I have a message from another time... Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT - SYMPHONY OF THE SWORD No. 3 - Third Movement: Valiant Rose Benjamin D. Hutchins with Kris Overstreet (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited High above the parched floor of Muroc Dry Lake in the high desert of California, the Boeing B-29 growled along at cruising speed, its four massive props chewing the cold, dry air. Up in the glazed nose, a slightly built figure in drab Army-green pants and a well-worn brown leather bomber jacket crouched behind the throttles, one hand on the shoulder of the man in the right-hand seat, looking out at the thin desert clouds. That man finished going over a checklist on a clipboard, stuck it in a pocket next to his seat, and then turned to the figure in the bomber jacket and grinned. "Ready?" asked Corwin Ravenhair. Kozue Kaoru nodded firmly. "You bet!" she replied. As she climbed down from the little elevator platform into the small orange craft nestled into the belly of the big silver bomber, Kozue wondered why Corwin thought it was important that she visit this spot in history. She'd heard from Utena about the simulation the two of them had run at the beginning of -her- space training, the year before, and Kozue thought she understood the message in reliving one of Corwin's father's people's first fumbling efforts to reach the stars... but this wasn't a spacecraft she was climbing into. Hell, it wasn't even a particularly sophisticated aircraft. It didn't have a canopy - just a side door, not even attached to the ship, which Corwin was now lowering into position on a couple of chains. Kozue reached for the latching handle to lock it into place as it was snugged up into the doorway to her right, then smiled. Might as well do it right, she thought, and wedged the end of the short length of wooden rod she'd found on the seat into the handle, using the wood as a lever to ram the locking mechanism home. Just as she'd been taught in the pre-simulation training, she strapped herself in, connected the wire from her leather flying helmet to the craft's communications system, flipped her goggles into position, hooked up her oxygen mask and adjusted it over her nose and mouth, then settled back and waited, alone with the drone of the mothership's props. "Ready?" said Corwin's voice in her headset. "Whenever you are," Kozue replied. "OK. Prepare for drop in ten... nine... eight... seven... six... five... four... three... two... one... drop!" There was a CLUNK from above, a slight jolt, and then a peculiar, weightless sensation. Sunlight flooded the little cabin as the tiny orange bullet dropped from under the B-29's shadow into the open air of the high desert. The bomber's drone vanished, leaving Kozue riding along in a whispery silence. There was almost no sensation of movement at all, except for the odd feeling of the silver bomber getting smaller and pulling ahead as her little craft glided behind. "You're away," came Corwin's voice; then, in a tone so familiar she could see the grin on his face, he added, "Go to work!" Kozue let go of the control yoke with her right hand and reached to the instrument panel. It was such a primitive setup compared to what she was used to, the ultramodern control station of the International Police Starship Valiant. It had no multifunction displays, no programmable controls, no electronics worthy of the name. The controls, yoke and pedals, weren't that different from those of the Valiant, but what few status displays there were took the form of simple analog gauges, each indicating a single thing: fuel pressure, altitude, airspeed. There weren't even any throttles, just a row of four toggle switches. It was to these switches Kozue reached; after a moment's pause, she put the fingertips of her right hand under them, firmed up her grip on the yoke with her left hand, and pushed them all simultaneously up. WHAM! The seatback came up to belt her in the back, almost taking the breath out of her, and the stillness of the cabin was torn away by the screeching roar of a four-chamber rocket motor. The B-29 vanished behind her as she pulled gently back on the yoke and sent the X-1 climbing toward the California sky. The date was October 14, 1947, and Kozue Kaoru was on her way to Mach 1. Falling away from the backslapping, the cheers, and the hot desert sun, Kozue came back to herself in an armchair in the quarters of the Valiant's chief engineer. That very engineer, Corwin Ravenhair, was on the edge of his bunk, peeling simsense electrodes from his forehead; Captain Utena Tenjou, who had flown left seat in the B-29, was doing the same at the cabin's small desk, where sat the interface deck that had just switched off at the end of its program. "... Wow," said Kozue, shaking her head slightly to clear out the little bit of transition fog that clouded it. "How was it?" asked Corwin with a slight twinkle in his eye. "Unbelievable," Kozue replied. "But," she added with a faint air of contrition, "I'm not sure I really understand what the point was. I mean, I get the historical significance to your dad's people, right, and I understand how primitive the technology was... but I'm not sure what I was supposed to learn." She smiled and added with a sparkle of her own, "It sure was fun, though." Utena laughed and got up from the desk, coiling up the leads to her electrode set. "That was pretty much the point," she said. "You have a different approach to things than I did, so Corwin thought we should do something different to start you off than he did for me, and I figured, well, why not?" "In your case it wasn't a lesson so much as a test," Corwin added. He got up from his bunk, wound up his own leads and put them on the desk next to the deck. "The X-1 wasn't a forgiving airplane, especially at the transonic threshold. I wanted to see how well you'd handle it." "And?" asked Kozue, arching an eyebrow. "Did I pass?" "You didn't auger it in," said Utena with a grin. Corwin nodded. "Listen, don't let this go to your head, all right, but you know how you keep saying that Miki's the prodigy in your family? I think maybe you just hadn't found the vector for your own genius yet." Kozue blinked, surprised and pleased, a faint blush making its way across the bridge of her nose. "Oh, c'mon. You're just saying that." But the young god shook his head firmly. "Did Zed Cochrane show you the helm logs from our little chase with the Amar?" "Sure. He even gave me a copy," said Kozue, "burned onto one of those little keychain isorods like Utena has." Corwin smiled. "That figures. You know why he did that?" "He said I could get free drinks with it," Kozue replied, grinning, "but I'm not sure what he meant." "It's proof that you did what you did - that warp-speed manual spiral. You know how many helmsmen can do stuff like that? Counting you, four, and two of them are dead. Nobody's ever done it anywhere near that fast, either. The previous record for a warp-speed manual tactical maneuver was Warp Factor 11.92." Corwin pointed a finger in an almost accusatory, vaguely intimidating manner at her chest and continued, his face completely serious, "You are a genuine prodigy." Kozue gave him a skeptical look. "C'mon. What're you buttering me up for? I already told you once, you just have to ask." That had its desired effect, turning Corwin's face a very entertaining shade of red and making him sputter. Utena looked from one to the other, her expression one of bafflement, for a moment, then burst out laughing. "OK," she said, spreading her hands, once she'd gotten herself back under control. She stretched her back, hands behind head, elbows high, and added, "That was more information than -I- needed. I think I'll just go back to the bridge and see what Klaang's up to." "It's not - I wa - she - look'a the BONES!" said Corwin, making a slashing gesture with one hand in mock frustration. He pushed a hand through his jagged black thatch of hair, shook a finger at his pupil in admonishment, and said, "You're incorrigible." Kozue grinned. "I hope so," she told him, and sauntered out of his quarters with a slight, affected swagger in her step. Corwin chuckled, squared away the deck, and then left as well, heading back to his office overlooking the engine room. The Valiant's summer tour was, after the slight initial hitch caused by the attack of the rogue Klingon cruiser Amar, getting off to a good smooth start. One unexpected benefit of the clash with the Klingons was the extra publicity the incident's press coverage had given the tour. The Art of Noise were finding their shows sold out even in odd places like Kane's World, where they were virtual unknowns despite the fact that their drummer, R. Dorothy Wayneright, was a native of sorts, built and raised in New Gotham City. Dorothy was slightly dubious about returning to New Gotham, but the show must go on, so she swallowed her reservations and went. It turned out to be a terrific show, played to a great crowd at a downtown basement nightclub called, in self-conscious reference to New Gotham's most enduring urban legend, the Bat Cave. Ship and band both received warm welcomes (and more press) at each stop on the tour. Everything was going very well - so well it was starting to make some of the ship's company a bit nervous. Not the captain, though; buoyed by her crew's success in their first engagement, she looked forward to a safe and productive journey, commanding her ship with a smooth imperturbability that gave the rest of the crew and passengers a boost to their own confidence. Everything, it seemed, was running according to plan. INTERNATIONAL POLICE SPACE FORCE INTERNAL COMMUNICATION FROM: CPT Utena Tenjou IPSFR cmdg. IPS Valiant NX-06041 TO: FCPT Benjamin D. Hutchins IPSF cmdg. IPS Challenger NX-04462 DATE: Wednesday, June 28, 2406 SUBJECT: Status update Dear Dad - As usual (knock on wood), everything's going great. The only complaints this week are from Zed Cochrane and his team - they've got nothing to do. The ship isn't obliging them by breaking down the way new ships are supposed to. Cochrane says he blames Corwin, but Corwin swears he hasn't cheated and done anything a normal human engineer wouldn't do. Corwin's birthday party went off just as planned - Kozue had managed to convince him that we'd all just completely forgotten about his birthday until after their stellar cartography session. It was a blast, you should've been there - after the party we spent the afternoon playing boarding drills with ten-man teams, each side with a telepath coordinator. We had to make a house rule that Amanda and Rina couldn't be on Devlin's team, though, because the three of them working together didn't need the other seven and it was just a complete slaughter. It's a little creepy sometimes, the way those three interact (especially since, with Devlin still in school and Amanda stationed at B6, they don't get to spend all that much time together), but they seem really happy. Next stop, Jyurai, where the Rune Knights, Nall, the Utonium sisters and Achika will catch a transport back to New Avalon and we'll leave Devlin back at the Psi Academy. Making this leg of the trip with the Lorica has been interesting - we've run a couple of cloaked-ship games and come out more or less even. Those Romulans Amanda has working for her are -good-, but their helmsman just about worships Kozue after hearing about the trick she pulled on the Klingons during our scrap with the Amar, so it all evens out. :) Her training's going well - she has to work at the bookish parts, like the navigation and procedural things, but the actual flying is just unconscious, and she's coming along really well at crisis management. Corwin figures she'll be ready to stand the exam right around the second or third week in August, maybe while we're doing our four-day mini-tour of Bodacious Vee. Like the song says, that's all I can think of but I'm sure there's something else. Oh well - if I think of it I'll file an amendment. Love from the whole gang, and Kate says to remind you that she's expecting you to show up for the Tomodachi show next Tuesday. Oh, check that - Klaang says he's sorry but he doesn't love you, only harbors a deep and profound respect for you. Zed Cochrane, on the other hand, says his love for you goes without saying, which, to be honest, is exactly the way I'd rather he left it. Anyway, take it easy. I'm closing this file before anybody else does anything weird. - UT END OF TRANSMISSION The recipient of this message, better known to friends and enemies as Gryphon, chuckled and dropped the report into the appropriate folder, then sat back, put his feet up on his desk, and scanned his surroundings for signs of any more creeping work. He didn't see any, but just to be certain he thumbed the intercom panel in the corner of the desk. "Ruri?" "Yes." "Have I got any more work to do?" "Not right now." "Oh. None at all?" "No." "Wow. Well, OK, then. I guess I'll be playing 'JC Denton Illuminates the Romulan Empire' again if anybody needs me." Just before he switched the intercom off, Gryphon was forestalled by Ruri's voice saying, "Sir... " The IPO chief blinked. Ruri almost never called him 'sir'. "Yes?" he said. "Since you have a moment, there's something I'd like to talk to you about." "Uh... sure. C'mon in." The channel clicked shut. Gryphon sat up, putting his feet back on the floor, and looked mildly puzzled and mildly concerned as the door to his office from the bridge opened and his diminuitive yeoman entered. Instead of looking bored, as Ruri Hoshino normally did, she looked slightly troubled about something. "What's on your mind?" asked Gryphon as the door swished shut behind her. Rather than replying directly, Ruri stood looking at him for a moment, then said softly, "I've been with you for a long time now, haven't I?" Gryphon nodded. "Fifteen years. Ever since I first started putting together the IPO." "Have I ever given you any reason to be dissatisfied with my performance?" "No, not at all," said Gryphon, surprised. "You've been indispensible. I couldn't have made the Organization work without you." He looked worried. "Did I give you that impression? I'm sorry if I did - I've tried to - " Ruri shook her head. "No. I was just making sure... " She paused, seeming for once to be at a loss for words rather than just lacking interest in saying anything, then took a breath and said, "Captain Tachibana has offered me the helmsman's job on Steamrunner." "Oh," said Gryphon. "What'd you tell her?" "I haven't told her anything yet, except that I wanted to speak to you about it first." "Oh. Well, is it something you're interested in doing?" "Yes," Ruri replied, "it is... but... there's my work here to consider. If you don't want me to go, then I'll stay here." Gryphon thought about that for a moment, then said, "If you want to take Maria's offer, then I think you should. Fifteen years is a long time to do the same job, and if you think you're ready to move on, then I won't stop you - on one condition," he added, raising a finger. "What's that?" asked Ruri, raising an eyebrow slightly. "Before you go," said Gryphon with a grin, "you have to find someone who can replace you. I can't get anything done around here without -someone- to think for me." "Actually," said Ruri, "I've got someone in mind already. She's green - just out of the Academy - but I think I can train her." The little Lensman's mouth quirked into a very slight, sardonic smile as she added, "She's certainly a hard enough worker... " Gryphon nodded. "As you see fit - you've always had a free hand, that's certainly not going to stop now." He smiled. "And I think Maria's made a good choice." A trace of color came into Ruri's cheeks; she glanced at the floor. "Thank you, sir," she said. "I'll... I'll just go and get started on the paperwork for my replacement, then." Gryphon nodded again, briskly this time, and said, "Carry on. Oh - and while you're at it, draw yourself up a promotion to lieutenant commander for my signature." He winked. "Can't have a junior officer at the helm of one of our new ships, can we?" "I don't see why not," replied Ruri mock-grumpily as she left. "Valiant's helmsman is a -civilian-... " Gryphon watched the door shut behind her, shook his head with a fond chuckle, and keyed on his dataterm again. It'd be weird not having her around after all this time... The morning - well, early afternoon, really - after the resoundingly successful New Japan show (performed before the Art's biggest crowd ever, 10,000 people packed into the Romanova Memorial Amphitheatre on the campus of the Stingray Institute), Imra Ardeen entered the Valiant's lunchroom to find Wakaba Shinohara sitting with her feet up on one of the tables, munching on nachos and reading a brightly colored magazine. She looked up as the blonde telepath entered, grinned, and put her feet and the front legs of her chair back on the floor. "Morning, Imra," she said. "Just getting up?" Imra nodded with a sheepish grin. "I -did- get to bed at 3:30," she replied. "Quite a party after the show, huh? Saionji dragged his butt to bed around the same time. He said I'd missed a good time, but I was so tired from all that sparring, I just wanted to sleep. I don't know where Kaitlyn gets her energy." Imra got herself a drink and a zap-pack from the automat - the captain might be willing to cook the ship's company's meals, but only at regular times, and the AEGIS op had missed lunch - then sat down opposite Wakaba to eat it. "It certainly was a good time," she replied, "and as for Kate's energy, I'm sure I don't know," she added with a smile. "I could speculate, but... " She looked curiously at the magazine Wakaba had put down next to her tray. "What are you reading?" "Comic book," Wakaba replied, holding the magazine up and turning it so Imra could see the cover. It was one of the products of the Bacon Comics Group, part of BaconMedia, the multimedia corporation run by longtime Wedge Defense Force morale officer and present Babylon Station commander Derek Bacon. The flag proudly declared it to be issue 298 of "TOP THRILLS COMICS featuring THE SCARLET SENTINEL and ARSENAL". The illustration below featured a rather stocky man in a double-breasted red cavalry jacket with a stylized metallic 's' logo on the flap, black pants, a red-lined black cloak, and a black domino mask. On his left hand, what appeared to be a ring was emitting a beam of red energy which was forming a plasma-shield-like barrier in front of him, deflecting a disruptor beam being directed at him by an angry-looking Cardassian soldier. An explosion graphic in the corner informed the reader that this issue was part four of "The Cardassian Caper!" "The... Scarlet Sentinel," said Imra, who had never had much time in her busy, academically meteoric life for comics. "Yeah," said Wakaba, nodding. "And Arsenal. She's really cool, but she's not in this one - she got captured by the Cardies last issue and this one's all the Sentinel trying to find her. I think they're building up to something really big for issue 300 in a couple of months. Derek better not kill her off - if he does, I'm going to get Utena to drop me off at B6 so I can personally kick his butt. I don't think he will, though. I think maybe he's building up to having SS finally admit he's interested in her as more than just a sidekick," she added with a sly wag of her eyebrows. "After all, she's all grown up now... " "Captain Bacon writes this book himself?" "Yup. It's the only BC title he still writes personally. That's why it's so good," said Wakaba, perusing the last few pages of the comic again. "Well, that and because the art's awesome. Moyer's a -god-." Imra took another look at the cover. "The Scarlet Sentinel looks... familiar," she said. "He should," Wakaba replied with a grin. "He's the Chief." Imra blinked, looked more closely, then laughed. "Well, I'll be - he -is- the Chief! What in... " Wakaba's grin widened a little. "The way Derek tells it, a long time ago - back during the days of the original WDF - someone asked Gryphon what he'd like to be if he wasn't a Wedge Defender, and he told them he wanted to be a superhero. Derek was just starting his media company back then, and he ran with it. This is the new version, started up after Gryphon was cleared and Derek relaunched BaconMedia. The original ones are almost impossible to find - a lot of people destroyed them after Sonset, and the rest are being hoarded by collectors." "I didn't know you were interested in comic books," said Imra. "Hey, I had to have -something- to do that first term I was in Midgard. Sitting around Saionji's room all day just didn't do it for me. I don't know how he kept from going crazy when he was staying in -my- room with nothing to do all day." She paused, eyes widening, put a fingertip to her lips, then said, "Oh wait... he didn't. Never mind!" The two girls giggled for a moment over Wakaba's joke; then Imra thumbed through the comic and asked, "How many of these do you have?" "Of Top Thrills? Individual issues back to 251 and the trade paperbacks all the way to the beginning. It's my favorite book. Why, you want to borrow them?" "I think I might," said Imra, nodding, "if you don't mind." "Not at all," said Wakaba, grinning. "Always happy to spread the Scarlet Word. 'I challenge all things dark and fell, I'm Evil's bane and Crime's death-knell. I fight for Truth and Right as well: I am the Scarlet Sentinel!'" She giggled. "Hey, if you like them, write Derek a letter. Maybe he'll make you a character too. You could be Cissie's new rival. 'Make Way for Saturn Girl!'" Imra rolled her eyes. "Don't be a weirdo, Wakaba." Early July found the Valiant beginning her great sweep through the Rigel sector, hitting various and sundry of the old United Galactica's core systems on their way to the new seat of galactic power, the Centauri sector and Earth. In the early afternoon of the month's first Wednesday, while the ship orbited New Caledonia, Janice Barlow put her head into the chief engineer's office to notify him of a minor glitch in the target projection system of the ship's semi-holographic shooting range. Corwin was sitting at his desk with one foot against the edge of the desktop, a large sketch pad propped up on his knee. He had a black Sharpie marker in his left hand and a look of deep concentration on his face. On the desk in front of him, a glowing green gemstone about the size of a hockey puck hovered above a repulsor pad, humming with a quiet, musical tone and giving everything in the small, cluttered office a faint emerald tint. "Working on something?" asked Janice. Corwin blinked, look up, and smiled, faintly distractedly. "Oh, hi, Janice. C'mon in. I'm just fooling around with a possible use for this stuff," he said, aiming a thumb at the green gem. "Pretty," she said, crossing the threshold. "What is it?" "It's called gaolith," Corwin replied. "It's a mystic gemstone, occurs naturally in a place called Cephiro. I was fooling around with this piece - " (here Corwin flicked a finger against the gem, making it spin in the levi-field and hum at a different, higher pitch) " - when I realized that I'd seen the energy it emits before." Janice sat down on the corner of his desk. "Oh yeah? Where?" "Your weapon, among other places." "I thought the color looked familiar," said the redheaded security officer, nodding. "It's producing Photon rays?" "Mm. 'Course, you Ragolians are the only ones that call it that," he added, grinning. "Everywhere else in the galaxy, it goes by a different name." "Getter rays," said Janice, nodding. "I know. I dunno why the early colonists called it 'Photon'. Ever since then their descendents have been wishing they hadn't, but what can you do." She came into the office and looked a little more closely at the gem. "So this thing naturally produces Getter rays?" "Mm-hmm, and lots of them. The bigger the crystal, the bigger the output. I'm still trying to figure the scale - it's not linear - but there's a definite relationship." "Hmm." Janice tapped her chin thoughtfully. "I'm not a Photon scientist, mind you, I just use the stuff, but one of the things you learn early on Ragol is that there's an upper limit to Photon tech's usefulness. Make a Photon cell much bigger than the ones that power our heavy hand weapons, or a Photon collector much bigger than one that can charge those cells, and you're buying a heap of trouble. The first generation of colonists, when they discovered how rich Ragol's magnetisphere is in Photon rays, built a collector big enough to power the capital city and more besides. They thought they'd found an unlimited supply of free energy." Corwin nodded. "And instead they blew a crater the size of Avalon County in the northern hemisphere and mutated all the indigenous lifeforms into vicious monsters. I read about that last night while I was researching Getter technology. Anyway," he added, pinging the gaolith crystal again, "if my calculations are right, G-stone doesn't have that limitation. It's stable however big the generator crystal is, as long as you make sure you get one without critical flaws. Powering a city with it isn't really practical, I don't think, but you could run a good-sized battle mecha with it." Janice leaned over and looked at the sketches he'd drawn on the notepad. "'Getter Robo', huh?" "Just a concept that came to me in the shower this morning," said Corwin offhandedly. He capped the marker and tossed it and the pad on his desk. "It's totally impractical, though. Probably never get built. Still, the power calculations are interesting, and I'll probably be able to turn it to some more practical purpose in the long run. Anyway, did you need something?" "Oh, I just wanted to let you know that one of the projector heads in the target range is a little glitchy. Probably just needs a new red element." "Oh. OK, I'll check it out." Corwin got up, took the G-stone out of the levi-field, and pocketed it. "Awright. Take it easy," said Janice, and she moved off down the corridor with her faithful Mag floating along behind. Corwin got halfway to the target range before being intercepted by Wakaba Shinohara, who wanted to know if he felt like heading dirtside with a group of the others for some sightseeing. He said sure, if they could wait until he'd dealt with the holoemitter, and with that minor job taken care of, they headed down. Not for the first time, he thanked his father and the others who had developed the Defiant class for blessing him with such a well-behaved charge. FRIDAY, JULY 21, 2406 CENTAURI SECTOR, EARTH ALLIANCE UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS Anthy Tenjou pushed her chair back from her desk, rubbed her eyes, and forced herself to admit that she was becoming a little bit worried. Her studies for the placement test she would have to take at summer's end - the all-important test which determined whether she would place into the Class of 2407 at the Deedlit Satori Mandeville Memorial Institute or, failing that, disrupt the lives of her husband and many of their friends - were going slowly and arduously but, on the whole, well. She had no cause for dissatisfaction. Oh, the work was hard, no doubt about that. She had never had any cause to take her education seriously in her previous life, and so was starting basically from nothing and attempting to qualify for the senior class at one of the galaxy's best secondary schools, not a trivial task by any stretch of the imagination. She had a lot of friends to help her if she needed it, though, and with the expert tutelage of Miki Kaoru and the loving support of the rest of the Institute Duelists and their closest friends, Anthy was confident that she could pass and all would be well... ... but nevertheless, she was becoming a little bit worried. For it seemed that every time she sat down to do some serious studying, which was almost every day and usually more than once per day, she developed a headache. Early on they'd been mild, more annoying than anything else, but lately they'd been growing worse, and now the pain behind her eyes was downright fierce. Anthy was accustomed to discomfort, having endured much more than her fair share of it in her life, but there were limits - not to how much she could stand, but to how long she would endure before wondering if there might be something seriously wrong. At first she'd attributed them to stress. It was a lot of information for her brain to absorb, after all, and hers was a brain unaccustomed to absorbing much of anything, thanks to the sort of life she had been leading up until this spring. As the summer went on, though, she grew less and less convinced of that theory's rightness. They seemed too consistent for that, and though challenging, the studying wasn't necessarily stressful. If not that, though - what? Sighing, she got up, absently picking up the book she was reading and putting a finger in it to save her place. She left the captain's cabin and went up the main corridor, around the bridge and to the stateroom of Kaitlyn Hutchins. It was evening cycle on the Valiant, nominal offtime for most of the crew, but with their entry into the Earth Alliance, Corwin Ravenhair was staying below to keep an eye on his engines and Utena was still on the bridge, making certain their IPO entry clearances and orbit arrangements for Earth were taken care of double-sure. The door slid open when Anthy pressed the call button - Kate had it set to open in lieu of chiming. Kate was sitting on her bunk with her black Stratocaster guitar slung on, noodling about with a bit of a Bo Diddley beat; she looked up, mildly surprised that her visitor was Anthy and not, as she had guessed, Juri. "E-evening, Anthy," she said; then she took the guitar off, put it down on her bunk, and cocked her head thoughtfully. "Y-you d-don't look so g-good." Anthy smiled wanly. "Does it show that much? I have a headache," she said. "Quite a bad one tonight." Kate frowned sympathetically, got up, and headed for the door to her cabin's small bathroom. "D-do you w-want something f-for it? I've g-got T-Tylenol, I think... " "That would be nice," said Anthy, nodding. "I think we've run out... but mainly I came to get away from studying for a while." Kate leaned back out of the bathroom, gestured to the book Anthy was holding, and said with a smile, "That m-might've worked