Draft 1, Part 1:  

		BGC: Machina non Grata


Authors' foreword:

	This is the first installment of my first actual fanfic.  I don't 
know how I feel about it.  My goal is to explore the world of MegaTokyo a 
bit more.  The story is, of course, based in the BGC universe, and 
includes many of the characters we all know and love (arigato, 
Sonoda-Sama).  

Any comments, suggestions and <constructive> criticism may be directed to:
		
	clewis@harry.sar.usf.edu

Flames will, of course, become one with the infinity of /dev/null.


WARNING: This work contains scenes of graphic violence and adult 
language.  If you can't deal with this, then I hope you're enjoying your 
cave.




	It really was a shitty night.  Then again, every night seemed to 
be a shitty night in MegaTokyo.  If you were one of the lucky few who 
could readily tell the difference between day and night, you might say 
that the day was equally shitty.  Stars and clouds, and frequently even 
the sun, had been eclipsed by a perpetual drizzle and a miasma of 
smog and lurid neon from a city happy to be choking on its own waste.
MegaTokyo was now the city that never slept.  God help us all if it ever 
wakes up.
	Greil shook his head, sharply recovering from his brief reverie.  
If there ever had been an age of philosophers, this was certainly not 
it.  MegaTokyo was a world unto itself, a world which did not lend itself 
readily to erudition and dialogue.  All the same, Greil's world was a 
miraculous example of fragmented consciousness.  It existed not so much as 
a continuous whole, stretching predictably from horizon to horizon like 
some sort of metaphysical superhighway, but rather as a jarring sequence 
of disjointed vignettes.  
	Today, this hour, in the here and now, the task at hand was procuring 
enough cash to pay for another night in the dingy coffin motel by the 'loop, 
the coffin which contained all of Greil's worldly possessions.  Options had 
swiftly dwindled as Greil found himself with nothing to sell, and no way 
to collect from most of those who owed him money.  They were, he reflected, 
insolvent, dead or just plain unavailable.  Then again, the people 
who came to the canyon seemed to cease being people and become insolvent, 
dead and unavailable -- not necessarily in that order.   
	Downing the dregs of an hour-old drink, Greil glanced around the 
bar.  The air was thick, stale and moist -- putrified with the stench of 
unwashed bodies, rotting cheap booze and the sickly-sweet cloying 
odor of synthetic tobacco smoke.  He seemed to end up here all too  
frequently, and yet he had no idea what the name of the place 
actually was.  It was just another shithole jammed into the ruin and 
decay of the Canyon.  Giving it a name would somehow imply forming a 
connection between he and it -- and that, he thought, was really admitting 
defeat.  Most of the people he knew, and who knew him as anything other than 
a low-rent con and a middleman, seemed to reside here.  His community 
lived,died, and existed in a bar spattered with its own ancient puke and 
blood, decorated and enriched with scrap and detritus.  The booze was 
cheap, and yet in a fact of final contradiction and misery, woefully 
overpriced.  Returning to the work of determining the monies owed him, he 
continued to leaf through a small notebook.  
	A lot of people thought it funny that he used paper and pen.  Some 
thought that, along with his ever-present trench coat, it made him look like 
an old-time cop.  He liked the feel of the paper, and the reassuring scribble
and scratch of a traditional stylus.  In an age where hand-held digital 
assistants holding tens of thousands of pages of data literally cost less 
than Greil's notepad, script was an idiosyncrasy and a luxury.  It was 
_his_ idiosyncrasy and luxury, though.  The reports of print's death, at 
least in Greil's mind, had been greatly exaggerated.
	"Hey, hon, buy me a drink?" asked a somewhat haggard woman who had 
taken a stool next to Greil's.
	Lucy was an interesting case.  In a place and time where being old, 
or being a prostitute, tended to reduce one's chances of survival, Lucy 
was both -- and, by all accounts, seemed to be flourishing, and proud of 
it.  Then again, for Lucy, flourishing was not being beaten half to death 
by some sick fuck who couldn't afford a boomer-whore to kick around.  
	In asking Greil for a drink, she wasn't asking for work.  Indeed, the
very fact that she could, and would, talk to him in a non-professional 
capacity was, to Greil, one of the highest honors possible.  They had a 
deep, unspoken understanding -- they just didn't hustle each other.  
At least in theory, had Greil wished intimate knowledge of Lucy's aging body, 
he probably could have had it ... dozens of times over, possibly even for free.
Likewise, Lucy could have scored all manner of stuff from Greil, at least 
during times of greater cash-flow.  The whole point of their relationship 
was that neither would ask anything of the other.  In some bizarre way, she 
really was like some sort of over-ripe, vaguely disturbed aunt to him -- an 
aunt dressed in a leather miniskirt and matching halter top, not to mention 
the green spiked hair.  
	"Sorry, Luce... I'm flat broke.  I was actually just about to 
head out the door to try and facilitate some cash flow," he responded.
	"'salright, kid," she replied with a smile, " ... How are the 
prospects for the theft of today's daily bread?"
	"Remind me never to take IOU's again, will you Luce?," he said wryly 
while looking at his notes, "I have to find an ether boy named Captain.  Do 
you know where to find him?"
	A brief shadow passed accross Lucy's face.  "No," she responded, 
the levity that normally lit her eyes now gone.
	Staring intently at Lucy, Greil asked "What's up?  What do you 
know about him?"
	"Nothing," she lied.  Greil was growing concerned.  Lucy never 
lied to him ... she never really had a _reason_ to.  
	"Come on, " he reasoned, "you know something ... spit it out."
	"Stay away from him," she said with obvious concern written on 
her face, "he's really bad news.  That's really all I can say.  If you're 
really hard up for cash, I can loan you a couple K ..."
	This was, Greil thought, _really_ weird.  In approximately three 
years, Lucy had _never_ offered him a loan.  She was beyond dirt poor, and 
they both knew it.  She didn't _have_ money to lend.  Something really was 
weird.  
	"Don't worry about it, Luce," he said in his most reassuring 
tone, "I can deal with it."
	Lucy looked at him with a certain disquieting sadness.  She 
leaned over and kissed him on the cheek.  She smiled, got up and left.
	Greil was really confused now.  Lucy was not acting at all 
normally, and it really bothered him.  She knew that he dealt with bad 
people.  Hell, she probably dealt with far worse people on a normal 
basis, he thought.  A specialization in military equipment tended to 
attract people who wanted to kill and die in spectacular and effective 
ways.  They weren't nice, happy people -- even for the canyon, they 
tended to be especially shitty.  Greil had a carefully crafted reputation 
as a resourceful, discrete procurer.  He tended to attract hermits and 
sociopaths.  The fringe of the fringe was his niche.  That was OK -- 
everyone needed a niche.  All the same, the look in her normally mirthful 
eyes had been downright haunting.  It had been almost like Lucy was 
saying goodbye ... for the last time.  Her concern was, in some sense, 
really flattering.  All the same, his choices were either starvation or 
commerce with the less than stable.
	Greil's current quarry definitely fit the rubric of less-than-stable.
He had purchased 10K worth of NIGHT, short for Nano-Ichromate G-Tetra hydro 
tetranomoline-621, a substance with which even Greil generally refused to 
deal.  In a microcosm of people who routinely popped, injected, inhaled, 
drank and sniffed their way to battered living through chemistry on a 
regular basis, NIGHT was a substance generally reserved for those who were 
just about to die, knew this to be the case and really didn't give a shit.  
The word on the street, such as it was, held that it had allegedly been 
developed by the helpful friends from the tower, GENOM, to extract the maximum
possible potential from the final hours of ground troops who had been 
contaminated with god only knows what retrovirus.  Before the age of 
NIGHT <Greil grinned at the irony>, such troops would have simply been 
immediately destroyed -- euthanized in some sort of incendiary blast.  
Disposal meant the loss of quite a significant investment in training and 
equipment.  NIGHT allowed the armies of the earth to reap every last 
pennies' worth from the walking corpses of their troops.  In some sick 
way, Greil thought, this was the ultimate in conservation and recycling.  
	Of course, nobody could really confirm that GENOM was involved in such 
business, and the helpful folks in the tower weren't likely to mention 
it along with the '36 model year at the next GENOM-motors press 
conference.  Quite honestly, Greil really did had have his doubts.  GENOM 
was generally held to be responsible for everything from the defilement of 
the planet to the alarming profusion of ever-nastier foot fungi among the 
homeless.  In a godless age, GENOM served nicely as a general 
catch-all for all things malignant to the people of the canyon and, to 
some extent, the people of the world.  Greil did not doubt their greed, their 
ambition or, in fact, their malevolence.  The tower was just that -- something
far above, and beyond, a canyon-dweller's scope of concern.  All the 
same, one just couldn't reasonably hang the onus of all things diabolical 
in a neat wreath around the summit of MegaTokyo's largest building.  It 
was just too easy.  At the gut level, Greil _felt_ that _everyone_ was 
responsible for GENOM, and that GENOM was only a cog within a yet-larger 
machine.  One of the only really useful lessons you could take away from 
a tour of the 'canyon was that consumption yielded waste of some sort, 
and that everyone- and everyTHING's shit stank.  If the reports about 
NIGHT's designed purpose were true, and Greil had every reason to believe 
they were, then it could probably be chalked up the byproduct of a 
depraved, indifferent, gluttonous, utterly and perfectly consistent society.
	Greil normally refused to deal in ANY drugs, but had been known to 
dabble from time to time.  When he did deal, things like NIGHT, a substance 
which killed, rather than hooked, clients tended to be bad for business.  
Besides which, reports of NIGHT's effects seemed to pass beyond the 
threshold of simple vomiting, bloody overdoses.   Normal drugs were to 
NIGHT what swimming in the disease-infested sewers of MegaTokyo was to 
eating a combat-grade flechette round.  The sewer would, in all likelihood, 
eventually get you, but the fletcher would most certainly obviate the 
need for hats and open-casket funerals.
	What Captain, a newcomer to the canyon, wanted with the shit, 
Greil had known the risks involved.  He had also had some of the shit 
around, a distinct need for cash.  He neither knew, nor particularly 
cared about, Captain.  All Greil knew was that Captain had specifically 
requested NIGHT, that Captain was most definitely not any sort of narc, 
and that he could set virtually any price for something so exotic. 
He vaguely remembered meeting Captain, a well-built recluse, whose 
main distinguishing feature in Greil's mind was a reputation for basically 
sound credit.  

