fought to regain her composure.
It took several minutes, and a couple more cups of tea
before she could finally stop blushing as some stray though
provoked memories of the awkward ... situation she'd walked
in on. For a brief moment, she was even able to see the
slightest trace of humour in what had happened.
Unfortunately, it dissolved as her mind morbidly returned to
what the consequences of the predicament she'd discovered
were going to be.
Sylia stood and walked over to the bay window of her
apartment, gazing out into the night. With a weary,
depressed sigh, she leaned against the thick pane of glass,
resting her forehead on the cool, slick surface as morose
expression settled over her face. She hoped Nene was going
to be strong enough to deal with what she was about to
encounter.
"There's just never an easy way out of these things
anymore, is there?" she murmured to herself.
THE NEXT DAY ....
"Ow!! SHIT!!" Bert swore, leaping back from the open
engine cowling of the motoroid he was working on. A few
more choice expletives escaped him as he hopped around a
bit, gripping his right wrist in severe pain. After a
moment or so, feeling returned to his hand, and he was able
to cautiously inspect his fingers for damage, sighing in
relief when he found none. Glowering at the innocent-
looking mech, he flexed his hand and fingers just to make
doubly sure that mashing them between the mech's armour
plating and the wrench he'd been using hadn't caused any
invisible damage.
"Goddamn machine hates me," he muttered blackly to
himself as he came back over to it. Maybe he was being
paranoid, but since starting on this particular motoroid,
he'd accumulated more bangs and scrapes than usual; part of
his mind was morbidly sure that some evil presence had
invaded the machine and was trying to get him for something.
Glancing around the vehicle garage for a moment, he sighed
and retrieved his wrench from where it had dropped.
It took another couple of minutes to finish putting the
cowling back into place, but it went without mishap.
Tossing the tool into the nearby toolbox, he wiped his hands
on a rag, and tossed that into the box as well. With one
last inimical glance at the blue-enameled motoroid, he
headed for the elevator from the lower basement level
housing the vehicle garage; he'd clean up his tools later.
The ride to the upper basement level went quickly
enough, and soon he was in the shop, casting about aimlessly
for something to do. After ten minutes of shuffling through
some plans and blueprints, he shoved them aside disgustedly;
he just couldn't concentrate long enough to get up any
interest in anything at the moment.
He paced around the shop's worktables for a few more
minutes, hands clasped behind his back. He knew why he was
agitated and couldn't stay focused: he was still trying to
find some way to gently tell Nene about the relationship
between Priss and himself. There was no way to avoid it, he
realized despairingly, even though the truth might smash
whatever emotional recovery she'd made. One way or the
other, she had to know the truth.
Sighing and bracing himself, Bert walked over to the
phone, and started to reach out for the receiver. He nearly
jumped out of his skin when the phone shrieked as his hand
touched it. Getting his heart back into his chest, Bert
picked up the phone as it started to ring again.
"Hello?"
"Um, hi there," a nervous-sounding Nene replied. "I
figured I'd find you there."
"Nene! Um, hi! I, uh, how're you doing?" he stammered,
as a curious mix of emotion washed through him. It was
partly elation at hearing her voice again, but the rest was
a fresh wave of pained sorrow at what he was going to have
to tell her.
"I'm okay, I guess," she replied, sounding as
uncomfortable as he knew he himself was. "Are you going to
be busy tonight?" she asked hesitantly. "I'm at work right
now, but there's some things I think we should talk
about...." Her voice trailed off in uncertainty for a
moment.
"I can meet you somewhere after work," he suggested
quietly. "The coffee shop down the street?"
"That'd be fine," she agreed quickly. "I'm off-shift
at 6:00, so I'll meet you there for 6:30, okay?"
"I'll be there," he promised. Nene thanked him in a
subdued-sounding voice, and quickly hung up. He stared at
the phone receiver in his hand for a moment or so longer,
then slowly replaced it in its hook. Glancing at the clock,
he left the shop, his face reflecting some of the inner
gloom he was toiling under.
****
Sylia glanced up from the paperwork spread in front of
her as the phone rang. Shoving a small stack of store
receipts out of the way, she excavated the phone from under
its concealing pile of paper. Pressing a switch to ensure
that the line was secure, she picked up the receiver.
"Good afternoon, Sylia," Fargo's voice greeted her.
"Are you busy tonight?"
"Not particularly," she replied evenly. "Did you have
something in particular in mind?"
"I've gotten a fairly lucrative contract offer from a
client," the fixer replied. "I thought maybe we could meet
to discuss it." Sylia started to reply affirmatively, when
Fargo added, "How does dinner at eight sound?"
Brown eyes narrowed as she glanced irritably at the
phone unit, as if it was to blame for Fargo's proposal; the
man was still trying the occasional not-so-subtle romantic
hint that he was interested in getting to know her better.
She just wasn't interested in him, not in that way, and
couldn't seem to drill that fact into his head. Idly, she
wondered if showing up in her hardsuit and belting him would
solve the problem. I'm starting to think like Priss, she
noted to herself with a sudden smirk; she could just hear
Priss suggesting that she do exactly that.
"I'll meet you at the usual time, in our usual place,"
she replied coolly. "I have got other concerns to take care
of, as you know."
"All right," Fargo sighed. "It was worth a try,
anyway."
"Good-bye." Sylia hung up the phone, sighing in
exasperation and shaking her head in bemusement. Clearing
her mind of the unwanted thoughts distracting her, she
returned to the task at hand, and started poring over the
documentation in front of her.
****
Nene wiped nervously at her mouth with a napkin,
placing it next to her crumb-littered plate. She took a
quick sip from her cup of coffee as she glanced nervously
around the small cafe, unable to calm down. It was fairly
quiet and empty, since most of the regular patrons were at
home around this time of the evening. She and Bert had used
it as a quiet meeting place several times before.... She bit
her lip and quickly wrenched her mind from the thoughts of
happier times, as all they did at the moment was bring her
close a tearful breakdown. She'd managed to pull herself
together a lot lately, but she was still recovering.
The young red-headed ADP officer loosened her tie a
bit; having come straight from the station when her shift
had ended, she was still in uniform. She felt tired and
drained from the long day, but at the same time she was so
edgy from what she had to do, she couldn't relax.
She glanced anxiously at the clock again, noting that
she had about ten more minutes before Bert was supposed to
show up. She tried mentally rehearsing what she wanted to
say to him, but each time she kept having to stop as a fresh
bout of combined anxiety and depression threatened to break
free. She took a quick gulp of her coffee, and ordered a
refill, skipping the chocolate donut this time.
Sitting back in her seat, the despondent young woman
stared at her mug, idly spinning it around in its place on
the table top. She hadn't yet heard Sylia's final decision
on her fate as a Knight Saber yet, but a portion of the
punishment for her actions was that she had to apologize to
Bert for what she'd done to him in crashing his systems.
That was the least he deserved, but Sylia had left it up to
her to arrange the meeting and carry it out.
Nene had to admit to herself that a great deal of her
trepidation was fear. Fear of what his reaction would be to
finding out she'd been responsible for nearly killing him,
fear he'd storm out of the caf‚ without giving her a chance
to explain. Fear of a lot of things.
Including the fear that their relationship was beyond
salvage now.
Nene took a huge gulp of her coffee to ease the
soreness in her throat that sprang up at that thought,
wishing she could banish it from her mind. It was a futile
wish though; with everything that happened, it didn't look
like there was much left to rebuild. And if he was dating
Priss now... She wiped irritably at her eyes.
The door to the donut shop banged open. As Nene looked
up towards the noise, a familiar tall figure wearing a long,
dark coat stepped into the small caf‚, sweeping off his hat
and running a hand through his perpetually messy red hair.
Greenish-brown eyes met hers across the room, and he started
walking towards her.
"Uh... hi," she greeted him hesitantly, giving him a
tremulous smile as she looked up at him. He smiled back
easily enough, but she could see a pained defensiveness in
his eyes.
"Hi," Bert replied quietly, glancing at the approaching
waitress. "Can I order you anything?"
"I'm fine, thanks." He nodded, and ordered a coffee
for himself. Sitting down across from her, he sipped at his
drink for a moment.
"It's nice to see you again," he told her hesitantly.
"You look great."
"Thanks. It's nice seeing you again too," she replied,
wishing she could ignore the pain that now seemed to be
filling her. He hadn't said anything to indicate his state
of mind, but somehow she could sense that a door that had
once been open to her was now closed. An uncomfortable
silence fell across the table.
As she sat watching him stare into his coffee cup, she
noted that despite the uncomfortable situation, he looked
more relaxed; much of the mental strain he'd been under
before appeared to have eased. If it wasn't for the fact
that his expression seemed to be more suited to a funeral,
she'd have said he looked like his old self, at least on the
outside.
"I've...I've got something I have to tell you," she
spoke up, cracking the brittle silence. "I ... I really
don't know how to say it..." She faltered as his gaze lifted
to hers, her voice trailing off. There was understanding
and compassion in his glance, but he remained silent,
waiting.
"Do you remember our last training mission, when your
suit crashed?" she asked. He nodded wordlessly, his face
tightening a bit. She took a deep breath and braced
herself.
"Well, I...it...." She had to stop and take another
breath or two. Her hands were trembling a bit, and she
quickly took a drink from her cold coffee in an attempt to
ease the dryness of her mouth, and the soreness in her
throat. Bert waited quietly, his gaze on her face as he
stirred his coffee. Nene gathered herself and plunged
onward.
"I'm the reason your suit crashed," she blurted,
flushing in shame as she remembered transmitting the proper
codes to his suit, spurred on by feelings of angry hurt.
Bert froze in disbelief, staring at her.
"Pardon me?" he asked softly. "What did you say?"
"I ... jammed your suit computer and made the control
programs crash, and that's why you smashed into those roof
beams," the slender red-headed woman confessed, as tears
gathered in her bright green eyes and began to fall. She
grabbed a napkin and wiped at her face as she quietly cried.
"I'm .... I'm so sorry, I didn't want you to get hurt that
way, but I...." She made a despondent, helpless gesture,
bowing her head as her shoulders shook. Bert stared at the
crying woman for a few blank moments, stunned.
"Why?" he asked, clearing his throat in order to get
his voice back. "Why did you do it?" He tried to fight
down the glow of anger that was beginning to flare into life
at the back of his mind. She'd been the one responsible for
that nearly fatal suit failure?! How..?! Why..?!
"I was angry with you," she sobbed, trying to stem the
flow of tears from her eyes. Sniffling, she blew her nose on
the sodden napkin she was holding, and dug some extras from
the dispenser sitting off to the side. Blowing her nose
again, she tried to get herself back under control.
"Angry with me?!" he echoed. "What...." He had to
pause and take a huge gulp from his own mug. "What were you
so angry about that you had to try and kill me over it?!"
He immediately regretted the harsh abruptness of his words,
but it was too late to recall them.
"I told you I saw you with Priss a couple of days
before ... before it happened," she replied meekly,
sniffling a bit. "I....I just couldn't forget about it.
You've always been really close to her, and you always
seemed to go to her first. I...thought you were dating
Priss behind my back, and I wanted to get back at you."
A long silence followed her remark, as Bert sat
silently wrestling with the feelings this new information
had roused in him. On the one hand there was a towering
anger over finding out what Nene had done to him from a
misperception born out of jealousy. At the same time, part
of him could see that she was truly sorry for having done
it. He wavered for a moment, caught in uncertainty as
conflicting impulses warred within him. Nene sat looking
pale, but she'd managed to collect herself and stop crying.
"Nene," he finally rasped, breaking a minutes-long
silence, "you know I wouldn't do that to anyone, least of
all to you. I told you I wasn't dating Priss, and that was
the honest truth."
"I...I know that, now," she said in a small voice. "B-
b-but it was easier to blame you for everything that went
wrong than try to think of a way to solve things. I'm ...
sorry." She grabbed another napkin and blew her nose again.
"It's always easier to blame someone else," he replied
wearily, rubbing his forehead and closing his eyes. "I
should've been more up front with you when we started going
out; maybe then we wouldn't have messed things up this way."
He smiled sadly as he opened his eyes to look at her.
"There's no real way to separate the blame anymore for
what's happened to us, but I'm sorry too. For a lot of
things." He lapsed into brooding silence, staring moodily
at the table top.
"You said you weren't dating Priss earlier," Nene noted
in a small voice. "Are you dating her now?" He was unable
to control the slow flush that started creeping up his neck
to his face. Yes, he'd wanted to tell her about Priss and
himself, but not this way! He'd wanted some time to ease
into telling her; instead, she'd just blown his fragile
plans into oblivion with one quavering question. He
desperately tried to find a gentle way to answer her, some
way to ease the impact the truth was going to have on her.
"You are seeing her, aren't you?" Nene's voice turned
choked, and tears started to stream down her cheeks again.
A sharp pain bit into his heart at the look on her face.
"Nene, I wasn't at the time, I swear," he told her, his
tone pleading with her for belief. "But I.... since we
stopped seeing each other, I thought it was over between us,
especially after the...accident."
"How long have you been seeing her?"
"About a week," he replied, shifting around in his
seat. "It started just after her last concert."
"Do you love her?" The faint, plaintive question tore
at him, threatening to undermine what little emotional
control he still possessed.
"I think so," he answered quietly, feeling a new stab
of pain at the way her face fell at his answer.
"What....what about me? Do you still love me?"
"Of course I do," he replied, again squirming
uncomfortably in his seat. "Nene, I still love you, in a
lot of ways, but, I ... it's not...."
"But not the way you love Priss," she said in a small
voice. He nodded unhappily.
