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Musk Dynasty Headquarters Company
Ian Cameron Starport
17:12 Local Time
Mechwarrior General Herb watched as another lance of Furinkan Combine
battlemechs assaulted his position at the starport. Brilliant green tracer
balls arced across the sky, the criss-crossing of laser beams filled the air
with an electric glow, and the screams of the wounded and the dying went
unheard on the tac-net over the roar of cannon fire and the teeth-rattling
explosions from falling 'mechs. It was mechanized slaughter, and no one was
exempt.
The Combine 'mechs attacked with a desire to annihilate his troops that
bordered on the fanatical. Clearly, General Prince Kuno had ordered his men
to give no quarter, for he had witnessed several of the Combine 'mechs
shooting out the cockpits of fallen Musk units even while taking fire. The
ferocity of the Combine's attacks had driven his own troops to such acts of
barbarism and bloodlust that he secretly feared that he would be unable to
control them.
A wave of missile fire stopped the Combine advance in its tracks, and
as supporting bolts of particle beam and laser fire tore into them, he could
see that, at least for the moment, his position was not threatened. This was
of little comfort to the hybrid general, for he knew that Kuno had more
troops, and they were fresher than his own, who had been fighting the Black
Rose Terror Regiment all afternoon.
He took the pause in the fighting to assess his situation. Reports
from low orbit seemed to indicate that the Orochi network had been
neutralized. That Kuno's warfleet was in shambles was only of small
consolation. All it meant in the final analysis was that neither side
truly controlled system space, and that he would not have to fear
continued orbital bombardment.
It also meant that he could withdraw unhindered from the system, if
necessary. He was no coward, but a cold and calculating tactician. Continued
battle over the ruins of the Star League proving grounds was useless in the
short term.
It was time to pull back from the starport and cede it to Kuno - at
least for the moment. He would need to harass the Combine prince to ensure
that he did not profit from the ruins, but at the same time, it was foolish
to remain where he was. That Kuno's regiments were not heavily supported by
aerospace fighters as they pressed the attack gave him hope for a successful
counter-attack. It was possible that the prince had held most of his fighter
assets in space to fight the Orochi, and had lost them in the battle.
He punched up his adjutant on the command channel, and gave the word
to fall back by company to the Drop Zones. Let Kuno have the muddy ruins
for now, and see how useless and untenable the position ultimately was in
the struggle for possession of the planet.
___________________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:
BATTLETECH: THE SAOTOME GAMBIT
PART THIRTY-ONE
by J. Austin Wilde
Super Critical Reactor Axe Man,
Fission Park Press
wildeman@gci-net.com
http://www.gci-net.com/users/w/wildeman/
The characters and situations of Ranma 1/2 are the
creation and property of Rumiko Takahashi and
Shogakukan/KITTY/Viz Video. Battletech and its
related materials are the property of FASA, inc.
No infringement of copyright is intended nor
should be inferred by this work of fanfiction.
___________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
North of the ruins of Ryuugenzawa City
17:05 Local Time
The smoking wreck of a MAD-3R Marauder lay sprawled out across the
torn green carpet of grass at the edge of the forest. Well behind it, the
ruins of the ancient colony town burned itself out under thick plumes of
grey smoke. The scattered bits of armor and shattered technology of a dozen
'mechs lay strewn around the Marauder.
The cockpit hatch came open slowly, and a slender black gloved hand
reached out into the open air. Kodachi Kuno wriggled clear of her 'mech,
pulling herself wearily to her stiletto-heeled feet. In spite of what she
had been through, she looked remarkably unhurt. Only her tousled hair and
her bitter sneer betrayed her defeat.
She looked around the clearing for a sign of one of her troops. There
were none. None, at least, that were intact. The BattleMaster in the service
of that witch, Akane Tendo, had destroyed them all.
She called out Tarou's name, wanting him close. That she needed him
in that moment to comfort her, she did not think too much about. Hers was
a primal urge, an instinctual desire that had nothing to do with sex in
that moment, and might have been considered genuine affection if one
believed that Kodachi Kuno was capable of such emotions.
He did not reply, and something within her cringed in misery. She was
alone, again. As always.
The wreck of the Locust belonging to the mercenary, Happousai, was a
burned out husk as she walked past it. The heat had been so intense that
the remaining armor had sagged, half-melted, from parts of the frame. Even
now, it was too hot to approach closely, and she worried about lingering
radioactivity leaking from its sundered fusion plant.
She continued on, picking her away around the jetsom that littered
the battlefield, in search of Tarou. When she found what may have been
the remains of his Hunchback, a hand came up reflexively to her lips, and
she gasped in horror at the sight. The battlemech looked as if it had been
pounded into a misshapen lump of metal - probably at the hands of the cursed
BattleMaster pilot, Ryouga.
A tear welled in the corner of either eye as she looked over the
slagged wreck of the Hunchback. The turret-shaped head was crushed beyond
recognition, and the torso battered and torn open to reveal the shattered
innards. Hydraulic and other fluids dripped in long lines of green, brown,
and red from the wounds, and soaked into the muddy ground in stinking pools.
She called out his name once more.
And was answered.
She ran to the sound of his voice, brushing past fallen trees, her
black PVC maillot fortunately resisting the snags of the branches. He was
dangling by parachute straps from the forest canopy, his clothing torn and
stained with sap and dried blood. A lock of his hair was matted in clots
that ran from an oozing cut on his scalp.
His look of condescension, however, remained intact.
"Missed me, did you?" he said in a mocking tone.
She tapped a foot imperiously as she looked at him. "I had written you
off for dead," she replied. "Perhaps I should let you hang there until the
birds pick you clean."
"No need," he replied, and tugged at his harness releases. He tumbled
to the ground, managing to land on his feet.
She eyed him for a moment. "You chose to hang there just to make me
feel sympathy for you," she accused. "Didn't you."
Tarou brushed himself off. "I did no such thing," he retorted, giving
her an evil look that made her shiver with desire. "I only just came to at
the sound of your voice."
Her lips curled up into a crooked smile. "How touching," she
harrumphed, but it was clear by her shifting stance that she was getting
hot and bothered by his withering arrogance.
He stepped up to her, looking down at her as she feigned indifference.
He knew better from her by now.
"Would you care to know how I escaped?" he asked.
"Hardly," she sniffed. "Why should I be bothered in the least with the
escapades of my underlings?"
Her retort caught him off guard, but he managed to retaliate with a
particularly devastating sneer that made Kodachi weak in the knees. She
feigned a swoon, falling into his arms in such a way as to press her ample
bosom into his chest.
"Unhand me, you peasant," she cooed to him.
"Never," he replied. His hands fell around her waist instead.
Much later, Tarou stood up and stretched out his arms. A sheen of sweat
made his skin glow in the fading afternoon light. The fighting seemed to be
in another world at that moment.
Kodachi curled up in his lap with a contented grin on her face.
"It's quite strange," she remarked. "By all rights, I should be furious
right now."
"And you aren't?" Tarou asked her.
She stroked his bare inner thigh with a finger. "I am," she replied.
"And yet I am not."
"You're distracted," he observed.
"Perhaps," she sighed. "But I find this distraction pleasant enough to
take my mind from other things."
Tarou grunted something under his breath.
"What is it, lover mine?" Kodachi asked him sweetly.
He looked down at her, his scowl freshened by a thought.
"I've fallen for you, haven't I," he said coolly.
"As have I," she replied, kissing his knee. "Ghastly, isn't it?"
"Quite," Tarou returned.
"We should return to the _Thorn,_ assuming that it's still here,"
Kodachi said after a pause to kiss her lover. "My Marauder is still
functional to some small degree, but I'm afraid that we have lost this
battle."
Tarou scowled again. "Damn that Ryouga Hibiki," he growled. "I should
have known better than to think I could have dealt with him."
Kodachi gave him an earnest look of affection. "We escape, my love,
to plot anew." She rose then, pulling him to his feet. "We shall rebuild
the regiment, and make it a plague upon all who have crossed us."
Tarou arched an eyebrow at her.
"Of course," Kodachi continued. "I shall have to find a place for
you now that your battlemech is destroyed. My personal towel boy, perhaps."
"Or your executive officer," he suggested darkly.
She kissed him again. "You can work your way up from Towel Boy while
I secure for you another 'mech," she told him with a chuckle. "I'd consider
it a blessing to be rid of such a hideous looking thing as that Hunchback,
really."
Tarou opened his mouth to rebuke her, but remained silent. His lost
battlemech had been an heirloom from his family, but now he saw it as
little more than psychic baggage from another time. He would always hate
the Cult of Azusa, would always nurse a grudge for the Commonwealth witch
doctors who had given him his Jusenkyo body, and could now add Ryouga
Hibiki to his long list of enemies, but with his old mech destroyed, he
also saw the opportunity to start his life anew.
Perhaps this was the direction his life was meant to take, doing
things his way and for himself, and with a woman who appreciated such
things by his side.
Perhaps this was the path to the happiness and fulfillment that had
been long denied him.
The two lovers walked back to the smoldering Marauder together, hand
in hand.
* * *
The DropShip _Palomino_
Five kilometers east of the Orochi Bunker
17:03 Local Time
Ranma Saotome could see two fighters from the Musk Dynasty making
cautious high-altitude passes over the swath of destruction carved into
the forest by the Leopard Class DropShip as it hit the ground. The ship
itself seemed intact, though it was obvious that the repairs had not
held. Their transport off the planet was apparently not going anywhere
any time soon.
The fighters reacted to her presence by making a high-speed run for
the horizon, surprising her. She had been spoiling for another fight, and
their sudden departure disappointed her. She watched the fighters for
several moments to make certain they were leaving, then dropped altitude
and glided in Airmech Mode towards the DropShip.
Ranma scanned through the radio channels looking for something that
wasn't scrambled, and would perhaps shed some light on what was going on.
There was nothing except some jabbering in Chinese, which she didn't
understand in the slightest, and some encrypted burst commos that could
only be coming from the Combine. From the anxious tones of the speakers,
however, it seemed as if the tables had turned on the Musk Dynasty.
She kept an eye on her radar warning indicator for a moment to make
sure they weren't going to try and sneak up on her, then set herself to
the task of landing at the DropShip.
The _Palomino_ looked like hell, its port side scarred with weapon
hits, including a nasty scorched hole over the aft end that must have been
the _coup de grace_ for the ship.
"Anyone alive down there?" she called over the radio.
"We're okay, Captain Saotome," Tad replied.
"What happened?"
"We lost the cooling system again. I think--"
Tad's voice was replaced by that of Captain Grant.
"Saotome, this is Grant. Where is the rest of Red Lance?"
Ranma rolled her eyes at the captain's intrusion. "They're on their
way. I just came ahead because I heard you were having trouble with some
Musk fighters."
"We appreciate it," Grant replied. Ranma couldn't tell by his tone.
"We're about to make our way to the bunker in the trucks, and could use
an escort."
Ranma blinked in surprise at the news.
"You're abandoning the ship?"
"The batteries won't hold out for another hour. After that, we're
just a big helpless target. We really have no choice."
"Understood," Ranma replied. So much for getting the 'mechs off
the planet.
* * *
The DropShip _Palomino_
17:25 Local Time
The rest of Red Lance appeared, a narrow line of battlemechs, most of
them heavily scarred with action. Kasumi's Victor was near the head of the
file, and cradled in its left hand were Doctor Tofu and Sayuri. Akane and
Soun moved their Warhammers aside to allow the Victor quick access to the
ship.
Ranma was waiting for them with Tad and two of the _Dragonfly's_ cooks.
They had the entirety of Tofu's Sick Bay apparatus with them, as the
crippled
DropShip no longer had power to run lights or any of the life support
equipment.
Kasumi knelt the Victor carefully, and allowed Tofu and his patient to
be handed off to the ground.
Ranma's eyes met Tofu's as they huddled over the stricken pilot.
"She gonna make it?" she asked him.
Tofu snapped off his bloody latex gloves and slipped on a fresh pair
offered by Tad.
"I don't know. She needs surgery, and at the moment, the facilities
for it aren't available," he replied. "I'll do my best."
