INDUSTRIAL RECLAMATION COMPLEX #1 NEAR THE CITY OF UART PLANET 03F8, OUTER RIM TERRITORIES 11 MAY 2296 Industrial Reclamation Complex #1, which covers nearly a half-million square miles of the surface of Planet 03F8, begins ten miles outside the city of Uart, which passes for a capital. It is surrounded by a high chain-link fence which is broken in so many spots as to be useless; the gates to its five road entrances are long-since gone, and no one bothers to guard the openings. Any of Planet 03F8's various small industrial firms which wish to can dump anything in this, the biggest single junkyard in the galaxy (the planet Junkion not counting, as it has no terrestrial core). Anybody who can get to it can pick through it for whatever they might want. Its numerous caves, crannies, nooks, and cul-de-sacs of junk serve as hidey-holes for all sorts of people: vermin, killers, addicts, and those who simply want to be left alone. 03F8 is a good place for that: a nameless little planet in a nameless system on the uninteresting part of the very edge of human space. In Sector 9A-1, near the Uart Gate, the panorama of junk appeared undisturbed, as usual. It was a good deception, for under the surface of one of the hillocks of junk, there was a skin of fused steel, held up by supports laser-welded together from larger pieces of solid scrap iron. It could be accessed by a door cleverly concealed on one junk-strewn side, a door which had rather elaborate safety measures for a secret door set into the side of a fake house-sized pile of random junk. Inside the false junk pile, a man worked steadily at the main power plant of something which was most assuredly -not- junk: a VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie variable-configuration aerospace fighter. It was white, with black and electric blue edging, and bore a distinctive black and white marking on its drive modules (currently removed and lying off to the side next to the makeshift crane which had been used to move them) and nose: a black ball with an eight painted in a white circle on it. When Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins had decided to name his Valkyrie squadron "Eight-Ball", he hadn't expected the name to be quite so applicable to his situation. So much for your grandiose visions of clearing your name, he said to himself for the millionth time as he worked to repair the cracked major plasma conduit which had forced him down on this world to begin with. Here you are, eight years of running and hard legwork later, and what've you got? Nothing. Except a sinking suspicion that whatever GENOM did to you, they covered too well for you to crack it, and an angel of death dogging your trail. Scowling at himself, he removed the wrecked section of conduit and looked behind it. "Oh, wonderful," he muttered aloud. "Just wonderful." The cracked conduit had backflashed. Behind it, half of the major power handling systems were slag. No wonder the Valkyrie had been experincing power problems for weeks, forcing him to seek out this junkhead; no wonder it had run so erratically in battroid mode when he used it to erect this shelter. The drive train was munged in a big way - big, but not irreparable. After all, this -was- the second biggest junkyard in the universe. Even with the admittedly minimalistic accoutrements he had here, he should be able to effect repairs, at least enough to get him to one of the outlaw-tech yards a bit further down the Rim, where he could buy proper parts and get a couple of good, non-question-asking engineers to help him do it right. As Gryphon clipped his CVR-3 together, seated the helmet, strapped on his blasters, and prepared to leave his hidey-hole, he wondered why he was bothering with it. The century was getting closer and closer to turning, and he was no closer to his goal than he'd been when he started. He'd heard about the destruction of the Wayward Son within days of his departure; strangely, he'd felt little. The ship had been his home, the centerpiece of his existence, for three centuries. Now it was nothing but a hulk in the middle of a blasted, radioactive desert... and he felt nothing? Somehow, it felt a little bit unfair. He knew the reason he was working like this, even if he wouldn't admit it. Work kept him from really thinking about how totally pointless his situation was. It kept him from sinking into despair over the utterly lost cause he'd become. He stepped out of the hidden door (having first checked the vid-survey system to make sure nobody was out there to see him) with a short-term goal of finding a #8 pulse compensator, and tried to keep everything else out of his mind - such as what the hell he intended to do once he had the Valkyrie working again. Gathering around him the cloak he wore to conceal his armor, Gryphon picked his way up one pile and down the next, making certain to note landmarks so that he wouldn't get lost (although, if he had to, he could remote-activate the Valkyrie's transponder and home on it). At the peak of the next junkhill, he thought he saw the distinctive blocky shape of a Carvers-Strohmsson J-191 plasma turbine. J-191s were equipped with two dozen #8 pulsers - surely he could find one on the wreck which was still functional. He made for it. Halfway up the next hill, he tripped on something and sprawled on the junk with a muted KLUNK, grateful for his armor's protection. Curious as to what he'd tripped over, he turned over, coming to a sitting position on the side of the hill, and looked. Ah, there it was - a cylindrical metal object, a sleeve of some sort, full of bunches of plasticene fibers and wiring, and... ... what?! His eyes followed the object back to a joint - a cybernetic interface cuff, connected to... "Slag!" he spat, and lunged forward, digging through the surface junk with his gauntleted hands and excavating the rest of the object. It was a robocybernetic torso, humanoid and tapered, flaring just about where the hips belonged. At that point it ended in a tangle of sheared metal, broken wiring, and melted myomers. The other arm was missing completely; the mounting pin at the shoulder mount was bright and gleaming where it had been twisted and torn away. The upper torso, between the shoulder mounts, was covered by a gently curved, rusting armor plate - the chest which was attached to the human head this wrecked cyborg body still bore. Gryphon bit back bile and pulled off one of his gloves, reaching out and touching the chest and ab plates. No vibration; no respiration, nor an active circulator. Unless she had a nano-maintenance system for her organics - possible, since there seemed to be even less organic material involved in her than in most full-on cyborgs - there was no way she could possibly be alive. He put his fingertips to her pale cheek, brushing back some black, straggly hair. Her flesh was cold, but he didn't think it was the cold of death - it was the cold of synthetic flesh which isn't being heated from within by the lifesim systems of a sophisticated cyberhead. A light flicked on in Gryphon's head. This was a conversion style which had been popular around the turn of the twenty-second century, when full-body lifesim conversion was prohibitively expensive, but the lifesim technology was finally working - people would get a full conversion, leaving only the brain and optic nerves intact of the original organics, and have the head of their new body made into a lifesim replica of their original - or perhaps the face they always -wanted- to have. These days, full lifesim was affordable, at least for large corporations and government agencies; it was not uncommon to encounter perfectly natural-looking people working in corporate security for the Big 50 megacorps who were completely robotic under their lifesim flesh, except for their brains. He pulled his TR-560 portable sensor array from under his cloak, flipping it open, and ran a scan. Then ran it again. And a third time. He ran the unit's diagnostic. There was no malfunction; the unit was reading a definite lifesign from the wrecked cyborg. She was alive, barely. Relief flooded through him, even though he had no idea who this woman was or how she had come to be here, nor why he should care. Had he been a bit more conscious of his own state, he would have been pleased to note it as a sign of his still-grimly-hanging-in humanity; as it was, he had nothing to say, and less to think, about it. That being the case, his sense of humor, which spent most of its time in hiding these days, remembered the training it had received through long years of association with Martin Rose. Since Gryphon wasn't using his voice just then, his sense of humor borrowed it for a moment. "That's a damn shame," he declared, "when folks be throwin' away a perfectly good white girl like that." Then he opened his facebowl, slapped himself in the face, closed it, picked up the wrecked cyborg, and started back toward his shelter as fast as he dared. Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Scrapheap City Shuffle Part One: Transformation Benjamin D. Hutchins with thanks to Yukito Kishiro (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited As best Gryphon could tell with the very limited robocyb equipment he had available, he'd been correct in his surmise: her organics -were- being maintained by a nano-engine. Truth be know, Gryphon had very little use for nanotechnology. He had always been more concerned with its potential effects if uncontrolled, and the difficulty of controlling it. He had never bothered to learn the nuances of it, or, in fact, the basics beyond what most laypeople knew of the concept. Now, he had to trust in it. Shrugging, he set about using a needle from his Valkyrie's medkit, some clean fluidic tubing, and a cannibalized secondary fusion baffle to improvise a drip to provide the engine with materials to maintain and repair her with. Hopefully, if he understood the way borg nano-engines worked, this would help while he got the rest of the equipment back online. Assuming he could. Robotics had been one of Gryphon's hobbies back in the good old days. He'd designed and built several successful types of robot, then branched in the later days to dabble in robocybernetics (the name given to the popular notion of cybernetics, the "chrome", in the latter days of increasing nano-enhancement) and interface technology. He and Erik Swimm had done extensive tinkering with their first full-conversion cyborg volunteer, that having been Erik Swimm. Still, that had been a while ago. He was rusty, decades rusty, relying on skills he hadn't used in years to get the power core and primary operation systems online before the nanochine finally gave out - and he didn't know how long that would be. Suppose he couldn't save her? Suppose he could? He knew nothing about this woman. Where did she come from? How'd she get this way? What was she doing, thrown out in the junkyard like yesterday's broken fan belt? She might not be friendly - in fact, she might well be psychotic. He was walking into a very dangerous situation with this. It was lucky for her he didn't care. Scrounging up his tool kit and stealing the arc lamp he'd been lighting his engine work with, he put her up on his workbench and got to it. His hands, it seemed, hadn't forgotten what they were doing. He found it startlingly easy to realign her drive train, calibrate the fiber-optic signal carrier "spine", and other such purely robotic tasks, and only had to search his stubborn memory for a few moments when it came to the rather thorny area of bio-robotic interface. Fortunately the integrity of her flesh/metal junction hadn't been compromised; that was always a pain in the ass to deal with. Three days passed rapidly, with Gryphon taking only cursory pauses to wolf down field rations, bathe (he was still, even in this situation, too fastidious to fall behind on that - being dirty distracted him to the point where he couldn't work), go out searching for parts and raw materials, and take the occasional brief nap. Very soon, it became obvious that she would need a new power core, as well as major power-handling systems and drive components - items he hadn't a chance in hell of finding in the junkyard, monstrous though it was. This was an industrial yard, after all. A microfusion core was outside the realm of probability as far as discovery here went. The items here tended to be big, and the parts he needed were very, very small. However, he knew where he could get them... ... the question was, did he want to make the sacrifice it would require to do so? He paced across the shelter, paced back, and, hand on chin, looked down at her sleeping form. A long moment stretched taut and snapped. How could he not? With its usual sizzling light show, the GRF-3N Griffin-III powered armor suit rezzed into existence around him, and for the first time he could remember, he reached up, worked the lock mechanism, and pulled off the helmet, then manually disassembled and removed the rest of the suit. All its systems were double redundant; he could strip out the backup fusion cell, the secondary neuromimetic systems, some of the actuators... the suit would still be functional, if at reduced levels, until he was in a better position and could get or make new parts for it. Grinning, Gryphon called his clothes back from the void and went back to work. Three days passed as he stripped out the Griffin-III's ancillary systems and reworked them for installation. At the end of those three days, most of the torso systems were back together and operational, including the primary biocell, another old-fashioned design feature since superceded. This was an armored module whose contents included a single lung, a simple digestive system tied to the nano-engine, and a circulatory pump. He'd gauged the capacity of her circulatory system at something around a quart and a half, and managed to tissue-type her with his TR-560. In one of those cosmic coincidences that served to remind him there was an actual divinity of a sort, he'd discovered that not only was she human, but they had the same blood type. So, when the time came to bring up her primary biosystems, he spent a few minutes in the cockpit of his Valkyrie breathing pure oxygen. Then, rather lightheaded, he stripped out another of the tubes and needles from the medical kit and improvised a transfusion tap in his own arm. He waited until he was absolutely certain he couldn't possibly afford not to stop now before disconnecting it, then sucked down a quart of concentrated boost ration and passed out in his makeshift bed. When he came to twelve hours later, his regenerative qualities had taken care of his own fluid debt, and her organic signs were looking a good bit healthier as well, now that breathing and all that sort of thing had started again. Satisfied, he moved on to the next step. Gryphon was impressed by the complexity and sophistication of this woman's systems, whoever she was; they were advanced beyond the level he and RoboSwimm had