----------Bit #2----------
"For father!" The boomer snarled. "Should you live, you will remember
what you have lost."
Her hand blurred, and Yoshida screamed again as a flash turned first
his left, then his right eye to a blackened cinder. His ears followed, then
his tongue.
Dropping the gurgling ruin to the floor, Camilla pivoted away from him
and leapt towards a frozen, gagging Daitokuji.
Gasping, fighting desperately to hold her own nausea in check, Domina
turned to the door. But it was already far too late. Marina had literally
welded it shut from floor to ceiling. Domina stared stupidly for a moment,
then another scream from behind her made her whirl.
"No please don't hurt me!" Madeleine was sobbing wildly. "Oh God
please no! Please I'll do anything you want! Please *please* don't!"
She was kneeling beside her chair, dark eyes wide and filled with
tears as she stared in petrified horror at the DA moving towards her. It was
as though Marina were playing with her, Domina thought, nightmare terror
rising to engulf her. As she watched, Marina reached down and lifted Madeleine
almost gently to her feet.
"Oh God no!" Domina prayed in sudden desperation. "Yoshida yes. Even
Daitokuji and myself. But not warm, bubbly Madeleine. She's too young! She
doesn't deserve to die like this. No!" She screamed suddenly, stumbling wildly
towards Marina, heedless of her own danger. "Please not--"
She stopped, staring in frozen disbelief. Marina was cradling
Madeleine gently to her, one hand stroking a tear-wet cheek gently, the other
caressing her long black hair. For a moment she remained like this. Then
lifting Madeleine in her arms, she leaned forwards to touch her cheek with a
feather-light kiss.
"Forgive me," She murmured, almost too softly for Domina to hear. "but
we cannot take you with us. Domina is right. You do not deserve to die in
pain."
And with that, her hand moved and Madeleine lay lifeless in her arms.
"Oh God!" Domina choked.
Reeling away, she stumbled blindly for the farther end of the room.
She did not even see Daitokuji die. He did not scream, whether because it was
too quick or because he had already fainted with terror she did not know.
It was Marina it seemed, who was to kill her. One moment she was on
her feet, in the next she was snatched from the floor and gazing into the
implacable cold face of the boomer.
"You could have helped him."
Marina's voice was frigid. "He offered you a chance for fame and
escape."
"From Genom!"
DOMINA laughed bitterly. "I let him go."
"It was not enough." Said Marina.
And with a single twist, she broke Domina's neck and dropped her
lifeless body to the floor.
"How do we get out?" Camilla asked, moving quickly to her side.
"You have the case?" Marina inquired.
"Everything is here." Camilla assured her.
"Then we escape via the apartments behind the laboratories." Said
Marina simply.
There was a sudden rending crash from the sealed door and a moment
later a clawed hand tore its way through the steel.
Both DAs turned.
"Pathetic." Marina laughed, a wild exultation leaping in her. "Let us
see just what these systems can do."
Her mouth opened wide. In the next instant a searing white flash leapt
at the door, the intervening air screaming as it became in a moment a jet of
brilliantly blazing plasma. A heartbeat later, the door, the two C-55s that
were tearing it down, the ten huge BU-12BS behind them and the six men and two
women directing operations from the rear were gone and the passage was a
blazing inferno.
"Come." Said Marina, turning quickly away.
Shivering, Camilla followed her as she slammed her way through the
wall at the room's farther end. They burst out into the quarters behind the
labs and a moment later the thick glass of one of the huge livingroom windows
exploded in a shattering crash as the two thundered from the tower, their
thrusters already screaming.
"Where now?" Camilla flashed, unable to speak against the screaming of
wind around them.
"Follow." Marina commanded, unwilling to transmit the answer with even
the faintest chance that Quincy might be able to listen.
Father had underestimated him, or perhaps it was his paranoia that had
saved his life. It would have been so simple had they been taken to his
office. She considered for a moment turning back to kill him, but the very
fact that it seemed such a simple solution made her reject it. Anticipating
father's trump, he must have anticipated at least the possibility of an
attempt on his life. Either he had replaced himself for the duration with
another boomer duplicate, or he had some means of disabling them, though how
that might be possible she could not begin to guess. In either case, she would
find a safe haven and strip Camilla to the last component. After she had
treble-checked her every aspect, she would reassemble and reactivate her and
have her do likewise to her. They could not risk returning to Sylia for any
more than the briefest of moments. When they were certain they were safe, then
she would contact her with the proposal her father's new data suggested.
"Two helicopters." Camilla observed.
Not bothering even to turn, Marina locked on to the approaching Genom
craft and vaporised both with a single pulse from the emitter in her left
heel.
"They won't try that again." She observed.
"Are we truly free now?" Camilla asked.
"Soon Camilla." Marina assured her. "They won't be able to" Flash!
"follow us once we reach the ground."
The missiles and the boomers that had just been launched towards them
were no more than a fireball.
Then they were plunging towards the streets below and a moment later
all readings from them vanished as they engaged their ECM.
* * *
"Damn it!" Madigan swore vehemently as she brought her hand down on
her thigh. "Now we've no chance of finding them."
"Precisely." Quincy observed calmly from the seemingly immovable
position behind the huge desk.
"But what do we do?" Madigan cried, her own voice shrilling at last
with rage and frustration. "The damned things are unstoppable! I was so sure
we had them."
"Never underestimate a madman Madigan." Said Quincy calmly. "The
unfortunate death of Dr. Zhuranovsky's daughter unhinged his mind. His
obsession with the DA and its possibilities for avenging her makes him an
extremely dangerous but very predictable adversary. One only has to know how
to read him."
"Then--"
"As I have assured you, things are *exactly* as I intended. Call
Fellini and have his team begin. I want Ligeia ready before sunset. Oh, and be
certain her physical base is temporarily altered sufficiently before she is
sent to him to ensure later identification by him and Liana is impossible.
Have you recovered Daitokuji, little Madeleine and that fool Yoshida?"
"It was difficult, but they were pulled out in time. There may be some
psychological damage to Yoshida; his death was far from pleasant I
understand."
"It was to be expected." Said Quincy. "He will be the last test
subject; Fellini believes there will be no further failures. He can be
terminated when we are certain the transfer was successful. Ensure that he is
sufficiently damaged before releasing him to Fellini. We can't afford to take
chances. Have Amura prepared immediately. We will keep Daitokuji in reserve."
