ACHERON, IN THE RIGEL SECTOR OF THE UNITED GALACTICA 18 JANUARY 2091 TSC Group Captain Kemal Mi'tian, Seventh Zardon Guards, stood at the ramp of his company's dropship and surveyed the wreckage through his rangefinder binoculars. Great prophets, the place was still burning, sixteen days after the incident. The Dirty Pair certainly knew how to make a mess... This time, though, they'd outdone themselves. Every inhabitant of the planet Acheron was dead, all because of the vizorium firestorm they'd touched off making their escape from Professor Wattsman's secret lab. The Seventh Guards had been sent for two purposes: making certain all of the monsters reported in the Lovely Angels' report had been killed along with all of the sentients who once lived there, and trying to find the body of the unfortunate man who had accompanied them on this mission and, according to the report, been killed ensuring the Lovely Angels' escape. It hadn't quite sunk in yet that Commander Benjamin D. Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force, was dead, even if his funeral -had- been three days ago... "All right, you lot, look sharp now!" Mi'tian barked, slamming the facebowl of his battle armor's helmet and stepping off the ramp. "This is where they reported Ground Zero to be -- get digging. We want the site of the control panel marked out; we want any datatapes that can be salvaged... " "Fat chance," one of the senior sergeants muttered. Mi'tian ignored him and continued, "And we want... er... the body." "If there's any to be found, sir, we'll find it," said one of the soldiers, kicking over a piece of rubble with his toe. "I doubt there's any to be found, though." "Do your best." Eyrie Productions, Unlimited presents UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES PASSION A Story of the Golden Age Benjamin D. Hutchins (c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited "Sir!" came a voice on the tac frequency, hours later. Mi'tian, catching a quick nap aboard the dropship, recognized it as Corporal Kamara's immediately, and keyed the com set next to his bunk. "What've you got, Corporal?" "We've found Commander Hutchins, sir." Mi'tian put on his helmet, activated the respirator, and left the dropship. Following Kamara's transponder signal, he picked his way through the rubble for several minutes, coming at last to a large pile of angular wall sections which had formed a strange kind of lean-to. Near it, a medical tent had been erected, the green chevron clearly marking it as such (a green chevron being the Zardon equivalent of a red cross), and, ducking through the flap held open by a saluting subcorporal, Mi'tian entered it to see Commander Hutchins's body laid out on the inflatable bier in the middle. He was covered in soot and a thick tar-like substance, and blood left a crimson trail down the sides of his face from nose and mouth. A corpswoman was bending over him, peering intently at the reading from the small sensor she was holding to his neck. He stopped, opening his helmet shield and smelling the sharp antiseptic tang that marked all medical locations. The corpswoman looked up from the sensor, her eyes wide, and met her commander's gaze with a look of shock. "Sir... he's alive." "Great prophets," Mi'tian whispered. "I'll contact the WDF imm -- " "Sir, wait." "What?" "Sir... he shows signs of extreme vizorium toxicity. I'm not certain he'll survive... there's no need to go getting their hopes up for nothing. Also... he was conscious for a brief period when we first found him, and he said not to let them know." Mi'tian considered. "That's very odd. He must have been delirious." "Perhaps, but the other factors remain, even if we discount his wish -- which I don't recommend." "I... I see your point. If he doesn't survive, there's no need to put them all through losing him again. Still... I have to inform -someone-... I don't have the authority to finalize that decision on my own." "What will you do, sir?" "Contact Command and find out what they think," Mi'tian said. "I'll be on the dropship. Inform me at once if there's any change." "We should move him to a full medical facility at once, sir." "I know. I'll contact you when I'm done with Command." "Sir!" "Alive, you say?" General (once Empress-Designate, before Zardon went democratic) Leeanna Zard'al said, her eyes narrowing with interest. "Have you notified anyone else?" "No, ma'am. Corpswoman Ilian recommended that we not subject the WDF to any undue speculation, since his condition is so tenuous. No need to make them lose him twice. She also recommends moving him to a complete care facility posthaste, a recommendation I concur with. In addition, he himself requested, before lapsing into unconsciousness, that the WDF -not- be informed." "Strange," Leeanna replied. "This poses a quandary... where can we send him that he will receive adequate care, and yet the WDF won't know where he is? Inform your corpswoman that she is to do her best, and I will contact you with instructions within the hour." "Yes, ma'am." Leeanna terminated the connection and then sat, lost in thought, for several minutes. What the hell? This was a thoroughly weird situation. What to do? Activating her com unit again, she tapped in a connection code known to perhaps a dozen people in the galaxy, and then waited. Moments later, Asrial, Queen of Imperial Salusia, appeared on the monitor. Once, long ago, Leeanna and Asrial had been enemies, bitter rivals in the endless war between Salusia and Zardon, and in the battle for the heart of an Earthman named Jeremy Feeple, but before that, they had been friends, and that same Earthman had ended the war and made them friends again, even if Asrial did wind up getting him, in the end. (Leeanna loved to point that detail out when in a puckish mood; it exasperated Asrial.) Thus, Asrial smiled when she recognized her caller. "Oh, hello, Leeanna. How are you?" "I'm fine, Asrial... but I have a bit of a problem." "Oh?" "Mm. You know my people are handling the cleanup of the EDEN Incident for the UG, right?" "Right." "Well... the Group Captain in charge of the team just informed me that they found Gryphon. Alive." Asrial's eyes widened. "Alive!" "Barely. They tell me he's extensively injured and heavily poisoned with vizorium... after all, he was in the middle of that inferno for days. He may not survive. They want to move him someplace where he'll be cared for, but they say he doesn't want the WDF informed that he's alive." "That's very strange." "I know, but he was apparently adamant about it, for the brief period he was conscious. I don't know what to do with him, and I seem to recall you have some sort of attachment to him, so I called you." Asrial nodded. "He's an old friend -- you remember, I did my military service on the SDF-17 -- and he saved Jeremy some years ago. I had Father make him a Knight-Defender for it. I offered him a sub-consortship then, and again when he helped me ascend the throne after the Greub Revolt, but he turned it down both times... I was rather disappointed." Leeanna laughed. "Earthmen. They'll never understand you Salusians and the way you think." Asrial smiled. "Oh, I don't know. Jeremy learned, in time." Leeanna grinned slyly, waggling her eyebrows, and replied, "Don't I know it." Both of them broke for a moment at that; when they recovered, Leeanna added, "You have the weirdest taste in men, Asrial." "Yes," Asrial admitted, "and the scary thing is, you seem to share it." Leeanna shrugged. "All in the name of galactic peace. What do you think I should do with him?" Asrial pondered for a moment, then replied, "Have your people bring him here. I'll put him in one of the secure rooms in the Palace Imperial and assign my personal physician to him. Everything will be very hush-hush." "Gotcha." Leeanna winked broadly. "If you find out why he doesn't want his own people to know he's alive, let me know, ok?" "Sure. Take care, Leeanna... and thanks for calling me on this." "No problem. You be careful." So it was that, slightly less than three hours later, the Zardon Naval Cruiser Garth Zard'al folded into Salusian space and sent a high-speed courier shuttle to the Salusian Palace Imperial near Saenar. There, an Imperial Watch detachment accepted the shuttle's special payload from the Zardon Guards, and immediately took him to the secure room in the West Tower, which had been outfitted as a hospital in the intervening time. Watch guards were posted in pairs at regular intervals in the corridors and stairwell of the West Tower, and the lift had been security locked to cardkey levels. Her Imperial Majesty herself hovered by the door of the room for the entirety of the twenty Standard hours in which her personal physician, Doctor Sandor Tinal, worked tirelessly to stabilize the poisoned officer. Finally, Tinal stood up, groaning softly as his back popped into place again, turned to Asrial, and bowed, saying, "Majesty, I believe we've finally stabilized him." "Thank you, Doctor. You're dismissed." "Majesty." The doctor and his staff departed in silence, and Asrial went to