accomplished. This had resulted in his getting lost occasionally while he figured out something which was new to him, sitting down with a pencil and some ratty newsprint to scribble out prospective designs for components as they occurred to him. It was obvious from her surviving central systems that she was some sort of combat model - the reflex hardwiring and strength/speed- oriented design of her main power-handling equipment left no doubt of that. With proper limbs, she'd be almost unstoppable. The artist in Gryphon wouldn't let him leave that challenge unanswered, so he scoured the sector of the junkyard for hours on end, days flowing into weeks as he discovered bits he thought might even be original and others which could be fabricated to suit. He was improvising heavily, since he didn't exactly have precision machining equipment and was forced to fashion everything by hand, and there was a day's delay as he cursed himself up, down, and sidewise for a fool and fixed a centimeter discrepancy in the length of the legs. As her completed body took shape, it became obvious to him that she was small, even smaller than he'd originally thought she'd be when he worked out her proportions on his newsprint. It wasn't until he'd put everything together, satisfied himself that it was all fitted perfectly, polished and replaced the chest plating (which he had redesigned for better articulation and such), and pronounced the job finished that he realized he had no idea how to wake her up. There was no switch he could find, and having been over every millimeter of her cybernetics with a microviewer, he was certain it wasn't hiding anyplace either. Deciding he needed to take a little trip and get his thoughts in order, he made certain the drip was in place, disconnected the Cyclone, and rode into the city, walking about in the dirty streets for a bit. He stumbled across a Salvation Army thrift store, and as he passed it, he was struck by an idea. Going inside, he rummaged through a couple of the clothing racks, looking for things which might fit the cyborg. Just in case she happened to care about that sort of thing. Most of the stuff which was small enough was unsuitable, to his mind - children's things, frilly and dumb-looking - but he found a few items which might suit. As he returned to his Cyclone, packed his purchases away in the storage boxes, and started it up, he never even noticed the figure in the long coat lounging in the shadow of the Salvation Army building. The figure, however, noticed him. When he arrived back at his shelter and reconnected the Cyclone, he found that she was, indeed, still unconscious. Sighing, he stood by the worktable for a bit, thinking, a bit consternated. Then he gave her one last sweep with his TR-560, verified that she was, in fact, quite alive and well now, and put it away. With nothing else to do, he unpacked the things he'd bought at the Salvation Army store and dressed her, just for the hell of it, in a pair of jean-shorts (he was pleased to discover that he'd judged her size right) and a t-shirt which bore the logo of a local company by the name of Duotech. "Well," he said, more to himself than the unconscious cyborg, "here we are, you and me, in a junkyard... " He shrugged. Perhaps after a bit of sleep, he'd know what to do. He went over to the old mattress he'd thrown on the floor and, kicking off his shoes, fell on it, pulling one of the old army blankets over him and dropping off. Gryphon was awakened from a surreal dream involving building Boris Karloff from parts found in an endless junkyard by a touch on his shoulder. As this was highly unusual, his body reacted with a Full Panic Startup, throwing him over on his back with his hand searching for a weapon. The cyborg he'd invested so much effort and time in was standing over him; she'd reached out and touched his shoulder with a hand. She jumped back, startled, as he turned over so violently; for a moment, his alarmed blue eyes met her own, which he noticed were brown and remarkably lifelike. Now that it was animate, he could see that someone had done an excellent job on the lifesim of her head module; he would have sworn that she had a genuine organic face. Not knowing quite what else to do, Gryphon pushed himself back, away from her, holding his hands out to the sides and showing that he was unarmed. It didn't occur to him for a few moments that she didn't appear the tiniest bit hostile - more curious, perhaps a bit frightened. He decided to try the old-fashioned way, then. "Hello," he said, keeping his voice warm and unaggressive. She looked as if she wanted to reply, but then blinked quizzically, making no sound. "Hello?" he tried again, eliciting another blink. He got to his feet and took a step toward her; she didn't move, just watched his hands. Slowly, he raised one, reaching it forward, placing his fingertips against her shoulder. She flinched, as if not expecting to feel the contact; he was momentarily pleased that he'd apparently gotten the surface tactile net to work. "Can you understand me?" he asked her. She didn't reply; only looked at him with those worried brown eyes. She opened her mouth and tried to speak, then looked confused as words apparently failed to come to mind - or come out. "Nod your head if you understand me," he said. She looked at him again, blinked, and then, slowly, nodded. Hmm. There must have been some neurological damage, after all, he thought. At least she doesn't seem to be psycho. "You understand Standard, but you can't speak?" Another nod, with a bit more assurance behind it this time. "Is your throat damaged, or do you not remember how?" She didn't seem to know. He shrugged. "It's not important, really. If you can't speak, you can't speak. We'll get by. I'm Gryphon, by the way; hope you don't hold that against me." She looked quizzical. "Never mind. Do you have a name?" She blinked, then looked thoughtful, then looked worried, then slowly shook her head, troubled. Definite memory loss. Damn. Gryphon pondered for a moment, hand on chin; as he did, the cyborg walked up to him, standing near enough to him that he could hear the servos whirring quietly when she moved, reached up, and touched the side of his face. He looked sidelong at her fingertips as she drew them away, then at her, quizzically. She traced the side of his face down to his hand, then gently pulled the hand away from his face and examined it. "Yes," he said quietly to the questioning look in her eyes. "We're different. You're what's called a cyborg. I can only assume that you were... like me, once. I really don't know." She looked even more confused, and he added, "I didn't build you, you see. I just found you, and repaired you... don't you know?" She shook her head, looking slightly frightened. Damn, he muttered inwardly as he realized what had happened. Her maintenance engine had gotten to the point where it was -really- cutting its losses... it must have been forced to let her neural net crash to ensure survival. Says something else about her systemic sophistication that it has that kind of discretionary power... but it also means she'll probably never remember who she was... He shrugged - one of them had to remain calm, after all - and put his hand on her shoulder. "Well," he said, smiling, "don't worry about it. You're here now, unless you want to leave. I'm certainly not dumb enough to think I could hold you against your will... if you want to leave, if you think you've got someplace to go, by all means, go ahead." He indicated the door, then added, "Personally, I'd prefer it if you stayed." Now why did I say that? he wondered, and the look on her face as she gazed back at him seemed to say the same thing. Then she shrugged and walked across the shelter, pausing by the door, chin in hand in an unconscious imitation of his gesture of a few moments ago. She seemed to be lost in thought. Then she turned back to face him, smiled, went to the makeshift chair he'd fashioned out of bits of junk, and sat down. Which left him wondering a) what just happened and b) what now? "Well, I'm going back out to look for parts for this beast," he said at length, slapping the side of the Valkyrie. As he started to snap his CVR together, he said, "You can come with me, if you like." She was at his side in a half-second, a smile on her face, and he couldn't help but smile back as he put on his helmet and left the faceplate open for once. They went out into the junkyard together and scoured a few of the hills for parts, coming up with some very useful finds in the areas of fusion rectifiers and plasma waveguides, and he knew he'd never have gotten that TZ980a servo-control board if she hadn't been there to dig the wrecked gravcar it came out of from under a pile of refrigerators. Gryphon, finding himself in the company of someone he could talk to for the first time in ages, nattered on, a blue streak of random bullshit, but she didn't seem to mind at all. Once, she lost her balance at the top of a pile of wreckage and fell, tumbling and bumping, down the side of it; in doing so she discovered the technique for making sounds, and since then had been occasionally making experimental syllables at random, like a child learning to speak. Apparently there was nothing wrong with her throat. Gryphon was having so much fun he didn't even notice that they were being watched until it was a wee bit too late, in fact. He got the prickling sensation at the base of his neck a bit too late, and turned around from the junkheap he was digging at, his hands dropping to the grips of his blasters, to find himself confronted by a sawn-off heavy laser rifle, in the rock-steady hand of a man dressed in a battered environment suit. The man had a remarkably ugly face, and his head was wrapped in a coil of dirty fabric that might once have been white. Gryphon recognized him as one Drovar Ganz, a fairly well-known bounty hunter. Though the man looked mainly organic, Gryphon knew believing that was a mistake. It took a great deal of talent or luck to survive in the galactic bounty-hunter game without massive cybernetic augmentation, and from what he'd heard, Ganz had relatively little of either. When he'd heard about the mark placed on his head by GENOM, Gryphon knew he'd be facing the better-known hunters sooner or later... but he'd been hoping for later. "So," Ganz sneered. "The Butcher of Musashi. 'Bout time I caught up with you." "I'm not the Butcher of Musashi," Gryphon replied, keeping his voice even and his glare level. "Don't give me any shit, Butcher," Ganz replied flatly. "I've got a pattern check match on you. You're a very valuable man. Five million Salusian to the one who brings you in, alive or dead. That's your choice." There was a pause. "Personally, I'd prefer dead." Gryphon scanned his surroundings, looking for anything he might be able to use. His sidearm was right out; Ganz would blow his face off before he could even get it. He'd been having so much fun he hadn't bothered to secure his facebowl. Damn and blast. But... perhaps, just perhaps, there was an angle... his right hand was inside his cloak, and he palmed a small item out of his right forearm guard's storage compartment, waiting for the right moment. "Now get your hands out here where I can see them," Ganz ordered, his rifle's muzzle moving just a tiny bit. Gryphon brought his right hand out of his cloak, dropped the item held in it, and then moved as fast as he could as the cloud of smoke engulfed them both. He broke to the right, reaching up to slam his helmet as he did, making for the bulky, unidentified wheeled object he'd noted about twenty yards to the - WHAM. It felt like a tree had fallen across his back, and he tumbled head for heels, fetching up against the object he'd intended to use as cover. Looking up, he saw Ganz approaching, upside down, out of the smoke. "Cute," Ganz grated. "I guess it'll be dead, then - " He was interrupted as something, a black and silver blur moving too fast for any detail to resolve, slammed into him from his left, and before Gryphon could figure out what happened, the bounty hunter and whatever had hit him were buried in the side of the junkhill. Gryphon got to his feet and backed off, drawing his weapon, and wondered what in hell was going on... And then Ganz and his newfound cyborg friend burst out of the junk, the bounty hunter with his rifle ready, the cyborg girl with eyes narrowed, a dead-serious expression on her face, in a ready position. Ganz sighted and fired, the targeting optic implanted in his right eye glowing; with speed beyond that which even her builder had anticipated, the cyborg girl -dodged the bolt-, leaping over ten feet to the side and then closing the gap between herself and Ganz with a single bound that wasn't over when she reached him. He tried to dodge, but she was too fast for him, and with a crash muffled by Ganz's environment suit, her fist met the sectioned chestplate of the armor built into his flesh. The nameless cyborg bounced away, turning a neat triple somersault in the air before landing lightly on the junk; the bounty hunter and his weapon took separate parallel paths down the junkhill. As Ganz got to his feet, looking a bit woozy, reached down and tapped a control on his right vambrace. As he did so, he seemed to straighten, regaining his full balance. "I didn't know the fearsome Musashi Butcher had to hide behind little borg girls," the bounty hunter taunted, trying to get his quarry to do something stupid. Fortunately, Gryphon had overcome any male-battle-ego problems long, long ago; the women in his life had always been better at personal combat than he. (The thought was vaguely, bitterly amusing, now that his own edge was becoming sharper and sharper in his exile -because- of one of them.) "Whatever works, baby," Gryphon replied with a larcenous grin; then he drew his blasters, ducked behind a slab of wrecked something- or-other (it looked like it might have been an earth-mover at one time), and started raining fire down on his attacker's position. "And I told you before, Sparky - I'm not the Butcher." As he sought cover from the hail of blaster fire, the bounty hunter seemed to be agonizing about who he should kill first: the one worth all the money or the one who was embarrassing him. The borg girl took the decision out of his hands by throwing herself down the junkhill at him, her footsteps throwing up small explosions of metal fragments in her wake. The hunter set himself and, with spumes of steam, fired a pair of small missiles from rails along the sides of his armor's forearm guards. The girl leaped up and - Gryphon wasn't sure at first that he'd seen her do this - used one of the missiles as a step, tapping off it with the toes of one foot and soaring high into the air. The missiles went on to blast into the junk, sending some of it flying in a boiling fireball. Ganz stepped back, looking up, trying to place her; Gryphon watched with detached amazement through his polarized facebowl as she seemed to stop in midair