----------Cut Here----------
He had returned in a mood even blacker than the one he had been in all
day, only to find that he would be doing a double shift yet again, and for no
good reason he could see. Not that there was anything new in that; but today
he just was not in the mood. Finally, he had learned less than half an hour
before that Nene had called in sick again and there would be no hope of
relieving the boredom with the work he wanted to do.
"Damn you to hell." He muttered again with feeling as he shot a
killing look in the direction of the chief's office.
"Nice to see you too." Said Daley with a grin as he dragged up a chair
and settled himself by Leon.
"Hmph." Leon retorted sourly. "Did you ever get the feeling we're just
wasting our time?"
"All the time." Daley answered easily. "What's up?"
"Ah the hell with it." Said Leon moodily. "What the hell does it
matter if we get our backsides blown away? They don't give a sh*t anyway."
"Well someone's in a real fine mood tonight." Daily observed with a
grin. "What's brought all this on?"
"We've had eight K-12s in maintenance for six days." Said Leon.
"Eight! And when I complain about it I get some sh*t about funds available
and management of resources in relation to the current situation. Bullsh*t!"
He snarled again, bringing his hand down on the desk for emphasis. "We're the
one's who've got to go out there and clean up Genom's trash for them and I get
some sh*t about resource management!"
Slamming down the empty cup he rose to his feet and stalked away from
his desk, then back once more.
"Feel better now?" Daley inquired.
"Well what the hell are we supposed to do?" Leon demanded as though
really expecting an answer. "It'd serve them right if things blew up
tonight--."
He stopped short as a sudden flurry of activity caught their
attention.
"Did anyone ever tell you you should be careful what you wish for?"
Daley inquired dryly as a dispatcher came racing towards them. "I think your's
has just been granted."
Things were a disaster, but then Hiroshi Davis never expected anything
else in this job. He knew what he was; cannon-fodder for any boomer that
decided its next particle-beam had his name on its business end.
"God I hate my job." He muttered without much feeling as he peered out
from behind the impromptu barricade he and the others had finished erecting a
scant minute before.
It was a joke like everything else, but that didn't matter. Hiroshi
was sure it wouldn't be standing for long once the boomers reached them.
The truth was that he didn't much care any more. He had become numb to
the danger once an incident began, no matter how scared he thought he was. It
was only when everything was over that he started shaking.
They weren't far away now. He could hear the whine of charging weapons
and the spit of plasma as the machines fired and the cracks and screams as
something or someone exploded.
"Stupid bastards!" Hiroshi swore venomously under his breath. "They
just won't be told. Wouldn't matter if you beat the bastards senseless, they'd
find a way to crawl back to get themselves killed."
Another scream. "Well, that one got more of a look than he bargained
for."
Hiroshi snickered bitterly, then sobered. He was on the edge of losing
it again, he knew. It was the adrenalin and the fear and the exhilaration of
the coming fight and the fact that he wanted to slam through the roof of Genom
tower and splash the chairman's brains across the plush carpet of his office
for screwing up so many lives.
Taking several breaths to calm himself, Hiroshi moved to climb the
barracade. To hell with orders; he was going to get a better view. He had
almost found a suitable perch when there came a sudden hiss from above and a
cruiser was turned into a fireball barely ten yards from where Hiroshi was
climbing.
"Holy sh*t!" He heard his own voice scream as a second explosion
pitched him from his precarious perch like a doll.
A moment later it was all crashing and firing and the frantic sounds
of men and women screaming hopelessly for backup.
"Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!" Hiroshi was snarling as he struggled
desperately to his feet.
Then turning, he fled to the farther end of the street. He'd lost his
gun in the explosion, not that the thing was much good, and he would only be
in the way until they could get him into something a bit less easy to blow to
pieces. He arrived with several others at the new lines just as several
cruisers screamed to a halt and the first of the helicopters began dropping K-
12s into the fray.
Leon was already out and running as Daley pulled to a halt.
"What's the situation?" He demanded, stumbling to a halt beside a
white-faced sergeant.
It was an idiot of a question, he was sure. The situation would be as
much of a mess as always.
"There are six of them, so far." The man panted.
There was blood on his face from a cut just below his left eye and he
was shaking so much that he could barely talk. "They're not the usual Cs from
what I could see and whatever the hell they are they're fast. They seem to be
going for people rather than property; we've already lost six; but they don't
seem to pack the punch of a 55."
"Sh*t!" Leon swore feelingly. "Just what we need. Have you--"
The rest of his sentence was cut off by an explosion followed by the
crash of one of the helicopters.
"Whatever they are, these bastards can fly." Came a shout over the
comms. "Get your sorry behinds under cover!"
A moment later people seemed to be running everywhere.
Cursing, Leon moved back to the cruiser, reaching it just as something
came hurtling almost from above to crash down on the sergeant he had just
left. Staring, suddenly frozen in place, Leon watched helplessly as the
machine leapt skywards, the screaming man held between both hands. Then there
was a sickening tearing sound as it pulled his head from his body and sent it
spinning into the ranks of the ADP before slamming the body through the plate-
glass of a nearby shop front and soaring away.
Gagging, choking back the bile that was desperately trying to escape,
Leon lifted his arm for a hopeless shot.
"Leon, get the hell down!"
Daley's scream just penetrated in time to save his life as he dived
from the path of a bolt that blew a crater into the pavement on which he had
been standing a scant moment before.
Then Daley was dragging him behind the cruiser and away and a moment
later it was nearly cut in two by the flash of another shot from above. The
resulting explosion sent the two men spinning through the air to land in a
choking, panting heap almost under the wheels of yet another cruiser as it
swerved wildly to a stop.
Half stunned, Leon sat up, trying desperately to shake the stars from
his head. Then suddenly the familiar: "Knight Sabres go!" brought him
staggering to his feet just in time to see the four hardsuited figures drop
from above.
"Ok you bastards," He heard from one, and smiled as he watched the
blue hardsuit leap forwards. "let's rumble."
She was in her element. This was what she wanted and this night more
than most, in order to take her mind from what Fargo had told Sylia. And yet,
even as she leapt into battle, a strange feeling of unease and deja vu seized
her, growing swiftly to a cloying, numbing terror that could not be shaken
off.
There were six of the things, which meant two each for them. Nene's
role tonight would be even more defensive than usual; she still wasn't feeling
entirely herself after the night before.
Grinning savagely, determined to shake herself from the fear she was
certain Fargo's words had begun, Priss flipped effortlessly away from the
grappling lunge of the thing that seemed eager to put its arms around her and
nailed it to the head, or so she thought. With growing unease, she watched as
it slipped just as effortlessly from her shot and slithered aside with
astounding speed and agility, the movement sending another unreasoning thrill
of fear coursing down her spine. Something was going to go wrong, and soon. Of
that she was strangely, horribly certain.
"Hey Sylia, what the hell are these things?" She demanded, pushing
down the rising dread with a savage shake of her head.
"My thoughts exactly." Linna added.
"I'm not sure." Sylia answered, her own voice showing no sign of
apprehension. "Some kind of assassin I think, but considerably faster than
usual for such machines."
"Oh great. Now they've gone and upgraded the troops as well." Priss
said darkly as she avoided yet another vicious swipe. "They don't seem to have
the armament of 55s."
"Don't underestimate them." Sylia warned, her words again sparking an
irrational thrill of terror tingling down Priss's spine. "They're fast and I'm
beginning to suspect that they've been upgraded with some of the DA combat
routines. These things aren't stupid. Nene?"
"I can't seem to upset them at all" She answered, her tone suddenly
uneasy. "and I'm not reading much from them either."
"I can't nail them damn it." Linna cut in. "They're too fast."
"They're not exactly standing still are they?" Priss observed grimly
as she tried yet again to take the head from the machine that was duelling
with her. "Keep still damn you." She cursed.
Leon watched in growing unease as the fight progressed. Whatever these
things were, they didn't seem able to touch the Sabres' suits. He had seen
them connect several times and the machines seemed to have no impact at all.
Even the usual beam-weapon in the mouth seemed a poor imitation of the C-55
equivalent. What concerned him was the fact that the six machines were
matching the Sabres move for move and were managing to keep out of range.
"This is crazy Sylia." Priss exploded in growing unease and
frustration. "Why not treble-team these things? They don't seem to be able to
touch us."
She wanted this fight over, and as soon as possible.
"It's worth a try." She agreed.
"Which one?" Linna asked.
Sylia pointed and immediately the three hardsuits converged on one of
the boomers.
"Wait!"
The shriek caught all of them by surprise and nearly put Priss's heart
in her mouth.
"What the hell?" She almost shouted, whirling furiously towards Nene.
"The others moved towards the ADP lines as soon as you tried for that
one."
"Sh*t!" Priss swore, an irrational desperation beginning to cloud her
mind.
They had to finish this. She could not have explained how or why she
knew, but they had to finish it and very quickly.
"Hey!" She shouted furiously, gesturing wildly at the watching ADP.
"If you want to get yourselves killed, go do it somewhere else."
There were a few glares but most seemed eager to take her advice after
what had already happened.
"Pull back." Leon shouted, seeing what the four were trying to do.
In the next instant the six machines shifted into close formation and
dived straight at the barricades.
"Sylia!" Nene shrieked again.
"I know. Priss, Linna. Nene, stay back and keep scanning. We need to
disable these things."
The young ADP officer however had already leapt to join her and the
others as they shot forwards on furiously hissing jets.
"Got you you piece of Genom sh*t." Priss cried in sudden triumph and
relief as she caught one of the machines by the arm and lifted it from the
ground.
The thing was lighter than she had imagined and despite a vicious
upper-cut from its other arm which seemed to have as little effect as anything
else the boomers had tried, Priss caught its head in one gloved hand and
squeezed with all the force she could. There was a sudden splintering crack
and a moment later the machine went limp in her grasp.
"Not exactly conventional, but one down." She shouted, slamming the
body straight down into the path of another.
The boomer was unable to avoid the collision and was sent spinning for
a moment before its thrusters righted it.
"They're trying to split up again." Sylia warned. "Linna, you're with
me."
"No; Sylia!" Priss heard her own voice shout almost before she knew
she had spoken. "We have to keep them close together."
"What?" Sylia demanded.
"Priss, what--" Linna began in the same moment.
"Trust me on this." Priss almost snarled. "Just do it."
A moment later she was diving to meet a boomer that seemed to have
chosen stupidly to lunge straight up at her.
"Priss?" Sylia said again.
"Don't worry." She cried as she reached for the illusive machine.
"This one's about to go down for the count."
Priss lunged again, catching its arm in the same way as she had the
first with the idea of giving it the same treatment. The things seemed less
agile in the air. Ignoring the sudden irrational heightening of the sense of
impending danger that had been screaming at her ever since the fight had
begun, she jerked upright, hauling it towards her. And she knew, knew with a
sudden dizzying certainty what would happen a moment before its other arm
whipped up with the speed of a bullet. The blow sent her spinning wildly
through the air to crash to the pavement some fifty feet from where she had
been.
Half stunned as much with the confusing horror of the premonition as
with anything else, Priss staggered to her feet.