A very thick silence fell for a few minutes, broken
only by the sound of the young red-haired woman across from
him sniffling and sobbing occasionally. Bert sat there,
wishing desperately that there was something he could do to
ease her distress, but there wasn't. The days when he could
gather her up in a hug and comfort her were dead and buried
now. He sat there, mentally damning himself over and over
again while she gradually pulled her composure back
together.
"You certainly didn't take long to find someone else,"
she noted, wiping her eyes on her uniform sleeve. She was
unable to keep some of the hurt out of her voice, and he
flinched from the unvoiced accusation.
"Nene, I admit I've made a lot of mistakes," he
replied, sighing miserably, "we both have, but I swear on my
honour that I was not seeing anybody else when I was with
you." He looked into her eyes, trying to let her see the
sincerity in his own gaze. "We split up over a month ago,"
he told her, "and I finally decided that I had just had to
get on with my life. You have to try and do the same," he
finished softly. "There's just no way around it."
"That's easy for you to say," she retorted bitterly,
angrily wiping again at her face with her sleeve.
"Nene, please," he said painfully. "It's not easy to
say, much less do. I'm not making light of this; I know how
much it hurts, believe me, but...it just has to be that way.
We can't go back to the way thing were; we've both changed
too much for that." He scrubbed at his own eyes, which had
treacherously started watering on him. "We can't go back,
so we have to move forward instead."
"So where does that leave us?" she asked after a few
moments.
"I'd like to think we can still be friends," he replied
quietly, a wistful look on his face.
"I'll have to...to think about it for a while," she
said. Her lower lip trembled a bit. "And I think I need to
be alone for a while."
"All right, I understand," he told her. Standing
slowly, he put on his hat, and looked down at her. She
wasn't looking at him, but was staring blankly at the table,
picking absently at a napkin.
"Nene..." he started to say, "I'm...." His voice
trailed off for a moment as she looked up. In her eyes he
could see the internal anguish she was fighting against, and
it gave the knife of guilty feelings another twist in his
guts. "I'm sorry," he told her helplessly, feeling he had
to say something. Turning away from her, he walked over to
the counter and paid the bill. With one last glance at her,
he left the shop, shoulders slumping, and his hands buried
in his coat pockets.
Once he was out of sight, Nene finally allowed herself
to slump in her seat. Pillowing her head on her arms, she
cried for a long time.
****
"It's a simple, straightforward data acquisition,"
Fargo explained in a low voice as he slid a datadisk across
the table to Sylia. She regarded it thoughtfully, picking
it up and slipping it into a pocket of her purse. Her clear
gaze met Fargo's inquisitive one.
"If this is such a cut-and-dried operation, why is the
client willing to pay forty-five million?" she asked
quietly. "That seems to indicate something much more
serious than a mere gathering of information."
"The information is currently in the databanks of a
GENOM production facility," Fargo informed her. "You're
quite right that it's not simple; there are rumours that the
place is being used to produce combat boomers, and there
have been some curious industrial accidents at that place in
the last few weeks. So many in fact, that the government
just got a court-ordered inspection of the place. The
client, however, is legitimate. I've checked them out, and
they aren't a GENOM front company."
"What is the information they want retrieved?" Sylia
queried. Forty-five million yen represented a sizable chunk
of capital, capital that the Knight Sabers could certainly
use. She hadn't told anyone else in the team, but the
finances had begun to get a bit tight. Just the same, she
couldn't rid herself of a faint suspicion that it was just
too coincidental for a job to show up now, when they needed
it.
"Data on some robotics systems with some industrial
applications," Fargo shrugged. "At least, that's what they
told me. They claim the research was theirs to begin with,
but that somebody stole it from them before they could use
it and sold it to GENOM. The disk has the files
identified."
"All right then," Sylia sighed. It sounded plausible;
GENOM certainly used strong-arm tactics from time to time to
get what it wanted. Just the same, something was nagging
uneasily at the back of her mind. She squelched the worry,
and looked over at the rumpled blond fixer.
"Deposit half the fee as usual in the account," she
directed him, "and tell them they'll have their data in less
than a week."
"Already done," he smirked crookedly. "Have to
maintain my reputation for efficiency, after all." Leaning
back in his chair, he drained off the last of the drink
sitting in front of him. A faint smile pulled at Sylia's
lips as she stood, tucking her purse under her arm.
"Your reputation is secure," she assured him. "I'll
contact you when we've fulfilled our end of the contract."
Fargo nodded, and watched as the elegantly dressed, blue-
black haired woman left the dimly-lit barroom.
Sighing regretfully, he turned back to the bar and
ordered another beer.
THE NEXT DAY ....
Bert lay staring at the ceiling, sprawled on the couch
on his back, with one leg draped over the arm of the sofa,
and one arm dragging on the floor. A despondent expression
cloaked his features, and the dim lighting of the room added
to the overall air of depression. He didn't even stir when
someone knocked on the door.
The knock sounded again, louder and more insistent. It
percolated through the gloomy preoccupation filling his
mind, reluctantly drawing him back to reality. "Door's
open!" he called wearily, almost falling off the couch as he
shifted around and tried to sit up. Finally, he made it to
a sitting position. The door opened a few inches, and
Priss's head poked around the edge.
"Hey, are you all right?" she inquired, her voice
sounding anxious.
"Oh, just peachy," he responded sourly, leaning back
into the couch and letting his head drop back against the
cushions. "Something come up?"
"We had a dinner date after you were done at the range
today, remember?" she asked quietly, coming in and closing
the door She kicked off her boots and padded across the
carpeting to the couch. Shifting his feet out of the way,
she sat down beside him, facing him concernedly, with one
leg tucked under the other. "What happened?"
"Aw hell, I'm sorry," Bert slapped a hand over his
face, swearing at himself. "I clean forgot about it.
Shit!" He muttered a few more uncomplimentary words,
directed at himself and his faulty memory.
"Hey, stop that!" Priss admonished. Leaning forward,
she reached out and gently placed a hand on his arm. "Why
don't you just tell me what's the matter instead of swearing
at yourself?" she suggested softly. He sighed miserably,
lifting his head so that he could look at her. She looked
back at him, a quiet plea in her red-brown eyes.
"I'm sorry," he sighed again in apology. "I just....
it wasn't a very good day today."
"Why not?"
"I didn't sleep that well last night," he told her
dully. "Mostly because I couldn't stop thinking about Nene;
I gave her the bad news last night."
"Oh." Priss's expression became sympathetic, and she
shifted a bit closer to him, keeping her reassuring touch on
his arm. "How'd she take it?"
"About how you'd expect," he replied, pained memory
flashing in his eyes. "She was really hurt by it all, but
she managed to hold most of it in, while I was there
anyway." He rubbed at his face tiredly. "I tried to be as
...as kind as I could ... but I couldn't... help her the way
I wanted to, and it...hurt to watch her have to go through
that."
"And you felt guilty all night for having to do that to
her," she summarized compassionately. He nodded mutely.
"If I got more than a couple hours' worth of sleep,
it'd be a miracle," he confirmed. "And having to go to work
and be polite all day today didn't help things any. By the
end of the day, I didn't have the energy for anything, and I
was an emotional wreck besides. I couldn't even talk to
Sylia; I left her a message on her answering machine to let
her know that I'd told Nene about us." He smiled sadly,
reaching out and gently caressing her cheek. "Sorry I
ruined your evening."
"We can always eat later," she dismissed the matter
with an irritable gesture. "I just wanted to know if you
were okay."
"Well, I don't really feel up to much right now," he
sighed. "All I'd planned on was just sitting here quietly
and thinking for a while."
"Sounds good to me," she replied carelessly. She
crawled onto the couch, squeezing in between him and the
back of it. Snuggling closer, she put an arm around him.
"We can sit quietly together; I don't think you'd better be
alone at the moment."
"Thanks," he gave her a small, grateful smile, and
wrapped an arm around her. Silence dropped over the
apartment again. After a while, warmed by the comforting
feel of her body close to his, he dozed off, his head
dropping back onto the couch as his breathing slowed.
Priss smiled to herself, then settled herself more
comfortably and relaxed. Ten minutes later, she dozed off as
well, her head on his shoulder.
****
Sylia turned from her kitchen counter as hesitant
knocking came from the front door to the apartment. Wiping
her hands on a towel and tossing it onto the counter, she
walked across the kitchen, coming out into the small front
foyer of the apartment, and opened the door.
"Hi, Sylia," a subdued-looking Nene greeted her. "Mind
if I come in?"
"Not at all!" Sylia replied with a warm smile. She
thoughtfully appraised the younger woman as she stepped into
the room and took off her shoes; she'd seen Nene happier,
but she knew the reasons for that. The young ADP officer at
least looked like she was getting enough rest again, and the
clothes she was wearing, a pink blouse with a blue skirt,
looked fresh, so it was fairly safe to assume she was
holding together.
"Sorry if I'm too early for the meeting," Nene
hesitantly apologized, glancing worriedly at her as she
closed the apartment door. "I...I had something I wanted to
talk about, if you're not busy."
"Not at all," Sylia smiled reassuringly. "I just made
some tea, so we can have a drink while we talk. Go on in
and sit down." Nene nodded and went into the living room.
When Sylia emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray
with the teapot and some cups, Nene was already sitting on
the couch, a forlorn expression on her face. Setting the
tray down on the coffee table, she filled two cups and added
some milk and sugar, and slid one of the cups over to in
front of the silent red-head. After a moment's
consideration, Sylia sat next to her, rather than in her
customary easy chair.
"So, what did you want to talk to me about?" she gently
prompted.
"I... I did what you said," Nene replied, almost
inaudibly. "I apologized to Bert last night for crashing
his suit on him."
"How did he take it?" Sylia queried.
"I....I'm not sure," Nene admitted. "I could tell he
was upset, but he really didn't say a lot about it." She
hesitated a moment before adding, "Even after ...after I
told him why I was angry with him at the time." She lapsed
back into a depressed silence, picking up her teacup and
taking a drink of the steaming beverage.
"Nene? If he didn't say anything, then why are you
sitting there looking like you've lost everything?" Sylia
inquired gently when Nene's gaze lifted to meet hers. Her
hunch was confirmed when the younger woman's emerald-green
eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"He is seeing Priss now!!" she cried. "He ... he told
me last night...after...after I," she gulped, trying to keep
her voice steady, "after I asked him about it. He said he's
been seeing her for a week." The memory was too much for
her, and she broke down crying again.
"Oh, Nene, I'm so sorry." Sylia hesitated briefly,
then gently hugged the younger woman, trying to console her
somehow. She'd been dreading Nene's reaction to finding
about Bert and Priss, and her fears had proved to be true.
The red-haired girl threw her arms around Sylia, clinging
tightly to her as she cried into her shoulder. They sat
like that for a few minutes as the young red-head cried
herself out. Nene finally sat up again, wiping at her face
with her sleeve, her eyes red-rimmed now.
Nene finally sat up again. "I...I'm sorry," she
sniffled, trying to wipe her tear-streaked face clean with
her sleeve.
"No problem," Sylia smiled gently at her, handing her
some kleenex from the nearby box. Her expression turned
gravely concerned a moment later. "Will you be all right?"
"I....I think so," Nene replied in a small voice. Her
voice turned choked again. "It hurts so much, I've been
trying not to think about it."
"Nene, it's not the end of the world," Sylia said
softly. "I know it hurts, and it's not easy to hear, but
these things do happen. You've just got to accept it,
especially because you can't change it. Denying it won't
help, I'm sorry to say."
"What should I do?" Nene's question had a plaintive
note to it. Sylia shook her head.
"I can't tell you what to do," she told the tearful red-
haired young woman. "That has to be your decision." A
brief silence fell.
"So what was the meeting about?" Nene finally asked,
wanting to change the subject to something less painful.
Sylia looked at her thoughtfully. She had decided, and
Nene had agreed, that, in order to preserve a semblance of
normalcy, one of the conditions of Nene's suspension from
the Knight Sabers was that she had to at least attend
meetings. A sudden absence would start the rest of the team
asking questions, and if the reason for her suspension came
out into the open.... For that exact same reason, they'd
agreed to keep Nene's actions on their last boomer outing a
secret between them.
"We have a job for tonight," she finally replied.
"Which is why I asked if you were going to be all right; we
really need your particular talents on this one. If you
think you can live with what's happened, and not let it
influence you on the mission, I'd like to take you along."
"I ... I can live with it," Nene whispered after a very
long, tense silence.
"Then you're off suspension, and on probation," Sylia
warned her. "I'm going to be keeping an eye on you."
"I can handle it," Nene repeated, her voice growing
stronger as her resolve firmed. "I won't let it get in the
way of my work."
"Good enough," Sylia nodded slowly, looking her in the
eye. "I'll take you at your word then." She glanced at the
clock. "We've got a bit of time before the meeting actually
starts, so why don't you go get yourself tidied up a bit?"
Sylia suggested. The young ADP officer nodded and stood up.
"Thanks, Sylia," she hesitantly. The Knight Sabers'
leader smiled reassuringly as she stood herself.
"I'm always here if you need someone to talk to," she
assured the younger woman. "Now scoot; go and get cleaned
up. We can talk about something else when you get back."
She watched as Nene slowly walked across the room, vanishing
into the corridor leading to the washroom.
Once she was out of sight, Sylia sighed wearily,
rubbing a hand over her eyes. It wasn't much, but maybe it
was a start towards the young red-head's emotional healing.
Right now she'd take whatever she could get.
****
Wind whistled shrilly past the sleek, dark shape
knifing through the inky blackness of the night sky over
MegaTokyo. Engines droning, the KnightWing scooted from
cloudbank to cloudbank as it steadily moved east, towards a
run-down industrial sector of the sprawling supercity. The
occasional stray beam of light from below glanced off the
plane's radar-reflective hull, briefly illuminating sections
of the speeding jet. Inside the sophisticated jetplane, the
Knight Sabers quietly awaited whatever the night's mission
might have in store for them.
