(NOTE: These credits should be scrolled through slowly while Journey's "Be Good To Yourself" is played very loud in the background. --G.) Eyrie Productions, Uninc. and British-AnimeTech, Limited present A Benjamin D. Hutchins Production A MegaZone Film Executive Producer: Rob Mandeville CROSSROADS Undocumented Features Volume Four THE CAST (In order of appearance) Gryphon..........................................Benjamin D. Hutchins Punk No. 1.....................................................Johnny Punk No. 2......................................................Tommy Kei.....................................................Kei J. Morgan Yuri.....................................................Yuri Daniels Zoner..........................Brian ("That's not my name!") Bikowicz Meph................................................................? ReRob (Penna)..........................................Rob Mandeville Deedlit (Istara)............................Deedlit Satori Mandeville Kevin (Tanderah)..........................................Kevin Tefft Cheryl.Z (Fachan).....................................Cheryl Zukowsky Largo..GENOM Corporation Type 481-A-S Hyper-Buma J-2073-D-2670-S-1871 Eve Tokimatsuri..............................Enhanced Video Emulation Vision........Virtual Interface System with Integrated Organizational Networking Wolfgang....................Baron Lord Wolfgang Amadeus Fahrvergnugen Sparks...............................................TCH2 Karen Davis Cmdr. Saavik...................................................Saavik Max.................................................Maximilian Hunter Vanessa.................................................Vanessa Leeds Buma No. 1.....................GENOM Corporation Type 60-A Buma F-242 Not Gryphon.............GENOM Corporation Type 33/S Replicant GRP-HN1 Jamie....................................................Jaime Finney Asrial..................Her Imperial Majesty Asrial, Queen of Salusia Hagbard................................................Hagbard Celine George....................................................George Dorn Chief O'Brien.....................................CPO Melissa O'Brien Dr. Selar.......................................................Selar Reality...............................................Vaughn C. Gross Zoner2.........................Brian ("That's not my name!") Bikowicz Gryphon2.........................................Benjamin D. Hutchins ReRob2.................................................Rob Mandeville Vaughn................................................Vaughn C. Gross Sherlock Holmes...........................................Edison Bell q...........................................................John Todd Q......................................................John De Lancie Iczer-1................................GENOM Corporation I.C.Z.E.R.-1 Deunan...................................................Deunan Knute Briareos.......................................Briareos Hecatonchires Haywire..................................................Mark Luchini Perry.................................................Perry Aldzinjal Gordo..............................................G'rdna' Ripperfang Tricia............................................Patricia M. Currier Pilot Officer McMurphy...................................Sal McMurphy Pilot Officer Coltrane...................................Jon Coltrane Kwei-Chang Caine........GENOM Corporation Type Bu-55c Buma 1138-04462 Decker-2..................GENOM Corporation Type 33/S Replicant DKR-2 P2B(fnord)H-272......GENOM Corporation Type 60-B Buma P2B(fnord)H-272 Iczer-2................................GENOM Corporation I.C.Z.E.R.-2 The original text of this document was written in the Software Publishing Company's Professional Write Plus under Microsoft Windows 3.1, on an IMH Associates Colossus 25 macrotower computer. Original draft outputs came from a Hewlett Packard DeskJet PLUS printer. This document was constructed at Eyrie Productions, Uninc., in its Morgan 401, 14 Dover St. #2B, and 105 Morgan Lane offices, from April 1992 to February 1993. The authors wish to thank all their friends who contributed to the editing, proofreading, error-checking and general kibbitzing of this work, as well as those who helped them out through the difficult times that seem to have made some of you think they had split up. Thanks also to all the performers who have inspired and aided the authors with their work and their lives, especially Def Leppard, for showing us that even the best have to fight their way through adversity. Thanks as well to all those people whose creations we have used in this story. The odds that we'll meet many of you are slim, but we thank you from the bottom of our hearts anyway. They include, but are not limited to: Haruka Takachiho, Katsuhiro Otomo, Kenichi Sonoda, Masamune Shirow, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Joseph H. Martin, Jr., Ben Dunn, Robert Anton Wilson, Robert Shea, and Gene Roddenberry. And finally, special thanks to all of you, for your patience and dedication to the characters we so love. This one's for you, and, of course, for Kei and Yuri. Benjamin D. Hutchins 105 Morgan Lane Millinocket, ME 04462 (207)723-6650 MegaZone 18 Hampden St. #3 Worcester, MA 01609 (508)831-7437 Rob Mandeville Student Box #2906 100 Institute Road Worcester, MA 01609 (508)791-5408 -------------------------------------------------------------------ONE "The entire sum of existence is the magic of being needed by just one person." -- Vii Putnam 20 JUNE 2388 VESPER, MUSASHI The airspace over the planet Musashi was not terribly busy; there was nothing anybody wanted there, except for the various nasty chemicals that were mined from its wastelands. It had once been a nice planet, but a war and a hundred years of apathy had just about seen to that. Today, however, the planet was to see a visitor. With a blaze of light, a small spacecraft emerged from superluminal drive some ten AUs from the planet, coasting into the system at .7 C. It was constructed in the shape of an aerodyne, perhaps a fightercraft of centuries past; on its back were huge, powerful thrusters which now belched blue fire. At its controls was a man wearing a suit of CVR-3 armor, bearing ship insignia not seen for over a century. The spacecraft itself bore odd symbols; a century-outdated WWWA logo on one tailfin, for example, an almost-forgotten Wedge Defense Force symbol under its cockpit canopy, the legend VVF-261-1, and the same ship signs. It was, in fact, a VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie. The pilot of the craft established contact with planetside authorities and made planetfall with no difficulty. After a bit of time clearing customs and seeing to the maintenance and servicing of his vehicle, he departed the spaceport at which he had arrived. The visitor was short, heavy-set, and as he left the spaceport was dressed in baggy black fatigues, a well-worn grey Safematic cap, and a thin black leather tie. The only things remotely fancy about his attire were his shoes, black and white British Knights, and his brown leather trench coat, which a military historian would have recognized as the standard officer's issue of the old Wedge Defense Force, with the Wedge Defense Force, Eight-Ball Squadron, and WWWA patches and the airbrushed painting of a pretty silver-haired woman on the back. The only adornments he wore were a wristwatch and a small, triangular purple earring in his left earlobe. Fingerless black leather gloves covered his hands. The grips of a pair of Japanese swords protruded above his right shoulder. He knew where he was; he was in the city of Vesper, on the planet Musashi, coreward of Terra in the United Federation of Planets. A free city-state on the face of a planet state; almost unheard of in Federation-level politics and government. An oddity on an odd planet. Musashi was mostly uninhabitable--reterraforming after the civil war had ceased, the budget gone, after only eight percent of the surface was changed. Vesper was one of the planet's two cities; the other, Zepan, laid claim to that eight percent, as well as all the rest of Musashi's soil except what was under Vesper's dome. That was just fine with the Vesperites, as most of that soil was carcinogenic ash. It always rained in Vesper, thanks to the ancient and obsolescent climate control dome over the city; condensation formed on it from the heavy industry and thick population present there, then fell back to the streets, washing them with caustic chemicals and the occasional bit of water. The stranger knew that; that was why his clothing was coated with chem-repellent polymers. It didn't feel any different, but it shed water and the like better than a heavy wax job on hand-rubbed lacquer. He knew where he was; he'd been here before. He turned left out of the alley, moving quickly and deliberately toward the personal transportation dealership at the end of the street. It was always dark in Vesper as well as rainy; the dome had long ago darkened permanently, a sad side effect of the beating of the merciless sun upon the city. The old plastics in the dome decayed slightly, the polarization slipped, and poonk! no more light. It was gradual; at first the dome always rendered the intolerable and dangerous radiation a pleasant, sunny day. Then the polarization began to slip and the sky dimmed; eventually it was pitch black. Without the sunlight, artificial heating was brought in; that, the population explosion, and the lack of sunlight and heat caused the water index to topple, causing the perpetual rain. On an alley wall was a poster for a gig coming up. The band was Basic Nastiness. The concert was called, strangely enough, "Roadtrip to Jersey (Don't Nobody Tell Tim)". The stranger recognized the sign, and might have even chuckled at a different place and time. But not here, not now. A pair of punks took this lapse in the stranger's stride for their own advantage, and stepped out of the alley in front of him. They wore rags and the mark of serious substance abuse; their skin was pale, blotchy, and discolored from near-constant exposure to the toxic rain. Both wore sunglasses. "Nice jacket, man, " one of them said. The stranger noted the slightly unbalanced cant to his bearing, marked him as desperate, and continued on, not saying a word. The punks fell into step beside him. "Don't you think that's a nice jacket, Tommy?" the punk said. "Yeah," Tommy agreed. "Yeah, Johnny, that's a nice jacket." "A real nice jacket. I think that jacket could keep me dry for a long time, don't you think so, Tommy?" "Yeah. Yeah, Johnny, I think so. Can I have his hat?" "Yeah, sure, Tommy, you can have his hat. C'mon, pop, give 'em up." The stranger didn't even look at him; he just kept walking. "I said, `give 'em up'!" the punk hollered. The stranger ignored him in much the same way that a helpless victim does not. [Apologies to Douglas Adams.] The punk pulled a large knife from one of his boots. "One last warning," he cautioned. The stranger didn't look at him. Instead, he took his black-gloved left hand out of his pocket, snapped out his left arm faster than Johnny's eye could follow, grabbed the knife hand in his own, and applied his open right palm to Johnny's chest. Johnny slammed back against the building, but managed to keep a grip on his knife. He held that same knife out, brandishing it, shouting in a high-pitched voice, "Don't make me cut you, man!" The stranger smiled. Johnny lunged. The stranger ducked aside, his left hand plunging into his coat; there was a flash of metal. Johnny was slammed back against the wall by the stranger's left fist; his knife clattered to the sidewalk. The stranger pulled his tanto smoothly out of Johnny's sternum and, wiping it, calmly put it away. Tommy ran away, in front of a car, and was hit quite hard as his partner sagged limply to the ground. "It's a coat, not a jacket, you cretin," the stranger told Johnny's corpse, and kept walking unconcernedly as he replaced the sword. After all, the pedestrian getting hit had nothing to do with him, did it? Two blocks down, the stranger noticed a dataterm bearing the legend VESPER TODAY (some enterprising youth with a laser etcher had added "Tomorrow the Galaxy" underneath). He smiled, a small, private smile, and paused, feeding it a credit chit and tapping in a code. He waited; it was an old dataterm model, and slow. Presently, it spat several small, waxy pieces of fiberplast into a small receptacle; he picked them up, put them into his pocket, retrieved his credit chit and continued on his way. When he arrived at the transdealer, a salesman immediately started showing him the latest in electric scoots, minicars, etc. The stranger wanted none of that. In a quiet but firm voice he indicated the ExoSalusia Industries J-9300-T Tornado gravbike standing in the special section. The salesman expounded for nearly ten minutes on the difficulty of obtaining the proper paperwork for the ownership and use of such a vehicle--which the stranger promptly produced, along with a registered credit chit locked in for precisely the correct amount of money. "Wait," said the salesman as the stranger threw a leg over the gravbike and inserted his newly-purchased key. "You need a helmet." The stranger took off his hat and folded it over onto the brim, forming a small wad of fabric which he slipped into the map pocket of his jacket. "How silly of me," he said calmly. He proceeded to buy the toughest available one, with the optional armor plating, comm gear, and HUD. That taken care of, he engaged the anti-rain field and waited for the salesman to get the door open, then kicked in the maneuvering thrusters and made his way onto the street. The salesman stood in wonderment, and then went to the desk and announced his retirement. He had just sold a 2-millon-credit ExoSal gravbike that was on order, then cancelled, and a half year old; it was expected that the overhead of that one vehicle would drive them out of business. And then, like some sort of guardian angel, a man named Benjamin D. Hutchins had come and bought it. Hutchins melded with the flow of traffic easily, rather more easily than normal considering how many people got the hell out of the way when they saw someone riding an ExoSal J-9300-T. He made his way through traffic as though he knew the city well, which, of course, he did; traffic thinned out considerably as he neared the exolock. Here his tough leather coat, gloves, helmet and fatigue pants would come in handy; the outside world from Vesper was a sun-baked desert. Riding a gravbike would involve a great deal of dust and heat; fortunately, his clothing was also modified for automatic climate control. Hutchins slammed the gravbike's main thrusters online as he entered the exitube; the fusion plant responded with a snarl of pure power, and the thruster throats belched blue radiance in a trail two feet long. His helmet automatically compensated to keep him from being blinded by the raw, unfiltered sunlight that blasted across him as he exited the black dome over Vesper. Of course, the tunnel leading out was gradated to make the transition less noticeable and more bearable, but at the speed he had the Tornado going at, it was like a high-speed film dissolve. Within moments he was howling across the desert of Musashi. Within an hour, his target was in sight; a smallish starship, like a great, graceful, but brawny-looking starfighter with wide wings and big drive thrusters. Its wings were turned up for landing position, the ramp was up, and the cockpit lights were out. The vessel was called Lovely Angel, and was thermocoated in a brilliant scarlet. It was a vessel he was quite familiar with. It had automatic defenses; or, the crew, for all he knew, might be home and on alert. So much the better. Snapping off the foreign-matter shield to free up more power for the thrusters, he raised the fine control to full and dropped the autobalance to almost completely off. At this setting