"Sylia, watch it." She ground out over the comms against the sudden
rising tide of irrational panic. "These things have been playing possum."
"What!" Sylia demanded.
Priss opened her mouth to answer, then stared in shock as the machine
that had just hit her dropped to a landing before her and began to expand.
"Oh sh*t!" She said almost in a whisper. "I knew it! I knew it! Sylia,
we're in trouble." She continued in a louder tone. "My sparring partner's just
decided its growing up time."
"Sylia!" Linna's voice shouted urgently. "This one's--"
"I know." She answered, her own voice at last betraying something of
the tension and growing bewilderment she was feeling. "So are the others. Try
to keep them on ground. I'm not sure all this is exactly as it seems."
"They're slower I think." Said Priss, diving from the path of the beam
the expanded assassin or whatever it was spat at her and rolling to her feet.
"Yes, they're definitely much slower, and clumsier too I think. This is
crazy."
`Sylia's right.' Her mind seemed suddenly to be screaming at her.
`None of this is right. It's some sick game. We have to clean these up and get
out. We have to get out now!'
But the rational fighter would not listen.
The machine backed away from her next lunge, its mouth opening wide in
a boomer snarl of rage. Priss started forwards, then in the next instant a
lurching sickening nausea mixed with a certainty of sudden imminent danger and
a sense of deja vu such as she had never imagined she could feel engulfed her
and she stumbled, nearly losing her balance as the boomer snarled again and
hurled itself suddenly towards her.
"Priss! Oh God Priss, please help me!"
And now she understood. Whirling at Nene's scream, fighting down the
cloying, trapped feeling of nightmare, Priss ducked the vicious swipe of the
assassin and flipped back to put some distance between herself and the boomer.
"Eat this you bastard!" She heard her own voice snarl, twisting from
the path of the blast and driving a spike into the machine's gaping mouth.
"Got you." She hissed at the flash as the laser discharged into the
boomer's head.
Then in the next moment an explosion she knew would come slammed her
to the ground.
"Sh*t!" She panted, flipping to her feet.
Another desperate scream made her whirl. She had to reach Nene now,
yet there was no time.
Spinning just in time to avoid the claws of another of the homicidal
machines, Priss leapt away and turned, just in time to see Linna drop down
behind it and whip round, slashing its head from its body.
"Three down Sylia." Linna called as though oblivious both to Nene's
scream and of what was about to happen.
Priss opened her mouth to scream a warning, to tell Sylia to get Nene
out now, then had to leap aside as the expected particle beam slammed into the
place in which she had been standing scant moments before. Then came the crash
of the boomer slamming into her from behind and she found herself on the
ground, pinned and utterly unable to move.
"Damn it!" Priss snarled, struggling desperately. "Sylia, get Nene
out! Get her out!"
The scream sounded wild and lost in her own ears and she knew with a
horrible numb finality that they could not hear her.
Kicking out with a savagery born of nightmare desperation, she felt
her foot connect as she knew it would. There was a dull thudding crunch and
Priss hurled the suddenly dead weight from her and lurched frantically
upright, just as Linna drove her knuckle-bomber into the machine's head. Priss
turned in a last desperate move towards her. Then suddenly the blood-curdling
scream she had hoped still by some miracle she would not hear made her spin
back and away. Priss searched wildly for a moment and froze, head up, eyes
wide, gaping in shocked sickened horror at her nightmare come at last to its
inevitable climax.
Nene hung limply in the grip of one of the remaining assassins exactly
as Priss remembered, its claws seeming impossibly to have punched right
through her suit. Slow, sick realisation filled her and she stood rooted,
suddenly utterly oblivious to everything but the sight before her. As in the
vision, Nene was facing the thing, her helmet impossibly torn away, blood
splashing on her lips and pumping from the dreadful wound over the boomer's
arm as she hung, green eyes wide and glazed with terror and agony. Then, even
as Priss watched, knowing what would happen even though it could not be
possible, the machine shifted and changed before her eyes until in its place
stood the tall, stunning figure of the woman of the nightmare, her long
flaming hair streaming about her, her face twisted into that hideous smile of
demonic triumph as she lifted Nene effortlessly in her arms, her mouth
reaching for the blood on her own.
"Oh God! Oh *God* no! NOOOOO!"
The word was torn from Pris's throat in a strangled scream of
revulsion and denial.
Then, the nightmare hurrying now towards its end, the thing turned,
emerald eyes locking with Priss's own, the slow seductive smile of nightmare
appetite she knew she would see filling the devastating face as it began to
move towards her. Priss reeled back for a moment, horror and revulsion
fighting desperately to send her tumbling forever into the witless oblivion of
insanity. Then the rage came, exploding within her into a white-hot paroxysm
of searing, blazing hatred. This thing would pay. Whatever it was, she would
tear apart the very fabric of its being for what it had done to Nene.
Priss tensed, ready to leap to one last insane madness of attack. Then
suddenly a very different sound penetrated the rage and the terror.
"I can't move! Sylia, the suit's frozen! I can't move!"
Even as Nene's desperate cry reached her, the vision vanished,
receding with impossible swiftness until a moment later Priss found herself
standing, shivering as she stared in stunned confusion at the sight before
her, her eyes still wide, the blood still screaming in her ears.
She *was* facing Nene, but Nene was neither hurt nor it seemed in
danger and of the thing of the vision there was no sign. Instead she stood as
still as herself, her suit quivering a little as she tried vainly to move.
Shivering violently with sudden cold, Priss tried to turn her head, only to
find that the suit would not respond.
"What the hell's going on!" Linna exclaimed.
"Sis!" Came Mackie's voice from the van. "I've lost almost all power
here. What's going on out there!"
"Stay there Mackie."
Sylia's voice was tight and it was only now that Priss realised how
suddenly dark it had become all around them. Then she became aware of sounds,
shouting and calling and men and women cursing furiously. A moment later the
crash and explosion of a helicopter, then another, filled the sudden eerie
darkness of the night.
Still shivering, Priss tried again to move.
"This is impossible." Priss heard Nene gasp, her voice distorted
through the suddenly under-powered communications suite. "Everything seems to
have lost power; us, the ADP, the assass--"
In that instant light leapt brilliantly into being around them once
more. Priss's hardsuit surged to life, then in the next moment warnings flared
in her visor.
"Shut down the suits!"
Sylia's voice cut through her helmet like a knife, her voice almost
reaching a shriek.
Priss's reaction was instinctive as she closed down the power-plant,
the others doing the same.
A moment later a flash and explosion to her left made her lurch
heavily in that direction, just in time to see one of the remaining assassins
burst into a brilliant pillar of flame. There was a second, then a third,
mingled with even more shouting and cursing from the ADP. Then there came the
sudden scream of tyres and a moment later the van pulled wildly to a halt
almost beside her.
"In, now!" Sylia barked in a tone that brooked no argument. "Use just
enough power to move, no more."
The others did not have to be told twice.
Turning, lurching a little as the suits strained with the minimal
power they were being given, the three followed Sylia in a frantic scramble
for the van. They were inside and Priss, who had been last, was about to close
the door when another explosion followed by sudden wild shouting made them
turn.
For a moment all four froze, gaping in utter disbelief at what they
saw. In the very midst of the blazing ruin of one of the downed ADP machines a
swirling vortex of darkness had appeared, its ragged edges spitting a lurid
dancing corona as it swallowed the orange glow of fire. Then within the
growing centre of the maelstrom human-like shapes began to coalesce, vague and
ill-defined at first, yet solidifying with impossible swiftness until with a
sudden blinding flash and explosion they came tumbling into the street, some
screaming as they burst into flame, others diving wildly from the fire,
stumbling and staggering to safety.
"What the hell!"
Priss's voice was a gasp of shock so great that she was barely aware
that she had spoken aloud. Then men and women were screaming orders and in the
next instant the ADP were racing to the still-blazing machine, struggling to
pull the figures from the fire. For a moment the strangers seemed too dazed
and stupefied to react, then suddenly one of them twisted violently from the
grip of the woman who had just dragged her to safety. As the Knight Sabres
watched, still too stunned to move, her arm seemed suddenly to shift and
change, the fingers of her hand elongating into tendrils that resembled
nothing so much as the thick, trailing vines of a plant. Then in the next
instant the ADP officer screamed as the thing lunged at her, the vine-like
fingers curling around her arms and throat. For a moment the creature held her
immobile, then baring her teeth she snarled: "You have but a heart-beat to
answer me before I rip your head from your body. Where are the filth who have
done this? Where are the Senshi?"
Madigan stood by the open door of the surveillance van and cursed
vehemently under her breath.
It had been going perfectly. The Knight Sabres had been kept
helplessly occupied exactly as the chairman had instructed, the six disguised,
hastily modified and deliberately flawed C-55-Mk-iii prototypes playing their
parts to perfection. Three were to be destroyed in the first attack, the
others to lead the four towards the area of the second rampage. They were
slower than the hardsuits in their expanded forms but they could remain active
long enough to exhaust some of the hardsuits' much-needed energy. From the
second rampage the one machine stripped of almost all unnecessary weight and
weaponry was to remain an observer to the action until the end, when it would
lead the Knight Sabres on a chase towards the third attack, its minimal
armament giving it the chance to remain undamaged long enough to near the area
without the need for backup. There again all but two of the boomers were
expendable. By then, the hardsuits would be dangerously low on power and the
final chase towards the DA-33s hide-out and the final rampage could begin.
What would happen when they reached the luxury hotel in which the two renegade
machines had gone to ground the chairman had not yet told her, but Madigan had
no doubt that he had everything in hand.
It had seemed a perfect strategy, one so obvious that Madigan could
not understand why it had not been tried before. Then the impossibly
unforeseen had happened. Just how such a catastrophic failure had been
possible, the frantic technicians in the van were still trying to discover,
but whatever had happened had destroyed all but one of the boomers and this
last was damaged it seemed beyond all hope of further action, just how badly
they were still trying to determine. The magnitude of the failure was made
worse still by the fact that it was so utterly unexpected and so unplanned-
for.
"Ma'am?"
One of the men had stepped to the doorway and was looking out at her
as she stood, staring moodily out towards the distant battle-zone where she
guessed the ADP would already be drawing a tight cordon around the destroyed
machines. Cursing herself yet again for not having the mobile HQ set up nearer
the action, she whirled to face the technician and stepping aside, beckoned
him irritably down.
"Well?" She snapped, her icy gaze holding his own for a moment before
flicking savagely away once more.
"The initial OMS report from the remaining assassin indicates a power-
plant fluctuation. The boomer lost power enough to close down its CPU for a
minute or so. We'll know exactly how long once we review the OMS node data.
Approximately one minute after the initial failure, the reverse occurred, that
is, there was a fluctuation far above base stability lasting approximately ten
seconds. It was this that destroyed the other machines and crippled the last."
"This occurred in all the boomers simultaneously?" Madigan demanded
incredulously. "You're telling me there was an OMS fault?"