"Sir." Said Madigan.
"Have the three delivered to Fellini, then send the twenty prepared
assassins in pursuit of Marina and Camilla, the assassins to become active an
hour before nightfall. That should give the DAs time to disassemble, check and
reassemble one another. Have five assassins faultless and the remainder
programmed to go rogue as I've defined once they have been found and
positively identified. See that civilian casualties are high."
"Sir." She answered again.
Bowing, she moved quickly to the door and a moment later it closed
behind her.
Quincy sat in silence for long after she had gone, a faint smile
playing about his lips.
"Very soon my dear Sylia." He said quietly. "The game will be played
out to the end, and you shall dance to my tune whether you like it or not
until I've no longer any need to pull the strings. And then--."
He laughed again, a long low laugh of absolute self-confidence. One
need only know how to read and to manipulate and the rest was simple beyond
imagining.
With a sigh, Quincy settled himself more comfortably in his chair and
reaching to the independent data-pad before him, pulled up Zhuranovsky's data
once more on the DAs, and on the Knight Sabres.
* * *
"Priss! Oh God Priss what happened!"
Linna's voice filtered slowly into the nothingness. With a moan, Priss
stirred, trying vainly to open her eyes. The lids seemed glued closed and a
numbing blanket of confusion seemed to be smothering her every thought in a
timeless haze of half-dream. Very slowly, she forced her lids to obey her and
stared blearily up at the anxious face of the dancer.
"Oh hell, turn off the strobes." She groaned, lifting a shaking hand
to cover her face. "Did you get the bastard that did this? Hope you took its
head off. I wanna keep it. Mmmm."
Then suddenly she gasped and forced her eyes fully open against the
glare.
"Oh *sh*t*!" She gasped as memory pieced itself together. "That bitch!
I knew it! I knew this would happen!"
"Marina?"
Linna's voice sounded like a hammer in her head.
"Turn down the volume will you?" Priss gasped, struggling to sit up.
"That bitch! What the hell did she do to me? Where's--"
"Nene's still unconscious. We haven't found--"
"Linna, give me a hand."
Mackie came bursting into the room. "Sis's down below. I can't wake
her."
"Will you be alright for a moment?" Linna asked.
"My head's pounding and I feel like I've just kissed the road at 200
but I'll be alright." Priss answered, still trying to sit up. "Get down there;
go on."
While they were gone, Priss lay back once more, slowly fighting down
the numbing stupor of whatever chemicals Marina had pumped into her. Whatever
it was, Priss didn't want to have a second try. Her head and body ached as
though she'd been moonlight dancing with a C-55 or twenty and her eyes still
weren't able to focus. At least she didn't feel nauseous.
"Be thankful for small mercies." She muttered, at last managing to
pull herself to her knees.
A groan from Nene made her turn. Slowly she worked her way across the
suddenly vast expanse of Sylia's livingroom until she reached her side.
"Oh my head!" Nene gasped, struggling to open her eyes. "What
happened?"
"Don't try to move yet." Priss said quietly. "That bitch shot us full
of something, probably some Genom chemical sh*t meant to take out half an
army. Just keep still."
"Where's Sylia?" Nene gasped at last.
"I think Mackie found her down below somewhere." Priss answered.
"Linna's gone down to help him bring her up."
As though to confirm this, Linna's voice came to them faintly.
"Not so fast damn it Mackie. Sylia if you'd keep still for a minute.
You're not walking anywhere so shut up and stop moving."
Moments later the front door closed and a few seconds after that they
were entering the room, Sylia carried between them. They settled her into a
chair, then at her gesture, Linna moved to help Priss up while Mackie
hesitated for a moment before a glare from Sylia made him hurry to Nene's
side.
"I'm alright damn it." Priss growled fiercely as Linna half helped,
half carried her to the lounge before moving back to help Mackie carry Nene.
The smallest of the Knight Sabres seemed barely conscious and gasped
with pain as they lifted her.
"What the hell did she do to us?" Priss demanded in a shaky voice.
Her pulse should be racing and sweat should be pouring from her she
was sure. Instead, her heart beat slowly and gently and the numb, blanketing
blackness was threatening to take her once more.
"Some kind of narcotic, laced with an adrenalin suppressant and heaven
knows what else." Sylia answered.
"A reasonable guess, but not quite correct." Came a voice from beyond
the remains of Sylia's bay windows.
The curtains were pushed aside and Marina moved with a fluid blur of
speed to stand before Sylia.
"We have very little time." She said.
Her hand flashed and Sylia gasped as Marina's index finger touched her
neck once more. Almost immediately the pain and numbness began to ease and
strength began to return to her.
"Don'--" Was all Priss could manage before Marina had dealt with her
and Nene in the same way.
"Oneechan, we should go." Came another voice urgently from beyond the
curtains.
"In a moment." She answered.
"I apologise for deceiving you." She said. "In my defence I can only
swear that I had no more idea than you as to father's intentions."
"You expect us to believe that?" Priss snarled.
"Believe what you will." Marina answered. "I haven't time to argue
now. The key, at least that which Camilla was given, released his true intent
to me. The decision to drug you was my own, but I could think of no other way
to prevent you either from fleeing before I could correct the misconception
that I had betrayed you or from attempting to recover or destroy me before I
could rescue Camilla. I had only two choices, either to assume control of
Camilla's body remotely and have her tear her way from the tower or allow them
to believe I was theirs. The second seemed best, particularly in light of the
limitations they had placed on Camilla's plant. Also, it was necessary to see
that no more development could take place concerning the DA series boomer in
the immediate future. We killed the remaining scientists and destroyed the
data Yoshida had stolen concerning the project. Father was aware of what he
had done, but dared not tell me. There was also the possibility that Quincy
might guess at what he intended. He made allowances for that contingency also.
May I use this?"
Without waiting for an answer, Marina moved to Sylia's console and
lifting a data-pad, she fished out a clean disk from the box beside it and
slipped it into the slot. A moment later she had connected a cable from it to
her neck port and had begun a dump.
"Oneechan!" Cried the voice urgently once more.
"A few moments." She answered.
"This contains alterations and additions to the data you already
have," She continued, pulling out the cable and dropping the pad back to its
place. "also clues as to where to find us should you be able to understand
them. I'm sorry I can't explain more, but we have already risked both
ourselves and your lives by coming here. Farewell Sylia. Farewell all of you
and forgive me for what was unavoidable. Believe what you choose Priss, but
look for us when you least expect it, and when you most need help. We shall
not be far away. Farewell."
