INTERNATIONAL POLICE HEADQUARTERS
                         NEW AVALON, ZETA CYGNI
                       SATURDAY, AUGUST 21, 2410
                                06:03 AM

        If there was one thing Catherine Willows could say in favor of
having had a large, complex, rather hairy case dropped unceremoniously
in her lap at half-past five on a Saturday morning, it was that the
sudden responsibility took her mind off all the -other- things she had
to think about.
        She sat at her desk in the tiny office her status as senior
level-3 criminalist afforded her, tucked into the corner of the crime
lab complex on the tenth floor of IPO Headquarters.  She'd spent the
last half-hour familiarizing herself with the details of the case that
she hadn't encountered directly when she was just one of a dozen field
investigators working on it.
        What they knew, or thought they knew, about the matter so far
was, in essence:
        1) Someone took a half-million credits in cash from Evidence
Vault A, sometime between when Greg Sanders logged it (two weeks
previously) and Thursday.
        2) Vasseck Kelshar, a former illegal intelligence officer from
Manaan, had escaped from prison on that planet at around the same time,
and absconded with 150 pounds of kolto, a highly valuable controlled
substance, to boot.
        3) Four days ago, someone hired ex-Neo-Soviet MGB operative
Yelena Belova to assassinate members of the IPO crime lab's night shift,
including CSI3 Nick Stokes.  That someone was not Vasseck Kelshar, but
Belova's payoff for the job included 100 pounds of kolto and cr30,000,
the latter positively identified as part of the money missing from
Evidence A.
        4) On Thursday night, Belova staged a domestic disturbance in a
vacant apartment in the Millrace.  She then hid in the closet and, when
Nick arrived to process the scene, she shot him with a .45-caliber
blaster cap and fled the scene.
        5) On Friday night, Belova attempted to shoot Catherine with a
sniper rifle, but the attempt was thwarted by Special Assignment 7 agent
Geoff Depew, who subsequently captured Belova.
        6) With most of the missing cash still missing and 50 pounds
(nearly a million credits' worth) of kolto outstanding, it seemed likely
that whoever hired Belova still had the wherewithal to hire at least one
more assassin.
        7) The unknown subject appeared to be targeting the night
shift's field criminalists.  Belova had revealed under interrogation
that she had been given a list of personnel for both shifts and
specifically instructed not to target the members of the day-shift crew.
        8) Whoever was hiring these assassins appeared to be connected
with the crime lab in some way himself.  Someone had to steal that cash
from the evidence vault, after all, and it wasn't the kind of place
people could just walk into off the street.
        9) Having learned this, lab director and night shift supervisor
Gil Grissom abruptly declared that he could not continue on the case due
to a potential conflict of interest, handed supervisory authority to
Catherine, and went home.
        Catherine had considered this behavior somewhat bizarre, even
for Grissom, until she sat down and had a long look at the big picture.
Now she thought she was seeing the same pattern that had spooked
Grissom, and if she was right, she didn't blame him for bowing out of
the case.  Administratively, the path ahead was fraught with danger.
        She felt a momentary surge of annoyance - upon seeing what a can
of worms the case might become, Grissom had dumped it in her lap and
disappeared, gee, THANKS - but then she chided herself for it.
        You wanted to be a supervisor, she reminded herself.
Administrative danger is part of the job...
        Sighing, she got up and went into the hall.  The first person
she saw was Horatio Caine, the new day-shift supervisor, who'd started
on the job the previous Monday.  Catherine had spent most of the week
avoiding chance meetings with him, partly because she was sore about not
being offered the job he'd been hired to do and partly because he just
struck her as kind of a weird guy, but she knew both of these reactions
were, at best, immature.  She didn't have that luxury any more.
        "Mr. Caine," she said.
        He paused, turning, and inclined his head cordially.  "Ms.
Willows," he said.
        "Look," she said, trying to relax her demeanor.  "If we're going
to be working together, you might as well call me Catherine."
        "All right, Catherine," said Caine agreeably.  "Feel free to
call me Horatio.  Is there something I can do for you?"
        He had, Catherine noticed, an odd habit of not looking directly
at the person he was talking to, except at the very end of sentences,
when he'd make fleeting eye contact and then look away again.  She
hadn't talked to him herself before now, but she'd seen him do it with
other people.  It was one of the things she'd thought was weird about
him, though seeing him do it up close, she had to wonder if he was just
shy.
        "I want to get all the field CSIs together in the layout room in
five minutes," she told him.  "It's time we all got onto the same page
and figured out what we're going to do next with this case."
        "I agree.  I'll have my people there."
        Catherine gave him a speculative look.  "Are we going to have a
problem here?" she asked.
        Caine looked genuinely taken aback by the question.  "I beg your
pardon, Catherine?"
        "I know you outrank me... technically... but with Grissom out of
the picture, I'm the senior criminalist in this lab, and he assigned
this case specifically to me."
        Caine nodded.  "I know that, Catherine," he said.  "And I don't
have a problem following your lead.  My team and I are at your disposal.
Just tell us... "  He reached into his inside jacket pocket, took out
his dataglasses, and slipped them on.  "... where you want us."


                              /*  The Who
                             "Who Are You?"
                     _The Ultimate Collection_  */

                 I have a message from another time...

                      Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                                  and
                          Avalon 17 Television
                                present

                 UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT

                            CSI: NEW AVALON
                           OUTWARD TRAJECTORY

                          Benjamin D. Hutchins
                              Geoff Depew

                 (c) 2007 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


                          WORLD WIDE BUILDING
                              THE MILLRACE
                                09:17 AM

        No doubt about it, Nick, said Nick Stokes to himself.  Your
sleep schedule is officially screwed.  You're awake when -normal- people
are up.
        "Morning, Nick," said his temporary host, Dr. Allison Cameron,
as she came down the hall into the apartment's common area from her
room.  "How do you feel?"
        Nick considered his answer for a moment.  "... Not too bad,
actually," he said.  "Still hurts a bit, but I've felt worse'n this
after a rough game of turfball."
        Cameron smiled.  "Well, that's what regenerative DNA will do for
you, I guess," she said.  "Let's have a look at your wound."
        Nick obligingly unbuttoned his shirt and let her set about
unsealing the synthskin dressing that covered the spot where he'd been
shot just a couple of days before.  With the sort of semi-morbid
fascination that he felt when examining victims of violent crime, he
craned his neck to look for himself as the doctor peeled back the
bandage.
        Where he'd had a char-edged hole roughly the diameter of a
baseball two days earlier, Nick now sported a red patch on the right
side of his chest that looked to him like nothing so much as a nasty, if
weirdly localized, sunburn.  There was a little bit of a raised,
reddened ring where the edge of the blast crater had been, but that
looked to be fading, and the skin over the wound had completely closed.
        "Well," said Cameron appreciatively.  "I'd say -that's- coming
along nicely."  She carefully prodded a couple of spots.  "Does that
hurt?"
        "A little," Nick replied.  "Nothing to get excited about,
though.  It's just a little sore.  Feels like I got punched."
        Cameron shook her head.  "Amazing."  She sealed the dressing
back in place, just for caution's sake, and went to the kitchen for some
coffee while Nick buttoned his shirt back up.  When she returned, she
asked, "Have you heard anything from the lab?"
        Nick shook his head.  "If I know them, they've been working all
night and nobody's had time to stop by."
        "They're really busy if Sara doesn't have time," Cameron
remarked.
        "With Sara, the problem's not so much having time as noticing
it," said Nick with a grin.  "She once spent three and a half straight
days just searching a DNA database.  When she gets her teeth into a
problem, the rest of the galaxy sort of ceases to exist for her."
        "Gee, I don't know anyone like that," said Cameron ruefully.
"Speaking of which, I've got to go into work for a while this afternoon.
I'll see if I can find out anything about the case, since you're not
supposed to be making outside calls."
        "You spend a lot of time at the office for someone who claims to
have paid her dues already," Nick joked, but Cameron just rolled her
eyes at him.
        "Compared to the shifts I pulled at Princeton-Plainsboro,
working at Boyce is like being on vacation," she said.  "And BJ has
never once asked me to break into a patient's house and steal their
drain cleaner.  Although, admittedly, I kind of miss that part
sometimes."
        Nick snorted.  "Become a criminalist.  You'll look under more
sinks than you thought people could keep stuff under."
        "When I got to town, Dr. Robbins tried to recruit me for the
medical examiner's office."
        "Aw, you should've taken him up on it.  Right now the night
shift is just Doc Robbins and Super Dave."
        "No thanks.  I prefer my patients to at least start out alive."
        "Shame.  You'd dress the place up some."
        Cameron eyed him narrowly over the top of her coffee mug, though
below her narrowed eyes, the rest of her face was smiling.  "Are you
hitting on me, Investigator Stokes?"
        Nick blinked.  "Who, me?  No!  I'm just saying."

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS
                                10:07 AM

        At Catherine's instructions, the criminalists of the IPO
directed their scrutiny in a half-dozen directions, all of them
considered important to the investigation - but the most critical of
them, and the one that Catherine was paying the most personal attention
to as the morning wore on, was inward.
        She'd gone over the access logs from Evidence Vault A a half-
dozen times, going right back to the time when Greg logged the Del
Giorgio case's ransom cash, trying to figure out who had removed said
cash and when, but she'd come up empty.  Theoretically, nothing could be
removed from the vault, once logged into it, without being signed back
out by an authorized staff member.  Attempting to remove a logged item
without signing it out was supposed to trigger a detention field and an
alarm.  Every criminalist in the lab had set it off through end-of-shift
absent-mindedness a couple of times, to the amusement of colleagues and
the annoyance of Security.
        With a thoughtful scowl, she left her office and went into the
corridor.  "Greg!" she called.
        "Yo," said Greg, emerging from the trace lab.  Then, looking
mildly puzzled, he asked, "Is Grissom really not coming back?  Where'd
he -go-, anyway?"
        "Hell if I know," Catherine replied irritably.  "Probably
communing with his dominatrix."
        Greg arched an eyebrow.  "Oooo... -kayyyy-... " he said.  "So
what can I help -you- with?"
        "Come with me," she said.  "I want to try a little experiment."
        "Okay," said Greg agreeably, following her down the hall.
"What's up?"
        Catherine stopped in front of Evidence A and told him, "Go get
something in there and bring it out without signing for it."
        Greg blinked.  "... Uh... I'm the noob, but I'm not -that-
dumb," he said skeptically.  "That'll just trap me in the vestibule
behind a forcefield."
        "It's -supposed- to," Catherine acknowledged.  "I want to see if
it's actually working."
        "Then... why don't -you- do it?"
        Catherine half-smiled.  "Because you're the noob, Greg," she
said.  "Now get in there.  Don't worry, I'll have Security spring you
before lunch."

                          THREE MINUTES LATER

        "Hazing the FNG, Willows?" asked the security-detail sergeant
who led the team responding to the vault alarm.
        "Testing the security system.  And your response time, nice
work," Catherine added.  "Can you let Greg out of there, please?
I promised I wouldn't let him starve."  Turning to the small crowd of
technicians and criminalists who had emerged from various offices and
labs in response to the alarm, she raised her voice and said, "Move
along, people, nothing to see here."
        A moment later, Greg emerged, intact save for his dignity, which
he almost visibly gathered about him as a few of those who had gathered
to watch broke into applause.
        "Thank you, thank you," he said.  "Catherine?  The vault
security system appears to be working as designed."
        Catherine nodded with a faint smirk.  "Thank you, Greg," she
said with elaborate sincerity.  "Your assistance in this matter is
greatly appreciated."
        "All part of the service, I assure you," Greg replied with equal
gravity.  "Now, if you will excuse me, I believe I'm wanted in Trace."
        "Carry on, Mr. Sanders."
        From the other end of the corridor, Calleigh Duquesne turned
away with a smile and made her way to the ballistics lab.
        The name of this establishment, and of the field it represented,
was something of a quaint anachronism nowadays, when around half of the
weapons used in the commission of violent crimes in built-up areas were
some form of directed energy weapon and therefore not ballistic at all.
Calleigh herself was often referred to as a ballistics expert, which she
assuredly was, but her expertise reached far beyond the realm of bullets
and rifling.  Still, she supposed the nomenclature was more elegant, if
less accurate, than calling herself a "ranged weaponry specialist".
        She arrived at Ballistics at the same time as Sara Sidle, and
being the courteous type, gestured the dark-haired criminalist in ahead
of her.
        "What've you got, Bobby?" Sara asked the man on duty, who was in
the process of reassembling a pistol at his workbench.  "Oh, Calleigh,
have you met Bobby Dawson?  Firearms examiner extraordinaire.  He's
usually on Nights with us.  Bobby, this is - "
        Dawson got up from his bench, wiped his oily hands on a rag, and
grinned broadly.  "Oh, believe me, Sidle, Calleigh Duquesne needs no
introduction," he said.
        Sara looked bemused.  "Okay, so, you already know her."
        "Only by reputation.  It's an honor, ma'am."
        Sara looked more bemused.  "... Right.  Clearly I missed a
memo."
        Calleigh remained unruffled, shaking Dawson's hand with the same
little smile she seemed to favor everybody with.  "Pleased to meet you,
Mr. Dawson."
        "Bobby.  Please."
        "Bobby.  Got anything on the weapons we recovered from Belova's
hideouts?"
        Dawson nodded.  "Plenty."  He gestured to the rack of weapons on
the far wall of the office.  "Most of the weapons she had were hot, and
a number of 'em have kicked back database hits.  Some of these guns have
been involved in some -very- high-profile crimes.  The one -you- guys
are interested in, though, is this number here."  He pointed to the
pistol on his workbench.  "Tokarev.  Pistolet Tokareva TT-33, with a
7.62mm reflec-barrel BlasCap conversion kit.  Custom job.  The base gun
was built for the Neo-Soviet Red Army at the Novaya Tula arsenal around
2365.  Whoever did the BlasCap conversion was a real pro, probably a
government shop."
        "Nick said he thought it was a 1911," Sara observed.
        Dawson nodded, but before he could speak, Calleigh said, "At
gunpoint in the dark, it'd be an easy mistake to make.  The TT-33
started out as a copy of one of John Browning's earlier designs."  She
reached to her belt and drew her own weapon (which proved to be a modern
copy of the venerable M1911A1), cleared it, then put it next to the
Tokarev.  "If all you can see is the business end... "
        "Mm," said Sara, nodding.  "Nice piece, by the way."
        "Thank you," said Calleigh, sounding genuinely pleased, as she
collected her .45, reloaded it, and holstered it.  "I understand you
carry some pretty special hardware yourself," she added with an impish
smile.
        "What, this little thing?" Sara asked with exaggerated
nonchalance, touching the grip of her Zardon Lawgiver-C.  "Just
something a uniform gave me one time."
        Calleigh laughed and turned her attention back to Dawson.
"Anything else?"
        "Class characteristics strongly indicate that this was the
weapon that was used to shoot Nick," Dawson said.  "Can't be as
definitive as with ballistic striations, but it was definitely a 7.62-
mil BlasCap, and there aren't a lot of those around.  You'll want to
check with Trace and see if they can match up the spectral composition
of the duranium alloy.  That's about as definite as it's gonna get."
        "All right, thanks, Bobby," said Sara.
        Dawson assured them both profusely that it was no trouble at
all.  As both women left the lab, Sara turned to Calleigh and said, "So,
uh, what was that all about?"
        Calleigh smiled.  "Oh, apparently your Mr. Dawson has read a few
little articles I wrote for Firearms Quarterly.  And he's from the same
colony as me, so naturally he's a gentleman of breeding and refinement,"
she added matter-of-factly.
        "Ah, of course," said Sara, enlightened.

