his expression unreadable.
"I'll be fine," Nene spoke confidently. "They're only C-
55 boomers; what's so bad about them?" With that, she stood,
and left the room, Bert's silent gaze still following her.
After the red-headed ADP officer had left the room, Sylia
rounded angrily on him.
"Why didn't you say something?!" she demanded,
seething. "You know she's not mentally ready to face a
dangerous situation yet!"
"I know," he replied tiredly, looking at Sylia with a
pain-filled gaze. "But she's made up her mind, and nothing I
can say will change that. If she wants to go, the only way
you can stop her is to tie her up somewhere, or wreck her
suit before she gets to it." He sighed, scrubbing a hand
across his jaw, wincing as he accidentally aggravated the
bruise Linna had given him earlier. "She's going to have to
find out the hard way whether or not she's ready yet," he
told Sylia. "You said it yourself yesterday: I can't protect
her all the time. Well, you can't either; she's going to
have to either fly on her own...or fall."
"If you'd at least voiced some concerns, she might have
reconsidered," Sylia replied quietly. "She'll listen to you
more readily than anyone else."
"Sylia, please," he said painfully. "I'm already scared
enough about her going along as it is; I know what I said
sounds cold, but it's like your having to run me through the
grinder on my testing: it's necessary. I don't need guilt
feelings complicating things right now, on top of everything
else." Sylia flushed slightly, embarrassed.
"I'm sorry," she sighed. "I'll call Linna, and meet you
downstairs." He nodded, turned, and left the room. Sylia
stood for a moment, her inner disquiet finally coming out
from behind the impassive mask she'd been hiding it behind.
After a moment, she controlled the fear and uncertainty,
shoving it to the back of her mind, and stepped over to the
phone.
****
The last piece of silver-coloured armour plating
slapped into place with a pneumatic-sounding hiss-snap, and
there was a gentle hiss of displaced air as the suit lining
molded itself snugly to his body contours. Bert carefully
flexed an arm, feeling how the suit was responding to his
movements; there was no apparent interference, but then
again, the suit wasn't fully functional yet. He reached over
to the blue-antenna-winged silver helmet that sat on the
side bench, picking it up, and looked at it for a moment;
the darkened eyeslot that represented his eyes as SkyKnight
stared back blankly at him, offering no insights into what
was in the immediate future.
Sighing, he reached up, and settled it into place, the
contacts between his helmet, hardsuit, and softsuit clicking
together with a metallic-sounding snick. He still didn't
entirely understand the way the hardsuit controls and
softsuit interface worked, but as long as they worked, he
wasn't going to knock himself out over details; the control
systems were the one thing on the hardsuits he didn't fool
with.
As the last connection was made, the familiar hum of
activated circuitry filled his ears, and his viewscreen
flashed on. Flickering readouts sped past his sight,
indicating that everything was working perfectly. He sighed
again, and stretched, reveling in the comfortable closeness
of his armour. The familiar, supportive feel of his suit,
and the comfortable feeling of security it provided him with
had been something he hadn't even realized he'd been
missing. Now it was back, and it was a fantastic sensation,
somehow uplifting and invigorating.
He paused very briefly, searching himself for any signs
of the nervous tension that had bothered him the last time
he'd been in a real hardsuit, but he couldn't find any.
Something inside him questioned that finding, but he
irritably squelched the doubts; what he needed was some
action to help him get over the doubts and worries that had
been dogging him lately, not more soul-searching.
A grimly anticipatory smile flickered across his face
as he clanked across his workshop to a nearby workbench. He
picked up the twin railgun bolt launchers sitting there, and
latched them into their respective shoulder mounts. Their
muzzles briefly tracked around the lab as his suit
battlecomputer tested them out before adding their command
paths to the main suit control programs. He was ready, he
hoped. As SkyKnight turned around, a knock at the door to
the lab sounded.
"Door's open," he called, his now-modulated voice
booming through the confines of the room. The door opened,
and an olive-green and gray hardsuit entered the room. Linna
tucked her helmet under her arm as she walked over to him;
he pulled his off a moment later, and his suit went back to
standby mode, his shoulder guns folding down into a low-
profile rest position.
"I can't talk Nene out of it," he told Linna before she
could say a word to him. "I know her well enough to know
that she won't listen to me. So please, don't ask." She
blinked, looking a little hurt.
"I didn't come in here about Nene," she replied,
looking up at him. "Sylia already filled me in on what
happened, and I think you're doing the right thing. I came
in here to see if you were all right, not to nag you about
anything else."
"I'm sorry," Bert muttered, flushing. "I didn't mean to
snap at you. I'm just...worried, that's all. I don't want
anything to happen to Nene, but she's...she's pushing it, I
think. I wish she would wait just a bit longer first, but
she won't." He looked away from Linna. "I know I'm the wrong
one to say anything, given how I've acted in the past, but,
damn it, I...."
"You want to protect her, and she's not co-operating,"
Linna said quietly.
"Yes. NO!" he snapped. "I mean...aw shit, I don't know
what I mean anymore! I'm just scared for her, that's all
there is to it." He looked away from Linna's concerned gaze,
forcing himself to stay calm; he had a horrible feeling that
something bad was going to happen. He could feel it.
Unconsciously, his gauntleted hands balled into fists, and
he had the sudden urge to start pacing the room.
"Hey," Linna said gently, reaching out and grasping an
armour-clad arm. Bert didn't react negatively to being
touched, and looked over at her quizzically. "Relax;
everything will be okay," she told him.
"If you only knew how much I wanted to believe that,"
he replied gloomily. "But I can't shake the feeling that
something's going to happen."
"If you don't relax, you won't be in much shape to
fight boomers," Linna told him. "Then something really will
happen: we'll have to re-hospitalize you." A faint smile
flickered across Bert's face.
"That's a possibility," he conceded blandly. "Good
thing my health insurance is paid up then, isn't it?" Linna
rolled her eyes, and shook her head. A brief moment of quiet
dropped over the shop.
"We'd better get going," Linna remarked after a moment.
"Sylia's probably wondering where we are." Bert nodded,
donning his helmet again. Linna settled hers into place, and
the two hardsuits left the shop.
****
Probing talons of smoke pierced the night sky,
emanating from the hungrily roaring fires below. Almost the
entire block near Kaneda and Fifth streets was aflame, and
sporadic explosions occasionally burst through the choking
pall of smoke that wreathed the street level. From a rooftop
offering a vantage point above the destruction, four armour-
clad figures looked on.
"Somebody miscounted; I'm only reading about ten
boomers," Nene reported. Bert wasn't sure, but he thought he
detected a bit of a tremor in her voice. He irritably
throttled down his nagging subconscious; he had enough to
worry about. Nene would be fine; all she needed was some
more time. "They've spread out, and appear to be moving away
from this area," she finished.
"Damn," Sylia muttered. If the boomers were spreading
out, that meant that the Knight Sabers would have to spread
out in order to get them, and Sylia didn't want to thin
their forces out any further. After a moment or so, she
realized she didn't have a choice, and sighed in combined
disgust and resignation.
"All right then," she finally replied. "Nene? You,
Linna, and I will take the nearest boomers here; SkyKnight,
you're responsible for intercepting the outermost boomers
before they reach anybody. With your flight system, that
shouldn't be a problem. Okay?"
"Gotcha, Boss," SkyKnight replied, an anticipatory grin
again wreathing his face inside his helmet. "Consider them
intercepted."
"Be careful," Sylia warned him sternly, then sighed.
"Knight Sabers....Go!"
****
"Take cover, damn it!! Fall back!! FALL BACK!!" Leon
hollered at the top of his lungs, sweeping the arm of his
ADP K-17 Armour Suit around in a motion signaling a
withdrawal. All over the street, ADP troopers in body armour
and helmets scooped up their weapons and began withdrawing
from the area. Leon flicked a quick glance at his cockpit
displays, noting that most of his men were still unhurt. He
tabbed his loudspeakers again. "Get the wounded out of here
now! I want them evacuated before things get any worse."
The bulky, blue-white mechanized suit turned around
again, facing towards the raging infernos a scant fifty feet
away. As he turned, his two remaining K-17 units moved up to
flank him. Damn it, Leon swore to himself, just when he'd
thought things were getting better in this rathole of a
city, something had to happen to destroy that impression.
The ADP had been caught with its pants down, both
figuratively, and literally speaking; there hadn't been a
boomer rampage in months, and the top brass had decided to
cut back the staff on the `Boomer Response Units'. The net
result of that inspired decision was that Leon had been
forced to take one of the K-17s out himself, because there
had been a shortage of qualified suit pilots around when the
current disaster had developed. Topping that off, the K-17s
hadn't been overhauled in so long, that some of them had
developed mechanical quirks ranging from poor control of the
suit, to involuntary shutdowns. He mentally promised himself
that he was going to correct the negligence of the mechanics
when....if he made it back to the station in one piece.
He swore again, as several indistinct forms stirred in
the smoke and flames ahead, and hulking, humanoid shapes
began to emerge from the hellish conflagration. Four, blue C-
55 boomers stepped out of the flames, and stopped, spreading
out. Leon's mouth was dry with nervous anticipation of what
was to follow; he didn't think that his three K-17s were
going to be able to stop these boomers, mostly because
they'd already lost four suits, and two pilots, elsewhere in
the city, from just a meagre handful of boomers. He spared a
brief moment to aim a heartfelt curse on the bureaucratic
horseshit that had effectively emasculated the ADP's
efficiency. How the hell were they supposed to stop boomers
if they weren't given the necessary support and equipment?!
For a moment, the tableau of the boomers facing the ADP
suits held still; then, the boomers sprang forwards with
mechanical snarls, almost faster than thought. Leon just
barely ducked aside as the boomer that had singled him out
slashed at his cockpit canopy with wickedly curved claws;
the faint squeal of metal on metal indicated that he'd only
been partly successful, and his computer informed him of a
hull breach on the right shoulder of his suit. Luckily, no
systems had been damaged. He was still in the fight.
Leon's K-17 lumbered forwards, and managed to grab one
of the other boomers from behind, seizing it by the arms. He
immediately realized that he'd made a mistake, as the boomer
started to tear free from his grasp with almost insulting
ease; the boomer's strength was burning out the hydraulic
musculature on the K-17.
"Shoot the bastard!! Hurry up, I can't hold him much
longer!!" Leon panted into his radio microphone. His guts
clenched in sudden fear as he received no reply, and he
quickly glanced at his status readouts.
Only one of his men was still in the fight, and was too
busy dodging the persistent attempts of one of the C-55s to
kill him to try and help Leon. The other K-17 pilot was
dead; he hadn't even had time to scream before the boomer
had torn through his suit, and him, spreading a sticky, gory
mess all over the street. The blood-smeared boomer that had
killed him was just turning from the unfortunate pilot's
body, and appeared to be targeting Leon next; its mouth
snapped open, and a beam emitter of some kind shoved itself
into view. Leon watched helplessly as a greenish glow began
to build in the boomer's weapon.
With a piercing, crackling boom, a red-white lance of
coruscating energy speared down from the darkness above; the
crimson-splattered boomer was smashed into a backwards fall,
and flopped around on the pavement, trying to regain its
feet. A second and third blast hammered into the downed
biomechanoid, blasting its torso into spinning shards of
twisted metal and wiring. The C-55 flopped limply, and quit
moving.
Just as Leon was about to start cheering wildly in
relief, the boomer he'd been holding tore free of his grip;
his K-17 suit jerked crazily as the hydraulic systems burned
out from the stress load, and his suit quit moving.
"Awwwwwwww SHIT!" Leon swore, feeling panic claw at
him; he was a sitting duck now. It would be several minutes
before the backup systems came on-line enough to allow him
to move. In the meantime, the boomers could pick him off
like a fish in an aquarium tank. Sweat began rolling off his
forehead as he watched his immediate antagonist pop its
claws, and step closer, arm coming back for a swing Leon
knew would kill him. The boomer seemed to grin evilly, and
its eyes flared redly as the coldly-glinting claws started
to slash forwards.
There was a loud, almost supersonic engine scream, and
a silver flash dropped from the smoke-shrouded sky. The
boomer spun around, aiming its claw strike at its new foe.
The strike never connected, as the killer machine was driven
off of its feet by a crushing roundhouse punch from the
silver-and-blue clad armour suit that suddenly materialized
in front of it. The boomer hit the pavement headfirst almost
twenty feet away, and rolled over swiftly, roaring
defiantly.
SkyKnight's arms snapped up, and two beams of spitting,
sizzling laser energy lashed out towards the boomer, neatly
bracketing its location. The boomer easily dodged between
the beams...and lurched around, staggering drunkenly as it
encountered the hailstorm of explosive railgun bolts that
SkyKnight's shoulder launchers had fired into the apparently
empty space between his particle laser beams. The bolts
punched into the boomer's plating, then detonated deep
inside its body; the boomer flew apart in a snarling flash
of flame and spinning scrap pieces. The glowing red eyeslot
of SkyKnight's helmet swung over to regard Leon's paralyzed
K-17.
"Thank God you're here," Leon told the silver hardsuit.
"We can use...Hey!! What the hell?!?!" The silver-clad
Knight Saber abruptly sprang forwards, and almost casually
shoved Leon's K-17 over onto the ground. The K-17 toppled
over like a skyscraper in an earthquake, making an ungainly
arc before slamming into the asphalt on its back with a
clamorous, ringing bang. Leon saw stars briefly as the back
of his head smacked into his cockpit canopy, and he damn
near bit his tongue from the jarring impact with the ground.
"What the hell did you do that for?!" Leon snarled
angrily, swearing. "You goddamn..." He cut off what he'd
been about to say as a brilliantly green-white energy bolt
hissed through the air over him, momentarily blinding him.
Leon swallowed his words, a chill working its way through
his guts as he realized that the shot would have hit him if
he'd still been standing upright. If SkyKnight hadn't shoved
him over, he'd have been dead.
Several more blindingly bright energy shots tore
through the thick, smoky air. Leon muttered some more
strangled curses, and tried moving again. His K-17 whined a
bit, but still refused to move; the actuator system backups
still weren't on line yet. He lay there, helpless and
fuming, while the sounds of battle roiled through the air
around him.
****
"Sylia!" Bert's voice crackled urgently over the comm.
"Watch yourself!! These are NOT normal C-55s! I repeat,
these are not standard C-55s!!" Sylia stiffened in shock at
the abrupt report. The channel was still open, and she could
hear the crackling whine of energy weapons of some kind in
the background of SkyKnight's transmission.
"Can you explain a little more clearly?" she requested,
as she, Linna and Nene moved closer to the location of the
boomers they'd detected. "What do you mean by non-standard?"
"They're faster," he explained tersely. "Better armour;
took two to three p-laser shots to get one of them.
Monomolecular claws. Particle beams instead of plasma
cannons..."
"All right, all right, we get the picture," Sylia cut
him off. "Don't take any unnecessary risks; just take them
out and then get over here."
"Roger; Done in ten minutes...I hope," SkyKnight
replied, then cut off the channel. Sylia took a moment to
swear silently; new boomers, and here they were without
their full complement of members. She signaled Linna to take
the left flank while she moved over to the right.
"Nene," she ordered. "Hold back here, and keep us
updated on any boomer movements."
"But Sylia!" Nene started to protest, and was silenced
by an angry slash of Sylia's white-armoured arm.
"I mean it!" she said sternly. "I didn't expect these
boomers to be upgraded ones; you're not fully ready to be in
a combat situation yet, so I want you to stay clear. Do you
understand me?"
"But..."
"I said, do you understand me?" Sylia repeated, turning
more towards her. The red-pink suit sighed petulantly,
crossing her arms over her chest in a sulky manner.
"I understand," Nene replied grudgingly. She didn't
think it was fair; Bert had been allowed off on his own, and
he was in danger of losing control of himself if the
circumstances were right. She didn't have anything even
close to that kind of a problem, but she was being sent to
the sidelines as if she'd misbehaved, or something. She
watched as the white and green hardsuits of her teammates
disappeared into the darkness beyond her. With another
disgusted sigh, Nene activated her sensors and began
sweeping the area with sensor scans.
****
SkyKnight cast a quick glance over his shoulder at the
C-55 that was circling around behind him, and then returned
his attention to the one that was in front of him. The blue
biomechanoid was trying to distract him while its colleague
moved in behind him, mostly by feinting strikes at his head
whenever it seemed like he was about to attack the second
one. He knew what they were trying to do, but he couldn't
think of a way out of the quandary he'd found himself in.
Part of his dilemma stemmed from the fact that Leon was
still down and helpless, and he was trying to keep the
boomers away from the defenseless officer. They seemed to
have realized this, and were playing that fact to the
fullest advantage possible, attacking him in ways that left
him unable to respond fully, not without leaving Leon open.
The other K-17 that had been still functional when he'd
arrived was dead; it had tried to go hand-to-hand with one
of the C-55s from behind when it had apparently been
preoccupied with its silver adversary, and the boomer had
spun around, and promptly blasted a huge hole through the
blue and white mechanized suit, and its luckless pilot, with
its particle beam.