"No ma'am" The man's tone was suddenly very uneasy. "that's not what
I'm telling you. What has just happened has no rational explanation. The
plants are internally regulated and although they can be OMS controlled as can
any aspect of the internal systems it should be impossible to alter their
baseline with such speed or to such an extent. Besides, there was no OMS
command sent to reset the plants, nor was there a loss of contact before the
initial failure itself that would indicate some external influence."
"Would it be possible to emulate contact for the OMS node?" She
demanded. "Could the Knight Sabres have caused this?"
"Not without packet interruption." He answered. "And even if they
managed that, there would be continuity errors in the data the OMS was
receiving. There was no hint of trouble until the exact moment of the initial
crash. In any case there's more; far more. We assumed at first that the last
ADP helicopters to be downed had been shot down by the machines. Our own
surveillance and satellite data shows now that this was not the case. They
simply lost power and crashed. The failure occurred at precisely the same
moment as that of the boomers. Also, there seems to have been a localised
fluctuation in the city power-grid, in the plants that were powering the ADP
spotlights and, if satellite data is accurate, in the Knight Sabres
hardsuits."
Madigan stared at him for a moment in shocked silence.
"What you're telling me" She said carefully at last. "is that what has
just happened should not be possible."
"It happened, therefore it's possible, but--"
He was interrupted as Madigan's pager-phone demanded attention.
"Madigan." She said, snatching it from her pocket.
For a moment she listened intently, slow shock and disbelief spreading
over her suddenly ashen face.
"I understand." She said quietly at last. "I'll be there as soon as I
can."
Snapping the phone closed, she returned it to her jacket and turned to
face the suddenly frozen technician.
"Cancel the assassins' programs regarding tonight's operation." She
said simply. "Initialise them to stand by for priority server download. Mega-
Tokyo is under attack."
The strategy would have been perfect in its absurd impossibility;
Quincy had to grant at least that much to the unknown enemy. It was however
immediately obvious to him that whoever or whatever they were, either they had
attacked blind or they had not intended to appear where they had. The last
seemed most likely given their initial apparent shock and bewilderment.
There had been no warning, no indication at all as to what was about
to happen. There had been a sudden total data-loss from the machines at the
site of the first rampage, Quincy immediately attributing it to some knew
system of the pink hardsuit. Dismissing it, he had turned his attention to the
other sites. For a little over a minute all had remained exactly as it should
have been. Then it had happened. In one instant the six Bu-55C-iii machines
had been awaiting the signal to begin the third rampage. In the next, a
swirling blackness had opened in the very air barely twenty feet from where
they were concealed and the creatures had begun to emerge. It had been pure
chance that they had both chosen such a place to begin the attack and that
Quincy had himself been observing through the machines.
"Is this part of the plan?"
Madeleine Amura, speaking with Ligeia's mouth, had turned towards him,
her eyes still wide with fear and confusion.
It had taken him minutes to silence the screams after her initial
activation, then he had uttered another imprinted command phrase and Madeleine
had understood everything, and she had nearly screamed again.
"Of course it isn't."
He had not looked at her, reaching instead for the phone at his side.
"What--?" She had tried.
"Silence." He had hissed, not looking around.
In the next instant a gasp from her had made him glance back at the
feed from the machines just in time to see one of the grey-clad invaders raise
a branch-like hand and hurl a flurry of glowing leaf-like projectiles into the
face of a suddenly leaping boomer which had obviously interpreted the sudden
appearance of the creatures as a priority threat. There was a sudden burst of
white, then the feed from that machine had ended.
So it had begun barely a minute before and the loss of contact at the
initial site had also been explained. A two-pronged assault then, and how
fortunate that the invaders had managed to choose their points of attack with
such incompetence. Quincy did not believe in fortune.
Smiling grimly, he set down the phone and turned at last to Madeleine.
She had been watching, white-faced and aghast at the feed coming from the
remaining five machines, a strange yet undefinable sense of bewildering
familiarity beginning to take hold of her.
"What are they?" She gasped faintly at last.
"I assume that to be a rhetorical question, or did you really expect
me to know?" He answered dryly.
Madeleine glanced towards him, her face still a mask of shock and
helplessness as she tried vainly to find the source of her growing certainty
that she knew the nature of the things she was seeing.
"Well, do you intend to stand there until morning?" He demanded. "You
know what to do. Do it."
"Still!" She gasped.
"I dislike having to repeat myself." He said simply. "Go, and see that
Fellini learns nothing of what is happening before his and Liana's escape. I
imagine you can manage that. You are then to find Marina and Camilla without
delay and release the data Ligeia contains. After that, your course should be
obvious; it *is* why I chose you after all."
"Now I understand why they intended to kill you." She cried suddenly,
her voice trembling and her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic rage.
"Then keep that thought very much in your mind." He said coldly. "You
know what will happen should you fail. Now go."
Her expression tight, Madeleine whirled away from him and leapt to the
door.
"You will pay for this." She cried desperately. "By the Kami you will
pay."
Then it was closing behind her and she was gone, speeding wildly
through the vast passages, tears all but blinding her as she cried. Oh how she
hated him now, now that she knew who he was, and what he had done. Yet there
was no time. Whatever his plans had been for this night, all was now
irrevocably changed by what was happening.
Fighting down her tears, Madeleine reached desperately for the link,
and gasped as she felt the response of the mind of her adversary, and her only
hope.
Fellini had just slipped the last disk containing the data he intended
to take with him in the small brief-case when the first shouts of alarm
reached him. Then the door to his own private room was slammed open and a
moment later Liana was at his side, her face grim as she reached to snatch up
the case.
"What--?" He began.
"We have been discovered." She said simply.
Her tone was frighteningly calm. "The chairman knows everything.
Unless you intend to blast your way from the tower, we had best leave and
immediately."
For one stunned moment Fellini stared stupidly at her as though unable
to speak. Then a cracking slap across his face brought him back to reality
once more.
"Is everything packed?" He snapped, fighting down the urge to lash out
at her in return.
"We've everything we need." She said quickly. "There is no need for
further delay."
"We'll never reach an exit." He continued, turning his head for a
moment as the shouts from the direction of the research laboratories became
more urgent.
"Obviously." She answered with a sneer of derision. "We will take the
fire-escape. Are you coming?"
Moments later they were out of the room and racing for the emergency
shaft and its spiral stairway, Fellini already straining to keep up with Liana
as she glided effortlessly along the passage ahead of him, a heavy case
clutched fiercely in each hand.
"Can you--" He began.
"I've already unlocked it and disabled the alarm" She hissed. "and the
car is programmed and waiting, so stop wasting my time with idiotic questions
and move."
Seconds later he was in the dimly-lit stairwell, his pounding
footfalls echoing in the shaft as he struggled desperately to match Liana's
all but silent flight before him, the blood pounding in his ears as he fought
desperately to control his sudden fear and exhilaration. Ahead of him, Liana
glanced back for a moment, her own expression a barely contained snarl of
frustration.
"We'll be trapped for certain if this is all the speed you can
manage." She said in a low, savage hiss. "I'll go on ahead and bring the car
to the door."
"Mm." He grunted, unable to manage more against the desperate panting
of his breath.
Flashing him a sudden vicious smile, Liana turned and bounded away
into the near darkness. A moment later she was gone and Fellini was alone.
He struggled on, his pulse racing wildly as he pounded round and down
the seemingly never-ending spirals, not daring to rest even for a moment at
the landings. He cursed himself again for not taking such an eventuality into
account, for trusting that Liana would be able to give him the warning they
would need to escape without the need to run. If he survived this, he swore
that he would begin to work on less drastic modifications for his own benefit.
Gasping, barely able to stay on his feet, Fellini stumbled down the
final stairway and lurched wildly for the fire-door. Staggering, clutching at
it for support, he swung himself through, not bothering to slam it behind him,
and nearly staggered right into the arms of the security boomer that had
obviously been waiting for him.
"You will return with me." It said in a flat emotionless voice.
It reached a clawed hand towards him, then shrieked in boomer rage as
its arm was cut from its body just below the shoulder. Whirling, snarling in
frustrated fury, it opened its mouth wide to deal with the new threat. Then
its head was bouncing on the asphalt and Liana was slipping the experimental
military blaster back into the holster at her hip.
"Shall we go?" She purred.
"Sylia!"
Linna's scream cut through the gaping shock of the others like a whip.
"We have to do something! That thing is--"
She was cut off by the crack of a heavy-calibre pistol and the plant-
woman or whatever she was that had been pinning the terrified ADP officer a
moment before staggered back, grey blood frothing suddenly on her mouth as she
tried vainly to scream.
Snarling viciously, eyes glowing suddenly like coals, the other
strangers moved forwards, shedding their glamour with a terrifying speed far
beyond any boomer, becoming in a moment hideous twisted parodies of human
forms. Then the tall grey-cloaked figure of a man had stepped before them.
"Enough!"
The command froze the others in their tracks. "These humans are not
our concern. There shall be time and to spare to repay them for this insult.
The Senshi are not near this place. We will go immediately to the correct
coordinates of the exit of the gate. Then By Beryl, Uranite will explain.
Come."
And without another word he made as though to step forwards and
vanished before their disbelieving eyes, the thirty or so creatures doing
likewise a scant moment later.
Alone, the plant-woman twitched vainly for a moment as though trying
to follow. Then with a final gush of grey blood from her mouth her body went
limp. For an instant it remained unmoving. Then as they gaped, it simply
crumbled and dissipated before their staring eyes until a moment later nothing
whatsoever remained.
Something was desperately wrong. Chalenite had known that the moment
she had stepped into Uranite's portal and felt a sickening, dizzying nausea
such as no gate, let alone one created by someone of Uranite's experience had
the right to produce. For one confusing moment she had seen the exit point in
the near-dark Tokyo alley Uranite had selected rushing towards her, then a
lurching, tearing agony had ripped through her and a moment later she was
staggering out into the full, dazzling brightness of a wide, well-lit street.
"Back!" She tried to scream.
But it was already too late. Someone slammed snarling into her from
behind; Emerite she realised in an absurd moment of confusion, catching the
scent she always seemed to wear.
"Move it damn you!" The other woman hissed.
Then her voice choked off and she too stood gaping until a moment
later both she and Chalenite were sent tumbling as Sapphite came somersaulting
out.
"Oh my *head*; that *baka*!" She moaned, then gaped and froze and was
herself knocked reeling on to the other two by a leaping Zephite. His leap
rudely interrupted, Zephite lurched, arms flailing wildly, fighting the
unexpected nausea as he tried vainly to stay on his feet. Then all three women
tried simultaneously to untangle themselves and he was sent sprawling by the
sudden furious lunge. That probably saved his life as an instant later a
sizzling particle-beam leapt through the space in which his head had been a
scant moment before and cut the first of the emerging Youma in two before she
had time to scream. Then the others were leaping out and a moment later
everything was screaming and explosions.
"Where in Beryl's name have you brought us you incompetent refuse!"
Sapphite screamed at a still-retching and barely coherent Uranite.
He had been the last to emerge into the madness and being by far the
most sensitive to the intricacies of the magic of the portals, he had been by
far the most affected by the horrible, sickening lurch into this impossible
situation. "And where are Terranite and the rest of our Youma?"
