Fritz Koopman kicked his right rudder pedal as hard as he could, winged his Dragon over, lined up on what felt like the second-from-an-infinite-number of Wyverns, and blasted it out of the sky. Like most of the enemy's equipment, the Wyvern was an inferior aircraft; that was one reason for the tremendous kill ratios the Air Force was piling up. Another, Koopman was noting with increasing satisfaction, was the fact that he and his pilots far outstripped the abilities of the dark elves who almost exclusively flew the fighters of Svartalfheim and Niflheim. He had no way of knowing it, but at their prelaunch briefing, those elves had laughed uproariously at the idea of a bunch of dead mortals flying Asgardian jets into battle against them. Well, they weren't laughing any more. Not, Fritz reflected to himself, that that necessarily meant it was a free ride. As if some supercelestial authority had decided that thought needed reinforcement, a flash caught Koopman's peripheral vision. Turning his eyes but not his head, he saw one of his flight's Dragons break up. "With regret, I must abandon my killercraft!" came the voice of Pilot Officer Kerliss, a male of the reptilian Race, over the tac net. His ejection seat parted from his dying fighter with perhaps a half-second to spare, and Fritz spotted one of the Wyverns twisting out of a half-roll and turning to strafe the pilot as he descended in his parachute. "I don't think so," Koopman growled, nosing his Dragon over and punching the afterburner momentarily online. Preserving the life (if that was the right word) of his stricken pilot took precedence over conserving his more sophisticated ammunition; he tasked a Skymaster missile with the destruction of that Wyvern and sent it on its way, then radioed for a rescue unit for Kerliss. Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT -=TWILIGHT=- FIFTH SEAL: TOCCATA Benjamin D. Hutchins Lawrence R. Mann MegaZone Kris Overstreet with the gracious assistance of the usual suspects (c) 1998 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited The thickening weather settled over the battlefield, and the sleet slashed down like a live thing, live and angry. Up to their ankles in icy slush in one of the Einherjar trenches stood a group of World War I soldiers, men well versed in trench warfare. An officer of the Kaiser peered out over the battle lines, trying to make out something, anything, through a battered set of field glasses. To one side of him stood a British infantryman, clutching his SMLE rifle as if it were his only link to reality; to the other, an American doughboy did the same with his Springfield. >This is pointless,< growled Leutnant Josef Halder at length, reverting to his native language since he was mostly talking to himself. "At least they're not using gas," the shivering Tommy offered. >Small favors,< Halder replied. "I think small favors are the only kind we're going to get, my friend," said the American doughboy. The German nodded, but said nothing, his gaze still intent on the all-too-near horizon. Suddenly his eyes caught motion, a great dark shape moving behind the line of the enemy -- too big to be one of those verdammt crawlers of theirs, and its motion was wrong. It moved as if... alive? "Was ist... " he murmured, adjusting the focus and wiping ineffectually at his glasses' wet lenses. "Fenris," the Tommy gasped. "Scheiss!" cried Halder. "ACHTUNG!" he bellowed at the top of his considerable lungs. "FENRIS APPROACHING!" Down the line, the men of the 121st Einherjar Infantry readied themselves, for the great wolf and his vanguard were bearing down on their position, and there was nary a god nearby to help them; only one of the mortal warriors, who observed the approaching enemy with narrowed eyes and knew that it would take more than a pair of automatic pistols to get him out of this one. Gryphon knew that his powered armor was in sorry shape. He had been meaning to overhaul it, repair the damage done to it in his fight with Largo, but he'd never gotten around to it. It was still sitting in pieces on his workbench, out in the garage of his New Avalon home, awaiting the weekend when he finally had the time and initiative to piece it back together. It had seemed so low-priority -- after all, he was Chief of the Utopia Planitia Yards and a flag naval officer, hardly the sort of jobs where one expects to need a powersuit. At least, he remarked ruefully to himself, you didn't tear it any further apart. Aside from being disassembled for manual removal, it was in the same condition it had been at the end of the battle; he hadn't stripped any systems. He wasn't sure if the hyperquantal call signal from his armor matrix chip would work across whatever gulf separated New Avalon and where he was now, but he knew that simple space was no barrier to its action, so it was certainly worth a try. He activated the chip and hoped for the best. For a moment, nothing happened, and he had resigned himself to the probability that he was too far away (in one way or another), or it was too badly damaged, for it to respond; then he was frozen in place by the aligner field as the scan lines gridded his body. The process had always amazed him; he had never pretended to understand how the armor matrix worked. It was simply another product of CLULESS, yanked protesting into existence in the winter of 1991 when he needed a weapon and had enough data on the fictional version of the original GRF-3N Griffin Mark III armor to generate one with the HoloDECstation's reality engine. When he'd abandoned the -3N on 03F8, he'd taken the matrix client module out of it first, and integrated it in the -S4N later. One day, maybe he'd find or figure out how it worked. Now, though, he was content to know that it did, as the battered but functional GRF-S4N Griffin Mark IV materialized around him. Its armor plating was cracked in a few places, some of the myomer-servo intersections were a bit dodgy, but the master power cell was at full output and the weapons were hot. He noticed a draft at his back; environmental integrity was compromised. He tried not to notice it as he targeted one of Fenris's standard-bearers and discharged his left-hand-held main gun. The blue-green particle bolt flickering over the Einherjar trench and blasting down their standard-bearer alerted the Fenris vanguard to the presence of someone better armed than the soldiers in the trench. Immediately, they fanned out into a wider pattern, scanning the greyness with peering eyes, but they couldn't see Gryphon; with his suit in terrain masking mode, he was all but invisible. He closed in on them from their left flank and burned another of the giants before they spotted him. Then he shut down terrain masking and melted out of the sleet, a sharp-edged white phantom, faceless with the visor of his helmet down. "The Midgardian is distracting the wolf -- let's go get those troops, Kraut!" cried Corporal Jones. "That's -Leutnant- Kraut to you, doughboy," said Leutnant Halder with a grin. "Let's go get them indeed!" The 121st scrambled from their trenches with a concerted cheer and waded into the dark elves and giants, bayonets set. The dark and choppy sea had gotten choppier, Admiral Yamamoto noticed; choppy enough to roll even his mighty flagship slightly. This was not a good sign, but as the old sailor considered the situation, he knew that at this stage it didn't matter all that much. The navy of Niflheim was all but routed already; the main body of their force had been pinned within the harbor and chopped to pieces just as planned, and the rest were out of position. The battle for control of Asgard's great harbor was effectively over; this inevitable coda would not change that. Grimly, Yamamoto ordered his vessels into a ring around the harbor, directed his field glasses to the center, and waited. Presently, he got what he was expecting: bursting out of the dark water came the head of a nightmarish serpent, all the monstrous sea beasts of sailor lore on a thousand worlds come to life, huge and green and horrific: Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, mightiest of the progeny of Loki. In his jaws he clenched the twisted remains of a submarine, like a dog holding a bone. As he turned his baleful yellow eyes toward land, he released it, letting it crash back to the surface of the harbor and sink out of sight. "All ships, open fire!" ordered Yamamoto, and the guns of the Asgardian fleet began raining fire on the serpent. Undaunted, Jormungand surged for the shore, smashing aside the aircraft carrier Shokaku and writhing his vast green bulk over the mountains toward the land battle zone. The Asgardian fleet kept hammering him with fire until all of his impossible length had passed over the mountains and out of sight, to no visible avail. Gryphon figured he might have a problem with Fenris almost as soon as he entered battle; the particle cannon, given insufficient warming time in the cold, went almost immediately offline, its charging coils cracked. Cursing, he slapped it onto his left-hip magmount and detached his hand from the locking plates that normally held it in place on his forearm. The wolf slashed at him with a huge paw; he ducked backward, but his stabilizers were off and his right leg was having an intermittent problem with its knee joint. The duck turned into a stumble, spilling him on his back. Before he could roll out of the way, one of Fenris's forepaws slammed down on him, shattering the transparent facebowl under his solid visor, knocking that visor out of true, crushing the already damaged chest and abdomen plates and his own chest with it, and driving him further down into the feet-deep packed snow. Snow and ice poured into his helmet through the broken visor. As he desperately tried to lever the huge wolf's paw off his chest, Gryphon wondered if he