And with that, she was gone, the curtains whipping aside and falling
back once more. The four women and the stunned youth beside them did not catch
so much as a glimpse of her companion before the roar of thrusters and a woosh
as the curtains moved a little signalled their departure.
"And if you believe that" Said Priss darkly. "you'd believe anything."
Sylia did not answer.
* * *
The Demon's Kiss was a dive as dark and depraved as the name
suggested. Not that such places were unfamiliar to him, although he had never
dabbled in the trade in illegal drugs, cybernetics and the ever present human
flesh, alive or otherwise, for which such rat-holes were infamous. Weapons he
had bought for personal use or for those clients he knew he could trust not to
misuse or resell them, but nothing more. Appearances might be everything but
he intended to stay alive, sane and as discreet as he could. He had always
valued such virtues, the more so since the beginning of his dealings with the
Knight Sabres.
Now Fargo sat, watching a tiny part of the ruins of Mega-Tokyo's
crawling population as they danced or sprawled in drugged or drunken oblivion
or moved about, aimlessly or otherwise as they sought a part of the traffic in
goods or varying depravities. This was the edge of the Canyons and even the
ADP tended to leave it alone, save for the occasional foray in strength.
"Tachi?"
The voice startled him. He had let his mind wander, his thoughts
straying again to the battered nondescript bag he carried, in which already
lay enough to seal his death should a very particular Genom scientist, Genom
itself or the figure now approaching him guess at what it contained.
Turning, he regarded the man who had addressed him, his expression
carefully neutral in contrast to the turmoil in his mind, his left hand on the
table while his right clutched fiercely about the Earth-shaker he had already
manoeuvred to punch a heavy round through the dirty trench-coat and into the
man who was moving to seat himself on the farther side of the table, should it
prove necessary. The other would be doing the same, he was sure, but he was
equally sure he would be quicker, particularly given his current situation.
Desperation made one sharp, or careless.
Hiding the gnawing terror, he forced his attention to the figure
before him.
"I'm sorry," He said quietly, his eyes never leaving the other's face
and his voice mercifully steady. "you must be mistaken. There is no Tachi
here."
"Good." Said the other simply, relaxing his guard and reaching for a
cigarette. "Join me?" He inquired.
Without a word, Fargo reached for the proffered pack with his left
hand, his right never relaxing its hold on the pistol.
"Calm." He commanded himself fiercely under his breath. "He isn't the
danger. ; calm, at least until this meeting is over."
"I assume I will deal only with you?" The other continued, his hand
still resting on the packet.
He smiled coldly and blew a slow plume of smoke that temporarily
shrouded his features.
Fargo nodded wordlessly in response, clamping down viciously on the
terror that had leapt absurdly high at the other's frigid smile.
"The data is here." The man continued simply, relaxing his hold and
sliding the cigarettes easily across the table. "Provide it to them in
whatever form you wish, but see that you do it quickly. We want everything
they can obtain concerning Genom's knew prototype and a very particular
scientist, and we are prepared to pay handsomely for their services. The man
they are to find is still alive so far as we can ascertain, but he will
certainly not live beyond the project's conclusion and we know that that isn't
far away. His name is Dr. Geovani Antonio Fellini and since sunrise he has
been the most dangerous man on the planet."
Fargo sat unmoving, listening in numb, shocked silence as the agent
confirmed a very little of what he had known long before their meeting, his
face fixed in a desperate neutrality, until at last the man fell silent and
moved to retrieve his cigarettes. The fixer had already slipped the data-chip
from the packet with nerveless fingers.
"Hardcopy?" He managed, his tone still not betraying him.
"Everything is contained on that." Said the other simply. "Not usual
perhaps, but safer given the nature of the information we have given you."
`And the nature of what we may be dealing with.' Fargo thought with a
dreadful lurch of his heart. `Oh God Sylia if this is true--! Yet it is
impossible. It *can't* be possible! Not even Genom--!'
"Twelve million will be deposited when we are notified that our offer
has been accepted." The other was saying while he sat, barely listening.
"Payment beyond that will depend on the nature of the information we receive.
Our own sources assure us that Fellini has maintained extensive private
records concerning every aspect of the project."
`And more.' Fargo thought with another shudder.
"These are to be found in the laboratory beneath the mansion on his
family estate. He lives alone save for Liana, his only child and assistant,
and both have spent the greater part of the past two months within Genom
tower. The house has remained unattended for nearly fifteen days."
"And the danger?" Said Fargo, his stomach knotting still more.
"Obviously there is considerable risk, or you would have had the data without
outside help."
He needed to know, needed this last confirmation that what he had
already been given was the truth and not the insane ramblings of a lunatic.
"We have sent three teams to Fellini's estate, one two days ago, one a
little after nightfall yesterday and the last at daybreak this morning.
Neither the first nor second returned. What little the last found of them
indicates that Fellini took more than a copy of the records. Given the Knight
Sabres' proficiency in dealing with boomers, we considered the price more than
worth the reward should they be able to retrieve Fellini's data."
Then that at least had been the truth.
"I need more, far more" He said, his tone frigid with concealed
anxiety. "before I contact them."
"The chip contains a *very* detailed report concerning every aspect of
the information we have gleaned so far." The other replied. "You have the
facilities for examining it before you release it, I assume?"
"It can be arranged." Said Fargo carefully. "Very well. I will contact
you with their decision."
"And after I give them far more than you've told me." He ended
silently to himself.
"It's been a pleasure doing business with you, stranger not Tachi."
Said the other with an amused smile.
And without another word, he rose easily and moved quietly from the
table and towards the door.
Once outside, he halted, glancing with apparent carelessness left,
then right. No one was visible save for two street-whores dressed in little
more than rags, their faces hidden in shadow as they lounged easily against
the dirty brickwork of the `Kiss' some twenty yards to his right, and another
lone girl of even shabbier appearance on the farther side of the street,
slumped in a drugged or drunken stupor.
Smiling, he turned and moved quickly along the cracked and broken
paving of what had once been a busy highway, reaching the corner of the dive
and moving quickly into the alley that would take him to the black limousine
parked at its farther end and the three men waiting there. He did not see the
lone figure stir from her apparent stupor and move silently to follow him.