he was controlling the bike fully on his own, flying it by the seat of his pants as it were. As he had hoped, various weapon turrets on the Lovely Angel swung to face him as he approached. Warnings rang in his headset, but he didn't know if they were from live individuals or recordings. After the final warning, the laser turrets opened up. <<< Journey: Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) >>> A deadly pattern of fire streaked from the various turrets, turning the entire portside fire arc of Lovely Angel into a killzone. Hutchins rode his J-9300 through the inferno of blazing neon blue death with the practiced ease of a professional and the raw, to-the-edge skill of a man who is desperately enjoying what he's doing. Lovely Angel opened up with her short-range missile launchers; Hutchins weaved, ducked, and dodged madly, even evading the heat-seeking missiles that homed on his thruster exhaust. He was doing almost 370 kph when he suddenly slammed the braking thruster full-on; by now he was inside the starship's arcs of fire. He came to a thundering stop next to the main engine reactor, then slapped his palm against the hull as if he were laying an anti-matter limpet mine. Then he gunned the fusion plant and threw the thrusters back into full power, streaking away from Lovely Angel and evading with all his radar-aided might. Again the airspace became a deathzone; this time much further from the ship, since the systems were now quite aware of his presence and the time for range warnings was long past. The pattern of laser fire and missile salvos led Hutchins to believe that someone he was quite familiar with was running the guns manually anyway. A heat-seeking SRM slammed into the sand less than four feet from the gravbike; the pulse created by its electroplast warhead disrupted the gravfield for a split-second. Many a novice and even experienced gravbiker has died due to such disruptions, augered in 400-plus-kph bikes with a sudden lack of gravitic suspension. The grav on one side drops, the bike rolls, and you're a smear on the ground. Hutchins leaned hard the other way, finding the center and shifting it under the right side's still-operative gravfield; moments later the left side came back online, the generators recalibrated by the autocomp. He reached into his jacket and hit the button that would've detonated the mine. The fire from Lovely Angel ceased. Had the mine really been there, the explosion resulting from his releasing the magbottle around the anti-matter slug that made up its core would've blown the entire engine compartment off of Lovely Angel. The explosion resulting from that would've vaporized the rest of the ship and turned the surrounding fifty to a hundred meters radius into fused glass. Hutchins slung the bike to a stop, half-facing the starship, stopped, put down a leg, and tabbed the comm unit in his helmet. "Bang, Kei," he said quietly. "You're dead." "Hutchins, you jerk," a female voice replied, "get your ass in here! What in hell are you doing on this dustball anyway?" He grinned and drove the bike back to the Lovely Angel. -------------------------------------------------------------------TWO "Harmony was the soul of our companionship, and the diversity and contrast that subsisted in our characters drew us nearer together." --Frankenstein Benjamin D. Hutchins wasn't the sort of man Kei usually went for; too short, too heavyset, and altogether too quiet. Kei was a loud person, and she liked loud people. Short, silent Hutchins seemed appropriate for Yuri, perhaps, but no; as Hutchins once said, "There are things known and there are things unknown, and somewhere in the middle are me and Kei." Kei put it more succinctly with: "Guess I'm funny that way." But that was a long time ago. Not that it mattered; they were still the same relative ages. Such were the benefits of the Omega-2 retrovirus. Damned expensive, in ways beyond monetary--but handy. Hutchins parked his Tornado at the bottom of the ramp and walked to the top; it was at that point that he stopped and came rigidly to attention. From somewhere else in the ship came his hosts, the crew of Lovely Angel; the WWWA esper team known far and wide as the Dirty Pair. Ben gave the standard Wedge Defense Force salute and said stiffly, "Permission to come aboard, ma'am?" "I wouldn't touch that line..." Yuri muttered. "Shut up, Yuri," Kei growled, elbowing her partner sharply in the ribs. "Granted," she replied. "It's good to see you again," said Hutchins, relaxing from his military pose. There was a hint of pain in his eyes and his voice, and something else as well... "And you," Yuri replied. "It's been far too long," Kei added. She too seemed haunted by something. "Has it? I lose track." They started walking back, toward the wardroom. "You know, I could've thoroughly hosed you guys. What's the matter, Kei? Your aim really sucked." "You always did know how to compliment a girl." "What're you doing here?" Ben asked after they had settled into the wardroom. "I don't see any mass death, destruction, and chaos around..." "We don't do that anymore," Yuri said quietly. "Our last fourteen missions have come off without a single hitch. We've almost lost that horrid nickname." "No kidding? People have stopped calling you the Lovely Angels?" He got a wardroom-sofa pillow in the face for that one. Just then, a huge mound of redblack fur sloped into the room, fixed Hutchins with a mournful expression, and uttered a low meow. "Mughi! Hey, chummer, what's happening? Haven't seen you in a while," Hutchins called, reaching out to scratch the huge, catlike animal behind an ear. "He's missed you," Kei said. "He's not the only one," Yuri muttered. "Oh, shut up, Yuri!" Kei turned to Ben. "Are you planning on staying?" "I don't really know at this point...right now, I could do with a shower and some food, in that order." "You know where the shower is; welcome to it." After three months of hard starfaring to get here in the first place and then a long, hard ride across the desert, the shower was the most marvelous thing in the universe. Ben was almost starting to feel human again, although, by sheer point of fact, he wasn't; too much metal, retroviral gene modification, and biometabolic augmentation in him for that any more. It didn't bother him; cyberpsychosis was not something he was especially concerned with being a victim of. Hot water raced across his skin as he worked at scrubbing out the last of the Musashi dust. He leaned back against the wall and let it hit him full in the face, marveling at the way a simple thing like a shower could make him happy. He wasn't a hard man to please, really; he liked simple things. Simple food, simple showers...simple relationships... He shook his head violently, squeezing his eyes shut, spraying water from his long hair across the cubicle. That was a long time ago, he said to himself, we're not gonna get into that again. The shower door opened. He whirled, his wired reflexes kicking to full levels, dropping to a combative semi-crouch, all by reflex. With a smile, Kei stepped into the shower. "Little jumpy, aren't you?" "Kei--I--what are you doing here?" "Showering, you?" "Wh--" "I wanted to talk to you, privately; I figured this would be just about the best place to do that." "Talk to me about what?" "You...me...us..." "Kei--" "Don't interrupt me. I know what happened back then hurt you a lot. It hurt me too. I still have scars from it, and I'm sure you do too." Kei paused for a moment, reflecting on their past. "But what we had was special... damn it, I don't want to just let it die!" "Kei...we haven't seen each other for a hundred years, except to shoot at each other. It's been dead. For a century, dead." "No. It's been hibernating. Waiting for the right moment." She smiled. "I kinda think that moment's here." "What do--" "If you didn't want this to happen, why did you come here in the first place?" "I..." He had no response for that one. "Well?" "I guess I did, subconsciously...I'm just...I dunno, afraid. Afraid it might happen again, afraid it might be worse. Damn it, Kei, I loved you, and part of me still does. What you did to me almost killed me, in more ways than one. I almost killed myself over it, but I was stronger than that, even then." "I didn't mean to hurt you, I didn't want to hurt you...I thought you were the one responsible for it. It wasn't until just a couple of years ago that I knew you hadn't done anything. Two years I've had trouble sleeping at night because I've known we split for no good reason." She looked on the verge of tears. "Two years of agony knowing I hated you when I should've loved you all the more." "Look, try to understand my position here...I've been waiting for you to come to a decision ever since you said you needed time. But now...now that the time is here I'm scared of what might happen." "Whatever happens...just let it." An hour later, Ben was sitting on the corner of the bed in his old cabin and Kei was crying on his shoulder. Years of aggression and bottled-up guilt, amplified by the odd depression one feels at certain times in one's life, were rushing out of her, and the shoulder of Ben's blue bathrobe was soaking through. His arms were around her, and he was stroking her back in a comforting manner. "You don't need to feel this way," Ben told her softly. "I told you, I forgave you. I always told you that, even when you were trying to kill me." "And I don't understand why you should," Kei replied, her voice muffled. "I hated you, I wanted you dead...and you infuriated me all the more by never hating me back." "I had some good friends," Ben said with a small grin. "Listen," he went on, "I don't think dwelling on the past is a good idea. We've come full circle in this; I think we should just start all over again. Clean slate. No strings. What do you say?" "Okay," Kei replied. "Hi. My name's Kei--" "That isn't quite what I meant," Gryphon said with a smile. They drew one another into a tighter embrace. <<>> In the fore end of the ship, fiddling around with something or other on the Angel's shipboard computer, Yuri heard an electronic lock go PING! as it was engaged. She smiled, and so did Mughi. -----------------------------------------------------------------THREE "Shared joy is increased; shared pain is lessened." --Anonymous On a small planet several thousand light years from anywhere, a man made a decision. The communication had reached him a couple of days before, and he had been soul-searching ever since. Now was the time, he decided; damn it, if he could go off and bravely face his fears, admit his mistakes, and so on, then so could he. Besides, he couldn't let that bastard think he was better. He got up from the table, folded down the computer thereinstalled, and headed toward the back of his house, pulling on the gloves of his flightsuit. He opened the door to the garage with a keypad and stepped out, putting on his helmet. Now was the time. He kept repeating that phrase in his head. Now is the time, now is the time. No turning back. No regrets. He opened the door to his starcraft and settled into the pilot's seat. Tapping control codes with practiced ease, he rediscovered long-dormant routines still came easily and keyed the door open. The strange starship rose on a cushion of air and blasted out, reaching escape velocity posthaste and streaking into deep space. It appeared to have a pair of superluminal warp nacelles built into a small living cabin, much like the executive transports the megacorps used. However, the nose section strongly resembled an old Terran surface vehicle. The entire craft was a resplendent fire-red and weapons ports could barely be seen. On its side, in fading black letters, could be seen the words: WARPZONE W.D.F. WAYWARD SON COMMAND WWWA-101162 The man laid in the coordinates for Musashi and kicked in the superluminal drive. Four days later he emerged from hyperspace near Musashi. He, like Ben, came in the most exciting way possible, needing the adrenaline rush to stiffen his resolve and make it ever harder for him to back down. He established a geosynchronous orbit and contacted the planetary officials for permission to land. With said permission, the starship did something most unusual. The nose section extended down and forward from the superluminal drive section on twin arms. A blue glow flared around the aft section of the nose, and it streaked away from its moorings toward the atmosphere. It looked for all the world like an ancient Terran Dodge Daytona. <<< Riggs: Radar Rider >>> The man grounded the Daytona outside the Vesper dome and raced out across the sand at its maximum speed. Lovely Angel's sensors picked up the incoming vehicle four miles out and immediately tossed a picture of it onto a viewscreen. Kei, Yuri, Mughi, and Ben were crammed into the cockpit watching, and as the image of a fire-red Dodge Daytona streaking across the Musashi ash filled the main screen, Ben leaped in the air and let out a triumphant whoop. He felt better than he had in nearly a century--he and the woman he loved were together again, and here came one of his best friends out of hiding--life was sweet, life was goddamn sweet. Yuri felt as Kei had four days previously, as she contemplated talking with Ben about what had transpired--full of annoyingly fluttery insects who refused to keep still. Unlike Kei, she didn't slam down over that feeling a lid of bravado and coat the whole thing with a thick layer of tough; part of Ben and Kei's relationship was melting through layers like that. Yuri had no intentions of shooting at this new arrival. (Although it bears pointing out that Kei had no intentions of hitting Ben.) The Daytona landing craft thus roared unchallenged up to the ramp of the larger starship and ground to a halt inches from one of the landing gear. The door opened and its pilot, resplendent in a tasteful, if antiquarian, WDF Wayward Son flightsuit sporting captain's bars, stepped out. He pulled off his helmet and shook his head; it had been a long flight. He then pulled off his gloves, threw them into the helmet, and dropped both in the seat before closing the door and marching up the ramp, his Nikes looking oddly out of place. He too gave a perfect WDF salute and inquired after permission to board, which was promptly granted. Then, with no preamble, no small talk, and no awkwardness at all, MegaZone gathered up Yuri in his arms (which was simple enough, as he topped her height by a foot, probably doubled her weight, and was met with no resistance) and carried her into the ship. Kei and Ben shared a small smile between them, and Kei reached over to squeeze his hand; everything was all right again. Or at least, as all right as it could ever be. ------------------------------------------------------------------FOUR "Time and Life/Life and Time/Someday I'll get what's mine/Through the persistence of Time" -- Anthrax "Penna, twenty minutes." "Cool. Got a minute?" "Sure. What?" "Could you buff me?" "Sure. But you explain it to Tanderah." "No prob. I can handle Pretty Boy, even while I'm being buffed." As if to prove his point, Penna touched his right shoulder, which fell off. He caught the now-inert slab of metal and tossed it to Meph, who grabbed a big can of Brasso and started away. Penna used his remaining hand to stripe some red on his cheek, ran the Fender Bender Bass/Rhythm through a tune cycle, put on his "Spud Wrench" T-shirt, grab his arm back from Meph, and hit backstage. Tuning up (manually) was Istara, a pair of cat-like ears poking out of her ballcap. Tanderah was there, with no need to tune up his electronic 'boards. Fachan, all five foot of her, had no instruments backstage. Mt. Percussion, which dwarfed her just for effect, was already set up on the Dry Park soundstage. "All set?" asked Istara. "Let's do it." And, just to piss the management off, the four hit the stage ten minutes early. As if that was going to be any help. They were going to start the show one hundred years, to the second, of the fall of the Wayward Son. The band, Basic Nastiness, had