--
===============================================================================
Robert M. Schroeck
rms@eclipse.net http://www.eclipse.net/~rms
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Do you like movies about gladiators, Timmy?
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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: Dw2-05.txt
Disclaimer and credits will be found after the end of the
chapter.
DRUNKARD'S WALK II: ROBOT'S RULES OF ORDER
by Robert M. Schroeck
5: Kill the Wobot, Kill the Wobot!
Music ... can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.
-- Leonard Bernstein
There's nothing quite like the certain knowledge that you're
going to be facing a true maniac in battle. -- Anonymous
Monday, October 27, 2036. 10:47 PM
Lisa laid back on her futon and pressed "play" on the remote
control. The screen flickered, and the familiar theme music
began to play:
"'I'm sorry, I'm not gentle,'
I can say if it's in my dreams.
My thoughts are about to short circuit..."
*MY thoughts are about to short circuit,* mused Lisa as the
recording -- a favorite episode from late in the first season --
launched into its story. *These last few months have been too
hectic for words. Between the Sabers and the 16 Times, it's a
wonder I get any sleep!*
Her attention began to drift away from the television as her
mind wandered. *What with holding down what amounts to two full-
time jobs, I've just about sacrificed what little social life I
had. And just when things were starting to get... interesting...
with Doug.*
She sighed. *Doug. What the hell am I thinking of? It's bad
enough he's a gaijin, but he seems to be involved with someone
else, he just might be a boomeroid, and the ADP are after him.
*And* he hasn't shown any
*real* interest in me at all. It's
probably for the best that I haven't had any time to spend with
him -- it's likely kept me from making a fool of myself, or
worse.* She chuckled humorlessly. *And isn't that the main
reason I've thrown myself into my work these past few weeks?
Fear: being afraid of making a fool of myself, being afraid of
how horny I got that one night, being afraid for him now that
he's out on the streets fighting boomers, being afraid
*of* him,
of what he might be...*
She leaned back; behind her, the "Sailor Moon" episode muttered
away on her TV, forgotten completely. *Mou. The last time I
even said 'hi' to him was when he asked me about a film lab,
what, two weeks ago?* She began to feel the familiar pangs of
creeping guilt. *I really ought to see if he'd like to do dinner
some time this week. Just as a kind of apology...* She felt
herself begin to blush. *NOT as a date!*
A soft, persistent beeping from her wrist suddenly roused her
from her train of thought. For a moment, she was disoriented,
lost between "Sailor Moon" and her musings, then she realized
that it was a Sabers alert. Tapping the "acknowledge" button,
she popped the concealed display open and scanned the details.
A band of five state-of-the-art military boomers running wild
among the warehouses on the waterfront. Combat team to report
immediately for deployment. Support team to wait 15 minutes,
then head to HQ to prepare for post-combat stand down and
briefing.
*Like hell,* Lisa thought as an evil grin crawled onto her face.
*This is just the kind of story I need to get off those damned
"human interest" assignments once and for all!* She snatched up
her camera and gear bag, slipped on her shoes and coat, and
barrelled into the hall -- only to run into Doug as their
apartment doors both slammed shut at the same time.
"Yow!" Doug yelped in surprise, throwing one arm out to catch
and steady both of them against each other. "Oh, sorry, Leese,
I didn't see you there, um, can't stay and chat, gotta run," he
burbled as he let go. With his leather jacket slung over his
other arm and his helmet in his hand, he certainly appeared to be
in a hurry, and Lisa had a strong suspicion that she knew exactly
where he was headed.
"S'okay, hey, maybe we can get... together... later...?" Lisa
trailed off as Doug dashed down the hallway to the fire stairs.
*I'll bet he didn't even hear me,* she thought, then shrugged.
Passing the stairwell on her way to the elevator, she paused and
listened; a faint "thud-pitter-thud-pitter" drifted up to her.
She snorted, partly in amusement, and partly in envy.
After a maddeningly slow elevator ride, she reached the garage
and took off on her motorscooter for the warehouse district.
Fifteen minutes later, having eluded the still-incomplete AD
Police blockade of the neighborhood, she parked her scooter
behind a dumpster and made her way to the roof of a warehouse
overlooking the combat zone.
This involved no small amount of climbing up and swinging from
fire escapes, and one intimidating leap between adjacent
buildings, but Lisa's old gymnastics training made it, if not
exactly easy, at least possible. After the jump, as she stood
bent over at the waist and panting heavily, she remembered the
night she had climbed 15 stories up the steel skeleton of an
unfinished building to take photos of the Sabers, and compared it
to the climb she had just made. *I'm only 21. I'm in my prime.
I can't be getting old,* she thought between long, ragged
breaths. *Could I be losing my nerve?* She stood back up and
looked about. *Then again, I've never done anything like this
while wearing a winter coat before...* Around her, the sounds of
combat echoed off concrete and wooden walls.
After catching her breath, she crouched and all but knee-walked
her way to the edge of the rooftop. Wall and roof joined simply,
with the barest overhang and no retaining wall. Lacking that
cover, Lisa lay flat and crawled the last few meters. She peered
out over the edge at the battle raging at ground level, then
ducked back to retrieve her camera from its bag and insert a
fresh diskette. Then she lay on her stomach with only her face --
and her camera -- extended past the eaves and surveyed the scene.
What the street's small, widely-spaced mercury vapor lamps failed
to illuminate, the half-moon above brought to the edge of
visibility.
A narrow street, little more than a single traffic lane wide,
stretched for several hundred yards in either direction.
Bordering it were huge warehouses like the one on which she was
perched, their two- and three-story concrete walls painted with
corporate colors and forming a man-made ravine some ten or twelve
meters deep. Across the road and a dozen or so meters to the
right a narrow alley provided access between two adjacent
warehouses. In the distance to the right, Lisa spotted the
flicker of flames and the plumes of rising smoke they
illuminated. The boomers had been busy tonight.
Just past the mouth of the alleyway, the Sabers and their
motoslaves held five Bu-65C boomers in a bottleneck with hand-to-
hand combat and fire from the motoslaves' guns. Lisa watched
with a kind of enraptured amazement that never seemed to fade
with repeated exposure; each battle involving the Sabers was like
the first, captivating her with its almost dancelike precision
and grace. The dull noises of hardsuit and Abotex meeting, the
sharp crack of depleted uranium slugs breaking the sound barrier,
the explosive crackle of a knucklebomber, the sharp scents of
propellant smoke and ozone -- these merely punctuated what for
her was a seductively visual experience.
But however absorbed in the deadly beauty of the fight she might
have been, she was not deterred from her original purpose in
defying Sylia's orders. Its strap wrapped securely around her
wrist, she brought her camera to bear on the street below. She
began to snap photographs of the action, her left hand working
the telephoto lens like a pump-action shotgun.
Closeup: A spray of vaporized Abotex erupting around a glancing
blow from Linna's knucklebomber, painting a gossamer blue blossom
with a bluewhite heart around the green stem of her arm.
Clickclick.
Medium shot: Sylia, laserblade extended in a fencer's perfect
thrust as a boomer twists just enough to turn a heartblow to a
score along the chest. Clickclick.
Medium shot: The protective cage of the motoslave's frame
wrapped about her, Nene's seemingly passive form belying the
frantic mental and electronic activity that she coordinated.
Clickclick.
Wide shot: An explosion of concrete dust and debris from a
warehouse wall, the result of a wild shot from one of the
motoslaves' cannon, the gout of flame from the muzzle flash still
a brilliant plume of white and yellow. Clickclick.
Lisa continued to snap images as the cloud of dust expanded into
the street, drifting across the mouth of an adjacent alley and
cloaking the Sabers and the motoslaves momentarily. The boomers
seemed to sense a brief advantage and pressed forward, driving
Linna and Sylia backwards -- to Lisa's left -- until the
motoslaves were forced to retreat in a ratcheting shuffle to give
them room to maneuver. As the front line quickly slid past the
mouth of the alley, Lisa thought she saw Sylia glance in her
direction.
It was then that she heard the music.
* * *
Monday, October 27, 2036. 11:20 PM
"You do realize," grunted Linna as she landed a glancing blow
upon one of the boomers with her knucklebomber, "that we've seen
more action in the last few weeks than we have in the entire year
before this?"
Sylia did not respond right away, engaged as she was in a
delicate exchange of monomolecular blade versus mechanized fist.
She spied an opening, thrust, and grunted in annoyance as what
she'd hoped would have been a killing blow turned into a shallow
gouge along the boomer's chest armor. "I'm aware of it, Linna,"
she finally replied. "Trust me, it has been a concern of mine."
"It's not just that, the boomers are also getting tougher," Nene
added in a distracted tone from her protected position in the
rear. "These must be improved models; they've got a better
frequency-hopping algorithm and it's harder to keep their
tactical coordination jammed."
Sylia grunted in agreement as she deftly parried a counterstrike
from her opponent. The motoslaves' occasional potshot at the
more daring boomers had started to fade into the background noise
for her, but she was momentarily startled by the hypersonic
whipcrack of a depleted uranium slug not far over her head. As
it shattered a nearby wall into a billowing cloud of concrete
dust, she made a mental note to tweak their ally-avoidance
routines. That last shot had been a little low for her peace of
mind.
As the dust cloud expanded into the street, the boomers
shouldered forward. The combat had turned into a pitched battle,
exactly what Sylia hadn't wanted; the Sabers' most successful
tactics required more room to maneuver than the closely-spaced
warehouses allowed. *I might have to let this fight expand into
three dimensions,* she thought grimly, *if only to break the
stalemate. But the moment the motoslaves stop firing, we might
find ourselves in a pincer.*
A glitter of light up and to the right caught Sylia's eye as she
and Linna slowly retreated to Nene's position. She spared a
moment for a zoom shot of the rooftop through the hardsuit HUD,
fearing a possible ambush by yet another boomer. It was with
mixed emotions that she saw the worried face of Lisa Vanette,
washed out and pale green under light amplification, peering down
over the shining telephoto lens of her camera. Frowning, Sylia
made another mental note, and discarded the option to take to the
roofs. *No, not with a noncombatant up there, damn it all.*
"You know," Linna said between panting breaths, "Priss is going
to say it's because they knew she was out of town that the
boomers started coming out of the woodwork again." Nene giggled
and Sylia barked a short laugh in spite of herself.
