, Agent Wagner?"
	"Usually Kurt," he replied, "though I have also been known to
respond to 'Fuzzy', 'Elf', and, on very rare occasions, 'Bamf Boy'."
He drew himself up a little and raised the index finger of his free
hand, making his German accent thicker as he went on, "But in ze
Munich Zirkus I vas known as ze Incrrredible Nightcrrrawler!"
	Liza raised an eyebrow.  "'Nightcrawler'?" she said
dubiously.  "That's a kind of -worm-."
	"Er, well, yes," Wagner admitted uncomfortably.  "But not in
Germany!" he added.
	"Even so.  Mm, no."  Liza smiled and squeezed his arm a
little, feeling solid, smooth muscle under his sleeve.  "I'll call
you Blue," she said decisively.
	This time it was Wagner's turn to raise an eyebrow; then he
grinned, showing his pointy teeth again, and said agreeably, "As you
like."

	Utena Tenjou stood in the middle of the Babylon 6 detention
center, arms folded, surveying the specimen in cell 3 with a
thoughtful scowl.
	In good light, the resemblance was muted, especially now that
Ahmed Garcia was rumpled, unshaven, and baggy-eyed from lack of
sleep... but she could see why Juri and Shiori had both been startled
by his appearance in bad light and under confusing circumstances.  Had
it been her in their place?  Yeah.  She'd have done the same.
	Garcia, who had said nothing while she stood and looked him
over, finally turned his head and asked hoarsely, "Well?"
	"I'm not here to ask you anything," she told him curtly.  "I
just wanted to get a look at you.  It's been a while since I saw the
enemy so clearly."  She unfolded her arms and put her hands in her
pockets.  "Sometimes I like to reminds myself what I'm fighting for."
	Garcia chuckled bitterly.  "Posture all you want, flatline,"
he snarled.  "Your species is ending and mine is rising.  It's
evolution.  We'll see who has the last laugh."
	Utena nodded dismissively.  "Uh-huh.  You know, you're damned
lucky it was Juri that you caught, instead of me or my wife.  If it
had been Anthy, you'd be sitting in that cell right now in a puddle of
your own waste, begging the monsters in your head to leave you alone...  
and they never, ever would."
	Garcia looked unimpressed.  "And if it had been you?"  
	Utena regarded him with a look combining total sincerity with
an utter lack of humor.
	"Me?" she said.  She stepped a little closer to the forcefield
and looked him in the eye, and Ahmed Garcia believed her as she went on
matter-of-factly,
	"I'd have killed you where you stood."
	Garcia looked back, his throat suddenly tight, and no words
came to him.  A moment later, he looked sharply away, feeling anger
and shame at giving up even this petty victory, even in his already
total defeat.
	She was only a teenage girl.  She was only a -normal-.  She
had no weapon, she hadn't raised her voice, she hadn't even made a
direct threat.  She was on the other side of a -forcefield-...
	... and he was afraid of her.
	He curled up on the cell's narrow bunk, elbows on knees, and
refused to look at her, his face screwed up into a look of such
petulance that Utena almost laughed.
	Almost.
	Instead, she turned without another word and left the brig.
	In the corridor, she met Gryphon coming the other way.  Seeing
her, he smiled, which helped to pull her own mood out of the dark
place seeing Garcia had sent it to.
	"Utena, hey," he said.  "I was just looking for you."
	"What for?" she asked.
	Gryphon looked mildly wounded as he fell into step beside her.
"Am I allowed to just want to see you?"
	Utena chuckled ruefully.  "Sorry," she said.  "I'm just a
little... edgy."
	Gryphon nodded.  "I heard about Garcia's unfortunate resemblance 
from Shiori," he said.  "We found out how the strike team got on board
the Valiant, by the way.  It won't happen again."
	"That's good to hear," Utena said, brightening.
	"Vision's working up a new set of security protocols for the
fleet," he went on.  "And I think it would be a good idea to send out
a dedicated information systems officer with you from now on."
	"Mm, yeah, that probably would be a good idea," she concurred.
"Got anyone in mind?"
	"I thought I'd ask T'Vek if she minded a few weeks in the
field," he said.  "And Shiori's got real talent in that area.  With
some proper training in starship security to go with her base skills,
she'd be good for next year.  I haven't talked to her about that yet,
though.  Don't know if she'd be interested."
	Utena laughed.  "Are you kidding?  She lives for that kind of
thing now.  She'd be all over that."
	"Well, next time I see her, I'll ask her about it, then," he
said, "and if she and T'Vek hit it off, T'Vek can train her."
	"Sounds good."  Utena paused pensively for a moment, then said
in a different tone, "Listen... there's something about all this
that's got me confused."
	"What's that?" Gryphon asked.
	"Why are we letting the Psi Corps get away with this?"
	"By letting them get away with it, I assume you mean why
aren't we telling the galaxy about Black Omega."
	Utena nodded.  "Exactly.  We've got everything we need to go
public with it.  We took three of them alive, captured a bunch of
their equipment, Shiori has all the records from their Tau Ceti
databank, Sunderland can confirm that the outfit is an open secret
within the Corps... so why aren't we blowing the lid off?"
	Gryphon nodded.  "I should have called a meeting with you guys
and explained it instead of just asking you to keep quiet, but I've
been so damn busy I haven't had time to chase you all down.  The
reason we're not going public about Black Omega is simple - I'm afraid
public knowledge of a secret Psi Corps strike force, exceeding even
the overly-generous public mandate of the Corps, would destroy the
Federation, and we're not ready for that to happen."
	Utena thought about that as they entered an elevator.  "You
think if some of our anti-Corps allies found out about it, they'd
demand that the Federation Council shut it down," she said.  "And
they wouldn't, so our allies would secede, and... "  She made an
expanding gesture.  "Boom."
	Gryphon chuckled.  "Very -big- boom," he confirmed.  "Things
are very tense in the Federation Assembly right now as it is, with the
Tau Ceti breakaway and all.  The provisional government is dealing
with the Feds, and the permanent government will probably apply to
re-join separate from the Earth Alliance, but all the same, it's a
sticky situation."
	He smiled darkly.  "Don't think that's the end of it, though.
Your team's work has given me - and Zoner - a powerful weapon to keep
in reserve, and Earthgov knows it.  They don't want the Federation to
fall apart any more than we do, at the moment, and it would probably
hurt them more than it would hurt us."  He sighed, leaning back
against the elevator wall with his hands in his pants pockets.
	"It's like playing chess in the dark," he complained.  "You
can't see your opponent's pieces, you can't even see your -own- pieces
most of the time, but you keep playing anyway.  Zoner's better at this
part than I am - he could probably explain it to you better."
	Utena, remembering MegaZone's tendency to be impenetrably
cryptic, laughed.  "I doubt it," she said.  "Anyway, at least we'll be
on our guard now.  They won't be able to pull the same trick twice."
	The elevator stopped and the two emerged into another corridor
which looked much like the one they'd left.  "I can't help but be
nervous about Earthgov's acquiescence in the Tau Ceti matter," mused
Gryphon as they walked.  "Part of it, I'm sure, is to do with the fact
that they know we can blow Black Omega... but I have the creepy
feeling that they're planning some other kind of reprisal."
	"Well, we'll have to keep an eye out," Utena said.  "Same as
always."
	Gryphon nodded.  "Yep."
	"Corwin tells me repairs are coming OK," Utena offered after a
few seconds of silence.
	"Oh, good.  I haven't talked to him yet either.  Say - are you
free for lunch?"
	"Sure," Utena replied.
	"Good.  Not only have I not seen you much lately," he said
with a grin, "I still need to talk to you about - "
	As they rounded a corner, heading toward the Zocalo, he
stopped, not because he'd decided not to tell her what he needed to
talk to her about, but because they met Kei Morgan coming the other
way.
	"You're off?" Gryphon asked after greeting her with a kiss.
	"I must be off to have taken this mission," Kei replied
wryly.  "Yeah, the team's loading up now.  Hey, Utena," she added,
giving the younger woman a hug.  "Nice work on Tau Ceti, even if you
did disappoint some people by pulling it off so slick.  We had half
the Experts ready to jump in if Earthforce invaded."
	"That's good to know," Utena said with a laugh.  "We were
pretty tense for a while there, waiting for the other shoe to drop."
	"Well, you didn't look it," said Kei.  "I saw the signing on
TV.  You carried it - better'n I would have," she added with a wry
grin.  "Everything about you at that press conference said that the
IPO means business."
	Before Utena could respond, Kei looked mildly annoyed and
raised her fingertips to her ear.  "OK, OK, jeez," she muttered.
"I'll be there in 5, John.  Saying so long to my family - you know,
those groups of other people some folks surround themselves with?
Uh-huh.  Out."
	She sighed, rolling her eyes.  "Mr. Schedule doesn't like
to be kept waiting," she grumbled.  "Bitch, bitch, bitch.  I only
agreed to go out there as a courtesy anyway, and because I'm curious."
	"Where are you going?" Utena wondered.
	"Planet out on the Rim," Kei replied.  "3WA thinks it might
have something to do with all the weird shit that's been going on out
there lately.  They asked for an Expert to come along, so I'm going
for old times' sake.  When are you guys leaving?"
	"Tuesday, I think," Utena replied.  "Assuming Corwin gets our
repairs done on time.  Kate's got a show here tonight, one for the
summer session kids at DSM tomorrow, and one in Bajor City on Monday."
	"Damn," said Kei.  "I'm not gonna be back until Friday.  Oh,
well, I'll catch 'em in New Avalon.  Look, say hi to Kate and the rest
for me, willya?"
	Utena smiled.  "Sure.  See you when you get back."
	Kei hugged her again, then did the same to Gryphon and added
the kind of kiss that reminded Utena (with a slight blush) that the
"young" couple saying goodbye in front of her had -been- a couple
since years that started with 19.
	"Behave yourself," Kei said, her forehead to his, one hand on
the back of his neck.  "Bea said she might stop by, middle of next
week, so you don't get too lonely," she added with a grin.
	Gryphon chuckled.  "You be careful."
	"Bah," said Kei, waving dismissively as she stepped away from
him.  "There's nothing out there.  That stupid computer Goulet bought
to 'improve' mission assignments is a piece of crap.  See you Friday."
	She took a couple of steps away, and as she did so, Utena
suddenly had the strangest feeling.  It struck her, abruptly and for
no reason, that Kei's breezy good cheer, which was the mood she almost
always presented in public, was -forced-.  She had no idea why she
might feel that way, and Gryphon - who surely knew his wife's moods
much better than Utena did - didn't seem to feel that way... 
	I must still be rattled from talking with that slime Garcia,
she told herself.
	All that took the time Kei required to take three steps away;
then she stopped, turned, retraced her steps, put a hand on Gryphon's
shoulder, and said to Utena with a smile,
	"Listen, you're in charge of this guy while I'm gone, OK?
Make sure he doesn't get in with the wrong crowd."  She winked.  "You
know how easily led he can be."
	Utena laughed, the strange feeling disappearing.  "I'll do my
best," she promised, nodding.
	"OK, now I -really- have to run," Kei said, kissing Gryphon
one last time.  "I gotta get down there before Lieutenant Morden calls
Security to track me down.  If the transport was a car he'd be revving
it and honking the horn."  She broke away, trotted off, turned back to
wave, and then disappeared around a corner, leaving her husband and
Utena waving goodbye.
	"... So," Utena said.  "What else did you need to talk to me
about?"

	Aaron Ajlond-Mui was deep in thought as he watched the crowds.
His attention, however, was not directed toward the tourists or the
other inhabitants of Babylon 6.  Rather, his ruminations were of a far
more immediate and personal nature.
	He was considering his performance on the last mission, and by
his standards, he had done an abysmal job.  Granted, nobody had died,
but the circumstances could have been easily avoided... if someone had
decided to trust him.
	This left him with two options.  First, he could resign his
post for the remainder of the Valiant's tour and arrange for a
replacement.  This would unfortunately impact the crew's morale, but
it would serve them better to have someone they could obviously count
on in the position.  The second option would be to... re-evaluate his
methodology.
	Aaron surrendered things neither arbitrarily nor easily.  He
was not a quitter.  This was all the more paradoxical because he had
an annoying tendency to take a laissez-faire attitude toward matters
other than medicine.  Thus, while the first option was feasible, it
left a bad taste in his mouth.
	Re-evaluating his methods, on the other hand, would be
difficult.  He had spent the vast majority of his career, and indeed,
his life, fine-tuning what he believed was an efficient, yet
compassionate approach to medicine.
	He sighed, and hung his head.  He wished that Memory was
there.  She was one of the few people outside of family that he'd
grown fond of; but she was currently in New Avalon, helping with the
Robocop 2.0 project.
	His ruminations were interrupted by a gentle tap on his
shoulder.  Given that Aaron had excellent hearing, it was no small
feat to sneak up on him.  Looking up, he was somewhat surprised to see
the green-jacketed figure of his father, Pearson "Doc" Mui.
	"Hey, kiddo," Doc greeted him.  "How's it going?"
	"Father," Aaron returned with a cordial nod.
	This, of course, elicited an exasperated sigh and a rolling of
eyes from the elder doctor.  Doc could deal with "Dad," "Dadoo,"
"Poppa," and under certain circumstances, "Pop," as appropriate titles
for his paternal status, but "Father" never failed to get his goat.
What was more annoying was that Aaron derived no malicious pleasure
whatsoever from the reaction.
	"Are you, by chance, taking Prozium?" Doc joked.
	"I haven't used that particular treatment in decades," Aaron
replied mildly.  "What brings you to Babylon 6?"
	"I just had a feeling that I should be here.  Damned if I can
figure out why, though."  Doc rubbed his chin in frustration.  "I know
it's important, but...well, it'll probably come to me in time."
	"Where's Mother?"
	"Shopping.  She'll be done in, oh, three hours or so."  Doc
winced for effect.
	"I don't suppose that you'll need an extra hand?"  Aaron
offered.
	"Always, kiddo.  First things first, though.  You look like a
man who needs to talk to somebody."
	"Father, it's really nothing - "  Aaron stopped short as Doc's
eyes drilled right through him.
	"Don't give me that," Doc said softly.  "I can tell in your
eyes that you're wrestling with something.  Seeing as how you almost
never doubt yourself, it's gotta be something important.  I'm gonna
buy you a drink."  he concluded.
	"Father, I don't indulge - "
	Again, Doc cut him off.  "Neither do I.  Therefore, I'll be
keeping it to soft drinks.  In any case, you can talk to me about it,
or you can wait three hours and I'll have your Mother wear you down."
	Aaron sighed.  "You don't fight fair, Father."
	"You kidding?  Compared to your Uncle Techie, I'm a Boy
Scout."  Doc grinned as he led his son to a local watering hole.

			TUESDAY, JULY 14, 2409
			       11:23 AM
		      IPS VALIANT, AT BABYLON 6

	Three days and three good, solid shows later, the Art of Noise
joined the rest of the Valiant's company in the lunchroom for the
usual pre-launch briefing-slash-pep-talk Utena liked to give whenever
the ship left an IPO port.  The repairs and cleanup were complete and
the Valiant gleamed like new from stem to stern.  At a glance, it
looked like all the dirt and wear had been transferred directly from
the ship to its two engineers, Corwin Ravenhair and B'Elanna Torres,
but they looked triumphant, if weary.
	"OK, everybody, this one's going to be short," Utena said
briskly.  "Repairs are complete and we're back in business.  We
managed not to lose anyone in our last adventure, for which the Widows
and Orphans fund is grateful.  And we've got a new person joining the
crew by order of the Chief."
	Kanna Kirishima, acting as chief of security on this
particular cruise, looked startled.  "Hey, you're not saying he - "
she began, but Utena cut her off with a nod.
	"You'll all remember Carmela Sunderland, I imagine," she said
wryly.  "She's been assigned to us for the rest of this cruise as an
engineering assistant third class, which basically means she'll be
handing Corwin and B'Elanna a lot of wrenches."
	Utena turned to Anne Cross, Kaitlyn's junior kenjutsu student,
and said, "We've given her the empty at the end of the hall, Juni.
Try not to shoot her unless she really needs it, OK?  Dad wants to see
if she can get along and play well with others before he lets her into
the sandbox full-time."
	Anne (sometimes known to her friends as Juniper) looked
somewhere between bemused and concerned, searched momentarily for
words, and then said slowly, "... I will try to be worthy of your
faith in my ability to not go com-PLETE-ly batshit at the thought of
spending another six weeks in the company of a Psi Cop, Captain."
	"Now, now," said Wakaba Shinohara, raising an admonishing
finger.  "Ex-Psi Cop!  You should be able to adapt.  After all,
Saionji's an ex-total asshole, and you get along with him all right."
	"(Oh, thank you,)" murmured Kyouichi Saionji, who happened to
be Wakaba's boyfriend.
	"Well, yeah," Anne allowed, "but Saionji was never a
total... you know... when I knew him, and you never get a second
chance to make a first impression, right?"  She sighed.  "I'll try not
to radiate mistrust -too- loudly in her direction, but if she goes
rummaging around in my head I'm going to... to... I don't know -what-
I'm going to do, and I don't want to find out either."
	"I'd recommend just shooting her," said Torres offhandedly.
"It'd be a lot less work for the atmospheric conditioning system than
setting her on fire."
	"Thank you, B'Elanna, that'll be all," said Utena.
	"I probably won't kill her," Anne said with a game grin.  "I'd
feel -really- weird about killing someone whose life I saved a week
ago."
	Utena chuckled.  "She's promised to be good; we'll see.  In
other news, Juri's got the tour rearranged, and would like to know if
we're ever going to have one which goes entirely according to plan.
She should know better - she went to Ohtori Academy - but some people
never learn."  She paused to let the laugh go around the room, then
said, "The next show is Thursday night at Jezebel.  You'll notice
Azalynn isn't here; she's hitching her ride over with Liza.  OK, gang -
end of briefing, let's go make things happen."

	They shoved off at a little past noon, heading out into the
wild black yonder.  The ship's company spent the afternoon settling
back into their places, having spend the repair time in guest quarters
on Babylon 6, and dinner that evening was a bit of a celebration for
having resumed their interrupted ramble around the galaxy.
	Early that evening, Utena stood outside one of the cabins in
officers' country and took a deep breath.  She wasn't exactly looking
forward to this little detail of being a captain.  The age discrepancy
didn't exactly help.
	On the other hand, she was in charge, and there were things
that she needed to say to her CMO.
	She touched the cabin buzzer.
	"Yes?"  Aaron's tinny voice inquired from the speaker.
	"It's Utena.  Do you have a few minutes?"
	There was a hesitation.  "Certainly."
	The door hissed open, and Utena was mildly surprised to see
Aaron looking a bit disheveled.  Running a hand through his shock of
dark hair, he smiled and gestured inside.  "Please, come in."
	The cabin was a rather small, plain affair.  She noticed that
the only distinguishing features were a largish suitcase and two
framed pictures.
	"Would you like to sit down?  Some tea, perhaps?"  he offered.
	She shook her head.  "No, thank you.  This won't take long."
	"I see," he said neutrally.
	She stifled a curse.  The man was not making it easy for her
to do this.
	"Dr. Ajlond-Mui... you are an excellent doctor," she began.
	He shrugged.  "I do what I can.  I do, however, sense a `but'
coming... and I don't mean what you sit on."
	Utena paused for a moment, thrown slightly off her stride.
Was that humor?  Or at least an attempt at it?  The guy was so
strange it was hard to -tell-.
	"Well, yes.  It's... it's the crew.  You may have noticed that
we're a little more... tightly-knit than most."
	"Captain, I would have to be blind, deaf, and mute not to
notice that," he joked, then sobered as he saw that Utena wasn't the
least bit reassured.
	".... right.  This isn't - I'm not punishing you for anything.
It's just that I really think we need to talk about you... and the
crew."
	Aaron raised an eyebrow.  "Ah."
	"You're not a -bad- doctor.  In fact, you're one of the best
in the fleet, or the Chief wouldn't have sent you with us.  But I
really think - "
	"Captain," he interrupted her calmly.  "If you'll pardon me
for saying so, you don't need to talk to me about my relations, or
lack thereof, with the crew."
	She blinked.  "I don't?"
	He shook his head.  "As it turns out, my father and I had this
very same discussion recently in the Zocalo."
	"Oh," was her response, her train of thought derailed.
	"Are you sure that you won't have a seat?  This may take a few
minutes to explain."
	Somewhat confused, Utena sat down.
	"I'm sure you remember how Agent Hyatt nearly died.  The fact
is, I was rather despondent about the whole affair; despondent and
disillusioned."  He took a seat and sighed.  "As I'm sure you're
aware, one of the most important aspects of medicine is the trust
between doctor and patient.  It is something sacred, and not to be
taken lightly.
	"However," he went on, "Agent Hyatt obviously did not feel
comfortable sharing her condition with anyone, not even someone who
was bound by oath not to reveal secrets.  Because she believed she had
nobody to confide in, because I obviously did not engender trust, she
very nearly died."
	"It wasn't your fault," Utena told him.
	"If she -had- died, would I still be blameless?  I think not."
He ran his hand through his hair again.  "I've spent years - no,
decades studying just about every form of medicine I could find,
finding the right balance between caring and professional detachment.
All those years of practice and experience... and someone nearly died
because she didn't trust me with her life."
	He fixed Utena with a tired look.  "Truthfully, I had
seriously considered resigning my post."
	Utena couldn't quite suppress the flash of anger and
disappointment she felt at that.  She'd never figured him for someone
who gave up so easily.  But then - 
	"`Had?'" she asked.  "Why didn't you?"
	"It was at that point that my father tapped me on the shoulder
and proceeded to strongarm me into a local drinking establishment,"
Aaron explained.  "We both abstained from alcohol, of course, but we
certainly needed to talk."
	He sighed, breaking up the eerily Vulcanesque aspect his
stilted speech pattern tended to give him.  "Good Lord, we haven't
talked to each other like that in years.  He told me about what he
believed medicine should be.  It was then that I realized both the
hubris and the arrogance in my methods.  I was a textbook doctor, but
not all lessons come from textbooks."
	Utena absorbed this for a moment.  "So... what now?" she
asked.
	"Now?  Well, if you'll still have me as your CMO, I'll do my
best to be a bit more... involved.  I won't guarantee immediate
results; after all, a 300-year-old mindset is difficult to break.  I
will, however, do my best.  If you'll still have me, of course."
	Utena couldn't help but smile.  The openness and earnestness
he'd exhibited... -that- was what she wanted out of her CMO.