	The point, at the moment, was that Captain owed him 10K, and that 
	he really needed that 10K.  
	
	Standing up, and stretching, Greil set about the task of finding 
Captain.  He knew that Captain had some loose affiliation to the 
Astroles, a hyper-methed bike gang made up primarily of radiation burnt 
USSD vets.  Greil had sold some gear to an Astrole by the name of Yamada 
a few months back.  He had needed some fairly exotic transmitter gear for 
some sort of nasty explosive setup on short notice, and Greil had 
produced.  In short, he owed Greil ... at least enough for some 
information, or so he hoped.
	Making his way accross town, toward the Astrole encampment, Greil 
had the vague feeling of being followed.  Although it didn't help his 
now-familiar Paranoia any, he popped three small, pink hexagonal pills.  
Shuddering, as the familiar tingle of yet more speed pulsing its jaggedly 
vibrant way through his fatigued body, he continued his journey.  
	Walking a few blocks meant the difference between one army's war zone,
and another's.  Not knowing who had alliances didn't help in avoiding becoming
dead in the crossfire.  Greil made a point of knowing -- it was good for 
both business and survival.  The spiders, yet another gang wacked out 
on weird-assed combat drugs, were adjacent to the Astroles.  They also 
owned the turf through which Greil was presently passing.  The spiders 
were not known for their levelheaded approach to anything.  They tended 
to be wholly unstable, generally unpleasant, and a real nightmare to do 
business with.  

	Unfortunately for Greil, several of them were also right in front of 
	him.
	