                          WORLD WIDE BUILDING
                                10:31 AM

        Nick was surprised, hopeful, and faintly alarmed to see
Catherine Willows enter the apartment.
        "Cath!" he said.  "Uh, what are you doing here?  Does this mean
I'm alive again?"
        Catherine shook her head.  "No such luck, Nicky," she said.  "I
used the city defense tunnels to get here - this building has a
connection to them in the subbasement.  We got the woman who shot you
last night, but we think there's at least one more out there, plus the
people who hired them.  It's still kind of up in the air who that is."
        Nick sighed, slumping back in the couch.  "Damn."
        "Ah, relax," Catherine said, sitting down at the other end.  "At
least -you- get the day off, unlike everyone else."  She stretched and
yawned.  "I haven't been home since Thursday.  It's a good thing I don't
have any pets.  Or a life."  She focused on the TV.  "You're watching
Saturday morning cartoons."
        "Hey, Mighty Orbots is on," said Nick defensively.
        "Nick, my -daughter's- too old for that show, and she's 15,"
Catherine teased.  Then, becoming more serious, she said, "How you
holding up?"
        Nick shrugged.  "It's already healed over.  I'll probably be
fine in another day or two.  Like it never happened."
        "That's not really what I meant."
        "Yeah.  I know."  He sighed.  "I dunno what to tell you, Cath.
It's like I said to Sara.  I don't even know why I'm like this.  And...
I'm not sure I -want- to know.  My parents are the people who cared
enough to raise me.  I mean, if one of my birth parents is one of the
old Wedge Defenders... what happened?  The Exile was over by the time I
came along."
        Catherine nodded.  "Mm.  Lots of weird things were going on
around that time, Nicky, but... I dunno."  She chuckled reminiscently.
"You know, when I was younger, I used to imagine that the reason Ben
looked out for me was because I was his secret daughter.  The evidence
eventually failed to support that theory," she added wryly, "but... "
        Nick gave her a sidelong look.  "Evidence?  ... You mean you
guys... "
        Catherine looked puzzled, then slugged him in the shoulder.
"No!  I mean I got -old-."
        Nick pulled his "aw come on" face.  "You're not old, Cath."
        "Aww," she said, smiling.  "Your mind's in the gutter, but
you're still a sweet boy."
        Nick laughed, only wincing a little.  "I got one Sara told me to
save for you," he said, but before he could go on, someone else entered
the apartment.
        "Good grief, it's Grand Central in here," Catherine mock-
groused.  "The man's supposed to be in hiding."
        "And a sunny good morning to you too, Catherine," said Skuld
Ravenhair cheerfully.  "I understand Ben showed you the toy box last
night."  Nick coughed.  Both women ignored him.  "What'd you think?"
        "Interesting," Catherine replied, her expression guarded.
"I'm... thinking about it."
        "Okay," said Skuld.
        "Did you track me down to ask me about that?  I actually needed
to ask you about something else anyway.  I was going to come find you
when I got done with my break."
        Skuld shook her head.  "Nope, I'm here for Nick."
        Nick blinked.  "Me?"
        "Yep!  Your time has arrived."  She grinned.  "And all you had
to do was nearly get killed."
        "My time for what?"
        "Well... -this-," said Skuld, and suddenly the room was filled
with light.
        "So that's what it looks like," Catherine said when she could
see again.  "Listen - I need to ask you a favor."
        "Shoot," said Skuld.
        "Uh," said Nick.
        "I need someone who can take a really in-depth look at a
computer system.  Inconspicuously."
        Skuld tilted her head.  "Don't you already have somebody in your
lab who does that kind of thing?"
        "Um," said Nick.
        "(Shush.)  We have a couple, but... I don't want anyone already
associated with the lab doing this job.  It's an internal investigation.
We think someone in the lab may have tampered with the evidence vault
computer."
        Skuld raised her eyebrows.  "Really.  Well.  I'd pop down and
have a look at it myself, but that would probably attract the wrong kind
of attention... "
        The last thing Catherine said seemed, after a few seconds'
delay, to shake Nick out of the startled reverie in which he'd been
contemplating his new Lens.  He turned to her and said, "Someone messed
with the evidence computer?"
        She outlined the case as it currently stood, including the
disappearance of the money from the evidence vault and the probable
involvement of Vasseck Kelshar.  The latter point got a wry smirk and
chuckle out of Nick.
        "Well," he said, "Barbara did say I pissed him off."
        Skuld snapped her fingers.  "Got it.  I know exactly the person
you need for this job.  Come with me."

        To Catherine's surprise, they didn't have far to go - only to
the elevator and then back out on the second floor, where the big
Salusian guy Nick had seen on the way into the building was working out
on a universal gym machine.  Unlike Cameron's place, which was done up
as a conventional apartment in a clean-lined, modern style, this floor
was basically just one big room.  Everything was neatly arranged, but
there was a brutal lack of decoration about it, like a military
barracks.  As they entered, the resident cut short his workout and got
up from the machine's bench.  Nick, who knew a few things about iron,
took a glance at the weight settings and raised his eyebrows.  Sure, the
guy was Salusian, but -damn-.
        But then, Nick wouldn't want to run afoul of this man in a dark
alley anyway.  He stood six-foot-two himself, but the man they were
visiting topped seven feet easily, and under his sweats and Royal
Salusian Navy tank top, he looked like he was made of polished granite,
with long limbs and the kind of fists Nick could easily imagine punching
through a solid oak door.  Nick wondered what those long, dark scars on
his arms were from.  They were much too straight and regular to be
accidental; they almost looked like long-healed laser burns, but why
would anyone do something like that on purpose?
        "Professor Ravenhair," said the man in a low, slightly raspy
voice.  Inclining his head, he assumed a parade-rest stance and waited
for Skuld to state her business.
        "Master Chief," Skuld replied.  "Sorry to just barge in on you
like this, but we have a little bit of a situation.  This is Catherine
Willows from the crime lab, and you've been briefed about Mr. Stokes.
Catherine, Nick, this is John Spartan."
        "Oh," said Catherine, sounding impressed.  "I didn't recognize
you without your helmet."
        Master Chief Spartan smiled slightly, which made his
weatherbeaten, normally-rather-forbidding face surprisingly open.  He
had very pale blue eyes, Catherine noticed, and sandy hair, which also
surprised her; somehow she'd always pictured him as dark and grim.
        "I get that a lot," he said.  "How can I help you?"
        Skuld provided the answer.  "Well, to be exact, John, it's not
your help we need - it's Cortana's."  She gave him a compact situation
report, pared down to the absolute minimum he needed to know.  "What do
you think?"
        Before the Master Chief could answer, the elevator arrived
again, this time bearing the redheaded woman from the first floor.
        "Hey, Dad, I - whoa!  Dead guy sighting!  Shit, sorry.  I'm
probably not supposed to see you."
        "Actually, your timing couldn't be better, Janice," the Master
Chief said.  "I need you to run an errand downtown for me."  He relayed
Skuld's report, then added, "The system isn't networked, so Cortana will
need to interface with it directly.  Obviously, I'm much too conspicuous
to take her down there."
        Janice grinned.  "You're kidding.  I get my very own take-
Cortana-to-the-computer-and-flip-the-switch mission?  Awesome.  I feel
so loved."  She turned to Skuld.  "Are we going right now?"
        "If you're ready," Skuld replied.
        "I can be, as soon as Cortana is."  As she spoke, the Master
Chief was opening a secure locker built into one wall of the apartment.
After that, he appeared to confer briefly with someone inside it, then
rummage around a bit before emerging with a small crystalline device.
This he placed carefully in an armored travel case, which he then handed
off to Janice.
        "Okay!  Ready to go!" Janice declared.
        "Well, let's get to it, then," Catherine said.  "The evidence
isn't getting any fresher."
        "I'm right behind you.  Seeya, Dead Guy!"
        Left behind, Nick stood there in the "Wait, I had something to
say" pose for a couple of seconds, then shrugged and turned to the
Master Chief.
        "So," he said, indicating his Lens.  "You know anything about
these things?  I didn't get the tutorial."

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS
                                11:02 AM

        The computer system controlling the tenth-floor evidence vaults
was actually on the eleventh floor, in a vault of its own.  Catherine
wasn't entirely sure she had clearance to get into it, but her ID card
did, indeed, open the door when swiped through the card reader in the
lock.  Inside, the room was relatively small (about the size of her
office), white, and cold, its mostly featureless floor sporting a
lectern-like interface rostrum standing in the center.
        "Well, this is it," she said, indicating the rostrum.  "I'm
going to assume you know what to do."
        The redhead, who had introduced herself on the way over as CID
Sergeant Janice Barlow, smirked.  "To an extent," she said.  Popping the
locks on the armored case, she carefully took the crystal module out and
put the case aside.  "I just plug in the module... "  This she did,
slotting the device smoothly into a slot on the rostrum.  "... and push
the button."  (Click!)  "Cortana does the work."
        With a small burst of three-D static, a holoemitter on top of
the rostrum came to life, rezzing up a small-scale but perfectly
detailed image of a woman who seemed to be made of glowing text.
        "Hi," said Cortana.  "What am I looking for?"
        The corner of Catherine's mouth turned up.  "Cool," she said.

        By midafternoon, pretty much everyone in the lab was starting to
run down.  The investigators' spirits remained willing, but after nearly
48 straight hours of running with this case, it was a bleary-eyed bunch
who haunted the halls of the tenth floor.  Moreover, they were starting
to run out of things to do.
        In Ballistics, Bobby Dawson was looking forward to the end of a
long and tedious task.  Between the two hideouts, they'd recovered
nearly a hundred weapons from Yelena Belova, and in the course of
logging them all for future reference, he'd had to test-fire them all.
After six hours of -that- action, the bloom was definitely off the rose.
Even the fact that he had the one and only Calleigh Duquesne not only in
his lab, but helping him out by doing all the database insertions, no
longer had the power to lift his weary spirits.
        Now he was finally nearing the end.  With four to go, he hoped
to knock the remaining tests off within an hour or so and finally, at
long last, call it a day.  He made sure the water tank was clear and
picked up the next weapon.  This was a Sardak 47 semiautomatic pistol, a
perfectly ordinary polymer-framed design.  Once they'd been the standard
sidearm of police forces all over Salusia.
        Dawson picked up the magazine, noted that some thoughtful soul
had already loaded it, and slapped it into the butt of the Sardak.
Then, charging the weapon, he aimed it into the chute of the water tank
and yelled,
        "FIRIN' TWO!"
        Halfway up the hall, just emerging from Questioned Documents,
day-shift criminalist Tim Speedle vaguely heard the shout, but didn't
really take it on board.  Dawson had been yelling and shooting all damn
day, after all.  Eventually you just tuned it out.  Besides, Speedle was
preoccupied with thoughts of the mysterious money.  The fact that cash
that was missing from the evidence vault had turned up as evidence a
second time was nothing short of alarming.
        So deep in these ruminations was Speedle that, had what happened
next not happened, he probably would have walked right into Sara Sidle,
who was coming the other way, engrossed in the contents of a file folder
and not looking where she was going either.
        Both of them found their attention quite effectively grabbed,
however, by the sudden roar of automatic gunfire and shattering transpex
that filled the office.
        Everybody hit the floor, as one does when gunfire breaks out in
the office.  Those closest to the lab were showered with pebbles of what
had been the ballistics lab walls.  The eruption lasted only a second or
two, and when it was over, the first sound (besides the tinkling of
still-falling transpex) that reached the stunned and ringing ears of the
other criminalists was the voice of Calleigh Duquesne:
        "Whoa, whoa, whoa, nice shootin', Tex!"
        Bobby Dawson stood by the water tank, the empty Sardak smoking
in his hand, his expression neatly combining fury and astonishment.
        "Shit!" he yelled, dropping the locked-open pistol.  "God damn!"
        Warrick Brown got cautiously up from a defensive crouch behind
the photocopier.  "What the hell was -that- all about?" he asked.
        "I don't goddamn know, Brown, I pulled the trigger once, the
friggin' thing fired 17 times!" Dawson snapped.  "That ain't supposed to
happen!"
        Calleigh, appearing entirely unfazed by all the chaos and
dismay, eased around her furious colleague, picked up the Sardak, and
quickly field-stripped it, then peered into its inner workings.
        "Mm-hmm," she said, nodding.  "Modified."  Turning to Dawson,
she said, "Our Russian friend left us a nice little surprise."
        Out in the hall, Sara picked herself up, dusted fragments of
transpex from her clothes, and remarked to herself that she really had
to stop ending up underneath broken parts of the lab.
        "Speedle?  You okay?" she asked the day-shifter as he pulled
himself upright next to her.
        "... Yeah... I think so.  Man.  The hell was that?"
        Sara directed her attention through the broken wall to the
doings in the ballistics area.  "Uh, looks like Bobby had a slight
weapons malfunction, but everything's fine now."  Then, wincing a
little, she looked down at the palm of her hand to find it crossed by a
nasty-looking red welt.  "Ow."
        Speedle leaned over her shoulder.  "What's that?"
        "It's a bullet burn."
        He blinked.  "A what?"
        "There's a trick to catching bullets," said Sara offhandedly.
"If you do it wrong, you burn your hand."  She shrugged.  "I did it
wrong."
        Speedle gave her a skeptical look.  "Were you... trying to show
off?"
        "Uh, no, actually... "  Sara handed him a .47-caliber bullet.
"I was stopping you from taking one in the side of the head."
        "Oh.  Well, uh, thanks."
        "You're welcome."
        Can all Salusians do that? Speedle wondered.  Must ask the new
girl.
        As everyone stood trying to think what to do next, the elevator
dinged and delivered the Chief to the tenth floor with Catherine at his
side.  They came up the hall at a brisk pace, stopping just outside the
debris field.  Everybody fell silent as the two stood surveying the
damage for a few moments.
        Then Gryphon said wryly, "Christ, Bobby, if you wanted your lab
remodeled, you could've just -asked-."
        Dawson sputtered for a moment, then managed to get out, "This
has never happened to me before."
        Gryphon nodded.  "Okay, look, it's not like we're driving here,
people.  Everybody out of the water."
        That drew a few blank looks, so Catherine elaborated.  "You've
all been going flat-out for almost 48 hours.  You're tired (except
Greg)," she added before Greg could correct her.  "Somebody's going to
get hurt if this keeps up."
        Sara raised her burned hand and said helpfully, "I've already
gotten hurt."
        Gryphon took note of the injury and said dryly, "I have Bactine
in my office.  The rest of you, log whatever you're working on and get
your butts across the street."
        "Across the street?" asked a puzzled Eric Delko.
        The Chief nodded.  "It's not safe to send you home, there might
still be someone out there gunning for you.  Fortunately, after the
-last- time this happened I was smart enough to make an arrangement with
the management over at the Monolith.  Maybe you're familiar with the old
Mafia tradition of 'going to the mattresses'?"

        As Bobby Dawson gathered up his scattered notes and gloomily
examined his damaged domain, Calleigh took pity on him and said, "Hey,
c'mon, Bobby, it's not that bad."
        Dawson sighed.  "Compared to what?" he asked.
        "Well," said Calleigh with a confidential smile, "if you ever
have occasion to visit my old lab in Aldera, you might notice that the
whole Ballistics area is newer than the rest of the building... "
        Dawson eyed her.  "Why?"
        "Oh," she said nonchalantly, "I had a little ol' argument with a
defective plasmacaster one time... "
/--
        The green-edged fireball tore through the side of the building
and raved out into the space beyond, which happened to be the visitor
parking area.  Chunks of flying concrete holed windshields and dented
body panels at the back of the lot, while those vehicles parked closest
to the building fared far more poorly.  Several were smashed and melted
into unrecognizable junk, while others, a little further from the center
of the blast, were overturned or flung into the far corners of the lot.
        Then, just as suddenly as it struck, it was over, and there was
silence but for the commingled wailing of the building's fire alarm and
the anti-theft alarms of a few of the less thoroughly destroyed cars.
Inside the building, people picked themselves up and crowded toward the
blackened void where the weapons lab had been.
        At the point of the cone of destruction stood Calleigh Duquesne,
a smoking duralloy tube in her hands.  Her entire posture, from rigidly
erect primary ears to braced feet, radiated shock.
        "Oh... my... -gracious-," she said softly, staring wide-eyed at
the devastation.
        Horatio Caine made his way into the room, pushing through the
crowd of investigators and technicians gathered at the door, and came to
her side.  "Calleigh," he said.  "Are you all right?"
        "I... I'm fine, Horatio," she replied.  "I don't know what
happened."  She looked down at the plasmacaster to confirm what she
already knew.  "It's locked off.  I pulled the power cell.  That
shouldn't have happened.  -Can't- have happened."
        "If you're all right, that's the important thing," Caine said
gently.  Then he walked slowly across what had been the weapons lab
until he was standing in the center of the breach in the outer wall.
Squinting against the sharply slanted, orange-tinted afternoon light, he
calmly surveyed the destruction, looking to the side, up, and completely
around the circumference of the 20-foot opening the blast had created.
        Reaching to the inside pocket of his jacket, Caine took out a
pair of sunglasses and slipped them on to shield his eyes from the
afternoon glare.  Then, taking another look around him, he observed in a
quietly impressed tone of voice,
        "Calleigh... there is a -complete- -hole-."
--/
        Bobby stared at her.
        "You're just tryin' to make me feel better," he said
suspiciously.
        "No, swear to God, it happened," Calleigh insisted.  "Ask
Horatio.  It turned out our suspect had rigged the 'caster with a hidden
secondary power cell and a triggering mechanism so it would fire if
anyone tried to dismantle it.  Fortunately, I had it aimed away from the
rest of the lab, and there was nobody out in the parking lot, so all it
did was a lot of property damage.  The only injury was to my pride," she
added with a smile.
        Bobby shook his head.  "Well, it'll be a while before I live
this one down," he said.  "I know better'n to load any more rounds than
I plan to fire, but I was tired and the magazine was already full... "
        Calleigh patted his arm.  "Everybody makes mistakes.  Besides,
who would've thought the Sardak had been modified to go full-auto like
that?  I mean, who does that?  It's not like it has any practical use."
She shouldered her field kit by its strap and said, "C'mon, I hear the
Monolith has a great steakhouse and I've been wanting to give it a try."