		       WEDNESDAY, JULY 15, 2409
			       3:02 AM
			      BABYLON 6

        John "Truss" Trussell scowled at his monitor.  There wasn't
anything wrong with it; it was a Panasony P-Metal Series 44, a nice,
mid-range, twenty-inch plasmachrome panel, in perfect working order.
Nevertheless, he scowled.
	Scowled, and fiddled with a pen, clicking its point in and
out, in and out, flipping it around in his fingers, tapping it against
his desk.
	Scowled, and fiddled, and bounced one heel up and down,
tap-tap-tapping rhythmically against the plastic anti-static panel
that covered the floor under his desk and chair.
	Scowled, and fiddled, and bounced, and periodically went "hmm"
or "rr" or "hmph" under his breath.
        All of which, except possibly the scowling, Nanami Jinnai
found exceedingly annoying.  It hadn't bothered her at first, but that
was largely because it had slowly escalated over the course of the
last ten minutes or so.  First the scowling, then the "hmm"ing, then
the bouncing, then the fiddling.  Next he'd start squeaking his chair,
or, if whatever problem he was up against this time particularly vexed
him, muttering to himself.
        Before he could get to that point, his partner took action.
        "John," she said.
        He didn't hear her.
        "John," she said, slightly louder.
        Again there was no response.  A moment later he began, on the
counterbeat of every heel-bounce, moving his chair ever so slightly
back and forth on its swivel, making it squeak softly in syncopation
with the tap of his heel on the floor.
        "John, I went to the doctor this morning," said Nanami,
"and he gave me some bad news."
        "(god dammit, what the hell?)" Trussell muttered, still
bouncing, fiddling and squeaking.  "(you were working a minute ago.
all i changed was the color code, why did that break -you-?)"
        "John, I'm going to have your baby," said Nanami, who, being
possessed of much better sense than to get into any such predicament
with the best years of her broadcasting career still ahead of her, was
going to do no such thing.
        "(i don't get it,)" Trussell didn't reply.  "(i just don't get
it.  wait... ah.  no.  what the -hell-?)"
        "John, my father knows about us.  My doctor told him."
        "(this was -working- a second ago!)"
        "John!  My father is coming over here with a shotgun!"
        Trussell stopped scowling, muttering, bouncing, fiddling and
squeaking, quarter-turned left to face her desk at the end of the
small room that served as the Babylon 6 bureau for both Network 23 and
Big Time TV, and said, "Sorry?  Did you say something, Nanami?"
        Nanami sighed, blew her honey-blonde bangs up away from her
eyes, and said, "No, John, I didn't say anything.  Could you pick
a nervous habit and stick with it, please?  I can handle one at a
time, but when you start making combos I can't take it any more."
        Truss grinned sheepishly.  "Sorry... what was I doing?"
        "You were fiddling, bouncing, squeaking, and muttering."
        "Sorry."  Truss got up from his chair, crossed the three steps
to the mini-fridge at the other side of the office, and took out the
day's fourth Diet Hassy.  "It's just that there's a bug in this stupid
script someplace," he went on as he returned to his seat.  "Every time
I set the background color to anything but ACACAC, the 'check out'
button disappears."
        "And that's bad, right?"
        "It is if Reg ever wants anybody to actually -buy- anything
from Big Time Online.  No 'check out' button, no database transaction,
no credit transfer... no sale."
        Nanami nodded her "right, that's bad" nod and went back to the
copy she was trying to write.  It wouldn't do to pester Truss too
much; after all, he -was- doing her boss's website work on his own
time, for free.
	A moment later, Truss started squeaking again.
        Nanami sighed, yawned, and considered giving up on the
detailed Tau Ceti post-mortem for now, in favor of just going to
sleep.  It -was- three in the freaking morning, after all.
	Before she could declare her intent to turn in, however, the
telephone on her desk rang, and she was all business again as she
scooped the instrument up.
	"Big Time News, Jinnai," she said crisply.  "Yeah.  Uh-huh.
... WHAT?"
	Truss dropped his pen and swiveled as Nanami's normally mellow
voice curved up into an outright squeak.

				 3:07 AM
		   IPS VALIANT, EN ROUTE TO JEZEBEL

	On this particular evening, Kaitlyn Hutchins was sleeping
alone, except for her pet tiger Sergei.  There was no special reason
for this.  Sometimes she and her lover slept together, and sometimes
they didn't, and tonight happened to be one of the nights when they
didn't.  Kate had been up fairly late reading a book she'd borrowed
from Yomiko, anyway.
	She awoke at the first ring of her door chime, wasn't sure
she'd heard it, and waited for it to ring again.  Then she sat up,
switched on the dim nightlight built into the bulkhead at the head of
her bunk, found her glasses on the bedside stand, and said, "Y-y-yes?"
	The door hissed open, and it took Kate only a moment to
identify the figure in the doorway, silhouetted by the low night-shift
lights of the corridor, by shape.
	"Juri?" she murmured, still trying to get her brain in gear.
In a crisis - if attacked, for instance - Kate could spring from bed
in an instant, sword in hand, defending herself as befit a master of
kenjutsu; but that was mostly her body working on its own, and it took
her brain a little while to catch up.
	"What is it?" Kate asked as Juri advanced into the room.
The door closed behind her, cutting off the corridor light, and then
Kate could see her face in the nightlight's glow - her expression
blank and somber.
	Juri sat down on the edge of the bed, one of her slim hands
toying with Serge's ears out of sheer habit.  "I... just got a call
from Luornu Durgo," she said, her voice restrained in a way different
from Juri's usual calm reserve.  "Something... something went wrong
with your mother's mission to the Rim.  Lu isn't sure exactly what -
your father's out there right now - but... the transport was
destroyed."
	Juri took Kate's hands as Kate blinked uncomprehendingly at
her.  She bowed her head for a moment before meeting Kate's eyes and
saying, "They can't find anyone from the expedition."
	Kate stared at her lover in dismay.
	"Some kind of problem in transit?" she asked in a small,
unbelieving voice, but Juri shook her head, her green eyes closed.
	"The transport reached its destination," she said.  "Luornu
said the pilot called in that they were down and ready to disembark,
and then... they lost the signal.  Your father rounded up anyone he
could find and got out there as fast as he could go, but by the time
they got there... "  She shook her head.  "They're still putting the
pieces together.  Gryphon is still out there, but Lu said he was
heading back to New Avalon... "  She opened her eyes, which glinted
wetly in the dim light, and gave her lover an uncharacteristically
helpless look.
	"I don't really know what's going on yet," she said quietly.
"I just... it looks like Kei might be... gone."
	"B-but... " Kate murmured, her stutter - normally conquered
when speaking to Juri, as of recently - returning.  "... she's a
L-L-Lensman."
	Juri nodded.  "I know," she said.  "She's... they've tried
that.  -I've- tried it myself."
	"And g-got n-n-nothing?"
	Juri gave her a somber, helpless look and shook her head.
	Kaitlyn looked back at her lover for a moment, her face
entirely blank.  Her lower lip trembled slightly, but that was the
only visible sign of emotion.  Only after several seconds did she
speak, her voice flat and low, almost inaudible.
	"we... have to go... to dad."
	"Utena took us into metaspace as soon as we got the word,"
Juri said.  "We'll be in New Avalon in an hour or two.  We might beat
him there."
	Kate nodded, looking down and murmuring, as if to herself,
"good, that's good."
	Then she met Juri's eyes again, and for a second, it looked
like she was going to make it through... 
	... but then her face crumpled, and she tore off her glasses,
threw her arms around Juri, buried her face in the redhead's chest and
-wailed-.
	Juri wrapped Kate in her arms, stroked her back, and absorbed
her cries.  Over Kate's shuddering shoulder, her own face was upturned
in pain, silent tears running down her cheeks from tight-closed eyes.

	The word spread around the ship fast - on a ship as small as
the Valiant, it couldn't help but do so, even in the middle of the
night.  People rousted each other out of bed, sent pages to each
other's cabin dataterms, and exchanged expressions of shock, sadness,
and disbelief.
	Janice Barlow was a case in point.  She should probably have
been sleeping, but instead she was wearing a gloves-and-goggles
semi-neuro virtual-interface set and playing an immensely popular
multiplayer VR game that happened to be set on her homeworld.  She had
never quite been sure -why- a game about the Early Colony Period of
her homeworld should rejoice in the name 'Dreaming Moon Online', given
that Ragol didn't even -have- a moon, but, she reflected, that was
probably why she wasn't the head of marketing for SegAtari.
	At any rate, Ragol hadn't really changed that much since the
Early Colony Period, so roaming around the simulated 21st-century
Ragol and blasting obstreperous monsters with Photon (as the local
dialect insisted on calling Getter rays) weaponry was kind of like
going home on vacation, except without the risk of running into a
family member and having to have an awkward conversation.
	She was just on her way to the Hunters' Guild headquarters to
see if one of the technologists there could tell her if she had, in
fact, just found a Magnarok when someone appeared in front of her.
The appearance was abrupt and silent, without the usual flashy
transport effect that means someone has just joined the game, and
anyway, this wasn't a designated entry point - someone had just hacked
into the game world, which was a reasonably impressive achivement.
	A moment later, she realized she knew who that someone was,
unless the person in front of her had hijacked that icon, which
wasn't overly likely.
	"Shiori," Janice said with a mixture of civility and
surprise.
	"Hi, Janice," Shiori Takatsuki replied.  "Listen, I hate to
crash in on your game like this, but nobody's answering your door."
	"Oh," said Janice, then chuckled.  "I'm all wired up and
Neal's probably asleep.  What's up?"
	In the real world, Janice's body sat completely still for
about a minute.
	Then, with a muttered "... shit!" she came to life, yanking
off her interface visor and unplugging the leads from her gloves.
Taking the gloves themselves off would take too long; she ignored them
as she turned, plunged across the room, and joggled her recently-
acquired roommate by the shoulder.
	"Neal," she said urgently, and when that failed to rouse the
big Niogan, she all but yelled at him, "NEAL!  Wake UP!"
	Neal Krummell did as he was told, blinking blearily at his
redheaded girlfriend's distressed face.  "... uh?  What?" he asked.
"What is it?"
	"Shiori just hacked into DMO to tell me," Janice replied, the
words almost stumbling over each other in their haste to get out.
"Something went wrong on that 3WA mission to the Rim.  They think
Kei's dead or something."
	Neal kept on with the bleary look for a short while longer.
"... What?  No fucking way," he declared after a few seconds.  He gave
her a dry scowl and made to roll over and go back to sleep.  "Next
time try something plausible.  Like Dorothy quit the band and Doctor
Doom is her replacement, maybe."
	Janice grabbed his shoulder and flipped him onto his back
again.  "You dumb shit, I'm fucking serious!" she barked.  "Something
took out the transport as they were touching down, blew it all to
fuck.  Shiori said they've only found pieces of most of the team."
	It seemed to sink into Krummell's skull that she -was-, in
fact, serious; the wild look in her one organic eye and the tears
gathering at the corners of both were good tip-offs.
	"Wait a minute," he said, "you're not kidding - Kei MORGAN?
Got KILLED?"
	"They're not sure, I guess, but... "  Janice trailed off, her
powergloved hands working at the bedspread.  "Like I said, the
transport's blown all to hell and... none of the Lensmen can raise
her."
	Krummell stared at her, then regarded the dull glow of his own
Lens for a few moments.
	"Holy shit," he murmured, sounding far away.  He seemed to
like the way that summed the matter up, or maybe he just couldn't
think of anything better, because after a moment, he said it again,
louder.  "Holy SHIT."

	In a different part of the ship's crew accommodation area,
Gunnr Brynjelfr hung up her bunkside telephone and said much the same
thing, except in Alvish, so it sounded much more elegant and refined.
	Anne Cross, who was standing with a curious, concerned look in
the doorway of the shared bathroom that linked their two cabins,
asked quietly, "What's wrong?"

	Corwin Ravenhair was sitting up in his bunk in the little
stateroom next to the chief engineer's office, with his covers as
disarrayed as his hair, talking to a holographic representation of a
ravishing redhead with an extremely somber expression.
	"I... I can't even take it in, Vee," he said after a few
moments.  He raked his hands through his jagged black hair, shook his
head, and blew out a sighing breath.  "How are the girls taking it?"
	"We're all devastated," Vigdis Brightblade replied
unsteadily.  "Poor Gudrun can't stop crying."
	Next to Corwin, Kozue Kaoru - the ship's helmsman on the day
shift and Corwin's girlfriend when it suited her - looked mildly
puzzled.  "Gudrun can't... ?" she asked.
	"Oh," said Vigdis, looking sadder still.  "She's been in love
with Kei for years, ever since the Ragnarok.  It was one-sided, of
course, but Kei was awfully good to her about it, and that just made
Gudrun love her more.  She's inconsolable.  No doubt she'll go
drinking with Thor tonight, if she can but bring herself to leave the
Valkyries' Hall."
	"Wait a second," said Kozue, holding up a hand with a
thoughtful expression.  Then she hesitated.  "... OK... I don't want
to seem insensitive here, but... uh... look, if Kei was dead, wouldn't
you guys know it?  I mean, you're the Valkyrie."
	"We would know if she came to Valhalla," said Vigdis.
	"Oh, come on," Kozue protested.  "Where else is a woman like
that going to go?"
	"That... would depend on what killed her," Corwin said slowly.
 He turned to look her in the eyes and said, quietly and seriously,
"It's all... not as simple as that."
	"But we -haven't- seen her, and Teleute and Forseti haven't
either," Vigdis confirmed, "so... there -is- hope.  But I don't want
to give you too much of it.  She had... has... very powerful enemies.
Everyone who was at the Ragnarok has."
	"Powerful enough to interfere with the natural order of
death?" Kozue asked.
	"Yes," Corwin and Vigdis replied as one.
	"... wow," said Kozue softly.

/*  Thomas Dolby  "One of Our Submarines"  _The Golden Age of Wireless_  */

			   108 MORGAN LANE
	       CRESCENT HEIGHTS, NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
			       3:08 AM

	Martin Rose stood alone in his bedroom, regarding his bed in
silence.
	He paused from that contemplation for a moment to raise his
left hand.  He considered the back of that hand for a long moment, and
the soft violet glow of the gemstone mounted there.  It gleamed just a
bit under his scrutiny, shimmering as if with anticipation.
	Yes, he'd considered making his own effort to call for Kei, to
see if this was all some sort of cruel hoax.  But the sheer absurdity
of that thought, and the deep undercurrent of worry - in some cases
near-panic - bleeding through the Lens network put the lie to that
almost instantly.
	Ordinarily it wasn't possible for anyone other than the
participants in a Lens conversation to tell that such a conversation
was even -happening-; such was the nature of the system, it had been
designed for ultra-secure communications.  But there was -so much-
activity out there right now, so much directed toward a single
apparently futile goal, that it was seeping into the awareness of
everyone who had a Lens.
	So Martin could tell that his voice would be just one more in
a chorus, a cacophony, of Kei's friends and acquaintances crying out
through the whatever-it-was for some glimmer of hope.  Had there been
any sort of response, any hint of a sign, it would have been joyously
and instantly relayed.
	Instead, all he could feel was the ongoing murmur, with the
occasional frantic outcry.
	He clenched the hand into a tight fist, let it fall to his
side, slipping under his cape, and returned his attention to where it
had been before.
	Eiko, his wife, continued to slumber as soundly as she ever
did.  She didn't wear her Lens in bed; the armbrace in which she'd
mounted it was comfortable enough when she was awake and moving about,
but not when she was trying to rest.  Thus she was spared the
unpleasant psionic wake-up call that had pulled Martin out of a dream
that had already fled his memory, but which left a faint nagging of
relevance and illness-at-ease.
	So she lay there, tossing occasionally, a faint mutter
escaping her throat every so often.  Even with no direct word of the
news, her own sleep seemed disquieted, as if she could feel the crisis
revolving around her dearest friend in her dreams.
	Martin sighed, torn once again by his quandary.  He knew he
should be the one to tell her what had happened - but in just a few
minutes he was leaving on the next jumpship headed out to the
Godforsaken planet where everything had gone so wrong, to look for
clues, hints, -anything- to indicate who had done this, and why, and
how.  And once he told her, he would definitely have to stay with her
for a good, long time, because she would absolutely need him.
	So much to do, so little time.
	He slipped soundlessly from the bedroom, making his way to the
house's control panel in the living room.  With a few quick taps he
ensured that neither the telephone nor the doorbell would disturb her
slumber.  He'd be back in a couple hours at the most, anyway, but
there was no sense in leaving this to chance.
	<All set, Lu,> he noted, clutching his left wrist in his right
hand and focusing through his Lens.
	<Acknowledged,> the Chief's assistant replied; he felt her
location in his mind and began concentrating on it.  But just before
he vanished, one final stray thought slipped across the link:
	<Dammit, I never told Kei I could do this.>

			 1275 STRANGE STREET
		  CLAREMONT, NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
			       3:15 AM

	At the end of Strange Street, the aptly named narrow lane
which slices diagonally through the bohemian district of Claremont,
there is a peculiar feature, one of many peculiar features that dot
the city of New Avalon.  The street ends at the edge of Lake Daniels,
where a person would expect it to end, but the -land- does not.
Rather, the street ends at the border of an arrowhead-shaped park,
located on an excrescence jutting out into the lake.
	If the park is the head of the arrow, Strange Street is its
shaft and the side streets radiating off from Belkin Circle are its
fletching.  And right at the point of the arrowhead, almost in the
lake, stands a round stone tower, five stories tall with a crenelated
roof, like a gigantic chess rook.
	The park is a pleasant little triangle of green at the edge of
the lake, with a good view of the spires of downtown.  It reminds
people who know New York City, on Earth, of Battery Park at the
southern tip of Manhattan, except rather smaller.  It is, in fact,
private property, but its owner isn't too hung up about people
strolling or picnicking in his yard, and though tourists almost never
go there, residents of Claremont can often be seen lounging around its
green expanse during the day.
	At night, lacking streetlights, it's a different story.  At
night, Mignola Point is a rather forbidding place, its wind-gnarled
trees and spike-topped wrought-iron fencing standing stark against the
sky.  The nightglow of New Avalon didn't reach very far into the park,
and the shadows there always seemed sharper than in the rest of the
city.
	With all that and the crenelated bulk of the Rook standing
sentinel at the lakeside, the place was really rather... well,
-creepy- at night, and so not many people ventured into it, even
though the nearest building to it, standing at the end of Strange
Street proper, was the Little Sisters of Althena convent.
	The man who lived in the tower was just as unusual as his
living quarters, and had much the same imposing effect when
encountered in the dark.  He was in the dark right now, struggling up
through layers of unconsciousness to answer the ringing telephone next
to his bed with his left hand - always his left hand.
	"Urrrnnnngh," he said concisely, then managed to get the phone
handset to his head right end up.  "Hellboy."
	The phone murmured in his ear for a few minutes.
	"Uh-huh," he rumbled.  "Yeah.  ... What?  Are you shitting me?
... No.  Right.  Uh-huh.  Sure.  OK.  I'll be here.  Yeah, fine.  OK.
Bye."
	He hung up, turned, and sat for a moment on the edge of the
bed, silent, his faintly glowing yellow eyes regarding the darkness of
his bedroom impassively.
	Then he got up, opened the French doors, and went out onto the
balcony, his hooves clicking softly on the stones.  A chill wind raced
in across Lake Daniels, but he didn't care.  It took a lot more than
that to make a demon bred in the fire pits of Muspelheim feel cold.
	He stood there for a minute, looking out across the blackness
of the lake, his heavy-whiskered, lantern-jawed face inscrutable, his
eyes blank and yellow under the flat stumps of what should have been a
grand and wicked pair of horns.
	Then he sank to his knees, threw out his hands (the normal one
and the great, ponderous stone one), and -roared-, splitting the
silence of the Avalon night like a great wounded animal.  It went on
and on, like an air-raid siren, pouring from his massive lungs and
through his corded throat, a huge, awful, inhuman noise.
	After many seconds it abated, trailing off to near-silence
before ending with a stifled gasp like a sob.  He slumped, head bowed,
hands slack at his sides, the right one falling to the balcony with a
dull clacking thud of stone against stone.
	Lights flicked on in the houses bordering Mignola Point,
including the dormitory of the Little Sisters convent, whose windows
faced the lake.  So, too, a light flicked on behind Hellboy, its
yellow glow streaming through the open French doors to silhouette him
like some red-stone gargoyle just inside the balcony rail, if
gargoyles ever sat in seiza.
	A slim female form in a floor-length flowing black silk
nightdress emerged from the doors, her dress and her long blonde hair
blowing behind her in the wind.  She approached the kneeling demon
slowly but not timidly, then knelt down beside him and asked in a very
lightly accented voice,
	"Hellboy?  Are you all right?"
	"Yeah," he replied, his voice even hoarser than usual.  He
tried to soften it a little, but mostly failed as he added, "I'm fine,
Snowflake."
	The girl brushed some of her hair behind her ear to keep it
out of her face, then touched the side of his face, feeling wetness on
his cheek.  "What was that noise?" she asked.
	Hellboy paused for a long moment before replying gruffly,
"Something I learned from a Klingon mystic one time."  He raised his
stone right hand, clenched it into a massive fist, then let it thump
slackly to the balcony again.  "Warning Death," he went on, looking up
at the dark night sky, "that a warrior's coming."

