Here's the next installment of my BGC/Doctor Who crossover.  This is
really the first time I've done a long battle sequence, so any C&C would
be appreciated.  Also, from here on I'm going to be doing some heavy
character development for Sylia, and some even for the Doctor.  Let me
know if you think I'm going OOC, but I hope you'll like where I'm taking
things.

				----------

BGC/WHO:  Slipt, part 7.

	The boomers in the corridor gathered together and began to circle
them leisurely, slowly tightening the snare.  The closest boomer lifted
its head slightly, and its mouth began to glow.
	Priss shoved a knucklebomb into its chin, sending it flying back
to knock over two other boomers.  Then she turned and ran, and the other
Sabers quickly followed.
	"Shit, we need some cover fast!"  Priss shouted over the comlink,
provoking a squeal of feedback.  "Nene, where!?"
	Nene glanced at the scanner display on her visor and ran past the
first two doors, plowing into the one beyond it and shattering the wooden
barrier.  "This way!"  She said breathlessly.  "Up to the next floor!"
	A laser bolt exploded next to Linna as she dived through the
doorway, and the three of them dashed up the stairs, the boomers not far
behind.  They emerged into a maze of office cubicles, drab gray and brown
plastiform walls scattered this way and that throughout the huge chamber.
	"Scatter!"  Linna said, running into a narrow opening in the
labyrinth.  Priss headed for a string of staggered cubicles, and Nene
followed the outer wall of the room, ducking behind the cubicles lined up
next to it.
	Moments later, a plethora of heavy footsteps on the metal
stairway signaled the arrival of the boomers.

	The room fell deathly silent, as the boomers began their search.
All Priss could hear was her own pounding heartbeat, and her ragged
breathing, deafeningly loud in her ears.  She crouched low behind a prefab
metal desk, watching the opening at the far end of the cubicle, waiting
with railgun at the ready.
	It was several minutes before a shadow passed in front of the
opening, but the boomer quickly passed on, apparently without glancing
inside.

	Nene crept along a dim corridor which wound back and forth, first
hard against the outer wall, then away from it.  She had no idea of what
she was looking for.  A fusebox, a panel of light switches, anything that
might give them a tactical advantage.  But so far, nothing.
	As she reached the far corner of the chamber, she heard a muffled
gulp and a snapping sound from several feet away.  Instantly, she froze.  
Luckily, a slight scuffing sound followed, farther away.  The boomer must
have found an innocent employee, who was working late, she thought grimly 
to herself.  At least, she hoped that was the case.
	Suddenly, the plastiform wall next to her exploded inward and one
of the hulking boomers reached for her, leering its metallic leer.  She
screamed, and jumped aside as a clawed hand raked the air where she had
been standing an instant before.
	A similar, more distant explosion registered dully on her panicked
consciousness.  Elsewhere, the boomers were attacking the other Knight
Sabers, she knew.
	She ran out of the cubicle, ducking as another boomer made a grab
for her.  She dashed down a short length of corridor and rounded a corner
just as a searing beam of red ripped a jagged hole in the corridor wall
behind her.
	How had the boomers found them all so quickly?

	The two boomers had jumped through the cubicle walls nearly
simultaneously, but Priss had been ready.  The first had been quickly
decapitated by a hail of railgun spikes, but the other was ponderously but
rapidly closing the distance between them as she dived around each
staggered cubicle.
	She stumbled to one side as an office chair crashed to the floor
at her feet.  The boomer was trying to slow her down.  A few steps closer
and it would have a clear shot at her with its deadly mouth cannon.  Priss
ran for a nearby cubicle wall and jumped up, slowly dragging herself over
the top.  And not a moment too soon, for immeditately after she was over,
a sizable chunk of the plastiform wall vanished in a cloud of acrid fumes
and smoke, vaporized by the boomer's laser.
	She collapsed into a heap on the floor, trembling with exhaustion.
"Move!"  she shouted at herself silently, as the ponderous footsteps of
the boomer grew closer.  Someone was speaking, but she only half-heard
the words through the echoes of the explosion.  "MOVE!!"

