/* Big Country "Far From Me to You" _Why the Long Face?_ (1995) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE STAR-CROSSED Part VII: The Purest Form of Democracy Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 2010 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited FRIDAY, AUGUST 3, 2356 GOODYEAR_ The Blue Suns strike team hit the dirt, just as Zaeed had predicted, about ten minutes later - and found Goodyear a ghost town, the houses shuttered and streets empty. There were eight of them, heavily armed and a lot more individualized than the Suns who'd come to town before. This was a Red Team, one of the Suns' elite strike groups, and each member was a dedicated professional with a signature, a reputation, and a very high pay grade. Rodek Garvex sniffed the air disdainfully as he led his team to the edge of the central square. "Farmers," he growled in his rock- crushing krogan voice. "I can smell 'em. Smells like... -stupid.-" He unslung his heavy repeater. "Weapons free, boys and girls. The kid was supposed to have the package right here in the square for us to pick up. It ain't here, so either he double-crossed us or he couldn't get the others to go for it. Either way, we teach 'em a lesson." He gestured to his left and right. "House-to-house. Hard target search. Anybody gets in your way? Kill 'em." Crazy Zardoz made that high-pitched giggle that always grated on Garvex's nerves. The krogan just hoped he'd get out of sight this time before he started licking his goddamn axes. Garvex hated that pretentious "oh look what a psycho I am" bullshit. He preferred his squaddies -quietly- crazy. "What's that noise?" said Varenn. Garvex glanced at his Minbari second, puzzled. He liked Varenn, which was a fairly rare emotion for him - she was almost as tough as a krogan woman, and her name wasn't the only thing about her that reminded him fondly of the psychotically aggressive warbeasts he'd raised back on Tuchanka - but sometimes she had strange flashes of insight that didn't make any sense to him at first. Still, they'd worked together for long enough that he'd learned to listen when she had them. This time, though, he was forced to admit, "I don't hear anything." "It's very high-pitched. Maybe outside the range of your ears," she said. "Can't pin down where it's coming from... " Her eyes went wide; she opened her mouth to say something else, but before she could get it out, a brilliant red beam of energy slashed down from the roof of City Hall and all but vaporized Shen-Dog. Then, as if the laser bolt had been a signal flare, the other side of the square suddenly filled with enemies - most of them armored, all armed, and considerably more professional-looking than the intel from the previous ops would have suggested. /* The Crystal Method "Name of the Game" _Tweekend_ (2001) */ "SHIT!" Garvex roared. "Break! Break! Break! Grab cover! Wextad, Horg, take out that laser! The rest of you stay tight!" Zardoz cackled his out-of-control cackle, whipped out both of his axes, and sprinted out into the square. Homing in on the woman who appeared to be taking point for the colonists, a tall, white-haired woman in a skintight black tactical envelope, he shrieked, "Time to play! TIME TO PLAY!" "Zardoz, you kratthead!" Garvex yelled. "Get - " The woman in black didn't seem bothered by the psycho's charge- and-scream technique. She turned, raised her rifle, and calmly blew Zardoz away. Apart from the siege of Goodyear back in February, when she'd been wounded and Tali had taken charge, Miranda hadn't been right in the middle of a firefight for a long time. The quarian's opening play with the SPARTAN Laser in this fight had been a solid one - Miranda would probably have gone for the krogan, but to someone who wasn't familiar with them, the big guy with the rocket launcher probably had looked like the more serious threat - but the reaction of the skinny guy in the orange prison pants -had- startled her a little. Not enough to make her fumble the takedown; out of practice or not, she'd never been that kind of girl. But it was an effective reminder that she was in a serious fight. Wextad and Horg faded to the left, trying to get an angle on the rooftop where the laserfire had come from. Horg pumped a couple of grenades from his launcher up there, hoping to catch the gunner in the blast radius with some indirect fire - but as the explosions bloomed, the dark shape of a black Cyclone battroid flitted across the main street and disappeared behind the building with the blue med clinic decal. Human and Klingon glanced at each other, then hustled across and tried the door. To their surprise, it wasn't locked. It hissed open and revealed a perfectly ordinary little med clinic, just like you'd expect to find in a dirthole like this one - except rather tidier and better- equipped. They intended to just cut through, maybe lob a couple of grenades around to break the medical stuff, but they pulled up short in surprise when they discovered that the doctor was in. "Boy, are -you- in the wrong place, Doc," said Wextad, leveling his rifle at the lab-coated, visibly elderly salarian. To his further surprise, the old doctor smiled very slightly. "Not at all," he replied. "Right where I need to be." And suddenly there was a pistol in each of his hands. Garvex saw the icons for first Wextad, then Horg flash red and then go black in the readout of his tactical command implant. He had no idea how the hell that had managed to happen, but add it to Shen-Dog and Zardoz and he'd lost half his squad already for no gain at all. A second later the Batarian Twins went down in a hail of bullets, having tried their old two-in-one pop-up trick against a squad of colonists led by a tall guy with an old-timey tin star on his jacket. Garvex had seen that stunt work a hundred times - it could confuse and rattle anybody but hardened military types - but the sheriff, if that's who he was, stayed cool and his people stayed cool with him. They let one pop up, waited for the other to come over the top, and then gunned them both down for their trouble. And that was six out of eight, gone for nothing. A simple sweep-and-clear - one that was supposed to have been set up in advance - turned into a total clusterfuck. Garvex felt the rage welling up inside him and welcomed it. Glancing to his right, he saw the deep flush