			  775 ALLARD AVENUE
			NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
			       05:17 AM

	New Avalon's sky was pink-streaked grey; dawn wasn't far off
when Kaitlyn beamed into the city.  She went not to the International
Police headquarters building, nor to her father's home in Crescent
Heights; both were mobbed with members of the press clamoring to find
out how the First Lensman "felt" about the apparent demise of his
longtime paramour.  Unsurprisingly, neither he nor his daughter felt
like dealing with -that-.
	Instead, she had arrived in a secluded courtyard behind a
Victorian mansion a short distance from downtown, in that nebulous
border zone between the Business District and Claremont.  She was
alone.  Several members of the Valiant's crew had offered to come with
her, but she had declined them all.  Some undefinable sense told her
that this was a thing she needed to do by herself.  Even Sergei had
stayed behind, to offer comfort to the others of the crew who had
known Kei.
	Kate felt very small and alone as she crossed the courtyard, a
pleasant brick-pathed expanse of grass and shrubs with a few stone
benches, to the back door of the building.  She climbed the steps and
pressed the brass button next to the door, and a few moments later the
door opened, revealing a tall woman in white.
	Kaitlyn knew Emma Frost only casually, to say hello to; she
was an industrialist, one of the New Avalon corporate scene's movers
and shakers, and Kate gathered that she had some connection to several
friends of hers, but they'd only met a handful of times and she didn't
see where they had anything much in common.  Kate knew her as a
breezy woman with a tendency toward inappropriate familiarity and an
affected English accent - kind of a snob, and rather irritating.
	Today, though, she was positively subdued, for a woman dressed
in white leather jeans and a lace blouse Kate could see her underwear
through.
	"Kaitlyn, dear," she said, and she seemed to mean it more than
usual.  Her face was sad, her blue eyes slightly reddened, but if
she'd actually shed tears she'd done a good job of cleaning up after
them.  "I'm so glad you could come.  Welcome."
	Kate was in no mood to be welcomed; she was having a hard
enough time holding things together without trading pleasantries with
practical strangers in vestibules.  She didn't mean to be curt, but
with her problems speaking, she couldn't really help coming off that
way anyway as she nodded once and asked,
	"W-w-w-where's my fff... ff... f-father?"
	Emma seemed to understand, at least enough that she wasn't
offended by the curtness.  She only nodded and said, "This way."
	She led Kate through the corridors of the mansion, up a flight
of stairs, around a corner, and into a large, high-ceilinged room
whose walls were lined with books.  Whatever wasn't covered in books
was dark paneling, and there were a number of overstuffed red leather
chairs scattered about, as well as some writing desks.  The floor was
dark hardwood with several expensive-looking Oriental rugs.  It was
the very picture of the library of a Victorian gentlemen's club.
	The people in the library sort of broke the metaphor, though.
They were much too scruffy to be members of such a club, and too few
of them fit the Victorian concept of a gentleman, either.  Three were
women, and one of the men was black.
	Kate recognized them all, though she knew some better than
others.  The white-skinned woman with the black spot around one eye
she had only a passing familiarity with - Beatrice Watanabe, Domino,
an Expert of Justice and one of her father's on-and-off lovers.
Luornu Durgo she knew well - only one of her tonight? - and the
worried-looking redhead was Jean Grey, of course, Gryphon's novice
kenjutsu student.  Kate had to search her mental files for a couple of
seconds to identify the tall black man in the Jedi robes - Mace Windu,
the Jedi Master her father had recruited to help him gather together
that splintered order of mystic warriors.
	They all looked battered and weary, their clothes rumpled and
even torn in a couple of spots, and they were all hovering silently
around an armchair in which sat the First Lensman.  Gryphon's form was
hunched and silent, his face hidden in his hands.  He didn't move; his
stillness was so perfect and awful that Kate could half-believe he had
-never- moved, -would- never move.
	As she took in this tableau, Kate's eyes fell on the billiard
table standing in the middle of the room, and she drew up short with a
sharp little gasp.
	Arranged on the green felt of the table were several jagged
fragments of golden metal, their battered, scorched surfaces covered
in barely visible angular tracery engraving, like circuit patterns.
The pieces were arranged in more or less the right relative positions,
close enough to show that they had once been part of a single object.
	Kaitlyn's blood ran still colder in her veins.  This was what
was left of the Cosmic Rod, her mother's mystic weapon - a device
forged by the hands of Skuld Ravenhair herself.  What in the universe
could do such a thing to a weapon made by the Goddess of Tomorrow, the
armorer of the Valkyrie themselves?
	Kate had no time to consider this.  With an effort, she pushed
it, the shock and horror of it, out of her conscious mind, cramming it
into the closet with all the -other- shock and horror of this night.
There would be time to indulge all that later.  Right now her father
needed her.
	Domino was sitting on the floor next to Gryphon's chair; as
she saw Kate approaching, she reached up and gently touched his arm.
	"She's here," she said softly.
	Slowly, Gryphon stirred.  He raised his face, and the pain in
his eyes as they met hers almost stunned Kaitlyn.  She'd only seen him
look anything like this upset once in her life, and that was when he'd
learned, years before, that she had been raped.
	He got up from the chair and came toward her with a shambling
gait totally unlike his usual easy stride, and all but fell into her
arms, crushing her against him with his own.  He said nothing, merely
held onto her as though he was afraid she would vanish like smoke if
he let go.
	The others discreetly excused themselves, so that when father
and daughter finally parted, they were alone.
	They went to one of the larger chairs, almost a couch, and sat
together, almost like they had when she was a little girl, Kate across
his lap with her arms around his neck and her feet hanging over one
arm of the chair, his arm around her waist.  For a long time, there
was silence.  Then Kate spoke, her voice even quieter and huskier than
normal.	
	"The others?" she asked, and he knew she meant her younger
siblings, the twins, Guy and Priss Morgan.
	"They're... dealing," Gryphon replied slowly.  "In their own
way.  Sylvie's with them, and... Domon and Rain."  He chuckled, though
the sound had little mirth - it was almost a dry scraping sound rather
than a laugh.  "They'll probably go out and break something."
	Kate nodded, mustering a weak chuckle herself.  "Probably,"
she agreed.  There were many others whose location and condition she
wondered about, but she was hardly about to ask her father for chapter
and verse on a long list of her mother's friends and acquaintances.
Kei Morgan had a -lot- of friends and acquaintances.
	"Skuld is in Asgard," Gryphon said abruptly, as if searching
for something to fill the silence with.  "She says she'll come as soon
as she can, but... there's probably nothing she can do."  He clenched
his fist and thumped it on the arm of the chair behind Kate's back,
then added in a soft, bleak voice, "There's nothing -anyone- can do."
	Kate wanted to know what happened, in more detail than she
already had, but she wasn't going to ask him, not now.  Instead she
just sat with him, held onto him.  The only thing she could do was be
there for him, as he'd been there for her in her time of greatest
need, while her thoughts ran in circles.
	Her mother was missing.  Lost on a mission.  Probably dead,
though nobody had been crass enough to say that out loud yet.
	Her mother.  It struck Kate with a shock like cold water down
her back that, thinking about it, she didn't really feel as though she
-knew- her mother very well.  They weren't terribly close.  Oh, she
loved Kei, and she knew Kei loved her, but... they weren't really
-friends-.  They got along with an easy sort of... well, it seemed
heartless to think of it as -indifference-, and that wasn't quite
accurate, either.
	The simple truth of the matter was that Kate was, and always
had been, her daddy's girl, and that was all there was to it.  Kei had
accepted that and not tried to compete.  She'd provided what was
needed, and that included the space that her eldest daughter had
always required.  If she hadn't given Kate as much attention as might
be expected from a mother to a firstborn child, that was only because
Kei recognized early on that it wasn't wanted.
	That kind of thing could have caused a major rift, the kind of
thing that led to slammed doors and lapses of speaking terms, but for
the remarkable inner peace and serenity Kei had brought back from the
Ragnarok.  The old Kei would have been infuriated that her daughter
apparently didn't want to be close pals and do all the things that
mothers and daughters did, hurt and jealous that Kate preferred the
company of her father - but after the Twilight of the Gods, she simply
accepted that it was in Kate's nature and not an expression of any ill
will.
	It had never really occurred to Kaitlyn before now how
valuable that was, and how grateful she was for it, and how remiss she
had been in expressing that gratitude to her mother.  When was the
last time she'd even told her she loved her?
	Something like shame welled up inside Kate as she considered
that, and she hung her head, tears rolling down her face.
	And her father demonstrated the rapport they had, the one
which could have unbalanced the family if not for Kei's quiet, knowing
peace, by patting the back of her head and saying softly,
	"It's OK, sweetheart.  She knows."
	That could have broken Kate down completely, but she knew that
if she let it, it would bring him down with her; so she marshaled her
strength, almost as if she were going into a swordfight, and thrust it
back.  She had to be strong right now, for her father.  Later, when he
didn't need her strength any more, she could let it go.  Later, in
private, in quiet... 
	"What will you do?" she asked him softly.
	"I don't know," he replied.  "Sakura called a little before
you got here and invited me out to Ishiyama if I wanted to get away
and think for a while.  They have that little cottage way at the
corner of the Shinguuji estate, you know.  She said I could stay there
for a while.  I might do it... but I don't know what to do about the
IPO in the meantime."
	Kate considered that, realized at once what he meant.  Yuri
Daniels was the Deputy Chief - Yuri, Kei's old 3WA partner, the only
person in the universe who had known her longer than Gryphon had.  She
had to be devastated too, and it would be the height of unfairness for
Gryphon to ask her to take on a burden -he- was laying down in order
to try to cope with Kei's loss.
	Though she'd resolved not to ask about everyone, this seemed
important enough to bend that vow a little, so Kate asked him if he
knew where Yuri was, and he nodded.
	"When I left, she was still out there," he said.  "Zoner got
there just as I was leaving, though, and he said he was going to try
and get her to leave with him.  She wasn't getting anything done,
just... you know.  Kicking over rocks, cursing, getting frantic.  I
couldn't do anything with her, not when my own guts felt like broken
glass... "  He sighed, a shivery, shuddery sigh.  "So that's her,
anyway.  I don't know where Larry is - probably with Priss and Sylv if
he's anywhere.  And Marty... Marty's still out there, like Yuri.  Or
he was when I left."
	Another factor Kate hadn't considered.  Martin Rose, the
grown-up she'd been closest to, after her father, as a child - he and
Kei were old, old friends as well.  Sometimes they even joked that
they were having an affair.  They weren't, of course - the Roses,
unlike Kate's parents, were strictly monogamous - but the joke
persisted, and she -had- seen her mother kiss him very occasionally,
when she managed to catch him and thought no one was looking.
	Sometimes it seemed to her as if Marty's life had been an
unending string of crushing blows.  Of course, anyone living to the
age that he and her parents and the others had attained would
automatically have been in for his fair share of hard knocks, but all
the same, there was just something about the way things had gone for
Martin Rose all his life that made a person wonder how many puppies he
had kicked in the previous one.
	She could see him there, on that distant and desolate world,
searching with a dogged persistence that made it seem as though he was
prepared to personally turn over every rock and look in every hole on
the planet for that missing clue.  It was the persistence that made
him such a great police detective... but this case wasn't like any
other he'd encountered, and all his determination would do was
frustrate him further.
	Kate hugged her father again and said nothing.  There was
no more to be said than there was to be done... and that was nothing
at all.
	Nothing.

	Kaitlyn returned to the Valiant late that day, grim and
determined and tightly controlled.  She went her her cabin, packed her
things, then got her band together in their studio on the Lido Deck
and told them, slowly but with apparent calm, that she was sorry, but
it didn't look like they were going to be able to finish the tour.
She intended to stay in New Avalon, at her father's side, until he was
ready to do whatever it was he was going to do, and if that was go to
Ishiyama, and he wanted her to go with him, she would go.
	She also told them, that being that case, they may as well go
home, and she didn't seem to notice, over the next couple of days,
that nobody did.  Some stayed with the Valiant; others went to the
house on Morgan Lane, occupying guest rooms and quietly staying out of
the way but keeping themselves nearby in case they were needed.

			FRIDAY, JULY 17, 2409
			       2:11 AM
			     IPS VALIANT
	      AVALON SPACEDOCK, ZETA CYGNI DYSON SPHERE

        In spite of her expectations four days earlier, dealing with
the Valiant's crew and company had proven to be a much easier thing
for Carmela Sunderland than she'd expected.
        On the other hand, that was because most of them were gone and
the rest were ignoring her entirely.  After the frantic dash back to
New Avalon and the subsequent dispersal of most of Kaitlyn Hutchins's
friends as they attempted to help console both her and her father,
Carmela had found herself almost completely forgotten.  B'Elanna
Torres, the half-Klingon engineer who seconded Corwin Ravenhair, had
been the sole exception - she had found her twice in the preceeding
two days to tell her that there was nothing she needed her for.
        Some of the Valiant's people were still spending their nights
on board, however.  Carmela knew for a fact that Anne Cross, the blip
who had saved her life, was still aboard - mainly because she was
radiating an intense frustration and unhappiness that was almost
impossible for Carmela to ignore and seemed rather stronger than
secondhand grief could explain.  Even at 2 in the morning, the girl
was still going strong.
        Finally, Carmela got out of bed, put on her bathrobe, and went
to see if she could help the girl lock it down.  She was supposed to
be making an effort in good faith to prove her worth to the IPO, after
all, and if Anne told her to get lost, well, she'd have at least made
an attempt.  And anyway, sleeping with full shields was about as
restful as dozing on watch.
        She padded down the hall to knock on the girl's door, and
realized that Anne wasn't in there.  She followed the emotional blast
wave down one deck and forward, and found the door to the dojo was
open.  Looking inside, she saw Anne moving through kata with her
bokuto, her face pouring sweat, and her expression set in a mask of
frustrated concentration.
        Carmela watched her for a little while in silence, until one
of the turns of Anne's kata turned her toward the door.
        "GYAH!" the girl gasped, staggering back and raising the
bokuto before lowering it slowly, panting.  "What do -you- want?" she
demanded angrily.
        "Some sleep would be nice," Carmela answered dryly, realizing
with a sense of vague, detached amusement that she was on the verge of
becoming the furious teenager's punching bag.  "But I'll settle for
you calming down enough that I stop dreaming your emotions."
        Anne turned away, her face suddenly a cold mask.  "I'll shut
the door to the dojo; that should block me.  I'm -only- a P3 after
all."
        "Given the level you're worked up to," Carmela observed
wearily, "I wouldn't be surprised if a little leaked out even then."
When Anne turned back to glare at her, she sighed.  "I -am- a P12, and
I was trained to pick up on things like this.  I'm not scanning you;
given the level you're broadcasting at, it's really not necessary."
        "If you close the door and go away," Anne snarled, "you won't
have to worry about scanning me.  I'm not -trying- to bother you."
But Carmela could feel the girl's radiated emotions shift to fear and
then begin gradually diminishing, probably as she struggled to calm
herself down in the face of a Psi Cop.
        Carmela sighed again.  I seem to be doomed to accomplish
nothing meaningful this week, she thought wearily.  "All right, but
you shouldn't be bringing emotions like that into a dojo anyway," she
observed, reaching for the door control.  "You're supposed to leave
them at the door, if I remember correctly."
        "Shut up!" Anne screamed, raising the bokuto again, her fury
boiling back up to rabid-animal levels.  "What do you know anyway?
You're not my sensei!"
        Well, -that- touched a nerve! Carmela thought nervously,
eyeing the bokuto.  "No, but I do - or did - fence competitively," she
answered, trying to sound calm.  "And undirected anxiety isn't much
use to anybody.  Unlike what you're probably thinking about doing to
me right now," she added, trying to smile and feeling it fail.  It
appeared that levity wasn't a useful tool in a situation like this.
        There was a long pause as the girl stared at her, anger
boiling within her, and then Anne slowly lowered her bokuto as her
fury drained away, leaving an aftertaste of weary misery.  "You're
right," she said finally.  "But would you -please- go away?  You...you
still make me -really- nervous."
        As the level of radiated unhappiness diminished to levels
where Carmela couldn't sense it without trying, she nodded slowly.
"All right."  And then she added, hoping quietly that she might get
through to the girl, "But if you want to talk..." she managed what
felt like a real smile from the inside, albeit a weak one, "I think I
probably feel about as useless as you do right now."
        Anne shook her head, turning away.  "No...you being here
reminds me that I'm not totally useless anymore.  Maybe you feel
worse.  I just... am not much use right now.  Please go away, and I'll
try not to be so damn loud."  She slowly sat down in seiza, resting
her bokuto across her knees, and appeared to begin meditating.
        ... I guess that's the best I can hope for tonight, Carmela
thought wearily, closed the dojo door, and turned to go back to bed.
	She was startled to see Gunnr Brynjelfr in the corridor,
leaning against the bulkhead with her arms crossed over her chest and
her head bowed, eyes closed.
	Gunnr opened her eyes when she knew Sunderland had noticed
her, looked steadily at her in silence for a few moments, and then
said in a low voice,
	"It was a good try."
	Sunderland blinked - she hadn't expected that - and then gave
a rueful, dry little laugh.
	"Not good enough," she replied.
	Gunnr shrugged slightly, levering herself away from the wall.
"The deck was stacked against you anyway, and the timing -stinks-,"
she said.  "It was still a good try.  Out of all of us, though, she
was probably the worst one of us to try to connect with, especially
right now."
	"It surprises me that she's so upset," Carmela admitted as
they walked to the companionway leading back up to the residence
deck.  "Was she particularly close to Lensman Morgan?"
	"No," said Gunnr.  "I don't think they ever met.  It's not Kei
she's upset about, anyway.  I'd have thought that would be obvious to
a trained observer like you," the elven Valkryie added, just a touch
pointedly.
	"I'm not at my best," Sunderland replied, and then, coldly,
"Having one's life turned upside down by one's moral standing will do
that."
	Gunnr glanced sharply at her, then relaxed visibly, chuckling
a little darkly at herself.
	"You're right," she said.  "Sorry.  That was out of line.  I'm
upset myself.  I'm just a little better at handling it than Anne is."
She stopped at the door to her stateroom, then stood looking at
Carmela as if she wanted to say something else.
	Then she sighed and said, "Well, it was a good try, anyway.
Keep trying... this'll get better eventually."  She paused as if
searching for more words, then gave up, keyed the door open, went
inside, and shut it behind her.
	"I certainly hope so," Carmela observed glumly to the empty
corridor; then she turned and went back to her own room.

			      NEW AVALON
                               6:45 PM

        Fetchingly sprawled in her chair, slouched over her elbow at a
round eight-person table at Chet's Chow - an all-ages theme restaurant
franchise centered around that lovable GENOM icon, Chet the Safety
Trooper - Captain Utena Tenjou lazily used her straw to stir the ice
in her soda.  She wondered, not for the first time, when someone was
going to invent an off switch for the paparazzi, besides the good old
Mark One fist.
        'Captain, how do you feel,' indeed.  How the hell did they
-think- she'd feel?  Kaitlyn's Mom was like family - hell, she -was-
family, she and everyone around her, more and closer family than
Utena'd known for most of her young life.  How she -really- felt was
like decking the next person who tried to ask her that question.
        Then there were the other questions, each as maddening as the
first.  Like that one about the possibility of restructuring.  Not
likely, and not even her department.  Sure, the Red Lensman was
important and well-liked, but she was only one person.  The IPO
definitely wouldn't collapse in her absence.  And the Chief may not be
ready to continue day-to-day operations, but he'd also collected some
of the most competent and capable lieutenants in the galaxy who could
easily keep things humming in his stead.  Hell, if he weren't so damn
high-profile the press twits wouldn't even notice he was missing.
        There was so much more in her mind to silently rage against,
but instead she closed her clear blue eyes and released a deep sigh.
She knew none of them were the thing that was bothering her the most.
        "Hey, Utena!"
        The Valiant's captain looked up and smiled.  Her crew, or most
of the members she'd called for anyway, had finally arrived.
        "'Bout time you got here," she complained with a good-natured
smile.  "Too much longer and I really -would- be hungry."
        "You could have been a bit less cryptic in your invitation,"
Juri replied, settling gracefully into the seat chivalrously offered
by Miki, who then eased himself into the one right beside.
        "I've never been one to be suspicious about the possibility of
free food," Gunnr noted as she dropped into yet another, "but she's got
a point.  I get the feeling appetizers aren't the first thing on the
menu of your mind today."
        "Wow, Gunnr," Corwin noted, doing for Kozue what Miki had done
for Juri.  "That was downright poetic."
        "Thank you.  Warrior, poet - I'm a regular Renaissance elf."
        "I don't need a scrying glass," Anthy noted as she took
Corwin's second proffered chair, the one directly next to Utena, "to
tell what's on your mind, love."
        Anne, for her part, hopped into the seat between Gunnr and
Captain Tenjou, looking around the assembled.  "Kaitlyn-sensei's not
here," she observed.
        "Which is exactly what I need to talk to you all about," Utena
stated with a nod, confirming everyone's heretofore unspoken guess.
"I've been trying to keep an eye on her behavior lately, for what
little time I get to -see- her, and I need to know if it's just me."
        "No need to elaborate on that, if it's a cold reaction you
need," Miki opened, clicking his stopwatch without looking at it.
"Since her mother's disappearance, she's become rather..."
        "Sullen?" Kozue suggested.
        "Withdrawn?" Gunnr volunteered.
        "'Intense,' I think, is the best word," Miki completed.
        "Yeah," Anne sighed, her head sinking a bit between her
shoulders.  "She usually acts a lot different between when she's
teaching and the rest of the time, but these past couple days, it's
like she's in Dojo Mode all the time."
        "Driven," Juri nodded in agreement.  "But, unfortunately, not
driven toward us."
        "Unwilling to share her burden," Anthy opined.
        "But that's the way she is," Kozue pointed out.  "She's never
wanted to be a burden on anyone, especially not the people she cares
about."
        "Particularly not her father," Miki elaborated thoughtfully,
tapping his chin as he slipped the stopwatch into his shirt pocket.
"He's the one she's always been closest to... and come to that, she
probably feels that now, she's all he has."
        "Hardly fair to the rest of us," Corwin added, "but as the
firstborn, she likely sees taking care of him as her duty.  And she's
always been his favorite, that's no secret."
        Miki nodded.  "And as his self-appointed emotional support, I'm
certain she's keeping her own grief in check, for his sake."
        "She -has- been with him a lot," Gunnr said.  "I hear she only
goes back to the house to shower, change, maybe eat, and sleep."
        Juri folded her arms.  "I'm afraid even that isn't quite true,"
she muttered, barely audible.
        Utena and Anthy glanced at each other, and then turned to look
at Juri.
        "What do you mean?" Utena asked.
        Juri sighed, closing her eyes and brushing her hair away from
the corner of her forehead.  "I do understand," she elaborated, "that
Kaitlyn will need her space, and her own time, to deal with this.
But... Wednesday night, before going to bed, I stopped by her room to
see if... well, if she needed a shoulder to cry on, or perhaps something
more."
        She sat forward, leaning on her elbows, gazed meaningfully at
Utena, and continued:
        "She wasn't there."
        Anthy blinked.  "Are you sure she wasn't just not answering the
door?"
        "The door wasn't locked," Juri sighed.  "And I tried again last
night.  Again, she was gone."
        Corwin's brow furrowed.  "That -is- troubling.  Kate values her
sleep.  It's another trait she gets from Dad."
        Juri allowed a wry smile to play across her lips.  "So I'd
noticed."
        Anne, having quietly taken all this in, sat up straight again.
"Well, one thing's for sure - we can't let this go on much longer.  It's
not good for her.  But... how do we get her to stop?"
        "Which is the real problem," Utena noted.  "Who do we know that
she'd listen to?  Or who'd know what to -do- about it?  I'd say we've
established that nobody here feels up to taking her on."
        "Not her father," Miki advised.  "Kaitlyn may be taking her
protectiveness to an extreme, but she is right on that count - the man
has quite enough problems as it is."
        "Almost everyone else I'd've suggested is sitting here now,"
Utena sighed.  "Damn it."
        "And Saionji's out, too," Kozue grumbled, slouching back and
folding her arms.  "Where the hell is he, anyway?"
        "That's something I'd like to know," Utena replied.  "He -was-
invited here, but I never heard back from him."
        "Truth to tell, he's become just as elusive as Kaitlyn," Juri
mused.
        Kozue's lips twisted into a humorless smirk.  "Heh.  Bet
Wakaba's about ready to skin 'im alive."
        "Actually, she seems to have expected something like this,"
said Miki with a shrug.
        Anne slumped back down in her chair.  "So we're it."
        Anthy, who'd been sitting with a finger to her lips in deep
contemplation, looked up as a light dawned visibly behind her eyes.
"No," she said quietly, "that's not true."
        Utena gave her a sideways look.  "What?  I know you're not going
to suggest Kanna."
        In reply, Anthy just gave her that beatific smile.  "Have the
waiter bring one more chair," she told Utena with a pat on the shoulder.
"I'm going to make a phone call."
	As she got up and crossed the restaurant to the pay phones, a
waiter in the white and black armor of a White Legion scout trooper
appeared at Utena's elbow, almost startling her out of her seat as he
asked,
	"<chk> Are you guys all set to order?"

	They'd just finished up at Chet's when the call came in,
conveyed by a curiously formal Lu Durgo - would Captain Tenjou please
report to the Office of the Fleet Commander at her earliest convenience, 
a phrase Utena knew was a polite way of saying "right goddamn now".
She left the others at the N stop near the restaurant, she headed
intown while everyone else was outbound for Crescent Heights, and rode
downtown thinking over their plan, hoping it would work, and wondering
what this call was about.
	Headquarters wasn't exactly deserted, even at 8 o'clock on a
Friday night, but it wasn't exactly bustling either.  The lobby was
completely deserted, feeling cavernous and cold in its darkened Art
Deco emptiness, as Utena crossed it to the elevator.  The 39th floor,
Administration, -was- deserted at this hour, and the only light she
could see upon emerging from the elevator was the one shining into the
corridor through the window in the Chief's outer office door.
	She entered the outer office expecting to find Lu at her desk,
but she wasn't there; this room, as well, was empty.  Utena paused for
a second, unsure what to do, and then went into the inner office.
	When she entered, Gryphon looked up from a mass of scattered
forms that threatened to inundate his desk.  Utena had to exert
conscious will to keep herself from reacting visibly to his
appearance.  She'd seen him briefly the day after the Valiant first
arrived at New Avalon, and he'd looked about like you'd expect a man
in his position to look - not that good.  Now, though, he looked
positively -awful-, not only exhausted and careworn but perhaps
physically ill.
	He got up from his chair, probably intending to offer a hand,
but she rounded his desk and silently embraced him.  He took it
gratefully, wrapping her up in his arms and holding on for several
seconds, and then, still without saying anything, they separated and
he sat down behind his desk again.
	Utena took a seat in one of the chairs facing the desk and
waited.  The First Lensman looked at an uncharacteristic loss for
words.  He pushed papers around on his desk for a few seconds, as if
trying to look busy while he thought of what he'd intended to say.
Then he gave up, sat back with an explosive sigh, and said,
	"I'm sorry... I think I called you down here for nothing.  I
hadn't thought it through."
	Utena cocked her head inquisitively.  "Hadn't thought what
through?"
	Gryphon made an ineffectual gesture and shook his head.
"Never mind.  It's not... would have been an imposition.  Not
something I have any right to ask for."
	Utena leaned forward in her chair, elbows on knees, chin in
hands, and said, "I'll be the judge of that."
	He gave her a look that combined skepticism with helplessness,
and she sighed.  "Dad," she said, "I don't just call you that for a
joke, all right?  I hope you know that."
	His look changed to one of surprise.  He said nothing, and
Utena used the silence to gather her thoughts before continuing, "I
don't remember my real father.  Both my parents died when I was
little, and my earliest real memories are of what happened after
that.  Ever since you took me into your home... you've been that to
me.  So if there's something I can do to help you through this, I
wish you'd tell me what it is.  If it's too much, I'll tell you, but
it'd have to be a hell of a lot to be too much."
	"It -is- a hell of a lot," Gryphon said gravely.
	"Well, let's hear it," Utena replied.
	Gryphon sat and looked at her for a moment, then smiled
faintly, shook his head at himself, and said, "All right, I'll tell
you.  I'm going away for a while - going to take Sakura up on her
offer and spend some time on Ishiyama, getting myself back together.
Steve Rogers will be filling in for me while I'm gone, with Lu's
help."  He chuckled.  "She knows more about what goes on around here
than I do, anyway."
	"That's good to hear," Utena said, nodding.  "Where do I come
in?"
	"Steve's a master at special ground ops, investigations, and
so forth," Gryphon said, "and he'll do just fine in the Chief of
Operations role; but he doesn't know anything about starship ops.  I'm
going to need someone to step in and head up the Space Force while I'm
gone."  He smiled darkly and added, "I want that to be someone who
Earthdome has already learned to fear."
	Utena double-blinked at him, her face blank with surprise.
	"You mean... "
	Gryphon's smile changed from dark to rueful.  "I did, but
after I asked you to come down here, I realized it wasn't fair of me
to ask."  He shook his head, unsmiling now.  "You have your own life.
I'll find somebody else."
	"Hold it," said Utena, a spark in her voice now.  "Did you
think about maybe asking me if I -want- to do it?  Sure, I have other
plans, but plans can be changed."
	Gryphon gave her a thoughtful look.  "-Do- you want to do it?"
	"Damn right!" she replied immediately.
	"Are you sure?" he asked.  "Don't feel you have to do it; do
it because you want to."
	Utena gave him a deadly-serious look.  "The last thing I did
because I felt like I had to didn't work out real well," she pointed
out.  "I don't -use- that reason anymore."
	Gryphon regarded her determined face thoughtfully.  At moments
like this, he found it very easy to understand how his eldest son
could have found himself so completely in love with this young woman.
In another time and place, she'd have claimed the father just as
easily, just as completely, and just as accidentally...
	... but the way he felt right now, that would've been a very,
very long time ago indeed.
	He smiled tiredly.
	"OK," he said.  "You've got the job... Commodore."
	Utena reached across the desk to shake his hand on it, then
covered their clasped hands with her free one and turned the gesture
into a more personal thing, a sort of seated embrace.  Nothing else
needed to be said.
	After a few seconds they separated, sitting back.  Utena
looked around the darkened office and said, "Where's Kate?"
	"I sent her home," Gryphon replied, rubbing his eyes tiredly.
"I have to order her to go or she won't.  She's starting to worry me."
	You have no idea, Utena thought glumly, but she said nothing
except "Mm."  It wouldn't do to add that much more worry to the man's
life, especially after she'd just taken off one of his burdens; and
anyway, she hoped the evening's plans would sort that problem out
without involving him.
	"You ought to go get some rest yourself," she told him.
	"You're right," he agreed, wiping his hands down his face.
"The paperwork has completely stopped making sense.  Not that it ever
made all that much, but at one time the invididual symbols on the
sheets did have meanings."  He pushed a few things around.  "I'll just
tidy up a bit and then go.  I promise."
	Utena smiled.  "OK.  If you're not home by 9, I'll send
someone to get you."
	She left the office, still letting what had just happened sink
in.  Had she really just agreed to take over the Space Force in his
absence?  The WHOLE Space Force?!
	Halfway down the corridor, still lost in thought, she jumped
and squeaked as someone emerged from one of the side doors and touched
her elbow.
	"Sorry," said that person softly.  Utena recognized her
instantly, dropped the defensive posture she'd recoiled into, and
hugged the newcomer firmly.
	"Where did you come from?" Utena asked.
	Skuld smiled.  "The records office girl keeps an aquarium,"
she said.  "I was hoping to catch you before you left."
	"Your timing's perfect, as always," Utena said.  "I was just
on my way out.  Trying to get my head around my new promotion," she
added with a rueful grin.
	"I thought you might accept," Skuld said, nodding.
	"Accept, I practically had to force him to offer," Utena
said.  "He tried to get out of it, said he'd rethought it while I was
on my way up and decided it was too much of an imposition."
	"It is a big job."
	"I know," Utena replied, though she really had no idea how
big; but when had anything like that ever stopped her before?  "But if
I can step in for a few months and help, then I'm going to do it."
	"I figured your answer would be something like that," said
Skuld, her smile widening.  "I've had this feeling since Tau Ceti,
actually."
	"What feeling?"
	"The feeling," Skuld replied, "that the time was almost
here... and now it is."