for a moment, hanging silhouetted in front of the sun, before dropping like a stone with one foot extended. The impact sent up a cloud of metal dust and a terrific crash; Gryphon waited for his visor to clear as he looked away from the sun. For an eternal moment, nothing moved; only the dust, settling around the new crater in the junkscape. Then, a small metal hand reached up above the edge of the hole and grabbed a solidly embedded strut from something long since gone, and the cyborg girl pulled herself out and stood at the edge. Gryphon went to her, smiling, and looked down into the crater, hardly noticing as she nestled against his side as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. At the bottom of the crater, the bounty hunter lay sprawled, dead, his chest a caved-in, bloody mess. Ganz's face, twisted in disbelief, stared at the iron-grey sky with a glazed eye and an unfocused cyberoptic mount. "Too roight," Gryphon muttered, slipping unconsciously into Jocko Mode. "Y'pack one 'elluva punch, gally-girl," he drawled, putting a hand on her shoulder and half-hugging her. "Oi'd 'ate t'see yer mad at me." She looked up at him, smiled, and then concentrated for a second or two before fumbling out the syllables past her uncooperative vocal apparatus: "Ga... l... ly?" "You like that?" he asked, and she nodded eagerly. He shrugged as they turned back toward their hideout, saying as they walked, "Well, I suppose it beats 'hey you'. In a pinch you can say it's short for 'Galatea'. C'mon... it's lunchtime." The next couple of months passed in a blur of activity, as Gryphon took advantage of the junkyard's facilities to overhaul his Valkyrie as completely as possible. He'd found a million other minor problems while hacking around with the power core, and decided he might as well get them all out of the way. Nobody else had come looking for him here after Ganz, so he'd decided after a week or so of complete paranoia that he was (relatively) safe. Besides, there was the little matter of this cyborg who needed somebody to answer just about every question in the known universe. He felt strangely like a parent, answering all the questions. The funny part was, at first, since she found speaking so difficult, Gally mainly communicated with simple gestures and facial expressions, and Gryphon got to the point where he could understand all but the most complex concepts when she expressed them. Most of her questions arose from things she saw and didn't understand while watching television, which she did most of the time when she wasn't out with Gryphon hunting for junk. With those, she simply had to tug on his sleeve and point to the screen, and he could usually figure out whatever it was about what was being shown that she didn't comprehend. Given the quality of television these days, he had to answer some pretty embarrassing questions. Life fell into a sort of routine. Gryphon, who had always been primarily a creature of habit, found it comforting. One day, as he worked at the left leg actuators, he felt the familiar tug at his sleeve, and, turning, saw Gally's eager face looking up at him expectantly. "Yeeesss?" he said, putting down the socket wrench and turning, hands in pockets. She pointed; the set was turned to channel ninety-six, the local "C'mon, now, being trapped in the hind end of the Kant Sector on a planet that doesn't even have a real name isn't so bad" station. At the moment, it was showing a rather laughable travelogue of nearby Uart, or, as its inhabitants almost universally called it, "Scrap-Iron City". "It's a city," he said, sounding a bit confused. "Didn't we go over this a bit ago?" She shook her head and pointed again. He looked definitely confused now, and said, "What about it, then?" She pointed at the screen once more, then pondered for a second. Then she tapped her chest, poked him in his, and pointed at a random wall. "You want to -go- to the city?" She nodded eagerly. "Mm... I dunno about that... I like a field trip as much as the next guy, but Scrap-Iron City wouldn't be my first choice to squire a lovely young lady like you around." She looked goodnaturedly exasperated and punched him in the shoulder, knocking him back against the Valkyrie. "Ow! OK, OK, there's no need to get violent. Sure, we can go to town, if you like. I dunno what we'll do there... but... " He shrugged. "I've never been bad at improvising." She grinned, hugged him, and darted off behind the screen which surrounded the bathroom fixtures he'd installed with a surreptitious water tap from underground. Gryphon found it rather amusing, really, that she possessed a sense of body-consciousness and modesty similar to just about everybody else, even though there was no particular need of it. She wore clothing consistently, and didn't like to be seen dressing or undressing. Gryphon tried not to let her know that he thought it was funny, since it would embarrass and annoy her, but it was really quite pointless. Even if there were anything to see, he certainly would have seen it already. He shrugged, smiling to himself, and went to the work sink to wash his hands. When he'd finished and hung up his lab coat, she was waiting for him, dressed in her favorite working outfit, that black elastic bodysuit, pair of high soft boots, and tatty old trench coat he'd scrounged for her at the Salvation Army store. He went to the pile of clothes near the bed and started digging around for something cleaner than his coveralls; as he did, he noticed her tapping her foot and glancing exaggeratedly at the spot on her wrist where a watch belonged. "Ok, ok, I'm coming," he said, selecting some random, battered fatigues and wandering behind the screen to change. As he laced up his old black Docs, he felt himself being watched, and looked up to see her watching him. "Oh, is -that- how it works?" he asked, amused. She regarded him quizzically. "You can watch me change," he said, and she nodded, "and I -can't- watch you." The nod became a headshake, but the impish grin was a constant. "Who taught you to be such a devious little creature?" She pointed at him; he rolled his eyes. "Right, uh huh. C'mon. You should watch less TV. It'll rot your brain,. That's about all you've got left that can rot, so you should be more careful with it." They walked down one of the more crowded streets of Scrap-Iron City, looking for some action, of what sort, Gryphon wasn't sure. It didn't seem to matter to Gally; she took everything in with the same kind of wide-eyed enthusiasm, impressed with everything. Well, almost everything. She didn't seem particularly thrilled by the enormous skycity which floated above Sector 9A-1, part of its perimeter crossing over the city and blocking out a large portion of the sky. Tubes connected several large, fortified-looking buildings in Scrap-Iron City with the skycity; Gryphon wondered what they were for. He wasn't terribly impressed either - skycities were far from uncommon, and as they went, this one (which he had heard was called Zalem) was pretty shabby - but it surprised him that Gally, who could be thrilled by the discovery of a useful piece of refuse in the second-biggest junk pile in the universe, didn't seem to give two figs about it. Ah, well. What did it matter? Maybe floating safety hazards just weren't her thing. "Hey," a voice said off to his left; as he walked, he glanced over, and saw a dingy-looking man in a poncho and baseball cap keeping step with him. Under his cloak, Gryphon's left hand went to a weapon grip, but he forced his voice to remain calm. "Yeah?" "That's a nice little borg you have there," the man in the cloak said. "Thanks," Gryphon replied tersely. "Oh, no trouble. I wonder, though - what's she for? She's too small to be combat, one would think." "One would think." "She, uh... for entertainment?" "No." "No kidding. With curves like that. Well, hey," the guy said with a knowing grin, "I suppose some folks are embarrassed to admit that the chrome turns 'em on, right? Listen... interested in selling her?" "She isn't mine." "Oh no? My, my. Her owner must trust you a great deal to let you walk around alone with her." "She doesn't have an owner." "Indy? That little thing? You're putting me on. C'mon, how much?" Gryphon turned a corner into an alley, feeling Gally's grip on his right arm tense a bit, and the man kept right in step with him, continuing, "Whatever you want, I'll go half again if we can close right now. She's just the most darling little thing - my boss will absolutely -love- her - urk!" Gryphon marveled inwardly at the way the Bryar's muzzle fit neatly around the tip of the man's nose as he said conversationally, "Piss off." "Okay, man, hey, no problem, no hard feelings, right? 'Cause, you know, I don't want there to be any hard feelings. 'Cept my boss might be a little annoyed, but hey, he won't shoot me, at least I hope not, anyway I've got even odds with him and I... don't... think... you're... kidding... well, bye now, you have a nice day and stuff," the man rambled, and then ran away. Gally watched him go, then turned to Gryphon and said slowly, "Jerk?" "Jerk," Gryphon confirmed, nodding; Gally smiled and leaned against him. "Not you." "No, I try my best not to be a jerk." A hand raised a small printout to where a pair of eyes behind circular spectacles could examine it, then lowered it so that the eyes could look down into the alley and compare the picture on said printout with the face of the man in the alley. Mm-hmm. That was the one. The Butcher of Musashi. Worth five million Salusian, but the money wasn't important - what he had done was. Time to take out the garbage... "He wouldn't sell." "No, sir, Mr. L, sir. Stuck his gun right in my face when I made the second offer." "Did you mention my name?" "No sir. I mentioned no name - only that I spoke on behalf of an employer." "You know, Davis, you're the only minion I have who uses proper grammar. Any of the others would have said 'didn't say no name'. That's why I keep you around, you know, when you screw up like this. You're a refreshing breath of near-educated air in this cesspool." The speaker, a dark, thin man whose slick-haired, reptilian grace put one in mind of Maximilien Largo (whom, to his eternal chagrin, he was not), turned to face the man Gryphon had put off in the alley. "Get a security team, then, and take her by force. I want that cyborg, and I want her intact." "What about the man?" "Kill him. If you want, you can split the bounty with the sec team. Unless, of course, you find some way to cheat them and get it all for yourself... in which case I'll match it." The businessman smiled. "Thanks, Mr. L!" "You're welcome, Davis. Get out." "Yes sir, Mr. L!" As they approached the other end of the alley, Gryphon pulled up short (nearly being dragged over forward by Gally, who kept going for another step before realizing he'd stopped) as somebody stepped out into it, blocking their path. He was rather impressive, Gryphon had to admit - much more impressive than the dingy twit he'd just told to hoof it, or even Drovar Ganz, who, for all his augmented strength and skill, had been scuffed and sloppy-looking. This guy was tall - as tall as Zoner, probably - and rangy, not heavily built, but not weak-looking. He was a snappy dresser, too, with those cunning round spectacles, the heavy brown oilskin duster, and the floppy brimmed hat. Heck, he was even wearing classic white conductor's gloves on his hands, the kind with three lines on the back. Most impressive, though, was what he had in his hands - an enormous chisel-pointed hammer, the head easily the size of a half-gallon drink bottle, on the end of a handle almost as long as the man was tall. Gryphon looked at his face, which was long and narrow, with nose to match, and realized he looked familiar. "Egon?" he said. "Stand away from him, young lady," the man in brown said, his voice deep and even. "No need for you to get hurt. I'm surprised you haven't hurt her yet, in fact... Butcher." "Oh, for - not another fucking bounty hunter," Gryphon said, unlimbering his Bryars. "Look, buddy, I've said it a thousand times, now I'll say it to you: I am not the Butcher of Musashi. You're barking up the wrong frame. I suppose now you're going to haul out the tired old thing about how much -money- I'm worth and yadda yadda ya... " "I don't do this for money," the man replied. "I do it for justice, and honor, and a lot of other things you wouldn't know anything about, you murdering scum." Gryphon sighed. "Sure, sure, I've heard all the insults you can come up with, I'm sure. Look, how many times do I have to say this, to how many people? I - was - framed! Christ, if I had a millionth of the number of people who are determined to see me fry on my side I'd've caught the bastard who really did it by now, but every last goddamned one of you gets in my way! Now, I dunno what you expect to accomplish with Mjollnir there, but whatever it is, I'd bet I can drop you before you get range. I don't want to kill anybody today, but I'm not letting you stop me." "We'll see about that," the man said, and started running, his strides enormous, drawing that monster hammer back. Gryphon faded back as Gally stepped sideways away, raising his pistols, but something made him hesitate before drilling the guy. Maybe it was the concern he'd shown for Gally, or maybe it was the enormous sincerity in his voice when he'd said he hunted for justice instead of money. Gryphon didn't know, but he had the overpowering feeling that this man belonged on -his- side, not dead. The man in brown took that opportunity to attack him, swinging that huge hammer around in a hissing arc - and as it reached right angles to Gryphon's position, the man thumbed in a button on the shaft, and a rocket booster behind the hammerhead fired. "GRIFE!" Gryphon remarked, throwing himself prone a split-second before the rocket-hammer passed through where his head had been. Gally leaped straight up with no visible effort, the hammer's arc passing cleanly under her and going on to utterly demolish a dumpster; recovering quickly, the man in brown turned and raised the weapon high, intending to bring it down on Gryphon's back before he could get to his feet. Gally again seemed to hang in the air for an instant, and then... Then she came down behind the man in brown, her small hands capturing the hammerhead; her deceptively high weight (after all, most of her was made of actual metal, not composites) threw the man in brown off, his arms bending back as his eyes widened in shock. As soon as Gally's feet touched asphalt, she set herself and yanked back on the hammer, flipping it over her head. The man in brown kept his grip until just about apogee, then flew free in a picturesque parabolic arc to land in a trash heap near the alley mouth. As Gryphon got to his feet, Gally whirled, discarding the hammer, and ran to the man in brown, hauling him to his feet and pulling back a fist. "Gally, wait!" Gryphon shouted, scooping up the hammer (and noting its immense weight) as