would suffocate from having his chest crushed before he drowned in the meltoff of the snow that was pouring into his helmet or simply choked on his own blood. Skuld spotted Fenris just as he smashed Gryphon into the snow. She gave out the obligatory call for reinforcements, but none of her personnel were close enough to help; having expected little else, she kicked in her Black Talon's boosters and made for the 121st Einherjar's position at top speed. Alighting behind the trench line, she had to swallow a small knot of fear at the sight of the great wolf, the pain of her dream still fresh and raw in her memory. Then she pushed it aside, dropped her targeting scope onto the wolf's left foreleg, charged her #1 Hellbore and burned it. Fenris jumped back, alarmed, as the orange powerbolt seared his leg, releasing the pressure on Gryphon's chest. Fighting the desire to black out, Gryphon tried to force his way back up out of the snow, only to discover that his power systems were compromised and the suit was losing motive power. Soon he'd be as trapped in its unyielding metal bulk as a man buried in concrete. Skuld reached up with her right gauntlet and pulled Bjarnnil free from the magnetic mount, whirling the mallet in her hand as the handle sprang to its usual three-foot length. One of the dark elves charged toward her with a wide-throated power rifle in his hands; she brought the hammer round in an arc and crushed his skull like a melon. The others fell away, knowing themselves to be outmatched, and turned to the trenches as the wolf they heralded turned to face Skuld. She whirled Bjarnnil to the ready and stared Fenris down, her fear entirely absent now. There was nothing of the compassionate patron of technology or the loving, cheerful goddess of a benevolent future in Skuld now; nor was there anything of the fearful girl she had been the night before. Today there was room in the Black Talon only for the Valkyrie leader for whom it had been constructed -- dark and terrible and beautiful, without mercy for the enemies of Asgard. Today Skuld fully embodied that most sinister aspect of her position among the Norns, the one which few realize exists and even fewer care to acknowledge: The future is where all must die. /* Bad Religion "Fuck Armageddon... This Is Hell" _All Ages_ */ Fenris turned toward Skuld, upper lip curling in a hideous snarl. His jagged fangs and slavering tongue were obviously not built for normal speech, so when he spoke, he spoke with a sort of telepathy. [Well, well,] he said, his voice cold and evil as he sidled away from the rest of the battle and the downed Midgarder. [What have we here? Looks like a little girl pretending she's a warrior.] Fenris's eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and if he could have smiled, he would have. What that would have looked like is left as an exercise for the reader. [No... not a little girl any longer, are you? An eleventh-hour coming-of-age, or I miss my guess. Clever, but it won't save you.] "Shut up," Skuld snapped, and unleashed the full power of her right arm's weapons battery. For a moment, Fenris and Skuld vanished from sight as the raw power released by the twin miniature Hellbores and the high-output particle gun built into the Black Talon's vambrace plate vaporized the snow and ice around them. When it cleared, the wolf was definitely wounded, but just as definitely unfazed. Blood dripped steaming to the cleared ground from the rents in his side, but he remained steady on his enormous paws, and the hate in his eyes was undimmed by pain. [Is that the best you can do, dirty little goddess?] He advanced a step, mocking her with his eyes. "No," replied Skuld, and fired her left arm's battery next. The vapor cloud was less impressive without the reserves of grounded snow, but the ionization layer arising from the burst of high-volume railgun fire and the three heavy lasers managed to obscure the combatants briefly. When it cleared, Fenris was bleeding on both sides, but didn't appear to care. [Don't you understand?] asked Fenris with mock sadness. [Silly girl. You can't hurt me. You can't. I am destined to devour the Allfather and avenge myself and my brother and sister, but before I do, I think I'll kill the future. Call it... symbolic.] "No!" Skuld repeated, and raked the wolf with both batteries at once, a precipitous action that elicited alarmed power-status warnings from her Black Talon's resource-management computer. She ignored them. The wolf had to die, he had to! She could not permit him to pass this spot; if she did, nothing would stand between him and the city, the castle, the Allfather. The weapons discharge alone threw up a cloud of smoke for a moment as it tore the air, but before it could clear the great wolf was charging through it, and Skuld evaded him by the narrowest of margins as his massive jaws closed with an almost seismic snap on the air where she had just been. [This is the end for you, girl, and the beginning of the end for Asgard. Father will be pleased with my work this day.] There was no power left in Skuld's Black Talon for weapons fire. The three sustained bursts she had unleased on Fenris had embodied enough destructive power to level a city, and though bloodied, the wolf remained unbowed. She had nothing left, except Bjarnnil. Whirling the mallet again, she settled back on her center of gravity and waited for the wolf's next charge. Bjarnnil was more tool than weapon, certainly no Mjollnir, but maybe it wouldn't have to be. Fenris sprang with a speed entirely belying his bulk; Skuld barely threw herself aside in time, bringing Bjarnnil around in a wide arc that connected with the wolf's nose. The crack of the impact jolted her arms through the armor, and Fenris reared back, baying in sudden shock and pain, as blood from his wounded nose spattered the ground. Where the weapons of the Black Talon, mighty but mundane, had failed to cause him pain, a blow from the enchanted mallet stung deep. But not for long. Angered, the wolf dove again, and Skuld knew she would never be able to hold him off for long. Where was Gryphon, why hadn't he come up yet? She switched her visor over to thermographic imaging and tried to locate him by the heat his suit's power plant must surely be kicking out. Where Gryphon was, was just about at the end of his rope. His helmet was more than half full of extremely cold water now, his legs were completely immobile, his arms felt like lead, and the cold was spreading throughout his suit as the environmental systems failed completely. Soon the motive systems would fail as well, and he would be completely trapped. Soon, for that matter, his hammering heart would give up, denied oxygen and finding itself with less and less in the system to pump. He would slip into hibernation, or perhaps die altogether. The cooling fins for his now-defunct power plant were still hot, though, and Skuld spotted him shortly, a few yards off to the side of the cleared patch where her high-powered face-off with the wolf had happened. She could tell by his sluggish movements that his suit was badly damaged, and he himself was probably injured. Cursing inwardly, she wondered what she could do out here; then she remembered part of their shared dream, and with a leap of intuition, she knew. That moment of consideration cost her dearly. Given an opening, Fenris took it, lunging and catching her in his powerful jaws before she could escape. Just as in her dream, Skuld was being crushed by the jaws of Fenris. For a moment, the parallel terror of that sensation shattered her composure, and she screamed; Fenris shook her violently and tossed her away. Shattered, powerless, unable to move, the Black Talon suit she wore was now the galaxy's most amazingly sophisticated collection of junk. It had done its most important job, though; the woman within was stunned and bloodied, but not mortally injured. Fenris knew this, but was not concerned. He stalked toward her slowly, intending to enjoy this kill for as long as possible. Jormungand plunged over the mountains into the west flank of the battle, tearing through the White Legion's lines and scattering troopers, tanks and walkers before it like tenpins. The enormous serpent seemed absolutely unstoppable as it tore through the GENOM troops, devouring some, smashing others and throwing the remainder to the four winds. As he abandoned the doomed command post with the others, Lawrence Mann began to know the first inkling of true despair. What could stand up to -that-? A moment later he had his answer. With a tearing peal of thunder, spinning his magic mallet above his head like the rotor blade of a helicopter, Thor Ironhammer charged from the Asgardian line, leaped in the air, and brought Mjollnir smashing down on Jormungand's head with such force that the serpent was slammed to the ground, sending up a spray of snow. The White Legion cheered, and Larry cheered with them; then that cheer turned into a concerted howl of horror as the serpent reared up again, narrowing its serpentine eyes to regard the god standing on its nose. "So," it observed, in what to Larry's somewhat addled mind was a perfectly atypical voice for the universe's biggest snake to have. Shouldn't it hiss whenever it said the letter 'S'? "At last we come to our prophesied battle." "I'm changing the ending," replied Thor, leaping back off the monster's head, performing a tidy somersault as he fell past its nose, and lashing his hammer out in an arc that caught its jaw and threw it sideways a good dozen meters. As he landed, though, Jormungand was rising, and preparing the first of the torrents of venom which the prophecy said would kill the thunder god. Thor was faster than the prophets had anticipated, though; he leaped aside as the jet of smoking green noxiousness slashed into the snow. Hissing his displeasure, Jormungand