"You might be better off taking her to the Orochi bunker," Ranma
suggested. "They have power, and you'll have a roof over your head."
"I was thinking the same thing myself," Tofu agreed.
Kasumi climbed down from the Victor, and Yuka appeared from the
Centurion that Tofu had piloted earlier. Both appeared shaken but calm.
"I'll assist where I can," Kasumi offered.
"The same here," Yuka added.
Tofu nodded wearily as Sayuri was placed on a stretcher and carried
to the open Cargo Bay door where one of the six-by-six trucks was being
readied by one of Akari's techs. "Yuka can stay," he said at length. He
looked at Kasumi then, and his heart turned somersaults. "Ka-Kasumi...
I-I think your sister will need you in your 'mech." It was easier to tell
her that than it was to tell her that he might be too shaky and nervous
performing surgery with her around. He felt like a total ass around her
as it stood.
She seemed to sense this, and bowed respectfully for him. "Of course,
Doctor. I understand."
"We better get a move on, Doc," the tech said to him as he watched
her return to her father and Commander Saotome.
"Yes. Yes, you're right," Tofu replied. He wanted to have Kasumi
near, but not at the cost of Sayuri's life.
Ranma excused herself when it appeared that Tofu had all the help he
could use. The ground from the DropShip to the bunker was fairly level and
clear, so she wasn't worried about them taking too long to travel the five
kilometers to the bunker. She turned to the blackened mass of Ryouga's
BattleMaster, and wondered why the moron inside hadn't popped his canopy
to join everyone else.
Akari wondered the same thing. The shock of seeing the BattleMaster
in such bad shape made her heart twist in knots, both out of empathy for
the battlemech, and for the man she loved who commanded it.
"Ryouga...?" she called up to the starred canopy.
"He hasn't come down yet?" Ranma asked Akari.
"No," she replied, trying to remain stoic when it looked like she
was going to break down at any moment. "He hasn't."
Ranma risked the jagged metal and started to climb the blackened
hull. "I'll go see what's up. Don't you worry. It'll take more than
this--" She gestured to the ruined armor around them. "--To take out
Ryouga Hibiki."
Ukyou walked up to them. "I hope so, Ran-chan, because I can't get
him to answer on the commo."
That revelation gave Ranma pause, but she refused to be daunted by
it. "He didn't seem to be in any trouble on the way here," she replied.
"Besides, the way this thing's shot up, I wouldn't be surprised if his
commo system fritzed out." With that, she continued her climb up the
ragged hull.
When she reached the cockpit, it became perfectly obvious why Ryouga
hadn't joined the others or answered his radio. She gave him a sly grin
and tapped on the canopy.
"Hey, Ryouga," Ranma said to him. "Put some clothes on, for God's
sake! What are you, some kinda pervert?"
Ryouga Hibiki was already beet red, so the remark could do little
more than add a little purple to his complexion. His hands shot to his
groin, covering himself with his neurohelmet as best as he could.
"This isn't funny, Ranma!" he snarled.
Ranma worked open the manual canopy release.
"What are you so worked up about?" she teased. "It's not like I
haven't seen a guy naked before."
"You're a girl right now!" Ryouga growled. "It's... It's a little
weird being looked at by a girl like this..."
Ranma rolled her eyes. "Do I even want to ask why you don't have
any clothes on right now?"
"No," Ryouga snapped.
"Fair enough," Ranma said with a shrug. She spied the heavy armored
case in the rear seat. "So that's what Tarou wanted? That's the library
core?"
Ryouga nodded, his face a twisted mask of shame and fear as Akari
called to him from below.
"Happousai found it in the ruins," he said in a low voice. "He was
going to keep it for himself, and use it to buy his way off the planet
in case we failed to escape. When I found about it, he nearly killed me.
Changing into a pig was the only thing that saved my life."
Akari called out his name once more, Ukyou joined in, and then a
third voice was heard.
"What's going on up there?" Akane demanded. "Ranma!? Ryouga!?"
"I'm doomed..." Ryouga lamented. "If they see me like this... I'll...
I'll die!"
Ranma chuckled. "I've got a better idea." She unstrapped the library
core and hefted it out of the seat. She then placed it atop the battlemech's
torso before returning her attention to the cockpit.
"What kind of plan is this?" Ryouga demanded.
Ranma leaned over his lap, making him cover up again with an anguished
grunt of surprise as her chest brushed against his. She took the water tube
used for drinking and refilling cooling vests and pointed it at Ryouga's
face.
"Oh, no you don't," Ryouga managed when he realized what she was going
to do.
Ranma opened the valve, splashing Ryouga with cold water before he
could launch her out of the cockpit.
"Think of it this way," she said to the angrily squealing pig. "This
will be the second time today that your piggy alter-ego will end up saving
your bacon."
She snatched him up by the bandanna and leaned out of the cockpit to
look down on the three women.
"Heads up!" she cried, and dropped Ryouga.
The pig squealed in terror all the way down into Akane's arms.
"P-chan!?" she cried in surprise. "How did you get up there?"
"Ryouga took the pig with him?" Ukyou chirped. "As a good luck
charm or something?"
Akane shrugged. "I guess so." P-chan uttered a tiny squeal of dismay.
"Where is Ryouga?" Akari called up, disappointment in her voice.
"He wasn't up here," Ranma replied. "It was just the pig. He must
have needed to take a leak or something, and split before we could all
assemble." She looked around the cockpit for a moment before calling down
to them again. "Anyone got some rope? About twenty meters of it should
do the trick."
"For what?" Akane returned, stroking her pet pig behind the ears.
Ryouga seemed to have let his anger pass, at least for the moment, in
Akane's care.
"To get this library core down. We're gonna want to put this case
somewhere real safe. It might be the only thing of value we get off this
mudball."
Genma stalked over as she shouted down to them, accompanied by Grand
Duke Tendo.
"Send that thing down here, Ranma," Genma called to her.
"I was tryin' to do that, old man!" she returned.
"So it's true?" Soun asked. "There is such a thing?"
Ranma nodded. "Happousai seemed to think so."
The mention of that name made the Duke turn pale.
"Speaking of the Master," Genma said uneasily. "Has anyone seen him?"
"He went down in flames, from what I saw," Ranma replied. "I didn't
see it happen, but I saw the Locust, and it was a total write-off."
Soun and Genma looked at each other for a moment. Both men nodded
solemnly, then began to dance a jig.
"Oh happy day!" Soun cried, tears flowing down his face.
"Farewell, Master!" Genma sobbed with mock sorrow. "We'll miss you!"
"Death in battle," Soun blubbered. "It's what he always wanted..."
Genma gave his friend a crosswise look, his expression sober and
guarded.
"I always thought he said that he wanted to die of exhaustion in a
cathouse..."
Soun returned the look.
"Who cares, Saotome, so long as he's dead?"
The two nodded solemnly again and began issuing hallelujahs and
waving their hands in the air like a Southern Baptist revival.
Ranma rolled her eyes at the two. "Keep doing stuff like that, and
the old freak'll return from the dead just to spite you."
Soun made the demon-warding gesture while Genma clutched his hands
to his face in a passable impression of The Scream.
"Don't say such things!" the Duke admonished him.
"What's gotten into you, boy?" Genma added. "Have you lost your mind?"
Ranma ignored them, and climbed down the BattleMaster to join the
three girls.
"Grant says the _Palomino_ is down for the count," she told Akane.
"I know," she replied evenly. She inclined her head towards the
Senior Technician. "Akari told me."
"We need to get off this mudball, and soon," Ranma went on. "Even
without the 'mechs, so long as we have the library core, we win."
Akane's expression hardened, surprising Ranma. "This isn't a game,
Ranma. It's not about winning or losing."
"Oh yeah?" she retorted. "Then tell me what this is all about? Are
we here for our health? The fresh air?"
Ukyou put up her hands in a calming gesture. The way Ranma and
Akane could go from calm to incindiery was unnerving to her. "Easy
there, Ran-chan."
"There are hundreds of innocent people on this planet!" Akane shot
back. "People who have nothing to do with the Succession Wars, and whose
lives are in danger now because we came here!"
Ranma realized where she was going with this. "You can't be serious,"
she returned. "You think we can afford to fight both the Musk Dynasty and
Prince Kuno's armies?" She waved her hands to the motley assortment of
battlemechs in their possession. "With this?"
"I know that!" Akane cried angrily. "I understand how impossible
that would be! What I'm trying to say is that I don't approve of the way
you're looking at all of this. We aren't 'winning' anything here. We're
just escaping with our own lives!"
Ranma started to say something in rebuttal, but held her tongue.
Akane watched her for a moment in tense silence.
"I know," Ranma finally said. "I hate the situation we're in." She
looked to the Phoenix Hawk LAM, scored with weapon hits and yet still
fully functional. "I don't want to give up anything we have right now.
Not after we paid so much for it. Getting the library core off the
planet with us will be a victory we really deserve."
"We need a DropShip for that," Ukyou put in. "What are the odds that
we can steal one?"
Ranma and Akane gave her surprised looks.
"Ucchan, that's brilliant!" Ranma cried approvingly.
"It's more like suicide," Akane retorted. She then gave a shrug.
"Still, it might work. We need to get to the bunker and find out what's
going on tactically."
Ranma nodded her head in agreement. "Sounds like a plan. Let's get
everything we can off the _Palomino_ and then mount up for the bunker."
She took the pig from Akane's arms. "Come on, P-chan, let's get you
cleaned up."
"Ranma!" Akane shrieked. "What are you--?" She let it drop as it
appeared that P-chan was not offering his usual protestations to Ranma's
handling. Had her beloved pet finally warmed to her beloved fiance?
"That was weird," Ukyou said, mirroring her mind. "Since when did
the pig ever put up with Ranchan?"
"Never mind that," Akari said mournfully. "What happened to Ryouga?"
Chapter Two
"Is it much farther?" Hikaru whined. Tromping through the woods like
this was killing him. He failed to notice that Shinnosuke kept up the pace
in spite of the fact that he had reopened the wound in his leg, and that
his trousers were getting soaked with blood.
"Not much farther," Shinnosuke replied, biting down on the pain.
Konatsu leapt down from the trees as he spoke. "Trouble," he hissed.
"Battlemechs approaching."
The three of them squatted down in the brush as the heavy thump of
metalshod feet echoed through the forest. The chirr and cry of birds went
silent.
"How many?" Shinnosuke asked.
Konatsu's eyes flashed with anxiety for him, making him gasp
involuntarily. To Shinnosuke, the kunoichi had become terribly beautiful
to behold over the past few hours. Perhaps it was a reaction to his
disappointment at discovering Akane's love for Ranma, or perhaps it was
because he knew the chances of them getting killed were very high, and
he didn't want to die alone.
"Two. Both of them Commonwealth as far as I could tell," Konatsu
replied.
The sound of the battlemechs grew in intensity, shaking the trees
and making the ground thump beneath them. A thin scream of dread began
to shrill from Hikaru's throat before Konatsu and Shinnosuke both
clamped hands over his mouth. The surprise contact of bare skin between
the two made Shinnosuke shudder with delight, and he forgot all about
the huge 80 ton Awesome that stomped past them with scant meters to spare.
"Mother!" Hikaru squeaked from beneath the two hands.
"Shhhh!" Konatsu hissed.
An Assassin loped past a moment later, catching up to the lumbering
mass of the hulking Awesome with ease.
"Definitely Commonwealth," Konatsu declared. "We should warn the
bunker."
* * *
Shampoo watched as Mousse walked back to his Crusader. She was
furious with him, and yet she felt a touch of pride in the fact that
even in his treason to the clan, he had become a man she could respect.
He was no longer a slave to her, no longer the spineless weakling she
had despised for years.
Nausea still wracked her as she followed him with her eyes. It had
to be the baby, she usually recovered from falls sooner than this. She
placed a hand to her belly, willing the tiny child within her to leave
well enough alone. It was silly to think that at this stage, a child as
tiny and undeveloped as hers could be expected to obey her mother, but
she did so anyway. The baby was a child of the Joketsuzoku, and she
would learn the discipline and obedience to her elders that her mother
had failed to learn herself.
"<Farewell, Mousse,>" she said quietly to him.