"Priss will..." she began, but was interrupted by the unexpected:
music. It was loud, loud enough to be heard clearly over the
clatter and racket of the fight -- a confident downbeat and then
a buzzing electronic tone that slid artlessly down the scale to
settle into a seething bass hum. Then, a man's high-pitched
voice, singing in English:
"<A modern day warrior,
Mean mean stride;
Today's Tom Sawyer,
Mean mean pride.>"
It seemed to Sylia almost as though a voice had spoken in her
soul, demanding that she stop, look and listen. Against her
will, she found herself pausing in the fight, peering past the
boomers in front of her -- which to her surprise were themselves
pausing and turning around -- to seek out the source of the song
that echoed wildly off the concrete walls which surrounded her.
At the edges of her peripheral vision Sylia saw that Linna,
too, had frozen in mid-punch.
Within the cloud of dust that still billowed into the street, two
points of light appeared, looking for all the world like eyes.
Their focus seemed to swing from side to side, as though
searching out both enemies and allies. As they drew closer, a
figure appeared beneath them, indistinctly at first, then more
solid; what had seemed to be glowing eyes were in fact headlamps
mounted on either side of a unique and recognizable helmet, worn
by a man in grey leather.
"<Though his mind is not for rent,
Don't put him down as arrogant.
His reserve, a quiet defense,
Riding out the day's events.
The river...>"
"Masaka," muttered Nene on the encrypted link. "Sylia?"
The white Saber had recognized the mysterious "Loon" immediately.
"I see him, Nene. Return to your tasks."
"I can't. I have to look at him." Nene sounded close to panic.
"I
*need* to look at him."
"Me, too..." Linna's voice held an uncharacteristic quaver.
"What's happening?"
Sylia managed a frown behind her faceplate. "I don't know, but
we're fortunate that it's also affecting the boomers."
"Yeah," breathed Linna, "Otherwise we'd be dead."
Loon stopped several meters away from the frozen combat. "Good
evening, ladies." His voice, a pleasant tenor, carried clearly
to them over the same hidden speaker system as the music. His
tone was friendly, even playful. "You look like you could use a
hand. By the way, nice armor. Love the high heels. Very haute
couture." Nene giggled nervously, and Sylia snorted.
He cocked his head to one side, as if puzzled by something.
"Well, what are we all standing around for? <Let's kick some
bot! System hazy shade bangles play!>" The song abruptly cut
off, and with it the Sabers' compulsion to stand still and watch.
As Sylia and the others realized that they could move again, new
music began -- low, languid, ringing tones and women's voices,
singing once more in English:
"<Time, time, time,
See what's become of me...>"
Then, as a guitar riff exploded over a pounding drumbeat, Loon
launched himself into an impossibly long leap, tucking himself
into a blurring, tumbling ball as a pair of sparkling white vapor
trails corkscrewed behind him. Only the boomers noticed the
blur's color shift from grey to white as they paused, assessed
his potential threat level, and dismissed him as unimportant.
With a curt nod to each other, Sylia and Linna lunged forward,
and two wounded cyberdroids roared. They spun around in
surprise, only to see the two Sabers breaking right and left
towards the ends of the boomer line.
Reacting only slightly slower, the other boomers turned their
attention back to the only credible opponents identified by their
tactical software -- the Sabers. With the cheek-to-jowl
stalemate suddenly broken, one of the 65Cs stepped up to face
Sylia, while two others bracketed Linna. At the same time, the
two wounded cyberdroids each confirmed a clear line of sight,
locked on a target, and opened their jaws. Within their mouths,
red glows grew and capacitors audibly whined as their cannons
charged.
>From her secure position in the rear, Nene frantically tried to
keep a lookout on the rapidly-mutating combat. Firing commands
down the interfaces built into her hardsuit, she not only kept
pace with the pseudo-random changes in frequency used by the
boomers' tactical network, but at the same time tried to reorient
the motoslaves to fire upon the two boomers aiming at Sylia and
Linna. One corner of her conscious mind registered Loon's leap
into the melee, but he was such an unknown that she couldn't,
wouldn't, gamble on him being a possible ally. Later, she would
tell Sylia, "It didn't matter that I'd watched him take out two
combat boomers by himself on that security camera recording.
This was real, right in front of me, there were
*five* boomers,
and my friends' lives were on the line."
Before the motoslaves could react to their new orders, though,
Loon snapped his body straight with an audible crackle and landed
feet first on the shoulders of the two boomers. The unexpected
impacts drove both of them forward as Loon springboarded back
into the air; one boomer fell to its knees and one hand while the
other managed to remain standing, but both had lost their target
lock. Their shots went wild -- one seared a meters-long streak
along one of the warehouses, and the other blasted a small crater
from the asphalt.
For a moment, through the black, choking smoke heavy with the
foul odor of burnt bitumen, a footprint was visible on the back
of each of the two cyberdroids, a rime of frost briefly marking
the point of impact before melting away.
Loon had rebounded off the 65Cs, back in direction from which he
had come, and with a somersault and a half-twist landed on the
far side of the boomers from Nene. He looked at her from across
the line of battle, and Nene stared back. He was no longer
simply in leathers; he no longer looked entirely human. A layer
of shining white crystal covered him from head to toe; the only
exception was his black goggles with their mysterious flickering
colors. Wisps of fog rolled down his form and pooled at his
feet, flowing slowly away into nothingness.
Nene thought he looked like nothing more than a statue carved out
of ice, and the impossibly black depths of his infrared image in
her visor more than confirmed that intuition; following Sylia's
standing orders from several weeks before, she automatically
performed a fast, full-spectrum scan of him.
As she did so, Loon nodded to her, bringing two fingers up to his
brow in a mock salute. Behind the combination of helmet, fog,
and ice, there was no way she could see the expression on his
face, but she got the impression of a good-natured smile, the
friendly recognition of a fellow warrior.
It was a brief pause in the midst of the action that seemed much
longer than it actually was. She risked a quick glance to either
side. Sylia had sliced a broad strip of Abotex from the torso of
her boomer even as she dodged its mouth cannon blast. Linna was
having a harder time dealing with two foes; she ducked under an
open-handed swing by one boomer to land a glancing knucklebomb
blast on the other. In the process she took a solid blow in the
stomach from her target; it thudded audibly on her hardsuit,
making Nene wince in sympathy.
Then the moment was broken by movement in front of her: the two
boomers the Loon had all but knocked over returning to their
feet. As they rose, they turned their attention away from the
pink Saber and to this unarmored human whose threat rating had
just been raised enough to merit removing him from the battle.
Loon threw his arms forward, hands and fingers outstretched and
spread wide, as if he were pushing something away. A massive jet
of brilliant, sparkling white erupted from his palms, and
engulfed the two boomers. When it cut off a moment later, they
were encased in rounded mounds of ice.
Then he turned and
*skated* towards Linna.
* * *
On a rooftop overhead, Lisa swore in disbelief as she took yet
another photo. It was one thing to watch Doug fight a
construction boomer bare-handed, but this... this was
unbelievable. How did he do that? How was it possible?
Something hidden in the jacket? But it hadn't felt any heavier
than a normal leather jacket that time she'd looked in his
wardrobe...
At least she'd seen his speed before. The fact that he seemed to
be everywhere at once didn't bother her so much now as mystify
her. *I still have to know how... and why... and... and... and
what! I swear I'll get the answers.*
Unaware of the manic glint in her eyes, Lisa swapped a fresh
data disk into her camera, dropping the filled disk to join its
fellows in a small pile growing on the rooftop beside her.
* * *
Atop a different warehouse, a masculine figure materialized in a
column of sparkling blue light. A moment later he stood with one
foot on the retaining wall, unnoticed thanks to certain items of
high technology, and watched the battle below.
(Guess what, pretty lady?) he subvocalized.
(I don't need to guess, b'wana, I'm following it all on my
sensors,) the female voice relayed back along the link. (We've
found the BGC alternate where Doug spent his second jump.)
Legion nodded, more to himself than in response. (His first
fight at the side of the Sabers, from the look of it, too.
Before the... philosophical differences.) He snorted. (Anyway,
you know what that means, m'dear.)
(Already on it, boss. Before those two uglies down there can
defrost, the Sabers will have our gift package of advanced
technologies buried in their computer system. I'm setting the
time-delay lock to release it a week after Doug moves on.)
Minerva paused thoughtfully. (You want I should leave him a
little present?)
(No anvils, Min. *Please.*)
(No, boss, that wasn't quite what I had in mind.) The ACI
giggled. (Although that
*would* be fun.)
Ed winced. (Don't. He never mentioned
*ever* finding an anvil
in his apartment. That would cause a paradox and probably
attract the attention of the Three. We don't need that, pretty
lady.)
Somehow the sense of a mock-pout carried through the link. (Oh,
you're no fun, b'wana.)
Ed rolled his eyes and said nothing.
(I promise, boss, nothing disruptive.)
He sighed. (Oh, go ahead, Min. Do it and let's see if that
damned staff of Valanna's will let us move on.)
* * *
At ground level, peering out through the window of a warehouse
office, a third figure raised his camera again. On the floor by
his feet were a set of lockpicks and a press pass.
"This'll get me a top page credit for sure," he murmured to
himself.
* * *
Trapping those two bots in big ice blocks wasn't the smartest
move I might've made, but it was about the only thing I could do.
White and Olive were already on the flanks of the line, Pink was
effectively a noncombatant, the support bots weren't firing
because I was in the way, and I couldn't take both boomers on in
hand-to-hand fighting by myself. Unfortunately, channelling that
much power, even with (cautiously) tapping the node to boost my
output, took a fair amount out of me. If I tried anything like
that again I'd probably knock myself out, at least until I had a
chance to breathe and center and recharge, and, surprise
surprise, I wasn't going to get that in the middle of fight.