SkyKnight hadn't been able to do anything about it,
being preoccupied at the time with not having his guts
speared by the other homicidal machine that was assailing
him. He'd felt a brief pang of intense sorrow and guilt over
not being able to prevent the officer's death, but that had
been fleeting at best, vanishing under the cold adrenaline
wave running through him right now. His own survival was
what counted at the moment; too much was riding on him
remaining alive to get caught up agonizing over `what ifs'.
He ducked a claw swipe from the front boomer, and
twisted desperately sideways, avoiding the claw strike he
knew would be launched at his back by the boomer behind him.
He wasn't quite fast enough; there was a high-pitched
screech, and a ripping sound, and a wave of angrily burning
pain spread out from where the boomer's claws had sliced his
side. Slapping a gauntleted hand to the gash, SkyKnight
backhanded the boomer with his other arm and swordblade,
slashing a deep trench across the boomer's carapace. It
snarled angrily, and flipped over to join its cohort as they
both fell back for a moment, regrouping.
Bert risked a quick glance at his side; it didn't
appear to be serious, but there was definitely blood
flowing, as he saw a thin crimson stain beginning to seep
out around the edges of the gash. Unfortunately, the sides
of the suits, under the arms, was where the armouring was
the thinnest. It had to be, in order to allow the wearer
enough flexibility and articulation of the armour joints to
move. It also meant that the wearer had to guard against
getting attacked from the sides too often, since a lucky hit
could punch through. He gritted his teeth, trying to banish
the discomfort to the back of his mind.
The boomers moved in a perfectly synchronized pincer
movement, slowly, almost as if savouring the anticipated
kill, and Bert abruptly realized what else had been
bothering him about these upgraded C-55s: they were fighting
intelligently, using strategy. They'd never been able to do
that before; the only boomer he'd ever encountered before
that had been capable of deductive reasoning had been the
Headhunter, and that bastard was well and truly dead.
What about the AI technology, though? he realized with
a cold flash of dread. It had never been determined if only
the Headhunter had been the sole possessor of the
technology, so it was quite possible that GENOM had the data
to build new combat models based on the more `human-like'
AI's processes.
"It goddamn figures," he muttered to himself, getting
into a ready crouch and flexing his fingers. Despite his
training lately, and his simulator results, he'd come to the
realization that his fighting at the moment was not up to
par. There was a huge difference between practice and the
real thing, and he'd realized he'd backslid a bit. He'd been
out of a hardsuit for so long, that he'd grown rusty; even
with the new AI, he should have been able to take care of
these boomers a lot quicker than it was taking him. And if
he was rusty...then his friends were likely going to need
help. He had one last chance to quickly nail the boomers, a
desperate gambit he wasn't sure would work....
With snakelike speed, the two boomers leaped at him,
one slightly in front of the other. In a purely instinctual
move, SkyKnight threw himself backwards, clumsily landing on
his back with a loud clang, ending up sprawled next to a
concrete lamp post and storm sewer grate. The boomers
dropped to the asphalt with heavy impacts about ten feet
away from him. SkyKnight didn't try to get up, however.
Metal gauntlets crunched a clenched set of handholds
onto the sewer grate and post as he pointed the soles of his
armoured boots towards the boomers, and his helmet came up
slightly to look at the boomers for one last time. Then...
"AFTERBURNERS!" SkyKnight barked sharply. With a loud,
hungry roar, incandescent waves of white-orange flame
spurted instantly from the rocket booster nozzles on the
backs of his boots, hitting the boomers squarely. High-
pitched, mechanical screams came from the firestorm,
sounding vaguely agonized.
SkyKnight wasn't paying attention, however; he was
desperately trying to maintain his purchase on his anchorage
points. His head was back, helmet against the pavement;
inside his suit, Bert had his eyes squeezed shut, and sweat
was running down his face as he tried to withstand the
sudden forces that were trying to take over and send him
flying. The brutal thrust of his rockets was slowly
crumbling the grip he had, and he was starting to slide
slightly, grittily scraping his hardsuit along the pavement.
He tried to dig deeper and hang on, his gauntlets starting
to slide as the violently snarling washes of flame continued
to mercilessly sear the boomers.
****
"Linna!" Sylia panted as she hauled at the chunk of
masonry pinning Linna's right leg, "are you all right?!" The
slab shifted, and the dented and dusty olive-green hardsuit
was able to slip free; she hadn't been able to get enough
leverage on the concrete pieces pinning her to be able to
escape on her own. Sylia grabbed her friend's arm, and
helped her to straighten up.
"I'm fine, just bruised," Linna's voice reassured her.
"Since when did boomers start trying to collapse buildings
on people?!" she suddenly demanded, almost angrily. She felt
her left arm, and rotated the shoulder a bit to make sure
everything was still working.
"Since now, it seems," Sylia replied dryly, looking at
the smoldering pile of scrap nearby that had been a blue C-
55 boomer. The biomechanoid had been ferociously attacking
Linna, never letting up, and forcing her back; only Linna's
tremendous agility had kept her from serious harm. Then the
boomer had suddenly fired, apparently missing by a large
margin. It hadn't been aiming at the green-hardsuited young
woman, however; it had been aiming at the wall behind her.
Linna had been caught under a sudden cascade of masonry as
the wall crumbled. She had been pinned by the leg, and
unable to move when the boomer had tried to get in the
finishing blow. Sylia had been able to intercept it before
it could harm her, and had blasted it into a smoking
junkheap with her particle-laser beam cannons.
"They never used to be able to do that," Linna noted,
wincing and placing a hand on the small of her back as she
unbent herself. "I mean, they never used strategy before."
"It appears as if more than just their hardware has
been upgraded," Sylia sighed, helmet swiveling around; there
were apparently no more boomers in the area. Best to make
sure, though. After a moment, she opened her comm channel.
"Nene," she called. "What's our status? Any more
boomers left?"
"There's a couple, I think," Nene's voice crackled
back, still sounding miffed. "I can't really tell for sure.
Maybe if I were to..."
"Don't start again," Sylia warned flatly. "You're not
coming any closer to the battlefield. Get over it. Now."
"Fine. I'll call if I detect anything," Nene sulkily
muttered back, and shut down the channel. Sylia swore under
her breath to herself.
"What's with Nene?" Linna asked, puzzled. "That didn't
sound like her."
"She feels left out, and she's trying to prove there's
nothing wrong with her," Sylia replied, sighing again. "I
just hope she doesn't get into trouble trying to prove that
she's okay."
****
Nene's sensor scopes flashed urgently, and she
irritably looked at the displays, emerald-green eyes
flicking across the images and data displayed. There was a
lone boomer approaching her position, and not from the
direction Linna and Sylia had taken; it appeared to be a
lone marauder. Perfect! Now she had the opportunity to prove
to Sylia that she could handle her end of things; one boomer
wasn't going to be a problem. She'd handled single boomers
before.
Charging her laser cannons, the red-pink hardsuited
young woman concealed herself behind a nearby rooftop
antenna mast, and waited for the renegade biomechanoid to
come within range.
****
SkyKnight staggered upright, pulling himself up by
using the lamp post he'd been desperately clinging to
earlier. A few feet away, blackened, carbonized lumps
sizzled angrily on the pavement: what was left of the two
boomers he'd managed to catch with his rocket exhaust. He
sighed in relief, and stretched; his armour creaked while
something in his back crackled and popped back into place.
"It's not the years," he sighed to himself with a wry
grin. "It's the mileage." Despite feeling tired, he felt
pretty good, considering...he winced as his side throbbed
again. He carefully looked down at his side, and noted that
the red stain was still growing slightly. Damn, the gash
must have been a little deeper than he'd thought.
Sighing again, SkyKnight awkwardly reached around to
the small of his back, and felt around. A small, rectangular
object fastened to his armour met his probing hand, and he
pulled it loose with a metallic clack. He brought the small
object around front to where he could see it. He looked from
the small box-like object he held to the gash on his side
armour, mentally estimating something. Taking the object by
its sides, he cracked it open lengthwise, revealing a soft,
gauzy-looking white pad of some kind nestled inside; the pad
was attached to the casing that had contained it, preventing
it from falling out.
Careful not to touch the pad with his gauntlets, he
carefully moved the object nearer to the hole in his armour.
After a moment of careful positioning, he slapped it over
the hole, exactly like a patch, making sure to force the
white padding into the slash in his plating.
He held the `medical patch', or hardsuit field
dressing, as he liked to call it, in place for a moment,
stifling the curses that sprang to mind as the antiseptic
and coagulant compounds contained in the pad burned into his
wound like live coals. He'd come up with the HFD idea
shortly after the Knight Sabers' semi-disastrous raid on
Hollister's base. While a full-blown medical kit might have
been a better idea, no one on the team had medical training,
which would make using a medkit worse than not having one at
all, especially if the user were to make a mistake of some
kind. Making these bandage pads was much more practical and
easy to do, but he reflected that he was going to have to
find something that didn't sting quite so much for a
disinfectant.
After a moment, he pressed all around the edges of the
outer casing of the HFD, and the adhesives in the edges
securely glued the patch to his suit. Sighing in relief, he
activated his comm systems for a moment. The comms spat and
crackled in his ears, sizzling like something was frying.
Damn; evidently his systems had gotten scrambled by one of
the boomers tagging his helmet with a punch.
"SkyKnight to Saber Prime," he broadcast, hoping he was
transmitting clearly. "All clear over here. The place is a
mess, though."
"Roger that, SkyKnight," Sylia's voice replied,
interference snapping in the background. "What is your
status?"
"I got scratched up a bit, but other than fatigue, I'm
okay," he replied. "I've got a couple things to check on,
then I'll rendezvous with the rest of you. How's Nene?"
"Fine, I think," Saber Prime replied. Bert's heart
jumped slightly; Sylia didn't sound so sure. "She's on
sentry duty right now, and we haven't received any word of
any more boomers yet; we're pretty much done over here
ourselves."
"Okay. Meet you in ten," SkyKnight replied, and shut
down the channel, an uneasy feeling tickling the back of his
mind. He couldn't really say what it was, so he dismissed
it. He turned towards the center of the street, where a
badly mauled K-17 was picking itself up from the street. Its
movements were jerky and erratic, and smoke was coming from
some of its joints, but it was definitely moving. SkyKnight
shook his helmeted head, and walked over to Leon's suit.
****
"Come on, you useless scrap heap," Leon snarled under
his breath. "Move, damn you!" His K-17 grudgingly responded,
reluctantly answering the commands of its pilot. With
several jolting shudders, the mangled armour suit began to
get up from the pavement. The way it was stopping and
starting made Leon feel like he was popping the clutch on an
old manual transmission car. He gritted his teeth and
persevered, forcing the damaged K-17 upright.
"You're clear now, Inspector," the deep, resonant voice
of SkyKnight penetrated Leon's cockpit. "There shouldn't be
any more problems tonight." The ADP inspector finished
pulling himself and his malfunctioning suit upright as the
voice finished speaking, sweating from the effort it was
taking to move the damn suit; the backup motivators weren't
nearly as good as the primary ones. After a moment's
hesitation, he popped open his cockpit canopy. Cool air
rushed in, sweeping his face with a welcome freshness. The
stench from all the nearby fires also wafted in,
unfortunately reminding him of what maintaining the peace
had cost the ADP tonight.
"Thanks," he said, his suit turning slightly so he
could look at the crumpled, mangled heaps of white and blue
metal that had been the other K-17s on his squad. "Too bad
you couldn't have gotten here sooner," he added, unable to
keep a trace of bitterness from entering his voice.
"We try our best," SkyKnight shrugged. "I can't do
anymore than that."
"Well that's just fine," Leon retorted. "I'll be sure
and tell that to their families." He knew he was being
unreasonable, and knew it was partly because he was tired,
but he just didn't care. It always hurt to lose men that had
been under his command, especially to something this goddamn
senseless.
"Look, McNichol," SkyKnight suddenly snapped. "Just
what the hell do you want from us?! I don't like what's
happened any better than you do, but we can't be everywhere
at once. Nobody can. Instead of bitching about what we
didn't do, and who we couldn't save, why don't you try
looking at what we did do?! It could have been one hell of a
lot worse." The silver suit turned and started stalking
away, angrily kicking a chunk of scrap metal away from
itself.
Four new K-17s suddenly loomed out of the smoky
darkness in front of SkyKnight, blocking his path. The
silver-blue armour suit stopped, then tried to walk around
the looming battlesuits emblazoned with the ADP logo. They
moved to block him.
There was a moment of tight silence, during which Leon
could hear the flames crackling nearby. SkyKnight's helmet
came around to look back at Leon his red eyeslot flickering
ominously in the dim, fire-lit light of the street, but he
remained silent. Leon looked puzzled, wondering what was
going on; he hadn't heard any orders over his radio to the
effect that more K-17s were being sent to his area. He
ponderously stomped over to the area where the police suits
apparently had SkyKnight surrounded.
"What's going on here?" he queried the lead suit.
"SkyKnight just saved our asses; let him go."
"I'm sorry, sir," an apologetic voice spoke from the
lead suit. "But we've been ordered to arrest him."
****
Nene grinned to herself as the blip on her tracking
sensor display moved closer; her target would soon be in
visual range, and then she'd be able to prove to Sylia that
she was recovered. In the back of her mind, a voice was
cautioning her that she really should call for backup, and
reminding her of the fact that she'd promised Sylia she'd
call if she detected anything. She ignored her conscience,
however. She was sick and tired of being treated like a
little girl.
Her sensor readout indicated that the boomer had just
entered visual range, and Nene peered cautiously around the
support beams of the antenna mast she was hiding behind.
Where was it? It shouldn't be too hard to locate a blue C-
55....
Shock washed over Nene with the numbing force of a
bucket of ice water being suddenly thrown over her. The
boomer approaching her, flying on jets of some kind, was not
blue.
It was red.
Her suit computer scanned through its database...and
came up empty. The boomer was a new type, unlike any she had
information on. She swallowed against the sudden dryness in
her throat and mouth, and activated her long range scanners,
gently probing the boomer to see if she could find a weak
point on it. In the back of her mind, uneasy fear had begun
to crawl around, and she thought that she felt a twinge from
her stomach muscles. She tried to ignore the feelings,
chiding herself for an overactive imagination. Information
scrolled across her screen, and she frowned at her sensor
display; she couldn't scan the boomer very well, and the
results were inconclusive. Shrugging to herself, she boosted
the power to her active sensors, trying to get a better
scan.
It was a mistake. The instant she boosted her scanner
output, the boomer wheeled around in midair, streaking down
towards her position. A huge, coruscating wave of green-
white energy seared through the air towards her. Nene
shrieked and ducked, as the sizzling energy blast sheared
off the antenna mast she'd been hiding behind. She threw
herself desperately to the side, as the bent and twisted
metal wreckage from the top half crashed to the rooftop
decking, scattering bouncing shards of metal all over. The
young ADP officer saw stars flare briefly in her sight as
she hit the roof on one shoulder, and slammed into another
nearby rooftop structure. As she groggily shook her head,
and rolled over, trying to get to her knees and get up so
she could get the hell out of there, a heavy impact shook
the roof's surface beneath her.
With an awful sinking feeling, Nene looked up to see a
huge, hulking, red-armoured boomer standing about twenty
feet away from her. Standing about ten feet tall, it was
roughly humanoid-looking, resembling a very large, red-
coloured C-55, although the vaguely skull-like face looked
more like it had fangs than normal teeth. It was huge and
very muscular looking, making the young woman feel suddenly
small and helpless. With something akin to a physical shock,
Nene realized that this boomer looked like the Superboomer
that the Knight Sabers had killed years ago.
Yellow eyes flashed balefully in the gloomy darkness of
the rooftop, and Nene's suit sensors informed her that she'd
just been scanned. She started to back away from the boomer,
as fear began to scrape and gouge at her. Call for help!!
her mind urgently screamed at her. Now, before it's too
late!! Nene swallowed again, trying to control her racing
heart. She was about to call Sylia when a cold, mechanical
voice from the boomer paralyzed her with icy fear.
"Identity confirmed," the biomechanoid stated
laconically. "Red Knight Saber. Procedure: Exterminate." The
boomer seemed to suddenly smile malevolently. "Threat Level
Estimate: Inconsequential."
****
"You're joking, right?" SkyKnight asked flatly. "Just
what the hell did I do now?" This is turning out to be such
a wonderful day, he observed sourly to himself. On top of
everything else that had happened to him today, now some
hotshots from the ADP wanted to take him in. Bloody
marvelous. Bert kept his attention on the mechanized suits
in front of him, a cold, watchful feeling spreading through
him.
"You're an illegally operating vigilante," the lead K-
17 stated. "I recognize the fact that you have assisted the
ADP on several occasions, but we cannot make exceptions for
anyone. We have been ordered to arrest you, and we intend to
carry out our orders." The K-17s spread out a bit more,
surrounding the silver hardsuit. SkyKnight didn't move, or
even shift slightly.
"Who issued the order?" Leon interjected from where he
was standing behind Bert. SkyKnight couldn't see it, but
Leon was watching him with a very uneasy expression.