        Geoff Depew stood by the bus stop on the corner of Allard and
Central, discreetly observing as the criminalists emerged in ones and
twos from Headquarters and made their way across the street.  He wasn't
the only one keeping an eye out, and in fact he hadn't been specifically
instructed to do it, but it made him feel better.  It would hardly do to
lose anybody right in front of the building, after all.
        He'd been there for about ten minutes, and had checked all of
the day shift and most of the night shift off his mental checklist, when
he became aware of a small figure in dark clothes standing next to him.
        "Chief wants to see you inside," said Raven.  Then, with a tiny
smile, she added, "Don't worry, we've got everything under control
here."
        If she'd surprised Geoff, he showed no sign of it.  He merely
replied, "Who's on it?"
        "Cassie, Kori and I are covering inside the hotel as soon as
everyone's in there.  Kara and Paige are on aerial patrol."
        Geoff nodded.  "Okay."
        A short walk and an elevator ride later, he was in Gryphon's
office.  He noticed as he entered that the room, never the tidiest of
workspaces, was in more than the usual amount of disarray - as if its
owner had been there working on something all day.  In fact, if Geoff's
glance at the trash can next to Gryphon's desk was any indication, the
Chief hadn't even left for lunch... nor, Geoff noted with interest, had
he eaten alone.
        He was alone now, though, and as Geoff entered, he shook his
head sadly and said, "Mr. Depew, what am I going to do with you?"
        Geoff gave him a puzzled look.  "Sir?"
        "I turn around for a few minutes and you're running off without
proper backup again," said Gryphon, his tone mildly cajoling.  "You know
you're not supposed to do that while you're still in SA7.  Now I know,"
he went on, holding up a forestalling hand, "that for the later part,
you didn't have a choice.  You were in hot pursuit, I know how that
goes.  But you should've had someone with you in the first place."
        "Yeah.  I know.  I had to do the investigative part alone or
Yevgeniy would've been too suspicious to talk to me, and after that... I
just got caught up in the hunt."  Geoff sighed.  "So what happens now?"
        "Well," said Gryphon with his up-to-something smile, "it's clear
you can't be left roaming around in the field without proper
supervision, and since I don't want to listen to Logan bitch about being
called away from Tomodachi with no notice on a weekend, I'll have to set
someone else to watch you for the rest of this investigation.  So let me
introduce you to your new boss."  Geoff turned toward the door as
another person entered.  "Special Agent Geoff Depew, SA7; meet Inspector
Catherine Willows, CID."
        "I believe we've met," said Catherine dryly.
        "You switched divisions in the middle of an investigation?"
Geoff asked, confused.
        "Not really.  More like the divisions switched on me."
        "I'm folding the crime lab into CID," Gryphon explained.  "I've
been thinking about doing it for a while now, but this... CSI
assassination plot, or whatever the hell is going on, made it a little
more urgent.  Making the lab's field personnel CID officers gives them
expanded law enforcement powers... "
        "... And it makes any future attacks on CSIs full-grown
attempted cop-killings," said Geoff, nodding appreciatively.  "Tricky."
        "I've been hammering out the details all day today," said
Gryphon, "and I think I've about got it sorted.  The formal announcement
will go out in the morning.  In the meantime, I'm seconding you into the
new branch of CID for the duration, since you're already involved in the
investigation.  You're still not an accredited criminalist, but I'm sure
you'll have further contributions to make," he added with a small grin.
"Carry on, Agent Depew."
        Geoff grinned.  "Yessir."
        On their way out, he and Catherine stopped on the eleventh
floor, where Janice was standing outside the evidence control system
room looking bored.
        "How's it going?" Catherine asked her.
        "She's still at it," Janice replied.  "Whoever messed with this
system was apparently pretty good at covering his tracks.  She's had to
unravel half of the system.  Probably won't have an answer for us until
morning."
        Catherine frowned.  "Hm.  Long time for you to hang around in
the hall."
        "Well, given that this room's been entered and the systems
tampered with by somebody once already, I'm not comfortable leaving
Cortana alone in there."  Janice shrugged.  "I'll be fine.  I've had to
camp out in way worse places'n this."
        "We can at least get you some relief, get a couple of
bluesuiters up here or something," Catherine said, but Janice shook her
head.
        "'S an internal investigation, right?  So you figure it was an
inside job.  Better not to involve anyone who's normally assigned to HQ.
If I need help, I've got people I can call."
        "Okay, if you're sure."
        "Yep.  It's cool.  I'll link you if we come up with anything
before you come back."
        Leaving the eleventh floor, Catherine and Geoff rode the
elevator back to the lobby in silence, though he noticed she kept
sneaking little half-smiling looks at him, as if expecting him to make
some remark.  As they passed through the third floor, he obliged her.
        "So," he said.  "I gather that basically I'm your bodyguard."
        Catherine smirked.  "More or less.  Think you can handle that?"
Punchy after so many hours on the go, she couldn't resist vamping him a
little.  "You up for guarding this body?"
        Geoff folded his hands behind his back and stared straight ahead
at the elevator doors, his face stonily impassive save for a tiny hint
of a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.
        "I respond to no provocation, Inspector," he said, his voice
flat.  "My interest in you is purely protective."  As the doors opened,
he dropped the act and added in a normal voice, "Are you still mad at me
for pushing you out from in front of a bullet?"
        Catherine smiled.  "Tell you what.  Buy me dinner," she said,
"and we'll talk operational guidelines."

                                11:29 PM

        One of the many top-notch amenities available to guests at the
Imperial Hotel Monolith - which is the finest hotel in New Avalon,
possibly in the galaxy - is a rooftop garden.  Here, guests who want to
get away from it all, but feel like Howard Hughes if they hole up in
their rooms, can kick back, relax, enjoy some comfy lounge furniture,
perhaps have an umbrella drink, and watch the city go by.
        That wasn't entirely what Greg Sanders was planning to do up
there - no umbrella drinks to be had at 11:30 at night, after all - but
it was close, and he was surprised to notice, upon emerging from the
stairway, that he didn't have the place to himself.  Sara was standing
at the edge of the roof not far from the stairway door.  She had her
elbows on the railing and was just looking off to the north, toward
Crescent Heights.  In her dark clothes, with her dark hair, she was
almost invisible until she turned at the sound of the door to see who
had come onto the roof.
        As soon as she did, Greg could tell that she wasn't glad to see
him.  Of course, Sara pretty much always looked a little gloomy, even
when, as far as he knew, she wasn't - but tonight she was clearly
entertaining a giant funk, and when she was in that kind of mood she
never wanted company.
        "Oh," she said.  "Greg.  Hi."
        Trying his best to sound casual, Greg replied, "Hey.  I wasn't
expecting to find anybody else up here.  Figured you'd be asleep."
        "Oh.  Yeah.  Well... "  Sara shrugged.  "I can't seem to do that
right now."  She tilted her head curiously.  "What are -you- doing up
here?"
        "Tonight's a holiday," Greg said.  "Under the circumstances, up
here's as close as I can get to 'above the canopy'."
        "Oh," said Sara for a third time.  Stepping away from the
railing, she added with a slightly nervous laugh, "I'll, uh, leave you
to it, then."
        "Actually... hang out for a second," Greg said.  "I could use a
volunteer from the audience."  Seeing her face tighten, he added, "No,
don't worry, it's nothing weird.  I know you think all my holidays are
excuses to do crazy things with fudge sauce, but hear me out."
        "I thought it was pudding, actually," Sara mused.
        "Look, I'm trying to be serious here.  It just so happens that
today is The Unveiling."
        "I'm still not sure I like where this is going."
        "Relax, I told you, it's not one of -those- holidays.  It's just
that... there are a lot of things that not even those closest to us know
about us.  Not because we're secretive - well, not -all- of us... "
        Sara folded her arms and scowled at him, but Greg was not to be
deterred now.
        "... but because in everyday life a lot of stuff just doesn't
come up.  So every year on The Unveiling, we try to tell someone close
to us something they don't already know about us."
        "Sounds like an invitation to blackmail to me."
        "Uh... we don't -have- blackmail on Dantrov."  Greg shrugged.
"I mean, what use would it be?  People pay blackmailers to avoid
embarrassment."
        Sara had to admit that he had a point.
        "Anyway... "  Greg looked around, then beckoned.  "C'mere."
        He led her off to the corner of the garden, to a small, smoothly
flagstoned area next to a decorative pool, about as far from the stairs
as it was possible to get and still be on the roof.  Looking a little
dubious, Sara let herself be guided to the middle of the patio.  Greg
sat down cross-legged on the stone floor and gestured Sara to sit
opposite him.
        "Okay," he said.  "Since it's my holiday, I'll go first.  I know
you think of me as a hard-rock, headbangin' kind of guy... and I am...
but the fact is, back home we're into all kinds of music.  Whenever
people get together on Dantrov, there's singing.  We love anything we
can sing together - whether it's ours or something we heard somewhere
else."  He gave her a wistful look.  "Truth is, I'm kind of out of
practice.  Since I graduated from college... I haven't really had anyone
to sing with."
        Then, to Sara's surprise, he looked up, took a breath, and began
to sing.

Oh the year was 1778
How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now
A letter of marque came from the King
To the scummiest vessel I've ever seen
God damn them all!
I was told we'd cruise the seas
For American gold, we'd fire no guns
Shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's privateers

        Sara sat, and watched, and listened, absolutely at a loss.  If
anyone had ever told her she'd some day find herself sitting on a hotel
roof in the middle of the night listening to Greg Sanders sing a -sea
chanty-, she'd have told them that they were out of their minds.
        And that would've gone double if they'd gone on to inform her
that, at Greg's smiling, beckoning cue, she'd join in with the call-and-
response parts and the chorus starting with the second verse.

Oh Elcid Barrett cried the town
(How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!)
For twenty brave men, all fishermen, who
Would make for him the Antelope's crew
(God damn them all!)
I was told we'd cruise the seas
For American gold, we'd fire no guns
Shed no tears
Now I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's privateers

        In every verse that followed, the one harmonized line and the
chorus were always the same, so not knowing any of the rest of the words
was no obstacle.  To her great but oddly detached surprise, Sara found
herself dredging up what little choral training she had (which dated to
high school, at least) to find something like proper harmonies - and
enjoying herself remarkably.  The song was a sad one, the tale of a
sailor crippled and demoralized upon an ill-advised voyage that yielded
none of the promised riches, but the striding, almost boisterous tempo
and the relish with which Greg attacked the verses made up for that.
        For the first time in her life, Sara thought she might
understand the appeal of this sort of activity.  By the time they
reached the penultimate verse, she half-wished they had a bigger group
to make more complex harmonies - and share in the sense of fellowship.
They made the final chorus last, drawing out the final line as if
unwilling to let the song end.

So here I lay in my twenty-third year
(How I wish I was in Sherbrooke now!)
It's been six years since we sailed away
And I just made Halifax yesterday
(God damn them all!)
I was told we'd cruise the seas
For American gold, we'd fire no guns
Shed no tears
But I'm a broken man on a Halifax pier
The last of Barrett's privateers

        The silence that descended, total except for the near-subliminal
background hum of the city at night, stretched for several seconds.  The
two investigators just sat looking at each other, Greg with a small,
bright-eyed smile on his face, Sara wearing a look of something like
astonishment.
        Then she blinked, shook herself as if coming into a warm room
from the cold, and said, "Wow.  Okay, that was different.  That was...
amazing."  Giving him a crooked little smile of her own, she added,
"Thank you, Greg.  I... would never have expected that."
        "Well," said Greg, "that's what The Unveiling is all about."
Then, leaning back on his elbows and unfolding his legs, he added, "Your
turn."
        Sara blinked again, looking momentarily at a loss.  Then she
smiled again, slowly this time and rather sadly.
        "Greg... " she said, then hesitated, searching for words.
"There are... there are -reasons- for this... emotional distance I keep.
It started out as a defense, but that was so long ago that... it's just
part of who I -am- now."  She shook her head and looked off into the
distance.  "You know, it's funny.  Vincent was right.  I -did- go to
Vulcan hoping I'd learn how to turn my emotions off."  She sighed deeply
and climbed to her feet.  "Obviously it didn't -work-," she added wryly,
"or I wouldn't feel bad about being an emotional cripple."
        Greg stood up, gave her a speculative look, then smiled.  "Ah,
it's okay," he said casually, patting her shoulder.  "You don't have to
be demonstrative about it.  I know you love me."
        For an instant, Sara looked like she might argue that; then,
remembering the spirit they'd shared a few minutes before, she gave him
another sad smile instead.
        "You're... unique, Greg," she said.
        Then, paying back some of the surprise he'd visited on her in
the last few minutes, she gave him a kiss on the cheek before turning
and walking back to the stairway door, where she paused and looked back.
        "Good night," she said.
        "Good night, Sara," he replied.
        Then, as the door closed behind her, he turned back to the
cityscape, singing under his breath, "How I wish I was in Sherbrooke
now... "

                        SUNDAY, AUGUST 22, 2410
                                02:07 AM

        It took four of her IPO-issue handlink's loudest priority-call
bleats to drag Catherine up from the depths of REM sleep, and two more
for her to find the link on the unfamiliar bedroom's endtable.  When she
finally did track it down, she didn't bother putting it on before
hitting the button.
        "Willows," she said blurrily.
        "Hey, it's Janice.  Cortana's got something for you."
        Catherine disentangled herself from the covers and sat up, a
little more alert.  "I'm on my way."
        She threw some water on her face and some clothes on the rest of
her, didn't bother making sure she looked glamorous, and headed for the
elevator, still at least a quarter asleep.
        Two floors down, the elevator slowed to a halt.  "Oh, come
-on-," she muttered, thinking, Who the hell else is heading downstairs
at this hour?
        The doors opened to reveal Geoff Depew, a tiny, enigmatic smile
on his face.
        "You weren't thinking of going out on the street alone, were
you, Inspector?" he asked.
        "How the hell did you - never mind."  Catherine raked her hands
through her hair, blinking rapidly in an effort to wake up.  "Do you
sleep?"
        "Never on the firm's time, ma'am," Geoff replied stolidly.