Mousse forced himself not to look back at Shampoo. He was beyond
her as much as he was beyond redemption. There was nothing for him now,
and not even General Herb's new order for the Commonwealth held anything
for him.
His daughter... Shampoo was carrying his child!
It was his dream to make Shampoo his bride and to start a family
with her, a dream he had cherished most of his life. Now there was a
child between them, but no love. There was only resentment and hate,
and a vow to turn that child against her father.
The weariness he felt at that was nearly total. It took an effort
of pure will to continue walking away from her, when what he really
wanted to do was lay down and die. Vengeance held nothing for him, it
was a hollow desire whose empty promises had been revealed to him in
their entirety in his confrontation with Shampoo.
As he plodded dully over the torn ground that separated his
battlemech from the fallen Panther, he searched for something, anything,
to motivate him. The distant rumble of clashing 'mechs to the south
caught his ear, and he turned his head towards the sound. The sight of
Shampoo standing in the distance at the corner of his vision made him
wince inwardly, but he had his answer.
There was only battle for him now. Battle against the Furinkan
Combine, and though he had no reason to believe it, to him it already
seemed a lost cause. His Crusader was still operational, though it was
missing most of its right arm. It would serve him long enough to fight
his enemies and earn the valiant fall in combat that had also been the
dream of a young boy growing up in the shadow of great warriors.
It was the last dream he could hope to achieve, the others being
crushed under cruel heel of fortune.
The voice of Mint addressing him came down as the other heel.
"<A question for you, Mechwarrior Colonel,>" Mint said in a
mocking tone.
Mousse turned to see the hated lieutenant of General Herb peering
at him from a tree limb. His Assassin battlemech stood nearby, its
armored hull obscured by clinging vines that hung from the verdant
woods.
"<Why is it that you have not destroyed an enemy of the Musk
Dynasty who stood helpless before your wrath?>" Mint continued, his
voice tight with barely concealed glee.
Mousse swept back his hair, a gesture meant to give him the
opportunity to search for Lime without drawing attention to the fact.
He did not see him.
"<She poses no more threat to us,>" he replied. "<Her battlemech
is destroyed.>"
"<I can see that,>" Mint returned, his voice retaining that manic
edge that made Mousse wary of a surprise attack. "<I regret that I just
missed the battle between the two of you. It might have been interesting
to see exactly how devoted you were to the task.>"
Mousse's hands dropped into the folds of his robes, a gesture whose
significance was not lost upon Mint, who raised a suspicious eyebrow at
him.
"<General Herb sent you,>" he said to Mint. "<Tell me why.>"
Mint laughed at his question. "<You already know why, *Colonel.*
Don't attempt to patronize me.>"
He dropped down from the tree limb, landing silently before
Mousse. There was a considerable difference in height between them,
though Mint seemed unconcerned by this.
"<But if you must know, my orders were to locate you,>" he added
dryly. "<If I were to find you in the presence of Shampoo, I was to
arrest you, and bring you to the General.>"
A moment passed with neither man moving or speaking. The sound of
footsteps well behind Mousse made him tense with wariness. It had to be
Lime.
"<Of course you should know,>" Mint continued coolly. "<My orders
were to kill Shampoo on sight.>"
Mousse tried not to let his surprise show. Herb would order her
death?
Mint leered at him. "<You were not expecting that?>"
Mousse pushed past him roughly in reply, and started walking
towards his Crusader. Mint backed away with a sadistic grin on his
face.
"<What are you doing, Colonel?>" he asked Mousse.
"<I am going to confer with General Herb. If these orders are
true, then I won't stop you from carrying them out.>"
"<I don't think so, Colonel,>" Mint said brusquely. "<You're
under arrest, remember? It wouldn't do to have you mounting up in
your battlemech.>"
Mousse stopped several paces short of the war machine. He turned
his head back to regard Mint, the blue of his eyes frosting into deeply
damask'd steel, and causing the diminutive henchman of General Herb to
freeze up in spite of himself.
"<Stop me.>"
Mint shrugged off the glamour of Mousse's unfeeling eyes and
leaped at him with a shriek, his twin serpentine-bladed knives
flashing in the dappled sunlight of the ravaged forest clearing.
There would be no mercy in this - he had been looking forward to
having an excuse to kill the pureblood upstart ever since Herb had
given the order to look for him. He cleared the distance between
them in an instant, his daggers slashing madly into the depths of
flowing indigo robes as Mousse whirled to face him.
It was like striking at shadows.
He ducked low to evade a counterattack that never came, screaming
for Lime to assist, and then leaped at Mousse again. The daggers ripped
into the dark robes once more to no effect.
As he tried a third time to cut Mousse down, a flash and roar
blinded his eyes and filled his ears with terrible noise as Mousse
produced a long curved sword, drawing it up from his tattered robes
and igniting the butane jet-torch that made flames lick along the
entire length of the blade. The flaming sword caught him above the
hip-point of the pelvis with the ring of steel on bone, and then
carved cruelly up through his ribcage until it cleaved through his
clavicle and rang smartly off his jaw. He was too surprised to cry
out in pain, his lips flapping open and his numbing limbs flailing
against the sheer heat that assailed him as the ground loomed ever
closer.
His last thoughts were only that he would miss the sight of his
general in her exquisite female body.
Mint fell to the mossy ground, his entrails spilling at the
base of the Crusader's scorched white hull, and his hair catching
fire. He squirmed once, gasped out what Mousse supposed was a final
yet unrecognizable curse, and then died with a wet rattle. Mousse
regarded him for a moment as the flames began their slow and steady
work of reducing him to ash.
There wasn't much time for introspection, however, as Lime's blood-
curdling cry of rage carried over Shampoo's cry of warning. He turned and
saw her waving her arms frantically from across the clearing, and knew
that she had tried. Strength flowed through his arms at this, an enormous
upwelling of power and courage where before there had only been the
adrenaline madness of hatred to guide his stroke. Lime charged across
the clearing at him with a huge thick-bladed glaive in both hands that
resembled nothing so much as a gigantic kitchen cleaver.
Mousse met his charge at a run, his flaming sword held high and
trailing hot sparks behind it.
They met in the center of the clearing with an earsplitting clash
of metal on metal. Lime's greater mass carried him through the charge,
driving Mousse to the ground flat on his back, half-stunned.
The Musk hybrid snarled out an incoherent curse for Mousse as he
chopped with the glaive at the dark-haired mechwarrior's knees. Mousse
coiled up tight at the strike, narrowly avoiding the heavy blade as it
dug into the soft ground. He sprang from his coil with a shout, kicking
at Lime's hands in an attempt to disarm him.
Lime absorbed the kick as if he hadn't even felt the blow,
recovering his glaive and again chopping down at Mousse, who managed
to roll frantically clear. The hybrid mechwarrior roared a curse, his
tiger blood running hot and thick in his veins, and attacked with even
more ferocity.
Mousse dodged another blow from the glaive, only to take a
backhanded return strike from the hardwood handle and reel once more
to the ground. Lime stepped up to hack him apart, bringing the glaive
down at his head.
Feeling his own terrible madness flowing through him, Mousse parried
the blow aside, and left his humungous assailant with a face full of pepper
spray produced from the depths of his sleeves. The sneak attack gave him
the chance to drag himself away from the gagging and choking Lime. When he
was clear of the blindly slashing strokes of the glaive, he pulled himself
upright and raised his flaming sword once again to attack.
"<I will not allow you to harm Shampoo,>" he snarled at Lime. "<I
don't care what happens to me at this point, whether I live or die, but
I will NOT ALLOW you to hurt her.>"
Lime wiped at the thick line of drool and snot that dribbled down
his lip. The pepper spray should have kept him out of the fight long
enough for Mousse to cut him down, but Lime was already starting to
fight it off.
"<Traitor,>" Lime spat hatefully at him. "<First to Cologne's whores
and then to us!>" He spat a thick wad of mucous on the ground between them.
"<You are an enemy even to yourself, traitor, and I mean to make sure that
you pay for killing Mint.>"
Lime's words stung more than his blows, all the more so because they
rang of truth. He was an enemy to himself; and had been one his entire life.
Was it any surprise then that his life should come to such a miserable and
bloody end?
They fell upon each other then with furious ringing blows. Sparks
flashed from their clashing blades and the heat of the flames made their
strivings hazy and indistinct, as if watching them through a mirage. Lime's
strength was the greater in this dire contest, but Mousse was fighting for
the only cause that had ever mattered in his life, and his sword turned the
heavy glaive aside again and again even as it sought out his enemy's heart.
The final blows fell, and for a moment it seemed as if both men would
die, for the blood of each was spilled onto the mossy ground.
Lime stumbled backwards dumbly as his chest spurted forth frothy waves
of blood that sizzled where they quenched the flames ignited in his clothes.
His glaive came up in a clumsy attempt to beat out the fires, then fell from
his weakening fingers to plunge blunted-tip first into the muddy ground. He
fell to his knees, still bleeding out in thick pulses from the horrible
trench carved across his sternum, and gave a final hateful scowl to Mousse
before toppling slowly backwards in death.
Mousse fell to his knees as well, the flaming sword sputtering out as
his grip on it weakened. He was singed from the heat of the flames, and the
bitter truth of the battle's end was that Lime had scored as well, though
not with such fatal results. He did not realize that he was shaking until
a hand fell upon his shoulder to steady him.
He raised his singed brow to see Shampoo standing over him, her hand
supporting him against the faint that threatened to take him.
"<I don't want your pity,>" he managed for her. "<Or your thanks. I
did it to save our daughter.>"
She did not reply, but her hand never wavered from his shoulder.
"<I meant that, Shampoo,>" he rasped. "<Let me go. I have one more
task left to me; a task I cannot shirk.>"
He rose, shrugging off her hand, and started walking towards his
Crusader once again. The smell of burnt flesh made him wince, as did
the pain that tingled through the wound in his side.
"<What do you plan on doing, Mousse?>" Shampoo demanded of him.
"<Are you off to kill General Herb now?>"
"<Lime was right,>" Mousse responded, not looking back at her.
To do so would cause his will to crumble, and he would not show his
weakness to her again. "<I am an enemy to everyone, including myself.
Killing Herb will at least be some atonement for the wrongs I've done
and the betrayals I've committed.>"
"<You can't hope to defeat Herb in your condition,>" Shampoo
asserted. "<And your Crusader is only slightly less of a wreck than
my Panther. What do you think you'll accomplish other than a futile
death?>"
Mousse climbed unsteadily up the armored torso to the hatch of his
Crusader. Blood dripped freely from his side where the tattered indigo
fabric of his robes were soaked through with it. When he reached the
hatch, he finally turned back to Shampoo. She was so beautiful to him,
so lovely and beloved, that he could not look at her without feeling the
pangs of heartache rend him apart. She was forever denied to him, by her
own choice.
"<Perhaps a futile death is all that I deserve,>" he said to her.
With that he dropped through the hatch and sealed it tight.
Shampoo put herself well clear of the Crusader as it struggled
upright. The damage was extensive, yet mostly to the armor. Aside from
the amputated right forearm, and the medium laser and machinegun mounts
it had contained, the 'mech was essentially fully armed. All four of the
missile systems appeared intact, and that was what Mousse would need
against Herb and his bodyguards.
Still, it was suicide, and she knew it as well as he did.
The Crusader took a moment to orient itself, then it began to
stomp towards the south, and its fateful duel with the leader of the
Musk Dynasty. She watched it go in silence for a moment, before finally
clenching a fist in anger at him.
"<Idiot!>" she shouted at him. "<I know what you're trying to do,
Mousse, and I will not let you hang your death on me!>"
She made a quick circle of the clearing before spying the Assassin
that had once belonged to Mint. She would have preferred the massive
triple-PPC carrying Awesome over the awkward looking medium-light
Assassin in combat, but there was no way she could catch up to Mousse
in such a slow and ungainly 'mech.
"Shampoo!"
The voice made her spin around, and she saw the spatula girl's pet
kunoichi running from the trees towards her. The local boy, Shinnosuke,
trailed along behind him, and bringing up the rear looked like... it
couldn't be... There was no way a Gosunkugi could be here, could there?