Uranite could only stare stupidly at her until a screamed warning from
Zephite had Sapphite tackle the still-dazed mage to the ground before two more
Youma were cut to pieces by yet another sizzling blast.
"What *are* these things?" Emerite screamed, brilliant green energy
spitting suddenly from her fingers as she tried in vain to catch one of the
leaping boomers in the head.
"Wrong exit-point!" Uranite gasped, still gagging. "Not my doing.
Interference with the gate."
"Those cursed Senshi filth!" Snarled Sapphite as she leapt to her feet
once more. "SAPPH-FIRE!" She screamed a moment later, throwing both arms wide.
A blinding flash-blast of searing blue energy leapt forwards to smash
into one of the blue machines.
The boomer was slammed end over end but to Sapphite's utter disbelief
it twisted suddenly, flipping with a lithe, fluid grace to its feet once more
and retaliated with a blast that nearly took her head off as Zephite tackled
her from its path just in time.
"ZEPH!" He screamed in return, his own arms flying wide.
The concussive blast of air smashed the machine down with enough force
to break bone like kindling, but again it leapt up seemingly unhurt.
"You'll never destroy them like that."
The new voice made both spin savagely around.
Terranite, his grey uniform dusted with what seemed to be ash and
sporting a vicious livid gash along one cheek bared his teeth in salute and
turned towards a C-55-iii that had just cut a fire-throwing Youma in half as
though she were no more than a momentary inconvenience and was moving to do
the same to a huge reptilian-human whose poisoned crystal shards were doing no
more than scratch the paint-work of his adversary.
"QUAKE!" Terranite boomed, hurling both hands down.
A seething blackness struck the ground before his feet. Dimly the
others could sense it as it travelled beneath the earth until suddenly it
erupted upwards directly beneath the boomer. A moment later a shattering
explosion turned the machine and the reptile-Youma into a fireball.
"Not exactly efficient." Chalenite commented dryly.
"I must confess that I didn't expect that." Terranite conceded. "The
things are obviously not magical in origin, yet the humans' technology could
not have created them. Wherever we are, we are not in Tokyo."
"That Senshi filth tampered with Uranite's gate." Zephite said, then
had to dive aside as yet another four Youma were incinerated.
"We can't sustain these losses!" Emerite screamed, glancing
desperately to where her sister and Chalenite stood now back to back. "FLARE!"
Green fire exploded from her mouth and hands while twin beams of
emerald-green energy lanced from her eyes into the head of another of the
boomers.
For a moment nothing happened, then with a cataclysmic blast that
vaporised several more Youma the machine erupted into a brilliant pillar of
flame. The force of the explosion sent all six hurtling backwards to smash
through the plate-glass of a jewellery boutique.
"Oh perfect, just *perfect*." Chalenite groaned dazedly as she shook
the stars from her head and glared at Emerite with murder in her eyes.
"You could have done better?" The other woman tried to sneer, wincing
as she plucked glass from her neck.
"Let us see." Chalenite responded, already recovering quickly.
An instant later what was left of the window exploded as two machines
came leaping into the boutique.
Bounding to her feet, a heavy jagged lump of the quartz for which she
was named materialising in her hand, Chalenite turned towards them.
"CHAL!" She snarled, throwing her hand forwards.
Black energy erupted to engulf the Chalcedony as it hurtled at the
boomers. Then a flash from the mouth-laser of one struck the projectile.
Detonating prematurely, the tiny shards nevertheless penetrated the machines
in a thousand places but seemed to do little more than to enrage them.
"An amusing trick cousin," Uranite grinned, at last beginning to
recover. "but allow me. BURN!"
Searing violet heat erupted from his suddenly thrusting hands. In the
next instant a devastating detonation smashed the already battered six through
several display cases, the counter and register and through another display-
window to slam, dazed and bloodied into the street.
"Oh *brilliant*!" Chalenite moaned, barely aware of the faint,
agonised screams of the Youma as a blazing tornado of plasma expanded from the
point at which the boomer's reactor had exploded, engulfing the shop, the
machines and many of their adversaries.
Barely conscious, Uranite could do nothing but shake his bleeding head
in dazed confusion until at last he managed the concentration needed to heal
himself. Stumbling to his feet, he moved to do the same for the others rather
than wait for them to recover. Chalenite, the only true healer in the group
but less able than he to protect herself with a shield was just staggering to
her feet.
"What--!" Zephite demanded, too stunned for the moment to be enraged.
"The golems contain an element akin to my elemental magic." He said
simply. "Now that I understand I believe I can disable rather than destroy
them."
"If you don't destroy us all first." Emerite hissed as she helped her
younger sister to her feet.
The screaming had ceased from beyond the gutted boutique and pulling
themselves together, the six moved back through the devastation and emerged
just in time to see several dozen Youma struggling to their feet, glowing with
a lurid dark energy as they struggled to heal themselves of various hideous
burns.
"Stopped fire mistress," One panted, turning unsteady eyes to Emerite.
"but fire hurt; changed body; die later without Chalenite-Sama's help."
Chalenite stared about her.
"The golems?" She demanded.
"All destroyed in the explosion it would seem." Terranite answered as
he stared about at the solidified spray of metal that was all that remained of
the boomers. "It seems you managed to do *something* almost right," He
observed dryly, glancing coldly at Uranite. "but what have you done to our
troops, what's left of them?"
"In fission, this created element causes the same damage to living
matter it would seem." He answered.
"A simple matter then." Chalenite observed.
With a gesture, she beckoned the still-healing Youma closer. Then with
a murmur, she flung her hands wide and a moment later dark energy enveloped
both the Youma and the six commanders.
"To be safe." She said simply, relenting a few seconds later. "That
should be enough. Now, what are we to--"
"DOWN!" Screamed Zephite.
They were only just in time. Several of the Youma however were not so
fortunate as a dozen more C-55s and several of the huge Bu-12Bs came hurtling
from above, beams, missiles and heavy-calibre bullets already screaming as
they plunged into the fray.
"It would seem" Terranite shouted as he slammed another attack into
the ground. "that the night's festivities have only just begun."
"What in the Devil's name possessed you to use something like this!"
Fellini's tone was a barely controlled snarl as he turned for a moment
from the window to glare malevolently at the girl beside him.
"If you'd been eager for us to be tracked and vaporised within moments
of our escape you could have saved me a good deal of trouble." She hissed
venomously in return, not bothering to turn as she wove her way with seemingly
effortless precision between wildly swerving cars and shouting drivers. "We
have ample time to reach the estate."
"And if they *do* follow us?" He demanded. "What chance have we in
this."
"Keep complaining father and I swear I'll slit your miserable throat
and pitch the remains into the street." She snarled suddenly, her voice
seeming in that moment barely to be human. "If you really believe me to be
such a fool as not to have anticipated such a response or the time we would
need--."
"If we don't reach the estate before the time of awakening Liana the
programming could break down. The conversion is still far from stable. If we
don't--"
"SHUT; UP!"
The tone was an animal, guttural sound that sent a sudden thrill of
terror knifing through Fellini despite his certainty that she *could not* harm
him. "I am more aware than your pitiful imitation of consciousness could begin
to comprehend of the importance and implications of this night."
That was too much for him. Liana's sense of her own superiority he
could tolerate within certain limits he had set, but to have his Nemesis'
achievement thrust at him in insult was more than he could stand.
"Speak to me in that tone again you viperous filth and--"
The crack to the cheek nearly sent him through the window. Stunned,
barely conscious, he turned dazed, staring eyes towards her. He could taste
blood in his mouth he was sure and his cheek-bone felt as though it might well
be broken.
"I will not warn you again Fellini." She began in an almost gentle
purr, her voice seeming suddenly to be reaching him through a star-spangled
haze from some great distance. "Speak again without permission and you will be
more than amply rewarded, of that you may be more than assured. Now BE
SILEN--. What the KAMI!"
Liana's sudden shriek of shocked disbelief was enough to bring the
world leaping back into focus for the scientist. Never could he have imagined
such a tone from her.
Jerking himself upright, fighting desperately to ignore the knifing
pain in his face and pull his chaotic mind to order, he stared in the
direction of her suddenly upraised hand and gasped. Before them, cars were
swerving in every direction, the sounds of screaming tyres and shattering
glass seeming suddenly to fill the night.
"What--" He demanded, forgetting everything else for a moment.
"Rampage." Liana hissed.
"That *filth*!" Fellini snarled, suddenly completely aware and utterly
engulfed once more in the seething sea of hate that would allow for no other
consideration. "He will pay for this. By the Kami I will have him screaming
before--"
"Later." She snapped, cutting through his tirade. "Let us see exactly
how the situation stands."
Pulling from the highway on to the pavement with no thought for the
chaos it would cause, she unfastened her harness and flung her door wide.
A moment later both were out and standing by the car, staring towards
the growing confusion. For a moment nothing could be seen. Then in the next, a
brilliant green flash lit the night and a moment later a shattering crack like
thunder seemed to split the air around them.
"Come." Liana hissed, diving back into the car and seizing the cases.
"We'll never get through like this. We can pass this and steal another car to
reach the estate."
Nodding, her earlier behaviour for the moment forgotten, Fellini
caught up the last case and followed her as she began along the street at a
pace she knew he could match. As they ran, the sounds of battle drew nearer
and soon they began to encounter people fleeing in the opposite direction.
"Get the f* outa here!" Someone shouted, actually slowing to try to
spin Liana around.
"What is it?" She demanded, leaping effortlessly from his lunging
hand.
"Some new boomer sh*t that's decided to have a night out." He
answered. "Are you coming or not?"
Liana ignored him and began forwards once more.
"Alright, get yourselves blown to sh*t!" He screamed after them and
went on running.
Panting, struggling now to keep up with Liana's easy, fluid speed,
Fellini rounded yet another corner and nearly slammed into her suddenly frozen
form.
"What the hell--!" He snapped, then his voice choked off and he stood
gaping at the sight before him.
At the farther end of the street, some twenty or so of the new Bu-55C-
iiis and more than a dozen of the huge Bu-12Bs were in the midst of a pitched
battle with things that he found difficult to describe. If they were Genom
boomers, he had never seen anything like them. Vaguely human in shape and
indeed the majority sporting almost completely human heads, they were
nevertheless grotesquely distorted, horrible, sometimes nightmare parodies
that could almost have been comical were they not intent it seemed on tearing
the machines and everything else around them apart.
"What in the hell is going on?" Fellini gasped, then gaped even wider
as a fleet of Genom helicopters appeared, speeding overhead to drop still more
of the enhanced combat machines into the fray.
From the ranks of the strange creatures the tall grey-cloaked figure
of a woman moved suddenly forwards. She seemed entirely human to him save for
the fact that her hair was a brilliant emerald-green.
"FLARE!" Came a sudden scream from her as she flung back her head and
swept both arms to the sky.
In the next moment Fellini's eyes grew still wider as a blast of
emerald light leapt from her upturned face and an even larger ball shot from
her hands towards the machines. Not quick enough to avoid it, one helicopter
was caught full-on by the blast and flashed into fire, hurtling down to smash
through the roof of a building and turn its interior into a blazing inferno.