crawling up Varenn's white neck that heralded her own imminent entry into berserk fugue. It made him grin in spite of himself, and she saw it and responded with her own fierce, filed-teeth smile. They bumped fists, then got ready to show these farmers what real violence was like. The two remaining Suns enforcers sprang from cover at the same time, going in opposite directions around the barrier at the corner of the square and making for the two elements of the Militia that were trying to pincer them. On one side, the krogan let out a tremendous bellow and just waded into Miranda's troops, scattering them in all directions and making straight for her. It had been a long time since Miranda had to take down a krogan, and then she'd had a grenade or two to work with. She shouted for her people to disengage, faded back, and scanned her surroundings, her genetically enhanced mind working at top speed. And here was another thing she hadn't had occasion to do in years. Just like riding a bike, she told herself. You never forget how it's done. Just find the center, grab the power, and... The charging krogan found himself suddenly lifted into the air by nothing at all, held there for a half-second, and slammed violently to the ground. Garvex felt things break inside him, didn't know what they were exactly, didn't care. His legs went numb, came back a millisecond later as his secondary spine took over; he tasted blood and bile in his mouth, hauled himself to his feet, set himself for another charge. -Now- the bitch in black looked scared. That was her best shot and it didn't stop him. Well, wasn't that too - Across the square, Varenn homed in on the sheriff, shotgun in one hand, combat knife in the other. He turned to meet her, raising his rifle, but he slipped - ironically enough, in one of the Batarian Twins' blood - and went down to one knee. Varenn's lips peeled back from her sharpened teeth and she let out an exultant shriek, knowing that her knife would drink deep of this one - Revealed by the sheriff's stumble, an armored figure standing behind him raised a bright red Hyperion combat rifle, calmly aimed as if he had all the time in the world, and shot her square in the throat. Garvex blinked, shocked out of his rage, as he heard Varenn's battlecry suddenly cut off in a horrible choking sound. He whirled, saw the Minbari go down in a veritable -cloud- of blood. The sheriff, the object of her charge, had ducked at the last second. Behind him stood a man in elaborate custom armor, a Sentinel to his shoulder. A man, to his infinite shock, Garvex knew. No -wonder- these assholes had been able to wipe out his whole team. That changed everything. Garvex knew he had to get back to the dropship, or at least back into comm relay range of it, and get word of this development to Vido. He'd want to know this even more than he'd want Garvex to make these farmers pay. With an enormous, literally superhuman, internal struggle, he forced down his krogan bloodlust and his need for revenge, aborted his charge, and made instead for the far side of the square with all the speed he could drive out of his battered body. The internal conflict this caused was nearly blinding in its intensity, and filled him with a whole new kind of fury... but he was a professional and he knew his job. Don't you worry, Varenn, he thought to his fallen partner. These fuckers -are- gonna pay. Bullets and blaster bolts whined and zorched all around him, pitting his armor and tearing his flesh, but he ignored them, blocked it all out. He had one goal now, one reason for living, and it was the little blue-and-white vehicle, now parked at the end of this packed- earth excuse for a boulevard, that had brought him and his team to this hellhole. As he cleared the square, a dark shape stepped out of the side street in front of him and turned. The Cyclone! Slimmer shape than the usual military jobs - a Bartley, probably with a woman inside. Hadn't the briefing said the quarian was the one who used a Bartley? She seemed startled to have emerged into the boulevard and seen a badly wounded krogan coming at her like a freight train; she turned, hand rising to the blocky shape on her right shoulder, and a bright red light lanced out and painted a bobbing dot on Garvex's chest. Not in time, sweetheart, he thought with a sort of fiercely joyous hate, and a second later he was on top of her, smashing forward with the bony crest on his head. Something shattered with a crackling sound like polycarb or duracrys; he felt his plate fracture, too, but shit, what did that matter now? Then he was up and over, leaving her flattened and trampled in his wake. The shuttle was maybe two dozen yards off now. Garvex opened a comm channel, hoping he was in relay range, and tried to get out his message, but his voice wouldn't work. The parts of him that made it were too full of holes and blood. And then the other Cyclone appeared, dropping out of the sky to land between him and his goal. With one last mighty effort, Garvex cleared the fluids from his throat, held open the comm channel, and bellowed a single word at the top of his perforated lungs. Then his world disappeared in a storm of miniature missiles. Gryphon regarded the smoldering remains of the krogan for a second and wondered why he'd chosen that as his last word. He hadn't even been -facing- Zaeed. Zaeed was over THERE - - his heart nearly stopped as he looked up the street and saw Zaeed, Chen, and the others clustered around the fallen form of a black Bartley battroid. He covered the distance in a single boost-jet bound, but Mordin was there before him, waving everyone back. "Stand clear!" the doctor barked, his usually cheery voice snapping with urgency. "Breathe as little as possible." Tali had unlocked herself from the Cyclone and was struggling upright out of its embrace, one forearm drawn across the lower half of her face like Dracula holding up his cape. A network of fine cracks covered the arc of violet duracrys that could be seen from there up; as she moved, a sliver fell away, opening a hole wide enough that Mordin could actually see the silvery glint of an eye and the black of a constricting pupil through it. "I'm - all right," she said, wobbling slightly on her feet. "Into the clinic," Mordin told her. "Quickly! Must minimize exposure. Decon unit there. Can isolate you, make