stand over the bed, looking down at Gryphon. Several hours passed. "Unnngghh... " Pain. Fire. Cold. Fire. Pain. How interesting. A Mobius loop of suffering. Oddly detached from what he was experiencing, Gryphon watched himself slide toward the abyss. He'd been hanging on for days, trying to stay with it, fighting the poison as it crept through his body, destroying him. He'd lain there in the wreckage and felt his skin crisping as the flames licked at him, and not had the strength to pull away because of the oxygen debt, the smoke searing his throat as his lungs liquefied inside his chest from the vizorium fumes. He'd felt with queer, clinical detachment as the mucous membranes inside his nasal passages had disintegrated and blood had flowed freely, the exquisite agony of choking on that blood as it flowed into his raw throat and made his tortured lungs cough, his body reflexively fighting to breathe. Through it all he'd refused to let go of his life. They had to be told of his betrayal. [Left me to die... ] Once, just before the Zardons had found him, Teleute had come to him and asked him to let go and cease his suffering; he'd refused with all the strength he had left, and to his surprise, she'd respected his will and gone away. That was why he was able to move and speak when they found him, why he'd had the strength and adrenaline to force his shattered vocal chords to tell them not to alert the WDF, not to alert -anyone-. Keep me a secret, he'd said. They mustn't know. Then it had all gone black. He'd lost consciousness, finally. All through the ordeal he'd hung onto at least semiconsciousness; only with that message delivered did he surrender to the dark, secure in the knowledge that they wouldn't let him die now. Now, he felt horrible -- terrible beyond words -- but he wasn't hanging onto his mortality with his fingernails. He didn't have to concentrate to not seize up and expire; his body was working on its own again. He could awaken and pay attention to other things. The fires were gone. The smoke and dust were gone. No new damage was being inflicted. He opened his eyes, wondering if they would work, and was rewarded with a fuzzy image of brown and grey. Blinking a couple of times restored moisture to his eyeballs, and the world resolved itself. The room didn't look like a hospital room. It was a bedroom, and a fairly opulent one at that. The bed was huge, twice the size of a traditional king-size at least, and had actual posts at the corners, not high ones, but there, and topped with knobs of some grey marble-like stone. The walls were paneled in some rich brown wood, the ceiling was of the same material, and the floor was the same kind of stone as the knobs on the bedposts. There were fixtures of brass, and a huge red brick fireplace dominated the far wall, a fireplace with a mantel of that same grey stone, and above it, a painting of a Cheltari Salusian man in a naval uniform. [Where the hell am I?] He wasn't alone. There was a chair next to the room's massive door, a large wooden one, which didn't look very comfortable, and curled up in it was a woman, blonde-haired, dressed casually in a t-shirt and jeans. Human? No; Salusian, humanized; there were the extra ears. In fact... wasn't that... ? He tried to say a name, but nothing came out; he coughed, feeling spikes of agony ray out from inside his chest when he did so, and tried again. This time his voice emerged, as a sharp, hissing rasp, but audible. "A... Asrial?" She stirred, then awoke with a slight start, looking over at him with crystal-blue eyes. Yes, that was definitely Asrial, all right. What was -she- doing here? "Gryphon," she said, rising and walking over to kneel by the side of the bed. "Thank the gods you're all right." "I'd hardly call myself 'all right'," Gryphon rasped, "but I'm alive. Wh... where am I?" "Salusia. The Palace Imperial." "How'd I... how'd I get here?" "The Zardon commander whose unit found you didn't know what to do with you, so he reported your discovery to his supreme commander, who happens to be Leeanna. She called me, since you're a Knight-Defender of the Crown, and asked me what I thought should be done." "And you had me brought here?" "There's no physician in the universe I'd trust with the life of a Knight-Defender above my own Dr. Tinal." "Thank you. It seems I owe you my life... " He remembered his manners, then. He'd taken Salusian citizenship a bit less than a century before, when he'd been a student at the WDF Academy -- since his own homeworld didn't want him back, it seemed the thing to do. That made Asrial his Queen, and there were certain observances to be made. "Majesty." "Please, my friend. Formalities don't become you... " Gryphon smiled weakly and replied, "Well, you -are- majestic." "You haven't changed; you're still a flatterer." "I feel obligated to flatter people who have saved me." The fire. Great gods, the fire. The memory crashed back down upon him like a boulder, and he would have screamed, but it was impossible. He twisted in agony half-remembered and half-real, and Asrial was at his side in a moment, the Queen of Imperial Salusia mopping the forehead of a wounded soldier with a wet cloth like a common battlefield nurse. Asrial, for all of her propensity to give grandiose titles, was not one to stand often on ceremony. The action didn't particularly do anything, physiologically -- he was not feverish -- but the gesture, a simple act of compassion and care, did much to calm his mind. Momentarily, the flames receded, leaving him, as they always did, with a cold rage burning below his skin, and the elemental need to avenge himself. Asrial felt his hand grip her forearm with surprising strength, and looked down at him with that surprise evident in her eyes. He relaxed his hand and smiled weakly up at her. "Seems it'll be a while before I'm well enough to get out of your hair, Majesty," he said apologetically. She looked into his eyes and saw the rage and pain lurking behind them, overshadowing the mere physical suffering his wracked body was subjecting him to. It frightened her a little, and she wondered what he could possibly have experienced in that hellish firestorm that could leave his mind so wounded. She had always been fond of him -- fond enough to offer him a sub-consortship years before -- and now, seeing him broken in body and tormented in mind, she felt her heart melting. What had happened to him? How could she help him to recover from it? "Don't worry about it," she told him firmly. "All that matters is you, getting better." "All?" he replied, his weak, apologetic smile becoming stronger and more familiarly quirky. "All," she repeated. To that, he replied with a characteristically unexpected action, and kissed the back of her hand with dry, cracked lips. "My liege," he said. She swatted him. For two months, he slowly recovered, his body knitting itself back together as the simple, natural medicine of the Salusian people flushed away the remaining poison in his system. During that time, Asrial remained with him, true to her word. Ambassador Feeple, as charmingly unassuming and friendly as ever, visited often, as did his "obligatory ninja bodyguard", Ichi. It was during one such visit that the Ambassador brought up the possibility of informing the WDF of his survival. "I can't do that," Gryphon replied. "Not yet." "But why not?" Asrial inquired. "You never have explained just why you forbade us to tell them the Zardons had found you in the first place, after it was clear that you weren't in mortal danger any longer." "I would think you owe us that, at least," Ichi observed. "True enough," Gryphon replied, and sat up a little straighter in bed. "True enough. All right... I'll tell you... but what I am about to tell you doesn't leave this room. Agreed?" "Agreed," said Jeremy, and Asrial nodded. "You have my word," Ichi added. Satisfied, Gryphon leaned back against the pillows and closed his eyes, and started recounting the tale as it played like a film behind his eyelids. /* Vivaldi "The Summer, III" _The Four Seasons_ */ We found the vizorium mines easily enough, and wandered around inside them for a while with a total case of the creeps, getting filthy with various forms of crud we stumbled into down there. When we stumbled upon what had been a miners' barracks area, Kei and Yuri were overjoyed -- especially when they found out that the baths worked. I was standing guard outside the door to the bathroom, waiting my turn, essentially, while the girls took a much-needed bath, and anticipating my own with a good bit of pleasure -- I hate being dirty, too. Then all hell broke loose in there, and by the time I made it through the door, Kei and Yuri were standing there, dripping wet, in towels, holding some guy at gunpoint. Kei had seen him before -- he was apparently a small-time thief and mercenary, who had been running a vizorium sideline of late, and she'd seen him while undercover tracking a preliminary lead into this case. Charming fellow, really, handsome in a rakish kind of way, very roguish, of course. His name, unlikely