Or not so quietly, in some instances.
"Damn it, how the hell was I supposed to remember there
was a meeting?!" Priss grumbled irritably. She shifted in
her seat, folding her arms across her chest as she propped
her feet up on a convenient protruding wall conduit.
"Don't look at me for an answer," Bert replied,
sighing. He shifted his armoured body slightly as he leaned
against the wall, tucking his helmet more securely under an
arm. His suit construction didn't allow him to fit into the
KnightWing's seats anymore, and his usual position while
enroute to a mission was now standing, with a handhold
clamped on whatever happened to be handy. Normally, it
wasn't a problem, although once they'd encountered some air
turbulence that had caused him to very nearly wreck the rear
compartment when he'd started bouncing around in his
hardsuit. "I forgot about it as well."
"Didn't you check your answering machine?" Linna asked.
She was also in her hardsuit, but her helmet was already in
place with the visor flipped up. "Sylia did try phoning
everybody last night."
"I don't have one of the damn things, Linna," Priss
retorted irritably. "What the hell would I use an answering
machine for?"
"Keeping track of reminders that we have a meeting?"
"Oh, very funny," Priss said sourly. "Any more bright
suggestions?"
"Well, you could write these things down instead,"
Linna suggested with a smile. "There's these marvelous new
inventions called paper and pens, you know." She was taking
a great deal of delight in verbally needling the two of them
on their memory lapses, and it didn't look like it was going
to stop anytime soon.
"Enough with the wisecracks already," Priss glared at
her friend. Linna looked back innocently, her blue eyes
sparkling with mischievous humour, but she did become quiet.
Priss glanced hesitantly at the rear of the plane as a
slightly edgy silence fell over the cabin. Nene was sitting
quietly at her console, monitoring communications and going
over the mission data again one last time. The right arm of
her red-pink hardsuit was plugged into the console to allow
her quicker access and ease of control over the computer.
The visor on her helmet was up, and although she couldn't
see Nene's expression, the entire posture of her body at the
moment suggested lonely isolation.
Quiet sympathy and compassion welled up within the
young rock singer. She knew it wasn't easy for Nene to be
in the same room as Bert and herself. After Sylia's rather
irritated phone call to try and locate them had woken them
up from dozing on the couch, they'd gone up to Sylia's
apartment separately.
She'd seen the instant flare of pain in Nene's eyes
when she'd looked at them, but the young ADP officer had
managed to hold herself together. The slender red-head sat
stoically through the meeting, avoiding meeting their gazes.
Priss could almost see the raw hurt she was fighting, but
was refusing to display, and she'd felt incredibly
uncomfortable the whole time. She'd wanted to say
something, but was wise enough to know that the last thing
Nene wanted was sympathy from somebody she was regarding as
a rival right now.
An almost inaudible, sad sigh from beside her drew her
gaze over and up, to where a pair of greenish-brown eyes
were also gazing at the rear of the plane. Bert's eyes
dropped to hers as she looked up at him, and she could read
much of the same thoughts she'd been having in his eyes.
She gave him a reassuring smile, and he made a half-hearted
attempt to return it.
"Five minutes until we land," Sylia's voice drifted
from the cockpit. Their white-hardsuited leader was in the
co-pilot's seat next to Sylvie. The red-grey hardsuited
woman's piloting had been flawless as she deftly maneuvered
them through the sky over the city, avoiding accidental
radar contacts and possible visual sightings. The fact that
it was a cloudy night had helped a lot in that regard, so it
was unlikely that the KnightWing's approach had been noticed
by anyone.
The seat framework creaked ominously as Sylia levered
herself out of it, carefully squeezing around the co-pilot's
chair towards the door to the aft plane section. She took
one last quick glance at the instrumentation, and at the
topographical map displayed in a central control panel
screen.
"I'll leave the landing to you," she told Sylvie.
"There should be some convenient overhangs in the canyon
there that we can hide the KnightWing in."
"Roger that," Sylvie replied cheerfully, her helmet
tilting to look up at her white hardsuited commander. "I'll
let you know when we're down and secure." Sylia nodded,
reaching up and sliding her helmet visor closed. Turning,
she stepped into the silence of the rear cabin.
"Everybody get ready," she ordered. "We'll be there
shortly." Everyone nodded acknowledgment, but didn't say
anything. Sylia could sense the air of discomfort in the
confined space of the cabin, and sighed to herself, hoping
that everything would work out somehow.
Priss let her feet drop from where they'd been propped
up, her bootheels ringing hollowly against the deck plating.
Fishing around under her seat, she located her helmet and
slapped it on, leaving the visor up for the time being.
Beside her, SkyKnight awkwardly jammed on his helmet with
one hand, keeping a grip on a nearby seat with the other.
It took a bit of doing to work it into its proper location
using just one hand, but he managed it after a few moments.
The red eyeslot flared brightly for a moment, then dimmed to
a dull glow. Linna calmly reached up and slid her visor
down; it locked into place with a loud click. She then
busied herself casually inspecting the knuckle bomber on the
right arm of her suit.
Sylia nodded to herself in mild satisfaction as she
made her way to the back of the cabin, where Nene's suit was
still plugged into the ship's computer.
"Everything all right?" she asked quietly as she came
up beside the Knight Sabers' computer whiz. The question
was layered with different meanings, but Nene understood
what she meant. Her helmet tilted to look up at Sylia, and
she could see in her eyes the pain the young hacker was
holding inside and trying to conceal. It was costing her a
lot to maintain the facade of normalcy, but she was doing
it. The white-hardsuited woman reached out and squeezed the
red-pink suit's shoulder in a reassuring manner. She
wouldn't be able to feel it through the armour, but it was
the thought that counted.
"I'm okay," Nene replied quietly. She bit her lip as
her gaze inadvertently slid to the silver and blue hardsuits
at the other end of the plane, and for a moment her
composure wavered. She wrenched her eyes away, and stared
at the computer console instead. "I'll be okay."
"All right," Sylia sighed softly. "How about the
mission information?"
"I've re-checked it all again, and it seems to check
out," Nene said slowly, reaching out and tabbing some keys.
"There's something bugging me about these files though."
"What is it?"
"If they're so top secret, why isn't there any
encryption on them?" Nene asked, looking up at Sylia again.
"There's supposed to be some security on the computer
systems, according to this, but anybody can read the files
once the computer's been hacked. That just doesn't sound
right."
"That is a bit odd for sensitive data files," Sylia
admitted with a frown. It didn't make her feel any better
when the vague feeling of unease she'd had about the mission
returned at Nene's observation. "But we were hired to
retrieve the data, not analyze filekeeping procedures. Keep
your eyes open, though; we don't need any nasty surprises."
"Okay, no problem," Nene replied confidently; there
wasn't much that she couldn't do with a computer. Sylia
nodded and turned to sit down in a nearby seat until the
plane landed.
Nene disconnected her suit's interface cables from the
control console, watching them retract into her weapon arm.
As they retracted, she glanced again in the direction of
Priss and SkyKnight, and again her emotional control
wavered. She squeezed her eyes shut, her composure
threatening to shatter completely as another spike of
heartrending pain stabbed into her. After a moment, she
regained control of herself. Nene glanced forward again,
then her expression hardened into resolve.
Standing up from her seat, the hardsuited young woman
took a deep breath, trying to steel herself for what she
felt she had to do. Her stomach felt tight and queasy, but
she resisted the urge to close her helmet and hide behind
the emotionless shield of her visor as started the long walk
towards the front of the cabin.
As she approached, Priss looked over at her. Nene
could see carefully veiled sympathy in the singer's red-
brown eyes, and for a moment, anger and resentment boiled
into life, churning around with the pain of loss she was
fighting. The last thing she wanted from her was sympathy!
She had a lot of nerve, sitting there looking sorry....!
She managed to fight back the feelings before they could
break to the surface, forcing herself to concentrate on what
she wanted to say.
"Um, hi, Nene," Priss greeted her uncertainly as she
came up to where she was seated. Her expression was fairly
neutral, but the young red-head could see she was
uncomfortable. "What's up?"
"I....just had something I wanted to say," Nene
replied, her voice sounding small and remote to her own
ears. Her throat felt sore, and the churning emotional mix
inside of her was making it incredibly difficult to speak,
especially to the sources of some of her emotional pains.
As her gaze shifted to SkyKnight, he raised his visor
so she could see his face; he had the same uncomfortable
expression that Priss did, coupled with sympathy, and what
looked like traces of remorse. Her composure quavered
again.
"I just...wanted to wish the two of you good luck," she
said faintly, gulping back against the sudden rush of tears
that threatened to burst forth. "I hope it works out for
you." She turned quickly before anyone could say anything,
and walked back to her seat, closing her visor so that no
one could see her face. She valiantly kept from crying as
she sat down; she'd cried enough earlier, and it was time to
stop giving in to the empty ache that still throbbed within
her, and move on.
"What was that all about?" Linna asked quizzically, her
helmet tilting to regard Priss and Bert. They exchanged an
unreadable glance, and Bert shrugged slightly before closing
his visor.
"We've... been dating each other for about a week,"
Priss told her quietly, unable to keep a faintly guilty look
from sliding towards Nene's red-pink suit.
"You've been what?!" Linna's jaw fell open inside her
helmet at the words, and she reached up and slammed her
helmet visor open in shock. Priss flushed slightly, and
quickly closed her helmet, leaning back in her seat without
replying. "B-but..." Linna's mind struggled to frame a
question, but her thoughts were refusing to come together
coherently; stunned disbelief was the prominent feeling in
her mind at the moment. At the same time, the realization
of the effect this development was likely having on Nene
prompted her to remain silent. At least until she had a
chance to corner either Priss or Bert and get some answers
from them in private....
A jarring thump shook the KnightWing as Sylvie eased
the plane down on the rough canyon floor. An instant later,
the muted roar of its powerful engines died, and the plane
became silent except for the hum of still-active secondary
systems and circuitry.
The red-grey hardsuited woman unstrapped herself from
the pilot's seat, and disconnected her suit interfaces from
the control board. Since she was the Knight Sabers'
official pilot now, her hardsuit had been equipped with a
few options for controlling the KnightWing through her suit
systems. Depending on her preferences, Sylvie could fly the
plane either manually, with her hardsuit controls, or with a
combination of the two. She pulled herself out of her seat,
and stepped back into the cabin where the rest of the Sabers
were waiting tensely.
"All right, let's go," Sylia directed, turning towards
the exit ramp controls. "We've got a job to do."
****
The thick metal door grudgingly slid aside as Nene
disconnected her suit from the electronic lock's interface
panel, and she nodded once to Sylia. The white hardsuit
gestured with a hand signal; blue and green hardsuits
blurred through the doorway, splitting up to flank either
side of the entrance.
"All clear," Linna's voice crackled over the comms
after a few tense seconds of waiting. "Nobody's in this
section of the plant."
"Roger. We're coming in," Sylia replied quietly. She
waved SkyKnight and Sylvie in ahead of her, then glanced at
Nene. "Any problems?" she queried.
"None," Nene shook her head. "Their security is almost
insanely simple, at this end anyway. I don't like it; it's
too easy."
"Welcome to the club," her white-suited leader returned
wryly. "Come on." Forcing her mind onto the task at hand,
Sylia stepped through the doorway, glancing around.
The doorway they'd selected opened onto a second-story
catwalk that ran the perimeter of the building section
they'd selected as their entry point. Offering plenty of
cover, it also allowed a fairly direct route to their
objective, the facility's central computer lab. The rest of
the building section they were in was filled with shadow-
draped conduits and pipes; it was impossible to see further
than about twenty feet out towards the center of the
building.
The other Sabers had spread out, and were partially
concealed in shadowed alcoves formed by the walls and pipes.
If anything happened, they were positioned so that they
could effectively cover each other and withdraw if need be.
As Sylia appraised the situation, Nene eased through
the door behind her, and allowed it to close behind them.
Once inside the building, she unfurled the scanner antennae
built into her suit's backpack, and started scanning."
"No boomers," she reported after a moment, her voice
seeming to echo hollowly in the cavernous room. "No
anything, actually. I don't even think they've got security
`bots."
"Let's check out this lab and get it over with," Sylia
ordered, the uneasy feeling prickling at the back of her
mind intensifying further. "Everyone be careful."
****
The plant wasn't entirely deserted. In a not-so-
distant control room, a laboratory technician watched the
video image of six brightly coloured hardsuits moving
through the factory. Fairly young looking, he had black
hair, hazel eyes, and a very bored expression.
Taking a cautious sip from a Styrofoam cup of coffee,
then a bigger gulp when it proved cool enough to drink, he
flipped the cover off of a large red button mounted on a
control panel. The button pressed down with a loud,
satisfying click, and he tossed off the rest of his drink,
crumpling the cup and pitching into a nearby garbage bucket.
He leaned against the console, humming idly to himself
as he rooted around in one of the capacious pockets of his
white lab coat. After a few moments, he succeeded in coming
up with an apple, and proceeded to polish it up on the edge
of his coat. He straightened up again with a sigh.
Crunching a bite from his apple, he poised his other hand
over another switch, chewing noisily.
The heavy tread of someone else's footsteps in the room
made him turn towards the noise, and his eyes widened.
"Hey!! Who are you?!" he asked in surprise. "Nobody
else is supposed to ...." A series of loud, harsh reports
cracked in the closeness of the lab, cutting him off with
unquestionable finality; the tech jerked spasmodically as
several projectiles were driven through his body in a bloody
spray. What remained of him dropped to the floor in a gory
mess, landing with a sodden thump.