"Shampoo!" Konatsu cried again. "What happened? Are you all right?"
"I fine!" she huffed, having no time for chit-chat. "You go now!
Shampoo have thing to do!"
"What thing?" Shinnosuke gasped between pants for breath. "Aren't
you hurt?"
Shampoo ignored him, and ran for the Assassin battlemech. She hoped
that Mint had left it idling, as she did not have the time to go through
a pre-startup on a battlemech with which she had very little familiarity.
"Hey!" Konatsu cried after her.
"You go back to bunker!" she yelled back. "Shampoo no have time to
explain!"
She climbed up the battlemech and pulled herself through the hatch.
Mint's neurohelmet rested on the ejector seat, and the steady thrum of
the reactor reassured her. The harsh voices over the Musk tac-net
indicated to her that the day's fighting had turned from certain victory
to a protracted slugfest against the Furinkan Combine.
She thumbed through the commo presets for the command channel, and
was rewarded with the sound of General Herb issuing orders to his troops.
Mousse might not prevail against the Musk general, but he might give her
an opening to use.
The Assassin lurched forward. It was a little heavier than her
Panther had been, but the weight was distributed differently around its
frame. It would take all the time she had before she caught up with Mousse
to adjust to the motion.
Shinnosuke and Konatsu watched the battlemech stomp off into the
forest while Hikaru gasped for breath.
"Where does she think she's going?" he asked Konatsu.
The kunoichi offered an apologetic shrug. "I don't know, but wherever
it is, things are going to get hot." He scanned the sky for the sun, which
was sinking in the west. "It's going to be dark in a couple of hours," he
said in his breathy falsetto. "We need to return to the bunker."
"C-Can't we wait a few more minutes?" Hikaru gulped. The oracles had
said nothing about a marathon today...
"Let's go," Shinnosuke replied. The stench of the burning corpses
was beginning to get thick.
Chapter Three
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
19 June 3025, 17:26 Local Time
"This is it," Shinnosuke said to Hikaru, who stumbled along behind
them, gasping for breath.
The sight of the Red Lance battlemechs and their pilots standing
outside the ancient Star League facility gave them pause. Where was the
DropShip?
"Ukyou dearest!" Konatsu called out to his beloved mechwarrior. She
turned at the sound of his voice and waved, drawing the attention of the
others.
"Where the heck have you been?" she demanded of him.
"Chasing Shampoo, sir," Konatsu confessed. Shinnosuke hobbled up to
them, half-dragging the exhausted Hikaru Gosunkugi with him.
"Oh my word, Shinnosuke!" Akane cried upon seeing the caretaker.
"Your leg!"
"It's nothing," he replied, trying to brush it off. "I'll be all
right."
"Who's this guy?" Ukyou asked, pointing at Hikaru. "A Combine P.O.W.?"
Hikaru's lips flapped open and shut like a fish out of his bowl.
"His Excellency, Hikaru Gosunkugi of the League of Five Nails,"
Konatsu replied when it became clear that Hikaru was too winded to speak.
"From what we were able to get out of him, he's been a prisoner of Prince
Kuno for awhile. He escaped from his handlers, and we ran into him in the
woods."
Hikaru offered a weak wave of his hand.
Akane grabbed Ranma by the arm. "Help them, already, Ranma!" she
demanded. "Get the two of them inside to see Doctor Tofu."
Hikaru made a giddy sighing noise at being so well thought of by
Akane, and he sagged against Shinnosuke a little more. Thoughts of curses
and hexes on Ranma Saotome were far from his mind, though he realized
dimly that his theories of Ranma and Kuno's enigmatic Pig-Tailed Girl
being the same person were probably right on the mark. He uttered a
gleeful yet weak cackle at the idea of Kuno being unknowingly infatuated
with his hated rival.
Ranma, on the other hand, threw up her hands with a huff. "I wanted
to hear about what happened to Shampoo first!"
"It's complicated, Captain Saotome," Konatsu answered for her. "We
tracked her south for awhile before coming across the wreck of her Panther.
She was okay, but there was some kind of fight on the ground outside of the
'mechs, and before we could get any answers from her, she was off chasing
a Musk Crusader in a captured Assassin. There is still an Awesome out
there unclaimed, if you think we should send someone for it."
"Chasing the Crusader?" Akane asked. "But why?"
"She seemed to know the man," Konatsu replied in his breathy
falsetto. "It's funny, but in spite of what we saw, I don't think that
she was betraying us to the Musk."
"I hope not," Ranma groused. "Because she can lead them right to
us."
"Weren't *you* the one who thought she should have a 'mech?" Ukyou
pointed out.
"Yeah," she admitted. "But it doesn't matter how loyal she is to us
if she gets captured and forced to talk." She steadied the swaying Hikaru
Gosunkugi and led him towards the armored door. "You gonna make it all
right, Shinnosuke?"
The SLDF caretaker made an affirmative grunt. "I'll be right behind
you." He offered Akane a gentle smile before following them inside.
Ukyou looked to Konatsu. "No more heroics, okay, honey?" she
admonished him. "I'm not going to stand for you getting killed today."
Konatsu offered a weak blush in reply.
* * *
Akari dabbled ointment on Ryouga's nose, where he had been injured as
a pig trying to claw his way out of the twisted rubble of the quonset hut
Happousai had brought down on him. Thanks to Ranma getting him out of
Akane's hands and into the _Palomino's_ head, he was able to change back
into a human with no one being the wiser, and his spare tunic and trousers
were right next door in berthing. Now he was in Akari's care within the
bunker, and for a moment the concerns of battle and their escape from this
world were put aside.
"You don't know how happy I am to know that you're all right," she
continued. "When I saw what had happened to the BattleMaster, I--" She
let the words hand between them for a moment. Ryouga's face began to
bloom with heat.
"I know," he said softly. "I'm sorry if I frightened you."
She brushed at his sweat-matted hair.
"You mean the world to me, Ryouga dearest," she said softly to him.
He managed to meet her eyes. "I-- I could say the same about you," he
managed lamely. He loved her with all his heart, and she knew it, but even
with all of that between them, it was still hard sometimes for him to say
it to her.
Instead he took her hand in his and brought it up to his chin, where
he nuzzled it softly. "We're almost home," he told her.
"I love you, Ryouga," she replied.
He squeezed her hand. "I love you, Akari," he said, marvelling at
how easily the words spilled from his lips. He seized the sudden courage
that welled up within him, and told her what he had been aching to tell
her since his return from the fighting. "I love you with all my heart."
"I know," she whispered, pressing her face into his shoulder. A sob
escaped her lips. "We're so close to getting out of here, and yet we're
still in so much danger. I just want to be with you for the rest of our
lives, that I'm afraid something will happen, and then--"
"Nothing's going to happen, Akari," he assured her, though he was
wracked with hidden doubts. "I won't let anything come between us. Ranma
and the others are working on a plan to get us a DropShip, and we still
have the _Coronet_ and the _Tautog_ up in orbit. If we have to leave the
'mechs behind, we'll do that, but we're getting out of here, I promise."
* * *
"It's meatball surgery, but it'll hold until we can get her up into
orbit and a real medical facility," Doctor Tofu Ono proclaimed. Sayuri
lay unconscious on a table in the dining area of the bunker, surrounded
by the crews of the _Dragonfly_ and _Palomino,_ as well as some of Shogun
Kuno's retinue.
Yuka wiped at her runny nose with a sterile cloth. "Thank you,
doctor," she gushed.
"Just doing my job," he replied, spying Kasumi coming through the
doors from the stairwell. "If you'll please excuse me." He made his way
over to the first born Tendo daughter.
"How is she?" Kasumi asked him.
"She'll make it," he replied. His jauntiness wavered as he continued
to speak. "Kasumi, I'm... I'm sorry about the way I b-brushed you off at
the _Palomino._ You deserved better from me."
Kasumi put a hand to her lips. "You were doing your job, Doctor.
I can't fault that."
He nodded weakly. It was settled between them, and yet he still
felt like an ass.
She gave him a demure smile. "I came down to tell you how grateful
I am for taking care of my sister on the expedition," she said to him.
"And for helping her and Ranma work things out with each other. Father's
ecstatic about it."
He began to blush. "Th-That's me," he said a little too loudly.
"Tofu Ono, professional matchmaker!"
She leaned forward and kissed him on the cheek, paralyzing him with
joy. "Please don't think me too forward, Doctor," she said to him. "But
I never got the chance to do this before you left Nerima."
Tofu made a high pitched squeak in reply, articulate words being
beyond his present faculties.
* * *
"Aloha, bruddah!" a voice called to Hikaru Gosunkugi. He turned and
saw the Shogun of the Furinkan Combine looming over him in the recreation
room, a pineapple-shaped mug of what Hikaru could only guess was rum punch
in his hand. What in blue blazes was *he* doing here? He began to question
the accuracy of his divinations once more.
"Fancy meeting you here, eh, brah?" the Shogun continued.
Hikaru felt himself being pulled bodily from the chair in which he
slumped. The Shogun pressed the pineapple mug into his hand.
"Have a drink, bruddah," the Shogun advised. "We gonna start de limbo
contest soon. Da Duke, he gonna be down here too!" Steel slide guitar and
bongo drums began to play in the background as the musicians warmed up and
beefy Polynesian men in red and gold loincloths began to limber up.
Hikaru took a weary glance around the room. Akane was here somewhere,
he knew. He took a fortifying sip from the rum punch, amazed that the
Shogun could manage to keep the stuff in stock for his perpetual luau.
The hula girl he recognized from the Maui Atoll on New Hawaii slipped up
to his side and whispered something in his ear. He didn't speak Hawaiian,
but it sounded like a good idea, whatever it was.
The Shogun gave him a wink and a hearty thumbs up.
He looked around once more. For a situation that looked pretty grim,
the Confederation people were filled with optimism. The Shogun himself
didn't seem to have a care in the world; a concept that Hikaru found
vaguely liberating.
Perhaps Shogun Kuno was on to something.
* * *
Ranma offered a tired sigh as Akane settled down against the wall of
the bunker next to her.
"What now?" she asked her fiancee.
"There's still a lot of fighting going on to the south," Akane replied.
"Not much activity from the Black Rose landing zone. The _Coronet_ isn't
answering hails, and neither is the _Tautog._ I just hope they weren't
destroyed."
"What about us getting put of here?"
Akane slipped her hand into Ranma's. "I don't know. Without the ships
in orbit, we're stuck. I'm almost tempted to try and steal that DropShip."
"It's crazy," Ranma conceded. "Maybe if one of the landing zones was
getting overrun we could slip the _Palomino_ crew in during the confusion,
but that kind of coordination is too big a problem to pull off without
practicing for it."
"So I guess we wait it out here until we hear from one of the ships in
orbit, or until the winner of the battle between Kuno and the Musk Dynasty
comes for us," Akane replied.
"I guess so," Ranma agreed.
Akane gave Ranma's hand a squeeze. "If it ends like that, I'm glad that
I'll be with you."
Ranma turned and gave her a sanguine look. "It ain't gonna come to
that,"
she declared. "I ain't losing you to Tatewaki Kuno. Period." She returned
the
squeeze. "Not without a fight that'll see either him or me dead."
"I don't want you to die, Ranma," she told him. "Not even to save me.
I've already gone through that once with you on this planet, and believe me,
I don't want to go through it again."
Ranma's look softened. She hadn't thought about what Akane must have
been going through after their disastrous introduction to Ryuugenzawa. She
had been half-crazy looking for Akane, and she had known that her fiancee
had survived. At the time, Akane had nothing to go on for her fiance's
survival but hope. Now that she knew how much Akane loved her, she could
understand what Akane must have endured in those lonely hours after touching
down.
"I won't die," Ranma replied. "I wouldn't give that Combine jerkoff
the satisfaction."
Akane laughed in spite of herself.
"Please don't," she said, and hugged Ranma fiercely. Ranma returned
her embrace, pausing only to kiss Akane's brow gently.
Grand Duke Soun Tendo watched his youngest daughter kiss Ranma Saotome
firmly on the lips and smiled. It was a little disconcerting to see them
kiss when they were both female at the time, but to see them do anything
more than shout at each other was a miracle, as far as he was concerned.
