THE PALACE-IMPERIAL, NEAR SAENAR PLANET SALUSIA, CAPITAL OF THE UNITED GALACTICA THURSDAY 1 JANUARY 2015 TSC, 02.23.00 HOURS Saenar, the capital city of Salusia's planetary government, blazed with light even at this early hour. It was, after all, New Year's Day. Salusia's calendar had only been synchronized with that of Earth for the past fifteen years, but the Salusian people, always up for a celebration, had fallen into the tradition with consummate ease, at least outwardly. Still, as he stood in his study at the Palace-Imperial, King Jerka (Arconian) VI, Ruler and Protector of Imperial Salusia, knew full well that there were some elements of his populace who were unhappy with the transition, even today. The people of Salusia had voted to change their calendar to that of Earth -- the people of the United Galactica as a whole had done the same -- to honor the betrothed of their beloved Princess Asrial Arconian. An ordinary Earthman had forged an alliance between militarily and industrially insignificant Earth and the mighty Salusian people, and with them, the whole of the UG... but there were those on Salusia who thought the whole thing verged on sacrilege. One group had been particularly worrisome of late: the so-called Sword of Salusia Party, a radical, ardently nationalistic group, had been loudly lobbying in Parliament, the press, and the United Galactica Assembly in Cheltopolis for one of two alternatives they felt were the only right ones. Either Salusia should invade and conquer the weak Earthers and destroy -their- culture, or, should the King decide to remain weak-kneed, then Earth should at the very least be expelled from the UG and all trace of its membership expunged. Jerka had ignored the Sword for some time, but of late they were becoming louder and more vociferous. Their apparent leader, a Kumbarai by the name of Alois Greub, was a charismatic and powerful speaker, and his hypnotic nationalist tirades gained more and more public acceptance as he traveled the planet preaching his gospel of hate and paranoia. Many of the Salusian people were starting to think, right or wrong, that he had a point, and that worried Jerka. For, while he had no special fondness for Earthpeople himself, his daughter, who would succeed him, did, and for all his gruffness and irascibility, Jerka Arconian could never deny his daughter anything she wanted. As such, he had become something of a sponsor for the Earthers, and while he, too, was a well-liked and charismatic figure, there were those who felt he was getting too old for the job. It was only a matter of time, he knew, before Greub or one of his cronies in Parliament demanded his abdication. He could refuse -- Parliament aside, the ruler of Salusia was still an absolute monarch -- but to do so might ignite the fires that were smoldering in the populace, and plunge the planet into civil war. Worse yet, he knew full-well that Greub would never willingly allow Asrial to ascend her father's throne, not without renouncing her betrothal to the Ambassador from Earth, Jeremy Feeple. And that, Jerka knew very well, his stubborn daughter would die before doing. He hoped it wouldn't come to that, but the political climate being what it was, he could no longer convince himself that there was absolutely no chance of it. Fortunately, she was safe right now, safely off the planet. Some years ago she had decided to get the military service expected of every Salusian monarch out of the way, and had, rather than serving in the Imperial Guard or the Royal Navy like all her predecessors, joined the Wedge Defense Force. That move, like many others, had roused some controversy, but Asrial was never one to go any way but her own, and it had never seemed to concern her. She was popular with the people despite (or perhaps because of) her dogged individualism; but Jerka wondered whether she was popular enough to stem the rising tide of dissent, as he had proven unable to do. He checked his chronometer and discovered that it was nearly 02.30. Time to go and face the music; he had called a meeting of the Knights-Defenders, the highest order of national hero in the Salusian register. The Order of Knights-Defenders of the Salusian Crown Imperial were a group of men and women who had shown valor and sacrifice for the Imperial Family, and pledged to defend the Crown with their lives. Jerka was hoping that this body could help him in his hour of need, and he had to try to organize them before the situation turned truly ugly. Not all the Knights had been able to come, he saw as he entered the conference chamber behind his study. At least two he had instructed -not- to come; Captain MegaZone and Commander Hutchins of the Wedge Defense Force he had asked to remain where they were and protect his daughter, who was, after all, serving with them. They had sent transmissions acknowledging, and assuring him that all was well, and he took some heart in that. Lincon Schel, the Knight-Commander, sat at the far end of the long conference table; ranked along either side were the rest of the corps, twenty of Salusia's finest warriors. They came to seated attention as the King entered the chamber, and as he took his seat at the head of the table, he bade them be at ease. "I believe you know why you are here," he said to them, "so there is no need for long explanations. The political situation on Salusia is grave, and I have reason to believe that the Crown is in danger. I must ask you, my Knights, to stand by me in this crisis, to help me organize the Imperial Guards against this threat, and hopefully stave off civil war." Schel, tall, fine-boned and handsome, got to his feet. "Respectfully, Majesty, I see only one way to avert civil war at this point." "And that way is?" Schel's voice and gaze remained rock-steady as he replied, "Your immediate abdication and exile. The disowning and banishment of your daughter and heir, the Princess Asrial. The complete dissolution of House Arconian and the investiture of a new Imperial Family." Jerka sat in utter, stunned silence for a moment. When he found his voice, it was a whisper: "Are you mad?" "I regret that this is the only alternative I can see, Majesty, but it is. I am sworn to protect Salusia and its people, and your removal is the only thing I can see that will accomplish that task. I am truly sorry, Majesty... but you and your family must go." "You are sworn to defend the CROWN, Schel!" Jerka raged, anger helping him to find his voice again. "Not the STATE, not the PEOPLE -- you are a Knight-Defender of the SALUSIAN CROWN! What you are speaking of is nothing more than a coup d'etat!" Schel nodded solemnly. "More or less, Majesty. Regrettably, our interpretations of my role do not seem to match. I cannot, in good conscience, assist you in further diluting the Salusian culture, in poisoning the Salusian mind. You were a good ruler once, Jerka, but your dotage on your mad, Earth-loving daughter has rusted your iron will. I will not stand beside you while you destroy our heritage... and neither will anyone else in this room." "This is madness! Will -none- of you fulfil your oath to me? Not ONE?" Jerka looked from face to face along the table; none of them met his eyes. "Turncoats and cowards, all of you!" he railed, slamming a fist down on the table. Then, his expression darkening, he continued, "Very well, then. If I must save my throne by myself, then that is what I will do." "I'm afraid the time for that has come and gone," came a voice from the conference room's door. "As usual, Jerka, you've missed your cue," continued the silk-smooth, threateningly calm voice of Alois Greub, radical nationalist and leader of the Sword of Salusia. "What are -you- doing here?" Jerka demanded. "Why, my friend Lincon here let me in," Greub replied with a smile as he entered the room and stood with a hand on Schel's shoulder. "Did you not dismiss the palace guards for the evening's celebration, secure in the knowledge that your loyal Knights would protect you for the night?" Jerka's face was nearly glowing red through his fur with outrage, and for a moment, he was utterly speechless. "Lincon, arrest our erstwhile monarch, if you would." "Yes, m'lord," Schel replied, and stood, moving around the table and approaching the King. "You won't get away with this, you bastard," Jerka spat at Greub. "The Imperial Guard won't take the overthrow of their rightful ruler lying down -- neither will the Royal Armed Forces." "The RSAF are already in my pocket, my dear Jerka," said Greub with that same calm, dangerous smile. "I subverted their generals months ago -- many of them are nationalists, patriots, the same as myself. The Imperial Guard are a different matter, I will grant you, with their blind loyalty to House Arconian... but my forces far outnumber them, so if they will not be turned, then they can be exterminated." "When she hears of this, Asrial will -- " "The Princess is not a threat to me either," Greub replied with perfect confidence. "When she hears that you have disowned her and abdicated in favor of me, she will be so crushed that she will never -want- to return to Salusia again... and even if she did, she would be unable, since my subsequent banishment order will be perfectly legal." Greub smiled as his lieutenant rounded the corner of the table. "You've lost, Jerka." "Perhaps," Jerka replied, "but I'm not going down alone." So saying, he ducked back away from Schel and, drawing a blaster from somewhere in his uniform, shot him stone dead. Turning, he drew a bead on Greub, but before he could fire again, cool and efficient Mara Ness, the table's only Kumbarai Knight, had knocked him against the wall with a double-tap from her own sidearm. "You won't... get away... with... this... " Jerka repeated as he slid down the chamber wall, crimson blood soaking his orange and black uniform tunic. "I already have," Greub replied sweetly to the royal corpse, and then shook his head. "Shame about Lincon, though. I suppose you'll have to be the Knight-Commander now, Mara." Ness nodded as she put away her pistol. "Well, now. Has anyone here any objection to my ascension to the Throne, upon the well-witnessed abdication and suicide of the late Jerka VI, of the duly-designated head of House Greub, Alois I? No, I thought not." Smiling, Greub took the seat at the head of the table, put his feet up, and sighed. Then his beatific expression was marred by a look of irritation, and he sat up, putting his elbows on the table. "Mara... get someone in here to clean up this mess, would you? Then I suppose it would be good to inform the populace of the tragic news. And I'll want to transmit a message informing the ex-Princess of her banishment as soon as day-shift begins." "You know she won't stay away, m'lord," said Ness. A slow smile crept over Greub's face, and his black eyes twinkled as he said to her, "Oh, Mara, my dear, I'm counting on that." Mara Ness had no reply; she bowed and left the room. "Tobal," Greub continued, turning to another of the Knights. "Go down to the city and find the younger princess, what's her name. You know the one I mean. Bring her back and confine her to her rooms until I have an opportunity to arrange for her exile. If she resists, kill her." The lanky, unsmiling Knight nodded and left. "Henrik," said Greub, gesturing to his tall, somewhat portly, green-shirted chief of party security. "The Earther Ambassador, Feeple, will be arriving at Cheltopolis Airport within the hour. Take a squad and arrest him - arrest, mind you. I cannot publicly execute a man your trigger-happy goons have already killed." "Leave it to me, Excellency," said Henrik, bowing and leaving the chamber at a brisk march. Greub's parting comment grated on him a little - "trigger-happy goons" indeed! - but even as the leader of the Swordsmen, the Sword of Salusia's Department of Party Security (so nicknamed even though most of them had never held a sword in their lives), he was hardly in a position to demand an apology. "The rest of you, leave me. I have to think." The once-Knights-Defenders filed out of the room, leaving the new King of Salusia with his victim. /* James Horner "Main Title" _Apollo 13_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES GOLDEN AGE RITE OF PASSAGE starring MegaZone Benjamin D. Hutchins Asrial Arconian Kris Overstreet and Jeremy Irons as Alois Greub Screenplay by Benjamin D. Hutchins Kris Overstreet and MegaZone Special Editing Support by The Eyrie Productions Team "Ninja High School" characters created by Ben Dunn ED-209 originally designed and created by Craig Davies and Peter Ronzani Weapons supplied by the Morgan Custom Shop For Derek Bacon. This one's not particularly wacky, Derek, but I thought of you at least six million times while working on it... --G. Copyright (c) 1997 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited CHELTOPOLIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT CHELTOPOLIS, SALUSIA 02.45 HOURS "Well, you're all checked out, Your Excellency. Welcome back to Salusia," the Customs agent smiled, returning the diplomatic visas and passports to the dark-haired human woman before him. Ichi-Kun Ichinohei accepted the documents with a smile, handing them over to the nondescript young man beside her. "Thank you, sir, but he's the ambassador, not me," she corrected. "Oh, that's right, sorry," the grizzled Vindari Salusian chuckled. "Forgive an old man his little slips." "That's all right," Jeremy Feeple answered, pocketing the documents in the breast pocket of his old Army-surplus jacket. "Happens all the time." "C'mon, Jeremy," Ichi smiled, picking up her small suitcase and purse, "the driver from the Palace will be waiting." "Do you really think they're waiting?" Jeremy asked, picking up his suitcase, Ichi's dress bag, her overnight case, and her other, much larger and heavier, suitcase. "It's- uggh! It's three in the morning!" he grunted, trying to find some way to balance the load on his back. "Well, that's your fault for insisting on the quickest flight out from Earth," Ichi smiled. "What's the matter, my company not enough for you?" she grinned. "Well, there's a lot here that I have to do," Jeremy said. "Negotiating the revisions to the joint defense agreements, reviewing the staff at the embassy..." "Making wild whoopee with Asrial when she comes in on leave..." Ichi smiled. "Making wild whoopee with... hey!!!" Jeremy's face flushed brilliant red as he glared at Ichi, who was giggling uncontrollably. Once the giggle fit subsided, she continued, "You know, you're probably the most famous Earthman ever to visit Salusia... and nobody recognizes you. I wonder why that is?" "Beats me," Jeremy said, recovering somewhat. "My guess is, all the attention I got back home is getting balanced out by the inattention I get here." "Well, Quagmire is an interesting place," Ichi shrugged. "Still, I much prefer being here. After all," she smiled, "nobody here's looking to take you away from me and Asrial." Ichi was wrong, both in the way she meant her statement and in another, more sinister, way. Baroness Leeanna Zard'al, a Judge in the Justice Department of the Zardon Republic, had arrived and cleared Customs an hour earlier, and currently awaited Jeremy in the main concourse of the Cheltopolis spaceport terminal. Ostensibly, her mission was to conduct negotiations for expanded jurisdiction in both Earth and Salusian spheres of influence. In reality, she looked forward to the visit as a new chance to court the two burning passions of her heart: Jeremy Feeple and Princess Asrial Arconian. At the same time, Henrik Gult, along with a full company of Swordsmen, had just arrived and begun combing the terminal for Jeremy. By one of those curious coincidences which seem to occur around Jeremy, the troopers had passed right by him while he had been filling out customs forms without even noticing him and gone on to the incoming flights to check the passengers. At the moment, one of Henrik's lieutenants was reporting their results, or rather