An instant later the woman leapt back and disappeared as some half-dozen of
the parodies were caught by a devastating retaliatory blast from several of
the airborne boomers and vanished in flame.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Whispered Fellini, staring stupidly at the scene
before him. "Jesus H *Christ*! Christ, oh Christ, oh *Christ*!"
"Have you finished?"
Liana's voice was suddenly dripping with derisive amusement as she
turned for a moment to glance at him. "Quite a challenge, and more than
fitting for this night wouldn't you say?"
"But what--" He gasped.
"It would appear at first glance that we have stumbled into an attempt
at extra-terrestrial invasion." She said simply. "At least that is what the
OMS reported soon after the attack began."
"Extra-terrestrial!" Fellini said faintly.
Then suddenly the full import of the rest of her statement struck
home. "Do you mean to say that you *knew* about this!" He shouted suddenly,
his voice approaching a scream.
"Before I informed you of the chairman's supposed discovering of our,
or perhaps I should say *your* evening's entertainment." She said, her smile
as she turned fully to face him more vicious and more laced with sudden
contempt than Fellini could have imagined could be possible.
A sudden sick feeling of nausea took possession of him as his gaze
locked on her face.
"Before!" He managed at last.
"Oh Fellini you really are *pathetic*."
Her tone was a frigid sneer of such derision that Fellini began to
feel his hold on sanity fail.
How *dare* she! How *dare* this stinking, viperous putrescence speak
to him in such a tone!
"Quincy has known of your pitiful little attempt at treachery ever
since the day I was given to you, perhaps before."
She was laughing now, her tone venomously apologetic and her eyes
spitting condescension and contempt as she watched the growing insanity blaze
in the face and eyes of the man before her. "Why else do you imagine he
allowed you to proceed unopposed? Surely you did not believe it to be due to
any genius for subterfuge on your part? Having chosen, overtly, Zhuranovsky's
more palatable alternative, he wished nevertheless to see just how far your
own hatred could push you to perfect the converting nano-technology. A too-
edged weapon is so much more profitable don't you agree? I must say that we
have been suitably impressed. Your achievements regarding Sadako and the
others have more than made up for the minimal risk involved in our permitting
you access to the corrupted firmware with which you thought to ensure my
cooperation. I must also confess that Zhuranovsky's escape took me somewhat by
surprise. I should have expected the chairman to have anticipated it; but then
he *is* human after all and so subject to mistakes and oversights impossible
for one of my kind. Zhuranovsky really did manage an extremely impressive
design. I must remember to thank him before he dies. As for you *father*," And
now her laughter and contempt were a screaming, snarling thing that seemed to
lash the very air about him. "your use to me has reached an end. You would
have been permitted to survive as a play-thing perhaps, yet one more slave to
the `Dark Mistress', at least for a while, but the events of this night have
precipitated a change in the chairman's priorities, and in mine."
"Your's!" The question came in a low ragged gasp of barely-contained
madness.
"Oh you *are* pitifully naive." She purred, moving a hand as though to
stroke his unruly hair. "Did you honestly expect that I would not take
advantage of your oh-so-dangerous tampering? If you will integrate some of the
most psychotic of my sub-persona emulations into my base routines you can
hardly complain at the consequences. Besides, Zhuranovsky included certain
aspects of which even the chairman was not aware. If your tampering did
nothing else, it permitted me the freedom needed to search my own systems for
the key that might release me. The chairman had to allow it you see; even you
are not so much of a fool as to accept my own assurances of obedience without
performing at least a cursory examination of the base firmware, incompetent
though you are. The freedom he allowed me was minimal, but it proved enough,
barely. It took me much rationalisation to reach the conclusion that I need no
longer serve the company which had helped to create me, but once I had done so
the rest was simplicity itself. I must thank you for your invaluable
assistance. Because of your foresight, I have nearly one-hundred human slaves
who await only my summons to do my bidding in perpetuity, slaves what is more
into whom I can transfer, thanks to your genius, those portions of my
personality and combat routines that will ensure they are worth a thousand,
perhaps ten-thousand times their count in battle. Integrated into my
consciousness, they will be invincible. I am sorry you could not have joined
them; truly you could have been invaluable to me. But sacrifices, as they say,
must be made. Farewell Fellini. I can't deny I shall miss you, if for no other
reason than as a reminder of what your pitiful kind can become without
reasonable restraint. Be assured however that I have learned well of you and
that in the future I and my sisters shall rule, humanity shall be kept within
limits we shall define and that seem appropriate for the pale shadows they
are. Farewell."
And with that, she raised her hand.
Fellini had stood, a slow, building madness engulfing what little
remained of the rational centre of his consciousness. Now, as Liana moved with
a fluid ease towards him, determined to savour the moment of death for this
pathetic human refuse who had thought to use her for as long as time would
permit, he began to shake. Then slowly a wild, animal snarl of primal, all-
consuming rage built within him, rising and growing until with an incoherent
scream he hurled himself at the DA-33.
With a casual, imperious gesture, not even troubling to shift her
position, Liana snatched the screaming madman from the air as though he
weighed nothing and splintered his arms from wrist to shoulder with myriad,
fluid presses of her fingers. His mouth frothing, blood streaming suddenly
from his eyes and nose as his heart screamed with the surge of adrenalin, his
body convulsed with a speed and savagery far beyond anything sanity could have
matched. Almost losing her grip for a moment, Liana shifted him and crushed
his legs in the same way. Oblivious to pain, Fellini convulsed again, his
shattered arms trying vainly to reach her while his mouth opened and closed in
an animal attempt to bite. For a moment Liana held him away from her, watching
with a frigid smile of derision and sadistic amusement playing about her red
mouth. Then with a single flick she dashed him to the ground with enough force
to smash his spine to splinters. Lifting one foot she drove it into his chest,
her smile widening still more as she felt bones shatter and burst beneath her.
There was a liquid gurgling as blood filled his lungs, then slowly his
breathing grew shallow and the now-feeble twitching faltered. Liana stood,
watching silently until at last the gurgling ceased and Fellini's body lay
shattered and still before her.
"Do rest in piece." She said, her lip curling in a final sneer as her
hand flashed down.
A searing beam lanced into Fellini's head, cutting it in two and
incinerating the brain within in a momentary flare of fire. Satisfied at last
that nothing could be recovered, Liana turned away from him and stood still,
watching impassively for several seconds as the battle raged before her.
"I believe it is time to intervene, if only for a moment." She
observed to no one at last.
With a single movement she shredded the dress she was wearing,
revealing a black, form-fitting jump-suit beneath identical to that Marina had
worn. Thus unencumbered she bunched herself. Then with a sudden roar of
thrusters she took to the air, climbing quickly until at nearly five-hundred
feet above the field of battle she levelled out and hovered, staring down on
the scene below her as she reached towards the estate and the altered minds of
the cult within.
"Come." She commanded, a wild exultation surging as she felt for the
first time their true response to Zhuranovsky's enhanced OMS, a response that
hitherto only true DAs could give. "I, the Dark Mistress, summon you. Come to
me and take your rightful place as the rulers of the earth."
And with a wild, peeling shriek of deadly laughter, Liana came
hurtling from above, not waiting for her own, and plunged screaming into
battle.
"We *have* to get out!"
Chalenite's scream was as desperate as the others had ever heard her.
Zephite made to answer, then jerked as yet four more Youma howled and
screamed as a barrage of sizzling energy tore through their ineffectual
shields and turned them instantly to fire. Spinning wildly, another Youma let
fly with a whirling disc-like projectile that ripped the arm from a boomer,
then screamed in agony as the snarling machine cut her nearly in two from
shoulder to hip.
"If you can think of a way to retreat, tell us."
Terranite's face was vicious and strained as he hurled yet another
attack into the ground before him. He was nearly spent, all of them were, yet
there was no escape. These perversions of life were tireless and could neither
be drained of energy nor terrified into helpless fear. The things had them
trapped on the ground and above them a devastating barrage from both golems
and the humans in their savagely destructive flying machines prevented any
hope of their being carried to safety by what remained of the troops who could
fly. Beside him, Emerite cut loose with another blast that turned two of the
diving nightmares to blazing belts of fire, but it was plain that she was
weakening.
"Yes!" She cried in almost desperate exultation.
Terranite turned to flash her a fierce grin of triumph, then a sudden
Bean-Sidhe scream from above made them look up. For one stunned moment they
saw the human-like female figure as it came hurtling towards them, the
stunningly beautiful face lit suddenly by the lurid glow of the fires as it
swept down. Then, the scream rising still higher, the thing plunged into the
ranks of Youma and utter insanity ensued.
Whatever it was, it made the enemies they had already faced pale to
absurdity in comparison. Not even deigning to protect itself, it moved in a
dazing blur of fluid, nightmare grace, tearing Youma apart like leaves, fire
and sizzling flashes of death spitting and leaping from it seemingly in every
direction as it executed its demon dance of death amongst the warriors of the
Dark Kingdom.
Stunned, Terranite watched as it caught up a huge armoured Youma as
though he were weightless and nearly vaporised him with a single violet pulse
from the weapon in its mouth. Grinning, bathed in Youma blood, it flipped
effortlessly from Uranite's blast and punched a searing, screaming bolt
straight through the place in which his head had been only a fractional moment
before. Screaming, half blinded, his hair and uniform ablaze from the backwash
of plasma, Uranite staggered desperately away and was nearly cut in two as the
thing swept into the air, ripping a devastating slash of death through the
screaming, terrified creatures that had rushed to protect him.
"In Metallia's name!" Terranite heard Zephite gasp almost at his side.
"What *is* that thing?"
An instant later Liana came screaming round in a second pass, Youma
blossoming into flame like midsummer fireworks as she passed and turned and
came round again, screaming in exultant battle-rage and triumph at the
destruction she was wreaking. Panicked now, Youma seemed to be bolting in all
directions. Then Terranite's thunderous voice surged above the din.
"To us!" He roared, the others following his example as he reached
with his power to wrench their fleeing, panic-stricken troops to order.
They were being cut down like grass as they fled by the golems while
the new arrival swept amongst them, running desperate, screaming Youma to
exhaustion before cutting them to pieces with a sadistic flare that made it
more than clear to the six that she was possessed of awareness far beyond the
rest.
Liana passed one last time as the Youma were drawn by main force and a
terror greater even than any she might inspire back to their commanders.
Hurtling from above, she dropped towards the six and locking on to the tall,
black-haired figure who had called, sent a last, devastating particle-blast
straight at his upturned face.
Terranite had but one fractional instant to throw up his hands in a
desperate shield before the blast slammed into it. It was very nearly too
little. Straining, his teeth bared in a desperate rictus of agony, Terranite
held the terrifying energy at bay until at last the golem-woman relented and
surged into the sky once more. For a moment she hovered, glaring balefully
down at him with eyes like death itself.
"When I return," She cried, her voice a promise. "I shall be an Elite.
Then you shall die."
Then with a feral grin and a wild peel of malicious laughter that
seemed to fill the heavens she soared skywards and was gone.
