The fools, thought Loki as he was led into the castle.
Escorting me to my very destination?  I must remember to thank Odin
for this opportunity...
        ... before I kill him.
        "What are you smiling at?" sneered one of the guardsmen as
he and his partner hauled Loki toward the stairs leading down to the
dungeon.
        "Your stupidity," replied Loki, and suddenly he was aflame,
all flame and no substance, scorching the guards even as he twisted
out of their grasp.  They cried out in consternation, but before they
could raise the alarm he was upon them, the air in their lungs sucked
away to feed the burning, their cries strangled within them as they
died.
        Laughing softly to himself, the Trickster slipped down a side
corridor.  The battle was almost over, and Loki knew now that he would
win.
        Behind him, a solitary figure trod silently in his wake,
unnoticed.

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

                UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
                             -=TWILIGHT=-

                          SIXTH SEAL: FUGUE

                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                           Lawrence R. Mann
                               MegaZone
                           Kris Overstreet

     With the indispensible assistance of all the usual suspects
            The invincible spirit of the late Derek Bacon
                                 and
     The inimitable notions of special guest creator Rob Shannon

                (c) 2000 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


        The Asgard forces were in open rout.
        The Niflheim armies, led and inspired by their last and
greatest captain, Loki, had shattered both the main defense line and
the temporary rally line, driving all but a few scattered units
headlong towards the literally last-ditch defenses in front of the
Gates of the Golden City.  Here and there throughout the Asgard
forces, commanders at every level attempted to rally their forces and
slow the assault, but there was nothing left to rally around.  Between
the work of the dwarven sappers, the thrashings of Fenris and
Jormungand, and artillery, the defenses had been pounded flat all the
way to the Gates themselves.
        As the Asgard forces stumbled behind the line drawn by the
last reserve unit - the 59th Einherjar Legion, formed from the elite
Autobot casualties of the Cybertronean Civil Wars - the Autobots
leveled their weapons and prepared for the final onslaught.
        "Ironhide, does this all seem vaguely familiar to you?"  Brawn
didn't bother glancing over at the elder Autobot, focusing his
attention instead on the oncoming hordes.
        "Yep."  Ironhide fired a stream of high-viscosity oil towards
the oncoming army, saturating the paved roadway before them.  "The
Chrome Mountain Pass, back in the Fifth War."  He smiled a little as
he added, "We won that one."
        "Reminds me more of Autobot City," Huffer chimed in. "You
know, the one where we all cashed in our microchips?"
        "Speak for yourselves, Autobots."  A little behind the defense
line, a lone blue-grey Decepticon Seeker struggled to finish attaching
a new wing to his body.  Baffle had been an early casualty of the Third
War, the first Cybertronian war pitting Autobot against Decepticon,
and as such was one of the relatively few Decepticons in the Einherjar
armies.  If one has fought and died with honor and in glory, the
Valkyrior are not picky about the context.
        "Hold still," Huffer grumbled, climbing out of the trench long
enough to finish the repairs to Baffle's back.  "Anyway, it's just
like it; a hard and fast strike, then pound and pound until something
breaks.  Just like Autobot City."
        "Naw, nothin' like that at all," Ironhide said.  "We got
caught in a sneak-attack there.  Here, we can see it comin' from a
mile away."
        "One thousand, two hundred fourteen meters and closing," Prowl
chipped in.  "I don't think we can hold them, Autobots."  As he spoke,
a flash of light and a roll of unnatural thunder erupted from beyond
their right flank, chanting voices barely audible, but unintelligible,
over the roar of battle.
        Near the end of the Autobot line, Trailbreaker chuckled.
"Don't be so sure, Prowl.  Speaking of Autobot City, Fort, I think
it's time to call in the big guns."
        The Autobot at the end of the line shook his head.  "Not yet.
They're not close enough.  We need to wait until they're committed -
until they can't get out of range before it's too late."
        Ironhide glanced at the two-tone gray Autobot, then smiled as
he returned to his sniper fire.  Fort was one of the gentlest
Autobots, one of the most likely to give peace a chance.  He always
fought as humanely as possible.  For him to speak so cold-bloodedly
about trapping the enemy in a killing zone impressed upon Ironhide
more than ever just what a desperate struggle this was, and he was
glad to see that this had not been lost on Fort as he'd feared it
might be.
        He almost wished Optimus Prime could be here, except that,
given the context, that would mean wishing the great Autobot leader
dead - something Ironhide, for millennia his bodyguard, could never
do.
        "One kilometer even!" Prowl declared, opening fire with a
medium-range gyro-rifle.  "Fortress, what are you waiting for?"
        "Seven hundred fifty meters," Fort replied steadily.
        "Let's not quibble over the little stuff," Windcharger yelled,
pointing.  "If they break through what's left of the GENOM line
they'll have a clear shot at the forward aid station!"
        Fortress's optics narrowed.
        "No they won't," he replied.  He jumped from the trenches and
climbed up one of the towers alongside the gates to the Golden City.
As he climbed, the towers began to shift and rotate, walls to slide
forward.  Weapons appeared from panels, extended from tubes, trained
upon the oncoming Niflheim army.
        Reaching the top of the wall, Fortress transformed, landing in
place in a socket atop the highest point of the shifting walls.  From
two pylons hands extended themselves, flexing, stretching; redoubts
pulled themselves inwards, forming feet and legs, bringing the immense
mass of city into a standing position.
        In ten seconds' time, a whole borough of the City of Asgard
had detached itself and shed its patina of gold to reveal gray and
blue armor, forming an immense humanoid figure much taller than the
tallest frost giant.
        Fortress Maximus turned to bring his artillery-scale blaster
rifle to bear on the enemy armor element pounding the GENOM line near
the perimeter of the aid station - and his grim features bore a look
of confusion as he witnessed the sudden change those ten seconds had
wrought upon the enemy.  During the transformation, the Niflheim
forces had lost their momentum, and as he watched they slowed.. and
stopped... and milled, uncertain, in the middle of the great plain.
        This effect was not limited to the spearhead less than a
thousand yards in front of the Autobot line.  Somehow, the spirit
which had driven the dark forces onward through the battle was gone,
vanished in the final echoes of thunder from the right flank.  Slowly,
before the astounded optics of the Autobots, the forces of darkness
began to pull back.  The charge became a skirmish, and then a
rear-guard, and then the enemy was clear of the final defenses and
withdrawing from the field.
        With extreme dissatisfaction, Fortress Maximus folded his huge
arms and rumbled, "That was a total waste of the element of surprise."
        Prowl looked up at Fort Max and asked, "Should we
countercharge?"
        "No," Fortress Maximus shook his head.  "They may be trying to
draw us out so they can flank us.  We must reform the defensive line.
Contact the human field commander and request fresh orders."
        "And call up for more guns so Huffer and I can strengthen this
line," Trailbreaker shouted.
        "Yeah, an' get some fresh oil, too," Ironhide grumbled.
"All'a this snow an' wind is makin' mah manifolds stick."
        "Would you like a pizza while I'm at it?" Prowl grumbled.
        Dozens of Autobots looked at Prowl in utter confusion.  "Never
mind," Prowl sighed, opening the comm channel.  "59th Einherjar to HQ,
come in... "
       
        On a stretcher in between the building hurriedly converted
into a pre-op ward and the equally makeshift emergency ward, a man lay
horribly mutilated.  Half his bones were broken, both lungs punctured,
and his face crushed.  From his arm, an IV trailed upward to a glucose
drip.
        The lights in the room flickered dimly, which was unusual in a
city fabled for light in myth and song.  This was not the fault of the
designers of the building, though; the building designers had never
anticipated the passive drain of megawatts of power from light
fixtures and power outlets into a small object, six feet long, wearing
a windbreaker.
        As the lights grew dimmer, the figure on the cot began to
move, albeit not voluntarily, nor in any fashion that Nature would
dictate a healthy humanoid could move.  Broken bones knit hurriedly.
Flesh shifted, ripped, healed again, in its proper shape.  The man's
breathing, which had been barely detectable before, grew stronger,
deeper, more regular.  The level of fluid in the IV's drip plummeted.

        Finally, the man yawned and stretched his limbs.  The lights
grew bright again, and the stand holding the IV toppled as he shifted
position.  The IV bag flopped empty on the floor as the man sat up,
assessed his surroundings, and yanked the needle from his arm.  He
appeared thinner than he had been, but not emaciated... and in fact,
he felt much better than he had before.
        "I needed that," Redneck said with a smile, and he walked off
in search of the battle.

        Colonel Harrison blasted a trio of dark elves who had set up a
small mortar outside the Freespacer defensive trenches and paused to
survey his command.  Only three of his large gun turrets still
functioned, and all five of the CAVs had been disabled or destroyed
and their pilots killed.  His effective fighting strength was down to
under five hundred, with a good quarter of those walking-wounded.  All
in all, the situation stank on ice - and he should know, since the
snow continued to pile up atop the bodies of the dead and undead
alike.
        Looking out over the oval of trenches again, Harrison noticed
that the Niflheim troops surrounding his position had stopped their
assault... not just stopped, but were slowly pulling back, in good
order, from the line.  A handful of his own troops had lowered their
rifles to stare at the enemy.  All around them, trolls, elves, and
undead walked past, apparently not noticing the battered regiment of
Marines just a few yards away.
        A handful of Freespacers crawled up from the trenches and
began firing into the retreating army; Colonel Harrison shouted, "No,
dammit, get back in the holes!"  Reluctantly, and with the halfhearted
persuasion of answering Niflheim fire, the Marines obeyed, and the
pocket of resistance watched as the battered but still massive
Niflheim force marched on.
        Off in the distance, the shriek of gravtank fire echoed,
scattered at first, then louder.  A moment later, the sound of more
conventional shells fired from the snub-nosed Napoleon-class turrets
of Asgardian microtanks.  The fire grew louder, and off to the left of
Harrison's battered position, the Niflheim retreat parted, revealing
the spearhead of Einherjar armor rolling down from the left flank.
        "Orderly," Harrison shouted to his staff lieutenant, "take a
note.  If we get out of here alive at the end, I want this ditch
called Fort Bastogne."
        "Fort wha?" the young Freespacer shrugged.
        "Fort Bastogne," Harrison repeated.  "We just got relieved by
Patton."
        Sure enough, in the cupola of the lead panzer, the
cigar-chomping grin of George Patton gleamed out from beneath the
star-bedecked helmet on the old general's head.  On either side of him
flapped the banner of the Afrika Korps and the 'cracker flag' of the
CSA, presenting one of the most incongruous sights it had ever been
Colonel Harrison's pleasure to see.
        "Get the wounded ready for transport!" he shouted to anyone
close enough to hear.  "We just got our ticket out of here!"

        "That's it!" Butch whooped, grinning and dancing.  "The enemy
has disengaged across the entire battlefront!  We'll be able to
counterattack within the hour!  We did it we did it WE DID IT!!!"
       Tyr shook his head, wincing as a nurse bound up the wound in
his shoulder.  "No counterattack, Butch," he sighed.  "The worst is
yet to come."
        "The worst?"  Butch shrugged.  "What else is there?  We killed
Fenris and Hela and that bigass snake, and Loki's getting marched off
to prison now... what else is there?"
        "The rest of the prophecy," Tyr rumbled.  "Do you remember
what the prophecy says happens when the battle is over, and both sides
have annhilated each other?"
        Butch shook his head negatively.  "'Fraid not."
        "I do," a voice called from behind him.  Walking slowly through
the drifting snow, Kris strode up to the pair.  "According to what I
heard in school, after the gods and giants kill each other off, the
demons under Surtur will arise and destroy Asgard, and Jotunheim, and
Midgard, and all the Nine Worlds in fire, leaving only a handful of
survivors hiding in the World-Tree to arise and remake the world."
        "That's it," Tyr said.  "At least, close enough."
        A low boom throbbed across the plain - not quite the sound of
artillery, but a more scattered sound, as much a rattle as a thump. It
rang again, louder, across the plain, and again and again in a slow,
regular cadence.  Tyr and Butch both raised field glasses and saw
trolls banging spears against shields, elves banging pistols against
helmets, dwarves hammering the sides of their few remaining crawlers,
all in the slow, rolling rhythm.
        Butch scrambled for the command radio and threw open the
channel.  "Overstreet to all units.  Pull back to the inner defense
perimeter and prepare for assault.  All air units regroup and prepare
for heavy engagement.  Overstreet out."  Behind his voice, the beats
of the Niflheim drums rang deep and sinister, louder and louder with
each forboding beat.
        Then, for a long, terrible moment, the wind howled through the
silent ranks of both the Asgard and Niflheim forces.
        The sky cracked open, parting in a fissure lit from within by
the light of a billion flames.  Through the rip, one of the flames
flew into the Asgard skies, taking on a vaguely humanoid form; behind
it, a dozen more, and a dozen after it, arose into the skies, filling
the air with a high-pitched giggle which sent shivers through the
defenders' spines.
        A loud Hurrah! echoed across the plain as the rift expanded to
touch the earth.  From the rift marched rank after rank of warriors,
each seeming at first glance no different from the Asgardians
themselves... save that instead of the marks the gods wore on their
faces, these bore streaks and slashes of color, branded into their
faces - the marks of the Damned and their brood.  Behind the vanguard
of infantry came armor, and mecha: strange creations of stone and
rusted metal, decrepit-looking, almost laughable, but moving with a
dreadful purpose that belied their crumbling appearance; and the
battered, rusting hulks of Transformers, fallen in dishonor from both
sides of the Great War.
        And then, with a deep, rolling laugh, an enormous flaming arm
reached through the rift and grasped its edge.  The rest of the body
followed, impossibly high, towering over everything on the
battlefield.  The fire parted at the head to reveal a glowing mouth
and eyes, framed by yellow streamers braided into a beard and plaits
which ran down the giant's back.
        Surtur stood in the frame of the rift, as his children the
fire-demons flew around his head, and his servants the Damned of
Asgard flooded out onto the battleplain, thousands strong.
        <<OH, HO HO HO!>>  The demon's laughter boomed across the
battlefield louder than the giants' artillery.  <<NOW, AT LAST I SHALL
HAVE VENGEANCE ON THE KIN OF VIDI AND VI! TODAY, THE UNIVERSE DIES -
BY MY HAND!>>
        His laughter rang through the valley of the gods, chilling not
only the defenders but the Niflheim and Jotunheim troops as well.
        Kris shook his father, who had frozen and stared at the first
sight of Surtur, back to his senses.  "Dad, I need to find Odin, and I
need to find him -now-.  Where is he?"