"The Chief," the lead suit replied, with the closest
thing to shrug he could manage inside such a bulky armour
suit. "I realize you don't like this Inspector, but we have
our orders. Personal feelings aside, he's an outlaw."
"I suggest you gentleman reconsider your decision to
try and take me in," SkyKnight said coldly. His mind was
icily calm as he noted the location of the four K-17
battlesuits on his viewscreen. He didn't want to fight the
ADP, but he wasn't going to allow himself to be arrested. He
eased into a ready stance, and prepared to fall back in
order to get the hell out of there.
"We know you won't harm cops," the lead suit replied,
sounding almost bored. "So spare us the theatrical threats,
huh? Just come along quietly." Bert opened his mouth to
reply, when a terrified scream came through on the helmet
comms.
"BERT!!! SYLIA!!! SOMEBODY HELP MEEE!!! PLEASE!!!!"
Nene's voice shrieked through hissing static, sobbing at the
same time. There was the sound of a loud impact of some kind
over the channel, and the line went dead except for the
electric crackling of his comm systems.
SkyKnight instantly stiffened in surprise and shock,
and everything seemed to start moving very slowly. He spun
sharply, ears ringing from the force Nene had put into her
desperate call for help, and he started to sprint away from
the K-17s, a wave of Arctic-cold fear sweeping through him
as he moved. He'd only taken a couple of steps when two of
the K-17s grabbed his arms. Jerking him to a halt, the K-17s
tried to pull his arms back, pinning them to his sides.
SkyKnight's mind went utterly cold.
"We said you're under arrest, damnit!" he heard. "Just
where the....AAAAARGGH!!" The speaker's voice ended in an
agonized scream, as SkyKnight tore his arm from the grasp of
the police suit on his left, and brutally drove the point of
his elbow into the guts of the offending K-17 with all the
power his hardsuit possessed; armour plating cracked and
shattered, and was driven inwards. The K-17 toppled over
backwards, sparks and smoke flaring from its ruined torso,
pieces of scrap metal clanging to the pavement with a
ringing noise.
Tortured groans could be heard coming from the downed
suit, as the silver-clad Knight Saber ripped his other arm
free of the confining grasp that held it, turned with a whip-
like quickness, and mercilessly slammed the other K-17 with
a roundhouse right that instantly shattered most of the K-
17's armour plate on the torso and cockpit canopy. A
wickedly-fast, left uppercut drove the mechanized suit
staggering backwards; it collided with a lamp post, then
keeled over onto its face with a loud bang.
The remaining two K-17s were caught flat-footed; they'd
never anticipated resistance, not of this kind. The missile
pods on their shoulders popped open, but by then, SkyKnight
was already thirty feet down the street and running hard. As
the stunned police watched, the shoulder-mounted wings of
the silver suit snapped out, and the silver-garbed hardsuit
shot skywards with a roar. He was barely ten feet from the
ground when a wash of incandescent flames from his booster
rockets kicked him into the skies even faster.
SkyKnight quickly locked onto the erratic signal from
Nene's transponder beacon, and blasted towards it. As he
roared desperately along, his boot rockets sputtered and
died; they'd exhausted their limited fuel supplies. Bert
didn't hesitate, immediately boosting his jet turbines to
150% maximum power. With the tortured shriek of stressed
machinery, his flight jets shot him forwards, towards the
beacon marking Nene's location.
****
The blue biomechanoid burst asunder under the combined
impacts of a heavily-charged knuckle bomber, and both of
Sylia's palm-mounted laser cannons. The white and green
hardsuits didn't pause, but immediately spun around and
leaped skywards. Jet thrusters kicked in, hissing urgently,
as the two Knight Sabers also sped towards where the frantic
call for help had come from.
"Nene!!" Sylia called, fear running through her with
icy-cold feet. "Try and get out of there, now!! Nene?!"
There was no answer to her call, just static. Sylia banished
the horrified thought that kept trying to claw through her
mind; Nene would be okay...all they had to do was arrive in
time to save her.
"I can't get a response from Bert," Linna reported. "I
mean, the channel is working, but he's not replying."
"Damn it, what the hell is he doing?!" Sylia fumed.
"We're going to need him, I'm sure of that."
The two hardsuits sped onwards, leaving behind the
smoldering battlefield.
****
A smashing impact rocked the world with a crimson wave
of pain, and Nene was driven to the rooftop again, crying.
She doubled up around the agonizing pain she could feel
eating into her stomach, whimpering and trying to crawl
away. Her helmet viewscreen flickered erratically, showing
the hulking red boomer that was slowly and systematically
killing her stomping closer.
"Sylia? Bert? Anybody?!" she called into her helmet
comm, trying to force her voice to behave for a moment.
Static hissed mockingly at her, and Nene started crying
again as she realized she was all alone. She tried getting
up again, gulping and attempting to ignore the agony from
her midsection long enough to activate her flight system and
escape, but the boomer sprang forwards before she could get
halfway upright, and again belted her sprawling with a
stinging backhand slap.
Nene's hardsuited body flew across the roof, smashing
into the low retaining wall that ran around the rooftop
edge, and crashed to the decking. She tasted blood from
somewhere in her mouth, and shakily tried to pull herself up
the retaining wall. Her body refused to co-operate, and the
badly-shaking young woman collapsed to the rooftop, crying
in fear and despair.
She'd tried so hard...but it hadn't done any good.
She'd known the minute she'd seen the boomer that she'd
gotten in over her head, and she'd tried to get away, but
the boomer hadn't allowed that. The brief fight she'd
managed to put up hadn't accomplished anything, either; the
boomer wasn't even showing scorch marks from the few brief
shots she'd hit it with. Topping that off, her sensors still
couldn't find a weak point on the boomer's armour to
exploit. Calling for help hadn't produced any responses, and
she felt cold claws of fear seize her guts, squeezing
mercilessly. She'd never been this alone before.
She looked up at the boomer as it approached her,
moving slowly and with unmistakable intent; she realized it
had decided to quit toying with her, as a compact weapon of
some kind sprang out of one of its arms. Her sensors
registered a large energy buildup, and she could see
greenish light gathering in the muzzle of the weapon. A
faint, droning whine rose in the air.
"No," she whimpered again, trying to huddle back into
the wall. Everything she could see turned blurry with tears
as her eyes brimmed again. "No, please, no..." She stared at
her imminent demise, a sick feeling settling over her,
unable to look away as the glow in the boomer's weapon
became brighter. The image in her viewscreen seemed to
waver, becoming for a brief instant a smirking blond-haired
man in a grey suit, pointing a large handgun at her.
What happened next was difficult to say for sure; the
entire night seemed to light up in a dazzling, blinding
blast. Explosions tore through the air, pounding her with
shockwaves from the blasts. Nene screamed again, and curled
up protectively, throwing her arms over her helmet. There
was another flurry of explosions, and something crashed into
her. Nene cried out as the heavy weight of something landing
on top of her drove her hardsuit bruisingly into the wall.
She couldn't see what was going on since she'd been
temporarily blinded by the earlier explosions.
She heard metal plating scrape and grind against her
hardsuit as the heavy weight on top of her shifted and
started to move. As the weight eased, she heard some pained,
under-the-breath swearing, and a faint hope blossomed.
"B-Bert?" she quavered, swallowing and trying to keep
from breaking down again. "Is that you?"
"I'm here," his voice reassured her. There was a flat,
ugly quality to his tone that she'd rarely heard from him,
but she was too relieved at being saved to pay it much
attention. "Just stay put until I'm finished," SkyKnight
told her. "This won't take long."
The young red-haired woman started crying in relief, as
the sounds of a vicious fight began to racket through the
air.
****
SkyKnight ducked the crackling green energy bolt the
hulking red boomer in front of him spat at him. The boomer
dodged his attempt to reply in kind with his particle lasers
with equal dexterity, and the two antagonists briefly
circled each other, looking for an opening.
SkyKnight winced as his body complained at what he was
forcing it to do, and he kept a cautious eye on his suit
readouts; everything seemed to be working normally. In order
to save Nene, he'd thrown himself in front of her, and taken
at least two particle beam shots to the torso. His armour
was now incredibly scorched-looking, and marked with a few
dents; inside the suit, Bert was feeling like he'd stepped
in front of a train. He ached all over now from the physical
shocks that stopping the energy blasts had produced, and it
hadn't helped his gashed side to feel any better, either.
The boomer had also suffered some damage; smoking
craters pockmarked its torso from the laser fire he'd
hammered it with at long range just before it could shoot
Nene. Its left arm was also missing from the elbow down; it
had exploded when he'd managed to hit the weapon with one of
his particle-laser bolts. It hadn't been slowed down by the
damage, though, and it still had several weapons, if his
sensor readings were giving him an accurate scan.
Snarling, the boomer lunged forwards, a long, wickedly-
sharp looking blade snapping out from the wrist of its
undamaged arm. SkyKnight's own swordblades snapped out, and
he blocked the descending edge with a cross-block move. The
boomer recovered immediately and feinted a strike at his
lower body. SkyKnight moved to respond to it, then quickly
blocked the boomer again as it scythed its weapon towards
his head. The fencing match went on for a few more seconds,
a flickering storm of edged death whirling between the
Knight Saber and the biomechanoid. Even though it was only
seconds, SkyKnight felt like it was years; the boomer was
incredibly fast, and very strong, at least a match for him.
He began to wonder if he'd been premature in saying this
fight wasn't going to take long.
The boomer's yellow eyes flared for a moment as it
stepped back a pace. As it did, twin guns of some kind
flipped up from concealed shoulder housings. The guns were
very compact-looking, each with about six barrels arranged
in a circular pattern. With a cold shock, SkyKnight realized
what the guns were, and desperately dodged sideways as the
miniguns opened up, the streams of hot metal they churned
out gouging trenches through the rooftop.
Not all of the slugs from the cannons missed entirely,
however; Bert swore as a stray shot tore loose his armour
plating on the left shoulder. The impact from the hit saved
him from a couple of serious injuries, though, as two more
slugs gashed trenches across his chest armour; if he hadn't
been turned by the previous shot, the next two would have
taken him right in the chest.
Fury and fear erupted, lending speed to his moves.
SkyKnight blurred under another salvo, and snapped a quick
shot at the boomer. The scorching, red-white energy blast
shattered the leftmost cannon into a smoking tangle of scrap
and wiring.
Howling furiously, the crimson boomer spun around after
SkyKnight, trying to tag him with its one remaining Vulcan
cannon. As it turned, the silver hardsuit flashed through
the air, leaping in close, accompanied by an electric snap-
hiss noise. A blazing blue plasma blade slashed through the
air, destroying the second cannon, and carving a huge gash
in the boomer's chest. It snarled, and a particle cannon
muzzle protruded from its mouth as its head tracked towards
the silver-clad hardsuit.
"Oh no you don't, bastard!" SkyKnight snarled. His
lightsaber sizzled through the air
and cut into the boomer's head and particle beam assembly.
Unfortunately, the boomer fired at exactly the same
time.
There was a blinding flash, and an explosion that
knocked SkyKnight sprawling to the rooftop with a loud
clang. He wasn't really paying attention, however, being
more preoccupied with the miasma of pain that was washing
over him from his right arm; the arm felt like it was on
fire, and he rolled around on the roof a bit, clutching his
arm at the elbow. After a few moments, the agony diminished
to almost bearable levels. His breathing coming in short
gasps, SkyKnight rolled to his knees, and forced himself to
his feet. Gritting his teeth, he finally managed to work up
the courage to look at his arm.
The arm of his hardsuit was a mess: the entire gauntlet
and arm-guard assembly that had housed his weapons for that
arm was burned and cracked, and several pieces of plating
fell off as he looked at it, dropping to the rooftop with
muted, sorrowful clangs. His particle-laser cannons looked
intact, but he shut down the power to them completely as a
precaution. He cautiously tried to flex his hand and make
sure that, inside the suit at least, he was okay. He could
feel his hand trying to move, but the gauntlet itself was
welded almost completely into immobility; he clenched his
teeth as his arm throbbed angrily from the attempted
movement. Damn; felt like it was burned.
It was when he turned his arm slightly to examine the
mounting for his suit lightsabers that he realized what had
happened. A huge, jagged hole had been torn open in the
underside of his arm armour, running almost the entire
length of his forearm, and wiring was spitting and smoking
from within the ruined systems. Evidently, his lightsaber
system had overloaded and blown up from being hit by the
boomer's particle beam. Wait a minute....the boomer!!!
SkyKnight spun around, frantically searching for his
foe before it could take advantage of his momentary
distraction. He didn't have to worry; the boomer was far too
preoccupied in dealing with the dodging and darting white
and dark green hardsuits that were attacking it. As
SkyKnight examined the red combat machine, he noted that the
weapon explosion had evidently worked both ways; the boomer
was missing the lower left side of its jaw, and its head
mounted particle beam assembly. Smoke was curling sinuously
from the wreckage, but the boomer was fighting as if the
damage to it was insignificant.
As Bert watched, Sylia's white-armoured form ducked
under a shot from some unidentifiable weapon in the boomer's
chest, while at the same time Linna leaped in close, driving
her knuckle bomber into the boomer's lower torso. There was
a bright flash and a racketing blast, and a few pieces of
armour plating went flying. When the smoke cleared, there
was a fair-sized hole in the boomer's carapace, but it
didn't appear to be badly damaged.
"Damn it," SkyKnight sighed. He ached all over, and his
arm felt like it was still burning up, but he had to help
Sylia and Linna finish off the boomer; as had been proven so
far, the killer biomechanoid was no pushover. He powered up
the guns on his good arm, and prepared to jump back into the
fight.
"Forget it!" Sylia's voice cracked over the comm
channel like a whip. "You're hurt; stay out of this, and
check on Nene. That's an order, mister." She ducked under
another scorching energy salvo, as SkyKnight grudgingly
complied with her order.
Turning away from the raging fight, Bert quickly strode
across the rooftop to where a trembling, red-pink hardsuit
was wobbling to its knees. Nene's suit was battered and
dented, with scratches marring its enameled exterior. A
couple of the antenna spars on her backpack had been snapped
off, and her helmet was missing one of its antenna wings,
but other than that, she looked like she was unhurt. He
suddenly noticed she was holding her stomach, and all
thoughts of his own injuries vanished under a wave of fear
and concern.
"Nene?" he asked quietly as he came up to her. Her
helmet turned towards him, and he dropped to his own knees
next to her on the rooftop. "Are you okay? Are you hurt?"
She didn't answer, but collapsed against him, crying
uncontrollably. He awkwardly wrapped his arms around her
suit, trying to console her.
"Shhhhhh. It's okay," he soothed, giving her as gentle
a squeeze as possible when two people are wearing powered
body armour. "You're fine. Don't worry, I'm here. Everything
will be fine."
"I tried," she cried, shuddering and gripping him
tighter. "I tried so hard!! I just wanted to...to..."
"I know," he told her quietly, compassionately.
"Believe me, I know what you wanted."
A bright flare of light washed over him from behind,
followed a moment later by a thunderous detonation that sent
reddish armour pieces skittering by him on the edges of the
hot blast of displaced air from the explosion.
"Nene!!" Sylia's voice called. Pounding footsteps
sounded behind them, and in the next instant, her white
hardsuited figure was standing next to them. SkyKnight stood
up, gently pulling Nene up with him. She didn't relinquish
her hold on him, however, clinging to him like a drowning
person to a life preserver. "Is she badly hurt?" their
leader demanded anxiously, her blue visored helmet turning
slightly from Nene to him. Behind her, the sleek green and
grey shape of Linna's hardsuit came up behind her, looking a
little dusty and battered, but otherwise okay.
"I don't think so," he replied quietly. After a
moment's hesitation, he sighed, and added, "Nene was holding
her stomach, though; she might have been re-injured." Nene
didn't deny or confirm his observation, but continued to
cling shudderingly to him, crying.
"We'll have to check after we get back to base," Sylia
decided, sounding worried. "What about you? You look like a
wreck."
"It's a long story," SkyKnight sighed. "Could we
perhaps go home first, and then worry about the whys and
wherefores?" He winced as his accumulated trophies of the
night all decided to scream in protest at the same time.
"I'd like to get out of the suit before too much longer."
"I second that motion," Linna put in, sounding tired.
"I'd really like to get out of my suit, too; I'm beat."
"Okay, let's get out of here, then," Sylia sighed. Nene
didn't appear to be in any condition to walk or fly,
however. SkyKnight and Linna gently supported her on
opposite sides, as the Knight Sabers lifted into the air,
and disappeared into the cloaking darkness.
****
"YEEEOWWCH!!"
"Sorry," the white-haired old man said insincerely.
"Did that hurt?" The old man straightened up, a blood-soaked
wad of what might have once been a white bandage pad in his
gloved hand. He tossed it into a nearby, plastic-lined
garbage pail, and pulled out a sterile-wrapped antiseptic
pad. Unwrapping it, the old man stepped back to his
reluctant, red-haired patient's side, and sponged off the
now lightly bleeding gash on the lower left side of his
torso.