he ran after her. She paused, looking over at him, and the man in brown hit her in the midriff, producing an amusing KLUNK and a near-hilarious look of melded "huh?" and "ouch" on his face. Gryphon pounded to a stop short of them, leaned on the hammer, and said, "I want to talk to him." "I have nothing to say to you, Butcher," the man in brown grunted, rubbing his injured hand. "Just kill me, or have your assistant here do it, and be on your way." "Will you stop with the 'Butcher' routine? Nobody's gonna get killed. Yeah, I'm Gryphon, but I didn't -do- it - whateverthesprock 'it' IS. Would I let you live if I had? Would I have even stopped Gally here from decorating Mr. Brick Wall here with your head? THINK about it." The man in brown considered, then glanced at Gally (who was still holding him off the ground by the front of his coat); she merely narrowed her eyes in annoyance at him and nodded as if to say, "So there, you moron." "I - " the man in brown began, when a string of bullet impacts just above his head sent brick fragments and his hat (which had somehow stayed on his head when Gally threw him) flying. All three of them ducked and looked up; on the opposite roof were five men in black and red composite battle armor, automatic weapons in hand. Gryphon recognized the logo on their suits: it was the symbol of Duotech, the company which owned Skycity Zalem and most of Scrap-Iron City. "All of you freeze!" one of them bellowed. "Shit," the man in brown muttered. "Duotech Security. What the hell do -they- want?" "Five million Salusian standard credits, perhaps?" Gryphon said with his Ford Prefect grin. Despite himself, the man in brown snickered, then stood up. "Hold it!" he said, holding up a hand. The Duotech team leader gestured to his men to hold back. "What the hell do you want, Ido?" he demanded. "I'm a registered Hunter-Warrior. This is my bust." "You looked like you had the situation -well- in hand, too," the Duotech man replied sardonically. "Beat it, freelancer. This is corporate business." He pointed to Gally. "That's Duotech property, and that guy," he continued, swinging his finger to point at Gryphon, "is in possession. We're gonna waste him and take her back to Mr. L, and if you've got a problem with it, we'll just kill you too and tell Mr. L you got in our way. Do I make myself clear?" "Ido" considered for a moment, and then sighed and recovered his hat. "Right." He took his hammer away from a confused-looking Gryphon and said, "I'll be going, then." Did he just wink at me? Gryphon wondered as Ido left the alley, walking past Gally, who was too busy sizing up the Duotech goons to bother with him. Said goons were dropping into the alley on rocket boots as he thought, and advancing with their weapons ready. Gryphon wasn't sure his blaster would do a thing against their body armor, which looked like a minor-style-change ripoff of CVR-3, and he cursed himself for not having worn his own. "Okay, men," the leader said. "Open - GAH!" He didn't get much further than that, as a brown blur with a stream of rocket fire behind it whirled around the corner of the alley mouth and splattered his torso all over the brick wall. OK - so apparently their armor was a -cheap- minor-style-change ripoff of CVR-3. The others turned, but as they did, Gally was already in motion. "Emergency! Target has assistance from city Hunter-Warrior Dai - " one of them called, apparently into a radio headset, before Gally plowed into him like a truck and took him messily down. Another opened up with his submachinegun, making a sweep for Gryphon, but he'd overcome his shock faster than the goon and dove off the line of fire, coming up in a roll to slam the man back against the wall hard enough to make him lose his grip on his weapon. Gryphon pressed the muzzle of his blaster to the guy's midsection as his right arm held the man off the ground by his neck, trusted in the inverse-square law, and fired; the man jerked, then slumped, and Gryphon let him fall. When he turned around, Ido and Gally had dealt with the others and were faced off again, tense, staring each other down. "Now what?" Gryphon inquired, leaning casually on the wall and twirling his blaster around his left index finger. "Round two, Egon?" "I'm willing to talk if she is," Ido replied, not taking his eyes off Gally. "Gally doesn't talk much," Gryphon said with a grin, walking forward and putting a hand on her shoulder. "Gally, relax. Let the man say his piece. I -would- be appreciative if you'd put the hammer down, pardon the expression." Gally relaxed, straightening from her wary half-crouch, and Ido responded by saying, "Right," and putting the hammer on the ground with a clack. "Why do you keep calling me Egon? My name is Ido. If you must be familiar, Daisuke." "You remind me of an 'Egon' I used to know. Listen, what's the deal? Why'd you wax those guys? One of them got off at least a partial report - and if Duotech is the law I think it is in this town, you've just marked yourself out. Let -alone- helping out The Vicious And Terrible Butcher Of Musashi and his ever-so-much-more- dangerous-than-he-is cyborg assistant Gally. Why?" Ido smiled, despite himself. "I'm a cyberneticist by trade - I just hunt on the side. I know cyberware, and being in the borg business in this town means knowing Duotech cyberware especially. Whatever she is, she's no Duotech product. Even with a mostly- piecework body, her reactions prove her brain/body interface is light-years ahead of their cutting edge. So, I knew these guys were bullshitting me. Probably Mr. L caught sight of her while you were walking around through one of his millions of eyes, and decided he wanted her. For study, I imagine - as I said, she's advanced far beyond any of the crap Duotech produces." He chuckled. "And I'll admit to being a bit annoyed at being told to take a walk. "As for the second part... let's just say you had a point before we were interrupted, and I'm at least willing to keep an open mind - and an eye on you." Gally made a small noise best approximated in text by "Hmph," folded her arms, and refused to look at Ido. Gryphon chuckled and patted her shoulder, then put away his weapon. "Well, I suppose I'll have to be the one to take the first step, as usual," he observed, picked up Ido's hammer, and handed it back to him. Ido accepted it, and then looked up, eyes narrowing, at the sound of a helicopter. "Duotech backup coming," he said. "We shouldn't be here when they arrive." "Lead on... you know this place better than I do. Come on, Gally." "But - " "Not now!" "Ohhhh... !" "Nice place," Gryphon said wryly as Ido showed him and Gally into a dingy building in the middling-bad part of town. The floor creaked, the wallpaper was peeling and the lights didn't work very well, and all in all, it reminded him of most of the apartment houses back in Worcester, and everywhere else in the galaxy there were poor college students looking to get out of the dorms. Gally stayed near him, as always, always close enough to his right side that he'd bump into her if he moved carelessly. He found the presence oddly reassuring, and well, when he stopped to consider it, why not? "It's getting dark," Ido said, leading them through what appeared to be a fairly well-equipped clinic and into a living-room kind of arrangement. "We shouldn't move until morning." "Er... A, what's with this 'we' stuff, and B, don't they know where you live, if you're registered?" "A, I'm not letting you out of my sight until I'm satisfied you mean what you say, and B, no - they only care that they can identify you when you show up looking to collect a bounty. Duotech can probably find me - I'm pretty well known as a cyber-doctor - but my clientele are noticeably anti-corporate for the most part, and will be uncooperative. We should be safe until morning. Then, well, I'm open to suggestions." Not knowing what else to do, Gryphon shrugged and sat down; in a few minutes, Gally began to pace, bored. Ido pointed out some books in the corner when this became apparent, and, giving him a cool nod, she went over and began to read one of them, apparently a large book of weapon specifications. "She's fascinating," said Ido in a low voice after watching her read for a bit. "Nearly complete cybernetic transfer, plus a body that's ill-matched to her original componentry, and yet she shows no sign of socialization shock at all. And her technical sophistication... did you build her?" "Not originally," Gryphon replied, and when he was rewarded with a puzzled look, he clarified, "I found her in the junkyard, wrecked. I had to improvise a bit... the upper torso is original, but the rest is a combination of kit-bashing and the odd feature I happened to think of off the top of my head." "Well, then, who did design her, make her that way? She's human?" "Mm-hmm. Genescans would seem to indicate. We even have the same blood type." "Who designed her, then?" "I don't know." "You don't know?" "She has a nano-engine which maintains the organics if the r/c is put out of action, but it's not 100% efficient. She was down in the junkyard long enough for her neural net to crash at least partially. Except for the combat skills and language comprehension, she was pretty much a blank slate. Even her name is just something I said one day that she latched onto." "That's amazing. How long has she been operational?" "Couple of months. You make it sound like we're talking about a computer, Egon." "Ido. I'm sorry - I try to always think of cyborgs as people, they're my patients, after all - but some aspects of their operation are so different from regular bioforms that the terminology gets confused. I meant no offense... she's just... fascinating." "In more ways than one," Gryphon replied, which got him an arched eyebrow. "Well, it gets a bit lonely being a hunted man. The past couple of months I've been practically a parent, although she's grown up a hell of a lot faster than any child. It's a strange dynamic... she depends on me for a lot of things, and yet in scrapes like the one we were in today, she's ten thousand times more effective. And like you observed, there's no trace of cybernetic socialization shock in her. She's very pleasant company, if quiet; she's still learning how to talk, you see." "Amazing. Would, uh... would you mind if I were to take a look at some of her systems? I haven't worked with equipment that sophisticated in a very long time." "You'd have to ask her," Gryphon replied. "I'm just her self-appointed guardian/teacher." "All right, I will." Ido cleared his throat, raised his voice, and said, "Um... Gally?" She looked up, fixing him with a narrow-eyed "What do YOU want?" expression. "Er... would you mind if... could I take you into my workshop and study some of your cybersystems?" "No," she said, and went back to reading. Ido looked taken aback by this utterly blunt response, and said, "But why not?" Gally looked at him again, as if this were the stupidest thing anyone had ever asked her, then pointed at him, and at the hammer leaning against the wall, and at Gryphon. Then, shaking her head firmly, she went back to reading again. "?" Ido said, looking at Gryphon. "I think she's still mad at you for trying to kill me." "Oh." "Did I mention she could be stubborn?" "No, but I think I can see that." Hmm... if what he says is true, then that's a point or two for him, Ido mused to himself. I don't think a Butcher would rescue a wrecked cyborg, not and leave her will intact. The man who did what happened on Musashi might build a slave, but not a companion... and he -did- stop her from killing me... He regarded Gryphon, who was leaning back in his chair and smilingly watching Gally do nothing. Maybe there's more to you than meets the eye, my friend... Gryphon was awakened from a dream which seemed to involve Zalem falling out of the sky and crashing into Worcester, an absurd juxtaposition at best, by Ido's hand on his shoulder. Apparently, he'd fallen asleep in the chair, and Ido, a good host, had covered him with a blanket. Gally was still asleep, curled up under a similar covering on the couch. No doubt she'd fallen asleep reading, and Ido had put her there, which meant he was stronger than he looked... but then, Gryphon knew that anyway, from the way he wielded that damn hammer. "Mngh," Gryphon said, erudite to the last, and followed it with, "Morning, Egon." "Ido. Listen, it's time we got a move on. Can you wake Gally? I'm afraid she'll tear off my arm if I try it," Ido said with a grin. "Sure thing... " Gryphon got to his feet and stretched, listening to some bones pop. Then he turned to Ido, a strange smirk on his face, and said, "Watch this. You're not gonna believe it." He walked softly across the room and gently drew the blanket back from Gally's sleeping form, then methodically cracked his knuckles, leaned over her, and started gently running his fingertips across her flanks, where her ribs would be. Ido's brow furrowed. What the hell was he doing? Gally twitched, then snickered in her sleep, her body moving as if to escape, and suddenly it became clear to Ido what was happening: Gryphon was tickling her. Oh, you have -got- to be kidding me, he thought. Just then, Gally awoke, rather explosively. There was a blur of motion, the couch overturned, and she and Gryphon tumbled across the room and fetched up against the wall. Gryphon had obviously (and inevitably) lost the conflict; she was sitting on him, most of her weight supported by her knees on either side of his hips, and tickling the hell out of him. "Uncle! OK! You win all right I give cut it out stop!" She stopped, leaned forward, and, crossing her arms, leaned on his chest and looked down into his eyes. Then, she spoke the first complete sentence Ido thought he'd heard her say: "You're no fun." "Then whyever do you stay with me?" Gryphon replied with that cockeyed grin which was becoming familiar. Gally shrugged, grinning back. "Dunno." "Well, work on figuring it out," Gryphon said, "and in the meantime, get offa me. You weigh a ton." She stuck her tongue out at him, bent a little closer to kiss him, and then got to her feet and pulled him easily up with her. Ido chuckled. "Whattayou laughin' at?" Gryphon said with mock belligerence. "You," Ido replied, shrugging into his duster. "You're an honest man, Egon," Gryphon said. "I like that." "Ido. C'mon. I've just about got my gear packed." "Okay." Gryphon found his rucksack and opened it up, taking out pieces of his CVR-3 and snapping them on. "Better safe than shot. You have a vehicle?" "No." "Hmm. Well, I'll figure something out." Ido looked about to respond, when Gally pulled on his sleeve. Quizzical, he turned to look at her. She held up the book she'd been looking at the evening before (ED. NOTE: "Dr. Farley's Big Book o' Cyberweapons"). "Sure, keep it," Ido said. She grinned and patted his arm, then went out into the next room to wait. "Not so hard to understand, is she?" Ido observed as he and Gryphon followed. "No, she tends to get her point across one