        Colonel Harrison swore, and swore profoundly, at the tides of
war.
        The appearance of the forces of Surt between Patton's scratch
armor and the main Asgard lines had stranded the remnants of the
Freespacer Marines and the various armor forces.  An attempt to work
their way around the fallen gods had resulted in the entire group
getting stranded behind the Niflheim lines, all the way to the far end
of the plain of battle.  In front of them stood, sullen and
unresponsive, the remnants of the dark elves and dwarves, the
dishonored dead, the various giants and all their panoply, terrible to
behold even in confusion and defeat.
        "All right," Patton growled around his long-extinguished
cigar, "if we can't kick 'em in the balls, we'll kick 'em in the
ass.  Form line of battle!"
        Panzers, Napoleons, TIE-tanks and one barely functional
Freespacer CAV shook themselves out of the mass of armor, forming a
single line abreast across the rear of the Niflheim formation.
Between the tanks, the remaining able-bodied Freespacers lined up in
support, Proton Packs and blaster rifles at the ready.
        Patton raised himself from the cupola of his command tank and
raised his hand, preparing to order one more charge into the enemy
forces, when Jeb Stuart shouted, "General! White flag from the enemy
position!"  As he spoke, gunfire erupted within the Niflheim forces,
and through the blowing snow a huge white banner became visible from
the top of one stone-giant tank, surrounded by thousands upon
thousands of Niflheim troops.  The greater mass of the dark forces
were firing back at the surrendering force, attempting to stop the
column from defecting.  The fire cut off as the column passed the
halfway mark between the Niflheim force and Patton's armor, and as the
column slowed before the Asgardian force a second flag unfurled,
virtually identical to the Confederate battle flag flying from
Stuart's Napoleon.
        "Hello!"  A single figure strode through the snow, slush and
mud towards the command tank.  "Hello the cavalry!  Request permission
to join up!"
        Harrison, Patton, Rommel and Stuart exchanged stunned
looks.  Harrison voiced it for them all: "WHAT?"
        The figure kept striding forward, and Stuart gasped as the
dark-haired, sallow-faced figure came into better view; under a thin
veil of decay and dishonor, the smiling face of Lieutenant General
Nathan Bedford Forrest looked up at the tanks.  "Sir, I represent a
number of the dead and the various races of the Nine Worlds who are
not present in this battle voluntarily.  Put bluntly, sir, we were
drafted."
        Harrison scratched his head and tried to cope.  "Why the hell
are you coming over to us?  And why NOW?"
        Forrest smiled, this time showing more teeth than strictly
necessary.  "In life, I fought for what I believed was the just right
of the white race to rule over the black.  I fought that because I
believed that the alternative was the destruction of my homeland, sir,
not just of my culture or my government but of the very nation of
peoples.  In that fight I became responsible for a number of
atrocities, I admit... but I ask you to remember that I fought to
-preserve,- and not to destroy."
        Jeb Stuart nodded agreement at this.
        "When I awoke from my final slumber in Niflheim, I discovered
to my horror that I would be expected to fight to destroy not only my
beloved South, but the entirety of creation, a realm far greater than
any living mortal mind can comprehend.  A great many of us are opposed
to such a fight, sir... but so long as Hela lived, it was impossible
for us to resist.  We quite literally did not have a choice, believe
it as you will, in our actions.  If we tried to disobey, our bodies
would move of their own accord to fulfil Hela's wishes.  Our attempted
rebellion only accomplished this much, that we were placed in the rear
instead of the front."  Forrest chuckled, shaking his head.  "I would
have done it exactly the opposite.  Place your unreliable troops in
the front, so that they cannot run, and use your reliable ones to keep
them in line."
        "I can sympathize with your dilemma, sir," Rommel nodded.
"Only too well.  But Hela is now dead and Loki prisoner.  What do you
wish of us?"
        Forrest took off his gloves and slapped them against his pants
leg.  "Sir, we are dead and condemned to dishonor.  That is a
self-evident fact, and just reward for the acts we committed in life.
The giants, elves and dwarves I have with me live for the battle, and
have no wish to eliminate the gods they strive against.  We desire no
reward, no pardon, no forgiveness for what we did or who we are.  All
we want is to be on the right side... the side we truly believe in...
at the end of the day."  Under the battered cavalry hat, haunted eyes
stared up at Patton and the other commanders.  "Sir, let us fight
alongside you."
        With a shout, the other Niflheim troops began charging into
battle again behind the demons of Surt. Only a token force remained
behind, facing Patton's troops.  Above, Asgardian fighters fell from
the skies as fire-demons slashed and turned about them, flaming down
the metal darts.  Artillery rolled over the clash of sword and shield,
and shadows moved as the giant pillar of fire named Surtur strode
towards the Golden City.
        "PLEASE, sir," Forrest rasped.
        Patton's cigar fell from his lips; he had chewed through the
tobacco.  His lips tightened momentarily, his hands clenched the tank
hatch, and he stared at the group of dishonored dead before him.  The
he spat the stub of the cigar sideways and spoke.
        "Deploy your forces in our front, General," Patton growled.
"You will support our armor charge into the enemy rear.  Wait for the
signal to attack."
        "Sir!!" Harrison looked up at Patton.  "You're going to allow
these... these... -deserters-... into the ranks?"
        Patton, Rommel and Stuart looked down at Harrison.  "Son, when
you're dead, you'll understand better," Patton growled.  "That poor
bastard could have been any of us, but for tiny little things.  I for
one don't give a good goddamn what he did in life - that man could
fight, and he could lead, and I will be damned if I let him go to
waste."  He extracted another cheroot from his jacket, pulled out a
Zippo, and growled, "Now see to your troops.  We'll wait until they've
completely committed themselves to the attack, and then we'll tear 'em
asshole from appetite."
        Harrison, confused, saluted and stepped off into the snow.

        The defenders of Asgard steeled themselves to be overrun by
the sheer weight of the enemy's numbers, each calculating the number
of the enemy he might be able to take with him to oblivion.
        Ten seconds before contact, another in the day's long series
of incredible things happened:
        The sound of singing came to the ears of defender and attacker
alike, coming from just to the left of the Asgardian defensive line...
and behind it.  The words could not be made out - the singers were too
far away - but it sounded like a battle hymn, a song for marching.
And indeed they were marching: out of the cliffside valley to the
west came rank after rank of shapes, indistinct at this distance,
vaguely man-like but spindly and insectoid, clutching weapons of
curious shapes and types.  Many of the shapes had garishly emblazoned
banners flying from poles strapped to their backs.
        At first the defenders took these otherworldly creatures for
another wave of the hellish assault against them, until they realized
one very basic fact: the newcomers were marching out of the valley at
an angle that would take them across the Asgardian line at an angle,
straight into the face of the startled Niflheim army.
        Gryphon, near the back of the knot of defenders who had been
preparing to die before the gates of the city itself, hit his boosters
and jumped fifty feet in the air, then hovered on the plumes of thrust
from his back jets as he zoomed his holovisor in on the broad,
brush-haired figure at the point of this bizarre alien charge - the
only humanoid figure in a sea of purple and green insectoids, riding
on the back of something that looked like what a horse might look like
if it were a giant bug.
        Yes, indeed, his eyes did not deceive him: It was Derek Bacon,
one of his oldest friends from the earliest days of the Wedge Defense
Force.  Bacon's normally placid face was grinning broadly and painted
in garish war colors, slashes of black and green.  He wore strange,
chitinous armor designed to resemble the carapaces of his multitude of
insectoid minions.  In one huge hand he brandished a great bronze
sword with a point like a spade; in the other he held an old-fashioned
WDF E-Mag blaster pistol and the reins of his mount.
        It was at about that point that the words to the battle hymn
of the great Bugrom army became intelligible to the defenders:

Onward Bugrom soldiers, marching on to war
With the flag of Derek going on before!
Bacon our great Prophet leads against the foe;
Through the flames and bitter pain, watch his standard go-OH...

Onward Bugrom soldiers, marching on to war
With the flag of Derek going on before!

See the subject races falling on their knees!
See them beg and grovel and beg us pretty please!
All praise be to Derek, who brings our destiny!
Hail his wisdom and his strength, wondrous for to see-EEE...

Onward Bugrom soldiers, marching on to war
With the flag of Derek going on before!

Soon the entire galaxy shall fall before our might-
But first a toast to Derek, noble in our sight!
What other noble leader could ever loom so large?
Let the Bugrom have no fear so long as he's in cha-ARGE...

Onward Bugrom soldiers, marching on to war
With the flag of Derek going on before!

        Gryphon killed his boosters and dropped back to the ground,
trying very hard not to burst out laughing.
        "Is that Lightnin?!" Kei demanded, incredulous.
        "Yup," Gryphon replied.  "I guess he wasn't pulling our leg
about that whole 'Bugrom War God' thing."
        Yuri stared at him.
        MegaZone, for the first time since his unfortunate encounter
with what had been the Mask of Eris, smiled.
        The four of them charged to the front and joined up with the
spearhead of the Bugrom advance, running or flying as their equipment
allowed them alongside Bacon's mount.
        "Derek!" Gryphon cried.
        Bacon grinned down from the back of his giant beetle.  "Hey-o,
Gryph!  I see we haven't missed all the fun yet!"
        "Actually, your timing couldn't be better," Yuri remarked.
        "You really -are- the Bugrom God of War?!" Kei sputtered.
        "You bet!" Derek replied, then scratched at his chin with the
thumb of his rein hand.  "Although, y'know, I didn't believe it either
until High Priest Beppo told me that there was trouble in the Kingdom
of Heaven and we ought to get the Holy Army of the Bugrom Sword
moving."  He looked sheepish.  "Tell you the truth, I didn't know what
the hell he was talking about!  'S one of the reasons we're so late."
        "What's the other one?" Zoner wondered aloud.
        Derek's grin broadened again as he pointed to the eastern
horizon.  "We had to make a little side trip and pick up some help!"
        A cloud of snow was boiling up behind the eastern ridgeline,
just behind the Niflheim army's right flank, where most of its armor
and mecha were concentrated for the clash with Asgard's remaining
armor.  Gryphon got some altitude again and kicked up the zoom on his
optics once more, just in time to see a vehicle crest that ridge in an
explosion of snow, then lunge down it toward the Niflheim flank,
followed by another and then another, a great ragged 'V' of vehicles
with the one he'd seen first at its point.  Behind them came a small
force of aircraft and a small group of starships, ranging from a
blaster-snouted rocketship to a very familiar blunt-arrowhead giant.
        The lead vehicle on the ground was an articulated heavy cargo
hauler, brilliant scarlet with a pair of shining silver cargo modules
in train behind it, and Gryphon's heart leaped to see it.  The leader
slashed into the flank of the army of the damned's armored brigade
like a sword thrust, scattering rust-flaked tanks and piloted stone
golems like tenpins, then exploded up into robot mode in their midst.
He combinined as he rose with his slave trailer to form a more
powerful robot while the second trailer assumed his own robot mode to
cover his leader's back.  All around him, his Autobot troops likewise
transformed and laid into the enemy with a vengeance.  Even at this
distance - a good half-mile - Super Optimus Prime's booming voice
easily reached the ears of all the defenders of Asgard:
        "Autobots - HIT 'EM HARD!"
        The fallen Autobots of the Einherjar gave a mighty cheer.
        Gryphon gave up altitude and flipped up his armored facebowl
so Derek could see the look of wonder on his face through the clear
underbowl.
        "Quite a side trip," he remarked.
        Derek shrugged.  "Cybertron's between the Hiveworld and X-21,"
he said.  "Besides, it was really -their- idea."  He angled a thumb
over his shoulder, and his four fellow WDF old-timers turned to look
as several more familiar forms emerged from the swarm of Bugrom
marching behind Derek's giant battle beetle.
        Martin Rose pulled down the scarf of his Hammer costume and
grinned; beside him, Eiko Magami Rose hefted her warhammer and tried
out a somewhat fiercer member of the smile family.  Ranged behind
-her- was the crew of the WDF Galactic Survey Ship Axalon, adjusting
their weapons and grinning.
        "Blaster and his cassette crew are watching Kate," Hammer said
before Kei or Gryphon could ask.  "They hated like hell to miss this
party, but the big guy owed me."
        Kei smiled, nodded; that was good enough for her.
        "And to think," said Dinobot to Kei in a dryly reproachful
tone, "that you failed to -tell- me - me! - that such a battle was in
the offing!  But for PCHammer I would have -missed- it!"  He folded
his spindly raptor arms and gave her a look of mock petulance.  "I
thought you were my friend."
        Kei grinned at him and replied nonchalantly, "Yeah, well,
I didn't have much time, so I only called my really -tough- friends."
        Dinobot gave her a sharklike grin and converted to robot
mode.  As he drew his Sonic Sword he chuckled and said dryly, "Of
course."
        "Now, if you'll excuse me," said Hammer briskly, "my posse
awaits."  He turned to Eiko, his eyes twinkling, and said, "Now you
bust frost giant butt -carefully-, OK, hon?"
        Eiko grinned.  "Will do, Diggy.  You watch your -own- butt."
        Rose looked back over his shoulder, shrugged.  "Not with this
cape on," he replied.  Then he gave his wife a kiss, tugged his scarf
back into position, jumped thirty feet straight up in the air, and
transformed to Rotofoil Jet mode, streaking across the battlefield
toward the roiling Autobot/Niflheim-armor punch-up.
        The Wedge Defenders turned their attention to the matter at
hand.
        "Holy Army of the Bugrom Sword!" Derek shouted, raising his
gleaming bronze blade high.  "Break ranks and attack!"
        The Bugrom ceased to sing, let out what amounted for them to a
cheer, and charged.
        "Let's go, Binky!" Derek cried, giving his beetle the spurs,
and he and his old friends rode the wave of the Bugrom charge into the
teeth of the enemy.