b-b-better if you hadn't b-brought it w-with you." Anthy looked at the book, only now realizing she was holding it, and tsk'd at herself. "It might, mightn't it," she agreed. She went to Kate's desk, found a sheet of scrap paper, marked her place and put the book aside. Kate came out of her bathroom again, two red and white capsules in hand, and fetched her guest a bottle of water from the little refrigerator built into the corner of the room. "Th-there you go," she said, handing the objects over. "I kn-know a f-f-few acup-practic tech-ch-techniques, too, if you w-w-want. P-part of my K-Katsujinkenr-r-ryuu t-training." "Well... if you don't mind," Anthy agreed. She swallowed the Tylenol with a gulp of water and added, "I don't want to interrupt whatever you were doing." "I was j-just f-f-fooling around with an old G-George Thorog-good song," Kate replied with a dismissive gesture. "B-but old Three-k-k-Chord G-G-George isn't exactly ch-challenging to c-cover." Kate ushered Anthy to a sitting position at the end of the bunk, climbed up into seiza behind her, cracked her knuckles, and set to work. "We'll j-j-just th-throw in a little of this w-while we w-w-wait for the T-Tylenol to k-k-kick in," she said. "Mmm," replied Anthy, closing her eyes. "That's marvelous. Thank you. I feel better already." "Any id-d-dea what b-rought it on?" Kate wondered as she worked, her fingers plying Anthy's temples as the balls of her thumbs pressed against the back of the darker girl's head. "No, not really," Anthy replied. "They seem to come on whenever I'm studying... and they've been getting worse as the summer's gone on. I haven't wanted to worry Utena, but... I'm starting to get a little worried myself." "M-maybe you should see D-Doctor Phlox," Kate suggested. "Well... I've thought about it... but as I said, I don't want to worry Utena, and... well, she's the captain. Surely if I went to Phlox he'd have to report it to her." "Hmmmm," said Kate thoughtfully. "W-when you're s-s-studying... " Kaitlyn went on working until Anthy had nearly fallen asleep, then asked, "How's th-that?" "Wonderful," Anthy replied. "It's completely gone. Thank you." "I d-don't know how much c-c-credit I can c-claim," Kate replied with a smile, "b-but you're w-welcome." Anthy regarded her history book, sitting on Kate's desk, and sighed. "I suppose I should get back to work." "You c-can s-s-stay here if you l-like," Kate offered. "Juri's p-playing chess w-w-with Imra ton-night." Anthy arched an eyebrow. "Chess with a telepath?" "She s-swears she d-d-doesn't ch-cheat," Kate said. "Anyway, J-Juri sees it as a ch-challenge." Anthy chuckled. "She would," she observed. "All right... thank you. I -was- getting a bit lonely just reading by myself." "No p-problem," said Kate. She moved her guitar out of the way, sat back against her pillows, and propped her musical notebook on her knees, but she didn't start writing in it right away; instead she watched quietly as Anthy sat at the desk, opened her history text and went back to reading. She had a good view of the darker girl's profile from that vantage point, and what she saw confirmed her suspicions. "Mm-hmm," she said. "Pardon?" said Anthy, looking up. Kate got up from her bed, crossed to the desk, and said, "I thought your d-description sounded f-f-f-familiar." Then she removed her large round spectacles and said, "T-try these." Anthy looked at her, puzzled. "I never needed my glasses," she said. "They were just - " Kate nodded. "I kn-know, but t-t-try them anyway. H-humor me." Looking dubious, Anthy took the glasses and regarded them for a moment. Then she shrugged inwardly - what the hell, it wasn't as though -Kaitlyn- were attempting to symbolically declare some sort of dominance over her - put them on, and went back to reading. She was immediately struck by how much clearer the type was. She'd never really noticed it before, but now, if she pulled the lenses down her nose a bit and looked over them at the page, everything was all... fuzzy. She had to squint a little to read the text, causing that familiar thread of pain to whisper into existence across her forehead, the faint beginnings of that tension behind her eyes. But push them up again, look through them - gone. All of it gone, and the page... well, it still wasn't quite perfect, but it was certainly much more readable. She took the glasses off again and regarded their owner with astonishment. "Kaitlyn," she said, "are you trying to tell me... " Kate nodded, unable to quite keep a smile off her face. A sort of horrified amusement creeping onto her face and mixing with the astonishment, Anthy went on with a slight tremor in her voice, "... that I actually -need-... " Kate nodded again, a faint quiver beginning in her shoulders. "... GLASSES?!" concluded Anthy, and with the last syllable she exploded into laughter, taking Kaitlyn right along with her. The two girls laughed until they wept, shattered by the cosmic irony of it all. When they'd recovered and dried their eyes, Kate said with a wry grin, "M-maybe it's t-time to see D-Doctor Phlox after all?" Utena Tenjou, Captain, IPO Space Force Reserve, sat in her center seat on the bridge of the Valiant and looked over the checklist one more time. Everything seemed to be in order. It had seemed to be in order three hours ago when she'd started checking it all for the third time, and it was in order now. She was almost convinced by now that it wouldn't somehow drift out of order while she wasn't looking if she went to bed. At the science station, where he'd remained despite lacking much to do out of sheer solidarity with his commander, Sub-Commander Klaang tai-Kalaan smiled slightly to himself. The vestai-Tenjou had good reason to be nervous about tomorrow's destination; after all, when she'd last left the planet Earth, it had been with a goodly part of the Earth Alliance's law enforcement community on her tail, and there was no doubt that the people she'd crossed to earn that farewell remembered her. Still, she was an International Police officer and a starship commander, and for all its snap and bluster back in the late spring of 2405, the Earth Alliance was a signatory to the International Police Accord. That meant they were obligated by international law to extend visiting IPO personnel every courtesy, and that meant that if Utena wanted to park her ship in Earth orbit and put down part of her crew for shore leave, then that was precisely what Earth would let her do. In fact, there seemed to be no hard feelings; the Earthdome representatives with whom the Valiant's crew had worked to make all the arrangements for their brief visit to Toronto had been quite pleasant about the whole thing. That made Utena a little nervous too, which Klaang noted as another indication that the vestai-Tenjou was a warrior wise beyond her years. She wasn't taking anything for granted going in there, even though the stop -was- the one she was looking forward to most on all the tour. "If the one may make a suggestion, joH'wI'," rumbled Klaang quietly. Utena blinked, looked up from her workpad display, and said, "Yes, Klaang?" "We will reach the Solar system at roughly noon New Avalon time," the Klingon scientist pointed out. "That is nearly twelve hours from now. There is plenty of time for you to get a good night's sleep -and- re-check everything one more time after breakfast." Utena grinned, then yawned and stretched one hand above her head until the knot between her shoulder blades popped most satisfactorily. "So go the hell to bed, is what you're saying, basically," she said. Klaang nodded equably. "In essence, yes," he replied. "Good idea." She turned to her lefthand command panel and pressed a control on it, declaring, "Valiant command systems on night-shift automatic." Then she rose, stretched again, and headed for the portside corridor door before pausing and asking, "Are you staying here?" "For a while yet," Klaang replied. "Good night, Captain." "Night, Klaang." Smiling at the idea of being mothered by a three-hundred-fifty- pound Klingon master-at-arms, Utena turned left out of the bridge and walked the four steps to the door of the captain's cabin, the most convenient to the bridge on the entire ship. The room was empty, which wasn't all that odd - hers was a close-knit crew, and people visited each other's quarters all the time. She could have tabbed the intercom panel and done a transponder search - everybody on board wore a little tag built into their ship's insignia pin that told the computer where aboard the ship they were - but instead she decided to try guessing where Anthy was. Her first guess, the lunchroom, was wrong - there she found only Juri Arisugawa and Imra Ardeen, engrossed in a game of chess, and Sergei the tiger asleep at Juri's feet. Utena, who wasn't very good at chess, couldn't tell from looking at the board who was winning, and neither player seemed inclined to notice her presence, so she went back out again without bothering them and tried her second guess. The door to Kaitlyn's stateroom opened at once, revealing mostly darkness. Kate could just be seen, curled up asleep in her bed; the only light came from the little desk lamp, which fell on Anthy's history book. Hearing the door hiss open, Anthy turned. The desk lamp's light glittered on... ... the lenses of her glasses. Not her old, big, clunky, aviator-framed glasses from days gone by - these were slim oblongs with silver rims, much more modern and sleek. They fitted her face a great deal better, altering her appearance much less. In fact, rather than detracting from her looks the way the old ones had, these actually accented the lines of her face a little - but still... Utena stopped in the doorway and blinked. "Er," she said softly. Anthy gave her a puzzled look. "What?" A number of explanations passed through Utena's mind; since she was tired, most of them were at least slightly alarming and all of them were wrong. "What happened?" Utena whispered intently, trying not to wake Kate. Anthy looked more puzzled still. "What?" she repeated; then it dawned on her what was happening and she laughed lightly, reaching up and removing her glasses. "Would you believe I'm farsighted?" she asked softly. Utena blinked again, then snickered, putting her hand across her mouth. Anthy put her spectacles back on, got up, closed her book, turned off the desk lamp, and went out into the hall, gently herding Utena out before her; before the door closed behind her, she reached back inside and switched it back to chime-for-entry mode. Utena was still giggling when they reached the captain's cabin. When the door closed behind them, she burst out laughing, then said, "You're -joking-!" Anthy shook her head, smiling wryly. "I'm afraid not," she said. "Kaitlyn realized it was the reason I've been having headaches while studying." "You have? You didn't mention - " "I know, I didn't want to bother you. I didn't think they were anything significant - and I was right. It was just that... well, after all that, I -do- need glasses after all." "So you had Doctor Phlox make you a set?" Anthy nodded. "He said there are other treatments available, but I really only need them for reading. Kaitlyn's prescription and mine are almost the same." "But Kate wears her glasses all the time." "It's easier than putting them on and taking them off all the time. And it's a bit of an affectation," said Anthy. "Before long she probably won't need them at all. Her father doesn't; his are blank, like my old ones were. He only wears them because he doesn't think he looks right without them." "Really? I never knew that," said Utena, impressed. "Where do you learn these things?" "It's amazing what comes up in conversation while you're waiting for glasses to be made," Anthy replied calmly. "You must be tired," she went on, veering away from the subject. "How many times did you re-check our documents?" "Three," Utena replied. She went into the bathroom, brushed her teeth, and changed for bed; then Anthy took her turn, and as they put out the lights and got into the captain's double-wide bunk together, Utena observed wryly, "I had -just- gotten used to you -without- your glasses... " "Perhaps I'll only wear them for reading," Anthy replied. "They do look a lot better than your old ones, though," Utena went on thoughtfully. "Well," said Anthy without audible irony, "when you decide on a preference, please let me know." "Oh, quiet, you." "As you wish, Lady Utena." "... I can't win this one, can I?" "No." A soft chuckle. "I didn't think so. Good night, love. I'm glad you're not having headaches any more." "As am I, believe me. Good night... " The concert at Sneaky Dee's was like a homecoming. The Art of Noise had only played there twice before, but they had been big, powerful, defining shows that helped to shape the band into what they now were, even though two of their current lineup hadn't been part of the group the last time they'd come. It was also a reunion, because almost everyone turned up for it, friends they hadn't seen in over a year, in some cases longer. Joe Graf and his band, the Crush of Love, were all present. Though the older, more established group, they'd insisted on being the opening act; after all, as Joe pointed out, the Crush had never gone on a galactic tour. Amanda Dessler, Crown Princess of the Gamilon Empire and former Art of Noise rhythm guitarist, her bodyguard Rina Dragonaar, and her fiance, former Art drummer Devlin Carter, all appeared, making their second rendezvous with the Valiant Tour that summer. And of course Dimitrios Arbuthnot ran the place, so he was there behind the bar, just where he belonged. Even Roy Chernow, the Maple Leafs fan who had taken it upon himself to explain the game of ice hockey to Utena and Saionji one spring day in 2405, turned up, much to their surprise and pleasure. Kozue Kaoru and Mia Ausa were off to one side of the bar during the first break, leaning against one of the tall tables meant for standing patrons and chatting with Imra Ardeen about how well the show was going and what a great room the band had to work tonight, when a tallish man with long blue hair in a ponytail and a Network 23 shirt made his way through the crowd to their table. "Dad!" said Mia, delightedly embracing her father. "Are you here covering the show?" "Nah," replied John Trussell offhandedly. "No camera, see?" he added, holding up his empty hands. "I took the day off. Just came over to see the show - and you, of course." "Well, I'm glad you did," said Mia, smiling. Then, looking at Kozue and Imra, she said, "I don't think you've met, have you? This is my father, John Trussell. Dad, this is Kozue Kaoru, Miki's sister, and Imra Ardeen, our AEGIS agent." Imra smiled - as if anyone had to tell her who John Trussell was! - and offered a gloved hand. This wasn't something she'd have been inclined to do two months ago, but life as a member of the Valiant's crew, with her crewmates' tendency to accept her as a telepath the same offhanded way they accepted that, say, their captain happened to have pink hair, had softened her reserve. Only after offering the hand did she realize that the reporter might not be too keen on shaking hands with a P12-rated AEGIS operative. Truss didn't bat an eye, though, and his smile was warm as he shook her hand and said he was glad to meet her. "Hold on a minute," said a voice from the crowd behind Truss, and then a redheaded young woman in jeans and a red t-shirt elbowed her way through. She looked Kozue up and down and said, "-You're- Kozue Kaoru?" Kozue blinked. "Yeah, that's right. And you are?" "Oh, Jung, you're here too?" said Mia. "'Course I am," replied the redhead. "You don't think I'd let your father fly -himself- from B6 to Earth, do you? He might get lost and end up in the Romulan Neutral Zone or something." "Thanks for the vote of confidence," said Truss dryly. "This is Jung Freud, my pilot." "Uh... huh," said Kozue skeptically. "Yeah, I get that a lot," replied Jung unconcernedly. "Are you the same Kozue Kaoru who's helmsman on the Valiant?" "Most of the time." Jung grinned. "Then I want to buy you a drink. What're you having?" "Zed told you this would happen," said Mia with a smile. "Uh, just water," Kozue replied. "Got to stay ready in case anything goes down, you know." "Bah," said Jung as the two of them made their way toward the bar. "I always find that things go smoother with a little lubrication. Anyway, nothing's going to happen. Trust me, I work for a news agency, and this planet's deader than my Great-Aunt Harriet tonight. Why do you think they let Bluehair take the day off?" Gonzalo Salvador y Bautisto Krupp, also known as Carlos II, Emperor of Argentina, Protector of Uruguay and Lord of the Patagonias, watched the little viewscreen on his desk and fretted. Here in his little office - not the huge, imposing one built for state affairs and public speeches - he had run the military state that his uncle, Emperor Carlos I, had founded in the aftermath of World War IV a century and a half ago. The nation had been his for nearly a century, and the youthful vigor he'd retained when crowned had faded into what was politely called 'distinguished' old age. He would turn one hundred fifty-six in October; he could hear the Reaper's tread behind him, time slowly catching up with him. And he hadn't conquered the world yet. He didn't particularly -want- the entire world; just all of South America and maybe a bit of the Central American isthmus as well, and maybe the Caribbean Islands as loose change. Unfortunately, in order to get those he'd have to go over Earthdome's collective dead body, and if you're going to have to take the entire planet anyway, why not keep it? He'd thought he'd had a chance, back in 2388, when the War of Corporate Occupation came to Earth and the GENOM forces occupied the planet. Argentina had been able to secure its own borders and airspace and, had the war gone on another month, it would have been able to add Paraguay, Bolivia and maybe the rump of Chile to its territory. Unfortunately, GENOM had thrown in the towel, the Federation had sent in peacekeepers, and the Argentine Empire ended up with nothing. So he'd built, and he'd trained, and he'd planned, waiting for the time when the small, elite Argentine armed forces could overwhelm the various Earth government forces in one swift, stunning campaign. Through the 2390s it had seemed to be working. Then, little by little, the interplanetary Earth Alliance had matched and then outstripped his own military buildup. It had built a starfleet substantial enough to make the Empire's secret space navy trivial. It had forced him to look for even more deadly technology to offset the now-insuperable gulf between Earthforce and the Imperial Army. And that had brought in the weapons inspectors. Carlos and his ministers had led the Federation inspectors a merry dance, insuring they saw only what Carlos wanted seen... and then the IPO agents had joined the teams, and the dance became even more difficult. The last steps were playing out on his viewscreen now, as one particularly annoying IPO agent was demanding entrance to the base where the Empire had stored its greatest, most potent - and most illegal - military equipment. For the moment, the agent was stalled by red tape... but the delays could only work for so long. What was worse, the agent already knew what was in the base's armories. Why else would one of the IPO's precious few warships come to Earth? Oh, the pretty fairy-story of a rock band on galactic tour didn't fool Carlos for one moment; once the agent had proof, the IPO's troopers would come in and take Carlos off to face trial for violations of the Babel weapons accords. Carlos' choices were coming down to three, and only three. He could let the IPO agent in and try to fight conviction in the Federation courts. (Ha.) He could destroy the offending weapons and give up any hope of conquering the Earth, or even South America, while he lived. (Ha, ha.) The only other option was to strike - attempt to take out Earthdome with a surprise blow, as per the many war plans he and his generals had crafted. They were not ready. The Imperial Space Navy was hidden at a base on the asteroid Chiron: an antiquated force of rebuilt pirate ships and obsolete war-surplus starships. Only one of the Empire's ten divisions was armored with the power suits which the plans relied on for victory; the others were either in off-the-shelf armor or had no armor at all. The twelve squadrons of aerospace fighters the Empire had were, put kindly, substandard; aging Rapiers, early-model Dragonflies surpassed by their current kin, and a single squadron of outdated Valkyries, scavenged at excessive cost from various places. Nor could they count on allies. Carlos had some offworld support, but they refused to do anything that would reveal their existence or identity. Those few Federation members with diplomatic ties to Argentina - such as the Freespacers, who kept an ambassador in Buenos Aires to thumb their nose at Earthdome - would never support an agressive war. As for the other two nations on Earth not part of the Alliance, Texas was too isolationist to want to take up arms against Earthdome, and Zanzibar had no military to speak of - just a single customs cutter in orbit and a small guard for the Prince and his family. In short, if Argentina attacked it would be alone and at a serious disadvantage... but if it didn't, Carlos' dreams of ruling Earth would be forever thwarted. Put in that light, the decision wasn't hard to make. Carlos switched his desk comm from the security-camera view of the weapons inspectors to the desk of his senior general. "Quevada," he said quietly, "I want Case Zulu underway within the hour. Our strike forces must hit Geneva at dawn." General Quevada looked faintly puzzled, but agreeable to the idea. "And the IPO agent?" "Kill him." Quevada, having gained his position by loyalty more than through any other qualification, made no protest at this sudden decision. "As my Emperor commands," he said, and cut the channel. Carlos II, Emperor of Argentina, watched the murder of the International Police man on his viewscreen, then leaned back in his worn, comfortable chair and sighed, feeling every day of his many years. All I wanted, he thought, was beachfront property in Acapulco. Was that so much to ask? A telephone rang, shrilly, insistently. It sliced through the fabric of its owner's dreams, rending them and casting them aside. A few seconds before she would have been given the Carter Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, Nanami Jinnai awoke - very, very grudgingly. For a few seconds, she didn't know where she was; her tiny apartment in the Montparnasse district of Paris was still unfamiliar to her. She'd only been working out of ISN's headquarters bureau for a little less than a month. Instinctively, she reached for the phone where it had been in her place in Kobe, but of course it wasn't there; the Paris apartment wasn't modern enough to have a bed with a builtin comm panel. Groaning, she squinted at the readout of her bedside clock and saw that it was - Christ! - four-thirty in the morning. Now awake enough to exercise simple motor skills, Nanami finished rolling over, reached past the clock, and picked up the phone. "Nani?" she asked it peevishly, then remembered again that she wasn't in Japan any more and changed it to, "Qu'est-ce que c'est?" "Ten rings, Jinnai, where the hell've you been?" came the gravelly response. "I was asleep, Meredith, what the hell?" Nanami replied. "I was out until 3:45 covering that comparative religion conference. Did you know the Kampiizi only perform their most important ceremonies after midnight? Neither did I." Producer Meredith Wayne was unsympathetic, as always. "Yeah, well, life's tough at the bottom," she said sardonically. "Get out of the sack and go down to Federation Plaza. Something big going down. Marcelin will meet you at the Metro and brief you on the way." Nanami blinked, all thought of protesting this shabby treatment from the assignment desk erased by the name of the place to which she was being sent. Federation Plaza! If something was going on at Federation Plaza at 6 AM... that had the smell of a real story, none of this cat-up-a-tree foolishness they'd had her on since she came to town. Could Meredith Wayne finally be prepared to treat the ex-weathergirl from Japan like the real reporter she dreamed of being? "I'm on it," Nanami said, hoping Wayne would notice how brisk and professional she sounded, and hung up. She scrambled out of bed, ran into the bathroom to throw water on her face, then dressed almost at a run and dashed out into the pinkish light of dawn. Federation Plaza was a ten-minute Metro ride from Montparnasse, but as the train was approaching, the PA system apologetically informed all passengers that the Plaza station was closed and the train would be going on to La Motte-Picquet. It wasn't until she had backtracked most of the extra distance on foot that Nanami saw why. A cordon of gravity tanks and armored personnel carriers had completely surrounded Federation Plaza, the gaps between them filled in with the black-and-grey figures of Earthforce Security Division troopers. Outside that cordon was another cordon, this one composed of uniformed officers of the Paris Police Metropolitaine. In a few places, the cops could be seen arguing with the soldiers, the troopers standing stolidly, blaster rifles cradled, while the policemen gesticulated in the Gallic style. Nanami unconsciously ran a hand through her short, thick, honey-blonde hair, readjusted the springy band that kept it out of her eyes, straightened the press badge fixed to the front of her ISN windbreaker, and ran toward the cordon, looking for someone who might be in some sort of charge. A policeman met her partway and tried to stop her. >No, miss, you must go back, I am sorry,< he told her in slightly breathless French. >It is not safe to approach the Plaza just now.< >I'm a reporter,< she told him, thumbing her press badge. >What's going on? Why all the hardware?< >I do not know exactly. Information is sketchy. It seems terrorists have attacked Earthdome in Geneva,< the policeman replied. >The Earthforce troops say they are here to guarantee the safety of the Federation delegates.< >Is that so?< Nanami replied skeptically. Gesturing past the policeman's shoulder with one hand, she added, >Then why are their guns facing -into- the Plaza?< The cop looked nervously around and said urgently, >You should not be here. Go now, or I won't be able to guarantee -your- safety.< Nanami set her jaw defiantly. >Oh! So you acknowledge that there's something funny going on here,< she said. >I did not say that!< snapped the cop angrily. Turning her roughly around by the shoulders, he propelled her a few paces down the sidewalk with a vigorous shove. >Go now!< >Whatever happened to freedom of the press?< she demanded. >Suspended,< the cop replied grimly. >Haven't you heard? We're under martial law!