lack thereof. "What do you MEAN, you couldn't find him??" Henrik roared. "By all the prophets and minor spirits, how could you MISS him? He's a HUMAN. His flight arrived on time. You even had a hologram to identify him by!" he shouted, waving the tiny cube in question in the lieutenant's face. "But sir," the lieutenant replied, "all these humans look alike. Besides, he looks so... so... -average,- sir. How are we supposed to pick him out of the crowd?" "Because, you fool," Henrik growled, "NOBODY ELSE LOOKS THIS ORDINARY!" He flung the cube into the lieutenant's chest, barking, "Seal the complex off! Go through every cubic inch of this facility, question every human you see! Check the restrooms for feet and search the luggage conveyors, just for laughs!! I WANT FEEPLE FOUND!" A glint of green caught the lieutenant's eye as he endured one of his superior's well-accustomed rants, and he looked up to see Leeanna, across the massive main concourse from him, remove her helmet and brush her hair back in her fingers. "Hm," remarked Lt. Pels. "There's something you don't see every day. That's a Zardon Judge over there, sir." His rant interrupted, Henrik looked distractedly up. "Obviously," he said, identifying the familiar uniform at a glance. "From Mega-City One, or I miss my guess, and fairly high-ranking, too," mused Pels. "How," asked Henrik icily, "do you know -that-?" "You can tell by the uniforms, sir," replied the lieutenant, oblivious by design to his superior's tone. "I wonder what she's doing here?" "Why don't you find out?!" Henrik sputtered. "Go and ask to see her papers." Note to myself, he thought. Once the Earthers are dealt with, I must convince Greub that Zardon should be next to fall. Leeanna looked up and smiled as she spotted something back towards the line of metal detectors which separated the docks from the main concourse. Henrik followed her gaze, looking at a few humans coming through the OUT doors: a fat blonde woman in a frilly pink dress; a dark-skinned man in a suit of Corellian cut; an ordinary kid with a girl with long dark hair; an old tourist couple; a - Ordinary kid? He forced his eyes to focus on the truly insignificant-looking example of anthropoid life, who was waving to the Zardon woman and smiling. He looked at the holocube to compare features; hair-colored hair (a sort of compromise between brown and blonde without being either), neutral-colored eyes, average build, average height- "That's HIM!" he gasped. Waving over the troopers he had kept near the main doors, he said, "Surround that human and his girl... and do it -quietly.-" Nodding, the greenshirts moved around the edges of the concourse, quickly surrounding the pair, Jeremy enthusiastically greeting Leeanna while Ichi eyed the Judge with open hostility. As soon as the troopers were in place, Henrik strode confidently forward, allowing himself a smile of his own. Halfway across the concourse, he shouted, "JEREMY FEEPLE!" All eyes were immediately on Henrik as he strode up to Jeremy and Ich, brushing past Leeanna in the process. Jeremy looked up at Henrik and asked, "Can I help you, sir?" Henrik brought himself up to the most impressive stance he could, declaring loudly and clearly, "Jeremy Feeple, by order of His Majesty King Alois the First, Emperor of Salusia, I am placing you under arrest as an enemy alien under suspicion of espionage, sedition, conspiracy, and treason against the Salusian state." Eyes narrowing and hardening, Leeanna quickly tied her hair back into a ponytail, and replaced her helmet on her head. Years as a street Judge had given her a preternatural sense of impending trouble, and in this situation, she didn't even really need it to smell a problem. Assuming that wasn't just the fat guy's cologne... "Now just a minute!" Ichi protested. "What about King Jerka and Princess Asrial? What happened to them?" "Jerka has abdicated and, tragically, committed suicide," Henrik smirked. "He has named Alois Greub as his successor. Asrial Arconian, if she knows what is good for her, will avoid Salusian space in the future. If she does not..." Henrik's smirk grew wider. "...then the Crown cannot be responsible for the consequences." Nodding to the troopers, who had quietly closed in on the couple, he said, "Seize them." "Jeremy, RUN!" Ichi shouted. Her thumb moved across the handle of her suitcase, and from a side panel, a long, gleaming katana sprang out into a high, graceful curve overhead. With a mighty leap, Ichi sprang over Henrik's head, grasping the sword in midair and cutting away her dress as she fell. When she landed, her clothing consisted of the dark leotard and sash she wore when 'on the job' as the heir to the Ichinohei ninja clan... and personal bodyguard of Jeremy Feeple. "Run where?" Jeremy replied, eyeing the surrounding circle of Sword troops dubiously. From behind Henrik, Leeanna shouted out, "Hold it right there! Drop your weapons and prepare to be judged!" Turning, Henrik found himself looking into the business end of an oversized pistol - a top-of-the-line Justice Department Lawgiver II. "Court is now in session!" the Zardon Judge barked, her visored gaze leveled at the tall Salusian commander. "You have no jurisdiction here, bitch!" Henrik growled. "Collaboration with a known terrorist, Alois Greub, ten years," Leeanna answered. "Attempted armed kidnapping of a diplomatic official, twenty-five years. Sexual harrassment, two years." With a small smirk, she added, "Contempt of court, ninety days." Henrik's face grew dark under the fur. "I want Feeple alive," he growled, "but these women must die. NOW!" Before any of the troopers could move, the Lawgiver spoke. Five loud, explosive shots rang through the concourse, punctuated at the end by the loud thump of Henrik's lifeless body hitting the floor. "Conspiracy to murder a Judge," Leeanna growled. "Death." The lieutenant who had been reporting to Henrik a few moments before barked, "Get them!" and aimed his blaster rifle at the gold Justice Department shield in the middle of Leeanna's helmeted forehead. Even if the blast failed to defeat the helmet, she wouldn't be going anyplace for a while. A shuriken struck the barrel of the rifle, shattering the collimator lens and diabling it. Even as she threw the star, Ichi leaped forward, knocking down the trooper nearest to Jeremy in one kick. "Jeremy, damn it, run!!" she shouted, shoving him back with one hand as she slashed open another trooper's guts with her blade. Blaster fire erupted in the concourse, and the few remaining bystanders scrambled for cover. Ichi leaped and cartwheeled through the fire, dodging bolt after bolt, slashing with katana and shuriken as she found the chance. Meanwhile, Leeanna had dragged Jeremy to cover behind a large decorative planter and was picking off the troopers one by one. Glancing around her, Ichi saw more and more troopers gathering from around the terminal. There were just too many of them to continue fighting here. They had to get out of the terminal, and fast. "We need an exit!" she gasped, leaping over to where Leeanna and Jeremy knelt behind the planter. Leeanna smiled and said to her Lawgiver, "Hi-X." The red LEDs on either side of the weapon cycled down and back up with a quiet whir and click, and a mechanized voice replied, "Selected." Smiling, Leeanna aimed for a large metal panel about forty feet away. "Get down!" she said, shoving Jeremy to the floor. A second later, she fired, flattening herself as a glowing sphere shot from the gun to the panel. BOOM. Metal and masonry flew everywhere. A small piece of shrapnel streaked past Leeanna's head, barely missing her as she flattened. As the smoke began to clear, she could see the upper rungs of an access ladder revealed by the blast. "Into the maintenance tunnel!" she gasped. "Move!" Ichi flipped into the hole, sliding down to the corridor beneath, dimly lit by auxiliary service lights. Jeremy soon followed, landing in her waiting arms. Leeanna followed a second later, pausing only long enough to take a gold brick from her belt and press the side. "Move!" she shouted, shoving the two Earthers down the corridor. As she ran behind the three, blaster bolts and bullets rained into the hole. Then, the small explosive charge blew, throwing the three of them off their feet and sealing up the hole behind them. "Are you two all right?" Leeanna asked when the dust began to settle. "Fine," Jeremy replied, and Ichi nodded agreement. "Well," Leeanna sighed, safeing the Lawgiver and returning it to its holster, "where do we go from here?" Ichi dusted herself off, cleaning and sheathing her katana as she said, "Well, I for one don't believe Asrial's father would step down until he died. He was murdered." "We have no proof," Leeanna said. "But reasonable suspicion," Jeremy pointed out. "Not that it matters. Alois Greub has a list of charges against him longer than the Chiisai Zardon Elevator. Now that he's revealed himself, I can act." Leeanna sighed a little bit, and muttered, "If I don't get shot by the first Salusian trooper who sees me..." "There must be some troops still loyal to... to Asrial," Jeremy said. "We'll find some of them and figure out what to do there." "Good plan," Leeanna nodded. "Which way do we go?" Jeremy looked around them. The service tunnels branched out around them in all directions, seemingly endless. After a moment's thought, he pointed to a tunnel bearing northeast. "That way," he said. "Are you sure that's a way out?" Ichi asked. "No," Jeremy answered. "But it's as good as any other way." "That way it is, then," Leeanna nodded. Quietly and slowly, the trio set off into the tunnels beneath Cheltopolis. WEDGE DEFENSE FORCE SUPER DIMENSIONAL FORTRESS WAYWARD SON (SDF-17) PATROLLING THE VEGA SECTOR 09.40 HOURS It was a standard day on non-hostile patrol. Little activity was expected -- Kilrah had been quiet since the end of the last war, two years previously. Various members of the bridge crew went here and there in the big room, performing routine duties. Chris Smith and Jer Johnson were manning helm and tactical in place of Yuri and Kei, who were on a 3WA operation. Chris was wearing a VR helmet and a power-glove and seemed oblivious to his surroundings, while Jer was tinkering with an X-Window-based toy in his main terminal window. q was locked in an incomprehensible conversation with one of his innumerable ham-subspace contacts. MegaZone, for once looking comfortable in the center seat, was reading all the news on USEnet and replying to three-quarters of it. Surrounded by the near-officelike mass of terminals and stations that was the Executive Officer's position was Senior Lieutenant Asrial Arconian, currently serving as XO (thus freeing Gryphon to take a semi-sabbatical and pursue his newest hobby/obsession, robotics). She, like Smith, was wearing a VR helmet and power-glove, and Zoner, as he looked up from his news to survey his bridge, thought he knew what they were doing. His suspicion was confirmed a moment later when Smith jerked like a puppet whose operator has tripped and fallen off the back of the stage, then turned around and said in Asrial's general direction, "Oh, you bitch! I didn't even SEE you!" "Gotta pay attention, Chris," Asrial replied with a smile, "or you're dogmeat. Thusly... " "Wha -- augh!!" Zoner snickered and went back to reading his news, wondering who the other two players in their CyberDoom deathmatch were. Life aboard the SDF-17 was comfortable right now; there were no major hostile actions, which left plenty of time for other activities. The Grav-Ball League's annual playoffs had entered the round of sixteen, and, as usual, Morgan's M-Deck Marauders were dominating the pools; the billiards championship had reached the semi-finals; the Rocket-Assisted Jai-Alai Association was in pre-season training; the Drama and Stagecraft Society was in full swing preparing for their spring performance of Wagner's _Tristan and Isolde_. q abruptly stopped babbling in whatever language he was using, muttered something apologetic-sounding, and fiddled with some controls; then he turned around and said, "Yo, like incoming transmission from Salusian Central Command." Zoner looked up, eyebrow crooking, as the rest of the bridge crew stopped what they were doing and paid attention. "Really? On screen." Over the projection pit at the front of the bridge, a holographic viewplane rezzed into existence, and on it was the smiling face of Alois Greub. "Greetings to the Wedge Defense Force," said Greub. "I am Alois I, King and Protector of Imperial Salusia." "Er, exqueeze me?" Zoner replied. "You heard me, impertinent Earthman. I regret that it is my sad duty to inform you all of the abdication and suicide of Jerka VI, my predecessor." There was a moment of stunned silence; then Asrial got to her feet and went to the side of the conn, expressing her consternation with the classic, "What?!" "Ah, Asrial," said Greub, his face becoming somber in a plasticene, insincere sort of way. "Your father, I am afraid, was quite mad. No doubt the loss of your mother finally claimed him; it has been eating away at him for some years. At any rate, he abdicated his throne last night, declaring me his rightful successor. House Arconian is dissolved. You are no longer an Imperial personage." "You're a liar. I recognize you, Greub -- where is my father? What have you done with him?" "Sadly, your father took his own life after abdicating. I did my best to stop him -- one of the Knights-Defenders, Lincon Schel, paid for his devotion with his life. Jerka killed him before turning his blaster on himself." Fighting back tears, Asrial struggled to keep her presence regal and commanding as she replied, "That's a lie! It has to be!" Greub shook his head sadly. "You really are just like your father... delusional. For your own protection, Lieutenant Arconian, I am banishing you herewith from the planet Salusia and all her Imperial territories. If you return, you will be institutionalized, probably for the rest of your life. My advice to you is to remain with the Wedge Defense Force, where your insanity will be valued and encouraged rather than treated, since that is what you seem to want." Asrial could not reply; slackening the muscles of her jaw would have permitted her to simply burst into tears. Instead she kept her face an iron mask and glared at Greub's image. "You can't speak to an officer of mine that way," Zoner cut in, half-rising from his seat. "Disowned, banished, Imperial or not, and I don't give a DAMN who YOU are -- you do NOT speak to one of my officers like that!" "Calm yourself, ape," Greub replied. "Oh, yes, that reminds me. On Monday morning, I will place before the UG Council a measure demanding the immediate expulsion of the planet Earth from the United Galactica, as well as the immediate dissolution of the Pact Galactica with the WDF. Enjoy the weekend, Captain. On Monday afternoon, you will be out of a job." "You don't think you're going to get away with this, do you?" Zoner replied evenly. "Oh, I have no doubt in my mind," Greub replied. "I have the Royal Salusian Armed Forces backing me up, including the Royal Navy. You do not want me to turn their might on your homeworld, do you? Or your shipyards?" "I'd like to see you try it, you son of a -- " "Careful, Captain. Don't provoke a war with rash words. I'm sure if you are at all true to your vaunted WDF Code, you will wish to avoid plunging the Galaxy into civil war." Zoner glared, but said nothing. "Good day, Captain, Lieutenant." The display zone flickered into the Salusian Imperial Sigil, then de-rezzed. Zoner turned to look at Asrial, who stood beside his chair, fists clenched and lower jaw trembling. "Asrial, are you okay?" he asked. For a long moment, she gazed down at him, eyes watering and quivering, fighting with herself. Then, letting out only a single sob, she turned and fled the bridge. Zoner watched her go, and then, cursing, punched a key on his conn. "Von Frankenstein Robotics," Gryphon's voice answered