        One thing a surprising number of the accounts of this battle,
which tend overall to be rather confused, agree upon is the location
during these latter stages of MegaZone.  Simply put, the man was
everywhere, an unmistakable sight with the plastron of an icetrooper
suit thrown hastily over the tattered remains of his WDF tunic and a
dark rage in his eyes.  Delivering ammunition to a pocket of Asgardian
Army soldiers on the south side; repulsing a thrust toward the aid
station with the 59th Einherjar, wielding an Autobot photon pistol as
a squad automatic weapon; standing on the battlements of the city
itself, bellowing a rallying cry to the pinned White Legionnaires.  He
yelled himself hoarse and must have covered fifty miles over the
course of the afternoon, and everywhere he went, Yuri followed, his
scarlet shadow with a lethal sting.

        Division III of the Holy Army of the Bugrom Sword was an elite
guards unit.  On the Hiveworld they were the guardians of Queen Diva
Herself, and thus of the life of the colony, for if the Queen were
lost, the Bugrom, as a race, were doomed.  Still, this duty superceded
even that holy calling, for the Prophecy was clear on the point: if
the Queen's Guards were not present at the Cataclysm, there would be
no future for the colony to survive to see.  They had followed the
Holy Derek gladly to this alien place, and now they hurled themselves
into battle with joyous abandon.
        Their leader was almost a mythic figure among the Bugrom
himself: The Green Knight of the Hive, one of the two Bugrom Not Born
of Bugrom, he had fallen from the sky with Derek the Warlord and stood
by His divine side in the War of the Lizards.  Since then the Red
Hive-Knight had remained on the Hiveworld, bodyguard and Consort to
the Queen; but the Green Hive-Knight had come and gone, sometimes with
the Warlord, sometimes alone, and when he visited the Hive, he led the
rest of the Queen's Guards.
        This august figure, radiant in his shining green armor and his
brilliant yellow-and-black-striped abdomen, flew at the head of
Division III's charge, a banner on a pole affixed to his carapace.
His wicked stinger gleamed dagger-like even in the feeble light of
this overcast day, and the snarl of his wings split the air like
thunder.  As Division III reached the battle line, he opened his
mandibles wide and cried,
        "GUARDIANZZ OF THE QUEEN - ATTAAAAAAACK!!!"
        The Queen's Guards threw themselves into the enemy formation,
overpowering armor and infantry alike through the weight of their
numbers and the power of their hand-held weapons.  Proton blasts and
missiles tore into rock-troll tanks and gutted them; whole platoons of
Bugrom soldiers gritted their mandibles, heaved, and overturned
vehicles, spilling their trollish crews forth.
        The trolls were about evenly divided between panic and rage,
for trolls detest bugs beyond all things save shape-changers.  They
scrambled from their wrecked vehicles and waded in with swords and
vibropikes, which the Bugrom met with claw and stinger and powered
bayonet.  The carnage was incredible, even for -this- battle.
        Group Leader Gjelfir Durmatter shouted orders to his troops,
desperately trying to snap them out of their horrified fury and get
them to fight the enemy with their heads rather than just their guts.
"Regroup, damn your bones!" he roared, brandishing his honor sword
from the cupola of his command tank and blasting a Bugrom platoon with
his hatch-mounted autogun.  "They're only bugs!  Don't lose your
thrice-damned... heads... "
        The last word died in Durmatter's throat as the one flying bug
drew even with his tank and hovered, its wingbeats growling in the air
between them.  Troll ichor dripped from its stinger, and it almost
looked to Durmatter as if its buggy face were somehow grinning at him.
His jaw dropped as he realized how different its taxonomy was from all
the other Bugrom.
        "You are no Bugrom soldier," he said, his voice almost lost in
the din of battle, but the bug heard him.  It drew back in its
hovering position as if affronted, its insectoid limbs assuming an
indignant hands-on-hips-like posture.
        "Nooo," it replied.  "Wazzpinator no zzoldier.  Wazzpinator
RULEZZ!  WAZZPINATOR - TERRORIZZZZE!!"
        And then, to Gjelfir Durmatter's absolute horror, it
-changed-, flipping over in midair, legs folding, arms appearing from
somewhere, as its bug head split and swung downward to reveal
another, smaller insect head with a weirdly humanoid aspect to it.
        Durmatter was still screaming when Waspinator's twin blasters
opened up and cooked off his tank.
        With a satisfied "hmph," Waspinator turned to see which of his
division's elements needed the most help.  From somewhere off to his
right he heard a deep voice bellow, "FOR THE GLORY OF THE RRROYALTY!
BURN, FOUL CREATURES!  BUUURRRRRNNNN!!"
        The Green Hive-Knight smiled.  Wherever they needed help, it
certainly wasn't where Inferno was.  He headed to the left, weapons
ready.

        R-Type was at the perimeter of the Forward Aid Station, in a
trench with the rest of his - well, all right, Otto Skarne's -
surviving men.  Neither Kawalsky to his left nor Feretti to his right
complained about his presence; they knew that the battle had gone well
beyond the stage where -anyplace- was safe, and he might as well be
here contributing as anywhere else.  Hell, Skarne himself was just a
little way down the trench, blazing away at any enemy that happened to
get too close, just like everybody else.
        "This is a hell of a way to spend a weekend," R-Type remarked
as he slapped another powerpack into his D.4a.
        "And this is only Thursday," Feretti agreed.

        The arrival of the Bugrom and the Autobots turned the tide of
battle slowly but inexorably against the forces of Niflheim.  The
Autobots reinforced the remaining Asgardian armor and mecha against
the nightmare machines of the undead.  Jetfire's Autobot Air Wing
helped the few remaining Asgardian Dragons contend with the fiery
Muspelheim fliers.  The seemingly innumerable hordes of the Bugrom
Army of the Holy Sword overwhelmed the Dishonored Dead.  Within two
violent hours it was clear that, if the Golden City were to fall, it
would fall only by the main force and effort of Surtur himself.

       Odin grunted, extracting his right leg from under the immense
iron weight Loki had materialized over his body.  His body was covered
with scraped flesh, dented armor and ripped leather, but his bones
were yet sound.  One did not end the life of the Allfather quite that
easily.
        Three figures waded through the snow towards him: Tyr Grimjaws
and the two Overstreets.  Odin stared at them, rumbling, "What news do
you bring?"
        The Redneck pointed up wordlessly, gesturing at the immense
figure striding forward through the masses of demons, dishonored dead,
dark creatures of all descriptions and bodies of the fallen.
        Odin looked up, his countenance hardening as he took in the
sight.  "Surtur," he rumbled.  "Only once before have I gazed upon
that foul creature, and my brothers fell to prevent him from gaining
freedom, lo those aeons ago."  He opened his hand; Gungnir flew into
it with a moment's thought.  "Perhaps a new Allfather shall be born
this day."
        The Redneck blinked in disbelief as he watched Odin step
forward.  "You aren't going to CHALLENGE him, are you?  What is it
with this place and challenges?  I think there's something in the air
here!!"
        "Sir, he's got a point," Butch added.  "We need to gather
together as many of the strongest able-bodied fighters we have and
gang up on him.  HE sureashell isn't gonna fight fair!"
        "And what honor would I possess if I stooped to his tactics?"
Odin roared.  "Nay, this fight is mine and mine aloOOOF!!"  Odin's
knee gave way, and he fell to the snow; he levered himself up on
Gungnir and resumed stepping forward.
        "You are not in any condition to be challenging Surtur," the
Redneck pressed.  "Much less the troops between him and us."  He
gestured forward, less than half a mile in front, where a line of
demons and giants came forward at the quickstep, shouting defiance.
Not a single Asgardian stood between Odin and the advancing line.
        Odin spat out a curse in some gravelly language, sweeping
Gungnir before him; a wave of power arced away from the swing,
flashing into and through the oncoming troops and felling dozens.  The
line continued to advance over the bodies of the fallen, not even
slowing.
        "What troops have we to send against them?" Tyr asked.
        "Not a fucking one," Butch sighed.  "Everybody's engaged except
for the 59th, or else out of the fight entirely.   And the 59th is the
only thing stopping the enemy from entering the City."
        "Plus one doddering old father of the gods," Odin grumbled
sarcastically.
        "Beg your pardon, Allfather."  Butch bowed, and for the first
time in his life Kris thought his father really put meaning in that
phrase.
        "Forgiven, forgiven," Odin sighed.  "But I shall stop them
here.  Behold! for I am Odin, father of all the gods, and I call down
the LIGHTNING!"
        What came down wasn't lightning.
        Before Odin's fist could clench in the gesture of summoning,
the snow exploded in a wave of heat and light.  An instant later, a
deafening roll of thunder picked up the four men and threw them
backwards twenty feet.  Lesser explosions sent wind blowing from the
flanks as laser, phaser, and rail gun blasts spread along the flanks
of the newly opened hole in the enemy line.
        The first sound the Redneck was able to hear was the chirp of
his communicator.  He pulled it from his battered jacket, wrenched the
bent antenna grid open, and keyed it on.  "What do YOU want?"
        "Hiiiiiii Admiral!!"  Aya Nakajima's cheerful voice barely cut
through the roar of the Charlemagne pulling out of its power dive and
buzzing the highest towers of the city.  A moment later, and in the
opposite direction, WDF Concordia pulled out of its own dive, its
phasers and turbolasers blowing huge gaps in the army of the dark
forces.  "We're all done upstairs, so we came down to help!"
        "Help," the Redneck gasped.  "Help, you say.  You damn near
KILLED me and you call it HELP??"
        "Ano... "  Kris could almost hear Aya steepling her index
fingers self-consciously.  "It was only a little barrage... "
        "Never mind that now," the Redneck barked.  "Come about and
lay down suppressing fire behind the enemy advance line.  And call
Little Joe down here, we need more aerial support."  He looked up to
see dozens of fire-demons, giggling at almost supersonic pitches,
splitting away from the furball above to chase the two immense
starships.  "And watch your back.  Overstreet out."
        Closing down the communicator, Kris looked around.  The entire
enemy advance for about five hundred yards to either side was GONE.  A
clear hole ran from the small hillock to Surtur's slow advancing feet.
        Halfway through that hole stood Odin.
        The leather was smoking, the armor was blackened and dented
still further, and the proud grey head was in dire need of a combing,
but Odin strode, stiff, proud, and limping only a little bit, Gungnir
clenched firmly in his right hand.  "SURTUR!!" he bellowed, his voice
carrying to every corner of the battlefield.  "I HAVE UNFINISHED
BUSINESS WITH THEE!"
        <<COME AND TEST THY PUNY MIGHT, THEN, OLD MAN,>> Surtur
replied.  <<THY BROTHERS WERE ONLY A MINOR INCONVENIENCE.  THOU MAYST
HAVE CHEATED PROPHECY, BUT THOU HAST BOUGHT THYSELF ONLY A BRIEF
RESPITE.>>  A massive fist rose, and a giant tongue of flame lashed out
and down at the relatively tiny Allfather.  Odin spun Gungnir in his
hands, the flame scattering away from the whirling spear.
        With a shout, Odin stopped the spin, hurling Gungnir high into
the air.  As the spear reached the peak of its trajectory, Odin raised
his hand and clenched it; the spear hung in midair, orienting itself
on Surtur.  With another shout Odin brought down his hand, and as he
did Gungnir flew swift and sure, straight towards the mark Odin had
chosen for it.
        Gungnir, thrown by its rightful owner, never misses its mark;
that is the enchantment laid upon it by its makers.  However, nothing
in the enchantment prevents it from being blocked, and Surtur brought
up his left arm, letting the spear plunge deep in the mass of
flame.  Surtur howled in rage, plucking the spear out and letting it
fall, bright blue flame bursting from the wound.  Enraged, he curled up
his right fist and drove it down upon Odin.  The god, unable to dodge,
barely blocked with his arms, flying backwards into the mud from the
blow.
        As Odin struggled to regain his feet, Surtur brought up a
foot, ready to crush the weakened Allfather.  A flash of cloth, a sweep
of red light, and Surtur's vengeful smile became a howl of anguish as
the foot was sliced away.  <<AAAAAARGH!  WHO?  WHO DARES??>>
        The Redneck landed behind Surtur, struggling to keep from
collapsing from nausea.  He'd been very low on energy; the only source
of power he'd been able to think of was Surtur himself, and channeling
that power into an immense energy blade made the Dark Side seem like a
Jacuzzi by comparison.  It felt worse than falling into a latrine; it
felt more like BEING the latrine, maggots and all.
        If he let go now, however, he'd be utterly defenseless, so he
held on with all the strength of his will.  His mind whirled,
desperately balancing the power, the madness, the almost overwhelming
nausea, the fierce joy of battle, and the peace of the Force, like a
man struggling to keep a half-dozen plates spinning at the ends of
poles.
        Still, such a question deserved an answer, so he gritted his
teeth, threw out his chest, and snarled, <Kristan the Red dares,
tyrant!>
        Surtur roared, the severed foot evaporating in blue flame as a
new limb formed at the end of his leg.  <<PUNY MORTAL, I AM NOT
DESTROYED SO EASILY!>>  A ball of flame swept down from Surtur's fist,
which the Redneck barely parried; he was thrown off balance, the
unholy blade in his hands very nearly flickering out.  A tiny line of
flame connected the remaining blade to its source, Surtur's other
ankle; the Redneck had a brief thought of attempting to absorb Surtur
entirely, then rejected it as suicidal, dangerous, and above all
unspeakably revolting.
        Before Surtur could follow up, a tiny speck of uru and leather
struck him in the temple, shaking him head to toe; a moment later, a
bolt of starfire slammed into his back, throwing him to his hands and
knees.  The Redneck barely sprang out of the way, leaping high over
the fallen giant and landing on one of the few remaining underdwarf
tanks.  He paid no attention to the sudden white flag stuck up from
one firing slit, catching his breath as he observed Kei landing to one
side of Surtur while Thor, on the other side, caught the rebounding
Mjollnir in his hand.
        <<GNATS!>>  Surtur's leg flashed out, slamming into Thor and
knocking him hundreds of yards away.  An instant later, his hand
slashed around to grab Kei; she launched herself airborne with the
Cosmic Rod, screaming with pain as one flaming finger brushed against
her bad leg.  She spun in midair, distracted for a vital moment, as
Surtur raised his hand to swat her down.
        A silvery-black blur flashed up from the rear, fusillades of
particle beams and Hellbore fire blazing from its ports as it streaked
into the rapidly narrowing gap between Surtur's hand and Kei.  Surtur
flinched, roaring, as the enchanted weapons' fire tore at him, and his
aim was spoiled.  The sweep of his great hand caught only the blur,
missing the woman entirely.
        Struck almost full-force by Surtur's fist, his back-mounted
propulsion jets still screaming at full burn, Gryphon tumbled ass over
bandbox across the battlefield, crashed completely -through- a
rock-troll tank (cooking it off in a spectacular fireball), and wound
up on his back in a Griffin-shaped dent in the side of a small hill.
        Waspinator turned from his blazing away at trolls and mused,
"Mmm, not bad technique, but Wazzpinator would have tucked and rolled
for extra bounce or two.  Get more zzympathy that way.  Pretty good
overall, though.  Wazzpinator give it an 8.5."
        "Thanks," Gryphon replied wryly.  He tried to get up, failed,
and slumped back into the snow as status-warning messages flooded his
head-up display.  "You want to see if you can keep Big Red busy while
I try to get my gyros to stop tumbling?"
        Waspinator regarded Surtur for a second, then gave a long,
exaggerated sigh.  "Wazzpinator know this izz going to huuurt," he
remarked, and zoomed off.
        Surtur now held in his fist a giant mace, crafted from the
same flame as his own body; with this he parried a blow from the
Redneck's giant beamsword, flinging him back again.  Another blast of
cosmic power from the ground set him to slam the spiked head to the
earth; Kei dodged just barely in time.  Surtur howled as Gungnir dug
deeply into his ankle; a swift kick knocked Odin back out of the fray,
just in time for Thor to slam Mjollnir onto Surtur's toes.
        Into the middle of this flew Waspinator, hovering around the
giant's head, pouring laser blasts and missiles into his face.  Surtur
bellowed in pain.  As the giant recoiled, Odin dodged his flaming
hand, avoiding another deathblow.  Roaring, Surtur lashed out and
nailed the Green Hive-Knight full-force.  Luckily, Waspinator was too
light to be obliterated then and there.  He careened through the sky,
tumbling end over end, bouncing off the earth, tumbling over, bouncing
again off his shoulders, and finally making one last undignified
belly-flop beside Gryphon, whose suit systems had managed enough
self-repair to return him to battle.
        "... zzzee?  Thazz how izz done," Waspinator warbled weakly.
"Boik... "
        "I bow to the master."  Gryphon smiled behind his facebowl,
bowing deeply to the prone Predacon.  "Now, if you'll excuse me... " 
        Surtur was definitely being hampered by the efforts of the
defenders of Asgard, but "hampered" was not the same thing as
"stopped".  Odin, Thor, Tyr, Kei, and Redneck were still harassing
him, and they were starting to pick up additional help as more and
more of Asgard's heroes, resident and visitor, took inspiration from
their stand and joined the fray.  Alita Ironheart, the last Valkyrie
who could still fly, was making slashing attacks at the monster's
head, her speed and nimbleness keeping her just out of his fiery
reach.
        Before long she was joined by Gryphon, and then other fliers
began to enter their pattern.  Waspinator's fellow former Predacon
Terrorsaur, who had come from Cybertron with the Autobots; a platoon
of jetpacked Dendrobii Jump Troopers; Baffle, the Seeker of the 59th:
all joined in, speeding around Surtur like electrons around a nucleus.
For every one of them he knocked away, it seemed another would arise
from the field of battle to attack him.
        <<FILTHY GNATS!>> he repeated, laying out wildly all around
him.  <<YOU DARE CHALLENGE THE LORD OF THE LIVING FLAME?>>
        "If it's flame you want," came a bold voice, "then it's flame
you shall have!"
        With that Inferno, the Red Hive-Knight of the Bugrom, darted
into the flight pattern, his ion thrusters and twin blasters blazing.
If it bothered him that he was attacking a creature made entirely -of-
fire -with- fire, he didn't show it as he zoomed around Surtur with
cackling abandon.
        <<YOU MOCK ME?>> Surtur demanded, ceasing his relentless
advance to draw back and then slam the Predacon to the ground.
Stunned, his thruster array crushed, Inferno sagged in Surtur's fiery
grip as the giant raised him to eye level.
        While Surtur glared at him with furious hatred, trying to
decide what awful thing to do to him, Inferno recovered his wits.
With surprising strength, the Predacon yanked one of his arms and its
accompanying blaster free from the fire giant's grip.
        "I DENY you!" Inferno replied.  "The True Flame would not seek
to destroy the Colony!  BURN, IMPOSTER!  BUUURRRRN!!"
        So saying, he shot Surtur square in the left eye.
        <<AAAARRRGGHHH!!>> howled the fire giant.  He clapped one hand
to his injured eye; with his other, he flung Inferno away from him.
With his thruster unit damaged, the Red Hive-Knight clattered across
the ground, following much the same path as Waspinator until he
finally crashed into the hillside a few feet from his green colleague.
        "Welcome to the zzcrapheap, Ant-bot," Waspinator burbled.
        "It's only a scratch," Inferno replied staunchly as his head
fell off and rolled down the hill.
        