enough, was Carson D. Carson. Carson started out as a prisoner, and then, as we made our way deeper into the mines (sure, we were -looking- for the way out, but we were good and lost by then), things started getting hairy. Bio-engineered monsters started popping out of the woodwork -- it was like a Nightmare run in CyberDoom. Before long we were all separated, and I was wandering around alone, lost in the catacombs. It was quite a bit like being in Hell. Eventually, I met up with Yuri, more by accident than anything else, and between the two of us we wound up blasting our way out of the tunnels and into a big central chamber -- and who was there but Kei and Carson, and a wackmobile scientist-type who had apparently mistaken them for his own creations -- why, I have no idea. At any rate, he was trying to scan-and-map them onto a new batch of the monsters, and ended up accomplishing little except making them meaner. Doctor Strangelove there sort of snapped when Yuri and I came blasting into the room, and sent a couple zillion of those things after us... we got Kei and Carson free, and at that point, survival was a bit more important than prisoner protocols. We figured out where the exit tunnels were, but by that point, the whole place was going up in flames -- secondary damage from our firefight with the monsters was causing the operation to come down around our ears. Kei and Yuri caught the Nutty Professor and his big butler-type, and when the last wave of monsters came rushing out of the hole in the ground that used to be Professor Wack's headquarters, and Lovely Angel still needed preflighting, I grabbed a SSIIVA unit and went back in to hold them off. Carson came with me, I thought because he had a shred of decency -- he seemed to be one of those gentleman-thieves you hear about, like Arsene Lupin and his ilk. What he was actually after went a bit deeper than that. We mopped up the monsters without much trouble, and then, as the place started to get -really- unfriendly and it became obvious that the firestorm was going to get out of any semblance of control, I turned to him to suggest that we get the hell out of there. Gryphon stopped speaking then, and simply sat for a moment, silent, his eyes squeezed shut, his breathing slow, even, regular, and entirely too controlled. "What happened?" Jeremy finally asked. Gryphon's eyes snapped open -- they burned like blue coals as he looked up and said, "He shot me." Asrial sucked in a sharp, hissing breath through her teeth; Jeremy blanched; Ichi remained impassive, but her eyes narrowed a bit. "He had a bottle of wine in his hand -- supposedly he'd stolen it once and Professor Nutcase had gotten it away from him. He popped out the cork, took a big drink of it, and said to me with a grin, 'You know something, pal? What Carson D. Carson wants, he takes -- no matter what.' I couldn't think what that had the first thing to do with, so I gave him one of those 'And?' looks, and his grin got wider as he continued, 'Guess what? I want something of yours!' "Then he shot me with a pulser rifle. I could feel it blowing my armored chestplate to bits, chewing into my flesh, the impact throwing me back against a wall... my faceplate shattered and the flames and smoke clawed at my face and my throat... and as everything went black and red, I could hear him laughing." He paused, took a deep, shuddering breath, and released it. "The next thing I remember is waking up in this room. I don't remember talking to the Zardons at all, or being transported here." "It makes sense, now... " muttered Jeremy. "What makes sense?" "Uh -- nothing." Gryphon leaned forward and repeated sharply, "-What- makes sense, Jeremy?!" Ichi put her face in her hand as Feeple murmured, "Really, it's nothing." "Tell me!" "Uhm... " Asrial cleared her throat and interceded. "When the Lovely Angels returned to the SDF-17," she said, "Carson D. Carson reported that you had heroically sacrificed your life so that they all might live. You... you were commemorated a week later, an empty coffin buried-at-space." Gryphon fell back against the pillows and looked up at the ceiling. "Son of a bitch," he said, eventually. "Told them I died for them. Shot me and left me to die, and told them... My goddess, Kei must be... " He sat up again, eyes narrowing. "No, no, oh christ no... get me a phone, please, I have to have a phone." "Gryphon -- " "Please! I need a phone." "All right... all right, just a minute." "Perhaps we should be going," said Jeremy, rising to his feet. "I'll look in on you later, all right?" "All right," said Gryphon with an absent wave, his mind six million miles away. Looking as if he had expected just that response, Feeple left with Ichi right behind him. Moments later, Asrial placed a small vid-phone on the stand next to Gryphon's bed, then excused herself as well. Gryphon sat for a moment, trying to will his pounding heart to slow down, hearing the blood roaring through still-dangerously-weak vessels and threatening to burst free again. Vizorium poisoning is a tricky and dangerous affliction, and pushing it now could send him spiraling into relapse. Eventually, he got himself under control; then, filled with trepidation, he reached out, picked up the handset, and dialed a well-remembered number. 0 11 207 508 723 798 6650 0166 RING RING The screen flickered to white, then resolved itself as the phone was picked up. The world ground to a sparking halt around Gryphon's reeling mind as he recognized the face looking out of it at him. "Carson," his throat squeezed out past his dropping jaw. Carson D. Carson, recognizing his caller, looked momentarily surprised, then moved closer to the camera (putting more of himself in front of the screen, probably). "Well, well, well," he said. "Look who's still alive." "You son of a bitch," Gryphon grated. "What the hell are you doing answering my phone?!" Carson sneered. "I'm doing a hell of a lot more than answering your phone, dead man," he replied. "This happens to be -my- phone now. My phone... my quarters... my life. Yours is over, and you're dead and buried. Your position has been... filled," he added with a leer. Gryphon's eyes widened as a sick feeling welled up from the pit of his belly. "She's just about forgotten about you," Carson continued, his sneer becoming an even crueler cheery grin. "Do us all a favor and don't put her through hell twice by trying to come back. She's in better hands now." Faintly, in the background, Gryphon heard a familiar voice: "Carson? Who is it?" Carson turned away from the screen, replying as he reached for the Disconnect switch, "No one important." NO CARRIER CALL DURATION 01:31 Gryphon stared in mute, uncomprehending, flatline horror for a moment, his muscles becoming tenser and tenser. He felt the pain knotting at the back of his skull as the muscles of his neck went into spasm, and couldn't care. He felt his heart racing dangerously, his blood raging as if on fire, and couldn't care. Then the world burst apart into a million red fragments, and he was spiraling into merciful blackness. INTERCESSION Your friends make you small And I hate them all Why be miniature When you were so tall? I know where you go I can't go there so My heart's turning blue I'm all over you Over you... Everything's a mess And you could care less Somebody heard you say You changed your address I know what you know I don't want to though No point in seeing you I'm all over you Over you... --The Curtain Society "All Over You" _Chelsea_ (7" single) The next month was a repeat of the previous two, albeit at accelerated speed; his relapse had been bad, but nowhere near as bad as it could have been. Before long, he was strong enough to get out of bed and walk around, and within another month he was training himself, getting back into shape as his para-human physiology finally came back up to speed, flushing away the last of the poison and repairing the last of its long-term damage. He would leave the palace for long periods of time, to walk around the Imperial Forests surrounding it, exploring the small mountains and hiking about. Equally long sojourns found him in the palace library, studying Salusian; before long he was reading anything that came to hand in its original text, having added the language to his repetoire in short order (languages had always been one of his strong points). To strengthen himself, bring back some of his tone, he took lessons in combat and the arts of darkness from Ichi -- by no means a long enough tutelage for him to take any title, but long enough to acquire some useful skills. As much of the time as she could, Asrial accompanied him, watching as he got stronger, recovering more and more fully. At length, as they sat on a grassy hilltop a few miles from the palace, looking at its gleaming, turreted majesty in the gathering twlilight, she raised the topic of his returning. "I'm not certain," Gryphon replied, "that I should." "But why not? Surely you don't intend to let Carson get away with what he's done." "It's a bit late for that, Asrial. I see now what he did... he came out of that hellstorm saying I sacrificed myself for them, and when Kei needed somebody, there he was. The bastard murdered me and then used my death and its effect on Kei to get into her bed. How can anyone be that low, Asrial? I've seen a lot of things in my time as a soldier... but war, for all its horror, seems somehow more... more humane than that. To cold-bloodedly kill a man, and put a woman through hell, just to make yourself look good, to get into bed with her... " He shivered. "I can't even imagine... " Asrial moved closer to him, putting her arm around his shoulders and pulling him closer to her. "So do something about it," she said softly. "Something he said to me, though -- it made sense, in a way. He said... 