< At Sneaky Dee's, audience and performers alike were entirely, blissfully unaware of these developments. The show carried on, finished up, went on for three encores. Afterward the band, tired but exhilarated, cleaned up backstage while the club cleared out. By then it was just past midnight. Some of the Valiant's company who had come down to see the show returned, while the band and a few others remained for a little after-hours loitering at the club. After all, their clearance to orbit didn't expire until noon, and who knew when they would see Dimitrios and the rest of the gang again? "... c-can't b-b-believe you c-c-came all the w-way from F-F-France j-just to see m-m-me and my b-b-b-band," said Kate to Inspector Francoise La Fontaine. "It was Lucas's idea," said La Fontaine in lightly accented Standard, smiling indulgently at the slightly chubby sergeant. "He saw the article in the New Avalon paper about your run-in with the Klingons and thought it would be a terrible shame to miss it." "And it would've been!" Lucas insisted with a shy, embarrassed grin. "I can't argue that," La Fontaine agreed. "How about getting something to eat?" asked Joe Graf. "I'll second that," agreed Utena. "Mass exodus to Happy Seven?" "No need for that!" said a voice from the stairs leading up to the second-floor club. Everone turned, startled, to see a tall, lanky figure with long straw-blond hair topping the staircase, two large bags of takeout food in his hands. "Takeout from Happy Seven - Delivered on the Wings of Angels!" declared Zach Stephens cheerily. "Zach!" cried Utena, jumping to her feet. The chief deliveryman of Celestial Pizza of Port Jeradar grinned, deposited his burden on the bar, and then traded a high-five that turned into a handshake with the Valiant's captain. "How the hell'd you get here?" she asked him. "I have my little ways," replied Zach with a faux-enigmatic grin. "Toldja I'd take a day off if Kate played a special show." "You've been here the whole time?" asked Miki. "Yeah, in the back. Didn't wanna make a big deal out of it," replied Zach. "Dig in, it's still hot! Happy Seven might not deliver, but I always do." They distributed the food - by some peculiar miracle, everyone got exactly what he or she would have ordered had they reached that stage of the food-gathering process - and set to eating it, a convivial group of twenty-seven - the band, the two former bandmembers and Rina, the French cops, the Crush of Love, Truss and Jung, Mia and Kozue and Imra, Zach, Utena and Wakaba, Janice Barlow and Neal Krummell, Dimitrios and Roy Chernow. Discussions meandered here and there, blending into one another. Political troubles were the last thing on anyone's mind. Until Truss, blinking, trailed suddenly off in what he'd been saying to his daughter, looking into some unknown distance. Mia looked at him in puzzlement - it almost looked as if someone else had come up and joined the conversation, and her father was paying careful attention to what the newcomer was telling him, except that there was no one there. Mia glanced at Jung, to see that she was also paying close attention to Truss - but the look on the redhead's face seemed to indicate that she knew what he was doing. Then his face darkened and he said to that same no one, "Damn. OK, stand by." He turned to Dimitrios, his voice cutting rudely across the conversations by the bar in a way that was most unlike the John Trussell most of the young people there knew. "Turn on the television. Any channel. Now." Dimitrios blinked at the reporter, but he'd been around too long and seen too much to quibble with a tone of voice like that; he went to the television at the corner of the bar and switched it on. " - statement issued by Earth Alliance President William M. Clark in response to the Argentine attack on Geneva," a neatly suited talking head was saying in front of a large, garish graphic reading EARTHDOME IN CRISIS! "Here it is again for those of you who are just tuning in. This statement was transmitted only moments ago from President Clark's office at Earthdome." The image switched to the face of President Clark with the familiar backdrop of his office behind him - and through the windows in the background could be seen the burning wreck of a Warhammer-class Destroid and a scene of wild chaos, with blasterfire still flashing in the greyish post-dawn light of Geneva's early morning in the plaza. The current time (05:51 GMT) was shown in the upper right; at the bottom of the screen was a banner reading: PREVIOUSLY RECORDED - STATEMENT ISSUED 0545 GREENWICH MERIDIAN TIME Clark looked steadily at the camera for a moment, as if not certain he was on, then glanced down, looked back up and began to speak. "At 5:17 AM Geneva time, commandoes from the Empire of Argentina assaulted the Earthdome complex in an attempt to seize or destroy the government of the Earth Alliance. These troops were equipped with the most advanced powered armor and armed with phasers, disruptors, and certain chemical and biological tactical weapons named in the Babel Accords as weaponry outlawed within the Federation. "These commandoes were stopped at great cost by the Presidential Guard of Earthforce, who are currently fighting off followup waves from the Empire of Argentina. Earthforce troops have secured Earthdome, the Federation Assembly in Paris, and Starfleet Headquarters in San Francisco. The governments of the Federation and of the Earth Alliance are in no danger. "I am hereby declaring a state of martial law throughout the Solar system, except for the independent state of Mars, until the Empire of Argentina has been subdued and the system secured. All citizens are instructed to return to their homes and remain there until curfew is lifted by their Earthforce regional commander. "The events of this morning have demonstrated beyond question the folly of permitting multiple sovereignties to exist upon a single planet. In the cause of peace we must unite this system under a single authority, so that internecine attacks of this sort can never happen again. In order to prevent future attacks upon the sole legitimate government of Earth and its colonies, I am declaring the full annexation of all formerly extraterritorial human nations within the Solar system, including the Argentine Empire, the Republic of Texas, the Principality of Zanzibar, and the colony of Titan." Imra Ardeen gasped, her fingertips inadvertently rising to touch one of her Saturn earrings. Looking somber, Clark went gravely on, "I have one final announcement to make, one which saddens me above all others. The disappearance of an officer of the International Police Organization in Argentine territory has led some within this government to accuse the IPO of instigating this unprovoked attack against the Earth Alliance. "I personally do not believe this to be true, but as President of the Earth Alliance I must act to uncover the full truth behind this attack. For this purpose I am declaring Earth's acknowledgement of the International Police Accord in abeyance pending a full investigation, and ordering the protective detention of all IPO officers and installations in Earth Alliance space. I request the IPO to cooperate fully with this investigation, so that harmony and good will may be restored between the IPO and the Earth Alliance government. "In closing, I wish the good citizens of the Earth Alliance to know that this government is in no danger, and that we shall not permit any petty dictator from a renegade state to usurp the freedom and security of our citizens. We shall not rest, and shall not cease, until all threats to our republic have been nullified. With your cooperation with Earthforce and Psi Corps officials, we shall bring this unpleasant incident to a swift and lasting conclusion, insuring the peace and prosperity of the Earth Alliance for millennia to come." The recorded scene disappeared, replaced once more by the anchorman in the suit. "Once again, you have just seen a statement issued by President Clark just minutes ago in response to the Argentine attack on Earthdome. Police in all of the Alliance's former member states are coordinating with Earthforce liaison officers to institute martial law throughout the Alliance. All off-duty police officers must consider themselves recalled to duty and should report to the nearest Earthforce Security Division office for new duty assignments. Civilians should - " Dimitrios switched the television off with a very colorful Greek exclamation. For a moment, there was silence; then everyone turned to look at Utena. "Well, crap," she said, and pulled out her communicator. "Tenjou to Valiant." Ear-curling static poured out of the device's speaker grille. Wincing, she adjusted a few controls, tuned it down to a dull roar, and tried again. Nothing happened. "J-jamming," said Kaitlyn, rising as well. "They know we're here," Dorothy Wayneright observed calmly. "An Earthforce Security team is probably on its way here right now to arrest us." "As police officers," observed Superintendent Marquette calmly, "I believe that is technically -our- duty now." Everyone turned to look warily at him, but the Frenchman only smiled sadly and went on, "But I think not. I cannot speak for my colleagues of course, but I am an officer of the French Criminal Police Service. The President, he says there is no more France? Then me, I say I am out of a job." "Want to join the IPO?" asked Utena with a wan grin. "I think we'll be hiring after this hits the fan. C'mon, you guys - let's get out of - " The door downstairs opened with a crash, and heavy boots on the stairs heralded the arrival of Dorothy's predicted Earthforce arrest team, ten armored officers with blaster rifles led by a man with black shoulder panels and a flechette gun. "You're all under arrest for martial law curfew violations," declared the squadleader. "We can sort out who gets more charges once we've got you all down to the station. Come along quietly or things will get very messy." "Hey, hold it!" came another voice, still on the stairs. The Earthforce Security troopers moved aside, looking slightly confused, to make way for a Psi Corps Enforcement squad led by a grey-haired, wiry female Psi Cop. She approached the Earthforce squadleader irately. "The IPO AEGIS ops are -ours-," she snapped. "You can have them once we've processed everyone downtown," replied the squadleader contemptuously. "Earthforce has priority in martial law situations." "Bullshit!" snarled the Psi Cop. "You know goddamn well the Corps has jurisdiction in all matters concerning rogue telepaths." "Jurisdiction this," replied the Earthforce squadleader, making an obscene gesture. "Get 'em outta here, boys." "Harrison!" the Psi Cop barked. "Ma'am!" said the burly leader of the Enforcer group. "Any of these leatherneck mundanes puts a hand on Ardeen or Carter, blast him." "Uh... ma'am?" "Stinking mindtapper!" roared the squadleader. He rounded on the Psi Cop, raised his fletcher, and was dropped to his knees by a pre-emptive telepathic attack. With a howl of outrage, one of the other Earthforcers blasted the Psi Cop point-blank, dropping her. Things got very, very hectic after that. By the time the dust settled, four Enforcers and five Earthforce Security officers were dead or incapacitated and the rest were standing in the empty wreckage of Sneaky Dee's, just piecing together how they'd all been had. "God DAMN it!" snarled the ranking survivor from the Earthforce team. "Call for backup and get AFTER them!" Nanami Jinnai escaped an unfortunate fate by fifteen seconds that morning. That was how long before Earthforce arrived that she gave up trying to get into the ISN broadcast headquarters on the Champs-Elysees, turned around, and started heading for the telephone booth across the street. She had just reached and entered the booth when the first armored personnel carriers surrounded the building and the first troops knocked down the doors and swarmed inside. With an inarticulate exclamation of surprise, she dropped a token into the phone and called her boss. "Nanami!" hissed Meredith Wayne. As suddenly as her image had appeared, it vanished, replaced by the words "VIDEO MODE DISENGAGED" on the pay phone's little semiholo display. "Get out of Paris if you can," said Meredith. "Don't come to ISN - I've revoked your access card. The troopers won't find you on the employment records because you're fired." "WHAT?!" Nanami blurted. "Meredith, what the hell's - " "No time! They're coming in now. God knows who you'll see when you turn on ISN tomorrow. Get out if you can. Find some way to tell people what's happened - " The sound of a door crashing open cut off the producer's voice; there was the sound of a short scuffle, and then a gruff voice said, "This is Sergeant Tennyson, Earthforce Security. To whom am I speaking?" Nanami hung up, pushed the booth open, and looked around the ISN front plaza. A few troops loitered here and there, but none of them seemed to notice her. Carefully, slowly, she backed away, into the bushes ringing the decorative stone plaza - - and bumped into somebody. Suppressing a scream, she whirled, expecting to see another trooper, perhaps slightly surprised, ready to take her into custody. Instead she saw one of the icons of her industry. "M-M-Mr. Carter!" she gasped. "What are you doing here?" "Missing my flight," replied Edison Carter, Director of News Services for Network 23, wryly. Time had worn his famous face somewhat, adding more lines and greying his hair, but he was still instantly recognizable. He was -the- face of television news for Nanami's parents' generation, the definitive newsman. His integrity, bravery and tenacity combined with Ben Cheviot's business genius and rigorous personal standards had made Network 23 one of the most powerful in the industry, the giant against which ISN employees liked to imagine that they constantly struggled. "And you, Miss Nanami Jinnai," Carter went on in his equally unmistakable, slightly reedy but firm voice. "Why aren't you inside getting arrested with the rest of your co-workers?" "I just got fired," said Nanami, touching her press card self-consciously. "I guess that means I should take this off," she added, removing the card and pocketing it sadly. "I'd lose that windbreaker too if I were you," Carter pointed out. Nanami glanced down at herself, realized that her windbreaker had the logo of her former employers emblazoned on it both front and back, and whipped it hastily off. It was chilly in the dawn of Paris, though, so she reversed it and put it back on. The blue satin wasn't as comfortable against her bare arms as the fuzzy white liner, but she might not get instantly arrested this way. "What are you going to do?" she asked Carter, trying not to let the awe she felt at standing this near to him creep into her voice. He nodded toward the ISN building. "News happening," he said. "Nobody else around - guess I'm covering it." Words came out of Nanami's mouth before she consciously thought of saying them: "I don't suppose you could use an assistant?" Carter grinned at her again, then gestured to the big, clunky Network 23 sub-ether camera-transmitter he carried. "You know how to use one of these?" "That antique?" Nanami replied with a slightly wicked grin of her own. "They taught us how to run those things in third grade." "Watch your mouth," replied Edison, but he was still smiling. He handed her the camera and said, "You're now my department's newest intern." "Intern?!" Nanami protested as she hefted the ethercam and trained it on Edison Carter's famous face. "I'll have you know I was a full field correspondent with ISN." "Yeah, well, we'll talk about that if we ever get back to the office," Carter replied wryly, moving so that the bushes still mostly shielded him but the ISN building could be seen behind him. "Patch me in." Nanami switched on the camera, saw the red "L&D" light appear in her viewfinder, and gave him a thumbs-up to supplement the red light she knew he could see atop the camera. He nodded slightly, composed himself, and then sent a thrill running up Nanami's spine as he spoke the famous words that had, when she was a small child, swayed her from the path of blind capitalism and toward the nobler calling of the news: "This is Edison Carter, coming to you live and direct on Network 23... " Imra Ardeen and Wakaba Shinohara ran down an alley in downtown Toronto as fast as they could go; Imra didn't think they were being followed, but better safe than sorry. "Do you think everyone got out?" Wakaba asked as they ran. "I think so," Imra replied. "I didn't sense anyone being captured, but then I wasn't focusing too carefully. I was too busy keeping that Psi Cop from noticing what Carter was up to." "That was pretty slick," Wakaba remarked. "For a minute I didn't know -what- the hell was going on." "There's a lot of latent animosity between the Corps and just about every other organization out there," Imra said, nodding. "Exaggerating those feelings to the point where violence breaks out is often not that difficult. It's a standard evasion technique, though in the simulations they didn't usually end up -shooting- each other." "OK, hold up a minute," said Wakaba. They slowed down, then stopped, panting slightly. "Anyone around?" Imra closed her eyes, concentrating. "Lot of background noise," she murmured. "The city's very agitated tonight... " "Martial law will do that to a city," Wakaba remarked wryly. Imra nodded. "I'm not picking up anything threatening nearby, though," she said. "I think we're clear for the moment. The question is," she added, leaning back against the wall of the nearest building with a sigh, "now what?" "Now," Wakaba replied, "we get a little creative." She raised her arm, pushed back her sleeve, and looked into the shifting green light of her Lens. "Never really had to use this thing before," she mused. "Let's see if it works." Closing her own eyes in a similar look of concentration to the one her telepath companion had just had, Wakaba focused her thoughts on the gem and directed them outward in a general call for help: It took her a moment to sort through the jumble of signals that came back - there were apparently half a dozen Lensmen in North America at the moment, and all of them were reporting approximately the same situation. <... IPO Regional HQ, Maine, under attack... > <... Earthforce troops surrounding Area 51... > <... made it to the Zeta Cygni consulate in DC, but they might not respect... > <... signaled Babylon 6, but I don't know if they'll be able to send help... > One came through more strongly than the others, and Wakaba tried to get a firmer lock on it at the cost of releasing the others: came the reply - a deep, confident 'voice', only a little rattled. The fleeting impression of a wry smile. When she came back from her Lens trance, she noticed Imra looking curiously at her and shrugged. "Looks like it works," she said. "We have six hours to get to Maine, which means that unless you can fly and carry me with you, we're going to have to crash a transporter station." "I doubt the EA Transit Authority will be inclined to let us use one," replied Imra with a sardonic grin. "Then we'll ask nicely," said Wakaba in reply as she put a hand on the grip of her sword. A relatively short distance away, galactically speaking, the Chief of the International Police was in his office aboard the IPSF flagship Challenger, which held station just off International Police Station Babylon 6 in orbit over Bajor. He was fiddling around with personnel allocations for the next Defiant-class Next Generation Destroyer, IPS Adamant, which was scheduled to be ready for trials by mid-August, when the chime of his office door twittered. "Come in!" he called, pushing his chair back a little and leaning back. The door opened and Ruri entered. Behind her was another, taller girl, slim and attractive with short brown hair. She still wore the uniform of an IPO Tactical Division field officer, blue coveralls, shirt, and cap, and Gryphon thought she looked a little nervous. "Here's my replacement," said Ruri without preamble. She might have gone on to do an introduction or she might not; Gryphon couldn't predict in advance and would never know, since the other girl pre-empted her anyway by snapping to attention, saluting, and saying, "Tactical Officer Luornu Durgo, Lensman, reporting for duty, Fleet Captain!" Gryphon got up from his chair and extended a hand with what he hoped was a friendly, welcoming kind of smile. "Welcome aboard, Lensman Durgo. We're not so formal here in the Space Force. You can call me Captain, or Chief, or Boss, or Oyabun, or even Gryphon - whatever strikes your fancy. I take it Ruri's filled you in on what the job is?" Luornu nodded as she took his offered hand. She had a good handshake, not as timid as her overall demeanor, and as they made eye contact over it, he noticed that she had interesting eyes - one of them was amber, the other violet. She didn't look away, either, so maybe her timidity was just an artifact of being in the August Presence of the Chief for the first time. Well, he remarked wryly to himself as he released her hand, she'll get over that fast enough if she takes the job. Then, as she lowered her hand, he noticed her Lens. It had the same peculiar coloration as her eyes, half amber, half violet, the two colors shifting alongside each other in a vaguely yin-yang-like configuration. Most intriguing. She took his attention away from it by dropping her hand to her side, nodding, and replying, "Yes, sir. She's been showing me the substance of it for the past few weeks, but she wanted to hold off on the introduction until she was satisfied that I could do the job." "She's a very hard worker," said Ruri, nodding, "and competent in all the particulars. It will take her a little while to get up to speed, of course, but I think she'll be... adequate," she added with a tiny, tiny smile. Luornu was apparently accustomed to Ruri's understated way of talking, because she didn't take the somewhat minimal praise as an insult, though it wasn't one, the way most people would have. She only said, "I'll do the best I can, sir. You may have to bear with me a little in the early days, though, if you decide to accept me for the position. After all, I can only be in three places at once." Gryphon cocked an eyebrow at her, then smiled. "You're more confident than you look, aren't you, Lensman?" "Sometimes," replied Luornu with a little smile. Gryphon laughed and slapped his desk. "I like you," he declared. "The job's yours if you want it." "I wouldn't be here if I didn't, sir." "All righty, then. Ruri, looks like your last job for me will be to transfer Lensman Durgo into the Space Force at the rank of... oh, let's say Senior Lieutenant... and list her as your replacement." Ruri nodded, then acknowledged the instructions with a phrase she almost never used: "Aye aye, sir." "Lieutenant Durgo," Gryphon went on, "your -first- job for me will be to finalize Ruri's promotion. Then arrange transport for her to Ishiyama so she can join Steamrunner for her trials - after you and Jantzen arrange her going-away party, of course." Luornu opened her mouth to respond, but at just that moment, the trim stripe running shoulder-high along the office walls began flashing yellow, an alarm hooted throughout the ship, and executive officer Lore Soong's voice announced, "Yellow alert. Captain to the bridge." Gryphon looked from Ruri to Luornu, then shrugged. "Looks like you're -both- my yeoman for the moment. Let's go see what's going on." At Toronto's Pearson International Spaceport, no officially recognized lifeforms inhabited the bright blue Cygnus Spaceworks executive shuttle parked in Bay 11-C. By the legal standards of the Earth Alliance, there was no one aboard to look out onto the ferrocrete hardstand to take note of the number of Earthforce troopers surrounding the blue Lambda. With both of the shuttle's registered human crew in the city, there was nobody left on the Morning Sun but three droids and a computer. The computer, which for reasons unknown even to his programmer liked to call himself "Rear Admiral Albert Calavicci", stood in the control cabin looking out at the troopers surrounding the Morning Sun and scowling. Of course, he wasn't really standing there; he was a holographic projection, and he wasn't looking across the hardstand with his eyes but rather with the shuttle's passive visual sensors. The effect was the same, though. He took a puff of his illusory cigar, clamped it back in his illusory teeth, and scowled some more. "OK, Rusty," he finally said. "Fire up the Beagle Boys." The purple and grey R5 unit standing next to him blurbled agreeably, whirled on his casters, and rolled aft, plugging into a console on the main corridor bulkhead amidships. A moment later, doors on either side of the corridor hissed open, revealing a pair of Neimoidian battle droids, one beige, one grey. "OK, boys," said Al, striding through Rusty and into the gap between the two battle droids with his hands folded behind his back and his face businesslike as though he really were an admiral. "Rise and shine, the boss needs your help. Load up program modules A-23 and C-17 and hop to it. I'll give you the details when you're loaded." "A-23," replied the two droids in their similar but slightly differentiated monotone voices. "C-17. Roger. Roger." There came a series of clicks and whirs as the configuration systems built into the two droids' storage bays automatically selected the enhanced programming modules requested and slotted them into the expansion slots on the robots' backs. They stiffened slightly as new information and abilities became available to their limited positronic matrices. The grey one wobbled a little on his feet, then announced, "... I know kung fu." "Yeah, yeah, congratulations," Al replied. "Now get back to the ramp and wait for instructions." "Roger. Roger." Janice Barlow was feeling a bit grumpy. And who could blame her, really? She'd been having a great night, complete with surprise visit from her sort-of-boyfriend, IPO officer Neal Krummell, who'd gated over from Titan for the show and was planning on taking the long way back to his posting with Valiant. And then all -this- had happened, and now she and Neal, along with Superintendent Marquette of the Paris police, the Crush of Love, and the pizza guy from DSM, were running down an alley in the general direction of the University of Toronto. She was just about to put her discontent into words when Neal did it for her: "This -sucks-." "No kidding," she replied. "How the hell are we going to get out of this?" "If I could get to Regional HQ in Maine, they're probably using the stargate to evac everybody to Titan," said Neal. "Which is probably an unholy mess itself, right now. Annexed, my furry white butt! Dammit, I have to get back there." Zach Stephens, in the lead, took a sharp right down another alley and led them out onto the sidewalk along Spadina Avenue. "No problem," he said. "I know a shortcut." He stuck the tips of his little fingers into the corners of his mouth and emitted a piercing whistle. Janice gave him a weird look, but before she could say anything, the roar of an approaching engine caught her attention. A moment later, an antique Cadillac hearse, black with a flame job and the words "HOT PIZZA" painted backward on the leading edge of the hood, skidded around the corner from Bathurst and screeched to a halt in front of them. "Good boy," said Zach, absently patting the hood. "All aboard!" he called, opening the passenger's door and sliding across the front seat into the vacant driver's position. Neal and Janice, puzzled but game, piled in, as did Superintendent Marquette. The old car was so huge that the four of them fit without much discomfort, despite Krummell's sturdy build and the Superintendent's broad shoulders. Zach leaned across them and gestured with a thumb to the back. "You guys don't mind the accommodations, there's plenty of room," he said to Joe Graf and his band. Joe shrugged. "What the hell, we're practically home," he said. "Figure we'll just see if we can slip through the patrols and get back to our apartments. Good luck, you guys," he added to Neal and Janice. "If you see Kate, tell her I'm damn sorry this had to happen in my town... " "Will do," said Janice, nodding. "Good luck, Joe. Maybe we'll see you around sometime." "I hope so," Joe replied. He patted the passenger doorframe atop the open window, looking sad; then he and the other members of the Crush turned and slipped back into the alley they'd come from. "OK," said Zach, pulling the Caddy's gearshift lever down into "Drive". "So, Bangor, then. Cool. I can do that." He pressed the accelerator, and the Caddy snarled and pulled off down the empty street. "Super, you want me to drop you in Paris on the way?" Marquette blinked. "Er... no, thank you," he replied, thinking to himself that this young man's sense of humor could stand to be in better taste. But Zach only shrugged and replied, "Suit yourself," in his easygoing way. He was the picture of relaxation at the wheel despite the fact that all North America's cities were bound to be swarming with nervous cops with shoot-on-sight orders for curfew violators; one arm out the window, right hand lazily gripping the top of the wheel, a man in his element and in tune with his surroundings. "You guys like music?" he asked offhandedly. "Stupid question, right?" he replied to himself with a sheepish grin. "Duh, where were you just?" Then he reached to the radio and flicked it on before slinging the big Caddy around a sharp left and down a narrow street. "The highway's the other way," Neal protested over the throb of an Alpha Collider techno-trance number. "Maybe yours is, man," Zach replied cheerily, "but you're not drivin'." When he had taken the job of chief engineer of the IPO starship Valiant, Corwin Ravenhair had never particularly expected to find himself serving as officer of the deck in a crisis situation. He'd thought that his working hours would be spent in his office aft of the bridge, overlooking Main Engineering and the intermix chamber, and his off-duty hours... well, most of them would be spent there too, fiddling with various ideas and concepts on the heavy-duty computers there. But as luck would have it, here he was, having come up directly after the show to get an early night before the following day's short hop and concert on Titan. As they had a day off after the Titan show, he'd been planning to hold the post-show gathering at his castle, and he didn't expect to be getting much sleep, so he was planning to stock up now. And, of course, -this- had happened. When he arrived on the bridge, he found Sub-Commander Klaang scowling at the communications panel and Anthy peering sleepily into the room from the opposite corridor door. "OK," he said, stifling a yawn. "I've read Clark's statement. What do the Orbital Patrol people want us to do about it?" "Listen for yourself," grunted Klaang. He switched the channel he was listening to from his earbug to the overhead speakers. " - leave the system immediately or shut down your engines and receive boarders. Respond immediately, Valiant." Corwin scowled, his agile mind filling in the gaps in a moment, stepped to the conn, sat, and punched a key on one of the side panels. "This is Chief Engineer Corwin Ravenhair, currently standing the watch on IPS Valiant," he said. "We've still got personnel planetside. Thanks to your communications blackout, it's going to take us a while to find them and - " "You have two choices, Valiant," the voice of the Earthforce comm operator cut him off. "You can leave them behind or join them in detention." "Even if this wasn't bullshit," Corwin snapped back, "they're not all IPO personnel. You did know about the band we're touring?" "Oh, yeah, your 'band'. Not a very convincing cover for an espionage squad. Tell your boss better luck next time. If I don't see you setting course for outsystem and firing up your FTL of choice or powering down for boarding within 5 minutes, I start shooting. Hieronymus out." "Fuck," Corwin muttered. "Klaang, anything?" The Klingon frowned ferociously into his sensor scope. "No," he said after a moment. "They've got our air-to-ground communications bands blocked solid. I can't raise anybody down there, or pick up anyone's transponder signal. Can you get Shinohara with your Lens?" Corwin glanced at the gleaming gem which formed the basis of his wristwatch. "I'm not sure," he admitted. "It's not the same kind of Lens. Anyway, I couldn't use it to get a transporter lock on her." He concentrated anyway, feeling his way through the unfamiliar terrain of the gem's telepathic capabilities. The Lens he wore was a Cephirean mage's Lens, not one of his mother's creations, but he knew they shared some similar properties, and his mother had successfully contacted him using her own at one point - but whether that was actually the Lens's doing or just the resonance of their divine blood, he wasn't really sure now that he thought about it. It seemed to be the former, though, because after a few moments' fumbling, he heard Wakaba's voice in his head: Corwin observed. Corwin scanned the tactical plot and decided that made sense. Wakaba replied wryly. Corwin cut the link, sat back, and sighed. "Fuck," he repeated softly. "What's happened?" Anthy asked. Corwin started slightly - he had forgotten she was there, and now felt bad about having sworn twice in front of her - and then gave her the quick outline. "Two minutes," rumbled Klaang from his station, where he was still hunched over his scope looking for signs of the landing