But I certainly wasn't going to show any sign that I'd just
expended more than half my reserves in a single attack. Not good
from the combat psychology end, and besides, I had more than
enough left to carry myself through to the end of the song if I
avoided throwing any more huge all-or-nothing effects at the
boomers.
* * *
Linna wanted to curl up around the dull ache in her abdomen; too
much of the impact had gotten through her hardsuit. Instead, she
just gasped with the pain and threw herself into a single
backwards somersault to retreat several meters.
A warning tone sounded. "Armor integrity. At. Ninety. Seven.
Percent," the hardsuit computer whispered in Sylia's voice.
As she fought to bring the pain under control before the boomers
closed with her again, a figure of gleaming white slid
effortlessly between her and the war machines. Not having
watched his transformation as Nene had, it took Linna several
seconds to realize that it was the Loon, blocking the boomers'
charge. He made a motion as if he were throwing a phantom
baseball; midway through the pitch, a cloud of glittering motes
coalesced into a gleaming spear of ice that flew from his hand
and smashed into the chest of the lead boomer. It shattered into
a spray of fragments without scratching its armor, but the impact
forced the cyberdroid to stagger backwards several meters.
The remaining one lunged at him, and he dropped to the ground,
pivoted on his hands to sweep its legs, then rolled aside to
avoid being crushed by the falling machine; a moment later he was
on his feet and at her side. The entire maneuver had taken less
than a second, and in her surprise and admiration Linna almost
forgot the ebbing ache in her stomach. "You okay?" he said, his
words punctuated by the crackling sound of ice breaking with
every movement of his lips and jaw.
"Yeah," she answered, "Just need to catch my breath."
"Do it fast," Loon said, not unkindly. Then he turned and pushed
a spread-fingered hand toward the closer of the two boomers,
which had dropped its jaw to reveal the collimating mirror of its
laser cannon. A swirl of white engulfed its head, only to vanish
and reveal a blob of ice more than half a meter across seated
firmly on the machine's shoulders. The cyberdroid began clawing
at the ice, metal fingers sending wet, white chips flying.
Meanwhile, the second boomer had regained its balance and began
to charge them. Linna forced the pain away, and stood straight.
"I'm okay," she announced.
He nodded to her, held out an ice-encrusted hand toward the
oncoming cyberdroid, and said, "Well, then. Shall we dance, Lady
Olive?"
* * *
On her perch above the fight, Lisa paused as a distant,
repetitive thudding sound caught her attention. She lowered her
camera and cradled it to her breast, then rolled backward away
from the edge of the roof and into a low crouch. She stood and
turned slowly in place, listening and watching.
The sound was growing sharper and clearer, and she quickly
identified it -- the prop noise of one or more small helicopters,
coming from the northeast. Straining her eyes against the
darkness, she could make out the lights of a small flock of
FireBees, swarming several blocks away. She brought her camera
back up to her eye, thumbed its light-sensitivity all the way up,
and stretched the telephoto lens to its full extent.
Through the viewfinder, she could clearly make out the tiny one-
man helicopters. They were circling around a dense column of
smoke that was more visible by the way it obscured both Fire bees
and buildings behind it than by the little light it reflected.
Her finger twitched, and the shot was saved. And another.
Scanning downward, she was startled by the sudden appearance of a
humanoid figure within the pillar of smoke -- the unmistakable
silhouette of a boomer, limned with white-yellow light around its
legs and torso. It burst from the smoke and hurtled over the
roofs of the nearby warehouses, followed by a second.
The first twitched its jets and changed course slightly, a move
echoed immediately by the one behind it, and Lisa realized that
they were heading directly towards herself -- and the combat
below.
Letting her camera hang from its strap around her neck, Lisa
raised her Saber-provided watch to her lips and tried to remember
how transmit with this thing; wrapping her hand around the
plastic shell, she squeezed what she hoped was the right button
combination and cried, "Saber Prime! They've got
reinforcements!"
Her watch beeped sullenly and its tiny LCD screen lit up with the
legend, "You have no new messages."
"Kuso!" Lisa began pressing more buttons.
* * *
As the combat raged before her, Nene played the controls of her
ECM suite like the virtuoso she was. Operating as much on
instinct as on the rapidly-calculated projections of the pattern-
modeling software, she tracked each frequency jump and expertly
jammed and rejammed the boomers' tactical network, operating with
a Zen-like abstraction and a speed which, of all her teammates,
only Sylia would have found neither astounding nor a little
intimidating. While she no longer was the poor fighter she had
once been and could face a 55C alone with confidence,
*this* was
where she excelled --
*this* was her chosen battleground.
In her "hacker's trance" she played the game of thrust and
counterthrust, and even though each encounter, each combat, was a
new and constantly-evolving event, there was still a continuity,
elements, flows, concepts and constructs, that altered little
from confrontation to confrontation, and gave her almost a sense
of comfortable familiarity. Although the players and the moves --
and sometimes the pieces -- might change, it was always the same
game.
Within this familiar gestalt, the patterns of give and take,
action and reaction, check and countercheck, Nene realized there
was an alien element. Sparing a thread of her attention on the
matter, she launched a sampler routine and a directional trace.
Any unfamiliar signal was a potential danger, as it might flag a
boomer tactic or system for which the Sabers might not be
prepared. It was always a priority to identify and analyze such
signals against that possibility.
The sampler quickly returned a first-approximation analysis. The
signal was a complex pulse, emitted every five seconds and almost
a second in duration, and running on a frequency unused by the
boomers' systems. It always began with a series of ten old-style
ASCII SYNs -- the antique code that requested synchronization
from a remote computer system in preparation for data exchange.
And each signal was always the same length. Beyond that, though,
there was no resemblance between instances.
Puzzling. Even more puzzling, there were no responses. Clearly
it was some kind of digital data packet, and it was on the wrong
frequency to be some odd variety of radar. And the SYN header
definitely suggested that it was expecting an answer of some
sort. The signal strength was enormous compared to the boomers'
tactical comm system, which could mean a distant -- or weak --
receiver...
Nene shook her head. The trace pointed into the massed combat,
but it did not change in strength or complexity as the boomers
fell, one by one. Her instincts were gnawing at her, whispering
that this was something important, not to be overlooked. But she
could spare no additional attention to it now. She launched a
process to record the signal; she'd look at it after the
debriefing.
* * *
Linna quickly realized that Loon had meant "dance" almost
literally. It took her only a few moments to see that almost his
every move was to some inner rhythm, a quick 4/4 beat so regular
that she found herself falling comfortably into it herself. She
chuckled to herself as she imagined a dance captain calling out
*these* steps: "One and two and punch and kick and one and duck
and spin and four... Come on, people, I don't see you really
*trying*!" It might have made him predictable, had he not seemed
to be able to be
*everywhere* on the field of battle at once.
She had never seen anyone or any*thing* as fast as he, with or
without cybernetic augmentation.
He certainly knew his way around combat, she had to give him
that. And he knew how to coordinate with an unfamiliar ally.
The rhythm seemed to help there, but it wasn't the only thing.
She found herself trading signals with him, a kind of instinctive
shorthand -- a gesture here, a nod there, flagging the next
target, implying the next move. And they attacked as a team --
an "I set them up, you knock them down" partnership that quickly
evolved as their blows volleyed the first boomer back and forth
between themselves.
But how he fought... He was a martial artist, that much she was
certain of. But he couldn't be a merc, he didn't have the
attitude and his style was too... wild, rambunctious... immature?
As if life were some immense computer game and he had all the
cheat codes.
Linna backfisted the boomer, staggering the machine and sending
it sprawling. Some yards away, the second of the pair continued
to chip away the ice imprisoning its head. "Who
*are* you?" she
finally demanded as they wordlessly decided their next move.
"Some people call me the Space Cowboy," Loon replied in a sing-
song cadence that was almost mocking. He glided like a skater
across the rough asphalt, leaving narrow trails of melting ice
behind each booted foot. "Some call me the Gangster of Love."
Slipping lithely around the boomer as it leapt upright and lunged
for him, he flicked his right hand open. A broad swath of ice
appeared beneath its feet. A leap and a spinning kick from Loon,
and the cyberdroid found itself sliding, its arms flailing
wildly, right to the green Saber.
Half-expecting this, Linna smoothly side-stepped and spun. With a
flick of her ribbon-cutters, she sliced off one arm and
decapitated it as it passed. A moment later, its headless body
slammed into a wall, then fell over backwards.
Loon hazarded a quick glance at her, and Linna thought she could
see him grinning through the ice inside the helmet. He snapped
his gaze from her and wordlessly they agreed on their next
target -- the other boomer had finally clawed the ice from its
head. "Some people call me Maurice." He trilled the "r"
almost foppishly as he launched himself into motion once again.
Without thinking, Linna followed.
"I am an expert in stucco, a veteran in love, and an outlaw in
Peru," he called over his shoulder as she sprinted after him.
*This guy is nuts,* Linna thought as she watched him plow into
their target only a few feet ahead of her. She spared a moment
to glance around: Sylia was disposing of her boomer, its face a
melted blob from laserfire, with a well-placed sword thrust; Nene
was jittering frantically within the protective cage of her
motoslave.
"I balance, I weave, I dodge, I frolic and my bills are all paid.
On weekends to let off steam, I participate in full-contact
origami. <I'm a high night flyer and a rainbow rider, and a
straight shootin' son of a gun,>" Loon continued, reciting as if
it were a litany, never pausing even as he slid up in front of
the boomer and stuck his face in its. "I hover and I hold; I
stalk through the city on little rat feet. <Shooting at the
walls of heartache, bang bang! I am the Warrior!>"
Dodging and weaving its attempts to hit him, Loon physically
taunted the cyberdroid with a collection of gestures liberally
lifted from ancient movies and cartoons from America: the
fluttering hand in the face, the double eyepoke, the "spot on
your tie" nose tweak. Not programmed for physical comedy, the
war machine roared its frustration. *All he needs now is an
exploding cigar and a circus sledgehammer...* Linna mused as the
boomer turned all its attention on its ice-covered tormentor.