        By the time Catherine and Geoff got to her office, Janice had
already set Cortana up on Catherine's desktop system.  The machine
intelligence's miniature holographic avatar "stood" above the system's
holoplate, next to the conventional display panel.
        "Okay," said Catherine, settling into her chair.  "What've you
got for me, Cortana?"
        "Well," Cortana replied, "I won't bore you with the really
technical details, though they'll be in my report for when you take this
to court.  The short version is, your intruder knows his way around
these systems.  He knew enough to get himself a Danish, bypass the
syslog, -and- bypass the syslog that monitors whether people are
bypassing the syslog.  But..."
        "Let me guess," Catherine said wryly.  "There's a syslog that
monitors whether people are bypassing the syslog that monitors whether
people are bypassing the syslog?"
        "No... although that's not a bad idea," Cortana said
thoughtfully.  "However, he did have to go in and delete one entry in
the -main- syslog to cover his tracks... and I can read raw crystal
sectors.  As you might imagine, there's a lot of garbage in the cleared
sectors, but in among all the random crap, I found -this-."
        On the main display, a window opened containing a tangled mess
of alphanumeric gibberish, which made little sense to Catherine before
Cortana highlighted a single line in the middle of it all:

Aug 6 07:10:18 evcon-a sudo: tspeedle : TTY=p1 ; PWD=/ ; USER=gsanders ;
COMMAND=/usr/bin/evcon itemchk -r itm294049

        "I cross-referenced the evidence identification database to be
sure," Cortana said.  "Item 294049 was the duffel bag containing the
missing money.  This user dissociated the item tag from the system
without flagging the item removed - and did it under the user identity
of the person who checked it in, so that if anyone went and actually
found the bag physically missing, they'd think Sanders either screwed up
logging it or stole it himself."
        Catherine stared at the entry in disbelief.  "Tim Speedle?  From
the day shift?  Why the hell would he do that?"  She looked from the
monitor to Cortana's avatar.  "Is it possible that there's another layer
to this?  That someone else did all this and tried to make it look like
Speedle was framing Greg?"
        Cortana shook her head.  "Not unless whoever did it was a Class
Two or better machine intelligence... or replaced the evidence control
computer's memory crystals.  That'd be a real Mission: Impossible
maneuver.  I think it's safe to rule it out."  She shrugged.  "Failing
that, Speedle's your guy."
        "You want us to go get him?" Janice asked, sounding hopeful for
some action, but Catherine shook her head.
        "Not yet.  And keep this quiet for now," she added, rising.  "I
have to go talk to somebody."
        "... You're welcome," said Cortana sardonically as Catherine
left the office.
        "Sorry about that," Geoff said.  "She's got a lot on her mind."
Then he followed her out, half-trotting to catch up.

        They went across downtown, from City Center over to Claremont,
where Catherine parked her official vehicle rather sloppily in front of
a townhouse and, without comment, led the way up the stoop to the front
door.  Geoff raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.  He knew this wasn't
Catherine's own house; though he'd never been there, he remembered from
some previous conversation that she lived in Crescent Heights, a few
streets over from the Chief's place.  Still, he noticed after three
applications of the doorbell achieved no results, she did have a key.
        As they entered, Geoff glanced at the mailbox next to the door
and understood, if not why they were there, at least where they were.
        The townhouse's front hall was dark, but a flickering greyish
light spilled out of an open door partway down, and Geoff could hear
what sounded like a muffled conversation.  As he followed Catherine down
the hall, he couldn't quite shake the feeling that he ought to have a
weapon out, though under the circumstances that was rather silly - and
anyway, she didn't seem concerned.  She just went down the hall, turned
left, and entered the room the grey light was coming out of.
        The light was coming from a television, and it was grey because
the program being shown on it was in black and white.  Apart from the
glow of the TV, the room - apparently the living room - was dark.  Geoff
could make out the shape of a man sitting at one end of the sofa.  The
man heard them entering, turned his head, and looked mildly surprised.
        "Catherine.  Geoffrey," said Gil Grissom.  "This is an
unexpected pleasure."  He reached for the remote, paused the TV, and
gestured toward the empty armchairs near the couch.  "Have a seat."
        Catherine moved to sit down at the other end of the couch.  "We
have to taaaAAAHH!"
        Geoff had his Jackal out before she finished yelping and jumping
back up, but he could see almost immediately that what Catherine was
reacting to was no legitimate threat.
        "What?" Grissom asked mildly.  "It's only Enrique."
        Catherine regarded the red-and-black-striped shape of Grissom's
dog-sized pet Ragolian saber beetle for a few incredulous seconds, then
shoved her hair back from her face and sat down in the armchair at right
angles instead.
        "You let your -beetle- up on the -couch-?" she asked.
        Grissom shrugged.  "He can't see the TV from the floor."  He
extended a large metal bowl.  "Chapulin?"
        Catherine looked at him as if he were insane, then took a
grasshopper from the bowl and ate it.
        "We have evidence that one of the day shift CSIs took the money
from Evidence A," she told Grissom.  "I'm assuming that's why you
suddenly had to go home.  You might've mentioned it."
        "If I had, that would've compromised the investigation.  That
was the whole point.  As director of the lab, I'm at least nominally
those people's boss."
        "And I'm not.  Right, okay, I get that."  She sighed.  "Still.
The suspense was killing me for a while there.  And we still don't know
why he did it."
        "Which one was it?"
        "According to the record Cortana dug out of the evidence control
computer: Speedle."
        Grissom looked faintly surprised.  "Hm.  Well, I was almost
right."  At Catherine's questioning look, he said, "I figured it'd be
Curtis.  I take it you haven't confronted him yet?"
        Catherine shook her head.  "What the hell, let him sleep.  Ben
has the whole crew bunked down at the Monolith with SA-level security.
He's not going anywhere.  As far as I know, he doesn't even know we're
onto him."
        Grissom nodded soberly.  "I think I know what you'll find when
you do talk to him."
        "And I suppose you can't tell me that either," said Catherine
dryly.  Grissom gave her a helpless look, but she waved it away.  "Never
mind.  I'm pretty sure I know too."  She looked at the frozen image on
the TV.  "What are you watching?"
        Grissom blinked.  "You've never seen 'Them!'?"
        "No."
        "Well... do you have a couple hours?"
        Catherine considered this, then got up and said to Geoff, "Take
the car back to Headquarters?  Then I need you to go back to the
Monolith and make sure Speedle doesn't go anywhere before we're ready to
talk to him."
        "What about you?" Geoff asked.
        "I'll call for a ride when I'm through here."
        "Okay."  He sketched a salute to both of them and left.
        "Shove over, Enrique," said Catherine.  "Hey, did you hear about
Ben's new organizational plan for the crime lab?"
        "He consulted me via Lens about it this morning," Grissom said
as he restarted the movie from the beginning.  "It seems like a decent
idea.  I just hope having expanded police powers doesn't go to some of
our field people's heads; I still need everyone focused on evidence, not
making arrests."  With a wry smile, he added, "Sometimes it's hard
enough keeping Sara from kicking down doors as it is."
        Catherine chuckled.  "Brass'll never admit it, but he kind of
likes her cowboy moments," she said.  "I think they make her seem more
like a real cop to him."
        They said little more until the movie was over, when Catherine
indicated the beetle sitting between them and asked,
        "Isn't this movie kind of depressing for him?  I mean, the bugs
-lose-."
        Grissom shook his head.  "Enrique hates ants," he said.  "He
roots for the people."
        "Oh."  Smiling, Catherine gave the beetle's carapace a
scritching.  "Good boy."
        Enrique warbled, waggling his sabers.
        "He likes you," Grissom translated.
        "He's not bad... for a giant bug," Catherine admitted.  Then,
standing up, she sighed and said, "Guess I'd better get back to work.  I
don't suppose you're coming back, now that we've got a line on what's
happening."
        "Not for the moment.  There's still a potential conflict.  I
shouldn't get involved again until you and the others have followed the
evidence chain all the way to the end.  Call me, though, if you need
anything."
        "Right."  Catherine tabbed her handlink to call for a ride.

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS
                                07:19 AM

        The lab was slowly coming back to life.  As they filtered back
across the street to resume work, the scientists of the IPO crime lab
found an official announcement of the lab's merger with the Criminal
Investigations Division waiting for them, along with a memo explaining
their new powers and responsibilities in detail and another advising
them that their new credentials would be issued by the end of the day.
Many of the field CSIs had been hoping, even lobbying, for such a change
for quite a while.  None was too dismayed by the idea of having a badge
and a cool CID-style title.  However proud an achievement the rank
itself was, most agreed that "Crime Scene Investigator III" lacked a
certain gravitas when compared with its new equivalent, "Criminalist-
Inspector".
        Presented with such evidence of the value placed on them by the
IPO's management, the newly anointed investigators felt refreshed and
ready to take another crack at the case, though those who normally
worked the night shift were eyeing their badly disrupted circadian
rhythms warily, anticipating trouble when the time came to go back to
their regular hours.
        That particular problem, at least, wasn't on Tim Speedle's mind
as he entered the lobby, heading for the elevators.  He wasn't, perhaps,
the promptest guy on the day shift, but he was no Eric "Newfoundland
Time" Delko, either.  Apart from the fact that he didn't normally work
Sundays, this was no big stretch for him.
        He was crossing the lobby when Jim Brass appeared from over by
Reception and fell into step beside him.  "Morning, Speed," he said.
        "Uh... morning, Jim," Speedle replied, thinking it was a bit odd
for Brass to be around at this hour of the day.
        "Talk to you for a minute?" Brass asked.
        "Sure, what's on your mind?"

        Five minutes later, they were in Interrogation A, a grim-looking
Sara Sidle had plopped a printout down on the table in front of Speedle,
and the day-shift CSI was starting to realize that it was going to be a
very long day.
        "So, Tim.  You want to tell us who put you up to robbing the
evidence vault?" Sara asked.
        Speedle frowned at the printout, then looked from Brass to Sara
and back again.  "That's part of a classified operation," he said.  "You
guys shouldn't even be asking about it."
        Sara gave him an incredulous look.  "Excuse me?  Nick getting
-shot- was part of an 'operation'?"
        "Pull the other one, Speed," Brass advised helpfully.  "It's got
bells on it."
        Now it was Speedle's turn to look baffled.  "Wait, wait, what
does Stokes have to do with it?"
        Sara slammed an open palm down on the table, making the printout
jump.  "Where were you yesterday, under a rock?" she demanded.  "The
woman who shot Nick was paid with the money you stole."
        Speedle stared at her for a few moments, then settled slowly
back in his chair, his face slowly moving from confusion to realization
to something like horror.
        "Oh, -fuck me-," he muttered.
        "The gang over at Terminal Island may take care of that," said
Brass sympathetically.  "In the meantime, you want to tell us about it?"
        Speedle looked at the printout again, then slumped, shaking his
head.
        "Conrad asked me to grab it.  I didn't know that was what he
wanted it for."
        Sara put her other hand on the table and leaned over him.
"Conrad -Ecklie-?  You stole money from evidence to finance a hit on
Nick masterminded by ECKLIE?"  Standing up, she folded her arms and
glared at him, her primary ears pinned back.  "I can't believe I saved
your frickin' life."
        "I thought it was part of an undercover operation," Speedle
protested.
        Sara gave him an are-you-kidding-me-or-what look.  "What, you
figured Ecklie -blew me up- and got -canned- to make his -cover-  more
convincing?"
        "He said that part was an accident."
        She snorted.  "And you believed him."
        "He was my boss!"
        "He was -Ecklie-, Tim."
        "'Fraid she's got you there, Speed," observed Brass laconically.
        "Look, I know none of you night-shift types liked him, but he
was a good investigator.  I never thought he'd pull something like...
whatever the hell's going on."  Noticing the very slight smile Brass was
giving him, he added, "What?"
        "I'm waiting for you to add the Standard Suspect Punch Line."
        "'You gotta believe me'?"
        "That's the one."
        "I know this game too, Jim."
        Without another word, Sara turned and left the room, banging the
door shut behind her.  Speedle watched her go, then turned back to
Brass, looking defeated.
        "Sidle's really pissed off, huh."
        Brass shrugged.  "Lemme put it this way: She's probably not
going to ask you to the Sadie Hawkins dance."
        Speedle gave him a baffled look.  "What does -that- mean?"
        Brass turned an ironic eye on Speedle and said matter-of-factly,
"Chicks hate losers, Speed."

        "Cath," Sara said as she entered Catherine's office.  "Speedle
just gave up Ecklie."
        Catherine looked up from some notes she'd been going over with
Warrick, then sighed, putting her fingertips to her forehead.  "I knew I
was going to have a headache today."
        "He claims Ecklie told him the vault thing was setup for an
undercover job," Sara explained.
        "And we're supposed to believe he bought that?" Catherine said
skeptically.
        Warrick shrugged.  "Maybe he did.  Hard to believe, I know, but
some people around here actually did like the guy.  I mean, -I- didn't,"
he qualified, "but that's what I heard."
        "So now the cops are looking for Kelshar -and- Ecklie," said
Sara.
        "Hmm."  Catherine thought for a moment, then said, "Warrick, see
if you can find anything on Speedle's computer to confirm or deny his
story.  Sara, you and Greg check out his place."
        Sara nodded and headed out to find Greg.  Warrick paused in the
doorway and asked, "Where are -you- going?"
        "I have to try and figure out if there's anyone on Days we can
trust any more," Catherine said.  Then she picked up her desk phone,
dialed, listened, scowled, and said, "Gil.  It's Catherine.  Speedle
gave up Ecklie.  If you don't come back to work now, I'm taking over
your office, and all your -crap- is never going to fit into mine."
        As she hung up, Warrick asked, "He wasn't home?"
        Catherine shook her head.  "If he is, he's not answering.  He's
probably asleep."
        "Grissom sleeps?"
        "Amazing but true.  I've seen it."
        Warrick arched an eyebrow.  "When and why?"
        "Just never you mind that, young Mr. Brown," replied Catherine
with a smile.  "Didn't I give you a job to do?"
        Warrick smirked and gave her a sketchy salute.  "Yes, ma'am," he
said, and got on with it.

                          WORLD WIDE BUILDING
                                10:02 AM

        It took Nick a minute to figure out where the beeping was coming
from, but he was a clever fellow, and eventually worked out that part of
the smarthouse system he had previously heard answering the phone was a
building intercom system.  The little display panel by the door said the
call was coming from the second-floor apartment, which he figured meant
it was safe to answer.
        "Uh, hello?"
        Janice Barlow's face appeared on the display.  "Yo, hey, Dead
Guy," she said.  "I don't suppose you speak Klingon?"
        Nick raised an eyebrow.  "Matter of fact I do," he said.  "Sort
of.  Couple of my fraternity brothers were from Qo'noS.  Why?"
        "Great.  C'mon down, we need a bank teller."
        "You need a -bank-... okay, this I gotta see."

        Sometime between his visit the day before and now, the mostly-
empty space in John Spartan's apartment had been converted, through the
use of various bits of furniture, some stage props, and some clever
holography, into a reproduction of the lobby of a bank.  Nick had never
seen a Klingon bank before, but, even allowing for the usual Klingon
interior design sense, it really couldn't be anything else.
        Janice met him at the elevator, wearing an outfit that looked
similar to the light powered armor Tac Div troopers wore when on
particularly dangerous ops.  There was a small gathering of people near
the entrance who looked like they were waiting for something.
        "Great, you're here," said Janice.  "Let me introduce you.  You
know the Master Chief already; you might recognize Xander Cage; the guy
with the stripes is Chad Collier; and this is Riddick.  Everybody, meet
Dead Guy."
        Nick looked faintly embarrassed.  "Nick Stokes."
        "We're not really supposed to know he's here," Janice went on,
"but what the hell, we're all up to no good here anyway.  He'll be
playing our bank teller."
        Nick looked around at the setup.  "Uh... what exactly are we
doing here, anyway?" he asked.
        Janice grinned.  "Rehearsing," she said, and then with audible
pride, "We're planning a -heist-."
        Nick eyed her.  "I'm not sure that's something I ought to be
getting involved in," he said.
        "Relax," said Cage, slapping him on the shoulder.  "We're
knockin' over an Imperial Klingon bank.  It's a special job for
Chancellor Krojaar's government-in-exile."
        "Strange way to fight a war," Nick observed.
        "Hey, all that gagh has to get paid for somehow," said Chad with
a fangly grin.  "Did you seriously have Klingon frat brothers?"
        "Yup."
        "Okay, pledging that outfit must've been... interesting."
        "Luckily, they joined after me," Nick said.  "Anyway, they were
pretty good guys.  Every Thursday we used to watch movies with the
Klingon dub track turned on.  They really liked 'Conan the Barbarian'."
        "There's a surprise."