party. "Bastards," Corwin snarled, his embarrassment for Anthy's sake forgotten in the wave of outrage that swept over him. Damn them, DAMN them - Utena was still down there, and Kaitlyn, and all the rest. He couldn't just loll around up here, and he sure as hell couldn't run away and leave them behind! He got up from the conn and started toward the helm station, and suddenly Anthy was next to him, her hand on his arm, her soft green eyes meeting his own - hey, when did she start wearing glasses again? Nice ones, though, this time - and stealing the anger from them. "What are you going to do?" she asked quietly. "What -can- I do?" he replied. "I can't leave them down there. I can't just run away." "You can't mean to shoot your way to the surface and back out again. That would be suicide, even with this ship." Corwin opened his mouth to dispute the point, realized it was valid, and fell silent, his big hands working helplessly. Then he shook his head and said, "All right, then - Klaang, you get the ship clear. I'll go down there and - " "And what?" Anthy interrupted gently. "Find everyone somehow and... what? Send them to Cephiro? Bring them through windows one by one to somewhere else? There are more than a dozen of them. Your strength isn't infinite, especially in Midgard." She said all of this very softly, very gently - not to throw his limitations in his face, but merely to remind him of them, to prevent him from giving into his rashest instincts and setting himself on a course to destruction. He recognized all that in a flash of intuition that headed off any indignant reaction, and instead of flaring, he sighed, long and disconsolately. Anthy slid her hand down his forearm and took his hand firmly in hers. "Utena will find a way back to us," she said, her soft voice charged with an intensity that shouldn't have surprised him, after all he'd seen her do, but still somehow did. "Our duty in the meantime is to make sure we're somewhere to be found." She smiled, a little wryly, and added, "Trust me, Corwin... it's an activity I have -some- practical experience with." Corwin felt himself smile despite the boil of emotions that still bubbled within him. He squeezed her hand, let it go, and went to the helm station anyway - after all, someone had to drive if they were going to put their tail between their legs and run. Klaang rumbled slightly, and Corwin knew the Warrior of Science didn't like it any more than he did... but as he took his seat, a plan came to his mind, and the little smile he'd given Anthy broadened into something more wicked. He keyed the helm station's comm functions online and said, "Valiant to Hieronymus, come in please." "This is Captain Edwin Planck speaking. You've still got 40 seconds," said the voice of the Hieronymus's commanding officer sarcastically. "What's it gonna be? Fight or flight?" "Neither," Corwin replied flatly. "IPS Valiant requests clearance to break orbit for intrasystem transit. Destination... " His wicked little smile twisted a little more as he added, relishing the single syllable to its utmost, "Mars." "... What?!" blurted the Earthforce Orbital Patrol officer. "You can't do that!" he snapped after recovering his balance. "You've been ordered to leave the system - " "The sovereign Martian government is signatory to the Pact Babylonica and the International Police Accords," Corwin informed him pleasantly. "Unless President Clark has decided to annex -them-, too," he added, in a tone of voice that made it plain how likely he thought that to be. The telepathic, shape-shifting, tranquility-loving Martians scared the hell out of the Psi Corps and Earthforce. No, there was no way Earth would risk a second war with Mars; only the intervention of the Wedge Defense Force had prevented the first one, back in the twenty-first century, from ending in mass tragedy on both sides. The Martians might like things quiet, but if roused they were implacable enemies, and very, very powerful. "You put one maneuvering thruster out of line, Valiant," snapped Captain Planck, "and I'll blow you clear to the Kuiper Belt. Got it?" "Aye aye, sir," Corwin replied nastily. "See you around." "Not if I see you first," snarled Planck, and the channel was cut. Corwin put the ship in motion, then turned in the helmsman's seat to address his one-Klingon crew. "Klaang, you want to tell the Martians we're coming? We should only need to borrow an orbital lane for a couple of hours at most." He turned a little more and grinned at Anthy. "You're right, you know," he told her. "If I know Utena, she's halfway to a solution to this mess by now - head down and fists clenched." Anthy laughed. "I imagine so," she replied. As it turned out, Corwin was half right. Utena didn't have her head down at that moment, but she did have her fists clenched. It wasn't, perhaps, particularly elegant for the Grand Duelist of Cephiro to just haul off and slug an Earthforce trooper, but it was less messy and permanent than lopping off his head with the Thorn of the Rose would have been. Locating the Earthforce Emergency Transporter Center in Toronto had been simple. Getting to the building hadn't been much of a challenge either. Neither had actually getting into the structure itself. Unfortunately, the low-security areas, like the lobbies, briefing rooms and staging areas, weren't of any particular use to Utena and the group she'd assembled after the scatter from Sneaky Dee's. What they were after was one of the actual transporter rooms, and those would be secured. On the face of it, it didn't seem like a very smart plan, invading a high-security Earthforce installation in the middle of martial law - but that was the beauty of the plan, as Utena saw it. Martial law had been declared just over two hours ago now. For the first hour, this place was a hive, full of troopers being beamed in from staging areas around North America and then flooding out into the streets to break up demonstrations, pack angry citizens off to their homes or jail, and secure government buildings and public transit systems. But that hour was past, and now the Center itself was quiet, almost deserted. Only a skeleton crew of security officers had been left behind to keep an eye on the place - after all, who was going to try and break into a transporter center? With the orbital relay stations shut down and the station not equipped with out-of-band beaming capabilities, the transporters there could only take intruders somewhere else in the hardwired network - which meant beaming straight into the lap of -another- TC's security force. So what would be the use? So getting in hadn't been tough, but now the four of them - Utena, Mia Ausa, and two of the three hapless French cops - faced their first real challenge: the secured corridor leading from Assembly Area B to the transporter core. This was about twenty feet long, and was secured by blast doors at the far end which were controlled by a man in an armored booth off the near end. "Hmm," mused Utena as she knelt at the corner and peeked around it at the booth. "Pretty sturdy-looking. We're going to have to get him out of there. Mia, I don't suppose you have anything that can take out that door?" "Not really," Mia replied. "Anything I could do that would be powerful enough to bring the door down would probably destroy the whole booth." "Allow me," said Inspector La Fontaine with a smile. She got to her feet, tugging Lucas up with her, and the two of them strode boldly out into the corridor. Utena blinked after them, then realized what La Fontaine must be up to. Quickly, she moved as well, staying close to the wall so that the man in the booth wouldn't spot her, Mia hard on her heels. The two of them slipped up to the side of the booth and flanked the door just as the two detectives reached the window. "Halt!" crackled the guard's voice through the intercom speaker below the window. "Identify yourselves." "But certainly," said La Fontaine, a little breathlessly, as though she'd just been running. "I am Inspector Francoise La Fontaine. This is Sergeant Martin Lucas. We are officers of the Bureau de Police Criminale, Paris. We were here on vacation. We must return to Paris immediately!" The guard ceased to look alarmed and settled into a merely wary demeanor. "Sorry," he said, though he neither sounded nor looked it. "Earthforce only. You'll have to stay here for the time being. Go down the street to the local police headquarters. I'm sure they can find something you can help with." "But no, this is terrible!" cried La Fontaine, wringing her hands. Lucas took his cue beautifully, sliding in front of his distressed colleague, leaning against the glass, and lowering his voice confidentally. "Listen, friend... we're off duty, yes, but we're not really supposed to be out of town. You know? We figured if there was an emergency, we could just come here and - poof! Yes? We never counted on a -global- emergency. Help us out, will you?" He smiled conspiratorially. "I can make it worth your while." The Earthforce guard gave him a skeptical look. "Oh yeah?" Lucas's smile broadened just a little, sly and a bit oily. He reached into his coat, took out his wallet, and cocked it slightly so that the thick sheaf of cash within was visible edge-on. "But yes," he replied. The guard weighed his options for a couple of seconds, then shrugged. After all, they -were- cops. "Wait there," he said, then keyed the booth door and stepped out into the alcove. Something heavy, hard and pointy smashed into the side of his face. He never felt himself hit the floor. Utena sheathed the Thorn of the Rose, relieved the unconscious guard of his blaster, then stepped over his body and rounded the corner to grin at Lucas while Mia slipped into the booth and opened the blast doors. "Slick," said Utena. Momentarily, Mia rejoined them, and the four headed into the transporter core. Amanda Elektra Dessler swept onto the bridge of her personal starship, boiling with rage. She stripped off her traveling coat and flung it randomly into a far corner; Rina Dragonaar made a mental note to retrieve it later. "This is the second time these people have tried to mistreat me and my friends," Amanda snarled as she dropped into the thronelike seat the Lorica's rebuilders had installed for her at the back of the bridge. "I exercise forbearance for your sake, Earthman, but by Kru's bloodstained axe, my patience is not infinite!" Devlin Carter cracked a little smile and replied, "I'm quite aware of that." Amanda wheeled in her chair to glare at him, and her anger melted in the face of his mild, inoffensive smile and the slyness it nearly concealed in his eyes. She couldn't help it; she laughed, then turned back to face the main viewer with a clearer, if still outraged, mind. "Commander Jethan!" she said. "Yes, Your Highness," replied the Lorica's Romulan captain, who still stood next to his command chair where he had risen when she entered. "Status?" "We're at Condition Yellow," Jethan reported. "Weapons precharged, shield generators on standby, all personnel at battle stations. Cloaking device is functioning normally and we do not appear to have been detected." "Excellent. Report." "When the Earth President issued his edict, we were ordered to leave the system or be fired upon. We protested for form's sake, acceded to their claims that you would be treated with the respect due your station and repatriated immediately, and jumped to hyperspace with our tails between our legs." The handsome Romulan smiled thinly and added with an arched eyebrow, "And then we dropped from hyperspace thirty light-minutes out, cloaked, turned around, and came back." Amanda smiled in return. "Perfect. Well done, Commander. You are still tracking the Valiant?" "Of course, Your Highness. She's making for Mars at half impulse. The Earthforce Orbital Patrol are keeping a close eye on her." "Get me a laser link with her," said Amanda. "I want to talk to Ravenhair - I imagine he's in command with the others stuck below - and find out what his plan is. He would never leave Tenjou behind without a very good reason." Jethan saluted Romulan-style, fist to chest, and turned to direct his comm officer to obey Amanda's instructions. Nanami Jinnai had never, in all her life, been shot at before, and she wasn't relishing the experience much. Not much, she had to admit as she ducked behind the corner of a building and kept running, but a little, yes. It was exhilarating that she had a part in such important events, that she was here helping to chronicle them for posterity - but she was a trifle concerned about her -own- posterity. Or her posterior, for that matter. Both were liable to get shot to bits if she and Carter didn't shake the Earthforce patrol that had finally spotted them covering ISN's closure. "I need an exit, Theora!" Edison Carter shouted into his handlink as he and Nanami pelted down some nameless side street in the 8th arrondissement. "Theora? Theora!" He cursed as nothing came from his link in response but an ominous silence. Nanami was beginning to wish she didn't have to carry this two-ton antique camera, but she dared not drop it. It was their only link to the outside with Edison's communicator offline, and even if it was only one-way, it was what made their presence here, in this dangerous mess, -mean- something. Without it they would just be another pair of fugitives; with it they were chronicling the end of democracy on Earth. Edison glanced over his shoulder, saw that she was falling behind, and stopped running, letting her (and the troopers chasing them) catch up a little. At her puzzled glance, he relieved her of the camera, hoisted it to his shoulder, and said, "Go! Keep going!" Now she was in the lead, running for all she was worth, listening to the pounding of Edison's footsteps and, further back, the low, thunderous tromping of the Earthforcers' boots. She - and this gave her a little thrill even under the circumstances - was what Network 23's viewers were seeing as they tried to make sense of the chaos that had erupted in Paris. That gave her an obligation, and, being a journalist, Nanami met that obligation. "The sounds you hear behind us," she panted as she ran, "are made by a squad of Earthforce troopers - a dozen or more, I haven't had a chance to stop and make an accurate count - as they pursue two journalists engaged in their lawful business of reporting the news." A well-timed plasma pulse ripped overhead just then, blowing a hole in the fire escape of the building they were running alongside, and Nanami ducked slightly out of instinct before taking up the thread of her narrative again: "That was weapons fire, directed at us. It seems clear at this point," she added wryly, "that they're not interested in detaining us for questioning." They plunged out of the little street and straight into a green, grassy park with trees and benches scattered here and there. Nanami, who was still unfamiliar with Paris, didn't know which of the city's many parks it was, but Edison knew. "This is the Parc Monceau!" he called to Nanami. "Keep heading north! We're almost to the 17th arrondissement. I know some people up there who can - " He trailed off, because, like Nanami, he had just seen the second group of soldiers entering the park at the north end, from the Place de la Republique Dominiciane. Unless they could cut across the park, they were boxed, and they knew it. Nanami skidded to a halt and turned around to face both Edison and the camera; behind him she could see their pursuers reaching the end of the little street. "It looks like they've got us cornered," she said matter-of- factly, inwardly surprised that she was so calm about her own impending death. "I don't know what their full intentions are, but they've already seen the camera and it hasn't stopped them from shooting. There's not much we can do now but watch and wait - " "Get down!" cried Edison. He swung the camera down from his shoulder, gripping it by its top handle in one hand, and flung himself forward, tackling Nanami and bearing her down to the ground on her back. She gasped painfully, the wind knocked out of her, and couldn't ask him what the idea was - but a moment later she found out anyway, as a big pink shape roared past overhead and disruptorfire slashed at the ground between the two reporters and the squad that had been chasing them. Edison, and the audience, had seen it coming from the north; Nanami, with her back turned, had not. The pink shape, an exaggerated bird form with upraised wings, an aggressive-looking 'snout' at the front and a glowing bar of an impulse thruster at the back, banked low over the rooftops of the 8th arrondissement, then came back for another pass. The disruptor cannons on its wingtips scattered Earthforce soldiers everywhere on both sides of Nanami and Edison's huddled position as the ship screamed overhead, then pivoted in midair with a howl of repulsors and dropped to the turf of the park. Edison raised himself to hands and knees, freeing Nanami from the weight of his body; she rolled over, coughing, and got herself partly upright as well. Then she gasped again, this time in astonishment at the sight of their rescuer. It was an old Klingon warship, a B'rel-class escort vessel, better known to most Earthpeople as a Bird of Prey. Unlike the ones Nanami had seen in news footage of the Empire, though, this one wasn't mostly green. It was dented and rusty, and its spotty thermocoat was a horrific shade of pink that might once, decades before, have been red. What was startling about it, though, was its markings. It lacked registration tags or barcodes anywhere Nanami could see. The only marks it had were large, garishly hand-sprayed letters on its wings, which shouted to the world: BIG TIME TELEVISION Edison's face lit up with delight and recognition; he raised himself to his feet and yelled, "REG!" As the Klingon's ramp touched earth, there came a crackle and feedback whine from the ship's PA system, followed by a rough voice with a thick accent - British, maybe, or colonial - saying, "Oi, Edison! Better git y'self aboard! Things're liable t'get a mite hectic round here in a minnit." John Trussell crouched at the corner of Revetment 11, trying to make himself as small as possible, hoping none of the Earthforce troops standing in a cordon around the entrance to Bay 11-C would look his way and notice him. He wasn't looking at them for his own benefit, really; Al wanted a look at them from a better vantage point than his own, and Truss's cybernetic interface implant was obliging him. Fortunately, Truss had owned the implant long enough that he was now used to the fact that no one else could see Al; otherwise, he would have been quite alarmed by the way the hologram-like image of his AI barged right out into the middle of the revetment's central courtyard to assess the strength of the Earthforcers guarding its northeast corner bay. As it was, he only cringed a little inside every time one of the soldiers' visors turned past the spot where Al was "standing". Behind him, he could feel Jung Freud's tension, and fancied that he'd have been able to feel it even -without- his minor telepathic gift. He didn't have to look to know the expression on her face. These clowns weren't actually pawing at her ship, but they were coming awfully close. Behind -her-, Kozue Kaoru and the Art of Noise crowded against the concrete retaining wall, waiting for Truss or Jung to do something. Truss backed away from the corner, bumping Jung back behind him, and turned to face the others. "OK," he murmured. "Here's the plan, such as it is. Al's going to send out our security droids. Once they've engaged the Earthforce troops, we're going to have to run for it." "Aside from Truss and me, is anyone armed?" asked Jung. Kaitlyn nodded. "With a -real- weapon," Jung told her, with a touch of the professional's impatience for the well-meaning amateur in her voice. If it was supposed to cow Kate, though, it didn't wash. The brown-haired Duelist leader narrowed her eyes slightly and replied in a cold, quiet voice, "G-get in my w-w-way, and y-you'll s-see how r-r-real it is." Jung read Kate's eyes, realized that she'd misjudged, and nodded concession of the point. "Anyone else?" Moose MacEchearn folded his massive arms and said nothing, only smiled a cold sort of smile. R. Dorothy, too, was silent, but one corner of her mouth rose, just a little bit. Liza Shustal, the band's engineer, reached into the bag in which she carried her circuit testers, output meters and so on, and pulled out a Cardassian disruptor, the usefulness of which in setting up a rock band's performance suite was not immediately apparent. No one else spoke up, but nobody shrank back, either. "OK," said Jung. Turning back to Truss, she said, "I think we'll do all right." Truss drew his Bajoran phaser (a gift from a major in the Bajoran Armed Forces back when he'd been part of the WDF task force which had driven the Cardassians from that world after the War of Corporate Occupation) and thumbed its setting high. The Earthforce troopers were wearing energy-diffusing armor, and a stun setting would just annoy them. He didn't really like the idea of using lethal force, but he knew that the opposition wouldn't have any objection to doing so; Al had already told him that Earthforce was -attacking- the Network 23 headquarters compound in Sydney, and finding it a considerably harder nut to crack than ISN HQ in Paris had been, if Edison Carter's report was to be believed. "All right," said Truss. "Go, Al." Al nodded and turned to someone on his end of the neuroillusory connection. "OK, you two, get busy." A moment later, the Morning Sun's ramp clicked, hissed, and began to lower. The Earthforce troops turned in surprise, making noises of consternation and raising their weapons. A moment after -that-, G-3N3 and R-06R charged out, jumping down before the ramp was fully lowered, and started making a mess. "OK, let's GO!" cried Jung, bolting up from concealment. The rest of the group followed her and Truss as they darted around the corner and ran for the ship. The soldiers, aside from the two who had already been incapacitated by Gene and Roger, heard them coming and whirled in astonishment. "It's -them-!" cried the one with sergeant's stripes on his armor pauldrons. "Grife, I can't believe they were stupid enough to come here! TAKE 'EM!" Then he raised his sidearm and pegged a blaster shot at Kaitlyn. She didn't seem to care; her eyes were narrowed into the concentrated glare that was familiar to all who had seen her fight. Her zatoichi whispered from its wooden scabbard and flashed; the bolt sparked against it and rebounded, blowing off one of the sergeant's pauldrons and sending him heavily to the ground. What followed was extremely violent and chaotic. The two battle droids had disembarked empty-handed, proceeding with the engagement using their close-combat software, but when the Earthforcers started shooting at the humans they drew their blaster carbines and brought them into play as well. The Duelists and bandmembers scattered to break up their opponents' range of targets, and then each got involved according to his or her own abilities. Truss and Jung worked together with the ease of long practice getting out of tight spots, working their way with surgical precision to their ship and leaving a path open behind them. Miki and Kozue Kaoru, neither armed, stayed close together and moved from cover to cover. Kate worked the Earthforce contingent's right flank, moving like smoke, now visible and now not, using the soldiers' own firepower against them. Liza Shustal, on the other flank with Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan by her side, stole occasional moments from her work with disruptor and Ishkarat saber to admire her ex-rival's clean lines and flowing grace amid the mayhem. Moose MacEchearn had neither of those; he just waded into the middle of the action and used his mass and power to their natural advantages. None of the troopers they were up against had ever -seen- a Hoffmanite before, let alone fought one, and in these close quarters it didn't really matter that Moose was unarmed. The same went for Dorothy, who had her internal power levels raised to their operative maximum levels and was moving so quickly and precisely that she sometimes seemed to disappear. She didn't need to deflect blasterfire or overpower men before they could fire at her; she could simply get out of its way before it reached her. At the base of the ramp, Kozue spied the craft in Bay 11-D and suddenly smiled. "I'll see you up above," she told Miki; then she gave him a hasty kiss, released his hand and headed for it. "What?" Miki replied, slightly flustered. "Where are you going?" "To do some good!" Kozue replied, darting past the Morning Sun's portside landing leg. One of the troopers, who had been hanging back off the left side of the battle with his blaster carbine's shoulder stock extended, looking for shots of opportunity, turned to see her coming and, with a surprised exclamation, took a shot at her. It was hurried and poorly aimed, though, and as he was turning, Kozue dove to the ground anyway; the blast passed well over her and scorched the Morning Sun's landing gear. Kozue hit the tarmac rolling, barking her elbow painfully, but the dive had its desired effect; as she rolled over the squadleader's dropped blaster pistol, her hand closed on its grip, and when she came up she zapped the trooper square in the chestplate, bowling him over backward with a great clatter of armor on ferrocrete. Not bad, she remarked to herself with a little grin as she hopped over his sprawled form and sprinted for Bay 11-D. Just like Tenjou would've done it. Well, no, she corrected herself; she'd probably have just run up and slugged him. But it's the thought that counts. "Your sister's got some nice moves," Azalynn observed as she reached the ramp and paused next to Miki. Once the slightly-elder Kaoru got his heart working again, he was able to acknowledge that yes, it -had- been a pretty nice move. Kozue reached 11-D without further incident. When they'd arrived at Revetment 11, there had been two troopers flanking the entrance to this bay too, but from that approach angle, Kozue couldn't see what was in it that they were guarding. As she approached, though, she saw that she'd been right, and her grin widened. She swarmed up to the cockpit, punched in the override code, swung into the seat, and retracted the boarding ladder. "You're lucky I came along," she told the Swordfish II cheerfully as she fished her keyrod out of her pocket and plugged it into the security lock. "Utena would have been really upset if we'd had to leave you behind." Kozue's first small-craft solo flight had been at the controls of Utena's scarlet fighter, a former asteroid racer and a gift from its builder, Corwin's father, and Corwin himself on the captain's previous birthday. The trainee pilot had standing permission to fly the Swordfish II whenever conditions permitted - it was why Utena had given her the spare key - and she took advantage of that permission any time she could, so by now she knew the preflight like her own morning routine. The fighter's fusion turbine was spooling up even as its wings cranked down and locked into flight position. While she waited for the turbine to come up to operating temperature, Kozue strapped in and pulled on Utena's helmet, which had been left in the seat. It was a little too large for her, but she hadn't brought her own, so it would have to do. Once she had the boom mike positioned, she thumbed on the comm system. "Swordfish II to Valiant, come in, Valiant. Swordfish II to Valiant, come in, Valiant." "Valiant here," came the voice of Kyouichi Saionji after a moment - no video signal came through. "Your signal is faint, three by five but readable. Is that you, Tenjou?" "No, it's Kozue," replied Kozue. "Utena went the other way from Sneaky Dee's, she's probably downtown somewhere. Truss and the band are getting out of here on Truss's shuttle, and I'm going to cover them. Where are you?" "Heading for Martian orbit," Saionji replied. "They told us to leave the system or be boarded, but the Martians are sovereign, and they've agreed to let us park while we figure out how to get everyone out." The holographic viewing area divided diagonally; in one half the static that should have been an image of Saionji remained, while the other contained an image of Truss. "Are you OK, Kozue?" he asked. "Fine. You?" "A few bruises and minor burns, but we're mostly all right." "This unit has lost an arm," protested one of the battle droids' flat voices. "Ah, shaddap, you," the voice of Al replied. "Rusty, if this one complains again, convert him into a toaster oven." Rusty breedled indignantly. "Put a sock in it, you guys!" snapped Jung, who now crowded into the viewpane with Truss. "Look, we're raising ship in ten seconds. Long range sensors show ground reinforcements coming up from the south and aero units inbound from the north. Got a preference?" "I'll cover you in the air," Kozue replied. "I don't have much in the way of ground-attack weapons." Jung nodded. "I figured. OK, we'll take our chances with the groundpounders. You about ready to take off?" Kozue glanced at the engine status readouts and nodded. "Whenever you are." Five Earthforce Security officers slept peacefully in the corner of Transporter Room Nine, courtesy of a particular favorite spell of Mia's. Eight more littered the corridors of the transporter core block, in various somewhat less comfortable states of unconsciousness, courtesy of Mia's Minbari fighting staff, the spiked basket of the Thorn of the Rose, and Sergeant Lucas's fists. (With somewhat archaic but well-meaning Gallic gallantry, the sergeant had insisted that Inspector La Fontaine stay behind him when things got violent.) Now Utena, standing at the transporter's control panel, scratched at the back of her head and admitted to herself that there might be a slight flaw in her plan. "I don't suppose either of you guys know how to operate one of these," she said to Lucas and La Fontaine. "Er... no," said Lucas. "Mia?" "I'm afraid not." "Hmm." Utena searched the panel for a communications interface. "Maybe I can raise Corwin and get him to talk me through it... " "Hang on a second, don't start pushing buttons at random," said