"What did I tell you, Tendo," Genma said with a clap on his shoulder.
"Get them together for the trip, and let the danger and excitement of the
mission bring them closer to each other."
"Since when did you become a genius, Saotome?" Soun retorted with a
good natured smile.
"I've always been a genius," Genma asserted. "You were just too
jealous to notice."
"Yes, well, you're too modest," Soun grunted. He turned away from
the tender moment his daughter and future son-in-law were having, and
walked Genma back towards the open door of the bunker.
"Forgive me for not mentioning it sooner, Saotome," Soun went on.
"But I forgot to tell you about a special guest of mine, who unfortunately
ended up accompanying us to Ryuugenzawa."
Genma raised an eyebrow at this. "Oh?"
Soun coughed into his hand. "Your wife is here on the planet," he
said to him. "She's down inside the bunker right now, I expect."
Genma's jaw dropped to his chest.
"Nodoka!?" he gasped. "She's HERE? NOW?"
"Don't thank me all at once," Soun sniffed. "You could sound more
exicted about the prospect of seeing a woman you haven't been around for
almost seventeen years." His voice took on a cold tone of reproach that
even Genma did not miss.
"I can explain, Tendo," he managed.
"The matter is between you and your wife," Soun returned. "It's
none of my business."
Genma nodded solemnly. "Does the boy know yet?"
Soun shook his head. "Unless Kasumi told him, I haven't had the
chance to yet. She's a good woman, Saotome. She wants desperately to
see her son, and yet she knows that with the fighting still going on,
that she will probably have to wait."
"She's gotta keep waiting!" Genma cried nervously. "Tendo, if ever
I was your friend, promise me something!"
It was Soun's turn to raise an eyebrow at him. "What is it, Saotome?"
Genma took his friend by the shoulders. "Do *NOT* tell my son that
she's here!" he pleaded.
Soun shook him off. "Why in God's name not?" he demanded. "Really,
Saotome, what's the matter with you?"
Genma's expression was grave. "Trust me, Tendo, It's a matter of
life and death!"
* * *
Blue Thunder Regimental Headquarters Company
North of Ian Cameron Starport
17:34 Local Time
"A pox on them all!" Tatewaki snarled as he watched the Commonwealth
troops continue their withdrawal back to the landing zones. If only more of
his fighter assets had survived the assault on the Orochi Network, he could
crush them utterly!
"My lord Prince," his divisional Operations Officer, Colonel Singh,
called to him.
"Speak, man!" Tatewaki barked in reply.
"The Fifth and Eighth Sword of Thunder Regiments have arrived at their
objectives. The starport area is secure."
It was news of hollow import. So long as the Commonwealth troops
remained in force and organized, his hold on the Star League facilities
was tenuous. The Commonwealth commander must have realized that when he
ordered a withdrawal.
"Hath thy reconnaisance section detected the departure of any
DropShips?" he asked.
"No, my lord," Singh replied. "All indications point toward the
Commonwealth forces withdrawing to a defensive cordon within two
kilometers of their drop zones. No retreat off-world has been detected."
"They test my resolve," Tatewaki said to himself. "Unthinking, these
curs bring forth the very impetus for their own destruction... Very well
then! Order my Fifth Sword of Thunder regiment to commence probing attacks
on the heathen Commonwealth perimeter."
"At once, my lord Prince!"
Tatewaki turned his attention to other, more important matters. Akane
Tendo was somewhere on this world, and he had to find her. He did not
believe that she had fallen captive to the Commonwealth troops, for even
the most doltish commander would have realized her value as a bargaining
chip, and offered terms to him for her.
Nor did he believe that what remained of his damnable sister's troops
to the east had her either, for Kodachi would have offered the same by now.
He would have to finish the job the Commonwealth had started, for he did not
feel comfortable with even a diminished Black Rose regiment on his flank.
That task he left to his mixed units of armor and mechanized infantry,
supported by his remaining close air support.
Still, a certain caution was in order. His sister had slipped her
leash on him before.
"Singh," he called to his operations officer.
"Yes, my lord Prince?"
"Dispatch two companies from the Eighth Sword of Thunder to my
sister's positions east of the starport. Have them offer quarter." It
was foolish of them to expect it in light of the mass executions of
Black Rose officers the last time they surrendered, but Tatewaki was
a stickler for formalities, and if his sister should be slain in the
ensuing battle, at least his alibi to the Daimyo would be in place.
"And if they refuse to surrender, my lord?" Singh asked, his tone
of voice suggesting that he understood exactly where his prince was
going with this line of action.
"Annihilate them," Tatewaki replied coldly. He was still smarting
from the loss of his starfleet, and his sister had already exhausted the
last reserve of his good graces.
With that settled, he maneuvered his Thunderbolt northwest, towards
the Commonwealth drop zones. Once the intelligence data from his probing
actions had indicated the defenders' soft spot, he would personally lead
the charge that would obliterate them.
Soon, Akane Tendo, you shall be mine. Once my enemies are slain,
nothing shall hinder me in my search. I shall tear apart this planet if
I must to uncover your hiding place...
Chapter Four
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
Planet Ryuugenzawa, Ryuugenzawa System
19 June 3025, 18:26 Local Time
Lieutenant Davidge rubbed at the bridge of his nose wearily. With
the network down, he was forced to communicate separately with every
remaining satellite in orbit if he wanted an idea of what was happening
up there. It was painstaking work, and it was made worse by the cascading
damage inflicted by high-speed debris falling from upper orbit. Many of
the satellites were non-functional, forcing him to retask other birds to
cover the affected areas and almost certainly expose them to damage.
"Any luck?" Malloy asked him.
"Unless the big guy restarts its telemetry, I don't see how I can
come up with a plot on it."
"What about the _Coronet_ and the _Tautog_?"
Davidge wiped away a bead of sweat. "The _Tautog's_ on the other
side of the planet right now. It won't be back on our side for another
hour. I haven't heard anything from the _Coronet._"
Several of the displays came to life abruptly as he said this.
"Hello!" he cried. He plunked down in his chair as Commander Malloy
looked on.
"Is it the Orochi?"
Davidge scanned the text. "Looks like it." His fingers tapped several
keys. "I have telemetry data. I'm going to see if I can request a status
report."
The displays danced and jumped as fresh information posted itself.
"The big bugger has shifted over to a 'safe' mode," he replied. "If
I remember correctly, that means no main drive use, and no weapons."
"Sounds good to me," Malloy observed.
Davidge wasn't so sure. "There's something really wacky going on
here. I keep getting this weird protocol that's preempting all of the
unit's functions." He pushed off with his chair to roll across the room
to the stack of aging binders and technical manuals that explained the
network and its components.
He sifted through them at a rapid pace, searching for an answer,
and tearing more than one fragile page from its bindings. As the other
ex-_Dragonfly_ crew looked on, he slammed his finger down on a page and
started reading.
"It's some kind of emergency protocol," he began, his finger tracing
along the lines of text as he read.
"Is it searching for drydock?" Malloy asked.
"I don't think so," Davidge said in a clipped voice. "In fact, I
think this could be extraordinarily bad..."
"Define 'extraordinarily bad,' lieutenant," Malloy ordered, his voice
dropping an octave.
Davidge checked a cross-reference in the manual before replying. What
he found did nothing to reassure him.
"It means, sir, that we are in deep shit."
* * *
Ranma, Shinnosuke, Ryouga, and Akane followed after Grand Duke Tendo
and Genma Saotome as they hurried down the stairs to the Orochi bunker
control room. Whatever Commander Malloy had to tell them, judging by the
urgency in his voice, it couldn't be good.
"What's up?" Ranma asked Akane as they reached the bottom of the
steps.
"I wish I knew," she replied.
Commander Malloy and Lieutenant Davidge were ready for them as they
stepped through the doors.
"We have a serious problem with the Orochi," Malloy began.
"I thought that Prince Kuno's fleet had dealt with it," the Duke
pointed out.
"Apparently not well enough, your Grace," Malloy replied. "I'll let
the lieutenant explain."
Davidge gestured to several displays, where the words 'FADED GIANT'
flashed in red in the top righthand corner of each monitor.
"The primary Orochi unit has initiated a highest-priority protocol,"
he said to them. "You can see it there flashing on the monitors."
"Faded giant?" Ranma asked for all of them. "What the heck is that
supposed to mean?"
Davidge gave them sobering looks.
"It means that under specific command guidance, the Orochi network
is programmed to destroy the Star League facilities here in order to
prevent them from being captured. It was probably a protocol that Kerensky
would have insisted on shortly before the Council of Lords sacked him from
command, as a way to prevent the Great Houses from seizing SLDF assets in
the event of civil unrest."
He pointed to several displays full of garbage. "It's not supposed to
be something that the Orochi can decide on its own," he went on. "You have
to tell it to initiate the protocol, and you have to have the command access
to do it; something that's impossible to get at the moment. Somehow, during
the big firefight up in orbit with the Combine, the Orochi glitched out.
When it restored function to itself, it ended up stuck in this 'faded giant'
protocol."
"So what does this mean for us?" Ryouga asked.
"It means that the Orochi has adjusted its orbit to put it on a direct
impact with the Star League Proving Grounds. Given a mass of almost half a
million tons, and a current velocity of twelve kilometers per second, it's
going to hit our particular piece of real estate in about fifty-eight
minutes, give or take a minute or two."
"Fifty-eight minutes?" Ryouga gulped. "We have less than an hour?"
Davidge offered a weak shrug. "Give or a take a few minutes."
Akane raised her hand slightly to speak. "Do I even want to know
how hard it will hit?"
"This is just an estimate," the astrogator hedged. "But if this
thing actually hits the planet - and it looks like it will - it'll be
like a few thousand nukes all going off at once."
An assortment of gasps and curses filled the room.
"Are you serious?" Akane cried.
Davidge nodded ruefully. "The armored hull will protect it from
the heat of reentry, so almost all of the satellite should make it to
the ground. The energy released will be somewhere in the range of
eight-thousand to ten-thousand megatons of exploding TNT," he replied.
"It'll make a crater five or six klicks in diameter at the very least,
and the blast will probably kill everything within a few hundred
kilometers. It won't be enough to wipe out all life on the planet or
cause some kind of global catastrophe, but it'll still suck to be us
when it happens..."
"It seems that a rapid evacuation would be in order then," Duke Tendo
observed solemnly. "We'll have to ferry people in the shuttles to the
_Tautog_ and _Coronet_ as quickly as possible. Keep trying to raise them
on the commo, Commander Malloy."
"It's not that simple, Dad!" Akane retorted. She looked to Shinnosuke
for a moment, who stood with his mouth open in mute horror. "There are
hundreds of people who call this world home, and most of them live within
a hundred kilometers of this bunker. They won't have time to flee! Their
lives will be snuffed out if we don't do something to stop the Orochi!"
"What can we do?" Ranma returned, earning a hot look from Akane. She
continued on in the face of her fiancee's glare. "It ain't like there's
anything any of us can do to stop a gigantic satellite from crashing into
the planet!"
Genma and Soun exchanged looks. The Duke offered a brief nod in
reply to the question that passed unspoken between them.
"There may be something we can do," Genma observed uneasily.
Ranma looked to her father. "Like what?" she asked incredulously.
"Spit on it? Ask it real nicely to change its trajectory and hit the
open ocean instead of us?"
"Not exactly," Genma replied. "Excuse me for a moment."
Ranma watched her father go. "Wait up!" she cried. "Hey Pop!"
She chased after him, leaving the rest of the assembled party to
themselves. Akane looked after Ranma as she charged out of the doors
to follow her father.
"Dad," she broached uneasily. "This isn't what I think it is, is it?"
She had pondered this very option herself, before she had learned of her
family's arrival on Ryuugenzawa, though not for this reason.
Soun nodded gravely. "It is," he replied.
Her eyes widened. "Then that means that Ranma will be the one to..."
Soun nodded again. "Yes. He will. His LAM is the only thing that can
reach the Orochi in time to do something."
Akane clutched her arms to herself as the others looked on in
puzzlement and concern.