way or another. She does speak more fluently these days, but she's gotten used to communicating non-verbally, and anyway, she's probably a little embarrassed about her speech patterns around you, being new and all." He looked around the clinic, which Ido had pretty much packed into a largish duffel bag, which, along with an American Tourister hardshell suitcase on wheels, comprised all of his baggage. "Look... I'm sorry about this. I didn't mean to involve you in my little war with the universe here. All I wanted was to be left alone." Ido shrugged. "My own fault. I could've just taken a walk like the guy said, and let you two deal with Duotech yourselves. Let's just say I have... my own reasons... for opposing them." As he said this, his finger unconsciously traced the small crescent-shaped brand on his forehead, which at first sighting Gryphon had taken for a birthmark. Ido collected his things, and they went outside, where Gryphon's Cyclone leaned on its kickstand. "Hmm," said Gryphon. "Now what are we going to do with - " Gally walked right up to it, flipped the storage-mode key, waited for it to compress down into box mode, and then picked it up with no visible effort. Ido and Gryphon looked at each other, bemused. Motioning with her head for them to follow, Gally set off through the twisted streets of Scrap-Iron City, heading for the vastness of the junkyard. Gryphon shrugged and, beckoning Ido, followed. "Mr. L," Davis's voice rang through the intercom. "What is it, Davis?" "One of our hunter units has just spotted Gryphon, Ido, and the cyborg. They're in the Barrens, heading for the edge of town." "All right. Send in the full team, including Dr. Yashida's pet monster, what's its name?" "Grewcica, sir? You want me to send that freak out there with a strike team?" "Is there some problem with that, Davis?" "Well, Grewcica's not known for his regard for collateral damage, sir. Your property might take a beating." "At this point, I'd be satisfied with examining her wreckage. If your new team and Grewcica can't handle this little problem, I'll contact somebody who can - somebody who I assure you has less regard for property damage than a hundred killer cyborgs. Understood?" "Y-you mean you'd actually.. ?" "The option is looking more attractive all the time." "Understood, sir. We'll do our best." "Good. I'm going back up to Zalem. Keep me informed." "Yes, sir. Davis out." "Egon... " "Ido." "Who the hell is 'Mr. L', anyway?" "You really don't know?" "All I know is, he seems to be a big man in this 'Duotech' outfit, has a lot of clout around here... nothing else." "Ah. Well... " Ido paused, considering. "His name is Lance. Lance Maltby - Duotech is named after his late, absolutely unlamented father Duo, who started the company. Lance is a chip off the old block - he's a business shark, an entrepreneur... has no particular science skills, but he's an idea machine. He comes up with some new concept and puts a team of engineers on it, and Duotech gets bigger. He built himself an empire here in Scrap-Iron City, and then abandoned it for his floating castle up there." He pointed to Zalem's great hovering bulk. "Since then Scrap-Iron City has been nothing but what it always was... a dumping grounds. Except now the dumping comes from above. See the hole in the bottom of Zalem? All the scrap and junk falls out of there about three times a day, into the junkyard. The automatic machines keep the piles from getting too high." "Hmm," Gryphon mused, looking at Gally, who was up ahead of them, out of hearing range. "She couldn't have come from there, at least not originally. I told you, I've worked with Duotech's cutting edge, and she's -way- beyond it. There are only a few cyberneticists who could have achieved such a high level of design sophistication, and none of them work for Duotech." "How certain are you of that?" "Completely," Ido replied without hesitation. "That puts an interesting new slant on things, doesn't it now - " "FREEZE!" "Oh, for Christ's sake," Gryphon muttered as the buildings on either side of the deserted street yielded forth a small army of men and women in Duotech Security armor. Gally stopped short, dropping the Cyclone and looking warily around, already assessing the situation. "Control, this is field four," the apparent commander of this bunch of goons announced. "We've made contact." "Acknowledge, field four," his comm system replied. "Use caution." "Affirmative, Control." It was a bit too late for that; Gally was already in motion, throwing the 200-pound Cyclone like a toy back toward Gryphon and Ido as she sprang forward, tackling the leader. "I am so SICK of you people," Gryphon announced, throwing his cloak aside and pouncing on the Cyclone, triggering it into cycle mode. Ido ducked aside as a spray of autofire went through where he had been, unpacked and assembled his hammer, and then swung into action along the left flank as Gryphon mounted the Cyclone and swung it around for a pass down the street. Bullets spanged from his armor and the Cyclone's ceramic hide as he roared down the street toward the big pile of security bozos who were attempting to subdue Gally; as he got closer, he thumbed in the transformation switch and felt the familiar sequence of kick in the pants, brief moment of vertigo, and power as the machine went to battroid mode. "Hey!" he blared through his PA speakers, seizing a pair of guards by the scruffs of their necks and bashing their heads together. "Can't you people take a hint? When the lady says no - " Here he paused to backhand a goon with what looked to be a stun baton out of position. "She means - " Here he paused to deliver a stylish side-on kick to another's midriff. "No!" Gally emerged from the group like a small force of nature, executing some form of whirlwind attack that scattered Duotech Security personnel like twigs and nearly caught Gryphon as well before he boostered out of the way. Stopping, she smiled, gave him a thumbs-up, and then ducked under a neural disruptor bolt and did something else impossible - she picked up a small pebble, rerouted the plasma coupling in her hand, energized the pebble, and threw it. When it hit the offender's chestplate it went off like a grenade, blowing her back through a shopfront. "Neat trick," Gryphon remarked as he knocked down a random goon and relieved him of his heavy particle beam rifle. "Ah, now this is more like it! I really do need to overhaul my EP-32. How you doing, Egon?" "Ido!" Ido replied, clobbering somebody and stealing her gun as well. "Whatever you say, Egon," Gryphon said. His collision alarm went off just then; turning, he saw a huge hand coming toward his face, and threw himself backward, taking only a glancing impact to his facebowl and watching with detached interest as a spiderweb of cracks rayed out from the impact point. He executed a half-intentional backward roll, coming up on his feet with weapon ready, to see... ... holy shit! The biggest goddamn 'borg he'd ever seen in his life. This bastard has to be twenty feet tall, Gryphon observed, backing away. Look at the size of those mag-rams! Christ, what a monster! "Whoa, boy!" Gryphon shouted. "Lay off the 'roids before somebody puts a saddle on you." "Graaaah!" commented Grewcica, and took another swing, sending pieces of Gryphon's left shoulder paneling scattering down the street. Fast, too. No sense in fucking around with this one. Firing up the targeting computer, Gryphon locked in the big 'borg in an instant and fired off his right side's plasma missiles, sending him up in a fountain of smoke and fire. "DIE!" Grewcica replied, emerging scorched but otherwise unharmed and nearly caving in the Cyclone's chest plate as he knocked Gryphon halfway down the street. Satisfied that -that- adversary was dealt with, for the moment, Grewcica turned, unlimbering a device from his back and getting it ready in his enormous hands. It appeared to be a gigantic chain saw. His slightly out-of-focus eyes settled on Ido next, as the latter was fighting his way through the last of the Duotech men on his side; as he turned, Grewcica fired up the chain saw and struck. Ido backpedaled, raising the plasma rifle he'd taken from the random goon out of reflex, to see it chopped neatly in half. Monochain! Ido realized, dropping what was left of the rifle after noting the shiny, clean cut. I'm in deep shit. Grewcica raised the weapon again, laughing madly. And was knocked right off his feet by a black and beige comet coming in from his right. Ido reconsidered his lack of faith in God. /* Urge Overkill "Sister Havana" _Saturation_ */ For almost a minute, Gally led the enormous psycho in a peculiar dance of destruction, always a couple of inches ahead of him, taunting with her silence as she dodged with a series of spectacular leaps and led him to destroy lampposts, building fronts, and cars. Finally, he clipped her, wrecking her lower leg and interrupting her trajectory, causing her to tumble to the street, the ruined limb trailing smoke. Ido gasped and readied his hammer, charging down the street, knowing he'd be too late as Grewcica raised his chain saw and struck. Gally came up to her knees and, moving so fast none could see her moving, caught the bar between her hands as it descended, stopping it cold. Grewcica grunted in surprise, then threw his considerable mass and strength behind it, trying to force it down. Gally could feel the wind from the spinning monochain blowing against the end of her nose as it came another millimeter closer, and then she ignored it and concentrated. Ido pulled up short, fascinated, and Gryphon, just coming to at the other end of the street, watched in similar fascination as the EM field generators for the mag rams in her upper arms popped out to their maintenance position and aligned themselves with the saw, then hummed into life. The saw's motor faltered as Gally tinkered with the field alignment, then began to race out of control as, caught between her hands, the bar started to glow an ominous blue color (as did her hands). Then, after another tense, straining second or two, the saw kicked back violently and exploded, sending Grewcica one way and Gally the other. When the smoke cleared, Grewcica had lost a hand, and Gally's arms were gone from the shoulders down, blown to bits by the backlash. Both were unconscious. Gryphon raced down the street on the Cyclone, back in cycle mode; Ido leaped on behind him, and as they sped past Gally, he scooped her up. Before the monstrous cyborg could regain consciousness, Gryphon opened up the throttle and got the hell out of Dodge. "This is not good news, Davis." "No, sir. I've never seen anything like it! She took out Grewcica like he was nothing, although she did suffer heavy damage in the process." "Such performance is all the more reason that I -must- have her," Maltby growled. "You leave me no option, Davis. I'm going to have to call in my outside assistance." "Sir, please! Dr. Yashida has some ideas for Grewcica's reconstruction, based on the data gathered in the fight. She's certain we can bring the cyborg in without relying on - outside assistance. We can rebuild Grewcica much faster and much better than Ido and Gryphon can rebuild their cyborg, given the difference in facilities. Please, Mr. L, I'm begging you here. Be patient. If you make that call you'll jeopardize -everything-!" "You overstep your bounds, Davis... but then, that's what I pay you for, in part. All right. One more shot. How long?" "Dr. Yashida wants at least a month, but I think I can talk her down to three weeks if we express the parts orders." "A month?!" "Please, sir. I honestly don't believe your outside help is worth the risk it entails. Give us a month and you'll have your cyborg." "And if you fail again in a month?" "Then I'll cheerfully accept whatever punishment you see fit to dispense, Mr. L. You know that." "You continue to remind me why I like you, Davis. That's good. All right; you and Dr. Yashida have your month. Get to work." "Yes, sir." Davis left the office and headed for his own, fishing in his suit coat's inner pocket for a datacard. Time to call in a few markers from Scrap-Iron City's Hunter-Warrior population while he was at it. After all, why take chances? Ido and Gryphon stood in Gryphon's bunker under the scrap, looking glumly at what little they had with which to work. A wrecked cyborg. A stripped suit of power armor. An assortment of crude hand tools. A Cyclone's engine to provide electrical power. A bathtub full of lukewarm, slightly rusty water. Not encouraging. Gally's power core had failed on the way in, destroyed by the backlash in her central power system, which had been insufficiently shielded against that sort of thing. They had gotten her back on the maintenance drip the instant they'd arrived, and Gryphon was hoping like hell the only reason her neural net had crashed before was because the nanosystem had been pushed beyond its limits - not that it simply didn't cover that factor. Finding a replacement generator, though, was proving impossible. The Cyclone's was much too small for the purpose. The Griffin suit's backup generator was unsuitable - it was not a fusion core like the primary, but rather ran on a supply of stabilized illudium pellets, generating power through a controlled annihilation by helium obscuride gas. Fine for a backup generator in a suit as bulky and heavily armored as the GRF-3N; out of the question for a cyborg as compact and relatively lightweight as Gally. Another concern was building her strong enough to withstand confrontations like the one which had put her in this condition in the first place, since it appeared she would insist on getting into them. Gryphon had given this his best shot the first time, given the tools he had to work with - he couldn't remodel the Griffin's outer armor case, and no really suitable materials existed in the scrapyard anyway. Compounding the issue's difficulty further was the fact that the power core's destruction had destroyed the organics in the torso biocell as well, leaving them with no choice but to scrounge up, somehow, a modern respirator/circulator/digestor cybersystem. There had been one which might suit in Ido's old clinic, but going back there was pretty much out of the question. Setback after setback dogged their trail, as days grew shorter and the air grew chill, bringing with it a creeping dread that it was only a matter of time before Duotech thought to look under that particular heap of junk. Strategy after strategy failed to work, and time grew ever closer to running out. After a week of near-sleepless time-wasting, Gryphon threw down his wrench and climbed up into the cockpit of his partially disassembled Valkyrie, bringing up the cockpit systems. "What the hell are you doing?" Ido inquired from benchside. "In an old computer game called Nethack," Gryphon said by way of explanation, "you have the ability to pray. It only works to your advantage if you've been good in the eyes of your god - trying to Do the Right Thing