	Utena returned to the Valiant at 9:15 in the evening, equal
parts disquieted and elated.  The mixture showed plainly on her face
as she entered the captain's stateroom.  Anthy glanced up from the
book she was reading, saw it, and marked her place before commenting,
	"I'm guessing, my love, that you've had a remarkably
interesting evening."
	Utena gave her a slightly wan smile.  "You... could say that,
yes."  She pushed back her right sleeve, examined what she found there
for a moment, and then raised her hand, back toward Anthy, to display
what was clasped to her wrist.  It glowed a soft rose color, the same
hue as the aura of power that surrounded the Rose Knight when she was
at the peak of her strength, and it touched Anthy's consciousness
gently as her gaze fell upon it.
	Anthy smiled.  "Congratulations," she said.
	"That's not the half of it," Utena replied, and sat down to
tell her the rest.

                               11:29 PM
                         1175 COLAN BOULEVARD
                        NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI

        Contrary to popular belief, New Avalon -does- have street
crime.  Not as much of it as in most other cities of its size, thanks
to its efficient police force and generally high standard of living,
but it's there.  Some districts, as in all cities, are worse than
others.  The worst is a neighborhood to the southwest of downtown,
bordering Salutown and Claremont, which has, over the city's
twenty-odd years of history, earned the nickname "Hell's Kitchen" in
reference to the famous neighborhood of Old New York on Earth.
        The Kitchen is as close to an urban purgatory as New Avalon
gets, and at its worst, it's as bad as any other bad neighorhood you
care to name.
        Colan Boulevard is the unofficial border line between the
Kitchen and the districts to its northeast, Claremont and Salutown. At
the top of the tallest building on the avenue, an Art Deco office
tower which held the Avalon County record for fastest descent into
dilapidation, a tall, caped figure stood looking northward into
Claremont, his arms folded.
        A few moments later, another man joined him, this one
appearing from the south.  He swung lightly into position on the
narrow ledge next to the caped man, seeming unconcerned with the
yawning depths awaiting him if he misstepped, and holstered the
baton-like climbing device he'd used to get there.
        Hammer turned to the red-clad, masked figure who had just
arrived and nodded courteously, the gesture of one professional to
another.
        "Hammer," said the man in red, returning the nod.
        "Thanks for coming," Hammer said.  "What's the street buzz
saying?"
        "Not much," the other replied.  "Whoever our new player is,
he's got the scum running scared.  They're coming into the Kitchen
from Claremont and Salutown even though they know I'll be waiting for
them."
        Hammer pulled down his scarf and cracked the faintest hint of
a smile.  "I guess they figure, better the devil they know."
        The man in red chuckled grimly.  "Perhaps.  Anyway, that's all
I know for certain.  I don't think anybody's been killed yet, but..."
He shrugged.  "I hear the newcomer uses a sword.  If that's true, it's
only a matter of time."
        The Hammer stared out into the darkened streets of Claremont
for a few silent seconds, then nodded, sighing faintly.
        "Well," he said in a weary voice, "time to make the donuts.
Thanks for confirming my darkest fears, Double-D."
        "Uh ... anytime, I guess," replied Daredevil.  He turned to
leave.
        "Keep your eyes open," said Hammer; then he winced visibly and
added awkwardly, "So to speak.  Sorry."
        Daredevil chuckled again.  "Don't worry," he said.  "Happens
all the time."  He drew his grapple baton, paused, and said, "Good
hunting, Hammer."
        "Thanks," said Hammer, and with a zip of line paying out,
Daredevil was gone, back into Hell's Kitchen.
        Maybe I should've asked him to come with me, Hammer thought;
then he shook his head and drew his scarf back up.
        No.  This is my business.
        And anyway... I'm not sure he could stop her.

        New Avalon also had a more organized criminal element, and
this week, it was taking some advantage of the fact that the local
police and the IPO had been knocked for a bit of a loop.
        The local station head for the interstellar criminal
organization Big Fire, for instance, was using the opportunity, not to
further her overall agenda of destruction and terror, but to run a
quick and simple little operation to increase her operating budget.
        Tonight, promptly at midnight, a flotilla of vans left an
anonymous warehouse in the Dockyards district and fanned out through
the city.  Each was manned by a crew of four Black Hoods, the rank and
file muscle of Big Fire's criminal army.  Each had a specific order
which wanted filling, passed on via their chain of command from the
contracted customer, in this case the Hutt crime syndicate of the
Outer Rim.
        Van Number 3 cruised into Salutown in a leisurely way.  At
half-past midnight on a Friday night - well, technically Saturday
morning, now - the Salusian district of New Avalon was still hopping
along its main drags, but the secondary streets were quiet and
dark. Everyone was either at home in bed or still in the clubs on
Arconian Square or the Avenue Queen Shiva.
        Elza Kiraly, a student at New Avalon University, was on her
way home from her summer job, bagging groceries at the Big N
supermarket on Aldzinjal Place.  It was past midnight, but Elza's day
was far from over.  She planned to go home to her walk-up on Crown
Street, change into her clubbing clothes, and then head for AQS, where
some friends of hers were saving her a place at a table in the
Magnifica Club.
        At first, she didn't quite know what to make of the dark van
that lunged out of a side street and blocked her path with a squeal of
brakes.  She thought perhaps it was a delivery truck for one of the
newspapers, taking the late edition around - but was unmarked, which
was weird.  Those vans were usually rolling adverts for the papers
they carried.
        Before Elza could consider this further, the back doors of the
van popped open and three men in black jumpsuits jumped out.  They had
pointed hoods covering their faces.  One of them held a nasty-looking
submachine gun, the other two weapons Elza didn't recognize.
        Suddenly, it hit her exactly what was going on, and she
screamed.
        So did the stubby weapon in the hand of the guy on the right,
and Elza went down.
        "Well," observed one of the Black Hoods, "that was easy."  He
slung his SMG on his back and bent to collect his team's stunned prey.

	/*  Danny Elfman  "Roof Fight"  _Batman_ OMP Score  */

        Something flickered in the corner of his vision.  More out of
instinct than conscious knowledge that something was wrong, he
abandoned his planned course in favor of whirling to face the movement
and yanking his weapon from his back - but there was nothing there.
        He heard a scrape, as of a bootsole on pavement, very close
by.  He turned, and something appeared - a grey shape, or rather
shapelessness, flickering toward him like a fog.  Something long and
dark appeared from it, and before the gunman could react, it had
smashed into the side of his head, sending him down in a boneless heap
with his subgun under him.
        The middle Black Hood reacted instantly, whirling and leveling
the bulky rifle-like weapon he held.  He fired, and a weighted net
exploded from its muzzle, spreading out to fill the space above the
fallen Hood's body.
        There was a metallic sound, and the net parted as it flew, its
halves immediately collapsing like a severed parachute and clattering
off into the darkness.
        The shape that had clobbered their teammate resolved itself in
that spot, appearing as though emerging from a dense fog, or possibly
-condensing- from it.  It was humanoid, but more than that they
couldn't really tell, since almost all of it was hidden by a
voluminous, tatter-edged cloak the color of woodsmoke.  Eyes glittered
from inside the peak-browed hood, but the only thing that could really
be made out was the straight and gleaming sword held in the person's
hands.
        The phaserman thumbed his power setting up and fired.  With a
frightening sort of gliding grace, the figure in grey moved to one
side and interposed its blade.  The phaser bolt reflected from the
steel and vaporized the netgun, burning its wielder's hands.  He fell
to his knees, screaming, only to be silenced by a solid sidelong kick
from a black-clad leg that emerged from the cloak as its wearer made
for the one with the phaser.
        By this time, the van's driver had disembarked and was
rounding the back of his vehicle.  He saw the sword-wielding figure
closing on his teammate and did the only thing he could think of,
grabbing a fistful of its grey cloak.  The hood fell back, and the man
with the phaser gasped at what this revealed - a woman's face,
half-masked by a grey scarf pulled up to her nose but with the
angriest, most piercing brown eyes he had ever seen, and a heavy fall
of curly brown hair that flowed freely back once released from the
hood.
        She whirled, driving back an elbow.  The driver ducked,
drawing a combat knife from his belt, and took a hack at her - but she
seemed to disappear again, fading away from the blow, and all that
fell to the street was a slice of her grey cloak about the size of a
handkerchief.
        Elza Kiraly woke - it had been only a light stunning, the
better to avoid injuring her; they had, after all, planned to have her
trussed up in the back of the van by now - and found herself still
where she'd fallen.  She wondered why her assailants hadn't done
anything past stunning her, but only until she raised her head and saw
them all sprawled in the street by the back of their van.
        A brown-haired woman in a grey cloak, her face half masked by
a scarf, stood among them, putting away what looked, for the brief
glimpse Elza got of it, like a sword.
        "Uh... thanks," said the young Salusian uncertainly.
        The figure in grey didn't acknowledge her; she just drew her
hood back up and then, to Elza's amazement, disappeared.
        Elza stood looking at the sprawled thugs for a few seconds -
none of them were dead, although the guy who had shot her didn't look
any too comfortable - and then, after giving one of them a
mean-spirited little kick, ran to the nearest police box.

        Hammer soared across the gap between two rooftops, keeping his
eyes on the street below.  He'd noticed the dark vans moving out
across the city - judging by their movement pattern, he guessed their
point of origin was somewhere in the Dockyards, and he'd already
radioed into police HQ about it.  Their exact purpose was something he
hadn't yet stopped to determine, mostly due to his preoccupation with
tracking down New Avalon's latest midnight vigilante.
        He paused before his next leap as Jim Gordon's voice on the
secure police band crackled in his mind's ear.
        <Hammer, this is Gordon, do you read?  Over.>
        <I hear you, Jim.  Go ahead.>
        <We're getting reports on that fleet of vans you spotted a few
minutes ago.  Looks like they're abducting women from all across the
city.>
        <I see.  Slavers?>
        <More like collection agents.  One would-be victim reported
men in black hoods.>
        Hammer's eyes narrowed.  <Big Fire.>
        <That's our take on it.  But the interesting thing is how the
victim escaped - she says the group attempting her capture was taken
down by a brown-haired woman in a hooded gray cloak with a sword, who
just disappeared when she was done.>
        That, in turn, widened Hammer's eyes again.  He looked back
down toward the street; one of the vans turned left onto it, headed in
a direction that would take it back toward the Dockyards.
        <Then I've got my lead.  Thanks, Jim.  I'll be in touch.>
        <Roger that, Hammer.  Try to leave a few for us this time.>
        <I may have little choice in the matter.  Right now, I've got
some girls to rescue...>
        He paused as another van turned onto the street below.  This
one, along with its cargo and crew, had one additional payload - a
tattered grey figure clinging low on its roof.
        <... and a promise to keep.  Hammer out.>

        Precisely on schedule, the dark-colored vans emerged from a
secluded alley that had allowed them to return unhindered by the
police patrols, turned the corner at the waterfront, coasted past
three warehouses, and pulled smoothly into the fourth.
        The operation's Q-Boss, distinguished from the rank-and-file
as usual by his red hood, sat just inside the garage, marking off each
vehicle's number on his checklist as it drove past, hooked sharply
right and circled around to line up facing his side of the building.
The numbers were stenciled low, on the inside of the left rear wheel
well where they wouldn't be noticed by passers-by, so Q-Boss's vantage
point for the mass arrival was a folding chair in a recessed vehicle
service bay near the entrance.  The remainder of the site's staff was
busily preparing the transit materials for their cargo's shipment to
Hutt space, with one or two men directing the vans to their parking
spaces and another two busy working a small communications depot.
        "Thirteen... Five... Nine... Eighteen... and one running late.
May's well call Agent A now 'n let 'er know it's good as money in the
bank."
        "Sir!"  A Black Hood still wearing a comm headset stopped at
the edge of the service pit and saluted the Q-Boss at rigid attention.
        "You'd better be here to tell me the problem with Van Three,"
Q-Boss grated.
        "Police-band surveillance confirms, sir," the Black Hood
declared, then paused as the garage door rattled and slammed noisily
shut and the last of the nineteen vans shut off its engine.  "They're
now in NAPD custody."
        Q-Boss made an annoyed sound.  "Retards," he snarled.  "Why do
we bother -arming- these asswipes if they're just gonna get caught by
street cops?"
        "The cops only did cleanup, sir," the Black Hood replied.
"They didn't incapacitate the van's team."
        Q-Boss glared up at his subordinate.  "Well, if they -didn't-,
then who -did-?!"
        His demand was answered, not by the Hood standing before him,
but by demonstration.  A sudden, brief cry of pain burst from
somewhere behind the line of parked vans.  It was followed in short
order by the chatter of a standard-issue submachine gun, which ended
with a loud crunch as Van Twelve jolted, momentarily disrupting the
perfect line of grilles and headlights.  Then came several more
shouts, more SMG and phaser bursts, all against a series of shrieks
and meaty cracks.
        "WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON OVER THERE?!" Q-Boss bellowed in an
effort to be heard over the din, hurrying up the steep staircase out
of the maintenance well and drawing his blaster.  "SOMEBODY BETTER
ANSWER RIGHT NOW!"
        The remaining Hoods had, by this time, stopped whatever they
were doing and were still gathering loosely around the Q-Boss.  Some
had their weapons drawn and ready, others were just holding theirs,
unsure of where to point them; all were looking either baffled or
alarmed.  Q-Boss looked around at his troops; determining quickly that
they were likely to stampede him in a panic if left to their own
devices, he instead gave them some direction.
        "All right, Black Hoods, FORM UP!  Three squads, one here, one
there, one over there!  Each squad form two firing lines, front men
kneeling!  Guns on full auto, phasers at max!  Whatever the hell comes
out from behind those vans, when I give the word every one of you give
it a Big Fire welcome!  TOGETHER - ALLEGIANCE OR DEATH!"
        "BIG FIRE!" they chorused, saluting, and immediately rushed to
comply.  Within moments the Q-Boss had his defensive lines in classic
formation, over ninety men in all, ready to reduce the other side of
the warehouse to fragmented slag if need be.  They might lose the
captives, still trussed up in the backs of the vans, but those could
be replaced easily enough.  It'd actually be more of a hassle to
replace the -vans-.
        The Black Hood formations finished setting up just in time to
get a good earful of the final throes of the clamor from beyond the
row of parked vans, which ended with one final, jarring SMACK and a
groan of agony.  Q-Boss could feel the sweat beading underneath his
scarlet hood in the long, tense silence that followed.
        "All right!" he yelled, unable to stand another moment of the
eerie quiet.  "Whoever the hell you are back there, come out where I
can see you!"
        There was no response.
        "Not coming out, eh?  Some great hero you are, pal!  Hiding
behind your precious cover of helpless girls laying practically out in
the open!"
        The silence continued, but Q-Boss didn't need a reply to know
what to do next.
        "That's right, helpless.  And they'll die right where they are
unless you show yourself!  Men, aim for the vans!"
        The stillness of the warehouse was shattered by a sudden
cacophony of clacking, ratcheting and humming as every firearm in
attendance was primed and prepared.  Then, all was quiet again, save
for the almost tangible hum of ready-to-fire weaponry.
        "So what's it gonna be, hero?  The girls... or you?"
        With his piece said, Q-Boss raised his arm, and the Hoods
raised their guns in response.  A tense, eternal moment passed, and
then another...

      /*  Information Society  "SEEK300"  _Don't Be Afraid_  */

        ... and then, as if condensing from a mist that wasn't even
there a moment before, the interloper appeared atop Van Ten, face and
form hidden by a loose, tattered hooded cloak as colorless and dingy
as the warehouse itself.  One edge of the cloak raised enough to show
an arm clad in midnight black, with a bare, fair-skinned hand at the
end gripping a gleaming steel sword.  Q-Boss found himself unable to
move or speak as eyes he couldn't even see bored into his soul, and
the sword swung around to point directly at him.
        The walls of the warehouse resonated with a hollow, darkly
feminine voice that declared:
        "Q-BOSS.  YOUR ANGEL OF DEATH AWAITS."
        As inexplicably as the human phantasm had appeared, she
vanished again, but this time not in silence - the entire building
sang with an eerie, mocking laughter that filled the Q-Boss with a
terror he couldn't even begin to grasp, let alone describe.
        Then the lights went out completely, plunging the warehouse
into darkness, and he simply screamed - but even that couldn't drown
it out.

	Unhindered by the near-complete blackout that drowned the
room, the grey-cloaked avenger glided gracefully through the assembled
Big Fire troops, leaping, dodging, striking when she could, melting
into and out of what little sight her enemies could muster.  Close-in,
there was nothing the Black Hoods could do to stop her, but every so
often the gunfire got lucky.  Her already tattered-looking cloak would
be visibly worse for wear once the lights came back on, her right leg
had been grazed twice, and when this was all over, she'd need some
quality time alone with her bruises.
	This, decided Kaitlyn Hutchins somewhere underneath it all,
isn't working out quite as well as I'd hoped... but it's too late to
quit now.
	Her mind connected for the first time, somewhat idly as she
threw herself out of the path of another stream of bullets, with the
fact that she'd just set herself completely alone against over a
hundred guys, counting the ones she'd taken out behind the vans.  She
didn't entertain the possibility of failure - she couldn't allow that
to even approach her consciousness - but did wonder why, despite what
had happened so far, it seemed less engaging than it should be.
Almost as if her opponents had their attentions divided...
	Another shape emerged from the darkness.  All Kate's inner
senses commanded her not to attack it, and soon the rest of them
confirmed that choice.
	His lightsaber humming and flashing like a beacon in the dark,
Kyouichi Saionji stopped just short of her position.  He hopped and
spun, his glowing blade producing a satisfying "zark!" sound as it cut
one Hood's SMG in two, and then set his foot viciously to the man's
midsection.  With that done, he slipped past her, seemingly not
reacting to her presence even though she -knew- he could hear the
strikes of her steel blade.
	Well, Kate noted, that explains where all my attention's been
going.  But I still get the feeling I've overlooked something
important.

	The Hammer arrived on the roof just in time to hear the
attacker's declaration and see, through the skylight he'd alighted
next to, the warehouse lights go out.  The hollow voice and the dark,
cold laughter chilled his blood too, but not for the same reasons.
	Oh, Kait, he thought.  What are you doing to yourself?
	His eyes narrowed as he looked through the roof and the
darkness beyond it (Decepticon assassination attempt, give me SIGHT
BEYOND SIGHT!), his bionicized eyes seeing corners of the spectrum
completely alien to most humanoid life forms, and saw that, though he
might not know the answer to his own rhetorical question, there was
someone down there preparing to do something else to its subject.
	Without bothering to do anything more stylish, he threw
himself through the skylight.