Now here was an opportunity she wasn't going to pass up. A jet-
assisted leap sent her on a long, high arc. Like a stooping
hawk, she dropped down upon the cyberdroid from above, her right
arm extended and knucklebomber charged.
At the same moment, the boomer threw a claw-handed blow that sent
Loon tumbling backwards over the asphalt. To its immense
surprise, he popped briskly to his feet like a jack-in-the-box on
the third roll. The boomer growled again and lunged for him,
only to find that its feet had been iced to the pavement.
Loon was still wagging a reproachful finger at the struggling
cyberdroid when Linna's knucklebomber shattered its braincase.
They paused a moment over its fallen form and looked at each
other, expressionless goggles to blank faceplate. This close up,
Linna was even more amazed -- a layer of ice that had to be at
least a quarter inch thick completely coated him except for the
goggles, effortlessly breaking and refreezing at each joint as
his body flexed, making his every movement an arpeggio of
crackling noises. Fog continued to roll off him, and the bone-
chilling cold of his very presence reached through her hardsuit
to send goose bumps crawling across her skin. And the music
continued to echo from his very person:
"<Look around,
Leaves are brown,
And the sky
Is a hazy shade of winter...>"
"
*What* are you?" Linna whispered more to herself than anything,
but the voxmod carried it to his ears.
Loon tilted his head. With the ice coating his features, it was
hard to see anything but the broadest of his expressions; he was
completely unreadable. Then he grinned, the ice at the corners
of his mouth shattering and thrusting out to either side. "That
would be telling. Wouldn't you rather enjoy the suspense?"
Linna stared at him, blinking and completely at a loss for a
meaningful response. Suddenly his grin drained away and he
lunged at her, striking her hardsuit in the solar plexus with his
shoulder. His shout of "Down!" registered a moment later, as a
searing beam of laserfire lanced down from above, neatly slicing
through the spot where she had just stood.
"We've got trouble! Two more 65Cs coming in from the northeast!"
Nene cried over the private link.
"Now she tells me," Linna muttered.
The walls and ground vibrated with the thunderous roar as all
three motoslaves opened up with their guns. Still on her back,
Linna watched as two new war machines dropped out of the night
sky. The lead boomer, mouth laser still deployed and protective
eye shutters still closed, failed to evade the high-powered
salvos; its chest and head exploded when the guns tore through
it, sending a shower of boomer parts and yellow nutrient fluid
throughout the street. Its companion was luckier, coming through
the attack untouched. Cutting its jets, it plummeted to the
ground; it shattered the asphalt where it landed on its feet,
crouched and facing the Sabers.
Loon flickered, going from laying on top of her to standing next
to her without seeming to move between the two positions. Linna
backflipped into an attack stance next to him. Already the
motoslaves had opened fire on the remaining boomer, and Sylia was
firing her lasers. With a shrug, Linna launched her shock darts
at it as Loon gestured and ice formed a glistening chin strap
around its still-closed jaw.
Several seconds later, its motionless form lay sprawled on the
asphalt in a widening pool of yellow, and the Sabers, as well as
their mysterious ally, relaxed. Loon looked around at each of
them. "Well,
*that* was entertaining," he offered. There was
the sound of rotors overhead, and all looked up to see a small
flock of Fire bees circling and surveying the scene.
"Linna, Sylia?" Nene murmured over their private encrypted link
at that moment. "I'm getting some strange temperature readings
from one of the iced-over boomers..."
Then there was an explosion, and a shower of ice shards pelted
them. Linna spun to see one of the cyberdroids Loon had encased
rising from a steaming puddle of water littered with melting ice
chunks. Its chest panels were slightly open but fused in place
by melted Abotex, partly revealing its pectoral heat cannon
array. Acrid wisps of smoke curled up from the burned polymer
covering its chest. Beyond, a surprised Sylia hesitated a
critical moment before sprinting at it.
"Shit!" shouted Loon at the same time as the boomer dropped its
jaw and fired its mouth cannon at him from point blank range.
The beam was a solid rod of false color in Linna's thermographic
vision overlay, so bright that the visible light display had shut
down to protect itself and so close that she could feel its heat
faintly through her hardsuit. She turned in time to see it
strike Loon head on and throw him back against the wall of the
warehouse on the far side of the street. To her thermographic
vision, he'd ceased to appear human; he'd become no more than an
incandescent blob.
Still, the music continued:
"<Seasons change with the scenery,
Weaving time in a tapestry.
Won't you stop and remember me?>"
"No," she whispered. It was strange, but in minute or so she'd
spent at his side, she'd started feeling a kind of camaraderie
with him. To see him killed so unexpectedly... she felt bile
rise up in her throat and struggled to control it.
The beam vanished abruptly, and she turned back to see Sylia
withdrawing her laserblade from the boomer's head. "Take care of
the last one before it frees itself," the white Saber said
dispassionately as the cyberdroid fell forward with a crunch.
"Now."
Linna glanced back to where Loon stood propped against the wall.
The ice was completely gone, and faint wisps of steam rose
from his body. In IR, he was still radiating heat. She was
about to turn to the last boomer when she realized...
"Ow ow ow ow shit." Loon's amplified voice echoed off the
warehouses to either side of them as he slowly and painfully
pushed himself away from the blistered and seared wall. Behind
him was a perfect silhouette of unharmed concrete.
Sylia and Linna froze, watching him in stark disbelief as he
glanced up and down the narrow lane. Ice was beginning to form
on his body again, producing a crazy quilt of colors on his
thermograph. "Is that all of them?" he growled.
"No," Sylia replied, her voice betraying none of her
consternation. She gestured to the block of ice remaining in the
middle of the street.
"Let
*me* take care of that," he snarled. As he stalked over to
the encased boomer, two tiny galaxies of ice crystals swirled
into existence around his clenched fists. By the time he reached
the block, he was once again completely coated in crystalline
white.
The temperature in the street grew noticeably colder as he placed
his hands on the encased boomer. Nothing seemed to happen right
away. Then there was an audible cracking, popping noise from the
block. "There." A cloudy network of cracks and flaws now
permeated the ice, obscuring the cyberdroid within.
"What did you do?" Linna asked.
"<Song off>," he muttered as he turned back to the Sabers. "I
infiltrated ice into all its body cavities and expanded it until
either they popped or everything inside them with water in it
froze solid. All that yellow goo these bots have is water-based;
it freezes nicely at around -5 C." The ice that had so recently
formed on him sloughed off suddenly, landing with a crunch in a
pile at his feet and leaving him once again simply in
inexplicably dry leather.
"Why didn't you do that earlier?"
He shrugged, then winced. "It takes a lot of attention and
precision," he replied as he gingerly rubbed his shoulder. "Not
the kind of thing you do in the middle of a combat situation."
Linna nodded and laid a gauntleted hand on his shoulder. "You're
a very impressive fighter," she said.
He barked a short laugh. "Lady, you're no slouch yourself." He
clasped her other hand in both of his. "If you ever want to go
independent and need a partner, give me a call."
"I doubt that will be necessary," Sylia said, stepping up to the
pair as his eyes flicked over to her. "I'm certain she will stay
with us. You know who we are, then?"
He snorted. "I may be from out of town, but I'm not ignorant.
You're obviously the Knight Sabers. <Pleased to meet you, hope
you guess my name>," he suddenly said in English. "<But what's
puzzling you is the nature of my game.>"
Unseen under her visor, Sylia raised an eyebrow. "<Quite>," she
replied. "But we have no need to guess your name, Loon-san."
He wagged his finger at her and grinned. "Ah-ah-ah, Lady White.
You're telling too much. You obviously have spies in the AD
Police."
Over the encrypted channel, Nene eeped. Sylia merely waited,
giving neither acknowledgment nor denial in response to his
accusation.
His playfulness seemed to vanish, as if a switch had been thrown.
"In any case, if you need to name my motives, call it... consumer
protection." He released Linna's hand and performed a
grandiloquent bow, more European than Japanese in style. "Now,
if you'll excuse me, ladies, it's well past my bedtime, and I
think I hear my mother calling me. Good night!" Then, with a
burst of the speed that they were beginning to find increasingly
disturbing, he dashed back into the alley from which he had come,
moving so swiftly that he almost blurred.
"Wait!" Linna called, and sprang after him; Nene and Sylia
followed a moment later. She reached the mouth of the alley too
late to do anything but watch as Loon sped off on a motorcycle
whose turbine howled with power.
Overhead, a single FireBee peeled off from the circling
formation.
"Mou," Nene said after a few seconds. "You'd think someone that
fast wouldn't have to be in such a hurry."
Linna turned to Sylia. "What was that he said a little while
ago? My English isn't good enough for me to follow him."
Sylia sounded thoughtful over the private channel. "It was
two lines from a song recorded in the 1960s."
"Really? What song?"
Behind her faceplate, Sylia briefly frowned. "'Sympathy for the
Devil,' by the Rolling Stones. It does not exactly inspire my
confidence."
"Huh..." Nene murmured contemplatively.
Linna snorted. "I'll say it doesn't."
Nene frowned as she shut down her suit's electronic warfare
systems, save those needed to screen them from ADP scans and
eavesdropping. "I didn't know you were into old music, Sylia,"
she commented absently.
"I'm not," Sylia replied. "But being Priss's friend for so long
does have its effects on one." She looked at the ADP observers
in the air above them, then sidewise at her teammates. "Collect
the motoslaves and let's go."
* * *
Lisa slid back a safe distance from the edge of the roof and sat
up. *Okay!* she thought triumphantly as she bagged her camera
and carefully gathered up the filled datadisks. *This'll get me
off "Lifestyles" stories for sure!*
Getting down from the roof was a touch easier than getting up,
and Lisa was soon back on her motorscooter, heading for Raven's
Garage.