according to the alignment of your character; if you haven't bugged your god for anything else lately; and if you only do it when you're really, really screwed. I think I qualify on all three counts, so I'm gonna try it." "From up there?!" "Hey," said Gryphon, unfolding the comterm keyboard from its compartment beside the ejector seat and connecting it to the central VDU. "You pray your way, man, and I'll pray mine." So saying, he began to type. It was a short session; Gryphon's plea was not overly complicated. He climbed down only a couple of minutes later. "Well, I dunno if that did any good or not, but hey, at this point, it's not like it could hurt." "What was that all about?" asked Ido. "You'll know if it worked." Gryphon picked up the wrench he'd thunked down on the bench and tapped it thoughtfully against his hand. "I can't think about this any more. My brain is just seizing up inside my head. I'm going to try and get some sleep." "I'll keep working for a while, I think," said Ido. "OK." Gryphon turned away and headed for his mattress, shuffling the shuffle of an extremely tired man whose last spurt of adrenaline has just burned off. Just before he reached it, he paused as if with a thought, and turned, pointing an urgent finger at the still-puzzled Ido. "This is incredibly important, Egon," he said. "DO NOT empty the bathtub." With this unilluminating instruction, he crawled into his covers and went to sleep, leaving Ido no less puzzled than before, and having forgotten once again to correct him. Gryphon was dreaming again. He was building a house of cards out of little squarish scraps of metal, but the wind kept knocking it down. Finally, fed up and in a snit, he got a blowtorch and welded the fuckers together, just to show 'em who was boss. Then, as he was getting up to put the torch back, he tripped and fell on his sculpture, causing himself an acute and very inconvenient case of being impaled to death on a sharp metal object. He awoke, understandably bleary, from this unpleasantry to find Ido bending over him, looking, if possible, more confused than he had been when Gryphon bedded down. "Er," he said, "your, um, friend has arrived." "Huh?" replied Gryphon, registering no clue of what Ido was talking about. Then, as comprehension hit, he scrambled out of bed, jazzed with that magical first shot of adrenaline. By the bench, a young woman was leaning on her elbows and poking through the random components of both Gally's body and the mostly-stripped Griffin powersuit. Noting that Gryphon was awake, she turned to face him, smiling, and he had to pause in his tracks momentarily, so surprised was he at the changes in her appearance since he had last seen her. She seemed in her mid-teens, working on what would be considerable height and an incredible figure in a couple three years. The work in progress wasn't so bad to look at in the meantime, either. She stood about five foot four, every inch of her sleek and slender, dressed in a well-designed assemblage of leather, cotton, silk and nothing - buckle boots, stockings and garters, leather shorts, a front-clasp bustier, gloves with no fingers, a collar and a heavy, padded leather motorcycle jacket, in an eye-catching combination of black, gray and red. Short isolinear non-volatile memory rods, 10-meggers, hung on short lengths of chain from her earlobes. She had long, luxurious, lacquer-black hair of a sort for which many women would cheerfully kill, and clear alabaster skin that set off the rest of her accoutrements perfectly. She wore no makeup, but her sharp-nosed, high-cheekboned face carried three peculiar, tattoo-like, blue oblong markings, one high on each cheek and one, larger, on her forehead. A long-handled red and white mallet was slung across her back on a leather strap. Gryphon tried to speak, choked on a sharp dryness in his throat, and went through a brief, chest-pounding coughing jag. "Wow," he said when he found his voice again. "You like it?" she asked, spinning around to better display the outfit. "It drives Big Sister up a wall." "My, my, my," Gryphon mused, chin in hand, as he walked slowly toward, past, and completely around her on a short and frank inspection tour. "You're getting to be all grown up, aren't you?" "I'm working on it," she replied, wrinkling up the bridge of her nose as she smiled all the way to her clear brown eyes. Then, solicitous, she took a step closer to him and said, "You look awful! I'm sorry things have been going so badly for you." "So you've been keeping up with the news, then. What do you think of the whole thing?" "Don't be silly! I think - I -know- - it's ridiculous! How could I not?" "True," said Gryphon with a wry grin. "Oh, but I'm being rude, where -are- my manners? Just because I'm hiding in a makeshift bunker under the galaxy's second largest scrap heap doesn't mean I should be a bad host. This fine fellow, whom you seem to have startled with your entrance, I presume you came in by the usual method? - is Dr. Daisuke Ido. Egon, this is Skuld Ravenhair. If anybody in the universe can help us with our little problems here, it's her." "Er, pleased to meet you," said Ido, forgetting once more to protest that his name was not Egon. "Hi," said Skuld, who then returned to surveying the chaos on the workbench. "Wow, you weren't kidding. What a mess." "Can you do anything with it?" asked Gryphon. "Sure, I can do a lot of things with it. The equipment is a bit cruder than I'd really like to work with, but I can make do." She bent closer to Gally and surveyed the neural junction in the back of her armored lifesim skull with a critical eye. "This is good work, a lot better than I'd expect to see on a backwater world like this. Who did the original conversion, and why?" "No idea," Gryphon replied. "I found her basically like this the first time." "OK, so all this unmatched stuff is yours?" He nodded. "Good job considering the circumstances, but she shouldn't've expected it to hold up in combat." "It's not as if she had much choice. She seems to be a natural warrior... she fights with what looks like it must be a learned martial art, but the way she does it it's damn near instinctive. It's kind of creepy, really." "Chipped?" "I'd say no," Gryphon replied. "Too natural, and she can improvise too well." "I don't suppose she remembers anything." "Not from before I found her. Her nano-maintenance engine got to the point where it sacrificed everything for survival, including letting her memory net crash." "Great. So all the data's still in there, somewhere, but she's got no links to it. She'll probably start getting it filtering back in dreams... or maybe not. Maybe she'll get lucky and it'll never surface. Neural trauma is such a pain... it's the worst part of cybernetic medicine." "She's a cyberneticist?" murmured Ido to Gryphon, in a tone somewhere between curious and incredulous. Skuld turned to him and smiled sweetly. "I'm a lot of things." Then she returned her attention to Gally. "Where'd you meet her? Who is she?" Ido asked Gryphon, in a quieter tone. "Years ago - oh, hell, nearly a hundred fifty now - I was on sabbatical from the WDF, teaching a class at a tech institute on Tomodachi, and her sister was in one of my classes. She's... well, you probably won't believe this, but she's a goddess." Recognition sparked in Ido's eyes. "Skuld is the Old Norse goddess of the future, one of the Norns." Gryphon nodded. "Boy," Ido mused. "When you call in favors, you don't play any games." "OK, boys," Skuld interrupted. "She's already gone through at least two bodies that couldn't keep up with her. We're going to have to make sure she doesn't do it again." Her smile became sly, almost smug, the smile of a person who knows exactly what she is doing and is loving it. "Let's get busy." Ido and Gryphon both had many opportunities to marvel at her over the next few days. First, she and Ido stripped away all the old robotic parts, retaining only the braincase unit. "Now," said Skuld briskly, puttering around the braincase with tools at whose purpose Ido and Gryphon could only guess, "I've been giving this a lot of thought during the stripdown, as to just what sort of reconversion we should do in this case. I'm worried about the condition of this brain. It's already had a neurocrash because of a nanomaintenance failure once, and that kind of thing usually does subtler damage too." Ido shrugged. "Yes, it's a problem, but what can be done about it? I mean, it's her -brain-, after all." Skuld shrugged at him. "The brain isn't essential." Ido's jaw dropped. "Not essential?!" he finally managed to say. "Certainly," Skuld replied. "It's not the tissue that's important, it's the energy pattern contained within it, and there are much more efficient and durable ways of containing that." She finished setting up the apparatus she'd been building around the brain case, nodded, and stepped back from it, then went back and started adjusting it. "Anyway, we certainly can't build a body that will really meet her capabilities if we leave this fragile thing in it," she went on. "Is she serious?" Ido asked Gryphon. Gryphon, who had caught the thread of what Skuld was going to do, grinned at him. "Sure. Hey, sentient mechanoids don't have brains, you know... " "Well... no... but - what about her humanity?" Ido protested. Skuld made a dismissive gesture. "Humanity is a state of mind," she replied. "Have you ever seen -your- brain? Do you think she'd ever seen hers?" Ido paused, fumbling for words. "Well... no... but - " "Hush," said Skuld. "I know what I'm doing. I understand your concerns, but I understand her too," she said, gesturing toward the braincase. "She's at home with her cybernetic nature in a way rarely seen in cybernized humans; so much so that she was hampered by the crudity of the attempts that were made to preserve some part of her original flesh. With that last remnant gone she'll be free to become what she truly can be." Then, the conversation clearly over, Skuld turned back to the device she was constructing and continued her adjustments. "Is she serious?" Ido asked Gryphon again. "How can she understand Gally? Gally's been unconscious since before she got here." Gryphon shook his head. "You'll just have to trust her, Egon. She's the goddess of technology. She knows what she's doing." Ido sighed, shrugging. "Sue me. I'm not used to dealing with gods." There was a low hum and a bright light from the apparatus over the braincase; then Skuld smiled, opened a panel on the top, and took out of it a gleaming crystalline sphere about the size of a baseball. It glowed from within with a pleasant white light. "What is -that-?" Ido asked. "The energy pattern I was talking about," Skuld replied matter-of-factly. "This is a resonance crystal. It now contains everything that makes this girl you call Gally who and what she is. Her consciousness. Her Spengler flux, if you want to be scientific about it. You know of the Spengler papers, of course?" "Oh yes," Ido replied with a rather ironic smile. "Yes indeed." "The race that originated this crystal technology called the energy the crystals contain a person's 'spark'," Skuld went on. "They're very much in tune with the fragility and yet resilience of the vital energies." "Originated? You didn't invent this?" "Oh, no one invented it," Skuld said, placing the spark crystal in a small three-legged stand. "It began on the machine world, Cybertron, millions of years ago." Skuld didn't waste time in long metaphysical debates with Ido. Instead she tabled their discussion and got both Ido and Gryphon working on the next phase of the project, tinkering away at what appeared to be a very elaborate chemistry experiment while she directed the two men in the gathering and preparation of materials from the scrapyard. They used an old Resistron plasma vessel casing and the Valkyrie's remaining functional engine to make a blast furnace for rendering down the metals Skuld said she would need for the new body's outer alloy. After four days of preparation, Skuld announced that she would complete the process on her own. So Gryphon and Ido took to the sidelines and watched as Skuld took the three piles of junk - the one that had been Gally, the one that had been the Griffin suit, and the one which they had collected from the scrapyard - and made them first a single pile, then a tidier single pile, and then a complete robocybernetic endoskeleton. "Davis, take a look at this." "What is it, Tarkinson? I'm on my way to a very important meeting and I don't want to be disturbed." "Got something funky in 9A-1 I think you should see." Davis looked for a moment as if he were about to berate the console operator, then relented. Tarkinson was not prone to wasting people's time - if he thought it was important enough to bring to Davis's attention, then it was probably something Davis needed to know. He straightened his tie and leaned over Tarkinson's station. "OK, two minutes. What've you got for me, Tark?" "Take a look at this." Tarkinson brought up an aerial view of part of 9A-1. "Yeah, it's a heap of junk. We have quite a few of those. Your point?" "OK, it looks normal on visual, right? Check it out in thermograph." Tarkinson punched a couple of keys, and the view changed to a brightly-hued artificially-colored thermographic image. In the central junkpile, an L-shape of bright white glowed furiously. "Now I've seen a lot of strange stuff in my three years here, Dave, but this ain't normal. Looks like somebody's runnin' a blast furnace under there." "So what are you telling me? Somebody's got a bunker underneath the junk in 9A-1 and they're running a smelter?" "You know anything else gets that hot? Look at the shape, too. They've got a long heat source, probably a fusion turbine, and here at the end, this round part is the smelting chamber. My guess is somebody's under there melting down junk and making good steel out of it. Making a tidy profit, I'd bet." Davis scowled at the screen for a moment, then felt a moment of epiphany. Somebody was smelting junk under there, all right, but... He reached past Tarkinson, took hold of the sensitivity knob for the heat sensors, and turned it up a bit. "Shadows" of heat from the alleged blast furnace glowed into relief against the cool dark background, outlining the shape of an aerospacecraft in dull orange. "Well, I'll be fucked," muttered Tarkinson. "They're using some kind of aero to power their blast furnace? They can't be flying the stuff out, we'd've spotted them by now!" "Don't worry about it, Tark. I'll take care of it." "But what about - " "I'll take care of it," Davis repeated, his voice harder. "Don't mention this to -anyone-. Got it?" "OK, Dave. Not a problem. Mum's the word." Tarkinson switched his monitor back to visual mode and began a scan of 9B-1. Davis straightened, adjusted his tie again, and headed for his meeting. Immediately after it, he had something to do. Ido had gone to sleep some time before, but Gryphon, unable to follow suit, sat at the bench, chin in hands and elbows on