'she's just about forgotten about you... don't put her through hell trying to come back.'" "That's a lie and you know it," Asrial said flatly. "Forgotten you! No one who has ever known you can forget you, my friend... least of all Kei Morgan. The two of you are bound by something that Carson D. Carson could never understand. Your souls are twined together at their very roots. No shallow scheme like this can put the two of you apart forever." "You seem very... I dunno, -certain- about this." "I am," she replied. "She thinks she loves Carson now." "No; she loves someone she thinks Carson is. No doubt he's acting very much like you -- it's the only way he can succeed at his twisted goal." Gryphon ruminated on that for a moment, and was rewarded with a flash of white agony as his mind's eye saw the two of them together, Kei all unknowing with that smiling demon in the bed that had been theirs... he cried out in anguish and fell to his back on the ground, looking up at the stars above Salusia and wishing he had the power to fling thunderbolts through the ether. The stars were blotted out, then, by Asrial leaning over him, and before he could think, she had lain on the ground next to him, her arm over his chest, and brushed her lips across his own. For a moment he enjoyed it; then he regained his wits and put a hand on her shoulder, murmuring for her to stop. "You need me," said Asrial in reply. "You're in terrible pain, Ben... you need warmth, you need companionship. You need love, and it just so happens that I'm here to give it to you." "But I -- you, you're -- " "We Salusians think differently than you Earthers, Ben. We're not bound by the constraints of the outdated, puritanical system you were raised under -- especially when and where you come from. Remember, Jeremy is about your age, and from the same area of Earth. I had to go through all of this with him... explain to him what love really is. At first, he didn't understand it either, but eventually I got through to him." "So you think you know what love is." "I know. Love is the greatest thing in the universe." "Well -that's- specific." "I remember a particularly insightful verse from an Earther song I heard once... 'love can make the time move fast or torture time so slow / love can heal a gaping wound or make the pain explode / love can be the difference between life and a hangman's rope / and that's why love don't come easy'." "I know that song." "You Earthpeople seem to think that love is an object, like a video disc or a car. You talk of giving your love to someone, of taking it back when a relationship goes sour -- you seem to think that, like a video disc, you have to get it back from the first person you gave it to before you can give it to another. Love is a fountain, Gryphon, a well -- a great many people can drink from it, and none detracts from any other's helping." "What are you saying?" "I'm saying," she said, kissing him again, gently, "that what we do here tonight won't detract a bit from what I have with Jeremy, or from what you will soon have again with Kei. Tonight, here, you and I are going to give to each other what we need, and express the love that's built up between us over the past months. You -have- noticed that, haven't you, even as you tried to deny it to yourself?" she asked with an amused grin. Gryphon reflected. It would be absurd, if it didn't make so much sense... ... and yes, he had to admit as he looked at it, he -did- love her. "What happens after that, though?" he inquired. "Who knows?" she replied. "We may never pass this way again. We may never need to. Tomorrow you're going to leave -- you're going to go back to the SDF-17 and take back the place that's rightfully yours. No arguments, Knight-Defender... that is an Imperial order." Gryphon snickered. "Yes, Majesty." "Tomorrow, my brave knight, you're going home; and so we should enjoy tonight as much as we can, h'm?" As it happened, Asrial was quite right: freeing himself from the shackles of his New England upbringing -was- a simple matter for Gryphon. Forever after, the memory of that cool late-summer evening would bring a nostalgic smile to his face. The cool, dry air; the soft, enveloping darkness, the sparkling stars... the smell of Salusian conifers alone would bring the whole thing back to him in later years, the memories of Asrial's sweet, strong body, enthusiasm and skill, and how very right she had been, how very much he had needed exactly what she took such relish in giving to him. In that one conversation, he learned more of love than he had ever known before; and in the events that followed, he learned still more. It was the finest gift anyone had ever given him. The next day found him arriving at the Imperial Spaceport near the palace, a small bag of clothing and equipment in one hand and a slip of paper in the other. He was dressed for the cool, bright weather, in the well-worn jeans, slightly tatty checked flannel shirt, and comfortable boots he had worn for most of his hiking around the Imperial Preserve. He hadn't shaved since his arrival on Salusia, and by now his beard had grown in fully enough that he'd trimmed it back this morning. No need to be too scruffy, after all. He stood in the main concourse of the spaceport for a moment, looking around from under the brim of an ISMC cap, and then, remembering his directions, moved southward, adjusting his grip on the satchel. Before long, he found the parking dock he was looking for. He could tell that by the vessel parked there; Asrial had warned him when she told him where to find it that it was "distinctive". The ship he was looking at now appeared to have been made of parts of two different ships; one, sweeping and graceful, encompassed the entire foresection of the ship and swept back and up to form what he took to be a flying bridge tower, while the other had been stuffed into the after-underquarter, where the drives belonged. The other seemed to his spacer's eyes to be Corellian; it had the usual row of three large ion-drive exhausts jutting out, and the knobbly power-regulator protrusions and such that went along with Corellian drives. Apparently this ship had lost its drive core near Corellia at one point, and been patched together rather haphazardly, but what the hell, he had seen worse patch jobs. He walked up to the tall, silver-haired man standing next to the ramp; said man, dressed in what seemed to be a CVR body-glove and a baggy jacket which formed a semblance of uniform, turned to watch him approaching, and Gryphon could almost feel him trying to recognize the man walking toward him and failing. "Something I can do for you?" he asked. Gryphon handed him the piece of paper he held in his right hand; the other man unfolded it, scanned it, and raised his eyebrows. "You realize," he said, "I'll need some sort of verification." "Of course." Gryphon pushed back his right sleeve, revealing what appeared to be a bar code tattooed on his inner forearm, just before the elbow joint. "All the verification you need is right here." "Wait here," said the man, and went up the ramp into the ship. A moment later he returned with another member of the ship's crew, a tall and pretty woman with her ash-blond hair cut in a near-cascade down one side of her face. Her CVR-glove was red, and the shoulders of her jacket were adorned with large red crosses against the white material. Apparently, she was a medical officer. Shrugging, Gryphon held his arm out to her; she took it in strong, gentle hands and turned it, then scanned the code with a light-pen. Then, with that somewhat amusing clinical detachment medical people have, she let his arm drop and took his head in her hands instead, turning it and peering intently into one of his eyes. Then she turned back to the man. "It's genuine," she told him. "Excellent." The man took Gryphon's hand and shook it. "Good to see you, Commander. My name is Joshua Balboa, and this is Mei Lin. Welcome aboard the starship Cha Cha Maru. Come up... our captain will want to talk to you." Captain Tita Mu Koshigaya was not what Gryphon was expecting to see in the commander of the ship Asrial had called "one of my best intelligence ships." He had rather been expecting... well, he wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but a water nymph wasn't it. Tita, all five feet and perhaps ninety pounds of her, leaned