	Three teenaged boys, each sporting an intricate whole-body web 
tattoo, stood holding automatic rifles.  None of them had an entirely 
intact face ... one was missing an eye, another a lip, while the third's 
scalp was a scarred, oozing mess.  They were all obviously cranked on 
something nasty, and appeared to be involved in some sort of intense 
argument.  One-eye turned and looked to about to confront Greil, as 
no-hair randomly shot his friend in the head at point blank range.  Greil 
slipped quietly passed as a violent, senseless fight ensued.  There had 
been a time when random violence like this would have shocked him.  As it 
was, random acts of respect were far more novel and, at some level, far 
more disturbing.
	Picking his way through the rubble, the sounds of the struggle 
faded behind him.  As he walked on, and passed into Astrole territory, 
even the spotty street lighting of the canyon faded out.  Greil walked in 
an urban cemetery, his only illumination the sick glow of the MegaTokyo 
skyline, reflected off the clouds far above.
	Greil froze as he felt something smooth and cold against the side 
of his neck.  A blue-white pair of eyes opened from the darkness 
immediately in front of him.  The Astroles had midnight-black skin, the 
lingering effect of anti-UV melanin treatment administered by USSD.  The 
deliberate, careful motions of a man acclimatized to zero-G tech, and 
combat, made for incredible stealth.  With this stealth, and an 
especially ruthless outlook on things, the Astroles had a reputation as 
especially efficient killers, and consistent businessmen.  
	"What be the nature of your visit, Greil-san?" asked the owner of 
the eyes in an odd jumble of Japanese and Jamaican accents.  The Astroles 
made a point of knowing as much about as many people as possible, 
particularly potential- and past- business contacts.  This thorough 
curiosity made them particularly dangerous, and especially useful to Greil.
	"I'm looking for Yamada, he responded."
	Even the gleam of his interrogator's eyes faded, as Greil was 
blindfolded and led through a meandering path, eventually ending up in 
the basement of some nameless building.  He winced at the light as the 
blindfold was removed.
	Yamada stood about 3.5 meters tall, a lanky giant.  This, 
combined with the characteristic onyx skin and a generally sallow 
complexion lent Yamada the appearance of some sort of primal shaman.  He 
was, Greil reflected, a wizard of sorts -- they stood in a shop, whose 
every surface was littered with mechanical- and electronic- parts of 
every shape and size.  Rumor had it that Yamada had worked on some 
serious shit for USSD, specifically in the cybernetic field.  Greil 
didn't know whether to believe this, or not.  What he did believe, 
however, was that Yamada _was_ a bona-fide technological genius.  
	"Whatcha want, Greil?  I take it this not social visit.," rumbled
Yamada.
	"You guessed it -- I need some info about a solo actor by the 
name of Captain. "
	"What you want with the likes of him," queried Yamada, lifting 
his brows ever so slightly.  He lit a cigarette, and offered one to 
Greil.  Greil declined.
	"He owes me some money," Greil answered simply.  There was really 
no point in lying.  To the best of his knowledge, the Astroles had no 
stake in the small-time affairs of someone like him ... or Captain.
	Yamada stared at him thoughtfully for a time, and then nodded.  
Jotting down some information on a piece of scrap paper, he handed Greil 
his blindfold.  Not a word was said as Greil was led up, and out, of 
Astrole territory.  At the border, his blindfold was, again, removed.  
Reading the directions, Greil found that he was on the Northern edge 
of the canyon, within a kilometer of Captain's abode.
	Squats tended to range from mostly intact apartments 
abandoned/condemned in the wake of the great quake, to crudely fashioned 
huts of rubble.  This particular squat was somewhere in the middle.  It had, 
apparently, been a fast food restaurant some time ago.  Plastic clowns, 
and other creatures, leveled sinister glares through the detritus, casting 
odd shadows.  Some sections of the canyon seemed to be constantly oozing 
with a plethora of decaying, dying lives.  Others, like this one, seemed 
to be left so desolate that even angry spirits were horrified away.  
Greil had once been convinced that he would go out, alone, in a place 
like this -- blood, rubble, sludge and agony.  At some point, he wasn't 
even sure when, he, thankfully, gave up such thoughts.  
	Greil picked his way through the garbage and rubble to the 
entrance of the makeshift abode.  The odor of putrefaction hung heavily 
-- even for the canyon.  Greil stepped inside, past what had once been a 
lime-green plastic tiled lobby.
	"YO! Captain! You here?!," yelled Greil as he walked carefully 
further into the restaurant.  A cold sweat began to form on the back of 
his neck.  There were times when, for no good reason, people feel a great 
deal of apprehension -- as if some long-buried, highly perceptive part of 
the mind were screaming in passionate futility about some impending 
danger.  This was one of those times.  
	"Who the fuck are you, and who sent you?," called a gravelly 
voice as Greil caught the flash of steel from the corner of his eye.
	"It's Greil, man, I sold you some stuff a few weeks back," Greil 
answered with surprising calm.  Greil had seen a lot of guns, and had 
been threatened more than once.  The fact that this person had bothered 
asking at all tended to alleviate many of his fears.  
	Any feeling of relief was soon quashed as Greil was 
unceremoniously slammed against a wall and frisked, all the while what 
felt like a rather nasty fletcher was rammed against his face.  
	"Believe me, Captain, I'm clean," quipped Greil, "that's why I'm 
here --."
	Greil was silenced rather abruptly as he was turned around to 
face his assailant.  It was definitely Captain, but he looked decidedly 
worse than normal -- which was really a feat, considering that Captain 
generally looked like shit.  It was unclear exactly what Captain's past 
was.  Some said that he used to be in some sort of covert operations for 
USSD, resulting in his rather silly handle.  Others said he was a merc who 
had worked for the Russians in the polar war before some nasty incident.  
Whatever the case, to Greil, he definitely looked military -- he was about 
2 meters, with a posture that remained amazingly straight as a simple 
unconscious action.  At the moment, though, Captain's normally ruddy, 
somewhat stubbly face was covered with a huge, unkempt mass of blonde beard 
crusted with mud, days worth of rotting food and a rather large amount of 
what looked like blood.
	All this paled in comparison to Captain's eyes.  Bloodshot and 
wild, with oddly dilated pupils, Captain's eyes looked like those of 
some sort of wild animal who knows its on its last legs.  
	"Christ... what the fuck happened to you, man?," asked Greil
	"Shut up ... what do you want, and why shouldn't I just kill you 
right now?" asked Captain, cuffing him accross the head with the butt of 
the fletcher.  Greil winced at the slow trickle of blood that wended 
its way down his face.  While Greil normally prided himself on his ability 
to read people's faces, a useful acquired trait in the trade of a 
middleman, the one skill which could not be neglected was straight 
intuition, and the one rule you learned first was not to deal with people 
whose behavior was totally unpredictable.  For any sort of dealer to 
remain solvent, it had to be solidly established that Junkies paid cash up 
front, psychos were to be avoided, and people like Captain were to be 
avoided like a mutant retrovirus.
	"Look, Captain," said Greil with utmost care,"like I said I came 
to see if you had the cash you owed me... but if you don't, I can catch 
you later.." Greil internally winced at this -- he really hated _giving_up_ 
money like this, but the second rule you learned as a middleman was that 
your life was probably worth more than 10k ... maybe not 20, but 
definitely 10.  
	"Goddamnit -- you want money ... sonofabitch ... you were probably 
_followed here, you dumb fuck!  You fucking sold me out for a goddamned 
couple of K?"  In addition to a rather unique sort of illogic, to Greil's 
eyes Captain was becoming less and less stable.  Ever so carefully, Greil 
bent his wrist, allowing a small, soft, spherical object to drop into the 
palm of his right hand.  
	"Calm down, Captain," Greil continued with an added degree of 
urgency in his voice, "nobody followed me ... I'm really not worth 
killing..."
	In response, Captain raised the silver H&K flechette gun to Greil's 
head, a bit of drool escaping the left side of a leering grin.  Captain not 
only intended to kill him, but intended to enjoy it thoroughly.
	Time slowed down.  In what seemed like an hour, but was probably 
far less, Greil's legs buckled under him.  As he dropped in front of a 
surprised Captain, his right hand slammed the marble-sized sphere into 
Captain's gut.  The sphere deformed, and adhered.  Greil curled up into a 
fetal ball as Captain brought the fletcher to bear at point blank range.
	With a muffled thud, and a sharp crack, Greil felt a faint breeze, as 
seven stainless steel needles flew by his left ear at several times 
the speed of sound, and a slick, wet spray splatter accross his arms, 
shoulders and head.
	Greil was we, and reeked of a familiar smell ... it was a smell that 
was all too familiar, that of warm blood.  He just wasn't sure if it were his,
or not.  After a quick check, he confirmed that he was, more or less, unhurt.
Captain, however, or at least what was left of him, wasn't quite so lucky.  
	Micro-charges weren't very common on the street, and they had a 
nasty habit of being volatile at the wrong time, but Greil sort of liked 
them.  They had the advantage of being largely undetectable ... unlike 
guns, which were heavy, expensive and subject to both detection and 
theft.  He had never had to kill with them -- their uses tended to be 
limited to minor distractions, or forced entries.  It had, in spite of 
its effectiveness, been entirely a spur of the moment tactical decision.
	"Remind myself to thank Meyer for that HazMat contact," noted 
Greil, as he checked over the gutted, sticky remains of Captain.  Somehow 
the gory scene just didn't have any effect upon him.  Maybe, he 
reflected, it was shock.  While death wasn't an unfamiliar thing in 
Greil's life, killing, as a self-performed act, was.  He absentmindedly 
pocketed the H&K, noting the seven charges left in the magazine as he thumbed
the safety on.  Captain had 200K on an anonymous credstick, a roll of 
2,9 DiNitroBenzedrine tabs, and ten syringes of what looked like more NIGHT, 
as well as the spent wrappers of four more.  Greil whistled soundlessly ... 
this guy was really ready to go.  NIGHT plus nitro-bennies was, if nothing 
else, totally hard core.  The combo, especially when used frequently, 
would yield homicidal, paranoid behavior -- a description aptly fitting 
Captain's behavior.
	Something gnawed at the back of Greil's mind.  200K was a 
shitload of money for a strung out psycho speed bunny, especially one 
carrying a full cargo.  The fact that the money was on a legit anonymous 
5000K stick, rather than in the normal illicit bills canyon dwellers 
almost solely dealt in made things yet Weider.
	On a lark, Greil checked around the squat.  If there was one 
thing that tied squatters in the canyon together, it was the profusion of 
innumerable caches of shit.  Seemingly simple bag ladies had been known 
to die and leave behind nooks and crannies containing hundreds of 
thousands in cash.  Chances were that a nutcase like Captain probably 
wouldn't bother, but Greil was certainly not going to let any possibility 
go by so easily -- particularly in light of the difficulty he had gone 
through to get here, and stay alive.  After a few minutes of checking 
likely spots, he found what he was really looking for -- a greasy bag 
lying in the corner, containing a case of some sort.  Upon further 
investigation, he found a mag-locked hand-held equipment case of some 
sort, made out of some exotic material.  From its weight, and texture, it 