bench top, watching Skuld make the final adjustments and connections within the chest cavity. He was tired enough to be entranced by the deft, sure workings of her long, slender artist's fingers as she tied in the last of the tactile net to the spinal transmission trunk. Despite her outfit, which was clearly intended to annoy her elder sister as some kind of teen rebellion thing, she was still as sure, confident and competent as she had been when he'd last had the opportunity to watch her work. Her style had become a little more compact; she worked now mainly from mental calculations and didn't bother writing down diagrams as much as she had in years past. The new body she'd built for Gally was an incredible work, its technical sophistication well beyond that of Gryphon's own attempt, but Gryphon wondered how near completion it was. Right now, it was almost skeletal in aspect, but the power train seemed to be complete. Gryphon wondered if Skuld had gotten so involved in making the power train as efficient and compact as possible, she'd forgotten about aesthetics. That would be unfortunate for Gally, and didn't really fit Skuld's usual design ethic - she liked her machines to be functional -and- beautiful. This body didn't even have a face yet. He was about to ask about that when Skuld paused with what she was doing as she noticed him regarding her, looked up, and for a moment, held his gaze without speaking. Then, she asked quietly, "What's on your mind?" To his surprise, instead of mentioning the thing he had been thinking of asking her, when he opened his mouth to reply he said instead, "Nothing much. Just thinking about how long it's been since I saw you or your sisters. How are they?" "Oh, fine," she replied, returning to work as she talked. "Belldandy's retired from field work, of course, and moved up to administration... she's thinking of tossing in the whole job and coming back down to Midgard. Keiichi would eat glass before telling her he's unhappy, but I can tell he doesn't like it in Asgard. Urd is still the MIS director. Last week she managed to lose the whole Niven Sector, we can only guess how, but we had to restore from a two-week-old backup, so there are lots of folks having deja vu now. I'm still stuck in Systems Maintenance, but at least they moved me up to Second Class Unlimited last year." "Business as usual." "Uh huh." "I didn't really mean 'how's work going' when I asked you how your sisters are, you know." She sighed. "Yeah, I know. Well... truth to tell, we haven't been getting along very well lately. I mean, you know how Urd is usually, and since she managed to screw up Niven Sector last week she's been especially bitchy. I can usually avoid her, though. It's Belldandy who's been getting on my nerves." Gryphon looked skeptical. "Belldandy? Get on somebody's nerves??" "She doesn't let me have any space!" Skuld complained. "She treats me like I'm still the little kid you remember, all gawky and clumsy and naive. If she knew I went out in this outfit she'd have a fit, even though it's just you and your friend who've seen me. She acts like she's my mother." "She acts like she's -everybody's- mother," Gryphon said wryly. "You shouldn't take it personally." "I try not to, and I always feel like a jerk when we get into fights, because she's so... so... so damn -good- all the time! When I was little I always tried to be like her, but I've got a streak in me that wants a little adventure now and again. I can't stay at home and take care of people the way she does all the time. She doesn't understand that." "Oh, I think she might. After all, you might think of her as a stuffy homebody, but consider how long she spent as a field engineer. That's got to take a spirit of adventure, barging into people's lives like that year in and year out, never 100% sure how they're going to react or what's going to happen. Maybe she's worried that you'll angle toward that career path and wants to steer you in some other direction." "I hate being steered! That's exactly what bothers me about her. How can -she- know what's best for -me-? Besides, I don't want to be a field engineer. I want Urd's job." "I'm sure Urd is thrilled to know that." "She'll retire some day, and take up man-chasing on the French Riviera or some damn thing," said Skuld with a dismissive gesture. "I suppose old people need hobbies. Anyway, I've already got a job that takes up enough of my time so I probably couldn't be MIS director on my own. I'm the captain of the Valkyrior, remember?" "Oh yeah... I keep forgetting about that." "So does Belldandy. She never remembers that I've been trained in all the Asgardian arts of combat, that I've passed my qualification exams in the Talon and had a week of advanced survival training in Jotunheim." "You've lost me." "Never mind, it's all Valkyrie stuff. Being a Valkyrie these days is kind of like being a cop, except a bigger pain in the ass. The Talon is our Multi-Purpose Armored Uniform, the standard issue Valkyrie powersuit. I've based a lot of this body on the Talon designs, actually. My point is that Belldandy always forgets I've had all this training, that I've got that Valkyrie fire in me that just won't let me stay home and take care of everybody in sight. I killed a wyvern in the mountains of Alfheim for my Trial, you know. Bell's was to cure some twentieth-century Earth disease. I'm not belittling that, but it points out the differences in us. The Aesir Council saw them when they made the Trial assignments, but Bell... " She raised pleading eyes to him, her anguished expression begging him to understand. "Sooner or later we're going to get into one of our fights, and one of us is going to say something so horrible that it causes a rift between us we'll never be able to patch... and it'll probably be me who says it." Pushing her tools away, she dropped her head onto folded arms and sobbed. "Easy, easy," said Gryphon, rounding the bench to put a comforting hand on each of her shoulders. "You're tired, and your imagination is running away with you. Everything will be fine." She looked up at him again, brushing ineffectually at the tears tracking down her cheeks. "You think so?" "I can't believe I'm presuming to tell a goddess how I think her family relationships will work out, but what the hell, a little hubris never hurt anybody. Look, Belldandy is your sister. She loves you dearly, and in Belldandy love becomes a powerful instinct to shelter and nurture. She's like the whole universe's mom. Don't resent her for that; it's what makes her who she is, just like your skills and your wild streak define you, and Urd's... well, let's call it brashness... defines her. "You go on being you - let Bell go on being Bell - and this thing will work it out itself, given time. Tread a little lighter. Stay out of each other's way. If you feel that argument starting, defuse it. Walk away. Don't talk about it again until you've calmed down. That's the best advice I can give you... I hope it's good enough." Skuld smiled through her tears, then leaned closer and hugged him. "You're so sweet. How could people revile you so? How can they be so stupid?" Gryphon shrugged. "I've asked that question all around for the last eight years, and unfortunately, I haven't found an answer. I don't even know for certain what they think I've done, let alone why they think I did it. They just don't know me, I guess." He paused, considering, then asked, "What -do- they think I did? I mean, multiple murder, right, I've got that part figured out, but... " She shivered. "Better you don't know." Then her smile returned; she ducked her head with an echo of her younger shyness, then placed a wet kiss on his cheek and released him. "Thanks... I feel a lot better now." "No problem," he said, giving her shoulders a squeeze before putting both hands back on the bench and leaning forward to survey her work. "How much longer do we have to go?" "Just about done," Skuld said. "You want to wake up Doc Ido? He's probably going to want to watch this." "Uh... look, don't take this the wrong way, but isn't it a little... well... ugly?" Skuld frowned, then smiled as she realized what Gryphon meant. "Oh, don't worry about that. The body will take care of that on its own once we power it up." "Huh?" "You'll see. Go get Ido." Gryphon went and roused Ido, who made his bleary way to the side of the bench, wiping at his spectacles with the tail of his shirt and yawning. At the moment, Gally's entire narrow chest panel was standing open, several plates fanned out in an almost flowerlike way to reveal the incredibly complex workings inside, workings which Ido, looking into the cavity, could make no sense of. In her hand, Skuld held a cylindrical object about six inches long by two inches in diameter; it appeared to be a glass tube with a metal cap at each end. The inside ends of the caps had points visible through the glass. The tube was filled with a pinkish liquid, and in the center, a gumball-sized red sphere of some unknown material floated, without anything visibly anchoring it there. "What's that?" asked Ido. "Power cell," replied Skuld, fitting it into the cylindrical cavity revealed by Gally's open chestplate. It clicked into place, half of its length still protruding; then, with a wind-chime-like sound, it glowed. The complex workings around it shifted, retracting it deep into the cyborg body's chest, and above it, the internal mechanisms formed a hemispherical socket. Into this, Skuld carefully placed the glowing white spark crystal. It glowed slightly brighter; then the socket shifted, drawing the crystal in a bit deeper and securing it more firmly. The chestplate fanned shut over it, its plates interlocking and sealing together with a hiss. "There," said Skuld. "Assuming she bothers to take basic care of herself, she shouldn't need servicing for... oh, a thousand years or so." "What about damage?" asked Ido. Skuld shrugged. "As long as she doesn't go jumping into any stars... " She rapped on the chestplate; it clunked dully under her knuckles. "This is an alloy called uru. It's what all the mightiest weapons of Asgard are made of... Odin's spear Gungnir, Thor's hammer Mjollnir. It's basically iron, except it's more or less indestructible. I think the Midgardian word for it is 'adamantite'... Bel would know for sure." Gryphon whistled. "Man. I'd like to have a powersuit plated with that." "I could probably arrange that," said Skuld with a grin. "Anyway, on to phase two." "Phase two?" said Ido. "You mean she's not complete?" "Oh, good Lord, no," Skuld replied. "This is just the skeleton. You think I'd leave her looking like -this-? I haven't even finished the protoform. And then we have to start the technorganic fusion process, and then that process will have to complete itself... we're not even halfway there yet, time-wise." Gryphon glanced at her as she spoke, a look of dawning comprehension on his face, and when she was done, he grinned. "So -that's- what you're up to," he said. Ido threw up his hands. He was a very intelligent man, a talented and well-educated cybersurgeon, but faced with this teenage girl, he was completely out of his depth, and it was starting to bother him a great deal. Skuld seemed to notice this, though, and she put a hand on his arm and gave him a gentler look. "Dr. Ido, I know this must be frustrating for you," she said. "But please, keep a few things in mind. Even discounting my origins, I'm a lot older than I seem to be - a lot older than you are - and I've had exposure to the technologies of civilizations you've never even heard of. What I'm doing here is based on the makeup of a species totally alien to your own, and isn't so much cybertechnology as xenobiology. It seems like it's something you should understand, but really you shouldn't expect yourself to - even though it looks like it, it's really completely outside your field. Expecting yourself to understand what I'm doing on the basis of your own education and experience is like expecting an astrophysicist to calibrate a neurospinal linkage. It doesn't take anything away from the astrophysicist that he can't do it." Ido thought about that, then nodded with a wan sort of grin. "I'll try to keep that in mind," he said. Ido had to work very hard to keep that in mind over the next few days, as what Skuld was doing with the new body - what she had called the "protoform" - went from puzzling to completely incomprehensible. They had put it into one of the bathtubs, then filled the tub with the strange, foul-smelling chemical concoctions Skuld had been working on while he and Gryphon prepped the materials. At first he thought it was a makeshift biosculpt vat, that Skuld was covering Gally's new body with synthetic flesh, but she assured him it went far beyond that. Indeed, as he peered at the metallic skeleton through the pinkish murk of the chemical soup over the next few days, Ido saw that she was right. The stinking broth was hard to see through, and got harder as it clouded further over time, but Ido thought he saw the metalic parts... -growing-, taking on an almost organic look of their own. Structures like muscles and organs were forming under the cloudy sludge, all with a curiously metallic sheen. Over the skeletal face of the head, a "muscle" layer with the beginnings of the shape of Gally's old face was beginning to form by day three. After that, the increasingly-gelatinous material clouded too much for him to make out anything but a vague humanoid shape. This seemed to please Skuld immensely; she immediately went to the generator, clipped on a second set of cables, and plunged their naked ends into either end of the tub. This caused the muck to glow a dramatic shade of dark red and hum alarmingly, both of which, she assured the two men, were perfectly normal and desirable effects. "Normally this would be a lot cleaner and take a lot less time, but under these conditions, it's best to take it slowly," she said. "What -is- going on in there?" Gryphon asked. "Earlier you said crystal-locking Gally's spark would free her from the constraints of her old organic material, but then you mentioned technorganic fusion - and whatever that is, it's definitely growing. I thought I knew what you were up to, but now I'm not so sure." Skuld nodded. "I guess I should explain it better, now that we have time," she said. "OK, look. You know Martin Rose, right?" Gryphon nodded. "Sure. Old friend of mine from the WDF days, though now... " He shrugged. Skuld nodded. "Then you know what he is." Again Gryphon nodded, then qualified it, "Well, in broad strokes. I know he's - " Then he stopped, a thoughtful look coming over his face; after a moment he grinned at Skuld. "You are -unspeakably- brilliant," he said. She beamed at him. "Um, for those of us who came in late... " said Ido. "Right, sorry. You've heard of PCHammer?" "Sure, the human Autobot," said Ido. "Leader of Thunder Force." Skuld nodded. "Right. His body is a technorganic fusion, created by a process developed by the WDF Life Sciences