struck at him with his fangs; Thor backpedaled and crashed his hammer down on the monster's nose, causing Jormungand to recoil with a hiss of pain. This game of cat and mouse went on for a while, until even Thor began to tire; as he did, he stumbled, and caught the edge of a venom stream. Screaming, he collapsed in convulsions. Hissing triumphantly, Jormungand drew himself back for the kill. Later, R-Type would not be able to say why he did what he did next. Instinct, he would say. Reflex. An inability to just stand by and watch a good man die. Whatever the reason, he slammed his helmet on his head, broke away from Kawalsky and Feretti, and charged, running as he never had occasion to run in his regular life. As he ran, he unleased one-handed a sustained stream of autofire from his blaster, raking Jormungand's face and causing the serpent to draw back more in consternation than alarm. His other hand pulled a grenade from his belt, and as he approached the fallen thunder god, he primed the grenade and threw it into the massive serpent's hissing maw. As it exploded, startling and blinding the serpent momentarily but doing it no real harm, he threw himself over Thor's prone body, hoping like hell his icetrooper suit would resist what he knew was coming next. Incredibly, it did. The acidic green slime poured down over him, melting the snow and scorching the earth around him, but it did not penetrate the suit. Thor was, momentarily at least, saved. Snarling with rage, Jormungand drew back and collected his fury for a second barrage -- one which Larry's suit computer was informing him with some alarm it would not withstand so handily. Outer skin thickness was down in some places to less than half a millimeter. Lawrence Mann covered his head with his hands and prepared to die. As Skuld's mind cleared, she saw, fuzzily, the wolf approaching. Sensor power was failing, but she dared not open her visor; she wasn't even sure she could at this point, anyway. She put it out of her mind and looked around. Gryphon's position was a few yards away. With the power train to her suit's legs crushed, it might as well have been a light-year. Or might it? Slowly, painfully, she inched Bjarnnil's handle through her right hand until she held the pointed end, the end with the brazing torch built into it. She balanced the hammer this way in her hand, upright, using the strength of her fingers to keep it that way as she turned it to a precise heading. This was chancy -- all it would take to screw it up would be for Fenris to realize what she was doing and leap, or the wind to change -- but it was all she had. Skuld tripped the hammer's handle extension command in her mind, and as it sprang up she let it tip ... "NO!" R-Type at first though that he'd said it; then he looked up, and his heart nearly stopped. Dashing through the snow, coming straight for him, was Yuri, her coat flying around her in her haste. He wanted to wave her off, but discovered with some consternation that his icetrooper armor had fused into the position it was in. If he wanted to take it off at all, he'd need help; right now he couldn't move. All he could do was watch. Jormungand reared back and opened his jaws to strike, and as he did, Yuri leaped straight up into them. The torrent of venom the serpent vomited forth struck her full-on before even leaving Jormungand's mouth. Larry screamed in sympathetic agony, his muscles knotting so powerfully they broke the fused back parts of his armor as he curled into a ball atop Thor's unconscious form. Dimly, looking up, he could see Yuri still silhouetted in the monster's mouth as the venom rained down, its discharge ruined by the blockage, several feet away from him and the thunder god. When the torrent was over, though, she remained there, burned and convulsed, but alive. Even as she uncoiled from the convulsive crouch she had assumed, Larry felt his own pain easing, the muscles uncramping, as the sympathetic reaction faded. It didn't clear, not entirely, but at least he could move. Yuri drew herself standing, raised the Ruger in her hands, and let off ten shots straight down Jormungand's throat. The serpent screamed and thrashed as his venom glands were destroyed; as he did, Yuri took the opportunity of his confusion to jump out of his mouth before he could close it on her. She landed heavily, unsteady on her feet, beside R-Type; her clothing was tattered and smoking, and, for that matter, so was her flesh. She used her coat to hide her face from him, and judging by the blistered, blackened ruin of her visible hand, that was probably a good idea. "Don't look," she said, her voice stiff and guttural, "you shouldn't see me this way," as her hat settled out of the sky onto her head. Thor looked up, blinking, and shook his head, conscious but unable yet to move much. Jormungand, his major weapon destroyed, roared with rage and struck at Yuri, intending to rend her with his fangs. She jumped lightly onto his nose, lowered the Ruger, and shot out his eyes. No - not his eyes. They weren't her target; they were just in the way. The magic bullets issuing from her enchanted sidearm were destined for a very different spot: the back of Jormungand's reptilian brain. The monster thrashed and howled and thrashed some more as its brain was destroyed, but Yuri somehow kept her balance and her aim until, with one last great effort, the Midgard Serpent straightened almost a full half of its bulk in the air, gave a massive convulsion that flattened many of the GENOM fortifications, and collapsed, slain. "Odin's wintry beard," Thor breathed. Yuri tumbled out of the sky, plowed into a snowbank, and lay still, face down, her hat fluttering out of the sky to land over the back of her head a moment later. R-Type shambled through the snow toward her, his movements hampered by the residual stiffness of his muscles and the damage to his armor. Then, in one terrifying moment, he realized he wasn't feeling anything from her. The subtle, often entirely subliminal, connection he'd felt to her for the past year or so (which had become stronger in the hours they'd been on the world of the gods), had gone out, snuffed like a candle the instant she hit the ground. That realization staggered R-Type; he stumbled in his run, then fell to his knees, unable to keep his balance. He kept on, anyway, in too much of a hurry to try and regain his footing, wallowing in a clumsy half-crawl through the snow to the fallen woman's side. He didn't want to look, but he had to, he had to know. He reached out with a trembling hand, took her shoulder, and turned her over. Her face was not the charred, withered ruin he had been dreading to see; it was reddened and a bit blistered, but it was still the face he knew so well. Her hazel eyes, almost green in the cold, were intact... and staring up glassily at the unforgiving grey sky. Dr. Lawrence Mann felt as if the bottom had fallen out of the world. He wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure what, so he ended up making a long, inarticulate noise somewhere between a groan and a howl. So busy was he with this little matter that he didn't notice her eyes twitch, flicker, and then snap back into focus; didn't hear her draw a ragged breath. Nor did it particularly register on him when she sat up and put a hand -- red and blistered, but not the horrific ruin it had been minutes before -- on his shoulder. "Larry," she said softly, "get down." Then she shoved him face-down on the ground, leaned over his back and shot the dark elf who had been about to burn him with a proton rifle, at about the same time Kawalsky and Feretti cut him down from their longer range. Sputtering and spitting out snow, R-Type sat up, wiped his eyes, and blinked. "I don't believe it," he whispered hoarsely. Yuri smiled. As R-Type watched, the skin of her face smoothed and whitened, the angry red burns fading and then vanishing altogether. She held up her hands; they, too, were clear and unharmed, except for a small patch on the back of one which cleared and disappeared before his eyes. "Everybody's got a talent," Yuri said with a grin. "Mine, as Kei and I discovered a few years back, is coming back to life." "Why didn't you tell me you could do this?" asked R-Type. Yuri shrugged, hauling him to his feet. "It never came up." "Yeah, I guess it didn't," Larry croaked, willing to leave it at that. There was, after all, plenty of stuff in his life which hadn't been talked about yet because it 'never came up'. Indeed, for a moment a whole slew of things he still hadn't told Yuri flashed before his eyes, along with a bunch of different impulses and things he wanted to do. He wanted very much to just sweep her up in his arms and hold on to her for the rest of his life, but he also knew there was no time for any of that. The danger was still far from over. So he settled for sending the strongest and foremost thought he could through their reestablished (and had it gotten still stronger?) link, not trusting his voice to do it right. [I love you so much.] She smiled softly and her hand tightened around his, the sound of her beautiful voice ringing with crystal clarity in his mind. [I know.] "BOSS!!" About that time the hollering and the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps became sufficiently annoying to distract the two, as Kawalsky and Feretti came charging toward them, with Skarne not far behind. "What the hell were you thinking?" Feretti sputtered, not bothering with the usual first question since the answer to it was fairly obvious. His face remained unreadable behind his icetrooper helmet but his body language and the tone of his voice compensated quite easily. "I was thinking I couldn't just stand there and watch the man get killed. And don't yell at me," R-Type grumbled. "Well, sir, if you don't mind a suggestion, next time