                           /*  Paul Hartnoll
                               "Ignition"
                           _WipeOut Pure_  */

        Sara Sidle held certain truths to be self-evident, and one of
them was this: Regardless of how fast a person -could- do it, ransacking
someone else's domicile was a very special act that, if possible, should
under no circumstances be rushed.
        So it was that she and Greg, who could theoretically do it
almost as fast as she could if you weren't too hung up on getting his
report in a timely fashion, took their time and tossed Tim Speedle's
apartment in an almost leisurely sort of way.  It wasn't as if it was
going to take all that long anyhow.  The place wasn't that big; the only
thing that might hamper them in any way was the fact that Speedle was,
at best, an indifferent housekeeper.
        Back at the lab, Warrick Brown was doing more or less the same
thing, only the domain he was rummaging through happened to be virtual.
Speed wasn't any better about keeping his office computer's data space
tidy than he was about his apartment, though, so the experience was much
the same.  There was a lot of looking under things, sorting out
irrelevant junk stuffed into random drawers, and finding useful tidbits
in the oddest places.
        For her part, Catherine spent the rest of the morning and the
first part of the afternoon engrossed in a deep trawl through the day
shift's personnel files, looking for anything out of the ordinary and
finding pretty much nothing.  There wasn't even anything untoward in
Speedle's file, nothing that would indicate he'd joined the lab with
anything other than the best of intentions - which fit in with the story
he'd told Sara and Brass.  His performance record seemed to be marred
only by routine citations for being crap at firearms maintenance.
        As for the others, their jackets were clean, for the most part.
If Allen were any further above reproach, Catherine would've suspected
him of something just on principle, but that was Barry for you.  Delko
had one minor controlled substance bust a couple of years ago, but that
incident had the Chief's personal seal on it, and Catherine seemed to
recall hearing about the mitigating circumstances at the time.  Boa
Vista had a couple of run-ins with her shitheel ex-husband; Catherine
could relate to that.  Curtis's record was entirely unremarkable, apart
from the automatically suspicious fact that Ecklie had considered her
his best criminalist, but what the hell, maybe she was.  Just because
Sara didn't like her didn't mean she was bad at her job.  Sara disliked
plenty of competent people.
        Caine and Duquesne's files from Alderaan contained a startling
number of line-of-duty shootings.  Here in New Avalon, Catherine herself
was considered somewhat anomalous because she'd had two in 12 years,
whereas from Caine's record it appeared that a case just wasn't complete
until he'd had to shoot somebody.  Still, all of them were passed by the
Royal Alderaan Police review board.  Catherine made a mental note that
the city of Aldera apparently had more game than she'd always assumed.
        Everything, in short, appeared to be in order.
        Catherine was just reaching that conclusion when Warrick sloped
in and dropped a handful of printouts on her desk.
        "What's this?" she asked.
        "Emails from Ecklie to Speedle," Warrick said.  "No specifics,
but he hints around that something's up and that he didn't leave the lab
for the reasons everybody thinks.  In the most recent one, 17 days ago,
he asks for a face-to-face at the Pinnacle.  That's probably where he
pitched his plan."  He shrugged.  "I gotta say, it looks like Speed's
story might be true."
        Catherine looked over the printouts and nodded.  "These messages
are anonymous."
        "Yeah, but originating network addresses don't lie."
        "Okay.  Maybe he sent more specific messages to Tim's -home-
inbox," Catherine mused.  "We'll see if Sara and Greg come up with
anything."
        "Right.  In the meantime, what are the chances I can get out of
here for some lunch?"
        "Hmm."  Catherine looked past Warrick into the hall.  "Hey,
Geoff!"
        Geoff Depew paused, took a step backward, and leaned into her
doorway.  "Yes, Inspector?"
        "What are you doing?" Catherine asked, casting a curious glance
at the plastic bin of evidence envelopes Geoff was carrying.
        "Just muling for Valera," Geoff replied.  "Why?"
        "We have pneumatic tubes for that," Catherine said dismissively.
"You're needed to provide security for a critical field operation."
        Geoff looked interested.  "Oh?"
        Catherine grinned.  "Warrick wants a cheeseburger."
        "You're gonna want to wait on that," said a smug-looking Jim
Brass as he approached from the elevators.  "Guess who Patrol just
picked up hiding out down in Docklands?"
        "Somebody got picked up?" asked Sara from the stairway door.
"What'd we miss?"

                          WORLD WIDE BUILDING
                                01:12 PM

        By the fourth run-through, they had the operation down to a
precisely timed sixteen-minute affair that, if all went according to
plan, would see "Emperor" Klayvor's government relieved of nearly cr6
billion worth of precious metals, gems, and negotiable instruments in
the most humiliating possible way.  Nick, who had watched it all unfold
in his role as the single hapless bank employee one of the strike team
would have to interact with, was impressed - so much so that he rather
wished he could go with them and play a part in the actual caper.  Like
all right-thinking people, he had always wanted to be part of a heist.
        They were about to start their fifth rehearsal - this time with
X on point and the Master Chief and Janice blowing the vault, just to
see if they could get it done any quicker - when the phone rang.
        "Yo," said Janice, picking it up.  "Oh, hey.  Yeah, he's right
here.  He's helping us plan a bank robbery.  Yeah.  Can we borrow him
for about a week next month?  Aw.  Okay, I'll tell him.  Bye."  She hung
up and turned to Nick.  "That was Willows.  She's sending a car for you.
I guess they've got somebody at the office they want you to talk to."
        "Huh.  Probably means I'm not dead any more," said Nick.  "Guess
I'd better go get my stuff out of Allison's apartment."
        Janice shrugged.  "Or leave it and see if she says anything,"
she suggested.  Nick gave her a look.  "Oh, and Willows says you can't
come with us.  Sadly."
        Nick sighed.  "Oh well.  So much for my secret dream."

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS
                                01:29 PM

        "Yep, that's Kelshar, all right," Warrick mused, comparing the
amphibian suspect parked in Interrogation A with the printout he held.
        "He looks like he's seen better days," Greg observed.
        "You'd be a little grubby too if you'd been hiding out under
Pier 44," Sara pointed out.  "So... who's going to take him on?
Warrick?  You got the line on him from the Manaan cops."
        Warrick smiled.  "Oh, I'll be in there," he said.  "I'm just
waiting for my wingman."
        Before Sara could ask what that meant, there came a knock at the
observation room door.  Warrick gathered up his notes, squared the
folder, and said, "And there he is.  Showtime."
        "Good luck," said Greg, and then he and Sara settled down behind
the mirror to watch the show.
        They were not disappointed.  A moment later, the interview room
door opened and Warrick entered - immediately followed by a very lively
Nick Stokes, who plopped a file folder down on the table and said
cheerfully,
        "Well, Mr. Kelshar, the good news is, you're not going back to
Manaan this time."
        Kelshar came out of his chair as if levitating, scrambled a
couple of steps backward, and cried in a gurgling voice, "AAAAHHHH!!"
        "What's the matter?" Nick asked, looking hurt.  "I thought I was
your favorite human of all.  You said so last time we were in this
room."
        "This cannot be," Kelshar sputtered.  "How did you survive?"
        "I have an excellent doctor," Nick replied blandly.
        There followed a split-second demonstration of non-verbal
communication that went entirely over Kelshar's head, but nearly injured
Nick's onlooking colleagues.  Warrick shot Nick a vaguely approving look
that asked, "Oh really?  For what value of 'have'?"  Nick fired back an
expression that clearly said, "Not now, I'm working, and anyway -no-,
don't hassle me, man."  In the next room, Greg fought valiantly not to
spit his coffee onto the inside of the mirror.  Smiling slyly, Sara
failed to help with that by patting him on the shoulder.
        "Anyway, your would-be assassin wasn't very good at her job,"
Nick went on when he recovered his aplomb.  "She didn't even stick
around to make sure she'd finished me off."
        "Then... the news reports... "
        Nick grinned.  "Do they have the phrase 'false sense of
security' on Manaan?"
        Kelshar stared at him for a moment longer, then clenched his
fists in a very human gesture of frustration.
        "Once -again- airbreathers fail to carry out even the simplest
task I set for them," he snarled.
        "Let's start at the beginning," said Brass, who until this
moment had been content to sit back and watch the show.  "You escaped
from prison back on Manaan, stole a bunch of this 'kolto' stuff to
finance your little project, and made your way back to New Avalon.  That
much is obvious.  And you used some of your loot to hire a blonde with a
thing for guns.  But maybe you can enlighten me about one thing."
        Kelshar fixed him with a beady glare.  "Nothing would give me
greater joy," he said acidly.
        Unperturbed, Brass asked mildly, "Where does the cash stolen
from this lab come into it?"
        The Selkath considered for a moment, tugging at one of the
mustache-like barbels flanking his wide, flat mouth.
        "Fine," he said.  "I'll tell you everything I know.  On one
condition."
        "You're not really in a position to be setting conditions,"
Brass replied, but Kelshar ignored him and pointed at Nick.
        "Get -him- out of here," he said.

        Twenty minutes later, a spatter of CSIs gathered in the
layout room to compare notes and congratulate Nick on his miraculous
return from the dead.
        "I guess this means I can't have your locker," Greg joked.
        "It does, and you'd better put my stuff back in it," Nick
replied.
        Calleigh looked puzzled.  "Why do you want Nick's locker?"
        "Oh, all the -boys- want Nick's locker," Sara explained, rolling
her eyes.  "It's right next to Catherine's... "
        "Now, now, that's not the whole story," Greg chided her.  "It's
-between- Catherine's and -yours-."
        While Sara digested that, day-shifter Natalia Boa Vista turned
to Warrick and said, "So Kelshar gave it up?"
        Warrick nodded.  "After Nick left the room, he told Brass and me
everything he could.  He says Ecklie caught him trying to hire someone
to take Nick out, but rather than call the cops, he dealt himself in and
expanded the plan."
        "Me getting whacked was the price for Kelshar's backing," Nick
put in.
        "'Expanded the plan'?" Eric Delko wondered.
        "Brass is still prying the details out of him," said Warrick.
"Basically, though, it sounds like he wants to take down the whole lab,
or at least Grissom's shift."
        Eric shook his head.  "Sounds like he's really gone around the
bend," he said.  "You think you know somebody."
        "Yeah, I hear you," Nick said.  "Hey, I'm sorry about Speed.
For what it's worth, the evidence supports his story."
        Sara nodded in agreement.  "Yeah, it looks like he just got
duped."
        "Well, let's hope that counts for something at his board of
inquiry," said Natalia.
        "Could be.  Apart from that, his record's good, and the Chief's
been known to forgive some pretty major screw-ups before," Warrick
observed.
        "What're you looking at -me- for?" Nick asked.  "Hey, I'm not
the guy who filed his own DNA in COGENT under the heading 'Too Legit To
Quit'," he added, shooting a look at Greg, who replied with an
expression of pious innocence.
        Warrick nodded, conceding the point.  "True.  And out of the
whole bunch of us, it was -Grissom- who nailed a suspect during an
ongoing investigation.  Go -figure-."
        Sara blinked.  "Wait, what?"
        "Didn't you know?"
        "Nnnno.  Just tell me it wasn't that obnoxious woman who runs
the school for the deaf."
        Warrick shook his head.  "Nope.  Not her."
        "Okay."
        Nick snorted.  "What, deaf people don't need lovin' too?"
        "It's not that she's deaf," Sara insisted.  "I just didn't like
her."
        Eric smirked.  "Yeah, well, I have it on good authority that the
lady in question was not entirely unknown to -our- old boss either, if
you know what I mean."
        Wincing, Warrick said, "Jesus, Delko, I did not need that mental
image."
        "Okay, I'm lost," Calleigh admitted.
        "Don't worry, Calleigh.  You'll meet her sooner or later," Eric
reassured her.  "She can't go a year without getting tangled up in at
least one case that comes through here somehow."
        "Actually, you might like her," Nick put in.  "She's very...
precise."
        Greg clapped his hands briskly together.  "WELL, ladies and
gentlemen, as enlightening as this conversation has been, I think I need
to go WASH MY BRAIN."
        "Yyyyeah, I'm with Greg," said Sara.  "See you guys later.  Oh,
uh, congrats on that Lens thing, Nick."
        "Heh, thanks," Nick replied.  "Not that I know what I did."
        "Yeah, I understand it's usually like that," Sara agreed, then
made good her escape.
        "Man, that's two Lensmen on Nights," Eric observed, shaking his
head.  "What have you guys got that we haven't got on Days?"
        Warrick shrugged.  "I dunno, man.  Raw sex appeal."
        "If that's what it takes, why don't you have one, Inspector
Brown?" asked Calleigh sweetly.
        "Zap!  Oh, man, she's good," Natalia chortled.  "I'm gonna like
working with her."
        As the investigators returned to their tasks, Warrick caught
sight of Geoff Depew again, this time headed in the opposite direction
with another container of envelopes.
        "Yo, Geoff," he said.  "Ready for that lunch run?"
        "Sure, I've got orders for half the crew to fill.  Just let me
drop this stuff off in DNA."
        "Where are you going?" Calleigh asked.
        "In-n-Out Burger, over on Satriani.  Want to come with?  Sounds
like we could use an extra set of hands."
        "Sure.  I'm still trying to learn where everything is in this
town."  She smiled wryly.  "It's a little bigger than Aldera."
        Warrick chuckled.  "Yeah, and sometimes I think the Chief was
blindfolded when he laid out the streets."

        "Oh wow.  -Nice- car," Calleigh remarked when they got to the
parking deck.
        "Damn, just how much do they -pay- you in Special Assignment 7?"
Warrick wondered.  "I am in the -wrong- racket."
        Geoff grinned.  "It's actually the Chief's," he said, unlocking
the shiny new battleship-grey Bentley Carnage waiting at the end of the
line of SA Newports.  "The dealer delivered it this morning.  Hasn't
even had the Q Branch treatment yet.  They recommend getting it through
the factory break-in period before making that kind of modification."
        Warrick shook his head.  "Tough life, huh.  Watch out for Cath,
break in the Chief's new Bentley... "
        Geoff shrugged.  "My penance for a wasted youth," he agreed.

        As they waited on line in the near-empty burger stand, Geoff
expounded on the 'secret' menu at In-n-Out, while Warrick put in
supplementary information.
        "... if you're not big on bread, they have the 'Flying
Dutchman', which is just two patties and two slices of cheese, or the
'protein style', that replaces the bun with lettuce."
        "And is -hella- messy if you're not used to it," Warrick warned.
"First time Greg got one the insides slipped out onto his pants."
        "Yeah, that's a problem.  I like the animal style, no tomatoes -
the patties get cooked in mustard, lots of pickles, they grill the
onions, just great."
        Calleigh shook her head.  "So much love for one burger place.
It's just a glorified Mc-"
       "I'd call heresy, but I tried to be a priest once, so I know
that's a pretty serious charge," Geoff interrupted, shaking his head.
"The register people here will, within what's in the place, let you
order your burger however you want if you can explain it to them.
That's way past your average McBiscuit.  Ever see one of their
registers?  They just have pictures of the menu items for buttons.
Besides," he said confidentially, "you want to have some fun, I'm going
to actually order for Greg what he asked for the first time.  They'll
blink, but they'll do it."
        "What DID he ask for first?" Warrick said with his eyebrows
quirked.  "I know he said he wanted a 2x4, but... "
        Geoff grinned.  "20x20."
        Warrick's eyebrows - and eyelids - shot straight up.  "He's
gonna try to eat it all.  If he dies, -you- explain it to Cath."
        Calleigh waved for interference.  "Wait, you're going to get him
something that's twenty burgers, twenty slices of cheese, and a bun on
each end?"
        "Sure," Geoff said.  He gave her an inquisitive look.  "Why, are
you thinking Flying Dutchman?  I'm pretty sure they don't have big
enough lettuce leaves for protein sty -... oh boy."  He tensed up, and
Warrick felt himself follow suit in response.
        "What's up, man?"
        "Two black vans just pulled into the parking lot and stopped in
ways that'll both block exits and let the backs... yeah, like that."
The two vans, now that Geoff had pointed them out, were obvious.  They'd
done it almost casually, but Geoff's tactical analysis told him what was
going to happen next.
        "Warrick, Calleigh, people are about to kick through the doors
to try and rob the place and everyone in it.  When they do, dive over
the counter.  Miss," he said, turning to the girl behind the counter as
he pulled a card out of a pocket and showed it to her, "two red-eyes and
a Chinese new year, please?"
        The girl looked at the card, nodded, and dropped to her knees
behind the counter just as the doors were pushed open by a dozen men in
black uniforms and hoods, armed with snub-nosed blaster carbines.
Calleigh and Warrick dove for cover as advised.
        "ALLEGIANCE OR DEATH - BIG FIRE!  Turn over all your valuables
or you will be shot!"  The apparent leader turned to the big man at the
counter, who had a small smile on his face.  "What do you find funny?"
        "You," Geoff said shortly.  "When you make your one phone call,
tell Agent A she needs to plan better.  Oh," he added as he swung both
hands behind him, "and your order's up."
        Two stun-gas grenades went into the centers of two groups of
agents, who started to cough roughly as the gas hit their lungs.  The
third grenade, a flashbang, went into the center, smack in front of the
leader, who howled as it went off right at his feet.  He dropped his
weapon, clapping his hand reflexively over his ears.
        Jackal and Canon slid out of their holsters smoothly as Geoff's
hands gripped and drew.  "IPO HQ already knows about this little
debacle.  You want to do this the easy way so no one, even you, gets
hurt?"
        Another one of the Black Hoods shook his head clear of the stun
gas and leveled his gun at Geoff.  "Never!  Allegiance or death!"
        Purple light flared around Geoff.  "I gave you the chance.  Just
remember that."
        And then -