	Unnoticed by any of the interlopers, Q-Boss edged away from
the sounds of the battle - his men's cries of consternation, fear, and
pain; the growl and hum of the lightsaber he could see flashing in the
melee - and cursed.  What the hell was going on here?  The freak in
the grey cloak was one thing, but what the hell was a Jedi Knight
doing here?  There weren't any living in New Avalon, as far as Site
Intel knew, and surely he'd have been warned if any of the ones on the
Big Fire watch list had come to town.
	-If- anyone spotted them coming, anyway.
	He bumped into his chair, nearly fell over it, cursed again,
and then scrabbled for the equipment pouch hung over the back of it.
Oh yes, oh yes - this would help, this was just what he needed.
	He dug through the pouch, found the item he was looking for,
and slipped it over his head.
	Instantly the battle in the warehouse resolved itself into
sharp definition.  It was in black and white, but aside from that the
image was perfect, as clear as day.  Hail the Magnificent Ten, thought
Q-Boss, for they always spring for the best gear.
	He scanned the seething mass of his men - which appeared to be
thinning at an alarming rate - and found what he was looking for.
With the lights out, the chick in the grey cloak wasn't using the
trick that made her invisible.  Maybe it took effort or used up
batteries or something - anyway, she wasn't bothering with it now,
secure in the knowledge that nobody could see her, and Q-Boss was
about to make her pay for it.
	He drew his sidearm, leveled it, tracked her through the
melee.  When she paused, having just cut down another of his men, he
fired.
	Faster than Q-Boss's eyes could follow, another cloaked shape
came crashing through the warehouse roof above him, dropped into the
space between him and his target, and brought an arm around in a
glinting arc with a metallic scraping noise.  There was a sharp SPANG
and a bright spark, and the deflected bullet whined off into the back
of beyond someplace.
	The deflection was done before the man's cloak had finished
falling around him, and now he rose to his full, towering height.
That height, the burning white eyes visible beneath the brim of the
broad slouch hat, and the wicked blade protruding from the cuff of his
coat all identified him instantly.  Q-Boss felt the blood draining
from his face as the apparition finished straightening and took a
single step toward him.
	"I am the Terror that Flaps in the Night," he intoned, sending
a repeat of the previous chill racing up Q-Boss's spine.  "I am the
beacon that reveals you wherever you hide."  He leveled the sword
jutting from his sleeve at Q-Boss's head, drew himself up even more
impressively, and said, "I am the Hammer."
	Q-Boss made a sound rather embarrassingly like a squeak and
raised his pistol, but that was as far as he got before a cable shot
across the space between him and the Hammer and wrapped around his
neck, then yanked him forward.  Before he really knew what was
happening, Hammer had him by the throat and was glaring at him with
those frightful glowing eyes of his.
	"And, ironically," Hammer observed in a slightly more
conversational but still quite sinister voice, "I am your best chance
of getting out of this alive."
	To his credit, Q-Boss was not your run-of-the-mill thug.
Indeed, as a man chosen to wear the red hood and lead a division of
Big Fire's men, Q-Boss held himself to be considerably more.  Big Fire
operatives were a cut above ordinary criminals in every way -anyway-,
and the Red Hoods were the elite of Big Fire's masked ranks.  They
were hand-picked, rigorously tested, and extensively trained before
they donned their scarlet masks and went into the field.
	As such, though he had been startled by the Hammer's sudden
appearance and intimidated by the man's incredible presence, he
recovered much more quickly than Hammer was expecting.  The cloaked
hero had gotten accustomed to the effect he had on bad guys, and he
was distracted by his worry for Kate, so he got a bit complacent - and
a moment later, he paid for it.
	Q-Boss still had his gun, and at this range, when he used it,
he couldn't possibly miss.
	Hammer recoiled with a sound partway between a surprised snarl
and an agonized yowl, releasing the red-hooded crook, as Q-Boss pumped
three rounds square into his midsection.  The purple-cloaked figure
sprawled on his back, his face screwed up in pain.
	Crap-for-crap on a crappity crap cracker, thought Hammer as he
struggled to muster enough consciousness to transform.  You'd think a
hundred years of playing this game would learn me better, but
nooooo...
	Q-Boss felt at his throat with his free hand, coughed, shook
his head, and then grinned darkly beneath his hood and leveled his
pistol at the fallen crimefighter.
	"So long, hero," he said, and squeezed the trigger.
	Just before the mechanism reached its breaking point,
something flickered out of the shadows and smacked into the back of
Q-Boss's hand.  There was a nasty crackle of breaking bones, and the
red-hooded criminal reeled, yelling, as his weapon dropped to the
floor.
	The object which had hit his hand, a short baton of some sort,
bounced off at an angle, caromed off a crate, clanged off one of the
uprights holding up the roof, and spun into the waiting hand of its
owner, who holstered it at his hip with a grim smile.
	"End of the line, Q-Boss," said Daredevil.
	Q-Boss snarled with rage and frustration.  What the hell, was
it Old Home Day for all the costumed freaks in New Avalon tonight?  He
knew of Daredevil, of course, from his pre-assignment orientation.
The guy was a terror on his home turf, but he tended to stick to
street criminals, of which that turf had something of a surplus.  On
the street, they called him 'The Man Without Fear', mainly because he
didn't seem to have any particular superpowers and he still put on the
suit and prowled the rooftops above the city's meanest streets at
night, engaging in some arrestingly bold acrobatics along the way.
	Still, he was mostly a threat to ordinary shlubs, and Q-Boss
was not prepared to accept the fate of an ordinary shlub.  His men had
been just about wiped out by the cloaked woman, whoever the hell SHE
was, and the Jedi Knight who shouldn't have been there, and now he had
a busted hand and was being stared down by Daredevil.  It was time to
cut his losses and get the hell out of here.
	He didn't go for the gun; he knew Daredevil was waiting for
him to do that.  Instead he whipped off his red jacket and yanked the
ring on his Emergency Battle Harness - the latest innovation from Big
Fire R&D, just released for field testing to special elite units.
	The concept for the EBH came from a piece of forgotten
Salusian military hardware from the 21st century.  The ExoSalusia
Personal Arms Division MP-1414zA "Shadow Warrior" Compact Personal
Powersuit System had been a technological failure when it was
introduced in 2015.  Although the concept was a sound one, the
technology hadn't quite been there yet.  The resulting device, though
easy to carry, quick and safe to deploy, and powerful in action, had
several insurmountable flaws, the worst of which was the duration of
the power source - about four minutes.
	The Shadow Warrior, or "Can o' Whoop-Ass" as it had been known
within ExoSal-PAD, had vanished quietly into the mammoth company's
history within a year of its introduction, and, unfortunately, it had
taken the concept with it.  One of Big Fire's corporate espionage
specialists had found its specs and designs by accident while looking
for something else, seen the potential in the idea, and passed it on
to R&D.
	The result was the EBH, a flat module about the size of a
man's hand worn on the back which, when activated, sheathed the wearer
in light power armor.  The power source still wouldn't win any awards
for its duration - only about an hour - and the suit used exotic,
expensive materials in such quantities that it wasn't cost-effective
for even Big Fire to issue them as standard combat gear, especially
since they still could be used only once.
	They made dandy escape gear for pilots, though, and a ground
combat version had just been introduced as test equipment for selected
Q-Bosses.  Big Fire was losing Q-Bosses in the field too fast for the
Magnificent Ten's comfort, and it was hoped that the EBH would put a
stop to that by giving the red-hooded leaders an edge in escape
situations.
	Just like this one.
	Q-Boss fired his EBH's back-mounted flight thrusters and took
to the air, headed toward the warehouse's riverfront side and
gathering speed.  Daredevil popped open the grappling vanes on his
billy club, preparing to hook the fleeing criminal's leg and go along
for the ride, but a quiet, rather gurgly groan suddenly reached his
super-sensitive ears.  He turned and sensed Hammer's long, lanky form
still sprawled on the floor, and then his nose caught the smell of
blood nearby, too near to belong to the big melee some distance away.
	With a cold shock, the blind hero realized that Hammer had
been wounded.  He'd assumed that the man's coat was bulletproof, and
that Q-Boss's point-blank volley had only knocked him down and stunned
him, but no.
	Abandoning any thought of chasing after Q-Boss, Daredevil
retracted his club's grapple arms and thrust the weapon back into its
holster as he turned to kneel by Hammer.

	Kaitlyn had heard the shots, of course, but they had blended
into the background - there was a lot of shooting going on at that
stage of the battle.  With Saionji's help, though, that phase was
widing down quickly.  Some part of her mind which had remained
observant and rational throughout this whole experience, felt great
satisfaction at Saionji's performance tonight.
	He'd blended his attacks with hers perfectly, as if they'd
rehearsed it beforehand (which, in a way, they had, given all the
cooperative kata and freestyle sparring they'd done); no communication
had been necessary, and before Kate knew it, they were back to back in
the middle of a circle of sprawled, unconscious bad guys, weapons at
the ready to meet new threats that weren't going to come.
	She felt the haze of the wrathful fugue-like state ebbing as
her breathing returned to something like normal.  Right on time, the
lights came back on.  Saionji extinguished his lightsaber and turned a
rather dry smile to his sensei; she paid him little attention, and
instead looked around as if seeing the warehouse for the first time.
	Q-Boss, clad in a weird-looking, banded suit of power armor,
was speeding toward the warehouse's waterfront end by way of a set of
jet thrusters built into his backplate.  A man in a red costume -
Daredevil!  Kate had heard of him but never seen him before - was a
few dozen yards away, near the warehouse office, kneeling next to the
sprawled and bloody form of -
	- MARTY -
	Kate's mind went all but blank again (and so, to Saionji's
cold alarm, did her eyes).  She didn't think, just reacted, breaking
into a sprint after the fleeing villain.  Her course took her up onto
a great stack of crates; she leaped up them like giant stairs (had
Hammer been fully conscious and seen her do it, he would naturally
have thought of the old game Q*Bert) and then bounded from crate to
crate along the top of the uneven jumble.
	Q-Boss, unaware that he was being pursued, crossed his arms in
front of his face and crashed through the window, pouring on the
speed, heading for the lake.  He could disappear out over the dark
water, then turn once he was sure he'd lost all pursuit and head for
one of the safe pickup locations.  Live to fight another day - the
imperative had been drilled into all Q-Bosses after the last holder of
that office in New Avalon had gotten perished in Operation Hardshell.
	Kaitlyn's cloaked form passed through the window right behind
him, hurled through the jagged hole in the glass without a second
thought, and she landed on the flat top of the streetlamp jutting out
above the warehouse's main door, suddenly and uncomfortably aware that
she had about run out of ground.
	Automatically, she drew back her arm and hurled her sword as
hard as she could.  It arched through the night like an arrow, its
blade glittering in the lights of the Dockyards -
	- and plunged into Q-Boss's thruster array.
	There was an incandescent flash and a deep, resounding BANG as
the jet thrusters went up, converting the speeding criminal from a man
in a powered suit to a flying ball of fire.  Debris flew in all
directions, and the main piece, that which a moment before had been a
man on the verge of escape, described a brilliant orange-yellow arc
out over Lake Daniels and splashed resoundingly down a hundred yards
beyond the water's edge.
	For a moment, all was silent.
	Then Kaitlyn's zatoichi fell from the sky and lodged,
point-down, in the top of the light fixture just in front of her.
With a soft "fzzt," the light flickered and went out.
	Kate stood for a moment looking out at the black surface of
the lake.  Then she pulled her scarf down below her chin, drew her
blade out of the lamp, turned, and jumped back into the warehouse.
Her heart, already heavy, was now solid and cold with dread at the
thought of what she might find when she got to the other side of the
sprawling mass of crates.
	What she found was Saionji and Daredevil, both looking
mightily impressed, and Hammer, apparently undamaged, his coat whole
and unbloodied, dusting theatrically at his sleeves.  She wondered if
it had been some sort of trick of her imagination, until she saw the
deep scarlet stain still on the floor.
	"Well," he grumbled as Kate jumped down from the last of the
crates and stood gazing at him in wonder.  "-That- was embarrassing."
	Then he spotted Kaitlyn, regarded her in silence for a long
moment, and sighed, turning his attention back to the only other
conscious men in the building.
	"Mr. Saionji, Daredevil... thanks for your help, both of you.
Particularly you, Double-D, for keeping the Q-Boss from blowing my
damn fool head off.  This puts me in a bad bargaining position, but
right now, I need to ask for another favor."
	"Name it," Daredevil replied with a small, indulgent smile.
"I'll see what I can do."

	From his vantage point on the warehouse roof, Hammer looked
down at the new flotilla of vehicles that had arrived - this time, a
fleet of NAPD vans and cruisers, filling the night with flashes of red
and blue, come to clean up the remainders of the foiled Big Fire
operation.  To one side, the released women were describing their
travails to uniformed cops with notepads.  To the other, Commissioner
Gordon conferred with Daredevil and Kyouichi Saionji, listening to
their take on the caper.  And down the center, the Black Hoods, cuffed
and humbled, were being marched into the backs of the vans for their
trip to the pokey.  Remarkably, it looked like they would be able to
get them all in one trip, except for the surprisingly small number who
needed hospitalization.
	Turning, he caught the eye of the person standing beside him.
Kaitlyn was still wearing the cloak, now so tattered that he could see
fairly easily which parts of it contained her and which were just
deceptive empty space.  The hood was down, though, letting her brown
hair flow free, as was the scarf, revealing a dark scuff on her cheek.
Her clear eyes gazed up at him while her lips moved haltingly, unsure
of where to even begin.
	"Kait - " he began, pulling down his own scarf while raising
an arm to reach toward her, but at that instant she clapped herself to
him, wrapping her arms tight around his waist and pushing her cheek
against his coat.
	"ohgodmartyiwassoscared," she managed to utter.
	Caught off-guard for a moment, Martin smiled and settled his
arms around her, stroking her hair with one hand.  "It's OK, honey.
You did good."
	She shook her head against him.  "no, no, not good.
goddammit!  i almost got you killed."
	"Hey, no," he retorted sternly, holding her tighter.  "No.
You do -not- blame yourself for that.  I walked up to a heat-packing
Red Hood all on my own.  I let myself go in distracted, I was counting
on him to blink first and he didn't.  That was very stupid of me.
-Me-.  Not you."
	With that said, he loosened his embrace again, but she still
clung tight.
	"And besides," he continued, "I'm the one who should
apologize.  My Act of Stupid scared you half out of your wits and made
you feel all guilty.  If I was paying attention we'd be loading a
Q-Boss into the paddy wagon right now instead of watching a smoldering
spot out on Lake Daniels."
	"don't care," Kate murmured into his jacket.  "already lost
mom.  won't lose you too."
	"You're right - you won't.  Long as I'm still around, you'll
never get me out of your hair."  He smiled, lightly ruffling her hair.
"At least not until you can train your girlfriend to give me a hug
without having you sneak up and push her onto me."
	That, finally, brought a small laugh from Kaitlyn's throat, as
she remembered the times the Roses visited the Tomodachi house and
she'd done precisely that.
	"They're all worried sick about you, you know," he went on
quietly.  "Utena, Anthy, Juri, Miki, even little Anne.  I had a
suspicion about the reports of the new vigilante roaming Salutown and
Claremont since Wednesday night.  Then your friends called me over to
Chet's tonight and told me you were disappearing at night, and that
pretty much clinched it."
	Kate looked up at him.  "... But how would they... Why would
they even look?"
	"Because you were worrying them -anyway-."  Their embrace
loosened, with Hammer's hands on Kaitlyn's shoulders as he looked
directly into her eyes.  "You can't partition your life off into
pieces, Kait.  Everything you do affects everything -else- you do.
Trying to force a separation makes the effect even greater.  Everyone
could see how tense, how INtense, you were becoming.  Anne said it was
like you were running a training session all day long."
	Kaitlyn's eyes fell away.  "I didn't want them to worry."
	"And in doing that, you worried them all the more.  They know
you, they know how you are, -who- you are... and this attempt to make
yourself into something you're not scared them.  Hell, you scared -me-
in there, with that laugh I haven't heard since your Dad got the
Shadow warded out of him."
	She looked up at him again, wide-eyed but silent.  But she
wasn't looking up for long, because he went down on one knee, and
regarded her with pleading eyes.
	"Kaitlyn... as a guy whose -job- is to run around with the
funny-tights set, I'm telling you - this is -not- -you-.  You can
handle trouble if it comes your way, you're your father's daughter,
but you don't go looking for it.  You're not an enforcer, you're a
musician.  You don't fight crime, you write songs."  He gripped her
shoulders for emphasis.
	"You don't bring fear... you bring -joy-."
	Kate bit her lip and wiped at the corner of her left eye.
	"God, Marty," she sniffled with a tiny smile.  "That was the
corniest speech -ever-."
	"Yeah, but it worked, didn't it?"
	To that, Kate nodded, her smile growing, and grabbed him into
another long hug.
	"Hey," he opened when they finally parted.
	"Hm, what?"
	"Let's get you home and get those cuts on your leg patched up.
We'll both get a good night's... day's... sleep for once, and then
tomorrow night we can catch some tuneage.  Frost said some band's
playing at the Hellfire, I forget the name already, but they'd have to
be good or you know she wouldn't let 'em in the door."
	"Heh.  Yeah.  Okay, it's a date then.  Should I bring anyone?"
	He smiled, rising to his feet as he scooped Kaitlyn up into
his arms.  "Aww, don't you trust me?  I'm both your date -and- your
chaperone.  Now, ready to ride in style?"
	As she nodded to him, her smile positively beaming - she
hadn't ridden inside his vehicle form since she was little - he nodded
to himself.  All the pieces were finally in place.
	Mission accomplished.  It was all up to her now.
	But first, we take the scenic route home.

		       SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2409
			       9:35 AM

	IN WAKE OF TRAGEDY, IPO CHIEF TAKES BEREAVEMENT LEAVE
		     NAMES TEMPORARY REPLACEMENTS

		 by Janosia Makaalis, Federated Press

NEW AVALON (FP) - Benjamin "Gryphon" Hutchins, the former Wedge
Defender and founder of the International Police Organization,
announced today that, in the wake of the death of his wife, Expert of
Justice Kei Morgan, he would be taking an indefinite leave of absence
from his posts as Chief of International Police Operations and
Commander-in-Chief of the International Police Space Force.

Steve Rogers, Deputy Chief for Criminal Investigation Operations, has
been named interim Chief of IP Operations.  Captain Utena Tenjou of
the IPS Valiant has been named interim C-in-C of the IPSF and will
hold the temporary rank of commodore during her tenure in the post.

(for a review of the careers of both Captain Rogers and Commodore
Tenjou, please see page A-16.)

Mixed feelings followed the announcement.  Gen. Alvin Parker of
Earthforce stated in an interview, "I am disgusted that the
International Police Organization felt willing to put a girl with the
kind of record SHE has in charge of their spaceships.  Next thing you
know, that fleet will be the same kind of pirates as the damned
Freespacers!"

The Babylon Foundation Council of Delegates at Babylon 6, however,
gave a nearly-unanimous show of support for the temporary commanders
of the IPO, marred only by the abstention of the Federation delegate,
former Federation Senator Robert Kelly of Earth.

Centauri Ambassador Londo Mollari said after the vote, "This only
proves that Gryphon is a more brilliant man than anyone thought!"

The Klingon Government released an announcement stating simply that
Commodore Tenjou is entitled under Klingon law to wear the Targ's Claw
with Blood Crescent for Valor and the warrior's garb of a revered
noble house.  "These," says the tersely-worded release, "are all the
qualifications a commander can ever need."

Earth Alliance President Neville Greeley's office released a statement
repeating that Tenjou and her flagship, IPS Valiant, are not welcome
in Earth Alliance space in the wake of the Titan and Tau Ceti
incidents, and Federation Senator William Clark of the Earth Alliance
stated that he would introduce a measure to the Senate censuring the
IPO for "their flouting of all rational thought."  He also stated he
would pressure the Senate to overturn the International Police
Accords.

In a statement before the Senate, Clark said the following: "Hutchins
has proven himself mentally unstable by, in this time of unrest,
stepping down and putting a juvenile she-pirate and a fossilized relic
of the pre-Contact era in his place.  This action casts a pall over
the entire International Police Organization and will, I am certain,
prove that the galaxy does not need that force to protect it when
Starfleet and the Federation Bureau of Investigation can do the same
job sanely and efficiently."

Speaking in rebuttal to Senator Clark's words, the Senator from
Salusia, Lord Hayward D'hiin, said, "The day that the people of Salusia
listen to a racist ass like William Clark - a man who requires printed
instructions to put on his pants in the morning! - will be the day our
revered Queen Shiva rises from her crypt and starts handing out Church
of Man tracts on the streets of Saenar."

In the uproar that followed, during which some delegates seemed close
to blows, Outer Rim Senator Eidun Palpatine called for both sides to
stand down and "show respect to Chief Hutchins and his family, who
have suffered a terrible loss and who may not be seeing as clearly as
they might."

Palpatine further reminded the Senate, "We also should remember that
it is the International Police ORGANIZATION, and both interim
commanders will have considerable support from the previous chain of
command to assist them."
 
An Associated Press poll of the Inner Sectors shows 55% of the
sentient population supporting the new IPO command staff as "a good
idea", and 45% not supporting, with a margin of error of +/- 3% .

			       11:45 AM
			      CHIK-FIL-A
			AVALON CENTRE GALLERIA

	"HA!" said Janice Barlow delightedly.
	Neal Krummell raised an eyebrow at her from across the table,
but said nothing, knowing she would elaborate on her own.
	"That fat slug Bill Clark called Utena a 'juvenile
she-pirate'!" Janice crowed.  "By association, that means we're
pirates too!"  She closed her bionic eye and squinted at him with her
natural one.  "Arrrrr, matey."
	Krummell blinked slowly at her, his eyebrow still raised.
Mitra, Janice's Mag combat remote, tried to get into the spirit of
things by perching on her shoulder, but as it had roughly the
configuration of a football, that didn't work out so well.
	"Dear," Neal explained patiently, "you already were a pirate
before you ever shipped out with the Valiant.  You jacked a Psi Cop's
runabout."
	"That was Ed's idea," Janice protested.
	"So?" Neal replied.
	"OK, OK," said Janice, waving a hand dismissively.  "C'mon,
eat up.  I wanna go down to Boots and get a new eyepatch.  Arrrr."
	Neal slowly turned his head to look at John Hyatt, who sat in
mystified silence on her side of the table.  Hyatt blinked at him and
shook her head slightly, wide-eyed, as if to say, "Don't look at -me-."
	"There will be no living with you on some days, if I ever live
with you on a permanent basis, will there?" Krummell asked
good-naturedly as he got up from his seat.
	"Probably not," Janice replied cheerfully.  "'Juvenile
she-pirate', that cracks me up.  Arrrr!"

			       8:30 PM
			    HELLFIRE CLUB

	When the lights came up, Kate stifled a sound of shock at the
sight of the band.  It was a band with which Kate was familiar -
intimately familiar - but she had never really seen it from this
perspective before, and the experience was so novel that the surprise
washed away any other emotion she might have felt about it.
	Azalynn stepped to the freestanding, old-fashioned microphone
they always set up in front - the one Kate herself used when she
wasn't behind her keyboards - and spoke into the sudden hush that
settled over the room.
	"Hi," she said.  "I'm Azalynn, and... we're most of the Art of
Noise.  For obvious reasons, our leader doesn't feel much like
standing in the spotlight right now... but the rest of us... well, we
thought maybe we'd play for her tonight."
	She looked out at the room, filled with friends of hers, of
Kate's or her parents'; nobody in the club was more than two degrees
of separation away.  Kate hadn't noticed that before, but she realized
it with a shock as Azalynn's eyes swept the room.
	"Would anyone like to come up here and help us do that?" she
asked with a little smile, her golden eyes glinting in the stage
lights.
	For a moment, nobody moved; then a figure toward the front got
up from his table and said in a gruff voice, "Yeah, I'll take that
action."
	Kaitlyn blinked, her surprise persisting but now carried off
in a different direction.  The man climbing up onto the stage was a
familiar figure to her, as to all the Tomodachi Duelists - it was
Logan, the coach of the kendo team at Nekomi Tech and one of the
Duelists' Federation's strongest supporters at that school.  He was
such a supporter of the IDF, in fact, that he'd joined it himself, and
the Rose Seal on his hand twinkled as he stepped into the light next
to Azalynn and unslung a guitar from his back.
	Kate had known Logan for years and had never been aware that
he -had- a guitar, never known he had any particular interest in
music.  He was a rather dour fellow most of the time, and Kate had a
hard time picturing him on a stage with a musical instrument... but
here he was, short, stocky, hairy and unkempt in his usual scruffy
leather motorcycling jacket and jeans, adjusting the strap of his
guitar.
	The guitar suited him, too - it was an old Gibson Firebird,
angular and flat, and it was as disreputable-looking as its owner, its
sunburst finish dull and the edges of its body nicked and scarred from
decades, maybe centuries, of hard use.
	Kate liked it instantly.  It was the kind of axe you'd find
tucked away in the corner of a pawn shop or hanging forlornly in the
back of Guitar Center, almost hidden by the gleaming new instruments
holding pride of place up front.  If you asked to see it, you ran the
risk of embarrassing the teenage roqboi salesman to the point of
physical pain as he took it down and offered it apologetically... and
then you'd plug it into an amp and, if its old spirit agreed with
yours, you'd blow the windows out of the shop.
	Yes, indeed, Kate knew the type.  She still used her
immaculate black Stratocaster for almost all her guitar songs on
stage, but she'd been getting more and more into playing the guitar
over the last couple of years, and she owned several of the
instruments now.  One of them was a seriously dubious-looking old
Telecaster that had a tone so sharp she could almost cut glass with
it.  Kate felt the corner of her mouth twitching into the first trace
of a smile she'd worn in days at the thought.
	Logan plugged in, fished a pick out of his pocket, conferred
briefly with the rest of the band, then turned around and stood
looking at the packed club for a second with a gruff expression.
	Then he cracked a small, wry grin and muttered, just loud
enough for the mic to pick him up, "Pryde's never gonna let me hear
the end'a this."
	Then, before anyone could do more than giggle a bit, he wound
up and, without any preliminaries, opened fire.