        James Joseph Condorcet XX, commander of the Charlemagne's ten
starfighter squadrons, struggled to maintain the calm composure his
ancestors had maintained in absurdly dangerous situations since the
first bearer of the name held commissions in the US Navy, US Army Air
Forces, and OSS in World War II.
        (Or so he'd claimed, back in the day.)
        It might have helped if he had a cigar, but he couldn't stand
tobacco.  It might have helped to remember that he'd recieved Omega-2
for heroism above and beyond during the GENOM War.  Unfortunately, the
only thing he could think of, besides the fire demon dissipating into
flamelets under concentrated laser blasts, was that he was less than
twenty-five years old and in dire danger of never seeing year
twenty-six.
        The wind pulled his X-wing to starboard, luckily slanting away
from a spray of flames thrown by a chittering flame-demon.  Flowing
with the air currents as he'd been taught in flight school, JJ spun
away from one demon and turned upon another, shattering its component
energies with concentrated laser fire.  Only supercharged lasers would
do the job; the Y-Wings were having much better luck with their
disrupting ion cannons.
        JJ took a moment to consult his sensor readouts, then gave it
up as a lost cause.  There were THOUSANDS of craft in the air, most of
them not reporting any transponder code at all.  The twin domes of
fore and aft readouts showed a solid sea of greens, reds and yellows.
The new GENOM-built sensor suites ought to have made the mess easier
to read through... if they hadn't blown the fuses in every craft
they'd been installed in.
        Over his canopy, a wounded TIE spun wildy downward, a flame
demon riding it down in terrible glee.  Without thinking, JJ blasted
the demon off the TIE with a pinpoint shot, only realizing as the TIE
pilot ejected how easily he could have destroyed the craft itself.
The thought only lasted a moment, as JJ checked his tactical readout;
the Freespacers had lost about a dozen craft from the hundred-odd
fighters they'd led down, but the GENOM fighters had lost nearly forty
of their hundred-and-thirty left over from the space battle.
        "Alpha One, this is Charlie One," JJ called through the
tacnet. "General, I'm reading disproportionate losses for your
fighters.  Respectfully suggest your command break for open space."
        General Tangril's reply came through a sudden wave of static:
"C'mon, c'mon, MERDE!  Sacre-damn bastard, um, Charlie One can this
wait perhaps un moment s'il vous plait?  I AM BUSY!!"  Her TIE
Advanced spun wildly, dodging three flame demons before an Asgardian
fighter cleared her tail.
        "General, your TIEs just aren't nimble enough in atmosphere
to - "
        "MY Twin Ion Engine starfighters are the finest light craft in
known space, Commander!"
        JJ sighed. "General, I'm going to ask you to put aside your
pride for a moment and consider - SHIT!!"  JJ swerved in his seat,
yanking the joystick aside instants before he and an Autobot would
have mingled their components.
        "M'sieu le Commander Condorcet," Tangril cooed through the
comlink, "whose shit would you have me consider?"
        "Very funny," JJ gasped.  "General Tangril, with all due
respect, my Y-Wings are more agile in atmosphere in high winds than
your fighters.  I am willing to admit you can turn on a dime and give
five centicreds change in space, but you're getting knocked around by
the winds and chewed up by the enemy.  I can't order you to get your
fighters back out to space, but for the sake of your command I
strongly advise it!!"
        "You're right, Commander," Tangril replied, "that is shit.
Have you considered we can't exactly retreat from the end of the
universe?"
        JJ paused for a moment.  "Ah... my apologies, General."  After
a moment longer, he added, "Do you think these things have a flight
ceiling?  They're made of flame and energy - I don't think they can
sustain themselves in the upper atmosphere.  None of them reads out as
higher than about eight thousand meters altitude.  Suggest your forces
regroup above their flight ceiling and stage attacks from there.
We'll give them trouble from this side."
        "Your suggestion has merit, Commander," Tangril replied.
"Alpha One to all GENOM fighters: increase to ten thousand meters
altitude and regroup for strike by wave."  A loud click sounded across
JJ's helmet speakers as Tangril added, "And just to you, Little
Joe... thank you."
        JJ blinked.  "Thank me for what?"
        Click.  "What was that, Charlie One?  I'm afraid my
communications suffered a brief failure.  Did you say something?"
        "Never mind, General, Charlie-One out."  JJ shrugged and threw
the throttle forward, swooping down on a pair of flame-demons.  How
does Dad do it? he asked himself.  I'll never understand women,
especially not women who outrank me...
        Not that I'll admit that to anyone else...

        Surtur surveyed his position with growing apprehension as he
fought his way onward through the infuriating swarm of aerial
adversaries.  Below him, Odin and Thor held their weapons, Gungnir and
Mjollnir, at the ready against the giant fire demon.  To the left,
Verthandi and her mortal lover stood together, the sword in the
mortal's grasp glowing with satisfaction from the wounds it had dealt
this day, Verthandi's gentle eyes full of defiance.  Skuld and the
three Valkyrie who remained on their feet stood by Odin as well, their
weapons ready, their eyes resolute.  To the right, the mortal who
called himself Kristan the Red smiled grimly up at him, daring to
drain away Surt's unholy fire and to shape an immense sword of pure
energy from it.
        Still other mortals stood ranked against him as well - the
black-armored one, the tall dark one with the haunted eyes, the three
in white armor - unaware or unconcerned that they were dwarfed a
hundred times and more by the foe they faced so bravely.  And behind
the Allfather, hovering hundreds of yards over the battlefield, four
immense starships, one all edges and triangles, one a blunted
arrowhead of glittering orange-gold metal, the others boxy and heavily
armored, trained their most potent weapons upon the Lord of the
Living Flame.
        Still worse, beyond all that three giant Autobots, the war god
of the Bugrom, and his holiest troops had positioned themselves
athwart the very gateway to the Golden City.  The tallest of the
robots was as big as Surtur himself and bristled with weaponry to
rival that of the foreboding starships.
        Any one, any two, any three of these threats Surtur could
handle with ease.  After all, had he not done for Vidi and Vi at the
gates of his own realm, all those ages ago when everything was young
and the gods were more powerful?
        But Odin should not be here; Fenris should have slain him.
        Thor should not be here; the Serpent's venom should have eaten
him away.
        The Norns should not be here; they should be cowering inside
Yggdrasil and praying for its protection to cover them.
        The Valkyrior should not be here; they should be as dead as
the Einherjar they had chosen, wiped out by the Dishonored Dead.
        And the mortals, the hell-forsaken mortals, above all THEY
should not be here, not a single one of them.
        Above and around them, the battle raged on, the Einherjar
fighting the Dishonored Dead; the fallen gods dueling the defenders of
Asgard; the flames of Surt, his children, striving with the flimsy
metal darts of Asgard's air and starfighter forces.
        The battle, he realized, would be close.  Very close.
        Too close.
        But the day was not yet lost.
        With a roar Surtur drew his hands together, sending a massive
blast of power down to his feet.  The shockwave struck the ground and
spread in a circle, knocking away his smaller attackers and
momentarily dazing Thor and Odin.  A second blast was directed at a
single midair object, where the Kristan creature had leaped to avoid
the first shockwave; he smiled as the Redneck tumbled backwards in
midair, finally relinquishing that part of Surtur's own power he had
been wielding.
        The moment's satisfaction savored, the fire giant ignored the
lesser fighters, stepping off into a quick walk, then a slow
thundering run.  As the heroes of Asgard gave chase, Surtur sent blast
after blast of unholy fire behind him, not enough to slay any but
enough to hamper their pursuit.  His eyes remained locked on the spot
little less than a mile before him, the gates of the Golden City and
the sole warrior there capable of giving battle.
        If the City falls, Yggdrasil is mine, Surtur thought with a
smile.  And with Yggdrasil destroyed, all shall return to primordial
flame, and then perfect entropy.  One chance for total victory... and
all that stands in my way is one warrior.