                             /*  Motörhead
                            "Ace of Spades"
                          _Ace of Spades_  */

         - he was off.  A drink machine died screaming as the Black
Hoods tried to follow him, but with his enhancements kicked into
overdrive by the Daodan, he was too fast.  The stun gas was a fast-
dispersing and self-neutralizing formula, so he was able to get up close
and personal in the Ignatine style, using his guns as bludgeons.  He
didn't want to start throwing lead around unless he absolutely had to -
there were too many cowering civilians in this joint and too many hard
surfaces that might cause a ricochet.  The Black Hoods might not care
about collateral damage, but he had come to care about it.
        Behind him, he heard the distinctive bark of a large-bore
handgun and the clatter of a blaster carbine hitting the floor.  That
distracted him for just an instant - instinctively he half-turned and
glanced toward the counter.  One of the Black Hoods was pitching
backward, having apparently rounded the counter's end and found a .45-
caliber surprise waiting for him.  Satisfied that the situation there
was under control, he turned his attention back to his dance partners,
but the momentary distraction cost him.  One of them, more by luck than
skill, managed to wing him, the blasterfire just clipping Geoff's upper
arm.  Between the ablative weave of his coat and his own dermal
enhancements, it didn't do any appreciable damage, but the half-turn had
put him slightly off-balance, and the momentary flash of pain made him
drop the Canon.
        Oh, well, the day I need a Canon to take out mooks like this, he
remarked to himself, and carried on with Jackal and fist.
        He had just about finished with the bulk of the strike team when
its leader, still streaming tears from his eyes and speaking too loudly
(a common effect of being suddenly deafened), scooped up his weapon,
drew a bead, and yelled, "I GOT HIM."
        Before he could close the deal, however, the Hood squadleader
felt something hard and cold poke him just behind his right ear.  His
eyes slid sideways from Geoff to the person next to him.
        Calleigh Duquesne, looking quite composed despite the size of
the revolver she held in both hands, shook her head.
        Getting the message, the raid leader dropped his blaster and put
up his hands.  The rest of the Black Hoods either were down, were still
affected by the stun gas, or lost interest in continuing the fight when
their leader chucked it in.
        It was into this scene that Sgt. Schweickart arrived with a
combined force of NAPD cops and IPO bluesuiters.  He paused, glancing
around.  "Sometimes, yelling 'NAPD, you're under arrest' is just
anticlimactic," he said with a small smile.  "You guys okay?"
        There was a unified cry of "Just fine!" from the kitchen, making
Warrick break briefly.

        "Nice bluff with the Canon," Geoff said to Calleigh once he'd
finished conferring with Schweickart.
        "Who was bluffing?" Calleigh replied casually.  "I'd have used
my own, but it stovepiped on me and I didn't have time to clear it."
She shook her head sadly.  "That new hollowpoint ammunition's just not
working out."  Then, as Geoff's eyes widened in surprise, she reset the
Canon's hidden safety, flipped it around in her hand, and offered it
back to its owner.
        "You undid the backup safety!  How'd you do that?"
        "I've processed one of those before," she said.  "Fine piece of
work, too.  My hand was sore for an hour after the test-firing, but I'll
bet it gets the job done."
        Geoff had a gobsmacked look on his face.  "The only way to get
one of these weapons is to be presented with it at the express order of
Father Talesio.  As far as I knew, I was the only non-Cleric who'd ever
taken one off Barsaan.  Where did you get that other one?  I'll need to
report it to the Tetragrammaton.  It needs to go back into the armory."
        "Took it off an arms smuggler's ship in a gun deal gone bad back
on Alderaan.  I know that H was interested in its history, and so am I.
You tell us about it, and we'll arrange for it to go back where it
belongs.  The new head of Ballistics in Aldera owes me that much."
        Warrick coughed.  "Yo, guys, this is great, but I'm carrying all
the damn drinks!  You want to pop the trunk?"
        Geoff moved to comply, but had to pause for a moment to admire
the one Black Hood who was sprawled full-length on the pavement next to
the Bentley's driver-side door.  There was a faint whiff of ozone
lingering in the warm summer air.
        "Boy," Warrick said sympathetically to the unconscious thug,
"that theft deterrence system really does the job, huh."
        "And that's the stock one, too!" Geoff remarked, thumbing the
button on the ignition key that opened the trunk.  That done and the
provisions secure, they climbed aboard and pointed the Carnage back
toward the barn.
        "I've got a bad feeling," Geoff said to no one in particular.
Then he tapped his link.  "Inspector Bosslady, we're coming back with
food and we... kinda left you a crime scene."
        "What?!" Cath's voice came from the link.  "What did you do,
shoot a toaster?"
        "Hey, not his fault, Cath," Warrick called from the passenger
seat.  "Black Hoods tried to rob the place.  It's all on the
surveillance video, should be simple enough.  Russ Schweickart has the
scene now."
        "Yeah, yeah," Catherine groused.  "I'll send Sara over after you
guys get back and we eat.  She's all bouncy and twitchy, I don't think
she's slept since Thursday."  ("Yeah, picture that," Warrick muttered in
a tone of complete unsurprise.)  "It'll help her get rid of some nervous
energy.  Out."
        While they waited at the traffic light at Barstow and University
Ave, Calleigh expressed some interest and got the brief on Geoff's
background.
        "You're the guy that ID'd Nick's wound as a BlasCap hit just
from the sight of it?" she said.  "Nice eye."
        "You would have, too, probably," Geoff replied.  "It was one of
those cheap Brand X knockoffs, and it had the cool-line pattern you get
in those when the shockwave interferes with the heat pulse.  Hell, you
probably would have gotten the brand by eye."
        "I did," she said.  "But then, I'm a professional."
        "So am I," he said, "but I was trying to -hide- what I was doing
from CSIs.  Now I'm working with them.  What a universe," Geoff
finished, chuckling.
        The rest of the ride back was fairly peaceful, except for one
item:
        "Lot of flashers out tonight," Warrick observed as Geoff pulled
the car into the Headquarters parking deck.  "And I mean a LOT."
        Indeed, as the three disembarked and had a look around, they
could see that the deck was almost devoid of marked units - and so was
the NAPD garage across the street.  The faint sounds of sirens could be
heard in the distance, which was no really unusual event in a city like
New Avalon... but they seemed to be audible in all directions.
       "I don't like this," Geoff said.  "Let's get this stuff inside.
I think this is going to be another busy night for everybody."

        Had Geoff realized how prophetic his words were going to be, he
might not have been so quick to utter them out loud.  For that Sunday
night was not just busy, it was the busiest night the crime lab had ever
seen.  All hell broke loose in New Avalon that night, criminal elements
coming out of the woodwork to pile up a list of incidents that would
skew the city's crime statistics for the whole year.  From Big Fire to
the Sky Raiders, from the street gangs of the Kitchen to the tattered
remnants of the World Crime League, it seemed like everyone with a
disregard for the law and a weapon picked that night to get up to a
little something violent.
        And everywhere they went, every one of them left behind a mess
that somebody had to analyze.
        That the situation was far outside the norm was reinforced by an
order that came down from the Chief's office as the teams were
assembling to roll on the first of the evening's many calls, about half
an hour after Geoff, Warrick, and Calleigh returned from the lunch run.
        "I don't want anybody going into the field tonight without
direct tactical support," Gryphon said, and it was so.  The CSI teams
found their backup waiting for them when they got to the parking deck,
ready to head out with them straight to their assigned crime scenes.
        Calleigh blinked in surprise at the sight of the bald, burly man
heading up the mixed IPO/NAPD squad that was forming up next to Horatio
Caine's Citymaster.
        "Why, Francis J. Tripp, as I live and breathe," she said,
delighted.  "Did you transfer from Alderaan just to keep an eye on li'l
old me?"  Then, fixing him with a narrow look of suspicion, she went on,
"Did my dad put you up to this?"
        Tripp, who was dressed in NAPD tactical body armor, laughed.
"Naw," he said.  "You're a grown woman, Calleigh, you can take care of
yourself.  I'm mostly worried about Horatio.  Bad enough the Chief let
him bring his friggin' -tank- with him from Alderaan," he added
sarcastically.
        "Frank," said Horatio with a nod.  "Nice to see you.  It'll be
just like old times."
        "Old times, hell, it'll be just like last month," said Tripp
with a snort.  "You've only been workin' here a -week-, Horatio."
        Back by the elevator bank, Catherine Willows adjusted her flak
vest and grumbled, "Women have been working in a tactical capacity since
the 20th century."
        "Longer on Salusia," Sara noted.
        "And yet, even now, nobody can build a comfortable female body
armor?" Catherine asked rhetorically.
        Sara shrugged.  "Come up with one, you'll be rich."
        Catherine laughed.  "Hey, if all I wanted was to be rich, I
could have arranged for that years ago - ... um, hello."
        Since moving to New Avalon at the age of 18, Catherine had seen
representatives of more sentient species than people living in less
cosmopolitan parts of the human-occupied galaxy had even heard of.  The
being standing next to her official vehicle now, however, was a new one
on her.  Well, all right, sure, she'd seen polar bears before.  She'd
been to the zoo just like every other parent in the greater New Avalon
area.  She'd never seen one in the light powered armor of the Tactical
Division's Special Mission Branch, though.
        "Wow," Sara murmured to Catherine.  "Ursus maritimus sapiens,
engineered to help colonize Ice Planet Halloran V.  I've heard of them.
Never seen one in person before."  As the two women walked toward
Catherine's vehicle, Sara took a couple of seconds to assemble a full
impression of the bear and his intricately machined custom armor, then
offered her scientific summary: "Cooool."
        When they reached him, the bear inclined his head cordially.
Even on all fours, his massive head was just about at eye level with
Catherine.  "Inspector Willows?  Sergeant Ragnar Ragnarsson, Tac Special
Branch.  I've been assigned to provide security for your shift."
        Catherine eyed him for a moment, then nodded.  "... Right.
Okay, Depew's with me.  Nick, you and Warrick go with Brass.  Sara,
Greg, Sgt. Ragnarsson will look after you."
        Greg sized up the bear as he was stowing his kit in the back of
another of the department Tahoes.  "Unless you've got your own vehicle,
big guy, you're gonna have to ride on the roof," he observed.
        "Acceptable," said Ragnarsson stolidly; then, with one mighty
bound, he jumped onto the truck's roof, causing the sturdy vehicle to
bounce jauntily on its suspension before settling down.
        Greg glanced at Sara, who shrugged and grinned as she racked her
kit next to his.
        "We're gonna be the coolest kids on the block tonight, Greg,"
she observed, slapping him on the shoulder.  "Let's roll!"

                                /*  Gun
                               "Word Up!"
                             _Swagger_  */

        Though the CSIs charged relatively cheerfully into the fray that
day, by midnight the atmosphere on the tenth floor of IPO Headquarters
was one of barely contained hysteria.  The previous night's rest helped,
but it hadn't been the kind of complete recharge everybody in the lab
needed, and the night they were all having now would've been enough to
test the lab's endurance after a full weekend's rest.  Add to that the
cloud of borderline paranoia that they'd all been working under since it
became apparent that criminalists were being targeted, and conditions
were almost perfect for a train wreck.
        For his part, the Chief was taking no chances.  He had gone home
after announcing the reorganization of the lab that morning, but he
reappeared in the building almost as soon as it became obvious that this
was not going to be an ordinary Sunday evening.  Setting up an impromptu
crisis command center in the tenth floor's spare audiovisual lab, he
kept tabs on where everyone under his command was and what was going on
everywhere in the city.  After their first deployment, with the evening
showing every sign of heating up further, CSIs had to start going to
scenes singly.  At that point, he made certain that each of them was
accompanied not only by tactical personnel, but also by at least one
member of a Special Assignment group.  A hundred times that night he had
to restrain himself from barging into the field himself to help.
        The uniformed officers of the New Avalon Police Department and
IPO Tactical Division who experienced that Sunday in the city would
forever after remember it as Hell Night, but the criminalists, specific
targets of everything from enemy stay-behinds to booby-trapped crime
scenes, had another name for the occasion.  They called it the Gauntlet.
        In the six hours from 6 PM to midnight, the 11 active
criminalists of the IPO crime lab handled more than four times that many
crime scenes, pinballing at a breakneck pace from one to the next,
paring down the initial processing of each to the most vital of steps
and moving on like medics caught in the middle of a massive firefight.
        "If this keeps up," Greg Sanders observed to Sara when the two
passed each other during a brief return to the lab at around 10 PM,
"we'll have to ask the whole population of the city to relocate for the
night and just string the yellow tape around the city limits."
        Sara awarded that notion a giggle based entirely on the
absurdity of the mental image.  She had neither the time nor the energy
for any deeper analysis of whether the remark was really funny, and
anyway, she's only stopped in the office to restock her kit and grab a
fresh power cell for her CrimeLite on the way to the scene of yet
another incident.  She'd been to so many by that point that they were
all starting to blur together in her mind.  She thought she remembered
Dispatch saying something about a bank robbery. A -bank robbery-.  At 10
o'clock on a Sunday night.  Only in New Avalon...