seemed like some combination of a synthetically stable depleted Uranium 
isotope, iridium and platinum.  Maybe, he speculated, it contained some 
sort of exotic deck.  A military-grade Ono-Sendai would fetch three or 
four shitloads of money on the black market.  Onos were custom decks.  The 
material and quality of their cases indicated the nature of what was inside.  
The best he had _heard_of_, let alone seen, was a platinum plated 
case.  The best he had ever seen was a gold.  Whatever the hell this 
was, if it was a deck, indicated something decidedly upper-level 
corporate.  Greil, again, whistled soundlessly.  This case was worth a small 
fortune ... not to mention what was probably inside it.  Greil tried to pry 
it open, but to no avail.  Cases like these were carried by very important 
men who wanted to keep the contents secret -- no matter what.  Nothing short of 
upper-grade corporate tech was going to crack this thing.  It was 
probably spec-ed to be dropped from the top of the tower without 
sustaining any damage.  Shrugging, Greil shoved the case under his 
trenchcoat, leaving it for future perusal and resale, making his way back out 
to the main line.
	Greil liked trench coats.  They tended to hide things like 
illicit cases, while repelling the perpetual foul MegaTokyo drizzle.  The 
only real caveat was that, if you wore the coat long enough, people came 
to associate it with you -- and you with it.  On the other hand, a lot of 
people wore trench coats.  Besides, to remove the coat was a big step toward 
anonymity.  In Greil's world, spontaneous anonymity was frequently a very, 
very good thing.  
	   As he walked, Greil began to stop feeling numb from the violence 
he had just engaged in.  He couldn't afford terror -- not now.  He popped a 
couple of the newly acquired small pink nitro-bennies, shuddering as the 
jolt hit a few seconds later, causing him to focus ever clearer on the 
fragmentary moment at hand, and allowing him to push the impending 
malaise of shock away -- for a little while longer.  
	Abstractly, Greil noted that the speed was pretty clean -- it took 
almost immediately.  As he climbed the stairs to the upper canyon (the 
MegaTokyo slum surrounding the fissure known as the canyon proper), the 
savagely vivid lights of the red zone bloomed before his eyes.  Through 
the crystalline chemical haze, Greil noted, with some amusement, that he was 
walking _up_ to hell from some place far, far worse.
	Greil wandered aimlessly for a while, in a state of agitated 
exhaustion and paranoia, afraid to immediately return to his coffin 
flop.  He wandered on streets cluttered with street sharks, victims, 
junkies, dealers and curious onlookers of all colors, shapes, sizes and 
nationalities.  Somehow, the nausea that came from his combination of 
exhaustion, speed and the ever-present seething mass of humanity 
was good.  It kept his mind off the scene he had just left.  Scraping off 
Captain's guts had been a mechanical action.  Part of him wanted to 
chalk it up to shock, but it seemed to be altogether too much a naggingly 
familiar scene.  The look in Captain's eyes had also been remarkably 
familiar.  And, although Greil hadn't killed before (at least, to his 
knowledge) the _feeling_ of killing seemed almost ... second nature.  In 
the context of this line of thought, even the putrefaction of sin, poverty 
and depravity that he was surrounded by was somehow comforting.  This was, 
after all, Greil's world.  Killers, junkies and cons were the 
accountants, doctors and lawyers of the normal world.  Greil was, most 
definitely, a professional.
	He eventually ended up in front of some kind of bar or club called
"HOT LEGS."  Greil snorted at the amazing lack of originality, but entered 
anyhow.  He was coming down off the nitros, and needed a drink.  At least 
now, he reflected, he had the money to buy drinks.  Maybe things were 
looking up ... in four hours he had gone from a broke dealer to a 
moderately well-off killer, thief and dealer.  To top it all off, he 
seemed to have arrived just in time to find a seat to watch the show.  
	"Lucky fucking me," he grumbled, with the express intent of hearing 
his own voice, while walking up to the bar, "the last thing I need to see is 
another goddamned third rate primadonna rock star..."
	"Oy, fellow ... dis ban verrry OK," interjected the bartender.  
The bartender looked to be some mixture of Fillipino and West African, 
although his glowing red prosthetic eyes tended to obscure this.  He 
turned from Greil, proceeded to curse at his assistant in some broken 
combination of Japanese, Bantu and Tagalog.
	"Drink be very OK, too," snapped Greil.  Primadonnas were actually 
OK.  In reality, the last thing he needed right now was some smart-ass 
bartender.  A good bartender, he reflected, knew when NOT to make smalltalk 
with the customer.  This was most definitely not a good bartender.  The 
neon-hued carotid IV tap gave him away as a syntho-morphine addict, and 
an individual distinctly lacking in fashion sense.  Accessorizing with 
drug paraphernalia had gone out of style nearly a decade ago.  Synth-heads
were incredibly self-involved as a rule, intent on their own syrupy 
chemical-induced narcicism.  They were both intensely boring 
conversationalists, and awful sources of information.  This made the 
strange little man virtually the worst possible bartender imaginable.
	"Yah Yah ... What want?" asked the bartender grumpily.
	"Bottle -- 1 Liter of 99, and a cup," Greil responded curtly.
	The odd little troll scurried about, finding a bottle and a 
<marginally> clean cup.  He put it up on the bar, and held out his hand.
	"1K is this."
	"Christ..." complained Greil, "I wanna get drunk, not laid."  He 
pulled the credstick out of his jacket and put it on the bar.  "Gimme the 
change in bills."
	"OK -- here go," the bartender chirped as he returned 150K in 
bills.  25% conversion rate would have normally been beyond usurous, but 
in this setting it was about right.  Greil grumbled as he took the cash, 
and his bottle.  "Have nice day," said the bartender as Greil walked away.
	"Fuck off and die," answered Greil, walking up the stairs to the 
balcony.  Balconies and corners allowed you to watch people, without 
necessarily being watched yourself.  Anonymity and solitude went hand in 
hand in MegaTokyo.  To Greil, these were the hands of comfort and security.  
People, all people, especially groups of people, made Greil really 
nervous.  Groups were loud, smelly, psychically violent things which 
invaded your space.  They were the properties emergent from the 
dysfunction of dozens of twisted, pathetic lives -- lives much like his 
own.  The thought of another Greil scared him the most.
	He used to sort of like people, and social interaction.  Groups had 
fascinating dynamics, at least to teenaged girls newly cogniscent of the 
mystery of urban life and intellectuals positive that the millings about 
of the great unwashed were somehow, in some way, terribly significant.  
He used to just like the feeling of company, but, at some indeterminate 
point, the comfort of others had become a pressing, stifling, threatening 
bio-mass.  A lot of things had seemed to change at that indeterminate 
point.  Greil began to muse about this, trying to recall the exact moment at 
which his life had really changed.  His past, that is to say that which 
happened before yesterday or so, seemed a gradually receding gray 
blur.  A few specific events punctuated the neutral, like the odd 
greenish-blue of his conversation with Lucy, or the seeping redness of 
his encounter with Captain, but there was just no feeling of 
continuity.  He was still having a conversation with Lucy, still staring 
at Captain's slumped form -- and, yet, both things had happened decades 
ago, and decades apart.  Other memories surfaced, like trash floating on 
the surface of a fog-covered lake.  It was as if he was experiencing, and 
being bored by, someone else's memories.
	Greil was jolted from his reverie by the start of the band's 
warmup.  He felt the vibrations in his chest as the bassist brought his 
amp stacks up to full power, and the drummer tightened the snare.  As he 
poured himself a drink, he noted that, although the equipment was 
generally at- or near- top notch, the band seemed positively scruffy.  
Almost as a reflex, he began tallying the street value of the equipment 
in his head.  Thousands of watts of Ugandan high-precision electronics 
would fetch tens- if not hundreds- of K from even the most circumspect of 
musicians (although most musicians tended to be morons when it came it 
money).  
	In glaring incongruity, the band all <obviously> had nasty 
hangovers from god only knew what.  They seemed to be almost as badly 
off as the HOT LEGS regulars, and that was really saying something.  
Bemused, Greil turned his attention to the crowd.  
	Live shows in the upper canyon seemed to follow a certain pre-
ordained template.  The booze was pricey, and watered down.  The regulars 
were lowlives.  The music was, as a rule, deeply uninteresting, and 
generally ranged from subnormal kids who didn't realize that proto-geo 
punk had become yet another corporate tool, to savage, monotonic rust 
that, no doubt, sounded fascinating to its borderline psychotic creators.  
	For larger shows (like this one, apparently) the management beat 
the regulars into submission to make room, and safety, for the influx of 
secretaries looking for a not-too-wild dance with someone just 
threatening enough, cologned Guidos looking for questing secretaries, 
teenagers looking for independence, a buzz and a vent to their 
self-centered angst, dealers looking for teenagers, salarymen looking to get 
blitzed, and, of course, cops looking for free booze, in exchange for not 
busting to lot of them.  In short, it was the final expression of the reason 
for the canyon's continuing existence, and the ultimate repudiation of the 
society of the day.  This was a place for staid suburbanites to spend a little
time on the margins.  
	The one consolatory factor about the entire hypocritical melodrama 
was that there was little question that if these bright-eyed ambassadors 
from the burbclaves, land of clean, white living and bimbo-box minivans, 
strayed from the careful niche their capital hard carved, they would be 
swallowed whole, and digested, by the wild animals normally kept behind 
the bars of poverty, depravity, and general marginalization.  There was, 
Greil reflected, a certain elegance to it all, if you could look beyond 
the stench of cologne, cigarettes and cheap booze.
	In the balcony, the other tables had been filled.  To Greil's 
right was a salaryman, probably a mid-level from Fujishima, judging from 
his off-the-rack Western business suit and tastefully designed lapel-pin, 
attempting to ply an obviously uninterested, and uninteresting, woman, 
with booze and talk of whatever bullshit bureaucratic pissing contest he 
was involved in.  Behind him, four bulky, dull-looking teenaged boys tried 
to convince a waitress that they were each twenty five ... as if anyone 
actually _gave_ a shit.  Behind him, a couple appeared to be on some sort 
of date.  She was sort of plain, but in a sweet kind of way.  He affected 
the dress and attitude of a regular, but his leather was too clean and 
expensive ... probably a junior salaryman trying to vent some of the 
steam built up over endless days of eating shit.  
	To his left, however, there was something slightly odd.  Three women,
two younger and one somewhat older, sat at the table, each drinking 
mineral water.  Mineral water was more expensive than the booze -- and 
didn't have the same sort of pleasant anesthetic effects.  The young ones, 
one sporting long, red _real_ hair, and one with blue-black short-cropped 
hair, seemed distinctly clerical.  They were each more or less attractive, 
although still sort of fresh and naive, judging by the way they carried on and 
giggled about various bits and pieces of gossip, while simultaneously ogling 
various men.  
	The red head seemed to blush a lot, and seemed totally occupied with 
looking, and acting, cute.  Her friend was basically just ... perky.  They 
were, to Greil, in a word ... uninteresting.  