	Linna had been caught by surprise, when one of the boomers had
crashed through the wall behind her.  The boomer swung heavily at her,
knocking her to the floor.  Smiling an evil smile, its mouth cannon began
to glow red.
	Linna kicked desperately against the boomer's legs, sending it
into a sprawling heap.  Climbing to her knees, she scurried for the next
bend in the corridor, but not before the boomer managed to get off a
parting shot.  It grazed her shoulder, and suddenly a searing agony tore
through her as the suit bubbled and ran liquid where the beam had touched
it.  She screamed.
	The boomer was slowly getting to its feet.  She crawled blindly
for the corner, unable to see through the haze of pain.  "Nene," she
whispered into the comlink.  "Nene, do something.  Help me..."

	Nene was running down a long length of corridor, her own boomer
not far behind her.  The next intersection was only moments away.  But
suddenly, another boomer stepped into view from the other corridor and
readied its cannon.  She dived to the floor as two searing beams of heat
tore through the air directly over her head, one from the boomer in front,
one from the one behind.  Within moments, all that remained of the two
boomers were two smoking masses of metal and plastic, with legs.
	Her comlink crackled.  "Nene, do something," whispered Linna's
voice.  "Help me..."  "I'm coming!"  She yelled, and promptly dashed
around the corner straight into a *third* boomer.
	The boomer was as surprised as she, but she was quicker.  Without
thinking, she shoved her fist into its maw and activated her signal
scrambler.  The boomer convulsed rapidly as its neurocircuitry flooded
with chaotic signals, dragging her back against the wall and hammering at 
her as its arms flopped around at random.  Finally, its eyes went dark,
and it slumped against the wall, unmoving.  She had killed it.
	She paused to draw a shuddering breath, flipping back her visor to
dab at the sweat running down her forehead.  And then she noticed a tiny
silver spigot protruding from the ceiling several meters away.
	"The sprinkler system!" she thought, elated.  "THAT'S IT!!"
Quickly now, she hurried down the next corridor and into the cubicle
directly below the spigot.  There was a smallish desk and chair, and an
ancient pad of paper filled with scribbled notes sitting next to a small
PC.  She adjusted her arm laser's strength and fired at the pad, then at
the PC.  Instantly, smoke and flame burst forth from both.  She ran to the
next cubicle and repeated.  Seconds later, the angry blare of the fire
alarm greeted her ears, and the spigots above began spreading forth their
salvation.
	The boomers had a rudimentary form of infrared vision, she'd
realized.  They hadn't been able to tell the difference between the heat
of their suits and the unfortunate employee, but they could still track
down and eliminate whatever sources of heat they could find.  Hopefully,
the water would help them to blend in with their surroundings, and give
them the edge they needed to win the day.