repairs." He waved the concerned colonists back. "Stand clear!" he repeated, louder this time. "Make way!" The crowd, now bolstered by civilians who had begun emerging from hiding when the shooting stopped, gathered around the clinic door as Mordin hustled her inside and stood barring their way. "No one enters," he said flatly. "Scott, Miranda will handle emergency first aid for the wounded out here for now. Most urgent cases will have priority when clinic can re-open. For now, absolutely imperative to maintain quarantine." Then he closed the door. "What did that mean, quarantine?" asked one of the militiamen. "Is that why she always wears that suit? I thought it was because she was a methane-breather or something. Is she contagious?" "No," said Zaeed. "We are." Gryphon dropped his own Cyclone back into bike mode, climbed off, and crouched next to the fallen Bartley. The mecha had suffered some armor damage, nothing too serious, but next to it, where Tali's head would have been when she fell, was a small pattern of iridescent purple shards. Gryphon gently nudged them together with his fingertips, adjusting them like puzzle pieces, until he'd reconstructed about half of what had been her visor. "Hell," he murmured. Straightening, he tabbed the commset in his helmet open. "Mordin, come in." "Yes," Mordin replied. "Aware of situation. Working as fast as I can." "No, you should know - she was sick last night. Feverish, headache, sore throat. She said it was nothing, but if she's still - " "-Yes,-" Mordin repeated, slightly more sharply. "Knew that. Have it under control. Will com you if you're needed. Mordin out." Gryphon considered that for a moment - how could Mordin possibly have known that already? - then walked slowly back down the street to the Suns dropship, revolving the last hour's events in his mind. The dropship was new, one of ExoSalusia's recently introduced UT-47 Kodiak shuttles - squad-level transport, a replacement for the old Denevan class. Room for twelve if they weren't picky about seating, crew of two. They weren't really dropships at all, but proper little starships, complete with hyperdrives of their own. Gryphon liked the looks of them, and had briefly considered buying one a while back - the same shopping trip on which he'd considered the Beta and ended up buying the Ranger - but he hadn't been able to talk himself into going with anything unarmed. For the purpose he had in mind right now, though, it was perfect, or it would be once they'd gotten those Blue Suns insignia off. Miranda appeared in the gullwing doorway. "Not thinking of leaving us, I hope," she said archly, pistol in hand. Gryphon regarded her coldly for a moment, then ignored her. "You wouldn't even scratch my armor with that," he said. "And no, I'm not going anywhere. I just want to make sure -this- isn't going anywhere... until we need it." He took a moment to dope out the control layout - standard ExoSal stuff - and then disabled the autopilot. "There. That should keep the owners from issuing an automatic recall." He eyed the comm panel. "Damn. Looks like that krogan managed to relay his last call out. I wonder if anyone was listening." BSS INCINERATOR AQUILA SYSTEM_ "Did you hear that?" Vido raved. "DID, YOU, MOTHERFUCKING, HEAR THAT?!" "I heard it," Relkan replied. "Zaeed. ZAEED! What the FUCK is ZAEED MASSANI doing on DELTA, WIPING OUT MY SONOFABITCHING RED TEAM?!" Not waiting for an answer, he punched the intercom panel on the wall open. "Kronfeld! Com the others and charge up the main batteries. We're goin' in!" "Roger that," the ship's captain replied. "Prepping for fleet hyperspace jump. ETA 0500 tomorrow." Bug-eyed with rage, Vido clawed at the comm panel. "Did you hear that, Massani, you piece of shit? I got 16 ships out here and we're all comin' for you! You got TWENTY HOURS to live! After that? Your ass is GLASS, my friend! YOU'VE FUCKED WITH ME FOR THE LAST FUCKING TIME!" GOODYEAR_ Gryphon and Miranda regarded each other with mutual bemusement. "I, uh, guess Vido knows Zaeed already," said Gryphon. "I guess so," Miranda replied. Then, stepping closer, she placed the muzzle of her weapon to the surface of Gryphon's CVR underglove where it was exposed between the plastron and belt. "And for the record, I'm pretty sure I could scratch you from here." "Maybe. Then what? Button up, raise ship, leave everybody else to die, haul my carcass to the nearest GENOM office? Everybody who ever knew you were Miranda Lawson would be dead, and a hundred million credits could buy you a whole new life. Again. If you were still the heartless bitch who helped Cerberus ruin all those lives, you wouldn't hesitate for an instant." She stared into his face through the slightly tinted facebowl of his helmet for a few seconds, the conflict almost visibly playing out behind her eyes; then she looked away, powered down the gun, and put it in its holster. "I'm not," she said, making it sound like a shameful admission. "Good." He flipped open his facebowl and grinned at her. "Now are you going to help me save this colony or what?" "You're really going to try, aren't you? I mean... -you- could just leave. And then we'd all be dead and you could disappear again." "Yeah. And if I were the soulless thing GENOM wants everybody to think I am, I wouldn't hesitate for an instant. But I'm not." He stepped around her and left the shuttle. "You might want to lock this down in case anybody in town gets panicky and thinks of bugging out. I'm gonna need it to make my plan work. And I need everybody in the big room at Charley's in an hour." Instead of going home, where there was nothing he particularly needed yet, or to the clinic, where he wouldn't be admitted, Gryphon went around to the back of the town hall, where he'd stashed his Valkyrie before the fight, and climbed up into the cockpit. Slumping into the seat was a little like coming home, or at least returning to the office after a long vacation. A moment later, Vision appeared on the central VDU. "So, uh... you want to fill me in?" she asked. He pulled off his CVR helmet, stashed it behind his seat, and sighed. "I don't think we've got time for the long version. Maybe not even the short version. But I'll try." The short version took him twenty minutes, after which he sat looking up at the sky, doing his best to capture a few seconds in which to think