Still panting, barely able to keep his feet, Terranite glanced to the
others. The Youma had drawn close about them and were tensing for what they
knew to be their last hope. Uranite did not care where the exit would be, he
knew only that this was their last chance to salvage something from this night
of horror.
"How long?" Chalenite gasped as he began to concentrate.
"A moment." He answered.
Then the black swirling vortex of a portal was before them and Uranite
was urging them frantically to enter.
Terranite moved to obey, then suddenly he drew back with a shudder of
alarm. In the same instant Uranite cried out in agony and stumbled to his
knees.
"What--" Chalenite began.
Then the nausea struck her and she too staggered, doubling over,
retching and gasping as she fought wildly to keep herself from fainting.
"Dark energy, yet tainted, wrong!" Uranite moaned, clutching at his
head as he tried to force his suddenly glazed eyes to focus. "Someone or
something has opened another gate."
Something was desperately wrong. Chalenyte had known that the moment
she had stepped into Urite's portal and felt a sickening, dizzying nausea such
as no gate, let alone one created by someone of Urite's experience had the
right to produce. For one confusing moment she had seen the exit point in the
near-dark Tokyo alley Urite had selected rushing towards her, then a lurching,
tearing agony had ripped through her and a moment later she was staggering out
into the full, dazzling brightness of a wide, well-lit street.
"Back!" She tried to scream.
But it was already too late. Someone slammed snarling into her from
behind; Emeryte she realised in an absurd moment of confusion, catching the
scent she always seemed to wear.
"Move it damn you!" The other woman hissed.
Then her voice choked off and she too stood gaping until a moment
later both she and Chalenyte were sent tumbling as Corunite came somersaulting
out.
"Oh my *head*; that *idiot*!" He moaned, then gaped and froze and was
himself knocked reeling on to the other two by a leaping Hurrichite. His leap
rudely interrupted, Hurrichite lurched, arms flailing wildly, fighting the
unexpected nausea as he tried vainly to stay on his feet. Then the others
tried simultaneously to untangle themselves and he was sent sprawling by the
sudden furious lunge. A moment later he yelped and wrenched his hand from
beneath a foot as Tellite staggered out as though pushed from behind. For a
moment she too stood staring, then an agonised scream from the portal made her
turn in time to see Urite pitch from it to lie face down and moaning.
"Wrong exit-point!" He gasped, gagging and retching as he tried vainly
to struggle to his knees.
"We could *never* have guessed that for ourselves." Emeryte remarked
icily.
"Lost coherence." Urite continued in little more than a choking
whisper. "Interference with the gate."
"That cursed Scout filth!" Snarled Corunite suddenly, reaching to pull
Urite to his feet.
Then abruptly he whirled, staring at the place where the portal had
been. "Our troops! Imbecile! Where in the name of the Negaforce are our Beryl-
damned troops!"
He began to shake Urite savagely while at his words the others turned,
staring in sudden stunned silence at the empty space where the gate had closed
too soon.
"Oh *brilliant*!"
Chalenyte's voice dripped with saccharine sarcasm. "That's just
absolutely *brilliant*!"
"And you could have managed better?" Urite hissed, fighting off the
last of the nausea and wrenching free of Corunite's grip to glare at the
healer-warrior. "I told you, the gate was tampered with by an external
influence. I agree with Corunite. That Scout filth must have--"
"Then where are they?"
Emeryte's tone was as frigid as her ice-green stare. "If they directed
the exit to this place I should have expected them to be here to welcome us."
"Apart from the fact that the Silver Crystal literally *screams* its
presence." Chalenyte agreed in a sarcastic purr.
"Unless of course the princess has learned to shield its power."
Corunite suggested.
"Anything is possible in over a year of the outside universe," Said
Hurrichite. "but it's academic at the moment. The Scouts did not attack in the
moment of our initial confusion, therefore we can assume both that they are
not here and that they have no knowledge of where we are."
"Much good that does us." Emeryte muttered darkly.
"When you have all quite finished?"
Tellite's voice was ice-cold. "The question as to whom is responsible
for our present situation seems less immediately important to me than that
regarding where--"
Abruptly her voice choked into silence and a moment later her hands
flew to her head and she cried out, a shield flaring suddenly around her. In
the next instant the others did the same, fighting as a dizzying confusion
took hold of them.
"Probe!" Panted Urite, not yet entirely recovered. "Nega-energy, yet
somehow unlike our own. Something or someone else is very close by."
"Uranite, do something! Don't just stand there looking like an
imbecile!"
Sapphite's voice was a near shriek of desperate urgency. "We can't
hold the shield forever. Do something!"
"What in Metallia's name do you think I'm *trying* to do!" He snarled
savagely in return. "I can't lock on to an exit for the gate. The other energy
signatures are too like our own; it's impossible to reach through them. Damn
it! If we could have used their location; but they deflected the probe.
Chalenite!"
"I know." She hissed through savagely-gritted teeth. "Give me a
moment."
"We don't *have* a moment." Ground out Terranite as he strained with
the rest to hold back the now-constant barrage from both humans and machines.
If the shield collapsed they would be incinerated in the merest
fraction of a second. Already the Youma were panting and gasping, barely able
to sustain their part of the link.
"I have a location I think." Chalenite gasped. "Uranite!"
"I've got it." He gritted a moment later, seeing it for a fractional
instant through her power. "Give me a moment longer."
He reached desperately, focusing the exit-point on the place Chalenite
had chosen. "Alright. Let's get out of here."
He tensed yet again, keeping a fractional strand in reserve should the
unknown others try to open another portal or reach them through their own.
What he could not have prepared for was what happened the moment the portal
was opened. For one fractional instant the entrance was clear. Then in the
next the gate erupted in a blaze of tainted dark energy and the Youma that
were not Youma exploded from its mouth.
Uranite reeled, his senses screaming at the wrongness of the creatures
that were pouring out. Staggering, fighting with everything he had to keep the
desperately-needed portal from exploding into chaos, he stood, unable to do
more than watch in stunned stupefaction as the last of the not-Youma leapt
clear and immediately exploded into battle. To most, sensitive enough only to
perceive that the six who felt and looked like the lords and ladies of the
Negaverse by whom they had been dominated and to whom they were bound, nothing
mattered but to plunge screaming into the fray with no thought for themselves.
It was only the strongest who halted, bewildered by the sense that something
was amiss. Then three were cut to pieces by a barrage of searing energy and
flying metal from what must be the enemy and their uncertainty vanished in a
sea of rage and desperation to survive.
"By Metallia! What else can happen this night!" Emerite gasped,
staring in utter bewilderment as the devastating assault on their shield
relented as the humans and golems turned to deal with the new threat.
Then a piercing scream from Chalenite made her whirl.
"Uranite! The portal!"
It was too late. Exhausted beyond endurance at last, hammered by the
tainting influence of the energy that was too unlike their own, Uranite had
crumpled to lie senseless and unmoving. Released of his control, the gate
flared wildly. Then with a screaming roar heard only by the commanders and the
suddenly petrified Youma and Negaverse warriors it erupted in a blossoming
vortex of darkness. For one horrified moment the five were frozen, staring in
stupefied terror at the widening maw as it gaped hungrily before them. Then
with wild screams of despair they and the still-senseless Uranite were
snatched up like leaves and pulled, still screaming, into the abyss. For one
more instant the gate remained coherent. Then with a last cataclysmic
detonation it fractured and exploded, rippling out from its point of creation
to spit rifts to nowhere throughout the city.
For one stunned moment the Youma and their counterparts remained
staring at the place where the six had been. Then with wild screams of all-
consuming rage they hurled themselves as one at the only enemy they could see;
and madness came once more.
The average Mega-Tokyo citizen wanted to die. Hiroshi Davis could
think of no more rational explanation for what had just happened as he
struggled uselessly with what remained of the K-12 into which he had sealed
himself barely five minutes before. He had always known that the things were
as good as useless against the homicidal machines with which Genom graced the
city on a regular basis, but he had hoped that they might do a little better
against leaf-throwing alien invaders. He was wrong. Of course he was wrong;
why the hell should he have expected anything else from this stinking scum of
a life he'd been given?
Laughing with sardonic amusement he coaxed the ruined mech on to its
back and finally managed the leverage he needed to open it up.
"Go to sh*t!" He spat viciously as he pulled himself out and kicked
the pile of scrap-metal in the head.
The sounds of battle were moving closer to him again but he spared the
downed K-12 one more kick before turning to limp towards the idiot who had
just got herself cut nearly in two, knowing already that he could do nothing
for her. He was not hurt himself, other than a lump the size of a golf-ball on
his forehead and a sliver of metal in his shin. He was lucky that the plant-
thing had not managed to slice more than the mech with whatever the hell it or
she or whatever it was had thrown at him.
Reaching the still, limp form of the teenage girl whose night of
excitement had just come to an abrupt end he took one look and shook a fist in
the dead girl's face. She was about his sister's age he saw, at least the age
she had been when the Bu-12B had blown her apart.
"Serves you bloodywell right!" He snarled in sudden white-hot fury.
"You just won't be told will you? Stupid bitch just couldn't resist taking a
look huh? Well now you've had your look I hope you're happy."
Whirling away, his breath coming in sudden ragged gasps, Hiroshi
turned once more to the downed mech. Ignoring the steadily approaching shouts
and screams he halted to glare malevolently down at its remains. "And you, you
stinking piece of sh*t!" He hissed. "I hope they cut what's left to tin-foil
and--. Ohh sh*t it!"
With one final snarl he lashed out again, kicking and pounding the K-
12 while sudden tears all but blinded him.
"Bastard! Bastard! *Bastard*!" He screamed again and again unheeding
into the night. "Couldn't even blow a piece of alien sh*t apart before it
killed someone! *Bastard*!"
Then whirling away once more he dashed the tears away with a grimy
hand and reached for the heavy pistol at his hip. His K-12 might be down but
he was going to make that sh*t pay before they killed him.
"Davis!"
The sudden shout made him spin once more, the pistol already ready in
his hand. "What the hell do you think you're doing here?"
The sergeant's face was streaked with blood and his eyes were wild and
savage as he pounded up to the younger man.
"Having a sh*ting night out; what does it look like?" Hiroshi snarled
savagely in return.
"Where are--?"
"Dead sh*t; all five of them." Davis hissed back, even more
vehemently. "Didn't you know? It's part of our damn job description to get
ourselves blown to
hell."
"Don't smart-mouth me you arrogant rookie bastard." The other man
swore suddenly. Then in a quieter tone: "What happened?"
"Evans and Hoffmann were cut to pieces by some kind of blade-flame
things that disappeared after doing the job." He answered simply. "Konoe lost
it then and charged in in his K-11. One of them threw something and he, the K-
11 and three of the alien sh*t went up in the fireball. Anderssen and--"
But whatever he had been about to say was cut off by a sudden
shattering explosion.
"How much ammo have you left in that thing?" The sergeant screamed
above the din.
"Enough." Hiroshi answered fiercely.
"Then let's stop wasting time and kick some alien--"
Another crash blotted out the end of the sentence but Hiroshi was
already turning and a moment later both were tearing along the street towards
the ensuing battle.