you might consider using the hazmat blanket that's in your equipment belt," said Kawalsky. R-Type would never know if he had been straight-faced or not, but his voice had betrayed no amusement. "... Oh," said R-Type, a loud "DUH!" resounding in his brain. He resisted a powerful urge to slap himself. About that moment a shadow fell over them and Larry found himself looking up at Thor, who had regained his footing and joined them. "Are you all right?" he asked the Thunder God. "I will be," Thor replied, holding his head and still looking a bit out of sorts. "Just a few more minutes." He looked down at the two mortals who had saved his life, still holding hands. "I thank you, both of you." Yuri shrugged. "It's a job," she said with a grin. KLONK. Bjarnnil's mallet head dropped from the sky and struck a blow to the chestplate of Gryphon's ruined powersuit that would have rung, had the suit not been partly crushed and buried in snow. As it did, providing the necessary contact, Skuld tried something she had never done before. Without any prep time, without extensive design work and preliminary enchantment, without even creating an incantation for the final assembly, she visualized a design and bent her will to its creation, using the material of the damaged armor as its basis. A brilliant blue-white glow surged out of the hole in the snow where Gryphon lay as the metal shell and the flesh within it twisted in the grip of the goddess of technology's will. For a moment, he felt uncomfortably like a man standing in the middle of a giant Rubik's Cube as somebody else tries feverishly to solve it; then he smiled as his shattered facebowl reintegrated itself, the outer visor of his helmet snapped into true, environmental systems sucked away the water, and reorganized but still familiar readouts glowed to life within that reconstituted facebowl. The pain and the crushing sensation in his chest dissolved into a feeling of unspeakable vitality. Power rushed back to his limbs, and getting out of the snow was no longer a problem; he burst free with just the slightest of mental taps to the flight jets on his back, dropped lightly back to the ground, and scowled through the clear new holographic display at his massive lupine foe. Fenris could not see his face, but the sharp, deadly lines of his new armor, a perfect amalgamation of the features which distinguished the Griffin suits and the razor-edged lines of the Black Talon series, spoke volumes. The suit's surface was a gleaming, opalescent black, the sort of abyss of colorlessness which, when you look into it, looks also into you. Understated silver striping offset its base color nicely and added to its perceived sleekness. The domed, faceless helmet still had the Griffin's trademark TV-antenna-like twin aerials jutting up from the back; the chestplate had the same panzer-turret-like slope. The shoulders and knees still had their distinctive armored baffles. The vambraces were sharply straked on the outside edges, a close-quarters combat modification Gryphon had considered for the Mark IV but never gotten around to implementing. The whole suit was trimmer, cleaner-lined and sleeker than the Mark IV, and moved with a fluid grace which the earlier suit had come a long way toward from the Mark III, but still fallen short of. Above the left shoulder, the two ancient samurai swords jutted up from the slots reserved for them in the backplate, just as in the previous mark. "Let's try that again," said Gryphon as he pulled up a weapons diagram from the battle computer and acquainted himself with his new combat capabilities. He still had a particle cannon on his hip -- improved, according to the stats the battle computer was giving him -- a popup missile launcher in his right pauldron and a contact concussion blaster built into his right vambrace; the rest of his weapons loadout had been rearranged into something like that of the Black Talon, complete with the two 30mm Hellbores on the strong-side (left, in his case) vambrace. He wasted a little time with those, burning and dodging, before reaching the same conclusion Skuld had before him; attacking Fenris with conventional weapons was meaningless. What, then, could he use? He had no magic weapon, no special power. All he had were the armored suit he wore, its weapons, and his swords. [But,] he reasoned, [the swords are an extension of my will, is that not so? And if it is my will that Fenris shall die... [What the hell? It can't hurt the situation.] He reached back and pulled the katana from its socket. Dropping into a single-blade stance, he waited for Fenris's next move. The wolf sprang; Gryphon ducked to the right and struck, opening a long furrow in the beast's right side. Blood spattered the snow, and Fenris yowled in pain. Slavering, eyes burning, the great wolf twisted, driving his merciless jaws at his tormentor. Slowly, as if in a dream, Gryphon pivoted smoothly and struck again. This time the wolf's yowl of pain was cut short, as the Midgardian warrior's blade slashed neatly through Fenris's massive neck, beheading him. The cheer that went up from the 121st Einherjar as they mopped up what remained of Fenris's vanguard was almost palpable. Kris and George Patton stood, one on the hull and the other in the hatch of the Einherjar panzer, observing the battle directly before them. The retreat had seemed total at first, with the enemy in complete disarray. Now, however, Jormungand had scattered or destroyed a large section of the defensive line, and Patton's panzers were spread thin attempting to cover the gap while Tyr and Butch scrambled what was left of their reserves to rebuild the lines. Despite Jormungand's death, the enemy was still pressing the attack, if anything harder than ever. Kris grunted as more bullets and blasts hit the shield he was barely maintaining over the command panzer. The quick recharge from the lightning and a handy pork riblet MRE hadn't relieved his fatigue, and his energy reserves were running low again. Concentrating on maintaining the shield was taking up a great deal of his concentration, and now simply standing became a difficult task. Man, Kris thought, when this is over I'm gonna need a loooooong rest. "Looks like we're about to get outflanked," Patton growled around his cigar. "How you holding up, kid?" "Been better," Kris admitted. "Better call Dad and tell him to pull what's left of the left flank in closer to the city, and then pull back ourselves." "Not me, friend," Patton growled. "I'm consolidating a division for another counteroffensive. I want a shot at whatever's driving these bastards." Kris nodded grimly. "You aren't the only one," he said. "Now, if you'll be so kind as to duck down into the tank, I can drop the shield and clear us a path. Sir." "You're the boss, Admiral," Patton chuckled, and he dropped down into the turret. As soon as the general was out of the line of small-arms fire, Kris dropped the shield and began throwing small, rapid-fire bolts in front of the command panzer, slicing up the enemy wholesale. Taking the hint, the tank advanced, flanked and followed by others like it. The armored spearhead plunged through the Jotunheim troops. Here and there, a panzer would be hit and disabled, or forced to turn and retreat, but in their wake lay dozens of the giant crawlers of the Jotunheim armored forces, not to mention uncounted numbers of infantry. Kris looked out over the masses of enemy troops, and with a start he noticed a small empty pocket off ahead and a little to the right of the Einherjar advance. Curious, he changed the aim of his blasts, guiding the lead panzer towards the gap. The others followed his lead, and before long the command panzer broke through into the opening. In the center of the opening stood a tall humanoid figure, dressed in a hideous business suit and smiling a toothy smile. Aside from the loud green tint of his face, and the smallish dark-haired woman lying gagged and hogtied in the small Radio Flyer wagon he pulled behind him on a string, he might not have seemed to be anything more than the new winner of GQ's Worst Dressed Sentient poll. Whoever he was, Kris guessed, he was a Heavy Hitter. "HOLD YOUR FIRE!" Kris shouted into the tank. "General, get your tanks out of here! This one's mine!" Then, he jumped out of the panzer, called a beamstaff into existence, and hurled it like a javelin at his opponent. The bolt blew straight through the green-headed man, boring a hole roughly three inches in diameter through his abdomen. Slightly startled, the man stopped his formerly leisurely pace and looked amazed at the hole. "Well," he said, "talk about a window to your soul." He then reached a hand in and rooted around for a moment, then pulled it out, empty. "Just like I thought," he said mock-sadly, "don't have one." Then he laughed, a cold, chilling and totally insane laugh, as the hole closed up and vanished, without so much as a rip in the fabric of the suit. Kris landed, igniting another beamstaff and trying to conceal his true weakness. The odds, he decided, are really sucky about now. Not bothering to issue a challenge - a mistake he wasn't going to repeat anytime soon - he swung the staff in a wide arc towards the green-headed man's neck. The man -caught- the energy blade in midswing, tsking and shaking his head. "Shame, shame," he said. "Attacking someone without warning, without formal challenge. Why, I'll bet you don't even know who I am." "You're evil," Kris said. "That's all I need to know." Dissipating the beamstaff, he ignited a smaller blade in his left hand and attempted an underhand stab at the green-faced man's gut. The blade stopped dead on impact, and Kris heard a hollow 'bong' sound. The green-faced man pulled his jacket aside to reveal a section of heavy iron plate. "Cast-iron stomach," he grinned. "I can eat anything - Mexican, Klingon, cyanide, anything - except cheese." Bending over to Kris, he whispered mock-conspiratorially into his ear, "It plugs me up something awful." "Who are you anyway??" Kris asked. "Oh, that's right, allow me to introduce myself. I am the Trickster, the Shapechanger, Father of Lies and Mother of - well, that's another story, one for the New York Post," he chuckled. "But my blood enemies just call me... Loki!" Brushing dust from his lapels, he said, "Oh, sorry about my appearance, had to snag this body at the last minute, and then I had to go pick up Peorth - I suppose a heathen like you would probably call her Eris - and then the traffic, the delays, the people to massacre..." Shaking his head melodramatically, he said, "Did you ever have one of those Judgement Days?" Kris considered what had happened with his energy blades, his own flagging power levels, and the general tactical situation. Simply put, it stank; he'd be best advised to butt out while he still could - if he could. Quickly, he sprang back from Loki, still rambling on to himself, and then, concentrating, he leapt up and over the evil god, aiming to rescue the goddess captive in the wagon behind him. About five feet before Kris would have landed, a butterfly net appeared beneath him, and he dropped neatly into it. Loki swung the net over, and Kris slammed into the ground. "Uh uh uh," Loki grinned, "that's not for you!" Then, the net changed into an immense golf club (5 iron), and Loki yelled, "FORE!" As Kris struggled groggily to his hands and knees, the club caught him in the head, sending it and the rest of him flying over the Niflheim army. "Well, that's that," Loki said. "Now then, where was I?" he pondered aloud. Snapping his fingers, he said, "That's right! I was busy avenging myself on the gods! How silly of me, forget my own head next!" This amused him further, and his mad laughter rang over the battlefield, urging his still-powerful forces on to more frenzied attacks. Reluctant to leave, but well aware of the limitations of his force, George Patton took the opportunity presented by the dark god's laughter to get his group the hell out of Dodge, pulling back to a position on the ridgeline above the left flank. There, Patton ordered his panzers to go hull-down and began surveying the lines through his rangefinder binoculars, hoping that something would start to break his way. Above, Kris struggled to regain his senses. He couldn't focus his eyes, he was having trouble feeling his feet, and his head throbbed with the double impact. Beneath him, the ground began to grow closer again, as he passed over the rapidly disintegrating Asgard lines. [I'm sorry, Washuu,] Kris thought, [I tried.] Then, right before the ground hit him, he thought wryly, [Y'know, I thought I was done with the Low Orbital Human Flight Lessons back at the WDF Academy gym...] Then the weight of the world caught him across the temples, and everything went black. "This isn't over yet," said R-Type, watching the scene from the White Legion's ridgeline through binoculars. "Loki just took out Admiral Overstreet, I hope not fatally. What's our status?" he turned to Skarne and asked. Skarne glanced back at the wreckage which Jormungand had made of the GENOM lines in his death throes. Troopers were working frantically to extract other troopers from what remained of the crushed fortifications, all while fending off opposing fire from the surviving soldiers of the dark army. "Overall, not good," Skarne replied evenly. "Admiral Yamamoto's fleet has the ocean secured and the airspace is ours, but ground lines on all fronts are falling apart. We won't be able to hold this line much longer. "General Ravenhair reports that Fenris has been killed by Gryphon, but he did a lot of damage before he went down," Skarne continued. "General -Patton- reports that, now Loki's finally appeared, the enemy is mounting a new spearhead attack behind him. They're cutting through the Einherjar the way Jormungand cut through us; so far nothing's been able to stop Loki." "Damn. They kept their trump cards for the end," R-Type nodded grimly. "We mortals can only do so much against gods." "Perhaps, but you've changed fate twice already," Thor rumbled, glancing back at Jormungand's corpse. "You may yet do so again." "I say we fall back to the city and regroup with the Home Defense there," R-Type said to Skarne. "If they get within firing range of Yggdrasil then this is all for nothing." Otto Skarne didn't get to the position he was in by being indecisive. He considered for a moment, then used his belt computer to key the com in his right ear to the GENOM vehicle network. "Major Veers, this is Colonel Skarne. Are you still alive?" "Surprisingly enough, yes," replied Veers's voice, scratchily, in Skarne's earset. "What is your unit's current strength?" "Two walkers and four advanced scout walkers, plus about a platoon and a half of TIE tanks," replied Veers. "The Jotunheim gunners seem to have a hard time hitting the little things." Skarne frowned. "Only two walkers?" "They're big targets," replied Veers. As if to underscore his words, the dull crump of a shell exploding against the heavy side armor of his walker rang through the com connection. Veers barked for a damage report, then returned to the channel. "Fortunately they're also tough, and the Jotunheim tankers aren't very good shots. Your orders, Colonel?" "Consolidate your unit on our east flank and cover the main force," said Skarne. "We're pulling back to the Golden City." The scene at the gates of the city was growing more chaotic by the moment. The hospital had been rushed inside the city, and as Frey organized a last-ditch defensive line before the gates, Washuu supervised triage for the incredible number of casualties being brought back from the lines. "Gut wound, prep him for surgery stat," Washuu said, pointing to a Mongol tankman still clutching his submachinegun. The next one over, a Hessian from the days of the American Revolution, had a neat hole through his skull, and his breathing came weakly and erratically. "This one's lost, set him aside," she said angrily, frustrated that many, so many, were beyond her help. Then, she saw the figure in the blue windbreaker lying senseless on a stretcher. "We found this one in an impact crater behind what's left of the line," an orderly said. "I don't know why he isn't paste, he musta been really moving when he hit the ground." Indeed, Kris was streaked with blood in several spots, and his arms both had more bends in them than nature had originally intended. Washuu put a gentle hand to his face; his neck moved much, much too freely. But he was still breathing. Sighing relief, Washuu said to the orderly, "I want you to get him an IV feeding drip set up. Let me know the instant he wakes up." [I'm sorry, Kris,] she thought to herself. [There are so many others who need me now... please hang on for me... ] The next patient was an Asgardian with a shoulder wound, ugly but not quite life-threatening. "Get him a unit of blood and some blankets," she barked, and continued on down the line, sorting out the dead and the dying. In the background, the thunder of artillery and gunfire grew slowly closer, as Loki drew closer to the home of his enemies. Louder still were the moans of the suffering, crying for water, for morphine, and occasionally for a weapon to finish the job. Washuu didn't hear a sound. "This is no good," George Patton growled around his again-dead cigar, surveying the battle lines with his binoculars. "They're going to come through the line right around there, and there's not a damn thing anybody can do about it." A quarter-mile away, Butch Overstreet took a look, then nodded, sighing, and said into his radio, "We've got no units at all in that area?" "None that I know of," Patton replied. "I don't have a big board like the boys in the War Room, but if I remember right the White Legion are all pinned down on the west ridge and the Regular Army is in the center. 121st Einherjar Infantry and 10th Panzer are too far out of position and there's no way I can see that -- " Just then, as the black-coated Asgardian Army defenders broke away from the weak part of the line and fell back in an attempt to regroup before being overrun, a pair of black-trimmed white Viper panzers burst from the drifts to the east, their chevron Hellbores blasting the lead tank in the Jotunheim formation and blunting the giants' armored charge. Behind those two panzers came a dozen more, and behind them a squad of cavalry vehicles and infantry, including Jeb Stuart's mini-tank brigade. Standing in the cupola of the lead Viper, Patton saw, was a thin man in a grey uniform, pointing toward a frost-giant tank which the panzer's gun killed a moment later. The whip aerial on the back corner of the panzer identified it as a command unit, and pinned to the top of that aerial was the proud, if somewhat incongruous, pennant of the 10th Panzer division of the Wehrmacht Afrika Korps. Patton grinned around his cigar again, reaching into the cupola of his tank and switching to the tac-net. "Rommel!" he bellowed. "How in the hell did you get over there from Sector 3 so damn fast?" The voice which came back was cultured and still bore a trace of a German accent, but it betrayed its owner's high spirits as it replied, "Patton, you magnificent bastard -- I read your book!" Patton guffawed; he and Rommel both had given up marveling at the situation they found themselves in long, long ago. "This has gone far enough," Odin growled, watching as the Asgardian lines disintegrated on the big monitor. Throwing aside his cloak, he strode out of the room, summarily ignoring the weak protest of the Air Force warrant officer who stood by the door. Urd followed him, driven by some impulse she could never name, as he stormed down the corridor to his throne room, reached