after a couple of buzzes. "Gryph, Zoner here. We've got a problem." "Oh?" "Yeah. Get up to my ready room -- and if you see Asrial on the way here, -bring her with you-." "Will do. What's this about?" "I'll explain everything when you get here." "Okay." Zoner paced his ready room, a largish conference room off to the left of the bridge-level turbolift foyer, and waited, hands behind his back. He was on the verge of having Security run a full-ship sweep looking for his missing officers, or at least asking Eve to look for them, but before he could get to the intercom, the door opened, and Gryphon came in. He was dishevelled, to say the least, dressed in an Engineering Division coverall which was smeared with grease and burned in several spots. His hair, which he had taken to wearing short on a whim a while back, was mussed and greasy, and his arms and hands were filthy where he'd had them deep in the guts of whatever he was working on. He was also alone, Zoner was displeased to see. "Sorry about the delay," Gryphon said as the ready-room door hissed shut behind him. "As you can see, I never got the chance to even wash up. I -did- see Asrial on the way up here, but I couldn't get her to come with me... and believe me, I tried." "Where is she?" "Officer's O-deck. Staring-spot of choice for the thoroughly upset -- what happened, anyway? She wouldn't tell me." Zoner, with a few of his own editorial comments thrown in, explained the message from Greub. "So do we stand for that?" Gryphon asked, plopping himself down in one of the conference chairs and putting his sneakered feet up on the table. "I don't think we should." "Neither do I," Zoner replied grimly. "What can we do, though? If this Greub person really achieved the throne through legitimate appointment by the previous King, he's the rightful ruler of Salusia... he can do whatever he wants. If we overthrow him by subterfuge or force of arms, then we're interfering with the internal operations of a sovereign state." "So?" Zoner replied without a pause. "... OK, well, you have a point there," Gryphon conceded. "The Wedge Defense Force exists to do what we feel is best, with or without the agreement of established laws and governments," Zoner reminded him. "We were intended to outlive governments, outlast entire dynasties if need be. Sometimes, people forget that -- Alois Greub apparently has. He thinks we're just a hired mercenary army, the paid equivalent of the United Galactica Department of Military Affairs - he doesn't realize that we're -above the law-. He just fucked with the wrong guys." "True enough," Gryphon admitted. "Still... I don't think military action is our best option here. Not on any kind of scale. We're talking about the people of Salusia here, and the last thing I want is for our guns to be aimed at decent people who've been duped by this Greub jerkoff. And besides - I don't think the United Galactica Assembly would look kindly on a military takeover. I don't want to make the wrong step and throw the galaxy into a war we could avoid, just because we wanted to prove a point. That's like getting into a traffic accident because you had the right of way, and wouldn't swerve to avoid a drunk because dammit you were right. Y'know?" Zoner nodded. "Then what do you suggest? Some kind of deniable commando operation? Go in, find this guy and take him out?" "Cut off the head, and the body dies with it," said Gryphon. "I think our first priority is to address what's happened on a more personal level, though. With her father dead and her world in turmoil, Asrial is going to need more immediate support, and it won't help her for the two of us to be up in some ivory tower pushing buttons." Zoner nodded. "Officers' O-Deck, you said?" Asrial heard the doors open, despite the fact that she had locked them behind her, and stared resolutely out the window, the tips of her primary ears twitching in annoyance. Didn't people understand that a locked door represented a situation in which someone wanted privacy? No, the people here seemed to think that a lock was an interesting electromechanical puzzle, not a device with any particular purpose. It was strangely comforting, though, to know that locks could still be bypassed in a universe which had suddenly lost all logic. The footsteps coming across the carpeted O-Deck were uneven, stumbling. [Oh, prophets,] thought Asrial to herself, [whoever it is, they're drunk. You'd think intoxication would keep them from working the locks, at least!] Turning, she prepared to give the intruder her best attempt at a good shouting-at. Instead, she stopped and took a step back with an astonished gasp, for standing before her, looking haggard and unwell, was Helmar Vant, one of the Knights-Defenders. In obvious pain, Vant knelt on the O-Deck floor, bowed his head, and spoke in the ancient and formal form of their native tongue: >Majesty, I present myself to thee: Helmar Vant, a single, unworthy knight.< Asrial's breeding overcame some of her shock; stepping forward, she touched Vant's shoulder and replied, >Rise, Helmar. Tell me what has happened. Is it true, what they say of my father?< Struggling to his feet again, Vant replied, >No, Majesty. It is not. This is what truly happened: Thy father called a meeting of the Knights-Defenders. All attended save the two who are on this ship; they, thy father instructed to remain here and guard thee. The King feared an uprising by the Sword of Salusia... little did he know.< Vant paused, as if the next part were hard for him to put into words, and then continued haltingly, >Lincon Schel, our Commander... he betrayed thy father, and all the other Knights followed him. I kept quiet, hoping for an opportunity to act, but things unfolded too fast. Alois Greub tried to have thy father arrested; he resisted, and slew Schel. Mara Ness then slew thy father.< >Mara?! Why??< >I do not know, Majesty. I fear they have all gone mad. Either that, or Greub has bewitched them. He is a powerful speaker, and a persuasive man. His personality is forceful.< Vant lowered his eyes again and continued, >Forgive me, Majesty. Thy father was murdered before my eyes, and I could do nothing to help him. I waited until the others were abed, and then made my way to the Imperial Spaceport, pausing only to warn thy sister.< He winced, then added ruefully, >At least, I -thought- they were all abed.< It was only then that Asrial noticed the bloodily bandaged wound in Vant's side, which was spreading fresh crimson under the sodden dressing. >Thou art wounded, Helmar. Speak no more; I will find a medic for thee.< >No,< Vant replied. >I must atone for my failure to defend thy father, Majesty. Thou art the true ruler of Salusia; Alois Greub has no proper claim. If he is to be prevented from severing all ties with Earth -- from invading, for that is his true goal -- thou must return to Salusia and destroy him. He has the Royal Armed Forces, it is true, but he can only consider the Royal Navy loyal to him. His conspiracy to seize power has many more roots in the Admiralty than the Army General Staff, and he cannot yet consider the Army truly loyal. Also, the Imperial Guards have gone into hiding, doubtless thou wilt know where better than I. Field Marshal Rann awaits thy command.< Vant fumbled in a pocket, then pressed a cold, hard object into Asrial's hand -- the gleaming gold signet ring of the Salusian monarchs, decorated with a stylized Salusian equivalent of the letter "A" (signifying House Arconian, and resembling a Greek sigma). >This I recovered from thy father's body... Greub cares so little for tradition that he refused to take it.< >Enough, Helmar, enough. Thou must rest.< >My life is forfeit, Majesty. I betrayed thy father's trust in me.< >Nonsense. Thou didst the only intelligent thing -- escaping from the situation to warn me of Greub's treachery. Watching the situation unfold and doing nothing, so thou couldst keep thy life and warn me, was far braver than sacrificing thy life for my father. We will mourn later, Helmar, together. For now, thou must survive -- for thou must come to me once I have reclaimed Salusia, and be honored.< Vant's grizzled face broke into a strained smile, pain nearly but not quite forgotten. >I thank thee, Majesty... I am redeemed.< The doors opened again, and Zoner and Gryphon entered the O-Deck to find the unusual tableau of the old, veteran Knight leaning on Asrial's shoulder, the bloody wound in his side soaking so thoroughly through the wrapping that crimson droplets were spattering the floor. "Asrial?" said Zoner, uncertain what was going on. "Quickly, help me!" she replied. "We must get him to sick bay at once." Once they had Vant secure in sick bay and were assured that he would recover, Asrial, Zoner and Gryphon returned to the ready room. Asrial informed the two Earthmen of Vant's news, which generally confirmed their suspicions; then she paused, looked down at the tabletop, and then looked up again. "Will you help me?" she asked them. "Don't be ridiculous," Zoner replied. "Of course we'll help." "Aside from Vant, who's in no condition to help out, we're the only Knights-Defenders left," Gryphon added. "And -I- haven't misunderstood my oath." "Nor I," said Zoner. "Here's what we have in mind... " "OK, settle down, children," Gryphon announced as he entered Pilot Briefing Room #4, over on the Prometheus, half an hour later. The assembled pilots, all those who had been on standby alert, wrapped up their conversations and turned their attention to the front as their Chief of Starfighter Operations plopped a datapad down on the lectern. "As you've probably heard by now, there has been a shift in power on Salusia this morning," began Gryphon. "The new regime is decidedly against the alliance with Earth and with the Wedge Defense Force. That's the bad news. The good news is that we have considerable evidence that the new ruler, one Alois Greub, a well-known radical Salusian nationalist, demagogue and terrorist leader, did -not- achieve his current lofty position legitimately." "Considerable," said Dave Ritchie with a knowing smile, "but not conclusive enough for the United Galactica Assembly?" Gryphon smiled, laid a finger against his nose and pointed at Daver. "So direct military action against Greub's regime is out - the UG would perceive it as an action against the legitimate power structure on Salusia, and although Zoner and I don't think they can take us, we really don't want to start a galactic war if we can help it. What's more, if we can, we'd like to prevent Greub from starting his own." Gryphon tabbed a control on the lectern, and on the briefing screen behind and above him, a map of a familiar part of the United Galactica glowed into being. "The Royal Salusian Navy is currently massing near Seltonia, ostensibly to regroup following the power shift back home and carry out 'exercises'. Our intel indicates they're actually forming up the vanguard for a Salusian assault on the Centauri Sector - and an all-out invasion of Earth." Gryphon waited for the murmur of consternation to fade, then said, "We might be able to take them, but hopefully, we won't have to try. I need six pilots for a deniable operation in Salusian airspace." Convinced that he was in danger of being drowned out by a massive chorus of volunteers, Lt. Mark "Haywire" Luchini shot to his feet, nearly dislocating his shoulder in an attempt to reach higher than his relatively short stature would allow, and shouted at the top of his lungs, "MEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!" Since no other pilot had so much as twitched or coughed, this sent the entire room over the edge into gales of howling laughter. When the dust cleared, Gryphon continued, "I need -five- pilots for a deniable operation in Salusian airspace. You must have no dependents, no moral qualms about toppling what may be a legitimate regime because we don't like their policy, and at least 800 logged hours or an instructor's certification in the Koensayr BTL-A4 Myrmidon. Lemme see those hands." Gryphon considered the field, thought on it for a moment, and made his selections. "The rest of you will remain on standby. I expect that within the next couple of hours, the SDF-17 will be moving to support the Earth Defense Forces frontier line, in case we don't manage to head off this war. Let's go over the deployments... " Half an hour saw Gryphon passing through the third door on the right, along the corridor leading from the main turboshaft to the bridge - the door marked "EXECUTIVE OFFICER". In the outer office, he was greeted by his current yeoman, an attractive human girl by the name of Ellis. She was an efficient administrator and able to stay calm when the office was under the most obnoxious of sieges; he knew he'd have a hard time replacing her when the time came for her to move on up the ladder. Who else would have thought of having three baskets on her desk: IN, OUT, and, for the material she deemed worthy of the Exec's personal attention, THROUGH? "Good morning, Commander," she said, looking up from her terminal as he entered. "General Todd from the Earth Defense Forces is holding for you on line three, and you've got seven messages from Commodore Overstreet with the CFMF." "Thanks, Ellis," said Gryphon, scooping up the contents of the THROUGH basket as he passed. "Tell General Todd I'll be right with him, would you?" After a quick thumb through his mail and a brief conversation in which Gryphon outlined to a worried General Todd the WDF's basic action plan, the WDF's Executive Officer put down his desk phone, sat back in his chair, and momentarily reflected on how much he enjoyed it when things started happening this way. The orchestration of different elements, briefing people who needed to be briefed, making sure all the players were in their right places - the people who said the Executive Officer's job wasn't interesting didn't have the proper appreciation for the special joy that comes from stage-managing. And as for the much-fabled paperwork, well, Ellis saw to that. Whistling a little tune, he picked up the phone and hit the speed-dial button for Commodore Overstreet's office. "Confederate Freespacers Mercenary Fleet, Lieutenant Bronsky speaking," came a burly-sounding voice. "Commodore Overstreet, please," said Gryphon. "Who's calling?" "Tell him it's Gryphon returning his call, he'll know." "Hold, please." There was a burst of dreadful music, country-style house dance, and then the familiar voice of former WDF officer turned Freespacer Kris Overstreet came on the line. "Hi, Gryph, three questions: How's Asrial; is this shithead Alois for real; and when does the party begin?" Overstreet's normal Southern accent was more controlled than usual, hard and to the point. "Very depressed but heading for righteously cheesed; we don't think so; won't be long now," replied Gryphon, forgetting entirely his mental note to mention the poor quality of the hold music. "Let's talk logistics." "Okay. Hang on a second." There was the sound of a hand being put over the mouthpiece of the phone, which didn't quite cover Overstreet saying, "(Lieutenant, let Captain Jerani know his sister is okay for now, and stand by for orders.)" Then Redneck returned fully to the line as he said, "Okay, what do you need to know?" "Are you aware that the RSN is gathering a fleet at Seltonia? They say it's for maneuvers, but we have intel that points toward an Earth invasion." "Yeah, I'm aware," drawled Redneck. "I've been pulling in what I can here to Zardon, but I didn't want to commit to a battle plan until I knew what you were up to." "Within the next couple of hours, SDF-17 will be moving to support the EDF frontier line. We're taking a page from the RSN's book and calling it an exercise. We let them shoot first, we don't have to justify ourselves to the UG Assembly when the smoke clears... our evidence that the Greub regime is illegitimate is enough to convince -me-, but the UGA is another matter. If you want to hear about our -other- plans, well, we'll have to secure the line." "Right, then, just a sec..." There was a sharp electronic blatter as Redneck activated a scrambler at his end; Gryphon punched the key on his phone which would figure out what scrambler key the CFMF command line would be using at this time of this particular day, and a moment later, the line mostly stabilized. A couple of random bleats and squawks died away as Overstreet fine-tuned the less sophisticated equipment at his end. "...damn cheap encryptor parts, OK..." "OK. We have evidence that Greub got where he is by subverting the Order of Knights-Defenders and assassinating Jerka. Now, I didn't like the guy much, but that burns me anyway, y'know?" Redneck released a long breath before answering, "I suspected as much, only I didn't know he'd actually gotten the Knights in on it. I take it Asrial's not taking it well." "Not at the moment, but she's tough," said Gryphon. "It won't be long before she gets past the initial grief, digs her heels in and gets mad about it. Anyway, it looks like, at this point, the only Knights-Defenders left who are both loyal and ambulatory are me and Zoner. We're putting together a small force for a deniable operation on Salusia - go in, find Greub, and kill his ass, to oversimplify the objectives a little." "Hm." For a couple of seconds, the line went silent. "Well, then that leaves me with two questions. One, what can the fleet do for ya, and two, what can -I- do for ya?" "Best thing the fleet can do is join us in our rendezvous with the EDF frontier forces, unless you get a better offer from the Centauri. We can work out a standard subcontract for it. As for yourself, I know you're an experienced insurrectionist... got any orbital insertion experience?" "Cap-drop? Once in training and once in action, and hated every second of it both times. Give me a stealth transport any day of the week, I'm a hell of a lot more comfortable -and- experienced with 'em." "Actually, I was talking about sneakship insertion." "Oh. Well, just a little bit... after all, that's how I got into my current mess to begin with," replied Redneck with a grin in his voice. "Oh, sure," replied Gryphon cheerfully, "by -blowing- a sneak job. That's supposed to fill me with confidence?" "Hey, I did complete the mission." "And scored in a big way somewhere along the line, if I recall correctly," said Gryphon with a laugh. "All right, if you're interested, there's a space open for you in the strike team." "Yeah, I'm interested all right," Overstreet said roughly. "Okay, let me see..." The hollow sound of Redneck typing echoed over the line. "I'm sending the bulk of the fleet to join the Son ASAP. Give Isarugi another promotion, he hates that, he'll be Captain commanding the force. I'm withholding the Palendrom and two MASS units to slip in beneath the Salusian defense grid. Ace in the hole in case things go FUBAR." "OK. Hopefully, we won't need them, they'd blow our deniability," Gryphon pointed out. "Either way it's good to have backup in place, anyway." "Well, seeing as Kalen would refuse just about any other order short of a direct assault on the palace, I'm glad you approve," Redneck chuckled. "Anyway, send me the rendezvous coordinates and I'll be there." "They're on the way," said Gryphon, turning to his own workstation and bringing up a mailer. "Bring a lunch and your favorite personal weapons, it's gonna be a long afternoon." "Gotcha. Black tie and twin .40's, will do. See you then..." Overstreet's voice caught for a moment, and he added irritatedly, "Oh, yeah, and Washuu and the fish say hi." "Uh, yeah," Gryphon replied, but the line had already gone dead. Gryphon finished dashing off the email with the rendezvous coordinates, then xlocked his station and headed out of his office. "Hold my calls, Ellis," he called over his shoulder on his way out the door. "Aye aye, sir," replied Ensign Ellis. Perhaps an hour later, a nondescript spacecraft left the SDF-17. It was a Corellian Engineering Corporation FB117 bulk freighter, one of CEC's big, square, slow cargo vessels. Built to haul hundreds of tons of bulk cargo - grain, water, crated supplies, troops, what have you - the FB117 was still ubiquitous over a hundred years after its introduction despite the fact that most of its components were several generations outmoded, for the simple fact that they -worked-. This particular FB117 was one of the WDF's small fleet of sub-ships, barely large enough to be capital ships, which were carried within the SDF-17's cavernous cargo-docking bays. They served as evacuation ships for crippled starships and space stations, survey vessels, perimeter scouts, and a number of other useful things. This particular example of the type looked innocuous enough, unarmed and with only the standard tiny navigational-deflector generators visible on its battered hull. At the helm, Gryphon opened up the sublight engines -- which were, in the typical FB117 fashion, underpowered for the ship's tonnage and thus had to be run wide open at all times -- while Zoner laid a course for Zardon into the navicomputer. One of the FB117's outdated features was its hyperspace motivator drive, kept around in some warships largely for its unusual tactical value in this day of realspace-warp patrol ships and instant-fold war wagons, and in freighters because it was still the cheapest FTL method known. "It's ready," Zoner reported after a moment. "Excellent." Gryphon reached forward, gripped the hyperdrive throttles, and pulled them back. Outside, the stars smeared into lines, and then the universe was gone. Operation PWEI had begun. "I love that," Gryphon commented of the hyperspace transition. "Pretty, isn't it?" "Mm-hmm. We should look into fitting a hyperdrive array to the Wayward Son... figure we'd need about fifty motivators, scattered around the wilderzones." "What the hell would we do with it?" "Who cares? Backup drive systems are always a good idea. Suppose something happens to the fold drive while we're cruising the Crab Nebula?" "Point." Gryphon leaned back in his seat and put his feet up on the instrument panel. "The only bad part about hyperspace is the wait... and even that has its uses." Sighing, he got to his feet. "Speaking of which, I'd better make sure Ed is really finished... hate for him to break down right when it's time to rock." "You do that. The last thing I want to have to worry about is friendly fire." Gryphon made his way aft, leaving the control room (too small to be a bridge, too big to be a cockpit) and going down the narrow set of steep steps to the main corridor rearward. Doors led off to either side into small cabins -- the officers' quarters, in an operational FB117. As he passed one, he paused, then backed up and rapped on it with his knuckles. /* James Horner "Darkside of the Moon" _Apollo 13_ */ "Come in," Asrial's voice replied, sounding small and fragile. Gryphon keyed the door and stepped in; the room was dark, and he could barely make out its occupant, half-sitting in the narrow bunk along the far wall, dimly silhouetted by the tiny reading lamp above the bunk's head. "My Queen," said Gryphon, kneeling beside the bunk. "Am I?" she replied, not sounding at all convinced. "You are," Gryphon replied. "You are Asrial Arconian, are you not? You are the rightful heir of the throne of Imperial Salusia." He reached up and gently took her hand in his own. "My sword will serve no other." Despite her mood, Asrial found herself snickering slightly. "You sound so... official." "Sorry. It's the royalty thing, I think. Being American by birth, I never quite learned how to deal with it." She smiled. "I know. Jeremy is the same way... oh, prophets, Jeremy! He was to arrive on Salusia this morning, right in the middle of everything! If Greub's storm troopers have found him... " "... then I feel very, very sorry for them," said Gryphon with a sly smile. "For such a small man, Jeremy Feeple casts a long, sharp shadow... if you follow me." That Asrial followed was evident in her own slow smile. "Unless I miss my guess, he'll be up in the mountains with the Guards by the time we arrive, waiting for you to show up and sort this mess out." "Do you think we can really do it?" "Do what? Take back the throne? Restore Salusia to its rightful ruler? You bet I do. There's no way we can lose -- and with the Imperial Guards behind us, well, hell! We're golden." He leaned forward, then, and gently kissed her cheek. "Don't worry about anything. We've got it all covered." Then, getting to his feet, he continued in a brisker tone, "We'll be coming out of hyperspace in about eight hours... you should get some sleep, even though it's earlyish. Don't know how long it will be before you get another opportunity." "You're right, I should. Thank you, Ben... thank you for standing with me, you -and- Zoner." "I could do nothing else," Gryphon replied with a smile, "nor could MegaZone. It's our job... it's what we live for. And besides... you're our friend. You're -my- friend and I love you. My friends get my help when they're in trouble." Asrial used the back of his hand to brush away a tear rather than release it, then smiled tiredly. "Get some rest," said Gryphon. "The Control Center will let you know when it's time." He stood. "We're going to do this, Asrial." Asrial smiled, a little brighter this time, and as Gryphon left, she switched off the light and curled up to sleep. The nondescript bulk freighter dropped from hyperspace near Zardon at 7:30 PM. This was well before a stock FB117 should have arrived, given its departure time and location from the SDF-17, but it was Gryphon's hope that, since they had arrived in the system on a Zardon approach, the Salusian defense grid would not scrutinize their arrival vector and the energy signature of their hyperspace transition closely enough to notice how overpowered the freighter's hyperdrive was. It didn't appear they had, since the sensors showed no interest at all from the direction of Salusia's orbit. The freighter quickly negotiated a space in the flight grid of the Confederate Freespacers Alliance Home Fleet, roughly forty ships in a parking orbit outside Zardon's ring and wheelworld. The official purpose of the rendevous, at least the one given to the Freespacer ATC and passed on to the Zardon authorities in the Chiisai Zardon wheelworld below, was "personnel rotation". This struck no one as unusual; the Zardons regarded it as business as usual, what with the freighter's Confederate Freespacers' Alliance registration, and the Freespacers didn't ask many questions. From the nondescript Freespacer freighter, an equally nondescript Multicon MT32 shuttlecraft departed the freighter's small hangar bay, docked at the Freespacer's capitol ship (not a typo), the CFA Independence, and discharged two passengers, volunteers whose part in the operation was limited to spending a relaxing day or two in the Home Fleet. In their place, only one man boarded, a wiry human fellow with reddish hair and a beard. He wore a greasy gray spacer's jumpsuit and a battered Confederate Freespacers' Alliance ballcap, and carried two toolboxes. His ID listed him as one Alex Likier, born on Earth, a machinist's mate who for the past ten years had been a Freespacer national. As the shuttle carried him toward the freighter, Commodore Kristan Overstreet regarded Alex Likier's ID and chuckled. Not bad, not bad, he thought to himself. I just hope nobody asks me to fix anything. The beeping of the wall alarm roused Gryphon from the sleep he'd fallen into, and he roused himself to have a look at it. Right on schedule: 20.00 hours. Smiling, he threw aside the raggedy emergency blanket he'd pulled out of a wall locker to sleep under, got to his feet and went through the back of the cluttered utility room into the empty storage compartment. There, he discarded the grimy coveralls and sneakers he wore, going into the sonic shower compartment off to the side and letting it pound most of the heavier crud off him. Returning to his workroom, he opened up the duffel bag he'd brought along and got out his working clothes: underwear, a dark grey t-shirt, grey-and-white mottled ripstop fatigue pants, and a matching mottled overshirt over which he buckled a clamshell of hard polymer armor, black on the inside and hastily sprayed grey-and-white on the outside. A pair of black Docs, daubed with some white polish to break up their outlines in snow, went on his feet. After making certain everything was where it belonged, he spread out a large piece of grey cloth on the staging table in the middle of the room and laid out his equipment on it, preparatory to tucking it away in various portions of his wardrobe. On the one previous occasion in which Gryphon had gone into the field, he had been woefully underprepared, and had noticed this almost immediately upon entering a touchy situation. Once he got himself out of that situation, more by luck than anything else, he had been taken to task by several of his more expert friends regarding what he -should- have been carrying. Hence, he was now woefully overpacked, and had to figure out what to leave behind. The first thing he picked up was a small rectangular block of shiny stainless steel rods and linkages, intricately machined. Inside this device was a knife blade; through a series of motions rather like a pantograph in nature, the block would appear to magically sprout that blade. It was a complex but smoothly operable contraption, and Gryphon had long admired the design, originated in Germany during the Second World War, for its complex elegance. It was a paratrooper's knife, more tool than weapon, which was fine with Gryphon, since he had never been terrific at knife fighting anyway. He stuck it in a trouser pocket and continued on. The next item was also a blade, a Ka-Bar fighting knife. Gryphon doubted he would need a knife at all, let alone two of them, but he couldn't think of -not- bringing this one; after all, Daver had prepared it for him and presented it with what, for Daver, was a good deal of formality (he had thrown it into the wall next to Gryphon's head). So it was strapped with appropriate care to its owner's right hip. MegaZone had insisted he carry a "hold-out pistol" of some sort. It was Gryphon's opinion that, should he ever be in a situation where he had to use anything called a "hold-out", there would be little point in the attempt, but to humor his commander, he had strapped a comically small ExoSalusia Arms CC-09 blaster pistol in a Spring-O-Matic (tm) holster to his left forearm. A double shoulder holster rig was next to go on, and then the items which filled it: a near-identical pair of somewhat elderly Bryar blaster pistols. The Bryar was a Corellian weapon, fairly ubiquitous on the Outer Rim and anyplace else with a thriving grey and black market in somewhat advanced weapons. An efficient and powerful weapon, its design had yet to be surpassed in the eyes of many weapons collectors. The pair was a gift from Kei, who knew his fondness for antique weapons. She had done some surgery on the weapons herself, sanding, filing, tinkering, until at last she had pronounced them fit for action. MegaZone had shaken his head and tsked when he saw them, making dire pronouncements about the inefficiency of the design's chem-action power pack and aligned crystalline collimator array; Gryphon had replied that Zoner didn't have a goddamned idea what he was talking about. Since most of the fighting he was anticipating would take place in the medium-close quarters of the Palace-Imperial, the weapon he had chosen as his main gun was a powerful midrange one: a Stouker Type III concussion rifle. The Stouker carried a reputation as a wicked, brutally lethal weapon, and for good reason: a blast from a properly tuned Stouker could nearly cut an armored target in half at close range, or reduce several unarmored targets to pulp. One had to be careful not to fire it in such close quarters that one would catch some of its charge's shockwave