        Fortress Maximus had stood passively, watching the battle
raging in the front, analyzing the struggle against Surtur from power
levels to tactical countermeasures.  Below his feet, the other Autobots
of the 59th watched the GENOM line in front of them sagging before the
last desperate surge of the combined forces of the demons, giants,
dark elves, underdwarves, and dishonored dead.
        Fortress noted, within the privacy of his own cerebration
unit, that the forces of evil had, by the book, already lost.  With
General Overstreet - Butch, that is - reorganizing the forward lines
after Surtur's first attack, Optimus Prime's Autobots and Derek
Bacon's Bugrom rolling up the overstretched enemy flanks, and the
combined Asgardian armor striking the whole in the rear, the forces of
darkness were now trapped in a killing box.  It was only a matter of
time before something gave, one direction or another.
        Something did give.  A roar of thunder and several flashes of
flame rose from the battle with Surtur.  Fort looked over to see the
flame giant, noticably reduced in stature from his first appearance,
charging forward in a lumbering run towards his position.  Even as his
mind calculated the expenditure of power necessary for Surtur to have
shrunk so much, he shouted, "Autobots, SCATTER!  Regroup behind the
GENOM troops and counterattack the enemy!  Surtur is MINE!"
        Fortress barely noted Prowl shouting, "He's right, Autobots!
Transform and roll for it!"  His vast sensor suite focused on Surtur
and nothing else, the various guns and autocannons on his immense body
aligning themselves on Surtur's approaching body.  Fire rained down on
Surtur from the starships stationed above, but most of it missed him,
and what hit him failed to stop him.  At one kilometer Fortress
Maximus opened fire with his twin plasma busters.  Explosions covered
Surtur's front with blossoms of orange and blue flames, but Surtur
kept coming.  At five hundred yards Fortress let loose with his
autocannons, slugs plunging through Surtur's body with barely a
disruption, and his heavy blaster emplacements.  At two hundred yards
Fortress drew his twin photon cannon, firing it into Surtur's belly;
the giant groaned, gritting teeth the color of molten steel, and kept
coming, sprinting at the end.
        And then Surtur was atop him, arms wrapped around his metal
torso, pushing him backwards towards the city gate.
        Fortress Maximus groaned, digging in his heels as Surtur's
surprisingly heavy body drove him back.  With a grunt he grabbed
Surtur's arms, pulling them away from his body, pushing back at the
elder demon.  The two giants faced each other, pausing for just a
moment, equal in stature if not in power.  His shoulders creaking,
Fort poured on the power.  The disconcertingly calm voice of his
onboard computer informed him that he faced permanent Spark loss
within 2.854 cycles under this level of punishment.  The last time
he'd heard a warning like that he'd died three cycles later.  Even so,
he resolved to fight to the very end, and to take the fight to the
enemy as of now.
        Fort Max's fist caught Surtur across the chin, knocking him
back for only a moment.  Surtur responded with a haymaker of his own,
his arm swinging wide before connecting alongside Fortress's head.  For
a moment the linkages between Fort and his larger body strained; then,
additional structural fields came online, preserving the Headmaster
connection.
        The two titans exchanged another pair of blows, this time to
the chest, knocking each other back slightly.  Surtur looked sound,
but agitated, in a hurry; Fortress ignored the various damage reports
coming in from the large dents in helmet and chestplate, analyzing
Surtur's stance, and gathering energy for one last blow.
        Surtur and Fortress Maximus charged at the same time, both
shouting incoherently, swinging right fists up for a midsection blow,
both fists landing simultaneously.  As flame billowed up from under
Fortress Maximus's fist, sparks flew from where Surtur's blow had
shattered his lower torso armor, driving metal into the more sensitive
components underneath.  A fragment drove against Fort Max's primary
balance gyro, and with a slow groaning sound he toppled backwards,
landing with a crash against the gates of the Golden City.  The great
doors bent inwards under his weight, a tiny gap opening between.
        Fortress could no longer ignore the damage warnings ringing
through his skull.  The screams of dozens of subroutines were joined
by great waves of genuine pain as each movement jostled things in
sensitive places.  Repairs were already underway, but he would be
unable to stand or fight for several minutes.  His weapons were offline,
his photon cannon lying useless dozens of yards out of reach.  He
fought to override the reflex to enter stasis lock, dredging his
generation cells for any power reserves they could offer him.
        Through the occasional static clouding his optics, Fortress
Maximus glared at Surtur, waiting for the end...

        ... an end that would not come.
        Surtur had been gravely hurt by Fortress's own blow, if not so
seriously as Fort had been injured.  In pain he stumbled backwards,
stepping in the abandoned Autobot trench and nearly toppling over
backwards as a result.  It took long seconds for him to recover his
balance and restore his body from the strike.
        Once he had recovered himself, he looked around to see Thor
and Odin standing between him and the giant robot sprawled against the
gate.  Hovering above them, the last Valkyrie flyer held a pissed-off-
looking Redneck in her arms.  Kei, Gryphon, Tyr, even R-Type and his
bodyguards were gathering after them, forming a solid line between
Surtur and his intended goal.
        Surtur paused for a moment, gazing at each defender.  Thor and
Odin had taken blows, true, but each looked well ready for more.  The
various mortals looked at him with burning eyes, a stare that told
louder than words of the willingness to die if it meant even weakening
him.  Last of all, as he glanced past a small redheaded newcomer to
the front, bright yellow beam held at the ready, he noticed the Norn
of the Present, gazing at him without a trace of pity, her hand
clenched on the limiter earring she wore.
        Surtur was no longer at his peak.  He had expended great
volumes of his power in his charge on the City, and even more energy
to repair the damage from the blows struck by the last defender of
that City.  His being had been depleted nearly by half; the giant
mechanoid would now be taller than he once it regained its feet.
Behind him, he could hear the confusion and dismay of the Niflheim
force, the valor born of desperate fear of the fallen gods, the
silence which replaced the former glee of his airborne children.  The
sounds of approaching engines to his rear told him that the Autobots
were rushing to support the other mortal heroes, their destruction of
Surtur's armor reserves finished.
        Fortress Maximus levered himself away from the dented gates of
Asgard and trained his giant main guns again, his optics narrowing.
Surtur felt a grudging respect for the machine warrior.  Not many had
escaped death in single combat with Surtur; fewer still would pick
themselves up and willingly challenge the fire lord a second time.
         One flaming hand rose up into the air, made a fist, and
flashed with a phosphorus light as Surtur's voice roared,
        <<ENOUGH!>>
        Over his head, the fighters and fire-demons broke off their
battle.   On the ground, gods and demons dropped their weapons and
stepped back from each other.  In the trenches, the spirits of heroes
and cowards alike paused and looked up at the fire giant, at the ring
of fire forming behind him.
        <<I CAME HERE TO CLEANSE THAT WHICH IS IN FIRE,>> Surtur
boomed, <<BUT THE PROPHECIES HAVE BETRAYED US.  ASGARD HAS NOT FALLEN.
THE UNIVERSE CONTINUES.  WE WILL RETURN TO OUR REALM AND AWAIT ANOTHER
DAY.>>
        Surtur's glowing eyes bore down on Odin with the light of the
most terrible supernova.  <<AND REST ASSURED, BROTHER OF VIDI AND VI,
THERE -WILL- BE ANOTHER DAY.>>
        Surtur stepped backwards into the ring of fire, never turning
his eyes away from Odin's as he vanished into the hellgate.  Behind
him, one by one, the fallen gods and fire-demons walked sullenly into
the portal, a few raising a defiant fist or a challenging sword at the
defenders of Asgard before vanishing into the shrinking ring of flame.
As the last remnant of one last fire-demon fluttered its way through
the portal, it snapped shut, vanishing into the fabric of spacetime.
        In the silence that followed the procession, one loud,
boisterous voice rang out from a lone, specially equipped X-Wing
hovering nearby:
        "AND DON'T COME BACK!!!"
        "Shut -up,- JJ," Kris shouted back at him, but his voice was
lost in the tumult of cheers and laughter rising up from the
survivors.
        The Ragnarok was over.

        The armor forces of Asgard and the defector Niflheim force had
taken a pounding, but they had held together somehow, driving the rear
of the enemy back against the front. The result had been chaos within
the enemy ranks, and now, with the entire battlefield paused in the
wake of Surtur's departure, that chaos only seemed put in abeyance, as
if a tidal wave had been frozen by a great cosmic Pause button at its
crest.
        Slowly, slowly, white flags were sprouting from the forces of
darkness.  From the ranks of the giants, the tallest, a great
blond-haired brute with long braided mustache and beard, held up a
stained white banner in one hand; his other arm hung useless from his
side, blood caked near his shoulder.
        "Hear me, Asgardians," the giant rumbled, facing the group of
battle flags surrounding Patton's command gravtank.  "I am
Utgard-Loki, ruler of Jotunheim and highest ranking officer remaining
to my force.  Who among you commands?"
        Patton stuck his head out from the cupola of his tank.  "I
guess I'll have to do until Odin gets over here, buster," he growled.
"What do you want?"
        Utgard-Loki lowered his makeshift banner, reached down to his
belt, and unbuckled it; it thundered to the ground, an immense
revolver and a longsword in its sheath falling in front of Patton's
tank.  "I offer the unconditional surrender of myself and my command,
asking only that the victorious be merciful to the fallen."
        Colonel Harrison barked, "And how much mercy would you have
shown to us if - "
        "Shaddup!!" Patton barked.  "Son, you have -so- much to learn.
Let the poor man keep his pride..."  He smirked ill-humoredly as he
surveyed the battlefield.  "It's not like he has much else left."
        That was nothing less than the literal truth.  Not an inch of
the vast rolling plain had been left untouched by the battle.  Craters
littered the snow and slush, tread tracks crossed each other at
random, and everywhere bodies lay strewn in the cold and deathly
silence.  Many an elf, many a dwarf, both light and dark, would not
return to their clans; hundreds of giants would never return to the
icy mountains of Jotunheim; and for every dead Einherjar soldier lay
the form of a Niflheim soldier, both their spirits forever dispersed
to the universe, together in the final death.
        "I can't promise anything except flat justice, General,"
Patton continued, "but on behalf of the warriors of Valhalla and the
armies of the Aesir and Vanir I accept your surrender.  Disarm your
troops and have them stack arms, then fall in for inspection; I'll
pass formal word of your surrender to my superiors."
        "It shall be as you say," Utgard-Loki rumbled, "and may I say
I am glad this day is over.  My people paid too high a price for too
little glory."  With that, Utgard-Loki bowed to Patton's tank and
turned back to his people, shouting his orders in the open without
need of radio.
        As he walked away, the defector Niflheim force followed,
abandoning tanks and weapons alongside gravtanks, Napoleons, and other
fighters.
        Patton, noticing the defection, shouted at the shade of
Bedford Forrest, "Hey! Where are you going?"
        Forrest turned, smiling that wild-eyed smile, and replied,
"Sir, we thank you for letting us end the battle on the right side.
But we asked no pardon for our actions.  We will share the fate of the
others who began the day in Hela's servitude."  He stood to attention,
saluted Patton, and growled, "See you in Hell, soldier."  With that,
he turned his back once and for all on Patton and his armor, leading
his troops back into the rapidly disarming masses of the dead.
        Harrison removed the hood of his cold-weather suit, scratching
his head.  "I just do not understand about this place, really I
don't."
        "It is not a thing you understand, Big Ugly," a hissing voice
sighed from nearby.  "It is merely something you accept.  Nichevo," he
added, sniffling a little bit.  Kerliss had had a very rough day,
getting shot down, stranded behind everybody's lines, swept up into
the infantry by Patton's charge, and now very likely coming down with
the human affliction known as a cold.  "Nichevo" was very rapidly
becoming his favorite word.
        The little reptilian form trudged forward, caring nothing for
the army before him or the tanks behind him.  Three miles ahead, give
or take a kilometer, lay the gates to the City, the infinite Halls of
Valhalla, and a nice warm bunk with his name on it.  He intended to
crawl into it, sleep for three or four days, and try to forget how
miserable the day was.
        His foot touched something hard in a snowdrift, and an angry
voice shouted, "Arrh!  Who dares?"
        Kerliss looked down, dusted away the snow, and uncovered a
silver robot's head with two glaring red optics and a big mouth full
of jagged, needle-sharp teeth.  "Er, I beg your pardon, superior sir,"
Kerliss sighed, "I did not see you in the snow."
        "Apology accepted, warrior," Inferno replied.  "Now, if you
would direct me to the battle, I must defend my colony!"
        Kerliss couldn't avoid the issue any longer.  "Superior sir,
you appear to have lost the rest of your body.  Are you all right?"
        "Merely a flesh wound!" Inferno crowed.  "Let the traitors
come - they too shall burn in the fires of Inferno!"
        Kerliss shook his head, turned and resumed his trek, strangely
buoyed by the encounter.  He was cold, miserable, and exhausted, but
at least he had all his body parts intact and together, including his
sanity.  His jaw flapped open for a moment in silent laughter as he
considered how sane it was to talk to disembodied heads, then forgot
the whole thing.
        Inferno, in the meantime, shouted at the departing male of the
Race, "Hey!  Come back!  At least help me find my body!  For the
Royalty!  I WILL FIND YOU, CREATURE, AND YOU SHALL BUUURRRRN!!"
        "Oh, give it a rezzt, Ant-bot," Waspinator groaned from his
position in the snowdrift next over.  "Where izzz medicbot when you
need one?"

        "HEAR ME!!"
        Odin's voice boomed over the battlefield as Surtur's had, only
with all the majesty of his title, Alfadur Manifest, behind it.  "HEAR
ME, FOR I AM ODIN, RULER OF ASGARD!  HEAR ME, WARRIORS OF ASGARD, AND
MIDGARD, AND NIFLHEIM!  HEAR ME, ELVES AND GIANTS, MEN AND GODS!"
        He strode forward, all eyes and ears turned towards him, until
he faced the remnants of Hela's army, battered and defeated, standing
in row upon row upon row across the smoking battlefield.  Then he
cleared his throat and continued in a more normal, but perfectly
audible, tone:
        "To you, servants of Loki and Hela, I say this: Drop your
weapons.  Furl your flags.  Take your fallen and depart.  Return to
the realms you came from and remain there in peace.  This mercy Odin
grants.
        "Teleute, Forseti, step forward!"  To either side of Odin
appeared a dark figure.  On his left, a small, almost waifish woman
with long, curly ebony hair and kohl-ringed eyes smiled up at him from
beneath a top hat.  To his right, a tall, slender figure, taller than
Odin, stood, bony hands clutching the worn wooden handle of a scythe,
his hood pushed back to reveal not a skull but a worn, long, almost
handsome face, dark eyes and proud nose topped by a cropped thatch of
yellow.
        "To these two," Odin declared, "I grant dominion over Niflheim
and Hel.  Return to what Hela claimed as her own.  Rule with kindness
and wisdom.  Teleute shall rule from her garden in Hel; Forseti shall
stand at the gates of Valhalla as he has always done.  This Odin
commands."
        Teleute smiled sardonically and said, "I believe I will do
that, thank you."
        Forseti merely shrugged.  SOMEBODY GETS KILLED AND EVERYBODY
GETS PROMOTED, he quipped in his unearthly, soul-cutting voice.
        Together, the two aspects walked to the mass of Hela's army,
Teleute strolling casually and twirling an umbrella, Forseti the
Reaper pointing with one hand while raising his scythe with the other,
guiding the dead back to their proper resting places.
        "Let's see... what else is there?" Odin mused.  For a moment,
MegaZone expected the Allfather to start patting his pockets looking
for his notes.  A moment later, a shining figure stepped smiling out
of the ranks, leaving quite a stir of excitement in his wake: Balder,
freed from his imprisonment in Hel by the destruction of Hela.  The
Shining One leant to Odin's ear and whispered something.  Brightening,
the All-Powerful nodded and said, "Oh yes, of course.  Let there be
feasting and merriment!  Let there be minstrels and storytellers!  Let
there be a celebration of life and remembrance!"
        Odin blinked.  "That reminds me."  He looked around the mass
of Asgardians and mortals and asked, "Has anybody seen Urd?"