about nothing, while Vision digested what she'd just been told. Then she said, "Okay... how do you plan to play this? I mean, we could just get the hell out of here." "Have the Blue Suns filed a Declaration of Discovery with the FCSB or the Royal Astrographic Society?" he asked, ignoring the suggestion, as she had known he would. "They hadn't when Zaeed and I left Deneb. Wait one while I check. My HW bandwidth is pretty poor this far out." She seemed to be lost in thought for a moment, then said, "No. There's no record of any extraordinary discovery in this system on file with either one. Just the RA's routine chart from when the Kresge sector was last swept. It shows that Scandia-CN38 III has six moons, none interesting. They probably just boomed in, scanned for anything bigger than Earth's moon, and pissed off again. This thing wouldn't have shown up, especially from the ecliptic. Cross-section's too small." Gryphon nodded. "I wonder if that's why it's built this way. Okay, here's what I need." Vision listened, her expression becoming more and more thoughtful as he explained what he wanted done; then she nodded. "Okay, you got it. Take me about ten minutes to set up." "Good." He levered himself up and swung a leg over the coaming. "It'll be just about showtime then. Set it up, but don't execute until we get a green light." "How would you have done this part if I hadn't shown up?" she asked impishly. "Wouldn't have been easy," he admitted. Climbing down onto the Valkyrie's left arm, he opened up the storage compartment aft of the cockpit and dragged out a duffel bag. "I better get dressed for dinner." He went home to Spare 14, the house that had never acquired a new name, showered, made some adjustments, and changed his clothes, swapping one set of armor for another, older, with more history and more inherent danger. Wearing it was something of an act of defiance, but Gryphon wasn't really sure -who- he was defying. The universe itself, maybe. While hanging the underglove of his grey CVR-3 in the closet, he paused for a moment and regarded Tali's dress. Silently, his face closed, he picked up one of the sleeves and let it flow between his fingers, feeling the embroidery slip past, the weight and quality of the material. Remembered what it had felt like with its owner inside it, dancing with him. It was Myla Van Horn's work. Exquisite. The house intercom beeped. "Benjamin." He hadn't been addressed by his actual name by anyone but Tali, and then only in absolute private, in so long that he was momentarily taken aback to hear Mordin's voice saying it; then he shook it off and replied, "Go ahead." "Situation here under control," Mordin said. "Tali'Shukra wants to see you." "I'm on my way." He arrived to find the corner of the clinic, including one of the biobeds, hastily tented off with heavy plastic and tape and festooned with warning signs. Inside, Tali stood with her back to the room; when Gryphon walked into the clinic she was just settling a helmet against her quasi-CVR's neck seals. Through the plastic he heard the faint hiss as the system locked on and pressurized. It wasn't her usual helmet, he saw; rather, it was the one that had come with Miranda's old suit of CVR-3F, the one that went with the Cyclone. It had been the only hard part of the suit Tali and Gryphon hadn't cannibalized and adapted for use with her regular gear. Her quarian helmet was sitting on a small wheeled table next to the impromptu decon area's inflatable airlock, where, Gryphon supposed, Mordin had dropped it after removing it from her head. The facebowl was smashed, as he'd seen outside - about half of it missing altogether - and the chin bar, with its little flanges and circular "snout" in the middle, was badly deformed, its superstructure crushed and bent where the krogan had slammed his bone-plated forehead into it. Seeing it that way was unexpectedly shocking, so much so that he had to just stand there and take it in for a moment. Tali cycled out of the airlock, pausing as she saw him standing there, deep in contemplation of her ruined helmet. He'd trimmed his hair and shaved off the beard he'd sported since they had met, which made him look much younger - only a few years older than she was, if that - and he was wearing an outfit she'd never seen before. It was like the underglove from his CVR-3, except... not. It was some kind of flightsuit, blue and grey with black and yellow striped shoulder plates, different gloves, unit patches and markings, the bold red and white delta of the Wedge Defense Force on the left upper arm. He had the hard parts of a CVR system attached in the same fashion as Tali's were, but it, too, was different, royal blue and black, polished to a fine shine. On the left side of the plastron was a white rectangular tag reading HUTCHINS in bold black letters. He had a pair of ancient weapons strapped to his back - swords of some kind; they didn't really go with the armor, but it crossed her mind that he looked strangely... -complete- with them there. He was carrying a helmet, and that was different too, one of the classic Stonewell Bellcom "destroyer prow" helmets she had seen in old pictures of Valkyrie pilots. She had known who he was since they met, but seeing him like this was like seeing a figure from a history file, and she had to stop and remind herself that she -knew- this man, perhaps knew him as intimately as she could know anyone. She couldn't quite convince herself of it, though - until he looked up, saw that she'd emerged, and his face broke into that smile, the one that always made her feel like everything was going to be all right, no matter how obviously not going to be all right everything actually was. Gryphon saw that Tali, or Mordin, had sealed the CVR helmet's normally pivoting visor with a neat bead of Permaseal and applied a heavy tint, so heavy that it completely obscured her features. He had no idea now what she was looking at, what she might be feeling or thinking; even the partial read he could get from her normal visor was blocked entirely. But it didn't block her body language, and he'd learned to read that nearly as well as the angles of her phantom eyes. He could see her surprise at his change, her uncertainty. He grinned, took one long step, and gathered her into his arms - his armor, her armor, who cared. "Are you okay?" he asked. "I'm