BubbleGum Cross

                                           Metal Heart - Part 7

                                         (c) 1996 by Andy Skuse
                                          askuse@execulink.com 

                 Based on characters copyrighted by Youmex, AIC, Artmic


Part 7 - Field Test

     Nene broke the tense silence that had fallen on the interior of the Knight
Saber's van, as they completed their final preparations,"Sylia, I've finished
the remote scan of the base. There's something really strange about these
boomers, if that's what they are." 
     Macky chimed in, "She's right Sis. I'm not seeing anything in Nene's
scans that indicate there are boomers inside that building."
     Sylia shifted slightly in her hard-suit, its snugness feeling strangely
unfamiliar as she moved to the doorway, " Run another check on the data
and fill me in as we go. We've kept those hostages waiting long enough.
Knight Sabers- it's show time."

                                                           ****

    Blackie pocketed his keys and stared into the gloom of his darkened
kitchen. Upon closing the front door, his hand reached for the light panel
beside the door-frame and flicked it on. His heart fell as he entered the front
room and spotted the vacant couch. A quick scan of the room revealed that
his guest was gone. He stood silently in the middle of the room for a
moment, remembering the sound of her voice. His gaze fell on the small
wooden chair beside the couch and a scrap of white paper that lay in the
center of it. Blackie snatched up the paper and flipped it over. The words
on the paper suddenly began to spin around in his mind, clashing with the
vivid images of her face, that would not fade. He sat down heavily on the
couch and held his head in his hands, trying to convince himself that she
wouldn't lie. Not her! Maybe she was a bit withdrawn sometimes, but she
was like him. She wouldn't lie! She was *just* like him. Wasn't she?
    He looked up slowly, his ears suddenly picking up a faint noise. The tiny
TV at the foot of the couch had been left on and the images on the screen
slowly drew Blackie's attention from thoughts of his guest's disappearance.
A shaky, helicopter-mounted, video camera was transmitting live pictures
of a floodlit building, its parking lot filled with AD Police and military
vehicles. Blackie reached for the volume and listened intently as the
on-scene reporter finished interviewing an important looking police officer
and began a recap of the crisis at the Matsumi Military Base. As he listened
to the reporter's account, his eyes narrowed when he spotted the Knight
Sabers armored forms, as they embarked from a dark blue van and
approached the building. Their figures cut in front of the floodlights at the
building's edge, casting four distended shadows on the buildings front wall.
The helicopter's camera suddenly zoomed out as the Knight Sabers shot into
the night sky, disappearing for a moment, and then zoomed in again to show
the four figures kneeling around a skylight on the building's roof. The view
then switched back to the reporter and then to a slow pan of the jammed
parking lot.
     Blackie turned off the TV and sat still for a few minutes, staring up at the
large, Japanese tapestry  that almost completely covered the wall facing
him. Every so often, his face would contort and his eyes would narrow to
little more than slits, while his thoughts would suddenly voice themselves.
Barely rising above a whisper, the words that escaped his lips were sharp,
quick and forceful, rising and falling in pitch, as if engaging their creator in
some sort of silent debate.
     Looking once more at the ancient setting depicted on the tapestry, he
focused on the individual figures that dotted the embroidered landscape. A
group of colorfully armored samurai warriors on horse-back charged
headlong into a phalanx of spear-wielding infantry while samurai on the
ground stood toe-to-toe with would-be opponents, their katanas raised
behind their heads in an awkward sideways manner. At each end of the
tapestry, a shogun sat upon an ornate, wooden throne, perched high above
the battle-field on a hill. The shogun's faces were stern and focused, almost
robotic in their concentration. Behind each throne, colorful banners flew in
the wind, upon them the symbols of each armies clan. At the end of the
wall-hanging closest to the window, the name Minamoto flew proudly
while at the other, the kanji symbols trumpeted the Taira clan's lineage.
Blackie stared hard at the figures, speaking softly to himself until his
whispers finally diminished to silence.
     Abruptly he rose, and crossed the room in a quick even stride. He swung
the tapestry back  carefully, and heaved on the inset brass ring attached to
the battered closet door. After pausing to look into the pitch black tunnel
ahead of him, he disappeared into its murk.