* * *
As Genma Saotome made his way up the stairs from the control room,
he spied an attractive middle-aged woman standing next to the Heir to the
League of Five Nails and the well-tanned Shogun of the Furinkan Combine,
and cringed. It had been years since he had seen his wife, but she had
changed very little over that span of time. Remarkably, she had kept her
good looks, and he felt a pang of regret for letting them go to waste the
way he had.
He did not dare face her at that moment however - not with Ranma in
his girl body - and so he doused himself with a splash of water from his
canteen, becoming a panda before she spied him. Ranma followed through the
door after him, still demanding to know what his big plan was. He hoped
like hell that his son was telling the truth when he said that he had
forgotten what his mother looked like. There wasn't time to steer him away
from her - certainly without drawing the attention that he wished to avoid.
"What gives, old man? What's with the circus act all of a sudden?!" she
demanded, trying to collar him with a hand on his wet fur. He could tell by
the incredulous look on his son's face that she was going to press the issue
of why he had decided to change into his panda body, and that was definitely
an issue he was unwilling to address where Nodoka might overhear.
[Shut up and follow me,] he signed to his son. [You want answers,
you'll get them, but not here.]
Ranma threw up her hands and made a sound that was half growl, half
shriek. She walked past Nodoka without recognizing her long lost mother,
feeling instead only a weird sense of knowing her, but not from where.
Genma was escaping up the stairs to one of the storage rooms as she
pondered the strange woman, and so she was forced to chase after him.
"Wait up, ya old coot!"
Nodoka Saotome watched the interaction between the huge furry black
and white beast and the boisterous and very unladylike red-haired girl in
the silver and white pressure suit, and frowned to herself. There was
something peculiar about the way the beast shambled along, something that
was oddly familiar. She couldn't quite place it.
The girl was equally enigmatic. Nodoka couldn't help but feel that she
knew her, and at the same time, she was so unusual that she should have
remembered any such encounter in the past. They were gone before she could
confront them, though, and she turned her attention back to the Shogun, who
was asking her if she wanted to dance.
"I'm terribly sorry, your Eminence," she demurred. "I'm afraid I don't
feel quite up to dancing at the moment."
The Shogun was easy about it. "No problem, wahine." He made a gesture
to the door Genma and Ranma had taken. "De Duke, he no say nothing about no
circus acts when we get here. Dis is a war zone, yah?"
Nodoka shrugged uneasily. "I'm afraid that when it comes to battles
and such, my knowledge of these things is rather limited."
She cast a final look to the door, hoping to see the girl again. She
wanted to know why she seemed so familiar...
* * *
Genma poured a flask of hot water over himself once they were in the
storage room, returning to his human form.
"So what's with the quick change act?" Ranma demanded.
"My change was an accident," Genma replied, not caring if Ranma
actually
believed it. He gestured to a packing crate, where a large cylindrical
device
rested within. "The answer you seek lies over there."
"What the heck is going on?" She took another look. "Hey, waitaminute,"
she muttered ominously. She recognized the crate from the trip over from the
_Palomino._ The techs had been very, very careful when handling it. "That
isn't what I think it is..." She gave him a narrow-eyed glare. "Is it?"
"It's a thermonuclear weapon," Genma confirmed in a deadpan voice.
Ranma Saotome eyed the thing sitting before her within its reinforced
packing crate. She had never seen one up close. Ever, in fact. The closest
she had come to such things had been the Tendo Armory deep within the
mountain at Azure Cloud Castle.
"This is your big plan?" she asked her father warily. "We're gonna
nuke the Orochi before it can reach the atmosphere and cream us?"
Genma nodded.
Ranma looked the weapon over once more. She did not like where her old
man was going with this.
"So how big a bang are we talking here? Twenty, maybe fifty kilotons?"
Genma cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"One megaton," he replied.
Ranma choked. Her eyes rolled around in their sockets, and she began
to twitch as if her head were about to explode. Veins bulged at her temples,
and she made a strangled noise before her brain regained its grip on her
paralyzed speech center.
"Are you out of your mind, Pop!?" she yelled, grabbing him by the
throat
and bobbing his head back and forth. "One MEGATON!? You gotta be kidding me!
What the hell was Grand Duke Tendo thinking when he gave you a ONE MEGATON
THERMONUCLEAR BOMB!?"
"It was intended to be a demolition device," her father replied coolly,
shrugging her off with an indifferent press of his hands. "In the event that
the location of the facilities was compromised, the device would be used to
deny the Confederation's enemies access to any advanced materials. We were
planning on threatening its use at the starport in case the DropShip
couldn't
get off the ground in time."
"Yeah, but ONE MEGATON!?"
Genma held up his hands in a calming gesture. "We weren't sure how big
the facility would be. We were just playing it safe."
Ranma stepped back from her father and the bomb. "Playing it safe? With
a megaton class nuclear weapon? That's..." she spluttered into silence,
utterly
stunned by what she was dealing with. Finally, she found words. "Why didn't
you
tell me we had this thing?"
"The information was on a need-to-know basis," Genma explained. "You
didn't
need to know."
"Like hell!" Ranma retorted. "As long as you've got me pegged to
deliver
this mother, and I know you do, you're goddamned right I needed to know!"
Genma gave an apologetic shrug. "Now you know."
Ranma threw up her hands and stomped around in circles, keeping her
distance from the bomb. "I don't believe this!" She stopped abruptly and
whirled on her father. "It's against the Ares Conventions to use nuclear
weapons!" she challenged him.
Genma shook his head. "It's against the Ares Conventions to use nuclear
weapons on *people,*" he corrected. "The treaty doesn't mention anything
about
using one on an out-of-control automated orbital battlestation that's about
to
slam into this planet and kill everyone living here." He gave his son a weak
shrug. "The bomb is technically a demolition device. Think of this as
demolition
on a moving target."
"A moving target with enough particle beams and laser cannons to light
my ass up from here to Christmas!" Ranma shot back. "And the best part of
your ridiculous plan is that if the goddamned Orochi doesn't get me, the
blast from your so-called 'demolition device' will!"
"Oh, stop your whining, boy," Genma growled. "At one time Tendo and I
were considering the use of one of the TEN megaton devices in his inventory.
You should be *grateful* for the amount of discretion we've shown in this
matter."
Ranma leveled her darkest gaze upon her father.
"I hate you, Pop," she said evenly. "I really, really, really hate
you."
Genma smiled. "You make your old father proud when you say that, boy."
Chapter Five
SLDFS _Coronet_
18:30 Local Time
"Main Power online," Lieutenant Fulton called from below in
Engineering.
"Main Engines ready to answer all bells."
"It's about time," Captain Hauptmann muttered. "Charge up the active
sensor arrays and do a full spherical sweep." It had been over an hour since
they had been able to watch the surrounding space with more than passive
instruments, and he rightly wanted a better look at their situation.
Getting hit without warning by debris from high orbit had banged them
around a little, and damaged some of their commo arrays. He wanted to know
when the next batch of space junk came tumbling down on him, and he wanted
the ability to get out of the way when he spotted it.
Hinako minded the conn while he hunched over the displays with the
sensor techs. She seemed very smug after her subduing of an entire company
of Combine Marines in the landing bays.
"Radiating," the sensor tech declared. A pulse of microwave radiation
sprang from the hull of the Star League cruiser.
The radar returns began bouncing back almost immediately.
"The Combine fleet is descending cautiously from high orbit," Hauptmann
said after analyzing the data. "And there's something else."
"It's the Orochi," the tech said, fear in her voice. "Contact bearing
two-two-one plus five-four, range three-zero thousand kilometers."
Hauptmann trained the telescope over to the indicated bearing. The
image of the battered and blackened hulk of the primary satellite appeared
on the main monitor.
"Did they get it or didn't they?" he asked aloud.
"I'm getting energy readings," the sensor tech replied. "The fusion
plant is still online, and I'm detecting indications of reaction control
system jets."
Hauptmann caught the tiny flashes of plasma on the display.
"So it's moving under its own power then," he said.
"It appears so," Hinako replied.
"So why isn't it blasting us?" Hauptmann asked. It has power, and I
can see at least one weapon mount that hasn't been touched."
"I don't know," Hinako admitted. "But perhaps we shouldn't look a
gift horse in the mouth."
"Captains!" the sensor tech called out to both of them.
"What is it?" Hauptmann demanded.
"I'm plotting a course for the Orochi," she began. "And it appears to
be on a collision course with the planet. In fact, it appears to be making
slight course adjustments to place the impact point right in the middle of
the Proving Grounds."
"What?!" Hauptmann cried.
"Are you quite sure of that?" Hinako put in.
The tech nodded. "It's very definitely on a course to hit the planet,
with the intact lower hull aligned to absorb the intense friction of
reentry,
apparently."
"Some kind of suicide option?" Hauptmann asked himself. "A doomsday
feature?"
"Possibly," Hinako agreed. "We need to try and reestablish a
communications link with the surface."
"All of the high-gain arrays have been knocked out, or are already
nonfunctional," the Communication section advised. "There's lasercomm,
but unless the weather clears up down there, it's a dicey proposition."
Hinako had a better idea. "What about the _Tautog?_"
"What about them?" Hauptmann asked.
"We could relay signals through them to the surface," she replied.
"They should be far enough over the planetary horizon by now for us to
reach them with our lasercomm, and they can send the surface a message
through what's left of the satellite network."
Hauptmann looked to the techs. "Do it," he ordered. "Sensory, spot
that corvette and give Commo some good numbers to match up the lasercomm
array."
Several minutes passed while the information was exchanged.
"_Coronet,_ this is the _Tautog,_" a voice crackled over the ether.
"Put Olivera on line," Hauptmann barked into the microphone.
There was a pause.
"Captain Olivera speaking."
Hauptmann didn't mince words. "Captain, we've got a serious problem
here, and we need to warn the surface about it. Can you relay us through
the satellite network?"
"Sure." The sound of him giving orders in the background followed.
"What's up?"
"The main Orochi satellite is going to crash into the Proving Grounds,
and make a hole big enough to park Prince Kuno's ego inside with room to
spare."
Olivera made a low whistle over the commo. "I can see it on my
sensors," he replied. "Don't count on us for any help in knocking it out,
if that's what you have in mind. I'm fresh out of torps, and my guns are
all out of action."
"How about your shuttles?" Hautpmann asked him.
"How much time until the Orochi hits?"
Hauptmann looked at the numbers on the sensory board. "About five-zero
minutes."
"They'll never reach the surface in fifty minutes from our position
in orbit, even if I sent them right now," he replied.
"Damn..." Hauptmann swore. They had the shuttles, but only Combine
pilots to fly them. His own crew had only a single shuttle pilot among
them, and at best they could squeeze in perhaps twenty people at a time.
"We need to warn them in any event," he told Olivera. "Patch us
through and stay close as a relay. Most of our commo suites are out of
action. We'll try to think of something on our end."
"Copy that," Olivera replied. "Good luck. _Tautog_ out."
Hinako arched an eyebrow at him. "The Main Gun?"
Hauptmann nodded. "It's the only thing I can think of that might put
a dent in that thing."
"I'm not sure if we can survive another shot ourselves," she replied.
"I'd better warn Lieutenant Fulton."
Hauptmann agreed. "Order the shuttle to land at the bunker. Tell the
pilot to take the Duke, the rest of the royal family, and as many others
as he can cram into that thing, and get them the hell out of there."
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
18:38 Local Time
"Hey, I'm getting something from the _Coronet!_" Davidge cried. All
but Ranma and Genma were still in the control room at the time. "They must
have detected the Orochi, because they're warning us about it."
"Tell them to send down shuttles at once," Grand Duke Tendo ordered.
"At the very least we can evacuate the non-combatants."
Davidge relayed the order.
"The best they can do is send one shuttle," he replied. "They only
have one pilot."
"That's enough," Tendo declared, knowing that there wouldn't be time
for more than one round trip to the planet. "Have the Shogun and his
retinue, plus any of our techs and ship's crew that aren't needed for
continued operations, assemble on the upper level of the bunker. They'll
be the ones to go."
"What if our plan doesn't work, Dad?" Akane asked him. She didn't want
to think about Ranma failing to destroy the Orochi, but it was something
they had to consider. "Can we hope to survive the impact in this bunker?"