fine," she said, her voice rendered extra-metallic by the CVR's lower-grade speaker. "I felt a little nauseous for the first half-hour, but I think that was just the shock. A helmet breach is pretty much the worst thing that can happen to a quarian off the Flotilla. It is to us what... I don't know, -drowning- is to you. We have nightmares about it sometimes. At least I do. But I wasn't exposed for very long, and Mordin got me isolated and deconned as fast as anyone possibly could have." Gryphon nodded. "Gave me a pretty good scare, too," he said. "I know firefights are dangerous, but I never imagined that happening." He gestured to the broken helmet. "It took me aback a little, seeing it like this when I came in. I mean, I know it's just a helmet, but coming in and seeing it there, for a second it was like I was seeing the actual face of someone I care about, all smashed and mangled." "It stands to reason," Tali replied. "I mean... for all intents and purposes, to you that -is- my face. Or was. It's no different for us, really. We learn to recognize the subtle cues in the design of others' suits - not just the masks, but that's a big part of it." She shrugged, gesturing to her current completely blank visage. "-Nobody- would recognize me in -this,-" she added. "We weren't trying to make it completely opaque, but... we were kind of in a hurry." "As long as you're all right," he said. "Everything else we can replace." "I'm fine," she repeated, and then, hesitantly, "Better... than fine." Gryphon gave her a curious look, then let it pass and said, "Good. 'Cause I've got a hard job to do now, and I'll feel a lot better with you backing me up." Charley's was packed and abuzz when Gryphon entered at the back and mounted the little stage where, the previous week, Mordin's DJ setup had stood. The lectern Miranda used when chairing town meetings was up there now, and onto this he placed the holojector Zaeed had brought, so that Vision could project herself into the discussion from her hardware station in the Valkyrie outside. Tali, her black armor now topped with an unfamiliar and faceless helmet, followed him like a shadow, and Mordin came after her. As the conversations died away, replaced with a shocked silence, Miranda and Chen filtered out of the crowd to join him on the other side, as did Zaeed. Gryphon noticed as they did so that he wasn't the only one who'd changed his look; Miranda had un-whitened her hair, returning it to its natural near-black shade of brown, and removed the subtle makeup she'd been using to look something close to her calendar age. She looked like Millandra Caspian's college-age daughter now. He wondered what the townsfolk would make of that. "Okay," he said. "You can all see what I'm wearing here. I'm sure you heard the rumor sometime in the last 45 minutes or so. Probably some of you didn't believe it. Well, it's true. My name is Benjamin Hutchins. I used to be the number-two man in the Wedge Defense Force. Thanks to our friends at GENOM Corporation, I'm now the most wanted fugitive in the galaxy. The price on my head is in the Guinness Book of Records and it goes up every fiscal year. "The leader of the Blue Suns, a man named Vido Santiago, offered one of you half of the take to make sure I was exposed and handed over to him, and then sent those mercs we just fought to make sure he got me either way." Gryphon smiled thinly. "I think that demonstrates Mr. Santiago's sense of good faith fairly clearly, but if not, here's something else: When his hit squad failed, he decided to cut his losses. Right now, a fleet of 16 Blue Suns warships - pretty much all of their deep space assets, if I recall correctly - is on its way here. Their intent is to glass the colony from above and then claim Halo for their own interests. Maybe he'll be able to convince GENOM I was one of the ones vaporized and collect his hundred million; maybe not. It appears he no longer cares." That sent a buzz around the room; he waited for it to die down, then said, "Now, here's where it gets complicated. I've got a plan that, if it works, will see everybody in Goodyear - that's all of you - safely out of harm's way, the Suns sent packing, and Halo in good hands. But there are some things about it you're not going to like, and whether I'm innocent or not, I -am- a wanted man, nobody who has any legal business bossing colonists around. And I'm going to need your help, everybody's help, to make it happen. "So it's decision time, Goodyear. I think I can save you... but I can't force you to let me try." He glanced at the chron built into his left vambrace. "We don't have a lot of time. Vido's fleet is about 19 hours out." He stepped aside and gestured Miranda to the podium. "What happens after that is up to you guys." Townsfolk murmured and exchanged shocked looks - maybe at what he'd said, maybe at Miranda's changed appearance, maybe both - but nobody spoke out as Miranda looked down at the lectern and gathered her thoughts; then she said, "I... this is not really a good time for this, but I suppose there never -is- a good time... " She smiled slightly. "And if I know you, and I'd like to think I do after all this time, you'll be able to handle it." So saying, she proceeded to lay on them the startling fact that she wasn't who they had thought she was either. She glossed over the more questionable parts of her past, saying only that she'd done things in her youth that she was no longer proud of, and had joined the merchant marine under another name to leave them behind and start over. "What I -am- proud of," she said, "completely and unreservedly proud of, is what we've done here these past ten years. Which is why... even though I don't think I'm fit to call myself your mayor or your captain any longer... I'm staying here. Whatever my name is, wherever I came from, I'm a citizen of Goodyear. The colony's fate, whatever it may be, will be mine as well." Then she turned the chair over to Sheriff Chen, who, she remarked wryly, was apparently the only authority figure in Goodyear who really was who he claimed to be - unless, of course, he was about to reveal that he was actually the long-lost Zentraedi warlord Breetai Kridanik. "Uh, no, sorry," he said, smiling a little awkwardly. "Just plain ol' Scott Chen from Shanghai. Uh... whoo. I dunno about you, but after all that I just want