The assassin's arm lowered, a smoking weapon
withdrawing into the sleeve of a long dark coat.
Unconcernedly, the dark figure tracked through the crimson
pool on the floor, squishing on fragments of the shattered
corpse as he reached the control console. Cold eyes glanced
incuriously at the screen for a moment, then the killer
reached out, and tabbed the switch that the tech had been
going to push.
Seconds later, the room was empty again.
****
"Those were shots," Sylia said sharply. "Everyone,
full readiness; we're not as alone as we thought." Turning,
she started sprinting for the lab. The rest of the Knight
Sabers followed her, adrenaline surging through them all.
Hitting the door with an armoured shoulder, Sylia burst
the door off its mountings, rolling out of the way and
coming smoothly up into a ready crouch, her right-hand beam
cannon charged and ready to fire. Priss dove through next,
followed in rapid succession by the rest of the team, all
except SkyKnight; he slowly backed into the room, making
sure nothing unexpected came at then from behind.
The room was deserted except for quietly humming
computers.
"I can't detect anyone else in this room, Sylia," Nene
reported crisply. "Whatever it was must have left."
"This is weird," Linna declared, carefully stepping
around the end of a console bank. "Where is every..whAAA!"
She yelled in surprise as her feet suddenly flew out from
under her, skidding on something on the floor tiles. Unable
to react quick enough, the normally dexterous hardsuited
dancer crashed to the floor with a resounding bang.
"Linna! Are you okay?!" Nene started to move towards
her, but Linna's green hardsuit came scrabbling towards her
on hands and knees.
"No!! Don't look there!!" she said, her voice sounding
choked. "Get away!!"
"What is that awful smell?" Sylvie suddenly spoke up at
the same time. She'd noticed it upon first entering the
plant; the odour in question permeated everything, and was
impossible to escape. "It's putrid!"
"Oh my God, I think I'm gonna be sick," Linna declared
with a moan, doubling over and clutching at her stomach.
SkyKnight started moving carefully towards where she'd
slipped, a vague premonition coming over him as he noticed
that red smears marked the floor where Linna had crawled
away. Nene tried to offer Linna some assistance, but the
green-hardsuited woman wasn't moving, just shuddering.
"There is an odd smell, now that you mention it," Priss
said distastefully, looking around.
"Not...quite," SkyKnight's strangled voice came in
reply to Nene's earlier question. He whirled away from the
sight of the mangled and bloody wreckage laying on the
floor, out of sight of the doorway, and squeezed his eyes
shut, clenching his jaw to keep his gorge from rising, as he
shuddered himself.
"SkyKnight?" Sylia's voice inquired. He jerked his
head in the direction of the pathetic remains.
"There's a.... body ... laying in the aisle there," he
gritted, swallowing nausea again. "Looks fairly fresh, but
whoever it was ... he's..." Words failed him for a moment.
"Let's just say I'm of the same mind as Linna right now."
"Oh yuck," Priss's voice sounded like his; perverse
curiosity had seized her, and she'd taken a look. "The poor
bastard's been shot to pieces; it's a real mess." She
turned away from the sight as well.
"I see." Given the reactions of everyone else, Sylia
decided to spare herself a glimpse of the unidentified
unfortunate, and glanced down at Nene. "That was the main
control panel; can you use another computer to access what
we're after?"
"Sure, no problem," the hardsuited hacker replied.
She'd finally helped Linna to a leaning position against one
of the consoles. "I can get in through one of the
terminals at the other end of the room."
"Do it then. We're not staying here one second longer
than we have to." Nene nodded, and walked to a terminal at
the far end of the room. Pulling up a chair, she plunked
herself into it, and plugged her suit into the computer
interface.
"There's some pretty good ICE on their system, Sylia,"
she reported a moment later. "This may take a while."
"Try and hurry if you can," the Knight Sabers' leader
replied, clenching her teeth as her stomach lurched
uneasily; the vile stench Sylvie had noticed had finally
made it to her nose through her hardsuit's air filters. She
walked down to Nene's end of the room, but the extra
distance didn't really help much; the odour was everywhere.
Sylvie had unwisely looked as well, and was being heartily
sick in a corner of the room. Priss was standing nearby,
trying to offer some solace.
"Sylia?" Bert's modulated voice carried to her; she
turned, as he clumped towards her, coming from the far end
of the room, near where the dismembered body had been found.
He was gingerly grasping something in a gauntleted hand.
"You'd better take a look at this."
"What is it?" she asked, looking at the long, thin
object.
"A railgun spike, I think," he answered, turning it
over in his hands. It was about ten inches long, with a
smooth surface tapered to a needle sharp point. "It was
embedded in the wall behind where the poor bastard must've
been standing. It hit a beam; the rest went right on
through the plaster."
"The rest?"
"It looks like about fifteen shots altogether," he
noted grimly. "Somebody wanted to make damn sure he
wouldn't survive." He paused, and his voice turned sickly-
sounding again. "Whoever the killer was, he walked through
the ... mess ... to get to the control panel for some
reason, then walked out the far door; there's bloody
footprints leading out that way."
"Did you try following the tracks?" Sylia's helmet
visor snapped up to look at him. SkyKnight's helmet shook
negatively.
"You said our mission objective was here," he replied
simply. "So I stayed. I ... I don't really feel like going
anywhere right now."
"That bad?" Sylia laid a gauntleted hand on his arm.
He nodded sharply, once.
"You'll pardon me if I don't feel like eating for the
next day or so," he said tightly. She nodded, then reached
out and took the railgun spike from his grasp, examining the
sticky, red-smeared projectile. Her posture stiffened
suddenly.
"Priss, get over here," Sylia ordered tersely, staring
intently at the spike. The blue- hardsuited woman joined
them a minute later. Behind her, Sylvie was slowly getting
to her feet, fastening her helmet back down.
"What's up, Sylia?" Priss asked, glancing from her to
SkyKnight towering nearby.
"Give me one of your railgun spikes for a moment," the
white hardsuit directed. Shrugging, Priss popped open the
panel on her suit arm that allowed access to the slim
magazine holding the ammo for her railguns. Extracting one
of the slender spikes, she handed it to her leader, who in
turn placed it next to the bloody spike in her gauntlet
palm.
The two projectiles, except for the bloodstains, looked
identical.
"Damn it," Sylia muttered, handing the clean spike back
to Priss.
"What's up?" the singer queried, sliding the spike home
and closing her suit's arm back up.
"Your railgun fires fairly distinctive railgun
projectiles," Sylia told her, and held up the one that had
been used to murder the unfortunate technician. "This one
appears to be a perfect duplicate."
"You're saying we've just been framed for murder,"
SkyKnight said flatly. Sylia nodded.
"The only way to know for sure that they aren't
manufactured the same way is under an electron microscope,"
she told them. "But we're well enough known that most
people will automatically assume it's us. Not many people
bother with rail weapons, and the military favors heavier
ammunition when they do."
"Well shit," Priss spat disgustedly. "That's just
great; now what?! You know the ADP is gonna take this and
use it to try and go after us harder than before."
"That can't be helped," Sylia sighed.
"Want us to take a quick look through the rest of the
plant?" SkyKnight queried. "The murderer might still be
here."
"Hmmm," their white-hardsuited leader considered their
situation for a moment. "Nene? How much longer?"
"About fifteen minutes or so," came the distracted
reply, as the red-haired hacker tapped away at the control
panel and manipulated her suit controls. "Whoever
programmed their computer is pretty good..."
"All right then, take a quick look around, but be
careful," Sylia instructed him. "Take Sylvie with you."
Her last sentence stopped him; both he and Priss had been
turning to exit the room.
"Sylvie?" he echoed. "Mind if I ask why?"
"Two reasons," Sylia answered candidly. "The first is
that she's still the new recruit, and you're more
experienced; hopefully, she'll pick up some useful things
from you. The second reason is that I don't need an
argument breaking out between you and Priss out there."
"We wouldn't..." the silver and blue hardsuits started
to chorus in unison, but Sylia chopped a gauntleted hand
down, cutting them off.
"The matter is closed," she advised them. "You have
your orders."
"Yes, boss," SkyKnight muttered irritably. With a
`what can I do?' shrug to Priss, he turned and lumbered from
the room, beckoning Sylvie to accompany him. She followed
him out into the darkness beyond the computer room door, and
the two hardsuits were quickly swallowed up by the shadowed
maze of machinery out there.
"Want me and Linna to check the other way?" Priss
asked. She was getting restless and irritable; she'd been
hoping there'd at least be some action. Sitting and
watching someone try to hack into databases was boring as
hell.
"No, I want you two here, just in case," Sylia replied.
"In case of what?" Linna spoke up. The Sabers' leader
folded her arms across her chest and leaned against the
wall, her visor tilting to watch Nene as she worked away at
the computer.
"In case we get some visitors I'm half-expecting," she
replied. "Linna? Would you mind watching the way we came?
I don't want to get cut off. Priss, you can keep watch from
the other door."
****
The muted rumble and throb of operating machinery
pulsed through the shadowy network of piping, beams, and
conduits, grumbling like some kind of slumbering giant.
Occasionally steam, or some other similar gaseous emission
hissed from a leaking valve, the sinister-sounding noises
making the darkness seem more ominous and foreboding. In
isolated corners, control panels winked and flickered
feebly, the pale glow of the readouts barely penetrating the
murky gloom of the facility. Movement in the blackness
resolved into a gleaming silver-blue armour suit,
accompanied by a somewhat smaller red-and-gray battlesuit.
"There's nobody here at all, anywhere," Sylvie noted,
sounding puzzled as her helmet turned to regard their
surroundings. "If this is a production facility, then where
are all the workers? Don't they have a night shift?"
"I don't know," SkyKnight's electronic voice replied,
his modulated sepulchral-sounding voice somehow fitting the
eerie settings. "But something about this place is just
screaming `setup!' at me; the fact that that poor bastard
back in the lab was killed seconds before we could get into
there kind of suggests that somebody else knew we were
coming."
"But nobody's tried anything aimed at us specifically,"
Sylvie pointed out.
"It doesn't have to be a direct attack," he replied
shortly. "Slurs on somebody's reputation can be just as
lethal as shooting them. It won't matter that we didn't
kill him, the common perception will be that we did, and
that could lose us some of the leeway we've had to operate
under."
"Oh." Sylvie stalked along silently, trailing behind
SkyKnight and watching their back trail as she considered
his words. "So what do you think is going to happen next?"
"I don't know," he answered, sighing. "But I somehow
have the feeling that the best is yet to come."
On the tail end of his words, something moved in the
darkness ahead of them, something BIG. His suit sensors
gave him a rough electromagnetic signature of the .... the
THING that was out there, but his battlecomputer was unable
to identify what kind of boomer it was, or if it even was a
boomer. It wasn't one of the newer combat models, that was
for sure; the profile of this one didn't even look all that
humanoid.
"Shit. Sylvie," SkyKnight said tersely. "Get ready;
we've got company."
"What?" she turned and peered around his shoulder.
"What is that?!" She involuntarily took a step back, her
gun arm coming up defensively.
"Trouble," he replied shortly. So far, it didn't look
like their contact had noticed their presence. "SkyKnight
to Saber Prime," he radioed. "We're not alone out here...."
****
"I see," Sylia replied. "What's your position?"
"We're under cover," Bert's voice crackled back.
"There's enough niches in the piping here to hide in. I
don't think I want to start a fight with whatever it is out
there; it's goddamn huge. I'm not even sure my lasers will
scratch it."
"Let's not jump to conclusions," Sylia suggested,
glancing swiftly around the room. "All you've got is a
sensor trace; that's hardly proof of its abilities."
"I'm not jumping anywhere!" came the emphatic reply.
"I'm quite happy where I am, thanks."
"Keep in touch," she directed.
"Roger that," he replied, cutting off the channel a
moment later.
"Nene?" Sylia looked down at the red-pink hardsuit.
"How much longer."
"Not... long, just ... about ... there!" she exclaimed
in satisfaction. "I'm in! Complete access to everything."
"Good. Find those files, download them, and then we're
getting the hell out of here."
"Oh SHIT!!" Priss's voice volleyed from the door where
she was stationed. "INCOMING!!!"
"Get that data!" Sylia snapped at Nene, whirling
sharply. "We'll handle this!"
The walls and ceiling at the far end of the lab
exploded inwards in a shower of dust and debris. Priss's
railcannon thundered above the crashing and crunching of
masonry, and Linna's pulse laser screamed from her position,
slashing bright paths through the suddenly smoky air as four
blue combat boomers ducked and dodged into the room.
One of the blue biomechanoids died immediately, caught
in an unintentionally well-timed crossfire between Priss and
Linna. The remaining three split up, each one selecting a
different Saber to go after. Sylia began backpedaling as
one sprang towards her, but it wasn't until the crackling
energy bolt it spat went well wide of her that she realized
it was focusing on Nene. There was a surprised yelp from
the red-head's location, as the energy bolt blew a
viewscreen next to her into a glittering storm of glass
shards.
Instantly, Sylia jumped sideways, putting herself
between the youngest Saber and the killer machine. As it
hurtled forwards, the arm blade on her left arm sprang out.
Spearing it towards the boomer's head, she whipped an
underhanded blow to its torso with her right arm, palm open;
the blade punctured the biomechanoid's skull with a
satisfying-sounding crunch, and the particle laser cannon in
her right gauntlet blasted a gaping hole through its chest.
The charging boomer became dead weight instantly, and
crashed into her, knocking her down and pinning her
momentarily to the floor.
****
"Aw hell," SkyKnight snarled. "Sylvie!! Dodge left!!