	The older one, however, was a different story.

	She was close to Greil's age.  At least, he _guessed_ she was close 
to his age.  She had that ageless appearance that most smart women would 
kill for.  Somehow she carried off both dignity and beauty, intelligence and 
poise, without really seemingly like she was working at any of it.  She 
seemed like she had always looked as she did then, and that she always would.
She looked so totally out of place in a dive like HOT LEGS that Greil would 
have guffawed loudly, had it not been for that almost painful air of infinite 
grace and dignity she projected.  She was dressed rather formally in a silk 
blouse, skirt and jacket -- all of which were so tasteful as to _not_ appear 
expensive ... which, of course, implied that they were, in fact, incredibly 
expensive.  Women like this, he thought, shouldn't waste any time in a place 
like this, Greil thought.  Somehow, he was also totally certain that she 
knew this, as well, and a great many more things to boot.
	Greil began to feel the pleasant haze of the booze settle over jagged 
nerves as he poured another cup.  The lights lowered.  The show was 
beginning.  
	Perhaps fortunately, Greil's laughter was drowned out by the thundering 
music.  The lead singer came strutting on stage, cocksure in her apparent 
position as leader of this gathering.  She, and it was most definitely WAS a 
she, was wearing a leather miniskirt and a halter top emblazoned with one 
single english word: "FUCK."  She did, thank god, have the body for such 
an outfit.   Greil noted circumspectly that she appeared to walk with an 
ever-so-slight limp.  Her hair, if you could call it that, was nothing short 
of hilarious.  A platinum blonde fright wig topped her head ... she looked 
like some sort of wacked-out neo-riot grrrl on T12, or something.  Then 
again, that was probably exactly the sort of look she intended to put 
on.  
	From the reaction of the crowd, it was plain that, fright wig or not, 
she was well received, indeed.  The two younger women from the table to his 
left had gone to dance, and had, of course, been pursued by the 
hormonally challenged moron teenaged boys.  The graceful one remained, 
retaining her air of casual assurance.  Somehow, it was not even surprising 
that, even in this meat market, nobody came over to hit on her.  She was 
obviously too classy for any of the sewage in this joint, and even _they_ 
knew it.
	As the concert continued, and the alcohol flowed, Greil found 
himself enjoying the music more and more.  For the first time in what 
seemed like days, his mind was really numb.  He casually noted that 
graceful-woman was watching both her comrades, and the show, with equal 
attention.  It reminded Greil of a cat watching her kittens -- they were 
not the subject of any sort of intense scrutiny, but they also never left 
her view.  Her friends were, of course, dancing up a storm, oblivious of 
the sea of humanity that surrounded them.  They seemed the type.  Greil felt 
good and warm, the buzz overtaking him ever so slightly.  The feeling 
was, of course, transitory.  
	Maybe it was genetics, or just years of chemical self-abuse, but Greil 
rarely held a buzz for long.  He knew it ... and he hated it.  Booze 
was not an efficient use of money for him.
	Out of the corner of his eye, Greil watched someone join him at 
his table.  It was a she -- young, and painted to look fresh.  Her 
clothing was made to look expensive and, in so doing, revealed itself to 
be only moderately expensive.  She appeared to be a fairly expensive 
prostitute, and an amazing contrast to the woman of grace (as Greil had 
almost comically come to know the woman to the left).  Glancing at her, 
he saw the precursor of another Lucy.  Even upon brief examination, she 
seemed to have the same hopeless, grim, total direction that only 
the most scarred mercenaries, and whores, could seem to muster.
	"Sorry -- not interested, no money" he said abruptly.
	"Relax," she said as she began stroking his arm, "I'm yours for 
the night -- no charge.  What's your name?"
	Greil took a good look at her.  She _was_ fairly attractive, and 
wearing very little.  Her dark hair coursed down around a pleasing 
almond-shaped Amarasian face.  At some point in his life, judgment would 
not have played a part in any decision in such a decision and, for a brief 
instant, he considered playing along.  Thinking better, and remembering 
that he hadn't been sixteen for quite a while, he jerked his arm back.
	"What's the matter?  Don't you like me?" she asked, her carefully 
painted face clouding over with a performance that, though unconvincing, 
was almost enjoyable.
	"Come on -- don't play that shit," he answered crossly, but with a 
certain degree of compassion, "it's like I said -- I don't have any 
money... and I don't take candy from strangers."
	"Come on baby, I can make you feel like a man" she continued, 
ever so soothingly, and somewhat more aggressively.  It was if the 
words he had spoken had passed happily by her.  Despite his growing 
alarm at her unsolicited touch, Greil had to admit that she had potential 
in the seduction department.  
	"Sorry, honey, but you're a bit young for my tastes.  What are you 14?"
	"What's it matter, I'm ready -- and I'm 16," she answered.
	"Sorry, no dice -- I'm also not into pedophilia.  Besides, you know 
what they say about free love.."
	"What's that?" she asked, forgetting her seduction act, at 
least momentarily.
	"Don't bank on it, baby," he answered with a wry grin.  
	"Now ... if I _pay_ you, will you tell me who sent you?" he asked 
patiently, pulling a wad of cash out of his pocket.
	"No dice" she tersely responded as she tried to leave, while 
still longingly eyeing the money.
	"OK, how about I don't shoot you, I still pay you, and you tell me who 
sent you", he calmly said as he placed the cash on the table, grabbed her 
arm, and poked her under the table with the H&K.  He really didn't like 
threatening this kid, but this whole thing stank more than the reeking sweat 
and cologne from the dance floor below.  Free whores tended to be 
paradoxical in this universe.  The universe didn't like paradoxes, and he 
didn't like coincidences -- and someone's guts landing in his lap and a 
free whore just didn't seem to be random occurrences.  He made sure, for a 
fifth time, that the safety was on.
	"I really don't have the patience or time for this shit any more," 
he continued.  "There's no such thing as a free whore, and we both know 
it, and we both know that my mysterious benefactor either has a definite 
agenda and I'm being caged out of here, or I'm even more paranoid than I 
thought."  <This is doubtful, he reflected, I already think I'm pretty 
damned paranoid>.  
	"Look... I don't want any trouble.  This guy just gave me a 
shitload of money to bring you back to a hotel.  He said it was a 
bachelor's party, or something.  I'm not into any kinky shit."  She was 
trying to be too confident.  
	Greil briefly considered her story, and responded "Nice try, now 
how about the truth?  This fletcher would _really_ make a mess of that 
nice leather number, and I know you'd just rather walk out of here 
with the money ... imagine, paid _twice_ for the same job -- and you 
can still score another trick tonight."  He really didn't plan to shoot 
her -- the mere idea that he was threatening this kid made him sick to 
his stomach.  The thought of being lured back to _any_ hotel for virtually 
_any_ purpose made him even sicker.  He had few friends, and none of them 
had the money- or the inclination- to buy him a woman.
	She looked around nervously and said, "It was some guy with a 
badge.  He said he was from the government, and that he could help me.  I 
just had to get you back to-"
	She never finished her sentence.  In the passing of a second the 
girl's face passed from worried concern to a soggy mess splattered across 
Greil's general vicinity, including the shocked woman-of-grace to his 
left.  It was as if, for the third time today, time had briefly stopped.  
Some remote part of his brain was exploding in terror, for the second time.  
Fortunately, the rest of his brain seemed to be functioning fine -- all 
too fine, really.  He coldly, almost analytically, observed that the shot 
had to have come from his right.  It was probably some sort of explosive 
slug, judging from the radical nature of the damage to the girl's 
lifeless body.
	Sure enough, to his right stood one of the teens.  He had 
apparently given up chasing older women in favor of homicide.  His eyes 
glowed a malignant shade of red.  His gun came to bear on Greil.
	A dry voice at the back of Greil's mind remarked that this was 
also the second time today he was being threatened with a gun, and that 
maybe this was a good time to consider a change in careers.  This voice, 
too, was ignored, however, as Greil jumped to his left, over his neighbor's 
table, knocking the still-shocked woman-of-grace to the floor behind the 
overturned table.  She looked at Greil in muted shock, and horror, 
beautiful even now, he thought, as he raised his still-ready H&K to 
return fire.
	With almost practiced ease, he leveled the bead on the target's chest, 
sighting the line of fire down the silver barrel of the fletcher.  With 
what might be called the patience of the moment, he methodically squeezed 
the trigger four times.  Three barrages of stainless steel needles 
rocketed from the H&K.  Greil felt the pistol jerk three times.  The 
fourth, unfortunately, caused the cheap fletcher to jam.  Greil cursed 
Captain, yet again, for poorly maintaining his equipment.  
	The shots Greil had fired had been flawless,  at a range of less 
than four meters.  He had seen them hit, and had watched the youth recoil 
from the impact.  Something was really wrong, though.

	He was still standing.

	Greil gawked ... that sort of munition should have -- no, WOULD 
have, taken down _anything_ on two legs, and most things on four.  Four 
hundred grams of razor sharp needles traveling well over the speed of 
sound tended to be rough on biological matter.  Given that he had hit, 
and that this thing was still standing, there was really only one 
conclusion he could easily come to.

	This wasn't biological matter.
	
	Greil looked over in surprise as he saw the graceful woman pull a 
pistol from her purse, the calm expression on her face replaced by an 
equally elegant pout of concern.  Armed civilians of all types tended to be 
fairly common, but women like this still looked odd holding something as 
blunt and coarse as a gun.  All the same, it was plain she knew exactly what 
she was doing as she placed a half-dozen rounds in close dispersion on 
the thing's face and torso.  There really wasn't time to consider 
gunmanship, though.  The thing was coming, and quickly, and didn't appear 
terribly fazed by any of the munitions hurled at it.  Greil edged toward the 
door, and the thing followed him.  This was some small relief, he 
reflected.  At least that woman wouldn't be mashed up.
	The thing charged at him, and he dodged.  Somehow, he leapt up 
onto the ledge of the balcony.  The assassin charged at him, as he jumped 
(backwards) off.  The crowd was still oblivious to what was going on, as 
the noise of the band easily drowned out the sound of melee, and the 
report of firearms.  This was actually a good thing, as the throng of 
dancing people was all that stood between the falling Greil and the concrete 
floor.  Somehow, the crowd saw his jump as some sort of exercise in crowd 
surfing.  A rather reluctant Greil was carried toward the stage.  The thing 
was heading down the stairs from the balcony, bound, no doubt, for him.  
He was, eventually, dumped rather unceremoniously on the stage.  
	An unpleasantly burly bouncer immediately approached Greil, 
setting about the task of removing him from the stage.  He began by 
kicking Greil repeatedly in the ribs.  Still stunned, Greil curled up 
into a fetal ball as he felt, rather than heard, one crack.  The lead 
singer, fright wig and all, saw this and leveled a rather nasty roundhouse 
kick to the bouncer's head.  As he fell with a heavy thud, the crowd went 
wild -- screaming and dancing with yet more energy.  The thing was caught in 
the frenzy, unable to make headway toward his quarry.
	Greil painfully and slowly dragged himself off the stage, trying to 
catch his breath and hold his left side at the same time.  He heaved the booze, 
and some pretzels, into a convenient guitar case, retching violently for 
a minute, or so.  He shook his head, and popped a few more of Captain's 
nitro bennies, silently thanking him.  Somewhat more lucid, if messier, he 
stood up and set about trying to find an exit.  

* * * * * * 

	Leon McNichol wasn't sure what the problem was.  He generally 
enjoyed any performance by Priss and the Replicants.  Hell, who didn't?  
Over the past three years, or so, they had really begun to get tight.  
Besides, he had sort of a crush on Priss.  Then again, who didn't?
The band was, to Leon, a sort of spark of life in an aggressively apathetic 
society.  Cynical as he sometimes was, Leon liked that spark.  It gave 
things meaning.  
	All the same, tonight he just didn't seem in the mood.  As he ground 
out another cigarette under his boot, he took a deep breath of the night air
... and shortly began coughing.  Outside air seemed as polluted and foul as 
the cloying, smoky atmosphere of the club.  There was no winning, it seemed.
	Maybe it was being a cop, he thought.  Leon was one of the most 
senior ADPolice officers with a tenure of considerably less than ten 
years.  The advent of raging combat boomers had considerably shortened 
the average lifespan- and hence career- of civil servants.  When he had 
been younger, the prospect of daring death had seemed a lot more 
romantic.  He had watched a lot of his friends die, and continued to do 
so on a daily basis.  He had even given up being especially scared.  He 
operated under the assumption that his time was, eventually, going to 
come.  The feeling he had wasn't fear -- he knew that one pretty well.  
It wasn't even anything as specific as depression (he knew that one, too, 
incidentally).  Leon shrugged and lit another cigarette.
	"Maybe I'm ready to be kicked upstairs now," he thought out 
loud.  "God knows I've got the chest-trophies for it...and the money 
would be nice..."
	He shook his head violently as he thought about the stream of 
captains he had fought with over the years.  Each one was more pathetic 
and lead-assed than the last.  To move upstairs was to cease to be 
effective -- at anything.  Anything at, or above, the level of Captain 
was a politics job ... which, in this town, meant becoming yet another 
corporate tool.  ADPolice bureaucrats tended to be so corrupt as to 
occasionally warrant offices of their own in the GENOM tower.  The thought 
of that made him physically ill.  Better to be splattered by some fucking 
machine, he thought.
	Leon's musings were interrupted as he watched a man come hurtling 
out of the side door of HOT LEGS, clutching his chest and running.  With 
a sixth sense issued to cops along with badges and guns, Leon knew 
something was amiss.  He moved to intercept the running man, pulling his 
badge out.
	"ADPolice.  Hold it -- what the hell is the rush, man?"
	The man, moderately over two meters, fairly stocky, and dressed in 
an open trenchcoat, had the look of someone coming from- or going to 
combat.  He didn't seem unduly impressed with Leon.
	"Something is trying to kill me.  You're a cop -- do something 
about it," he said as he pushed past.  
	"Wait a-," Leon's rejoinder was cut short as the man's pursuer 
burst through the same door.  From a distance it appeared to be a bulky 
male.  As it drew closer, Leon noticed glowing eyes ... and a 
considerable amount of missing flesh.  These observations, plus years of 
hard experience told Leon one thing.