to lie down and think it over for a while. Shame we haven't got the time. So... uh... anybody got any questions?" Apparently concerned that he'd be drowned out by a chorus of other questioners, Garrett Redding put up his hand and inquired in a voice that, there having -been- no other immediate questioners, made people near him duck: "IS MISS TALI OKAY?" Much of the tension in the room was blown out by the mass laugh that got; when it was over Tali stepped forward and said, "I'll be fine, thank you," with a smile in her voice. With the floodgates open, a debate broke out - a sometimes spirited one - as to what should be done with the fugitive, who should lead the colony if Millandra, or whoever she was, was stepping down, whether there was any hope of any kind of parley with the Blue Suns, and so forth. It wasn't rancorous, but it also wasn't getting anywhere, and after twenty minutes or so of directionless wrangling, one voice cut above all the others with a whisky rasp: "GODDAMMIT, THAT'S ENOUGH!" Everyone stopped talking and turned to look at Alice Hernandez, who was leaning against the far wall with her rifle by her side, a cigarillo smoldering in the corner of her mouth, and her arms folded across her chest. "You people are the biggest bunch of headless chickens I have ever seen in my life. Millandra, Miranda, whatever the hell you're gonna call yourself, you were still the captain of the Sojourner and in my book that still makes you the boss of this town. So take charge already." She shook her head disgustedly and tapped the ash from her smoke. "For Christ's sake, woman, you used to have balls." Startled silence. Miranda stepped to the lectern, a little smile on her face, and said, "... Do I hear a second?" "Uh... second!" said Old Man Fredriksen. "All in favor?" "Aye!" "Opposed?" Nothing. "Well, then. I guess I'm back in office," said Miranda. "And whether we decide to follow it or not, I'm curious as to just what Commander Hutchins's plan -is.- Perhaps we should ask him about it." So he told them. And, as he had expected, there was at least one part of it they really didn't like: the part where everybody lived, but Goodyear had to be abandoned. As townspeople expressed their resistance, and in a couple of cases shouted abuse, Tali leaned to Mordin and whispered, "Back him up! Did you finish re-running your tests?" Mordin nodded, his eyes scanning the crowd. "-And?-" Tali prompted. "No change," Mordin replied. "So we have to leave anyway. Tell them!" Mordin hesitated. "What's the matter? Mordin! You have to tell them. He's -losing- them, and for nothing!" "I... " Mordin swallowed, then drew himself up, his amphibian eyes becoming steely. "Yes. You're right." He tugged his lab coat straight. "Face defeat like a scientist. What Dr. Sagan would do." He glanced at her and smiled. "Thank you again." Then he stepped to the podium, moved Gryphon gently aside, and broke through the argument with, "Afraid I have to give you all another shock. Probably the day's least welcome. Wish it were otherwise, but science... not always about what we wish for." Mordin's bombshell silenced the room completely as he explained it in choppy, telegraphic sentences. At the back of the room, a couple of people could be heard quietly sobbing as the old salarian's cold facts sank in. A baby cried, was shushed by his mother. For nearly a full minute, nobody spoke. When someone did, it was Alice Hernandez again: "Well, shit. If I gotta leave anyway, I'd just as soon leave alive. I say we give the kid's plan a shot." When Gryphon smiled at that, she made a dismissive gesture and said, "Yeah, I know you're old as hell, you know what I mean." "Say we -do- go along with your plan," said Old Man Fredriksen. "What are you gonna do when it's over?" "The way this is going to have to go down, there'll be an official investigation. People from the FCSB, the Colonial Authority, maybe even Starfleet." Gryphon shook his head. "I can't stick around for that. As soon as I know you guys are safe, I'll have to fade." He sighed. "I've done it before. I can do it again." "Hold it," Herrick Mitchell put in, leaning on a crutch. "We're supposed to just let you walk away?" He sneered. "If you're innocent, why don't you turn yourself in and have your day in court?" His sister Harriet turned to him and said, "Herrick, if you don't shut up I'm going to ask that nice man to shoot you in your other leg. -Think- about it. If he was framed, the same people who framed him control the planet where it happened. Do you think he can look for fairness in those courts?" "Dad always taught us that the innocent don't have anything to fear from the law," Herrick insisted. "Your daddy was a smart man, Herrick Mitchell," said Alice loudly. "Smart enough to know you don't tell a six-year-old how the world really works and expect him to sleep at night. But you're old enough now to know better." She dropped her cigarillo to the floor, ground it out, and blew out the last mouthful of smoke. "Besides. Guilty, innocent, it doesn't matter now. Way I see it, he's the only chance we got. He gets us outta this mess, we let him clear off... sounds fair to me." "Hell, I wish he could stay," said Fredriksen. "We could use his help when we get wherever we're goin'." Shooting a glare at Herrick, he added, "He'n his young lady done more good for this colony in the six months they been here than -you- done in your whole life, sonny." Fuming, Herrick subsided. "He's gonna be trouble," Zaeed whispered to Gryphon. "First chance he gets he's gonna tell anybody with a badge everything he knows." Gryphon nodded. "I know. I'll have to make sure I'm long gone by then." "I could take care of him for you," the mercenary offered. "Quietly," but Gryphon shook his head. "That's not how I play the game." Zaeed shrugged. "Suit yourself." "Okay, look," said Miranda. "We can stand here and talk about it until the Blue Suns get here and start making the sky rain fire, or we can make a decision and live with the consequences. Personally, I favor the latter course of action. At least it -is- a course of action. Shall we put it to a vote?" So they voted. Before his eyes, Gryphon watched the purest form of democracy in action, reminding him powerfully of the way the tiny towns worked in the Maine of his boyhood, as the two hundred or so voting-age citizens of Goodyear