up to the rack behind his throne, and drew down his golden spear Gungnir. Turning, the Allfather saw his sometimes-wayward daughter lingering in the doorway, unsure whether or not she should be following him, and he smiled. "Well, Urthr, what do you think?" he inquired with a cheerfulness that was only half mock. "Shall we go out there together and show these fools how to fight a war?" Without a verbal reply, Urd crossed her hands before her chest and closed her eyes; the court robes she still wore from the day before glowed and then seemed to melt, running like wax into a new shape before congealing again into the light leather armor of an itinerant archer of old. On her back was slung a quiver of arrows, and a great ivory bow hung from one shoulder. She looked at her father with clear, fearless eyes, and nodded once. From the center of the chaos that was the aid station just within the gates, Belldandy saw them leave. At the thunder of hooves she glanced up from her work in time to see Sleipnir, the eight-legged horse, flash past, with her sister at the reins. Odin rode behind on another horse, a magnificent bay beast, albeit not as impressive as Sleipnir. Since Urd's unauthorized 'borrowing' of the eight-legged steed for what she considered an all-important journey, Sleipnir had preferred her to his actual owner, which in times past had been one of the many grounds for the on-again, off-again estrangement between Urd and her father. This confirmed the suspicion she had gathered from the influx of wounded: the battle was not going well at all if Urd was going out armed for battle, let alone the powerful, but aging, Allfather. She glanced to her right; though revolted by the gore and pain of the surgery, Keiichi remained at her side, sword in one hand and shield in the other, his face pasty and stiff as he contained his instinctive reaction. Bel gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, then returned to work. Kerliss was fairly sure he had died and gone to Hell. His actual death had come as something of a disappointment -- one of the killercraft pilots slain in the Race's abortive takeover attempt of the Bugrom homeworld Hive Prime, he had expected, as all males of the Race expected in those halcyon days, that in death he would serve the spirits of the departed Emperors as the teachers of his hatchlinghood had promised. Instead he found himself in this bizarre place, surrounded by beings of races he never had any inkling existed. As if that weren't rude shock enough, most of these races had never heard of his own, a people so secure in their supremacy in a limited universe that they had never invented any word for themselves. They were -the- Race, and all others were their subjects; thus were the teachings. Their attack on the Bugrom hiveworld had changed all that, but Kerliss hadn't lived to see it. He had found out about the sweeping changes which were to overtake his culture vicariously, through news reports and talks with successive new arrivals. Eventually he had even gotten used to the idea. What he had never quite gotten used to, though, was this place's dreadful climate. In the golden halls of Valhalla it wasn't much of a problem -- he could stay inside when the weather became cold and wet and vile. As a killercraft pilot (although the Asgardians had a different word for them), he was even mostly exempt from such conditions when on flying duty. Now, though, he was out of his craft and on the ground in the worst weather on record, and, being a native of a place much hotter and drier than this, he was utterly miserable. Clutching his emergency sidearm and shivering inside his flightsuit, Kerliss made his way toward the lines, hoping he wasn't overtaken and killed by a patrol of dwarves or giants before he reached the gates of the city. It appeared the ground battle was falling apart just as the ocean, outer space and air above were being secured; but that was the way of it on days like this. From one of the other pilots in his squadron, a Russian killed over Germany in the Fourth World War on Earth, he had learned a word for situations like this. "Nichevo," he muttered to himself, slogging through the snow. The remaining warriors of Midgard regrouped at the center of the shrunken Asgardian line, along with a few of the more senior gods. R-Type had replaced the damaged parts of his outer armor with pieces taken from the kit of an icetrooper who wouldn't need them any more, and was surveying the battle lines through a pair of rangefinder macrobinoculars, trying to make some sense out of the chaos. The command group was flanked by the three companies of White Legion infantry who remained, a company of Asgardian regulars, and the remainder of the White Legion's armor. As R-Type scanned the horizon through the binoculars, Colonel Skarne did the same with his cybereye. Yuri stood next to them, making out whatever she could with her naked eyes. Kei sat on a Legion pack-crate and secured a field dressing around a bloody wound in her right thigh, cheerfully cursing the weather, the frost giants, the dark elves, the fucking weather, the underdwarves, the legion of the dishonored dead, the goddamned fucking weather, the dead Nazi Vernichtunslager guard who had the gall to stick his damn bayonet in her leg, and the goddamned miserable filthy fucking weather in a merry stream of mixed Standard and German invective which R-Type, who understood German, and Skarne, a Niogan native like Kei, both found most refreshing. Presently, Gryphon arrived, in a clearly Griffin-like powersuit neither Larry nor Yuri had seen before; he was assisting a uniformed but armorless Skuld who favored one leg. R-Type turned his eyes back to the front, peering through the binoculars again. Loki was coming close enough that Larry could get a pretty good look at him now, and as he focused the binoculars and exercised their rather limited zoom function, he felt his blood cooling. "Yuri," he said in a tight voice, and handed her the binoculars. Yuri looked; the ruddiness in her cheeks paled despite the cold. "Gods," she murmured. Lowering the field glasses, she turned to Larry. "Zoner," they breathed simultaneously. "Huh?" said Kei, looking up. "Remember our vision?" asked Yuri. "Uh-huh," Kei replied, not liking where her partner was headed already. "We know what part of it means now. Look." Kei got to her feet and went to Yuri's side with a faint limp, taking the glasses from her partner. She looked for a long moment, lowered the glasses, looked again, and observed, "Houston, we have a problem." Gryphon stepped up the magnification factor of his holovisor. "Who's that with him?" "Pardon?" "He's got... yup, it's a toy wagon. Somebody in it, but I don't recognize her. She doesn't look like she's having any fun, though." Skuld hobbled over, using her hammer as a crutch, and had a look through the field glasses. "It's Peorth," she said. "One of the Vanir. She's... well, mostly she works for the Relief Office, but she's the closest thing we've had to a trickster since Loki went to the Dark Side." By the unselfconscious way she said that, it seemed to be common Asgardian parlance for what happened to the dark god. "You might know her better by her Greek name - Eris." Gryphon would have palmed his face had he not been wearing a helmet; the gesture carried its usual significance anyway. "Well, -that- makes sense," he observed. "If I were Zoner and I had been possessed by the spirit of evil, first thing I'd do is kidnap my favorite goddess." He shook his helmeted head. "Beautiful. At least he didn't go after Teleute." He was about to jump down from the ridge and see what he could accomplish when two horses thundered by, one carrying a grim and angry-looking Odin, the other a similarly grim and angry-looking Urd. "Urd's going into battle?" Skuld observed, making a question of it in a tone that said she didn't know quite what to make of it. "So it would appear," said Colonel Skarne. Unaware, or perhaps just not caring, that he was being observed, Loki set upon the Regular Army regiment that was covering the center of the line. Tyr, the Army's commander, appeared, sword in hand, his missing hand replaced by a blaster mount. From somewhere, Loki produced an umbrella; they dueled for a bit, then Loki seemed to tire of the duel and shot him with the umbrella. As he did, his aim was spoiled slightly by the fact that four arrows in rapid succession thunked into his chest and head; his shot went a bit wide, knocking Tyr down and bloodying him, but not killing him as had been Loki's intent. "Whoa!" said Loki. "Who's a-crampin' my style?" He yanked one of the arrows out of his head and looked at it. "Saaaaay, I know this arrow." "Indeed you do," Odin boomed, riding up and dismounting. "I took you into my home and treated you fairly, Loki. How many giants can say they were adopted into the home of the gods?" "Yadda, yadda, yadda. You're boring me, old man!" replied Loki. "You're boring me and you're in my way." The evil god's red eyes narrowed. "What I want right now is behind you." A few meters behind the Allfather, Urd sat astride Sleipnir, her bow drawn, waiting for an opportunity. "Well, you can't have her," Odin replied, leveling his spear. "Now stand and do battle - or will you shoot me, too, like a coward?" Loki seemed to consider this for a moment, scratching at his chin. Then he brightened, snapping his fingers. "Nope! I won't do that." "Good," said Odin, and readied himself. "I'll do THIS!" said Loki, and a large black iron weight labeled "16 TONS" plummeted out of the sky, crashing down on the leader of the gods. "Ta, Pop - wish I could stay and chat, but you know how it is." Odin, pinned under the weight and trying to push it off himself, made no reply, but Urd replied for him, loosing the shaft she had been holding ready. Loki staggered