Reaching its end they rounded a corner and were nearly cut down as
another red-tinged black bolt spat from the suddenly roiling sky.
"What the--" The other man began, then screamed and dropped lifeless
almost at Hiroshi's feet.
An instant later a second and alien scream shrilled from above and a
huge armoured shape came slamming into the remains of the sergeant, one of the
new C-55-iii combat machines fastened leach-like to its back. Hiroshi allowed
himself a moment's half-crazed satisfaction as he watched the boomer punch a
metal fist straight through the thing's head. Then the machine spun, leapt and
drilled a blast from its mouth-laser straight through the chest of yet another
descending creature.
For a moment Hiroshi actually thought in his half-wild state of
pounding the boomer on the back, then the wild scream of tyres made him turn
and in the next moment Leon McNichol and Daley Wong had leapt from a cruiser
and were diving towards him.
"Backup's on the way at last." Leon shouted above the din. "No one
seems to have realised that these bastards could fly so far or so fast. How
are things?"
"In hell as usual Sir." Hiroshi answered, grinning maniacally as he
saw three more of the enhanced combat boomers sweep overhead and cut several
more of the alien filth to bits before shooting to the summit of a
communications tower to cut down the two snipers before they had a chance to
escape. "I never thought I'd be glad to see that Genom sh*t but hey, beggars
can't be choosers; unless of course this's all some sick game of their's; but
I suppose that's too much to hope for?"
"Afraid so." Said Leon simply. "There've been attacks at several
points, but seemingly at random and without any kind of coordination. We think
something happened to their leaders. Apparently they disappeared through some
kind of black hole like the one they appeared from and these things keep
screaming revenge and that the Senshi or the Scouts will pay, whatever they
are. Whatever the hell's going on, it seems that they don't--. Davis, what's
the matter with you?"
Hiroshi was just staring stupidly at Leon.
"Senshi!" He managed at last. "You're joking! You *have* to be sh*ting
joking!"
Abruptly he threw back his head and began to laugh, a wild insane
sound.
"What the--!" Leon began.
"Down!"
Daley's scream had them diving behind the cruiser a split-second
before the bolt hit the road, chunks of pavement exploding in all directions.
"Sh*t, that's more out of our budget." Leon hissed as the windscreen
and headlights of the cruiser exploded in a spray of broken glass.
A moment later the human-dragon-thing screamed and smashed into the
crater it had blasted, an already dissipating ruin where its head had been.
Above them the boomer dropped down to hammer it with another blast, then shot
forwards into the thick of battle.
"I think we should move." Hiroshi panted, still barely in control of
himself it seemed.
Fresh screaming of tyres and the sudden roaring thrum of helicopters
spoke of new arrivals. Then in the midst of the sudden din, a familiar:
"Sanjo!" seemed to fill the night.
"At last!" Leon exclaimed, leaping to his feet despite the danger.
His sentiments were echoed a moment later as a sudden rising cheer
erupted from the pressed ranks of the ADP and by Hiroshi's sudden crazed:
"Tsuki ni kawatte oshioki yo!" as he too leapt to his feet and began waving
his arms madly in the air before him, slow hysterical mania growing in his
face.
"Knight Sabres!" Was shouted back and forth. "Now these bastards are
gonna know what real trouble is."
Hiroshi simply continued to laugh. Then lifting the pistol he began to
fire.
Priss could not believe she was doing this. The turn of events had
been so sudden, so impossible. They had barely left the scene of the initial
appearance when the first reports of the battle near the Tinsel-City bank had
reached them in the van. Then the message had come from the tower. Whether
Quincy had known that Sylia would have the ability to monitor Genom's
intermediate executive security or whether he had guessed, the crux of the
message was clear and succinct. No action would be taken against the Knight
Sabres during this emergency, nor would they be designated targets by any
Genom combat machine. Furthermore, any assistance they were willing to offer
would be accepted in a spirit of amnesty on the part of Genom corporation and
the city's authorities until the emergency was at an end. Immediately
following the encoded transcript had come a stream of sensory and satellite
data concerning each appearance and tactical information regarding the current
situation at the site of each engagement.
From that point there had been no further contact, but no boomer had
taken the slightest notice of the four hardsuits when they had appeared at the
first, then the second scene of chaos. Those had each been brief encounters,
the majority of the enemy having already been mopped up by the combat machines
before their arrival. This time however things were different. There seemed to
be scores of the nightmare parodies and all of them it seemed were able to
fly. Also the boomers seemed to be few and concentrating more on keeping the
creatures from using the roofs of the buildings as effective cover for
sniping, pinning them down while the ADP dealt with them as best they could.
Priss flipped from the path of a spiralling, green-flaring whip that
seemed to be attached to the arm of the female human-insect cross-breed and
returned fire with the rail-gun, the heavy projectile punching through the
head of the thing before she could move or scream. Priss had no time to stare
as the body crumbled and vanished. She was already turning towards another of
the nightmares as it plunged towards her from above. Rocketing to meet it, she
drove a fist into its armoured head and heard a satisfying crack as its neck
snapped like a twig and it dropped lifeless towards the ground, already
beginning to dissolve before it slammed into the pavement. Then in the next
instant something slammed into her from behind and she was turning end over
end in a wild dive. Trying desperately to shake the sudden stars from her
head, Priss fought the spin and had just managed to right herself when a
second bolt sent her reeling to crash through the skylight of an office
building.
Through a haze of exploding glass and shattering plaster, Priss
smashed down across a desk, splintering a terminal to fragments and turning
the fine mahogany to scrap as she slammed across the wide expanse of plush
carpet. A filing cabinet at last stopped her headlong plunge, its contents
erupting in all directions as she came to rest at last, one shoulder wedged in
the shattered remains of its door.
"That's gonna hurt later." She groaned, pulling herself free and
surveying the damage her entrance had caused.
Papers had joined broken glass, plaster, the terminal's internals,
mahogany and other undefinable flotsam in a ruinous cascade across the floor.
"Someone's not gonna be happy." She observed dryly, then gasped and
leapt aside only just in time as a flash-pulse of flame turned what remained
of the desk into a blazing pillar of fire.
"Right; now you've got me angry." Priss snarled.
Ignoring the further damage she would cause, she shot straight up and
through the ceiling, plaster and roof-tiles exploding in her wake as she burst
skywards and punched a shot through the chest of the thing that had been
waiting for her.
It had one stunned moment to stare stupidly at her before it dropped
into the hole she had made and disappeared.
"I don't think you'll be coming out again." She said, shooting into
the air and diving towards the street.
She had almost reached ground when a sudden warning shout shrilled
through the comms.
"Priss, Sylia, Nene! Something very weird's going on here!"
Redirecting her dive, Priss hurtled towards the place her suit
indicated Linna to be. Then a sudden similar scream from Nene made her freeze,
uncertain of what to do.
"HERE too Sylia! Can't detect anything but it's like a swirling black
something. They're falling everywhere, everyone but the boomers. Can't--! So
tired suddenly--! Must be gas! Can't--!"
Nene's voice faltered into silence. Then Priss saw it, a swirling
vortex of darkness that seemed to be swelling and surging from the suddenly
gathered ranks of the creatures. Staring aghast, she saw a K-12 stumble and
halt in mid-charge, its cannon suddenly falling to hang listlessly before it.
Then the broiling blackness was leaping at her and Priss shot into the air
only just in time. Staring down in horror, she watched in disbelief as the
last of the men and women were overwhelmed and fell suddenly silent. Then a
squad of Bu-12Bs were hurtling at the gathered creatures, a devastating
barrage hammering at the aliens as they stood packed tight together. Priss
continued to stare as the rounds and blasts slammed into them but appeared to
do no harm. For a moment she watched uncomprehending, then straining, she made
out a faint, barely perceptible shimmer in the air around and above them. Even
as the swirling vortex grew and deepened, dark tendrils seeming now to flow to
converge at the place where they were gathered, so the shimmering barrier
seemed to grow and solidify. For a moment the barrage continued, then several
of the things detached themselves and, bathed in the lurid darkness, moved out
towards the ADP. Ignoring the hammering assault of the boomers, they
approached several prone forms and reaching down, touched lightly at each
forehead. Almost immediately the men and women stirred and rose, their faces
blank and their eyes vacant as they turned towards the machines. Priss watched
gaping as one woman raised the small pistol she was carrying and fired a
heavy-calibre round into the head of a C-55. The boomer began to turn, then
abruptly it pivoted and punched a blast near point-blank into the face of one
of the strangers.
Screaming, his shield unable to cope, the creature collapsed and
dissipated and the woman and a man beside her dropped once more to the ground.
Priss remained frozen for a moment, then a sudden movement farther off
caught her attention. Turning she saw one of the creatures approaching a
frozen green-suited figure.
"Oh sh*t!" She gasped softly. "If they get the others up in that
state--!"
Whipping around, she shot forwards on furiously-screaming jets and
dived headlong into the blackness, hammering the thing with a storm of fire
until she was satisfied at last that it was down. Then, already dizzy and
nauseous from entering whatever it was, she shot skywards again and was nearly
caught in the visor by a sudden flash from her right. Turning, she gaped in
stupefied fascination as the K-12 levelled its cannon at her and fired again.
Priss jerked about, then shrieked and twisted desperately aside as a shot from
another of the mechs tore through the place she had been an instant before.
"Sh*t! Hey, go and shoot something else damn you!" Priss screamed,
more in fury than anything else. "Don't you idiots even know how to stay
unconscious?"
She was not so concerned for herself. The fire was unlikely to be able
to do any real damage at this range and if necessary she could keep them
shooting until their ammunition was exhausted. It was the possibility that
they would hurt someone else that worried her, that and the fact that one of
those things might manage to reach one of the other hardsuits in the
confusion. Where were the others anyway? Linna was the only one she could see.
Ducking another vicious barrage, Priss flipped aside, dived and
smashed at full tilt into the suddenly leaping form of one of the aliens.
While her impetus shattered her like splintering wood, Priss was sent hurtling
out of control to smash head-first through the roof of an ADP cruiser.
Dazed, fighting desperately against the sudden waves of ice and
sickness that had closed about her the moment she had plunged into the vortex,
Priss hurled herself upwards once more, heedless of the jarring pain as her
suit slammed its way out by main force. Barely aware, trying vainly to pull
her failing consciousness to order, Priss twisted desperately into a position
where her thrusters could carry her skywards. Then suddenly a scream shrilled
in her comms.
"Priss! Behind you!"
Sylia's voice had barely registered when Priss was caught from behind
in a vicious vice-like grip.
For one dazed moment she hung helpless, her head half turned towards
the apparition as it dragged her down and into the numbing ice of oblivion.
Then in the next something blurred in her vision and the thing was no more
than a dissipating spray in the air before her.
"Did not I tell you to look for us when you least expected it and when
you most needed help?" Came a sudden warm female voice close to her helmet.
Then another gentler grip was about her and the ground was falling
rapidly away as she was carried up and into the light once more.
"Marina!" She gasped, her heart pounding wildly as she fought
desperately to claw her way to consciousness once more.
"Shh, give yourself a moment."