raised their hands one by one to settle the fate of their town and themselves. And when it was over, Miranda turned to him and said, "It appears the ayes have it. We're in your hands, Commander." Then, leaning closer, she added in a lower, colder tone, "And I will personally guarantee that betraying us will be the last thing you ever do." Gryphon grinned and restrained a sudden, improbable urge to just kiss her and see what it did to that hardass look she'd pasted on her face. Instead he clapped her on the upper arm, said, "You worry too much," and stepped to the lectern. "Okay. Here's what we've got to do." Once the plan was explained and its various parts put into motion, there wasn't really a lot for Gryphon to do, other than roam around checking into various preparations and, more often than not, just get in the way. The next phase of the plan mainly involved waiting for things he'd put in motion to happen without him, anyway. Alice had finally been the one to suggest that he might take himself off and "meditate or something" until the time came for him to take useful action. He couldn't get his head into anything like the right place for meditation; instead, divested of his armor and back in a basic coverall, he found himself drifting aimlessly around Spare 14, picking things up and putting them down again. He supposed he ought to get a box and pack what few possessions he had, see if he could find a place in Old Number One for them, but something about that seemed so terribly... -final.- Eventually he came to rest on the edge of the bed, glumly regarding the scuff mark on the nightstand where Tali tended to put her shotgun down every night before retiring. That was where she found him half an hour or so later. He glanced up as she entered, leaving his question unspoken, and she said, "Miranda and Mordin are prepping the shuttle now. They told me I should go and get some sleep. Like -that's- going to happen." She dragged the chair out from the room's tiny built-in desk and sat down facing him. As she did, he noticed idly that the CVR helmet she wore looked even more out of place now that she'd removed the rest of the armor from her encounter suit. "I have to talk to you," she said. "I've been thinking about your plan." Gryphon raised an eyebrow. "And?" "And I know what you're trying to do," she said sharply. "And if you think you can just run away while you've got -me- off running an -errand- you're an idiot." "It's a little bit more important than an 'errand'," he pointed out, his voice mild. "Don't try to change the subject," Tali said. "Tell me why you want it to happen this way." "Tali, it's not a question of what I -want,-" said Gryphon. "Do you think I wanted -anything- that's happened today? I -need- you to do this. You're the only one who can, and everything - everything! - depends on it. I know that's a lot to dump on your shoulders, but I can't help that. This is the way it has to be." "And after it's done? You didn't mention anything about that when you were outlining your big plan." She folded her arms. "You said -you- would have to disappear. Nothing about me. Not a -word- about taking me with you." "I -can't- take you with me." "Don't you dare," she said coldly, "make some stupid joke about how your Valkyrie only has one seat." Gryphon gazed at her bleakly for a few seconds, then shook his head. "Not today. Not like this." He sat forward, elbows on knees, and took her hands; she resisted, but not much, nor for long. Looking earnestly at where he guessed her eyes would be behind the CVR helmet's unfamiliar blankness, he went on, "Tali, I -never- meant for you to get sucked into the vortex that is my life. All I wanted was to get you out of there. I was going to take you to the nearest -civilized- spaceport, set you on your feet, send you on your way, and make myself scarce before the cops showed up. That's all. You'd never have seen me again and you'd have had a great story to tell all your friends back on the Flotilla when you finished your pilgrimage. "Instead, we got stuck here. We got... comfortable. With the town, the people, the rhythms our lives settled into... with each other." He looked around the room, still holding onto her hands. "I've been happier living in this dingy little prefab with you than I've been... " He shrugged. "In a long time. Not on New Japan; not in Woody Creek; not even on Ishiyama. I haven't been -this- content since before the Fun Stopped. But we both knew it had to end sometime." "-Goodyear- has to end," Tali replied. "-We- don't." "Tali, do you have any idea what life would be like on the run with me? The quiet we've had here, Blue Suns notwithstanding, has been an... aberration. I normally spend my time getting shot at, or worse. You heard what I told Scott this morning. I go somewhere, I try to get some space, and someone comes after me. There's violence. I move on. Lather, rinse, repeat. I can't drag you into that." "You won't be dragging me." As if she hadn't spoken, he went on, "And there's a woman out there, one who used to love me - which is the worst kind of enemy to have, by the way - who thinks I'm the devil himself. She can't be bargained with. She can't be reasoned with. She doesn't feel pity or remorse or fear. And she absolutely will not stop. Probably not until one of us is dead. I don't even want to -think- about what she would do to you. Remember what Miranda said to you when she thought I'd betrayed her? Magnify that by about a million. That's what Kei would think of you. I take back part of what I said earlier. She would pity you. But she'd still kill you." "I told you before, I'm not made of glass," said Tali. "I can take care of myself. You've seen that." Gryphon shook his head. "You've never seen anything like Kei." "And -you- obviously aren't listening," Tali shot back, tugging her hands from his so they'd be free to gesticulate angrily. "I don't give a damn about -danger.