* * *
Raven's Garage. Tuesday, October 28, 2036. 12:02 AM
Sylia glanced around the room. While Lisa seemed to be bursting
with energy, Linna and Nene dropped into their seats and looked
close to dozing off. Doctor Raven had been snoring in one of the
chairs when they came in from the mission and there he remained;
no one had had the heart to wake him.
"In deference to the hour," Sylia began without preface, "we'll
make this quick. Given the circumstances, this mission was well-
executed; and despite our narrow venue, we managed to halt the
boomers with a minimum of property loss. While we can't do
anything about the buildings that were damaged or destroyed
before we got there, we can at least be satisfied that
accomplished that much."
She looked down at the PIM in her hand. "I have no negative
comments on any Saber's performance tonight. However, Lisa..."
At her seat by the computer, Lisa flinched and bit her lip.
"The next time you wish to document one of our combats, please
let me know in advance. I had to discard several potentially
useful battle strategies because of your presence on a nearby
warehouse. And you are lucky that I saw you there, otherwise you
might have found yourself in some danger. Do you understand?"
This pronouncement brought the other two Sabers out of their near-
stupor, and Nene stared at Lisa in disbelief. Linna merely
rolled her eyes, as if to say, "Some things never change." Lisa
mumbled an inarticulate response as a sudden wash of shame forced
her to lower her eyes.
"I said, do you understand?"
"Yes, Stingray-san," she murmured sheepishly, which seemed to
satisfy Sylia, who simply gave a curt nod.
"Now, to our feature presentation," Sylia allowed herself a
slight satisfied smile, "the intervention of the alleged
boomeroid 'Loon' in our battle tonight. Nene, what do the sensor
logs have to say about him?"
Nene shook her head wearily. "It's a jumble. One minute he
reads just like the time Priss ran into him, the next he has the
IR signature of an ice cube. And I mean that literally; I ran a
quick spectrograph on him and that
*was* ice he was covered
with."
"I could've told you that."
"I have facts, thank you, Linna." The redhead momentarily stuck
her tongue out at her fellow Saber. "I got a lot more data than
Priss did, though, and there's even more going on with him than
it appears. We need to do a proper analysis of the logs, but
I'll tell you this: he's got a weird kind of 'lens' effect
around him, like he's refracting energy that comes near him.
It's really freaky."
"Would that account for his survival of the laser attack, then?"
Sylia asked.
Nene nodded sleepily, her fatigue starting to overcome her.
"That's how I noticed it; something similar happened during that
one fight the ADP got footage of, some weeks ago. So I replayed
the logs of the beam hit on the ride back to see exactly what
happened. Most of the laser bent
*around* him."
"Interesting." Sylia eyes were half-lidded in thought.
"What's even stranger is that on the ADP footage, the laser
didn't bend, it
*splashed* like water. It's really weirding me
out."
"Why the difference?" Sylia asked.
Nene shrugged. "I don't know. I can't even make a guess as to
how he's doing it in the first place, so how can I theorize about
that? Maybe he's upgrading or changing his equipment every time
we see him.
"There's one other thing," she continued. "After he showed up
tonight, I picked up a strange radio signal. It might be from
him. But it looks like it's encrypted." She yawned and rubbed
one eye with the tips of two fingers. "I won't know what's up
with it until I crack the encryption. And I'll start on that
tomorrow after I analyze the scans."
Sylia nodded slowly. "Let me know when you have any further
results from your analyses. Linna? Did you learn anything while
fighting at his side?"
Linna smirked. "I learned he's a nutcase." Then she gave an
embarrassed look and shrugged. "Actually, that's not really
fair. He was talking a mile a minute in both Japanese and
English, real crazy, and I thought he was babbling. But the more
I think about it, the more I get the impression that it's an act,
a put-on."
"Why?"
She shrugged again. "He's too together. Precisely controlled,
in a chaotic way, if that makes any sense. I think all his
babbling, it's like the patter a magician does during his act, a
kind of distraction and misdirection technique. Gets you focused
on what he says and what he seems to be so you ignore something
else."
"Like what?" Nene asked.
Linna shook her head. "It's almost certainly intended to confuse
or mislead his opponents. Why did he aim it my way? I'm not
sure. Probably to distract me from wondering who he is and where
he's from. And who he's worked for. He's clearly experienced at
fighting as part of a team -- he never put himself in anyone
else's line of fire or motion. And he's a very good martial
artist -- but terribly unorthodox."
At her station, Lisa eagerly attended to Linna's analysis. She
hadn't given any thought to what Doug's abilities implied, but it
appeared that Linna had. Perhaps some of her questions might be
closer to answers now. All she had to do was clamp down on the
impulse to blurt out some of what she knew...
"I can't quite identify the style he's using," Linna said. "It
seems more like a blend of many different things than a single
specific martial art. I think I spotted elements of capoeira and
muy thai, but he also used some classic shao lin kung fu and no
small amount of unadorned street brawling. In some critical ways
it resembles Jeet Kun Do, in that it appears to emphasize
flexibility and unpredictability. It's pretty likely that he's
studied all of those and more, and that what he's using is a
synthesis -- effectively a personal style, custom tailored for
his reflexes and his speed on foot."
Sylia nodded again. "Any ideas about what is responsible that
speed?"
"Enough amphetamines to choke a horse?" Linna offered, then
laughed.
"Ano," Nene interjected. "I clocked him at almost 50 kph at one
point. Nothing human should be able to run that fast and
maintain it for as long as he did, under those conditions."
"So," Sylia mused, gazing into space, "we still have more
questions than answers. A team player, acting alone. Apparently
human, but clearly more than that. Abilities that any rational
mind would discount as impossible. Mysterious radio signals and
bizarre, elliptical conversations. And he is sought by GENOM."
"So, what do we do next?" Linna asked.
Sylia raised an eyebrow. "We continue to watch and learn. And,
if he seems safe enough, we approach him."
Nene looked disgusted. "That just might be the only way we'll
get answers to any of our questions."
* * *
Tuesday, October 28, 2036. 12:11 AM
It didn't take me too long to shake my ADP tail -- a trip through
the messier parts of the Fault Zone at my bike's top speed
quickly dissuaded the little chopper's pilot from following me.
*And* laid a false trail for any other ADP pursuit later.
I got home shortly after midnight, changing into civvies in the
garage and toting my leathers and helmet upstairs in a plastic
shopping bag. No use compromising security any more than I had
already when I ran out earlier in the evening. To prevent that
kind of thing, I probably should have kept my duty uniform in the
garage, but to tell the truth, the idea made me uncomfortable. I
just didn't like the idea of it being 26 floors or more away if I
happened to need it. Yeah, I know, I was a whole lot farther
away from it when I was at work. That's different. Don't ask me
how. It just is.
Anyway.
While I healed up the burns and other indignities inflicted upon
my gentle, inoffensive self, I thought over the evening's
festivities. My first encounter with the Knights was...
interesting. At least this time I hadn't gotten creamed because
I'd done something stupidly overconfident. This time it was
plain old bad luck. I had to admire the ingenuity of the bot,
though; damn good programming, that kind of creativity in combat.
Almost human. I actually found myself nodding in approval.
Putting aside the helmet, I got up and made myself some tea while
continuing to think. No casualties, all the boomers accounted
for, property damage minimal, to the best of my knowledge. Good.
No threats to my personal security, as far as I knew, despite my
blunder. Good. Pattern of attacks suggested I could safely make
an attempt at a gate out some time in the next few days. Good.
I'd drawn upon the node for a little extra strength in dealing
with the bots, but it was necessary. Still, I had to make sure
that I didn't get in the habit of using raw power as a substitute
for skill and strategy; if I ended up tapping the node every time
I used a song, I might forget how to make do with more a
*normal*
level of magic. My homeworld is a mana-poor Earth; last thing I
needed when I got home was a dependency on high levels of mana...
Then, as I sipped my tea, I turned my mind to my last concern of
the evening, which only revealed itself when I went to turn down
my bed.
I tended to leave my door unlocked when I was at home. (Lisa was
probably the only person who knew this. Until her work and my
after hours activities set our schedules diverging, she'd been
getting into a habit of knocking and entering without thinking
about it.) But I locked my door when I went out; and I
*know*
for a fact that it was locked when I got back that night. I also
know it's not particularly secure -- a low rent Federal housing
project? Are you kidding? But marks indicative of any kind of
break-in would have been
*very* obvious to me. And there were
none.
So where the hell did the complete set of "Looney Tunes" plushies
on my bed came from?
* * *
GENOM Tower. Tuesday, October 28, 2036. 8:24 AM
Katherine Madigan touched the "pause" icon on her desktop after
the third playback. While the previous night's boomer deployment
had not been the success she had been hoping for, it mattered
little. There were other ways of seeing to it that those
warehouse blocks were condemned; GENOM would own the land one way
or another by the quarter's end.
Katherine tapped one expensively-manicured fingernail against the
mahogany desktop, listening idly to the sharply defined clicks as
she considered what she had just watched. The arrival of the
Knight Sabers on the scene, despite their reduced strength, was
so routine as that it had been allowed for in planning. A
thought occurred to her, and she spoke softly to the PIM in her
desk system. "Note to self -- investigate absence of blue Knight
Saber. Possible split or dissension in ranks? Dispatch agents
to search the mercenary underground for disaffected ex-
employees?" *Not very likely,* she decided privately. *But
worth some research, just in case.*
She bristled momentarily, recalling Mr. Quincy's explicit
instructions to her regarding the Sabers: no investigation of
their identities, no overt attacks upon them, no traps, no
ambushes. Although they were an impediment to GENOM's corporate
destiny, he refused to remove them. In fact, he seemed to enjoy
the perverse cat-and-mouse game his directives forced GENOM to
play. If she were in charge...
But she wasn't. And she had more important things to attend to
than daydreams of corporate command. At the moment.
Number one of these was the newly-increased value of the being
whom (thanks to Ohara and his people) she had come to think of
simply as "the Visitor", despite the "Loon" appellation the AD
Police claimed he had given for himself. Initially, he was worth
capturing simply for his extradimensional origins. But now,
after what she had seen on the recovered data recorders -- his
icelike armor and an almost-total defense against a 65C's laser
cannon were technologies that she -- and GENOM, of course --
wanted. Immediately.