                        MONDAY, AUGUST 23, 2410
                                12:09 AM

        As a supervisor, Gil Grissom was known by those who worked for
him as a fairly liberal sort, at least in some respects.  As long as you
answered your pager, pulled your weight, and didn't screw up the
evidence, he'd repay you by being the kind of boss you could count on to
understand if, for instance, you suddenly and unexpectedly needed some
time off.  He might get a little grumpy at inappropriate crime scene
humor (and really, when you get right down to it, is there any other
kind?), but he was a good guy, and he wasn't one of those people who let
the regulations become a straitjacket to good investigating.
        That said, there were certain things about which he was flatly
insistent.  One of them, and rightly so, was adherence to protocol where
the evidence was concerned.  That was only to be expected, and generally
not hard to enforce.  A criminalist without a commitment to evidentiary
protocol wouldn't last long in the business, after all.
        Another of Grissom's personal bugaboos, upon which he'd lectured
each of his CSIs at some point in time, was an intolerance of "cowboy"
behavior.  Time and again he'd stressed to his people that, though they
were field operatives required to carry weapons, they were -not- cops,
and they were -sure as hell- not tactical personnel.  Okay, life in the
field was uncertain, situations were sometimes fluid, and the exigencies
of the moment had to be allowed for, but given a choice, Grissom
expected his people -not- to go off on their own, -not- to run down
leads without waiting for properly qualified backup, and under no
circumstances, -ever-, to confront or seek to capture a suspect alone.
        None of which explained why he was entering a house at the far
end of a newly developed neighborhood on the outer edge of Waidburgh,
south of the city proper, all by himself.  But the rest of the shift was
busy, and so was the day shift, and he would take this on himself.
        The door opened to his careful efforts and swung open silently.
This house was supposed to be the model home for the development, the
one completed but vacant showpiece that prospective buyers toured.  The
furniture was arranged just so, very carefully, and just mussed enough
to make it look like someone lived here and had company from time to
time.
        The most distinctive piece of the furniture was the large couch.
Right next to it, Grissom was surprised to see a corpse - a recent one.
The surprise was not due to the neat hole in the back of his head, but
the angle.  Apparently someone had heard stories about the IPO being
able to pull the memories out of a brain after death (an urban legend)
and had tried to burn out the part of the man's cortex that corresponded
to memory, possibly with a phaser.
        And from the shape of his head and the hairlessness of his
scalp, the dead man appeared to be Conrad Ecklie... who had not lived in
a model house in Waidburgh the last time Grissom checked.
        <Benjamin.  Sorry about this,> he sent through his Lens.
        <Damn straight you are, Gil,> the Chief replied.  <Cath's been
in here five times in the last two hours demanding I find you, and
there's only so many times I can claim you're working on something
special for me before she tries to pop my head off like I was a Pez
dispenser.  If she does it again I'm going to get Skuld in here, give
her her own Lens, and let her take it up with you directly.  You'd
better have something good.>
        <How about Conrad Ecklie's corpse?>
        <Congratulations, that's something good.  What else do you
have?>
        <I just found the corpse in the living room of... well, it's
supposed to be this real estate company's model home, but it looks like
some kind of safehouse.  I'm going to do a quick process of the rest of
the house, then I'll call back.>
        <Should I tell Cath something?>
        <If it keeps her from decapitating you, by all means.  Grissom
out.>  With that, he opened his kit and pulled out his ALS.
        A few moments later, he called the Chief back.
        <I still have a head, for the moment,> Gryphon confirmed.
<What's up?>
        <He kept a journal.  By hand.  In plaintext.  It's all here.
Everyone who was paid to do something to attack the crime lab.  Names,
places, times, amounts.  And something bigger, if we can break it.>
        <What is it, Gil?>
        <The identity of Big Fire's local commander - codename Agent A.
That part's encrypted, but the text around it is plain.  He met her at a
location and time which is enciphered.  We have that, we have her.>
        <Bag it and bring it in ASAP.  I'll call Sheriff Mobley and
inform him that I would be pleased if he'd have his people secure that
house.  That'll give us everything we need, Gil.  Nice work.>
        <Understood.  Grissom out.>
        He bagged the notebook carefully, then bagged the pen with it,
and headed out to his car.  He left the door unlocked but closed, got
into his car, put the little flashing light he kept for emergencies on
the roof, and drove as fast as he could into New Avalon.  He was
diverted twice due to police activity, then pulled into the parking deck
after showing his Lens to the gate guard.
        As he got out, he heard a voice in his head:
        <GIOL'BERTIS GRISSOM, WHERE THE HELL ARE YOU?>
        Grissom winced as the angry cry crossed his prefrontal cortex.
<Hello, Catherine. I see Benjamin actually followed through on his
threat.  Congratuations.  I am just now pressing the button for the
elevator in the parking deck so I can log some evidence with Benjamin,
then prepare for a glorious night's work at the Crime Scene
Investigations People's Collective.>
        <Great.  Come to your office - we're both in there.  What did
you get?>
        The elevator dinged and he entered.  <You can see it when I get
there.  In thirty seconds.>
        The Lens transmitted cues that normally aren't verbal in
communication.  This was the first time that Gil Grissom had actually
felt a nigh-murderous look without being in the same room as the person
giving it.
        Thirty seconds later he entered his office, finding both
Catherine and Gryphon in there.  He held out the notebook.
        "The collected writings of the late Conrad Ecklie," he said.
        Gryphon took it - with gloves on, Grissom noted approvingly -
and thumbed through it, his eyes flicking intently across the pages.
"There's a lot in here than the past we... whoa."  He looked up.
"According to this, Ecklie's been fixing evidence since December.
Jesus.  This is going to open up a huge can of worms."  He blew out a
breath and seemed to yank his train of thought back onto the matter more
immediately at hand through an effort of will.  "But right now, we know
who's organizing all of this, meetings to set it up, bases.  We're going
to retask the bluesuiters to the bases and then see who I can bring in
as a codebreaker."
        There was a flicker on Grissom's desk holocube.  "You called?"
        "Cortana?  You're still here?" Cath said, sounding surprised.
        "I left a monitoring process around in case you needed me, and
it sounds like you do."
        The three looked at each other, and then Gryphon showed her the
page.  "That enciphered part in the middle of the plaintext.  We need it
broken, and fast."
        Cortana broke the image down and stored it in her internal
databank, then made a quick assessment of its content.  "Let me work on
it.  I may need to borrow some computing power."
        "Do what you need to do," Gryphon told her.  Then he looked at
Catherine and Grissom.  "I don't want either of you thinking this is
proper procedure, but we need this information fast to save lives and
end this craziness.  Making headway in court is secondary to stopping
the -city- from burning."

        The tide of the evening turned at 12:30, when, armed with the
specific information culled from Ecklie's notebook, IPO tactical
personnel and allied assets began a full-on counteroffensive.  Everyone
from the Titans to the Repo Men fanned out to show the city's organized
criminals what they'd won.  The doors to warehouses, boltholes, and
hideouts all over the city felt tac-issue boots that night, except for
the one Sky Raiders lair that was memorably reduced by Sgt. Ragnarsson.
        At around that same time, Gil Grissom and Jim Brass left the lab
on an errand to a very different part of town.  While tactical forces
and costumed crimefighters crashed into dark and hidden places in the
bleakest parts of town, Grissom and Brass found themselves on the
doorstep of one of the city's finest homes, a near-palatial mansion in
the ostentatious western part of Crescent Heights.
        Grissom did the knocking.  The door opened at the hand of a
woman in her late 40s, with a slightly sluggish gaze.  "Can I help you?"
        "Chief Inspector Brass, New Avalon Police Department, ma'am, and
this is Gil Grissom with the IPO crime lab.  We've got a warrant to
search your daughter's room."
        "Upstairs on the left," the woman replied, getting out of the
way.  "Should have expected this," she added in a vacantly resigned
tone.  "Two went bad, the third had to go bad too."
        "Lovely view of life," Jim quietly said to Grissom on the way up
the stairs.  "Real winner of a person."
        "Considering what she's been through, I'm not surprised," said
Grissom.  "One daughter rejecting the family name, the other all but
doing so, what happened to her husband and the company he'd expected to
inherit.  And if that affected her so much, I'll bet the last daughter
would do almost anything to regain that level of prestige in New
Avalon."  As he spoke, he kept glancing around, as if hearing something
off in the distance.  The air of distraction he had was... well, a bit
Horatio Caine-like, really, and enough unlike Grissom's normal focused
demeanor that it put Brass a little on edge as well.
        "Something wrong?"
        "I've got a bad feeling.  And you know how much I hate to rely
on my feelings."  He reached into his coat, then nodded his readiness.
Brass raised an eyebrow - Grissom NEVER drew, to the point where it was
often unclear whether he was even carrying a weapon.  (Against
regulations, perhaps, but then, Brass had seen Gil Grissom face down
Geoff Depew and make him back down through pure force of personality.)

                          /*  Masamichi Amano
                     "The Infiltration - Big Fire"
              Giant Robo: The Animation Soundtrack 3  */

        A moment later, Grissom's bad feeling was confirmed when the
door at the end of the hall burst open to reveal a black-clad, masked
figure leveling a compact but deadly blaster pistol at them.  Caught
flat-footed, Brass cursed under his breath.  He should've had his own
weapon at the ready as they climbed the stairs, but somehow it just
didn't seem -appropriate- in a setting like this, even knowing who they
were here to apprehend.
        "Chief Inspector Brass," said the black-clad woman, tossing her
shock of curly blonde hair contemptuously.  "And Dr. Grissom.  How nice
of you to stop by.  Did you like the little present I left for you in
Waidburgh, Doctor?"
        "It's proving most informative," Grissom replied mildly.  "By
the way - for your information, Agent A, that story about post-mortem
neural scanning is a myth.  There was no need to mutilate the corpse
like that."
        "I suspected as much, but really, it was as much as he deserved
anyway.  And now I suppose you'll give me some tiresome speech about my
-rights-."
        "That's his job," Grissom said, indicating Brass with a tilt of
his head.  Now that the crisis was actually here, all the nervous
tension he'd had when they entered the house had dissipated, leaving
behind only a sort of glacial calm.  "I'm just here to collect evidence.
To be honest, I was expecting you to have absconded by now."
        "Leave without telling my mother goodbye?  Really, now."
        Grissom nodded.  "Family is very important to you, isn't it,
Miss Broadbank?"
        Clarissa smirked slightly.  "Did you honestly think that would
rattle me?  You're in my father's house.  -Obviously- you know who I am.
But it doesn't really matter."  Her smirk became a cold, predatory
smile.  "You realize, of course, that you'll never leave this place
alive."
        Grissom regarded her with an almost-sad expression for a moment.
        "Miss Broadbank," he said, "I don't want to draw my weapon.  If
you let the situation escalate that far, it can only end badly."
        Five times in his career, Jim Brass had heard Gil Grissom say
something like that to a suspect.  Five times, despite the Salusian
scientist's entirely unremarkable appearance, the suspect had backed
down - for what exact reason, Brass could never say.
        Clarissa Broadbank, alias Agent A, did not.  She merely laughed.
        "Oh, Dr. Grissom," she said indulgently.  "I have every
-intention- of making this situation end badly."
        Then she turned her blaster to Brass, whom she clearly regarded
as the greater threat, and fired.
        In the millisecond or so that the next events took to unfold,
Brass had just enough time to form a dreadful expectation of pain and
darkness, for however comical she might look to his world-weary cop's
eyes in her black outfit and Zorro kerchief mask, Clarissa clearly knew
how to handle that blaster, and her aim was dead-on.  Instead of a
scarlet blaster bolt between the eyes, though, what he got was the
surprise of his life.
        With a snapping hiss he'd heard only a couple of times before in
his life, a brilliant green bar of light sprang into being before his
eyes, turning aside the shot that would have taken off the top half of
Brass's head and sending it off to burn a harmless hole in the ceiling.
Shocked, he looked to his right and saw Gil Grissom, grim-faced... and
holding a lightsaber.
        Somehow that didn't seem as weird to Brass as he figured it
ought to.
        "Oh -ho-," said Clarissa, apparently not too bothered that her
attempt on Brass's life had been foiled.  "-That's- interesting.  It
seems even the lowliest branches of the IPO are full of surprises."  She
fired again, not for effect, but to give Grissom something to do while
she ducked back through the door into her bedroom.
        "It's over, Clarissa," said Grissom calmly as he and Brass -
weapon drawn now - followed her warily into the room.  Even keyed up for
action as he was, Grissom took in every detail of his surroundings,
noting to himself how incongruous a setting this frilly pseudo-Victorian
froth of a wealthy teenage girl's bedroom was for an armed standoff with
a dangerous criminal.
        "Au contraire, Dr. Grissom," she said.  "Or Master Grissom, I
suppose I should call you?  But then, whatever you are, it doesn't
really matter."  Her lovely soprano voice was tinged with something dark
and ugly now, and she kept them covered as she edged into the far corner
of the room.  "This -match- may be over, but the game is only beginning.
Big Fire will take this sphere, then the galaxy... and there will be no
place for you or your colleagues in our new order."
        Brass leveled his sidearm.  His icy composure showed no sign of
the multiple shocks he'd endured to get to this point, for Jim Brass was
nothing if not a professional.
        "Right now the only thing anyone is taking, young lady, is a
trip down to the station for interrogation," he said.
        Clarissa laughed again.  "Oh, I don't think so.  You've revealed
me, but that doesn't matter."  She reached the corner of the room, on
the far side of an oversized bed festooned with a colony of stuffed
animals.  "Do you really think interfering with your little group of
-scientists- is the height of my ambition?  I have bigger plans, bigger
ideas, things that will shake the galaxy, and the Magnificent Ten think
I have what it takes to do it.  And that means I can't be caught."  She
took one hand off the gun and bopped a stuffed bear on the head.  A
shimmering light appeared around her, and she smiled.
        "TOGETHER - ALLEGIANCE OR DEATH - BIG FIRE!"  She threw the Big
Fire salute as she dematerialized.  "And for you, Dr. Grissom," she
added just before she vanished, "rest assured, it will eventually be
death... "
        Grissom deactivated his lightsaber and put it away as Brass
dashed across the room.  "Dammit.  Point-source transporter."
        Grissom nodded.  "Smells like it burned itself out.  Probably
set to do that, and take the memory with it.  We'll take it back to the
lab and look at it, but my guess is we won't get anything."
        Brass holstered his sidearm with a little more vehemence than
was strictly necessary.  "Damn.  If I'd thought she'd have something
like that, I would have suggested a hot entry.  Maybe gas."
        "Concealability is the point of that kind of equipment.  Hide
it under a rug... boom."  Grissom pointed to the perfectly circular
hole in the carpet that now revealed the portable telepad beneath.
"It's the expense that keeps them uncommon."  He pulled a tricorder from
his belt and checked a few readings.  "The trace is scrambled.  This is
a high-end unit designed for just this kind of escape."  He closed the
instrument and put it away.  "That tells us one thing: Big Fire's
sparing no expenses on this girl.  They really -do- think she has the
kind of potential she talked about.  I wouldn't be surprised to learn
that she has the personal backing of one of the Magnificent Ten."
        Brass sighed.  "We should have brought more people with us.  A
tac team.  Or at least Ragnarsson."
        "I don't think Sgt. Ragnarsson would have fit through the door,
Jim," Grissom pointed out.  "Anyway, we didn't have more people to
bring.  Miss Broadbank's little campaign of terror saw to that - by
design, I expect."
        "Mm."  Brass looked around the room for a moment longer, then
turned to Grissom and said, "And another thing, where the HELL did you
learn to use a lightsaber to do that kind of stunt?  You could have
taken my head off!"
        Grissom shook his head.  "No, Jim, I couldn't have.  I admit I
was never much of a duelist, but Master Tor-Pal wouldn't have let me
take my Trials without making sure I knew what I was doing."
        "You really -are- a Jedi Knight?  I thought that was just an
urban legend."
        "Yes, I am.  But... I disagree with the Order on a number of
details and... I'd prefer not to have this get out.  The Force isn't
admissible in most courts.  I try to rely on my physical senses, and use
my training to keep myself calm and rational during a case."  He shook
his head.  "It's a very... difficult line to walk sometimes."
        Brass nodded.  "You kept quiet when I was having that trouble
with my daughter.  I owe you that much... Gil."
        Grissom gave a small smile.  "I'll need to call in someone to
process this - I can't, I was involved."
        "We'll give it to one of Horatio's people."  Brass raised his
hand and spoke into his link, requesting a CSI team and some cops to
secure the area.
        Grissom went out in the hall and looked toward the top of the
stairs.  There were a pair of maids there, looking frightened and
curious, but the master and mistress of the house had not reacted at all
to the sounds from upstairs.
        He shook his head, slowly, wondering what it took to bring up a
child like that.

                            IPO HEADQUARTERS
                                12:21 AM

        Dr. Allison Cameron wrinkled her nose at the table in front of
her.
        It wasn't that she was displeased to be here.  Indeed, she'd
felt oddly honored when the call that woke her at 9:30 PM turned out to
be not Greg House, whose follow-up call she'd been dreading for days,
but Al Robbins, the IPO's chief medical examiner.
        "Dr. Cameron, I won't beat around the bush," Robbins had said.
"We're desperate over here.  David and I are working at full capacity,
and we've already called Dr. Woods and Dr. Fujiyama from Days back in to
help out.  This crime wave is washing in a body count that we just can't
keep up with."
        "Albert, I'm not a pathologist."
        "No, but you have the skills to pinch-hit for one.  The Chief's
already signed off on it, and I just talked to Rocky Stone.  If you want
me to beg - " (she could picture his weird-uncle smile here, and
couldn't help but smile herself at the thought) " - I will... "
        Begging hadn't been necessary.  Cameron was used to the worst
cajoling in the galaxy, and compared to that, Dr. Robbins's gentle
banter was like a day at the beach.  So she made her way down to the
sub-basement, took a defense tunnel tram to the IPO building, and tossed
a hand in.  It was good she had.  Apart from the victims of the
evening's various violent crimes, there were plenty of bad guys who
hadn't taken their free trip to Terminal Island, opting for the free
trip to the Corrigan Gardens cemetery instead.
        And at twenty past midnight, by luck of the draw, she drew the
prize known as the corpse of Conrad Ecklie.  As it turned out, this was
a piece of luck for everyone involved (except Ecklie, arguably), because
what she found upon embarking on what all surface indications said would
be a straightforward post-mortem examination turned out to be right up
her alley - a textbook example of Weird Medicine at its finest.
        Now, 40 minutes later, she had the honor of calling Gil Grissom
down to the morgue to give him her preliminary report.
        "Hello, Dr. Cameron," he greeted her cordially, with Nick in
tow.  "You said there were some irregularities?"
        Cameron gave him a tired smile.  "You could say that, yes.
Quite a few, in fact, but let's start with the really big one."  Looking
Grissom in the eye, she said flatly, "This man is not Conrad Ecklie."
        Grissom blinked, looked the body over, and then said in a mild
sort of voice, "You could've fooled me."
        "That appears to have been the point," Cameron told him.  "I'll
get into that in a minute - but DNA doesn't lie, and this man's genetic
profile doesn't match the one on file for Conrad Ecklie in COGENT.
What's interesting is that it -does- match the simplified profile the
headquarters computer systems use for entry and exit ID, but that's
someone else's department."
        Gil took off his glasses.  "What else do you have?" he asked in
his I-don't-like-this voice.
        "Well, he's had surgery on his long bones to make him match
Ecklie's Bertillon proportions, after which he probably had to learn to
walk again - you can see the bone fusion points in the scans here and
here," she said, pointing to a holographic projection of the dead man's
full-body scan.  "And there's a huge amount of evidence of him
undergoing intense, and immense, nanosurgical work in a tank."
        "Biosculpting to make him look the part?" Nick wondered, but
Cameron shook her head.
        "This goes -way- beyond cosmetic bodysculpting," she said.
"Whoever this guy is, he's got Ecklie's retinal patterns, subcutaneous
blood vessel patterns in the hands, fingerprints, handprints, TOEprints,
every friction ridge on his body's been redrawn nanosurgically.  It must
have been agonizing.  They had this set up beforehand, probably at least
a year in advance."
        "Any signs of other brain surgery where they extracted his
cool?" Nick quipped, trying to break the tension.  "Sorry," he added
when both doctors gave him you're-not-helping looks.
        Grissom gave the body a thoughtful look, then said, "The
questions then become: When did this change happen... and where is
Conrad Ecklie?"
        "Not only that," Nick asked, "but how did they get the -fake-
Ecklie's genescan into the Headquarters ID system?"