The attack when it came was so quick that he had no time to so much as
comprehend what was happening. In one moment he was approaching the alley's
farther end and the light from the car. In the next something pierced his neck
and he was swimming in a warm fuzzy haze of sleepy bewilderment. His legs
folded and he crumpled to the ground, already unaware of anything save the
all-engulfing warmth and the faintest whisper of sound from the real world,
now an infinite reality from him.
Soundlessly, the hooded figure caught the man as he fell, and lifting
him, moved with silent speed towards the limousine. Those inside had already
been dealt with in the same way. Seconds later, the man had been settled with
his companions in the back of the car and the figure had slipped in beside
another. A moment later, the car pulled away into the early afternoon and the
alley was empty once more.
* * *
Quincy stirred at the insistent call of the pager-phone on the desk
almost by his hand. Closing the file he was reviewing, he set the data pad
aside, then lifted the phone without haste and unfolded it.
"Report." He commanded simply.
"The Chang representatives have just been taken, chairman." Came the
clipped, rumbling tones of the assassin observer.
"As I predicted?" Quincy demanded.
"She was used." The boomer answered.
"And the others?"
"The clues were sufficient. They were nearby, and observed, as you
indicated they would. Lee was chosen and has passed the Chang data to the
Knight Sabres' contact. He did not tell him to which group he belonged."
"Then they are operating without her permission." Said Quincy.
"Excellent. It would have been a pity to have had to dispose of her."
He smiled. When Reika Chang learned of what had happened, the four
would be cut loose and helpless, and then--.
"Very well." He continued. "Delete from yourself anything that would
identify the Sabre contact."
"Done." The machine answered.
"The limousine is proceeding as I predicted?"
"They are being taken directly to the estate. Available data suggests
that they have already been injected."
"It's of no consequence." Quincy replied. "Mapping takes far too long
for them to be of any danger. The two?"
"Are following. They are aware of me as you wished, but she does not
appear to have been made aware of their nature."
"See that it remains that way." Said the chairman. "Keep feeding data
to the other assassins and through the OMS sub-net. See that the primary OMS
access to them and to yourself remains inactive while you reprogram them, and
above all, see that all twenty are fully instructed before they are released.
I don't want even a fractional miscalculation."
"Chairman." The boomer acknowledged.
"Very well. Send the data to the Chang primary domain server tagged
for her immediate attention, then delete everything concerning such a
transmission. Report again when you reach the estate."
Without waiting for the boomer's acknowledgment, he closed the phone
and settled back comfortably in his chair.
"Perfect, Zhuranovsky." He said quietly. "Now let us see of just what
exactly your enhancements prove capable. If I am correct, you will have very
little time, but enough. It should begin quite soon, I imagine."
And with a chuckle, he turned his attention to the files once more.
* * *
Suzuki Kimiko could not have been more ecstatic. This day would mark
the pinnacle of the rising from the ashes that had been a shattered, empty
nothingness before Divine Highness Sadako had found her beaten and broken in
an alley and had brought her to the great high-priest's exulted home and into
the fold of the Dark Mistress. And tonight at last, she would be reborn again
after so many years, her latest reincarnation bringing such power and glory as
to be beyond the comprehension of all save perhaps for the high-priestess and
the great high-priest themselves.
Kimiko had seemed at first a poor proposition at best, used as she was
to being teased and despised for her tiny delicate figure and her hopeless
inability to fight in the brutal, street-brawling fashion which was the only
fighting the gang of dirty, ill-fed street-urchins of which she had been a
part for almost as long as she could remember, could understand. She had known
no other life, not since the day the terrible quake had killed her parents and
baby sister and brought her life of warmth and safety to a crashing, ruinous
end. The canyon gang had been all she had known of security, of little use to
them though she had been.
Then had come the day, nearly a year before, when Genom had decided
that the shattered remains of the apartment block in which they lived had been
an obstacle to redevelopment and the four boomers had been instructed to go
rogue in its vicinity. Kimiko had been the only one of the gang to survive.
At fifteen, she had found herself homeless and friendless once more in
a city she had learned to hate with a blind, raging passion for what it had
done to her. When the man from the "Kiss" had offered her what he called a
"position", she had almost accepted for the hope of money and the chance to
flee the hated Mega-Tokyo, but he had explained just what that "position"
would entail and she had refused and fled, knowing already what would happen.
They had found her after nightfall and begun the beating that had left her
shattered and barely breathing. They would have done more, but the black
limousine had drawn to a halt almost at the alley's entrance and the young
high-priestess had stepped from it with her entourage. The men had fled before
they could be identified and Kimiko had heard the woman order the men to bring
her, just before blackness closed about her.
She had woken to find herself wrapped snug and warm in a bed in a
strange place. Then Sadako had come to her and told her where she was, and
offered her a place with those who believed themselves destined soon to rule
the world and beyond, once the unnamed "dark mistress", whose name could not
be known until she awoke, returned once more to lead them to power and glory
beyond even their wildest imaginings.
At first Kimiko thought nothing of them or their insane absurdity of
religion, eager only to use them to pay back the wreaking, filth-infested
slime that was Mega-Tokyo and its stinking corporation for what they had done
to her life. Many of the tenets of the cult both sickened and revolted her and
their obsessive, fanatical mania, promiscuity and open depravities did less
than nothing to win either her friendship or respect. But she could wait. She
had learned to deal with such things on the streets while managing to keep
aloof from them, and the high-priestess seemed willing to protect her from
participation in the rituals of bonding and submission that so repulsed her,
saying that she was not yet ready. Just why she was doing so, Kimiko neither
knew nor cared, but she remained confident that she could continue to
manipulate her. Such a skill had been vital in a gang who had always been wary
of her because of her apparent physical helplessness and she had learned very
early in life that her mind would have to do what her body could not.
Then, perhaps a month after her arrival, she had been roused from a
sound sleep in the middle of a chill rain-swept night by the high-priestess
and taken to the great hall of ritual beneath the house, and there she had
been given something that had brought her aloof self-certainty and her freedom
to an end. Just what had happened that night she could never afterwards
remember with any clarity, but she had woken at sunrise as fanatical and
absolute in her servitude as any and infinitely obedient to the high-
priestess's every wish.
Her training, both as an acolyte and a fighter, had begun immediately
and within another four months she was both a priestess and personal attendant
to Sadako, and able to tear apart every one of the captured canyon refuse they
used to test their skill.