back in a swivel-rocker office chair and put her grav-booted feet up on her immense oak desk, looking for all the world like a high schooler at the principal's desk. For a moment, after reading the paper Gryphon had given Balboa, she was silent, a pensive look on her sprite's sharp-nosed face. "Docking with the Wayward Son is no problem," she said at length. "We do that a couple of times a year to pick up supplies and current charts. Putting a 'member of the crew' off permanently... -that-'s tricky." "You don't have to worry about the internal security systems," Gryphon assured her. "I can get past those easily. It's the personnel that might be a problem. The SDF-17 is a big ship, but I'm pretty well-known. I'll have the advantage that they won't be expecting me to turn up, but there's still a chance I might be recognized." "Would that cause trouble?" "No, but it would ruin the surprise." "Surprise?" Gryphon outlined for her what had happened that brought him to Salusia in the first place, and what he planned to do about it, and at the end of the story, a slow smile spread across her face. "Right!" she declared, getting to her feet and nodding her auburn head. "Don't worry about a thing, Commander -- we'll get you there." INTERCESSION There's a girl with a crown and a scepter Who's on WLSD And she says that the scene isn't what it's been And she's thinking of going home That it's old and it's totally over now And it's old and it's over it's over now And it's over it's over it's over now I can see myself At the end of the tour When the road disappears If there's any more people around When the tour runs aground And if you're still around Then we'll meet at the end of the tour The engagements are booked through the end of the world So we'll meet at the end of the tour Never to part since the day we met Out on Interstate Ninety-One I was bent metal you were a flaming wreck As we kissed at the overpass I was sailing along with the people Driving themselves to distraction inside me Then came a knock on the door which was odd And the picture above me changed At the end of the tour When the road disappears If there's any more people around When the tour runs aground And if you're still around Then we'll meet at the end of the tour The engagements are booked through the end of the world So we'll meet at the end of the tour This was the vehicle, these were the people You opened the door and expelled all the people This was the vehicle, these were the people You opened the door and expelled all the people This was the vehicle, these were the people You let them go... At the end of the tour When the road disappears If there's any more people around When the tour runs aground And if you're still around Then we'll meet at the end of the tour The engagements are booked through the end of the world So we'll meet at the end of the tour And we're never gonna tour again No we're never gonna tour again --They Might Be Giants "End of the Tour" _John Henry_ That night-cycle, after the ship was away and in hyperspace, Gryphon lay in the bunk of the stateroom he'd been shown to, looking up at the ceiling. He was, of course, quite unable to sleep. The combination of a strange bed in a strange place, his own mental agitation at finally being active again, and a strange but overwhelming feeling he couldn't identify effectively prevented that. Instead, he stared at the ceiling in the darkness and thought. He needed some kind of a plan. Just showing up, pretending to be someone else, wasn't going to do it. The charade wouldn't hold out forever, and anyway, what would he do then? Roam around until he found Carson, and then what? Confront him, and risk losing spectacularly and getting himself spacked again? Get a big rifle and wack him from a distance? Not very satisfying. And what of the others? Just showing up alive would be a bit of a shock for them, wouldn't it? What about what he had just come from, for that matter? He wasn't entirely sure -what- had happened back on Salusia that last night. Well, he knew what had -happened-, but... Hmm. Curious feeling, this. His anticipation at seeing Kei again, at proving to her that he hadn't died, hadn't left her, was running high. At the same time, he had to wonder when he would next see Asrial. What was she, now? His Queen, his savior... his lover? Once, at least. That fact was recorded for posterity in the bar code on his arm; it identified him to anyone who knew the Salusian High Military Code as a Knight-Defender of the Crown and Imperial Consort of the First Circle, which, under Imperial law, afforded him quite a few powers under law. Both of them were complex people, and though they loved each other on many levels, they could not be said to be -in- love, not the way he and Kei were. Idly, as he turned the situation over in his head, he wondered if it really made as much sense to Asrial as she claimed, or if she was just making it up as she went along like he did most of the time. Ah, the heck with it. Why argue with any system that works? Carson. What the hell was he going to do about Carson? Under the WDF's conduct code, he was quite entitled to just kill him out of hand. Anyone who survives a direct attempt on his life has the right to return the favor. Under UG law, such conduct was still frowned upon; the UG's legal code would prefer that Gryphon report the incident to his local law enforcement authorities, who would then build a case, make an arrest, and try the accused before a court of law. This had the disadvantages of taking the situation out of Gryphon's hands, taking forever, and being singularly unsatisfying, so Gryphon much preferred the WDF way. Besides, since Carson was living aboard the SDF-17 now, he was subject to the WDF's laws, not the UG's. Even if he hadn't, his crime was committed within the confines of a WDF field operation for which he had been deputized... So legally, there were no worries regarding just walking up to him, sticking a gun in his mouth and blowing his brain stem out the back of his head. An entertaining image, but impractical. Perhaps a better thing to think about would be, rather than playing with images of Carson suffering indescribable torments in the name of vengeance, how he would go about putting the pieces back together afterward. No doubt Gryphon's return would startle a good many people, not least of whom by any means would be Kei. She would undoubtably be upset: hurt and angry at being deceived, perhaps even suffering mixed emotions at the loss of the person she -thought- Carson was even as the trauma of learning the truth was hitting her. This would have to be handled carefully. Fortunately, handling Kei's emotional state carefully was something Gryphon had a great deal of experience with. Explaining what he had learned... that could wait, but he was certain that she would find it interesting, if nothing else, once the unpleasantness was taken care of. Her thinking had run closer to those lines than his, anyway; she'd actually reproached him for being rude enough to turn down Asrial's initial offer, several years ago, which had at the same time confused and amused him. That would go a long way toward assuaging any worries she might have about him not wanting to return to their old life after knowing what had happened to her in his absence... assuming she wanted to. No. Don't think about that... Damn the man! He should die a thousand deaths... but there's only the one. It would have to be a good one, then. Some sort of elaborate scheme to drive him over the edge before ending his torment... some way to drive him into bleak madness before the final stroke. Aboard the SDF-17? Right. The corridors and chambers of a Super Dimensional Fortress are ever-so-scary. If only... Gryphon's mind was interrupted from its tail-chasing by the chimer on his stateroom door, pinging softly, almost diffidently, in the darkness. He looked at his watch, pushing in the button so that the dial lit up bright blue (his favorite part of the entire timepiece), and discovered that it was nearly midnight. How long had he been up? Since... what, seven, eight that morning? "Come in," he said, wondering if the locks in this ship worked in such a way that he'd have to get up and do something with a switch. That turned out to be unnecessary; the door pinged a different tone as the locking mechanism disengaged. The door hissed open, and as Gryphon blinked in the light streaming in through the open rectangle, he made out a small silhouette in the doorway. "Oh, I'm sorry," Tita said. "I didn't know you were asleep -- it's not important." "That's all right," he replied, raising a hand (partially as a signal, and partially to shield his eyes from the bright light of the corridor). "I wasn't sleeping. What's on your mind?" "Nothing, really. I just wanted to be sure you were settled and all that. You're a guest on my ship, after all; it's my responsibility to be sure you're comfortable." Gryphon chuckled. "I'm fine, thanks." "Lucky you," replied Tita, walking into the room and sitting down on the edge of the bunk. "I can't sleep