	Boomer.

	He drew his weapon, a newly modified three shot depleted uranium 
slug pistol, and aimed.  
	"Stop, or I'll fire," he shouted.  He knew this to be more or 
less futile, but these were the rules of engagement.
	The boomer seemed about as impressed with Leon as the man it was 
chasing.  It brought a weapon of some sort to bear, and smiled.
	Leon dove to the side, as he squeezed off a shot.  As always, it felt 
as if his wrist were breaking.  Somehow, he managed to clip the boomer's 
left shoulder -- knocking it back about two meters.  
	Much to Leon's dismay, the damage appeared to be mostly 
cosmetic.  To his further dismay, he heard a motorcycle engine turn 
over.  HIS motorcycle engine, goddamnit.
	"HEY!" he shouted, in vain, as the pursued man took off on his 
brand new ZXZ-1400 Kawasaki racing bike, a bike he had purchased with 
the express intent of impressing Priss.  He would never live this down 
with the guys at the squad... he had left the keys in the ignition.  
	The boomer, seeing his quarry depart, took this opportunity to 
shed what was left of its skin.  Leon fired another shot at it, missing 
completely, but noting that the boomer was some variant of the new GENOM 
C-60 that had recently sprung upon the perpetually unlucky citizens of 
MegaTokyo.  One of the really nasty things about this, the latest cream 
of GENOM's foul crops, were the dual recessed chain guns in each arm.  
These tended to indiscriminately shred people, buildings and cars alike.  
In this case, they happened to be trained on Leon who, after discharging 
two rather nasty cannon-like charges from his revolver, had been evaluated 
as an intermediate-level threat.
	Diving behind a convenient plas-crete blast shield (HOT LEGS had 
installed them after several suicide bomber attempts), Leon avoided being 
hit by the hail of molten steel emanating from the boomer's arm.  In a 
fluid motion, it turned toward the fleeing motorcyclist and engaged its 
flight system.  The backwash of its propulsion system blasted over Leon, 
scalding him slightly.  He scratched his head as he watched the boomer 
dwindle out of sight, chasing after the poor bastard on the bike. 
	"We've got a live one -- C60 headed northbound in pursuit of a 
blue ZXZ-1400, driver male caucasian - 2.1 meters, approximately 105 kg, 
brown hair," said Leon into his radio, "subjects should be travelling at 
extreme velocity.  Exercise caution ... target fully armed.  And take it 
easy on the bike."
	"Well, I guess it beats moping," reflected Leon.
 
* * * * * * 

	This really wasn't shaping up to be a good week for Greil.  
Things had seemed to be about average-shitty at the start -- broke, 
smelly and strung out.  Then people began dying, and being killed, all 
around him -- in most gory ways.  Somehow, he had moved from trying to 
collect flop money to desperately trying to recall incredibly rusty riding 
skills -- skills acquired some decades before, under far less threatening 
circumstances, on a small dirt bike (a far cry indeed from 
the turbocharged 200+ HP monster he was on now).  It was not a transition 
for the best, he thought.  
	He winced, and swerved, as an eerie blue pulse of light lanced 
past him, decimating a parked subcompact.  Whatever the hell was chasing 
him was gaining, and rapidly.  He needed to get off of these damned small 
streets, if he was to have any chance of saving his- or anyone else's- 
life.  The brutish, ox-like chunk of steel between his legs would 
probably be able to out-distance whatever was chasing him.  He didn't 
know an awful lot about bikes any more, but he did know that it _looked_ 
like the only differences between it and a supersonic fighter were the 
missiles and the wings.
	As if on cue, the entrance ramp to 187, the major superhighway 
connecting MegaTokyo with Kobe-4, and linking in the 'burbs, appeared.  
187 was the main commute for the salaried, zombified multitude.  
It was wide, fast, well-maintained, and basically free of traffic at 3 AM.  
Somehow, Greil managed to keep the bike moving in a more-or-less straight 
line as he popped a few more nitro-bennies.  He had lost count of 
how many had been consumed long ago.  That same damned small voice at 
the back of his mind suggested that this was probably a _bad_ thing.  
The term "para-traumatic amphetamine psychosis" kept winging its ungainly 
way through his head.  These thoughts were quickly, and adroitly, drowned 
out as Greil's pulse soared well past its already frenetic 160 beats per 
minute as the speed hit.  For an interminable moment, things seemed to 
become rather ominously dim.  
	As the entrance ramp flew by, a nearly open highway presented itself.  
Fifteen lanes of concrete joy laying themselves bare to the bike's lusty 
embrace.  As he opened the throttle, and felt the almost contemptuous 
rumble of the bike's engine climb to a wail not unlike the hammers of 
hell themselves, the streetlights, animated billboards and other 
motorists formed an eerily beautiful sort of flowing, distorted montage.  
Greil felt an amazing animal rush.  Here he was, his fight or flight 
instinct firmly planted to the right, riding a barely-harnessed hell beast.
	Swerving gracefully, the bike easily, almost lazily, revved to its 
17,000 RPM redline.  Greil felt at one with the machine, and the speed 
<auth note: both kinds>.  As the range of sixth gear passed, the speedometer 
likewise passed the 230 KPH mark.  Glancing at his rear view mirror, Greil 
noted, almost abstractly, that the thing was still behind him.  It was 
unclear if he was gaining, and he didn't feel comfortable staring at the 
rear view.  A barrage of glowing tracer fire flew past the bike, annhialating 
a feckless freight truck.  Greil barely dodged the burning wreckage, but 
continued ... accelerating all the while.  Some day, he reflected, he 
really must learn how to really ride.  
	Finally, he hit eighth gear.  The engine continued its march 
toward oblivion, propelling the bike past the 300 KPH mark.  The 
screaming wind buffeted the bike savagely, and the front tire wavered 
dangerously on the road.  He felt as if his hair were being torn from its 
roots.  Idly, he wondered if a bullet through the head would kill him any 
faster than hitting the road at this speed.  This thought quickly 
vanished.  Seconds meant kilometers.  There was a great deal of irony in 
the fact that Greil's nitro-bennie hyped reaction times were probably the 
only thing that saved him from the slow moving passenger car dead ahead.  It 
was all Greil could do just to hold on, and keep the bike in a more or less 
straight line, as he locked up both brakes.  Neural-net ABS was a 
really good idea.  
	Had it not been for that same intimate, 
immediate risk of an amazingly quick and painful death, he might have 
almost enjoyed the vivid and unsettling hallucinations his fevered brain 
was experiencing.  
	Clumsily dropping the bike back to third gear to accommodate the 
almost painfully slow 150 KPH pace he had been forced to assume, he began 
to accelerate again.  A white flash reflected from his rear view as his 
pursuer chose to pass through, rather than around, the obstacle -- much 
to the misfortune of the driver.  Weaving through a sudden clump of 
traffic, Greil cursed to himself, as clueless drivers seemed wholly 
intent on side-swiping the two-wheeled vehicle rocketing past them.  
	Finally past the unexpected traffic, he again opened up the 
bike's throttle, winding the bike to its maximum speed which, by his 
estimate, sat somewhere around 350 KPH.  On two wheels, however, such 
speeds don't leave a lot of time for speculation.  The engine was 
hovering precipitously over 17,500 RPM, and was beginning to sound odd.  
Despite the incredible amount of ground he was covering, he could tell 
from the flash of explosions, and the frequency of stray fire passing 
over his crouched form, that the thing was, somehow, getting closer.
	This was it.  The bike was topped out.  He was past the city, in 
open territory, on the superhighway.  There were to be no more exits for 
sixty kilometers.  That was eight minutes.  He didn't figure either he, 
or the bike, would last more than five.  Unfortunately, he just didn't 
see any alternatives to simply continuing.  Leaning deeper into his 
crouch, his eyes suddenly widened ....
	