- I'm quarian. My entire species is in danger. Always. I've been in danger since before I was born. I nearly -wasn't- born. The everyday life of every quarian is so precarious that something as crazy as the -pilgrimage- makes -sense- to us! Think about that for a moment." Gryphon half-smiled. "You raise a valid point," he said. "But that's another thing: You've got a job to do, and a home to go back to." "You seem to have taken care of the first part -for- me," she said wryly. "As for the second, there's plenty of time for that. Besides - with my help, you might be able to complete -your- pilgrimage... and then we'll -both- be able to go home. Together. Wherever we decide that should be." He regarded her with a look much like the one he'd shown when she made the sudden end run around Miranda's objections to the salvage mission, mingling affection and a not-displeased incredulity. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" "You're damned right I am." Now it was her turn to grab his hands. "I won't lose you. Not now. Not when I'm this close." Gryphon looked puzzled. "Close to what?" he asked. "Uh... " Tali shifted uncomfortably, looking away. "Nothing. Never mind. It's not important right now. When this is over... " "Tali." He didn't raise his voice, but something in the way he spoke her name riveted her attention as he went on to ask, in a gentle voice with more than a tinge of worry, "What did you do?" "I... " She didn't answer for a long moment, then said, "I went to Mordin and asked him if he could make me... like you. Stronger. Immune to things. Not necessarily extend my lifespan, but... at least make me strong enough to - to touch you." She paused, then added hopefully, "And I think it's working. I was exposed to the open air for more than a minute today and it only made me sick for half an hour. That -has- to be a good sign." "... That's why you were sick last night," said Gryphon slowly as his mind pieced the puzzle together. "It was an immune reaction to a retroviral gene rewrite." "Yes! And we're not supposed to be able to -have- strong immune reactions. Mordin did some bloodwork while he had me in decon this morning and found that some of the key sequence changes are already being expressed in living cells. He said it would be another day or two before the change is complete, but after that... well... " She hesitated, suddenly awkward, looked at the floor, and finished in a small voice, "After that we can really be... together. If you want to." Gryphon seemed not to trust himself to speak for a few moments. When he did, what came out was, "Tali... why didn't you tell me you were thinking about doing something like this?" "I wanted it to be a surprise," she said; then, looking up, she added, "I thought you'd be happy." He took a long breath, held it for a moment, and slowly let it out; then he lay down, moving over so she had room to settle in beside him, and said, a little mournfully, "Oh, Tali. You didn't have to do that for me." "I know," she replied simply. "I wanted to. And not entirely for unselfish reasons," she added, getting back a touch of her impish good humor. "Quarians are mammals too, you know. We have... drives. We're good at sublimating them - we have to be, stuck in these damn suits all the time - but we have them." Raising herself up on an elbow, she looked down at his face and added, "I have to say your reaction is a little disappointing." Gryphon chuckled and pulled her down against him, ignoring the uncomfortable corner of her CVR helmet's chin bar where it dug into his chest. "I'm incredibly moved that you'd take a step like that just to be with me," he said. "I only hope you know what you just signed up for. But I imagine you probably do. You're smart. Smarter than I was when I bought -my- ticket." "We don't know if I'm getting the full ride," Tali said. "Not yet. Mordin wasn't sure the complete modification would come through the reverse transcription process. Whatever that means." "Hm," said Gryphon, a syllable that meant he knew what it meant, but didn't think it was important. He supposed it shouldn't have surprised him that Mordin would have the geneticode for Omega-2 in his files. Hell, he was probably the guy who stole it for the STG in the first place. He and Zoner had known -someone- had for quite a while, but the salarians were the WDF's allies and they hadn't seemed keen to blow the galactic balance by going hog-wild with the stuff, so they'd let it slide. They stayed there for perhaps twenty minutes, just cuddling and woolgathering, until Tali stirred and said reluctantly, "I... should get going. The shuttle must be just about ready." Gryphon sat up and rubbed surreptitiously at the sore spot on his upper chest. "Yeah, I should probably get to work too," he said with forced nonchalance. "I wish you could come with me," said Tali. "I'd love for you to be able to see the Flotilla as it is now. Meet a few of my friends. Explain the situation to the Admiralty Board yourself... but I know you can't, not under the circumstances. But someday... when it's all over?" He nodded. "I'd like that." "Well... okay, then. I guess... this is it. Here's where I ride off and save the day," she added wryly. She went to the door, then hesitated and turned back. "Before I go... do you... want to see my face, at least?" Gryphon smiled. "I'd love to," he said. "But we can't have you addressing the Admiralty with the sniffles. It'd ruin the gravitas. Think of all those poor schoolchildren studying the vids of the Historic Moment later on... " Tali's laugh was only a little forced. "Right. That would never do. Okay. I'm... going." She crossed the living room, then lingered by the front door and looked back. "Good luck." "You too, Tali," Gryphon replied. "May the Force be with you." He stood on the stoop and watched her walk down the street to the shuttle. A crew of colonists had spent the last couple of hours stripping the vehicle of its Blue Suns markings while Mordin, Miranda, and Vision made sure no nasty surprises lurked in its superstructure or its computers. She paused at the gullwing hatch, looked back, raised a hand in a wave, then ducked inside and sealed it behind her. The impromptu ground crew backed away as she powered up the blocky little craft's engines and raised ship, then pivoted it on its repulsors and throttled up. In seconds the shuttle was gone, disappearing into the clear blue sky. The plan, which Garrett Redding had dubbed "Operation Desperate Gamble" during the briefing session, was underway. /* The Outlaws "(Ghost) Riders in the Sky" _Ghost Riders_ (1980) */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Star-Crossed Part VII: The Purest Form of Democracy To be continued in Part VIII: Operation Desperate Gamble E P U (colour) 2010