She allowed herself a small smile, and placed a telephone call.
"Ohara-san, GENOM has new... objectives for your project."
* * *
Ladys633 Building. Tuesday, October 28, 2036. 10:41 PM
Sylia sipped her tea and stared at the monitor. Impossible, but
there it was.
She had easily confirmed what Nene had called a "lens" around the
Loon. *When you know what to look for,* she thought with annoyed
amusement, *it's actually rather obvious.* Whatever it was, it
didn't affect the visible spectrum, or infrared or ultraviolet --
except for lasers, which perplexed her -- making the effect
virtually invisible. But on all other spectra...
On radar, he had the silhouette of a sparrow, when he showed up
at all; LADAR had somewhat more success in tagging him. Sonar
was damped down to the point where he read more like a mist or
cloud than a solid object. When any other kind of active scan
even noticed him, it returned a fragmentary or incoherent result
more like a signal attenuation than anything else. Passive scans
were more productive; most of those returned usable data,
although what that data implied...
*Curious. Very curious,* thought Sylia, pursing her lips.
And it wasn't just energy and scans. Lisa had noticed an anomaly
on the playback and pointed it out to the Sabers, and afterwards,
Sylia spent several hours enhancing the recordings to confirm and
analyze the oddity. Eventually she had been forced to build a 3-
dimensional computer model of the scene, drawing upon visual data
from all three hardsuits' recorders, in order to confirm that
what appeared to happen did indeed happen.
The boomers' strikes at Loon, as often as not, missed when they
should have hit. The model clearly showed blows thrown by the
machines seeming to swerve away from the man, as if deflected or
pushed aside.
Sylia recalled Priss' first encounter with the Loon and the
bizarre behavior of the railgun spikes, and steepled her fingers
before her face in thought.
"And why the music?" she mused.
Then, reaching for the keyboard, she switched to a search engine
on the Net and typed in "<Time, time, time, see what's become of
me>" -- the only snatch of lyrics she remembered clearly from the
battle.
A few minutes later she nodded to herself. "Interesting," she
murmured. "'<Hazy shade bangles,>' indeed, Loon-san."
* * *
IDEC. Wednesday, October 29, 2036. 9:12 AM
"So, what's the word, Davis?" Daniel Ohara slumped wearily into
the seat between Tony Nakamura and his number-one research
assistant, Davis Kristoff. The pair made up an interesting set
of similarities and dissimilarities. While both were heavy-set,
Kristoff's two-meter frame towered over his much-shorter
supervisor; seeing the pair side-by-side never failed to remind
Ohara of the obelisk-and-globe monument somewhere in America that
marked the site of a long-gone World's Fair.
Tony's sharp sense of style contrasted with the younger man's
rumpled "classic hacker" look, and Davis sported a short blond
beard where Tony was clean-shaven. But they wore their long hair
in identical neatly-gathered ponytails, and they shared the same
eager, inquisitive light in their eyes.
Davis looked at Tony, who nodded. "Well," he began, "We've been
looking at the boomer datalogs that Madigan sent down to us, and
we can tell you a few things."
"Such as?"
Davis smirked. "First, we're going to need better sensors than
these crap data recorders the combat boomers have been carrying.
They may be good enough for tactical decisions and after-the-fact
battle analyses, but there's nothing here that's suitable for a
proper scientific investigation."
Tony nodded. "We really do need better remote sensors if we're
going to find out anything from this guy. Right now we can
confirm that he's not obviously augmented with boomeroid parts,
that he's fast, and that he has a raft of powers out of every
sentai show you've ever seen."
"At least he doesn't have a giant robot with a silly medieval
weapon!" Davis pointed out, chuckling, and Ohara frowned.
"Don't laugh yet," Ohara said morosely. "He may pull one out of
his back pocket next time." He scowled. "We haven't the money
to buy better sensor equipment; we've got no slack in the budget
whatsoever."
"Get GENOM to pay for it," Davis growled.
"That's not a bad idea," Tony mused. "If they want us to catch
this guy so badly, they sure as hell should give us the equipment
to do it with. And I don't mean remaindered boomers, either." A
sly look bloomed on his face. "And who's to say that we can't
take advantage of this to get our hands on some gear that'll be
put to good use in the lab after we're done with this charade?"
For the first time in what seemed like hours, Ohara smiled. "I
like that. After all, we have no idea what will and won't prove
most useful in getting the results GENOM wants, so we'll need a
wide variety of equipment. And given that GENOM wants results
yesterday, only the best will do, of course." He chuckled,
feeling his spirits lift for the first time since speaking with
Madigan the day before. "I think it's time to make a call to our
'boss,'" he added, grinning.
* * *
Editor-in-Chief's Office, 16 Tokyo Day Times. Wednesday, October
29, 2036. 10:37 AM
"Sole photo credit, 'additional material by' byline on the main
story, the 16 Times gets the copyright on the photos, and you get
a 25,000 yen bonus," Kiyoshi offered, reaching for the manila
folder cradled protectively in Lisa's arms.
Lisa frowned and stepped back, shaking her head at him. "Not
good enough. Sole photo credit,
*my* story with
*my* byline, I
retain copyright, I get reassignment to a crime beat, and you can
skip the bonus." Lisa leaned forward to wave a photo of the
green Knight Saber shattering the head of a boomer under the
editor's nose; she snatched it away when he made desperate
grabbing motions at it.
"Okay, okay, sole photo credit, co-writer credit on a joint
article, you keep the copyright, and I reassign you. That's my
final offer," Kiyoshi countered.
Lisa paused a moment and took on a contemplative look, dragging
one corner of the photo back and forth across her lower lip as
she gazed thoughtfully at a water stain on the ceiling of
Kiyoshi's office. "Hmmm." She flicked her eyes back at the
editor, and gave him her most kawaii smile. "Make it the lead
credit on the byline and use my story as the base for the final
article, and you have a deal, sir!"
"Done!" Kiyoshi pounded on the desk, causing Lisa to flinch.
Even after an hour of exhaustive negotiation -- which at one
point had her threatening to take her photos to another online
newspaper -- Kiyoshi had far more energy than Lisa liked. The
man practically lived on the sludgelike coffee brewed by the
interns, after all. She was afraid he would leap across his desk
to pump her hand, Western-style, to seal the deal.
Fortunately, he instead turned to his terminal and began typing.
"To show you my good faith, Lisa-chan," she resisted a wince once
again at his familiarity, "I'm sending the memos about your
reassignment right now. You'll be on the city beat before you
walk out of this office."
Lisa restrained the urge to squeal and jump for joy, and instead
bowed solemnly to the distracted editor. "Arigato, Kiyoshi-san."
"There!" He punched the "enter" key fiercely, then spun around
to face her. "Done. Now, I presume, any future scoops you may
have will not require us to go through all this unpleasantness?"
She smiled. "We'll see, sir. Depends on how good a scoop it
is."
Kiyoshi laughed loudly. "Very good, Lisa-chan, very good! Fair
enough. Now, get out of here and go see Toboki-san."
Lisa furrowed her brow in confusion. "Chiasa?"
He nodded. "Yes. She'll be your co-writer on the story. It's
good work, Lisa-chan, but you have a tendency towards purple
prose and melodrama which Chiasa will help you purge from your
system. Now, go, get to work!"
Outside his office, Lisa allowed herself a moment of despair.
Toboki Chiasa was one of the best writers in the office, but she
also was notoriously cantankerous and highly territorial. Lisa
would learn a lot working with her, but the process was
guaranteed not to be pleasant.
*But so what? I'm off the damned lifestyles stories!* she
cheered inwardly.
*That's worth paying *any* price! Even
suffering from the sting of Toboki's tongue!* She hugged the
manila folder to her chest.
*My first top page story! *My*
scoop!
*My* exclusive! And I did it without even hinting that
Doug was part of the fight, either.*
She reflected on that as she began to wend her way through the
labyrinth of desks that made up the city room. Photos of a new,
unknown boomer fighter at the sides of the Knight Sabers would
have guaranteed her everything she'd wanted, but the very idea of
doing that felt like a betrayal. *If Doug had wanted to be
known, he certainly would have gone public before now. It's only
right that I help him keep his secrets.* Another concern struck
her. *I wonder if I should tell him that I know about him...*
With that thought barely complete, she found herself standing at
the desk of Toboki Chiasa. "Toboki-san?" she ventured
cautiously, "Kiyoshi-san sent me over to work with you..."
* * *
Editor-in-Chief's Office, 16 Tokyo Day Times. Thursday, October
30, 2036. 8:55 AM
"Would you care to explain this to me, Lisa?" For the first
time, Kiyoshi's hyperactivity didn't seem clownish or cloddish to
Lisa. This morning, all that energy seemed to be channeled into
barely-controlled anger. He slammed a pair of pageprints down on
the desk in front of her.
One was the top page of the previous day's "16 Times," with her
story and photos. Despite the threatening atmosphere in the
office a smile of delighted satisfaction flickered across her
face when her eye fell upon it. The other was the top page from
the same edition of the Tokaido News P.O.N., but when she saw the
headline, she felt a cold pang in her chest and her knees
suddenly went weak. *Oh, no. Oh, no...*
"KNIGHT SABERS SAVE WAREHOUSE DISTRICT," the main head read, but
it was the subhead which sent her soul spiraling into fear and
despair: "MYSTERY 'ICE MAN' JOINS ARMORED MERCENARIES." With
trembling hands she picked up the print and scanned it. Its
detailed story was liberally illustrated with very clear,
high-resolution photographs of Doug and the Sabers.
"Perhaps you'd like to explain to me why you neglected to include
a mysterious new vigilante in your otherwise complete and
meticulously detailed story, Lisa-chan?" Kiyoshi's face was
turning red as his voice began rising in volume. "Could you
explain why none of the photographs you gave us show this
'Iceman'? Can you possibly provide me with any good reason why
you knowingly submitted a story that was incomplete? A story
that was, in fact, slanted and censored by
*you*?" He was
shouting now, and she was sure that beyond the glass walls of his
office the city room staff were all watching her public disgrace.