oneself, but that was a skill long hours in the sim-center had helped him comfortably master. Gryphon figured it'd be good enough to cover his butt. Checking that the weapon's powerpack was fully charged, ready and safed, he slung it over his shoulder, then stocked the thigh pockets of his fatigues liberally with extra packs for it. He dispensed with throwing knives; there was only one edged object he had yet been able to figure out adequately how to throw, anyway. That item he tucked into one of the upper pockets of a matching winter-camo field jacket which he would wear over his armor plate once he was out of a climate-controlled environment. He ran a brush through his hair a couple of times, then put a winter-mottled SWAT cap on. Black leather gloves protected his hands; the left one was missing its fingertips, for better sensitivity in his shooting hand. Clothed and armed, he donned the last two components of his kit - a pair of battle specs (multifunction optics which looked not unlike blade sunglasses), and a set of smartears (electronic earplugs which would amplify quiet sounds and dampen dangerously loud ones, as well as providing secured radio comm for the team). Satisfied with his kit, he climbed up a ladder on a nearby wall and through a ceiling hatch into the next room above. That room had once been a cargo hold, until the clever engineers at the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards had converted it into a small starfighter bay, just big enough for the craft docked therein. Gryphon did a slow walkaround, taking in the sleek black lines of the Lockheed-Allied Shadow Legios Combined Variable-Geometry Fighter System, and smiled to himself. It was no Valkyrie - but then, what was? - but the Legios was quite an impressive machine, and the Shadow Legios doubly so. Without it, this mission would have been a whole lot harder. Redneck leaned against the hull of their Legios dropship near the Beta section's main gear, smiling quietly. He had shucked his machinist's coverall in favor of a white sweatshirt and a matching windbreaker which hung open to reveal a dark green reversible lining. His dark grey pants were loose-fitting and fitted with baggy pockets, each of which bulged at the snaps. Twin black .40 caliber pistols, heavier RebelTech knock-offs of the original Smith and Wesson .40 S&W automatics, rode in holsters at his hips, and a classic Remington 30.06 hunting rifle, equipped with a modern telescopic sight, hung across his back from a shoulder strap. He'd taken a set of smartears and a pair of battle specs from the equipment bag too. Redneck pushed his white ball cap up slightly and nodded to Gryphon. "Ready to go when y'all are," he said confidently. Gryphon chuckled. "You look like you're about ready to go out for a weekend with the guys and bag a deer." Redneck shrugged. "Not that much difference between a deer and a traitor," he replied. "Both dumb." MegaZone, standing by a nearby upturned fuel drum and using it for a setup table, chuckled as he snapped a clip into his M41A1 pulse rifle, racked a round into the chamber and set the safety. He wore a mottled black-and-white insulated coverall which the WDF Special Forces had jokingly nicknamed "the cow suit" when testing them, all-weather boots and a SWAT cap that matched his cow suit. At his hip he had a heavy autopistol, an Ares Arms Predator. The Predator was a brand new item, just announced; they hadn't yet actually hit the market. Zoner had received his only a few days earlier, as a birthday present from Kei. She wouldn't say how she'd gotten it ahead of the ship date, but he knew she had many contacts in the armament industry, so it didn't surprise him all that much that she had. Zoner unholstered the Predator and held it with a smile. It was a huge handgun, even bigger than the Desert Eagle he was so fond of, and chambered for the most ridiculously powerful cartridge in the entire commercial handgun industry, .650 Turbo Express, developed especially for it. He racked back the massive slab-sided slide on the empty magazine, causing it to lock open, then popped out the mag and set down the weapon. A box of .650 TE ammunition (commonly nicknamed ".650 Crosstown Express" or simply "Crosstown" on the assumption that it's like getting hit by one) sat on the drumhead next to the pistol, and, whistling a happy tune, Zoner began extracting the fat, heavy rounds from the block of foam and thumbing them into the stack of magazines he had standing by. Asrial emerged from a small room off to the side, tying her hair back in a braid. She'd changed to a pair of hiking boots with heavy socks, what looked to be a white one-piece mock-turtleneck swimsuit, and a pair of brown safari shorts. Her main weapons were a pair of custom-made submachineguns, built by the Morgan Custom Shop on the same basic planform as the Kuromi series of small subguns, but chambered for the same bonecrushing caliber as Zoner's Predator. When she presented them to their owner, Kei had joked that they really qualified more as small autocannons than as subguns. Asrial had them holstered on either hip, and flanked by extra clips of ammo that hung down after the fashion of waist-mounted armor plate. A special sling arrangement on the side of the small leather backpack Asrial wore held a folding-stock pump shotgun where her right hand could reach it and pull it free easily. She, too, had battle specs and smartears - a single set of the latter in her secondary ears, since her primaries could adjust through a similar tolerance band of their own accord. Gryphon took in this spectacle for a moment, then cleared his throat and said calmly, "Let me just take this opportunity to say, for the record: 'Boggle!'" "Oh, you're just saying that," she replied, tabbing her fingerless leather gloves tight. "Aw, c'mon," drawled Redneck, clapping the WDF officer on the shoulder. "It ain't like you've never seen a nearly naked, nubile young Queen before." "It ain't?" Gryphon asked, confusion in his voice, as he tried to remember when else he might have. Well, there was the time Kevin Tefft had tried out that Speedo swimsuit, but he would hardly call -that- a nubile sight... "You're gonna freeze in that getup," Zoner pointed out. "(Or at least poke somebody's eye out,)" Redneck muttered, making Gryphon and Zoner strangle laughs down to coughs. "Don't worry about me," Asrial replied with a smile. "A Salusian of Imperial birth can handle extremes of temperature with considerably more ease than you humans." "If you say so," Zoner replied. "OK, let's go. Kris, Asrial, you're with me in the Beta. Gryph, you take the Alpha, you've flown just this kind of op before." "You ride, I drive the bus. Roger," said Gryphon with a grin as he climbed into the cockpit of the Alpha. The chronometer built into the instrument panel was reading 20.20, which was right on schedule. He strapped in, plugged in, and powered up the avionics, patching through to the communication system, into the intercom, and up to the control room. "Control room," came a voice. "Are we as close as I think we are?" "That's affirm. We'll reach the defensive perimeter in approximately twenty seconds." "You ready to rock?" "Just about." "Good. Just like we planned it." Gryphon reached out and flicked the toggle for the cockpit down, and as the canopy locked itself into position, he gave his flight systems one last check. It wouldn't do to have something out of position, after all, when the Big Moment came. "OK, let's do the conference," said Zoner down in the Beta. His hands tabbed over several controls in the comm panel, and in the holoHUD before him, a number of small comm windows appeared in increasingly-complex geometric cleverness. A window appeared for Gryph and two for the rest of the Beta's crew, one for Lieutenant Jennings's relief crew up in the control room, and one for each Y-Wing pilot in Auslander Squadron: Lieutenant Commander Greg "Torpedo" Thomas, in real life the solid, reliable commander of Thunderbolt Squadron; Senior Lieutenant Mia "Gunship" Satori, one of the loyal proliferation of Satori siblings doing that Salusian military family honor in the WDF; Senior Lieutenant Mark "Haywire" Luchini, Eight-Ball Squadron's resident loose cannon on deck; Junior Lieutenant Rob "Ashura" Shannon, who felt a little nervous about being in any operation with Haywire; Junior Lieutenant Carol "Harry" Martinez, a subscriber to the "speak softly and carry a tac-nuke" philosophy; and Ensign Frank "F.N.G." Gordon, who would never live down his initials. "Take it, Gryph," said Zoner. "Anybody's had any second thoughts, now's the time," Gryphon said. "It's a little late to back out, but you can get your objections down on record." No one spoke. "OK," Gryphon continued. "Here's the breakdown. We're about to violate the Salusian defense perimeter. We'll probably have to shoot our way to orbital altitude, which, once we clear the perimeter, won't be tough - their cap-ships will be too far out of position to reach us in time if we spring it right. Auslander Squadron, your job is to provide cover against the fighter patrols; if Zoner and I have all this calculated accurately, they'll be the only enemy elements that can reach us before we make the drop zone. "Auslanders, it's down to you to keep them off us while Jennings gets us into position. Once the drop is made, you'll have forty seconds - maybe less - to get away from the gravity well and beat it into hyperspace before those big Salusian battlewagons get you under their guns, so don't screw around - understand, Mark?" "Got it," replied Haywire. "I'm crazy, not -stupid-." "Just you keep that in mind," said Gryphon. "OK, that's it. Your astromechs should already have a hyperspace course laid in for the rendezvous point. Do a standard hyperdrive bolter - dash on a straight vector for two light-minutes, drop to sublight and regroup for the haul to the rendezvous. You'll link up with the SDF-17 and the EDF fleet and render assistance, if need be, in the defense of Earth. Hopefully, by the time you get there, it'll all be over and there won't be any need of that defense. Questions?" There were none. "Let's do it to it." Salusia, as it always did, hung suspended in the so-called "void" of space, slowly rotating and bluely beautiful in the light of its G-class primary. Around it, the normally tranquil space was busy with a show of armaments unseen since the end of the Zardon Wars, ten years previously. The Home Defense Detachment of the Royal Salusian Navy was patrolling along a line of demarcation which more or less corresponded to the orbit of Salu I, the planet's primary satellite, keeping a close watch on all ships entering and leaving the area. Alois Greub had warned his new soldiers that the Wedge Defense Force was likely to attempt some kind of countermeasure, despite his harsh warnings to them, and the misguidedly loyal fighting men and women of Salusia were ready to see them repelled. They -weren't- ready for what happened, though. At the perimeter, a Corellian FB117 bulk freighter was cruising slowly toward Salusia. Its identification signal tagged it as the Hanson's Luck, a Freespacer freightliner, bound for Cheltopolis with a load of Triganian furniture, redsward grain and assorted comestibles. It cleared the perimeter and chugged toward a parking orbit, but once inside the out-turned guns of most of the perimeter defense, it did something remarkable. It gained speed, and with showers of sparks all around, it shed its outer skin. The broad, squarish lines of the bulk freighter sheeted away, shattering into twinkling constellations of ceramic debris, as demolition charges blew them away to reveal the spindle hull, bulging thrusters and gleaming weapon mounts of a CR90 corvette fitted for blockade-running gunship duty. The bulk freighter Hanson's Luck was really a warship, armed to the teeth and ready to fight, and surrounded by a staggered box formation of six Koensayr BTL-A4 Myrmidon starfighters. A startled defense operator remembered his morning's instructions and scanned it for Wedge Defense Force markings, but found none. Instead, the ship bore a distinctive logo, a stylized humanoid skull with a set of earphones. Down the side of the ship, large letter spelled out the name: PAN WORLDS ENFORCEMENT, INCORPORATED MINUTEMAN NINE As the stunned defense network rebounded from this shock and swung into action, so too did the CR90, turning its hammerhead prow toward the planet and speeding for it with the maximum of raw thrust and minimum of subtlety for which Corellian ships were so famous. As it did so, there was a crackle of interference, and then the Salusian tactical comm network resounded with the sounds of a loud techno-rock song. /* Pop Will Eat Itself "Ich Bin Ein Auslander" _Dos Dedos Mis Amigos_ */ Fighter Squadrons 1 through 8 of the Royal Salusian Naval Aviation Wing 94 (Cobalt Talons) converged from their sector patrols on the ship, tightening up their formations and readying the anti-ship missiles they had been prepared with this morning, intent on seeing this unauthorized invader go down in flames. As they did, Minuteman 9's many rapid-fire turbolaser emplacements began to awaken, tracking and firing with the dogged determination of expert systems. Alarmed, the fighters, contract-built ExoSal Rapier and Raptor space superiority craft, scattered, breaking to two-ship elements and reorganizing to deal with the hail of laserfire. "Alert the King!" the Talon commander cried into his comm unit as he swung his Raptor into attack position on the interloper ship. "An unknown attacking force is at the perimeter!" "Acknowledged, Talon Leader." "Mm," Gryphon observed as his tactical analysis HUD lit up like a Christmas tree. "There certainly are a lot of them... " "Mm-hmm," replied Zoner in the Beta, observing a similar phenomenon. "You ready?" "But oeuf course. Lemme hear 'em, Auslanders!" "Auslander 1, ready!" "Auslander 2, ready!" "Auslander 3! LOCK and LOAD, baby! WOOO!!" A pause. "Er... Auslander 4, ready!" "Auslander 5, ready!" "Auslander 6, ready!" "Auslander Squadron, this is Minuteman Control," Gryphon announced. "Break formation and attack, repeat, break and attack!" "WOO!!" cried Haywire, ramming his throttles to the firewall. "It's GREAT to be ALIVE!!" Memo to myself, thought MegaZone. Increase his medication. When people talk about all hell breaking loose, they're talking about things like what happened next. The Cobalt Talons were the RSN's most elite fighter group, each of them having logged over a thousand hours in their nation's fighting ships. But here, they were up against a group of avowed fanatics at the controls of heavily modified, hotrod Y-Wings, and so all precepts of proper fighter combat went straight out the window. "OK, gang," Torpedo announced over the Auslander tac net. "We're outnumbered eight to one, but remember, we don't have to beat 'em - just keep 'em off the ship long enough for them to do the job." "Roger," replied the rest of the pilots, except Haywire, who was busy lining up on a Raptor. Pilot Officer Tal Kramnar bore down on the Minuteman 9, his target acquisition systems staring hungrily at the distinctive signatures left by the massive engines. He readied his heavy missiles, hoping that, at the very least, he could slow the ship down, cripple it so that his wingmates would have an easier time of blasting it to bits. He checked his vectors and smiled; he was at least two kilometers out. There was no way that those mercenary Y-Wing pilots could intercept him in time. He rechecked his missile lock and squeezed the trigger - WHAM! Kramnar's Raptor suddenly pinwheeled out of control. The cockpit went dark as the instrument lights flickered out, then strobed with brightness as sparks rained down from the couplings in the aft bulkhead. Kramnar cursed and fought the controls, feeling the heavy fighter reacting sluggishly and jerkily. As his computer systems recovered and his one unblown VDU came back online, he was able to