        Loki touched the door, smiled, and bent his will to it; the
lock clicked, then drew back, and he entered.
        Even with his cynical heart, the sight, sound, smell of the
Great Machine took his breath away.  Two levels below in this
cavernous, drab, grey room, its parts indistinct in the gloom but its
totality unmistakable, it churned and clacked and puffed and hissed,
drawing and redrawing the pattern the universe followed, writing
and reiterating the laws by which all creation worked.
        Yggdrasil, the World-Engine.
        Loki had only been here, in the innermost domain of the Norns,
once before.  He had learned far more from that visit than they could
have imagined, and it was there, at that very time and place, that he
decided on the course of action he would take when the time came to
act.
        Well, now here he was.
        Suppressing his giggles, he slipped into the room, closing the
door behind him, and stood on the upper level.  A narrow catwalk
ringed the room, and in front of him, in the center of the side by the
door, another stretched halfway across the great open space, meeting
in the exact center of the room with the top of the Great Machine's
cylindrical core, where all its most vital and delicate control
components were shrouded in seventy-five tons of brass.  At the top,
on a flared platform at catwalk's end, was the Console, a gleaming
array of brass and copper tubes, keys, and switches, with the hopper
for the card reader on the right and the outfeed from the console log
on the left.
        Loki reached into nowhere and drew out a fat wad of yellowed
celluloid wafers, rectangular, nipped off at one corner: a card deck,
prepared eons before for this very occasion.  All he had to do was
feed it to Yggdrasil and set it running.  It would modify the existing
runtime code, subtly changing the way the Engine operated, warping the
basic structure of existence...
        ... and giving him power beyond any being's imagining save his
own.
        He stood before the Console for a moment, a gleam somewhere
between reverence and madness in his eyes, and then reached to place
the cards into the reader.
        "Loki."
        The voice was soft, husky.  Not an imperious cry as he might
have expected upon being discovered here, but a quiet hail, almost a
plea.
        He turned, and there was Urd in the doorway, letting the door
close behind her.
        "Well, well," said Loki cheerfully.  "You've come to watch the
moment of my victory.  How sweet."  He lowered his voice and hooded
his eyes.  "I always knew you'd never really dump me."
        "Don't do this, Loki," said Urd flatly, dispassionate.
        "Or what?" snorted Loki.  "You'll tell your daddy?  You'll
pardon me if I'm not too impressed with him any more!"  He turned back
to the Console; then a slow smile spread over his face, and he turned,
eyeing the eldest Norn slyly.  "You know, Urd, you don't have to go
down with the rest of them."
        "Don't I?" asked Urd.  "Whyever not?"
        "Well, y'know, I've always been sweet on you," said Loki
conversationally, grinning.  "And even the omnipotent overlord of all
creation can use some companionship... whaddaya say?"
        Urd smiled sardonically.  "Why, Loki, you're married."
        "Fah!" said Loki.  "Sigyn had her moments, but she's
essentially a very dull person, not at all up to the caliber I'm going
to require in my companions once I'm all-powerful."
        "Hell of a way to treat someone who was as faithful to your
sorry ass as she was," replied Urd.
        Loki grimaced.  "Oh, cut me some slack, Urd.  I'm the only
interesting thing that's happened to the poor girl, of -course- she
worships the very ground upon which I tread.  But you, now... you're a
different story.  So sneaky and underhanded and mean - you're the only
woman who's -really- for me.  I could make a place for you in the new
order of things, if you were amenable to it."
        Urd tapped her chin with a fingertip, considering.  "What
about my sisters?"
        "Oh, come ON!" cried Loki, rolling his eyes.  "Do you really
want to spend the Golden Age of Me putting up with that whining little
simp Verthandi, to say nothing of Skuld?  Nasty little piece of work,
that one, going to come to a bad end, I'll make sure of that.  No, if
you want the brass ring, Urd my darling, you're going to have to lose
the excess baggage.  Know what I mean?"
        Urd pondered, then nodded, her green eyes narrowing as her
lips curled into a vicious parody of a smile.  "Yeah, I can relate."
        Loki smiled broadly.  "Good!  Now, if you'll excuse me, I have
a little work to do."  He turned, reached for the reader -
        - THUNK.
        Loki lurched, feeling as if he'd been punched in the back.
With a searing pain, his right arm fell limp at his side.
        "NO!" he cried, as his precious cards fell from his useless
hand and scattered on the catwalk, some of them falling over the side
to be destroyed in the enormous gears of the Great Machine.
        He turned, feeling the blood begin to well up in his throat,
and there was Urd.  She wasn't smiling any longer, but her eyes had
that same merciless narrowed glare as she faced her one-time lover,
the fletching of another arrow already drawn back to her ear.
        "You said... you'd go with me... "
        Urd smiled coldly.
        "I lied," she hissed. "You taught me how, remember?"
        She loosed the shaft, and Loki's world exploded in a red
splash.  He stumbled back, felt the rail, the world tilted -
        "NOOOOOOOOOOOOO - !"

        W - H - A - M - !
        To R-Type, it felt as if the entire world had been on a train,
and that train had suddenly crashed into an abutment.  Reality
-lurched-.  Skuld screamed and fell to her knees, clutching at her
head; Belldandy turned pale as a sheet and stumbled against Keiichi.
R-Type fought the urge to vomit and dragged himself back to his feet.
        "What was -that-?" he demanded.
        Belldandy looked at him with her crystalline eyes full of
dread.
        "The Engine... it's stopped."
        Everybody within earshot looked sharply at her.
        "What?!" said Zoner.
        "Yggdrasil - the World-Engine - something's happened to it,"
Belldandy gasped.  "It's stopped running."
        "Bel," said Kei Morgan, "let's pretend for a second that I
don't know anything about supercosmology or Asgardian technology, and
just tell me what the hell is going on."
        "The World-Engine is the supercomputer that stabilizes the
fabric of Creation," Belldandy told her.  "If it's stopped running,
the universe will... will -unravel-."  She caught sight, then, of Urd
emerging from the gates of the Golden City, looking grim.  "Urd!" she
cried.  "What happened?"
        "Loki was trying to reprogram the World-Engine to give himself
absolute power," Urd replied.  "I stopped him, but he fell into the
Engine.  It... it's wrecked."
        "How badly?"
        Urd looked at the ground, shaking her head.  "Completely."
        Rattrap slapped his forehead, producing a sharp clank.  "Oh,
sure," he said miserably.  "Just when we was about to start
celebratin'."  He shook his head sadly.  "We're all gonna die."
        Skuld scowled.  "Like hell," she muttered; then she raised her
voice and said, "Attention all super-geniuses!  I need anybody with
highly-developed hyperphysics or mechanophysical engineering skills to
gather 'round!"
        Gryphon flipped open his communicator and made a call to his
ship; moments later, his chief engineer appeared in a wash of
transporter bleed.
        "You'll never get it repaired before spacetime starts to break
up," said Urd.
        Belldandy looked from one of her sisters to the other; then
she set her jaw and said, "Oh yes she will."  She turned to Odin with
a look in her eyes that invited no debate, and said, "Father, you know
what I must do."
        "No, daughter," Odin replied.  "I will do it."
        "Swaying on your feet, with your battle wounds still bleeding?
No, Father.  I am the Norn of Today; it is my duty to see that what
is, remains."
        Father and daughter gazed at each other for a long moment;
then Odin bowed his head, closing his eye in acquiescence.
        "Very well," he told her, his voice heavy.
        "What are you going to do?" Keiichi asked, his voice thick
with worry.
        "Everything I can," Belldandy replied, "but I will need you
with me, Keiichi."
        "Of course," he replied.  He sheathed Grayswandir and dropped
his shield.  "I'll do whatever you need me to do."
        "For now, you need only attend," replied Belldandy.  She gave
him as reassuring a smile as she could manage, then reached up to her
left ear and touched the elaborate earring she always wore there.  A
wind seemed to rise up around her, blowing a ten-foot circle around
her clear of snow and ruffling her robes as the earring and the mark
on her forehead glowed.  She levitated off the ground, eyes closed,
and began speaking in her native language again.

        >O power bright and clear of mine,
        Sealed tight lest you too brightly shine,
        Come forth now to restore my might,
        Return to me in form of Holy Light!<

        As she spoke, the roiling storm clouds and lowering darkness
of evening which were settling over the plain grumbled with new
thunder, then pulled back above the circle in which Belldandy stood,
forming a swirling hole in the sky.  With her last syllable, the
earring shattered with a bright tinkling sound, and a bolt of white
light so intense none could stand to look at it blasted down from the
sky beyond that hole, engulfing the goddess where she hovered.
Keiichi screamed her name and threw himself toward her, but was driven
back by the roaring wind that defined the glowing tunnel in which she
had been.  Slitting his eyes against the light, he struggled forward,
calling for her.
        Suddenly it was over, most of the howling light and roaring
wind silenced as though someone had closed a door on them.  Keiichi
stumbled, almost falling, into the much softer corona of light and
soft swirling breeze that remained, then pulled up short with a gasp.
        Belldandy was still there, but she had changed.  Her robes
were much more elaborate and colorful, flowing around her in the
gentle wind that still blew.  Her hair had gone snow-white and was
much longer than it had been, flying free about her face and
shoulders.  The markings on her face had become more elaborate too,
the needle-thin diamond on her forehead replaced by a broader two-part
diamond divided by a disk.
        She smiled at Keiichi.  "This is my full power, Keiichi.
You've seen it before, once."
        "Of course."  Keiichi grinned wanly.  "That was a long time
ago, though.  I'd forgotten how... er, dramatic... the transformation
is."
        "Now is when I'll need you most," said Belldandy, sobering.
She reached out her hands, and Keiichi stepped forward to take them.
"Even at my full strength, what I am about to do will tax me.  I'll
need your strength as well to see me through."
        Keiichi smiled.  "Everything I have is yours to take,
Belldandy," he said.  "You know that."
        The Norn gave her husband a kiss.  "Thank you, my love," she
said.  Then she closed her eyes as if in concentration.  The light
built around her, gathering in bright rays at the mark on her
forehead, and as she abruptly tipped her head back, a thinner,
still brighter beam of light shot from the mark up through the hole in
the clouds to the infinite reaches of the sky.  Slowly, Belldandy sank
to the ground, then to her knees, settling into a sort of back-tipped
seiza, and Keiichi sank with her, his fingers still interlaced with
hers.
        Skuld turned to the group of engineers which had gathered
around her and were now staring, like everyone else on the plain, at
her sister.
        "Listen up!" she barked in her best Valkyrie voice of command.
"Verthandi's stabilizing the universe, but even her strength won't
hold it for long."  Her tone softened a little as she went on with a
slight grin, "I realize that super-geniuses don't usually make good
team players, but this is -it-, people.  This is the most important
project any of you will ever work on, and if we don't get our act
together, and -fast-, it's also going to be the shortest."
        Skuld surveyed her squad for a moment, then nodded.  "OK,
here's how we're going to do this.  Urd, we need the designs and
diagrams for the Engine from the Archives.  Wheeljack, Ratchet, you're
on parts fabrication.  Washuu, you supervise the reassembly.  Alita,
Gryph, Kris, Optimus, uh... other Optimus - we'll need you for skilled
heavy lifting.  Nadia, Mr. Watt, see if you can get the power station
operational again.  Nikola, I need you to recalibrate the reality flux
coils.  Rhinox, sweep the field effect dynanodes and replace as
needed.  R-Type, get that card reader reset.  And Cheetor - "
        Everybody blinked in surprise, and all eyes went to Cheetor.
        "Who, me?" the Maximal said, surprised.  "Wow!  What can I do
to help?"
        "We'll need about a ton of coffee and food in here -pronto-,"
Skuld told him, "so get your spotted hinder in gear."
        "What're -you- gonna be doing?"
        "I have about a million cards to punch," replied the Norn of
Tomorrow briskly.  "Now get busy, everybody!"