Hang back and snipe at the bastard; don't try to get in
close with him." He lashed out with a crimson beam of laser
energy, the glowing burst momentarily throwing the dimly-lit
room into harsh relief. The shot splashed off the armoured
carapace of the lumbering behemoth approaching without any
apparent effect. Whatever the trigger had been, it had
started charging them at exactly the same time they'd heard
Priss bellow a warning over the comm channel.
"Gotcha!" Sylvie panted, scrambling away from the hole
melted into the wall beam next to where she'd been hiding.
"What about you?" A flurry of energy beams speared from her
own lasers, but they too glanced off the thing's thick
plating. The misshapen hulk roared defiantly, as searing
blue beams from weapons embedded in its chest scythed
through the air again. It had started attacking without
warning, suddenly opening fire and lurching towards where
the two hardsuits had been concealed.
"Give me a minute; I'm trying to see if this thing's
got any weak points." SkyKnight continued his assault,
pounding the armoured shape with his lasers, the red-white
beams lancing surgically into every portion of the
creature's body. He ducked a crackling reply shot. "Damn
it! The bastard's armour is just too goddamn thick; I'll
need a lot more raw power before I can get through that kind
of defense."
"What is it?" Sylvie asked, trying for a snipe shot in
what she believed was the creature's head; maybe she could
blind it....
"Modified Doberman, I think," he replied. The boomer
did have the appearance of a Doberman, with white and black
armour, but it was at least fifteen feet tall, and it looked
like it weighed at least a three or four tons. "But whoever
modified it didn't do a great job; I think it's too heavy to
fly now, and it's definitely having problems moving. Those
are about the only breaks I think we're going to get with
this monster."
The deformed boomer howled, and crashed forward
ponderously, its footsteps shaking the floor as it bore down
on the two lone Sabers.
"Wish me luck," SkyKnight sighed. Before Sylvie could
ask what he meant, the silver-blue hardsuit blurred towards
the juggernaut.
"What?! Bert!!!" Sylvie shouted, immediately opening
fire on the boomer, frantically trying to injure it somehow.
She even pegged all fifteen of her railgun spikes rapid-fire
at the malformed biomechanoid in the bargain; except for one
lucky shot that seemed to become wedged between its armour
plates, the rest whined harmlessly off of its hide,
ricocheting off into the darkness.
If SkyKnight heard or noticed the commotion she was
making, he gave no indication. As he neared the lumbering
hulk, he ducked under the ponderous swipe it took at him
while a cylindrical handgrip snapped into his right hand. A
split-second later, the blue-white energy blade of his
lightsaber hummed hungrily as he slashed twice in quick
succession, once at its arm, and once at its torso.
Snarling in rage, the biomechanoid whirled with a speed
that belied its bulk, clipping him with a backhand from its
maimed arm. The silver battlesuit was knocked sprawling and
skidding along the floor, before a quick burst from his jets
flipped him into the air to land on his feet again. The red
eyeslot of his helmet flashed balefully, and Sylvie could
hear some scorching epithets coming from the silver suit.
"SkyKnight!!" the hardsuited sexaroid called. "Are you
okay?!" She gritted her teeth in frustration as the
Doberman continued to ignore her long-range fire. She
stifled the urge to dive in close to attack with her
swordblades; they didn't have the penetration that his
lightsabers did, and she'd just seen how effective they'd
been.
"Marvelous," he called back disgustedly. "The thing's
just too bloody big; I'd need a lightsaber blade more than
six feet long to seriously hurt it." His lightsaber snuffed
out, the hilt retracting into its housing on his arm. With
another snarled curse, SkyKnight whipped his right arm
forward, sending another shattering blaze of particle-laser
energy stabbing into the head of the renegade machine.
The Doberman responded with an unearthly howl. It
suddenly stiffened, rearing back, and throwing its arms
wide. The massive armour plates on its torso sprang open,
revealing a huge maw that began glowing incandescently
white. SkyKnight desperately dove sideways as a searing
beam of pure white light tore through the air towards him.
****
"I don't like this..." Nene muttered to herself,
feverishly working at the computer. Behind her, the din of
an armoured brawl pulsed and ebbed, dimly impinging on her
awareness. Her focus on her assigned task was so total, she
didn't even flinch when a greenish energy bolt passed her
with mere centimeters to spare.
"I knew it!" she suddenly burst out, glaring at the
data readout inside her helmet. The information displayed
on her suit viewscreen contrasted sharply with the data
being displayed on the computer monitor in front of her at
the moment. She'd located the data files they were
supposedly to retrieve, but some vague premonition of
something wrong had led her to do a subtle probe of the file
status; she still couldn't believe that someone wouldn't
protect such sensitive files somehow.
Her hunch had proved correct: her suit was detecting
some kind of a watchdog program in the system. The sentry
program had all the earmarks of a virus, and a very
sophisticated one at that. While not a part of the files
themselves, it was set to activate and attack any computer
systems it encountered if an attempt to access the files was
made. If it entered her suit systems after activating, it
was game over.
"Nene!!" Sylia's voice crackled over the comms.
"What's the holdup?! Download the files!!"
"I can't!" she shot back. "They've been protected!
I'm going to try and crack it now, but I don't know how long
it'll take."
The entire room suddenly shook, and the south wall of
the room suddenly vanished as a huge beam of white
coruscating energy sheared through the masonry with an ear-
splitting crack-sizzle, and punched a hole in the opposite
wall, disappearing into the factory beyond. Nene sat frozen
in shock for a moment, one gauntleted hand frozen over the
keys she'd been about to punch.
"What the hell was THAT?!" Priss's voice yelped over
the communications frequency. The shocked question jarred
the young red-head back to her senses, and she returned to
her task.
Reaching over to the left hip of her hardsuit, she
detached a slim rectangular object. Pulling its attached
data cables from their recessed niches in the casing, she
plugged the box into the terminal's other set of I/O jacks,
on the side of the machine. Stretching briefly, she hunched
over the keyboard and began the delicate task of trying to
bypass the watchdog program, and download the files into the
portable storage unit.
She barely noticed the noise of the final concerted
salvo from her three teammates that reduced the last C-55E
combat boomer into a smoldering pile of slag.
"How's it going?" Sylia came over to her, her hardsuit
covered in concrete dust, and marred with some scorching.
Smoke trailed in little wisps from her laser cannons, and
her breathing sounded laboured.
"Fine, I think," Nene replied vaguely, sweat trickling
down her face inside her helmet. This was incredibly touchy
work; whoever had programmed the watchdog was a master. "I
just need some more time." Emerald-green eyes flicked
intensely over the data display, watching for any
indications that her tampering had triggered something.
"All right, we'll try and buy you some more time then,"
Sylia sighed. "There's just one boomer left, and Bert and
Sylvie are trying to deal with it right now."
"Trying?" Priss queried, coming up behind them. Her
hardsuit was relatively unscathed, with a few scratches
showing through the dust and dirt coating her armour.
"It seems to be a Doberman," Sylia explained. "I've
only heard the sketchiest report from them though; they're
too busy staying alive to be more explicit."
"Well what're we waiting for then?!" Priss demanded.
She spun and charged out into the factory before anyone
could say anything.
"Priss, wait a sec...damn!!" Sylia swore, gritting her
teeth. "Linna, stay here and watch Nene's back; there may
be more boomers around."
"No problem," the green-suited woman assured her.
"I'll keep watch."
"I hope this won't take long, but if you get finished
before we're through with the boomer, get out and get that
data back to the KnightWing," Sylia directed. "Once you're
finished, we'll be right behind you." With that, the white
hardsuit sprinted through the hole in the wall, heading for
the fight everyone could now hear rampaging in the distance.
****
"You all right?!" SkyKnight panted, grabbing a red-
armoured arm and hauling Sylvie out from under a pile of
collapsed conduit and pipe. Snapping a quick burst of laser
fire at their foe to keep it momentarily at bay, he bodily
hauled his comrade away from the wreckage, retreating from
the biomechanical hulk. The red-gray suit flailed around
for a bit, dazed at first, but her coordination returned
quickly, and she managed to get her feet under herself
again.
"I'm fine now," she assured him. "Just stunned for a
minute."
"You've got to pay attention to the battlefield at
least as much as your opponent," he told her as he released
the grip he had clamped on her arm. "Especially in a
confined space; it can either be used to your advantage, or
it can be a liability, depending." They continued to back
away from the slowly advancing boomer. Oddly, it had
stopped firing weapons, and was trying for the `up close and
personal' approach of physically crushing them.
"Case in point, right?" Sylvie suggested dryly, taking
a quick glance at the crumbling building around them.
Flames danced luridly in the smoky shadows, and a thick
pall of smoke was gradually lowering as parts of the
facility burned. The boomer's massive beam weapon had
cleaved through the entire building, judging from the looks
of it, and started fires in half-a-dozen places. Beams were
slowly buckling all over, creaking and groaning over the
uneven stress load that shearing off some of the other
support structures had caused. Off in the distance, severed
pipes spewed burning plumes of gas into the air, and
contributing to the fires. Throughout it all, sections of
the building had started to collapse, dropping chunks of
masonry and other debris to the floor, shaking the concrete
beneath their feet with an ominous promise.
"Right. Duck!" the silver hardsuit replied, giving her
a sideways shove as he leaped away in the opposite
direction. A second or so later, the tail end of a large
pipe whizzed through the space they'd been standing it.
Sylvie staggered, but managed to keep her balance as she
dodged and crouched. The boomer seized the opportunity of
their momentary distraction, and charged forward.
"This is insane!" she shouted, boosting herself with
her jets into a twisting mid-air loop that brought her down
behind the boomer. She blasted away with her laser, vainly
hammering at the creature's armour. "We can't maneuver, and
we're in more danger from the building than from this
thing!!"
"I know that!!" SkyKnight snapped, ducking and dodging
the ponderous, pawing swipes that the boomer was trying to
tag him with. "We've got to at least cripple the bastard
somehow first before we can get away." The silver-clad
hardsuit ducked under another slashing claw, and suddenly
blasted straight up into the air, his jet turbines howling.
The huge boomer snarled menacingly, and lashed out with
a hand to try and grab the airborne suit. As its taloned
hand shot forwards, the silver Knight Saber whipped an arm
down as an electric snap-hiss sizzled in the smoky air. A
blue flash swept through the boomer's arm, and its hand
dropped from its arm, cleanly severed at the wrist.
A mechanical shriek screeched from the maimed
biomechanoid, as it charged the silver suit, enraged.
Surprised by the unexpected move, the silver battlesuit was
knocked from the air by a clubbing blow, and crashed heavily
into a pile of burning wreckage. The hulking boomer lifted
a massive foot to stomp the downed Knight Saber.
"Get lost, you bastard!!" an angry voice yelled. A
moment later, Priss's blue hardsuit hurtled out of the smoke
and flames feetfirst, impacting solidly with the boomer's
bestial head. The rogue biomechanoid lurched, and was
shoved slightly off balance, forcing it to put its foot down
for stability. The blue hardsuit however, bounced like a
tennis ball, and crashed to the floor herself.
"Priss!!" Sylvie's red-grey suit dashed up to her as
she staggered upright. "Are you okay?!" The blue hardsuit
wobbled as she got to her feet.
"Yeah, fine," Priss winced inside her helmet. Felt
like she'd almost busted her knees with that stunt; the damn
boomer was built like a concrete wall. "Just remind me not
to try that again."
"Watch it!!" SkyKnight surged to his feet and shoved
them aside, just in time to be clipped by another swing of
the boomer's arm. Again he banged unceremoniously to the
flooring. Before the boomer could exploit the momentary
advantage, twin spears of crackling energy slammed into the
boomer from above, diverting its attention.
"You weren't kidding about its size, were you?" Sylia's
voice noted over the comm channel, as her white hardsuit
landed next to the slowly rising SkyKnight. She fired a few
more times with one hand, giving him a quick hoist with the
other.
"We've got to get out of here," he gasped. "This
building won't hold together much longer, especially with
the way that thing stomps around."
"I'm open to suggestions," the white hardsuit replied
mildly, firing another salvo at their foe. At the same
time, Sylvie and Priss opened fire from behind, confusing
the boomer as it sought to find what was annoying it; its
combat AI was apparently not all that intelligent. Howling
in frustration, the boomer reared back, raising its arms
above its head.
"Aw hell, not again!!" SkyKnight shouted. He snapped
both his arms up, and let drive with all four of his
particle-laser cannons. The quartet of sizzling energy
beams staggered the boomer slightly, but that was it.
The boomer wasn't about to fire its internal beam
weapon though; instead, it slammed both arms into the floor
beneath its feet. Instantly, jagged cracks spiderwebbed
outwards from the impact site. Concrete cracked with sharp
detonations, and chunks vanished, falling to the level
below.
"Up!!! Everybody get airborne!!" Sylia shouted,
horrible fear shooting through her. Before they could
follow her orders though, the floor gave way completely with
a crashing rumble, and an awful weightless feeling assailed
her for a brief moment. Flaming debris followed the Knight
Sabers and the rampaging biomechanoid as they hurtled into
the abyss below.
****
"Got it!" Nene sighed in shaky relief, leaning back in
her chair. "It's all downloaded." It felt like it had
taken forever, but she'd gotten the files and left the
watchdog program behind. She hoped she didn't have to
perform another hack as difficult as that last one had been
anytime soon; she felt like she was swimming in sweat inside
her suit, and she really needed a drink of something.
Reaching out, she disconnected the portable storage unit,
and clamped it back into its carrying location on her suit.
"Finally!" Linna coughed in the smoky haze that was
thickening in the room. "Can we get out of here now?!" The
red-pink suit nodded, and stood. Nene blinked in surprise
as she nearly fell over; she didn't think she'd been that
tired! When she noticed her green-hardsuited comrade
fighting for balance, she understood instantly; the whole
building was trembling violently.