                                                             ****

     In the mountain laboratory, high above the unfolding scenario at the
Matsumi military base, Dr. Leomund Sholtan finished his last set of
preliminary tests. Staring up at the glowing multi-vision TV screens in the
dim confines of the main operations room, Leomund blinked a few times,
and then closed his eyes tightly. Slowly, the pain surged in his strained eyes
and then ebbed away, a few drops of salty moisture forming at the corners
of his eyelids. He wiped them away with the edge of his hand and then
looked back up at the screens. The image of four, tall, human figures
standing stoically in a large hall, surrounded on all four sides by military
personnel crouched against the four walls, flickered erratically. Static and
snowy interference distorted the image, combining with the silence in the
room to create a haunting view. 'Well at least the alias modifiers are
functioning stably,' he thought to himself. If those ever failed the whole
project would be a disaster. Leomund quietly urged a frustrated looking
technician to boost the amplitude of the video signal coming from the
military bases's digital link. The technician threw up his hands and then
returned to his work on a wiring panel at the end of a large console.
     Leomund cursed at the man's back and turned sharply on his heels.
     Leaving the control room he crossed the corridor and shoved hard on his
office door. The vidphone's console was blinking for attention as he sat
down in his chair to rest. He grabbed the handset and stabbed at the
illuminated button.
     "Leomund, the video signal from the base is not what I had hoped for.
You know that the signal is going to have to improve if I am to make my
demands clearly."
     Leomund listened to the anonymous investor's confident tones and
fumbled for a reply, "Sir, we're doing all we can at this end. I assure you
that nothing will interfere with your connection to the base. We await your
signal for the video lockout."
     The voice on the other end of the phone suddenly grew very cold,
"Leomund, I haven't asked for much, have I? Human error is not acceptable
at this stage. Please inspire your people to improve the image clarity or I
may be forced to come up there myself. And that's not something that you
want to happen, is it?"
     Leomund hesitated, as he digested the implications of the investor's
threat.
     "No Sir. We'll repair it right away sir."
     "That's better. Lockout will begin in five minutes."
     "Very well sir."
     "<click>"
     Leomund set the handset back down and settled back into his chair for a moment, listening to his heart pound in his ears. It was becoming apparent
that the project had a few bugs. He only hoped that they didn't show up
during the field test or he suspected that he might actually meet his unseen
benefactor. And that meeting he felt sure, would not be one that he would
ever get to talk about with any of his colleagues. Ever.

                                                          ****

     Priss' eyes strained to cut through the blackness for a moment, as she
stared down into the dusty skylight to the main hall below her. Suddenly her
night-vision display cut in, transforming the view below to a shimmering
green arena. She immediately spotted the four boomers, standing stock-still
in the center of the room, unmoving, and unaware of their presence. Until someone could prove to her different, she would continue to think of them
as boomers. It would make it a lot easier to do her job.
     Sylia's whispering voice came through everyone's intercom abruptly,
causing the other members to start, "Macky, have you confirmed Nene's
earlier opp status check?"
     Macky's distorted voice replied, "Sis, it's still coming back the same.
Everything we send at them bounces back as flesh and blood. I've already
run a wide diagnostic of the system and it's telling me everything's fine. The
good news is, I've got a videolink to the base's security channel. Nothing
much to report though. It's not a very strong signal." 
    Sylia gently sighed, the sound being carried to her companions ears
through the intercom. 
    "What are we waiting for?", Priss hissed, causing her still throbbing head
to pound a little more, "We just drop in and take 'em out!  They won't know
what hit 'em!"

     In the mountain laboratory's control room, a stony voice emanated from
the loud-speaker system, interrupting  the silence.
    "Video lockout in three minutes."

     Leon shifted uneasily inside the cramped interior of the military's video
truck, jockeying for a better view of the monitor bank. He didn't think he
would feel this helpless. His gut gnawed at him, telling him he was right
about his theory. Linna's questioning tones flashed through his mind,
attacking his instinct and boosting his self-doubt. 'Damn! If only I had some
proof,' he thought.
     Glancing at the monitor in the bottom left hand corner of the grid, he
spotted a shadow he hadn't noticed before. Inching forward through the
hushed group of a dozen or so soldiers, he strained his eyes to pick out
details of the shadow. Small, circular in shape with an oblong shadow
stemming from its edge. His eyes suddenly widened, as the shadow's source
became recognizable. At the edge of the camera's field of view, lying face
up, in full view of the other hostages, was the severed, human head of the
dead hostage.