considered calling it the "Wayward Son Century Benefit Concert", but that was too normal. To fit with the source of the band's name, they decided to name the gig "Roadtrip to Jersey (Don't Nobody Tell Tim)". Which, of course, pissed off the crowd, since nobody had any clue what the hell it meant. That was okay. Anyone who really mattered tonight knew. And were probably laughing their asses off. A few people saw the band take the stage, though the lights were off. Here's a quick description of the venue. Dry Park is the closest thing to a hang-out there is in Vesper. Keeping the assorted shit off of the residents is a pneumatically-supported Servodome. Lighting simulated sunlight, and there was real green grass there. And it was damned expensive to get into. Especially tonight. Above the stage, suspended by a sky-hook, was a huge digital clock. It counted the hours, minutes, and seconds until the century of the crash, taken from Touchdown. It read six seconds. Five. Four. Three. ... ... Simultaneously, lights hit the stage, and four voices braided perfectly: Carry on my wayward son There'll be peace when you are done Lay your weary head to rest Don't'cha cry no more It was not too far a stretch, if any at all, to assume that no native had heard that song. It all began to make sense, in a twisted sort of manner. And some people, among the mass of mundanes, would gain some form of clue over the next three hours as to what the Wayward Son stood for. The rest would just party on. That was okay. The concert wasn't for those mundanes. Each band member knew, closely and intimately (depending on one's sense of the term "intimately", of course), every single person they were trying to reach. The fact that these thousands showed up for the gig really didn't bother them a bit. ------------------------------------------------------------------FIVE "But Time is on our side/and Time is the essence" -- Def Leppard, "Overture" One band, over three hours. No solos, no long speeches, just song after song punctuated by pre-recorded sound bites which, though nobody knew the sources, sounded cool at the time. Basic Nastiness knew how to put on a gig. The accepted thing to do at this point was to pretend to leave the stage, then come back to do an encore. Instead, Penna stepped up to the front mic. Unnecessary; he was linked to a headset mic and had been trading vocal responsibilities with Istara. But stand-up mics did have a certain effect. "Everybody here have a good time tonight?" The response was a roaring crowd, a massive affirmative. "Great, then you can go home now. No no, just kidding. Seriously, we do have some heavy territory to cover before this evening's over. First off, I would like to thank Mr. Fnord, whoever he may be, for fronting the cost for this entire concert. "Second, the box office counted eighty-two thousand, three hundred and seventy-five tickets sold: this gig went one hundred percent capacity. That means we raised about one point six million Solaris tonight. And, thanks to Mr. Fnord, that's all free to fund the Musashi Terraforming project. Remember, you can make a difference. You already have. Give yourselves a big hand. "But most importantly, this is a time for good-byes, hellos, and shattered illusions. First, the goodbye is to all of you, unfortunately. Barring the incredibly unforeseen, this is going to be the last time you ever see Basic Nastiness. We're going off-world, and probably won't return in your lifetimes. It's been a fincredible decade: I don't even think our forefathers got as much of a reception as we had. "Why we're leaving brings us into the shattered illusions. Of course, you know us by our stage names. But we've been around for a long time under different names, possibly more famous than our current ones." He made a gesture off-stage. There was a rumble, deeper and lower than anything Mt. Percussion could pound out. Upon a pillar of flame, a craft rose from a pit behind the stage. A really ugly ship, uglier than it was even designed, slowly leapt over the stage backing, and landed straddling the percussion unit. Penna turned back to the mic. "My friends, I give you the Rick Allen and her crew. I would like to introduce you to --" he gestured to Fachan, Tanderah, Istara, and himself in turn--"Cheryl.Z, Ktefft, Deedlit, and ReRob." The fog lifted from the heads of some of the mundanes. Most, of course, thought that they had just seen TMOA gimmicks, and blew it off. Some, remembering the stories they learned in school, recognized the names and the stories, and saw how these pretenders could pass for the four, but the big fact remained--they're dead! Other than that, several dozen media personnel were pressing for bandwidth on the cellulars. "Which brings us, at last, to the hellos. The real reason for this gig was to attract the attention of a few special people. We know that some people survived the Wayward Son. We're hoping that some of those survivors are here, in person or by video. Guys, we've got a message for you. "Largo and GENOM, of course, are still in business. We can't let the galaxy go on with this menace still at large. For the past century, we have, because there was simply nothing we could do about it. Now there is. "With the assistance of the Government of Vesper, we have created the warbird Phoenix. It is fully staffed, and capable of the job at hand, but we still need you at the senior positions. "If you were on the Wayward Son, you can find a way to get here and you will find a way to reach us. But, time is short, as Largo will be informed of this gathering quite soon by his own intelligence forces." ReRob was more correct than he assumed. Largo's "intelligence forces" at the moment consisted of a vidscreen cable-linked to Network 23, which was showing this live and direct from the Edison Carter Show. This was all Largo needed to see now; he'd acquire the tape from the net later on. He decided, instead, to invoke his remote control unit. He grabbed Jacq Sandia, the functionary du jour, and launched him at the screen. He then made a mental note to himself not to do that too often, as this represented a waste of good vidscreens. ReRob had taken a breath to continue, but he was cut off.. "Hang on a second," a voice cried from offstage. ReRob whirled, his eyes widening. It couldn't be-- Gryphon came out from the wings, wearing what the few Card No. 1 fans in the audience recognized as his old stage clothes; black fatigue pants, bright red Converse All-Stars, a dark flannel shirt, a grey hat with the logo "INTEL INSIDE" on the front, and a long grey duster. His hair was tied back in a long ponytail, and his smile was just about touching the triangular purple earring he wore in his left earlobe. Behind him came Kei, in a similar shirt and a pair of tattered jeans; Zoner, in his uniform; and Yuri, in a denim skirt, leather jacket with about a thousand zippers and the like, and low black boots. "Hold it right there, pal," ReRob said, holding up his metal hand. "I've seen this kind of thing before. If you're really Gryphon, then where are we going?" Gryphon looked puzzled for a second; then his smile widened, he seized another upright mike, and shouted, "Planet 10!" with a fist raised defiantly in the air. "When will we get there?" ReRob continued, his voice becoming less skeptical and more excited. "Real soon!" Gryphon cried. "What is the greatest joy?" ReRob demanded. "The joy of duty!" Gryphon bellowed. "History is made at night--character is what you are in the dark!" "Gryph!" Rob cried. "Welcome back!" Those in the crowd who remembered their great-grandparents' tales (and old discs) of Card Number One were awestruck; the same for those who remembered the tales of the Wedge Defense Force. A great wave of cheering rose up, marred by the boos and hisses of those whose ancestors had put a somewhat negative slant on the tale, such as it was known, of the end of the WDF. Rob pulled Gryphon away from the mikes and murmured to him, "I take it you're--" "Cleared, Rob," Gryphon replied, and grabbed a mike. "Cleared and judged innocent by Wolfgang Amadeus Fahrvergnugen himself!" The crowd roared. "My friends...for those of you who know of me, who believe in me and whose parents and grandparents believed in me--I thank you, and I thank them. "Rob--if you don't mind, there's a song I'd like to do. Could I trouble you to take your old station behind the 'boards?" "Sure, Gryph...sure." There was a little whispering as Gryphon described the song to ReRob off-mike, and then Rob took his place. Yuri was busy borrowing an acoustic guitar from Deedlit, and passing an electric to Zoner; meantime, Gryphon and Kei were taking position in front. The crowd fell silent. Yuri on acoustic, Gryphon and Kei up front, Zoner on an electric (rare indeed), ReRob at the 'boards, and a different drummer; this was a setup some of them recognized. After a hauntingly odd-sounding acoustic intro, Kei, lighted only from a pin above, began to sing. The rest of the band was blacked out. Baby I get so scared inside and I don't really understand Is it love that's on my mind or is it fantasy? Another pin came up across the stage, filtered through a red gel, on Gryphon: Heaven Is in the palm of my hand and it's waiting here for you What am I supposed to do with a childhood tragedy? If I close my eyes forever Will it all remain unchanged? If I close my eyes forever Will it all remain the same? Sometimes It's hard to hold on So hard to hold on to my dreams It isn't always what it seems When you're face to face with me You're like a dagger You stick me in the heart And taste the blood from my blade And when we sleep would you shelter me In your warm and darkened grave If I close my eyes forever Will it all remain unchanged? If I close my eyes forever Will it all remain the same? Will you ever take me? No I just can't take the pain... Would you ever trust me? No I'll never feel the same...ohh I know I've been so hard on you I know I've told you lies If I could have just one more wish I'd wipe the cobwebs from my eyes And if I close my eyes forever Will it all remain unchanged? If I close my eyes forever Will it all remain the same? Close your eyes Close your eyes You gotta close your eyes for me... The lights came up, slowly; Gryphon and Kei crossed the stage until they were standing face to face, looked at each other for a long moment, and then fell into a warm embrace. The rest of the band gathered around. The crowd went nuts. "Ladies and gentlemen," Gryphon announced into the mike next to his face, "the Wedge Defense Force is back!" <<< The Alarm: Change II >>> -------------------------------------------------------------------SIX "How many? Smoking or non?" --Many a waitress In all, there were nine of them: the four from Basic Nastiness, Meph (BN's majordomo), the Lovely Angels, Gryphon and MegaZone. In a gravbike, Daytona, and a rather beat-up VW Microbus (though VW's were never sold on Musashi), the gang descended on Denny's. Denny's was, believe it or not, cleared out for the event. When Basic Nastiness puts on a post-gig nosh, they don't kid around. They were greeted with menus by a woman in a familiar face and a waitress uniform. Zoner was the first to react. "Andrea?!?" She looked down at her name tag which read, appropriately enough, "Andrea". "I guess so. You were expecting somebody else?" MegaZone was still stunned. "You survived?" Gryphon slapped his friend in the forehead. "Remember your geography. SDF-17 Denny's was next to escape pods. Duh." Ben, of course, had no more clue than Zoner did that she would be here. They sat down and started looking at the menus. Kei was the first to speak. "I see the decor is still early vinyl." "What did you expect? This is Denny's after all," redirecting his attention Zoner continued, "So let's see if I can do this without looking at the menu. Bowl of chili no cheese, double Denny Burger combo with the salad. Bright orange dressing, no egg or 'shrooms. Key lime pie. Hmmm... A coffee and a Coke.... Oh! And a buttermilk biscuit!" "Got it!" Andrea said, grinning. "Nailed it Zoner!" Yuri chimed in. "Well, some things you never forget," Zoner managed to say straight faced, well, almost. Once the laughter died down the rest of the crowd placed their orders and they started bullshitting, trying to catch up on each others' past. "...so after the Son bought the farm Deedlit and I settled in here to try and set up a new defense system. We had no idea where Gryph and Zoner were, except for the occasional report of Kei blowing someplace up trying to kill Ben. When she wasn't busy with that her and Yuri were working for the 3WA. So Deedlit and I decided to make a living with our band and use the profits to build a new ship," ReRob was explaining. "We've been working pretty hard to have it completed before the hundred year anniversary. Our next job was to find all of you. So we're already ahead of schedule," Deedlit followed. "You haven't been doing too bad with Virtual Labs either. You built up quite a reputation with your work. I've used a few of your concepts in my work over the years," Zoner added. "Yeah, well, building a new ship cost a bit more than we'd anticipated. VLI gave us the funds we needed to do the job right. And the customers helped fund research we ended up using in constructing the ship. So VLI really made the Phoenix possible," ReRob stated modestly. "Come on Rob, we all know that you're the one responsible for her design. Designing and building your own starship isn't an easy task," Ben added, "I should know." "You been working on something of your own?" Cheryl asked. "You could say that," he replied with a smirk. "Whatcha hiding Ben?" Kevin inquired. "Oh nothing. I've just done a few odd jobs here and there over the years. I had to keep on the move don'tcha know." Ben cast a sidelong glance at Kei, who smiled sheepishly. "I spent a few years at the University of Meizuri, kicked around Earth for a while getting a degree or three in astronautics and the like from M.I.T., spent some time in Mega Tokyo, studied at the Stingray Institute for Robotics...then I had the accident with my warp drives and wound up across dimensions...spent a year at Starfleet Academy, served aboard the USS Enterprise under Captain James T. Kirk, commanded the USS Invincible, NCC-1717, for twenty years, and wound up back here. I keep busy." "So, the Angels worked for the 3WA, Ben was working on the lam, the rest of us were here, and what did you do Zoner?" Deedlit asked. "I got into cybertech, real into cybertech. I've been doing a lot of development work underground. That's how I make my living, I do all the leading edge research for the corps and they pay me the big money. I take the risks and they get the credit. And that's the way I wanted it. I made a good living and I got to stay out of the limelight. Hell, if it wasn't for me Ares would have gone under back in '50 when they were coming out with their new nanite line. They were promising the sky and they cocked it up. Their R&D people screwed up big time, I stepped in and sold them the tech I developed for my own use. If you check the patents, Dr. Charles U. Farley is me. I didn't want the credit, actually I really tried to avoid it. Being famous would have made life difficult." "Difficult? How?" Cheryl asked. "Well, research didn't occupy all my time. I needed to get out once in a while..." "And?" "Being famous would have interfered with my work." "Which is?" "I kill people," Zoner replied a little harsher than necessary. This was followed by a rather strained silence. Kevin finally broke the silence, "Oh." "I'm not exactly proud of it, but it's something that needs to be done. When the law can't handle someone I go in and do the job. The universe is a big place and, unfortunately, there are plenty of psychos. A lot of the cases where the hood showed up suddenly dead I was in the area on vacation. If there was a bounty sometimes I would collect on it and donate the money to a fund to support the victims families or use it to fund more research. Occasionally