at all my first night in a new place." As she spoke, the door hissed shut again, plunging the room back into darkness. "Actually, neither can I, but I didn't want to mention it. It's nobody's fault but mine, after all." "See? It must be some kind of universal thing." Tita kicked off her boots and leaned back, putting up her feet; then, as if realizing that what she was doing could be considered impolite, she turned to him and said, "Uh, do you mind?" "No, not at all." Gryphon moved himself over a bit, putting his hands behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. "How long before we rendezvous with the Wayward Son?" "Two weeks. They're on patrol at the Outer Frontier, so we'll be meeting them right around the Rigel Rim." "Ah, good. I haven't seen the Rim for a couple of years now. The starbow near black hole Rigel X-91 is the prettiest one I've ever seen... " "I'm surprised military people notice things like that." "Well, the WDF isn't your usual military organization." He chuckled. "Hell, -I'm- one of the officers." "How'd you ever get involved with that anyway? You don't look like the soldier type to me." He shrugged. "Damned if I know. I just sort of fell into it. Come to that, you don't look like a spy." "Is that what Asrial told you?" He nodded. "Ha! We're not spies. We're civ hunters. We're just observant, and we report back anything we notice that we think Salusia might be interested in, that's all. We're just another pair of open eyes out here." "Civ hunters, eh? I've never really understood the charm in that, even though the WDF has dabbled in it ourselves from time to time. It's like archaeology, but on such a huge scale... where's the hook?" "Well... " Tita paused for a moment, then shrugged. "It's a calling." "Mm. So is the Wedge Defense Force. Not very many of us are soldiers by nature... which is probably what makes us so effective at what we do. We've never forgotten the basic problem that civilians have with trusting a military organization. Hell, we're more of a police force than an army. The 3WA's operation is a lot bigger than the WDF proper, but they get less press because they're less visible." "With a few exceptions." He smiled. "A few, yes." There was a long period of silence, as both of them lay in the quiet darkness and thought their private thoughts; then Gryphon was broken from his reverie by the sensation of a fingertip tracing a line across the inside of his right elbow -- his Defender's Mark. He glanced to his side to see Tita contemplating it in the gloom, that pensive look on her face. "Mm?" he queried. "I was just thinking... wondering how you came by this. All the other Knights-Defenders I've seen are members of the warrior caste, native Salusians, pure soldiers." "I got that... " He shrugged again. "I got that for doing my job. I was assigned to cover a transport which was carrying Ambassador Feeple; we came under attack and I covered the transport. When the smoke cleared, I had a big hole in my left side and Salusia's highest military honor." "And the First Circle." "No, that came later... and I'm not certain precisely why." In the darkness, he could just make out Tita smiling as she replied, "Oh, I think I know. Queen Asrial is something of a romantic, you know, and you're such a textbook picaro... well, it was bound to happen sooner or later." "Oh, you think so, do you?" he replied, grinning. "I've read about you," she said. "I think I know as much as anybody who isn't part of the WDF's inner circle can know about you. You're the easiest one to learn about, you know... compared to the others you're a public figure. Your captain... nobody knows -anything- about him, not even his real name." "He thinks being secretive and mysterious is funny. Me, I never saw anything to be gained from secrets, so I don't often keep them. My life is pretty much an open book... one that someone recently thought he would write the last chapter of." "What happened there? Her Majesty's orders didn't mention it." With considerably greater calm than the last time, Gryphon recounted the events of the EDEN Incident again. "That's... awful," said Tita, sounding almost at a loss. "I'm so sorry. I saw you and Kei once, while the Cha Cha Maru was docked with the SDF-17 for restocking, a couple of years ago. You were... I dunno how to put it. You were interesting to watch. You weren't terribly obvious about it, like some people, but it was obvious that you were very much in love... " Tita sighed. "You don't see something like that very often. I hope I find something like that for myself one day... but, I'm young yet." "How old are you?" "Well, that's a complicated question. Objectively, I'm not really sure. The best guess I've heard puts us all at around three hundred Standard years old. Subjectively, I'm eighteen, or close enough." "Time dilation?" "How'd you guess?" "I know someone else who has a similar age discrepancy." "Oh. Yeah... that's what it was. I turned fourteen in a relativistic pseudo-warp... " "You said 'us'. The rest of the crew?" "Mm-hmm. The crew of this ship is my father's original crew. It's because of him that I do what I do, really... he was a surveyor. Cha Cha Maru was originally a scoutship, a survey and observation vessel, for the Atlantean Empire." Gryphon blinked. "Atlantis? I thought that was only a legend." "No, it was real, once," Tita said wistfully. "Dad and his crew were surveyors... they kept an eye on the Santovaskan Empire, since Atlantis had trade agreements with the Santovasku. When he thought I was old enough, he let me go out with them. We were out in the fringes of the Empire -- a long way from home -- when the Santovaskan Civil War broke out, and while we were compiling our final report, we were attacked by Loyalist forces. Apparently the Loyalists had gotten the idea that Atlantis was backing Kahm's rebels." Tita paused, then continued, "They just about destroyed the ship. We only got away because of what Dad did... he jettisoned the engineering section and imploded it. The implosion destroyed the attacking Santovasku ships, and the rebound effect threw us back to our own galaxy... but... he had to stay behind to initiate the implosion. And without a dimension motor we made the whole trip at .98 C, so time had no meaning. To us, it took two months to be intercepted -- by a WDF ship, no less -- and slowed down.. but... " Comprehension dawned on Gryphon. "But Atlantis had disappeared in the interim." "Yes. Gone without a trace. The others made me the captain because that was how it was always done back home, but it's Balboa who really knows what's going on most of the time. But I'm the one who has to make the big decisions, and that's why we're civ hunters. I keep hoping that someday... someday... we'll find out what happened to our home." Shrugging off her sadness like a coat, she cheerily continued, "But in the meantime, Her Majesty has very graciously taken us in as Salusian subjects, and arranged for the Kuat Drive Yards off Corellia to rebuild the ship for us... she's done a lot to help us get acclimated. We owe her so much... so we do little favors like this for her sometimes." "Well, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. You should be able to get back to your search as soon as you drop me off." "Oh, it's no problem. Truth to tell, I just about demanded the job when Asrial mentioned that she needed somebody to do it. I told you I've read a lot about you... well, since we got here I've been fascinated by the WDF, you know. How a professional fighting force can keep up such a level of informality... you know, the Atlantean Navy was a very showy affair, and very disciplined. We wear the uniform out of respect, but we were always glad that Exploration and Observation was never part of the fleet proper. Anyway, like I said, I saw you once when I was on the SDF-17, and I wanted to meet you... I'm sorry, here you are trying to get some rest and I'm babbling away." "Ah, it's all right. After the last few months I've had, I could use a good bit of babble. Besides, it seems to me we've something in common, at least." "What's that?" "Each of us, in our own way, is trying to go back home." She considered for a moment, then nodded. "You're right." "I hope you make it back someday, Tita. If there's anything the WDF can do to help, just name it." She blinked at him. "Y... you mean that?" "Of course! It's the kind of thing we exist for." "You'd divert the resources of that kind of organization to help a bunch of lost spacers find their missing homeworld... why?" Gryphon shrugged. "Can't help it. I've recently decided that I like you." She blinked again, and this time the action cast loose the water that had been building up in her eyes for the last few seconds, so that it trickled down her cheeks. Rather unexpectedly, she burst out with a sob and buried her head against his shoulder, which caused him to start slightly and instinctively put an arm around her shoulders. "What's wrong?" "Nothing, I'm sorry... it's just that I only just met you, and you're offering to do a huge favor for me, just