        Half an hour later, a folder and disk dropped onto Grissom's
desk.  "Got it," Nick said.
        "You're becoming a top-flight computer forensics technician,"
Grissom said with a raised eyebrow.  "Thinking about a transfer?"
        "I'm fine here.  Besides, this turned out not to be that hard.
I was able to pinpoint just when and how."  He opened the folder, and
started to run his finger through.  "A year ago, we got a data transfer
from the Mega Tokyo PD on New Japan - something to do with a missing
persons case Days was working.   There was a delayed package virus
attached.  It hit the database and waited for a trigger message, which
came in a couple weeks later.  Then it overwrote his ID profile with
this other Ecklie's."
        Greg poked his head into the office.   "I too have some
interesting news about Conrad Ecklie: He's been holding down two jobs."
        "He doesn't seem the type," Nick said.
        Greg grinned.  "Yeah, well, especially since one of them is
director of the Washoe Colony crime lab."
        Nick looked puzzled.  "Washoe Colony, that's in the Rigel
sector."
        "Yeah, well, don't ask me how he handles the commute, I'm just
the noob.  Also, he is both dead and yet alive, which is a surprisingly
messianic trick for Ecklie."
        Gil Grissom rarely looked completely gobsmacked, but he did at
this moment.  "Are you sure about this, Greg?"
        Greg presented a sheaf of printouts.  "Here you go.  Every press
release since he took over on January 1.  That's how I know it's the
real Ecklie," he added with a confidential wink.  "He loves to take
credit for things."
        Nick stared hard at the printouts, then at Greg.  "And no one
here noticed?"
        The Dantrovian tech shrugged.  "We haven't gotten a
collaboratory request from Washoe Colony CSI since, well, -ever-, and no
one compared our personnel records to theirs.  No reason to.  Honestly?
I'm going to have a hard time with it if it turns out he's the kwisatz
haderach.  Or maybe it's just quantum physics - just because we didn't
find any cat hairs... "
        Gil gave Greg the 'do-you-work-here' look, then relented.  "All
right, then.  I'm going to take this to the Chief; he mentioned wanting
to be kept in the loop on this, and it's going to be an interesting
loop.  Good work, you two."  He picked up Nick's notes, took the folder
from Greg, and headed towards the elevator.  "And if I were the two of
you?  I'd go down to the motor pool and get a car.  Now that the city's
quiet again and we have the worst of the mess contained down here, the
Chief's authorized a trip to the Crescent."

                          MORNINGTON CRESCENT
                              THE MILLRACE
                                02:02 AM

        It had to be admitted that they didn't sound terribly polished.
They were too inexperienced, and too comprehensively refreshed, for
that.  But then, the kind of song they were singing wasn't designed to
be performed by terribly polished groups, and whatever else an outside
observer - like, for instance, the waiter who passed by the half-closed
entrance to the billiard room - might say about them, it was at least
obvious that they were enjoying themselves.  And really, that was what
it was all about at Mornington Crescent.

Now old Gil Grissom made the call
(How I wish I was in Saenar now!)
For a scientist of brave heart and true
Who could fill a gap in his night shift crew
(God damn them all!)

I was told we'd process scenes
For the evidence sole, we'd fire no guns
Shed no tears
Now I've a broken heart in this Avalon sphere
The last of Grissom's privateers

The IPO lab was a sickening sight
(How I wish I was in Saenar now!)
With Ballistics a mess and no item tags
And Greg in the chem lab with the staggers and jags
(God damn them all!)

I was told we'd process scenes
For the evidence sole, we'd fire no guns
Shed no tears
Now I've a broken heart in this Avalon sphere
The last of Grissom's privateers...

        The work, of course, was far from finished.  There was an
almighty mess of follow-up to be tackled, open cases outnumbering active
criminalists by more than four to one, to say nothing of the vast tangle
of potentially corrupted evidence and confusingly twisted facts left
behind by the late Conrad Ecklie... or -whoever- he'd been.  Those left
to pick up the pieces could count on cases by the dozen being reopened
as opportunistic defense attorneys (and prosecutors, come to that, since
not a little of the tainted evidence had been thought exculpatory)
latched onto the news of a mole scandal in the IPO lab.  The very
reputation of the lab itself would have to be defended, perhaps
restored, by those who remained.  At least one more criminalist's fate
had to be decided, the new CID chain of command needed clarifying, and
no one doubted that administrative headaches as yet unforeseen would
accompany all -that-, too.
        In short, they were still deep in the woods... but tonight, or
rather this morning, none of that mattered.  They'd take it as it came.
For the moment, they were just happy to be free of the crushing,
imminent tension of the last few days; happy to be alive; happy to be
together.  They were like the crew of a ship that, though still far from
home, had just survived a brutal storm... and so they ate, drank,
laughed, and sang until the Crescent closed down around them.
        Grissom's privateers had a hell of a lot to do tomorrow; but
they'd survived tonight, and for the moment, that was enough.

                               /*  Boston
                           "Don't Look Back"
                         _Don't Look Back_  */

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited            Don't look back
presented                               A new day is breaking
                                        It's been too long since I felt
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES                     this way
FUTURE IMPERFECT                        I don't mind
                                        Where I get taken
CSI: NEW AVALON                         The road is calling
[109] OUTWARD TRAJECTORY                Today is the day

The Cast                                I can see
(in order of appearance)                It took so long just to realize
Catherine Willows                       I'm much too strong now to
Horatio Caine                             compromise
Nick Stokes                             Now I see what I am
Allison Cameron, MD                     Is holding me down
Graig tz'An Daarst                      I'll turn it around
Calleigh Duquesne                       Oh yes I will
Sara Sidle
Bobby Dawson                            I finally see the dawn arriving
Skuld Ravenhair                         I see beyond the road I'm
driving
MCPO Sir John Spartan, RSN
Cortana                                 It's a bright horizon
Janice Barlow                           When I'm awakened
Tim Speedle                             I see myself in a brand new way
Warrick Brown                           The sun is shining
Benjamin D. Hutchins                    The clouds are breaking
Geoff Depew                             'Cause I can't lose now
Raven                                   There's no game to play
Gil Grissom
Enrique                                 I can tell
Jim Brass                               There's no more time left to
Xander Cage                               criticize
Chad Collier                            I see what I could not recognize
Richard B. Riddick                      Everything in my life
Vasseck Kelshar                         Was leading me on
Eric Delko                              But I can be strong
Natalia Boa Vista                       Oh yes I can
Russell Schweickart
Frank Tripp                             I finally see the dawn arriving
Ragnar Ragnarsson                       I see beyond the road I'm driving
Mathilde Broadbank                      Ooh far away and left behind
Clarissa Broadbank                      Left behind
Albert Robbins, MD
                                        Oh the sun is shining
Principal Reconstructionist             And I'm on that road
Benjamin D. Hutchins
                                        Don't look back
Shootout Coordinator                    A new day is breaking
Geoff Depew                             It's been so long since I felt
                                          this way
Floridian                               I don't mind
Chad Collier                            If I get taken
                                        The road is calling
Ragolian Beetle Wrangler                Today is the day
Janice Barlow
                                        I can see
"CSI: Crime Scene Investigation"        It took so long just to realize
created by                              I'm much too strong now to
Anthony E. Zuiker                         compromise
                                        Now I see what I am
"CSI: Miami"                            Is holding me down
created by                              I'll turn it around
Anthony E. Zuiker                       Oh yes I will
Ann Donahue
Carol Mendelsohn                        I finally see the dawn arriving
                                        I see beyond the road I'm driving
"Barrett's Privateers"                  Oh far away and left behind
by
Stan Rogers                             Don't look back
                                        Don't look back
Repartee Testing                        Don't look back
The EPU Usual Suspects                  Don't look back


                            105 MORGAN LANE
                            CRESCENT HEIGHTS
                                3:43 AM

        When the night shift gathered at Mornington Crescent after
putting a big, complicated, difficult case to bed (which had become
almost traditional after the Salutown Slugger case), it was not at all
uncommon for the Chief to join them.  It was also not uncommon - indeed,
it was quite customary - for at least one of the CSIs to accompany him
back to his place after the Crescent shut down at 3 AM and kicked
everybody out.  On one occasion, after the brutal and demoralizing
ordeal that had been the Stafford Street quadruple, the whole party had
relocated to the Heights after chucking-out time and gone until dawn.
        This occasion was considerably lower-key, no party at all.  This
was just Gryphon and Catherine, quietly relaxing, sort of unwinding from
the unwinding, in his living room.
        Catherine had moderated her intake more than most at the
Crescent that night, and now was far from impaired - just a bit bright-
eyed and thoroughly at ease - as she sat deep in one of the room's
comfortably overstuffed armchairs and sipped a glass of passable red
that Gryphon had dug up in the kitchen somewhere.  He, knowing nothing
about wine and trusting it even less, had only a glass of water, but
seemed content, slouching in one end of the sofa with Wolfgang the
Lensbeagle curled up and snoring at his side.
        "We haven't done this in years," Catherine observed.  "Just
kicked back and let the time go by.  Sometimes it's hard to believe
either of us has -time- for it."
        Gryphon chuckled.  "I know what you mean.  It's been quite a
week, hasn't it?"
        Catherine rolled her eyes at him.  "You have a gift for
understatement," she observed.  As she put her wineglass down on the end
table next to her chair, the gleaming green gem affixed by a silver band
around her slim wrist caught her eye, and she paused to contemplate it
for a few moments.
        "You know," she said, "I haven't agreed to be part of your
project yet."
        He nodded.  "I know.  Doesn't matter.  You were due anyway."
        "Isn't it going to annoy your high-grade agents if you keep
going around giving these things out to criminalists?"
        "I doubt it.  The SAs know you guys play a vital role.
Actually, I'm hoping to get the whole field staff Lensed one day, night
and day shift both."
        Catherine lowered her arm and eyed him.  "You're kidding."
        Gryphon shrugged.  "No, and why not?  Anyone who passes the Test
is worthy.  Doesn't matter what you do in the organization, or what...
what -abilities- you have.  Being a Lensman is as much a matter of
character as it is competence."  He shook his head.  "Conrad never
understood that.  It's why he was never seriously considered."
        "Mm."  Catherine reflected on this for a moment, sipping her
wine, and then her thoughts seemed to shift gears.  She put the glass
down again and regarded him with an almost mischievous smile.
        "What?" he asked.
        "Something Nicky said the other day reminded me of something I
haven't thought about in years," she said.  "I'm a little late for
Greg's latest holiday, but what the hell.  There's something I don't
think I ever told you."
        Gryphon arched an eyebrow.  "Oh?"
        "When I was younger... back in the pre-Eddie days... I thought
you were secretly my father."
        "... Really."
        "Yep.  From the ages of, oh, 18 to about 30, I was absolutely
convinced of it."  She sighed.  "By the time I figured out for certain
it couldn't be so, I'd gone and married Eddie."
        Gryphon thought for a moment, then smiled.  "Well," he said, "I
could adopt you."  That got a snort of amusement out of her, and he
continued in the same offhanded tone, "Or marry you, I suppose."
        Catherine laughed at that, then sobered a little and regarded
him with a fond, slightly sad-eyed smile.
        "You'd do that, wouldn't you," she said, and it wasn't really a
question.
        He shrugged.  "Sure, why not?"  His smile was a little sad too
as he added, "Kei approved you years ago, you know."
        And just like that, as he said those words, something that had
been bothering and mystifying Gryphon for months abruptly became
perfectly clear.
        Of course, he said to himself, and filed it away for later.
        "I have to warn you," said Catherine, her smile taking on a wry
edge, "I'm high-maintenance."
        "I'm okay with maintenance," Gryphon replied with affected
unconcern.  "I just bought a Bentley."
        "I'll take that under advisement," Catherine said.  She finished
off her wine, then set about extracting herself from the chair.  "Much
as I hate to, I've got to get home.  I have to be on a spaceliner in - "
She looked at her watch and grimaced.  " - six hours."  She pushed her
hands back through her hair and sighed.  "I haven't even packed yet."
        "Crash here if you like," Gryphon offered, rising.  "I can have
your stuff brought to the spaceport.  I know some expert bag packers."
        "Tempting... but I'd better not."  She crossed to the couch,
bent to give Wolfgang a scruffling goodbye (waking him in the process),
then hugged Gryphon for a long, pensive moment.
        "Good night, Ben," she murmured.
        "Good night, Catherine," he replied, then showed her to the
door.  She paused for a second on the top step, surveying the darkened
street with a thoughtful air, and he said, "Sure I can't give you a ride
home."
        Catherine shook her head.  "I think I need the walk to clear my
head," she said, then repeated, "Good night."
        "Night, Cath.  Say hi to the kids for me when you get to
Meizuri."
        "I will."
        The sky was lightening and turning pink in the east, but in the
direction Catherine was headed, night was still clinging to its perch.
Gryphon stood and watched her go until she disappeared into the darkness
between the dimming streetlights, then went back inside, shut the door,
and headed into the living room to turn out the lights.  A glance at the
wall clock told him it had just turned 4 AM.  Alone for the first time
in nearly two full days, he felt every minute of the crisis just past,
his body and mind at last coasting to a halt.
        "Urrrgh," he groaned.  "Hound dog, I'm getting too old for this
business."
        On the couch, Wolfgang stirred and opened one eye, fixing him
with a look that said, "You always say that."
        "Well, come on," said Gryphon, thumping the back of the couch as
he passed it.  "Time for bed."
        As he said that, the doorbell rang.
        "... Oh, now what," he muttered, crossing the foyer.  Opening
the door, he was vaguely surprised to find Sara Sidle on his doorstep.
        "Oh!  Hi," he said.  Then, with a look of mild concern, he
added, "Uh, what's up?"
        "Hi," said Sara.  With eyes slightly too bright and stance
slightly unsteady, she gave him a lopsided smile and went on, "You
should know that I'm exhausted, punchy, half-drunk, and wired, and I'll
never forgive you if you don't take me to bed right now."
        Gryphon stood and regarded her for nearly a minute, his
expression almost blank.  Sara's smile was just starting to flicker into
uncertainty when he suddenly reached out, drew her close to him, and
kissed her as he'd wanted to, on some level, since he wandered into the
crime lab on a cold day last November.
        Then he looked into her eyes and said quietly, "I'd love to.  I
really would.  But... it's not that simple for me."
        Sara looked back at him for a moment, then glanced down at the
step she stood on.  "No," she said, nodding.  "I know.  It's not that
simple for me, either."  Then she met his eyes again, her face entirely
serious now, and went on, "Maybe that's the problem."
        Gryphon nodded.  "Maybe."
        "You... "  Sara hesitated, aware that she was venturing into
territory she herself tended to guard jealously against the intrusions
of others, then gathered herself and plunged on, "You want to talk about
it?"
        Gryphon smiled.  "Yeah," he said.  "I do."  He stepped back and
made a gesture of welcome.  "C'mon in."

                          E P U (colour) 2007