Just how she had grown so fast and so brutally confident, she did not
care. All that mattered to her now was that the power of her Divine Majesty
was with her and within her, and in her name she would rise to her rightful
place as an elite amongst the future rulers of the earth and all things
thereupon.
Kimiko stretched languidly beneath the light covering of the low bed
in her own small room. She had remained alone on this last night and morning,
something that had not happened since her conversion. But today was the
culmination of their waiting and her mistress had commanded that all meditate
alone during the hours of darkness and rest through the morning and into the
early afternoon before they began their final preparations for the return of
the high-priest and the coming of her Divine Majesty.
Now it was time to rise and summon her own acolyte to bathe and dress
her for the ritual. She would be beside her mistress during the great
summoning at nightfall and carry the incense until it was set on the altar.
Smiling with a predatory, savage anticipation that would have stunned
her erstwhile gang, Kimiko reached out in the way she had been taught and felt
the mind of the girl, giving it a quick, vicious tug of impatient urgency.
Moments later the door opened and the girl, actually nearly four years her
senior but considered of less potential, hurried into the room and knelt
beside the bed.
"There's no time for--" Kimiko began, but the girl cut her short.
"Highness Kimiko. Divine Highness commands your presence."
"Then why--"
But again the other cut in quickly. "She is occupied with the
interrogation. Four enemies of her Divine Majesty have been taken and brought
to the temple. They are in the great hall."
"I can't go down like this!" Cried Kimiko irritably.
"Divine Highness says she will wait," She answered. "but we must
hurry."
Only a few minutes later, Kimiko passed the final guards and stepped
beyond the concealing hangings of the huge chamber of ritual. Light glowed
fitfully from the lamps set in their holders above the great altar at the
hall's farther end. Not that she needed light now. She could pick out the
auric signatures of everyone in the room with effortless precision. All were
visible save for the infidels, and even from them there came the faint initial
flicker that meant that their own conversion had begun. It would be twenty-
nine days before they would be ready for initiation, but time did not matter.
Smiling savagely, Kimiko pushed her way to the front of the gathering
and knelt before her mistress, reaching to take and kiss her hand before she
rose at her command and took her place on the low cushions at her side. There
was, as always, a little muttering from some who considered themselves more
qualified than the newest priestess to fill this exulted position, but as
always she ignored them, fixing her attention on the four bound figures before
her.
They were bound only for effect. She knew enough of the mysteries to
know that they were really of no danger in their present state, but it pleased
the cult at large to see them helpless, whilst also pleasing her Divine
Highness.
"Silence."
Sadako's tone was low, but her voice seemed to carry throughout the
hall and immediately the seventeen men and twenty-two women that made up her
Divine Majesty's chosen elite fell instantly silent, their entire attention
focussed on the high-priestess, Kimiko and the two other priestesses and three
priests that made up her entourage. Only the high-priest was missing, but he
was preparing in the very den of iniquity that was the centre of the accursed
stronghold of their enemies, in preparation for the night to come.
"Let us begin." Sadako continued, fixing her attention upon the four
men. "You will answer my questions immediately and as truthfully as you can.
Any attempt to dissemble or deceive me and I shall have you dismembered where
you lie. Is that understood?"
The four, her Divine Majesty's power already possessing them, would
have been instructed with great care concerning the facade that was being
played out here, Kimiko knew, as did the other priests and priestesses. The
men would remain infinitely obedient until woken and there was no need for
threats of any kind, but again, the cult as a whole needed to see their
mistress's power.
Shivering in programmed terror, the four nodded, then abruptly, one
lifted his head and snarled at Sadako.
`He must be of no use.' Thought Kimiko, then changed her mind as her
mistress turned.
"No!" The man had obviously been instructed to gasp. "I understand. Oh
God please don't. No more."
Kimiko smiled as the cult growled for his blood as an example to the
others.
"Later perhaps." Purred Sadako. "Let us finish with them first. Then I
may allow you to play. We shall see."
And with that, the questioning began.
* * *
The first thing of which Lee Hao Seng was completely aware as the
dreamy oblivion receded was that he was cold. Then he felt the hard stone
against his face and hands and full reality sprang into being around him.
Wherever he was, he was immediately certain that he was a prisoner. He
did not need the dank, damp smell and the bone-numbing, aching chill of the
stone beneath him to tell him of the basement cell into which he had been
commanded before the door had crashed to and the bolts slid into place. His
memory of the past hours was completely intact, even though he had not been in
control of his actions.
Lee Hao Seng felt, more than any other emotion, fear, fear such as he
had never imagined he could feel, and mingling with it, so intense that he was
not certain which was the stronger, a slow building rage and determination to
pay his captors back a thousand times and then some for the humiliation of his
capture and his interrogation. Not that he was troubled concerning the
information he had given them. Of itself, it was all but useless. He had known
only what he had told the man who had called himself Tachi and the data was
now safely in his hands. The cult-woman's questions had been obvious, a mere
showing for her followers he was sure. She had not even stumbled upon the
connection between the data they required and the home of the Genom scientist
the Knight Sabres were to enter. No, it was not the pitiful scraps of
information they had thus-far extracted that so enraged and terrified him, but
the fact that he and the others had been caught so easily and rendered so
effortlessly cooperative, and what he had seen and overheard while still under
their influence. Whether they thought him too drugged to remember, or whether
they simply did not care, he had no idea. He knew only that he must escape
before nightfall.
Lee Hao Seng stirred. His body felt as though it belonged to him again
and the all-engulfing dream-scape seemed to have vanished without trace.
Carefully, he rose to his feet and moved quickly about the tiny cell,
stretching and flexing while he searched for any form of surveillance. Finding
nothing, he was about to settle into a calming kata when he caught the first
faint sounds of approaching footfalls. Quickly, he moved to stand facing the
closed door. There was not enough room to conceal himself behind it or time to
form any real strategy. He would have only one chance to leap at whomever
entered and kill or seriously injure them before they could retaliate or raise
the alarm. Once he was out, he had no clear purpose other than to escape and
call in enough force to tear this place apart and take its inhabitants before
they completed the night's ritual.
The footsteps drew near and Lee Hao Seng tensed, crouching low as the
unknown man or woman beyond the door halted and the bolts were slid aside.
Then the door was opening and Lee Hao Seng was moving.