A mix of humiliation and anger at that humiliation welled up in
her, making her head buzz even as she fought to suppress her
tears. Her chest felt tight, and the desire to do violence, to
break something, raged through her, warring with the need to cry.
*How dare he! He has no idea!*
"This new vigilante, who may even be a new Knight Saber, is the
number one story in the news all over Japan today, Lisa-chan.
And every netstation, newspage, and newspaper in the Home Islands
is going to Tokaido P.O.N. -- not to us -- for the details. We
lost a great deal of prestige and credibility today, Lisa. It
would have been better for the '16 Times' to have published
*nothing* rather than what we did put out! We would have been
just another paper who didn't have a reporter on the spot.
Instead we printed what, compared to the
*real* story, was
nothing more than a fluff piece!"
Kiyoshi realized that he had been shouting and snapped his mouth
shut. Then he glared past Lisa at whoever was behind her,
watching. He glanced once left and once right, a thunderous
expression on his face, then returned his attention to her. When
Lisa saw the look in his eyes at that moment, she wanted to crawl
away and die.
"I'm very disappointed in you, Lisa," he said, more softly but no
less angrily. "I had very high expectations for you." He turned
and gazed out the window of his office, his back to her. "You
probably don't know it, Lisa, but I worked with your father once.
He was... a journalist's journalist. There was a fire burning in
him, a fire I thought I saw in you. That was why I hired you,
you know. That, and the praise Professor Andou had for you when
I called her."
The invocation of both her father and her favorite instructor
from college was a double blow that almost shattered her control.
Unwanted angry tears welled up in Lisa's eyes, and she only
barely prevented them from spilling down her cheeks. Kiyoshi
continued, heedless.
"I'm afraid I was wrong about you, Lisa. You're not ready yet.
Not while you're letting your own private agenda dictate how you
report the news." She tried to speak, but he held up one hand.
"No, I don't care what your reasons were, or how good they are."
He turned back from the window and lowered himself slowly into
his chair, seemingly drained of the energy that characterized him
for her. "You may go," he said, dropping his attention to the
bluelines on the desktop before him.
"Sir?" she quavered. "Am I fired, sir?"
"No," Kiyoshi replied without looking up. "That would be a waste
of your talents." He flipped through several pages before
continuing. "There will be a home and garden show at the GENOM
Convention Center this weekend. It opens tomorrow morning. I
want 30 paragraphs and at least three photos suitable for a
section front page eyecatch."
Lisa stood there, trembling, unable to form any kind of response.
Eventually, the editor grew curious and looked up at her. A soft
"Go back to your desk, Vanette-san," was all he said.
Mustering as much of her tattered dignity as she could, she
turned and strode out of his office.
To her credit, Lisa made it to the ladies' room before the sobs
broke free.
* * *
AD Police HQ. Thursday, October 30, 2036. 4:25 PM
Leon sighed and closed the TV window on his monitor. It had
finally happened. "Loon" had made the news.
Chief Todo hadn't been happy about that, but then again, he was
rarely happy about anything, Leon mused. He chuckled quietly.
At least the Sabers seemed as much at a loss as the ADP when it
came to the so-called boomeroid. *Thank god for small favors.*
He idly tapped the data disk he held on the edge of his desk.
Things were starting to spiral out of control. It didn't take
much to start, but after all his years in the ADP, Leon knew the
signs. And when it did, there would be an orgy of finger-
pointing, blame-shifting, and buck-passing.
And if worse came to worse, evidence would be destroyed so that
the department could "prove" it had never known a thing, and thus
could not be held responsible for any perceived failures. He'd
seen it happen before. And the one such time he'd tried to keep
an offline copy of his work at home, his apartment had been
conveniently -- and professionally -- burgled. Of course, that
had happened during the tenure of the last Chief -- the self-
serving bureaucrat who had replaced Todo, and who had been ousted
after the Illegal Army debacle. Now that Todo was back in
charge...
Leon held the unlabeled diskette up to his eye and squinted,
sighting idly through the spindle hole. He leaned back and
slowly rotated his seat, surveying a narrow slice of the squad
room through the tiny opening. He needed an undisputedly secure
hiding place. And just in case more than the usual happened, he
needed to make sure the data was in the hands of someone who
could make the best use of it.
The bitch of it was, Leon knew
*exactly* what he could do with
the data to meet those requirements. He just wasn't sure that he
*should* do it. He continued to spin slowly, musing on the
question that had occupied his mind on and off for several hours
now.
A familiar shock of red hair came into view through the spindle
hole, and he made his decision.
"Oh, hi, Leon," Nene said a few moments later as the inspector
stopped at her desk. She had just gotten back with an enormous
stack of files and was mostly occupied in paging through them,
occasionally stopping to compare a tidbit on her monitor screen
with one under a fingertip.
"Hey, Nene. Got a favor to ask you." Leon sat down on the
corner of the desk, close enough to the stack of brightly-colored
folders that Nene slid them protectively away from him.
"A favor?" she repeated distractedly.
"Yup." He deepened his voice to a pompous bass. "I hold in my
hand the complete files we've compiled on the boomeroid called
'Loon.'" Nene's head snapped up, and Leon nodded at her,
smiling. "Right. My work, Daley's, Fuko's, yours, everyone's.
Up to and including the FireBee video logs from the other night."
"Okaaaaay," Nene drawled, although her eyes glittered with
exactly the kind of interest he'd hoped he'd see there. "And
what's this got to do with me?"
"I need you to hold on to it for me for a few days. Put it
someplace secure, just in case there's a 'system accident' on the
ADP computers."
"But..." she began, and Leon lifted a finger and shook his head.
"Listen. I trust your skills and contacts to make sure nothing
happens to this data, and that it doesn't get in the
*wrong*
hands." *The extra emphasis on "wrong" might be overdoing it,*
Leon thought, *but Nene didn't seem to have noticed.*
"So, what's in it for me?" she asked with a sly smile.
Leon shook his head and rolled his eyes in mock exasperation.
"What, a frequent binger discount card isn't enough? I do and do
for you kids, and this is the thanks I get!"
Nene burst into giggles, which she stifled by biting her knuckle
before anyone else in the area noticed. As it was, Naoko glanced
up and shot her an envious look. Nene responded by playfully
sticking out her tongue at her co-worker before realizing that
Leon was watching her with eyebrows raised and an amused smirk on
his face. She grinned sheepishly and shrugged, and he laughed
out loud.
"Sure," she said, holding out her hand. "I'll take care of it
for you. I know just the place to keep it safe."
*And with any luck that'll be the Knight Sabers' computer
system,* he thought as he passed the disk over. *I know you,
Nene; you won't pass up this chance.* "Thanks, Nene. I'll let
you know if and when I need it back, okay?"
"Uh-huh," she replied, turning the disk over and over in her
hands and staring at it almost hungrily.
* * *
GENOM Convention Center. Friday, October 31, 2036. 11:07 AM
Holding her camera to one side with one hand, Lisa scooped up
cold water from the spigot with the other and splashed it into
her eyes. *If I can't keep from crying every fifteen minutes, I
won't be able to complete this damn assignment.*
All morning her mood had oscillated wildly between anger and
despair. Three times already she had had to dash into a restroom
to wash away the tears that welled up in her eyes at the thought
of her disgrace in the newsroom, once during an informal
interview with the chairman of the show's steering committee.
Fortunately, he had waited patiently for her to return and
continue, but he'd looked at her strangely for the rest of the
interview. *The last thing I need now is strangers pitying me,*
she thought angrily, and suddenly her eyes were wet and brimming
again, her sight blurred. She drew in a long, rasping whine of a
breath, then steeled herself.
The water still fountained from the spigot, and she scooped up
another handful and flung it into her face. The shock of the
cold water this time did what it had failed to before -- stop her
tears.
As she stood there bent over the basin, face dripping, wet hand
gripping the edge of the marble countertop, dry hand cradled
protectively around her camera, she made her decision.
*I *will*
get back what is mine. I
*will* do something more with my career
than endless fluff pieces. I'll show Kiyoshi. I'll show him.*
* * *
Moteru Roku, Kagoshima. Saturday, November 1, 2036. 7:43 PM
"Relax, Priss," Nene's image on the telephone encouraged.
"Relax, hell! Have you seen these papers?" Priss snatched up a
crumpled newsfax from where it lay on the hotel room's table and
waved it in front of the phone's video pickup. A four word
headline blazed, "BLUE SABER? NEW SABER!" in 5-centimeter
characters.
Nene giggled. "Yeah! Pretty funny, huh?"
"Funny my ass!" Priss ranted. "They're saying this 'Iceman' is
my
*replacement*!"
On the screen, the redhead frowned. "Wanna shout it louder,
Priss? I'm sure the guy in the room at the end of the building
didn't hear you that time."
Priss growled, sparking another surge of giggles from Nene.
"Listen to this, Nene," she spat when she managed to collect
herself. She shook the paper out and read from it. "Despite an
entrance that suggests that he may be an independent vigilante,
the 'Iceman' is thought by most knowledgable Knight Saber
watchers to be the successor to the Blue Saber, who hasn't been
seen in many weeks and is believed to have left the team. 'The
Iceman is significant on several fronts,' says Tokaido News
P.O.N. technology columnist and self-professed Knight Saber otaku
Albrecht Yamaguchi. 'He breaks new ground with his combat style,
his disposable ice armor and the very fact that he's the first
male Knight Saber. He is clearly more of a team player than the
Blue Saber, as well. Could the Blue Saber have been fired?'" As
she read, Priss's voice crept back out of her forced calm and
upwards into tones of outrage and anger.
"Oh, come on, Priss, chill out!" Nene urged, although a flicker
of worry crossed her face, unseen by Priss. "It's just some
stupid reporter's opinion! We know you didn't get fired, and we
have nothing to do with the Loon. And you know it, too. Why get
so worked up over it?"