back, letting out a sound that might have been actual pain, as the arrow slammed into his head through his right eye, burying itself several inches. Straightening up, the dark god reached up and pulled the shaft from his head, snapped it, and threw it away. His clothing darkened, shifting around him, changing from that hideous power suit to something simpler, black and ragged-edged, with some tatters of silver trim: the court robes Loki had been wearing when he was imprisoned in the cavern beneath the serpent, so many years ago. He made no jokes. He did nothing wacky. He simply advanced, fists clenched, eyes (for the one Urd had shot him through was back as if nothing had happened) smoldering with hate. "You and I have to have a little talk, Urthr," he growled through gritted teeth. "But not in front of the horse." "Just so," replied Urd; she slid down from Sleipnir's back and waved the horse away, then put her bow and quiver aside. "Will you do to me what you did to Father, or have you something even stranger in mind?" "Why, Urthr," replied Loki, his tone completely belying the lightness of his words. "A person would think you aren't happy to see me." "I'm not happy to see you like this," she replied. "If you had come back to us the man you used to be, I would be happy. I would be filled with joy such as I've never known if I could have back the Loki I knew as a girl. What you've become, though... no, I'm not happy to see that at all." "Well, that's a hell of a thing to say," said Loki indignantly, "considering you made me this way." Urd looked momentarily taken aback; then her cold composure returned, and she said, "If that's what you think, you're deluding yourself. But then, you never could face reality on its own terms. You always had to redefine them for yourself. I'm the Norn of Memory, Loki; I know what you were, I can see what you are, and I know what brought you from there... to here." Her eyes narrowed, and then, she smiled a bit. Loki knew enough about nice and not-nice smiles to know that the smile Urd wore had never even considered the possible benefits of being a nice one. "And more to the point, I know how to get rid of you." And she disappeared. "Damn that woman!" Loki howled, flying into a rage. He began to tear through the lines of Asgard's armies, puffing like a freight train as he drove toward the city gates. "He's displaying higher power levels than Loki ever did on his own," Skuld observed. "Does MegaZone have any particular super-ability that Loki could be exploiting?" "Not really," Yuri replied. "He is a stage two Detian... He's got some bionic and cybernetic augmentations, so he's a bit faster, tougher, and stronger than an average man his size, but nothing like... that." "Then he must be getting his power from some outside source. Make no mistake, Loki in his regular form is -very- powerful, but he can't change shape so rapidly or into such radical forms, and he can't just ignore injuries like that. To lay on that many protective wards, he'd have to have been casting them on himself for the last, oh, seven or eight years, and he hasn't had that much time." Urd appeared beside her sister, smiling that same cold smile. "I know how to get rid of him. Where's Bel?" "Probably still at the aid station. Why?" "Because we're going to need her to throw a Great Warding on that son of a bitch. Find a flat spot and get started on the circle. I'll go get Bel." The Tenth Regiment, Freespacer Special Marines, was the smallest independent command in the Asgard Line, comprising at full strength 1,000 men, women, and what-not. This included five single-man Compact Assault Vehicles (each roughly equal to the two-man Napoleon-class minitank in power), fifteen light to medium portable emplacement antiarmor batteries, dozens of EWHB antipersonnel cannons, and hundreds of the best-trained, most tenacious combatants on land, sea and space in the known galaxy. Being the smaller, or smallest, component of any joint armed force was hardly a new experience to the Freespacer troops, particularly its commander, John Benjamin Harrison. He'd seen action on New Texas, Gorlorndan Core, the Texas Free Republic, the Narn homeworld, pirate capture operations beyond count, and most recently on the Cardassian frontier, before he'd been given command of the newly formed regiment on the Charlemagne. He knew damn well he didn't have the equipment of the White Legion or the WDF Marines, but what he did have he could use to its fullest, and more. Odds never frightened Colonel Harrison. Like most born Freespacers, Harrison had been raised with the stories of the Freespacers constantly proving the odds wrong, overcoming incredible disadvantages to victory after victory. The adage that a Freespacer could lick five times his or her weight in (insert enemy here) had, historically speaking, held up: it took truly astonishingly overwhelming force to take down a Freespacer unit. Unfortunately, overwhelming force seemed to be the order of the day. All through the morning, the line had been pressed hard from end to end, and it had broken no less than twice- once with Hela's bodyguard, and once with the coming of Jormungand. Now, even with the Midgard Serpent lying dead across the battlefield, the Asgard line was crumbling, units pulling out in orderly retreat in some places, in open rout in others. On either side of the Freespacer installation, Niflheim forces were pouring through gaps in the line. Very shortly, the Freespacer position would be isolated on all sides, surrounded by the enemy. A moment before, over the command channel, General Overstreet (it still bothered Colonel Harrison to recieve orders from the dead father of the fleet's commanding officer) had given orders for all remaining intact line units to fall back to the secondary line and reform. Here and there, units such as Harrison's were holding their own, but without the rest of the line they would be swallowed up. From the big-picture point of view, it was time to close up shop. Harrison had no intention of pulling out. Behind him, the five CAVs were harrying the flanking enemy forces, helping protect the retreating Einjerhar and Asgard troopers. Of the fifteen prefab gunnery turrets, nine were still operational and pounding away at the heavier Jotunheim armor, while the E-Webs and Proton Packs mowed down row after row of oncoming infantry. Still, of the thousand men he'd had to begin with, Harrison commanded less than seven hundred now; about two hundred fifty troopers had been sent back to the aid station, and as many as a hundred more were beyond all help, mortal or divine. And if he tried to pull out now, surrounded on three sides and understrength, he'd lose his artillery, he'd lose his defenses, and in all probability he'd lose his command. Besides, he consoled himself, we're serving a purpose here. Every dwarf and giant and troll and elf and... whatever... that wasted itself attacking his position was one less to harry the retreating forces, one more second of time bought to allow the line to reform, rally, and counterattack. Harrison shrugged and turned to his orderly. "Tell the company commanders to pick out spade details. They've got ten minutes to dig a second trench behind our artillery. Move." Then, into his field radio, he said, "General, this is Colonel Harrison, Tenth Freespacers. The enemy has us boxed in, and I see no hope for retreat. We're going to hunker down here and see how long it takes them to take us out. Over." Butch Overstreet's angry voice squawked from the speaker, "What the hell do you think you're doing? Get your unit out of there right the hell NOW!" "General, it's too late for me to get out with my men," Harrison said. "Get us a secure hole and we'll consider it, but I think we can hold out here for a while. Harrison out," he sighed, tossing the radio aside and lifting a phaser rifle. He'd always believed that there came times in a person's life when, no matter how shitty the odds were, they had to stand and fight. He'd believed that Captain Condorcet's mutiny and stand at Wilderness Station had not been one of those times. Now, as the blaster bolts and bullets whizzed over the trench, he figured that if the End of Creation wasn't one of those times, then he'd never know what was. The Great Circle of Warding was nearly complete. Skuld hoped it was correct; she had run the most rudimentary of calculations on, of all things, Colonel Skarne's pocket computer. Hacking the more powerful computers in Gryphon's new armor to do the calculations more precisely would have taken too much time. She and Gryphon had cleared a place for the circle, on a large, flat expanse - a roadbed, in better weather - just before the city gates, behind the last ridge line of the snow; as the mortals and Brunnhilde Silverspear stood watch, she worked as fast as she dared at burning the marks of the circle into the stone with the torch on Bjarnnil's handle tip. Behind, at the gates, Urd and Belldandy waited for their cues. Almost done!" Skuld announced. "Urd! Bel! Take your places." The two sisters did as instructed, moving to their positions at two nodes of the circle. Skuld continued working, as rapidly as she dared, but Loki was coming closer. If he saw what she was up to before she was finished... "Brunnhilde, Gryphon - hold him off! He can't be allowed to come through here until the circle is ready!" "This is gonna be some party," Gryphon muttered to himself, energizing his weapons systems and striking out through the snow. "Well, well, well. What have we here?" growled Loki as the armored Earther and the Valkyrie squared off before him. The green-faced being had completely dispensed with all the jokes and wackiness now; he was a red-eyed, gritted-toothed terror, bent on one goal and one goal only. Unleashing a battle yell that would have shaken the rafters had she