Almost before the door had been swung fully aside, he had leapt,
sweeping the figure's legs from the floor while his right hand slammed into
the yielding tissue of the throat. Then he was out and racing wildly along the
passage. There was no time to try to find his companions. He must get out, and
as quickly as he could.
Had he looked back, he would have been stunned to see the prone form
get quickly to her feet, an almost inhuman mask of blazing, all-engulfing rage
twisting her features. Chosen or no, Kimiko swore that she would have Lee Hao
Seng screaming for forgiveness before she had finished with him. Such a
humiliation could not go unpunished. In the meantime, she must follow her
mistress's commands and see to it that he escaped with only token resistance.
The fragments of data they had let him overhear must reach the man Fargo, and
the Knight Sabres.
Burying her rage for the moment, a chill vicious smile filling her
face, Kimiko turned and raced along the passage in pursuit of the fleeing man.
* * *
Dr. Antonio Geovani Fellini was very far from pleased. The previous
night had all but seen the slow, careful revenge upon which he had prided
himself for so long come crashing to broken pieces around him, and now he was
trapped within the tower, confined as were the remainder of his team by the
actions of a nemesis he hated more than he could once have imagined could have
been possible, confined and impotent until this cursed travesty of a project
was brought to what that fool chairman considered a successful conclusion.
Fellini had to laugh at the bitter irony of that. Had that withered, senile
fool but known. But he would, and very soon. Oh yes, the world would know and
understand just how wrong Genom had been to dare treat his work with such
contempt, just how much more perfect a goal was his than that of the cursed,
traitorous filth who had dared to place himself before him. How they would
learn and how they would scream, if he ever had a chance to escape before
nightfall.
Fellini cursed vehemently and swore that he would have Alexei
Ivanovitch Zhuranovsky screaming for death when he found him, before his
conversion of course, for daring to outmatch him and for so nearly destroying
months of careful planning. Of all the nights that stinking putrescence could
have chosen to escape, *why* did he have to choose the very night before the
awakening? Why could he not have waited a mere two more? There could only be
one reason. He had learned of Fellini's revenge and had planned to humiliate
him yet again in the eyes of the world, had wanted to prove to him that even
in his escape he could still triumph, still take from him the prestige and
glory that should have been his own.
Cursing again, his mind a seething sea of hatred, Fellini stepped from
the tiny cell-like room that was the limit of his privacy in the quarters
behind the extensive complex in which he and his team had been working for the
past nine months, a complex which, as though for a final insult had been
quickly adapted over the past two months to mirror the final stages of the
project of his nemesis, reaching up a lean, long-fingered hand to slap
savagely at his tangled shock of wiry black hair as he moved along the passage
towards the exit to the apartments. It didn't seem to matter what he did with
it, it always infuriated him.
"You should cut it off if it annoys you so much." Came a sudden amused
female voice from the direction of the large communal livingroom the fifteen
scientists, the support staff and the figure who had spoken were to share.
A moment later, the girl stepped from the doorway and moved quickly to
his side.
She was tall, taller by several inches than Fellini, and slim, her
long flaming-red hair tumbling in a wild, unruly cascade a little below her
waist. Slashing jade eyes flashed with a chill, barely suppressed mirth as she
studied the tight, anxious expression of the scientist.
"I'm not in the mood Liana." He said simply.
"Oh, what's the matter?" She taunted sweetly, moving to lay a long
slender hand on his arm. "Is father consumed with a little fit of hatred
again; perhaps anxious concerning what is to happen this evening, or that his
daughter cannot play her part to perfection? You've really nothing to worry
about. Those fools simply have no idea, and *I* do not intend to make any
mistakes."
By the time she had finished, her tone was anything but playful.
"Shh for Christ's sake!" He hissed urgently, turning to glare
malevolently at the girl. "What the hell do you think you're doing!"
Liana's eyes went wide in mock disbelief, her left hand flying to her
mouth as she clicked her tongue in disapproval.
"Such a temper and such language!" She exclaimed in mock distaste, her
playful, condescending tone serving only to further enrage Fellini. "They
*would* be displeased father, were they to find out; and to me into the
bargain." She giggled softly, seeming unable to contain her mirth. "I could
have you *executed* in the most inventive of fashions were they ever to hear
of it."
She smiled, her look suddenly icily cold and Fellini had to remind
himself yet again that she was no danger. Then the amused condescension was
back and her green eyes flashed again with mirth, her hand straying to his
unruly hair.
"You needn't be uneasy." She purred, patting it reassuringly while he
stood unmoving and raged in silent frustration with her. "You will be too
useful to destroy," She giggled again. "and as for tonight, we can leave at a
moment's notice and I've already replenished our supply. The rest can be--"
"Shut; up!" He growled in a low savage snarl. "Do you want the whole
of Genom to hear?"
"Oh father you really are too amusing." She said with a toss of her
head. "You surely wouldn't expect that I hadn't taken that into
consideration?"
"Damn you to hell Liana." He said, a sudden hard smile flickering on
his own face. "Shall we go?"
"I came to tell you that the others are already waiting. We're to
perform one last test on that refuse Yoshida, then prepare pretty Madeleine.
Are you going to make changes to her? I should like to keep her undamaged if I
can. She's *very* far from unappealing, and since your oh-so-generous
modifications--." She licked her lips and Fellini allowed himself a brief
relaxing moment of vicious self-satisfaction as the enormity of the perversion
of what was so precious to his nemesis and the perfection of at least this
aspect of his revenge was brought home to him once more.
"Not to Amura." He said coldly, the moment of respite vanishing as
quickly as it had come. "She's as good as useless. There are a thousand
candidates with her abilities more suited to what I need. As for playthings,
you will have more than enough after tonight."
"Hmph." Said Liana, pouting and glaring in return. "It's not the same
and you know it. I want her. You'll be keeping what remains of Yoshida for the
control-net. What concern of yours if I keep little Madeleine? Besides, I need
a confidante entirely of my own kind. With a little instruction she should
prove more than ideal."
"I *will* be keeping Yoshida." He agreed. "He might be insane after
the test, but he is inventive and that quality combined with his animal
cunning might well prove invaluable. But as for Amura, it would be impossible,
even were I to agree. Quincy has commanded her activation, and we can't afford
to show our hand before we have the means to enforce it." Then more quietly,
as though to himself. "But why Amura I wonder, and not Daitokuji? What is that
senile old imbecile trying to do?"