"Come on!" Linna snapped. "Let's get out of here!!
This place is coming down around our ears!" Ceiling tiles
dropped to the floor as if confirming her observation.
"But what about Sylia?!" Nene objected as she was
hauled along by an arm out the door.
"Weren't you listening?! She told us to get out when
you were done, and that's what we're doing!" Nene balked,
grabbing at a pipe, but Linna kept hustling the young red-
head along. The reached the catwalk leading to the exit,
and began moving rapidly along it, fighting for balance
whenever it lurched. Out in the factory beyond, they could
see flames wreathing much of the internal structure.
"We can't just leave them!!" Nene tried again.
"I don't like it either," her friend admitted tightly,
ducking as a chunk of conduit swung down in an arc, narrowly
missing her. "But orders are orders."
"Sylia!!" Nene tried the comm frequency. "We're done
and we're leaving! Sylia?!"
"I already tried that," Linna told her quietly.
"There's no answer. Interference, I think."
"Then we've got to go look for them!!" she protested.
"They may need help!"
"Nene!!" Linna's voice was exasperated. "We've got to
get...."
There was a loud, metallic-sounding snap, and Linna
turned in time to see the catwalk start to collapse as a
section of piping crashed down on it. Driven by the
momentum of the falling debris, the grating under the feet
of the two hardsuits lurched violently, throwing Nene into
the railing, and tossing Linna to the surface of the
catwalk.
"OOOF!!" The red-pink suit doubled over the railing,
clutching frantically at it to prevent herself from being
launched headfirst to the floor a long way below. A scream
from behind her made her turn, and she saw Linna's green
hardsuit writhing in pain, her right leg pinned beneath a
chunk of steel girder that had crashed to the catwalk.
"Linna!!" the young red-head screamed. Grabbing
whatever handholds she could, she scrabbled over to her
friend. The catwalk tilted into an even more precarious
angle, and the supports holding it to the wall began
creaking threateningly.
"My leg," Linna's voice was a choked sob of pain.
"Couldn't get out of the way in time. Oh my GOD!!" The
last statement was a shuddering gasp as she clutched at her
pinned leg in agony.
"Hang on, we'll get you out of here," Nene pleaded.
Bracing herself with one hand on what she thought was a
secure anchor point, she reached down with the other and
tried moving the debris pinning the green hardsuit's leg.
Actuators whined in protest at the load; her suit didn't
have the physical enhancements that the suits designed with
combat as their main function did.
"Nene," Linna gasped, pointing. "Over there...get that
piece of pipe." A tremor ran through the catwalk supports,
and the debris on her leg shifted a bit, making her clutch
it again.
The red-pink suit turned, and saw the indicated piece
of pipe. It was about four feet long, and a couple of
inches in diameter. The jagged ends testified to the force
that had torn it loose. Reaching over and snagging it, Nene
slid one end under the beam pinioning the leg of the green
hardsuit. Bracing herself, she pulled up on the improvised
lever. For several long, agonizing seconds, nothing
happened. Nene strained a bit more, feeling like her arms
were about to dislocate at the elbows; the twisted chunk of
metal finally shifted enough for Linna to pull her leg free.
"We're going to have to risk flying in here," Nene said
worriedly, dropping the pipe as the catwalk groaned and
heaved again. "There's no way we can walk it now."
Inwardly, she was torn. She wanted to go look for Sylia and
the rest of the team, but her injured friend was the
immediate priority. She stepped over to Linna's suit, and
carefully put one arm around her waist, while looping one of
the green suit's arms around her neck.
"Fine," the hardsuited dancer replied, sweat dripping
down her face inside her helmet at the torturous fire coming
from her lower leg. It was an effort not to scream every
time an involuntary movement jarred it. "Let's just get out
of here."
Thrusters hissed urgently, and the two hardsuits
carefully lifted into the air, scooting towards where the
exit and safety were hopefully located. The catwalk
crumbled finally as they lifted off, crashing to the burning
floor below.
****
An armoured gauntlet crunched a handhold into a slab of
masonry, hauling a battered-looking silver suit into view.
The red slot in its helmet glowed as SkyKnight swept his
gaze through the underground chamber they'd fallen into.
Rubble lay everywhere, and flames glowed fitfully from some
of the scattered wreckage. What seemed like a long way
above, a large, orange-lit hole flickered in the ceiling.
"Sylia?!" SkyKnight's electronic voice boomed through
the semidarkness. "Priss?! Sylvie?!?!" He began to panic a
bit as he lurched to his feet. Where was everyone?!
"Over here!!" Priss's voice called back, bringing an
instant surge of relief. The blue-hardsuited woman appeared
out of the dark, as beaten and dented-looking as he knew he
himself was. A red-gray hardsuit walked behind her, limping
slightly. SkyKnight seized the blue hardsuit in a relieved
hug before he could stop himself.
"H-h-hey!! Unclench damnit!!" Priss hissed as her suit
creaked, shoving at him. "Not so goddamn hard!!"
"Sorry," he apologized, releasing her. "I was
concerned."
"I noticed," came the dry retort. "Where's Sylia?"
"Over here," the familiar voice of their leader called.
"Checking on our erstwhile adversary." A faint white blob
appeared in the darkness, gesturing to them. Everyone
trooped towards her, relieved. As they came up to her,
SkyKnight suddenly noted that the vile smell they'd detected
earlier was even stronger down here. It was vaguely
familiar, for some odd reason, and part of his mind worked
at trying to remember just what it was.
"Don't worry, it's dead," Sylia assured them as they
crunched through the rubble to where she was standing
staring at a bulky, crumpled shape nearby. "It couldn't
fly, and some of the pieces of the floor supports were
driven through it when it landed." Everyone looked at the
mangled boomer, mentally sighing in relief.
"Well then," the white hardsuit turned briskly, looking
up at the hole in the ceiling a long way up. "Let's get
out of here before the fires get down here." No sooner had
she spoken, then the darkness surrounding them became alive
as four pairs of yellow eyes began glowing brightly.
Ominous rumbling noises that had nothing to do with the
building slowly collapsing rolled through the dark.
"I think we're in trouble," Priss sucked in her breath
sharply.
****
Sweat ran down Nene's face as she staggered up the
entry ramp of the KnightWing, half-dragging Linna. Once in
the cabin, she eased the injured woman into a seat, then
went rummaging around for the medical kit they kept on hand
for emergency use. As she searched, Linna pulled off her
helmet, shakily wiping sweat-soaked bangs out of her face,
and then let her head drop back to the seat, relieved to be
off her injured leg, and grateful for the cool air inside
the plane. With the weight off of it, the pain in her leg
subsided slightly to a sullen, angry throbbing.
"Here, take these," Nene's voice made her sit up
slightly. A couple of tablets lay in the outstretched hand
of her suit. "Sorry we don't have any water to go with
them," she apologized as Linna took the tablets.
"I can manage." The hardsuited dancer dry-swallowed
the tablets, pulling a sour face at the taste of them.
While she waited for the painkillers to take effect, Nene
stepped across to the communications board and sat down in
front of it. Flipping some switches, she began a call to
their base.
"KnightWing to Base, do you copy? Over."
"Base here," Anri's voice replied cheerily. "How's it
going out there? Finished already? Oops, Over!" she added
after the channel went briefly quiet.
"Not quite," Nene sighed. "I'll give you the
highlights so far, and then you'd better get your medical
kit ready..."
****
Sylvie threw herself backwards frantically, barely
avoiding the hissing swipe of a long blade as the red boomer
looming in front of her attacked again. Sweat trickled down
her forehead, making her eyes sting as her lungs frantically
clawed oxygen from the air. She was in deep trouble, and
she knew it. The killer biomechanoid advanced towards her,
both blades out and held low for either a slash or a stab at
her.
Her eyes darted fleetingly from the status readouts of
her suit display screen to the area around and behind the
boomer, desperately trying to find some avenue of escape.
Her lack of field combat experience had put her at a severe
disadvantage immediately, reducing her to purely defensive
moves as she tried to keep the advanced combat boomer at
bay. It had been relentless in its pursuit of her, and it
had been all she could do to just keep herself intact; so
far, she hadn't been able to even attempt an attack. If she
hadn't had the advantage of faster reflexes and the better
suit interface that her unique nature provided, she'd
probably be dead by now.
Her heart hammered in her chest, and the rushing of her
blood sounded loud to her ears inside the helmet. Some
remote part of her mind was reminding her that she'd asked
for this; she'd wanted to be in the front lines of a
mission, and now she was getting her wish. I wasn't ready
for THIS kind of a confrontation!! she snarled back at her
subconscious. If only she'd had some more time to
prepare...
The boomer lunged forwards again, eyes flaring
brightly. Sylvie had a brief instant to hope her friends
were doing better than she was before her fight for survival
again swept her up into a confused whirl of motion.
****
SkyKnight rolled aside, jerking his helmet out of the
way of the descending armoured foot. As the A-12's foot
crushed a sizable footprint into the cement floor, he lashed
out with his own kick from where he had been knocked prone,
catching the boomer behind the knee. Caught by surprise, the
boomer's knee folded under the impact, making it stagger
sideways. The silver hardsuit used the momentary respite to
roll upright and set himself again.
The crimson biomechanoid sprang fluidly towards him
again, chopping downwards with its right arm blade;
SkyKnight deftly parried it with one of his own swordblades,
spearing his other arm-weapon at the boomer's torso. It
twisted aside with unnatural agility, then launched into a
blistering fencing display as it attacked with both of its
arm blades.
It was humanly impossible to match the boomer blade for
blade, even with his hardsuit. He'd already learned that
lesson once the hard way, so he boosted himself backwards
with his jet thrusters. The killer machine instantly sprang
after him, leading with the points of its murderous
weaponry.
The battle turned briefly aerial, as SkyKnight wrenched
himself sideways through the air, avoiding the attempt to
spit him like some kind of armoured pheasant, and opened
fire with his particle-lasers. The boomer ducked the
spitting laser storm, and blasted back with its own energy
salvo almost faster than thought.
The air around him turned brilliant green, and pain
washed through him as the shot struck him squarely, smashing
him back. He had a moment to hope that his comrades were
faring better than he was before a loud clang notified him
that he'd hit the floor again.
****
"Well wasn't that useful!" Priss muttered disgustedly
as the crimson-armoured boomer in front of her shrugged off
her beam shots without harm. With a mechanical snarl, the
armoured killer slashed the air with a return shot, which
she ducked easily.
Priss boosted herself towards the red combat machine
with her suit thrusters, her eyes intently trying to find an
opening as the boomer shifted to meet her attack approach,
dropping into a hand-to-hand stance. As she landed, it
lashed out with blinding speed, directing a kick at her
helmet; she ducked, jamming her gun arm towards the boomer
for a point-blank shot. In a smooth, fluid movement, the
boomer used the momentum generated by its kick to spin out
of the way, and it spun around again with another kick.
"OOOF!!" The blue hardsuited woman flew backwards as
the armoured foot plowed into her stomach. Sucking in a
tortured breath, Priss rolled upright, and forearm-blocked
the boomer's descending arm as it leaped at her. A jarring
shock rattled her to her teeth, but she kicked out at the
crimson biomechanoid's leg while straining to keep its arm
away from her. The boomer quickly jumped back, trying to
avoid her impact blasters, and it lost its balance as some
of the rubble underfoot shifted. For one fleeting moment,
it was vulnerable as it tried to remain upright.
"Gotcha!!" the hardsuited singer exulted savagely. Her
gun arm snapped up, and a shattering blaze of laser energy
speared from the gun muzzle, followed in quick succession by
the flat crack of her railgun. The biomechanoid was struck
squarely between the eyes by the shots, and it collapsed in
a headless heap a moment later.
"Piece of cake," Priss panted, staggering over to the
biomechanical carcass, giving it a couple more railgun
spikes to the chest at close range, just to make sure it
stayed down. After a moment to recover her lost breath, she
charged towards the flashes of another battle, where she
could faintly see a white hardsuit dueling it out with
another boomer.
****
His breathing sounded harsh inside the confines of his
helmet as he warily watched the boomer circle him. Bert
made a mental note to try and figure out a way to have some
kind of internal air-conditioning built into the suits; at
least it might eliminate the problem of perpetually feeling
like he was swimming in sweat during a fight. He returned
his attention to the killer combat machine a few metres
away.
A low rumble, almost like a growl emanated from his
biomechanical adversary as it stalked him. A slow leak of
oily fluid dripped onto the pavement from the ruined stump
of its left arm, and faint wisps of smoke curled from the
smoldering hole high on the right side of its chest.
SkyKnight had managed, however briefly, to get the boomer at
a disadvantage, and had gotten home with two particle-laser
shots. If he hadn't been preoccupied with not getting
killed himself by the boomer's swordblades, he could
probably have aimed a bit better and ended the fight right
there. At the moment, he'd take whatever he could get.
SkyKnight's armoured shoulder brushed the cylindrical
wall of the storage tank near him as he backed away, and he
stifled the surge of irritation that flared through him; of
all the places to have to fight the boomer, why had he moved
further into the tank farm that surrounded them?! Of
course, he hadn't really had much time to scout the
territory first, but it was still annoying, and potentially
lethal, to be so hemmed in.
At the same time, the nauseating stench that had been
pervading the air again assaulted his sinuses with renewed
enthusiasm; whatever it was that was giving off such a foul
odour had to be nearby. He hoped it wasn't going to get any
stronger; it was already enough of a distraction.