a familiar voice from the ceiling, and a moment later a ventilation grille fell to the floor with a mighty crash. Behind it, Imra Ardeen and Wakaba Shinohara came down somewhat more gracefully. They were dirty and rumpled, their clothes torn in a couple of places, but they looked pleased with themselves. "How the hell did you guys get in here?" Utena demanded. "We came in through the reactor complex and up the power transmission shafts to the machinery area," Wakaba replied, shrugging. "That's crazy!" Wakaba gave her old friend a look. "What, and walking right up to the security station and slugging the guard wasn't?" Utena conceded the point. Imra, meanwhile, went to the transporter control panel, brought it online, and said, "Wakaba, can you get Eadwards again and tell him we're coming? I'd hate to wind up getting bounced back here because they've closed their link to the network." "Will do," Wakaba replied; she concentrated on her Lens for a few moments, then said, "OK. As soon as we're through they're shutting it down again, but you'd better set the panel to scramble after we're gone anyway, just to make sure." "Done," Imra replied. "Autodelay set. Energizing in five seconds." The six positioned themselves on the pads and waited. A moment later, there came a pounding at the door and a muffled, official-sounding voice. "Relax," said Imra. "By the time he gets his override to work, we'll be long gone... especially since he's having some trouble remembering his code," she added with a sly little smile. A moment later, they were gone. The Earth district headquarters of the International Police Organization was not actually in the city of Bangor, Maine, but rather north of it, outside a tiny community called Alton. Bangor was the nearest city anybody outside Maine would have any chance of recognizing the name of, so it was called IPO HQ Bangor anyway. A lot of people found it a bit odd that the IPO hadn't chosen to set their planetary HQ up in a major city, or at least somewhere other than the middle of nowhere; but that part of Maine had sentimental ties for the Chief of the International Police, and anyway, it didn't matter much where the compound was if it was equipped with aerospace facilities and tied into the global transporter grid. That grid delivered Utena and her party to the central administration building, the only part of the complex still secure and controlled by the Experts of Justice. Within a second after their arrival was confirmed complete, the station's link to the GTG was cut off permanently - by a technician with a fire axe - and Lensman Eadwards welcomed them to the station. The place was in the grip of a serious emergency, that much was certain. The lights were red, as aboard a starship in battle, and the sounds of the Earthforce tank artillery trying to breach the defensive perimeter were audible in the distance. Blue-suited IPO Service Division technicians ran here and there on inscrutable errands. The PA system occasionally blared warning messages to various sectors of the base or hailed specific squads of personnel to reinforce same. Shouting over the noise, Eadwards, a tall, sandy-haired, balding man in early middle age, informed the six who had just arrived from Toronto that they were starting the final pullout, but that conditions at Titan weren't much better. "Earthforce hasn't arrived in force yet, if you'll pardon the expression," he said as he led them down one red-strobing corridor and into another, "but they've got a fleet on the way and some advance elements harassing the aerospace defense perimeter. Titan's Governor General has mobilized the militia to back up our own forces there, but once Earthforce's occupation fleet gets there... well... then we'll probably have to fall back to Babylon 6 and blow the -Titan- gate too." "And abandon the people of Titan to their fate?" said Utena angrily. "I thought you were a Lensman." "The Klingons have a saying, Captain," Eadwards replied, unoffended. "'Only a fool - '" >Fights in a burning house,< said Utena in Klingonese. "I know it." She looked grim, still angry. "It sticks in my craw too," Eadwards assured her, "but how would it help the Titanese for us to line up and get killed? There are only a hundred of us; Earthforce is sending five thousand. We'll hold as long as we can, but if it looks like we're going to be overrun and wiped out, we'll have to pull back. It'd just be a waste of personnel to try and push back a grey tide." "Maybe," Utena replied, unconvinced. She glanced back, having noticed that Imra had been silent throughout their grim little discussion of her homeworld's fate. She looked calm, professional, like she always did, and Utena was again glad to know her. The captain offered her an attempt at a reassuring smile, which the telepath accepted with good grace, and then they were at a large, armored door which Eadwards was plying with a complex code. "We've been opening the gate at ten-minute intervals," said the Blue Lensman, "but for you nine, we'll do a special run." Utena glanced around. "There are only six of us," she said. Eadwards cracked his first smile of their short association. As the giant power door ground open, he gestured to the three people standing just inside it. Lucas and La Fontaine stood agape with surprise for a moment, then rushed to greet their boss as Utena and the others from the Valiant did likewise with Janice and Neal. The greeting and the comparing of notes stopped momentarily, though, as all six who had just beamed over from Toronto looked further into the room and got their first look at a Babylon Foundation stargate. The room itself was unremarkable; it looked more like a hangar than anything else, three stories high with drab metal walls and a steel-raftered ceiling. In one corner, a cluster of computer terminals were connected to massive cables that snaked across the diamond-plate steel floor to a ramped pedestal which stood in the center of the room. More cables draped from the ceiling and ran here and there, connecting large, important-looking pieces of equipment to other large, important-looking pieces of equipment. And standing in the center, atop the pedestal, was an... -artifact-. That was the only word any of them could think of to describe it. It was a huge ring, perhaps twenty feet in diameter, and it looked carved from some metal or mineral none of them recognized, dark and gleaming with a peculiar, almost oily sheen. The ring was divided into thirty-nine segments, each marked with a unique, peculiar glyph. Seven triangular 'windows' studded its outer rim, including one directly at the top. "Whoa," said Utena. She had, after the last couple years of her life, some experience with mystic artifacts and powers, and this, to her, spoke of such things. It was the kind of thing she would expect to see in Corwin's mother's garage. Eadwards whistled through the clamor of the bustling room and got the attention of a dark-skinned woman in technician's overalls who stood in the middle of the cluster of computers. "Jazmin!" he cried. "Fire it up! Special delivery." The tech nodded and started giving instructions to her techs, and a moment later, the chevron-shaped windows studding the gate popped 'open' toward the center, and the glyph-marked section of the gate started to turn inside its frame. The room began to fill with a weird, subsonic, hackles-raising rumble. The gate stopped with one of the symbols showing through the window at about the two-o'clock position. "Chevron One is holding," Jazmin announced; a moment later the chevron snapped shut, and she added, "Chevron One is locked." The gate held that pose for a moment; then the gate began turning once more, seeking its next target for the next chevron around clockwise. It did this five more times, each time with an increase in the rumbling sound until finally Jazmin had to shout to be heard over it as she reported the status of each chevron. Then it sought back to its original position, stopping with an inverted 'V' topped by a small circle in the top window. "CHEVRON SEVEN IS HOLDING!" Jazmin bawled over the now-nearly-deafening roar - but she never got to issue the second part of the litany, because when Chevron Seven locked, the gate opened, and nobody was paying a damn bit of attention to her status updates anyway. Even the people who had seen the gate in action a thousand times before, like Eadwards and Jazmin herself, had to just stop and look at it as, with a shattering peak to its roar, it suddenly filled with a seething vortex of silvery energy - - and just as suddenly went silent except for a soft hum, the energy within it becoming as placid and shimmery as a pond under moonlight. "... -Whoa-," said Utena, with a bit more feeling this time. "Better get going," said Eadwards with a smile. "I know it seems like the long way around, but you should be able to contact your ship from Titan - Earthforce isn't in a position to jam communications from there yet." The room shook, and Eadwards glanced at the ceiling with a rueful expression. "We won't be far behind you at this rate." "What about... this?" Utena asked, gesturing to the gate. "You can't leave it here for -them- to find... " "No," Eadwards replied, shaking his head sadly. "And we can't get it out of here - so we'll have to destroy it. Now get moving! We don't have much time." Utena looked at him, looked at the gate, then back at Eadwards, then nodded. "Good luck, Lensman," she said. "And to you, Captain," he replied. They saluted each other, then Utena turned and led the others up the ramp to the gate's threshold. "This'll be a new experience," Wakaba observed wryly. "I've done it before," Neal Krummell offered. "Oh yeah? What's it like?" "It's... well... it can't really be described." "Oh. Well, that's useful," said Wakaba dryly. Utena look at her distorted reflection in the silvery surface of the gate for a moment, then squared herself and strode unflinchingly through it. Neal was right. It couldn't really be described. Kozue Kaoru was in desperate trouble, deadly danger, and she well knew it. The spacecraft she was riding wore New Avalon registry and was on record as the property of an International Police Space Force officer - an officer currently splashed all over the police nets for having eluded "lawful detention" in Toronto. What was more, she was flying escort for a Network 23 reporter's transport. Unlike ISN's in Paris, Earthforce Security had found Network 23's Sydney headquarters a tough nut to crack, mainly because Australia-New Zealand, unlike France, was fighting back against the sudden abolition of her remaining sovereignty. The Royal Australasian Air Force was fighting pitched and losing battles in the skies over Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Auckland, and ANZAC was dug in on the ground, costing Earthforce time and blood for every foot of ground they gave up. Though this show of heroism was not solely for the benefit of Network 23, the network was nonetheless benefitting by it, using the time the Australasian forces were buying them to evacuate the planet. Their big transports were leaving the system unmolested; Earthforce had too much to do, and anyway, the transports belonged not to the network but to their chief sponsor, the Neimoidian Trade Federation megacorporation ZikZak. The Earth Alliance didn't want a war with the Trade Federation, and as such, they held back from attacking the transports, even though it galled them to let Network 23, a consistent thorn in their side, get away. Individual personnel of that network, not traveling under the protective wing of ZikZak, were fair game - and John Trussell had made enemies in the government during his time as a reporter. All this went toward explaining why the Earth defense grid identified both Swordfish II and the Morning Sun as targets, and why Kozue Kaoru and Jung Freud were up against it. /* The Black Crowes "Kickin' My Heart Around" _By Your Side_ */ Kozue was hunched over the scarlet fighter's controls, throttle grip twisted wide open, her teeth gritted in a predatory smile. Deadly danger or not, she was having the time of her life. She barrel-rolled the Swordfish around a missile satellite, raking it with the fighter's main armament, the four blaster cannons mounted in her T-paneled wingtips. Utena hadn't been anticipating trouble when she launched that afternoon, so the missile rails on the outsides of those wingtips were empty. So aside from the heavy gun slung underneath, the blasters were Kozue's only armament - but with any luck, they would be all she needed. There were no fighters up here for her to contend with since she'd left the aero interceptors behind in the atmosphere, only these automated weapons platforms. The interdictor network was still in place, of course, and it had gone live the moment the Morning Sun was identified by the defense grid, but that was all right. They weren't planning to go FTL and leave the system anyway. All they had to do was reach Mars. Of course, the Earthforce Orbital Patrol knew that too. Kozue thumbed a brief burst out of the afterburner, hurling the Swordfish II to even greater speed, and strafed a pair of blaster mines, putting them out of commission a moment before the Morning Sun would have reached their line of fire. Jung reciprocated by using the Sun's ion cannons to disable still another missilesat, which had been perhaps a second from achieving target lock on the Swordfish when she did so. On the bridge of the Valiant, Corwin Ravenhair paced and swore, not even bothering to feel embarrassed about it now. Anthy, off to the side, eyed him worriedly. She knew his patience and prudence would have limits - he was so much like Utena in that respect that it sometimes alarmed her - and that if either of the small ships fighting for their lives on the much-magnified main viewer got into serious trouble, Corwin would abandon the sanctuary of Martian orbit to go to their aid, consequences be damned. What was more, she couldn't honestly say that he would be wrong to do so. For Corwin, the most agonizing part was the not knowing. How many of them were with Truss? How many still on Earth? Who was flying the Swordfish II? He didn't think it was Utena; he wasn't sure he could explain precisely -how- he had formed that impression, but nevertheless he didn't think it was. That left Kozue as the most likely candidate, Kozue who had no actual combat experience, but who had enjoyed the combat simulations most of all the simulated trials she had undergone. If that -was- Kozue, she was doing well, damn well. If she had been alone, she would have cleared the grid and made it to Mars without a problem. But she wasn't alone; she had to hang back, circle around, and keep pace with the slower Morning Sun. A hotrod sleeper the modified Lambda-class might be, made over by a team of engineers at the same shipyard where the lackluster Rigel Yards Danube-class runabout had been transformed into the estimable Kennebec-class gunboat, but she was still a sleeper. The requirement of leaving the outer hull unmodified had limited the power of the sublight engines that could be installed, and so her sublight speed was one area in which her redesigners had never been quite satisfied. Jung Freud was now chafing under that same limitation. She pounded the heel of her hand on the instrument panel, trying to wring more speed out of the Morning Sun's laboring Dual Line ion engines with sheer force of will. The hopped-up shuttle was maneuverable enough, and that was a saving grace, but still - at this speed, a measly ninety megalights, they would never clear this stinking blasterfield. But she dared not strip back her shield or weapon recharge rates - the gain in speed wouldn't be enough to counterbalance the loss of defensive strength. All she could do was hang on, fly her figurative pants off, and hope it and Kozue Kaoru's coverage would be enough. The blue-haired girl was a damn good throttle jockey, Jung had to admit it; but her fighter's main advantage was speed, not firepower, and having to keep pace and cover the Sun was canceling that advantage out. Kozue could dart ahead to take out upcoming obstructions, but then she had to double back to cover the Sun's flanks... ... and here, the wailing alarm on Jung's short-range sensor panel informed her, came the -next- big problem, crossing the lunar defense perimeter on its way in to give them a pain in the neck. It was one of Earthforce's old Myrmidon-class destroyers, the pre-Corporate War predecessor to the Hyperion class: too antiquated for frontline service, shorn of her FTL drives and converted into a planetary monitor. She was inbound on an intercept course, and even a cursory look at the sensors told Jung that she would catch them. "Kaoru, we've got a big problem," she told her commset. "I see it," Kozue replied. "Can you outrun it?" "I don't think so," Jung replied. "Go on without us, there's no need for them to catch us both." "Like hell," Kozue replied, winging the Swordfish over. "I'm not leaving my brother behind! If we can't outrun them, we'll just have to take them out." "Take them OUT, are you CRAZY?" Jung blurted. She caught Truss, in the copilot's seat next to her, looking at the ceiling with an I'm-not-going-to-say-anything look, but she was too busy being aghast that she'd met someone with less regard for her own safety than Jung herself. "That's a Myrmidon-class destroyer. She outguns us a hundred to one." "Never tell me the odds," Kozue replied, the vicious grin obvious in her voice. Captain Edwin Planck of the EAS Hieronymus expected an easy grab with these two. The fighter would be tough, but his ship's own Starfuries could take care of that; he was mainly concerned with the shuttle, which he'd been informed was carrying fugitives from not one but two separate casualty incidents in Toronto. "Get a tractor on that Lambda-class the instant she's in range," he snapped to his weapons officer. "Aye aye, sir," replied Lieutenant Fredrika Bloggs. The outcome of that order came to Jung's attention, and that of everyone else aboard the Morning Sun, quite rapidly; in the process of winging over to line up on the destroyer for a proton torpedo attack, the Morning Sun shuddered, her controls went dead, and her engines began laboring more intensely to no visible avail. "Dammit!" Jung snarled. "They've uprated the tractors on this bastard. We can't break loose. Kaoru! Can you do something about that tractor projector?" "I'm a little busy right now!" Kozue replied, jamming in some thrust-vectoring to port and barely avoiding a pair of concussion missiles from one of the Hieronymus's Starfuries. "Then I guess it's time to dust off the secret weapon," Jung grumbled. She cut her engines and touched the maneuvering thrusters, swinging the Morning Sun so that she was being reeled back to the Hieronymus head-on. Then she bottomed the weapon and shield recharge rates, thumbed a large red-and-white-striped switch next to the weapons panel into battery, and waited, her face betraying no emotion. Truss, beside her, was looking intently out the front window, his own face similarly blank. "Al, tell our passengers to hold onto something," said Jung through her teeth, and the hologram vanished from behind them to report to the wardroom and relay the message. One second later, the green light above the switch Jung had thrown came on, and she reached to the panel and hit the key innocuously marked 'MODE SELECT'. The twin heavy naval turbolasers concealed in the Morning Sun's wingroots - weapons normally deployed only on capital ships - blared scarlet fire with a noise that rattled the Substance-class scoutship's whole spaceframe. Their barrage raced back along the Earthforce destroyer's tractor beam's lines of force, through the gap in her shields, plowed into the beam projector, and blasted it and a sizable chunk of the forward docking assembly all to hell. At the same instant, Jung was throwing the Morning Sun's sublight engines to 110% power in reverse. The shuttle bucked and shivered, her engines howling against the pull of the destroyer's tractor for the half-second before the beam winked out. Then she hurtled backward as if released from a spring, flinging the flight crew against their straps and almost dumping the unsecured passengers into a heap against the front bulkhead. Jung hauled back on her flight yoke, pulling the Sun's nose up and over, and raked the Hieronymus's nose with turbofire as she did so, just for good measure; then, at the peak of the reverse Immelmann, she jammed the throttles past full ahead and twisted the Morning Sun into a tight corkscrew roll that sent her haring away from the wounded destroyer amid a fusillade of hasty, inaccurate cannon fire. Kozue saw her redheaded comrade kick the Earthforce ship in the crotch and whooped with delight, then flung the Swordfish II into a tight split-S and blasted one of her four Starfury opponents to glowing bits. She offered the pilot a cheery wave as she streaked past his ejection capsule, dove back under the Morning Sun's path, and erased a big Class 54 torpedo platform with the asteroid racer's Devastator-class plasma cannon. Corwin, on the bridge of the Valiant, crowed in triumph as well, as did Klaang, and so did a number of the ship's company watching on the big screen down in the lunchroom - but their exuberance was short-lived, as the destroyer gathered herself up from her shock and charged after the fleeing shuttle. Her weapons fire settled down, becoming metronomic and accurate, and four more fighters were launched from her bays. "Aw, -slag-," said Corwin as the Morning Sun's shields started to flare first blue, then green. "All right, dammit, that's enough!" He sat down at the helm station. "Saionji, thank the Martians for their hospitality and tell 'em we're leaving." "I hate to say it," Jung gritted as the Morning Sun shuddered under fire, "but I think we're out of tricks. I guess they've decided that capturing us isn't essential." "Well," Kozue replied, her voice tight with anger, "they're by God gonna know they were in a fight!" As she spoke, the Swordfish II spiraled through Jung's field of vision, wingtip blasters lashing another Starfury out of the sky. "Amen to that, sister," Jung replied, throwing the Morning Sun's secondary weapons into overcharge mode. A moment later, as the Morning Sun's aft shields were failing and Corwin was reaching for the warp controls and cursing his too-long hesitation, another ship suddenly dealt itself into the game. Two dozen kilometers off the Hieronymus's port bow, a Romulan Warbird-class destroyer with Imperial Gamilon markings suddenly appeared out of nowhere. The Gamilon Crown Starship Lorica issued no challenge, transmitted no warning. Princess Dessler's personal transport let her Mark IX heavy plasma weapon say all that she had to say on the matter. One moment, the Hieronymus was panting at the Morning Sun's heels, turbolasers screaming, ready for the kill. The next, it was as though she had never existed. "Target destroyed, Your Highness," reported Commander Jethan blandly. "Chief Ravenhair of the Valiant sends his felicitations," Sub-Commander Rokar added with a little smile, fingertip to his commlink earbug. Amanda smiled. "Tell him I will be pleased to accept them in person once we reach Titan," she replied. Rokar duly relayed the message, then chuckled and said, "You appear to have flustered him, Your Highness." "Excellent," Amanda said. Rokar, still smiling, turned back to his combination communications and sensor panel - and then the smile was erased from his face by what he saw there. "Commander!" he cried. "I'm showing a coolant leak and burnout creepage in the Morning Sun's reactor control systems. She's taken two direct hits to her engine spaces and it looks like she's heading for an overload!" Jethan spat a nasty oath. "Helm, get us as close as you dare," he said, then thumbed his intercom controls. "Engineer Vikaris to the transporter room!" "Isn't there anything you can do?" asked Truss. "If there were," Jung snapped, "don't you think I'd do it?!" She was working the engine status panel frantically anyway, trying to pull some rabbit out of the hat, but it looked very much as though there wasn't a hat to pull from. "See if you can get the Lorica or Valiant on the comm, maybe one of them can - " Chill dislocation washed over Jung, and the next thing she knew she was falling - but not very far; only the distance from where her seat had been to where the deck of the Lorica's transporter room was. It was undignified, and it hurt a little, to sprawl on the floor that way, but it was better than getting blown up. She sat up quickly and looked around; all around her, the rest of the Morning Sun's company were scattered in similar positions, rubbing various parts of their bodies which had had unscheduled encounters with the transporter platform's hard deck. Behind the control pedestal, Engineer Vikaris smiled. A good job of work for a hurry; she'd even gotten the droids and the core module for the AI. No doubt the latter was a bit confused by the fact that all his sensory inputs had just gone dead and he'd switched to battery power, but she felt he'd agree that the alternative was worse. She patted the console happily. Those high-resolution pattern imaging sensors were the best improvement the Gamilons had helped her make to her ship, as far as she was concerned right now. Truss and the others got to their feet, assembled near the intercom display panel by the door, and watched the Morning Sun's fiery death with somber expressions. The reporter sighed and put a hand on his pilot's shoulder. "She was a good ship," he said. "Got us out of a lot of tight spaces." "Including this one," Jung agreed, nodding. "She couldn't get us through the grid, but she got us off the planet... " "... and without that, where would we be?" said Moose MacEchearn. "Yeah," said Jung. "Exactly." "Wait a minute," said Truss. "Did you just say something nice about that ship? Like, in front of witnesses?" Jung gave him a half-hearted dirty look, but said nothing. "Would somebody please get on the radio," said Miki Kaoru pragmatically, "and let my sister know I'm alive before she tries to take on the Defense Perimeter Control Complex all by herself?" Nanami Jinnai felt very, very out of place. Being Japanese, she was accustomed to order, neatness, things in their places. The Big Time TV studios - which happened to be a small starship - were the very antithesis of that. They were a confused jumble of half-baked AV equipment, clothes, unopened mail, stacks of recording media, and unidenfiable widgets. Oh, it wasn't -filth-; there was no half-eaten food or dirt anyway. It was just that the whole ship was a big pile of... -junk-. She'd heard of Big Time TV, of course. It was a pirate station that broadcast illegally on a variety of unused frequencies, depending on the time of day. There was a regular cottage industry on the Solarnet keeping track of when and where Big Time would be on, because despite its outlaw nature - or maybe because of it - the station was wildly popular. It mainly showed old music videos and action movies, and its sole staffer, the gruff but cheerful "Blank Reg", provided droll commentary between tracks. The EA's Communications Ministry had been trying without success to track down Big Time for over a decade. And now, as a passenger aboard the Big Time ship, Nanami knew why: the channel operated out of an old Klingon ship, one that was equipped with a cloaking device. Perhaps the Orbital Patrol could have found it - it was an antique, after all - if they had looked for it, but the Ministry of Communications had never thought of having them look. The thought had never occurred to anyone just how Big Time might be managing to hide its station so effectively. What a story this would make, Nanami thought, if only the world it would've made a good story in still existed. She got up from the chair where Edison had left her panting for breath in the scramble to get offplanet, went up the ship's 'neck' to the bridge, and there found Edison and another, larger man bent over the navigation console. When they heard the power door open for Nanami and then close behind her, they turned, and Nanami got her second surprise. The man standing with Edison was big and broad, with muscular arms, thick grey hair and a grizzled beard. He was wearing ratty jeans, engineer's boots, and a t-shirt that read PISS OFF in large, friendly letters; there was a spiked dog collar fastened around his thick neck and he had tattoos running down both arms. What really surprised her about him, though, was that like the ship itself, he was a Klingon. "Hullo, love!" he declared in a gravelly, British-sounding voice, surprising Nanami yet again. With a big, friendly grin on his pleasantly ugly face, he ambled across the bridge and pumped the young reporter's hand up and down. "Welcome aboard the Big Time. I'm Reg." "... -You're- Blank Reg?" Nanami blurted, but of course it was a stupid question; she'd have known that voice anywhere. "Sure am," replied Reg cheerily. "Owner o' the Big Time, operator an' sole proprietor o' Big Time Television, Makin' Tomorrow Seem Like Yesterday." (He pronounced it "yistiddy".) "Uh... pleased to meet you," she said, falling back on the training of her childhood and bowing with her hands folded in front of her. "I'm Nanami Jinnai." "Glad t'meetcha, Nanami," Reg said, his accent plunking an 'r' into her name after the second 'a'. "Edison an' I were just decidin' where t'go next. Can't go back t'Earth, that's certain. Edison reckons Network 23's headin' for Babylon 6, at least f'the time bein'." "Well... I guess we should go there, then," Nanami said, when it dawned on her that her opinion was being asked. "I guess so," said Edison with a faint smile. "Well, Reg, you think this old crate can get us there in one piece?" "You watch, Mr. Carter," said Reg with a grin. He sat down at the helm and started punching buttons, some of which acknowledged his efforts, others of which did not. "She'll 'ave us to B6 before we have time t'get bored." Turning in his seat, he addressed Nanami again. "So you'll be workin' for Edison, then?" "I... I guess so," said Nanami. "I can't go back to ISN... whatever the government's doing to it, it's not going to be someplace I'd want to