"No, of course not," Bert half-snarled sarcastically,
wincing at the sting of the antiseptic, glaring. "I always
yell like that. Of course it goddamn hurt!! You didn't have
to rip it loose like that!!" The old man tending him was
tall and wiry, with short white hair and a mustache, and
wearing a white doctor's coat over some rumpled-looking
jeans and a shirt. A compact, briefcase-like medical kit sat
on the nearby countertop, filled to the brim with various
surgical implements, sterile packages, and bottles. Sardonic
amusement glinted in the doctor's brown eyes as he looked at
Bert, fishing something else out of his briefcase.
"I sure as hell did," he replied, unfazed by his
patient's profanity. "In the first place, I needed to make
sure the wound was clean; in the second, those drugs you
used in the pad almost permanently glued the damn thing to
your idiotic hide." He pulled out a syringe, and filled it
with a few cc's of a clear liquid from a small, stoppered
bottle. "I'll give you a formulation to use that won't do
that for the next time. And from now on, for God's sake, if
you have to design something with medical applications,
leave the decisions on what preparations to use to the
professionals, okay?" Bert flinched violently as the doctor
stabbed him with the needle and depressed the plunger,
flushing in chagrin from his remarks at the same time. After
a moment, the burning in his side seemed to cool off and
vanish. Bert sighed in relief, and managed to hold himself
still while the doctor quickly and expertly smeared some
kind of medicated ointment on his gashed side, firmly
bandaging it up afterwards.
As the doctor stepped back, Bert quickly pulled his
sweater back on; the basement infirmary wasn't the warmest
room in Sylia's building. He carefully flexed his lightly
bandaged hand; it was burned slightly, but not enough to
cause more than a day or two of discomfort. He'd already had
several comments about sticking his hands where they weren't
supposed to be. He sighed, deciding that complaining about
his treatment wouldn't really get him anywhere.
"Thanks, I appreciate it," he told the doctor, who was
now packing his medical implements into his case, closing it
and locking it. The doctor turned around, picking up his
case as he did.
"You're welcome," he replied, faint flickers of
amusement visible in his eyes. "It was nice to meet you
awake and lucid for a change, instead of comatose and
feverish. Try and dodge faster next time, though, okay?"
Bert flushed again.
"It's not like I try and get injured," he muttered. "It
just happens."
"I know," the old man replied dryly. "But if I'd had
even just a couple of patients as injury-prone as you are
back when I was practicing, I'd never have needed anyone
else." The white-haired old man grinned as Bert flushed
again guiltily, then reluctantly grinned himself.
"I suppose I do run up a pretty good bill at times," he
remarked, sighing, and hopping down from the examination
table. "Thanks again." Bert hesitated slightly. "I never did
get your name."
"That's right," the old man replied calmly, becoming a
little more serious. "And you won't be, son. It's safer that
way for everybody. Good night." The old man left, leaving
Bert to stand by himself in the infirmary for a few minutes.
At length, he sighed and stood a little straighter. Wincing
slightly at the aches from his abused body, Bert strode
briskly out the door, flicking off the lights and shutting
it behind him.
****
A fairly tall woman with blue-black hair paced back and
forth across the small lounge, steering with unconscious
deftness around the scattered chairs on the room. A look of
extreme anxiety marred her smooth features, and her brown
eyes were whirling with a complex multitude of concerns. She
was wearing a form-fitting white, red, and blue bodysuit of
some description, covered by a white lab coat. Periodically,
she cast a glance at the door to the lounge, but her
constant, agitated motion around the room never slackened.
Sylia looked up anxiously as the tall, thin, white-
haired old man carrying a medical kit knocked briefly and
then entered the room. The old man sighed tiredly, and
dropped his kit into a nearby chair. He looked over at Sylia
finally, and a warm smile spread across his face.
"Sylia," he greeted her. "How's my favourite niece
doing?"
"I'm your only niece, uncle," she reminded him, shaking
her head as a reluctant smile spread across her face.
"Then that makes you my favourite as well, doesn't it?"
he replied blandly. "Come here and give this tired old
sawbones a hug."
"You haven't changed a bit," she sighed, walking over
to him and embracing him. He kissed the top of her head
fondly as he hugged her, then allowed her to step back.
"Why, would you want me to?" he asked, quirking an
eyebrow at her, unsuccessfully hiding a smirk.
"It'd be a hopeless wish," she said dryly. "You've
always been incorrigible." She was silent a moment, and they
stood there looking at each other for a minute or two. Sylia
opened her mouth to speak, but was forestalled.
"The young lady is fine," he assured her. "She's just
terrified at the moment. I gave her a sedative to help her
sleep, so she should be okay until the morning. As for the
young man, he'll recover completely. The burn wasn't
serious, and the gash was just a flesh wound, this time.
Other than being bruised up a bit, he's perfectly healthy.
He'll probably gripe about stiffness for a couple of days,
but nothing you can't live with."
"Easy for you to say," she retorted, smiling. "You're
not the one who's going to have to listen to him for the
`couple of days'."
"The burdens of command," her uncle replied blandly.
"Thanks a lot."
"No charge," he replied grinning, then sobered. "There
was one thing I wanted to ask you about, however," he noted.
"Has your friend there always been ...overly sensitive about
physical contact? I know I caught some kind of reflex action
about to occur a couple of times when I was examining him,
but he was controlling himself pretty well. I almost didn't
notice at all."
"No, he wasn't always like that," Sylia sighed, sinking
into a nearby chair wearily. "It's a long story."
"I have time," the old man said dryly. "The one
advantage to being retired, I suppose."
"Regrets, uncle?"
"Sylia," he sighed, easing himself into a nearby chair.
"The older you get, the more regrets you have about
everything. I don't think there's anyone alive who doesn't
wish that they'd done something differently, or wonders what
might have been. Yes, I suppose I regret my decision in some
ways, but in other ways, I don't. I know I made the right
choice; I was one of the few with enough guts to stand by
their convictions, and the fact that I'm still alive proves
it."
"I'm sorry," she said contritely, reaching out and
clasping one of his hands. "I didn't mean to re-awaken any
painful memories." He shook his head, squeezing her hand
briefly before releasing it.
"They've been with me for years, Sylia," he assured
her. "I've gotten used to them. Now you were going to tell
me about this friend of yours?" Sylia nodded, sighing, and
gave him the condensed version of the kidnapping, skipping
some of the details her uncle didn't really need to know.
Her uncle was silent for a moment when she'd finished, head
bowed slightly. When he looked up at her, there was concern
mixed with fear for her in his eyes.
"Sylia," he started to say slowly, but she shook her
head slightly, cutting him off gently, but firmly.
"Please, uncle," she told him, "let's just skip the
argument where you try to convince me to do something else,
shall we? I know it's dangerous work, and I know that
there's a risk I may get hurt, but I have chosen to accept
that risk. Why can't you?"
"Because you're young," he snapped irritably. "I'm old;
I haven't got all that many years left, but you still have
your whole life ahead of you. I don't want to hear you've
been killed because of your....your `crusade'. I know how
you feel, and I share your feelings, believe me I do...but I
worry about you, constantly." An awkward silence fell for a
moment, and the old man sighed, a slight smile appearing. "I
knew I wasn't going to change your mind anyway," he told her
wryly. "You're as incorrigible as I am in a lot of ways."
"Runs in the family," she deadpanned, then smiled
warmly at him. Her uncle smiled back, then stood stiffly,
Sylia rose also, and he gave her another quick hug, kissing
her fondly.
"Take care of yourself, my dear," he sighed. "I don't
want to have to ply my trade at your expense." With that,
the old man picked up his case, and left through the door,
giving her a parting smile. Sylia stood quietly for a
moment, arms folded in a strangely defensive gesture, almost
like she was hugging herself for warmth. A melancholic
expression briefly flashed over her face, but she shook it
off. The lounge became deserted a few moments later as she
flicked off the lights and left herself.
****
"Priss, for God's sake sit down," Bert said wearily.
"It wasn't your bloody fault, so quit castigating yourself
over it, will you?!" From where she was seated on a nearby
couch, Sylvie nodded in unconscious agreement. The dark-
haired young woman was clad, as usual, in her snugly-fitting
blue-white bike suit, and her helmet lay upended in a nearby
chair, with her gloves crammed inside of it. Her golden-
brown eyes kept shifting from Bert to Priss. Linna had
stayed around long enough to make sure all her friends were
okay, but then she'd had to leave; her dance company was
getting an early start the next morning.
"Wasn't it?" Priss snapped, bitter self-reproach
flashing in her eyes. She peeled off her red leather jacket,
and angrily hurled it into the same chair that Sylvie's
helmet was sitting in. "If I'd kept an eye on her on our
last mission, she wouldn't have gotten shot, and then she
wouldn't have felt she had to prove herself tonight. I
didn't, she did, and now she's probably going to be even
more of a wreck." Priss spun around angrily, intending to
keep pacing, but it was at that moment that her injured leg
decided to give out on her. She grabbed the back of the
nearby couch to keep from falling, biting her lip against a
startled, pained outcry.
Sylvie immediately moved to get up and help her, but
Bert was already moving. He leaped out of his chair in a
fluid motion, a concerned look on his face, and was around
the coffee table and couch in an instant, putting an arm
around Priss' waist to help her stand.
"Get away from me, goddamn you!" she snarled, trying to
shove him away. "I'm fine!! Go play the chivalrous hero with
someone else!" Bert's face remained concerned, although a
slight flash of hurt at her response flickered briefly in
his eyes. He could see angry moisture gathering in Priss'
eyes, and realized she was more upset over her leg's
condition than she was letting on. He didn't respond
immediately to her remarks, but guided her around to the
front of the couch, and helped her to sit. Priss refused to
meet his gaze, staring moodily at the coffee table.
"I'm not playing," he told her quietly, trading a quick
glance of concern with Sylvie. "I'm concerned about you."
"I don't need it," she growled. "I'm fine. Bugger off
and leave me alone."
"Fine," Bert sighed disgustedly, his fatigue greatly
lessening his tolerance for her usual stubbornness. "Be like
that, then. But I'm still telling you it wasn't your fault.
If it was anyone's fault, it was mine. I should have kept
her from going somehow, especially since I knew better than
anyone that she wasn't fully ready to go back out yet.
Instead, I decided to let it lie, and now she's in even
worse shape." He turned away from his friends and started
pacing himself, suppressing winces at the twinges from his
bandaged side.
"I can't believe you two are arguing about whose fault
it was," Sylia's voice came to them from the apartment door.
Everyone looked up as she wearily entered the room. Sylia
had changed into a faded grey tracksuit, and looked tired;
there were slight circles under her eyes. She sighed,
running a hand through her blue-black hair as she came over
to the central area where the seating around the coffee
table was arranged. "I don't think it was any one person's
fault, specifically," she told them as she came up to them.
"Nene was at least partly to blame herself for not following
my orders at the time. I should have realized that there was
a possibility of her disobeying me, but I chose to ignore
it, and that makes me partially to blame as well."
"I think we can stop with the `who's at fault'
session," Sylvie spoke up from where she was sitting. "Why
don't we just say it was a shared responsibility, and leave
it at that? I'm getting tired of listening to everyone
wallow in guilt, if you don't mind." Everyone else flushed
red, and didn't meet anyone else's eyes for a few moments.
Sylvie shook her head ruefully.
"She's right," Sylia sighed. "It's pointless; it's
done, and we'll just have to live with it. Self-
recriminations are a luxury we can't afford to indulge in
right now, especially given the seriousness of what happened
tonight."
"What did happen tonight?" Priss asked, still sounding
slightly sullen. "All I got to hear was that Nene got jumped
all over by a new boomer." She was still pissed off over the
fact that Sylia hadn't even notified her of the mission,
until after it was too late to try and go along.
"What looked like a pile of normal C-55 boomers,
wasn't," Bert replied absently, still pacing like a caged
animal. "They were better armed and armoured, and definitely
faster and smarter."
"And the one that Nene decided to confront was a new
type," Sylia added simply. "I've never seen one like it
before, although it did have some resemblances to the
Superboomer. I'd say GENOM's design team has been very busy
lately." She sighed, sitting wearily in her chair, and
staring out the large bay window of her living room at the
twinkling nighttime lights of the sprawling city beyond.
"So what are we gonna do about it?" Priss demanded.
"Are we gonna just sit here and let them get away with it?!
We should go out..."
"And what?" Bert interrupted irritably. "Level the city
until we find the production facilities? We don't know where
the damn things are being produced. You think they're just
going to nicely tell us where they're illegally making
combat boomers? Yeah, right!" He paced some more, scowling
unconsciously, as Priss flushed. Her red-brown eyes narrowed
dangerously, and she glared at the restlessly moving red-
haired young man.
"I'm going to be looking into that," Sylia spoke up,
interrupting whatever retort Priss had been about to launch,
glancing at Bert with the faintest trace of concern in her
gaze; he paced on, face like a thundercloud, apparently
oblivious to everything else. She looked back at Priss and
Sylvie. "The main thing that we have to do now is get
ready."
"What do you mean by `get ready'?" Priss asked, looking
suspiciously at Sylia.
"I mean that everyone, and I mean everyone, is going
back into training, starting as soon as possible," she
replied. "We were all unprepared for tonight; we've been
inactive for so long that we've all grown a bit rusty, and I
think that it was a contributing factor to our performance
when we went after Hollister. I'm going to discuss setting
up a training program of some kind with Linna, and then
everyone will be on it. Including myself," she added, as
Priss opened her mouth to say something. The brown-haired
young woman kept silent, and leaned back into the couch
looking vaguely upset for a moment. She didn't say anything
else, but Bert noticed absently that she was unconsciously
rubbing her injured leg.
With a sigh, Bert stopped his pacing, and came over to
the couch, dropping heavily into it next to Priss. She
didn't appear to notice, but sat staring into space with a
distant, pained look in her eyes. They all sat silently for
a moment.
"Well, I think we need to do something more than just
get back into training," Bert finally said. "Maybe `field
trips' wouldn't be a bad idea now and then. You know, just
go out and dodge around on the rooftops a bit, so we can get
used to the way the terrain can change."
"That's a reasonable idea," Sylia agreed. "It's a lot
better than just sitting in the simulator all the time."
Nobody else replied to his observation. Bert's gaze met
Sylia's eyes for a moment, and he almost imperceptibly
nodded in Sylvie's direction. A faint hint of a smile
appeared on her lips as her gaze flicked briefly to the dark-
haired woman, and she nodded ever so slightly.
"We're also going to have to do something about evening
the odds a bit," he spoke up. "Even with everyone present,
and at 100% we're still getting outnumbered at times. What
we need is another member for backup." He casually looked
over at Sylvie, raising an eyebrow quizzically. "Wouldn't
you agree, Sylvie?"
"What?!" she said, startled out of whatever thoughts
had been preoccupying her. She stared, wide-eyed, from Bert
to Sylia, her gaze staying on Sylia. "You mean me?!"
"That's correct," Sylia replied, nodding. "If you are
willing, we'd like you to become a member; we had a meeting
about it the other night, and everyone was in agreement.
Anri is welcome too, if she wants in."
"I'm.....I....I don't know what to say," Sylvie said
dazedly.
"Say yes!!" Priss exclaimed, a crooked grin spreading
across her face. "Come on, it'll be a blast!" Bert had a
momentary vision of something exploding at Priss'
observation, and hoped that it wasn't a prediction of what
was going to follow on the heels of the addition of a new
Knight Saber who also happened to enjoy a lot of Priss'
usual pastimes.
"I...yes..yes, I'd like to join," Sylvie said softly,
sudden tears glimmering in her eyes. "Thank you. It really
means a lot to me, I...." She started crying a bit, and
Priss carefully stood up and limped over to her, giving her
friend a hug. Sylvie hugged her back.
"You won't be on fully-active status right away," Sylia
continued speaking. "At the very least, not until you're
used to handling a hardsuit. However, until then, you can
pilot the KnightWing for us; we really need a good pilot.
Once you are fully ready, you'd be our reserve force."
Sylvie nodded wordlessly, swabbing at her eyes and trying to
regain her composure. While she composed herself, Sylia
stood and went into the kitchen.
"So when are you building their suits?" Priss asked
sitting back down on a nearby chair, figuring that Bert
would be immediately jumping all over that possibility,
since he was so nuts about building suits and other gadgets.
He didn't answer, apparently not having heard her; his gaze
was slightly abstracted as he stared into space, almost like
he'd already started planning what to build. Sighing in
irritation, she reached over and prodded Bert's leg. His
body jerked in a brief snap of motion, not quite the offense-
geared reflex action of a few short weeks ago, but still
more than just surprise. He appeared to catch himself and
come back to the present, and he looked quizzically over at
Priss.
"I said, when can you build Sylvie and Anri their
suits?" she repeated. Bert shrugged.
"From the ground up, a brand new, fully-tested suit
will take at least a couple of weeks. I can certainly handle
the hardware end of things," he replied. "But the controls
and the ...um...er ...the ...ah...."