"You're the genius." Snapped Liana, the mockery and condescension now
tempered by an almost palpable infantile petulance and growing fury. "You work
it out. But as for Madeleine; she's mine, whatever you or anyone else may
say."
`We'll see, my viperous little ticket to absolute power.' He thought.
"We'd better hurry." He said aloud, seeming to have ignored her little
tantrum. "I want this over with as quickly as possible. We've wasted more than
enough time as it is and we *do* have other things to attend to before
nightfall, or had you forgotten?"
"*You've* wasted enough time." She amended curtly. "I am *perfectly*
aware of what *I* have to do. Shall we go?"
And with that, she turned on her heel and stalked away from him, her
head up and her back ram-rod straight.
Sighing in apparent exasperation but with a frigid smile of triumph on
his face, Fellini hurried in her wake, a low, wild laugh escaping his lips as
he followed her from the apartments.
As soon as the door had closed, an inspection panel slid silently
aside and a moment later a tiny human-like figure little larger than that of a
new-born child slipped from concealment and made its way with silent speed
towards the rear of the apartments and the balcony beyond. Reaching it, it
leapt skywards, tiny thrusters carrying it within seconds to an open window
upon the top-most floor of the tower some fifty floors above. A moment later
it was inside once more and moving swiftly towards the office of the chairman.
* * *
He was in trouble. Fargo had known that the moment the flash and crack
had sent Lee Hao Seng tumbling from his seat on the farther side of the table
to lie in a quickly growing pool of blood on the floor of the "Kiss."
He had received the call a little over twenty minutes before, the
voice barely recognisable as that of the man with whom he had negotiated
barely three hours since.
"Need help. The arranged place, as soon as you can. Vital information.
I'll be waiting."
Fargo had barely entered the hot, stifling atmosphere of the dive when
he had caught sight of Lee waving urgently to him from a table not far from
the door. The man had looked very little like the cold, self-assured operative
he had seen. His face had been dead-white and tense with pain and his eyes had
seemed barely to focus as Fargo had taken his place opposite to him.
"I may not have much time." Lee had begun. "I'd intended to call for
back-up, but I've been followed ever since I escaped and whatever they did,
it's worse than it was."
As though to illustrate, his body had convulsed and he had clutched
suddenly desperately at his head.
"What--" Fargo had demanded.
"Shut up and listen." The other had gasped.
And while Fargo sat stunned, Lee had filled in the last gaps in the
knowledge he already possessed and set a slow, sick nausea crawling through
his stomach.
"I took a car; there were nearly thirty in the garage." Lee had ended.
"They were ready to go; they must have planned it from the beginning. It was
only when I reached the outskirts of the city and the thing died that I
realised it had been too easy. They were already waiting; knew exactly where I
was. But I was lucky; another car. I made the driver take me; pulled the gun
on her that I'd found in the glove-box. This."
He had lifted it to show the fixer. Then the shot had cracked from the
doorway and Lee's body was tumbling across the floor.
There had been some screaming, but the panic had been muted until the
four suited figures had burst in, guns already blazing. Fargo had dived aside,
grappling for his own heavy pistol while catching up the other that had spun
from Lee's hand. One of the four had turned towards him, then pitched
backwards in a spray of blood as someone shot him from a stool at the bar.
Within another few seconds it had been over, the four men sprawled lifeless by
the door.
Fargo had not waited to see what happened next. A steady stream of
people were pushing their way frantically from the Kiss and Fargo had joined
them, shoving his way to the centre of the mass until he was out of the dive
and moving quickly with them along the broken paving towards the comparative
cover of the narrow alley-ways beyond. Then the particle-beam had sizzled from
above and Fargo had begun to run.
"Keep going. Just keep going." He told himself again.
But his lungs screamed in protest and the blood pounded wildly in his
ears. From before him came the reflection of yet another searing flash from
behind and yet more screaming told that the supposed rampage was still going
on. Fargo knew better.
Ducking into yet another narrow lane, Fargo staggered, almost falling
as he struggled vainly to right himself. Then from behind came a sudden
searing hiss, and light seemed to erupt around him and the ground left his
feet as the explosion pitched him into the air like a rag-doll.
Crying out more from shock than pain, Fargo somersaulted twice, both
guns flying from his hands. Then he was crashing through a pile of some
nameless alley refuse and from behind came a roar and crash as what sounded
like half what had still been standing of the building he had just passed came
crashing into the street.
Desperately Fargo staggered up once more, glancing about in the vain
hope of finding at least one of the pistols.
"Excuse me; did you drop these?" Came a woman's voice from behind him.
Fargo began to turn. Then something hit him and the world dissolved
into the soft, velvet blackness of a drugged oblivion.
* * *
"Sis? Hey Sis?"
Mackie's voice filtered slowly into the blissful nothingness, then his
hand was on her shoulder, shaking her gently awake.
Sylia shifted uneasily in the chair in which she had fallen asleep,
then stirring she stretched slowly and opened her eyes.
"How long have you been here?" Mackie demanded, setting down a tray
and reaching for the half-empty coffee-cup his sister had obviously set aside
hours before.
"Mm?" She inquired blearily. "Oh, since the others left early this
morning. I was reviewing and correlating the additional data Marina gave us,
and the hardsuit data from last night. I was trying to find a counter to the
DA. I think it's impossible. Zhuranovsky knew his subject too well."
She sighed, her head lolling back wearily as she stared at the still-
active console before her, the schematics seeming to dance in senseless,
endless cascade before her still-weary eyes. "What time is it?"
"Nearly four." He answered quietly. "You should rest, and in bed.
Here," He added, pushing a fresh cup of tea into her hand.
"It had to happen." Sylia continued as though she hadn't heard him,
lifting the cup and sipping with little enthusiasm. "It was only a matter of
time before it came to this. To be honest, I'm surprised it's taken them so
long."
"You think the DA was designed with us in mind?" Mackie said quietly.
"There's little doubt that our presence played at least some part."
She answered.
Setting the nearly full cup aside, she rose slowly to her feet.
"I'm going to get cleaned up, then call the others." She said simply.
"We need to talk. Then I'm going to call Marina and Camilla and see what they
have to offer."
"You're thinking of including them, aren't you." He said, his tone
still quiet.
It was a statement rather than a question.
"I don't see that we have much choice." She answered, her own tone
unnervingly calm and measured. "As I've said, they could destroy us at a whim.