The boomer's eyes glowed brightly as it blurred towards
him in a renewed assault. The ringing clash of edged steel
meeting another blade skirled through the darkness as the
silver hardsuit met its charge, parrying the boomer's
remaining swordblade with his left arm, as his right arm
smashed the boomer's head back, re-directing its particle
beam shot towards the distant ceiling above them. The
silver Knight Saber had a fleeting instant to pray that it
wouldn't bring down the roof on top of them.
SkyKnight leaped backwards as he parried a backstroke
from the boomer, the gun on the left shoulder of his
battlesuit sweeping into position with a loud clack. A
sharp report accompanied the discharge of a railgun bolt,
which buried itself halfway into the armour plating on the
boomer's lower torso, just above its hip.
The explosive bolt blew a sizable hole into boomer, and
the boomer's movements slowed suddenly; its hip joint had
apparently been damaged, reducing it to a crippled-looking
limp. With an enraged snarl, the crimson biomechanoid spat
another crackling particle beam at its nemesis.
SkyKnight nimbly ducked behind a tank....and found
himself staring at the warning placard for the container he
was standing behind. There was an unmistakable `Explosive!'
warning on the sign, but that wasn't what had sent freezing
chills of alarm through his guts. The name of the chemical
inside the tanks was prominently displayed just below it:
HYDRAZINE.
"Oh. My. GOD!!!" The silver-clad hardsuit spun
violently, his gaze darting to the other tanks nearby, his
frantic eyes noting now that all the tanks were similarly
marked. At the same time, he berated himself for not
recognizing the pervasive stench of the corrosive fluid
sooner. There were few things that were as volatile, and as
repulsive in terms of fragrance, as hydrazine, a major
component of jet and rocket fuels.
His horrified gaze was wrenched sideways as his
erstwhile opponent dragged itself around the tank to face
him. There was a mechanical whir and snapping noise as twin
mini-guns folded out of the crimson machine's shoulders.
SkyKnight's taut nerves responded before he was even
conscious of having decided to attack.
Whipping forwards, he smashed the boomer sprawling with
a roundhouse swing before it could fire, and then dove over
it headfirst. His jets kicked in as he passed over the
boomer, catapulting him out and away from the floundering
biomechanoid. A spray of high-velocity projectiles screamed
through the air after him, but missed, instead tearing a
gaping hole into the side of the nearest hydrazine tank.
SkyKnight didn't look back, but revved his jets higher,
racing away from the shockwave and huge fireball that
blossomed behind him.
****
Sylia hurled herself backwards, narrowly avoiding the
raking energy blast that lanced through the air. She turned
the backward-leap into a twisting handspring that brought
her upright facing her foe again. Before she could get set
for an attack, the crimson-armoured boomer attacked her
again, rushing forward with blinding speed and slashing at
her with its arm-blades.
Desperately, she parried with her own hardsuit blades,
then fired the thrusters on the right hip of her suit,
throwing herself sideways to avoid the particle bolt the
boomer blasted at her. She deftly maneuvered herself
through the air, landing a split-second later as she
launched a blistering salvo from her own laser cannons.
The red-white energy bolts tore into the boomer,
punching smoking holes into its torso, but apparently
without seriously injuring it. With an enraged snarl, the
boomer leaped at her, executing a spinning kick that
would've done credit to any martial artist. The white
hardsuit just barely dodged the devastating kick, twisting
aside with a back-wrenching jolt.
How can this damn thing be this tough?!, the unbidden
thought sped through her mind. She hadn't had this much
trouble in a one-on-one fight in a long time, and she wasn't
enjoying the experience. The boomer was tough, strong, and
agile, and it was exhibiting relentless determination as it
tried to kill her. Dimly, she realized that the boomer's AI
must have realized that a large part of the Knight Saber's
successes depended on teamwork, and that was why they'd been
split up; one-on-one, the boomers were superior combat
machines. She prayed devoutly that everyone else was all
right.
A white-hot spike of pain speared into her skull as the
boomer landed and caught her helmet with a sweeping
backhand. The blow, delivered without even turning around,
carried enough force to send her staggering sideways,
momentarily stunned. The boomer seized the opportunity
immediately, and the white-armoured leader of the Knight
Sabers felt two more numbing impacts send her staggering
back.
There was a loud clang as Sylia felt her back hit the
wall. Still dazed and reeling, she was unable to do
anything as the boomer's metal-clad fist smashed into the
torso of her hardsuit, high on the left side of her chest.
Metal crunched and squealed as her suit was sandwiched
between the boomer's fist and the wall; something snapped
agonizingly within her, spearing her with red shards of
incredible pain. Sylia didn't even have time to scream as
the shock swept a black shroud over her sight.
****
Sylvie staggered backwards, nearly blind from the sweat
streaming into her eyes. Her breath was a pained rasp now,
and she knew with certainty that she was as good as dead.
Despite valiant effort on her part, she hadn't been able to
turn the tide of the battle, and the boomer had almost
contemptuously destroyed her endurance with a punishing rate
of attacks. She was willing to swear that the damn thing
was laughing at her as it advanced slowly, the long edged
weapon extending from its right arm slowly lifting for
another strike at her.
A tremendous detonation shook the entire building, and
the compressive shockwave from whatever had exploded
buffeted her. Shocked, she forgot completely about her
opponent, and spun to gape at the expanding inferno roughly
fifty metres away. As she stared at the raging flames, a
familiar droning noise heralded a flickering shape that was
flying at high speed towards her.
She promptly forgot all about what was happening at the
other side of the building as her opponent grabbed her by
the neck from behind. Crushing agony raced through her as
she grabbed at the boomer's hand, but she couldn't get the
leverage to break the iron grip. She was strong, and her
hardsuit enhanced her strength even further, but she just
couldn't get a purchase to loosen the boomer's hand with.
Tears squeezed out of her eyes as the clenching hand
tightened further. One lousy mistake...she could just
picture the boomer preparing to skewer her from behind,
The sizzling whipcrack of an energy beam burning past
her eased the death-grip on her neck abruptly, but not
totally. She was helplessly dragged sideways by the
remorseless boomer as it turned. Her eyes were still
squeezed shut as she braced herself for the inevitable
swordblade in the back. It never came.
"Sylvie, can you hear me?" SkyKnight's electronic voice
drifted to her ears. Opening her eyes, she could see a
familiar silhouette against a savagely burning wall of
flames in her suit viewscreen. The silver hardsuit stepped
sideways a few steps, and she was hauled around to face him.
Abruptly, she realized that the boomer was using her as a
human shield; Bert couldn't shoot at the boomer without
hitting her.
"Sylvie!! If you can hear me, answer me!!"
"I can hear you," she replied, vaguely pleased that
there weren't any tremors in her voice.
"Good," came the reply. "I'm going to try something
now, so brace yourself. Try not to struggle too much."
"What?! What are you going to do?!" Sylvie couldn't
quite believe what he'd just said. `Try not to struggle'?!
He wasn't the one with his neck being squeezed!!
"Trust me," came the not-so-soothing response. Sylvie
watched, her stomach churning around uneasily as SkyKnight
began drifting slowly closer to her and her captor. The
boomer backed off, dragging her with it.
"Whatever you're doing, do it faster!" she choked as
the boomer's hand clenched again.
"Okay, let's see how smart you really are, you
bastard," she heard him mutter. The glow from SkyKnight's
visor eyeslot began to pulse at regular intervals, and her
suit sensors informed her that a targeting scan was passing
over her.
The boomer obviously detected it as well; realizing
that the silver Knight Saber was trying for a targeting lock
on it, the crimson biomechanoid hauled the captive red-grey
hardsuit closer to it, trying to shield as much of its body
with hers as it could. The boomer was still taller than
her, though, and she was beginning to have difficulty
breathing; with her feet dangling a full two feet above the
floor, she felt like she was being hanged.
"Okay, try to figure this one out then," she heard,
just before her suit viewscreen lit up with all kinds of
screaming warnings. He was locking his targeting systems
onto her suit instead of the boomer!!
"What the hell are you doing?!" she protested
frantically, trying vainly again to get away from the
boomer. "Shoot the boomer, not me!!" SkyKnight seemed to
be ignoring her, and his arms came up. A low hum began to
emanate from his arm-cannons.
The boomer appeared bewildered, and its grip on her
neck wavered a bit. Her sensors were still warning her that
a weapons lock had been established on her when everything
suddenly lit up in a flare of brilliant red energy. Stray
electrons sizzled and spat in her ears as she felt the
boomer holding her jerk sharply, and stagger. A moment
later, she was free, as two more crackling detonations
seared the air. Sylvie tripped on something and fell to her
hands and knees.
"You all right?" A pair of helping gauntlets
accompanied the question. Vision clearing, the hardsuited
sexaroid looked up at SkyKnight as the silver-clad hardsuit
helped her back to her feet.
"I think so," she answered, gratefully drawing an
unobstructed breath. The sharp pains stabbing into her head
from the base of her neck reminded her of what had almost
happened, and she promptly found herself getting angry at
him. "Just what did you think you were doing back there?!"
she demanded hotly. "I almost got killed!!"
"I'm sorry," he said soothingly. "I didn't have time
to explain, and the boomer might have understood if I had.
I bluffed it."
"Bluffed it?!" she repeated blankly.
"It didn't expect me to fire at it since I had a target
lock on you," he explained, shrugging. "I didn't have my
weapons tied into the targeting systems though, so I could
shoot at it the minute I had an opening."
"And just how could you be so sure you wouldn't miss
and hit me?!"
"Practice," he replied matter-of-factly. "Why do you
think I do so much archery?"
Sylvie just stared at him in disbelief.
****
"SYLIA!!!" Priss shouted, horrible fear surging through
her as she watched the white hardsuit crumple to the floor,
slumped against the wall. The boomer stepped towards the
fallen hardsuit, obviously intending to finish her off.
Priss launched towards the boomer on her flight jets, racing
against time.
"Get away from her!!" the panicking blue hardsuit
screamed, firing a steady stream of energy beams at the
boomer. The red biomechanoid was struck by a pair of the
shots before it realized it had another adversary to contend
with. It sprang away from the downed hardsuit, snarling
viciously.
Priss landed between the injured white hardsuit and the
red combat machine, her mind racing. She needed a way to
end the fight quickly, partly so she could help Sylia, and
partly because she was tired herself, and knew she couldn't
last through another fight like her own solo combat had
been.
The rolling boom of a not-to-distant explosion sent a
cloud of smoke and flames racing towards them. The boomer
misinterpreted the explosion from behind it as an attack,
and leaped sideways, half-turning to face what it thought
was a new assailant. Instantly, the blue-armoured Saber
threw herself at the boomer, attacking with everything she
had.
The boomer tried dodging, but was too slow in reacting;
desperation had given Priss a momentary advantage over it.
It staggered away from her, smoke pouring from the hole
ripped into the side of its neck by her almost point-blank
volley of railgun spikes. She gritted her teeth
determinedly, and sprang into the air with her jets as she
aimed a kick at the boomer's skull. Her armoured boot
impacted solidly with the biomechanoid's head, and her
impact blasters blew it apart with a satisfying display of
pyrotechnics.
Hardly pausing to catch her breath, the blue hardsuited
woman dropped back to the floor, then speedily but carefully
picked her way across the rubble to where Sylia was still
slumped. Kneeling next to her, she gently turned her over,
sucking in her breath in dismay at the sight of the crumpled
armour plating on the white suit's left shoulder. It didn't
look good.
"Sylia?" she tried calling. "Can you hear me?" There
wasn't any response, so Priss reached over and was about to
try opening Sylia's visor to check on her when the heavy
crunch of armoured feet on concrete sounded behind her.
Spinning violently, she lunged to her feet as she speared
her gun arm towards where the footsteps had come from.
"Hey!!! Peace!! Time out!!" SkyKnight yelped, throwing
his armoured arms across his helmet as he ducked
frantically. Priss just barely kept from shooting him; the
adrenaline hadn't quite worn off yet.
"You stupid asshole!!" she spat, lowering her arm and
powering down her weapons. "Don't sneak up on me like
that!!" Behind the cringing silver hardsuit, a red-grey
hardsuit limped into view.
"I'm wasn't sneaking!" he protested, straightening up.
"I..."
"Never mind," she cut him off flatly. "Are either of
you hurt?"
"Not really. Some bruises and the like, but that's
it."
"Good." In the distance behind her friends, Priss
could see flames wreathing the chemical tanks, and decided
that any further conversation was better carried out
somewhere very far away from their current location.
"Sylia's hurt bad, and we're going to have to carry
her," the blue hardsuit informed them. "This place could go
up any second, so we've got to get the hell out of here.
Sylvie, get her feet; I'll take her shoulders." The red-gray
hardsuit started to stoop down.
"Hang on a second! We can't carry her like that; we
might make something worse!" SkyKnight objected. He hastily
glanced around, then saw what he was after. With a quick
burst from his flight system, he zipped over to the wall
near a storage tank, and wrenched loose the metal ladder
from the wall. Swooping back to where Priss and Sylvie
waited tensely, he quickly chopped the ladder down to a
suitable length with his lightsaber.
"There: one makeshift stretcher," he proclaimed,
carefully dropping it to the floor next to Sylia. It took a
few more moments to gingerly ease their fallen leader onto
the ladder, and secure her suit to it with some stray
wiring. Priss and Sylvie picked up the improvised litter.
"Okay, now let's get the hell out of here!" Priss said,
her helmet looking up towards the distant exit hole.
Angrily burning pieces of wreckage hit the floor around them
as they gently lofted into the air on hissing jet thrusters.
As they moved steadily upwards, the rain of flaming
debris increased in intensity as loud rumbling began to
drown out the crackling flames. A few of the falling pieces
zipped by with uncomfortable closeness, and SkyKnight had to
ride shotgun, using his lasers to snap-shoot at any debris
which might hit them. After what seemed like an eternity,
they made it to the upper level, and vanished into the thick
clouds of black smoke, hurrying to find the exit.