	<BANG!>

* * * * *

	Sylia pulled the hardsuit up and into place, silently running 
through a checklist of various mechanical details in her mind for the 
sixth time.  These rapid deployment maneuvers were, as a rule, the most 
dangerous, and least profitable, operations the Knight Sabers ever 
undertook.  All the same, they also tended to be the most 
valuable in developing the sort of spontaneous judgment and 
battle intuition that all the simulators in the world could 
provide  In such situations, Intelligence was, at best, sketchy, if not 
totally unreliable, and the potential for a trap was fantastically high.  
In short, it was very dangerous.  Then again, that was the life of a 
mercenary band ... and, despite the higher sorts of aspirations she 
liked to think they represented, they were, in the final analysis, 
just another set of guns for hire.
	One of the things she tried hardest to impress upon her people, 
and herself, was that their hardsuits were, by no means, invulnerable. 
Like a street cop facing the random shots of a chance argument on the 
street, they were just as likely to expire from a stray armor piercing shell 
fired by a well-intentioned ADPolice chopper as they were from a particle 
beam vomited forth by a malevolent boomer.  Looking down at the damp rag 
with which she had wiped off that girl's gray matter, she considered how 
close she had come to becoming yet another collateral statistic in that 
rogue C-60's stat bank.  Had it not been for the abrupt shove of that 
stranger, her first night of recreation in weeks - if not months - could 
have been her last.  Dead was dead, no matter what the cause.  They could 
NOT afford to forget that.  Immortatility, her old combat instructor had 
once pointed out, was something best reserved for the young, the stupid and 
the soon to die.  Shuddering slightly, from a combination of 
apprehension and excitement, she pulled her helmet down, and clasped the visor
into its locked position.
	"Mackie," she called through the suit's comm link, "do you have a 
fix on the target?"
	"Yeah, sis," came a reply, "I have an IR fix, and a feed from the 
ADPolice SatLink.  Radio chatter says that it's already taken out twelve 
civilian vehicles, five ADPolice cruisers and two chase 'copters.  It seems 
to be chasing a sport bike of some some kind... hold it ... data coming in."
	"Gee, Priss, I thought only _you_ were foolish enough to run a 
boomer chase on a bike," chided Linna.
	"Shut up", grumbled a rather gravely-voiced Priss, " ... I'm still 
pissed about having to leave that show.  Every damned time I get into it, 
this kind of shit happens.  You'd think that after all this time ADPolice 
would have caught on, or something.  What a bunch of fucking donut 
munching dumbassed--"
	"Hey! Lay off the ADPolice!, " chimed in the slightly 
squeaky, but highly indignant voice of Nene Romanova.  Nene had really 
come along during the past year, thought Sylia.  She had become 
considerably more assertive in combat -- with both Priss and the world as a 
whole.  She still had a way to go, though.
	"Quiet down," Sylia calmly commanded, "What were you saying, Mackie?"
	"Target is definitely in pursuit of that bike ... I'm putting 
visual up on screen," said Mackie as a chase helicopter video feed was 
projected on the HUD of the KnightWing prep chamber, "I wonder what the 
hell that poor guy did to deserve being chased like that ... velocity is 
ranging between 150 and 320 KPH, variable.  The boomer appears to 
be slowly gaining...I'm bringing up a threat summary of the '60 now ... 
this one's a new model.  W We've got nothing close to it in our 
databases.  Some of the armament config is similar, but I'm showing 
radically different ECM activity, and several indeterminate high energy 
sources.  We'll have our own visual in 42 seconds...It looks like the '36 
model is out early this year."
	"OK -- bring up the motoroids," Sylia called, "ADPolice has 
nothing heavy enough to fight that thing that could possibly keep up.  
We'll have to drop in behind it, while sustaining full-load thrust.  Nene, 
set up a maximum-output counter-ECM array, and prepare to record 
everything.  I want accurate data, Priss please exercise discretion with 
your weaponry -- we want to save, not splatter, the rider of that bike, and 
Linna, please don't get in too close until we have some idea what we're up 
against...I'm not anxious to deal with a hostage situation."
	"OK!" they cried in unison.
	As each woman stepped up to their launch position, the 
exhilaration that comes before a fight, an exhilaration probably as old 
as banking itself, began to flow.  The massive KnightWing dove precipitously 
toward its mechanical foe, preparing to jettison its most deadly, and precious, 
cargo.
	Sylia felt a rush of air buffet her suit as the launch doors of 
the KnightWing opened over the MegaTokyo skyscape.  The target had been 
acquired, and the suits had been programmed.  Once again, she ran through 
her mental checklist as the launch countdown was projected onto her 
visor.  
3.... 2.... 1.... 
	"GO!" She shouted as they left the KnightWing, experiencing 
momentary weightlessness, and then crushing pressure, as the Motoroid 
boosters cut in.  They would have gone without a shout, she thought, 
but it was better -- it made her feel better -- if she, their leader, 
started things.
	They were coming in perfectly above the highway.  Descending to 
an altitude of just over 15 meters, the target was in sight some 500 meters 
ahead.  Sylia's tactical computer began churning out possibilities, 
probabilities, munitions status and thumbnail telemetry on 
the other sabers.  The modified motoroid flight system Mackie had 
completed several weeks before appeared to be functioning ideally, she 
noticed.  She slowly inched the thrust up, causing the hardsuit formation to 
begin to gain on the boomer, reducing the gap by 7.5 meters per second 
according to the microwave uplink from the KnightWing.  She glanced over 
at Priss, nodding, as the targetting computer realigned, compensating for 
the change in relative velocities.  The nature of this fight, in some sense, 
justified the seemingly endless hours of physics and calculus her father had 
pushed upon her as a child, she noted with a wry smile.
	"Nene, what do you have?" she called out.
	"Not much yet ... the propulsion systems appear to be some sort 
of variant of the C-60.  It would appear that output has been increased 
by 38.5%.  The old '60s wouldn't have made it past 290 KPH.  Power source 
is indeterminate ... I'm getting only a few localized emanations from 
it.  Either it's really efficient, or its got great ECM ... or both.  
I've got nothing on the weapon systems, except for confirmation of two 
arm-mounted chain gun pods and a particle beam.  No _external_ missile 
pods.  I'm trying to get a fix on its comm signal...I can't even 
establish if its acting autonomously, or not."
	"Priss," Sylia continued, "can you get a clean fix on it?"
	"I can't get a goddamned lock," she replied.  "I think I can hit 
it, but I can't guarantee a no-hit on that guy he's chasing."
	Sylia grimaced... This could get really ugly on the highway.  The 
only blessing was that it wasn't very crowded.  In short order, they 
would probably find some sort of ADPolice roadblock ... probably before 
they hit any of the really rich 'burbs.
	She winced as the hardsuited women broke formation, dodging the 
burning wreckage of several innocent passenger vehicles.  With image 
enhancement, she could just make out the frantic dodging of the 
motorcyclist.  He did not appear to be a very experienced rider.  
Fortunately, the cleared the patch of traffic -- allowing all parties to 
accelerate more freely.
	"Mackie," she called out, "what's the status on the motorcycle and 
its driver?"
	"Not good," he responded, "judging from the thermal signature, 
the bike has passed maxium rated speed, and engine tolerance.  It probably 
won't last another fifteen seconds.  Harmonic analysis indicates that he may 
be floating valves already.  Oh, and sis ..."
	"What, Mackie," she responded.
	"The driver himself doesn't look so hot, either.  I show the onset of 
tachycardia, and an irregular electrical signal.  Either he's _really_ 
nervous, or he's got some serious health problems of one sort, or another.."
	Wonderful, she thought, if he, or his bike, fails at this speed, 
things will get very ugly very quickly. 
	"Linna," she barked, "I need you to retrieve the driver of that 
motorcycle.  I want you to engage your afterburners, snatch him quickly, 
and move him out of the line of fire.  Priss -- accelerate with me toward 
the target, and hit it with a tactical spray when Linna calls an all clear.  
Nene -- engage all counter-ECM arrays on my signal."
	"Roger," called Linna as a bright blue flame announced the 
presence of her afterburners.
	"Gotcha," called Priss as her hardusit pulled along side Sylia's.
	"Nene - GO!" she called.
	Immediately, her HUD dimmed briefly, internal DSP systems 
compensating for the massive amount of electromagnetic radiation 
permeating the atmosphere.  She saw Linna rocket ahead, nimbly dodging idle 
fire from the boomer.  Pulling toward the target, she and Priss each drew a 
bead on the exhaust of the boomer.  Closer... Closer...

	<BOOM!>

	A plume of fire spewed forth from what was once the bike.  The 
brilliant blue light of Linna's afterburners drew a graceful, decelerating 
arc into the sky, as she carried the rider to safety.  The boomer began to 
follow her skyward.  Sylia's heart raced as her glowing HUD indicated a 
massive energy buildup, and a microwave paint on Linna's motoroid.
	"NOW!" she shouted at Priss, as she felt the solid, repetitive 
thud of her shoulder-mounted linear accelerator and the brief pressure of a 
half-dozen armor-cracking missiles.  Bolts of light streaked from she, 
and Priss, into the exhaust of the boomer.
	The sky turned brilliantly white as, simultaneously, the boomer's 
flight pack exploded, throwing it into an eccentric dive toward the 
pavement, and a searing purple bolt of energy flew into the sky from some 
sort of hardpoint on the thing's shoulder, approximately toward Linna.  
	Had it not been for the destabilizing impact of their fire, she 
would have been vaporized.  As it was, she had lost most of the right side of 
her motoroid, and almost all of her flight system.  She hurtled, helplessly, 
toward the cruel earth below.  As she hit, Sylia saw one of the telemetry 
thumbnails go blank.  She felt a sinking sensation in her gut as she engaged 
her own afterburners, rushing to the aid of her fallen comrade.