work any more. Come to that, I can't go back to Earth... I guess I'm a fugitive." "Eh, well, that's not s'bad," said Reg with an offhanded shrug. "I been a fugitive for goin' on 60 years. It's really very liberatin'. Well, listen. If y'want an alternative t'bein' Carter's camera slave," the Klingon added with a grin, "why not come work f'me?" "For -you-?" Nanami replied, incredulous. "Yeah," Reg replied. "I been thinkin' of settin' up a news department. Y'know - Independent Coverage You Can Trust, that kinda thing. How'd y'like t'be it?" "The whole department?" "We're a compact operation," Reg replied with a more-or-less- straight face. "Well, I don't know," said Nanami thoughtfully. "What kind of pay are we talking about? A girl's got to make a living." The ad-hoc Earthforce fleet banged together to effect the seizure (or 'liberation', as the official line had it) of Titan wasn't in any great hurry. Spearheaded by the cruiser Agamemnon, it was loafing along at sublight speed, not bothering to go to warp or enter metaspace for the jaunt out to the orbit of Saturn. What was the hurry? The Titanese weren't going anywhere, and the International Police holed up there couldn't expect relief from Epsilon Eridani for at least another two hours. Captain John Sheridan sat on the bridge of his vessel, the fingers of one hand wrapped around his chin, and considered the situation. He didn't like it - something about the reasons for the government's declaration of martial law and the subsequent annexation of the free territories rang hollow for him. Still, he was a soldier, not a statesman - that was his father's province - and soldiers did as they were told; and so Sheridan was considering the defenses of Titan and the possible resistance that world might offer. "It seems to me," mused the general staff officer standing to Sheridan's left, "that this will be fairly easy. Wouldn't you say, John?" "I don't know how you define 'easy', General Parker," Sheridan replied, "but it seems to -me- that it's going to be pretty damned messy. The Titanese value their independence quite highly. They won't back down. Our forces will have to beat them down and take their world by force. It's liable to be a very bloody fight." "Well, certainly, there will be -some- resistance," General Alvin Parker replied offhandedly. "But even if they resist to the utmost of their capabilities, they can't hope to do more than cost us an hour or two. Look at the mathematics. They have trivial aerospace defenses - a dozen fighters, perhaps, and those outdated - and their ground forces are equally laughable. Except for the Experts of Justice they have no army at all. A company of Destroids will stomp them flat. We won't even have to send down most of the troops until it's all over. We can reserve them for the occupation." "If the people of Titan are pleading for our help in overthrowing their Zeta Cygnan oppressors," said Sheridan without an outward trace of irony, "why do we need an occupation force?" Parker chuckled. "You're a smartass, son," he said. "I don't mind, but you want to watch who you show that to. Could get you in trouble someday. Anyway, you know as well as I do that this isn't about liberation, whatever the politicians say about it. It's about taking back something that should've been ours all along." "Even if the people there don't want us?" Sheridan replied. Parker gave him a sidelong look, a silent warning that he'd overstepped, and said gruffly, "Their opinions don't enter into it." Then he turned and strode away. "I'll be in the planning room. Call me when we're within dropship range." He left without waiting for an acknowledgement, so Sheridan didn't give him one. Instead the captain turned back to his main viewer and murmured to himself, "We'll see what the Titanese have to say about that." "Beg pardon, sir?" asked his helm officer. "Nothing, Mr. Carroway. Steady as she goes." On Earth, Colonel Rupert Loyola was feeling pretty pleased with himself. He and his combined-arms regiment had reduced International Police Headquarters in less than six hours, his hovertanks decimating the automated defenses while his infantry breached the perimeter and swarmed into the outbuildings. Now he was personally present for the moment when the sappers brought down the main door to the administration building. He stood behind a portable blast shield, arms folded behind his back, gripping his swagger stick, as infantrymen rushed through the blown doors to meet the expected IPO resistance in the lobby. There was none. They entered to silence, except for the clatter of their boots on the floor and the subtle whine of their charged plasma weapons. After a few moments, the captain in charge of the assault team came out and reported. "The place is deserted, sir," she reported. "They must have gone underground, into the maintenance tunnels and whatnot. We'll find them." Loyola nodded. "Very good, Captain Montano. Proceed." It took half an hour for Montano's men to determine that the administration building was absolutely vacant. There was a heavy blast door shielding the entrance to the basement, however, and she was confident that they would find the beaten International Police holed up behind it. Loyola gave the order for it to be blown, and blown it was. But there was no one down there, and as the soldiers entered the basement, the PA system suddenly announced in a pleasant voice, "Attention. Unauthorized access to the high security zone. This facility will self-destruct in five Standard minutes. Please evacuate the facility." Montano glanced at Colonel Loyola. "Sir?" Loyola scowled. "Self-destruct? A self-destruct device powerful enough to destroy this base would lay waste to the surrounding area. The International Police would never endanger the nearby towns. It's a bluff. Continue your sweep." Montano did so, though she didn't look entirely convinced by her commander's logic. A search of the basement and subbasement also revealed no personnel. As they searched, and the PA system announced the declining time every thirty seconds, Captain Montano grew more and more visibly apprehensive. They found nothing of interest in the basement except one enormously armored door, sturdier by far than even the one barring entrance to the building itself. It took Montano's sapper teams fully two minutes to breach it, by which point the PA system was saying there were two more minutes left. What Captain Ingrid Montano found inside that room erased all misgivings about Colonel Loyola's assessment of the PA system's message - and replaced them with the dead certainty that the colonel was wrong. She ran back to the corridor, shouting for her men to follow her. "Colonel!" Montano cried as she reached him. "We have to get out of here -now-!" "What are you babbling about?" asked Loyola. "Straighten yourself up and address your superiors correctly, Captain!" "There's something in there, sir," said Montano, trying to fight down panic. "I don't know what it is, but I do know that whatever it is, the IPO would never just let us have it. You can tell that just by looking at it. That message is genuine and we HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE!" Scowling more deeply, Loyola reared back a hand and slapped her across the face. "Get ahold of yourself!" he barked. "You're acting like a cadet on her first mission." "And YOU'RE acting like a chipmunk licking the peanut butter off a mousetrap!" Montano snapped. "Investigate it yourself if you're so certain it's safe. If you live," she added with a humorless laugh, "you can have me shot!" Then she pushed past him and ran, shouting for her men to follow her. Some of them, trusting their captain's intuition more than the colonel's bravado, followed; others waffled. A few raised their weapons, but Loyola waved them down. "Let her run," said the colonel with a condescendingly merciful air. "Let's go see what's got her so spooked." He ducked through the hole in the door and pulled up short. "What in the world... ?" he wondered, looking up at the gleaming, inert ring of the stargate. As the PA system counted down from ten, Loyola started to laugh at the absurdity of it all. -This- was what had frightened Montano, an ostensibly stable officer, so badly that she'd defied his orders, insulted him, and deserted in the face of the enemy? Why, it was nothing more than a - "... Zero." A dome shield suddenly resolved itself over the base, its diameter equal to the diagonal of the square described by the outer perimeter fence. Ingrid Montano and the few soldiers who had followed her had just passed this point when the shield appeared, erupting from the ground from a projector track which had been concealed beneath the earth. So powerful was this curtain of energy that it sliced several armored vehicles which had been parked partway across it clean in half as it rippled upward into the sky to meet at a point directly above the exact center of the base. This shield could be so very powerful because it was only intended to stand for thirty seconds. It was powered by fast-decaying instant-action chemical batteries originally developed to power the shielding of deep solar probes, which had only to reach the centers of stars, transmit back their information, and then surrender to the nuclear fire. In this case, its purpose was not to withstand fires without, but rather to contain those within. One hundredth of a second after the field reached full intensity, the fusion reactor buried at the center of IPO Headquarters, Earth, went supercritical, becoming essentially a five-megaton thermonuclear weapon, and exploded as such. The perimeter troops and Montano's survivors flinched, some of them flash-blinded, as the dome over the IPO base suddenly became a hemisphere of hard white light. The shield contained the explosion completely, its inner surface acting like the walls of a reverberating blast furnace to magnify the effects of the explosion on its contents. When it finally abated and the glow faded, nothing remained inside the perimeter but glowing glass. The shield, having served its purpose, winked out, and the stunned survivors recoiled from the intense heat radiating from the blast site. Ingrid Montano limped to an armored personnel carrier, sat down tiredly on the fender, reached inside for the radio, and reported the death of Colonel Loyola. The news of the IPO base's self-destruction reached General Parker as the fleet was arriving in the general vicinity of Titan. He stormed out of the planning room with a face like a thundercloud, and John Sheridan sighed with inward resignation. "By God," rumbled Parker, "those International Police people have a lot of nerve. Look at this!" he said, and thrust a printout into Sheridan's hands. Sheridan read it, then read it again, then handed it back. "Well," he said, "I guess they're serious about not welcoming trespassers." "One of these days that so-called wit of yours is going to get you into a lot of trouble, boy," grumbled Parker. Sheridan let pass the fact that the general had just called a thirty-six-year-old line officer 'boy'; it was just the way Parker talked when he was annoyed. "Just taking Titan's not going to be enough now," the general went on, pacing the deck beside Sheridan's chair. "We're going to have to make an example out of these people." "Ah... what people, General? The Titanese don't have anything to do with this." "No, not the Titanese, John," Parker snapped. "The IPO garrison. Their headquarters in Beltane. We're going to have to hit Government Center with everything we've got, take that place before they can set up a similar surprise for us there. One of our officers who saw the basement of the IPO HQ on Earth and got out alive says there was something weird in the basement, probably what they blew the place up to keep us from having a look at, and by God if they've got something similar on Titan I'm going to get it! Deploy the fleet for a full surface assault. I'm not going to play around with these bastards at all." At that moment, a sensor alarm and a hailing annunciator went off at the same time. The comm officer was slightly quicker on the draw, pre-empting the sensorman's report by saying, "IPO starship is hailing us, Captain," at the same time an image of a Defiant-class destroyer appeared on the main viewer. "How the -hell-?" blurted General Parker. "Put them on," said Sheridan. The screen beeped and switched to the view of a Defiant-class bridge - one which appeared to be crewed entirely by two teenage girls and a Klingon. The one in the captain's seat - a tall, slim girl with piercing blue eyes, long, slightly feathery pink hair and good legs - looked challengingly out of the screen at Sheridan. "This is Captain Utena Tenjou of the International Police Starship Valiant. I'm not any good at quoting chapter and verse from regulation and international law, so I'm going to make this as simple as possible: Get lost." Parker spluttered. He had a daughter about the same age as this girl back home, and she would -never- have dared speak to him in such a fashion. As such, he didn't know how to react. Sheridan, on the other hand, smiled slightly and replied, "Can't do that, I'm afraid. Captain John Sheridan, Earthforce. We have orders to secure this area and deploy our ground forces to assist in the transition of the Titan Colony back to the lawful administration of the Earth Alliance. Do I take it from your tone that you intend to oppose us?" Utena nodded, an I-knew-it expression crossing her face. "Uh-huh," she said, "you're gonna play it that way. OK, Captain, it's your funeral." (Sheridan thought that was a little rich, coming from someone whose tiny destroyer was looking down the barrel of a Nova-class battleship and her escort fleet, but he didn't comment; something in the girl's eyes told him she meant every word of it.) "Cross the Titan defense perimeter and we're in a shooting war, Captain Sheridan. If you think I'm bluffing, come ahead." "I don't think you're bluffing," said Sheridan seriously. "Which is too bad. Good luck, Captain. This is nothing personal." Utena looked back at him for a moment, then nodded. "You'll excuse me," she replied, "if I don't wish you the same - but I appreciate the gesture." She made a slight movement of her hand, and the Klingon at the comm console cut the connection. "They're going to take us on by themselves? That one little ship? They're insane!" said Parker. "No, I don't think so," said Sheridan grimly. "Just committed. Agamemnon to all ships: Deploy for surface assault." With Kozue Kaoru back behind the helm of the Valiant where she belonged, and Zefram Cochrane and his team keeping the engines running smoothly, that vessel was at the peak of her fighting trim. Since their engagement with the Amar, Kozue had mastered the complexities of simultaneous weapon and helm control, eliminating the need for her navigator to double as guided weapons officer. Since they were fighting a defensive battle over a planet, a navigator wasn't particularly needed, and so Miki wasn't at his post. Instead he was below, with Kaitlyn, Azalynn, Moose, Dorothy, Liza, Edward Tivrusky and Ein in the room at the top of Government Center's main tower. This was a big, airy room which usually served as the conference chamber for the Board of Regents who helped the Governor administer the colony on behalf of the Zeta Cygnan government. Its windows could be opened and it had a balcony that looked out over the central square of the city of Beltane, for announcements to the public. On top of the conference table in the center of the room, Liza Shustal sat cross-legged, surrounded by a mass of wires, amplifiers, mixers, signal processors and interface equipment. Edward and Ein were underneath that same table, connecting cables from all that to other cables that ran across the room, out the door and down the stairs to the next floor down. Both had their wearable computer arrays jacked into the system. Still more cables ran from Liza's nest across the room and out onto the balcony, where the Art of Noise had just finished setting up and testing their instruments. Under the bright blue early morning sky, the plaza was empty save for units of the Beltane Municipal Police, who were assembling to serve as an absolute last line of defense for their government. The ordinary people of Titan were in their homes, glued to their televisions, watching as John Trussell covered the coming crisis from the steps of Government Center itself. "OK, Edward," said Liza, "we're set. Patch us in." "Working!" Edward sang out gleefully. She and Ein plied their computers, making all manner of beep and buzz, and a few moments later, Edward sang again, "Ready!" Liza grinned and raised her eyes to the balcony. Kaitlyn surveyed her band, then came around behind Dorothy's drum riser, nodded to Liza, and went back up to take her place behind her keyboards. Liza grinned again, then thumbed a key on the commset next to her. "Studio 7-G to Valiant," she said. "Ready when you are." "Roger, 7-G, stand by," Klaang's voice replied, and he left the channel open. In the background, Liza could hear Utena's voice saying faintly, "But I appreciate the gesture." There was a brief, tense, anticipatory pause. Then Utena's voice rang out from the speaker, this time clearly directed at Liza and her companions: "Valiant to Studio 7-G. Sound Goldfish Warning." /* The Alarm "Rockin' in the Free World" _Raw_ */ Liza looked up, but Kaitlyn had already heard. She raised a hand, then dropped it, and her band gathered itself and hurled down the gauntlet, in the form of a pounding, angry beat that thundered forward mainly on the power of Dorothy's drums and Moose's bass. It was an angry song, much angrier than those the Art of Noise usually played, but today was a special day, and as Kate leaned to the microphone in front of her keyboards she gave her voice its full share of that anger as she sang: "There's colors on the street Red white and blue People shuffling their feet People sleeping in their shoes There's a warning sign on the road ahead And there's a lot of people saying they'd be better off dead Don't feel like Satan but I am to them So I try to forget it any way I can "Keep on rockin' in the Free World Keep on rockin' in the Free World Keep on rockin' in the Free World Keep on rockin' in the Free World" Above and around Beltane, the Earthforce assets assembling for conquest paused momentarily in confusion as the music roared through their tactical communications networks. Nothing they did seemed to stop it. This was a tactic many of the attackers had heard of before; started by the Confederate Freespacers back in the early twenty-first century, it had come to be known as a "goldfish warning" after the horrible song the Freespacers originally played when they did it. The Earthforce personnel involved today had to concede that the International Police were doing it with better music, but still, it was terribly annoying and disconcerting to have their communications replaced by music. The defenders of Titan, on the other hand, seemed energized by it. Valiant was joined by the Titan Defense Force's small contingent of Incom T-65F Dragonfly starfighters, their pilots grooving to the beat and identifying with the message. They engaged Earthforce's hordes of Starfuries, gravely outnumbered but game for the fight, as the Valiant plunged into the heart of the fleet, weapons blazing, using all of her speed and agility to good advantage. The dropships carrying the Earthforce ground assets got past Valiant, since she was too busy maneuvering to avoid the fleet's massed firepower to do anything about them - but that was part of the plan. As she watched the first quartet, three troopships and an automated Destroid carrier, pass the orbital perimeter and head for the atmosphere, Utena punched a key on her command panel and said, "Heads up, Corwin - groundpounders heading your way." On the surface of Titan, standing in front of a line of TDF gravtanks, Corwin Ravenhair watched the horizon through a pair of electrobinoculars, then let them fall to his chest and nodded in satisfaction. He turned to the man next to him, a tall, burly fellow in the uniform of an IPO Tactical Division colonel, and said, "OK, here they come. I'll keep their Destroids occupied. You deploy your tanks against their conventional armor and see what you can do about bottling up their infantry." Colonel Ordo Genreen, combined force commander, gave the young man a skeptical look. He knew this Ravenhair kid was a Lensman, and the Chief's son to boot, but he was planning to go up against a company of Earthforce Destroids by -himself-? Genreen had heard stories about the kid's father that made him believe -he- could have accomplished such a feat, but this kid... well, Colonel Genreen didn't see it. It was with perfect confidence, though, that the black-haired young man went out to meet the enemy, walking with easy, unconcerned strides until he was twenty yards or more in front of the TDF and IPO combined forces. On the other side of the plain, near the ridgeline, the Earthforce Destroid company could be seen forming up, having disembarked from their dropship. Colonel Genreen's aide leaned over and whispered, "Sir? Should we - " Genreen cut him off with a sharp gesture of his hand. If the kid wasn't up to the task he'd just volunteered himself for, they'd all known soon enough. Corwin stood for a moment, hands in his trouser pockets, the summer breeze across the meadow ruffling his shirttails. It was a nice day and a nice place, and a great pity that he had to ruin it all with violence... but that was the way things went, sometimes. He raised his wristwatch to his lips and declared in a clear, strong voice: "BIG O! It's SHOWTIME!" For a moment - just long enough for Colonel Genreen to wonder if the kid really was off his rocker - nothing happened. Then the ground underfoot shuddered, actually moving strongly enough to jostle the men inside the grounded panzers slightly. The vibration grew stronger, radiating toward them from the place where Corwin stood; then, just in front of him, the earth split open, clumps of sod, soil and rocks falling away into a great black sinkhole. A moment later, a titanic shape began to rise from that hole. A great black head, grim-faced and copper-helmeted, and broad armored shoulders arose, and Corwin, with a gleeful grin on his face, jumped lightly over the edge into the hole next to the monstrous machine. Genreen cried an incoherent warning sound and took a half-step forward, but then Corwin reappeared - kneeling in the palm of one huge black iron hand, grinning even wider. As it rose further and further from the ground, the biggest Destroid anyone there had ever seen, the massive machine raised its hand to its chest, depositing Corwin in the open hatchway below its head. This hatchway then sealed behind him, and as the robot came to a halt standing fully at ground level, towering over the TDF troops, it paused for a moment, silent. Then its eyes glowed bright yellow and it shifted slightly, as though strength had just flowed into its limbs. It regarded the oncoming Earthforce Destroids - now pausing to regroup and assess this new wrinkle on the battlefield - for several seconds. Slowly and deliberately, as befit its great mass, it raised one massive, powerfully-built forearm, clenching its fist. Then it raised the other arm to suit, hesitated, and bashed its fists together before its chest. An intolerably bright beam of light lanced out from the coppery helmet on the robot's head, slashing through the sky between the Titanese forces and Earthforce. It plunged past the Earthforce front line, narrowly missing the lead Destroid, a Crusader-class heavy, and ripped into the armored flank of the dropship, which was just starting to power up for takeoff. The dropship exploded in a tremendous fireball, blackening that end of the sky with smoke and silhouetting the Earthforce robots against the white-orange light of the explosion. Genreen gasped, then took a step forward and yelled up indignantly, "Why the hell didn't you do that before they disembarked?" The giant robot turned and looked balefully down at Genreen for a moment, the permanent scowl on its black-armored face seeming just for him. After a moment, it spoke in the amplified voice of Corwin Ravenhair: "That's the difference between warfare and murder." "Stupid kid," muttered Genreen as he went back to the battle line and got ready to lead his tanks against Earthforce's. Corwin heard him, but didn't stick around to have it out. He had more important things to deal with - like the twelve Destroids who would now be the -only- twelve Destroids Earthforce would be able to send to Titan. He applied his feet to the pedals, and Big O began to walk forward. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, until finally the huge machine broke into an impossible-seeming run, torn sod and earth flying in the wake of each enormous footstep. Behind him, the TDF/IPO combined force raised their tanks, disembarked their infantry, and surged into motion themselves. /* Big Country "Driving to Damascus" _Driving to Damascus_ */ Captain John Sheridan really had to hand it to Captain Tenjou and her crew. They might be a bunch of kids, but they were tough, they were smart, and they had brass balls the size of cantaloupes, especially their helmswoman. She was making that little ship do things Sheridan's experienced spacer's eye was telling him were impossible, and she was making them look -easy-. The Agamemnon's gunners were having fits trying to keep up with her. Ten minutes into the engagement, and already the Earthforce contingent had hit stiffer resistance than they had expected. Not only were their comm channels soaked with rock music (which Sheridan secretly admitted he was rather enjoying), but the ground forces had run into major trouble - some kind of assault-class Destroid, not on any of the intel reports, had vaporized the 122nd Destroid Battalion's only Destroid-rated dropship with only a single company, a third of the battalion, landed. A dozen Destroids should still be able to neutralize Titan's ground defenses - except for this mystery mecha, which had torn into them in an all-out frontal assault and was in the process of demolishing Company A's Fire Lance. The space battle wasn't going much better. Valiant had already done for two of the Agamemnon's escort destroyers and had her sights set on a third, and the fleet's left flank was being harassed by a Romulan-built destroyer that some who sighted her were reporting carried Gamilon markings. That would be the Lorica, then, Princess Amanda's ship. What an almighty mess -that- could turn into! Sheridan still remembered the previous year, when the Psi Corps had arrested Princess Dessler and her father, Gamilon Emperor Desslok, had nearly bombarded the Earth back to the Stone Age. General Parker was nearly beside himself, back at the planning table coordinating the assault while he left the fleet actions themselves to Sheridan. The only bright spots were in the numbers. It might take the Earthforce group longer than they had initially expected to overpower Titan's defenders, but overpower them they would. The statistics were inescapable. Only a matter of time. The shuttle which landed on a side street two blocks from Government Plaza had begun existence as a Rigel Yards Danube-class runabout. Like the IPO's own Kennebec-class ships, this ship had been heavily modified since leaving Rigel. Unlike the Kennebecs, though, which had been modified for additional speed, durability and firepower, this had been rebuilt for nothing but stealth, sacrificing almost everything in the speed, durability and firepower departments for that one overriding characteristic. In that one area, it succeeded spectacularly - to the point where, in broad daylight, in a city, two blocks from a building being defended by two dozen armed and nervous individuals, no one noticed it land. Similarly, no one noticed its crew of six black-clad men disembark, slip across the street, and disappear down a manhole. A moment later, five of them made their presence known in most dramatic and unsubtle fashion as they burst from maintenance ducts within Government Center and began assaulting the inner defenses head-on. Reports of their attack spread through the Center's internal tac net, amid considerable confusion at first, for no one quite knew who or what they were. They weren't Earthforce troopers; the armor they wore was all black, frightful and faceless, of a style none of the defenders had ever seen before. Their armor appeared to be powered, heavily shielded, and equipped with high-powered weaponry. It was Imra Ardeen, commanding the defense force detachment on Level 11, that made the most alarming discovery about them: they appeared to be immune to telepathy. As the reports from the internal defenders echoed over the tac speakers along with the running commentary from the battle ahead and the periodic updates from the battlefield to the south, Mia Ausa and Anthy Tenjou looked uneasily at each other. They were in the Center's lowest level, stationed outside the doors of Governor Miriam Ondeen's emergency office. It had been decided that, with their powerful skills at mystic shielding, Anthy and Mia would be the Governor's last line of defense if Government Center were breached. As the two sorceresses glanced at each other, Mia's eyes held a question; Anthy nodded; and the two began to weave a warding around the Governor's office door. They had just finished it - a powerful working, one that should keep even one of these armored marauders at bay - and were settling back to rest a bit and recover their energies should more active defense be needed when a black-clad form dropped down out of the rafters. Anthy reacted first; she recoiled in surprise, then set herself, raised her hands, and cried, "Come to my hands: ROSENJAEGER!" With a crack like thunder, a splinter of light crossed the space in front of her, then resolved itself into a hexagonal staff of beautiful red-brown wood, capped with gleaming gold and bearing the runic inscription of a Valkyrie's weapon, also in gold. Anthy was still a novice with the weapon, a Draconic warstaff like Corwin's own trusty Stick, but she wielded it gamely all the same, presenting it in a