****
"Nene!! You can't go back in there!!" Linna objected.
She unwisely tried to stand, then collapsed gasping back
into her chair as her leg screamed at her despite the
painkillers she'd taken. "I know how you feel, but it's too
dangerous!!" Her red-pink suited friend stayed out of her
reach, and determinedly began moving towards the lowered
exit ramp of the KnightWing, pausing long enough to drop the
portable storage unit that had been the focus of their
mission into another seat.
"I can't stand it anymore!!" she declared adamantly.
"They should've been back by now!!"
"Hold that thought!!" Sylvie panted, rushing past the
startled young woman. She threw herself into the pilot's
seat in the cockpit, thumbing a series of switches and
starting the warm-up sequence for the plane's engine. As a
low thrum began to carry through the plane, a very battered
and dusty blue hardsuit backed up the loading ramp into the
plane cabin, carrying a silent and still white hardsuit
gingerly on a makeshift stretcher. The other end of the
stretcher was being held by SkyKnight, who looked equally
the worse for wear.
"Nene, you'd better call home base and get Anri
standing by," Bert advised as the loading ramp closed behind
him. "I think Sylia's in a bad way."
"Already done," she replied crisply, her tone faintly
smug. "Linna's going to need some medical attention too."
"What happened?!" Priss asked in surprise, glancing
over. The green hardsuit sighed, then winced.
"I got caught by a falling chunk of the building," she
replied in disgust. "No time to dodge it. What happened to
Sylia?"
"A goddamn red boomer, that's what," SkyKnight told her
tersely. Moving carefully, he and Priss moved to the rear
of the cabin, and gently slid Sylia's body from the
stretcher onto the emergency bunk that folded down from the
wall. He glanced down at Sylia's suit as they strapped her
down for the rapid trip home, and felt worry again stab
through him at the sight of the crushed-in armour on her
chest and shoulder. "Should we try getting her suit off?"
he asked uneasily, indicating the damage. "I really don't
like the looks of that."
"Better let the doc handle that," Linna advised from
behind him, wincing to herself as she tried to get
comfortable. "We don't want to make anything worse."
"Brace yourselves!" Sylvie's voice called. "We're
leaving!!" Everyone grabbed for something solid to hang on
to as the plane jerked sharply, the whine of its engines
rising to a thunderous roar.
Climbing urgently into the cloudy skies, the sleek
black plane banked and shot off into the distance, leaving
behind the burning factory on the edge of the Canyons. A
moment later, a massive fireball engulfed the what remained
of the building, sending billowing fountains of smoke into
the sky, and raining debris on the surrounding city.
****
Bert's head jerked up from where it had been pillowed
on his arms on the table as the door to the lounge creaked
open. Blinking aching eyes, he tried stifling a yawn as he
looked towards the entrance. Although comfortably
furnished, the lounge was used mostly as a waiting room if
someone was in the infirmary. On the couch across the room
from him, Sylvie lay sprawled out, trying to relax. One arm
was thrown over her eyes to protect from the glare of the
room lights, and her sock feet were propped up on the arm of
the sofa. She was wearing her bike suit again; Bert idly
wondered if she actually had any other regular clothes.
"Where's everyone else?" the crusty old doctor inquired
as he walked into the room, dropping his kit in the chair by
the door. He looked the same as he always had: tall, thin,
and old, but now he also looked tired, and there was an
exhausted slump to his shoulders.
"They're waiting somewhere else," Bert replied
uncomfortably as he stood up from his chair. "It's kind of
a long story." Originally, Nene and Priss had been waiting
in the room with them. Unfortunately, with the immediate
stress of the mission over, the hurt feelings Nene had been
able to ignore earlier had begun to leak through her
control. Priss had left, saying she'd check back later; he
had a pretty good idea of where she was waiting.
He also knew why she'd left, since he was sharing the
same awkward and uncertain feelings she was whenever Nene
was present. He'd sat for a few minutes as guilt worked
relentlessly on him, but then Nene had stood, quietly
declared that she'd be waiting in Sylia's apartment for
word, and left. That had been over two hours ago.
"Hmmm," the old medico looked at him thoughtfully, then
shrugged. "I'll need your help moving my patients
upstairs," he informed him. "Both of you; Anri and I can't
manage by ourselves."
"How are they?" Sylvie asked, sitting up and swinging
her feet to the floor.
"Fine," he sighed tiredly. "The young lady with the
black hair and blue eyes..."
"Linna," Sylvie supplied, standing and stretching,
wincing as her sore neck complained at an incautious
movement.
"....has a wrenched knee and a fractured shinbone, plus
some heavy bruising," the doctor continued as if
uninterrupted.
"And...Sylia?" Bert spoke up hesitantly. The doctor's
jaw tightened, and for the first time, Bert saw very deep
concern flash in his eyes briefly. It was quickly masked.
"She has a broken collarbone and some torn muscle in
the shoulder," he said quietly. "She's not in any danger,
but she will be out of action for a while." He glanced at
Sylvie. "I understand you've been helping her run her
store?" The tall dark-haired woman nodded. "Good. Keep at
it," the old man directed. "She's not to do anything, and I
mean anything, for two weeks at least."
"As for you," the doc turned to the tall red-head, "I
expect you to handle the other `business', shall we say.
The most I'll allow her to do is sit at a computer, if that,
and I want you to make sure she doesn't go beyond those
limits. Clear?"
"I'll do my best," he promised.
"Good," the doc grunted gruffly. "Now, if you two will
give me a hand?"
THE NEXT DAY .....
Sylia sighed irritably, shifting around on the couch
and trying to get comfortable. She immediately regretted
it, as a searing spike of pain stabbed her chest, overcoming
even the barrier of the painkillers she'd taken. She didn't
dare up the dosage though; her uncle would kill her if he
thought she was overdosing, and she really didn't need an
addiction to the things.
She carefully lay back, wishing for the thousandth time
that it hadn't been necessary to tape and splint her left
arm into immobility as well. Trying to do anything with one
hand was incredibly awkward and frustrating, turning normal
rituals like getting dressed into lengthy, painful
processes. As it was, she was wearing an old baggy
tracksuit; it had proven to be the easiest to get into, and
the most comfortable at the moment.
A pensive frown creased her brow as she stared at the
ceiling, ruminating on the mission the night before. While
on the surface it looked like the Knight Sabers had been
successful, she couldn't escape the feeling that somehow
something had been missed. She went over the mission again
with care, trying to see what was eluding her. A loud knock
on the door to her apartment shattered her concentration.
Sighing in irritation, she slowly began sitting up.
"You don't have to get up Sylia," Nene's voice called
cheerily. "I let myself in." She looked remarkably pert,
bright-eyed and fresh. She was wearing her ADP uniform, and
looked crisp and neat.
"I'd noticed," she replied dryly with a faint smile.
"You're certainly chipper this morning."
"Shouldn't I be?" the youthful officer replied. Some
of the cheer disappeared as she sat down across from her.
"You said I had to move on, so I'm trying." For a moment,
Sylia saw the intense emotional pain she was still fighting
flash in her eyes. "I've .... wished them luck," she said
after a moment, taking a deep breath and biting her lip as
her composure cracked a bit. "I'm... trying not to let it
bother me, but..."
"I understand," Sylia smiled gently, sparing her having
to elaborate further. She sat back, giving Nene an
appraising glance. "You're off to work soon, I presume?"
"Uh-huh," Nene regained some of her bounce. "I've got
an afternoon shift, so I thought I'd check on you and Linna
first. Need anything?"
"Other than instant healing?" Sylia suggested with a
wry smile. "I'm fine, thanks. Sylvie made sure she left
the kitchen stocked with ready-to-serve food made up, and
Anri is due to check on us later today."
"Okay," she replied, starting to stand. "I'll go check
on Linna, then." Sylia stopped her with a gesture.
"I did have one thing I wanted to say before you go,"
she told the young red-head. "You did extremely well on the
mission last night. Good work; I'm proud of you." Nene
flushed at the compliment, then grinned a bit shyly.
"Well, I did do a bit more than maybe just get the
files we were supposed to," she confessed.
"Oh?" Sylia raised an eyebrow. "What did you do?"
"While the files the client wanted were downloading, I
looked around and found some files on the specs for those
new boomers; it looks like they tried to wipe them from the
system, but they didn't do a very good job. I was able to
re-build them without too much trouble." She grinned again,
shrugging. "I figured we might as well take a copy of our
own, sort of as a bonus." Sylia couldn't help laughing out
loud at the smug look on her face.
"Yes, very good work," the Sabers' leader repeated,
amused. "I'll look at the data later. You'd better go
check on Linna, and make sure she isn't trying to get up."
Sylia watched as the slender red-haired woman left the room,
heading for the guest room where her injured friend was laid
up. Shaking her head in bemusement, she sighed and shifted
around on the couch again, the day somehow seeming a bit
brighter.
****
A very satisfied smile crawled across Kate Madigan's
normally cool features as she walked into Quincy's lofty
office, almost caressing the file folder she had tucked
under her arm. Her usual dark-coloured business suit was
neatly pressed, and her long lavender-hued hair was
perfectly in place; she was a bit vain about always
appearing professional, and it helped add a bit to the
intimidating effect her reputation had on underlings.
As she approached the massive oak desk the chairman
seemed to live behind, his chair swiveled to face her,
turning away from where he'd apparently been gazing out the
huge bay window overlooking the city. Icy blue eyes watched
her as she approached, and there was definitely a pleased
expression on the craggy face of the CEO. A carafe and
glass of ice water sat on the desk near him, moisture
beading on their chilled surfaces.
"Madigan," he greeted her with unaccustomed cheer when
she reached him. "And how are you on this marvelous
morning?"
"Sir?!" She was taken a little aback at the unusual
greeting. "Are you feeling well?!"
"Never better," he assured her. "I'm merely enjoying
the morning and its boundless possibilities." He eyed her
obvious confusion with evident relish for a moment, then
sighed and became more like his accustomed self. "You had
something to report?"
"The operation last night was a total success," she
informed him. "Our liabilities have been liquidated." With
obvious satisfaction, she placed the report folder in front
of him.
"The plant was destroyed?" Quincy asked, taking a
measured sip from his glass of water. He left the report
sitting on his desk; he could examine it later.
"The insurance adjustors are assessing the damage now,
and I expect the rewards from the claim will exceed several
billion," she reported, pausing a moment to savour the taste
of victory. "And there are no indications left that the
facility was ever home to our combat boomer development.
The fires and explosions left nothing intact, and appeared
to be just another industrial misfortune. We may have to
pay some fines for improper storage of dangerous materials,
but they won't amount to much."
"We must sometimes deal with adversity," he mused
philosophically. "What of the technician who was in charge
of the facility at the time?"
"Unfortunately, we can't pin his death on the Knight
Sabers as planned," Madigan replied, a trace of regret in
her voice. "There wasn't much left to identify of anything."
"Pity," Quincy sighed. "After going to the trouble of
duplicating their weapons, I'd looked forward to seeing more
warrants for their arrest go out. What of their `client'?"
"I wish them luck," Madigan replied. "The virus we
sent them is remarkably efficient; if they have a business
left by the end of today, I'll be surprised. We were
fortunate that there was a disgruntled former employee
willing to tell us what they were planning." Once the plot
against GENOM by a smaller, non-affiliated corporation had
been revealed, Quincy had seen an immediate opportunity to
use the plan to his own advantage.
The first step had been to transfer the files the
company had been interested in to a new location. Luckily,
they had the perfect site: the production facility where the
new A-12 combat boomers were being produced.
Despite throwing up every possible roadblock they could
think of, the government had succeeded in getting a court-
ordered inspection of the plant; somehow, somebody had
received word that there was illegal weapons development
going on in a supposedly innocuous, aging factory. An
inspection was something that couldn't be allowed to happen;
there was no possible way to hide all the evidence...unless
the factory conveniently disappeared.
The hiring of the Knight Sabers had provided the
perfect excuse. They were already notorious for destroying
GENOM facilities, so it wouldn't be hard to pin the loss of
this particular factory on them either. Making sure that a
suitable welcoming committee had been arranged, and leaving
some appropriately-placed explosives had also ensured that
the building wouldn't survive. Arranging to have a murder
pinned on the Knight Sabers would have been a nice added
touch, but Quincy was willing to take minor little setbacks.
"It appears that our faith in the young woman acting as
their computer expert was well-founded," Madigan continued,
smiling coldly. "The computer systems never even twitched
while she was working on them, and she downloaded the files
intact, bypassing all the safeguards on the system."
"Excellent." Quincy savoured the taste of victory for
a moment, then looked at his unofficial second-in-command.
"Was the true nature of those data files discovered?"
"No sir," Madigan answered. "The pink Knight Saber
didn't try accessing the files at all." Which was extremely
fortunate, she noted in a silent aside to herself. The data
files that the Knight Sabers had retrieved concealed a very
virulent computer virus, one which destroyed all computer
systems it encountered. If the Knight Sabers had uncovered
that little fact before downloading the files, at least part
of their plan would have been ruined.
"Was there anything else to report?" the craggy-faced
old man queried, leaning back in his chair. Madigan sighed,
looking momentarily irritated.
"Our other investigations have some promising leads,
but so far no success," she told him. "With this matter
settled, I assure you I will be devoting my full attention
to them."
"Very well," Quincy nodded. "Proceed." Madigan bowed
respectfully, then turned and left the capacious office.
The door banged closed behind her as he turned his chair to
stare out the colossal window overlooking the sprawling mega-
city. After a moment, corrosive laughter began to roll
through the room.
END
(Finally!!! ^_^)