call forth a damage assessment. His fighter was gravely wounded - shields completely wrecked, the main power core knocked out, extensive damage to the flight control systems, one of its two primary thrusters down, the missile delivery system destroyed. How? What had hit him? Had he collided with something, a random micrometeoroid or piece of space debris? His shielding should have been up to the job of protecting against such a threat. Then he glanced in the rearview and saw the spatulate prow of a Y-Wing bearing down on him. The bastard had hit him from that opening range, and managed to get on his tail in the time it took him to recover from the tumble? Hit him with -what-? What had that kind of range and power that a Y-Wing could carry? "No," he said aloud as the realization struck him. "Impossible. He couldn't have - " Laser fire from the Y-Wing's nose cannons began slamming into the wounded Raptor's remaining armor, and Kramnar pushed all thoughts out of his head and tried to evade. He could not call for help - his communications system was destroyed; he could only hope that someone would notice his plight and save him before the attacker destroyed him. For his part, Mark Luchini couldn't believe he'd actually tagged the son of a bitch with a protorp. Sure, Raptors were big for starfighters, but proton torpedoes were so damned slow! He'd never expected to score with that shot. But now that he had, he gleefully bored in to follow it up. The enemy pilot was game. He tried to evade as best he could with his crippled ship, but Haywire bracketed him with fire and then lined him up rock-solid for the kill. His grin slipped for just a moment, and, almost on impulse, he reached down to the weapon-select panel and flicked a toggle. Then he thumbed the cannon trigger, and instead of deadly laser fire, the volley he poured into the crippled Raptor came from the twin ion cannons mounted aft of and above his seat. Sparking and sputtering, the Raptor darkened and began to drift as its electron power system was disabled. Haywire spun his Myrmidon in a brief roll of acknowledgement as he darted past the disabled craft, and Tal Kramnar would never say he had never seen a human show mercy. As the dogfight raged around it, the Minuteman 9 charged into a high orbit of Salusia. (Technically, it was not in fact an orbit, since the ship remained under power, but given the distances involved, we might stretch the term for simplicity's sake.) Lt. Jennings kept the ship on a straight and steady course, tracking across the planet's major northern continent, while Lt. Brokaw in the Drop Control seat peered into a device not unlike a Department of Motor Vehicles eyesight tester and made a few adjustments with the controls under his right fingertips. "Strike force, prepare for drop!" he announced. "Three! Two! One! DROP!" Amidships, on the bottom of the CR90's hull, fifty circular hatches swung open, and from them, black metallic pods, not unlike oversized photon torpedo casings, burst forth in a rippling wave, two by two, to streak into the atmosphere of the planet below. Even as they did so, the concealed fighter bay above them opened to the top, and the Shadow Legios slipped out and boosted down after them, serenely invisible. At 45,000 feet, the pods' outer layer exploded, shattering into sheets of shrapnel and disgorging tons of metallic chaff, designed to confuse the air-defense radars looking up at them. At 30,000 feet, small drogue chutes and verniers began adjusting their courses, aiming them for a pre-determined landing zone programmed into their drop computers by Lt. Brokaw. At 20,000 feet, Salusian ground defenses opened fire on the pods, their fire controllers doing their best despite the myriad of false signals coming from all the chaff and 4444the pods' own built-in ECM systems. Six of them were destroyed by missiles lucky enough to home on the proper targets. Had there been drop troops in the pods, only forty-four would have made it to 10,000 feet. Not that it mattered, since there weren't. The remaining pods braved the thicker layer of air defense at 10,000, and eight more were destroyed; the remaining thirty-six burst at an altitude of 100 feet, disgorging no power-armored shock troops into the forest south of the Palace-Imperial. But Alois Greub and his Party defense coordinators did not know that. In response to this non-threat, the Sword of Salusia poured from the Palace Imperial into the snow-covered palace grounds, demonstrating a comprehensive level of finesse, competence, and leadership to rival any rabid mob anywhere. The cooperation of the Royal Army was as yet unsecured; the area had been abandoned by the Imperial Guards; and the Royal Marines were all off at Setonia preparing to invade Earth - and so it fell to the Swordsmen and only to them to secure the grounds around the palace from this sort of assault. Armed with the latest infantry weapons Salusia had to offer, their wind up, and their ears still ringing with one of Alois Greub's patented nationalistic tirades, they were prepared to make short work of the thirty-six power-armored drop troopers who weren't waiting for them in the South Woods. No one paid any attention at all to the single Shadow Legios, which descended from orbit along an entirely different vector, settling among the Cheltar Mountains west of Saenar and the Palace and then following a winding, subsonic course below peaktop level through the mountain range itself. But then, even had anyone wanted to do so, they couldn't - the Shadow fighter's invisibility rendered the cover of the mountains all but visually superfluous. In orbit, its job finished, the Minuteman 9 buttoned up its drop bays, swung its nose away from Salusia, and hauled ass, thrusters flaring to max power as the ship dashed away from the planet's gravity well. The six Y-Wings, battered but functional, broke off their engagments with the Salusian fighters and followed, outrunning their adversaries as they formed up with their mothership along the same vector. Now, the only ship that had a hope of catching them was the Royal Salusian Navy's brand-new flagship, HMS Greub's Pride (very recently Arconian's Pride). So new the carpet glue in the turbolifts still stank - so new that the fold drive was not yet operational, which was why the flagship had not gone to Seltonia with the fleet -the battleship was stuffed with all the latest innovations. These included a Corellian powerplant which gave it sublight speed, if not maneuverability, superior to that of almost any starfighter. On the bridge, Admiral Alar Tharn stood at the main window, his hands folded behind his back. "Time to range?" "Fifteen seconds, present speed," reported the helm officer. "Destroy the capital ship first, then the smaller vessels at leisure. You may fire when ready." Fifteen seconds passed, and there was no responding fire from his ship's batteries. For a moment Tharn thought he might not have been heard; then he realized that his entire bridge crew had turned away from their stations and were staring at him. "What are you waiting for?!" he demanded. "Destroy them!" Slowly, deliberately, Chief Gunnery Officer Kal Maran stood up and, without taking his eyes away from the admiral's, reached up, unfastened the Sword of Salusia armband he had found with his uniform that morning (as had all Royal Salusian soldiers), dropped it to the deck, and ground it under his heel. One by one, the bridge crew all followed suit, from Tharn's Exec all the way down to the most minor environmental control officer. The same message was clear in the steady eyes of every last one of the young and talented officers, who represented the very cream of the younger elements of Salusia's Royal Navy officer corps: they knew instinctively what these forces were here to do, and would not fire upon them. "You'll all pay dearly for this," Tharn declared, and made for Maran's console, reaching to throw the young officer out of his path. He never got the chance; one of the Bridge Security Officers, a young and well-built woman, intercepted him. "You're under arrest, sir," she said quietly. "Please do not resist. You were a fine officer once, and I would hate to have to kill you." Her steady eyes and steadier blaster made it quite clear that she meant exactly what she said, and Tharn, shoulders slumping, relented. What was the universe coming to when a Satori rebelled against legitimate authority? As two other BSOs took the defeated flag officer away, Kara Satori turned to Captain Jodan Rel, the Exec (and, incidentally, a friend of Asrial's from the Salusian equivalent of grade school), and, saluting, said, "Captain, the bridge is yours." Outside the window, the Minuteman 9 and her fighter escort leaped into hyperspace, sending up a cheer from the bridge crew of the battleship Arconian's Pride. Below, Gryphon smiled as he spotted a good place to put the Legios down, about a mile and a half from the Palace-Imperial, at the very end of the mountain chain. Mount Aisan, the mightiest of the Cheltar Mountains, bulked to the east, the last mountain in the chain; directly to the south by a mile or so was the much smaller peak of Mount-Imperial. Between the two was the thick Northwest Forest. He flared the Legios and brought it down gently in a forest clearing just barely big enough for it, locked the systems down, and thumbed the key that deployed the automatic camouflage net. The net sprang out from its housing atop the Beta, draping down over the craft like a collapsing parachute, and Gryphon wondered not for the first time why Lockheed-Allied had never come up with a decently automated way of repacking it. By the time he had climbed down from the Alpha's cockpit, the remaining crew were waiting for him, checking their kits one last time. /* Juno Reactor "Guardian Angel" _Beyond the Infinite_ */ "Everybody ready?" he inquired. "Looks like it," Zoner replied. "Going to unpack your science fair project?" "Now's the time." "Science fair project?" asked Asrial. "I prefer to think of it as a squire to fit my modern knighthood," said Gryphon. He grinned and thumbed the external override for the Beta's bomb bay. It hissed open with the characteristic sound of heavy servopneumatics, and a specially-installed lift within lowered its cargo to ground level. Asrial let out a small, involuntary gasp when she saw what that cargo was. It was an automaton of some sort, she saw -- bipedal and standing at least eight feet tall on its massive digitgrade legs and symmetrical, cruciform, four-toed feet. The upper torso was a rounded carapace, and its arms were enormous, mostly unarticulated vambraces ending in paired, nasty-looking muzzles. The ammunition feeds for those muzzles, double-thickness armored ammunition belts, hung from the undersides of the vambraces for a foot or so before rising in smooth curves to outlets on the enormous pauldrons marking the "shoulders" of the huge arms. Curved around the outside of the right vambrace was a strip of small, red-tipped missiles on a track, feeding to a launch tube which lay along the outside of the arm; in that spot on the other arm was a long, thin pair of metal rails, an induction cannon. The front of the torso was dominated by a recessed speaker grille, resembling an impassive, remorseless mouth, and the slight beetling of the carapace above it gave the machine the impression of glowering somehow, despite the fact that it lacked a face at all and was only vaguely humanoid. Gryphon pressed a key on the small control unit affixed to his belt, and, with a growling noise that was part capacitor and part synthesized sound, the machine snapped upright, small locking plates snapping outward at its joints to free it for movement. Its movements were subtle despite the thing's immense stature, and it gave the impression of being slightly unreal, which was a bit disconcerning given its very real presence. "ED-209/A1," the machine boomed in a deep, resonant, synthetic voice. "Power-on self-test. Main power: 100% operational. Secondary power: 100%, standby. Cybernetic decision net: 100%. Motive power/drive train: 100%. Sensor systems: 100%. Weapons systems: 100%, standby. Target tracking system: 100%, standby. Ammunition feeds: 100%, standby. All systems fully functional. ED/209A1 awaiting instructions." "Ed," said Gryphon, and the machine turned on its waist rotator ring to face him, cocking slightly to one side in a gesture Asrial found weirdly reminiscent of a dog. "Prepare for combat operations. Combat response mode initiate." "Combat response mode initiation: engaged," ED/209A1 replied. There was a series of clicking and ratcheting noises as the four ammunition belts for the cannons were drawn up into the vambraces a few inches and racked back a few more; the cannon muzzles extended a little more out of the front of the arms. The missile rack on the right side ratcheted up one, feeding a missile into the launch tube. There was a capacitor whine as the delivery system for the induction cannon charged. Laser designators mounted near all of the weapons flicked on and off as the machine named them in turn. "Ammunition feeds: Engaged. Main armament, 20mm autocannons 1 through 4: Armed 1. Armed 2. Armed 3. Armed 4. Secondary armament, 4-inch micro-missile launcher: Armed. Secondary armament, 2mm induction cannon: Armed. Secondary armament, 4mm point defense minigun: Armed." For the first time, Asrial noticed the five-barrelled minigun that was mounted on the machine's back, between its shoulders, as it popped up into position, spun around on its small turret, and twirled the barrels without firing. "Target tracking systems: 100%. Combat decision booster: Enabled. ED-209/A1 awaiting instructions." Redneck looked the machine up and down with an impressed but dubious look and remarked, "Well. So much for subtlety." "You'd be surprised," said Gryphon, patting the robot's right vambrace. "I sincerely hope so," Red replied skeptically. "I would have brought the SAINT prototype, but it's not operational yet. And anyway, Ed here isn't as unwieldy as he looks." Gryphon turned to Asrial and indicated her to the robot. "Asrial, this is ED-209/A1, the prototype of the Enforcement Droid Series 209. Ed, this is Asrial. Recognize and lock." The robot turned to face Asrial, its body leaning forward on its legs a bit in a motion which Asrial found slightly intimidating, and she knew without any visual signs that she was being scrutinized. "Arconian, Asrial, Senior Lieutenant, Wedge Defense Force," said the robot. "Service number: 0040051a03b6. Date of birth: October 24, 1956. Blood type: M negative. Religion: Unregistered. Decorations: Salusian Expeditionary Force First Contact Medal, October 31, 1999. Wedge Defense Force Gold Star for Meritorious Service, April 3, 2004. Wedge Defense Force Blood Cross with Bars for Valor, July 12, 2013. Current assignment: Assistant to the Executive Officer, SDF-17. Clearance level Violet A1. Recognized and locked." Tch, thought Gryphon to himself, I never noticed how long that takes when I was testing it in the lab. I'd better change that part of the OS so that it doesn't even read the abbreviated service file when it pulls them from memory. "Nice outfit," continued the robot impassively. Gryphon blinked. "I see you've given it your taste," observed MegaZone dryly. "I dunno how that got in there," said Gryphon, making a mental note to check that out when he had a moment. "Anyway," he said to Ed, "prepare for command instruction." "Ready." "This instruction is Ultraviolet-Alpha level. No contradictions. You are to protect Asrial. No instructions may countermand except at level UV-Alpha. Whatever the risk to yourself, no harm is to come to her. Do you understand?" "Instructions received and understood." Ed stalked forward two long strides on his massive legs to stand nearer Asrial. "ED/209A1 protection mode engaged." Asrial looked quizzically at Gryphon, who replied to her unspoken query, "With the instruction set I've just given Ed, he'd stop an artillery shell for you. Now... where do we go from here?" "East," Asrial replied. "Mount Aisan. That's where the Imperial Guards have their hidden command bunker." "Surely Greub's men have raided that by now?" Zoner asked. "No one knows the location of the bunker except the Imperial Family and the Field Marshal of the Guards until it's implemented," explained Asrial. "Not even the Knights-Defenders. The Guards have a history of preparing for any eventuality... even a mass revolt that leads to the Order of Knights. If the Guards really have taken to the mountains, then Rann will have taken them to Mount Aisan. I'm sure of it." "All right... let's get moving." An Imperial Guards patrol spotted them near the base of Mount Aisan, just as planned, and within moments the four were being rushed to Field Marshal Rann's command center in the bunker itself. The corridors they rushed through were dimly lit, and a bit cramped for one of Ed's immense stature; they were also damp and musty, giving an air of long-term disuse. The place was starting to come alive, though, and even as they passed through the corridors, the lights brightened as a tech crew got more of the generators working. They had no more time to notice things, as a huge blast door ground open and they were shown into the presence of Field Marshal and Imperial Guardsmaster Talon Rann. Although Redneck had met the old warrior on occasion through his duties with the CFMF, neither Gryphon nor Zoner had actually met Rann before; both had seen pictures, but those had not completely prepared them for the first meeting with him. He was immense, nearly seven feet tall and so broad-shouldered the brush epaulets of his ornate Marshal's uniform seemed to stretch to reach all the way to the ends. His hair had gone white, and the black parts of his fur were shot through with grey, but he had not lost a bit of his impressive stature, nor had the steel of his eyes softened. It was incongruous to see this enormous, authoritative man drop to one knee and bow his head, rumbling in a seismic voice, >My Queen.