position of challenge and demanding to know the interloper's business. The figure, a man dressed in black, robed, cloaked, and hooded unto anonymity, made a gesture with his right hand - - and something invisible slammed Anthy back against the wall next to the Governor's door like a blow from the fist of God, driving the breath from her lungs. As the dark-skinned sorceress crumpled, Mia made a noise of shock and dismay, turning to face the interloper. Still weak from the warding, she nevertheless moved with speed and grace as she drew and triggered her Minbari fighting staff and settled into a ready stance. The interloper chuckled softly, then reached up, took hold of his overcloak, and threw it off. Mia gasped in astonishment, for she recognized both the man and the clothing he wore underneath - and the two images had never before come together in her mind. The man was Roger Tremayne, the Psi Cop who had caused so much trouble for the Institute Duelists' Society more than a year ago back on Earth. She well remembered the interrogation, mildly voiced but deadly serious, that she'd undergone at his hands in the early stages of the Corps' crackdown at WPI. She'd used her sorcerous abilities to mask the fact that she was mildly telepathic from him, knowing that in doing so she would reveal that she had some strange power, but hoping the man would be a blindly pragmatic modernist, like so many present-day humans, and pass it off as his imagination. Looking at him now, she realized that there was very little chance of that, for Roger Tremayne stood before her dressed not in the black of the Psi Corps, but the black of the Ancient and Obtenebrated Order of the Sith. Mia had read of them and seen their pictures in her ancient book about the Jedi Knights. The Sith were an evil offshoot of the Jedi, power-hungry men who had sold their souls to the Dark Side of the Force to gain that power. They wore black parodies of Jedi robes and carried and fought with lightsabers, just as the Jedi had done. It was a Sith Lord who had all but wiped the Jedi Order out, fighting for the last Santovasku Emperor, almost three millennia ago. With Quevas XIII Santova's death and that of his Sith accomplice, the dark order was supposed to be as dead as that of the Jedi... but here was one now. Roger smiled coldly. "You recognize me," he said. "Your thoughts betray you. You recognize my face -and- my garments." He took the silver cylinder of his lightsaber from his belt and thumbed a control on it; a green-edged beam of white energy hissed from it and hummed menacingly in the air, casting odd shadows on his angular face. "That's very interesting," said Roger with faint, mocking amusement. "I shall enjoy finding out how you knew of us." Those blades were supposed to be able to cut through anything, but the Anla'shok fighting staff was made of the finest materials known to Minbari science - a science that had been in its relative infancy when the Jedi and the Sith both fell into legend. Perhaps, just perhaps, that would be enough. Mia let out her finest roar of challenge and lunged - - and staggered back a moment later holding two smoking pieces of metal. Well, she thought, I had to try. Discarding the ruined weapon, she backed away, trying to gather her strength for a sorcerous counterattack, casting quick glances at Anthy to see if her stunned comrade was any nearer to recovery - and hoping against hope for help to come. Up on the balcony, Kaitlyn faltered slightly as she adjusted her keyboards for the next number. Azalynn sidled nearer and murmured, "What's the matter?" "I d-don't know. Something... someth-thing's w-w-wrong. B-besides the obv-v-vious." "Should we stop?" "N-not yet," Kate replied, shaking her head. "Let's d-do 'Red B-Balloons' next... " Corwin drove Big O to the left, pivoted on one massive foot, and brought the machine's right knee up hard into the midsection of an Earthforce Atlas-class assault Destroid. The Atlas crumpled, combat gyros knocked askew, and before its pilot could recover, Corwin drove Big O's left hand into the Destroid's chestplate, fingers digging into the armor plating. The Atlas's pilot triggered his close-range weapons, blanketing Big O in explosions, and the three remaining pilots of operational Earthforce machines cheered. Surely even that big black bastard couldn't stand up to a close-range missile spread and a point-blank burst from the Atlas's mighty autocannon! When the smoke cleared, though, Big O was still there - battered, dented, smoking in a couple of places, but still very much upright and not very impressed-looking. The silver piston in the Rune God's left forearm rammed back, then forward, and the shockwave blew the Atlas's reactor assembly clean out its back. The wrecked fusion plant flew a dozen yards before exploding, washing both the ruined Atlas and the victorious Big O in brilliant orange light. The Rune God of Iron looked positively demonic in that light as he contemptuously discarded the broken, now-partly-melted shell of the Atlas and turned toward the three survivors, eyes glowing brightly out of his hulking silhouette. /* The Beatles "Revolution" _The White Album_ */ Wakaba Shinohara's back was to the wall, literally. The black-armored marauder who had attacked her section - Area 12, Level 7 - had plowed through all the IPO blue-suiters she'd had with her, and now it was just her and it... and she was out of ideas. All she had was a katana, which she couldn't expect to do much against this thing, and a blaster carbine, ditto. This would be a good time for Clef's 'gift of magic' to finally amount to something, she grumbled to herself as she jacked the power dial on the blaster all the way past the top and got ready to do what little she could to slow this bastard down. She got off four shots on rapid fire before the marauder reached her; two missed, owing to the E-11's legendary inaccuracy, and the other two fizzled against his armor. Not quite knowing what else to do, she ducked his first swing, drew her sword, and hoped that, perhaps, her Duelist status would give her some special edge when fighting with such a weapon. The blade broke against the marauder's armor, and, with a speed surprising for his armored bulk, he backhanded Wakaba, catapulting her painfully across the hall and through the wall. Broken wall panels tumbled down, burying the auburn-haired Duelist as she crumpled to the corridor floor. Without further concern over her, the marauder busied himself trying to open the elevator doors at the end of the hall. Occupied with this, he didn't notice the pile of rubble that had buried Wakaba shift and settle. He -did- notice when that pile exploded, sending fragments of stone and wallcovering scattering in all directions and pinging a particularly heavy chunk off his helmet. He turned, body language radiating surprise, and saw his former quarry standing amid the remains of the rubble that had pinned her. She was scuffed, bruised, bleeding from a thin cut under one eye, and her clothes, jeans and a bright green T-shirt, were ragged, but she was quite unbowed - and surrounded by a coruscant green glow that seemed to be flowing from the Lens clasped to her wrist. "That. Hurt," she snarled. The marauder didn't reply; he merely threw himself at her, jets in his back coughing to give him a little extra impulse, and flung forward a fist for a killing blow. Wakaba's right hand snapped up and caught the punch, stopping the marauder dead in his tracks. Grunting in surprise - the first sound any of the defenders had heard one of them make - he strained harder, to no avail. It almost felt like he was pushing against a forcefield rather than a human hand. The harder he pushed, the brighter the emerald light surrounding Wakaba got, especially at the point of contact. Then she raised her other arm, crossing her fist against her chest like a Romulan salute, and in doing so presenting the face of her Lens to her enemy. The energy lashed out from it, blowing him clear down the hall. The good news for the Marauder was that he now had access to the elevator shaft, since Wakaba's blast had flung him clean through the doors. The bad news was that the impact had wrecked his back jets, leaving him to plummet helplessly ten stories into the elevator machinery area in the sub-subbasement, demolishing it completely on impact. Ten seconds later, the free elevator car plunged down after him and landed on top of him. Two seconds after that, its mangled wreckage was blown back up by the explosion of his armor's fusion bottle, then crashed back down amid the smoking, cooling debris. Wakaba looked down at her now-lambently-glowing Lens, eyebrows raised. "Well!" she said. Utena Tenjou gripped the arms of her captain's chair and barked orders to her impromptu fleet of two, not stopping to marvel that Amanda Dessler was taking orders from her without so much as a by-your-leave. Valiant and Lorica were keeping the Earthforcer ships busy, but it was a tightrope act all the way. The Titanese Dragonflies, with Jung Freud helping them out in a borrowed, retired, but still working Subpro Z-95 Headhunter, were still holding their own, but the odds against them grew with every passing minute. Without backup pretty soon, the situation was going to get sticky, especially since Earthforce -did- have backup coming. Added to all that was the fact that some part of Utena's mind insisted on worrying about Anthy, down below, and wishing that the former Rose Bride hadn't been so adamant about going down to pull her weight in the planetary defense forces. She loved that new assertiveness about Anthy, masked as it was by her usual quiet demeanor - but it was damned inconvenient at times like this. Not that, Utena mused to herself as Valiant shook with a torpedo impact and one of the secondary consoles sparked a bit, I could really claim she was safer here with me... And there was Corwin, but of course he was with Big O, and that was probably the safest place to be in this whole quadrant... She shook her head, pushed it all out of her mind, and doubled her efforts on the job at hand. She just had to hold them until more IPO assets arrived, and hope that Earthforce's backup didn't get there first. Janice Barlow slammed another Photon cell into her Varista, locked the weapon's breech, and opened up on the marauder who'd been wrecking the lobby again. The bastard moved so fast, it was like trying to tag a hydrophobic Bumblegrunt - she'd done a lot of damage to the lobby herself, trying to take him down where the various scattered IPO Tac types and Beltane cops had failed. The only ones still on their feet in the lobby were herself and Neal Krummell, whose VR-252 Gladiator Cyclone had definitely seen better days. Still, the guy was brave, Janice had to give him that. His suit was hopelessly outclassed by the gear the guy in black had for these combat conditions, and still he hung in there. He'd taken a couple of heavy body blows, and his frontal armor was cracked and spiderwebbed - he had to be hurting in there - but his voice was as strong as ever and his attitude was still upbeat as he called encouragement to his Ragolian comrade and they tried to flank the marauder. "Listen, Red," he remarked over the short-range comm channel that linked them, "I've got one plasma missile left. Why don't you see if you can chase him into the corner and I'll let him have it?" "Sounds decent to me," Janice replied, and began bracketing the marauder again, trying to herd him. It worked, after a fashion, but she had to be very careful, because his own weapons were no small potatoes, and her Frame was only a light one. She wasn't sanguine about testing her Hunter's Shield against his right arm's main plasma battery, either. At length she had him squared away, and Neal launched his missile - but the marauder was too slippery. He actually seemed to -dodge- the missile. He didn't clear it completely - it clipped his right arm, blowing off the weapons array in a fiery explosion - but the marauder was substantially unharmed as he hit the floor, gathered himself, and then lunged straight toward Neal. Janice yelled a warning, but the Tac Div agent was too slow in his damaged Cyclone. The marauder hit him full-on with a nasty-sounding CRUNCH, flinging him across the room to smash against the wall. He slid down, unmoving, the facebowl of his CVR smashed. Janice didn't waste time yelling his name or indulging in any histrionics. She just set her teeth, changed out her Varista's partly-spent Photon cell for her last fresh one, thumbed the weapon's power dial to its very highest setting, and snarled, "OK, boy. Come get -this-." Then she stood up from behind her marble planter cover, -daring- the marauder to come after her. He turned, sized her up for a moment, then moved with that horrible gliding speed they had. Hovering over Janice's shoulder, Mitra the Mag targeted the seam dead-center on the marauder's chestplate and fed his targeting fix to the Ragolian's cybereye. Time slowed down as her Frame's systems kicked into high gear, also coordinated by Mitra's logic center. Janice's arm snapped up, leveled, fired. The Varista raved verdant destruction, vomiting the entire contents of its fully-charged Photon cell against the marauder's stoutly built armor. The marauder's arms, legs and head flew in five different directions. Of his torso, simply nothing remained. Fifteen yards behind the spot where he had been, a bit of stone crumbled and fell from the top of the roughly circular hole burned in the far wall to the bottom. Janice Barlow jacked the Varista open and dumped the smoking, totally exhausted Photon cell on the floor, where it melted a small hole in the stone. "Asshole," she muttered, plunking the partly-spent cell back in and recharging the weapon. Then she holstered it and went to see if Neal was alive. /* Bad Religion "Hear It" _No Substance_ */ The IPO Tactical Division squad on Level 11 was getting wiped out, and Imra Ardeen, as their de facto leader, knew it. Whatever these things were, they were immune to telepathic attack, which meant that for all her AEGIS qualifications, she was no more effective in opposing this one than any other teenage girl with a blaster - which is to say, not at all. She gave her squad orders to fall back, covered their retreat, did everything right - but it would have taken genius in small-unit tactics to beat this thing with what she had, and though Imra Ardeen was many things, that she was not. That left making sure as much information as possible got to the other defenders, and as she backed toward the elevator bank and kept up covering fire, she relayed over the tac net, " - some kind of psionic barrier elements, possibly cybernetic. It's hard to tell... it feels artificial, not like a natural resistance. I don't think they're droids, but - " She was interrupted by a burst from the marauder's weapons array which slashed through the air above her. Only her AEGIS combat training saved her, dropping her to the deck before the armored attacker could track his weapons downward and tag her where she stood. One of her men fell, his armor's chestplate smoking; the others stepped up their counterattack, but they might as well have been throwing rocks for all that their blasterfire affected the marauder's armor. The one functional elevator arrived on that floor just then, stopping with a merry and completely incongruous "ding!" For a moment, everyone, including the marauder, paused and looked at it in puzzlement. Who the hell was riding an elevator into the middle of a firefight? The doors opened, and Imra's spirits spiked into a much higher register. On the face of it, it didn't seem like she had much reason, for what emerged from the elevator wasn't an antiarmor squad or a crew-served heavy blaster or anything else that might have made an impression on their seemingly-unstoppable foe. It was just one woman, and a woman not armed with any ranged weapon, to boot. But that one woman was Gudrun Truemace, so Imra's spirits rose anyway. Gudrun charged out of the elevator, a window-rattling bellow of challenge trailing behind her with her long mahogany hair, her spiked iron mace cocked low. The marauder took a half-step back, raised his weapons array, and launched a plasma burst at her. The Valkyrie -parried- it, a sweep of her mace sending the green fire arching off in another direction to blow a hole in the corridor wall, not slackening the pace of her charge a bit. The marauder, his body language evincing shock, backpedaled and opened fire at a more urgent rate, his expectations of a quick and easy kill dashed. Gudrun kept coming, ignoring most of the poorly-aimed volley fire, smacking the more accurate (or lucky) shots away with quick, efficient flicks of her mace. In five seconds she'd closed the gap between them, and the mace flashed around, far faster than it looked like even a ruggedly-built woman like Gudrun should be able to swing it. What followed reminded Imra, acoustically, of a very hungry man eating a lobster in an almighty hurry. When it was over, Gudrun had a minor burn on one upper arm and a bit of a bruise at the corner of her mouth, and the marauder looked like a motorcycle that had been run over by a robotruck. The gobsmacked Tac Div troopers stared for a few moments, then sent up a mighty cheer. The Valiant dodged a barrage of turbolaser fire from the Agamemnon's forward batteries, returned the compliment with her directional phasers, and vectored off in pursuit of one of the Earthforce flagship's escorts. On the bridge, Utena kept one eye on the shield status display and the other on the tactical plot, calling coordinating instructions to Jethan and the fighters and occasionally reminding Kozue of the bigger picture beyond the helmswoman's combat tunnel vision. Presently, one of the bridge's corridor doors whooshed open and in padded Sergei, Kaitlyn's pet neotiger. Unconcerned by the noise, the flashy spectacle on the main viewer, or the occasional jump of the deck beneath his feet, he padded across the bridge, seated himself nonchalantly next to the conn, and then released a mighty yawn, stretching his fanged jaws wide. Utena chuckled. "Nice of you to join us," she remarked, reaching to give the tiger a quick pat on the head. "Grmf," Serge replied, licking his chops. Translation: When's dinner? On Level 3 of Government Center, Juri Arisugawa was starting, just faintly, to wonder what she'd thought she was doing, volunteering to help with the defense of this place. Juri didn't suffer from a lack of confidence. She knew she had many fine qualities, among them her natural athleticism, her good looks, her keen intellect, her exceptional fencing skill, and her administrative prowess. None of those were much good against a locomotive, though, and that was pretty much what she, the four Romulans Amanda had dispatched to help with the defense, and Guy Morgan were up against here. They were in exactly the same situation as Imra and her TD team, except that four of them were armed with Romulan disruptor carbines instead of BlasTech E-11s. "This is hopeless," Sub-Centurion Voltetius snarled, voicing the very thought that had just crossed Juri's mind. It would take a miracle for the six of them to defeat this monster with the weapons they had available... and Juri Arisugawa, as all her friends had been repeatedly informed, did not believe in miracles. Kaitlyn's brother Guy, however, did. It was one of the defining features of her family that they -all- did. Every member of the extended Hutchins-Morgan-Ravenhair clan seemed to believe that, with a strong enough heart and deep enough convictions, one could overcome any adversity and emerge better for it. It was a conviction they shared with Utena Tenjou, and when she wasn't finding it irritatingly naive, Juri had to admit that it endeared all of them to her, Utena included. Now Guy, barely thirteen years old - Tenjou's age, though Juri could hardly believe it as she thought back on it, during the Grand Tournament - gripped his E-11 more tightly, set his jaw in that charmingly adamant way that all his family had, raised himself slightly from cover, volleyed autofire at the marauder to no apparent effect, and declared flatly, "There -has- to be a way to stop this thing." "I'm open to suggestions, kid," Voltetius replied wryly. "Fall back to the elevator core," Juri told Voltetius and the others. "Maybe we can - " The marauder kept her from finishing her plan, whatever it was; spying a weakness in the ceiling above, it unleashed its weapons array upward, and with a crash, paneling, broken structural members, and a lot of dust fell down on the defenders of Level 3. The Romulans took the brunt of it, knocked down and unconscious with a few bones broken. Juri, in the fore of the group, caught the edge; she was knocked off her feet and stunned by a beam, but not pinned. Guy was missed entirely. Coughing through the dust, he called for the others, asking if they were all right, and got no responses. He found Juri, saw that she was semiconscious but all right, and went to check on the Romulans. Of the four, he could only see Voltetius, who lay prone, head, shoulders and one arm extending from under the rubble heap, a trickle of green coming from the corner of his mouth. They're all down, Guy thought to himself, then turned to face down the hallway. If he's not stopped, he'll come down here and finish them off. If I don't do something, Voltetius, Miss Juri and the others will die. His blue eyes narrowed. Not going to happen. The marauder stalked out of the dust cloud, his right optic port glowing as he locked his targeting system on the one opponent still on his feet. Guy Morgan faced an opponent twice his size and with ten times his firepower, and he didn't blink. Instead, in a moment of utter clarity, he knew exactly what he had to do. It was like a game he'd played with his twin sister Priss and her best friend Sylvie a thousand thousand times - Showdown. The marauder fired, but Guy wasn't where he had been. With all his strength and speed, he threw himself sideways, dropping his E-11 and scooping up the disruptor carbine that had fallen from Voltetius's outstretched hand when the sub-centurion was borne down by the collapsing ceiling. When he came up, though, he didn't fire it; that would have been pointless, he'd seen that well enough when the weapon was in Voltetius's hands. Instead, he yanked off the sideplate, blessing his ever-exasperating twin for her all-consuming obsession with firearms, ripped out the safety circuit, and rammed the power dial all the way to the top. The disruptor sparked, fizzled, and started to overload. With a defiant yell, Guy launched himself at the marauder, jamming the muzzle of the disruptor squarely into the notch in the man's black armor where his helmet's neck shroud joined his plastron, and fired. There was a tremendous flash of green-white light, bright enough to blind Juri Arisugawa for almost twenty seconds. She pulled herself out of the wreckage, bright spots dancing in front of her eyes, and shook her head, calling, "Guy? GUY!" When her vision cleared, what she saw filled her heart with ice. The marauder lay at the far end of the corridor, smoke curling gently up from the place where his head had been... and Guy lay sprawled at Juri's feet, smoke curling gently up from... well, most of him. His face, somehow, was unharmed, but the rest of him was a burned, smashed ruin. Juri dropped to her knees, put a fingertip to the side of his throat, and then gasped in surprise. "Still alive," she whispered, incredulous. Then she tabbed the IPO commbadge that had been loaned to her and said in her hardest, most businesslike voice, "Arisugawa to Central. I need a medical team on Level 3 NOW!" Juri didn't believe in miracles. She did believe, however, that the world had a perverse sense of humor and liked to rub her nose in it, for, as it so often did, it had gone ahead and provided one - of a sort. The Art of Noise were just getting to the good part of "I Think I Like It" when the door to the stairway smashed open and the last marauder charged in. This interruption stopped even them, as Liza scrambled up from her engineer's position with weapons in hand. Edward and Ein emerged from under the table; Edward held a hand weapon of bizarre design, while a peculiar thing that looked like a turret unfolded from the back of Ein's equipment harness. The band stopped playing and turned. R. Dorothy Wayneright moved before any of the others could further react. A moment later, one of the policemen out on the plaza, standing by his cruiser listening with consternation to the chaos that had erupted on the tac band from inside Government Center, was startled to see a black-armored humanoid form come hurtling through one of the Council Chamber's windows, plummet down in a neat parabolic arc across half the plaza, and smash with a tremendous splash and crunch into the decorative-plinthed plaza fountain. A few of the cops moved over toward the fountain and prodded at the inert form gingerly, but it didn't move - would never move again. Officer Barnes looked up at the window the thing had come from, then raised his electrobinoculars for a better look. Framed in the jagged remains of the window, R. Dorothy looked balefully down at her fallen opponent, then turned away. She -hated- being interrupted in the middle of "I Think I Like It". In the basement, Roger Tremayne turned away from the unconscious form of Mia Ausa and faced off against Anthy again, the cold smile on his face unchanged. "You're quite a puzzle, my dear," he said. "This one is obviously a student of the old ways, but you... you're something else. Something intriguing." His smile widened a little, becoming absolutely no warmer. "Something I look forward to studying in much greater detail." Anthy narrowed her eyes and raised Rosenjaeger to the ready. "You won't find me so easy to take," she told him. "We'll see," he said - and then tore her staff from her hands with a negligent gesture and sent it clattering off down the corridor. "It would be a shame to destroy such a lovely weapon," he told her conversationally. "Now. Come quietly, my dear. Who knows? You might come to enjoy life with us. A woman with your powers could make quite a place for herself in the new world order." His suggestion carried added weight both from the Force and his telepathic powers, but Anthy only laughed mirthlessly. "You have no idea," she told him, "how tired I am of hearing words like those from men like you." Roger shook his head. "You're stronger than you look," he conceded. "I suppose it'll have to be by force, then." He advanced, and Anthy's thorny vines whipped out from the walls on either side to engulf him in their tearing embrace. He snarled, slashing through them with his lightsaber, flinging them back and withering them with the power of the Dark Side. She stepped back, stepped again, felt the wall behind her, and gathered all her strength for a last, desperate push: >Elemental fury, slashing light that tears the sky, Hear the voice of She Who Calls and smite my enemy with your timeless wrath: LIGHTNING LANCE!