Soun turned to Davidge, who appeared to be the answer man for these
kinds of questions.
"I don't know," the lieutenant replied. "I think we'd manage to weather
the blast effects all right if we sealed up the bunker right before impact,
but the temblor the Orochi will generate on impact, it'll be something
right out of a disaster movie. We might get sealed up in here forever."
"We're better off here," Ryouga declared. He made an oath to himself
that Akari would be on that shuttle.
"I hope you're right," Akane said, and left the control room to find
Ranma. She made her way up the stairs, stopping short at the sound of
Shinnosuke's voice.
He was at the foot of the stairs, balancing on his pushbroom for a
crutch.
"Akane," he said to her in a voice filled with emotion. "I wanted to
thank you for not forgetting about my people. Even if there isn't much
hope for them, it was a kind gesture."
Akane felt a lump form in her throat. "We're not dead yet, Shinnosuke,
and neither are they. Ranma can do this, I know it."
Ranma appeared on the stairwell from the storage room above her.
"This is nuts, old man!" she cried.
"It's our only chance," Genma threw back.
"I know that!" she snarled. "Don't you think I don't know that?! I
still don't have to like it!" Then she realized that Akane and Shinnosuke
were there.
"Ranma!" Akane called to her.
Ranma looked down at her, her face falling in dismay.
"I believe in you, Ranma," Akane told her.
Ranma closed her eyes. "I'll do my best," she said. Then she grabbed
Genma by his neck. "Let's get this goddamned firecracker of yours armed,
already!"
"We need Akane to arm it," Genma replied in a tight voice. "Only a
Tendo can arm one of the family's nuclear arsenal, and she was the one
this bomb's codes were entrusted to."
Ranma looked down at Akane in disbelief. "You knew about this?"
She nodded slowly. "I never thought we'd ever have to use it," she
replied softly. "And I never thought that you would be the one to..."
Ranma waved her off. "There's no time for this," she growled.
"Let's just get it over with."
"Ranma, I'm sorry!" Akane cried.
"Forget it!" she shot back angrily. Ryouga and the Duke appeared at
the door to the control room below them with questioning and concerned
expressions. "I said there's no time. I still have to prep the LAM for an
orbital flight, and we still have to figure out a way for me to carry this
thing up into space."
She jerked her father around and started pulling him up the stairs
to the upper level. "Chop chop, old man!"
Akane, Ryouga, Shinnosuke, and Grand Duke Tendo followed after them.
* * *
Musk Dynasty Regimental Headquarters
Musk Dynasty Landing Zones
18:40 Local Time
"<You're quite certain of that?>" Herb asked over the commo. He had to
prepare a defense against a Combine attack, and did not have time to be
considering yet another variable in his calculations. The officer aboard his
personal DropShip had apparently received some very disconcerting news from
space.
"<Impact is projected to occur in approximately forty-four minutes, my
lord General,>" the officer replied.
Herb grit his teeth in anger. The Orochi was about to crash right into
the Proving Grounds at a velocity high enough to wipe the entire facility
off the landscape, destroying all of the planet's fabled technology in one
cataclysmic moment, and there was nothing that he could do about it.
To lose like this, when the contest for possession of the planet was
not even decided!
He struck the console of his battlemech in a rage, cracking the hard
plastic shell and driving one of his ancillary displays offline.
Damn it all! he swore. So much was lost, and for nothing!
"<Order a general recall of our forces,>" he ordered. "<Troops are to
withdraw to the DropShips for immediate evacuation of the planet. Third
Battalion is to fight a rearguard holding action until ordered to retreat
in haste.>"
He needed to salvage what he could of his troops and escape the
system. Prior to Mousse's departure, they had been able to acquire a few
bits of lostech from the facilities they had captured upon landing, plus
the mechs that had been abandoned at the starport, so perhaps the
expedition was not an utter failure. At least he would not be going back
empty-handed, even if the gains didn't precisely square the balance books
with the loss of two destroyers.
A rare smile lit across his face at another idea. If he could keep
Prince Kuno and his forces occupied up to the last moment, they would be
obliterated by the Orochi! A stunning victory for the Commonwealth that
would do much for his standing with the Elders he wished so ardently to
overthrow.
He thumbed a personal channel on his commo suite. "<Lime, Mint, I
order you to return immediately, and at best speed to the landing zones.>"
There was no response. At least not from either of his men.
"<Lime and Mint are dead, General,>" Mousse replied over the commo.
A vein bulged on Herb's forehead. "<Colonel Mousse!>" he barked.
"<Explain yourself!>"
Mousse appeared on his display. "<They're dead, General. I killed
them. As I am coming to kill *you.*>"
Herb tried not to let his surprise show at the revelation that his
underlings were dead. "<So...>" he said slowly, drawing out the moment
between them. "<She still has dominion over you, eh, Mousse? I must
confess that in the final analysis, I'm not surprised by your utter
faithlessness to anyone or anything but her.>"
"<No, I expect that you weren't,>" Mousse replied. "<Not after I
learned about your standing order to kill Shampoo on sight.>"
Herb nodded his head in concession. "<To the last, you are so
miserably predictable, Mousse. Can't you see that I've been trying to
free you from her?>"
"<I *am* free from her,>" Mousse returned. "<Killing you will be
my first and last act as a free man, and I do it for someone who is not
myself nor Shampoo.>"
In an instant of clarion prescience, Herb understood what Mousse
was saying.
"<A child...>" he replied dully. "<That purple-haired harlot is
carrying your child.>" He slammed his fist down again, consumed with a
fit of jealousy that last stirred itself with the revelation that
Shampoo had made love to Mousse aboard the _Domingo._ Was it possible
that she had intentionally become pregnant as insurance against any
duplicity on Mousse's part?
"<Killing you will be my gift to her,>" Mousse confirmed. "<That
she might grow up in a world without the Musk Dynasty!>"
"<ENOUGH!>" Herb roared imperiously. "<I have had enough of your
fool's tongue, speaking glibly of righteousness while its master wallows
in treachery! The promise of the Musk Dynasty was the greatest gift that
could be given to the men of the Commonwealth, and yet you have spurned
it for nothing more than a whore's whelp and your own tortured sense of
self! No more!>"
He activated an omnidirectional radio beacon and turned his
battlemech north, the only conceivable direction where Mousse could be.
"<Continue the withdrawal!>" he ordered his men on the command
channel. "<Have a Leopard Class DropShip standing by within two minutes
of my broadcasted position to evacuate me.>" He switched back to the
private channel with Mousse. "<There is little time to conclude this,
traitor!>" he called out. "<Home on my beacon and we shall settle this
matter to the satisfaction of all!>"
* * *
Blue Thunder Regimental Headquarters Company
East of the Musk Dynasty Drop Zones
18:52 Local Time
"Very strong indications of Commonwealth total withdrawal," the
tac-net buzzed.
"Leopard Class DropShip lifting off," another voice put in.
"Heading north at high speed."
"Union Class ship lifting off," a third voice announced. "It
appears to be making an orbital insertion burn."
Tatewaki Kuno watched the Musk DropShips lifting off through his
cockpit visor, long streams of white-hot plasma streaming below them
as they raced for the heavens.
"Press the attack!" he ordered. "Onward, men!" His own Thunderbolt
strode free of the forest, missiles bursting from his shoulder mounted
launch drum and into the harried Musk Dynasty rearguard.
"General Prince Kuno!" Captain Kyle called over the command
channel as he cleaved a Musk Shadow Hawk in half with his Thunderbolt's
katana.
"Speak!" Tatewaki bellowed, angry for the interruption in such a
desperate moment. The Commonwealth withdrawal may have only been
temporary, to put them out of immediate danger of being overrun, and
allow them to counter-attack at a later time. He needed to destroy as
much as possible before that happened.
"My lord, our long range sensors are plotting the descent of the
primary Orochi satellite," Kyle said to him. "It is on a direct
collision course with the planet at roughly your position! Estimated
time of impact is in thirty-two minutes!"
"What of it!?" Tatewaki cried angrily. "Do you not realize that
I am putting these heathens to rout!?"
Kyle made an exasperated face. "My lord! The reason they are
departing is that the impact of the Orochi will destroy everything
within one hundred kilometers or more! I urge you to fall back
immediately to your DropShips and leave the planet!"
The look on Tatewaki's face became equally tortured. "Withdraw,
man!?" he raged. "Without Akane Tendo and the Pig-Tailed Girl in my
possession!?"
"But it is suicide to remain, my lord!" Kyle pleaded with him.
Another voice broke in over the command channel, cutting Tatewaki
off from his rebuke.
"My lord Prince," the voice declared. "We are detecting what
appears to be the command beacon of the enemy forces, radiating from
a position north-northeast of your own, at a range of two kilometers,
and heading north. A Leopard Class DropShip appears to be paralleling
that course, at low altitude."
Tatewaki considered it. The Commonwealth commander was not
leaving the planet with the others, not yet, but he was keeping the
option open for evacuation. Why was he not fleeing with the others?
Unless...
"He knows something," he said aloud. "There is something valuable
to the north, something that he dares remain behind, and without his
troops, to obtain..."
He turned his Thunderbolt north, catching the rest of his company
off-guard.
"To the north, men!" he ordered them. "Akane Tendo is there, I can
feel it!"
Kyle broke in once again. "We are detecting unknown signals using
Star League protocols from a position twenty kilometers north of your
location," he conceded. "But there is no time for you to get there, my
lord!"
"Bah!" Tatewaki sneered. "My only fear is that I shall be too late
to stop the Commonwealth commander from taking what is rightfully mine!"
* * *
Test Area North
18:59 Local Time. T-minus 25 minutes to impact
The smell of blood in the cockpit was strong. Mousse ignored the
smell, and shook off the feelings of dizziness that could only be
attributed to blood loss as Herb came into range. With a quiet curse
and a prayer for just a little more strength, he lined up his twin
LRM-15 racks to shoot.
The Crusader was at the edge of a large clearing, a perfect place
for his duel with General Herb, as his missiles would have clear paths
to their target. The approaching general had apparently not noticed him
yet, but he would very soon. When the green box that haloed the Musk
Grand Dragon in his HUD turned green, he squeezed the triggers with a
curse for the evil hybrid general.
Longbow missiles peeled from their launch tubes in the Crusader's
shoulders, corkscrewing across the clearing in twisting arcs of grey
and white smoke. Herb saw the missiles as they fell upon him, and
explosions obscured the battlemech from view for several moments as
they struck. When the smoke cleared, the Grand Dragon continued on, its
armor cratered but intact.
Herb answered with a bolt from the Grand Dragon's arm-mounted PPC,
which whipped through the humid air with fiery arcs of lightning wisping
from the blast. He struck the Crusader low in the torso, scorching a
thick black rut on the armor.
"<I thought you would prefer something more intimate than an
artillery duel, Mousse,>" Herb said to him, scorn dripping from his
voice.
The Crusader was already charging forward into medium range.
Herb launched his own volley of missiles at him as Crossbow SRMs
leaped off the Crusader's hip racks. The missiles wove fiery trails
between each other as they crossed paths, and more than one weapon
hit another in the middle.
"<When the time comes, I'll tear you apart with my hands,>"
Mousse countered.
Herb fired back with another blast of PPC fire. The shot struck
Mousse hard, blasting apart several critical heat sinks in brilliant
clouds of fire and smoke. He reeled from the hits as alarms rang within
his cockpit.
The Grand Dragon followed up with a barrage of laser fire that
knifed into the battered Crusader, carving off chunks of armor and
setting the half-amputated right arm alight as the beams dug into the
exposed myomer bundles.
"<It's not too late to come to your senses,>" Herb told him as
the Crusader burned. "<Give up your vendetta and return to the Musk!>"
"<Do you take me for a fool?!>" Mousse countered, hammering at the
Grand Dragon with his left arm machinegun while he prepared another SRM
barrage. "<There is no place for me there!>"
"<I understand all too well the effect Shampoo can have on a man,>"
Herb said coolly to him, while aligning his own weapons for a close range
shot. "<I'm willing to overlook your behavior under her influence. I'm
even willing to put aside the deaths of my henchmen, Mousse, because I
see what an asset you can be to the Musk Dynasty!>"
He held his fire even as Mousse held his.