        They got busy.  Gryphon, Alita Ironheart, Maximal commander
Optimus Primal, and the man-sized robot that was the core of Optimus
Prime cleared away the shattered wreckage of the core of the
World-Engine and prepared the site for reconstruction.  The Redneck,
lifting the scrap with one arm while constantly stuffing food into his
mouth with the other, sorted out the remains of the Engine for
salvage, melting down the parts which were obviously broken beyond all
reclamation.  Urd, Washuu, Wheeljack and Ratchet looked over the
Engine's blueprints, took a survey of the salvaged parts, decided
which were irreparable, and started work on the replacements for
those.  Nikola Tesla went to work on the coil calibration, so immersed
in his work he didn't even notice the clanging and crashing of the
cleanup effort around him.  In the adjoining chamber, Nadia Davion and
James Watt labored over the Engine's massive steam-driven power
source, which had been knocked out of commission by the sudden jarring
stop of the Engine.  Rhinox, the Maximal engineer, ranged around the
Engine chamber on the catwalks, patiently inspecting the thousands of
dynanodes studding the walls and ceiling and replacing the burned-out
ones from a stock of replacements he carried in a basket on his back.
        "Eh, ya gotta love these old machines," Rattrap mused as he
handed his friend another dynanode.  "Crude, but the parts are cheap."
        Rhinox only grunted in reply, but Rattrap wasn't expecting
anything else.
        Outside, the armies milled around with the confused energy of
a concert crowd unsure whether the headliners would come back for
another encore.  After an hour or so of effort, their commanders got
them organized again, and just as night took hold completely, the
after-action inspections and head counts began.  Metroplex was
designated interim headquarters for the after-action operations, as
the Golden City was off-limits until the Engine could be repaired.  He
took up his city mode in the convenient notch where the city walls and
the mountain slope came to a junction, at the very corner of the Great
Plain.  Ablaze with light and warmth, he was a welcome sanctuary from
the cold for the wounded and the merely tired alike.
        Fortress Maximus remained at his station before the Golden
City's gates.  Omega Supreme took up a guard post near Metroplex.
Most of the Autobots and Bugrom, who cared nothing for the cold,
manned a perimeter, along with the most irrepressible of Einherjar,
Regular Army and Freespacer volunteers.  The battle seemed to be over,
but you could never be too careful after a day like this.  In the
middle of the battlefield, the Charlemagne had landed and was dividing
its resources between caring for the less seriously wounded and
supplying emergency power to the various camps in and around the
City. In the sky above, the other three great starships still
patrolled restlessly, while the Star Destroyer Vindicator watched over
all from geostationary orbit.

        MegaZone stood at a window in one of Metroplex's highest-level
conference rooms, gazing out at the ranked troops, the patrolling
Bugrom and Autobots, the twinkling lights of Fort Max's superstructure
before the dented golden gates.  His face was drawn and haggard, his
expression unreadable.
        Behind him, sitting on the edge of the conference table, Yuri
Daniels watched his back.  There were a few things about Zoner that,
in all their years together, she had never been able to get used to.
This was the worst of them: his awful, silent brooding.  It gave her
such a sense of futility whenever she tried to persuade him to let it
go.
        But she loved him, so she tried anyway.
        "It wasn't your fault, you know," she said.
        He laughed, a hard sound without mirth.
        "Don't 'hah' me," Yuri said sharply.  "And don't expect me to
walk on eggshells around you just because you've decided to blame
yourself, either."
        He glanced around at her, his eyes flickering with something
unpleasant.
        "And don't - you - DARE get angry with me," Yuri added,
jumping down from the table and approaching him, her own eyes
flashing.  "I won't have it.  Not this time.  Last time something like
this happened, you were so angry with yourself for being taken in that
you broke my heart.  Well, this time I won't let you, you big, dumb
son of a bitch!"
        MegaZone stared hard at her for a second, his jaw muscles
quivering.  Then he opened his mouth...
        ... and laughed.
        Laughed so hard he keeled forward into her arms as she stood
gaping at him, and kept laughing as she helped him to a sofa in the
corner of the room and got him settled on it.  There was an edge to
his laughter that made Yuri uneasy.  It wasn't until they were seated
that he was able to get control of himself, wipe away the tears that
had collected in his eyes, and say to her,
        "Have I ever told you how beautiful you are when you're pissed
off at me?"
        The corner of her mouth quirked.  "Is that why you piss me off
so often?"
        Zoner chuckled.  "It must be."  He leaned back into the end of
the couch, bringing Yuri with him so that she ended up nestled against
his chest, and stroked her long black hair.  "I know I'm a pain in the
ass," he told her.  "I know what you're saying is true, too, that this
wasn't my fault... but... "  He sighed deeply.  "I developed blaming
myself into a highly advanced art form during the Exile.  I can't get
over something like this just because it makes you mad that it bothers
me.  A lot of people died today because I was careless."
        "Careless?"
        "I didn't -have- to put on that stupid mask," Zoner told her.
"I was just so -bored- in my office... I could have had it checked,
-should- have had it checked."
        "And if you had," said a voice from the doorway, "do you
really think the handiwork of the Trickster King himself would have
been so obvious?"
        Zoner and Yuri both looked up and gasped.  Brunnhilde
Silverspear was there, dressed in a sickbay smock.  Her beautiful face
was badly bruised, one shoulder was plastered with bandages, that arm
was in a sling, and she had an ankle in an inflatable cast.  She
hobbled into the conference room on a crutch, let the door sigh shut
behind her, and stood glaring at Zoner with angry eyes as she leaned
on her crutch.
        "Well, mortal?  Answer my question!" she demanded.  "Do you
truly believe your scientists could have detected Loki's tampering?
Could have fathomed the Mask of Discord at all?  You do not strike me
as that stupid."
        "Hey, ease up," Yuri began, but Brunnhilde rounded on her
angrily.
        "Be silent, woman!" she barked.  "This is between me and this
self-pitying creature."
        Yuri was primed to get up and start something, even if this
woman -was- in a cast, until the Valkyrie's eyes flashed fire at her
and cut off the protest in her throat.  Yuri managed only a quiet "OK"
before averting her gaze.
        "I still await your answer, Earthman," said Brunnhilde coldly.
        Zoner looked up at her, then gently disengaged himself from
Yuri and stood up slowly.
        "I don't know," he told her.  "Maybe not.  But at least I
would have made the gesture."
        "You would have made the gesture," Brunnhilde said.  "The
outcome would have been the same - the battle would still have
happened - the dead would still be dead - but YOU WOULD HAVE MADE THE
GESTURE, and THAT would make it all acceptable to you?  Are you truly
-that- arrogant, Earthman?"  She finished the statement holding
herself as upright as she could manage, her eyes ablaze with cold
fire.
        Zoner looked back at her, puzzled, and replied innocently,
"Well... yeah... "
        Brunnhilde tried to keep her furious stare on him for a few
more seconds, but at that, she had to laugh.  The laugh, however,
quickly turned into a wracking cough as she clutched at the broken
ribs in her side.  She lost hold of her crutch and tumbled forward,
her trip to the floor cut short by Zoner's arms.
        "Brunnhilde!" Yuri called out as Zoner caught the Valkyrie and
lifted her as gently as he could, carrying her to the sofa.
        "I'm fine.  We Valkyrie are not so easily defeated."
        MegaZone scanned the blonde warrior with his eyes, taking in
both her beauty and her wounds - wounds that he himself had inflicted.
As he did his countenance darkened and his brow furrowed with concern.
He broke the silence by leaning close to the warrior and saying
quietly,
        "Brunnhilde, words cannot say how sorry I am for the things
I've done today.  Heal well."
        He kissed her cheek softly, then turned to Yuri and kissed her
lips tenderly.  "I've got to go now," he whispered before rising and
walking towards the door.
        "Zoner...," Yuri called as she started to rise.  She was cut
short by the Valkyrie's grip on her wrist.
        "No, let him go.  He needs some time.  He'll be back, do not
worry."
        Yuri hesitated, turning towards Brunnhilde.  Her nervousness
warred with the certainty in the warrior's gaze and tone.  She fought
the feeling of panic and dread that swept over her as she turned and
watched the door close behind Zoner's back as he left.

        Keiichi sat on the cold, hard ground, his wife's hands in his
own, and watched her hold the universe together.
        It was an awesome thought, even for a man as accustomed to the
divine and miraculous as was Keiichi Morisato.  The truth of the
matter was that he was uncomfortable with that side of his life.  A
mechanical engineer by trade, he preferred machinery to magic, and at
this very moment would really have preferred to be inside with the
others, doing what he could to help with the World-Engine.  His and
Bel's life on Tomodachi was as mundane as could be, 90% of the time,
and he liked it just fine that way.
        But at the same time, he knew that the magic, the wonder, was
part of Bel's life.  Keiichi would have loved her just as well if she
had been an ordinary woman - he was quite confident of that - but she
wasn't, and to truly love her, he had to accept her world in his.  He
knew that -she- knew that it made him uncomfortable, and so she tried
to limit its intrusion into his life as much as possible.  She'd moved
away from the Golden City because he'd felt so out of place living
here after they'd first gotten married, moved back to what for her was
an equally alien world, though to him Tomodachi was comfortably
boring.  The thought made him feel guilty.
        Looking at her now, in all her celestial glory, that ray of
brilliant light illuminating all the heavens as she stood in for the
World-Engine, he suddenly resolved to learn, after all this time, to
better accept the supernatural in his life.  He would come to Asgard
with her more often, meet more of her friends, spend more time with
her relatives.  He would invite more than just her sisters to visit
their home on Tomodachi.  He loved her so much - how could he be so
unfair to her?  He burned with shame at the thought and promised
himself to do better by her.
        Still concentrating, Belldandy smiled slightly and said to
him, "Are you cold, Keiichi?"
        Honestly, he replied, "Yes, but don't worry about me.  I'll be
fine.  How are you holding up?"
        "I'm all right so far," she said.  "And I know that Skuld will
work as fast as she can."
        Then she lapsed back into silence, all her energies bent
toward her critical task, and Keiichi sat and contemplated how very
much he loved her.

        Skuld was in her office typing, prepping the code stack for
the automatic card puncher, muttering block-transfer calculations to
herself.  Washuu smiled to herself as she slipped around the end of
the Norn's desk and put down another pint of ice cream for her.  (For
the curious: Cherry Garcia.)
        "... 48c9(3), 9d9*49(%2c!), oh, thank you, 993dC/13f... "
Skuld murmured, her fingers flying tirelessly over the keys of the
autopuncher.
        "No trouble," Washuu replied.  "We're a little ahead of
schedule on the reconstruction," she reported.  "Ratchet really -is-
the best tool-and-die bot in the history of Cybertron."
        "498l44, 2C2C2a4, +59(17), good, 2z4(3c), m44+a1(~/94), 4 -
what the hell?  This shouldn't be in the Void Buffer."
        "Hm?" Washuu asked, edging a little closer.
        "This block transfer," Skuld replied.  "There's a big chunk of
it that doesn't make any sense whatsoever, and it's right in the
middle of a Void Buffer."  She sighed.  "Mortal scientists fooling
around with void locking, I bet, beamed something into unspace and
then couldn't figure out how to get it back."
        "Don't look at me," Washuu told her.  "I know better than
that."
        Skuld grinned.  "I know you do, Professor.  Anyway, I'd better
move this to Output... 54{4}117c, 49... "