< >Rise, Field Marshal Rann,< Asrial replied, and when the officer had returned to his feet, she continued in Standard, "How many of the Guards are here?" "All, Majesty," Rann replied, then continued bitterly, "Three divisions of the finest soldiers of Salusia, hiding like rats in a mountain shelter built by their grandparents." "The skill of your warriors will do them little good, outnumbered twenty to one by the Army. You have done well to bring them here, and now I must ask you to do something even more difficult, even more contrary to your valorous nature... I must ask you to do nothing." "Nothing? I do not understand." "If there is to be war with Earth, the Earthers will need the assistance of the Guards, as well as their Martian and Centauri allies, the Wedge Defense Force, and the Freespacers, to stand against Greub's forces. These last remaining Knights-Defenders and I will try to stop it from happening by subterfuge, but if we fail, you and your soldiers will be desperately needed. For that reason, I ask you to wait here. Complete your preparations and await further instructions, but whatever you do, do not reveal yourselves until it is absolutely necessary. The job that must be done at the Palace is a job for commandos, not soldiers." Rann considered, then rumbled in acquiescence. "Your command, my Queen. The Imperial Guards will remain here and await your orders." "Thank you, my friend. I know how hard it is for you to remain in hiding... but I hope you can understand my hope that it will not be necessary for you to fight at all." "You misunderstand me, my Queen," Rann replied. "I do not wish for there to be bloodshed. I simply wish I could better protect you." "Don't worry about me," said Asrial, cracking her first smile since their arrival at Mount Aisan. "Within twenty-four hours, you will know what you must do. Until then, remain vigilant, and wait." "As you wish." "Is there any word of Ambassador Feeple?" A somewhat indulgent smile split Rann's granite face. "I was wondering when you would get to that. His Excellency the Ambassador joined us just outside Saenar, an hour or so after Greub's thugs raided the Earther Embassy." Rann turned, in a sweeping motion, and punched an intercom key on the wall behind him, bellowing, "Adjutant Harz! Go and get His Excellency the Ambassador, if you will -- Her Majesty wishes to see him!" "At once, Field Marshal!" a voice replied, and the intercom light went out. Smiling, Rann turned back to Asrial, saying, "He's been a great help, your ambassador. His talent for organization is great." Redneck grinned, "Jeremy's got a lot of hidden talents." Asrial's smile grew, threatening to become a giggle. "That's my line, Kris," she said. A few moments later, a liveried young Salusian led in Jeremy and two women. The first, a Japanese woman with long dark hair framing a perpetual look of suspicion, wore a dark leotard and sash with a katana scabbarded behind her back. The second strode in wearing the armor of a street Judge in the Zardon Department of Justice, except for the helmet, which she carried in the crook of one arm. Her shoulder-length emerald hair flowed freely atop the gold metallic epaulets of her armor, and her green eyes seemed fixed directly into the back of the ninja's head. Every movement spoke of discipline and duty, tightly controlled. "(Well,)" Redneck's mouth muttered before his brain could hit Mute, "(I wasn't expecting the Zardon Inquisition.)" Light-years away, Josh Brandt flinched. A couple of feet away, Gryphon murmured, "(No one expects the Zardon Inquisition,)" out of the corner of his mouth, then caught an elbow from Zoner, who was too busy gawking to say anything. "(Oof,)" Gryphon added. Asrial and the others paid them no mind; instead, she leaped forward, hugging first Jeremy and Ichi tightly. The three stood together for a long moment, while the others looked on impassively. Kris thought he heard Asrial crying happily, while Jeremy and Ichi mumbled their condolences and support. Moving carefully around the group-hug, Leeanna took a quick, longing look at the open expression of love and friendship before facing the WDF and CFMF commanders. "Hello, MegaZone, Gryphon... Kris," she said quietly, with all the professional detachment of her office as a Judge. "Thank you for keeping Queen Asrial safe." "It's good to see you, Leeanna," Kris managed to say. "What brings you here, anyway?" "I was en route to meet Jeremy at the airport on official business when the coup went through," Leeanna said. "Now, though, I have another duty to carry out, provided it can be done with any hope of success." "Would this new duty have anything to do with the new occupant of the Palace-Imperial?" Zoner grinned. "It does," Leeanna nodded. "The Justice Department has had outstanding warrants for the arrest, extradition, and sentencing of Alois Greub for some time now, but up until now he has remained underground on Salusia. Now that he is in the open, though..." Something unpleasant seemed to glitter in Leeanna's eyes as she finished, "Now justice will be served at last." "Well," Red muttered, "isn't this convenient." "Hey, don't knock good luck," Zoner said. "It got me where I am today. Well, Your Honor, it so happens we intend to infiltrate the Palace-Imperial in a few minutes, and you're more than welcome to join us... provided Asrial agrees, of course." "Hm." Gryph walked over to Asrial, still hugging Jeremy and Ichi tightly, and placed a gentle hand on her shoulder. "Majesty," he said quietly, "we have to get moving." Reluctantly, Asrial pulled away from the others, straightening her pack straps. "Well," she said. Nodding to Leeanna, she said, "It's good to see you here, Leeanna." "Likewise," Leeanna nodded. "Would you object to my joining you in your operation?" "Not at all," Asrial replied. "Just remember one thing: Greub is -mine.-" The expression on her face left no room for debate. Leeanna smiled grimly. She knew that some things in the universe are more ancient and more deeply ingrained than the Justice Department and its prerogatives, and one of them was the Salusian nobility's tradition of kanly. "So long as I get the pieces left over, I have no problem with that." "I'm going, too," Jeremy and Ichi chorused. Asrial turned to them and shook her head. "Jeremy... oh, Jeremy, love, it's good of you to offer... but this is going to be a dangerous and tricky operation, and you just don't have the training for it. And Ichi, I need someone to stay with Jeremy... no matter what." Leaning closer, she whispered something into Ichi's ear which made the ninja's eyes widen with shock. "You can't mean that..." she gasped. "Promise me," Asrial pressed. The two locked eyes for a long moment; then, finally, Ichi nodded. "I promise," she said. "Just make sure you come back." "We'll see," Asrial answered. She looked at Jeremy one last time, and said, "Jeremy... take care of yourself." With that, she leaned in and kissed him, hard and passionately. The two hugged and kissed each other for several moments, only breaking off when Red cleared his throat loudly. "I don't mean to be disrespectful," he drawled, "but sooner or later, those chickens in the Palace woods will get their heads back on." "I'm ready whenever you are," Leeanna said. Asrial broke away from the embrace, touching a finger to her lips and then to Jeremy's. >I am with you forever, my heart,< she whispered. "Take care," Jeremy replied hoarsely. ONE HOUR LATER AT THE BASE OF MOUNT IMPERIAL The base of the small mountain on which the Palace-Imperial had been constructed centuries before was surrounded by thick, coniferous forests. In fact, that type of forest dominated much of the surrounding area, the Imperial Preserve. There was little automated security; normally, the forests and the palace itself were patrolled by large numbers of Imperial Guard troops. It was a matter of pride for Field Marshal Rann, as it had been for his predecessors, to keep the palace secure without dependence on contrivances. Sensors could be disabled, fooled, or jammed; a good sentry was a much bigger challenge. Today, those troops were replaced by a garrison of Greub's green-shirted storm troopers, the private army of the Sword of Salusia he had built up over the years, and supplemented by Army personnel and the quisling Knights-Defenders. The Sword storm troopers were of uneven talent and skill, to say the least, and the Army's soldiers were well-trained but unsuited for the task. This left the bulk of the castle's defense, although it was not understood by their commander, to the eighteen remaining traitor Knights. The extensive catacombs under the Palace-Imperial were an example of an area which would have at one time been patrolled by at least a platoon of Guards, on a rotating patrol scheme. Now there were green-shirts stationed at the major intersections of tunnels, the occasional Army enlistee scattered here and there in the tunnels themselves, and, guarding the main entrance at the back of the Mont-Imperial, a detachment of Sword green-shirts and a single Knight. As she knelt behind a bush a hundred yards away and surveyed the situation through a pair of infrared rangefinder binoculars, Asrial did not fail to note the Knight. "Six guards," MegaZone whispered. "No... seven, there's another over there by that big rock. Looks like he's having a smoke. And the Knight, of course. Which one is that?" "That's Ilai Farn," she replied. "The bladesmaster. I wonder what happened to him? He looks like he recently had an argument with a speeding truck." "Want me to take him?" "Now, Zoner," Redneck interjected lazily, removing his Remington from its sling and clicking off the safety. "Don't waste your energy on a guy like that. I mean, he's doing us the favor of standing right out in the open like that." He raised his rifle to his shoulder, switched off the image amp in his battle specs and looked through the rifle scope, thumbing on the infrared filter. The distant Knight sprang into sudden thermographic relief, a mottled red-yellow-orange shape on the deep blue background. "Think you can hit him from here?" Zoner whispered. "Don't worry about it... " replied Redneck. He took a breath, held it, and squeezed the trigger. The crack of the rifle echoed through the woods and rebounded off the flank of the mountain. The group of men at the catacombs gate whirled around in all directions, one spraying a group of bushes in entirely the -wrong- direction with autofire from his rifle. Ilai Farn whirled with them, and for a split second, as his hand furiously worked the rifle's bolt, Redneck thought that, as expected, he'd missed with the first shot. Before he could get off the second, though, his eye was registering the spray of hot orange something flying from Farn's head, and the Knight-Defender was dropping lifelessly to the ground. "Hot -damn-, I got him!" Redneck exclaimed. "Didn't you think you would?" asked Zoner, glancing at him sidelong. "Hell, no, not with the -first- shot," Redneck replied, switching off the thermoscope to save the power cell and safeing the rifle. "I usually have to use the first one to get the range. 'Swhy I've trained to build up my bolt speed." He toggled his battle specs' image amp back on, let his eyes adjust for a second, then said, "Well, that was easy. I'm on point, any objections?" "Nope," replied Gryphon, unslinging his Stouker. "Have fun," said Zoner. "Damn," muttered Redneck as he crept forward through the snow. "And I was lookin' forward to the argument." It took the group perhaps ten minutes to creep nearly to the edge of the clearing, moving painfully slowly, careful not to jostle branches, stepping slowly into the snow so that it would compress without rustling. Once, Red paused to look back, and noticed with surprise that ED-209/A1, who he had expected to be the most obvious of them, was actually least obtrusive. In the dark, against a mottled background, Red had to look hard to notice the robot's broken outline. Hmm, he thought to himself. The outer skin must have a chameleon capability. Very interesting... and, most surprisingly of all, the big machine was damn near silent, almost catlike. Leeanna, on the other hand, stood out like the proverbial pounded thumb in her unbroken black armor. Holding up a hand, Red waved her behind the robot. She tilted her head inquisitively, then nodded as his meaning sank home, and did as instructed. They crept on through the night. A couple of times, they froze immobile as one of the remaining Swordsmen, backed against each other in a semicircle fronting the catacombs entrance, turned to face one of them, eyes wide with panic. It wasn't the PWEI commandos the Swordsmen were seeing, though, but the demons of their own imaginations; and, truth be told, they couldn't have heard a group of charging rhinos over the pounding of their hearts in their ears. Gryphon crept to the very edge of the clearing, his breathing regular, thankful that WDF fighter pilot training included an extensive course in commando and guerilla ground actions. You never knew when you might get shot down and have to be clever, after all. He elbowed his way forward through the snow, quietly, slowly, his Stouker balanced over his hands. Through his battle specs' light-amplification mode, everything gleamed in various shades of red, an effect Gryphon had amusedly dubbed "TerminatorVision" when he first wore the test pair provided by the vendor back in '03. He hitched himself sideways a little, slung the Stouker crosswise on his back and considered his options for a moment. "Hold off, team," he whispered into the mic of the earset comm built into his left smartear. "I've got these guys." Yeah, this would work. He reached into his field jacket's top pocket and withdrew the cool rectangle of metal that waited there, palmed it into his left hand, resting it between his index and middle fingers, and looked back up at the guards. Staring