   /*  Dire Straits  "Money for Nothing" (live)  _On the Night_  */

	Kate leaned back in her seat, closed her eyes, and felt the
chill flow through her.  She preferred to do this song with the long
lead-in, like it was done in the original studio version - it gave
Dorothy a chance to shine - but with or without the intro, the opening
hook to "Money for Nothing" still had the power to raise goosebumps on
her arms.
	Logan played it once through all alone, attacking each note
with a kind of savage intensity and a delicious lack of precision,
searing it into the air like a challenge.  Then Dorothy kicked the
rest of the band in behind him and the song really got going.
	It surprised Kate still again when Logan did the singing.  His
voice was gruff, unpolished, like the rest of him, often seeming more
suited to snarling imprecations at opponents in a fight than to any
gentler pursuit, like singing.  Still, "Money for Nothing" wasn't
exactly opera, and his rough voice and blunt delivery gave a certain
authenticity to the old familiar lyrics.
	As the song played, Kate started to notice other people around
the fringes of the stage - shadowy figures hanging around in the wings
or down at the edge of the apron, a guy under the Exit sign off to the
left.  She couldn't tell who any of them were, but something about
their bearing as "Money for Nothing" rolled on raised a whispering
sensation in the back of Kate's mind.
	It didn't connect up entirely, though, until Logan finished
the last verse, bent the solo hook around on itself, and pinned the
end of the song to it (everybody ended "Money for Nothing" a little
differently live, since the studio version just faded away).  When
that happened, the guy by the Exit sign suddenly surged into motion,
leaping up the short flight of steps to the stage and entering into
brief but animated negotiations with Miki before plugging his axe into
the rhythm amp.
	As he did so, then turned, the stage lights caught a glitter
of silver from the guitar and from his face, and Kate's breath caught
momentarily in her throat as he came out into the light and she
recognized him.
	His height and build were unremarkable; he was dressed mostly
in black leather, and as bald as a honeydew melon, with a gleaming
silver slash of shades where his eyes belonged and glinting neural
interface sockets above his ears.  His guitar body gleamed in chrome,
matching the sockets, the shades, and the buckles on his boots.
Despite the wardrobe and the shades, he wasn't at all intimidating; he
gave the crowd a warm smile and, without saying a word, hopscotched
onto the fading beat of "Money for Nothing" with the intro to a new
tune.
	The band followed him without missing more than one beat, with
Logan slipping into the rhythm role and Miki standing off to the side
and grinning.
	Kaitlyn was dumbfounded.  She hadn't seen Joe Graf, the lead
guitarist of an instrumental group called The Crush of Love, for
-years-.  The last time she saw Joe was the last time she was on
Earth, the disastrous last show in Toronto.  Keeping in touch with
regular people on Earth had become difficult for someone like Kaitlyn
after that; she'd heard news of him a few times through the musical
grapevine, but they'd had almost no direct contact.  An email here and
there, the occasional crossing of paths on message boards, but that
was it.  She hadn't heard from him in at least six months... 
	... and here he was, laying down the lead line of her favorite
of his songs, a driving-yet-haunting number called "Blood Races, Time
Stands Still".
	Through that song and into the next, Kate thought Joe was the
only member of The Crush of Love present.  She remembered having heard
that the band had broken up, not out of acrimony but just because its
members had scattered after graduating from the University of Toronto.
So rapt was her attention to Joe and Logan (who she still couldn't
quite believe was a rock-n-roll man) that she didn't notice until
halfway through a high-octane cover of "Layla" that the shorter
Canadian wasn't actually playing his guitar on this number.
	Since she was hearing a rhythm guitar part, that led Kate to
search the stage with her eyes - and there was Erik Arnulfsson, the
Crush's rhythm guitarist, with his left-handed Les Paul and his
buzzed brush of straw-blond hair, and next to him the whip-thin,
nut-brown, cornrowed form of Domina Kelley with her battered old
Fender J-Bass.  And - yes - somewhere in there, broad-shouldered,
black-haired Jill McElwaine had replaced Dorothy behind the drum kit.
	At that moment, Kaitlyn forgot herself and her gloomy
predicament for the first time since it began and laughed out loud.
She couldn't help it - the song was so utterly unlike anything the
Crush normally played, and they were having such a good time with it.
And -Logan-!  Seeing him play and sing "Money for Nothing" had been
startling enough, but "Layla" was a -love song-, albeit a rather
rough-edged one.
	The laughter broke what remained of the ice within Kaitlyn's
heart, and when she was done with that, she had to get up and dance.
	When "Layla" ended (which took a while, with Miki winding out
the piano outro and the guitarists jamming around his line for as long
as they all felt like it), Kate had an urge to go up and say hello -
she hadn't seen the Crush in years - but the flow of the show had
turned into a free-for-all jam session.  Art members and Crush members
mingled almost at random as they rollicked their way through another
Crush song, "Power Dive".
	That led into an extended drum solo as only R. Dorothy
Wayneright could provide one.  People moved around in the shadows; the
only lights on the stage illuminated her gleaming cymbals and her
pale, impassive face beneath a rising-sun hachimaki as she played.
	She built the solo carefully and expertly to a thunderous
climax, and then, just as it reached its peak - 
	- stopped, and the moment hung there like a car balanced on
the edge of a cliff - 
	- and then the voice of a new guitar sliced into the silence
with the opening hook of another song, the lights snapped up, and
there was the lean Vulcan face of Surel, the lead singer of the
Illogics (formerly Cthia, formerly the Illogics), the galaxy's hottest
all-Vulcan hard rock band.  (And, amazingly enough, not the only one.)

"Those crazy nights
I do remember
In my youth
I do recall
Those were the best times
Most of all"

	The rest of the band slammed in behind him - Dorothy was still
on the drums, but the rest of the Illogics were there - wiry Sanan at
the piano, Synok with his bass, Sketh and his guitar - as they laid
down the old Journey track for all it was worth, their voices braiding
together into a perfect, piercing harmony when they reached the
chorus:

"Those summer nights are calling
Stone in love
Can't help myself, I'm falling
Stone in love"

	They spun "Stone in Love" into "Escape", just like Journey
used to do back in the 20th century, and somehow hulking S'Bann, the
Illogics' drummer, took Dorothy's place without disrupting the
transition much.  And still they came, arriving from backstage for
Kate to notice them at the most unlikely moments.
	Aunt Belldandy and her bright red Strat laying down the riff
for the Ramones classic "I Wanna Be Sedated".  Shiori Takatsuki
borrowing Logan's axe to provide the rhythm line on a heavy metal
version of "Pipeline" opposite the one and only Zach Stephens, leader
of the Port Jeradar Surphony Orchestra on Jeraddo and pizza
deliverator extraordinaire.  Professor Hank "The Beast" McCoy from NIT
throwing down the keyboard line from "Jump" while Surel did his best
David Lee Roth impression (which, it had to be admitted, wasn't all
that good - the Vulcan face simply cannot sneer that effectively).
	Finally they paused for breath, Azalynn bouncing breathless
and flushed to the front mic to ask if those assembled were having a
good time.  The cry she got back was out of all proportion to the
small crowd, and it made the little Dantrovian beam all the more as
still more shadowy figures moved about behind her.
	Kate leaned toward Juri and asked her quietly, "How much of
this did you arrange?"
	Juri gave her back a pious look - she almost looked as if she
should have a halo gleaming above her flame-orange curls - and
replied, "Enough."
	Kate smiled and hugged her lover with one arm, then turned her
attention back to the stage - 
	- and physically recoiled in astonishment at the sight of the
man who had replaced Azalynn front and center while she was talking to
Juri.
	He was tall and lanky, dressed in a rumpled, threadbare black
suit with a white shirt and narrow black tie, and his wingtip shoes
needed polishing.  His complexion was a bit sallow and his black hair
was slicked back in an old-fashioned style.  Slung on his shoulder was
an immaculate black guitar - Kate thought it was a Gibson ES-345, and
though it had the look of an axe that had seen a lot of road, it was
impeccably maintained and glittered in the stage lights.
	Its wielder had on black sunglasses, which he took off to
reveal twinkling dark eyes as he smiled at Kaitlyn's look of utter
dumbfoundedness.
	"Bon soir, Mademoiselle Kaitlyn," he said, his voice touched
with humor and more than a trace of a Gallic accent.  "I am told that
some years ago, you believed that my taste in music could have stood
some improvement."
	Kaitlyn could not reply; she only stared at him in
astonishment, her voice not working at all.
	His smile widened as he chuckled.  "Well," he said.  "I have
considered the matter, and I've reached the conclusion that fifteen
thousand years of human cultural evolution have been leading up to
THIS."
	He positioned his left hand on the neck of the guitar, drew
his right hand up, and Kaitlyn cringed internally, trying to steel
herself for what was coming.
	Oh my God, she thought despairingly, WHAT is he about to DO to
that BEAUTIFUL guitar - 
	- and Jean-Jacques Ragulin proceeded to lay down the sweetest,
purest, hottest version Kate had ever heard of one of the classic
guitar intros of all time.  Before she'd recovered from -that-, he'd
leaned to the microphone and belted out the first verse:

"Way down in Lou'siana, down in New Orleans
Way back up in the woods among the evergreens
There stood a log cabin made of earth and wood
Where lived a country boy name of Johnny B. Goode
He never ever learned to read or write so well
But he could play a guitar just like ringin' a bell"

	When the song was over - which didn't take long, the very
earliest classics of rock were not known for their length - Ragulin
bowed, grinning, and faded into the background, another of the
rotating, interchanging musicians.
	Kaitlyn was still sputteringly trying to come to terms with
the fact that Ragulin - RAGULIN, the haughty, snotty ringleader of the
Ecole Musico-Technologique, creator of "L'Experience Sonique", that
excruciating exercise in random noise - had somehow, in the years
since she last saw him, transformed into a guitar-slinging bluesman,
when another face from her past took the stage.  This one she'd seen
more recently, and was less surprised to see in this context, but it
was still a bit of a shock to see Amanda Dessler and her Flying V on
stage.  She was, after all, Gamilon's Crown Princess.
	That hadn't dulled her edge, though; she was still the
sharpest rhythm guitarist Kate had ever heard as she stepped
effortlessly into her old place alongside Azalynn for a Surel-voiced
cover of one of Kaitlyn and Azalynn's own songs, "I Had a Good Time".
Amanda struck the song's Dantrovese-inspired harmonies with Azalynn
and the Vulcan without faltering - that was the kind of relentless
professional she was - and yes, now that Kate looked, that -was-
Devlin at the drums.
	With Aunt Bell here already, that made everybody who had ever
been an official member of the Art of Noise on stage, and Kaitlyn's
face just couldn't keep from smiling as they played.
	The smile changed as something sparked inside her head, and a
moment later she'd grabbed one of the cards bearing the Hellfire
Club's beer list, flipped it over, placed it against Juri's back (the
nearest flattish surface), and started scribbling furiously on it.
	Juri, who was used to this sort of thing, smiled.  Kaitlyn
smiling and laughing was a good sign; Kaitlyn dancing was a very good
sign; Kaitlyn suddenly struck by the songwriting mojo was a
-startlingly- good sign.  The only thing that could be -more-
encouraging was if she got up on stage herself... 
	When that song finished, there was another pause as the
musicians shuffled around and thought about what to play next.  Kate
finished her jotting, folded up the card, and stuffed it and the pen
into the pocket of her jeans.  Azalynn, noticing the movement, deduced
what had been happening and beamed around the room.
	"Anybody else?"
	From the back of the house, a man excuse-me'd his way through
the crowd, politely moving through.  As he came into the lights,
Kate's eyes widened once again.  He was a longtime friend of her
father's, and had been an occasional babysitter for her, many years
ago; but he was also one of the busiest sentients in the galaxy, and
he came here, for this...  Kate felt tears come to her eyes, and for
once this week they weren't tears of grief.
	The big, weathered Swede got on stage, his red t-shirt and the
navy-blue pants almost reflective in the bright lights.  He conferred
with the others for a moment, then stepped behind the keyboards,
tapping some controls, making some adjustments.
	Then he nodded, and Azalynn made her guitar sing a triumphal
fanfare before the band - this one was Azalynn, Dorothy, Synok, and
Shiori, not that Kate noticed - settled in behind Olaf Petersson's
simple keyboard line and commanding voice:

"Sometimes when your hopes have all been shattered
There's nowhere to turn
You wonder how you keep going
Think of all the things that really mattered
And the chances you've earned
The fire in your heart is growing
You can fly if you try leaving the past behind
Heaven only knows what you might find"

	Kate stood rapt, almost at attention, as Petersson sang a song
that was written for his own funeral (by Kaitlyn's father, no less)
back in 2006.  Written for a funeral, yes, but it was no dirge.  It
was a rock and roll anthem, a song that spoke of fighting through, no
matter what - a song about defying the darkness and battling on,
originally designed to buck up the Autobots after the devastating loss
of their most revered leader.

"Dare!
Dare to believe you can survive
You hold the future in your hand
Dare!
Dare to keep all your dreams alive
The power is there at your command
Dare!
Dare to keep all your love alive
Dare to be all that you can be
Dare!
There is a place where dreams survive
It's calling you on to victory
Dare!"

	And when it was over, he smiled, stepped down from the stage,
moved through the crowd, hugged Kate, and was gone - bound for
wherever he was needed next.
    And that, Kate thought as she watched him disappear into the crowd
by the exit door, was the secret of being Optimus Prime.
	With Petersson's departure, the musicians reshuffled again,
this time making room for three new arrivals - Bobby Drake, a very
popular rock radio DJ in New Avalon and a huge Art of Noise fan; and
his friends Don and Kitty Griffin.  Kate blinked in surprise.  She
remembered Kitty, who was a grad student at NIT and the Duelists'
Federation's first grad-level member, telling her once that she and her
husband had been in a garage band in high school, but Kate didn't know
they still played.
	They took up a flying-V formation at the front, with Drake in
the center, Don to his left, Kitty to his right.  Hank McCoy went back
to the stack of keyboards.  They busied themselves for a few seconds
getting acquainted with their positions - a sign that they hadn't
played together much, at least not lately - and then Drake started in
with a simple, driving, unaccompanied lick.
	Kate noticed belatedly that the drum set was unmanned, and
wondered if this were, perhaps, an error in the constant dance of
shuffling positions the jamming musicians had been doing all night.
They got to the part - Kate knew the song, her own band covered it
sometimes - where the drums should kick in under a sliding bass pickup,
and there they were.  Except that first drumhit wasn't a drumhit at
all; it was the sound of the air rushing out of the drummer's way as
he arrived in his seat out of nowhere in a puff of blue smoke.
	Kurt Wagner didn't miss a beat, and Kate was impressed all
over again with his dexterity.  That's a hell of a trick, Herr Wagner,
she thought to herself with a grin as she moved her lips along with
Griffin's - hmm, a band whose lead singer was the bassist, one didn't
see that much anymore.

"I used to travel in the shadows
And I never found the nerve to try and walk up to you
But now I am a man
And I know that there's no time to waste, there's too much to lose
Girl you say anything at all
And you know that you can call and I'll be right there for you
First love, heartbreak, tough luck, big mistake
What else can you do?

I'll say anything you want to hear
I'll see everything through
I'll do anything I have to do
Just to win the love of a girl like you
A girl like you"

	As Kate's body danced, more or less on autopilot, with a
smiling Miki Kaoru, she reflected that Drake and his band were
unpolished and a bit ragged.  Clearly they hadn't been rehearsing
again for very long, possibly just the last couple of days - how long
ago was all this laid on? Kate wondered, knowing she would never get a
straight answer from any of the people she suspected of organizing it.
	Still, they had heart, and they had energy, and they clearly
loved to play together - and in Kate's book that kind of thing could
cover up a multitude of sins, including rhythm and lead guitarists who
hadn't quite found each other's measure and a drummer who seemed
entirely ignorant of the proper use of the hi-hat.  They reminded Kate
of the Art of Noise's own sound, back in the spring of '04 when she'd
first put them together.
	No, she corrected herself - when -Azalynn- had first put them
together.  Kate would gladly have spent the spring terms as she had
spent the fall ones, going from her room to the library to Alden
Memorial and back again, hiding from the pain of her horrible
experience the previous summer rather than enjoying her life; but
Azalynn had seen the pain inside her, had seen the way to break
through to it, and had assembled the band around Kate before she
really knew what was happening.
	And look where they had come since.  They'd had to replace two
members whose lives had taken them on a separate trajectory, but that
hadn't slowed the group down, and now Kate was at the head of a rock
band powerful enough, as a favorite movie of her father's had once put
it, to turn goat piss into gasoline.  Did she -ever- feel as alive as
when she was leading the Art of Noise and things were really cooking?
In the dojo, maybe, sometimes, when the energy was right; at the helm
of the DSM orchestra sometimes, an experience she missed terribly at
music-poor Nekomi Tech.  But usually it took the band, her band,
Azalynn's band, to lift her to that height.
	Drake's band (Kate wouldn't learn its name until days later,
since he'd forgotten to introduce them) finished their song, and there
was another pause while the musicians shuffled themselves around.
Kate, overheated from dancing, made her way to the bar at the side of
the room, through a crowd composed, for once, entirely of people known
to her.
	Amanda and Devlin were here; Kitarina Dragonaar, Amanda's
bodyguard and sometimes more, caught Kate's eye and waved furiously
from the other side of the room; there was Liza Shustal, looking
pleased with herself as she swapped God knew what bons mots with Emma
Frost.  Utena and Anthy and Corwin and Kozue, Saionji and Wakaba
(doesn't she look fetching with her hair that way), John Hyatt and
Janice Barlow and Neal Krummell - all three of Lu Durgo - MegaZone and
Yuri, John Trussell and Nanami, and a blonde girl Kate didn't recognize
until she noticed Jubilation Lee with her, which meant she must be
Paige Guthrie, a protege of Gryphon's in Special Assignment 1...
	Kate slipped onto a stool by the bar and kept running her eyes
over the crowd, each time noticing a new familiar face.  Nadia Davion,
the Challenger's chief engineer; Mimi Shinguuji, sticking close by
Kate's youngest brother Guy; "the twins", Guy's twin sister Priss and
Sylvie Daniels.  Misato and Domon and Rain from ACROSS.  Old
girlfriends of her father's in enough quantity to make her want to
giggle a bit.  Skuld, Lafiel Abriel, Bea Watanabe, Princess Koriand'r
of Tamaran, a cheerfully drunk Jamie Finney kalKesek, Rahne Sinclair,
Sumire Kanzaki all the way here from Ishiyama...
	Kaitlyn sat for a minute and just watched all these people -
dozens of people - longtime friends of her or her father, all coming
out to raise their spirits and celebrate life.  She sniffled a moment,
blinking back a tear - and before she could turn to the barman and ask
for something to drink, a hairy hand put a glass of a dark,
thick-headed beverage down in front of her.
	She blinked - as a musician, she knew hands the way some
people knew faces - and looked up into the smiling face of Dimitrios
Arbuthnot.
	"You looked like you needed it, kiddo," said the former
proprietor of Sneaky Dee's, the most beloved venue the Art of Noise
had ever inadvertently gotten trashed by the Psi Corps, with a fond
smile.  He clapped her gently on the shoulder, then went back to the
bar, sliding behind it and getting back to making drinks for thirsty
guests.
	Kate sat and watched him work, dumbfounded all over again;
then she picked up the glass and sniffed at it warily.
	Newcastle Brown Ale, her father's favorite - how did Dimitrios
know that?  She'd never had a beer at Sneaky Dee's, and Gryphon, as
far as she knew, had never met Dimitrios at all.
	All these people - Joe and his band, and Dimitrios too,
apparently, coming all this way - it was dangerous for Earthpeople to
visit New Avalon nowadays, could have unfortunate political
consequences... 
	With the air of a woman who has just made a decision, she
downed the Newcastle in three blissful pulls, put the glass on the
bar, hopped down from the stool, and strode up onto the stage, where
the various musicians were still arranging themselves.  They paused as
she approached, their looks by varying degrees pleased and startled.
She smiled and looked around, thinking she would probably have to
borrow Azalynn's guitar, or Erik's - but the Dantrovian reached behind
the main stack and presented her smilingly with her own gleaming black
Strat and one of her favorite medium-weight picks.
	She looked around at the current band setup.  Martin Rose had
come up on stage at last and taken his place behind the keyboards.
Sketh, grinning at Kate as she plugged in her Strat and adjusted the
pickup control, had his axe hooked up to the rhythm stack.  Dorothy
was at the drums, Don was still on bass... good enough, more than good
enough.
	Kate looked around the stage, making brief eye contact with
each of the musicians there in turn; then she turned to face the
audience, which had gone all quiet when she mounted the stage.
	That was fine; she needed it quiet for the next part to be
heard, because the song she planned to sing didn't open boisterously.
	She stood quietly for a moment while the makeshift band behind
her awaited their cue, and then she started to sing, accompanying
herself with a simple beat on her guitar.

"What would you think if I sang out of tune?
Would you stand up and walk out on me?
Lend me your ears and I'll sing you a song
And I'll try not to sing out of key"

	Dorothy picked it up first, then Don, and then the rest, and
they filled in behind her as she sang the chorus.

"Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends... "

	Dorothy played a short bridge, and Hammer sang counterpoint
for Kate on the next verse:

"What do I do when my love is away?
(Does it worry you to be alone?)
How do I feel at the end of the day?
(Are you sad because you're on your own?)

No, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, get high with a little help from my friends
Mm, gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need anybody?)
I need somebody to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love

(Would you believe in a love at first sight?)
Yes, I'm certain that it happens all the time
(What do you see when you turn out the light?)
I can't tell you, but I know it's mine

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Oh, I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends

(Do you need anybody?)
I just need someone to love
(Could it be anybody?)
I want somebody to love

Oh, I get by with a little help from my friends
Mm, I get high with a little help from my friends
Oh, I'm gonna try with a little help from my friends
Yes, I get by with a little help from my friends
With a little help from my friends... "

	The harmony on the last note was a little ragged, but not bad
for a completely unrehearsed performance.  After it was over, the
silence teetered for a second.  The whole occasion could have tipped
the wrong way at this point and become horribly mawkish, ruining the
whole effect Kate had been shooting for.  It had been a calculated
risk on her part, and she was now trusting in her impromptu bandmates
to do the right thing - though she wasn't sure what that right thing
would be.  It was a bit like those team-building exercises where you
let yourself fall.
	Hammer turned his head and caught Dorothy's eye; she smiled at
him ever so slightly, banged the cowbell three times, slammed down a
hit, and Hammer laid in a keyboard riff.  The rest of the group caught
on instantly - the riff was that recognizable - and right where she
should have, Kate grinningly leaned to the microphone and sang,

"Everyone's watching
To see what you will do
Everyone's looking at you, oh
Everyone's wondering
Will you come out tonight?
Everyone's trying to get it right
Get it right

Everybody's working for the weekend
Everybody wants a new romance
Everybody's going off the deep end
Everybody needs a second chance, oh

You want a piece of my heart?
You better start from the start
You want to be in the show?
C'mon baby let's go!"

	In the little pit in front of the stage, Anne Cross adjusted a
couple of the mixer knobs and smiled more broadly than she had in
days.  -This- was the way things were -supposed- to be when the Art of
Noise was on the road.
	Kate tore through the solo with abandon she hadn't always
shown with a guitar on stage, and they put down the rest of the song
in high style.  Then the jam began again, the musicians mixing and
matching, so that Kate had the unique experience of playing in the
same band with Ragulin - a thing she would have to cross off her
"well, THAT'LL never happen" list now.
	They played "Take It Easy" and "We're Not Gonna Take It"; they
played "Who Do You Love?" and "Invisible Touch".  Belldandy lent her
divinely lovely voice to an old song called "Kyrie", at once elegiac
and hopeful:

"Kyrie eleison down the road that I must travel
Kyrie eleison through the darkness of the night
Kyrie eleison where I'm going will you follow?
Kyrie eleison on a highway in the night"

	They jammed all night, mostly twentieth-century music, that
good old rock and roll, with some modern Art of Noise and Crush of
Love songs plus a few of the Illogics' hits.  They even got Rahne
Sinclair (who was just lit up enough at that point to agree to it) up
on stage to sing for them on a guitar-rock version of "Killiecrankie".
	At the end of that, as Rahne happily left the stage amid
applause, a group at the front conspired to more or less shove someone
else up in her place.  Kate squinted against the stage lights to make
out her sister Priss, Priss's lifelong co-conspirator Sylvie, and
perennial bad influence Jubilee grinning and giggling as they goaded a
fourth girl into the limelight.
	Koriand'r - slim, green-eyed, and blushing furiously even
through her orange skin - stood looking nervous and perplexed for a
second, and then asked in a quiet voice, "Forgive me for intruding,
but... may I join your monster rock megajam?"  Then she smiled and
added hopefully, "I know many hot licks."
	Kaitlyn suppressed a snicker - it wouldn't do to make fun of
the poor girl's speech patterns, colloquial Standard just wasn't her
ally - and said, "S-s-sure.  G-got your o-own axe?"
	The Tamaranian princess glanced at the floor, shamefaced.
"Unfortunately, no, not with me.  I had not intended to put myself
forward, but... "  She glanced over her shoulder at the three girls
who had pushed her on stage, who were giggling furiously among
themselves, then smiled and said, "... I find myself moved by the
spirit of the occasion."
	Kate grinned.  "N-no p-p-problem.  M-Miki - lend her your
g-guitar."
	Smiling, Miki ducked out of his Rickenbacker's strap, but
before he handed it over, he asked rhetorically, "Why me?"
	Kate shot him a wink.  "'C-cause you're p-perfect," she said,
which elicted cheers and catcalls from various quarters of the
audience, and one of those huge, earsplitting two-pinky whistles from
Miki's twin sister Kozue.
	Miki handed over the instrument, and Koriand'r found her way
into it with an air of familiarity, if not recently-practiced
familiarity.  There was a mild frisson in the suddenly quiet air of
the Hellfire Club; everyone there seemed to be aware of the fact that
this pleasant girl from a kingdom on the Outer Rim might be about to
embarrass herself horribly.  She handled the Rickenbacker like she
knew what she was doing, but tentatively enough to make people wonder,
all the same.
	Then, after she finished arranging the strap and adjusting the
knobs to her satisfaction, she held the pick ready, murmured quietly
to herself for a second, and touched the strings, and that uncertainty
vanished, replaced by astonishment.