I'd pick up on a contract for spying or something like that. It gave me a chance to test out my equipment, and maybe I made a difference once in a while. I'll never really know, all I know is that I ended more lives than I can recall... or that I want to recall..." "Funny, I never heard of you on the news," Deedlit observed. "I have plenty of identities, and most of the time the authorities are all too willing to cover for me. They don't like having to admit that it took an outsider to clean up their house." "You think you're alone in this mass death guilt thing? Why don't you take a look at the side of my fighter sometime," Ben snarled. "It isn't really the same thing. A lot of my work was with my hands, or my spurs. Looking at their face through the scope as I blow their head off. But even that isn't the worst. I design cybertech. Sure, some of what I do improves lives, even saves them, but I've also made weapons. There are millions of punks out there with tech I designed trying to prove their worth by having the highest body count. Sometimes I wonder how many lives I've taken indirectly." "Yeah, they're everywhere. In fact I think I introduced one to my companionsword in an alley the other day, he wanted my coat. Kids today... tsk tsk," Gryphon said with mock sadness. "Ok, ok. So it's a bit melodramatic. I guess I'm just getting tired with my life. I started doing it while I was still down from the loss and rather bitter. It became sort of a security blanket for me, a routine to fall back on. But now that it's all in the past I'm not really all that proud of what I've been up to. I may have made a lot of progress technically, but I don't think I made much progress as a person. I don't know, maybe if I was sure I made one iota of difference sometime." "I made a lot of progress as a person, maybe I made enough progress for the both of us. I used to be a fighter jock, now look at me, I'm an engineer," Gryphon quipped. "Oh, some progress," Yuri observed sardonically. "Which reminds me Zoner, you dropped this a while back." Yuri handed him what appeared to by a metallic ace of hearts. "You saved it all this time?" Zoner asked, a bit surprised. "It was one of the few connections I still had with you." Zoner's eyes misted over and he turned away to fight the tears. "Yep, we're all back together again," Kevin observed solemnly. Once the laughter stopped Meph spoke up for the first time of the evening, "It's hard to believe that you guys haven't seen each other in a hundred years, well for the most part. It's like you were just hanging together yesterday." "Well, a lot of things have changed, but we are still the same people at heart. Things can never be the same as they were before the breakup, but we'll find a new equilibrium," Rob answered for the group. "Um...yeah. I've never been fond of equilibrium, myself...it's boring. Then again, maybe my life's been a tad too interesting of late." Gryphon took a drink of his root beer and set it down, lost in thought. ----------------------------------------------------------------SEVEN "It is better to have loved and lost than to have hated and won." --Anonymous "Ahh...wow. Now this is a place." So saying, the reinstated Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins flopped onto his back on top of the grassy knoll. It was the sort of place he had always wished Millinocket had, and had always written into the golf course in his stories which involved that town, the place where he grew up and was so far distant from now. It was on that nonexistent grassy knoll that one could sit and see, spread out below him, the entire town of Millinocket, its lights glittering in the early evening, his breath crystallizing before him as he sat pensive. In his stories, the grass knoll above Millinocket which wasn't really there was one of his favorite places. He and Ray had many long and involved conversations on that knoll, before and after Friday, August 24th, 1990. But there was no Ray, and no grassy knoll over the town of Millinocket, and nothing particularly special had happened to the real Ben Hutchins on August 24th, 1990. In fact, his high school years had been, with a couple of notable exceptions, singularly unimpressive, and without a doubt carnally uneventful. Not that it particularly bothered him; there were always other things to pour his energies into, to sublimate the stress in useful ways...fiction, for example. Fictionalizing was a way of keeping himself semi- sane. He had continued it into college, until that day...Wednesday, October 2nd, 1991. The day his world had turned inside out and upside down and taken a very hard bank to the left. (And rotated 90 degrees from the plane of reality.) It didn't hit FUBAR 'til the 12th, but still... He stretched out, looking up at the night sky. There had been a time when he was afraid of the dark, but that was a while ago now, and besides, there was no need for him to fear; there was nothing out here which could harm him. A cool breeze blew across the knoll, ruffling his shirt. He stuck his hands behind his head and closed his eyes, smiling peacefully. No more stress, no more running for his life; just peace and calm and quiet. He heard a soft rustling that meant someone had taken up a sitting position beside him; there was no need for him to open his eyes, he knew full well who it was. Nonetheless, he did open his eyes; after all, he knew who it was, and he knew that looking at her was fun. He had done far too little of that over the past hundred years, and what little he had usually over the sight of some kind of weapon; no fun at all. In his stories, written centuries ago, the woman who sat on the grassy knoll and talked with him for hours at a time went by the name of Rachel Summers; she was a striking redhead, around 5'7", with a mite of a temper problem. The woman who was sitting on the grassy knoll with him here went by the name of Kei; she too was a striking redhead, around 5'7", with a mite of a temper problem. The similarities were annoying at times. However, they were all circumstantial; Ray and Kei were totally and entirely different. Night and day. Not and real. This wasn't just a stress reliever after an evening of Battletech, pizza, and too damn much caffeine; Kei was real, here, and very much alive. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: Oi. Isn't recursion wonderful? I need some sleep. See you in the morning, kids.) With a sigh of contentment, he leaned back fully and dropped off to sleep. Ben knew already that he was dreaming. It was the only explanation for what was going on, and besides, he knew this dream well, it was a frequent one. As before, he tried to force himself awake; as always before, he failed. This little drama would play itself out to its conclusion, as always, no matter what he did. He was walking down the corridors of the Seventh Street School. This was a dead giveaway; the Seventh Street School, along with the rest of Musashi City, was dead, long dead and buried in the scorched ash somewhere in this very desert, beneath the wreckage of Largo's Dreadnaught. Also, the corridor was incredibly long, vaulted and Kafkaesque...and cold, too damn cold. He shivered despite the warmth of his CVR-7. He turned a corner and saw the door to Corridor 17; desperately willing himself to stop, he tabbed the control and opened the door, his ElectroMax ready. He came barreling through the door, gun smoking, CVR scorched, brushing past himself, and dashed off down the corridor. Gryphon turned, puzzled beyond repair, as he went past himself. Then he turned back and stepped through the door to see Kei, standing with a look of utter shock and disbelief on her face. At his end of the corridor, just about at his feet, was an entire fifth-division class. Dead. "Should've run when you had the chance, you son of a bitch!" Kei screamed, her voice raw. "What?!" Gryphon replied, by now extraordinarily confused. "BASTAAAAAAAAAAAARD!" shrieked Kei. She raised her own weapon, tears streaming down her face, and fired. Three times in rapid succession, neatly blasting a "therefore" symbol into his chest. CVR-7 shattered and flesh burned; he was thrown backward into the door frame, feeling the cold hard metal slam his CVR back piece into his back as the smell of charred ceramic and flesh bit into his nostrils. Pain roared across his brain; he probably screamed, although he never felt it, because blackness had already descended on him. He had never raised his own gun. Ben screamed and tore himself awake. Always it came to this point. Always. He couldn't escape the ending, it always forced itself out to the finale. That hadn't been the end of the tale; he had awakened an hour and a half later. Kei was gone. He was lucky; his CVR-7 had stopped most of the energy before failing. As it was, he was cruelly wounded, and as he was dragged to the evac shuttle, he started bleeding severely. He survived, though, and woke again a day later in sickbay. And then everything went to hell. Now, there was just the cool and dark of the hill, the warm glow of the city below, and Kei's concerned voice asking what was wrong. The very same woman who had shot him and left him for dead. The universe is a funny place. "No, I'm fine," he insisted, pulling himself up into a sitting position and crossing his feet. "Just a dream, is all." He leaned back again and, now fully awake, dropped into thought. He realized something, suddenly, out of the blue, and spoke it aloud: "I miss Eve." "Mm?" asked Kei, who had been lost in thoughts of her own. "Eve. I miss Eve." Ben looked up into the night sky, found Sol. It comforted him to think that Earth was still there. "Now that you mention it...I've been wondering all these years what's been missing from life on board ship...now I remember. Eve was everywhere, anytime she was needed." "Yep." "I remember how proud you were when she came online... going around grinning all over the ship for days, you were so happy...I've only seen you happier twice in my life. Once when you saw me again in the HoloDECstation, and once last night." "I wonder...if I had the facilities, could I rewrite her?" He shook his head. "Probably not...she wouldn't be the same..." "You did a pretty decent job on me," said Kei with a grin and a nudge. "I was insane at the time," Ben replied. "Make of that what you will..." A soft footstep sounded behind them; they turned. Yuri. "Hi, Yuri," said Ben as Kei's partner settled gracefully to the grass beside her. "Didn't expect to see you here tonight..." "Didn't expect to see you at all tonight," Kei corrected him, elbowing Yuri in the ribs and grinning broadly. "What's the matter, eh? Forget what to do? Huh?" "Cut it out, Kei!" Yuri replied, shoving Kei slightly. "Oop," said Ben, "I think there's a problem here. Standard offers apply." It was a standard statement of his, made to friends who seemed to be having problems. "Ditto," Kei added. "So what's the problem? You should be bouncing off the walls! The Team Supreme is back, Yuri, what could possibly get you down about that?" "It's been almost a hundred years," Yuri said in a hollow voice. "He's changed...he's a different person entirely. I want the old Zoner back." "What do you mean, `changed'? He seemed pretty much the same when he came aboard," Kei replied. "Didn't he seem that way to you, Ben?" "Yeah, pretty much. He's bound to be a little different, I suppose--a hundred years in isolation will change a person as much as a hundred years on the run will. I'm different now than I was then. We all are." "He thought I betrayed him...have you talked to him yet?" "No...I sent him the communique that brought him here in the first place, but I haven't really talked to him." "You should...he's completely different. No. I take that back. Not completely. He's like he was when he was angsting. Distant. Cold, almost. I could always reach him before...what's happened to us? What's happened to all of us?" She leaned on Kei's shoulder, sobbing. "Don't panic, partner," Kei said. "I'm the one that's supposed to get all emotional." "And I'm the one who always has to pick up the bits when Zoner fucks something up," grumbled Gryphon, getting to his feet and striding purposefully back toward the Lovely Angel. "Don't wait up," he called back over his shoulder. "This may take a while." He squared his shoulders, his fists clenching reflexively as he built up his resolve for another confrontation with the most fragile ego he had ever encountered. After four hundred years, Zoner was just as tiring. -----------------------------------------------------------------EIGHT "There's no time for fussing and fighting my friend/But baby I'm amazed at the hate that you can send and you/Painted my entire world/And I/Don't have the turpentine to clean what you have soiled/And I won't forget it" --Bad Religion The cabin door opened; without any preamble at all, Gryphon stepped into the room and said, "What the hell's the matter with you?" "I don't understand what you mean," MegaZone replied from his bed, "and I don't recall inviting you in." "I don't recall asking." "You do know I outrank you." "Stuff that shit. Zoner, why did you come back?" "Thought I could use a change of scenery. Musashi is beautiful this time of year." "Oh, cut the bullshit. You don't know, do you? I should've expected as much. To me, this whole experience is a closure, putting an end to everything that started with GENOM's frameup. To you, it's nothing. You still don't trust me. You still don't trust them. The judgment of Lord F's military tribunal wasn't enough for you." Gryphon shook his head. "I don't know what else I can do for you..." "Fuck it!" Zoner shouted, jumping off the bed. "It's not you I don't trust. It's myself!" "I beg your pardon?" Gryphon asked, a bit bemused. "I didn't believe in you. I believed the evidence of my senses, however full of holes that evidence was, and it ended up nearly costing you your life. More than that; it did cost a lot of people their lives. The entire Force was destroyed. Everybody scattered...so many people dead. And now you people want me to lead you again? I can't do it. I couldn't live with myself if I accepted. Listen, if I can't trust myself I can't trust anyone else. I have no baseline. There's no way that I can be expected to lead anyone, anywhere! Like I said so many years ago, without trust there can be no love, without love there can be no life. The only reason I haven't paid a visit to the local blast furnace is the work I've been doing. Fuck, listen to me, 'my work'. I kill people! I lost count for goddess sake! All I do is design new toys for any cyberpsycho with enough credits and go hunting every once in a while. I test most of the things I design on myself, just for laughs ya'know? There really isn't much of me left. I've replaced too much. I guess somewhere along the way I replaced my heart and soul too. Anyway, I'm not doing it." "We're not asking," Gryphon stated, nonplussed. "I'm not doing it." "Fine. It's obvious this experience isn't truly behind all of us yet." Gryphon turned around and stepped outside the door frame, still inside the range of the sensor that held it open. He turned back for a moment. "Call me when you've figured it out." He left. "Oh, fuck it. Why did I even bother to come back? Everyone would have been better off if I had just stayed in the shadows and played dead. They don't need me. No one needs me, Yuri least of all. Why? WHY THE FUCK DID I COME BACK?!" Zoner screamed. But the only answer was a dying echo. ------------------------------------------------------------------NINE "Damn!" Scree, scree, scree. "Double damn!" --Randolph Carter "Well?" Kei asked when he returned to the knoll. "He's isolating himself because he doesn't trust himself," Gryphon replied, a hard, sardonic edge to his voice. "He didn't believe in me and he's whipping himself for it. He doesn't want to lead us. He doesn't want to be a part of our lives again. He's afraid of himself. As usual. I can't do a thing with him." "What are you going to do?" Yuri asked him, tears