so hard at them he was surprised they didn't feel it, he imagined a trajectory, a bright green line curving across their entire formation. The metal card quivered between his fingers; very slowly, he drew his left arm forward across his body, cocking it. Not now... not now... Now. His left arm snapped in a sweeping arc to the left, and as it reached its furthest point, he relaxed his fingers, letting the card flick out of his hand. Redneck blinked in confusion as he saw, through his rifle scope, Gryphon's arm sweeping around, and the guards twitching very definitely toward the motion. The hell? Way to give away your position! One of them hit the trigger of his autogun, sending a brrrup of fire into the snow, but he was off by a mile and Gryphon was already rolling sideways and back, putting a big rock between himself and them. It was about then that Redneck realized what Gryphon was up to. There was a series of strangled, gurgling cries as Redneck swung his scope back to the doorway, and all seven guards crumpled to the ground, surrounded by spraying warmth which, had he bothered to think about it, Redneck would have been rather glad he couldn't see in true color. Something warm flickered back to Gryphon, who reached up and deftly plucked it from the air. "I do believe that's a clear," Gryphon's voice murmured in his, and the rest of the team's, ear. "I do believe it is," came Zoner's soft rejoinder. "So," Redneck asked after a moment of open channel. "Who remembered to bring the house key?" "Ed's got it," replied Gryphon. He beckoned the robot over to the side of the massive metal door, where the status lights of a small computerized lock panel gleamed in the night. "Lean over," he said to the machine; obediently, it leaned down, presenting its faceplate. Gryphon thumbed open an access port, drew out a cable, took a look at the card slot on the lock, and selected an appropriate card-shaped attachment for the end of that cable, snapping it in place. Then he slotted the card end into the lock, pressed a couple of keys, and let the processing power of Ed's positronic brain go to work. Moments later, with a bleep and a soft clunk, the door unlocked and swung open. Asrial covered it from one side, Zoner the other, as it swung in; then Zoner crept inside and checked behind it. "It's clear," he reported, and Gryphon uncabled Ed as the rest of the team moved in, then covered the rear as they entered and closed the door behind them. "Y'know," said Redneck to Gryphon, pushing back his cap, "I owe you an apology. I gotta say, if you opened a compartment on that robot an' offered me a Coke, I wouldn't be at all surprised." "Well," said Gryphon with a grin, "I'm afraid I can't do that, but... " He reached up to the back of the main body and popped open a small hatch, which opened with a quiet pfft and a puff of steam. "Would you care for a root beer instead?" asked Gryphon, pointing to the clearly visible half-dozen brown glass bottles racked within. "IBC, mm, it's good." Redneck blinked. "Hey, I spent most of 2014 working on this robot," Gryphon replied to the Freespacer's unspoken statement. "It'd better be good." "Maybe later, thanks," said Redneck, slinging his rifle and drawing his pistols. "Too much to do right now to have a cold drink." Gryphon shut the compartment and walked around the robot. "Scanning anything, Ed?" "No life forms save ourselves and various small rodents within 100 meters," reported Ed. "Well, Asrial... it's your tunnel maze," said Zoner. "This way," Asrial nodded, and off they went, senses peeled, weapons ready. "By the way, Red, who controls the hold music on the CFMF PBX?" asked Gryphon offhandedly, as the party proceeded down the tunnel into the bowels of Mount-Imperial. "Do wha?" replied Redneck, caught completely off-guard by a question so irrelevant to his current surroundings. "Yeah, that stuff is terrible," Zoner commented. "It's like this awful... techno-line-dancing-house-dub... thing. Brrr." "I have no idea what you guys are talking about." "The hold music you get if you call the CFMF offices," Gryphon said patiently. "It's dreadful. Don't believe me?" Gryphon paced ED-209, reached up, popped open an access panel, and handed Overstreet a cordless phone. Redneck looked at the WDF officer as if the latter had suddenly sprouted a new head. "... we're infiltrating the very heart of the Salusian Empire," he said slowly, "... and you want me to... oh, fuck it." He took the phone and punched in the CFMF main switchboard number. "Confederate Freespacers Mercenary Fleet, Lieutenant Thomason speaking," answered a pleasant female voice. "Jill, put me on hold." "Commodore Overstreet? What - " "Listen, I'm really short on time. Don't talk. Don't ask. Put me on hold." "Ooooookay, sir," replied Thomason. With a click, Commodore Overstreet was listening to the worst hold music he had ever heard in his life. Gryphon and Zoner were right - it was part country, part techno, part house dub, combining the worst elements of each into something so horrible, he couldn't put words to his revulsion. He'd never heard anything quite like it in his life, and if there were gods in the heavens, he swore to them that he'd never willingly hear it again. Redneck physically recoiled from the phone, his thumb mashing the on-hook button as if it were a big, scary bug, and he regarded the handset all the revulsion of a vegetarian visiting the Texas National Chili Cook-Off. Regaining his composure, he released his death-grip on the button and handed the phone back to Gryphon, muttering, "When I get back, somebody is going to die... slowly... painfully... and to the tune of the theme from 'Mr. Ed'." "We told you it was bad," said Zoner. Then he stopped, his brow furrowing, the corners of his mouth turning up very subtly, and walked back, taking the phone from Gryphon and examining it briefly before returning it to its place. "Something?" asked Gryphon. "Maybe," Zoner replied, his voice carrying that faraway "I'm still thinking about it" tone. "Maybe." Zoner returned to point, fiddling pensively with the front strap hanger on his MP5. They wandered through the catacombs for some time, turning left, then right, following passages that sloped consistently upward, wary but finding no resistance, until at last they came to a place where the stone tunnel ended at an incongruously high-tech metal door, sealed with a locking mechanism similar to that on the outer door. "This is it," Asrial said. "The palace sub-basement is through here." "Is there a utility room someplace down here?" asked Zoner suddenly. "A utility room?" "Yeah, where the utility lines come in from outside." "Well, the Palace-Imperial has its own electric power generators, but there's a room where the telecom lines come in from Saenar, yes." MegaZone smiled. "Does the palace have a PBX?" "Yes, why?" "You'll see. Gryph, can you get your pet robot to crack this door?" "Shouldn't be a problem." Gryphon performed the card-and-cable operation again, and Ed sat for a minute, then two, deep in thought. Suddenly, the lights went out. "Shit!" Zoner hissed. "They're on to us," Redneck whispered. Gryphon yanked the card out of the socket and hastily stowed the apparatus, then knelt off to one side of the door, readying his Stouker and aiming it at the dim reddish outline the door formed in his battle specs. Ed backpedaled to the corner they'd just turned, giving himself the best possible field of fire, while Zoner mirrored Gryphon on the opposite side of door, the two angled to avoid crossfiring each other. Leeanna and Asrial backed off down the corridor to either side, while Redneck followed Ed's path. With the sudden bark of pneumatics, the door popped open, spilling out a flood of light. The flare compensators in the team's battle specs (and Leeanna's helmet) flicked, then automatically returned the glasses to normal-vision mode, and as the squad of Sword troopers poured into the tunnel, they met considerably stiffer resistance than they had been expecting. The ones who came through first on the sides ran into a Stouker blast and a stream of 10mm explosive-tip fire, respectively, while the ones making it through in the middle found themselves, further down, caught in a crossfire of Crosstown Express and Lawgiver autofire, and those who survived -that- gauntlet walked right into Ed's wall of cannon fire. Redneck dropped prone between Ed's feet and flicked off his rifle's safety, surveying the action through the scope. A Swordsman, tumbling unharmed through the fire zone around the door, whirled and brought his weapon to bear on Gryphon; Redneck dropped him. Another leaped through prone and leveled at Leeanna; Redneck plucked him out of the air before he could land. Beyond the open doorway, he could see one readying a grenade; he shot that one in the arm, making him drop the live grenade and blow up himself and the tail end of the squad with it. Redneck winced. Not quite the effect he'd been going for, but effective, he supposed. Abruptly, he felt himself being dragged backward, out from under the robot. Startled, Redneck lost his grip on his rifle, and before he could figure just what was happening, he'd been hauled roughly to his feet and slammed against the nearest wall. Blinking, half-stunned, he looked down a bit into the face of an angry Swordsman. Shit! Red thought. This jerk must have been down some side tunnel, we missed him, he missed us... unless he's smarter than most of his buddies and was following us. His arms were pinned to his sides by the Salusian's grip on him, so he brought his legs up and kicked out hard, smashing his feet into the Swordsman's face. The Swordsman pitched over backward, then rolled smoothly to his feet, fists balled, feet at a wide stance. It was about this time that Kris realized he wasn't dealing with a random guard, but one of the Knights-Defenders - Tobal Zonn, a well-known master of the deadly Salusian fighting art of Kiliari. "Ahhh, shit," muttered Redneck. Further down the tunnel, Gryphon growled with annoyance as the red "charge exhausted" light on his Stouker began to flash. He set the weapon aside and reached for his Bryars, but before he could get them out, one of the Swordsmen still inside the door spotted his pause and leaped, tackling him to the ground. The man was too close to use his rifle as a rifle, but holding it sideways and pressing it down against Gryphon's throat with his considerable Salusian strength was proving just as effective. Gryphon tried to draw his Bryars, but though his hands were on the grips of the pistols, the Swordsman's knees were bearing into his arms where they crossed his chest, the weight pinning them down. He couldn't get his legs up enough to do any good, and without his arms free, he didn't have enough leverage to roll to one side or the other. This was starting to look extremely poor. Abruptly, the weight and pressure were gone, and Gryphon rolled to one side and sat up, coughing, in time to see Asrial hurl the Swordsman she'd plucked off him by the scruff of the neck against the opposite wall, where he struck with a most alarming thud and fell to the floor to lie still. Behind Ed, Redneck reached into his shin pocket and pulled out his collapsible staff, thumbing the extender control while aiming it at Zonn. Zonn was far too cagey an opponent to be hit by that, but still, with a staff in his hands, Redneck felt better about his chances. He admitted to few, if any, equals or betters with his favorite melee weapon. They went back and forth for a few minutes, trading blows, Red's extended reach about evenly matching Zonn's greater strength. Redneck was beginning to wonder if it was going to come down to which of them tired faster - When suddenly Tobal Zonn's head was replaced by a spray of crimson mist, and his decapitated body slumped to the floor like a sack of meal. Startled, Red whirled to see ED-209/A1, his torso turned completely around on his waist rotator, calmly retracting his left-arm induction cannon. "All targets neutralized," said the robot. "This area is secure." "-Thank- you," said Redneck, collapsing his staff and returning it to his pocket as he edged around the robot and into the charnel house that had been a corridor. "The guy Ed just whacked was one of the Knights," he reported. "Must've been following us for a while. We've been made, people." Zoner walked slowly around the combat zone, turning over dead Swordsmen, going through their pockets, his brow furrowed in thought. Then he edged around Ed, checked Zonn's corpse, and returned. "You notice anything odd about these guards?" he asked the party in general. "Um... " Gryphon glanced around as he fitted a new powerpack to his Stouker. "No, not offhand." "None of them has a radio. Neither did any of the guys outside." "So?" asked Asrial. ""So if they're not using radios to coordinate their actions, they're using the palace's internal comm systems. Asrial, what's the quickest way to the telecom closet?" /* Lalo Schifrin/John E. Davis "Mission: Impossible '88" _The Best of Mission: Impossible Then and Now_ */ The strikeforce crept through the basement to the telecom room, securing each area as they went. They encountered no more resistance anywhere in the subbasement. Nobody in the generator rooms, nobody guarding the PBX... "Bad security," murmured Zoner as he borrowed Gryphon's paratrooper knife, popped the cover off the PBX patch panel, and began deftly extracting wires, clipping and stripping them with a Leatherman tool, and tying them together in interesting ways. In five minutes he had wired Ed's cellular phone into the master bus. Redneck's face split into a shit-eating grin. "Zoner, if you're thinking of doing what I think you're thinking of doing, I oughta warn you, I think it's a violation of the Geneva Convention." "Oh well," replied Zoner. "Good thing they're just terrorists, not a real government." "Eyep," said Redneck. "You wanna dial, or should I?" "No need," Zoner said with a grin, as he punched Redial. "Isn't technology wonderful?" "Confederate Freespacers Mercenary Fleet, Lieutenant Thomason speaking." "Hi, this is Manny with Galactic Bell Field Service calling. Listen, we've got a DS1 we've got to do some loopthrough testing on out here. Can you do me a favor, chuck this call on hold and forget about it? We'll clear the line when we're done." "Your funeral," replied Lt. Thomason. With a click, Zoner was on hold. Gently, he nestled the cellphone handset among the wires at the bottom of the PBX cabinet, checked the connections, and replaced the cover panel. "Let's book," said Zoner, folding the paratrooper knife back up and returning it to its owner. "We've just crippled their internal communications, and with the lousy security they've got down here, I'd be willing to bet they were banking on that strike force in the tunnel to stop us. We could probably just walk right into the elevator in the Main Hall and ride it way up to the King's Study." "We're just gonna walk into the Main Hall elevator and ride it all the way to the top," said Redneck skeptically. "That's the idea, yeah," replied Zoner. "With the minimal rearguard they've got watching the place, why take the stairs? If they weren't covering the utilities room, they probably don't have much covering the main hall." "If you say so," Redneck shrugged doubtfully, pausing to reload his rifle before trotting after the rest of the strike force. The team worked their way up through the basement to the first floor (Redneck being briefly amazed that ED-209/A1 could negotiate regular-scale stairs) and encountered no further resistance. It was starting to look, as they walked the corridors of the Palace-Imperial proper, that they might just get away with it. Just then, a patrol of five Swordsmen wandered around the corner and found themselves face-to-face with Zoner and company. Both groups were frozen, startled, for an instant, but Zoner recovered first, and as he cut one of them down with a burst from his pulse rifle, the rest of the