"The what?" Sylvie and Priss chorused. Bert squirmed a
bit in his seat, flushing slightly.
"Sylia will have to do the ergonomic part of the suit
design," he replied awkwardly. "I can't do that."
"Ergonomics?" Priss repeated. "What the hell is that
supp...oh." She suddenly developed a wide grin, and actually
started to laugh. "You can't...do...the...HAHAHAHA!!!!" She
collapsed helplessly into the couch again, snickering and
laughing out loud.
"What's so funny?" Sylia asked, coming back into the
room with a tray of steaming mugs. Sylvie was staring from
Priss to Bert, who by now was flushing almost brick-red. He
was also steadfastly refusing to meet anyone's eyes.
"He...can't...do....the.." Priss gasped, then collapsed
laughing again, tears squeezing out of her eyes. Sylia
looked at her, puzzled, as she placed the tray on the table
and sat down, taking a mug for herself. Bert immediately
seized another mug and started drinking it down, trying to
hide his obvious discomfort.
"Ergonomics of my suit," Sylvie finished Priss'
sentence for Sylia, puzzled. "What's so funny about that?"
Sylia developed a sly smile of her own, and looked over at
Bert, raising an eyebrow. Sylvie didn't think it was
possible, but he seemed to turn even an even brighter red
colour. He was so embarrassed, she was positive he was
radiating heat waves.
"Part of the `ergonomics' of designing the suit for a
specific wearer is taking their measurements," Sylia
explained to her gently. "It's a rather involved process,
since the suit has to be as perfect a fit as possible, in
order for some aspects of the control systems to work
properly. Since that's the case, you'd only be wearing a
softsuit."
"What's the big deal about taking my measurements?"
Sylvie asked, still puzzled. "Something like that shouldn't
be too....hard." She looked at Bert, abruptly remembering
just who she was dealing with. She grinned suddenly, impish
humour glinting in her eyes.
"Don't bother," he growled, his gaze meeting her eyes
briefly as she opened her mouth to make a comment of some
kind. "I don't want, or need, the hassle right now," he
stated flatly, banging his mug back onto the tray table.
Sylvie sighed, shaking her head and smiling.
"What are we going to do with you?" she asked
rhetorically, smiling gently at him. She should have
remembered how hung-up he could get on propriety; he was so
square sometimes, it was almost painful to watch. They were
going to have to find some way to get him to loosen up a
bit...
"You could tell Priss to shut up," he mumbled, giving
the still-laughing, brown-haired woman a smoldering glare;
Priss was gasping for breath by now, she was laughing so
hard. "I don't happen to think it was that funny."
"I'll take care of that end of the suit construction in
the next few days," Sylia interjected, giving him a slightly
sympathetic smile. "You can just concern yourself with the
hardware aspects of her suit."
"Thanks," he said, flushing again. "I'll check back
with you in a couple of days then. Right now, I've got some
things to do." With that, the tall, red-haired young man
stood and swiftly exited the room, Priss' laughter still
trailing after him.
THE NEXT DAY.....
Bert carefully carried the steaming mug of tea over to
his coffee table, balancing a couple of books in his other
hand. With painstaking care, he lowered the mug to the
table; it was slightly awkward, handling things while his
hand was bandaged up, because at times it interfered with
his sense of touch. He hesitated a moment, then peeled the
wrapping off his hand, flexing it experimentally. There was
no pain, and it looked okay, so he decided to just forego
the bandage.
With a sigh, he flopped back into his recliner, putting
his footrest up. Tossing one of the novels he'd been
carrying into the nearby couch, he started to read the
other, occasionally sipping his tea. He read quietly, just
relaxing, for about an hour or so. At length, he sighed
again and stretched, feeling oddly peaceful for a change.
With everything that had happened over the last few weeks,
he couldn't remember the last time he'd just said `to hell
with it', and quietly read or done something recreational.
He made a mental note to try and do it more often; he needed
to use anything that could help him relax.
Stifling a groan at the way his battered body protested
the movement, he sat up and stiffly levered himself out of
his recliner; it seemed as if every bang and bruise he'd
received the night before without noticing them were now
having a competition to see which one could attract the most
attention. He ached all over.
Well if you keep throwing yourself in front of shots
like you were last night, it's not going to get any better,
his subconscious pointed out. You're going to have to either
find a better way of saving people, or else just get used to
being sore the morning after, it added before he irritably
squelched it. He couldn't help it, especially where Nene was
concerned; instincts just seemed to seize control of him at
those times, instincts that didn't allow time for the
contemplation of the sanity of a particular action.
With a rueful grin, which turned into a wince a moment
later, he succeeded in getting up out of his chair, and he
hobbled over to the kitchen counter. He had just made
another pot of tea when his bedroom door creaked open. As he
turned around, a rumpled and disheveled Nene slowly walked
through the door, into his kitchenette, rubbing sleepily at
her face.
Her normally lustrous red hair was a tangled mess, and
there were dark smudges underneath her eyes. An old flannel
blanket was draped across her shoulders, covering her
wrinkled white nightgown. Her expression was distracted and
lost-looking, and she didn't return his tentative smile of
greeting. She didn't have any visible marks from her ordeal
of the night before, but it wasn't physical injuries Bert
was worried about.
"Hi there," he greeted her out loud; she didn't reply.
He walked over to her and gave her a gentle hug; she-half-
heartedly returned it, almost like she was still asleep. He
reached up and brushed her tangled bangs out of her eyes,
looking into them; there were still lurking traces of fear
in the green depths, stirring around in agitation. Bert
tipped her chin up, and kissed her softly on the lips; Nene
kissed him back, but she was lacking the ...energy, the
spirit she normally seemed to have. A chill of some kind
starting curling around in his guts, as he hoped her
listlessness was merely a result of the sedative she'd been
given last night.
"Come on, you'd better go and get cleaned up," he said,
deciding that trying to carry on as if things were normal
was the best course of action. He gently steered her towards
the bathroom door. "You still have to go to work, remember?"
"No!!!" she suddenly cried. Before he could move, Bert
had a sobbing, red-haired young woman clinging tightly to
him like a leech. He stiffened as pain knifed through him,
but managed to stifle the swear words that sprang to mind as
Nene unknowingly squeezed his bandaged side. "I don't want
to! I c-can't! Please!!" she sobbed, almost hysterically.
Bert held her as she cried, a feeling of complete
helplessness welling up; Nene appeared to be falling apart,
and there wasn't a thing he could do about it. He wrapped
his arms around her shaking body, trying to comfort her
somehow.
"Nene, I'm sorry, but I can't do that," he replied
softly, swallowing against the sudden, painful tightness in
his throat. "You know I can't do that. You have to go to
work; there's no way to avoid it, not like before."
"B-but I can't stop thinking about it!" she wailed,
fresh streams of tears dripping off her face as she looked
up at him. Bert gently brushed them away, caressing her
cheek with his hand at the same time.
"You have to try," he told her simply. "It's in the
past, and we can't change that." He leaned down and kissed
her again. "Dwelling on it is only going to make you
miserable. Please, just let it go," he told her as he pulled
back a bit. "You're going to drive yourself crazy if you
keep this up. I realize it was a terrifying experience, and
I know how you feel, but you have to face it, put it behind
you, and then move on. Crying and denying it like a little
girl isn't going to make it go away." It was the wrong thing
to say; Nene's eyes narrowed dangerously, and a slight,
angry flush suffused her face.
" `Little girl'?!" Nene repeated, stiffening in his
arms. "Is that what you think of me?!" Bert mentally cursed
himself for the poor choice of words, then swallowed, and
braced himself.
"Nene, you're a very attractive and smart young woman,"
he told her, suddenly feeling like he was picking his way
barefoot through a minefield. "One of the things I've always
loved about you is your cheerfulness and ....and vitality,
but..."
"But what?" she asked ominously, her face darkening.
Bert sighed mentally, bracing himself for the now inevitable
explosion.
"But I've .... felt that....maybe at times you
don't.... take things seriously enough, don't...think things
through often enough," he said slowly, a sharp pain lancing
through him with each word as he watched Nene's face become
more and more stony. "You know your suit isn't built for
front-line fighting, but you still tried to do it last
night. I..."
"I don't take things seriously?!" she repeated, cutting
him off, anger flaring hotly in her eyes. "You're a fine one
to talk, Mr. Chivalrous Knight-in-Shining-Armour!! At least
I'm not running around trying to fit myself into some stupid
image!!" Bert stood, shocked into speechlessness, as Nene
stormed into the bathroom, slamming and locking the door
behind her. Awful silence permeated the room for a moment.
"I'm sorry," he said quietly to the suddenly empty and
hollow-seeming room. He turned, and leaned against his
kitchen counter, putting his head down on his arms,
squeezing his eyes shut as a couple of tears leaked from
them at the edges. "Damn it, I'm sorry...."
****
The usual hum of office activity rose and ebbed around
the isolated islands of desks scattered through the ADP
Investigation Division. The noise was unusually hushed this
morning, however, as if people were afraid to talk too
loudly about something.
Inspector Leon McNichol didn't even notice the subdued
atmosphere in the offices; he was seated at his desk, trying
to finish his report for the upper brass on what had
occurred the night before during the sudden boomer rampages.
His mind was only partly on the task however, and he was
unable to keep his attention on his work. He absently sipped
at a cold cup of coffee, grimacing disgustedly at the taste
while staring off into space.
In part his distraction was due to numbed sorrow over
the loss of some of his men to the biomechanoid rampage; he
still couldn't erase the feeling that he was partly
responsible, even though he knew he'd done all he possibly
could. He knew that the possibility of death while on duty
was part of the price of wearing a badge, but that didn't
make it any easier to live with the results. He throttled
down yet again the lingering rage over the way the
government bureaucracy had crippled the ADP's ability to
effectively deal with boomer problems. How could they do
their jobs if they couldn't get the support they needed?!
The second reason for his distraction wasn't quite as
easy to categorize, but it did have an easily identifiable
source: SkyKnight. For the first time since Leon had known
the silver-clad Knight Saber, SkyKnight had used almost
deadly force on someone other than a boomer; the two K-17
pilots he'd injured would recover, but they weren't getting
out of the hospital anytime soon.
Leon hadn't seen SkyKnight in a long time since before
last night, and they'd never chatted much before anyway, but
the hardsuited mercenary he'd seen last night had seemed
totally unfamiliar. It was almost like there was someone
else under the armour. For one thing, he'd been completely
silent during his brawl with the rogue boomers, which was
unusual; previously, he'd always made some kind of
smartassed quip once in a while. There'd been a driven
intensity to his fighting that hadn't been there before.
The other factor adding to Leon's unease was that there
had been a definite hard edge to his conversation, and his
subsequent actions. SkyKnight had always been civil before,
and scrupulous in avoiding conflict with the ADP, but he'd
been terse, almost harsh when talking to Leon, and his
effortless smashing of the K-17s that had tried to restrain
him had been further proof that SkyKnight was not the same
any longer.
Leon sighed, leaning back far enough in his chair that
he ran the risk of toppling over backwards. He yawned,
scrubbing at his gritty eyes; he hadn't been able to sleep
all that well in the aftermath of the fight, and his mind
had insisted on replaying everything he'd seen, giving him
no rest. He leaned forwards again, folding his arms on his
desk, and he let his head sink down onto his arms for a
moment. Despite himself, his eyes sagged shut, and inside of
a minute he was dozing quietly, as the office noises still
continued to drone around him.
****
Fires crackled sullenly, wreathing the street with a
sooty shroud of smoke. Electrical cables writhed and spat
like artificial snakes, hanging down from shattered utility
poles and transformer boxes. In the distance, the subdued
roar of burst fire hydrants spewing water into the air
almost drowned out the sounds of distant explosions. Asphalt
crunched underfoot as an armoured shape stirred in the
darkness and smoke. Around it, dimly-seen blue and white
shapes spread out, surrounding it.
"I suggest you gentleman reconsider your decision to
take me in," the deep, electronically-modulated voice of the
gleaming silver-and-blue hardsuit rumbled, as a low,
throbbing hum began to pulse ominously through the air. Leon
suppressed the uneasy twinges that ran though his guts, and
noted the silver hardsuit had shifted into a combat-ready
stance. Alarm bells started going off in the back of his
mind, and he shifted a bit closer to SkyKnight, hoping he
could somehow mediate a peaceful resolution of what looked
like immediate combat.
"We know you won't harm cops," one of the blue-white K-
17s replied. "So spare us the theatrical threats, huh? Just
come along quietly." Leon shifted closer another step;
SkyKnight's head came up a bit, almost as if he was going to
reply, and then it happened.
"....HELP...!!...." Leon's ears just barely caught the
muffled, staticky voice, apparently coming from SkyKnight's
helmet. Whatever it was, it was instantly cut off as the
silver suit jerked and stiffened in apparent surprise. Leon
was caught flatfooted as the silver-garbed mercenary spun
with surprising speed, and started to sprint away from the
hulking K-17s.
Leon's mind seemed to be spinning somewhere off in the
distance; as he watched the K-17s grab SkyKnight, and the
silver Knight Saber's instantaneous reprisals, his mind kept
replaying the brief cry he'd caught from the hardsuit's
helmet. It certainly hadn't been SkyKnight's voice, and it
had sounded distorted with static, almost like a
transmission from somewhere, calling for help. It had
obviously been intended as a private transmission, though;
the bit that Leon had heard had sounded like the faint
pickup of a microphone from a speaker. At any rate, whatever
or whoever it had sent the call out had obviously been the
reason SkyKnight had suddenly tried to leave the scene.
Leon's mind churned, replaying the garbled cry he'd
barely heard. It had almost sounded like it had started with
a name....
****
"MCNICHOL!!!!" The piercing yell blasted his eardrums.
Leon jerked upright in his chair, eyes snapping open. He
frantically tried to clear his mind of the cobwebs of sleep
that still clung to him, as he blearily looked around. From
a couple of desks over, a blond haired detective grinned at
him as he put down the phone.
"Have a nice nap?" Henderson inquired, smirking. "You
really should quit snoring like that; makes it hard for the
rest of us to concentrate."
"Go to hell," Leon growled back, irritably brushing his
hair out of his eyes and smoothing it back. "You spend a
night like I did, and we'll see just how spry you are the
next day." Henderson's expression sobered a bit.
"Sorry, Leon," he apologized, nodding in sympathetic
understanding. "I can understand that you're tired, but that
was the Chief Inspector on the phone, and she wants to see
you in her office. Now."
****
The double doors banged open, the chill outdoor air
flooding into the archery range building's front foyer with
a hissing rush of breeze. The damp, cold air seemed to
settle over the room like a shroud as Bert strode through
the doors, a bleak, depressed expression riding his
features. The doors swung shut behind him as he reached up,
and pulled off his wide-brimmed hat, absently brushing his
hair out of his eyes.
He stood for a moment, staring at nothing in
particular, then his face contorted into a disgusted, angry
look for a moment, and he pitched his hat with a muttered
curse at the coatrack on the wall nearby. The spinning hat
smacked into the rack's edge, and dropped to the floor. His
long, black duster coat followed a moment later, flailing
through the air until it hit the rack, somehow catching on a
couple of the coathooks and hanging on them in a disorderly
fashion that somehow was reminiscent of a body sprawled
lifelessly on the ground.
It was a fitting metaphor, he gloomily reflected,
turning and slowly trudging up the stairs to the second
floor of the building; given the aftermath of his remarks to
Nene, he felt like he'd shot and left for dead.
After the red-headed ADP officer had re-emerged from
the bathroom, she hadn't spoken to him except for the barest
minimum number of words necessary to ask him to get some
breakfast ready while she changed into her uniform. After
that, she'd been even more stoic, ignoring his stammering
attempt at an apology, and giving him a cold shoulder that
made dry ice seem hot by comparison. She'd kept a thick
barrier of silence between them all through breakfast, and
on the drive to the ADP building. After she'd gotten out of
the car, she'd informed him that she'd be getting home on
her own that night. Without even saying good-bye, she'd
walked off into the HQ building. He'd watched her go
helplessly, unable to think of anything to say to her that
would...
That would what?! he irritably snarled at himself. That
would magically make everything better?! It was too late,
the damage had been done; she'd already been distraught over
nearly getting killed by the boomer, and his blunt,
unflattering appraisal of her hadn't helped any.
Given her emotional state he should have realized that
she'd been looking for comfort of some kind. He hadn't
provided it; instead, he'd managed to put his foot in his
mouth, and he'd hurt her at the same time by being honest.
He sighed again, cursing himself with every word in his
vocabulary as he came to the top of the stairs; the only
certain thing in the whole mess was that Nene wasn't going
to be speaking to him anytime soon. His face twisted briefly
in inner torment at that thought, and he quickly yanked his
mind away from the subject.
He was unable to stop dwelling on it, however. As he
walked down the hallway towards the lounge, his mind
morbidly kept replaying the image of the hurt and angry
expression that had appeared on Nene's face as he'd tried to
explain his inopportune remark. The memory was like burning
coals eating into him; he would have given anything he
possessed at that moment to have been able to recall his
words.