     Sylia's helmet swung up sharply to face Priss, "It's not that simple! This
is a trap if I've ever seen one, and we don't need any crazy  stunts right
now!"
     Nene interjected, "Then what are we going to do? Who know's if they'll
get impatient and decide to kill another hostage!"
    "Relax Nene. That won't happen. Look- both the military and the police
have tried negotiating with them, and from what the general told me, that
term isn't even in their vocabulary. They've killed one hostage, but that was
some time ago. It's our job to see if we can first get them to release the rest
of the hostages, and then we take them out. Does everyone understand?"
     Priss let an exasperated sigh escape, "Oh, right! So we drop down in
there and ask them to politely let the hostages go! They'll cut us to pieces!"
     "No they won't. They've been waiting for us to show up here. It's the
Knight Sabers they really want."
     Two helmets suddenly swung over to stare at Sylia. Linna kept staring
down through the skylight.
     Priss spoke first, "How the hell- ?"
     Sylia's hand gesture cut her off, "It doesn't matter now. But it would be
wise to keep your head up this time Priss. We all know by now that this is
not a routine boomer retirement." As the word 'retirement' rolled off her
tongue, the whispers she thought she'd heard earlier came to mind and then
vanished, shoved out by the matter at hand.
     "Enough discussion. Remember to use your pitch jets so we don't land on
top of them. Ready? We go in on my mark."
     The four figures on the rooftop rose to their feet and readied themselves
to descend. Sylia took one last look at the positions of the four 'boomers',
some fifteen feet below.
     "Now!"
     Throughout the main hall, a single, short, high-pitched whistle pierced
the silence, followed immediately  by the ear-splitting din of descending
shards of glass. Sylia hit the ground hard, but her suit absorbed the majority
of the impact and she found herself standing on her feet. With a lightning fast
movement, her right arm swung upwards as she locked her visor's sights on
one of the four figures in the center of the room. Tiny crystals of glass
continued to descend from the shattered skylight, glittering like emeralds in
her visor's green, night-vision display. Amid the shower of glass, the four
silhouetted figures remained motionless.
    "Targets locked!", came a trio of voices over the intercom. Sylia took a
quick breath, visually checked her target's still motionless form, and then
switched her intercom over to speaker mode.
     "Stay right where you are. We know what you want. Let these people go
first and then we'll talk."

     "Video lockout in two minutes."

     The figure in Sylia's sights suddenly raised its arm, the motion itself a
sharp, almost imperceptible jerk. Her suit systems cried out in alarm,
sending commands to its power-core for a build-up. Amazingly, none of her
companions fired, but the reason quickly became clear. The figure was
pointing at the nearest hallway that connected to the building's front exit.
Sylia felt her own heartbeat pound, the strangeness of these cybernetic
creations rekindling an almost forgotten hatred inside her. Her opponents
were living up to her fears.
    Linna watched in surprise from her vantage point across the room as the
hostages hesitated to rise, not knowing of their fear of their captor's horrible
reprisal, demonstrated earlier that night. 
    Slowly though, they stood, testing even the patience of the Knight Saber's
leader. "Let's go! Move it!", Sylia commanded through her suit's speaker.
The hostages stared at her with widened eyes and then began to accelerate
their flight. Some dared to look back for a glance at their liberators, while
most just shuffled out, exhilarating that they would not share the fate of their beheaded co-worker. 
    Nene cried out suddenly, "Sylia! I'm detecting some kind of power surge.
It's definitely coming from the-  whatever they are!"
     Priss flexed her knees and tensed her right arm ,"Let's rock!"
     Sylia turned back to face her opponent, just as it finished tapping a few
delicate commands into a keypad attached to its arm, "Wait Priss! The
hostages aren't all out yet and we're in a cross-fire!"
     No sooner had her words left her lips, then the dark room erupted into a
wash of blue light. Each Knight Saber reached up to cover her eyes as their
visor's NV displays suddenly flared into a blinding mask of bright green.

     "Video lockout commencing."

     Leon suddenly pushed forward through the stunned group of soldiers to
reach the control desk,"Whaddya mean you've lost the video!!? Get it back
pronto, or you'll be back in boot camp!!"
     The soldier wrestled with the video truck's controls while he wondered
how the AD Police detective could make good on his threat. The monitor
bank continued to defy his frantic efforts, the display still a grid of
static-filled squares. 
     Leon slammed his fist on the edge of the console and then quickly turned
to shove his way back to the truck's exit. As soon as he emerged, his eyes
locked on the dark, blue utility van on the edge of the parking lot. To his
left, a line of soldier's and police officers were helping the emerging
hostages to a waiting bus at the back of the lot. To his right the general stood with his arms folded across his chest and a slight smile on his face as
he watched the hostages board the bus. 'You won't be smiling for too long,'
Leon thought to himself, 'When you remember how much you owe somebody for pulling this off.'
     Leon began to walk towards the blue van, picking up his pace as he
neared the edge of the parking lot.
     Macky jumped in his seat as several loud thumps woke him from his
own intense strugglewith the lost video feed. On the monitor marked,
"EXTERNAL - REAR", a figure wearing dark sunglasses stood tapping his
foot impatiently on the pavement. He slid the back open to reveal Leon's
smiling face, "Got room for one more?"
     Macky sighed and motioned Leon to enter.
     Leon climbed the metal steps and stole a quick glance back at where the
smiling general still stood, "This ain't over yet you son-of-a-bitch."
     The blue metal door slid shut firmly, followed by a metallic 'click'.

End of Part 7
********************************
BG Cross
The Dark Traveller
askuse@execulink.com
Co-Maintainer of the Fanfic ML FAQ
********************************