* * * * 

	Greil groggily began to open his eyes, wincing as the bright 
sunlight of a summer afternoon peeked between his eyelids.  The smell of 
freshly cut grass permeated the air.  Everything was warmth, everything 
was good...
	He came to violently, puking his guts out -- for the second time 
in an hour.  The bright, pleasant light in his dream was replaced by the 
sputtering, malignant flames which seemed to encircle him, the pleasant 
fragrance cruelly supplanted by the reek of burning polymers and... flesh?
	Just ahead lay a vaguely humanoid shape, sprawled out by the side 
of the road.  It was some sort of armored suit.  Vague memories of 
suddenly flying off the bike, carried by elegant, merciful, metallic 
hands, at horrendous speed came back to him, followed shortly by the reason 
for his flight..
	To his immediate right, the ground erupted, showering him with 
earth and shrapnel.  The now all-too-familiar stink of fear permeated his 
nose.  The thing was approaching, coming in for the kill.  Wailing in 
pain, Greil pushed himself off the ground.  His ribs grating in places 
they shouldn't have, his left arm not moving at all normally.  
Coughing violently, he tasted the coppery bile of his own blood.  This, he 
thought, was the taste of death.  
	Staggering over to the fallen metallic form of his mysterious 
benefactor, Greil checked the now-exposed hand of the pilot for vital 
signs.  Female, he noted.  Very interesting.  A small, but definite, wave 
of relief washed over him as he detected an ever-so-faint pulse.  The 
thought of yet a third death, the death of a woman, seemed, above 
all, totally intolerable this eveneing.  Pushing the wrecked helmet out of 
the way, he rolled the fighter into a somewhat more comfortable position.  
She was a fine featured woman, with short black hair.  She seemed somehow 
familiar...
	Greil sensed a malevolent presence behind him.  As he turned, he 
was overtaken with an amazing calm.  Here, some ten feet away, stood the 
metallic foe who, so mysteriously, seemed hell-bent on killing him.  A 
single glowing red eye survived, seemingly glaring at him.  Ripples of 
carbon-composite sinew seemed to ripple accross the thing's 
superstructure.  It really seemed to _want_ to kill him.  Maybe it was 
the drugs, but Greil could have sworn that the damned thing was really going 
to enjoy his death.  Here he was, alone, and he was going to die -- 
just like he'd always thought he would.  The greatest tragedy wasn't the 
loss of his own life, but rather the loss of the enjoyment of the satisfaction
of having actually predicted something correctly for once..
	The thing raised its arm, firing some sort of flechette ... 
aiming not at Greil, but at his fallen companion.  He winced in 
surprise, and revulsion as the projectiles ripped through her thigh 
armor.  As blood welled out of the wound, eerily reflecting the fires and 
streetlights, her unconsciousness was probably all that saved her from 
the maddening pain.  He knew now, for sure, that this thing was really 
fucking evil.  It didn't _need_ to hurt her more.  It _knew_ that it would 
bother Greil -- and it was bothering him, eating him up from the inside.  
The feeling of powerlessness was horrendously unbearable.  Greil tried to 
shield the woman from the next barrage, but the thing simply recalibrated,
hitting her in the right chest.  It was going to slowly kill her while 
Greil watched.
	Searching through the pockets of his trenchcoat for a weapon, ANY 
weapon -- even a fucking pencil, Greil turned up nothing but some drugs 
and a wad of cash.  With a hollow chuckle, he briefly considered bribing 
it, or maybe throwing this damned metal attache at it.  Maybe he could 
get it stoned, or something...
	All of a sudden, an idea germinated in his head.  He was dead -- 
that much was abundantly clear.  Nothing could reasonably save him 
from this damned monstrosity, and the likelihood of running away 
was nil.  Perhaps, he thought, he could at least go out with a bang.  The 
NIGHT he was carrying was designed to extract the final bit of 
killing potential from a man who was all but dead from some horrific 
plague.  This hell-spawned creation was definitely a plague, NIGHT was the 
ultimate in final combat drugs, and this was final combat.
	Wincing, he drove a fistful of the NIGHT single-use E-Z syringes 
into his neck.  It immediately felt as if his entire circulatory system 
were on fire.  He tried to scream, but found himself utterly paralyzed.  The 
crimson fire of the thing's eyes seemed to magnify, gaining resolution 
and clarity, until they became a crystalline lattice encompassing the 
whole world.  A black-purple haze gracefully descended over all that he 
surveyed.  A terrible, exhilirating strength flowed through his battered 
body.  Ribs grated, and broken bones shifted sickeningly ... just sounds 
now.  He was another machine, designed and built just to destroy this 
goddamned abomination.  Greil's conscious mind was naught but an abstract 
observer now, watching things from the end of dark tunnel -- a tunnel peering 
down at his own body.  A vague sense of sadness came, and passed, as even 
this faint connection with his previous life faded out, and away, on 
gossamer wings.

* * * * * 

	Sylia's comm unit reverberated with Nene's scream.  Almost 
involuntarily, she whipped around -- to find a second mystery boomer 
bludgeoning Nene.  Where had it come from?  Why hadn't they detected this 
additional presence?  These questions flashed through her mind as she 
barked an order to Priss to assist Nene.  Pushing a nagging sense of 
dread out of her mind, she turned back toward Linna's fallen hardsuit.  
Sylia gasped in horror as she realized that this boomer appeared to be 
firing _past_ its target, slowly maiming Linna's prone form.  The target 
was trying to shield Linna with his own body, but to no avail.  Things 
were going wrong.  This was the nightmare scenario for quick 
deployment -- in a position of ambush, outgunned and tactically 
isolated.  Her mind worked through a dozen strategic possibilities, 
eliminating all of them.  Any way she figured it, the data was 
insufficient to support a conclusion that the situation was anything 
but a losing one.
	Sylia diverted her attention briefly, firing a volley of rail-gun 
spikes at the first boomer's exposed back, planting three, yielding a small 
trickle of nutrient fluid, distracting it from its original target 
and Linna.  She dodged, as the boomer turned toward her with a salvo of 
some sort of rapid-fire charged particle beam. 	As Sylia raised her weapon 
to fire again, she paused. 
	Somehow the hunter had become the hunted -- the boomer's target had 
crossed some ten feet, seemingly in the blink of an eye, and was 
clinging to the back of the boomer -- attempting to rip its head off with 
his bare hands.  As she zoomed the hardsuit's enhanced optics, she gaped 
at the paroxysm of death on his face.  Blood seeped freely from his nose and 
mouth, and his eyes bulged from his head.  The boomer struggled 
to remove its unwelcome passenger, crushing his arm and yielding a geyser 
of bright-red blood.  Still, the target tenaciously clung to boomer -- 
savagely clubbing it with some wreckage from Linna's hardsuit.  Random energy 
bolts flew out, as the boomer attempted to free itself ... somehow, the 
man had managed to utterly disable, and dismantle, the boomer's sensor 
array.  
	Blind and deaf, the boomer cast about frantically, at one point 
utterly crushing its passengers left leg -- yielding yet another spray of 
blood.  Finally, the shot Sylia had been waiting for manifested.  Her 
targeting system had pinpointed a crack in the boomer's chest armor, 
probably induced by Priss' missile barrage earlier.  Nimbly dancing her 
way toward the boomer, Sylia extended her monomolecular-reinforced blade, 
grunting in almost erotic satisfaction as she drove it deeply into the 
boomer's most intimate workings.
	Bounding backwards, Sylia gasped in shock as she realized that the 
man was _still_ bludgeoning the boomer, literally with the bloody stump of 
one of his arms.  Bounding carefully over, she pulled him off the boomer.
	"It's over -- it's dead!" she exclaimed.
	Her exclamation was immediately answered with a change in targets. 
The man, rather feebly, began attacking Sylia, smashing her 
suit with his bloody, broken fists.  Realizing that he was not in control 
of his facilities, she gently but firmly clubbed him on the back of the 
head ... knocking him unconscious.  
	"Mackie -- get down here NOW ... emergency extraction," she 
shouted as she checked Linna's flagging vital signs.  
	Turning to check on Priss and Nene, she found two truly taxed 
Knight Sabers facing a largely, and distressingly, unharmed boomer.  The 
women were holding their own, she noted, but just barely.  It was only a 
matter of time before they ran out of ammunition ... or made a mistake.  
Tactically, if the Knight Sabers did not show a clear advantage within 
five minutes of the onset of the fight, they were in serious danger of 
losing.  Twenty minutes more or less was an assurance of at least one 
serious casualty, even under mostly optimal conditions.  It had only been 
ten minutes, and they had one Knight Saber down, one victim to extract, 
seriously depleted ammunition and energy stores, and a boomer who seemed 
mostly unimpressed with their current payload of munitions.  The upshot 
of all of this was that it was time for a strategic retreat. 
	"Prepare for emergency extraction," she called out grudgingly.
	To Sylia's utter surprise, and relief, even Priss immediately 
disengaged ... fleeing from the boomer's attack, and prepared to leave.  
	Mackie, thankfully, was right on time.  Priss gently cradled Linna's 
hardsuited body, as Sylia carried the mystery man up to the waiting KnightWing.  
Her HUD informed her that the Boomer was 11.4 seconds behind, and accelerating.
	As soon as they were aboard, Sylia called out "Mackie -- proceed 
with contingency plan A12-S.B."
	"Roger, sis," he responded.
	The slowly rising boomer barely dodged a massive metal canister 
plummeting toward it.  On the visual display of the rapidly accelerating 
KnightWing, Sylia watched the white flash of a target-directed
fuel-air device punctuated the otherwise calm of the MegaTokyo dawn, 
incinerating everything within a 400 meter radius.  She sighed as a 
second, smaller, set of explosions marked the self-destruct mechanisms of 
the boomers.  Nodding in approval as Mackie announced that the wounded 
had been stabilized, Sylia Stingray sank back, still in her hardsuit, in 
utter exhaustion onto a waiting cot.

***** End, part One.

	Author's afterword:
	
	Well, that's that.  Our (anti?)hero Greil has been introduced to 
the KnightSabers and, at to some degree, the tone of the story has been 
set.  How much is left of either Greil- or Linna- remains to be seen.  
I guess this is as close as I come to creating a cliffhanger.  

	I didn't spend an awfully long time on the technical issues.  
There are, for instance, at least four drug names that I more or less 
mangled from present substances.  Suggestions from any arm-chair 
biochemists would be appreciated.  

	If you've read this far, thanks.  It takes a good deal of effort to 
perservere through someone else's first draft.  I'd like to hear your 
comments -- send 'em all to clewis@harry.sar.usf.edu.  More will (hopefully) 
follow.

CHL, 10/20/95.