< Yellow-white energy flung itself from Anthy's out-turned palms, crackling across the space between them to enshroud the black-clad man in sizzling currents of power. He bellowed in pain, stumbling back, and then seemed to gather himself. That cold dark power lashed out from him again, pushing the energy back, and Anthy's last attack fizzled. "Is that the best you can do, my dear?" asked Roger mockingly. "Perhaps I'll have to revise my opinion of you. Here - try -my- version." Blue energy crackled from his free hand, and Anthy felt herself flung back, muscles knotting in agonizing convulsion. The wall struck her, and then she fell into mercifully cool blackness. On the top floor, Kaitlyn gasped, then dashed for the stairway door. Her bandmates and Liza didn't ask any questions - they just followed hard on her heels, readying such weapons as they had. In outer space, Utena jumped in her seat, letting out a yelp of pain, then looked around in puzzlement. She wasn't -in- pain - so where had that sudden, terrible -impression- of pain come from? "Anthy," she whispered as a dread, cold certainty touched her heart. "Something's happened. Kozue, disengage! Get us down to Beltane - the bastards are trying a backdoor play!" "What?! I CAN'T disengage!" Kozue replied, sounding a bit harried. "I dunno if you've noticed, but I'm in a running phaser duel with a CRUISER here!" "Dammit!" Utena snarled, slamming a fist down on her chair arm. "Fast as you can - finish them and let's get out of here! Lorica, you'll have to hold them - something's going on at Government Center... " "-Hold- them?!" Jethan's voice replied incredulously. "Have you lost your -mind-?" Utena gritted her teeth until she was afraid they would crack, then let out her breath. He was right. They were both right. She couldn't abandon this fight; if she did, they would -all- lose. "Belay," said Utena. "Come to one-one-five mark seventeen and engage that Hyperion before she can flank Lorica." "Aye aye, Captain," replied Kozue, turning word to deed. Dammit, Anthy, thought Utena to herself, forcefully restraining herself from chewing on her thumbnail. You'd fucking well better be all right. In the cockpit of Big O, Corwin Ravenhair recoiled with a scream as all his muscles bunched and released. Dizzied by the sudden spasm of pain, he lost control of the Rune God. Big O staggered, fell to one knee. The two remaining Earthforce Destroids, an Awesome-class assault unit and the company commander's Crusader, sensed weakness and moved in for the kill. In the next moment, Big O had straightened, his eyes blazing, as Corwin seized the controls, teeth gritted. "Anthy!" he cried, wrenching at the handgrips, and Big O whirled, one enormous spiked fist smashing backhand into the Awesome's forward armor. Cockpit window smashed, pilot stunned by the shockwave, the assault Destroid reeled. Big O turned, missile racks opening, and rained explosives on the Crusader until it fell. By then, the Awesome had recovered. Particle cannon fire lashed Big O, carving a bright, shiny furrow in the armor over his left shoulder. Snarling, Corwin whirled the Rune God of Iron and triggered his eyebeams, carving the Awesome's gun arm off at the shoulder. Burnout creepage flashed back along the powersystems and shut down the Destroid's reactor. Not satisfied with merely disabling his enemy, Corwin drove Big O forward, pounding the machine down flat on its back, then plunged the Rune God's hands into the Awesome's chest, tore out its power core, and brandished it like a trophy before throwing it aside. Alone and victorious, Big O retired from the battlefield, charging toward Beltane at top speed. Roger Tremayne stood triumphant, his mission complete. Not one but -two- anomalous espers collected, one of them a suspected extradimensional. Not a bad day's work; his master was sure to be pleased. He saw from a glance at the status display on his wrist that all five of his servants had been destroyed, but that had been expected, and they had served their purpose. The two women were in Roger's hands, and their capture would bring at least one more running straight into Lord Sidious's web. Roger especially looked forward to the look on Utena Tenjou's face when she realized there was no escape for her. Wiping the arrogance from that girl-child's pretty face would be worth all the pain of the wounds he'd suffered at the hands of that Gamilon harridan, and the humiliation of his official disgrace in the Psi Corps. Of course, the Corps was largely irrelevant, but the appearances had to be preserved, and the demotion really -had- stung some part of Roger. Yes... it would be good to get even for all of that. He knelt down next to Anthy, hanging his deactivated lightsaber on his belt, and touched the side of her unconscious face with the fingertips of his right hand. A pretty one, this, and unusual - he'd never seen a black girl with violet hair or green eyes before. Then again, he supposed she wasn't really human, which might account for - "DON'T - YOU - TOUCH - HER!" a voice screamed, and suddenly cold steel was biting into Roger's shoulder, not far from where the Gamilon's k'tayyl had carved him a year before. Bellowing in surprise and pain, the telepath recoiled, twisting away from the blade before it could bite deeper, then thrust out his hand and flung his assailant away with the power of the Dark Side. Recovering himself as best he could, Roger recentered himself, pushed down the pain, then drew and ignited his lightsaber again. Inwardly, he was astonished. He'd never even felt his attacker coming! He reached out with his mind as his eyes sized up the opponent. It was another one of those Duelists, the tall, slim but broad-shouldered young man with the long, wavy green hair. Saionji, his name was, Roger forgot his first name offhand. He was too busy reacting to think about it too hard anyway, since, to his utter shock, his attacker's mind resisted his telepathic assault. Well, no - not resisted. -Avoided-. It flowed before his attack like water, or mercury. The man's mind was nearly blank. All that existed in it were a few simple, overpowering imperatives. Foremost among them being "Kill the person who hurt Anthy." With a roar of rage that rattled the basement's structural beams, his pupils the size of purely theoretical particles, Kyouichi Saionji flung himself at Roger Tremayne. /* Ministry "Just One Fix" _Psalm 69_ */ In all his years, Roger had never faced an enemy like this before. As a telepath trained in combat, he was accustomed to relying on his psionic powers to incapacitate any enemy who tried him. As a Sith Adept trained in the Dark Side of the Force, he was accustomed to paralyzing his opponents with fear and overwhelming them with his rage. This man could teach him a thing or two about rage, he had absolutely no fear, and his mind was a thing alien to Roger's experience. The Psi Cop might as well have been trying to intimidate or psi-shock an oncoming avalanche. The only advantages Roger had were in his greater experience with a blade and the fact that, if Saionji tried to parry his lightsaber with the mere steel blade the Duelist held, he would not only fail, but lose his weapon. But, as he backed Roger all around the broad subbasement corridor, severing utility pipes and electrical cables and carving furrows in the concrete walls of the said corridor with his attacks, Saionji didn't seem to be worrying much about that. Kaitlyn and the others following her piled out of the stairway at the end of the corridor to see this battle raging at the other end. Roger's green lightsaber flashed and flickered, missing Saionji by inches, by millimeters, as the enraged Duelist ducked, dodged, and weaved, always pressing his own attack. Roger was bloodied, his Sith robes slashed in several places, and Saionji's blade seemed almost to cut the air with the same sinister hum as the Psi Cop's saber as it sought its master's enemy's blood. The curious no-touch duel raged for almost ten minutes before one of them struck a truly telling blow. And the one who did it was Kyouichi Saionji. Roger Tremayne screamed, a high, agonized scream, as his right arm parted midway between shoulder and elbow in a brilliant spray of blood. He staggered back, clutching at the wound, and Saionji advanced, a look of feral triumph crossing his lean, hard face. Tremayne fell back against the wall, thrust his bloodied left hand forward, and lashed Saionji with the same Dark Side lightning he'd used to fell Anthy. The Duelist faltered, howling in pain, then gathered himself up and started advancing again - THROUGH the storm of blue-white fire. Roger's eyes widened in something like panic as he heard the chorus of the Dark Side shift to favor the Duelist. His lightning sputtered, died away, as Saionji unknowingly drew strength from it. He shrank back, then threw himself aside as Saionji's blade whipped through the space where his head had just been. He thrust out his remaining hand again, but not to attack this time. Bending the Force to his will, he called his lightsaber to his off hand, lit it up, and threw himself into one last desperate attack. Saionji turned, saw the strike coming, and instinctively parried it. The lightsaber's blade sliced through his sword, severing most of the blade, and then burned through his shirt and bit deep into his right side before the stub of the tachi's blade caught against the projector tip of the lightsaber. Snarling in agonized defiance, Saionji thrust the blade aside so hard that he broke Roger's grip. The lightsaber, blade automatically withdrawing, clattered away down the corridor again. Kyouichi Saionji, gravely wounded, fell against Roger's chest, the strength escaping from his legs. Roger smiled, raised his one remaining hand, and closed it around the Duelist's throat. Robbed of his weapon for the second time, he decided he no longer needed one. The madman was on his way out anyway; why not help him along? Grinning cruelly, he tightened his grip, looking intently into Saionji's pinprick violet eyes, watching to see the light go out of them. Instead they expanded to a more normal size, looking back at Roger with sudden, total lucidity, and this time the Psi Cop -did- feel his opponent's intentions - too late to do anything about them. With a sudden, superhuman burst of strength, Saionji rammed the jagged, still-red-hot, ten-inch stub of his tachi's blade into Roger's gut, twisted it, wrenched it sideways, and tore it out again, releasing a gush of blood onto the concrete floor. Then he rose up to his full height, broke Roger's grip, raised the ruined blade above his head with both hands, and drove it down into the Psi Cop's upper chest. Roger Tremayne gasped, gagged, and stumbled backward, not sure whether to clutch at his belly or his throat. Finally he settled on grabbing at the sword. It came away as the strength left Saionji's hands; Roger seized it with his one hand and tried to pull it free, but it had bitten into his breastbone and lodged there. He raised his astonished eyes to Saionji's, saw a weary smile come onto the Duelist's face - - and then a transporter beam swept him up and he knew no more. Saionji looked past the spot where his opponent had been, past the pool of blood left behind by Tremayne's partial disembowelment, and saw Anthy sitting up in seiza, her eyes wide with astonishment and concern. Warmth flooded him at the sight of that look in her eyes for him. He gave her a jaunty grin, and then passed out. "We've got trouble, joH'wI'," Klaang observed from his sensor console. "Earthforce reinforcements entering combat sensor range at flank speed, ETA 5 minutes. Looks like another Nova-class and her battlegroup." "Wonderful," Utena replied. "And that," Kozue added as one of the Earthforce destroyers fell aside, windows and drives darkening as her reactor died, "was the last of the photon torpedoes." "Even better," replied Utena sardonically. "Shut down the launchers and targeting systems and redirect whatever power that frees up to the shields." "Already done, but it only netted us 5%. Those things don't use much power nowadays." Valiant bucked as the Agamemnon's forward gunners scored. "And there goes that five percent." The helmswoman took a moment to glance over her shoulder and observe, "We're gonna get clobbered when that second fleet gets here." "I know," Utena replied, "but what else can we do? I'm not running out on Titan. Where the hell are -our- reinforcements?" Klaang surprised her by answering that purely rhetorical question with a bellow of triumph. "Ask, my Captain, and ye shall receive! Challenger and support vessels inbound at high warp!" "ETA?" Utena asked instantly. "Would now do?" Klaang replied. IPS Challenger dropped from warp at the head of a small fleet. Only two of the other ships in that fleet belonged to the International Police Space Force: IPS Pennsylvania, the Iowa-class battleship acquired from the WDF at Babylon 6's change of command, and Valiant's class ship, IPS Defiant. The rest, ten strong, were mostly Centauri-sector patrol forces borrowed from the Wedge Defense Force's Strategic Fleet under the command of WDF Admiral James T. Kirk. Kirk's Enterprise wasn't here, but three of the ships he had sent to answer his old friend Gryphon's cry for help were of the same class; the rest were Iowas and Excelsiors. The two ships which weren't WDF were a lone GENOM-built Ikazuchi-class spacecraft carrier, which was even now disgorging its wings of Legios and TIE Avenger fighters, and a Gamilon K'tayyl-class destroyer, weapons visibly charged for war. On the battle-red bridge of the Challenger, Gryphon sat up in his command chair and snapped, "Get me the Earthforce flagship." Lieutenant Hoshi Sato nodded and worked her controls; a moment later, John Sheridan's bridge appeared on the main viewer. "Captain Sheridan," said Gryphon in a voice tight with anger. "I think you know why we're here." "To declare war on the Earth Alliance?" Sheridan replied, raising an eyebrow. Gryphon snorted. "You're smarter than that, Sheridan," he said. "You declared the war when you attacked Zeta Cygnan territory." "General Alvin Parker, Earthforce," cut in the broadly-built, grizzled flag officer standing to Sheridan's right. "I'm in command of the forces tasked with liberating Titan Colony from Zeta Cygni's illegal occupation, and - " Gryphon didn't bother restraining his laugh, and it was all he needed to utter to stop Parker cold. "Turn your ships around and head back to Earth, -now-, Captain Sheridan, and we can still keep this from turning into a full-blown war," said Gryphon to the man he regarded as his real opposite number, ignoring the general entirely. "Your troops on the ground will be interned and repatriated, assuming none of them are convicted of war crimes. That's the best I can offer you. Press this further and I won't be responsible for the consequences - President Clark will." Sheridan nodded, accepting the statement implicit in Gryphon's naming of the Earth Alliance's chief executive. "I'm glad you realize that I'm only a soldier following orders," he replied. "I'm sorry, Captain, I really am, but my orders are to take and hold Titan, and that's what I have to do." Gryphon sighed. "I'm sorry too," he said. "Here's hoping we both survive. Challenger to Task Force Titan - " He was interrupted by a bleat from the sensor panel. Hanson Davion, acting as his interim science officer while Klaang was on assignment with Valiant, peered at the display, then said mildly, "-This- will be interesting." Before Gryphon could ask what would be interesting, another fleet dashed into the conflict zone at warp speed, stopping just off the battle line drawn between Earthforce and the IPO-led relief force. This one was strong but had an unfinished look to it, as if, like Gryphon's fleet, it had been knocked together hastily out of available assets. The ships matched, though. Some were the same classes as those in the International Police fleet's WDF contingent; others were the newer Starfleet-only designs, most of which Gryphon found very ugly, like the Nebula-class cruisers and the massive vessel in the lead. A moment later, a transmission interrupted the conversation between Sheridan and Gryphon, dividing both commanders' viewers into a split screen to accommodate the image of a bald, patrician, and utterly no-nonsense face both of them recognized instantly. "This is Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the Federation starship Enterprise," the new force's commander declared in his rich, resonant, commanding voice. "By authority of Starfleet Commander, Admiral James Morrow, I hereby recognize that an armed conflict exists between two Federation members, namely the Earth Alliance and the Republic of Zeta Cygni. I am invoking Federation martial law for the Solar system. All armed forces are to stand down and return to their home bases as of 1200 hours Federation Standard Time. Any force which violates this cease-fire will be met by the full weight of Starfleet." On the part of Gryphon's screen which still showed the bridge of the Agamemnon, General Parker scowled. "Captain Picard, this is General Alvin E. Parker, Earth Alliance Titan Liberation Forces. We have a lawful - " "The Federation High Council has been apprised of your claim," Picard cut him off sharply. "They will render a decision in due time. In the meantime, you will withdraw your forces and await their decision, as required by Federation law." Parker set his teeth and, determined to take away -something- from this nightmare assignment, persevered, "Captain, the International Police ship Valiant has as crew and passengers several individuals wanted by the Earth Alliance for crimes committed during the emergency. We demand you turn over Valiant and her crew to Earth Alliance custody at once." Now Picard was starting to look a little annoyed. "General, what part of 'return to home base' do you not understand?" he inquired with cordial hostility. "This is now a Federation matter. The Federation High Council will decide the validity of -all- your government's claims. If you attempt to seize the Valiant by force, you will be committing an act of war against the United Federation of Planets... and that, I assure you, will be the last mistake you -ever- make." Parker glowered at the Starfleet captain for a moment, then slumped slightly as he recognized the validity of Picard's orders. "Very well, Captain," he replied. "We're leaving - under protest. May we have time to disengage and recover our ground forces?" "You may not," Picard replied flatly. "They will be taken into Starfleet custody and repatriated once a Federation investigation has determined their war-crimes status." Parker grunted. "Better than having them locked up by the Zetans, I suppose. Very well, Captain," he repeated. "Agamemnon out." Gryphon could have sworn he saw a little smile on John Sheridan's face, a twinkle in his eye, as the transmission from the Earthforce ship cut off. "Captain Picard," he said. "I'll dismiss my ships back to their bases, but I request permission for Challenger to remain here for the time being. Titan is, after all, still Zeta Cygnan territory until and unless the Federation High Council decides otherwise." Picard considered this request, still totally businesslike, then nodded once. "Very well. I've been instructed to meet with Governor Ondeen as soon as possible, in an attempt to determine the wishes of the people of Titan themselves. You're welcome to attend that meeting as well, Captain Hutchins, if you wish." "I do wish," Gryphon replied. "I'll see you down there as soon as I've finished squaring away my people." "Understood. Picard out." Gryphon sat back in his seat, watching the Earthforce fleet disengage and depart, and listened with one ear to the reports of the surrender of their ground forces. Then he sighed deeply, letting out all the tension of the impending battle, and said, "Challenger to Task Force Titan. You all heard my conversation with Captain Picard. Thanks for your help, everybody, but I hope you'll forgive me when I say I'm glad it wasn't needed. All ships, return to base. Challenger out." He paused, scratching the head of his ship's mascot Wolfgang, then said, "Hoshi, would you get me Valiant, please?" "Captain Tenjou's holding on line 2," replied Hoshi with a smile, and Utena's bridge appeared on Gryphon's viewer. "You know how to make an entrance, Dad, I'll give you that," she said with a grin. "Lots of practice," Gryphon replied, matching it. "Everything OK there?" "Yeah, we're fine. Out of ammo and a bit beat up - you came along at just the right time - but no casualties." She paused, looking off to the side at a tactical plot, then continued, "The TDF lost five fighters, two pilots dead. They're still picking up the pieces in the ground battle... but overall, it looks like we might have gotten away with this in better shape than we expected." Suddenly Klaang made a noise of surprise and discontent. He entered the frame at Gryphon's right, his big, ugly face looking troubled, and said, "Maybe not quite, joH'wI'. I think you had both better get down to Beltane immediately. Unknown forces attacked Government Center during the battle. There have been casualties." Utena went pale. "Not - " she said, but Klaang shook his head. "The emtai-Tenjou is fine," he said. "But several of the others have been injured, two gravely." He turned to face Gryphon and added, "One is your son, Captain." Gryphon came half out of his chair; beside Klaang, so did Utena, and both of them had almost identical expressions. It would, Ruri Hoshino mused, have been funny if it hadn't been so desperate. "Corwin?" asked Gryphon. "No, not Corwin," replied Klaang. "Guy." Utena let herself fall into her seat, hating herself for the rush of knee-weakening relief she felt mingled with the sustained concern and horror. Gryphon, on the other hand, got the rest of the way up. "I'm on my way. Lore, you have the bridge." Nightfall in Beltane, and all was pervaded with an air of tense, nervous expectation. The Federation Council was still deliberating over the fate of Earth's sovereign nations and Titan. In a suite of diplomatic quarters at Government Center, Gryphon sat in an armchair, trying not to fret. There were three other chairs in the suite's sitting room; one held Utena Tenjou, another Jean-Luc Picard, and the third Corwin Ravenhair. Everyone there had offered to go fetch another chair for Anthy, but she was just as pleased to sit on the floor next to Utena's chair, her hand covering the Grand Duelist's on the chair arm. Up above, in Challenger's sick bay, Doctors Selar and Phlox labored to save the lives of Guy Morgan, grievously wounded by a disruptor explosion, and Kyouichi Saionji, nearly cut in half by a lightsaber. Neither young man's fate had yet been determined - more things to add to the tension and the waiting. Wakaba Shinohara refused to leave Saionji's side, and in light of the green glow that surrounded her whenever she became agitated, neither Selar nor Phlox had thought it necessary to insist. Kaitlyn and Juri, slightly more circumspect, kept their vigil in the forward lounge. The others were scattered here and there, mostly asleep after their exhausting day. Utena wasn't even sure what the hell time it was relative to when she'd gotten up and prepared for the trip to Toronto. It seemed like about a hundred years ago... but she couldn't sleep, not until the rest of this mess was decided. Captain Picard, seeing the distress in her face, tried to reassure her, saying in a quiet, diplomatic tone of voice, "I shouldn't worry, Captain Tenjou. The Earth Alliance has acted well outside its authority in this matter. I'm quite certain that the Federation High Council will clear all of this up in due time." "I hope you're right," she replied, "but I'll believe it when I see it." "Well, however it comes out," said Gryphon, "I want you to know that you did well today, Utena, you and all your crew. If not for you guys coordinating the defenses, Titan would have fallen within an hour. You held out for nearly five, long enough for us and Jean-Luc's forces to arrive and put an end to the fighting." He cracked a wry grin. "If we had room in the fleet for another flag officer I'd promote you." Utena chuckled. "I'll settle for a raise," she joked. "Thanks, anyway... but I'm not sure it'll mean much to me if Guy and Saionji don't pull through." She chuckled again, more darkly this time. "Who would ever have thought there'd come a day when I was worried that -Saionji- might die... " Anthy squeezed her hand gently and said nothing. There was a beep at the door. Out of sheer habit, Picard barked, "Come!" at the same time as Gryphon's more easygoing, "C'mon in," then turned and met the IPO captain's grin with a faintly sheepish little smile. The door hissed open and Luornu Durgo entered, looking faintly rattled. "Fleet Captain, the Federation Council has just announced its decisions." "And?" Instead of replying directly, Luornu crossed the room and handed him a datapad. He read it, the scowl on his face deepening by the second; then he flung it across the room, snarling under his breath, "Spast!" "What?" asked Utena, leaning forward in concern. "What's the matter?" Gryphon got up, retrieved the pad, sat back down again, and said, "-This- is the matter." He cleared his throat and read, "'The Federation High Council has voted to absolve the Earth Alliance of any accusations of wrongdoing in the wake of the coup attempt by the Argentine Empire. There will be no sanctions taken or permitted against Earth.'" Utena leaned forward still more, outrage plastered all over her face. "-What-?!" "'Furthermore,'" Gryphon went on, his tone of voice becoming more and more venomous as he read, "'the High Council decided that since the nation-states of Earth are subordinate to the Earth Alliance, the dissolution of those states is a matter purely internal to Earth. The Federation will not interfere in Earth's unification efforts, although the High Council does exempt the colony at Titan, the moon of Saturn (Sol VI), as the said colony, being a lawful part of the Republic of Zeta Cygni, falls outside Earth Alliance jurisdiction.'" He stopped, snorted, discarded the pad again, and added sourly, "Well, -that's- mighty white of them." Picard sat in his chair, his usual composure almost completely destroyed. The man looked utterly dumbfounded. Finally, after a moment of fumbling, he said, "Captain Hutchins, Captain Tenjou... I... I don't know what to say. This decision comes as a complete and total shock to me. I cannot imagine what the Federation Council can be thinking." "We can see that," Gryphon replied, his voice surprisingly gentle given how angry he obviously was. "It's all right, Jean-Luc. It's not your fault. We don't blame you." He chuckled, a little bitterly. "After all, even with all this, you -did- save Titan. If they'd managed to take it, well... possession is nine-tenths of the law, as they say." "I... " Picard got to his feet, tugged down his uniform tunic, and tried again. "I must return to Enterprise," he said. "There may - " As if triggered by the statement, his commbadge beeped and said in Will Riker's voice, "Enterprise to Picard." Picard tapped the badge. "Picard." "New orders from Starfleet Command, sir. You'd better come back up." "I was just on my way, Number One," Picard replied, his businesslike veneer back in place. He turned to Gryphon and said, "I'll speak with you again before either of us leaves the system." Gryphon nodded. "I'll be here for the foreseeable." Picard nodded in return, then tabbed his commbadge again. "Picard to Enterprise. One to beam up." A moment later he was gone, and there was an awkward silence. "Well," said Utena after a moment. She stood up, dusted off her hands, and went on, "I think I've had about all the horseshit I can swallow for one day. I'm going to bed. Good night, everybody." Anthy went with her; after a moment, heaving a massive sigh, Corwin got up, bade his father good night, and left the room as well. Several minutes went by as Gryphon sat in silence, glaring balefully out at the starry night. "Er... " said Luornu Durgo diffidently. "Did you... need me for anything more, sir?" Gryphon started faintly, jolted out of his reverie, then turned a gentle look to his new yeoman. "No, Lieutenant, I'm sorry. I should have dismissed you after I got done swearing," he added with a wry smile. "Hell of a first day, huh?" Luornu smiled slightly. "I don't think I'll die of boredom in this job, that's for sure. Oh - and if we're really going to be informal in the Space Force? You can call me Lu if you want." Gryphon grinned. "OK, I will. Good night, Lu." "Good night, sir." She left him then, and he sat looking out the window for hours, his mind tumbling over and over. Then he reached to the table beside him, picked up the telephone, dialed a long number, and waited through three rings. "You were right," he said to the man who answered. "It's starting." /* The Who "Won't Get Fooled Again" _Who's Next_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited We'll be fighting in the streets presented With our children at our feet UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES And the morals that they worship FUTURE IMPERFECT will be gone - Symphony of the Sword No. 3 - And the men who spurred us on Third Movement: VALIANT ROSE Sit in judgment of all wrong They decide and the shotgun The Cast sings the song (in order of appearance) Kozue Kaoru I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Corwin Ravenhair Take a bow for the new revolution Utena Tenjou Smile and grin at the change all around Benjamin D. Hutchins Pick up my guitar and play Ruri Hoshino Just like yesterday Imra Ardeen Then I'll get on my knees and pray Wakaba Shinohara We don't get fooled again Janice Barlow No no Anthy Tenjou Kaitlyn Hutchins I'll move myself and my family aside Klaang tai-Kalaan If we happen to be left half alive Juri Arisugawa I'll get out my papers and smile Sergei at the sky Joe Graf For I know that the hypnotized Domina Kelley never lie Jill McElwain Erik Arnulfsson Yeah! Amanda Elektra Dessler Kitarina Telaia Dragonaar There's nothing in the street Devlin Carter Looks any different to me Dimitrios Makenikos Arbuthnot And the slogans are effaced by the bye Roy Chernow And the party on the left Mia Ausa Is now parting on the right John Trussell And the beards have all grown longer Jung Freud overnight Carlos II of Argentina General Eduardo Quevada I'll tip my hat to the new constitution Nanami Jinnai Take a bow for the new revolution Meredith Wayne Smile and grin at the change all around Jacques-Yves Aucoin Pick up my guitar and play Francoise La Fontaine Just like yesterday Martin Lucas Then I'll get on my knees and pray Zach Stephens Frank Williamson Yeah! William M. Clark Jules Marquette Meet the new boss Clevon Endicott Same as the old boss Marie Todd William Harrison /* The Art of Noise "99 Red Balloons" Colin Eadwards _Man, It's So Loud in Here_ */ Luornu Durgo RADM Albert Calavicci, USN (Ret.) You and I in a little toy shop R5-T1 Buy a bag of balloons with the G-3N3 money we've got R-06R Set them free at the break of dawn Neal Krummell 'Til one by one, they were gone Caddiel At the Dome, bugs in the software Edwin Planck Flash the message, 'Something's out Gordon Wendell there' Jethan Floating in the summer sky The Hon. J. Maurice MacEchearn IV Ninety-nine red balloons go by R. Dorothy Wayneright Elizabeth R'tas Shustal Ninety-nine red balloons Alf Barmakian Floating in the summer sky Azalynn dv'Ir Natashkan Panic bells, it's red alert Kyouichi Saionji There's something here from somewhere Jazmin Cullen else Fredrika Bloggs The war machine it springs to life Rokar Opens up one eager eye Vikaris Focusing it on the sky John Sheridan As ninety-nine red balloons go by Alvin Parker Ellis Carroway Ninety-nine Decision Street Rupert Loyola Ninety-nine ministers meet Ingrid Montano To worry worry super-scurry Edward Wong Hau Pepelu Tivrusky IV Call out the troops now in a hurry Ein This is what we've waited for Ordo Genreen This is it boys, this is war Orihalcon The President is on the line PCED Special Hunter Units 9313-9317 As ninety-nine red balloons go by Roger Tremayne Gudrun Truemace Ninety-nine knights of the air Voltetius Ride super-high-tech jet fighters Gai "Guy" Morgan Every one's a super-hero Hoshi Sato Every one's a Captain Kirk Jean-Luc Picard With orders to identify To clarify and classify with Scramble in the summer sky Earthforce As ninety-nine red balloons go by IPO Tactical Division Earth IPO Tactical Division Titan Neunundneunzig Kriegsminister Titan Defense Forces Streichholz und Benzinkanister Beltan M.P.D. Hielten sich fuer schalue Leute Witterten schon fette Beute and special guest stars Riefen: Krieg und wollten Macht Matt Frewer Mann, wer haette das gedacht as Edison Carter Dass es einmal soweit kommt and Wegen neunundneinzig Luftballons W. Morgan Shepherd Neunundneunzig Luftballons as Blank Reg Ninety-nine red balloons go by! oscillation overthruster Ninety-nine dreams I have had Benjamin D. Hutchins And every one a red balloon It's all over and I'm standing pretty consulting engineer In this dust that was a city Kris Overstreet If I could find a souvenir Just to prove the world was here reverberator Here it is, a red balloon John Trussell I think of you And let it go... spark Anne Cross scientist Anne Springsteen steering committee The Usual Suspects The Symphony will return E P U (colour) 2002