				*	*	*

	Sylia awoke to the sound of soft ticking.  Glancing to one side of
the bed, she saw a small, tower pendulum clock sitting on the bedstand,
with a note beside it.  "Time is but a fleeting thing.  -- The Doctor"
She smiled.
	A knock echoed slightly from the metal door.  "Come in," she said.
"I'm awake."
	The Doctor peeked in, smiled, pushed his hat up, and produced a
handful of violets.  "I know."  He strolled into the room and dropped the
flowers into a tiny vase already sitting on the bedstand, half full of
water.  "Do you have a moment to chat?" he murmured disarmingly.
	She nodded, and beckoned him to a chair next to the bed.  "So,"
she began, smiling faintly.  "What's the weather like outside?"  "Toxic,
as usual," he returned.  "You should be well enough to deal with it in
another week, I think."
	The smile faded from his face, replaced with a faraway look.
"What will you do, after this is all over?" he murmured softly.
	"Go on fighting Genom, no doubt," she answered pragmatically.
"There's a balance to maintain."  "Really?"  He quirked an eyebrow at her.
"Tell me about this balance."
	She sighed.  "There's not much to tell.  Genom puts on its front
for the rest of the world to see.  It's what they don't see that I'm sworn
to defend against.  The corruption festering there is a double-edged
sword, cutting a path of progress forward, but slicing innocent lives
asunder as it moves."  She held up her stump of an arm.  "Genom must be
watched, so that the good and the evil are balanced."
	"But that's not what you said," he replied.  "You said you'd go on
fighting Genom."  "To keep that balance, of course!"  She snapped, giving
him a cold glare.
	She fought down her anger with a visible effort.  "I'm sorry, I--"
"I know," he said.  "Maybe if you say it often enough, you'll eventually
believe it.  But that isn't why you're fighting them, is it?"
	She stared at him for a moment.  "What do you mean?"  He shook his
head sadly.  "Sylia, Sylia.  When did it become personal?"
	She quickly looked away, steeling herself against the churning
emotions suddenly surfacing under his careful probing.  "I don't know,"
she whispered.  "It wasn't just your arm, was it?" he pressed.  "Tell me."
	The clock ticked away the passing seconds, then minutes, while she
searched for the answer she didn't yet know herself.  "Maybe I just can't
trust them," she finally replied.
	The Doctor shook his head again, taking Sylia's hand.  "It can't
be that simple.  What did Genom do to you that made you so angry inside?
What did they take away from you that drives you to fight against them
so?"
	And then she knew.
	Without warning, a rumbling explosion shook the room, sending the
vase to the floor to shatter into pieces.  The Doctor quickly stood,
bracing himself against the chair as the aftershocks died away.  He
said, "That wasn't very far away."
	"He's here," Sylia said flatly, her gaze cooling to its normal
icy formality.  "*HE* is here.  Help me up, we don't have much time."

				*	*	*

	Priss glanced upward in surprise as the water began to rain down
upon her.  "What the hell?" she wondered as she clambered slowly to her
feet.  Then the boomer's footsteps stopped, and she understood.
	She took off in a shaky jog down the new corridor.  "Nene," she
said into the comlink, "where are you?"  "Take the second left, and watch
out for the boomer behind you," came the hurried reply.
	Priss followed the corridor back and forth past several more
cubicles before she came to the second intersection, and caught up with
Nene a minute later.  Glancing back, the boomer that had been chasing her
before was nowhere in sight.
	A boomer lay at Nene's feet, its hands outstretched, its back and
neck arched at an impossible angle.  Next to it lay Linna's prone form. 
She was unconscious, which was fortunate.  She hadn't seen how close she
had come to dying.
	"She'll be okay," Nene murmured quietly over the comlink.  "But
the boomer made a mess of her shoulder."  It was true.  The suit had
nearly melted through on Linna's right shoulder, leaving a sliver of
blackened, blistered skin exposed.
	"How many did you get?" Nene asked.  "One," muttered Priss.  "Then
there's one left.  Let's get Linna downstairs first, and then come back
for it."
	Priss frowned at the boomer, and gave Nene a curious look.  "What
did you do?"  She grinned impishly.  "I gave it a headache."
	
	The boomer was waiting for them at the doorway.  It turned,
smiled a deadly smile, and shot forth its deadly beam into the cubicle
next to them.  Though it had given off no small amount of steam
penetrating through the shower still descending from above, it still
managed to gouge a deep hole into the plastiform.  Priss and Nene ducked
back into the corridor.
	"Damn!"  Priss growled, as the boomer's footsteps grew nearer.
She reached out again and fired off a volley of railgun spikes at the
boomer.  Most went wide, but several sailed true to bury themselves deeply
into its chest and head.
	The boomer stopped instantly, a shower of sparks erupting from all
over its body, the water coursing down its hulking form glowing from the
electrical discharge.  Then a series of explosions ripped through its
frame, knocking it from its feet and finally blowing it apart completely.
	Priss simply gaped.
	Nene let out a sigh of relief and smiled again.  "Come on Priss,
we have a disaster to prevent."

	But the battle had only begun.

Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
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