Division and the late Hi-Q of Nebulon, Optimus Prime's binary partner and one of the greatest scientists of his age. The Cybertronian technology of his Rotofoil craft and the human tissue of his body were... merged together, so that the junction between the two became indistinguishable. He's a cyborg in the absolute purest sense of the word, a life form both organic and technological with no division between one and the other, down to the submolecular level." Gryphon's grin widened a little. She was leaving a few things out - namely the otherdimensional race of Transformers whose cybernetic structure she was copying more directly than Marty - but explaining about the Beast Warriors would just confuse Ido even more. "And... that's what you're doing to Gally?" said Ido. "Bingo!" said Skuld, pointing to him with a grin. "The basic parameters of her body are defined by the sample of her DNA I included in the technorganic fusion matrix - which means she'll look like herself - but she'll be more, much more, than meets the eye." "When will she be ready?" Gryphon wondered. "Once the glow stage starts, it shouldn't be too long," Skuld said. "We'll know when - " There was a sharp "whoosh", and a great billowing cloud of pink smoke gushed out of the bathtub, nearly overwhelming the hideaway's ventilation system. As the fans sucked it away and mingled it into the plumes of smoke that always rose from certain points in the junkyard, the three people crowded around the tub. Lying in the bottom of that tub was what looked for all the world like a perfectly normal human female, her body proportioned as Gally's original cyborg shell had been, and wearing her face and her pageboy fall of coal-black hair. Ido and Gryphon raised opposite eyebrows and said simultaneously, "Whoa." Ido reached out and tentatively touched Gally's arm, then prodded it a bit more firmly. "It feels... real." "It -is- real," Skuld said. "In this form, she's outwardly indistinguishable from a normal human. You could do... " Skuld paused, her cheeks pinkening slightly, and went on, "... pretty much anything people do to each other that doesn't involve major surgery... with her and never know she was anything but a regular girl." "'This form'? She has others?" "Of course. The 'techno' side of her technorganic matrix is Cybertronian. Transformation is inherent in their makeup." Gryphon went and got a blanket, throwing it over the still-unconscious cyborg; at Ido and Skuld's quizzical looks, he shrugged and said, "She'd be embarrassed." Then, struck by sudden curiosity, he drew back the blanket and looked at something Skuld had painstakingly programmed to appear on the skin of the cyborg's upper chest: an intricate pattern that looked almost like circuit traces, tattooed in maddening complexity over an area about an inch high by three inches wide, just above the curve of her left breast. "What's this?" he inquired. Skuld leaned over, then smiled. "My signature, sort of," she replied. "It's a datascripting technique I developed once when I was bored. I use it to keep notes sometimes, or sign my better work. It translates directly to my native language - loosely translated into Standard, this says something like, "'I have forged this body from the scrap and waste of a world out of order, where men serve technology rather than the reverse, and the essence of a world in balance, where technology itself is life. What was broken, I have made whole. What was rejected, I have made useful. The woman within I recognize as a kindred spirit. Her soul lives in harmony with the steel that is her flesh as Man should live in harmony with Machine. She shall guard those whom she loves with the tenderness of a mother and destroy those who oppose her with the ferocity of a Niflheim storm. I accept her as a sister; I name her as a Valkyrie: Alita the Ironhearted, Daughter of the Lightning. So speaks Skuld the Ravenhaired, Norn of the Future, Goddess of Technology.'" Though he found the somewhat florid Standard wording amusing, Gryphon was touched by the depth of the spirit echoed in those words. They confirmed a suspicion he'd had, that, though she remained unconscious throughout, Gally had played more than a passive role in her recreation; that Skuld's instinctive communion with things technological had given them a rapport that went beyond the spoken word. To accept a stranger, an outsider, a mortal, as sister and Valkyrie was a remarkable thing indeed. Gally stirred, then sat up, opening and blinking her clear brown eyes. For a moment she looked down at her new hands with confusion; then she turned to Gryphon, Ido and Skuld, and smiled. "Thank you," she said, a tear leaking from the corner of one eye. Up in the Valkyrie's cockpit, an alarm suddenly wailed. "What the - ?!" Gryphon wondered, swarming up the ladder into the cockpit. There he quickly powered up the sensor systems and checked the remote sensors he had that alarm tied to. The picture he got wasn't very encouraging. "Hell!" he growled, climbing down out of the aerospacecraft. "Heads up, everybody, we've got big-league trouble. They spotted us, I don't know how, but they spotted us. We've got contacts bearing down on us from at least five directions, all around." Gally sprang up, shock on her face, and threw the blanket aside, all modesty forgotten in the urgency of the moment - but when her feet hit the floor she stumbled, nearly falling headlong. "Easy!" Skuld said. "I haven't adjusted any of your systems yet, and you haven't learned this new body at all. Get back on the table and let me - " "Have to wait," said Gally through her teeth. Her favorite clothes had been destroyed with her body in the battle with Grewcica, so she pushed Skuld aside and began to rummage through the box containing what she had left. Skuld frowned, but said nothing. She knew that kind of stubbornness well, and had no inclination toward wasting her time. She just hoped that Gally would be able to acclimate herself to her new situation fast enough. The hatch on the very top of the false junkmound swung open, and Ido eased himself up, rocket hammer in hand, to the surface. Gally, clad in a defunct rock band's T-shirt and a pair of tattered jeans, followed, slamming the hatch behind her and standing with her back to Ido's. The enemy were ranged all around the mound by now, and Ido, with a sinking heart, recognized most of them. They were a mixed bag of local hunter-warriors and Duotech security personnel, and they had the place completely surrounded; behind them could be seen the ring of gleaming white Duotech aerodyne transports they'd arrived in. Davis stepped to the fore of the thickest group of them, a wedge of armored troopers and kitted-out hunters to the cityward side of the mount, and grinned. "I think you know what we want," he said. "Well, you can't have her!" Ido bellowed. Davis rolled his eyes. "Have it your way." He raised his voice so that it carried to all the troopers and hunters present. "Kill him." Ido swore and dove down the side of the junkpile as blaster bolts, bullets, even arrows tore into the place where he had been standing. At the same time, Gally sprang into the air. She came down in the middle of one group of troopers and hunters, scattering them in all directions, in various states of disrepair. Ido, meanwhile, had leveled the nearest trooper and taken his blaster rifle, and was now running, ducking, and shooting, just trying to stay alive. Gally tossed aside the broken remains of another Duotech trooper and closed in on Davis, who looked preternaturally calm considering he was about to die. Narrowing her eyes at him, she raised the blaster she had taken from one of the troopers she'd broken, and said flatly, "Call them off." She wasn't as confident as she sounded; although faster, stronger and surer than any normal human body, this new body of her wasn't what she had been expecting. It wasn't even as powerful as the one Gryphon had made for her, which, even if it had been wrecked in the process, had at least managed to disable Grewcica. She could probably shoot Davis, but as for all of these bounty hunters and soldiers... in this form, she just didn't know. It had been kind of Skuld to make her so convincingly human - she would be able to live a normal life, if she survived this - but without the power of a full cyborg body to match the fighting skills that burned in her mind, she wasn't sanguine about her chances of doing so. Davis seemed to pick up on her doubtful thoughts. He smiled and said smoothly, "Oh, I don't think so, my dear." Strange attitude to take, she thought, and then she was flying backward and crashing into a small pile of refrigerators. Sitting up immediately, she looked around, trying to determine what had hurled her thus. It wasn't that difficult a search to make. The obvious choice would be the giant, howling freak job of a cyborg who was now looming behind Davis with most of a wrecked bus raised over his head. Now truly despairing of her new body's ability to meet the demands of the situation, Gally tensed preparatory to getting up. Before she could actually move, a spasm of some kind seized hold of her - neural feedback, some kind of calibration problem perhaps, locking her muscles and freezing her painfully in place. She gritted her teeth and tried to get hold of herself, willing her new body to move her out of the way before the bus came crashing down, but nothing was happening. Her body felt like it was trying to spring apart, a strange, low-frequency buzzing harmonic emitting from it. She felt like she had to strain just to hold herself together. What in the galaxy was happening to her? The bus exploded. Grewcica didn't seem to think that was very sporting of it; he roared in anger and glared up the hill. Gally forced her head around, fighting back waves of pain, to see Gryphon standing at the top of the hill, the missile launch tubes on the right vambrace of his Cyclone smoking and empty. Grewcica ground his teeth, roared again, and charged up the hill, clawed fingers cocked for rending. Gryphon hit the boosters and jumped over his first wild swinging attempt, then let him have it in the back with the pair of missiles on the other forearm guard. The giant cyborg turned, smoke rolling up from his back, not notably impressed. "Uh-oh," said Gryphon to himself as Grewcica reared back a hand to strike again. Davis, noting that Gryphon was now very busy and that the little cyborg girl was apparently suffering some kind of motor malfunction, smiled to himself and signaled the Duotech guards nearest him. As they closed in, Gally struggled to move, to attack, but the spasm was still gripping her. It felt alarmingly like her -bones- were moving, her internal organs, everything shifting out of its place. That humming, buzzing sound continued, pulsing with every spasm, as she fought to keep herself together and desperately wondered what was going wrong with her new body. Then Skuld's voice came to her, speaking from somewhere within her head: "Don't fight it, Gally. It's not a malfunction, it's your birthright. Your new body is a Cybertronian technorganic fusion." "I don't understand!" she cried desperately, though no sound came from her grimly locked jaws. "What do you mean?" "Oh, Allfather, I forgot - you've probably never heard of Cybertron. I can't go into much detail now, there isn't time. The people of Cybertron are transforming mechanoids. Your new body is based on a fusion of their cybernetic ecology with human biology. You're not falling apart - your body is trying to transform to its battle mode so that you can fight more effectively." "What can I do, then?" "Just let go!" Skuld replied. "Don't fight it - embrace it. Become your true self. Relax and be transformed!" "All right," thought Gally, and she closed her eyes and did as she was told. It was a remarkable sensation, and yet, now that she had assurance that it wasn't some kind of horrible malfunction, it wasn't an unpleasant one. As the buzzing harmonic, now unmuffled by her struggles to contain herself, rose merrily up a five-step basetone progression, her whole body seemed to fall into itself and bloom outward at the same time, as if turning inside out. With a sweeping, shivery feeling, the warmth of human flesh was replaced by the familiar, rather comforting chill of cyborg steel. She opened her eyes and looked down at herself, to see the same basic petite girl-shape, now clad in gleaming armor and then sheathed over that in her familiar black body stocking, her favorite boots and her tan coat. Her chest was emblazoned with an unfamiliar scarlet sigil that looked like a stylized robot's face. She stood up, feeling the power and grace in her new metallic form, and punched at the air experimentally. A sound like a whipcrack snapped through the air as her knuckles punched through the sound barrier. Alita Ironheart smiled and threw herself at Grewcica's back. Gryphon felt an odd sensation of deja vu as a black and tan missile smashed into the gigantic cyborg and bowled him away; then Grewcica tumbled, roaring, down the side of the junkheap, and the missile resolved itself into the shape of a girl. Alita stood on the pinnacle of the heap, one knee bent, her coattails flying behind her in the wind. He could see her face in profile, and it was much the same, but for the slashes of gleaming chrome that began under her eyes and then turned down her cheeks, the strange metallic sheen of her hair, the peculiar crystalline glint of her eyes, and the fact that the irises in those eyes had turned a startling bright gold color. On her chest was the old familiar Autobot shield. She grinned at Gryphon as Grewcica struggled to his feet, looked up at her, and snarled. "Kill you!" he roared. "Eat your heart!" "You'd break your teeth," said Alita. Her voice sounded different, too: slightly hollow, with an overlaid metallic timbre, like the voices of most of the Transformers Gryphon knew - like Martin Rose's voice when he was in his Rotofoil form, in fact. As she launched herself down the junkhill at her gigantic adversary, Gryphon grinned. Look out, Marty, he thought; You've just lost your 'smallest Transformer' title. /* Joe Satriani "One Big Rush" _Flying in a Blue Dream_ */ Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presented UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE Scrapheap City Shuffle Part One: Transformation starring Benjamin D. Hutchins Skuld Ravenhair and introducing Alita Ironheart with Dr. Daisuke Ido Lance Maltby David Davis Grewcica Mike Tarkinson Drovar Ganz and the Duotech Corporate Security Service Constructicon Benjamin D. Hutchins Special thanks to nine years' worth of Usual Suspects Constructed in such disparate places as Millinocket, Maine Orono, Maine The Inn at the Park, Anaheim, California The Los Angeles International Airport Hilton and Towers Worcester, Massachusetts Waltham, Massachusetts and anywhere else Mr. Hutchins may have been since 1993 Alita Ironheart will return in Part 2: Starcrossed E P U (colour) 2002