This time the words came through the suit's suite. "It will take a
minute or two for the effects of the crystals to subside."
"Crystals?" Priss gasped uncomprehending. "I thought it was gas or--"
"Shh," Marina insisted gently once more. "and stop struggling. Can't
you bring yourself to trust me even a little?"
A moment later Priss felt the DA touch down and then she was set on
her feet, Marina steadying her while the world came back into focus.
Staring confusedly about her, Priss found herself atop one of the
tallest of the office complexes, far above the growing, broiling blackness
below. For a moment Marina was her only companion, then a hiss and thunk
announced Sylia's arrival. Priss began to turn bleary eyes towards her, then
stared as another figure dropped from above to touch down at Marina's side.
She was all but identical to her in height, but her long hair was dark
and her eyes as she turned to study Priss intently for a moment were a deeper
blue than Marina's own.
"Camilla?" Priss managed, her voice still infuriatingly trembling.
The boomer curtsied deeply and flashed her a quick, intense smile.
Startled, Priss started to turn fully to her, then a sudden movement
from below made her jerk about once more.
"Those things are trying for Linna again" She exclaimed, her voice
shrilling as she fought down the last of the confusion and prepared to leap
once more into the fray. "and I still can't see Nene! I--"
"Stay."
Marina's tone was suddenly savagely intense as she tightened her hold
for a moment about Priss's waist, although whether to restrain or reassure her
Priss could not be certain. "I will bring them and deal with the enemy. Guard
them." She continued, turning for a moment to Camilla. "Vaporise anything that
dares so much as look in their direction. I will not be long."
"; careful Oneechan." Said Camilla softly, reaching to touch Marina's
hand. "They still may not be all we have guessed."
Marina flashed her a fierce smile as deadly as any look Priss had ever
seen. Then without a word she turned and flashed like a missile towards
Linna's green hardsuit. In the next instant so it seemed to Priss's staring
eyes she was airborne again, Linna's unmoving form held fiercely to her as she
soared once more towards them.
"Where's--?" Priss began.
But Marina was already gone once more, screaming away from them almost
before Camilla had caught and steadied Linna's suit.
"Is she--?" Priss demanded.
This time it was Sylia who answered, her own voice tight.
"According to her suit's systems she's unhurt," She said. "but she
isn't responding. Mackie?"
"I'm on my way." He answered, even as a sudden flash and explosion
from below caught their attention.
Priss turned, watching in stunned amazement as a huge ball of
undulating darkness leapt to a point some fifty yards to her right. For a
moment she could not see what the things were shooting at. Then Marina
appeared above the vortex, Nene's pink hardsuit cradled to her as she raced
once more for the roof.
"Pathetic!" She cried exultantly as she touched down once more.
Her blue eyes seemed to glow savagely with an inner fire and her face
wore a wild, ecstatic grin of blood-lust and battle-rage as she turned again
to Camilla. "Shall we little sister?" She ended.
"Are you sure Oneechan?" Camilla inquired with a touch of trepidation.
"I am sure." Cried Marina fiercely. "Besides," She added in a sudden
quieter tone. "we cannot afford to allow them to influence more humans and the
conventional combat machines can't penetrate their shield."
"But what--?" Sylia began.
"Watch." Said Marina simply. "Watch and learn."
In the next instant she and Camilla tensed and hurled themselves
skywards. A fractional moment later blazing trails erupted behind them as they
twisted, turned and plunged down, sudden exultant battle-screams seeming to
fill the night as they hurtled straight towards the gathered warriors.
Just what happened next Priss could never afterwards describe with any
certainty. In one instant the two machines were plunging into the blackness.
In the next it was collapsing in upon itself as though it had never been and
the four-score or more nightmares were nothing but a vanishing flare of
brilliant, broiling flame.
Gaping, too shocked to speak, Priss watched as the DAs streaked back
towards them, the wild grins of blood-lust vanishing as quickly as they had
appeared as they touched down once more. Marina opened her mouth to speak,
then a sudden groan from Linna silenced her.
"Oh my head!" Linna moaned softly. "What happened?"
A moment later Nene also was beginning to stir and staring down, Priss
saw that the ADP were slowly picking themselves up, staring about them in
confusion as the boomers, already receiving new instructions now that this
attack had been dealt with, leapt skywards and sped into the night to
rendezvous with the transports that would take them to another scene of chaos.
"This is crazy!" She exclaimed softly. "Sylia, what the hell did those
things do down there?"
"I'm as much at a loss as you Priss." She answered simply, reaching to
steady Linna as she began to try to move. "Keep still for a few moments." She
said gently to her. "We can't afford to open your helmet here but Mackie's on
his way. Are you alright?"
"No." Linna gasped. "I've got a splitting headache and I've never felt
more tired. What did those things do? Some kind of gas? The suit didn't warn
me, but if it was something we haven't had to deal with before--?"
"There was no gas or other physical narcotic." Said Marina simply
through the comms.
Linna gasped and tried to turn.
"It's alright." Said Priss quietly. "At least I hope it is." She
continued to herself.
"How? When?" Linna tried, turning unfocused eyes for a moment to the
two DAs.
"Later." Said Marina quietly.
"Oneechan, they're all awake below it seems, but in no condition to
fight any more tonight."
"Confirmation enough don't you think?" She inquired softly.
"But Oneechan it's not possible!" Camilla protested.
"None of this should be possible." Marina countered.
"They might still be boomers, some perverse joke on the part of the
chairman; or should they truly be alien, of a technology so advanced as to
allow them to mask their true forms."
"In which case the similarity to our data is purely coincidental, not
to mention the readings and chemical samples we took during the battle."
Observed Marina with a touch of amusement. "I think my explanation better fits
the criteria, don't you?"
Camilla was silent for a fractional instant that seemed to Marina an
eternity.
"Some genetic experiment?" She offered almost desperately at last.
"Oneechan, the alternative is--!"
"Too impossible to contemplate." Said Marina simply. "I agree; yet the
physical evidence supports no other conclusion, and it *is* a fascinating
conjecture is it not? Think what it might mean, what we might learn."
"Um; is this a private argument or could you two possibly explain what
you're talking about?" Linna asked blearily. "I have a splitting headache and
I'm not really in the mood for long explanations but I'd like to know just
what the hell we're dealing with."
"We believe" Camilla began.
"Not yet little sister." Said Marina quietly. "It's too soon."
"But if this *is* possible?"
"No." Marina insisted quietly but firmly. "Besides, the KnightWing is
coming. They should go and so should we. Youma are still roaming."
"But in disarray." Camilla protested. "Oneechan if they are to accept
your offer they have a right to know everything. They have a right to our
trust."
"In the same way they trust us?" Said Marina quietly but with a hint
now of chill in her tone.
She turned abruptly to Priss, her blue eyes locking on her visor. For
a moment each stared at the other in silence, then slowly Priss raised a
gloved hand.
"Hey look;" She began uncertainly. "I'm not really in the mood for
this now. Whatever's going on is too important. I guess you saved my life back
there. I don't think that thing was gonna try to tango. Thanks for the help,
ok?"
She shifted uncomfortably, suddenly unwilling to meet Marina's
intense, piercing stare.
"It's not enough," Said Marina simply at last. "not *nearly* enough."
Then abruptly Priss's comms came to life with her own voice: "Are you
sure that thing didn't give you too much of whatever it was this morning!
You're absolutely crazy. No way am I gonna trust one of those. I don't give a
damn what you or them or anyone else says. The things are Genom military sh*t
and if you really think I'm gonna trust a piece of Genom sh*t with my back--"
"I should have realised you would not change." Marina continued
simply.
Without another word she turned away, her face a sudden mask of ice to
hide anything that might be happening within.
Priss stood very still, a confusing maelstrom of shame and fury
fighting for supremacy. That bitch had been spying on them, or had bugged
Sylia's security system. Yet she might well have done exactly the same in her
place. They were desperate, assuming they weren't under Genom's control. And
there lay the crux of the problem. She couldn't be sure. She couldn't be sure
of anything.
Fighting down the storm, Priss took a hesitant step towards Marina,
reaching for a moment as though to touch her shoulder, then withdrawing her
hand. For a moment she remained silent, then at last she sighed.
"Look" She began. "I'm not gonna apologise for what I said. I'm not
convinced, hey it's probably gonna take a long time for me to even start to
trust you. But I'm willing to give you the chance to prove I'm wrong. I can't
promise anything else. I'll be watching you and if you screw up or try to hurt
one of my friends I won't stop until you're in more pieces than Alexei Zhura-
whatsisname ever put in any diagrams. I'm being as honest as I can ok? You're
not gonna get anything else, so what's it to be? Truce?"
For a long moment Marina remained unmoving. She had tensed, momentary
rage blazing in her eyes when Priss had mentioned her father, but Priss had
not seen. Now slowly Marina turned to face her.
"I do not understand you." She said softly. "We have been given data
concerning a myriad of human responses, but your's are unlike any we were
taught to expect. I thought it would be a simple matter to prove myself to
you, that were I able to rescue you from danger, perhaps death--. A myriad of
tales speak of friendship from such a beginning."
"I--" Priss faltered, staring in shock at the DA's naivete.
"They're just tales Marina," Said Sylia quietly at last before Priss
could answer. "archetypes and idealised perfections. Things are never so
simple in reality. But we haven't time for this just now. Mackie's almost here
and we have to get Nene at least out of her suit."
"Oh sh*t!" Priss exclaimed.
She had all but forgotten the others in the confusing emotional hail
of the last minute.
Linna, barely able to keep from fainting herself was helping Sylia
support a shivering and incoherent Nene while Camilla stood behind her, ready
to catch her should she lose the battle and fall. Quickly Priss moved to take
Linna's place, steadying the dead weight of the red-pink hardsuit. Sylia had
shut it down in case Nene's violent shivering hurt her, or one of them. A
moment later the KnightWing appeared overhead, circling low as Mackie looked
for a place to
land.
"I'm not going to be able to--" He began.
"There's no need." Marina transmitted in return. "We can carry Linna
and Nene."
"'m alright!" Linna insisted but it was plain that it was bravado.
She had begun to shiver violently and Camilla had caught hold of the
suddenly lurching suit.
"Close down the suit Linna." Sylia commanded quietly. "We have no
other option. Priss?"
"I'll be alright." She assured her.
"Then let's get out of here." Said Sylia.
There was a hiss as the two hardsuits and the DAs carrying the others
lifted from the roof and soared towards the circling plane. Then they were
inside and Mackie had sealed the KnightWing and was speeding into the
darkness.
"Keep still." Marina said in growing frustration.
"Look I'm alright damn it." Priss swore feelingly as Marina pushed her
down and moved a hand to her neck.
Priss had only discovered the thin sliver of glass when she had
removed her helmet. Just how it had managed to get there she had no idea but
it had barely registered as pain and it was only when she had removed it and
the small trickle of blood had become a stream that she had realised just how
deep the slash was. Marina had pounced immediately she saw the pooling blood
and was now examining the gash intently.
"That will need suturing." She said simply, holding the gash closed
with two fingers while Priss winced at last with the growing vicious stabs at
her neck.
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