"Just one month, Nene, one more month!" Priss jabbed a rigid
forefinger at the pickup, almost hitting the screen. "Then I'll
be back in MegaTokyo and I'll show this Loon character what it
means to muscle in on
*my* rep!"
"Mou... I thought you liked him, from the way you talked about
that motorcycle race the two of you had."
Priss grimaced. "Well, yeah, it was fun, and he was cool about
everything and all. But that doesn't give him the right to go
waltzing in taking over for me!"
Nene rolled her eyes. "He's
*not* taking over for you, Priss!
He usually operates on his own, and he just stepped in to help us
out in a tight spot." A far-off look drifted onto her face.
"You should have seen him, Priss. It was like being in an old
sentai program, the way he leaped and moved. And he was
*enjoying* himself, like stopping the boomers was the most fun
he'd had in... in... ever!"
"Shit!" Priss spat. "You sound like you're getting a crush on
this guy, Nene."
The redhead's eyes snapped open to their widest extent. "What?
No! It's just that, well, it kinda reminds me of, like, when we
first started. It was all so
*fun*..."
"For
*you*, maybe," Priss muttered.
"...and exciting," Nene continued, unhearing. "It was a great
big adventure, being the mysterious good guys, taking on the
forces of Eee-vil. But now..."
"It's just another job?"
On the phone's tiny screen, Nene shook her head. "No, not
really. It's still fun and all. But, after Mason and Sylvie and
Largo and Largo
*again*, I don't know... It's like I lost
something."
"Go on," Priss murmured, a sudden, familiar pang stilling her
anger.
"I mean, I didn't even notice at first." Nene's voice had grown
quiet and solemn. "I mean, I still acted the same way, still
related to people the same way. But I realized that... that the
world is different to me. It's
*been* different, maybe since the
day we... the day Sylvie died."
Priss nodded. "The world's not the bright shiny place you
thought it was, it's dirty and rotten and the worst part of it is
that part of
*you* that used to be clean is dirty and rotten,
too." Her voice was soft, and far away, and full of regret.
"Yeah," Nene whispered. "Yeah." Her gaze drifted down, off-
screen, as she spoke. "And it was what I lost that made the
difference. I didn't know I'd even had ... whatever it was ...
until it was gone."
"Yeah."
"I mean, I'm still me. I laugh, and smile, and do my thing. I'm
just not as.. carefree as I used to be. I'm not taking quite the
same
*joy* in it, do you know what I mean? I still get a thrill
from the danger and the challenge, but I've lost that ... delight
... in doing what we do because it's right."
Priss looked thoughtful. "And he's still got that... joy?"
Nene nodded. "And I envy him, Priss, I really do. Say what you
will about me acting like a kid, but I've lost my... um..."
"Your innocence," Priss supplied softly.
A sorrowful look came across Nene's features. "Yeah. My
innocence. And I want to know how he can do what does and still
keep his."
* * *
IDEC. Monday, November 3, 2036. 9:09 AM
As the internal courier scurried off, Daniel Ohara and Illya
Vaysberg stared at the collection of large crates that had been
left in their care.
"Me and my big mouth," Daniel muttered.
Illya clapped a hand to his superior's shoulder. "So more
boomers she gives us. But the expense account also we get! This
is good, no?"
Ohara twisted his head around to look at the larger man. "Oh,
the expense account is good. Even if she did warn me that I'm
going to have to document every paper clip and stamp we buy.
That's not a problem." He gestured at the largest of the
plasteel packing cases in front of them. "
*This* is the
problem." He clenched his fist and drew it back as if to pound
it on the side of the case, then relaxed as he changed his mind.
"A superboomer! A goddamned superboomer!"
Illya ran a hand across the smooth surface of the case, and
raised an eyebrow at his boss. "So?"
"So, she's expecting us to
*use* it. She said as much. 'GENOM
wants results
*now*,'" he said in a falsetto mockery of Madigan's
voice. "'You
*will* use the resources we send you.
*We* will
worry about the publicity the Visitor has generated.'" He
sighed. "It was bad enough trying to rein in those two 55Cs she
gave us, and they still all but broke free. Avram's going to
have a fit trying to put constraints on this mother. And if
*it*
breaks free..." He shook his head. "Every time I think this
can't get worse, it does."
Illya laughed, surprising Daniel. "So these 'opportunities' we
must make the best of, no? And what happens, happens." He
shrugged elaborately. "It is a dangerous job, true, but as my
cousin Bradford from Murmansk says, 'When it is the fan you are
holding, you must expect sometimes to be hit with the shit.'"
In spite of himself, Daniel laughed. "Your cousin sounds like a
wise man."
"That he is, Ohara-san," Illya said, suddenly solemn. "The first
to warn he would be, as well, that the shit may be more to handle
than we want." He laid a hand on the crate holding the
superboomer. "This a great deal of resources represents.
Perhaps too much. Why to us give such an expensive and dangerous
device?"
Daniel frowned. "Because Madigan's willing to go to any lengths
to capture the Visitor?"
Illya returned the frown. "Maybe so. But if so, why so great a
killing machine as this does she give us, my friend? Perhaps the
Visitor is not its only target?"
"What do you mean?"
Illya ran his hand up and down the plasteel surface of the crate.
"You should forgive me, my friend, but we Russians -- we have of
backstabbing and betrayal by our allies a long history. We have
not as a people survived by ignoring the possibility of the
poison needle hidden in every hand of friendship. And Madigan no
friend is." He traced his fingers along the stenciled model and
serial numbers. "You may call me paranoid, friend Daniel, but
what if Madigan seeks us to eliminate after her tasks we
accomplish? This her perfect tool would be."
"Are you suggesting that it might be booby-trapped?" Daniel
resisted the urge to step back from the crate as his expression
darkened.
Illya shrugged again. "In a way. Imagine this: Not long after
its lost boomeroid GENOM recaptures, goes rogue a superboomer
does within the Tower itself. Great tragedy, no? So many die
before destroyed is the boomer -- many GENOM employees, including
us. 'About damned time boomer destroys GENOM property,' people
say, and on their way go. Boomer is untraceable scrap, and we
forgotten are while IDEC goes on with GENOM-picked management."
Illya looked back over his shoulder at Daniel and raised an
eyebrow. "Is how
*I* would the play make were I Madigan."
Ohara scowled. "Have I ever told you that you have a dark and
depressing imagination, Illya?"
The large blond man laughed heartily, the sound echoing oddly in
the storeroom. "I am Russian, friend Daniel! What do you
expect?"
Daniel smiled ever so slightly in acknowledgment, then took off
his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "I suppose we'll need Avram to
look for overrides, trojans and logic bombs in the superboomer's
programming, then, as well as laying in
*our* priority commands,"
he said.
Illya nodded in agreement. "Is work of at least three-four
weeks, if done right we want it."
"Madigan won't like that," Daniel reflected.
"Fuck Madigan and horse on which in she rode," Illya declared,
then grinned. "Hot damn! That I have wanted to say ever since
about the Red Chinese Bradford say it last year!"
Daniel chuckled, and replaced his glasses. "Right. Fuck her.
She wants the job done right, then it gets done on
*our* terms."
Then he grew serious again. "Still, we'd best plan some
countermeasures for her inevitable retaliation."
"Then go plan shall we, my friend?" Illya waved expansively at
the door.
"That we shall," Daniel said. "That we shall."
END OF CHAPTER FIVE
------------------------------------
This work of fiction is copyright (C) 2000, Robert M. Schroeck.
Bubblegum Crisis, and the settings and the characters thereof are
copyright by and trademarks of Artmic Inc. and Youmex Inc., and
are used without permission.
Douglas Q. Sangnoir, "Looney Toons" and "The Loon" are trademarks
of Robert M. Schroeck.
"The Warriors", "Warriors' World", "Warriors International" and
"Warriors Alpha" are all jointly-held trademarks of The Warriors
Group.
Legion and Minerva and any representations thereof are copyright
by and trademarks of Edward Anthony Becerra, and are used with
his kind permission.
Lyrics from "Moonlight Densetsu" (also known as "Moonlight
Legend"), lyricist unknown, music by Chieko Baishou, copyright
date and owner unknown to me. English lyrics translated and
copyright (C) by Theresa Martin, courtesy of the Sailor Moon FAQ.
Lyrics from "Tom Sawyer", recorded by Rush, written by Geddy Lee,
Alex Lifeson, Neil Peart and Pye Dubois, copyright (C) 1981 by
Core Music Publishing (SOCAN).
Lyrics from "Hazy Shade of Winter" written by Paul Simon,
copyright (C) 1966. Copyright holder unknown to me.
Lyrics from "The Joker", recorded by The Steve Miller Band,
written by Steve Miller, copyright (C) 1973. Copyright holder
unknown to me.
Excerpts from "The Brag of the College Applicant" (attributed to
a "Hugh Gallagher" circa 1990) are almost certainly copyrighted
by someone, but I've never seen a confirmed credit. (For anyone
who might be interested, the complete Brag is available on the
Web at
http://www.io.com/~woodward/other/collessy.txt)
Lyrics from "Joy to the World", recorded by Three Dog Night,
written by Hoyt Axton, Copyright (C) 1970 by Lady Jane Music
(BMI).
Lyrics from "(I Just Wanna) Lay Back and Be Cool", performed by
Gene Anthony Ray and The Kids from "Fame!", author and copyright
information unknown.
Lyrics from "The Warrior", recorded by Scandal featuring Patty
Smythe, written by Holly Knight and Nick Gilder, copyright (C)
1984 by Red Admiral Music, Inc. (BMI) and Makiki Publishing Co.
Ltd. (ASCAP)/Arista Music, Inc.
These and all other quotes are included in this fiction without
permission under the "fair use" provisions of international
copyright law.
Many thanks to my prereaders on this chapter: Joseph Avins,
Kathleen Avins, Nathan Baxter, Ed Becerra, Barry Cadwgan, Andrew
Carr, Chris Davies, and Helen Imre. Additional prereaders for
future chapters welcome.
C&C gratefully accepted.