Nene's retort to his remarks had been equally as
painful to him, and totally unexpected. Okay, sure, she'd
expressed misgivings before over his `shining armoured
knight' ideals, but it was the first time she'd ever ....
ever intimated that it might be more than just misgivings.
Part of his mind tried to dismiss her remarks as being
fueled by anger and hurt, and not to be taken seriously.
Unfortunately, another part of his mind was unable to just
dismiss them, and kept analyzing them to try and see if
there was any justification for her observation.
He opened the door to the lounge and stepped in,
casting an unhappy glance around the room; everything looked
normal. With a deep sigh, he went about making a pot of tea
while part of his mind continued to probe through his soul,
analyzing what it found.
Was he just trying to fit himself into an ancient,
glorified image? While in some respects it might have been
true at the beginning of his career as SkyKnight, it was
definitely not the case now.
He was honest enough to admit to himself that in the
beginning, it had been an ego trip of sorts, flitting
heroically around the city, defending the public from the
evil depredations of rogue boomers. He had gotten carried
away with the armoured knight image, and hadn't really
thought seriously about certain harsh realities associated
with the job the Knight Sabers did. He'd been dangerously
blind to them in fact, and had suffered the consequences:
more injuries than he could comfortably count anymore, and a
rather rude awakening to just how corrupt things were, and
how cold and unforgiving the rest of the world really was.
The results were that most of his idealism had been
burned out of him, leaving him cynical, and occasionally
bitter. There was still a faint shred of it inside of him,
somewhere, that faint longing for a better world, and the
belief that somehow he'd be able to make it come about. At
least, he hoped it was still there; he'd been through so
much that he wasn't really sure anymore.
There were some aspects of his character that were
inseparable from his chivalric ideals, his sense of honour
being the first and foremost of those. It had gotten him
into more trouble than he cared to think about, but it was
just the way he was. A wry smirk briefly appeared as he
recognized that the existence of his honourable leanings
confirmed that he hadn't lost all of his idealism. At the
moment, he needed whatever cheering thoughts he could get.
Sighing again, he poured himself a mug of tea, and sat
down on the couch, absently pulling a novel from the nearby
wall bookshelf at the same time. He sat for a while,
aimlessly paging through the book without really reading it,
sipping his drink. After a few minutes, his face again
flashed disgust, and he irritably pitched the book onto the
coffee table. Setting his cup aside, he put his feet up on
the table, and leaned back, lacing his fingers together
behind his head.
He sat like that for a few minutes more, a black
expression on his face as he scowled at the ceiling. With a
growled curse, he abruptly sprang to his feet, and started
pacing; he had to find something to do now, or else he was
going to snap. He didn't feel up to archery, and he really
wasn't in the right frame of mind to play in the shop. His
mood wasn't going to make him the most sociable person in
the world right now, either. Damn it, he needed to do
something.... anything!!
A dull thump, and a muffled, pained outcry of some kind
sounded through the walls, just barely audible. Bert froze
in mid-step, listening intently, but the sound didn't repeat
itself. He eased over to the door to the lounge, opened it a
crack, and peered cautiously around the door into the hall.
Seeing nothing, he eased the door open a bit further, and
stealthily slipped out into the hallway.
He carefully crept down the corridor, keeping his back
to the wall, moving towards the next door down, the door to
one of the exercise rooms. As he moved along, his mind
raced; could it be an intruder? He didn't think so, since
none of the burglar alarms had gone off. Of course, someone
who knew what they were doing could easily bypass
computerized security systems; technology was not foolproof.
Nene could have circumvented the building systems
blindfolded. He quickly squelched that thought, and focused
on what he was doing.
He reached the door, and carefully reached out,
grasping the door handle. He waited a moment longer,
listening, and he thought he could hear....someone crying?!
He listened a bit more, one eyebrow unconsciously quirking
upwards. Now who the hell could that be, especially given
that it was still pretty early in the morning? Slowly
turning the handle, he eased the door past the point where
the latching mechanism would catch, and let the door swing
quietly open.
Stepping softly through the door, Bert swept a
searching gaze across the room; all the equipment was the
way he'd left it, with everything in its place. His eyes
tracked across the room, and came to rest on a familiar-
seeming young woman with long brown hair who was awkwardly
trying to get back to her feet from a semi-kneeling
position. She appeared to be having problems with her left
leg; both of her hands had a clenched grip on it at about
knee level, as if she was trying to keep it from folding on
her as she stood up. He could hear her breath hissing with
the effort she was exerting, as if she had her teeth
clenched together.
Bert frowned as he finally recognized the woman as
Priss, and started quietly walking towards her. It suddenly
struck him as odd that she'd decided to come in by herself.
Priss unsteadily straightened up, weaving a bit. As she
released the clenched grip she'd had on it, her injured leg
folded, and she toppled backwards to the mats, a strangled
cry of pain and frustration being torn from her. Bert was
across rest of the room before even being conscious of
having physically taken the steps. As he came up to her, he
noted that there were tear streaks down her cheeks, and
there was an expression on her face somewhere between total
despair and frustrated fury. Her head jerked up as he
approached, and she flushed, angrily scrubbing an arm across
her face, trying to dry it off. She glared hotly at him as
he came over to her, starting to reach down to help her up.
"Get the hell away from me!" she spat, slapping his
hand away. "I don't need any help! I'm fine!" Angry moisture
gathered at the corners of her eyes again, and she wiped it
away furiously, only to have more leak out.
"Bullshit," he replied levelly. He ignored the way she
stiffened and tried to get loose from him as he grabbed her
one arm, looping it around his shoulder while bending down,
and then put his other arm around her. Straightening up, he
easily lifted Priss to a standing position once more.
"I SAID leave me ALONE!!" she snarled, yanking her arm
from around his shoulder, and shoving him away at the same
time. The motion overbalanced her, however, and her weakened
leg gave out again. Priss started to topple over backwards,
a pained cry escaping her lips, but Bert immediately snagged
her again, managing to get around behind her to catch her
before she could hit the mats. He gently scooped her up, and
carried her over to a side bench.
He carefully lowered her to the bench, sat next to her,
and then gave her a tender hug. Priss sat stonily for a few
moments, as if ignoring him completely, then, almost
grudgingly, briefly hugged him back. She lifted her head,
her eyes meeting his for a moment. At seeing his concerned
look, she flushed, and pulled away from him slightly. He
didn't try to stop her, but reached around and grabbed a
nearby towel, wordlessly handing it to her.
Priss flushed again, and almost angrily snatched the
towel from his grasp, scrubbing fiercely at her face, trying
to clear away any evidence of the fact that she'd been
crying earlier. Bert continued to watch quietly, still not
saying anything, worry and concern flashing in a whirling
tide through his greenish-brown eyes. If Priss was aware of
his feelings, she wasn't giving any indications of it; in
fact, she was steadfastly refusing to meet his gaze. An
oppressive silence fell over the room as Priss pitched the
towel down the length of the bench. It hit the bench end,
then flopped limply off of it to the floor.
The red-brown eyed singer folded her arms across her
chest in a defensive gesture, and leaned forward, resting
her elbows on her knees, trying to appear indifferent.
Instead of making her appear unaffected, however, it made
her look isolated and lonely. Her expression was more
contained and emotionless than it had been a few minutes
ago, but Bert could still see lingering traces of depression
in her face. After a couple of minutes of smothering
silence, he finally got sick of being ignored, and cleared
his throat; the young woman sitting next to him didn't even
acknowledge that she'd heard him, but stared off into space,
brooding.
"Want to talk about it?" he asked quietly.
"No." Priss didn't even change expression, and didn't
look at him.
"Come on, Priss. You expect me to believe you're okay
after what I just saw?" Bert shook his head. "I don't buy
it; something is obviously bothering you, a lot, if it can
make you break down crying. I...."
"I said I don't want to talk about it!!" she half-
snarled, hands balling into fists as she swiveled towards
him. Bitter fury burned brightly in her eyes. "Mind your own
goddamn business!!"
"This is my business," he replied calmly. "We're
friends, remember? I want to help. Please."
"I don't want help!" she spat angrily. "Get lost, and
leave me alone!"
"I can't, and I'm not going to," he replied, irritation
starting to show through the veneer of concerned calm he had
in place. "If I was even slightly inclined to leave, I'd at
least like to know what the problem is, first." Priss didn't
respond, but turned away from him again, her lips
compressing into a thin, bitter line as she stared out
across the exercise room.
"It's about your leg, isn't it?" he asked suddenly. She
didn't reply, but he caught the merest flicker of something
as it flashed across her face, and noted that her body
suddenly seemed to become taut as a coiled spring. That was
all he needed to confirm his suspicions.
"Afraid it's not going to heal completely?" he asked
quietly. "Maybe you should see a specialist ab...."
"SHUT UP!!!" she shrieked abruptly, catching him by
surprise. Bert jerked backwards, startled, as a backhanded
slap whistled by his face. He grabbed Priss's arms as she
tried to hit him again, looking into her anger-contorted
face; her teeth were clenched together in fury, but there
was an anguished look in her eyes, almost one of frantic
denial. She tried to pull loose from his grasp, but he
grimly held on.
"Priss?! What the...."
"I'm fine!!!" Priss snarled defiantly, although there
was a hint of desperation in her declaration. She struggled
against his grip on her arms as she continued, "I don't need
to see anyone!! I'm fine!! It's healing, you hear?!
I...I..." Bright tears suddenly were streaming from her
eyes. "I...I...I'm ....fine..." She started crying, still
trying to pull away from him. Sighing, he pulled her closer
and gathered her up in a hug; she stiffened, trying to shove
back from him, but he held on tightly. She finally gave up
and slumped against him, sobbing quietly. Bert continued to
quietly hold her, trying to offer some solace by his
presence.
They sat like that for another few minutes, until
Priss managed to pull herself together again. Bert pulled a
handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her; she took
it, and again wiped her face dry with it, sniffling only
slightly as she sat a bit straighter, putting a slight gap
between them. He ignored the hint, and kept one arm gently
around her shoulders.
"Why didn't you say something about it sooner?" Bert
asked quietly. "If I recall correctly, you're the one who
told me, several times, not to hide from problems."
"That's different," she replied in a low voice.
" `Do what I say, not what I do'?" Bert quoted, shaking
his head. "Seems like a bit of a double standard to me."
"You're not the one looking at the possibility of
being..." Priss faltered a bit, then swallowed and forced
the words out. "Being crippled for the rest of your life."
"You're not going to be crippled," he told her
fiercely. "You're blowing this all out of proportion; just
because your leg isn't healing as fast as you'd like doesn't
mean that it's going to develop into a permanent
disability."
"Oh yeah?" she retorted, wiping at her eyes. "And just
what makes you such an expert?"
"Experience," he replied soberly. "Trust me, I know
what having to wait for something to heal feels like; it
never goes as fast as you'd like it to, no matter how minor
it may have seemed at the time. Please, stop worrying so
much."
"I can't help it," she muttered. "It hurts most of the
time now...and...and..." She faltered a bit, swallowing as
her eyes began brimming again. "I....I....I'm scared; I
don't want to spend the rest of my life in pain, and
crippled because of it," she said in a low voice. "I....I
just couldn't handle it."
"Are you sure part of it isn't just psychological?" he
asked. "You're so sure that it's not healing, that it could
be mostly in your mind. As for pain," he shrugged, "that can
be endured."
"What's that supposed to mean, `it can be endured'?!
How the hell would you know?!"
"Because, I've been living with it for a while now," he
told her quietly. "Remember when the Headhunter speared me
through the shoulder and chest?"
"I'm not likely to forget something like that," she
replied, a trifle dryly. Having one of her friends laying
in her lap, bleeding heavily, was not an experience she was
anxious to repeat. She'd felt an awful horror at the time,
sure that he was dying right there in front of her.
"Well, supposedly, it's one hundred percent healed," he
told her, carefully flexing his left arm, and rotating the
shoulder. "I've been to a few specialists, and they've all
said the same thing. Despite that, it's still painful at
times, almost like it's still torn up inside. There's no
physically detectable reason for that to be the case, but it
still hurts occasionally." He shrugged again. "I've learned
to live with it; I hardly notice it anymore, but it's
there."
"Oh." Priss looked uncomfortable, and sat silently
after his revelation, uncertain of what to say. She
shifted a bit on the bench, and stared at the floor, her
mind going over their conversation. There was a possibility
he was right, but...she didn't want to go see a doctor, only
to have her fears confirmed, and find out that she was going
to have a painful handicap for the rest of her life. That
thought scared her like nothing else ever had before.
"You've got nothing to be afraid of," Bert spoke up
quietly, almost as if he was reading her mind. She realized
that he was, more or less; their personalities had enough
similar quirks that he could probably predict fairly
accurately what her state of mind was like. "I know it's
scary," he continued, "but trust me, you've got to get it
looked at. I'm sure Sylia can direct you to some good,
discreet, orthopedic physicians; all you have to do is ask.
Okay?" He reached out and tilted her chin up in order to
look into her eyes. "Okay?" he repeated. She nodded slowly.
"All right," she replied, sighing in resignation. "I'll
go this afternoon. Satisfied?"
"A little," he smiled briefly, then became serious. "If
you don't mind my asking, why'd you come in here by
yourself? Couldn't Sylvie come in with you?"
"I didn't want anyone else around," she mumbled. "I
don't enjoy falling on my face in front of an audience. I've
been coming in by myself for a while now, trying to get my
damn leg back into shape."
"Wait a minute," Bert interrupted, frowning. "Linna's
been giving you rehab sessions, right?"
"Right."
"And you've been coming in here, by yourself, and
working out with your leg on top of that?"
"Yeah. So what's wrong with that?" she queried,
wondering why he was frowning. Bert rolled his eyes, shaking
his head and putting a hand over his face, sighing deeply.
He looked at the ceiling as if praying for guidance.
"Hey, what's with you?" she prodded him, giving him a
quizzical look.
"You've been overdoing it, that's what part of your
problem is," he told her, sighing and shaking his head
again. "Priss, the ONLY exercise you were supposed to be
doing was the rehab sessions; they're meant to gradually
condition your muscles and bring them back to normal
strength. By doing all that extra exercise, you haven't been
giving it a chance to heal. You're your own worst enemy
sometimes, you know that?"
"I didn't have a choice," she said tightly. "I've got
to get this leg back into shape, and I figured exercising it
would help."
"Why? What's the rush?" he inquired. "It's not like
we've had a lot to do lately." Priss didn't reply, her
expression turning tight. She turned away from him slightly,
folding her arms across her chest, a look of anguish
crossing her features. Bert squeezed her shoulder gently,
reassuringly. "Priss?"
"My...band has a concert in almost three weeks," she
said quietly. "We've been practicing a bit, but with my leg
the way it is, I can't get up on stage. If..." She
swallowed, starting to tremble a bit, then clamped some
ironclad control on herself, forcing her voice to remain
steady. "If...if I can't ... perform by the concert date,
then ... they're going to have to find someone else to sing
lead for the concert." Bert wordlessly hugged her again, and
this time she hugged him back immediately, seeking
reassurance in the warmth of their embrace.
"You won't have to worry about that happening," he told
her, giving her a brotherly squeeze. "If you get your leg
looked at, and take it easy in the interim, I'm sure you'll
be fine."
"I sure hope so," she replied morosely, sitting up and
pulling away from him. Singing was one of her great joys,
and losing that on top of everything else would be an awful
blow. She suddenly looked lost and alone as she sat there
contemplating her future.
Almost before he realized he was doing it, Bert reached
out, tilting her chin up gently with his hand, leaning
forwards while pulling her a bit closer at the same time,
and softly kissed Priss on the lips. She twitched in
surprise, but didn't... quite ...withdraw. It felt kind of
nice, actually, sparking some kind of a warm glow in the
back of her mind. Almost of their own accord, her lips
responded to his, and her arms came up, sliding around him
in a hug.
After what seemed like a long moment or so, he pulled
back, and she flushed a deep red colour, releasing him
hurriedly, suddenly feeling embarrassed and awkward for some
strange reason. He appeared to be in a similar state,
turning a bright crimson colour, quickly looking away from
her.
"I, um, I'm sure everything will be fine," he told her,
flushing again. "Just, uh, don't do overdo it anymore,
okay?" He quickly retreated before she could do anything to
stop him, and fled the room. Priss watched him go from where
she sat on the bench, her mind falling all over itself as
she tried to sort out exactly what it was she was feeling.
****
Kate Madigan looked up from her desk as a timid knock
at the office door proclaimed that someone had business with
her. With an irritated sigh, the lavender-haired exec closed
the file she'd been poring over, and leaned back in her
chair, looking around the room for an idle instant. The
knock sounded again.
"Enter," she called evenly. The door swung open a
couple of feet, and a young woman with short brown hair,
wearing a neat, light grey business suit and glasses peered
cautiously around the door's edge. "Yes?" Madigan asked, a
touch of impatience in her tone, her blue-grey eyes spearing
the luckless woman with a frigid glance. "What is it? You
know I'm not to be disturbed when examining security files."