streaking her cheeks. "Exactly what I can do. Nothing." He paused. "No...I take that back. There is something I can do. Are there environment suits in the Angel capable of handling the radiation inside the wreckage of the Wayward Son?" "I think standard heavy envirosuits should be able to handle it...but why?" "I'm going exploring. C'mon, Kei." "Wait a second--how is poking around the wreckage of his dead ship going to help MegaZone?" Kei demanded, getting up and following him with Yuri hot on her heels. "It's a surprise. Trust me. The only thing that can help him may well be inside the radioactive wreckage of that ship. I just hope it can be saved." He turned to Yuri, pulling a set of keys and an identcard from his jacket pocket. "Yuri, here. Take your repulsorswoop into Vesper. This card will get you into the spaceport slip my fighter is in. Open up the cargo case and get Ziggy." Ziggy was Gryphon's personal computer, which had started out as an Intel i80386DX/25, way back when. These days it had a British-AnimeTech 88886XLi and a CLULESS AI driver, but that was another story entirely. "Okay...but why?" "You'll see. Set Vision up in the wardroom and get her up and running. I'll be back soon, I hope with the cure for Zoner's 'condition'." She looked at him warily, but trust won out. She had trusted him even when no one else had; she certainly wasn't going to doubt him now. She took the keys, and the card, gave him a quick hug and kiss, and ran for the Angel. Gryphon went part-way up the Lovely Angel's ramp and yanked open a locker; inside was a heavy envirosuit, standard WWWA issue. He pulled it out, put it on, and powered it up. It was made of a marvelously compact material, an AnimeTech invention; molecularly-scaled chainmail, basically, with an electromagnetronic forcefield generator for rigidity and radiation shielding. The headpiece was not a helmet, but rather a close-fitting hood, patterned after the battle dress of Terran ninja warriors and the under-helmet covering of Mandalorian Deathwatch troopers. Kei snagged another and put it on, powering it up. Powered up, the suits also made fairly handy battle armor. Always a plus for the 3WA agent on the go. Gryphon pulled on his helmet and swung a leg over his J-9300, starting up and revving the plant; Kei climbed on behind him and, making sure her grip around his waist was secure, Gryphon took off across the ashfields. It was night, but that didn't matter to Gryphon; his eyes had been in nightvision mode since dark. He rezzed up the HUD on the inside of his visor, fed the helmet's computer all the data his own memory had on the location of the Wayward Son, cross-referenced it with the latest readings from the Musashi weathersat network concerning global radiation spots, ruled out the former location of Musashi City, and determined the ship's position. This took about a second. Then he rezzed up a pipper on the HUD indicating the wreck's location, steered to center it, and opened the throttle up all the way, until the roar of the thrusters in his ears had almost drowned out the scream that was boiling in his brain. Presently, the wreck appeared, rolling up from the horizon and looming silhouetted against the navy blue night sky. Twisted, tattered, with gaping rents in its hide, but definitely recognizable, it lay in the sands, horribly damaged but somehow still proud. Gryphon suppressed the twinge in his heart at the sight of it; his work place and home for nearly three centuries, broken and dead in a crater of glass filled by the winds with sand again. He brought the bike to a halt and climbed off, slinging the duffel bag he had brought over his shoulder. "What are we doing here?" Kei asked through the radios in their envirosuits, as he picked his way along the aft quarter of the vast hull, looking for a rent large enough to get through. (The search didn't take long.) "Looking," Gryphon replied, climbing through a largish hole near main engineering. Kei followed, glancing quickly at the readouts to make sure the suit could handle the radiation this close to the wreckage of the Reflex furnace. (It could.) "For what?!" "Please...I'm trying to remember, it's been a long time." The deck slanted at a good ten-degree angle, and the corridor off to port ended in a tangle of once-molten metal. Beyond that mess had been ReRob's engine room. He went off to the right, trying to recall the ship's layout as he did so. The turbolifts, of course, were not functioning, but he managed to wrench open a Jeffries tube hatch and began to climb. His course wound through the innards of the vessel, through sections totally wrecked and sections nearly intact, and finally came to an enormous, intact blast door marked "Computer Core Machine Room. NO ADMITTANCE." Gryphon grinned. "Good. This door isn't down. That's a good sign...now how the fuck do I go about getting it open?" Kei began to understand what he was doing. She smiled and let him go about it; he was obviously enjoying this, serious business though it was. He popped the emergency access panel, tried a switch, and was rewarded with a light. "Yes! The emergency batteries are still functional." He crossed to the other side and tapped in his Umbra-level clearance code. It failed. "Shit. I forgot--Class 3 lockout. Kei, you had Umbra clearance--try your code." She did; with a creak of aging servos and a protest from the slightly misaligned frame, the huge door slid haltingly open. Beyond, as Gryphon shone his light in, they could see instrument panels and drive arrays, mostly smashed. Gryphon stepped through the gap and pulled open another emergency panel, crossing a couple of circuits and throwing a switch. The emergency lights flickered on. The core machine room was a mess. Panels had blown out in the overload sequence, before the quantum-vector power distribution system had failed; drives were smashed, and even an old magtape was ribboned about the chamber. Gryphon ignored it and headed right for the door in the back, which read (through the streaks of soot) "E.V.E. Central Core Room-- AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY". Fiddling with the access panel again, he got the red light for emergency batteries on, and then tapped out a code Kei had never heard on the instrument panel. Above the door, an LED message board flickered, then valiantly displayed the following characters: [neato-keen Klingon text and graphics sacrificed to ASCII] The door hissed open smoothly. "What the hell was that?" Kei asked as she eased into the room behind him. "My back door," Gryphon replied. "I created Eve; I wanted to make sure no one could ever lock me away from her. So I built that special function into the codelock. No one else even knew it could do Klingonese." He popped another panel and fired up the room's emergency lights. Kei let out an involuntary gasp when she saw the room for the first time. It was a small room, barely the size of a walk-in closet, and contained only one thing; a black pedestal, about three feet high and cylindrical, topped by a hexagonal black platform about a foot across. Set into this was a large red crystal that glowed as if lit from within. Leads from all three walls and the ceiling led to the crystal, stopping at the glass dome surrounding it. Gryphon's smile split his face from ear to ear. "I was hoping as much. The backup cells are still operational. Hell, I designed them to last ten thousand years, if necessary." He put his hand on the glass dome; it flickered, but remained dark except for the glow of the crystal. "Hmm...not enough power." He went to the wall, pulled off an access panel, and messed around with some leads. There was a fat blue spark. The lights went out. "There. Crossed over the door circuits; we should be able to get some uptime now." He went back and placed his palm on the glass ball. It glowed to life like a plasma f/x ball, a blue glow like Cherenkov radiation appearing around the crystal and leaping to touch the glass opposite his palm. The glow illuminated Gryphon's face. <<< Asia: Don't Cry >>> On the wall opposite the door, a screen flickered into life and Eve's face appeared on it. She opened her eyes, then blinked. "Commander!" she exclaimed, her voice grainy. The image and sound jumped periodically, barred by static. "Is the ship--" "Unsalvageable, I'm afraid. How are you?" Eve appeared momentarily introspective, then said, "98% systems optimality. Remaining 2% dysfunction due to low power and poor audiovisual interface equipment condition." "Excellent. Authorization code tak'hklah mk'hra Ulath'ka; total system shutdown for core crystal move." Eve blinked. "It's that bad?" "It's that bad. I'm sorry to put you in such a cramped system, but until the new ship is ready, I'm afraid you're going to have to spend some time in Ziggy." "It's better than being in limbo for--" she paused, "--99 years and change." She paused, closing her eyes; then they opened again and she reported, "All systems ready for shutdown." "Good. See you in a few, Eve." He removed his hand; the blue glow disappeared. Then the red glow from the crystal faded down to the dullest glimmer. Gryphon removed the glass dome carefully, removed the crystal from its holder, and put it into his duffel bag. "Let's get out of here," he said to Kei. -------------------------------------------------------------------TEN "When a faraway voice sounds as close as you feel...that's AT&T." --Advertisement As he had requested, Ziggy was up and running on the wardroom table when he and Kei returned to the ship. He logged in and was greeted by Ziggy's majordomatrix AI, Vision, a female AI in the style of Eve, but a bit less...conservative. "Hi, Gryph," Vision said in her standard, sweet voice. Like Eve, she was a singer. Her visual representation appeared on the holoscreen, a fetching woman with brown hair (except for the peculiar shock of green in front) and all the stage presence of Eve. (That particular bit of the code was the same.) "What can I do for you?" "Prepare for shutdown, Vision...got another tenant coming in temporarily." "Shutdown?" Vision asked, alarmed. "Who's taking my place?" "No one, Vision...you'll be back up as soon as possible, I promise. Eve-1 needs a place to crash until the new ship is ready." "Eve!" Vision's eyes went wide(r). "She's still running?" Gryphon nodded. Vision had known Eve, back when Ziggy was connected to the SDF-17's system on a pretty permanent basis. "Well, in that case, let me pack my things." There was a brief pause as the VISION logo appeared on the screen; then the picture of the AI returned and reported, "Ready for shutdown..." Gryphon popped open the third drive bay, tabbed the red control, and waited; when the LED cycled green, he pulled out the large, blocky molecular-circuitry cartridge that contained Vision. Snapping an adaptor around the red EVE crystal, he slotted it, tabbed the control, and waited. Eve appeared on the screen and looked around, a mildly claustrophobic look on her face. Gryphon pulled an RS232 cable out of his duffel bag and connected Ziggy to the wall panel. "Let the games begin," he muttered, and sat down at the keyboard. The viewer in Zoner's room chimed and flickered; the EVE test pattern appeared as she adjusted the color map, then Eve herself appeared. Zoner was not looking at the screen; he was looking out the viewport. "Zoner?" Eve addressed Zoner tentatively. Zoner spun around. He was even hearing ghosts. They say the first thing to go is the mind, this is not a good sign, Zoner thought. Well, might as well answer, "Eve?" "The comm-screen." He crossed the room and stopped dead in his tracks. "Eve?! How? I thought you went down with the Son. This is the real you isn't it? This isn't one of Ben's tricks is it?" "No, this is the real me. Ben rescued the memory from the wreck of the Son." "So he sent you to talk me into leading them didn't he?" "Well, not really. He just thought that you might want someone to talk to." "Eve..." "Ok, I guess he felt that you would change your mind after talking to me." "It's not going to happen." "Well, do you want to talk anyway?" "What the hell, can't make anything worse." "So what's wrong?" "This may take a while," Zoner sighed as he flopped onto the bed and opened the nightstand. He pulled out a set of interface cables and connected the jacks on his neck to the comm-screen. "This should be easier for the both of us." Zoner pressed the large green 'Go' button and fell into infinity. A new icon appeared next to Eve in the reality that was the Lovely Angel's communications network. It looked vaguely like a large man, but many sections seemed to be constructed of circuitry. "Zoner! When did you?" "Soon after leaving the ship. After I heard about the loss I sort of wigged out. So I decided to bury myself in work, I taught myself cybertech. And I used myself as the guinea pig for most of it. I do good work, if I do say so myself." "You don't look very cybered." "Well, it's easier to surprise people that way. I kept a lot of the surface meat, but the insides are metal. Sort of a T-eight million. But enough of that." "Yes, what did you want to talk about?" "I'll start from the beginning. When things went to hell I booked. I just left the ship. I was responsible for sending all those people to their doom. I shouldn't have left, I was weak. If I broke then I can break again. A commander cannot allow his emotions to effect his judgement. In short I failed. In that failure I betrayed my trust in myself. That was worse than my feeling that Ben had betrayed me. Much worse. If I can't trust myself, I can't trust anyone else. And if I can't trust anyone else I certainly can't love anyone. Without love life doesn't matter. The only reason I'm still alive is due to pure luck and Omega-2. I haven't been very careful with myself lately... Damn it Eve, I got cold. You know, in the last hundred years I don't think I've loved anything, not once did I cry - not for any of those that I killed, the only time I approached happiness is when I was avenging someone. I was trying to avenge all the people I let down. You know me, I never forgive myself for anything. I still hate myself for shit I did in seventh grade for goddess' sake! That was what, about four-hundred some odd years ago! There is no way I'll ever be able to forgive myself for abandoning my friends to die. Never. I let them down, I let me down, I washed out at the worst time." "Zoner, there's no way you could have known...." "FUCK THAT! It doesn't matter if I couldn't have known or not. I SHOULD HAVE NEVER LEFT MY POST! THAT WAS BAD ENOUGH, I JUST PICKED THE WORST TIME TO DO IT!" "WILL YOU JUST SHUT UP FOR A MINUTE!" Zoner was just a bit stunned, Eve had never lost her temper like that before. "Seems I managed to piss you off too." "Well, I'm not going to sit here and listen to you drill yourself into a hole. You're a friend, and a damn good one. You did a terrific job for roughly three hundred years, you just made a mistake and Murphy's Law took over. You're only human..." "Not any more," Zoner snorted. "Ahem... As I was saying, you're only human, and you feel emotions. Or at least you did," Eve added as Zoner scowled. "Everyone was stressed. Ben ran, Kei left, Yuri made some bad calls, the whole crew was affected." "That's just it, they needed me to keep things together. So, in their hour of need I ran. I should have kept it together long enough to get everyone else shaped up. I did it all the time, and the one time it was the most important I cocked it up. If I backed down once I'll back down again." Eve shook her head. "You really don't get it, do you?" "Get what?" "That's what you're doing right now." "Exactly. I'm doing it now before we're staring down the barrel of a wave motion cannon." Unreality flickered; Zoner was sitting at a table, looking at a large projection screen. Eve was wearing an old WDF uniform with some unidentifiable but ornate rank badge on it. "I'm afraid it's too late for that." The screen glowed to life, showing a map of spacetime, depicting a region MegaZone was familiar with. Cygnus Beta he recognized, and Sol, and Salusia. And what the hell was that big red dot? Eve drew a box around the red dot and magnified it. The blowup depicted the Halstead system, an unremarkable system near Cygnus Beta that contained nothing of note, save a space station created by an interstellar conglomerate and taken over by another. The station showed in its usual position, orbiting the third planet...but the system was full of blips. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, in orbit around all the planets and moored in stationary positions around the star's gravity well. "What the hell--?" Eve was silent, magnifying again on the large blip right next to the blue dot indicating Halstead Station. Three scans later, it had come into enough resolution to show details. It was a starship, wedge-shaped, with vast expanses of flat deck, gun turrets everywhere, and a flying bridge above the impulse thruster bank. Dreadnaught. "Uh...how recent is this picture?" "It's coming in from a sensor drone. Live and direct." She slapped the table in front of her with the (obligatory) riding crop. "The time for existentialist bullshit is over, Zoner. You're needed. Now get off your sorry self-pitying ass and do your job. You're the only one who can." "Eve, you don't seem to get it yet. If they are up against that then I am not the man. I have no idea what to do, nor the confidence to do it. I'm just going to paint a yellow stripe down my back, tuck my tail between my legs, and run. I figure I either do it now or in the middle of a battle. Besides, it's about time for Ben to get a command. I figure he's up to it more than I am. So go show him the fancy maps and photos, I'm not your man." "He's seen the photos, he's getting a command. You've been out of the technology loop for a hundred years, my friend. We're beyond the level of a single ship now." "All the more reason to forget it. If I don't know the tech I can't use it effectively. Ben knows it, Ben can command it. They only job I'll take is solo fighter jock. Just me and the WarpZone. That way when I run I'll only clusterfuck myself." "Excuses, excuses, and more excuses. You don't believe them any more than I do. Maybe you haven't noticed, but there's a shortage of superdimensional fortress commanders around. You're eminently qualified and history speaks for itself about your competence. Who led the Wedge Defense Force for four times the average sentient lifeform's span? To victory, time and time again? The WDF never lost under your command. Not once. You left. Big fucking deal. People retire all the time. Macquivr isn't much of a commander. Everyone knew that. The vessel might have been better served with Mandeville commanding, who's to say? Maybe he's one who fucked everyone over, why don't you go whip him for a while? Maybe it's all Gryphon's fault, go beat him up. No, no...I have a better idea." She walked over until she was standing right in front of his seat and leaned down, bracing herself on the corners of the desk, her nose almost touching his. "Maybe you should take it all out on the one whose fault it really is." The screen behind her blipped into an image of Largo. Zoner sighed. "You have a flair for the dramatic, Eve, did you know that? Still, I put q in the command. I chose him, my fault, not his. He wasn't ready, and I should have seen that. Hell, I should have made you the commander. You knew the ship better than I did. Listen, I'm just not ready." With that Zoner yanked out the interface cables. "I'm sorry, Eve. Goodbye." "If you leave now you'll never forgive yourself," Eve called after Zoner's retreating form. He marched straight to the Daytona from Hell and buckled in. "Sorry Yuri," he whispered to no one in particular and punched the throttle open. In only a few minutes he was linked to the beta and warping out of the sector. But he kept replaying his conversation with Eve over in his head. He dropped out of warp between systems and shook his head. "DAMN SHE'S GOOD!" he screamed before reversing course and dropping back into warp. <<< Edie Brickell & New Bohemians: Forgiven >>> "Welcome back," Eve chimed as he re-entered the Angel. "Very funny, Eve, very funny. Ok, so I'll stick around for a while. At least I can pick up some new tech." Eve said nothing. She knew the real reason he had returned and there was no reason to gloat. ----------------------------------------------------------------ELEVEN "Faster, meaner, smarter...man, I hate the technology curve." --FastJack "Where are we going, anyway?" asked Zoner from the back of the Lovely Angel's cockpit. WarpZone had been taken in tow, and Gryphon's fighter ensconced in the docking bay under the ship, so that they could all make the journey to their common destination together. ReRob and company were remaining back at Musashi, doing some last-minute kludging on Phoenix. "Might as well just show you," Kei replied, toggling the cockpit windows out of their glare-guard opacity. Zoner gasped at what lay before them; it was a huge silver sphere, its true size impossible to determine, but immense, to be certain. According to the gravimeter, they were in a star system's gravitational well; but there was no star. It was then that he realized what he was looking at. "My God," he whispered. "Is that a Dyson sphere?" "Two points for the Zonermeister," said Gryphon from his seat behind Kei. "Who built it? Where the hell are we?" They ignored him; Gryphon was too busy keying the comm system online as Kei and Yuri plotted an approach and shifted the Angel's systems to gravitic compensation mode. "Planitia Control, this is Lovely Angel on final approach, bearing zero mark zero on gate one four five. Request that you open gate." "Lovely Angel, this is Planitia Control. Gate is open. Proceed with approach, docking bay fourteen." "That's Utopia Planitia?!" Zoner cried, his jaw dropping. The Lovely Angel swung in close to the silvery surface of the sphere, stretching off so far now in the distance that it appeared flat. Its radius must have been one and a half astronomical units, at least, corresponding exactly to the orbit of Planitia itself. A huge hatchway had opened in the side of the sphere, permitting the vessel entry, and she swooped through. And MegaZone had the first view he had ever had of the new Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards. Latticework spacedocks stretched from here to the end of his imagination, off toward the star in the center of the sphere, so very far away. Some vessels were moored to the surface, other floating free, shuttlecraft flitting here and there. Most looked complete; some were still in the final stages of fitting and preparation. And the diversity! MegaZone counted among them Excelsior class battleships, Bengal class carriers, Colonial Battlestars, Exeter and Constitution class cruisers, even Alaska class battlecruisers--he even spotted a couple of Klingon D-7s. "There must be hundreds of them," Zoner murmured. "Five hundred forty-six, at last count. 90% are ready for battle right now; the rest need only minor fittings and adjustments, and we're waiting for senior staff on a bunch of them." While they were speaking, the Angel was navigating through the maze at nearly one-quarter impulse power, streaking past vessels of every shape, size and description, in a sweeping turn that would take them to the far side of the star. And as they cleared it and came about to the opposite side of the sphere, MegaZone found himself looking at a ghost from the past. Huge, blue and white, with a long, tapering foredeck and mighty thrusters aft; Bengal class carriers, two of them, mounted on armatures port and starboard; a majestic and proud flying bridge; railguns like spikes from the "shoulders" of the armatures. The Wayward Son! No, he corrected himself. It's not. It's too large, for one thing. By the size of the other vessels around it, he judged the vessel he was looking at to be over eight kilometers long. Much larger than the Wayward Son, which had been only 3,800 meters stem to stern. And its surface was different, marked with more small weapons turrets and odd sensory bulges and things of function not readily and intuitively apparent. And, he noticed, mounted on the rear of the flying bridge, aft of the bridge windows proper, was the old Wedge, looking like another sensor array among the many that dotted the huge vessel's hull. Zoner's eyes slipped down its side, from the huge impulse thrusters rearward, down the fighter carriers, to the tips of the Tycho Naval Mass Drivers and out to the end of the foredeck, where he could make out the words: W.D.F. WANDERING CHILD SDF-23 Gryphon had risen to his feet behind him, and now he reached up and touched his shoulder. When Zoner turned around, Gryphon was pinning a small golden Maltese cross to his epaulet. "Admiral," he said, "Your new command." "Wait a second," Zoner cried, following Gryphon out of the cockpit as Kei and Yuri made mooring arrangements, "Admiral? I never agreed to any--" "It's a fleet, therefore we need an admiral. Can you deny that?" "No, but--" "And as the leader of the Wedge Defense Force, you should hold the highest rank, correct?" "Well obviously--but no one told me we were going to have a fucking fleet! I mean Eve mentioned that we had more than one ship, but a goddess damn fleet!" "Trust me," Gryphon replied as they navigated the Angel's corridors, "we're going to need it, if our intelligence data on GENOM's strength is correct." "Wait a minute--where are we going? Why isn't the Angel docking?" "Admiral, Admiral...you really must get acquainted with the new technologies," Gryphon replied, leading Zoner into a room off to the side. Kei and Yuri were waiting for them, having used the turbolift. "New technologies, what are you--?" Zoner stopped short as he registered what was in the room: a control panel, facing a small, three-walled alcove which had six round pads in a ring arranged in it. "Oh, no. Are these what I think they--" "Just step onto the pad, Admiral, and everything will be fine," Yuri said with a smile, taking his arm and leading him up into the alcove. "Yeah, fine. Just going to scatter me about the cosmos. You sure this thing can handle cybered Deitans?" "What kind of goober are you anyway? It's matter, isn't it? Shut up and get on," Gryphon snapped. "Geez, what a wuss." Once they were all standing on the pads, Gryphon took a small black device out of his pocket with a grin, flipped the gold grille cover open, and said, "Gryphon to Planitia Control. Energize." They were swallowed up by a blue glow; when they reappeared, it was in another, similar, but much larger room, and there was a large group of people waiting for them. Zoner didn't notice them; he was too busy looking down at his hands. "Wow! Transporter technology? Back in the old days we thought that was just a pipe dream, how did--" "You may thank your friend Dr. Petrarca for the transporters, as well as many of our other improvements in matter replication and transmission, Admiral," boomed a familiar voice. "Welcome, MegaZone. Welcome back to the Wedge Defense Force." Zoner's eyes widened. There, along with an entourage of technicians and a group of familiar faces in uniforms that Zoner recognized as familiar, but not WDF, was Lord Wolfgang Amadeus Fahrvergnugen himself, black battlearmor and all. "Wolfgang! How's it been? I haven't seen you in... what sixty, seventy years? Last I heard you and Celine were missing. I'm not dealing..." Fahvergnugen strode up to take charge of his confused compatriot, and, as he was leading Zoner out of the room with a friendly arm over his shoulder, was saying, "There have been many changes, my young friend..." ----------------------------------------------------------------TWELVE "Think about it Think about it Think about it" --Information Society The next three months flew by in a blur for MegaZone and the rest, as they immersed themselves in their work and forgot about their emotions. The WDF had been a splintered group, its team spirit shattered and its dynamic synergy of creative power destroyed. The next three months were spent reforging that into an even more powerful force. And, in MegaZone's case, there was a hundred or so years of catch-up learning to do. Politically, he was pretty much caught up. He watched the news; he was well aware that the United Galactica had collapsed under its own bureaucratized weight seventy years before, replaced by the trimmer, more dynamic United Federation of Planets. It did not surprise him to learn that one of the driving forces behind the organization of the UFP had been Celine. He knew that the Empire of Kilrah was still a threat, and that the Klingon and Romulan Empires had an uneasy truce with the Federation, too busy warring with each other and the Klingon Republic to want a war with the primarily human and Salusian Federation as well. He knew that the Discordian Confederation was keeping the Kilrathi and the Cardassians off the Federation for the moment, while the Fed dealt with this threat from within. Unfortunately, the Cardassians and the Kilrathi had not had the courtesy to start wars with each other like the Imperial Klingons and Romulans. He also knew that the GENOM fleet had flattened the Federation's Starfleet at Wolf 359 before taking Earth back by force, and was now on its way to Cygnus Beta to finish the job, once and for all. That angered him, in a way that surprised him. He wasn't aware that he cared anything for the planet of his birth, the Cradle of Humanity as it was called these days; but there was a certain pride in being able to say you were an Earthman, and it pleased him somehow. He was pissed at GENOM for taking it. No; the big catchup here was in tactics and strategy. He had been the finest starship commander in space, but that was a hundred years ago. Things had changed. And besides, he had an entire fleet to command now. Granted, each vessel was commanded by a competent officer; he had reviewed their records, all 546 of them. There were also the new weapons and fighters to consider, including the new VF-2 Victory Veritech fighters (replacements for the time-honored Valkyrie series, designed by Gryphon himself) and the experimental Gunstars, and the concept of carrier battlegroups like Commodore Henry Decker's Tiger's Claw and her entourage. The Federation Starfleet type ships were a new thing as well; they fought differently than the slab-sided navalesque ships Zoner was used to. The Republican Klingons allied with them...well...they did whatever Klingon honor demanded. For Gryphon, there was the whirlwind of construction supervision on the classes of vessels he had designed; the Alaska class battlecruisers and the new Confederation class megacarrier, the Concordia, were his personal responsibility, as well as secondary supervision on the Wandering Child, which was experiencing no end of drive headaches. He was also picking out the flight crews of the Concordia's fighter groups and assigning staff to the vessel, for it was to be his command when the time came. For Kei and Yuri, there were retraining seminars to reacquaint them with their positions on the SDF-23's bridge, where they would be until the crisis was over, and refreshers in large-vessel tactics and the like. Meanwhile, back at Musashi, ReRob and company stretched their legendary ingenuity and imagination to their limits trying to make the Phoenix as battleworthy as possible. Rob had heard of the SDF-23's problems with the drive systems and thought he knew the answers, but he had to complete his own ship before heading back to help them; there was simply not time to send a pickup to take him to UP, fix the problem, and return to Musashi. GENOM was on their way through the Enigma Sector; they would reach Macleod Station within the week. All in all, it was a hectic three months. Gryphon and Zoner were on the bridge of the SDF-23, buried deep in the side of the cosmocompass, as Gryphon tried to puzzle out why the thing wasn't interfacing right with the drive computers and Zoner