	      /*  Van Halen  "Eruption"  _Van Halen_  */

	The last note grumbled away into silence; Koriand'r held her
pose, hunched over the guitar, eyes shut, for a couple of seconds in
utter silence, then opened them and looked timidly around, as if
afraid that she'd upset someone.
	The applause that broke out afterward put that to rest, and
she blushed again, smiling red-faced as she waved to the crowd.
	"You're n-n-not b-bad," said Kate with a grin that showed she
found the Tamaranian's performance considerably better than "not bad".
	"The electric guitar has been one of the traditional arts
taught to the daughters of the Tamaranian royal family since
Liberation Day," Kori explained, then added helpfully, "We are not
considered ready to leave Tamaran until we can make it both cry -and-
sing."
	"Do you know 'Purple Haze'?" Dorothy asked, and Kori nodded
enthusiastically.
	"It is one of the selections in the Standard Book of Rock,"
she confirmed.
	Kate grinned.  She liked "Purple Haze", but Azalynn didn't -
she said playing the melody line made her teeth hurt - so the Art of
Noise didn't often play it.  Dorothy banged her sticks together to set
the tempo, and they were off.
	The ever-shifting jam went on, musicians swapping in and out,
taking breaks, getting drinks, while the music went on and on; but
once Kate took the stage she never left it again.  She didn't play on
every song, but she always stayed up there somewhere, listening,
smiling, even dancing and singing backup.  They played "Twistin' the
Night Away" and "More than a Feeling", the latter with Azalynn and
Miki striking soaring harmonies while Sketh's axe roared out the lead
guitar line and the Griffins and Dorothy kept the rhythm line
pounding.
	Bobby Drake's band regrouped for a nice cover of the Art of
Noise's old show-opener, "Higher Place"; the Illogics roared through
an old punk standard while Kaitlyn gleefully provided modified lyrics,
transforming the Sex Pistols' signature number into "Anarchy in the
E.A.", much to her audience's glee.
	Then the mixing and matching resumed, with grab-bag one-shot
bands blowing through rockers like "Armageddon It" (Miki on lead
vocals, to the screaming delight of Sylvie and Kozue), "Couple Days
Off" and "It's In the Way that You Use It".
	At one point, Kaitlyn and Hammer had an animated little
conference, and then rearranged the keyboard stack so that one of the
boards was facing the opposite way.  She and Hammer then used the new
setup to team up, leading Azalynn, Erik Arnulfsson, Don Griffin, and
S'Bann in a pounding cover of the old Van Halen anthem, "Dreams".
Their voices blended like the sounds of their boards for the final
chorus:

"So dry your eyes
Save all the tears you've cried
Oh, that's what dreams are made of
'Cause we belong
In a world that must be strong
Oh, that's what dreams are made of
And in the end
On dreams we will depend
'Cause that's what love is made of... "

	The two keyboardists wound it down, playing the last note as
one; then they grinned across the keyboards at each other and ripped
off an impromptu duel arrangement of the speed-and-precision piano
drill Kate had written years ago, the one she called "Run Down".  The
two raced up and down the scales, challenging each other, never
breaking eye contact as they punished the keys.  Eventually, they
turned it around, flipping it seamlessly over and turning it into a
cooperative piece, and made the room all but shake with its power
before bringing it to a thunderous conclusion and falling into an
embrace during the applause.
	Not long after that, the Art of Noise reassembled itself more
or less by accident, four of the five current members taking their
accustomed places for a hammering cover of the classic Who song "Won't
Get Fooled Again", in which Kate made the organ line pay dearly for
its repetitiveness and Miki did a damn good Roger Daltrey -and-
windmilled his Rickenbacker like Pete Townshend all at the same time.
	When the song ended, they looked around and seemed to realize
that they were together again and alone on stage, all the other
musicians having put aside their gear and gone out into the crowd.
All those faces looked back at them, smiling, anticipating, as Azalynn
bounced out from the wings to take her spot next to Miki and Sergei
the tiger, putting in his first appearance of the night, prowled up
from backstage somewhere to start pacing around the stage.
	It was midnight, the opening act was through, and the Art of
Noise was on.
	And front and center in the crowd, surrounded by his friends
and lovers, beaming at her with his face full of pride and love, was
her father.  He still looked harried and tired - that was to be
expected, the man had barely slept in four days - but his eyes were
bright for the first time since Kate's return to New Avalon, and his
bearing had some of its old strength in it.  For the first time, Kate
could allow herself to believe that maybe - just maybe - with a little
luck, and a little help from his friends - he would be all right.
	With that before her, there was only one song Kate could
possibly play.  She turned to Dorothy, and the robot girl gave her the
same little knowing smile she'd given Hammer; she knew exactly what to
do.  So did the rest of them.  When everything was clicking, Kate's
band knew their leader as if linked to her telepathically, and tonight
everything was clicking indeed.
	Dorothy gathered herself and then pounded out the opening
line, and Kate's piano, Moose's bass, and Miki's rhythm guitar jumped
on it and hit the ground running.  Kate stood at her keyboards,
looking out over the blinking status lights, directly at her father as
she sang the lyrics she had originally written for someone -else- she
loved a great deal:

"Doing time where it takes you
You know it's time that can break you
We get caught in the moment, just sleepwalking most of our lives
In your mind when you need it
With a song to help you believe it
You can reinvent your world anytime you like

To be alive again
Waking up from where you've been
Younger now than you were then
You're coming round again
Do you remember when
Life was so much simpler then
The summer nights that never end
To be alive again"

	Juri recognized the song instantly - how could she not, when
Kate had written it for her after their trip to Paris together? - and
smiled.  Truth to tell, she'd have been smiling anyway, just to see
Kaitlyn up there on stage, the brightness restored to her soul as her
bandmates and the others healed her with music.  No one who knew her
and had worried about her could keep the smiles from their faces as
she rocked the stage, leading the band through a high-powered set.
	She left her keyboard stack early in the set, taking up her
guitar instead.  Sometimes Miki played keyboards; sometimes they stood
idle, and sometimes Azalynn did too.  She didn't mind; Kate had been
expanding her horizons with the stringed instrument since Azalynn had
first talked her into playing it on stage some years before, and the
Dantrovian guitarist had to admit that some of Kate's compositions
just didn't sound quite right unless Kate herself played them.
	That was certainly the case with the last song of the night,
an anthemic song about abandoning oneself to love that Kate called
"Dive Into Me".  The song featured some of the tightest binding
between lead and rhythm guitar Azalynn had ever heard, and though she
and Miki were a very good team, their attempts at the solo and bridge
never quite worked as well as when Kate took over lead.
	Azalynn knew that, and Azalynn knew why; so she stood off to
the side, her own guitar idle, and didn't grudge it a bit as she
watched Kaitlyn and Miki play the middle solo almost back to back
before Kate belted out the final chorus.

"Dive into me, into the raging sea
Follow your heart down where it's deep and it's dark
Dive into me, into the healing sea
Put your life into my hands and take a chance
Dive into me"

	Back-to-back they went again for the outro, another beautiful
high solo with Miki's rock-solid backing rhythm, all of it driven
along by Dorothy and Moose's precise and powerful teamwork.
	The song ended with a crash, one that resonated long enough
for Kate to say once more, "Dive into me," before they cut it off with
one last note.  On that note, the lights went out, and the show,
though it barely seemed possible, was over.
	Many of the participants felt as if they had -always- been
here, playing or listening or dancing, caught up in this magic
experience.  They had to remind themselves that there was a world
outside, that they had lives to go back to, now that it was over.
	The crowd dispersed slowly, parts of it lingering on at the
bar, unwilling to let go of the experience and move along just yet.
Gryphon hung around for a few minutes, winding up a few conversations,
and then slipped out the back into the courtyard where Kate had first
arrived in New Avalon a few days before.  There, alone, he stood and
looked up at the dark sky, speckled with the dim flecks of the Utopia
Planitia shipyard complex's distant lights.
	He took in a deep breath of the cool Avalon night air, held it
for a moment, and let it out, feeling the last of the tension drain
away with it.
	Then he went back inside, climbed the stairs, and went to bed.

	Kaitlyn spent half an hour haltingly thanking everyone who
came and promising to catch up with the ones she hadn't seen in a
while, like Joe and the rest of The Crush of Love, very soon.  Ragulin
laughingly promised to tell her the story of his reformation, gave her
a card with the number of a cheap hotel in Claremont scribbled on it,
and ambled away into the night with a backward wave, his guitar slung
on his back.  The bands and guests split up and wandered away, out
into the streets or beamed up to the Valiant for the night, until at
last Kate, still flushed and a bit giddy, emerged from the Hellfire
Club with Miki, Juri, and Serge in tow.
	Miki went to put their guitars into the trunk of Kate's
antique Impala convertible, which stood at the curb; Kate hung back,
putting a hand on Juri's forearm, and murmured in a low voice to the
redhead as she leaned down to hear,
	"Juri... if you're all right with it... I think... "  She
paused, then said positively, "Tonight."
	Juri smiled.  "I thought you might say that," she said, "when
I saw how the show was going.  I'm all right if you're sure."
	Kate nodded, smiling a little in return.  "I'm sure," she
said.
	"All right," Juri replied.  "Be careful.  Don't force
anything.  There's time."
	"I know.  I won't.  Thanks for worrying."
	Juri's smile got just a little wicked.  "And tomorrow," she
said, "you will tell me -everything-."
	Then she concentrated on her Lens and sent a signal to the
Valiant, and a moment later, she and Serge vanished in a blue-white
wash of transporter energy.
	Miki, just shutting the Impala's trunk lid, turned to see this
with some surprise.  He gave Kate a slightly curious look as she
crossed the sidewalk - and a more curious one still when she handed
him the keys to her car.
	"M-Miki," she said softly, her eyes looking very large and
bright in the glow of the streetlight in front of the club.
	"Yes, Kaitlyn?" he replied, his own voice hushed as if in
response to her gravity.
	By way of reply, Kaitlyn looked at him for a second, then
leaned swiftly in and kissed him.
	The first one was overly quick, impulsive and yet hesitant at
the same time; but it sparked something, struck an arc on the energy
that had been palpable between them since the full-band set began at
midnight.  It led to another, more comfortable, more polished, and
that in turn to another, until a Cornet-Scientifer early edition truck
ground past and startled them and they realized they'd been standing
there on the sidewalk making out for half an hour.
	They laughed about that, the moment not broken but made a
little less intense, and probably improved for all that; then Kate
leaned close to him again, almost close enough to start it all over,
and murmured,
	"I w-w-want you... to t-t-take me home...  and m-m-make l-love
to me."
	Miki looked mildly surprised, but not at all displeased.
	"Are you sure?" he asked, and she nodded.
	"V-very sure," she said, smiling; then she kissed him again,
as if to seal it.
	Then, like the gentleman he was, Miki did as he'd been asked.

			SUNDAY, JULY 19, 2409
			NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
			       11:45 AM

	Morning services had been over for three-quarters of an hour
when Juri Arisugawa arrived at the front door of the Cathedral of
Saint Michael the Archangel.  On a normal Sunday, the place would be
deserted by now, except possibly for a sexton or two sweeping up.  The
sounds that flowed out onto the marble steps when Juri opened the
massive, heavy main door told her that her suspicion was correct,
however: The cathedral was not empty today.

 /*  J.S. Bach  Toccata and Fugue in D minor ("Dorian"), BWV 538  */

	She walked through the narthex and into the nave, feeling like
a small boat sailing through a maelstrom of sound.  The many voices of
the cathedral's great pipe organ sang all around her, the magnificent
instrument in full cry.  The sound, layered and rich, poured over Juri
as she crossed the nave.
	Juri was not a particularly religious woman, nor one given to
awe, but St. Michael's always gave her a sense of what it must be like
to be both - especially now, with its great stone walls and brilliant
stained-glass windows filled to overflowing with the roar of the organ
in the hands of an artist.
	She stood in the middle of the empty nave and looked around
the upper level gallery, where most of the organ's pipes were.  She
followed them with her eyes and found the place where they all
eventually converged.  They came together on the second level of the
chancel, just above the entrance to the sanctuary, in a glittering
forest of streamlined metal surmounted by the great ranked throats of
the biggest pipes, all of them radiating from a central source.
	That source was a bank of keyboards, pedals, knobs, and dials
that rivaled in complexity and number the controls of any piece of
machinery Juri cared to say she'd seen; and seated at them, operating
them not just with her hands and feet but her entire being, was
Kaitlyn.	
	Her back was to the nave, but Juri knew her anyway - the shape
of her shoulders, the tilt of her head, the fall of her wavy brown
hair down her back, all gave her away, as did all the thousands of
little motions that playing the organ involved.  Her head was thrown
back, moving with her shoulders as she played, and Juri had no doubt
that if she were to climb up there and look, she would see that Kate's
eyes were closed.
	Juri stood silent - no sound she could possibly have made
could have competed with the cry of the organ, anyway - and watched
her lover play.  It was not a particularly happy song; it was in a
decidedly minor key, dark and thrusting and perhaps angry - but it was
not without a certain fierce joy, she thought, as it rose to its
climax, hesitated in that peculiar way that Bach toccatas had, and
then crashed down into a huge and vehement finale.
	Kaitlyn paused for only a moment, her hands where they had
fallen to strike the toccata's last note, and then she moved and began
the accompanying fugue.  This was a slower, more stately piece, its
melody line beginning with an almost tentative air that gained in
strength and confidence as more voices were layered over it, each
restating it in a slightly different way.
	When Kate finished the fugue, she didn't start another piece
right away; instead, she sat back, her arms hanging slack at her
sides, her head tipped back, and just breathed for a while.  It had
been a long time since she'd played an instrument as grand as this;
-too- long.
	Juri took the opportunity to applaud.
	So did someone else, which surprised both women, since Kate
had thought she was alone, and Juri had thought the two of them were.

	They sat at a sidewalk cafe in Claremont, a few blocks from
St. Michael's, and had a light lunch while they watched the residents
of that bohemian neighborhood going about their Sunday.  Unusually
happy-looking goth kids and people in painters' smocks wandered here
and there.  A nonhumanized Salusian girl in the yellow and white habit
and orange head-kerchief of an Althenian nun went by with a market
basket on her arm, looking pleased with herself.  Down the block, Kate
thought she caught a glimpse of Yomiko Readman, already heavily
burdened, ducking into another of Claremont's dozens of obscure
bookshops.
	Ragulin sat with them, still dressed in his threadbare suit.
He was sprawled in his chair with a sort of calculated casualness,
like a living room set in a beautiful-homes magazine that has been
meticulously, deliberately dressed to seem lived-in.  He seemed to be
all arms and legs, his lankiness exaggerated by the cut of the suit
and the way he'd arranged himself, and he was smiling a bit
mischievously across the table at Kaitlyn.
	Kate sat with her elbows on the tin-topped table, stirring
sugar into her tea and smiling quietly back at him, not saying a
word.  Juri, sitting rather closer to Kate than to Ragulin, glanced
from one to the other with one eyebrow arched, waiting for one of them
to say something.
	Finally, Ragulin laughed and broke the silence.  He took a sip
of Perrier and said, "Ah, Kaitlyn, you haven't changed.  Ever the
silent observer."
	"You w-were the one ob-observing sss-ss-silently a m-minute
ago," she replied mildly.
	"Mais non!" Ragulin protested theatrically.  "It was never my
intention to spy on a private moment.  I had no idea you would even be
there!"
	"What -were- you doing there?" Juri wondered.
	Ragulin gave her a sly smile.  "It is a church, is it not?  I
am, after a fashion, Catholic."
	Juri, who hadn't considered that, blinked.  "Oh," she said.
	"So... " said Kaitlyn, letting the syllable hang in the air
for a second.  "It's p-probably rude of m-m-me to ask, b-but tod-day I
d-d-don't care - w-what the hell h-hap-happened to you?"
	Ragulin chuckled.  "Ah, well."  He regarded his mineral water
with the glum look of a man who thinks that a friend of his is not up
to some important task, then said, "To tell a story like that, I shall
need a proper drink."  He gestured to the waiter and asked him, "Do
you have La Fin du Monde?"
	Juri did a masterful job of not choking on her coffee when her
mind automatically translated the name of the drink from Gaulish.
Ragulin, who did not know her, completely missed it.  Kaitlyn did not,
but only giggled lightly as the waiter informed Ragulin that, alas,
the establishment did not stock any beer so exotic as that.
	"Bah!" said Ragulin with a disgusted gesture.  "What have you
that is fit for a son of France?"
	The waiter looked like he had suggestions in mind, but he kept
himself admirably professional as he said neutrally, "Well, there's
Pernod... "
	Kaitlyn made a face.  "It's m-m-much t-too early in the d-day
for P-P-Pernod," she said.  "M-m-might as w-well have a-absinthe for
b-b-breakfast.  Guh."
	"I've done that, you know," Ragulin observed mildly.  "It
gives one a... remarkable perspective... on the rest of the day.  What
about Calvados?"
	The waiter confirmed that they did, in fact, have Calvados,
and Ragulin smiled as if to say that all was forgiven.
	"Bien," he said with evident satisfaction, "three."  When the
drinks had been delivered, he took a nip of his, smacked his lips, and
said, "Now then.  What the hell happened to me, that was the question?"
	"It was indeed," Juri replied dryly, eyeing her new glass with
a slightly dubious air.  In her world, ten past noon was a bit too
early to be drinking apple brandy.
	Kate didn't seem to mind, though.  She didn't seem to mind
much of anything today.  She sipped her Calvados, sat back in her
seat, and waited for Ragulin to tell her.
	"Two years after we last encountered each other," he said, "I
completed my studies at the university in Nice.  In the meantime, the
Earth Alliance government declared that there was no more France, and
since all the cool kids were styling themselves antinationalists at
that point, I said it was a good thing."  He smiled mockingly at
himself and had another sip of Calvados.  "But all the cool kids were
also hypocrites," he said dryly, "and most of us left Earth the next
year.
	"I decided to go to Rigel, where there was an institute for
experimental music, to further my studies.  I had little money, of
course, so I had to take the cheapest route possible, a torturous
economy hyperflight with a number of stopovers.  The one I was
dreading most was the third, on Funkotron."
	Kate and Juri glanced at each other, a sparkle of amused
understanding in Kate's brown eyes, but they said nothing as Ragulin
declaimed, "Five hours - FIVE HOURS! - trapped at Elvis Presley
International Spaceport in Hipsville, surrounded by... well, by the
sort of people who would willingly go to Funkotron.  We were forced to
get off the transport, so I sat down on a bench at the gate, as far
away from everything as possible, put on my headphones, and hoped that
l'Experience Sonique would see me through."
	Ragulin sat forward, his elbows on the table, and smiled
darkly.  "For four hours it worked," he said.  "One more hour and I
would have escaped, been on my way to Rigel and the fame and glory
that were rightfully mine.  It was within my grasp!" he said, holding
up a hand bent into a claw-like shape; then he relaxed into his
thrown-together posture again and said,
	"But then an old man came and sat down beside me.  His suit
was shabby and his shoes looked like a dog had chewed them.  He had a
guitar on his back.  I tried to ignore him, but inside I was fuming.
The gate area was empty, EMPTY!  There was no reason for this old man
to have sat down right next to me.  He was deliberately trying to
bother me, but I would shut him out.  I would not let him bother me.
	"That might have worked too, if the power cell in my crystal
reader had not failed.  I had to change it, and when I did, he took
his opportunity and struck up a conversation.  Unwillingly, I
responded."
	Ragulin leaned forward again, but this time his expression was
faintly dreamy rather than dark.  "I can't tell you how we got onto
the subject," he said, "the conversation is mostly a blur now... but
we talked about music.  He said he was a bluesman, the son of a
bluesman from a long line of bluesmen.  I was dismissive.  Oh, yes,
the blues.  An archaic form, dead except in certain backwaters.
Primitive music obsessed with the past, and without a future.
	"The old man gave me a mild look.  He said, 'Do you really
think so?'  Then he took the guitar from his back and... "  Ragulin
shrugged, a big, expressive, very Gallic shrug.  "That was the end of
Ragulin as you knew him."
	Kate had slowly leaned forward during this tale; now she was
sitting with her own elbows on the table, watching him raptly as he
told his tale.  Her eyes were bright and there was a little smile
playing at her lips.
	"Four hours later," Ragulin went on, "he got up and said,
'Well, I don't imagine I'll see you again.  I'm an old, old man, and
I'm going off to my sister's to die.  That's OK, though.  I hear
Heaven's nice, for a place that ain't home.'  Then he walked off,
disappearing into the crowd.  It wasn't until almost an hour later
that I realized he'd left his guitar behind."
	Kaitlyn watched him intently, the same little smile still on
her face, and said, "A-and you... "
	Ragulin grinned.  "I, ma chère Kaitlyn, never got to
Rigel.  I understand the music scene there is a bit lacking."  He
chuckled.  "Too many pompous children in black."
	Juri found herself trying idly to predict what Kaitlyn would
say to all that, but she failed completely.  It never would have
crossed her mind that the next thing out of Kate's mouth would be,
"Come tour with us," especially since the last Juri knew, Kate wasn't
planning to finish this year's tour.
	Kate hadn't known that either, until a moment before, but now
that she'd reached the conclusion she was going with it.
	Ragulin's eyes shot toward his windswept bangs.  "I?" he said,
genuinely surprised.  "Tour with you?  The Art of Noise featuring
Jean-Jacques Ragulin?"
	Kate made a surprised little noise, which in turn made Ragulin
give her a questioning look.  "What?"
	"Oh... n-nothing, it's j-j-just... you have a n-name?"
	Ragulin laughed.  "Of course I have a name!" he chortled.
"Silly girl, you must be in love," he added with a grin.
	Kate reddened, smiling, and said nothing.  Ragulin thumped the
table lightly with an open hand, downed the last of his Calvados, and
tossed some coins on the table.  "At any rate, if you really mean
that, I should be very pleased to join you.  I have, as it happens, no
pressing engagements at the moment," he added wryly.  "When do you
leave?"
	"In the m-m-morning, if I c-can g-get it arr-r-ranged," Kate
replied.
	Ragulin rose to his feet with the same effortless, almost
accidental grace he showed sitting down, swept her a bow, and smiled
at the both of them.  "Then I will bid you au revoir, and make my
preparations," he said.  "I am lodging at the Wilmont.  I do not
believe the telephone in my room is working, but perhaps the desk
clerk can be roused from his slumber long enough to get a message to
me."
	With that, he left them, blending into the bohemian passers-by
and disappearing.
	Kate sat as if in thought for a moment, then made a contented
little "huh!" noise, tossed back the rest of her Calvados, and got to
her feet.  Juri left hers and followed as Kate went smilingly out onto
the sidewalk.
	"So you've decided to continue the tour after all," she noted
with a dry smile.
	Kate chuckled.  "Yeah, about 45 seconds ago," she replied.
"Well, I suppose I was probably thinking about it last night and this
morning, somewhere in my mind, but consciously, I didn't realize it
until I invited Ragulin along."
	Juri nodded; they walked along Brantner Avenue in silence for
a few moments, then turned the oblique corner onto Strange Street.
Then Juri broke the comfortable quiet, asking softly, "So... how do
you feel?"
	Kate turned to her, looking thoughtful, and then said, "I
feel... a little guilty, really.  I mean... because I feel -wonderful-, 
and it seems to me that I don't... really have any right to, right now.  
You know?"
	Juri smiled gently.  "Kaitlyn, when have I -not- had to
struggle against that feeling?" she asked.
	"... Good point," said Kate pensively.  Then she smiled and
said, "But I -do- feel wonderful.  Not just physically, but... oh,
this will sound corny, but, -spiritually-.  It's like everything that
happened last night... washed me clean.  I feel... -new-.  Nothing's
really changed, and the grief is still there, but I can... carry on.
I think... "  She paused, looking on the verge of sadness again, and
said quietly, "I think she'd want me to."
	Juri nodded.  "I'm sure she would.  She'd want you to be
happy.  And... I do, too."
	Kate smiled and took her lover's hand.  "I am," she said.
"Thank you for giving me the opportunity.  I feel like a circuit's
been closed somewhere.  Like parts of me are alive that I didn't even
know were there."  She smiled, just a trifle wickedly, and added, "I
can't wait for you to know what I'm talking about."
	To her immense gratification, Juri actually blushed.  It was a
quiet, restrained blush, suited to her reserved demeanor, but it was
there, and Kate's face responded to it with a look of outright glee as
they walked down Strange Street hand in hand.
	When Juri trusted herself to speak again, she asked as
neutrally as possible, "Where -is- Miki, by the way?"
	"He was still asleep when I left," Kate replied.  "I'm
surprised I'm awake.  I shouldn't be.  I was up very late last night,
and I haven't had a decent night's sleep in almost a week.  I should
have stayed in bed until at least four... but I woke up at ten-thirty
and that was it.  I couldn't get back to sleep no matter how I tried,
so at quarter past eleven I gave up and came downtown."
	Juri smiled.  "And Father O'Halloran let you play the organ
after Mass."
	"He's a sweetheart," Kate said.