because... you like me... " "I've made it a goal in life to make as many friends and as few enemies as possible," he replied, and brushed some errant hair back away from her eyes. "It's a curse of sorts, being a Nice Guy." She laughed, the morose mood shattering as rapidly as it had crystallized, and hugged him. "I like you, too." Long moments of further silence passed; again, it was Gryphon who was removed from his reverie, this time by a soft rattling noise which it took him a moment to identify as snoring. He fell asleep. The journey to the SDF-17 took two weeks. For a couple of days, Gryphon chafed, impatient; then he discovered the ship's library and started reading everything in sight. Cha Cha Maru, being a freelance trader, civ-hunter and exploration vessel, had an impressive but disorganized collection of books and datatapes, and so what Gryphon found over the next couple of days was quite haphazard. Having finished _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_, he got up from the table and paced across the large room to the shelf where he had acquired it, and as he slid it back into the ranks of books, his eyes seemed drawn to glance at another, taller book standing a few spaces down the row. He reached up and pulled it out -- it was black, bound in leather, and the cover had the words "ARCHIVES OF THE SHADOW - W. GIBSON" stamped in gold foil on it. "Wow," Gryphon murmured. "Where'd they find -this-?" He took it back to his seat and started to read it, and as he did, a slow smile of recognition began to spread across his face. Presently he began to snicker, then chuckle, and then, just as Tita entered the room, he threw back his head and laughed, long, loud, and darkly. "Uh... it can wait," said Tita, and left. The remainder of the trip saw Gryphon in one of the large and currently empty cargo holds, practicing everything he had ever known about hand-to-hand fighting and the arts of darkness. His skill level at the latter was unimpressive, but rigorous drilling in the finer points of remaining still and unseen in the dark improved him to the point where he pronounced himself passable. The former, he had a good deal of skill in already -- a Veritech pilot by trade, he had learned to fight from the best experts the WDF had to offer, not least of whom were Kei and Yuri themselves, the better to implement his fighter's battroid mode and protect himself when out of the cockpit. Training brought the old reflexes, dulled by his illness and inaction, back to their old sharpness; pushing himself made them sharper. He was in better shape than he had ever been before; his long walks in the Imperial Preserve had seen to that. On the last day of the trip, he finished his preparations and considered himself ready; the next day, Cha Cha Maru docked aboard the SDF-17, and its crew scattered to the public sectors, enjoying R&R while their ship was overhauled by the Wedge Defense Force's civil-service engineering crew. Included among this crew was a bearded fellow, his hair brown and cut short, dressed in the usual Cha Cha Maru uniform of CVR body-glove (black, in his case) and loose white and black jacket. With a small duffel bag over his shoulder, this unassuming fellow made his way to the inner sections without arousing a great deal of interest; then, as he approached one of the lifts which could lead to the upper decks and were thus off-limits to visitors, he chanced to run into a group of WDF personnel emerging from said lift. One of them was Major Joe Elliott, the commander of Raptor Heavy Squadron 625 (Def Leppard), a squadron which flew often with Gryphon's own Eight-Balls. He and the brown-haired gent physically collided; as they rebounded, Elliott made apologies, then stopped, brow creasing. "Don't I know you?" he inquired, his voice carrying the Earther-British accent even after so many years in space. "Not likely," the other man replied, shrugging and adjusting his sunglasses, which had been knocked askew by the collision. "Name's Don Griffin -- I came in on the Cha Cha Maru this morning. Civ hunters." Elliott looked intently at Griffin for a moment. "Is there some problem?" Griffin inquired after that moment. "No, no, not at all," Elliott said, taking a step back and shrugging. "You just... look like somebody I used to know." "I have one of those kind of faces," replied Griffin, and moved off down the corridor. Joe Elliott shrugged and continued on his way, in the other direction. Don Griffin ducked into the nearest unoccupied room -- a conference room -- and locked the door behind him. A quick examination revealed to him that this conference room did indeed have a bathroom, which was good. He removed his uniform jacket and left it lying across the back of one of the conference chairs, then removed a small object from his duffel bag, went into the bathroom, removed his shades, and shaved off his beard. Returning to the conference room, Gryphon opened up the bag all the way and began to remove items from it. A pair of black dress trousers: these went on right over the CVR undersuit. Black dress shoes: replaced the soft boots that had gone with the Cha Cha Maru uniform. White dress shirt: tucked into the trousers. Black necktie: obvious location. Black leather gloves: replaced the white gloves of the uniform. Then he shrugged into a black woolen trenchcoat and buttoned it up. He drew a red scarf taut around his lower face, just below his nose, and then put a black, wide-brimmed slouch hat on his head. Now he was ready. He threw back his head and tried out the Laugh. Perfect. The Shadow slipped out of the conference room and made for the nearest seldom-used freight lift to the upper sections. Momentarily, he located, moving quickly and surely, an armory, which he immediately bypassed the lock on and entered. Scanning the racks of weapons, archaic, modern and futuristic, he didn't take long to locate suitable armaments. He couldn't find any Colt M1911A1s, .45 automatic pistols of the old school, but there were a couple of Kuromi A-34s, small, slab-sided machine pistols with 50-round magazines of 7mm slug ammunition. Taking them, as well as some extra ammunition for them, he tucked them into his coat, and was about to leave when the small monitor next to the door plinked into life. "Identify yourself," said Eve, the ship's autonomic cybernetic intelligence. The Shadow pulled down his scarf, revealing himself to be Gryphon, and at Eve's shocked gasp, he raised a black-gloved finger to his lips and said, "Shh," with a conspiratorial smile. "Gryphon! But you -- " "That's what -he- wants you to think," Gryphon replied in a whisper. He pulled back up the scarf and continued in an icy variation on his normal voice, "I intend to bring him back to reality... rudely." "But I have to -- " "No, Eve," said The Shadow. "Not yet. Not until I finish this. Okay?" Eve considered, then, solemnly, nodded. "I understand." "Thanks, Eve. I owe you. Say... there -is- something you could do for me, though... " "Name it." Carson D. Carson strolled down a corridor in the housing section of the ship, nearly half a mile away from Armory A-D-65, whistling a small, happy tune to himself. It had been nearly a half-year now since he'd started this odyssey with the biggest gamble of his life, and it had paid off handsomely. And, unlike most of his other jobs, it had come off without a hitch. Well, with just one -- that phone call could have upset the whole thing, had he not been closer to the telephone. The old Carson Luck ran true to form, though, and he hadn't heard anything from that hard-to-kill sonofabitch in months. Apparently he'd succeeded in driving him into vizorium relapse. No doubt he was finally dead by now... no one could recover from that, not after relapsing. At any rate, Carson was quite certain that Gryphon was well and truly out of the picture, despite Kei's annoying tendency to wake in the night crying out his name even now. She was beginning to grate on him, incredible lay though she was, and besides, it was almost time to move on to the second phase of his plan. Sure, it would be tough to figure a way to get the WDF's Big Boss-Man out of the way -- tougher than getting rid of Gryphon, which had been a tailor-made situation handed to him on a silver platter by The Carson Luck, to be sure -- but it would be worth it in the long run, and how could he call himself successful with only half the set? Ruminating on how to begin the next phase, he turned the corner, and jumped when a blast door slammed down behind him. He'd been on this ship for six months now, and had never seen one of those actually -close- before. Shrugging -- must be some kind of drill -- he kept going. Just as he was about to pass into the next block section, the door in front of him slammed down too. Hmm. He turned around and looked up and down the corridor; there were five doors visible to him, three on one side of the corridor and two on the other. He tried them systematically; four were locked, and one opened immediately, into what appeared to be some kind of ballroom or dance hall. There were tables standing along the sides of the room with chairs up on them, and a raised stage at the far side; the floor was polished hardwood and the walls decorated with moldings and sconces. Elaborate crystal chandeliers bathed the room in light. As he entered it, the entrance's blast door slammed down behind him, and then, the lights went out, leaving only the woefully inadequate gleam of the battery-operated emergency lights and red Exit signs over immovable blast doors. Uh-oh. "Who's there?" he called, hearing his voice echo eerily in the dimness of the emergency-lit ballroom. In response, a laugh welled up around him, deep and resonant and sinister: a laugh that pierced to the very core of his being, mocking and sardonic. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck. "Who's -there-?!" Carson repeated, fighting to keep the panic he was feeling from rising in his throat. "How quickly you forget," the mocking voice said. Carson turned, trying to see where it was coming from, but he saw no one in the darkened corners of the room. "The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, Carson. Crime does not pay." "What the hell -- where are you? Show yourself!" "When I want you to see me," the voice replied, "you will, rest assured." There was a pause; then, in a conversational tone, as if changing the subject around the dinner table, the voice continued, "You murdered a man, Carson." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Don't try to lie to me, Carson. I know everything about you, every little thing. How you saw an opportunity that must have seemed as golden as if it had been provided by Fate herself. How you took it without regard for anyone's happiness but your own. How you twisted a woman's grief at your own crime into a deception that got you into her bed. What's next, Carson? Disney World?" Carson went visibly pale, even in the darkened room. "W-what are you -talking- about?!" he demanded, his voice becoming shrill with defensiveness and fear. "Still you protest? Did you really think you'd get away with it?" The voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, sounding as if the speaker were leaning over and speaking right into his left ear: "Did you really think -I- wouldn't know?" Carson whirled, sending a balled fist toward the source of the voice, but there was nothing there but the dark, and the Voice laughed again. "I know what you are, Carson, I know what you think and how you operate." "Come out here!" Carson demanded. "Come out and fight!" "Face your own crimes first. Admit to me what I already know you have done." Kei Morgan was confused. Why were the blast doors in section six closed? And why were they opening in front of her, then closing again? "Eve? Eve, what's going on?" There was no response; the wall monitors, spaced evenly down the hall, remained blank. "Eve?" [What in hell is going on here?] she wondered, reaching into the multi-zippered bike jacket she was wearing over her Tactical Response t-shirt and drawing her off-duty sidearm. [The doors seem to want me to go somewhere... okay, well... ] "You want to kill me, don't you, Carson? You can't abide being shown a mirror. Can't abide the idea that there might be someone alive who knows what you are and what you've done." The whisper in his ear again. "Can't imagine what would happen to you if that someone were to tell -her-... " "No!" Carson cried, whirling, his hands seeking. "Damn you, come out here and fight like a man!" "I'll tell you what," the voice said. "Here. I'll give you a handicap." There was a clatter; a moment later, one of the Kuromis skittered across the floor, bumping Carson's heel. He turned, nearly falling, and scooped it up, unleashing a short burst in the direction from which it had come. "I'm afraid you missed," The Shadow said reproachfully. "Try over here!" In the corner of his eye, Carson saw motion in the darkness -- a wide-brimmed shadow stretching on the wall -- he whirled, tracking a long, rolling burst. "Sorry," The Shadow replied. "Not there either. Boot to the head." Something caught him in the head from behind, spinning him around; he saw a flicker of motion, heard a whisper of cloth, blasted at it. "Nice!" said The Shadow. "Almost tagged me with that one. Or at least you would have if I weren't over -here-." A hand clamped with iron force onto Carson's shoulder and he was swung around; for the first time, he found himself looking into the burning ice-blue eyes of his accuser. He had a brief impression of a hawkish nose (an illusion perpetuated by the scarlet wrapper obscuring the mouth and minimizing the chin) and the brim of the hat, but the eyes dominated his consciousness. He tried to raise the Kuromi, but The Shadow had already laid him on the floor with a thunderous left cross, and when his vision cleared and he scrambled to his feet, he was alone in the darkness again, and The Shadow was laughing. "STOP LAUGHING!" Carson screamed, opening fire at nothing. [Gunfire?! Isn't that... ] The door trundled open, and Kei threw herself flat on the deck just as a burst from the Kuromi tore through the air above her. Carson kept turning, not even noticing the door opening, and Kei could only crouch there in the doorway, wondering why Carson was blazing away with a machine pistol, and why that laughing voice sounded so damned familiar. "What's the matter, Carson?" asked The Shadow's voice. "Can't you handle the darkness of the truth?" "SHUT UP!" replied Carson, and sent another long, rolling burst into the far corner, the slugs ripping apart a table and shattering its accompanying chairs. "I've told you before, I know everything about you, Carson. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" The Shadow laughed, and stepped out of the darkness at the far end of the room, his scarf fluttering in the breeze coming from a ventilator duct. "The Shadow knows! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA" "Son of a BITCH," Carson howled, and began running toward The Shadow, raising the Kuromi. "I'll kill you just like I killed that bastard Gryphon!" [ ... I can't possibly have heard that right.] The Shadow's laugh grew louder and more mocking as Carson raised the Kuromi, squeezed the trigger, and was rewarded with a hollow click. He threw it away and kept charging, intent on killing The Shadow with his bare hands. "I'm afraid you're quite right, Carson," said The Shadow. "You -will- kill me just like you killed Gryphon." He reached up, pulled down his scarf, and threw away his hat. "Because you didn't kill me -then-, either," he added, in a snarl of his regular voice. Carson D. Carson skidded to a halt, his eyes wider than tea saucers. Then, as it began to dawn on his shock-frozen mind that the man he murdered was standing in front of him with the empty, discarded Kuromi's well-fed twin in his left fist, he twisted around and began to run toward the door. A hot poker slammed into his chest with the force of an oncoming truck, once, twice, three times, and before he knew what was happening to him, before he even had time to properly feel the pain, he was stone dead. Kei lowered her smoking blaster as his body crashed to the wooden floor, and then, hands shaking, dropped it as she broke into a dead run across the ballroom. Gryphon weathered her impact, enclosing her in his arms and burying his face in her hair, making quiet, soothing noises as she sobbed against him. "It's all right, lover. It's over." "I'm s-sorry," Kei hitched. "I th-thought -- he s-said you were... were... " "It's all right," he repeated, looking at her face, smiling, and kissing away her tears. "Good shooting, by the way." She smiled through the tears and laughed unsteadily. "Yeah? Heh... yeah... " Then she pulled him against her with all of her considerable strength. "I'm so sorry... " "Don't worry," he said, and hugged her back. "Just remember, anytime you think I'm gone... I'll be back, no matter what." "Promise?" "Promise. When all of your hopes have come and gone... think about me and I'll be there." He held her for a few more moments, then kissed her cheek, which caused her to turn to face him so that he could kiss her properly. "C'mon," he said. "Let's go tell the others I'm alive. I want to see Zoner's face, I could use a good laugh after all this." Kei laughed, and they left the room arm in arm. It was eleven-thirty in the morning of Friday, October 19th, 2091. /* Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet" _Money for Nothing_ */ THE CAST Kemal Mi'tian: Group Captain Mi'tian Kal Zebayan: Sgt. Zebayan Ianj Kamara: Cpl. Kamara Mani Ilian: Corpswoman Ilian Leeanna Zard'al: General Zard'al Asrial Arconian: Her Imperial Majesty Asrial I, Queen of Imperial Salusia Sandor Tinal: Dr. Tinal Benjamin D. Hutchins: Gryphon/The Shadow Jeremy Feeple: Ambassador Feeple Ichi-kun Ichinohei: Ichi Joshua Balboa: Balboa Mei Lin: Mei Tita Koshigaya: Tita Joe Elliott: Major Elliott Eve Tokimatsuri: Eve Carson D. Carson: Carson Kei Morgan: Kei With special thanks to Walter Gibson and Howard Chaykin, both of whom I borrowed from here... --G.