done it indoors, Brunnhilde hurled herself at her adversary, the spear in her hands glittering as she plunged it to the blade's base into the left side of Loki's chest. "Pathetic," said Loki. He slapped her away as an annoyance; she stumbled, a spiderweb pattern of cracks raying out on her helmet from where he struck her, as he yanked the silver spear out and hurled it away. "Skuld has no taste - OOF!" Gryphon cut him off by diving forward in a shrieking-jets booster tackle, smashing into the dark god's midriff with enough force to have all but bisected his unaltered host. In his current form, though, Loki seemed rather unimpressed; the impact knocked them back through a snowbank in a tumble, but Loki's hands smashing into either side of Gryphon's armored body still caused a fireburst of pain to envelop the Wedge Defender. He tumbled aside, crumpled and gasping, as Loki got back to his feet and made for the gates again. "Damn you - " Brunnhilde snarled, charging at him again, Hellbores spitting destruction. Loki sidestepped the barrage, turned into her attack and brought her up short with one hand clamped onto her shoulder. "You really must learn some manners, my dear," said Loki, slowly closing his hand and crushing the armor beneath into a mass of jagged inward edges. She kicked at his side, trying to dislodge his grip; with his free hand, he punched her in the stomach, the blow smashing the armor plate and bringing tears to her eyes and blood to the corners of her mouth. A second vicious blow shattered her helmet, freeing her hair and allowing the icy winds to scythe through the tears. They froze to her cheeks as Loki regarded her lovely face, now pale and pinched with pain. "Well, so much for you," said Loki with a shrug. "A pity in a way that I haven't more time to -enjoy- your company," he said with a leer, then more cheerfully, "but you know war." He drew back his fist for the kill, and Brunnhilde forced herself not to close her eyes and cringe. She was a Valkyrie, by Odin, and she would die like one. She was alert and paying attention, then, when a glittering black armored hand seized Loki's head, the fingers actually digging into the green forehead, and the dark god was abruptly yanked away, leaving her to crumple into the snow. "AURGH!" bellowed Loki, twisting free of Gryphon's grasp and then lunging to seize his attacker. "I'll crush you with my bare hands," spat Loki as he grappled with Gryphon in the snow, each struggling for an advantage, neither finding it for the moment. Teeth gritted, Gryphon gave a little ground, twisting, shuffling up to the crest of the ridge, his back to the gates. "Now," said Skuld's voice in his ear. "No, I doubt that," he replied to Loki, and fell backward. "Wha - ?!" said the startled dark god, pulled over with the great weight of his armored adversary as the latter no longer tried to hold himself up. As Gryphon felt the jarring impact of his back against the stone, he drew his legs up, got his feet under Loki, and pushed as hard as he could. Loki's grip broke and he tumbled free; Gryphon himself turned a half-flip with his momentum and ended up on his hands and knees, back to Loki. Before either could get to their feet, though, Belldandy spoke in her native tongue: >It begins.< With a basso rumble that rattled Gryphon's teeth, the Great Circle flared, burning away the snow that concealed it as it burst into angry orange life. Loki shrieked in outrage and pain as he felt the crushing pressure; the Circle pulled him down as if the mass of the planet beneath it had suddenly jumped a thousandfold. Thanks to his last half-tumble, Gryphon was caught in it too; he was crushed to his knees, then flat on his face as, sizzling and sparking around him, his armor dissolved away and his street clothes returned. It would be impossible now to get him out of the circle, but the Norns proceeded; far too much was at stake, and at any rate, he had nothing to fear from the magic they were about to invoke. >Savage darkness, foul device,< Urd intoned, working her hands in the most ancient of patterns. >You resurrect an evil best left buried. Memory rejects you.< The loop of the circle she stood in thrummed with a harmonizing note and reddened. In the center, Loki writhed as if burned, and screamed. >Subterfuge and cruelty,< said Belldandy, >the perversion of good intentions and the rape of an ancient gift.< She shook her head sadly. >Existence denies you.< THRUM. Her subcircle turned green. Loki jerked again, as if whipped, and shrieked. >Deviltry and hatred,< said Skuld, >the use of a good soul to commit an act of darkness. Foresight ignores you.< THRUM. Skuld's circle turned blue, and the glow from all three spread toward the center, then overlapped and spread toward each other, obliterating the orange and merging together to form white where they touched. Loki, trapped in the center, screamed and screamed, the green discoloration on his face bubbling as if it were wax and his face beneath red-hot. >We are the Norns,< said the three together. >We reject you,< said Urd. >We deny you,< added Belldandy. >We ignore you,< said Skuld. >We abhor you,< they concluded in unison. >In the name of the Past,< said Urd. >In the eyes of the Present,< said Belldandy. >By the light of the Future,< said Skuld. >We command you,< said they in unison: >BEGONE.< As they completed the chant, the circle turned completely white and its tone deepened to a howling roar. Loki shrieked inarticulately as the circle erupted into a towering column of white light, writhing and twisting, barely visible in the center. The green mask peeled away from the face of MegaZone beneath, and for a moment they drifted separate, expressions mirroring each other. Then the whiteness washed away all detail, and then the circle collapsed into darkness and all was still. >It is done,< said Belldandy softly, and the markings of the circle on the ground faded and vanished. She would have gone on, probably, but the sight of what lay within the boundaries of the faded circle brought her up short with a gasp. Where there had been two men, now there were four. MegaZone, dressed in a battered WDF uniform, lay sprawled near the center of the circle, and closer to its edge, Gryphon was crumpled like a rag doll; but next to each lay another man. In Zoner's case, the identity of his companion was easy to determine: wiry, red-headed and dressed in tattered Asgardian court robes, he could only be Loki. But who was the cloaked, slouch-hatted man who lay next to Gryphon? The four began to stir, groaning, and sit up; first to arise was Gryphon's counterpart, then Gryphon himself. Sitting up and rubbing his temples, Gryphon didn't notice the other man for a moment; when he did, his only reaction was to blink a couple of times and regard him with something a bit short of a stare. "Well," he said, and his voice rasped. Coughing, he tried it again, and it came out better the second time. "Well. This explains a few things." "Do you know who this is?" asked Skuld, her confusion clear in her voice. The cloaked man, face partially obscured by a red silk scarf, turned blue eyes to Skuld; they crinkled in a way that made it clear he was smiling. "He knows," said the man, and as he got to his feet, he faded away, vanishing into the blowing snow. "What the hell?" said R-Type. "Remind me," said Gryphon, standing up and rubbing his neck, "and I'll explain it sometime." Then he turned and noticed Loki, who was pulling himself to his knees; putting two and two together, he reached into his coat and discovered that his .45s were gone. Of course, he said to himself. Should have figured. He willed his armor back, and back it came; the experience felt strangely different, less like the old armor matrix experience and more like what had happened when Skuld had rebuilt the armor. He had little time to examine the sensations, though, as Loki and Zoner both pushed themselves to hands and knees and looked woozily up. As luck would have it, the first thing they saw was each other. Loki regarded Zoner with bleary indifference, while behind the haze in Zoner's eyes, recognition sparked. R-Type could almost see the gears turning in the bigger man's head as event connected to event, raising him closer and closer to realization... And then a flood of recollection burst like an atom bomb on the horizon, and the recognition in MegaZone's dark eyes changed to hate in an instant. His face darkened, and as he levered himself up to a crouch his fingers tensed in an instinctive strangulation posture. From somewhere deep in his body, a low, primal snarl rose, building to a scream. "nnnnnrrrrrrrrRRRRRR!!" bellowed MegaZone, throwing himself at the still-dazed trickster god and seizing him by the throat. "LOOK - WHAT - YOU - MADE - ME - DO - YOU - FUCK!" he raged, punctuating each syllable with a hard shake that rapped Loki's head against the ground. This action seemed to shatter the tableau, and abruptly everyone was moving. Guards appeared from the city gates, and they and the others on the scene struggled to separate the two. While Gryphon held back Zoner, the guards manacled Loki and hauled the still-dazed god to his feet. The others gathered around, trying to inject some calm into the situation and failing by weight of numbers. Finally, as Zoner raged incoherently against the metallic embrace of Gryphon's nelson hold, Yuri pushed her way through the crowd, laid her hand flat against Zoner's chest, and said to him, "Stop it." At her touch, he quieted, sagging against Gryphon's arms. "What have I done?" he asked Yuri softly. At the ridgetop, R-Type looked at them together for a moment, then turned and leveled his rangefinder binoculars at the battlefield, turning slowly to take it all in. "Well, that's one thing taken care of," he remarked. "Now who's going to handle all of -them-?" END FIFTH SEAL