"I...I'm sorry Ma'am, but these reports just came in,
and they all have a top level security priority," the young
secretary stammered. "You told us that any reports of this
nature were to be forwarded to you immediately." Madigan's
foreboding look vanished at the news, and she gestured. The
young woman came over to her desk, handed her the thick
bundle of file folders, bowed, and quickly left the room.
Madigan thoughtfully shuffled through the folders as the
door quietly closed behind her secretary.
She selected the thinnest folder first, and started
reading. It turned out to be a transcript of the ADPolice
reports on the boomer rampages of the night before, combined
with the technical reports on how their latest boomers had
performed. The biomechanoids had performed flawlessly, with
an apparent increase in combat efficiency of about 35%
overall in comparison to the older combat models. Quite
acceptable.
She idly paged through the ADP report, not really
paying attention to the details, since they were really
powerless to do anything against them anyway; keeping them
underfunded and ill-equipped saw to that quite effectively.
As she flipped through it, however, the name `SkyKnight'
seemed to leap out at her, and she began reading more
closely. As she read the details of SkyKnight's encounter
with the K-17s, a slow, almost triumphant smile began to
spread across her face.
"So, it's finally beginning to get to you, is it?" she
muttered to herself. "Excellent; it will make destroying the
Knight Sabers that much easier." She set the report aside;
the Chairman would be interested in that one, if for no
other reason than it appeared that one of the Knight Sabers
was not acting in a normal fashion. That indicated the
possibility that the group was having some internal
problems, something they might be able to exploit in order
to completely destroy them. Still smiling to herself at the
thought, she picked up the other file folder she'd been
given.
It turned out to be the report on some strange goings
on that had happened north of the city. A little over two
weeks ago, a massive explosion had leveled part of a nature
reserve, and subsequent investigation of the site had
revealed that there had actually been a hidden operations
base of some kind in the middle of the devastation.
Naturally, finding a secret facility of any kind brought
suspicion onto GENOM, and they'd been forced into proving
they had not had anything to do with the ruined base. It
hadn't been very hard, especially since, for once, they
hadn't been involved.
Quincy had used the opportunity to have GENOM's own
specialists examine the site, and they'd come back with the
conclusions that the hidden base had been a combination of a
secret research development facility and a military staging
base. From the completeness of the destruction, it was their
conclusion that a weapons explosion had taken place. Despite
going over everything with the equivalent of fine-toothed
combs, their specialists hadn't been able to give any leads
as to who the former proprietors of the base were, or any
other useful information.
Madigan shuffled to the back of the file folder, and
removed a datadisk; it had been her idea to check back on
some of the routine observation satellite data for that area
from the last several weeks. While GENOM had access to
almost all of the spy satellites in orbit around the Earth,
only some of them were used regularly, like the ones used to
keep an eye on major cities. Some of the outlying areas
received only occasional scrutiny, since it was generally
held that nothing important happened outside of MegaTokyo
proper, anyway.
She pressed a button on her desktop, and a viewing
projection screen slid silently out of the ceiling above her
desk. The disk slid into a slot next to the control panel,
and a few seconds later, the spy satellite footage began to
scroll across the screen.
As she perused the observation photos, Madigan idly
mused that they were going to have to revise their opinions
of the outlying wilderness regions. Judging by some of the
details in the collection of sporadically-taken pictures,
there were definitely strange things afoot out there.
The most obvious change to the area in question was a
well-concealed road that had been built leading to a small
clearing with a hill in the middle. Although it was obvious
that the road builders had taken great pains to make the
track blend in with the surroundings when viewed from above,
the swath it cut through the forests was unmistakable.
Pictures from a time index of several weeks later showed the
heat traces from vehicles using the road at night, but it
was the last few images in the data set that captured
Madigan's attention.
The first one showed a large plume of orange-red flames
billowing out from a concealed entrance in the hill.
Enlargement of the image showed the silhouetted shapes of
debris, and a few twisted humanoid shapes caught in the
fringes of the blast. The next image, taken several minutes
later, showed another plume of flames being volleyed forth
from the hill again, but this time in the middle of the
conflagration was a dark mass of some kind; image
enhancement showed the sleek, streamlined shape of an
armoured attack helicopter. The airship was obviously
fleeing the base as it exploded, and Madigan had to admire
the construction of the ship if nothing else; it looked like
a mean piece of hardware.
The final image in the set was what really interested
her. In it, the hill was gone, completely. In its place was
a raging pit of flames and smoke that illuminated the
surrounding area with a smoky, orange-tinted glow. As she
zoomed in on the devastated base, some faint detail at the
edge of the clearing caught her eye. Frowning, she focused
the viewer on that spot, and hit the image amplification
again.
Immediately, a dark, streamlined silhouette of a jet
aircraft of some kind became visible, just at the edge of
the forested clearing. Off to the side of the dark ship were
the faint outlines of sleek, armoured shapes. Madigan's
frown became even more intense as she played with the image
enhancement and contrast controls. The picture finally
became recognizable.
She was looking at the Knight Sabers.
Madigan sat back in her chair, thoughtfully assessing
the picture on the screen. It was very definitely the group
of hardsuited mercenaries that had been plaguing GENOM's
concerns for some time now. Whatever had happened, it looked
like they'd come out second best this time: of the four
women, only two were upright. The white and green Knight
Sabers were carrying their blue armoured comrade towards the
waiting ship, and a few feet away, a red, white, and pink
hardsuited figure was laying on the ground. The entire group
looked battered and beaten-up, not at all.....wait a second!
Madigan scanned around the picture again intently; no,
she was not mistaken. There were only four Knight Sabers in
the picture; SkyKnight didn't appear to be in attendance for
this outing. She briefly considered the possibility that he
was in the ship, but then dismissed the idea. Given his
annoying chivalric ideals, SkyKnight would have been
assisting in moving the wounded, not sitting in the ship.
The fact that one of the injured women appeared to be the
one he had strong feelings for, based on their observations
of him, made that possibility even less likely. No, for some
reason, the silver-garbed hardsuit had not been there. Why
not? It was definitely something to look into.
Madigan quickly gathered up the scattered data files,
and hardcopied the photo images she was interested in. After
her report to The Chairman, she had a lot of work to do...
****
The door to the office banged open noisily, as a tall,
brown-haired man burst through, impatience and agitation
visible in his every movement. At the clamour, the
attractive, slender-looking woman seated behind the large
desk dominating the office looked up from the paperwork
sprawled in front of her, anger flaring in her aquamarine-
coloured eyes at the abrupt intrusion.
"Okay, Chief," Leon said, coming over to stand in front
of the desk, looking down at her. "What the hell is it this
time?"
The Chief Inspector rose to her full five-foot-five
height, her long, straight red hair falling to hang behind
her, reaching to the mid-point of her back. The immaculate,
dark blue ADP uniform she wore did little to cloak the
impression of energy and authority that radiated from her
trim frame, and there was no mistaking the snap of anger in
her blue-green eyes as she glared up at Leon.
"McNichol," Chief Inspector Hitomi Ichinohei's normally
calm and controlled voice cracked across the confined space
of her office. "I don't give a damn what kind of night you
had yesterday, that's no excuse for just barging in here,
ignoring proper protocol, and being insubordinate. Am I
making myself perfectly clear?" She stared up evenly at the
taller police officer, not intimidated in the slightest by
the glowering look he gave her back. She'd cleared a lot of
hurdles to reach her current position, and no disgruntled
junior inspector was going to faze her. She watched as the
brown haired officer visibly smoothed his mood out.
"I'm sorry, Chief Ichinohei," he apologized, running a
hand through his hair, mussing it up. "I'm just ....still
sore over losing some good men last night."
"I know," her gaze softened slightly, and she sighed.
"I don't like losing them either." She motioned for him to
sit down, and she sank back into her own seat, giving him an
appraising glance as he sprawled in the spare chair across
from her. His normally clear blue eyes were bloodshot with
dark circles under them, and his clothes looked like he'd
slept in them. A faint smile appeared briefly.
"You look like hell," she told him bluntly. "Why didn't
you take today off? Nobody would have faulted you for it."
"Too much to do," he replied wearily. "I've got about
five different reports to finish, including the one on last
night's rampage. I've also got some ongoing investigations
that need to be seen to." He sighed. "As attractive as a day
off sounds, I just can't afford it right now."
"Fine, but if you push yourself too much, you're going
to be getting a holiday, whether you want it or not," she
warned him. "We can't afford to have anyone on this force
not at their best, especially not now. Clear?" Leon sighed
again and nodded, smothering the irritated expression that
appeared.
"So was this a social call, or was there something
important?" he asked a moment later, masterfully suppressing
a yawn. "I have got some things to do."
"I'd say it's important," she replied. "Given what
happened last night, there's been some old questions re-
awakened about you."
"Oh really?" Leon frowned. "And just what questions are
those?"
"Why you haven't brought in the Knight Sabers whenever
you've had the opportunity, and just what your relationship
is with them. After what SkyKnight did to our pilots last
night, some of the upper levels have started asking
questions again." Leon snorted.
"What, the paper-pushers don't have anything better to
do than to start that again?" he inquired sourly. "There
isn't any relationship; I've run into them several times,
that's all. SkyKnight's the only one I've ever talked with,
and he's not very forthcoming. The rest of the group ignores
me." The Chief Inspector nodded thoughtfully.
"I believe you," she told him, "but the fact still
remains that you're the officer on scene most of the time
whenever they do show, and the fact that you haven't even
once tried to arrest them has fed all kinds of speculation."
Leon stared disbelievingly at her.
"And just how," he asked, anger beginning to grow, "am
I supposed to arrest four women and one man who walk around
in powered personal body armour that lets them bench-press
boomers as if they were paperweights?! The K-12AT suits
might, I say MIGHT, have lasted a few seconds against them
if we'd tried to arrest them, but our current equipment is a
joke! They wouldn't even break a sweat battling the K-17.
Hell, they could laugh at it and it'd fall apart!!" Leon ran
a hand through his hair in frustration. "I can't believe
that we're actually trying to arrest them anyway. They've
got the only weaponry around that's capable of taking out
boomers, and they're doing it as a public service, for God's
sake!!"
"They're mercenaries," the Chief Inspector replied
thinly, a cold edge of hardness apparent in her voice. "It
doesn't matter whether or not they're a help; they're
unlawfully operating criminals, with very illegal weaponry.
It's our duty to bring them in."
"Oh really?!" Leon snorted. "Why? So GENOM can seize
their suits and build better boomers with them?! I don't
believe this!! Okay, fine, so they've got hot hardware; so
WHAT?! I could see the concern it if they were bloodthirsty
psychopaths or something, but they've been helping to keep a
lid on this godforsaken, boomer-infested, stinking rathole
of a city!!" His voice was unconsciously increasing in
volume as he spoke. "So what if they operate outside the
law?!" he snarled. "At least they can goddamn DO something
useful, instead of generate red tape, paperwork, and
BULLSHIT!!"
"Are you finished?" the red-haired woman behind the oak
desk inquired icily. "If you are, then I'd like to point out
that you are a public servant, sworn to uphold the law,
regardless of your personal views. Laws are there for the
protection of society; the system may not be perfect, but we
can't let somebody just flaunt the law because it's
inconvenient. If one person gets away with it, pretty soon
someone else will try it, and before long we'd have anarchy
running riot everywhere." She stared levelly into Leon's
eyes, driving her point home. "The Knight Sabers are
vigilantes, and it is our job to bring them in because
they're breaking the law. They may not be a direct danger to
society, yet, but if we continue to allow them to operate
unimpeded, they may become one."
"Well, I don't believe it," Leon muttered.
"I don't particularly care what you believe," she
snapped back, aquamarine eyes flashing irritation at his
recalcitrance. "This is a direct order: you WILL attempt to
bring the Knight Sabers in at the next available
opportunity. Am I making myself clear?"
"Perfectly," Leon retorted sourly. "But I'm telling you
right now, it won't work. We'd need better equipment first."
Silence dropped across the office as the Chief
Inspector and her older subordinate officer stared across
the desk at each other. She was a good officer, he mused to
himself, if a bit too much of a hard-nosed disciplinarian at
times. There was no nonsense about her; she was direct and
honest in her dealings with the officers under her command,
and she expected the same in return. The fact that she was
willing to go to bat for her officers if necessary, and had
done so several times, had quickly silenced the few mutters
of criticism that had been floating around the offices.
A lot of those disaffected rumblings had been because a
woman had been appointed to the Chief Inspectorship. The
fact that she was also younger than most veterans of the
force had implied a lack of experience, and many people
harped incessantly on that fact, complaining that the brass
playing political games was the only reason she'd been
promoted. A few of the nastier rumours had even been to the
effect that she'd slept around to get where she was. The
propagators of those particular rumours hadn't been
tolerated for long, though, and had been told rather
pointedly by several people, some with a fair bit of rank,
to shut up.
Leon had not been one of the whiners, even though he'd
been one of the more senior officers passed up for the
chance at a promotion. He'd been around long enough to be
able to see that her ability was genuinely there, and had
recognized the fact that she'd make a good Chief, a much
better one than him, or a lot of the other candidates, in
fact. He'd also realized that he was quite happy where he
was, and didn't really want a promotion. Well, not to the
Chief's position, anyway.
The new chief hadn't let on that she'd known about the
slight dissension in the ranks, but had quickly and
efficiently straightened out the department, brooking no
nonsense from the complainers. Those who hadn't been able to
adapt to having her in command had transferred elsewhere
within the ADP. While the level of bureaucracy and paperwork
in the office hadn't decreased any, things were definitely
running more smoothly.
"McNichol," her voice jerked him out of the slight fog
that he'd started to drift into. He looked over at her,
blinking and trying to clear his mind. Hitomi looked
slightly rueful, a smile flickering over her face. "There's
one more thing I need to discuss, and then I think you'd
better go home; you're dozing off where you sit."
"And that is?" he asked, forcing himself to
concentrate.
"Why are you using the department's resources for
personal uses?"
"Personal uses?" he echoed. What was she talking about?
She nodded, red hair waving slightly as she picked up a file
folder.
"You've been charming the secretaries in the Records
division into checking out a certain `Bert Van Vliet',
according to my information," she replied. "And you've been
running some other probes into his past, I understand. Why?"
Leon jumped guiltily, startled. He'd thought he'd been
able to keep his checking on Nene's boyfriend fairly quiet.
Evidently not, given the stern glance the Chief was leveling
at him.
"Uh, well, er, I, uh...." What the hell could he say?
All he had were vague suspicions that the man was involved
with something....something not quite right. The problem was
that he was lacking anything resembling even partial hard
evidence of anything.
"Well?" she asked impatiently, drumming her fingers on
the desktop. "I'm waiting."
"Well, you see, I'd been curious about this guy," Leon
started awkwardly. "It struck me as strange that Nene had
suddenly turned up sick. When I thought back a bit further,
it seemed like she was always getting these unexplainable
injuries..."
"You thought he was abusing her," the Chief stated
quietly, leaning back in her chair. Leon nodded.
"That's what I thought at the time," he replied. The
tall, brown-haired inspector quickly explained his concerns,
and what he had, or hadn't been able to find. "The guy
doesn't have any past records, and it struck me as kind of
funny." She gave him a strange look.
"No past records?" she repeated, arching an eyebrow.
"What, twenty-eight years of data not enough for you?"
"What?!"
"Take a look," she invited, tossing the file folder she
was holding across the desk to him. "It's all there," she
told him. "Twenty-eight years of personal files. Public
school, high school, university degrees, health records, job
histories and so forth. Just how much detail were you trying
for?" Leon looked up from the file to the Chief, his face a
study in bewilderment.
"But this wasn't here a few days ago!" he blurted.
"None of it was!! The oldest record I could find was three
years old!!" He shuffled through the file a bit more, still
not quite believing what he was seeing. There was no way he
could have missed all the information sitting in front of
him; he'd been incredibly thorough. He frowned as he paged
through the file, noticing something funny, then looked over
at his superior officer.
"There's no records on his birthplace or country of
origin," he noted. She nodded.
"You'll also notice that there's a letter of
explanation why," she pointed out. "All his original
documents were lost in the 2025 quake; that's why everything
in there is a computer transcript."
"Well, wasn't that convenient," Leon muttered to
himself, scowling at the file in front of him. While that
had happened to a lot of people's records, he just didn't
buy it. Not in this case.
"Yes, it was, wasn't it?" she agreed expressionlessly.
Leon's gaze snapped up to meet hers.
"Then you think he's hiding something as well?" he
inquired hopefully. The red-haired woman across from him
sighed.
"Based on what you've said so far, it does look a
little `too perfect'," she admitted, "but other than your
suspicions, there's no real reason that I can see to keep
investigating this guy." Her gaze narrowed as Leon opened
his mouth to speak, then hesitated, looking uncertain
suddenly. "What is it now?"
"Well, I didn't quite tell you everything earlier,"
Leon confessed, swallowing nervously. The Chief's expression
turned stormy as she waited for him to continue. "I, uh,
checked out the address listed as his permanent residence,"
Leon told her, sighing. "Nobody's lived there in weeks; the
place looks like it's been broken into and ransacked. If
he's not living there, then he's hiding for some reason."