"<Why do you think I came to you with that assignment on Tau Ceti?>"
he went on, confident that he had Mousse's attention now. The two 'mechs
circled each other warily as he spoke. "<You are more important to me and
the future of the Musk than any hundred loyal hybrids, Mousse. You were
one of the Joketsuzoku, pure blooded, and yet your coming over to the
Dynasty is the spark of inspiration my army needs to succeed.>"
"<Think about it,>" he continued. "<Who better to serve as an example
against the corruption and virtual slavery of the Elders than you?>"
Mousse thought about it for as long as it took to squeeze the twin
weapon triggers on his controls.
"<It's too late for all of that now!>" he bellowed as the missiles
screamed off their hip racks, blasting into the center mass of the Grand
Dragon. A PPC bolt crackled into him as they exploded, and he felt the
Crusader buckle from the hit. Something deep within the torso came apart
with a roar, and the battlemech began to tremble and shake. Alarms screamed
in his cockpit, the low wail of the high radiation alert foremost in his
mind.
He desperate glance at the dosimeter display as he fought for control
over his battlemech told him what he feared: parts of the fusion reactor
radiation shield below his cockpit had failed, and he had received at least
two-hundred centigrays of exposure - a potentially lethal dose without
dedicated medical treatment. The reactor began an automated shutdown,
which he cancelled with a slamming fist on the override button. Not yet.
Not like this.
Herb's Grand Dragon shrugged off the missile hits, but he could see
by the ragged armor that Herb was vulnerable. He threw his battlemech
forward into a clinch, grappling with Herb and trying to wrench the Grand
Dragon off its feet with his right arm stump.
The Grand Dragon was only a little lighter than his 65 ton Crusader,
but Mousse's 'mech had been designed for formidable strength, and was able
to lift his enemy from the churned ground. The Grand Dragon clubbed at his
head savagely with its PPC cannon arm, knocking him about the cockpit as
he wrenched at his controls, but he did not let go.
The Crusader slammed the Grand Dragon to the ground with a thunderous
sound, then fell upon it, spilling liquid nitrogen coolant from the many
rents in its armor and systemry, and freezing the hulls of both 'mechs in
frosty patches of white. Arcs of plasma from the fusion plant licked across
both war machines as the Crusader began to fail. Missiles began to cook
off from the shoulder launchers, spiraling crazily into the distance.
Mousse eyed the dosimeter as he coaxed strength from his battlemech's
failing limbs. Four-hundred centigrays and rising. He could almost feel
the gamma and fast neutron radiation cooking him, though even this lethal
amount of energy left no immediate physical marks upon him.
He locked his good limb upon the Grand Dragon's head and squeezed
as hard as he could. Armor buckled under his grip, and the cockpit visor
spidered into a tracery of cracks. General Herb's scream of mingled rage
and alarm was music to his ears.
The reactor failed of its own accord before he could finish the job,
and the hand actuators went limp. He watched numbly as the cockpit hatch
on the Grand Dragon sprang open, and his nemesis crawled clear of the
wreck.
He was exhausted. The blood that had soaked into his ejector seat was
now sticky and congealing. His fingers felt tingly, and his head swam as
he blinked at the dosimeter. Seven-hundred centigrays. If he didn't die of
blood loss, he had about three weeks of slow death from radiation injury
to look forward to.
He pulled himself up from the ejector seat and through his own cockpit
hatch. Herb would die, he had to die. There would be no place for him in
the afterlife if he did not succeed in that.
The hybrid general did not hear him as he slithered from his hatch. He
was preoccupied with his radio remote, calling to a nearby DropShip to come
pick him up. Mousse blinked his watery eyes, and saw the blurry brick-shape
of a Leopard Class ship moving in from the southwest. Herb reached into his
robes and withdrew a signal star, shooting it into the sky to mark his
position.
Mousse lost his balance then, and fell badly to land upon the hard and
scarred torso hull of the Grand Dragon. The sound caught Herb's attention,
and Mousse heard the sound of footsteps approaching him. He raised his head
to see Herb looking up at him from the ground two meters below and in front
of him.
The hybrid general cocked his head at him questioningly.
"<Radiation?>" he asked smugly.
Mousse croaked out a reply.
"<I thought so,>" Herb said, nodding. "<You left your mic open during
our struggle, and I heard the alarm inside your cockpit.>" He made a tsk'ing
sound. "<I suppose I'll be doing you a favor by killing you now, before you
have a chance to succumb. I'm told that the experience is quite horrific.>"
Herb coughed into his shoulder, flexed his arms, and threw out his
hands in preparation for one of the lethal ki-blasts for which he was most
notorious.
"<You'll forgive me if I don't get too close to you,>" Herb said
sourly. "<Farewell, Mousse... You can take comfort in the fact that
Shampoo and your child will be joining you shortly in the void, as I am
reasonably assured of the fact that the Orochi satellite is within twenty
minutes of crashing into the planet and turning this entire section of the
continent into charred ruins.>"
Energy began to crackle within the outstretched hands of the hybrid
general.
Mousse turned his head from side to side, looking for escape, attack,
anything to keep from ending like this. What he saw filled him with one
last desperate hope.
As Herb's ki-blast built up to the level where even aligned-crystal
steel armor plate would be torn asunder, Mousse threw one of his hidden
weapons with the last of his strength. The weapon arced over Herb's
shoulder in a dull olive flash, narrowly missing him. Herb greeted this
last gesture of defiance with a smugly raised eyebrow as he drew breath
for the shout that would annihilate Mousee.
The weapon, however, had other ideas.
It struck the casing of a longbow missile that had fallen from
the shoulder launch tubes of his Crusader and onto the muddy ground. Then,
being an antipersonnel hand grenade, and not a knife as Herb had believed,
it exploded.
What followed was a lesson on the effects of sympathetic detonations
in destabilized plastic-bonded high explosives.
* * *
Orochi Bunker
18:59 Local Time. T-minus 25 minutes to impact
The thermonuclear bomb could talk.
"Present identification and arming codes to authorize thermonuclear
release," it declared.
Akane stepped up to the weapon, and placed a hand upon a sensor
plate as she had been hastily instructed to do by her father and Kasumi
prior to leaving Nerima. Both members of her family now huddled over her
and the weapon as it sat in its packing crate next to the Phoenix Hawk
LAM.
"I am Lady Akane Tendo of Nerima, Viscountess of Gondolin," she said
in a loud yet strained voice. "Arming Code for full thermonuclear release
is NOVEMBER-VICTOR-YANKEE-NINER-NINER-NINER-HOTEL-ALFA-CHARLIE."
The bomb considered her reply.
"Present second stage identification and concurrence-authorization for
thermonuclear release."
This time Genma stepped up, and placed his hand upon the sensor plate.
"I am Commander Genma Saotome, under warrant from the Grand Duke of
the Nerima Confederation," he told it. "I concur with the order to arm and
release. Second Stage Arming Code for full thermonuclear release is FOXTROT-
MIKE-ZULU-ZERO-ZERO-TWO-OSCAR-OSCAR-ZULU."
"Enter desired time delay and present final authorization for full
thermonuclear release," the bomb said to them.
Akane looked to Ranma, who gave her a firm nod. She placed her hand
once more upon the sensor plate. "Final authorization code for full
thermonuclear release is FOXTROT-TANGO-NOVEMBER-SIX-FOUR-TWO-WHISKEY-TANGO-
FOXTROT."
"And then some," Ranma agreed as Akane spoke aloud the last three
codes.
"Authorization granted for full thermonuclear release. Projected
yield: one-thousand kilotons." the bomb declared. "Enter time delay or
activate default setting to proceed."
Akane backed away from the weapon, closing the access panel as she
did so.
"It's ready," she declared.
"This thing's a time bomb?" Ranma asked the Duke.
Soun nodded. "Most nuclear weapons are," he replied.
"How long a delay can I have?"
"Ten thousand seconds," Soun answered for him.
"Can I stop the countdown once it's started?" she asked.
Soun shook his head. "Normally, yes. But it requires both people
who armed it to rescind a release order."
Ranma saw his point. Akane and his old man couldn't exactly ride
along with him in the cockpit in case they wanted to call it off.
"Well, I'll need at least fifteen minutes to make it into space,
or at least high enough up that the blast from this thing won't wipe
you all out on the ground."
"There is a dead man's switch function for the device, Ranma,"
Kasumi said to him. "It starts a default one minute countdown from the
moment the firing button is pressed."
Ranma nodded. He could use the micromanipulator arms stowed within
the right forearm of his LAM for the delicate work of pressing such a
button. "Yeah, I guess it might be too dicey to go guessing exactly how
much time it will take to deliver this damn thing." She did not like
standing next to the bomb, and certainly not with it armed.
Lieutenant Davidge presented a few schematic drawings for her to
look at as she checked her pressure suit systems one more time.
"You want to get it as close as you can to the top center of the
unit, or to the main engine nozzles in the ventral hull," he told her.
"A thousand kilotons is a lot of boom, but it might not be possible to
vaporize the Orochi outright, even with that much destructive power."
"You're talking about destabilizing the fusion plant," Ranma said
to him.
"That's right," Davidge agreed. "The reactor is still operational,
so any kind of instantaneous damage to the core might just blow the
whole thing at once. The higher up you are when it happens, the better,
of course. The blast from the fusion plant might be as bad as the bomb
itself, and an atmosphere will only compound the blast effects."
"Great," Ranma said with a shrug. "Now anyone have any ideas on
how I'm gonna get this thing into low orbit?" She gestured to the bomb,
which was the size of an oil drum. "It's too big to ride along with me
in the cockpit, and there aren't any hardpoint mounts on my LAM."
Akari presented herself with a salute. "Captain Saotome, I believe
we can fit the bomb comfortably within the left hand of your mech during
transit, if I relax the standard flexor tensions within the forearm
actuators a few points. That will allow you to carry it safely in Fighter
Mode, and let you deploy it in either Airmech or Battlemech Modes."
"Great," Ranma said with little enthusiasm. "How long will it take?"
She disappeared underneath the fighter with a torque wrench in hand
without replying. The sound of metallic clacking rang out from the
undercarriage before she reappeared with a smile on her face.
She brushed her nails on her coveralls. "Already done, sir."
"Good," Ranma declared, relieved to have what appeared to be a
reliable solution to the problem while they had only minutes left in
which to act. "Now get on the shuttle, before it leaves."
The lone shuttle from the _Coronet_ rested, with its turbojet engines
running, near the battlemechs. The Shogun of the Furinkan Combine and most
of his retinue were already aboard, and it was time for the other non-
combatants in their group to join them.
Akari looked to Ryouga for an instant before responding. Ranma could
tell by the look on the Lost Boy's face what the answer would be before
she even spoke.
"I'm staying here with Ryouga," she replied softly.
Ranma let it go at that. "Let's get it loaded, then," she said. She
looked up at the dimming sky. The Orochi was already a faint smudge of
light against the deep blue of dusk.
TO BE CONCLUDED
Author's Notes:
1. All right already! I'm not done yet! I admit it! Some of you, I'm sure,
are quite pleased that this will bleed into another installment, but I'm
sure there are just as many who want to see an ending! Be patient! There
ain't much left for me to do.
2. The effects of the primary Orochi satellite's impact with Ryuugenzawa
were
based upon results generated by the Solar System Impact Simulator program
created by Dr. Douglas P. Hamilton. To simulate the Orochi, I used an iron
asteroid of 500 meters in diameter, moving at a very modest 12km/sec
velocity.
The calculated impact would release an amount of energy equivalent to a
nuclear weapon with a yield of 8,783 megatons; generate a magnitude 8.2
earthquake; and leave a crater 6.7 kilometers in diameter, and 0.5
kilometers
deep! Needless to say, anyone within about a 100 kilometers of the impact
site is going to die, and there may be serious climatological effects from
such an impact.
Want to smack one of the planets of the Sol system around? Here's the URL:
http://janus.astro.umd.edu/astro/impact.html
Free The Nukes!
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Sir Desaix, member # 116 of the Knights of the True Fiancee
anime fanfics available at
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