absorbed information, when the turbolift doors opened and Lord Fahrvergnugen strode in. "Lord Fahrvergnugen on the bridge!" the Officer of the Deck barked; the two officers pulled themselves out of the instrument panel and turned to face their benefactor. "My friends, GENOM has taken the Enigma Sector. They will be here within the week. We're out of time. How long before this ship is ready?" "I don't know, sir," Gryphon replied, wiping grease off his forehead with a rag and sighing. "Without ReRob here to puzzle out that drive problem we're practically flying blind--he designed the entire engine system." "I have spoken with ReRob," Fahrvergnugen told him. "The Phoenix is ready." "Great...hey, Sparks, do me a favor. Punch up a tactical of Enigma's border with this sector, and show me GENOM's course." The technician at the tactical console obeyed, and the map appeared on the main viewer. "Okay...now..." Gryphon murmured, perusing the screen. "Sparks," Zoner said, "Highlight our position, GENOM's current position, and Musashi." The tech did so. "Ah-ha!" Zoner cried. "There it is. Look," he said, indicating, "GENOM will pass fairly close to Musashi. Now, ReRob doesn't have a chance against that battlefleet, granted--but the Phoenix is faster than they are, right?" "Theoretically." "Theoretically my ass. If Rob designed it, it's the fastest thing in space, barring Hyper Valkyries and WarpZone. He can get in front of them and lead them right to us!" "Why would we want that?" asked Lord F. "Look. Without ReRob, this ship can't fold. He's the only one who knows what the hell is the deal with the fold drive. With his instructions over subether, we got the impulse engines and the Reflex furnaces to operating condition; for battle, that's all we need." "Sir, we won't be able to fire the main gun without the fold drive operational," Sparks cut in. "I know that--but listen! GENOM will enter the system. Our fleet engages theirs. ReRob beams over, tinkers with the drive while we use the lesser weapons to fight a holding action. And then--boom! We kick major ass!" "I like this plan," Gryphon said. "The fleet has a couple of other major weapons; hell, each Yamato class battleship has a wave-motion gun, and the Concordia has the PTC-2." "What the hell is the PTC-2?" "It's a surprise." "Oh, goody." "Okay, look. We need to get on the horn to Rob and let him know about this plan. In the meantime, I have to finish up preparations on at least half a hundred ships, and you need to get this beast as ready for combat as it can be without its chief engineer. I'm up to my eyes in work...gah, sometimes I wonder why I wanted to be a starship designer..." "Thrill of creation?" "Yeah, that's gotta be it." Gryphon started walking toward the rear of the bridge. "I'm heading over to Planitia Control to contact ReRob...coming, Admiral?" "I hate that..." ReRob's incredulous face leaned out of the screen, the aspect ratio warping as he got too close to the camera. "You want me to what?!" "There's no danger, Rob, really! Well, except for the usual dangers involved with being engaged in a war, of course." "You're not making me feel better about this, Gryph." "Look, it's simple," Zoner cut in. "You're faster than they are. Stay out of their range and lead them here. Your bird enters the sphere, you come across to SDF-23 and get those engines working while the rest of the fleet keeps them off. I figure we can at least fight a holding action if not push them back ourselves; the arrival of the fortress should turn the tide decisively in our favor." ReRob sighed. "Well...I can't say as I like it in theory...but in practice, I think it just might work. We'll download all the telemetry you have on the GENOM fleet's position, establish an ETA, and let you know as soon as we finish crunching the numbers. Phoenix out." The screen blacked. "Well...he's not thrilled, but he'll do it. Now, it's crunch time. Get back to your ship, Admiral--I've got a fleet to get ready." Gryphon grabbed up his datapad and rushed off. The Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyard swung into full-scale action, a concentrated hive of chaotic-seeming activity. --------------------------------------------------------------THIRTEEN "Cry havoc--! And let slip the dogs of war!" --General Chang Gryphon stood in the turbolift, his fist clenched tight around the orders assigning him command of his ship. Since he had first seen and taken over the final stages of the construction of the WDF Concordia, it had been a foregone conclusion that command of the vessel would pass to him when the time came; but the time was now, and the immediacy of the whole thing burned in his mind. After three centuries as the Wayward Son's exec, he was finally receiving a ship of his own, a ship almost as powerful as the SDF-17, and in many more ways his own. The Concordia was his design, pulled from the databanks of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyard's Sperry/UNIVAC masterframe computer, Bombsight, when Lord Fahrvergnugen began constructing the WDF's grand fleet, several years before. He had sketched it out during the Wayward Son's second repair and refit layover, after the destruction of Neo-Worcester, and fleshed it out anytime he had access to a CAD or VCAD terminal linked to Bombsight, keeping up with the technology curve and updating the vessel five or six times before it was even constructed. He had planned to have it built when the time was right for the WDF to branch out and form a fleet. That time had never come before the Breakup. Gryphon had been delighted when he discovered that the Concordia was actually slated for construction; he had been intending to claim the captaincy of a Constitution-class cruiser, to replace his lost and beloved USS Invincible, before learning that his own personal brainchild was under construction. He had immediately assigned himself as construction supervisor, replacing Lord Fahrvergnugen himself. The original Concordia design had been very sketchy, nothing but a general hull design and some very preliminary power requirement calculations. There had been a place in the keel design for a Class Omega weapon, of which the WDF currently fielded three designs, and a Class Omega powerplant and fold system. Originally, these had been intended to be a Reflex furnace and cannon, and the appropriate drive. Over time that had been updated, and in the year between Gryphon's pardon and the commencement of actual construction, it was fleshed out and finalized. That year had been a year of hard work indeed, and here was the reward. The temperamental Reflex furnace had been superseded as a power source for vessels of the Concordia's size; instead, she had fusion-powered impulse engines, and main power was provided by a bank of engines of Gryphon's own design, engines which utilized a strange combination of conventional thermofusion and wave motion dynamics. Very classified. The Class Omega weapon had been upgraded, too, but what had replaced the fabled Reflex cannon in this ship's design was one of the WDF's best-kept secrets. The turbolift stopped and the doors hissed open, and Gryphon found himself in a drydock, similar to but much smaller than the mammoth drydock where the Wayward Son had been constructed and reconstructed so many times in its career. Here, the Concordia sat patiently at moorings, waiting for her chance to take to the stars. From the station balcony behind the ship, Gryphon could see her two enormous banks of impulse thrusters, like giant fins on an ancient motorcar; the aft quarter of the ship bulged with the vast engines that powered the vessel. The bridge tower rose majestically, terminating in the broad sweep of the v-antenna for the main sensor suite just above the semicircle of crystalline windows that formed the bridge outlook. The Concordia was a naval-design ship of the old school, not a modern-design Federation vessel with its separate engineering and command hulls, and nacelle-mounted warp-drive engines. Concordia had a single, solid hull, bristling with weapons, sensors, and shield generators, with two huge operating decks for its fighter compliment; she travelled between starsystems with instantaneous fold drive. The last layer of green thermocoat had been applied hours ago, and all final checks were complete. The WDF Concordia was ready for launch, and just in time, too; the GENOM fleet, at last report, was a mere fourteen parsecs out, and closing fast. Gryphon turned and went back into the turbolift, keying it for Transporter Station A. Once there, he ordered that he be beamed to the Concordia. After the now-familiar disorientation of transportation passed, he stepped off the Concordia's transporter platform and presented his command papers. The ensign there approved them (looking faintly awestruck at the thought of being in close quarters with the legendary Gryphon himself), filed them, and issued Gryphon his ship's insignia, which he affixed to the breast of his uniform tunic. This device allowed him complete access to the vessel; as captain, he could go anywhere he liked. This included through the doors to his left, into the turbolift, and to the bridge. The doors hissed open; Commander Saavik glanced up and announced, "Captain on the bridge." "As you were," Gryphon said before any of his command staff could get up. He knew them all, as well as any commander knew his crew, as well as MegaZone had known his own crew on the old SDF-17. They had served together for thirty years, thirty of the happiest of Gryphon's life without Kei, and while that wasn't as long as three hundred, Gryphon figured it was good enough. In some cases, that was longer. Saavik, for example, had been with him his entire Starfleet career. He arrived on the Enterprise, under Jim Kirk, a lieutenant commander and an engineer's mate; then-Lieutenant Saavik had been assigned to assist him. Since that time, he could not remember a time when she was not at his side. He smiled and took his place in the center seat. The viewer pinged; the VISION test pattern appeared, followed by the AI's representation. She was depicted wearing a WDF uniform of her own, holding the rank of lieutenant commander. "Oi, Captain," she said. "Hey, Vision. I'm glad the techs got you settled before the fight. Like your new digs?" "It's not bad," the AI replied, looking around and smiling. "Lots of empty space, but I can fix that when I have the time." "All shipboard systems operational?" "Looks good," Vision replied. "Computer telemetry connected on all stations. Not a gap in the net anywhere." "Good." He addressed the entire crew present. "I'm sorry we don't have time for a formal launching, but the enemy is within fifteen parsecs of the system, and there's no time to waste. If we aren't here to greet GENOM when they come out of hyperspace, there won't be enough left of ReRob to scrape up. We're defending our home turf here, and that gives us an advantage. I suggest we use it. Now then. Status, Commander Saavik?" "Aye, sir," Saavik replied, turning to her screens. "All decks report systems ready and optimal. Everything is in preparation for launch." "Computer concurs," Vision confirmed. "Standing by." She disappeared. "Lieutenant Leeds, contact Planitia Control and request permission to depart at Gate Four. Mr. Hunter, viewer on, ahead mag one." <<< Queen: We Will Rock You >>> "Viewer on, sir," Lt. Cmdr. Max Hunter, his helmsman, replied. The front viewer hummed on; it was no longer considered safe for WDF vessels to enter combat situations with the shields over the bridge window retracted. Outside, the vessels of the Wedge Defense Force were departing the Dyson sphere in an orderly manner, cruising out the numerous gates on impulse power as the mighty super dreadnaught fortress idled up her Reflex furnaces carefully. Furnaces were tricky things; it wasn't good to just ram them up to full power. Gryphon wondered if the engineering staff was having trouble without Rob to guide them. For all his self-professed lack of skill as a commander, none, not even oft-self-critical ReRob, could fault his engineering prowess. The WDF Pennsylvania, Captain John Trussell's command, cruised past, flashing her running lights; the Concordia responded likewise. Gryphon smiled as the Iowa class battlecruiser exited the sphere; the Iowa was another design he had pushed for in the planning stages. "Captain," Lt. Vanessa Leeds reported from the comm station, "Planitia Control reports we are cleared to depart on Gate Four." "Mr. Hunter, make it so. One-quarter impulse power." "One-quarter impulse power, sir." The huge megacarrier began to move, gracefully easing out of her slip before pivoting and, for the first time in her life, entering the outside space. It felt curiously like the Invincible's last trip out of Spacedock, before the trip back across the dimensional barriers. Part of that might be because the Concordia's bridge module was the very same as the one on the Invincible, removed from the wrecked Constitution-class starship and mated to the Concordia's flying bridge structure by the skilled engineers of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyard. Outside, the Wedge Defense Force fleet was arranged in meticulous order. Carrier battlegroups, composed of a Bengal or Exeter class carrier and its assorted escort ships, dotted the skies in tight clusters, the fighters not yet launched. The mighty Alaska class battlecruisers and Excelsior and Iowa class battleships stood alone or in pairs. Captain Erik Swimm's Federation class dreadnaught, WDF Indomitable, hovered near Gate Twelve, ready to escort the Wandering Child out into battle when the time came. Groups of Constitution class cruisers, the backbone of the WDF's Tactical Fleet, traveled back and forth in covering patterns, escorting and patrolling simultaneously. The Battlestars were arrayed at equidistant points throughout the formation, strengthening perceived weak spots, each of them equal in size and nearly equivalent in power to the old Wayward Son. They were already scrambling Vipers and Dragonflies to cover themselves; just for a moment, Gryphon felt a pang of longing for the cockpit, the smell of CVR-5 and the vibration of the engines behind his back; then it passed. This was his calling now, his duty. ReRob sat in his own conn, on the bridge of the Phoenix; his fingers were dug into the arms of the chair, the knuckles of his natural hand white, as he kept a watchful eye on the readouts of the engineering panel in front of him. All warp tolerances were edging uncomfortably close to the critical level, even with full transwarp drive engaged. They were doing Warp 9.875, a good point two seven five above the vessel's rated tolerance capabilities; the spaceframe was vibrating so violently that the smaller readouts were illegible, and her tortured wail made conversation without shouting impossible. "Range!" he demanded. "Eight point four seven and closing," Deedlit called from the helm. "Lead over GENOM?" "One point seven six and holding." "Utopia Planitia in sensor range," Meph injected. "On viewer," Rob ordered. The main viewer shimmered into the view of the Dyson sphere, so small it took up a fist-sized area of viewer, dots of light shining around it. "Maximum magnification." The screen shifted to a closer view, close enough that ReRob could see the WDF fleet arrayed against the incoming enemy. All but her flagship; she was waiting for her engineer to return. The glimmering warp field of ReRob's incoming vessel became apparent to the sensors of the WDF fleet at around the same time. Now all the viewers on every vessel were showing the Phoenix coming in like a bat out of hell, magnification stepping down every six seconds. On the bridge of the SDF-23, MegaZone sat in his conn, fidgeting nervously with the cuff of the new uniform tunic he had grudgingly donned and glancing uneasily at the four-leafed admiral's pin. "Come on, Rob," he muttered. This vast vessel, and all her potential, sat idle beneath him, the familiar thrum of the Reflex furnace under his