"Anything else you `forgot' to add?" she queried in an
acid tone, although her face now had a thoughtful look. The
brown-haired inspector nodded.
"I found rifle cartridge casings spread through the
grass behind his house," he said quietly. "Forensics is
going to be examining them when they get a chance to see if
they match up with any weapons we know about." Silence
cloaked the office again as he finished speaking. Chief
Ichinohei sat thoughtfully behind her desk, her fingers
steepled together in front of her face, considering the
information.
"It does sound suspicious," she finally conceded
reluctantly. A relieved smile started to spread across
Leon's face, but it stopped when the Chief added, "Despite
that, however, we're just going to have to let it lay."
"What?!" Leon burst out. "But this guy's up to
something!! I know it!! The whole setup stinks of something
wrong!! He's...."
"And you haven't got any proof!!" she snapped back, her
voice overriding his with an authoritative tone that brooked
no dissent. "The closest thing you've got to evidence is
inadmissible, because you were on his property without a
warrant!! Now let the goddamn matter drop, and quit wasting
department time on it!! Do you understand me?!"
"But...oh, all right," he muttered irritably, looking
sour. "I won't waste any more department time on him.
Happy?"
"For now," she replied dryly. "Where you're concerned,
though, it's usually a very short term feeling." She waved a
hand towards the door. "Go on; go home and get some sleep.
We'll call if there's an emergency." The tall inspector
nodded wearily, not bothering to summon up the energy to
reply to her quip. He heaved himself out of the chair, and
slowly made his way to the door, opening it, and stepping
out into the office area again, missing completely the
coolly appraising glance that Hitomi gave him.
Once he was outside of the Chief Inspector's office, a
grimly smug smile passed across the blue-eyed inspector's
visage for a moment; no, he wasn't going to use anymore
department time for his inquiries. What he did on his time
off was his own concern. Whatever was going on, he was going
to get to the bottom of it.
Straightening his jacket and adjusting his gun in its
holster, he started striding across the office, the thought
of getting some sleep shoving all his other concerns aside
for the moment. He was passing the secretarial area when one
of the duty sergeants hailed him.
"Hey!! McNichol!! Wait up a second!!" Leon turned as a
short, stocky man with iron-grey hair, dark brown eyes, and
a leathery-looking face charged towards him, waving a file
folder.
"What's up, Takagi?" Leon asked when the sergeant
puffed over to him. The older man handed him the file
folder, wheezing while trying to catch his breath.
"This," Takagi gasped, getting control of himself
again. "That forensics report you were after. They just
finished." Leon nodded acknowledgment, and tucked the folder
under his arm; he was too bloody tired right now to try
reading it. He was about to turn to go again when the
sergeant's hand on his arm stopped him.
"Mind if I ask what happened last night?" he inquired.
"I never did hear the details."
"Which part did you want the details on?" Leon replied,
a trace of bitterness entering his tone briefly. "The part
where we got our asses kicked by the boomers? Or the clean-
up afterwards?" The sergeant's gaze turned compassionate for
a moment.
"Don't let it get you completely down, Leon," he
advised, slapping his shoulder briefly. "These things
happen, and we can't do a thing about it. Sucks, I know, but
that's the way it is. No, I wanted to know why SkyKnight
wasted two of the K-17s. That's not his usual style."
"How the hell should I know?!" Leon snapped, fatigue
making him more cantankerous than normal. "I can't read
minds, and I've given up trying to predict what Mr. Knight-
in Shining-Armour is going to do. I..."
A loud crash from behind them prompted both men to
whirl around. A white-faced, red-haired young woman in an
ADP uniform was staring at them, a broken coffee mug on the
floor at her feet. The dark brown liquid was slowly seeping
away, staining the carpeting. The two men stared back at
her, perplexed.
"W-what was that?" Nene asked, trying to keep her voice
steady. "A-about the K-17s, I mean?" She looked like she'd
just seen a ghost, Leon noted, frowning to himself. Come to
think of it, Nene hadn't looked good all day, and there'd
been some speculation that her illness was coming back. He
watched her carefully as he answered.
"Last night SkyKnight wrecked two of our K-17s when
they tried to arrest him," he told her. "The pilots are
alive, but they're going to be in the hospital for a few
days, at least." Absolutely all colour drained from Nene's
normally cheery face, giving her an ashen pallor, and Leon
quickly jumped forward, concerned, as she seemed to sway a
bit. The young red-head caught herself, and stared around
blankly at her surroundings.
"I-I-I'm not feeling too good," she stammered in a
small voice. "I-I think I'd better go home." She didn't
appear to notice Leon, or anyone else as she walked across
the office, vanishing down the hallway leading to the stairs
to the changerooms.
"What's with her?" Takagi asked from behind him. "You'd
think somebody'd just told her that her best friend was an
axe-murderer."
That's a very good question, Leon mused to himself.
Just what was wrong with Nene? And why had hearing about
what had happened to the K-17s prompted that kind of a
reaction? He stared thoughtfully down the now-empty hallway,
trying to make sense out of yet another piece of the puzzle.
****
"Checkmate," Sylia noted calmly, picking up her teacup
and sipping at it. Amusement lurked in the back of her dark
brown eyes as she added, "You're improving. It only took me
thirty moves this time." She smoothed out her skirt with one
hand and settled into her chair contentedly.
Bert pulled away from the chessboard without replying,
giving her a sour glance; she met his glance with an
innocent expression. Ever since he'd started playing the
occasional chess game with Sylia, he'd never been able to
escape the feeling that she was secretly laughing up her
sleeve at him. He did win, occasionally, but most of the
time she outfoxed him easily, besieging his king in an
almost insultingly short time. He was beginning to suspect
that she let him win, once in a while, just so he wouldn't
feel completely outclassed.
He picked up his own mug, taking a slurp of the hot
liquid within. He savoured the mouthful for a moment before
swallowing it, quietly enjoying the air of friendly
companionship that was in the room at the moment. It wasn't
exactly why he'd dropped in on Sylia to begin with, but
considering how the rest of his day had been, at the moment
he was quite willing to take his small pleasures where he
could get them. He sighed, setting his mug aside as his
conscience prodded him into finally bringing up the subject
that had originally been his motivation for stopping by to
see her. His sometimes leader was watching him, cradling her
own cup in her hands, a knowing look in her eyes as she
gazed over at him. He sighed again.
"There's something we need to discuss, Sylia," he told
her. "It's in relation to last night. I was going to mention
it sooner, but I...got sort of sidetracked." And he hadn't
really been in a frame of mind suited for conversation until
a few hours ago, a voice in the back of his mind pointed
out. Sylia nodded.
"That's all right," she replied. A wry smile appeared.
"I know it's not hard to get off-course, especially lately."
Bert grinned slightly, then fished a small optical data disk
case out of his hip pocket. He set it on the coffee table,
and slid it across the slick surface to her.
"That's my flight recorder data," he explained simply.
"I think you'd better look at it, especially the stuff from
the early part of the mission." Sylia's eyebrow quirked
curiously as she reached out and picked up the disk case,
thoughtfully turning it around in her fingers.
"Any particular reason for the emphasis on the early
stages of the outing?" she asked, cocking her head at him.
He nodded, sighing.
"Yeah, there is," he replied, running a hand through
his hair in agitation. "That's the time period when I
destroyed two ADP armour suits." Sylia froze in disbelief
for a moment, surprised.
"Pardon me?" she asked, a touch of her surprise showing
in her voice. "When you what?"
"When I destroyed two ADP K-17 armour suits," he
repeated, looking old and weary suddenly. "I'd just finished
taking care of the boomers when it happened," he told her.
"Four new K-17s showed up, and said they had orders to
arrest me, although the implication was that they'd have
settled for any Knight Saber they could find." He picked up
his mug again, and took another slurp. "I was getting ready
to fall back and just get the hell out of there, and then IT
happened."
"Nene called for help," she guessed.
"Right," he nodded, wiping his mouth on the back of his
hand, setting the mug down. "She screamed, and I... I
started to go and help," he said in a strained-sounding
voice. "It was like I wasn't really in control of what my
body was doing," he told her. "I seemed to be seeing
everything as if it was long-distance, and I was ....afraid
I wasn't going to make it in time." He sighed again, a long,
drawn-out exhalation, and put his head in his hands, his
elbows balanced on his knees and his hands covering his
face.
"And then what happened?" she asked, concerned; he
didn't appear to have heard her. Sitting up and leaning
towards him, she reached out, gently grasping his hands and
pulling them away from his face, holding on to them. "Bert?
What happened then?" Guilt-ridden greenish-brown eyes looked
into hers.
"They grabbed me," he said in a low voice. Sylia felt a
lump of ice crystallize in the pit of her stomach,
immediately knowing what must have followed. "They grabbed
me, and I....struck out. I think part of it was due to my
.... `problem' with being grabbed or hit unexpectedly. It
didn't ... I couldn't ... I don't really remember exactly
what happened," he admitted, swallowing painfully, "but all
I could think about was that I had to get away so I could
help Nene. When they grabbed me, everything went kind of
blank for a moment or so. I don't even think it took me ten
seconds to put two of the K-17s out of the fight. I .... I
wasn't trying to kill them, but ... but I wasn't trying not
to kill them either. After they were down, I took off before
the others could get in on the act."
"I see," she said quietly. Silence fell for a moment.
"Why didn't you tell me this sooner? I could have had Nene
look into the reasons for the sudden desire to arrest the
Sabers while she was at work." She was surprised by the
flicker of deep pain that flashed across his face, quickly
walled off behind a granite-faced facade.
"I didn't think of it last night because I was worried
about Nene. I forgot," he admitted tonelessly. "And then
this morning...." His face became tight, and Sylia became
more concerned; he looked like he was about to crack under
some kind of strain.
"This morning, Nene and I had an...argument," he told
her tightly, muscles working in his jaw as it clenched and
unclenched. "We....I.... I managed to put my foot in my
mouth by telling her that she had to try to forget what had
happened, and to..." His voice turned even more stretched-
sounding. "And to stop carrying on like a ... little girl.
She said a few things back about me.... and she wouldn't
talk to me after that. The last time I saw her was when I
dropped her off at work. She said....not to bother picking
her up after work."
"I see," Sylia repeated slowly. Bert pulled his hands
loose from her, picking up his mug, and she sat back,
running a hand absently through her blue-black hair. It was
not good news. Given the fact that Nene's emotional state
was upset at the moment, she could see how inopportune
remarks could suddenly escalate into a major offense. She
was more concerned, however, with the effects that the spat
could have on the red-headed couple. They'd both been
relying heavily on each other for caring and support during
their respective recoveries, and a prolonged estrangement
would not help either of them. In fact, a sudden withdrawal
had the potential to make them worse.
As she sat there thinking the matter over quietly,
trying to see some way she could perhaps smooth over the
ruffled waters, the door to her apartment banged open. She
frowned, glancing towards the front end of the apartment,
starting to rise from her chair, wondering who it was.
"Sylia? Are you home?" Nene's normally bright-sounding
voice called out. "We've got to talk about something." Sylia
noted to herself that the young red-haired woman sounded
unusually agitated about something.
"In the living room," she called back, standing up. As
she stood, she noticed the faintly hopeful look that had
appeared on Bert's face. Every line of his posture was tense
as he slugged back the last of his drink and stood himself.
Nene entered the living room area from the front foyer
of the apartment, moving agitatedly, and fluffing her hair
out as she came towards them, head bowed. As she lifted her
head, Sylia noted that the young ADP officer's complexion
was very pale, as if she was ill.
"Sylia, I just found out..." Nene's voice trailed off
as she noticed that Sylia wasn't alone. She stopped dead in
her tracks when she saw Bert, her eyes widening, filling
with a look that was compounded of what looked like horror
and disbelief. Sylia felt a chilly, premonitory feeling
sweep through her.
"Uh, hi, Nene," he spoke up awkwardly. "How was
your....day?" His voice trailed off as she looked at him
like he was a complete and total stranger. The chill in
Sylia's stomach deepened a bit.
"What are you doing here?" Nene asked, her wide green
eyes fixed on him, an incomprehensible mixture of emotions
boiling through them.
"I was talking to Sylia," he replied slowly. "I was,"
he swallowed, flicking a sidelong glance at her, "I was
telling her about what happened last night, during the
mission, and I.."
"Did you tell her that you attacked the ADP as well?!"
she flared suddenly. Bert blinked, taken a little aback by
her vehemence.
"Well, yes, I told her, but...."
"Why didn't you tell ME then?!" she asked. "I had to
find out at work!" Tears suddenly started gathering at the
edges of her luminous eyes, and she folded her arms
defensively across her chest. Sylia stood quietly; from the
intensity of their gazes, it was like the red-haired couple
didn't even know she was there. She restrained the urge to
speak up, praying they'd work through it.
"Nene, I didn't have a chance," he protested, spreading
his hands pleadingly. "And I didn't attack them! They tried
to arrest me, and...."
"You didn't have to nearly kill them!"
"I didn't!! I mean, I didn't try to kill them!! Damn
it, you screamed for help, they grabbed me, and I put them
down as fast as I could so I could go and help you!! You
can't seriously believe I tried to kill them..." His voice
trailed off again as he stared into her face. Sylia watched
as most of the colour drained from his face, and he looked
like he'd just been shot in the guts.
"That's what you think, isn't it?!" he whispered. His
voice suddenly gained in strength, moving towards anger, and
he started to shake a bit. "You think I TRIED to kill them,
don't you?!"
"I don't know what to think anymore," she replied
tearfully. "You've changed; you're not the man I fell in
love with. You're harder, colder, and...and...and more
ruthless." Bert's face went even whiter. "I don't know you,"
she whispered, tears beginning to track down her face,
"and...and I don't think I want to, either." With that, she
turned and fled the room, sobbing brokenly.
Deathly silence filled the room as the door slammed
behind the departing ADP officer. Sylia was shocked by the
expression on Bert's face: utterly bleak, cold, and empty.
It was as if every emotion he possessed had been stripped
away. They were back suddenly, and his teeth clenched in
infuriated anguish as a heartfelt pain blazed in his
greenish-brown eyes. His hands clenched into fists at his
sides so hard that his knuckles cracked. His body was
trembling as he tightly suppressed his emotions, trying to
retain control of himself.
"Bert?" Sylia spoke up softly, concerned. She started
to move towards him, intending to try and offer some
friendship if nothing else, when his eyes turned on her.
They were cold and alien-seeming in that instant; Sylia
wasn't sure if he recognized her or not at that moment.
"Pardon me," he grated, his voice sounding like it was
coming from an unimaginably deep cavern. "I need some air."
He brushed past her, slamming the door of the apartment
behind him with enough force to rattle some of the pictures
on the wall.
The leader of the Knight Sabers slowly walked back to
her chair and sat down, trying to figure out just what she
was going to do next. From what she'd just seen, things were
now much more serious than a mere argument. There was the
very distinct possibility that what was happening could
splinter the Knight Sabers' organization, and she had to
prevent that from coming to pass.
She picked up her teacup, swallowing what was left,
grimacing at the combination of the cold liquid's taste, and
the unpleasant thoughts swirling through her mind. She'd
just set her cup down, when the sudden realization of what
he'd meant by `needing air' struck her.
"Oh Good God, NO!!" she burst out. She jumped out of
her chair and ran swiftly across the room. Not even pausing
long enough to grab some shoes, the blue-black haired woman
charged out of the apartment.
She was too late.
****
Silver armour plates sealed into place with pneumatic
hisses as the various interconnecting pieces of the hardsuit
locked into place with metallic snaps. There was a final
hiss as the suit's interior lining pressurized, molding
itself to the body contours of its occupant. Gauntleted
hands reached out, picking up a silver helmet with blue
antenna wings on the sides, settling it over his head.
His vision was swept by darkness for a moment, then lit
up with a bright glow as the suit systems initiated, and the
sensors and viewscreen came to life. A welter of brightly
flickering symbols and characters scrolled across the
screen; status reports. They were only dimly seen, though,
as if at the edges of a tunnel. Everything seemed remote,
detached, at the moment, as if being viewed from infinitely
far away. It had to be that way; he didn't think he could
handle the reality of what had happened just now.
SkyKnight checked himself over once more, more from
ingrained reflex than conscious thought. He noted, but
didn't attach any significance to, the deep ruts and gouges
that still marred the hardsuit's smooth chest and shoulder
armour plating. His damaged gauntlet and lightsaber array
had already been repaired; it was all he'd felt up to at the
time, earlier.
He slapped a pair of launchers into his shoulder mounts
without really noting what he'd picked up, habit taking over
again. It was all that was driving him right now; his mind
was numb with a contorted, whirling mix of anger and deep
hurt, and he didn't want to have to confront it.
The door slammed closed behind the silver hardsuit as
it clanked out into the corridor. An ominous silence drifted
over everything as the sounds of SkyKnight's departure
penetrated the room from the outside hallway.
****