        Commander Robert R. Shannon of the Wedge Defense Force Deep
Space Patrol was not having a good day, and what was worse, he wasn't
even having the right -bad- day.  On his wrist computer, the date was
September 11, 2288, which, unknown to him, was utterly and completely
wrong.  In his wrist computer's defense, though, it had only -been-
wrong for about the last two seconds.
        Two seconds ago, he and his ship, the WDF patrol cruiser
Delphinus, had been running for their lives from the biggest
anti-matter explosion Shannon had ever seen.  It also happened to be
the biggest anti-matter explosion he had ever set off, and he was
quite prepared to be very proud of it, when he had time, if he was
still alive.  Anyway, he'd set off the explosion in order to blow up a
sizeable GENOM Corporation squadron which had been rather unsportingly
bent on the extermination of his little ship, and now his battered
command was hauling all the ass it could haul in the general direction
of "away".
        Unfortunately, the wavefront of the explosion seemed to be
hauling a bit more ass than that, so he'd ordered the fold drive
engaged even though the navicomputer was offline.  Misfold now, figure
out where we end up and walk home later, at least we probably won't
die instantly: that was the logic there, such as it was.
        Unsurprisingly, that was where everything had gone really
pear-shaped.
        The deck smashed up underneath him, almost flinging him down.
The already tortured spaceframe of the Delphinus groaned in protest as
the ship crashed into - through - an unexpected barrier.  Shannon
gritted his teeth and hung onto the ship's wheel, bracing his feet
against the pitching deck.  On the helmsman's panel in front of him,
the cosmocompass and all the environment gauges spun wildly.
        "Atmospheric contact!" cried Lieutenant Jordan Cochran, the
ship's operations officer and, at present, the only other conscious
lifeform on the bridge.  Her clawed fingers flickered over the ops
console's sensor controls with blinding speed as she rattled off,
"Unknown planetary body, class M!  Current altitude 50,000 feet and
falling!"
        "WHAT?!" Shannon blurted.  He would have spun around and
stared at her if he hadn't been latched onto the wheel, which was just
as well, since the ship would probably have spun out of control
immediately.  Four seconds ago the ship had been in deep space without
a star system around for light-years, and now she was at airliner
altitude above an M-class planet?!  "All engines stop!  Rig for
atmospheric running!  Anti-gravity lifters to maximum!  All back full!
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!"
        Jordan complied as fast as she could, which was very fast
indeed - as a member of the genetically engineered species
Velociraptor sapiens, she was possessed of reflexes several times
faster than those of any human.  As she did so, she kept up a running
chant of command call-backs, just like the manual said to do (a thing
she only remembered to do when under great stress):
        "All stop aye rig for atmosphere aye anti-grav to maximum aye
all back full aye what the hell is going on currently unknown sir!"
        The wheel twitched, went slack, and then took up again as the
fly-by-wire switched from inertia-vector control to the ship's
atmospheric control surfaces.  Shannon didn't often take the helm, but
nevertheless, he could feel the difference in the wheel as Delphinus
took the air.  The ship's heart-stopping plunge slowed, then stopped.
The roaring retrothrusters halted her forward fall as the anti-gravity
lifters kicked in to stop her vertical drop.  For a moment, as Shannon
called "all stop" again, she hovered.
        But only for a moment.
        Sparks cascaded from one of the engineering panels, and with
an ominous creaking sound, the ship began to fall again, slowly at
first, but gathering speed.  On the main viewer, the static cleared
enough to show what looked like the site of a recent and immense
battle, a great plain strewn with burn marks, blast craters, wreckage
and bodies, the concentration of wounded and dead visible even from
this height.  It had all taken place near the gates of a great golden
city.  Shannon could see that quite well, since it was the city his
ship was falling toward.
        "Failureintheplasmaenergysystemomigoshwe'relosingantigrav-
liftsystemsfailingwe'regoingdown!" Jordan blurted.
        Shannon struggled with the wheel and yelled, "Sound collision!
Brace for impact," knowing all the while that there was no way in hell
his wounded bird and her battered crew would survive a fall like this
on top of everything else.  Delphinus wasn't answering her helm - with
the anti-gravity systems out, she was just so many tons of dead
weight, her maneuvering wings completely inadequate to keep her
aloft.  What was more, those wings weren't answering the way they
should.  From where he stood, with most of his displays and gauges
inoperative, Shannon couldn't tell that this was because one of them
was missing.
        Then there was another heavy jolt - more like two sharp tugs
in very rapid succession - and the ship stopped falling again.
        "What's going on?" Shannon asked.  "Did we get anti-grav
back?"  He knew even as he asked that they couldn't have; the helm
was still dead in his hands.
        "No," Jordan replied, peering at her sensor display.  "Tractor
beam - two of them!  We've been tractored... "  Her slitted eyes
widened in surprise, and she turned to him, saying, "We've been
tractored by the SDF-17 and the Autobot Ark!"
        Shannon sighed.  "Thank God!  Damage control teams, secure all
damaged areas and get any more wounded we may have to sickbay.  Hail
the SDF-17 - Aeka's going to need a lot of help.  Where the hell are
we?"
        "Unknown," Jordan replied, "I can't get a star fix with all
this cloud cover and the cosmocompass is totally fried and the
galactic inertial navigation system is out and I can't pick up any
navinet beacons so when you get right down to it I really don't have
any way to find out attempting to hail SDF-17 maybe they know."
        Shannon turned his head and blinked at her, his mental
comprehension taking a second or so to catch up to her rapid speech,
then nodded.  "Very well, carry on.  Shut down all motive systems.
        One of the controls on Jordan's console sparked.  "Blast!" she
spat.  "Comm system's hosed so I can't call anyone," she reported.  If
she was fazed by having to do the jobs of almost an entire bridge
crew, she wasn't showing it; she always acted a bit harried just
because of her natural hyperactivity, so it was hard to tell.  Shannon
only hoped he still -had- a bridge crew.  Most of them hadn't looked
very good when they'd been dragged off to sick bay, especially Vyse.
        He looked at the main viewer field again.  Static was
overwhelming it as the ship's power and sensor systems failed.
"Retract bridge shield," he ordered, and the viewer field flickered
out as the heavy armor shield over the forward viewport slid up.
Shannon released the useless helm with some difficulty.  Massaging his
cramped hands, he went around the helmsman's console to the forward
bridge rail and looked out.
        His eyes widened in shock.  "What in the name of... "
        There -was- a golden city below, and the biggest concentration
of beings he thought he had ever seen.  Obviously a very large battle
had been fought here recently, apparently in defense of the city,
since it was before the city's gates that the mass of those still
standing was gathered.  What an army!  Thousands, tens of thousands of
human-sized creatures, nothing but antlike specs from up here; armored
vehicles of all kinds; what looked like an entire Autobot army.
Fortress Maximus himself was looming before the gates of the city,
apparently the last line of defense.  Shannon had thought Fort Max was
deceased, but it wasn't as if he visited Cybertron often; obviously he
was wrong.  There was even a smaller city out there, taking up a
corner of the great plain in front of the golden city.  A starship
resembling a Freespacer Broadway-class courier on steroids took up
much of the center of the plain, with troops moving in and out of a
large hangar bay within the huge angular beast.
        It was night.  The only reason Shannon could see as much of
the scene as he could was because of bleed from the remarkably bright
beam of light being shone into the sky by something in the center of a
clear circle on the plain, bleed so intense it lit the plain like day.
That beam passed through a gap in the clouds above and disappeared
from sight, like a hyperbeam transmission or a laser flare, only
sustained.  What the hell was going on?
        Another bright light detached itself from the mass below and
rose toward the Delphinus.  For a second, Shannon thought it was a
weapon discharge; then, when it rose more slowly, he wondered if it
might be a missile.  At this point there wasn't much to do about it
either way, so he just watched it come.  As it matched altitudes with
the slowly descending Delphinus, the light paused, then changed
course, flying horizontally over the ship's foredeck.  As it passed,
it illuminated the charred stub of the forward stabilizer fin, the
gaping hole where Forward Turret Number One had been, the twisted
remains of Forward Turret Number Two.  Shannon winced at the sight of
his beautiful ship so scarred and torn.
        The light came straight toward the viewport, then stopped
outside and resolved itself into... a woman.  Moreover, a woman
Shannon knew.  Kei Morgan hovered outside the bridge of the Delphinus,
her outline bulked out by a beat-up Starfleet flak jacket and
thermoboots.  She held in her hands a metal staff a couple inches
shorter than her own height.  The head end, just above a peculiar
double bend, was glowing brilliantly, the source of the flying light
he had seen.
        Robert Shannon gaped at her; she threw him a salute, then
dropped out of his sight, down to the quarterdeck in front of the
bridge tower.  A few moments later she came through the door at the
back of the bridge, the light at the end of her staff dark.
        Kei grinned at Shannon and pushed the dark goggles she was
wearing up onto her forehead as she descended the stairs.  "Hey, Rob,"
she said cheerily.  "Glad you could join us.  Too bad you missed the
party."
        "Kei - wha - where are we?  What the hell just happened?"
        "Let me explain," Kei said; then, with a thoughtful
expression, she went on, "No, there is too much.  Let me sum up.
Actually, forget that too, there's still too much.  The state your
ship's in, you must have wounded."
        Shannon gave a heavy sigh.  "I'm surprised we've got anybody
who -isn't- wounded," he replied.  "Can you get some medtechs up here
fast?"
        "We can do better than that."  Kei pointed to the smaller
black-and-white city, the one tucked encampment-like into the corner of
the plain and the mountain.  "You get all your wounded together and
I'll get Concordia's transporters to cross-beam them straight to
Metroplex.  Freya and First Aid should have room in the new field
hospital, even -with- the casualty situation we've got down below."
        "Transporters?!" Shannon blurted.  "You don't mean - "
        "OK, -really- quick summary," Kei conceded.  "It's 2390,
transporters have worked for sometime.  Don't freak out when you see
the Star Destroyer 'cause GENOM's on our side now.  Everything else'll
have to wait."
        Shannon stared at her for a second, then shook himself.
"Right," he said, businesslike.  He went to the wheel and keyed the
intercom panel.  "Aeka?"
        "I'm very busy at the moment, Robert," a harried-sounding but
still cultured voice replied.  "You might have knocked us around a bit
less."
        "Sorry," said Shannon.  "Look, I don't have time to give you
details, can you get all the wounded together if they aren't already
and prepare for transport?"
        "Transport?!  Robert, have you lost your mind?  Some of these
people would die if I tried to move them from one bed to another, let
alone - "
        "Aeka, it's Kei Morgan," Kei cut in.  "Listen carefully.
You've jumped into the future.  We have matter-to-energy transporters
which can move your patients without trauma and a fully equipped
combat hospital down below to move them to, so get them together and
get ready for beaming, -stat-."
        There was a second of silence as Aeka Jyurai Shannon's mind
digested this new information; then she replied briskly, "Understood.
We'll be ready in one minute.  Sickbay out."
        "I'll go down there and coordinate the transport.  Meantime,
your ship's in no shape for orbit.  We'd better set you down near
Metroplex."
        Shannon almost protested - Delphinus wasn't built for
terrestrial landing - until he realized she was right.  She spoke into
a hand communicator, giving instructions to the SDF-17 and the Ark,
and then patted his shoulder and went below.  Shannon stood at the
useless helm, a passenger aboard his own command, and watched the
ground come closer and closer.  The two tractoring ships paused
momentarily at a few hundred feet to provide as stable a platform as
possible for the beam-off.  Then Kei returned to the bridge to report
that it was done, and the Delphinus settled slowly to the snowy
ground.
        The SDF-17 and the Ark lowered her as gently as possible, but
even so, the Delphinus was never designed to touch ground this way.
Her one remaining wing bent, then snapped; there was a shuddering
crash as the main body of the ship touched down.  The bridge
viewport's heavy armorcrys window cracked right across as the ship's
structure settled under its own weight.  Rob Shannon thought he might
very well cry.
        Then it was over, and the Delphinus lay dead on the plain
next to the lights of Metroplex, listing ten degrees to starboard.
        Shannon punched a key on his intercom panel.  "Engine room,
this is the captain."
        Chief Engineer Fiorella Piccolo's voice came back, "Engine
room, aye.  What's going on?  Did we just touch ground?"
        "Yes," Shannon said.  "We did."  He drew a breath and then
completed the Delphinus's strange cruise in the formal fashion:
        "Engine room, shut down all systems.  Finished with engines."
        "Sir, I... "  A pause.  "Aye aye, sir.  Finished with
engines, aye."
        All around Shannon, the Delphinus's last systems died, the
bridge's last lights flickered out, and a chilling silence pressed
in.  Commander Shannon looked around, sighed, and gave the inert
ship's wheel a listless spin.
        "C'mon," said Kei, touching Shannon's shoulder.  "Let's get
you and your crew debriefed.  And don't worry about the ship.  Where
you've ended up, they can fix -anything-."

        "If this works," Rhinox remarked three hours later, as he
watched Optimus Prime and Alita lower the last of the Engine's
gleaming brass replacement pushrods into place, "I'm gonna start to
believe that we can fix -anything-."
        "We'll know soon enough," said Skuld as she walked out the
catwalk to the Console.  She carried with her an immense white box
full of freshly-punched yellow cards, a box marked on its side in
scrawly black marker, 'WORLD ENGINE RESTART - 09/12/2390 - BOX 1 of
49'.  "Anybody who's not doing anything, you might help me carry these
boxes."
        In half an hour, it was done, and the work crew stood along
the south catwalk watching as Washuu, Urd, Skuld and Rhinox gave the
Engine a final walkaround.  Then Washuu and Rhinox went to the catwalk
with the others as the two Norns took up their restart stations: Urd
at the power control station on the east catwalk, and Skuld at the
Console, surrounded by the boxes of cards.
        "Ready, Urd?" Skuld called into the brass speaking tube next
to the Console - not that she needed to, with the Engine shut down and
the room silent.
        "Ready," Urd replied, her voice echoing across the cavernous
room.
        "Begin rotation.  Bring Engine to idle."
        Urd threw several large switches, then squeezed the lockout on
a huge lever and pulled it slowly to the first of its three
positions.  There was a deep hiss from somewhere to the east, in
the steam plant chamber.  With a long, slow, soft grinding of oiled
metal against metal, the Engine began to turn.  Twenty thousand rocker
arms rose and twenty thousand fell as the master shaft turned slowly
through its first half-revolution.  With an imperceptible pause, they
all gave a gentle "clack", then reversed direction, falling and
rising.  Slowly, slowly, as everyone who breathed held their breath,
it picked up speed, from a slow grind to a loping chug to a flat-out
factory whir; and then it held.  Gauges and indicators all around Urd
danced and flickered, then stabilized.  Near Urd's station, an
enormous ball governor accordioned slowly inward, halting when it had
collapsed about halfway.
        "Engine at idle," she reported into the speaking tube, which
was now a necessity.  "Engine is at 2,000 RPM and holding.  All
readings are normal."
        "Understood," Skuld replied.  "Shift to input mode for program
read."
        Urd squeezed the lever's lockout and pulled it to its second
position.  There was a deep clunk, a brief grinding of gears, and the
mass of much more intricate components at the center of the Engine,
below the Console, began to whirl, pump and toggle.  The Engine slowed
a little with the taking-off of all this power; Urd added steam to
bring its speed back up.
        "Engine is steady in input mode," she reported.
        "Commencing program read," Skuld replied, and began to feed
the cards into the reader, slowly, carefully, a stack at a time.
There were forty-eight thousand, two hundred seventy-two of them.
Feeding them into the reader in neat stacks of five hundred, Skuld
took a little over three minutes to get them all fed in.
        Now for the delicate part.

        On the plain, Belldandy's strength was beginning to fail her.
A half-hour earlier, she had begun sweating despite the cold, and
gripping Keiichi's hands tighter.  Now she was gritting her teeth,
clearly straining.  Keiichi sat and watched her, fear mounting in
him.  He looked back over his shoulder at the castle.  There was steam
billowing from one of the chimneys which had been silent all night -
could that mean... ?
        "Hold on, Belldandy," he whispered to his wife.  "Hold on.
There's steam coming from the castle - Skuld has got the Engine
running again," he added, praying it was true.
        "Stay with me, Keiichi," she whispered.  "Give your strength
to me."
        Carefully, he released her hands and leaned forward, rising up
on his knees and enfolding in her in his arms, careful to stay clear
of the beam of light still issuing from the mark on her forehead.
"Always, Belldandy, always," he murmured into her ear.  "I'll never
leave you."
        She locked her arms around him and held on tight, fighting to
give the universe every second she could.

        "Bring Engine to 4,500 RPM and hold," Skuld ordered.  Urd
complied, playing the valves and togglesl like an organ until the
tachometer needle rested exactly between the two green lines painted
on its glass cover.
        "Engine holding at 4,500 RPM," she reported.
        "All right, here goes," Skuld murmured to herself, her voice
carried unwittingly to her sister by the voice tube.  Then: "Prepare
to shift to execute mode."
        "Ready to shift to execute mode," said Urd as she gripped the
lever and made several minute last-second adjustments to the valves
with her other hand.
        Skuld closed her eyes and spoke a soft benediction, then
opened them, nodded once, and ordered sharply,
        "Execute."
        Urd pulled the lever to its final position.
        With a ringing crash of gears and cogs against others, the
whole room shook, and the final, up-to-now silent, and most complex
part of Yggdrasil, the World-Engine, gave a great moaning sigh and
began to move...

                            END SIXTH SEAL

This segment of 'Twilight' is dedicated to the memory of Derek
G. Bacon, who will have been gone four years on Friday, the 15th of
December.  You got to help save the universe, Derek, and you did it in
your own inimitable style.  I'm just sorry it took me so long to get
it out for you.
        --G., 12/11/2K