boots very recognizable, very familiar. His command staff around him, ready for action; the familiar keening cry of adrenaline across his nerves; he could almost convince himself he was back on the Wayward Son again. Almost. "Planitia Control reports ready to dock at Gate Seventeen," Cheryl reported. "Negative," ReRob replied, getting up. "They're going to need Phoenix and her guns in the fight, and there's no time for docking and redeploying. Helm, bring us to station-keeping at quadrant four two four bearing seven six mark three, at an altitude of 4000 meters. I'll beam over. Meph, you have the conn. Do us proud." "I'll do my best, sir," Meph replied as he took the captain's chair. Deedlit looked back as her husband stepped into the turbolift; just before the door closed, he grinned and flashed her a thumbs-up, which she returned. Then he was gone, and she returned, professionally, to her duties. There would be time for all this, she told herself resolutely, when they had won. "They have halted, my lord," the Buma subcommander said from the helm station on board Dreadnaught II. "Is that a fact?" the man in the admiral's uniform replied, his back to the bridge crew as he stood on the master catwalk looking out at the passing starfield. "At Utopia Planitia, as we thought?" "Yes, my lord. The Dyson sphere is there, just as our intelligence informed us. And--sir! I have ship contacts, numerous and varied. It'll take some time to sort out--I make at least a hundred vessels, sir, probably more." "So," the admiral said, his breath crystallizing on the window. "They have a fleet, as well. So much the better. They cannot defeat GENOM!" He whirled. Pink skin, slick brown hair, glittering blue eye; a cybernetic cowl covered the left upper quarter of his face. It was not Largo. In fact, except for the GENOM admiral's uniform, the cybercowl, and the twisted, evil gleam in the pit of the one remaining eye, it was an exact duplicate of Captain Benjamin D. Hutchins of the Wedge Defense Force. "Helm," this creature barked in a raw, hard-edged parody of Gryphon's voice, "bring the fleet out of warp and transfer control to the individual vessels. Scramble all fighters and prepare for a full-scale star system assault! Hail Largo!" "Hail Largo!" the bridge crew cried, and set to their duties as red strobes began to flash. On the bridge of the Concordia, Gryphon saw the GENOM fleet drop out of hyperspace. Despite his expectations, despite his familiarity with the intelligence data, he could not help but rise to his feet as starship after starship dropped out of warp. Huge, wedge-shaped vessels formed the backbone of the fleet; Imperial class star destroyers, by Concordia's computer's reckoning. Scattered through the fleet were a number of vast, black, hourglass-like vessels which the tactical analysis computer indicated were primarily fighter carriers. Ikazuchi battle carriers appeared, here and there, apparently a new model that used warp propulsion instead of folding. (Unknown to the WDF personnel, GENOM had abandoned fold drives decades before, when it was revealed that the unstable fuel for Dreadnaught's fold core was largely responsible for her utter annihilation.) At the fleet's forefront was their flagship, an exact duplicate of the vessel that had destroyed the Wayward Son utterly; the Dreadnaught. It looked much like an Imperial destroyer, but huge; so huge the Concordia could have sailed into its docking bay. "Battle stations!" Gryphon ordered. "Red alert. Scramble all fighters, Lieutenant Leeds." "Fighters on their way out, sir," reported Vanessa. On the forward viewer, the bridge crew could see the Concordia's crack fighter squadrons deploying, racing one after another down the port and starboard catapult ramps with precision timing; light Epees, heavy Sabres, Broadsword bombers, and Gryphon's favorites, the medium-weight, blisteringly fast, heavily armed Rapiers. Then, the final squadron took wing, five brand new VF-2 Victory Veritech fighters peeling down the ramps and forming up just meters off the deck. The Victory was another of Gryphon's engineering triumphs, a revitalization of the basic design that had made the VF-1 Valkyrie so effective for so long. These five Super Victories were the successors to the legend of Fighter Squadron VVF-261; the Eight-Ball Squadron, under the command of Colonel Patricia Currier, formerly of the original Eight-Ball. Gryphon knew his legend was in good hands. "All fighters away, sir," Leeds reported presently. "Shields up, Lt. Finney. Bring all weapons to full power. Stand by PT Control." "Shields are up," Lieutenant Commander Jaime Finney reported from the Tactical station. "Weapons at full power. PT Control is standing by." "All combat sensors are optimal, Captain," added Saavik. "All decks report ready for combat," Lt. Leeds reported. "Helm, impulse power. All ahead full, set course two four three mark one seven. Move to engage the enemy of your choice." Gryphon smiled slightly as he felt the vessel surge beneath him. "This is it." Battle was joined. --------------------------------------------------------------FOURTEEN "I've been dead once already." --Captain Spock Within instants of materializing in the Wandering Child's number-four transporter room, ReRob was on his way to Engineering at a dead run. There wasn't much time. At the door to the engine room, a technician handed him a radsuit; murmuring thanks, Rob stripped off his uniform tunic and boots and hauled the suit on over his trousers. There was no time for a proper change. Before him stood the fold drive, a massive rectangular prism of metal the size of an office building laid on its side. Normally, were it operating at optimum levels, it would be thrumming at a nearly subsonic level, resonating with the Reflex furnace that could be heard and felt throughout the vessel, and bathing the whole chamber in a pleasant blue glow. Now, it was dead, dark, silent, and cold. "Damn," Rob cursed under his breath; worse than he had thought. He yanked open an access panel and got to work. Up on the bridge, Zoner watched the feed from one of UP's outer sensor arrays as the battle began. Massed Federation-style ships, mostly Constitution and Excelsior class, converged on one of the star destroyers, unleashing a firestorm of photon torpedoes and phasers from their combined weaponry. The destroyer's shields strobed red with the hits; finally, after one particularly hard-hitting salvo, the portside shield generator globe imploded in a column of flame. Instants later, a spread of torpedoes from the lead Excelsior's tubes blasted through the bridge windows, gutting the entire bridge module. Very quickly, though, the destroyer's gun crews overcame their surprise and concentrated their attacks; turbolaser bolts hammered one of the Constitution ships, which the UP computer identified as the WDF Hood. The Hood turned to port, her impulse engines flaring as her captain tried to evade, but the GENOM ship's Buma crew had her marked. As her shields collapsed, the vessel began to heel hard to port, her helmsman overturning. Energy blasts and missiles ripped great holes in the proud ship's hull as the other WDF vessels fled at full impulse power. The portside warp nacelle burst into a violent conflagration as the entire pylon collapsed. Out of control, the Hood's twisted wreckage slammed into the foredecks of the star destroyer, and then her antimatter containment fields let go. The resulting fireball whited out the monitor for a second. MegaZone discovered that he was shuddering, and sweating cold; he had seen battle before, hundreds of times--but never like this! The combat was primal, almost savage, the vessels tearing at each other like animals. Here a Battlestar and a star destroyer traded broadsides, both of them burning at various decks, terribly wounded yet refusing to give up the fight; there a Klingon D-7 class cruiser (crewed, he was told, by actual Republican Klingons), her engine room on fire, rammed an Ikazuchi amidships, taking both ships to hell in a fiery mess. Suddenly, one of the great Yamato class battleships spoke, her helix cannons ripping one of the hourglass carriers in half. A star destroyer turned to confront the vessel, which, the UP computer told Zoner, was the class vessel Yamato, captained by none other than the legendary Salusian Admiral Halcyon, on loan to the WDF for this battle. Bolts from the destroyer's turbolasers holed the Yamato's hull repeatedly as the smaller vessel blasted away with her helix cannons, ripping great hunks out of the destroyer's sides; Zoner turned away, sensing the inevitable outcome of this battle, but his eyes were drawn back to the screen by some morbid fascination. The fire from Yamato ceased; Zoner took this to mean that the vessel was dead, her power plant destroyed, perhaps her crew slain. The star destroyer continued to salvo for a moment-- --and then the bow of the Yamato vomited forth a stream of energy so brilliant it made the viewer go dark for an instant. The beam punctured the destroyer straight through, and as the GENOM vessel twisted on its axis from the impact, fires began to erupt all through her structure. In just moments, the vessel had reduced itself to smoldering junk. "The wave motion gun! They actually got it to work!" Zoner exclaimed. He had been so busy learning about fleet operations, he hadn't had time to get to all the technical readouts; the Yamato class was one he had missed. Still, he thought in retrospect that he should probably have figured as much. "Admiral," came a voice from the back of the bridge. Zoner spun in his conn. Asrial, Queen of Salusia, was standing in the rear of his bridge, looking not a day older than when they had first met at the WDF's first reorganization in 1992. She wore a Wedge Defense Force uniform: the undershirt's visible collar was command-branch white. the stripe down the trouser seams red to denote the WDF Navy. Her tunic was the Strategic Fleet's blood red, and was outfitted with a Wandering Child commbadge. Her rank, Zoner was puzzled to note, was Commander. "Your majesty--what are you doing here? This is an extreme danger zone--" "I am here because I will it," Asrial replied, smiling. "As a Salusian of Imperial birth, I may claim that right. This is your ship, however, and I respect that--permission to come aboard?" "Granted," Zoner replied, "but you haven't answered my question.," "I am here, Admiral, because you require an executive officer." Zoner was momentarily very puzzled. Then, smiling, he indicated the station to his right, for so long crewed by Gryphon on the old SDF-17. "By all means. I think Gryphon would agree that his post is in good hands." She took the seat and began to familiarize herself with the control layouts, then reported in a cool, professional voice, "All systems are optimal except fold control and Reflex systems. Captain Mandeville is currently working to correct the fold drive malfunction and get all high-energy systems back online. He estimates five minutes before we are ready to deploy." Zoner looked back at the main viewer; the Concordia's familiarly squat naval profile was locked in a running gun battle with the GENOM flagship. Her shields were flaring red and her weapons were apparently having no effect on the huge vessel--and Zoner knew why. "q, open a channel to the Concordia, now!" Gryphon's bridge materialized in a corner of the viewer pit. "Gryphon, this is Zoner! I read the reports--Dreadnaught was equipped with phase shields, your weapons aren't having any effect!" "I noticed that, Admiral," Gryphon gritted as he fought to hang onto his seat, Concordia's deck shuddering underneath him with the force of Dreadnaught II's weapons. "Situation is under control. Please don't distract us. Concordia out." The bridge projection vanished. Zoner looked miffed. "Captain, shields are at seventeen percent and failing," Saavik reported in a...tense tone of voice. "WDF vessel closing from portside aft to support. It's the Bismarck, sir." "Vanessa, warn them off. We have the situation under control." The Bismarck, a Yamato class battleship, fired her wave motion gun. The bolt of energy streaked forth and disappeared, banished by Dreadnaught II's phase shields to a vacant parallel plane. The super star destroyer's firepower shifted from the Concordia to the Bismarck, which backed away at full thrust; momentarily the GENOM vessel's interest shifted back to the Concordia. "Vanessa! Get me a channel to the enemy vessel!" "Sir?" "Just do it!" "Aye, sir...hailing frequency is open." "GENOM flagship, GENOM flagship, this is Captain Benjamin D. Hutchins of the WDF Concordia. Cease hostilities at once, or you will be destroyed." The main viewer sizzled to a view of the GENOM commander, and Gryphon suddenly found himself looking at a twisted reflection of himself. "So. It's 'Captain' now?" the replicant sneered. "Not only did you manage to get out of the trap I laid for you so carefully, but you got a promotion in the bargain?" The battle stopped as if someone had pressed "pause" on the Universal Remote. Everyone's eyes, on both sides, were glued to the split screen view of the two commanders. Kei sucked in a sharp breath as the image appeared, and MegaZone gripped the arms of his conn a little tighter. He punched a key on his chair arm. "Engineering! ReRob, we need full power now! There's--" "I see it, I see it," ReRob's voice replied. "I can't work any faster than I am already. Give me three minutes." Zoner sighed; there was nothing to do. "All right, Rob. Just keep working as fast as you can. Bridge out." Meanwhile, on the screens, Gryphon had replied with, "And you managed to get out of the prison on Tantalus V and make your way to your masters, who gave you command of this entire fleet? Largo is still too much the coward to face us in combat when the odds are even, is he?" "Oh, the odds are far from even, my pathetic predecessor. Your weapons cannot even harm my ship--and yet you threaten to destroy me? An empty threat, I think." "You know me," Gryphon replied. "You were fully briefed on the man you were to frame. You know I don't make empty threats. I possess the power to destroy your vessel, and if you do not surrender and prepare your fleet for boarding at once, I mean to do just that." Gryphon's eyes narrowed. "The animal side of me, who hungers for revenge after what you put me through, wants to just push the button now, but the Starfleet officer I was trained to be is giving you a chance. I wouldn't blow it if I were you." "Ah, but you are me," the replicant replied. "Did not all your friends believe so? Did not the woman you loved believe so? Tell me, Gryphon--if the people you love can think you so full of evil and deceit as that, what kind of lovers and friends does that make them? No, my friend, there will be no surrender today. Think about what I have just told you, before I send you to the void. Then, think on it for eternity." Gryphon's screen blacked and everyone else's shifted to an exterior view of the Concordia and her adversary. The super star destroyer opened fire again; all WDF personnel could see the Concordia's shields beginning to buckle. "Jamie...lock PT Control on target and await my command." "PT Control is locked," Finney replied as her panel blinked red. "In charging cycle." The lights, already at combat red, flickered a bit, and the thrum from under the decking took on a more urgent note. The vessel shook under the pounding she was getting from the Dreadnaught II's guns. "Shields collapsing, Captain," Finney reported. "Front and portside armor registering minor damage." "Vanessa, get me a channel one last time." "Open, sir." "Last chance," Gryphon called. "I'll see you in hell!" Gryphon's voice shrieked back. "Recheck PT lock." "Lock confirmed," Finney replied. "Charging cycle completed. All systems locked in and green-light. The phase-transit cannon is ready to fire." "Fire!" Finney pushed the control marked "MODE SELECT". The muzzle of the weapon that formed the Concordia's very keel pulsed and crackled wit