			       4:30 PM
		      MATHEWS MEMORIAL SPACEPORT

	There wasn't much of a crowd, which was just as Gryphon wanted
it.  He'd spent the last several days, since he regained the ability
to function on a basic level following Kate's appearance on the scene,
making his arrangements and saying his goodbyes.  Now, standing
outside his private hangar at Mathews Memorial, there were just his
children and a few carefully selected intimates to see him off.
	He said a few quiet words to his youngest, Guy and Priss.
They had been hit hard, but had bounced back the fastest, with the
resilience of their youth and boundless optimism.  They were the
closest to Kei of the couple's four children, especially Priss, but
that meant that they'd inherited something of their mother's serenity
in situations like this.
	They promised to look out for Sylvie, who was almost as
shattered by the blow as if her own mother had gone, and to be
vigilant in defending the city; and then they went to do just that.
	He said some similar words to Yuri Daniels, Kei's oldest
friend, who was getting ready to leave on her own journey - not to try
and find her center again, at least not explicitly, but rather to
search the Rim for any clues to what might have befallen her old
partner.  The actual scene had yielded pretty much nothing, but Yuri
was convinced that there were answers out there somewhere, and with
the Chief's blessing, she was taking her own leave to find them.
	They were old, old friends, these two - he'd known her longer
than anyone but Kei, longer even than MegaZone, who was conspicuous in
his absence now.  They didn't need to say much of anything, and indeed
they didn't - just a few soft words, a long look, and a kiss, and she
stepped aside so that Eiko Rose could say her goodbye.
        The influx - the FLOOD - of friends and well-wishers into New
Avalon had proven to be just what Eiko needed to help her focus past
the pain of losing her best friend.  She was looking considerably less
wilted as she assured Gryphon that, between her, Major Katsuragi, and
all the other interested adults in the area, the twins would be well
looked after in his absence.
        "Besides," she said with a bright, mostly-non-forced smile, "I
could use a new project.  Keeping up with Wapiko is losing its edge,
and I've only been filling in the gaps at your house when I could - by
Crom, it's time for a new challenge!"
        She struck a dramatic pose and declared grandiosely, "I vow
that by the time you return, your kids will each be at least five
pounds healthier and your house will be -spotless-, or I am not the
Galaxy's Mightiest Mortal Mom!"
        Gryphon just looked at her oddly.  "'Mightiest Mortal Mom'?"
        "Well, Substitute Mom."
        "Hey, don't sell yourself short."  Ben clapped a hand on her
shoulder.  "A day never went by when Kei didn't tell me she'd've lost
her mind without you to help mind the store.  You're as much a part of
my family as any of the kids."  Her face colored slightly as he
continued, "So maybe I should see about getting you to stop hanging
out with Marty, because he's obviously a bad influence.  'Mightiest
Mortal Mom,' jeez."
        At that, Eiko just giggled lightly.  "Actually, Pete Rasputin
came up with that one.  He says he just hasn't had a chance to use it
in a Lensmen comic yet."
        Ben cracked a wry smile.  "Heh.  I'll keep an eye out for that
issue."
        They hugged briefly, and then parted.  Eiko lingered there in
front of him for a moment, her eyes seeming to tell him she had one
last thing to say ... but instead she stepped back in silence, as her
husband stepped forward into first a handshake, and then an embrace.
        "Don't worry about us," Marty told him.  "You've got the best
people in known space watching over your affairs.  They can keep a
leash on the cock-ups like me."
        "Thanks," Gryphon replied.  "You're always a pillar of
confidence."
        "Well, I'm definitely a pillar of -something-.  Usually mostly
water."
	Gryphon chuckled dryly, patted Hammer on the shoulder, and
moved down the line to Corwin.
	The younger man, coveralled and grease-smeared, grinned.
"She's all ready to go, Dad," he reported.  "Go easy on the coils for
the first 500 light-years."
	Gryphon shook his son's hand, then hugged him, greasy coverall
or no.
	"Look after your sister," he said quietly.
	"I don't think Juri and Miki will need my help," Corwin
replied in a wry murmur, "but you know I will anyway."
	Gryphon smiled and embraced his eldest son again.  "And look
after yourself, too," he added.
	"You too, Dad.  I hope... I hope you find what you're looking
for out there."
	The elder man nodded.  "So do I," he said, and then went one
step to Corwin's right, where Utena Tenjou waited smiling.
	"I'll try not to misplace your fleet," she said, saluting.
	Gryphon laughed.  "Just remember, you've got a lot of
resources behind you," he said.  "Don't hesitate to call on them if
you need anything.  You're sure I can't convince you to transfer your
flag to the more appropriate ship?"
	"Maybe after the tour," she replied, "when most everybody else
goes back to their regular lives.  Right now... I feel like the
Valiant is still my place."
	Gryphon smiled.  "Believe me," he said, "I understand.  Just
so you know, though, Lore claims to be 'beside himself with desire' to
see you take Challenger into a fight."
	Utena laughed.  "Hopefully it won't come to that," she said;
then, becoming more serious, she added, "But if it does, I'm ready."
	"I know," Gryphon replied.  "See you in a few months.  Take
care of yourself."
	He hugged her, kissed her cheek, and moved on to Kaitlyn.
	The events of the night before had revitalized her; she looked
vibrant and fully alive before his eyes as he put his hands on her
shoulders and smiled at her.  The smile she returned was a little
wistful, a little tentative - as if she was asking him to forgive her
for being happy, under the circumstances.
	Gryphon dropped his duffle bag, drew his daughter into a full
embrace, and held her for several silent minutes before murmuring in
her ear,
	"It's all right.  You know she always wanted you to be happy."
	Kate sniffled and nodded, pressing her face against his
shoulder.  "I know," she replied in a hoarse whisper.
	"I'll be back soon," he told her, "and you can always come
after me if you need me for something.  Sakura will know where to find
me."
	"Hopefully I won't have to bother you," she replied.  "I'll
miss you."  She chuckled wanly.  "Silly, isn't it?  We spend months
apart anyway, sometimes - when I was in high school we were regularly
apart for longer than you're probably going to be away... but... "
	He squeezed her in his arms and patted the back of her head
with a shushing sound.  "I know.  Don't worry.  I'll come back.  And
if I'm feeling up to it, I might see you in October."
	Kate drew back, a bit puzzled, and then smiled when she
realized what he was getting at: She was going to be -on- Ishiyama for
NIT's fall break, to shoot a movie at Sumire Kanzaki's studio near
Ohji.
	"Worst to worst," he added, "I'll probably be back In for
Christmas."
	Kate chuckled again, stronger this time.  "You better," she
said, resting her forehead against his and making twinkling eye
contact.  "I'm not sure how long I can handle having -three- students,
and you know 'Zatoichi vs. Wolverine' is coming out then anyway."
	Gryphon laughed, squeezed her one last time, and kissed her on
the forehead.  "Be well, Kate," he said softly.
	"You too, Dad," she replied.  "Love you."
	"I love you too," he said, then ruffled her hair a little,
shouldered his duffle bag again, gave the assemblage a wave, and
turned toward his waiting craft.
        "Ben, wait - "
        The call of Eiko's voice came as only a mild surprise, and
Gryphon figured she just wanted to make sure it would be okay for her
to crash in his bed every so often (it was).  He turned and looked
down, into that same look of uncertainty, her lower lip tucked cutely
under her front teeth.  They regarded each other for a moment, and
then the little red-haired girl made her decision:
        She pulled him in close and kissed him.
        Ben, caught even more completely flat-footed than everyone
else watching, took a few heartbeats before he responded in kind.
        Unexpected this is, he decided.  But definitely not
unpleasant, oh no.
        After more than long enough, they parted, slowly, smiling,
faces flushed, nearly oblivious to their gobsmacked onlookers.
        "Stay safe," Eiko told him.  "Stay well.  Come back to us - we
love you."
        "With a reminder like that," he replied, "you can count on
it."
	He stood smiling as Eiko turned and trotted back to the
group.  Gryphon snickered a little to himself at the blank look on
Martin Rose's face as he looked down at his wife.  Eiko beamed up at
him, saying nothing.  Martin raised a finger and opened his mouth as
if to speak; Eiko batted her eyes, which caused Martin not to say
whatever he'd been intending to say.  Yuri Daniels barely kept herself
from laughing out loud.  Martin shot her the you're-not-helping look,
which meant that she -did- laugh, and it was all downhill from there.
	Gryphon smilingly watched all this, then waved to everyone
again and climbed up the boarding ladder to the cockpit of his old,
faithful VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie, the venerable Eight-Ball One.
	He could have taken Daggerdisc, of course, or any of a dozen
IPO small craft, but under the circumstances, the battered cockpit of
the old Valkyrie felt more like home than any other ship would have.
The fighter had spent the last twenty-five years in the Wedge Defense
Force Museum, but Corwin and Kozue had spent the last several days
refurbishing it for his use - a gesture he would remember, amid all
the gestures by friends and family that had warmed his heart this
terrible week, for many years to come.
	Gryphon jumped over the coaming into the cockpit, stuffed his
duffle bag into the small storage compartment behind the seat, and
strapped in, then fired up the turbines.  He raised a hand in one last
wave, then lowered the canopy, taxied out to the runway, called for
clearance, and opened her up, vanishing into the clear blue sky over
Lake Daniels.
	The others stood looking at the space where he had been, and
then they dispersed with goodbyes and hugs and promises to keep the
support network intact across the distances that would soon separate
them.

			       6:18 PM
			     IPS VALIANT

	Utena sat in her center seat with her bridge humming all
around her, feeling good to be getting out on the road again.  She
loved New Avalon, but this unplanned visit had been hard on everyone,
and it would be good to leave the city behind them for a while.
	"Well, Juri," she asked as the eponymous redhead and Kaitlyn
came onto the bridge, "did you get the tour rearranged to your
satisfaction?"
	"I did," Juri replied, with that satisfaction evident in her
voice.  "Everything's arranged and ready.  Azalynn will meet us at
Jezebel, as before."
	Utena nodded.  "Great.  Everybody else back aboard, Klaang?"
	The giant Klingon science officer grinned toothily, clearly
pleased that things were back on track.  "All accounted for, joH'wI'."
	Utena turned a grin to Kaitlyn.  "What about you, Kate?  You
ready?"
	Kate smiled.  "You b-bet.  L-let's hit the c-c-comeback
trail."
	"Let's indeed," agreed Utena with a firm nod.  "Mr. Kaoru!
Get us the hell out of here.  We've been cooped up in this sphere too
long!"
	Kozue Kaoru grinned and plied her helm controls with a wink
and a cheerful, "Aye-aye, Commodore!"
	The Valiant left the Zeta Cygni Dyson Sphere at 6:25 PM Avalon
Standard Time, then went immediately to warp speed, destination
Jezebel.

	  /*  W.A. Mozart  _Requiem in D minor, K. 626_  */

		     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
			      presented
			UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
			   FUTURE IMPERFECT
		   - Symphony of the Sword No. 4 -
			   Fifth Movement:
			Requiem for a Lensman

			       The Cast
		       (in order of appearance)
			   Shiori Takatsuki
			 Benjamin D. Hutchins
		     TPA_Smith-001a (Agent Smith)
				Vision
			     Luornu Durgo
			  Carmela Sunderland
			     Garth Ranzz
		       Elisabeth R'tas Shustal
		       Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan
			     Kurt Wagner
			     Utena Tenjou
			     Ahmed Garcia
			      Kei Morgan
			   Aaron Ajlond-Mui
			     Pearson Mui
			   Kanna Kirishima
			      Anne Cross
			   Wakaba Shinohara
			   Kyouichi Saionji
			   B'Elanna Torres
			    John Trussell
			    Nanami Jinnai
			   Kaitlyn Hutchins
				Sergei
			    Juri Arisugawa
			    Janice Barlow
			    Neal Krummell
			   Gunnr Brynjelfr
			   Corwin Ravenhair
			  Vigdis Brightblade
			     Kozue Kaoru
			     Martin Rose
			   Eiko Magami Rose
			       Hellboy
			  Illyana Rasputinya
			      Emma Frost
			  Beatrice Watanabe
			      Jean Grey
			      Mace Windu
			     Anthy Tenjou
			      Miki Kaoru
			   Skuld Ravenhair
			     Matt Murdock
			     Elza Kiraly
			     James Gordon
				Q-Boss
			     J'onn Hy'aat
			    Olaf Petersson
		      Kitarina Telaia Dragonaar
			       MegaZone
			     Yuri Daniels
			    Jubilation Lee
			    Paige Guthrie
			     Nadia Davion
			   Sumire Shinguuji
			      Guy Morgan
			     Priss Morgan
			    Sylvie Daniels
			   Misato Katsuragi
			     Domon Kasshu
			    Rain Mikamura
			    Lafiel Abriel
			Jaime Finney kalKesek
			    Rahne Sinclair
			    Sumire Kanzaki
		    Dimitrios Makenikos Arbuthnot

			 with musical guests

			  THE CRUSH OF LOVE
			       Joe Graf
			   Erik Arnulfsson
			    Domina Kelley
			    Jill McElwaine

			     THE ILLOGICS
				Surel
				Sanan
				Synok
				Sketh
				S'Bann

			  THE UNCANNY X-BAND
			     Bobby Drake
			    Donald Griffin
			    Kitty Griffin
			Hank "The Beast" McCoy
			     Kurt Wagner

			      featuring
				Logan
			    Zach Stephens
			 Jean-Jacques Ragulin
		    Princess Koriand'r of Tamaran

			     and starring
		    THE ART OF NOISE (NEW AVALON)
			   Kaitlyn Hutchins
		       Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan
			      Miki Kaoru
		  The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn IV
			R. Dorothy Wayneright
			Amanda Elektra Dessler
		     Devlin Edison Dessler Carter
			  Verthandi Morisato
			   Shiori Takatsuki


			   Musical Director
			 Benjamin D. Hutchins

		    Terror that Flaps in the Night
			     Martin Rose

			      Deaconess
			      Anne Cross

		    Federated Press Correspondent
			     Geoff Depew

				Sexton
			     Pearson Mui

			    Lexicographer
			    Janice Barlow

				Choir
			  The Usual Suspects

		      Musical credits to follow

From the January 2409 edition of the Hacker's Dictionary:

danish (DAY-nish) n. (slang; Nekomi Institute of Technology on
Tomodachi circa 2407) The condition of being superuser, root, or other
privileged user of a machine one has just successfully exploited.
Believed to have derived from 20th-century Internet Relay Chat,
wherein channel operators were denoted by an @ before their nicknames.
(Note the symbol's resemblance to the dessert.)

"Get a danish" refers to the process of exploiting a machine to gain
privileged access; "I'm going to have one of my agents get me a danish
on the campus web server and fix that cron job myself if the campus
admins don't get to it soon."

See also: 0wned, sticky bun.

		       The Symphony will return


		       SATURDAY, JULY 25, 2409
		     45 MILES NORTHEAST OF SENDAI
		      EMPIRE OF MORITA, ISHIYAMA
			OUTER RIM TERRITORIES

	Gryphon climbed down from Eight-Ball One, sealed the cockpit
behind him, and shouldered his duffel bag.  As always at the end of a
long trip in the cramped fighter, he was glad to be on the ground, and
gladder still to be here in this fragrant, piney forest.  Ishiyama was
one of the most beautiful planets he knew, and this region, the
prefecture of Sendai near the city of Sendai, was one of its loveliest
parts.
	He patted his faithful old fighter on the nose, then turned
his back on it and surveyed his new home for the next little while.
	It was a log cabin, small, trim and neat, standing in a
clearing at the top of a ridge which overlooked a great swath of the
pine woods and a sparkling round pond a mile or so off.  There was no
other feature of civilization within sight, and from up here, "within
sight" covered a lot of ground, at least southward.
	The cabin was an odd sort of thing to see on Ishiyama, which
was one of the most Japanese of the Japanese colonies, but its
presence was easily enough explained: Some ancestor of Sakura
Shinguuji, the current owner of the estate on which it stood, had been
inordinately fond of the structures, which he'd read about in a book,
and had built this one partly as a training project and partly as a
retreat.
	Gryphon crossed the clearing to the cabin, and just as he
reached for the door, it opened.  Having expected to be alone up here,
he took a half-step back, his hand reaching for the sword grip jutting
up above his shoulder; but then he relaxed as the man who had opened
the door emerged onto the canopied front step - too small to be a
porch, but rather larger than your average stoop.
	"Jeez, Zoner!" said Gryphon.  "Can't sneak up on a brother
like that."
	"Sorry," MegaZone replied, and he did indeed seem contrite.
He held out an envelope.  "Here - note from your landlady."  As
Gryphon took the envelope and tucked it away in his shirt pocket,
Zoner pointed back into the cabin and said, "I was just making sure
the lights were working and stuff."  Then he stepped aside and said,
"I'll just be off."
	He took a couple of steps away, then turned back and added,
"Listen... take care of yourself, OK?  I'm gonna be helping Yuri look
around.  If you need anything, just... I have ways."
	Gryphon, who had gotten used to Zoner's speech patterns
(especially since Zoner became the Chaoswalker), smiled.  "Yeah.  I
know.  I'll holler if I have to."
	Zoner nodded.  "Good.  Do that.  'Cause... you know.  We don't
need to lose anybody else."
	"Yeah, I know," Gryphon repeated.  "Don't worry.  I'm here to
get it together, not fall apart."
	"OK.  Good.  Good," said Zoner, seeming faintly distracted.
Then he looked at his old friend for a few seconds, taking in the way
Gryphon seemed smaller somehow but was still standing straight, the
way his face seemed older but also, perhaps, wiser; and then he
shrugged, came back up the two steps, and embraced the shorter man.
	"Take it easy, man," he said quietly when they separated.
"I'll see you."
	Gryphon nodded.  "You too, Zoner.  And look after Yuri, will
you?"
	Zoner cracked a small smile.  "Don't worry about her," he
said.  Then he put his hands in the pockets of his long black leather
coat - in Sendai, even in the summer, it didn't get particularly hot -
and walked away.  Gryphon watched him cross the clearing and step
around the nose of Eight-Ball One, and knew that if he ran across the
clearing right now and rounded that same corner, there would be
nothing there but fresh air and pine trees.
	He stood in the doorway for a few minutes, looking at the
trees and the lake and the bright blue sky studded with fluffy white
clouds.
	Then he went into the cabin, shut the door behind him, and
took a look around.  It was a cozy little structure, all one room
below with a sleeping loft above, and reminded him a bit of his camp
on Vortigern's Lake, though that was bigger than this place.  There
was a cookstove, a fridge, a shelf full of books - and there was no
telephone, no datatap, no TV.
	He took off his swords and his leather flight jacket and hung
them on the back of one of the kitchen chairs, plopped his duffel bag
on the table, took off his boots, picked up his swords again, and
climbed upstairs.  The windows were open and a fresh breeze blew
through; the bed was a bit narrower than he was used to, but not much
different from his bunk on Challenger, and there was a very festive
bedspread in an incongruously Japanese pattern neatly stretched across
the top of it.
	Gryphon sat down on the bed and took the envelope out of his
pocket, slit it with a finger, and read the neatly written note
within:

My dear friend,

I hope you find this humble cabin well suited to your needs.  The
pantry and refrigerator are fully stocked and there is fishing gear in
the closet.  Under the lean-to behind the cabin, you will find a small
canoe and the things that go with it, and in the bookcase is a map
showing the trails in this part of the wood and where they go.

Please remember that the cabin is your home for as long as you wish to
stay.  No one will bother you here - I will make certain of that.
Even I will not approach the cabin unless there is some dire
emergency.  If you find you want company, the trail to the main house
(about 10 miles) is marked on the map, and there is a Sendai
Prefectural Forest Service ranger station about the same distance to
the north.  The ranger there is named Kenji Watanabe and he is always
happy to have some company.  He plays a very good game of go.

Words cannot express what I feel right now.  I and all the Hanagumi
will always be indebted to Kei for bringing you back to Ishiyama and
our lives, and we are all crushed by her loss, but we know this must
be as nothing compared to what you must feel.  We all recognize your
need for solitude as you grapple with your loss, but please know that
we will be here for you if you need us.  I speak for all of us in this
matter.

I hope to see you soon and trust that you will be well.

Until that time I remain,
Your very devoted friend,
SAKURA SHINGUUJI

PS. The troutlike fish which lives in the pond you can see from the
front door is called utsugi, and is very good with butter.

	Gryphon read the note twice, then folded it and put it back in
his pocket.  He sat on the edge of the bed for a few moments, then
reached into the pocket, took out something else, and affixed it to
the wall near the head of the bed with a tack.
	He sat and looked at the picture of Kei, smiling and winking
rakishly at the camera, for almost five minutes.
	Then he rolled onto his back, put his hands behind his head,
and sighed up at the ceiling.
	"Damn," he said succinctly.


			 E P U (colour) 2003


			   |--------------|
			    SPECIAL BONUS:

All songs mentioned outright in the depiction of the Hellfire Club Jam,
			    July 18, 2409

* entirely fictional song
+ meta-original song (not a cover in the UF universe)

Money for Nothing  [Dire Straits]
* Blood Races, Time Stands Still  [The Crush of Love]
Layla  [Derek & the Dominos]
* Power Dive  [The Crush of Love]
Stone in Love  [Journey]
Escape  [Journey]
I Wanna Be Sedated  [The Ramones]
Pipeline  [The Ventures, but this version sounds more like the Anthrax cover]
Jump  [Van Halen]
Johnny B. Goode  [Chuck Berry]
+ I Had a Good Time  [Boston]
+ Dare  [Stan Bush]
A Girl Like You  [The Smithereens]
With a Little Help from My Friends  [The Beatles]
Working for the Weekend  [Loverboy]
Take It Easy  [The Eagles]
We're Not Gonna Take It  [Twisted Sister]
Who Do You Love?  [George Thorogood & the Destroyers]
Invisible Touch  [Genesis]
Kyrie  [Mr. Mister]
Killiecrankie  [Robert Burns]
Eruption  [Van Halen]
Purple Haze  [Jimi Hendrix]
Twistin' the Night Away  [Sam Cooke]
+ More than a Feeling  [Boston]
+ Higher Place  [Journey]
Anarchy in the U.K.  [The Sex Pistols]
Armageddon It  [Def Leppard]
+ Couple Days Off  [Huey Lewis & the News]
It's In the Way that You Use It  [Eric Clapton]
Dreams  [Van Halen]
Run Down  [Toshihiko Sahashi]
Won't Get Fooled Again  [The Who]
+ To Be Alive Again  [Journey]
+ Dive Into Me  [Big Country]