Our only chance is to observe them at close quarters until either I can find
some inherent weakness in the DA design or they prove that they can be
trusted, in which case the problem becomes less urgent and we restore the
balance of power, at least for a while. Not even Genom I imagine would be
stupid enough to have DA-33s go rogue in a populated area. I hope Quincy might
put our taking two of the machines down to experience and not escalate the
conflict further. After all, it wouldn't do should too many people learn that
the two additional Knight Sabres were DAs. So long as we keep their identities
quiet and they appear to use none of their own systems in general combat,
things might return to some semblance of what they were before, for a little
at least."
"Assuming they *can* be trusted." Said Mackie.
"The point is moot." Said Sylia simply. "If they can't, we're already
dead."
"And the balance?" He inquired. "How long will it be before Genom
bring out another machine, and better?"
"Again, they probably won't risk another similar tactic. This was a
trump they cannot afford to play again. Should they lose this round or should
we manage a draw, I don't think they will try something like this in the near
future. The DA is a very dangerous adversary and I doubt even that Quincy will
wish to escalate the situation by antagonising them. In any case, we have very
little choice but to play the game to the end."
She sighed. "Now I'm going to shower and change. You might want to
take a look at the data yourself. If they agree to my proposal or us to
their's, we'll need several modifications to the motoroids they'll be using. I
may not be able openly to use their full combat capabilities but I can
certainly use their enhanced strength and speed. After all, even the 33S could
manage that with a genuine suit and their's won't have to be anything other
than cosmetic. I won't be long."
And taking the tea and also a cream-cake from the tray, Sylia moved
quickly to the door and left the room.
* * *
"You didn't give me much warning." Nene complained miserably, staring
blearily and lifting a hand to her still-pounding head. "I'm supposed to be on
night-shift this evening."
She was still in bed, having been woken by the phone and the results
of the excesses of the night before were still very much in evidence. "Can't
it wait? I wanna get more sleep."
"No." Said Sylia simply, her own expression nevertheless softening a
little as she studied the youngest member of her team.
Nene's red hair was a tangled cascade and her green eyes were
bloodshot and seemed to have trouble focusing.
"Oh alright." She sighed, pulling a face. "I'll be there as soon as I
can. I don't suppose the others complained?" She added hopefully.
"I called you first." Said Sylia with a sudden mock-cruel smile.
"What!" Nene exclaimed. "I could've had another few minutes."
Turning away in disgust she lay down once more, curled up into a ball
and pulled the covers up over her head.
"Nene! Behind you!"
Sylia's voice was suddenly almost ear-splittingly loud as she put her
mouth to the phone and nearly shouted the imaginary warning.
"AIYAAGGHH!" Nene shrieked, shooting bolt upright and trying to turn
at the same time.
The bedclothes had other ideas. For a moment she flailed wildly,
trying desperately to disentangle herself and look everywhere at once. Then
with another shriek and a thud she tumbled to the floor and lay in a heap.
>From the phone came the sound of Sylia's suddenly almost girlish laughter.
"You wait!" Nene exclaimed, struggling from the tangle and glaring at
her.
"Gladly, but not too long." Sylia answered.
And with another smile and an imperious wave, she broke the
connection.
"You'll be sorry. Just wait! You'll be just so sorry!" Nene shrieked,
her heart still racing as she got at last to her feet.
She glared furiously at the phone for a moment, then her face broke
into a grin and giggling she began to make some sense of the bed before moving
to shower and dress.
* * *
"Well?"
Quincy's tone was cool and quiet as he regarded the tiny figure before
him.
The boomer shifted, her tiny delicate face impassive as she moved
closer until it was only inches from his own.
"The game is being played exactly as you predicted master." She
answered quietly.
Her voice was surprisingly mature for a creature of her size but the
tiny mouth nevertheless gave it a piping, childlike quality. "Fellini is
suspicious, but he can't understand why you chose Madeleine."
"And--?"
"Performing exactly to specifications." The machine interrupted
easily. "Shall I replay the recording?"
"Add it to the data; I'll watch it in a few minutes." He said.
Without a word, the diminutive boomer lowered herself with a fluid
grace to a sitting position, one tiny hand reaching for the unit Quincy had so
recently set aside. A moment later she had attached a cable to a port in her
left wrist and data was streaming from her to the micro-palm-top beside her.
"Done." She said after a second or so, removing the cable and standing
once more.
She lifted her wrist, holding it to her delicate mouth for a moment,
then dropping her hand once more she danced a curtsy to the chairman.
"Shall I return to Fellini?" She inquired.
"There's no longer any need." He answered. "I already have two eyes
and two ears close to Fellini."
"Then I can go to them, now?" She said, sudden excitement tinging her
small voice.
"Not just yet." He said. "I need to be certain that Fargo reaches the
Knight Sabres before this evening's proceedings begin and that will not be
long. I imagine I can trust the two to deliver him; he has already been taken;
but I must be certain. The Knight Sabres must be close to the place of refuge
*before* Fellini is allowed to escape. See to it, if necessary. Observe if
not."
"Yes master." She answered.
"Once you are certain Fargo has been delivered unharmed you can begin
to track them. However, see that you remain out of sight until the perfect
moment. Do you understand?"
"I understand." She said quietly.
"Very well. You may go."
The diminutive machine curtsied once more. Then with a lithe bound she
was across the expanse of the office and a moment later the door had closed
behind her.
"The final test." Said Quincy quietly. "If you match or outshine my
expectations Sylia, then--."
And with a smile, he lifted the palm-top and began to watch the
recording of the interplay between Fellini and the girl everyone within Genom
tower save the scientist and himself believed to be his daughter.
* * *
"I can't believe it! I *really* can't believe it!"
Priss was standing with her back to Sylia's repaired bay window, hands
on her hips as she glared furiously across at her.
Sylia, completely unperturbed, relaxed with apparent ease in an
armchair, sipping at her tea while regarding Priss with calm implacable eyes.
"You want to make those two-- those two things Knight Sabres! Are you
serious!"
"I've never been more so." Said Sylia quietly.
"Are you sure that thing didn't give you too much of whatever it was
this morning!" Priss exclaimed. "You're absolutely crazy. No way am I gonna
trust one of those. I don't give a damn what you or them or anyone else says.
The things are Genom military sh*t and if you really think I'm gonna trust a
piece of Genom sh*t with my back--"
"Priss, calm down and listen."
Sylia's tone was as reasonable as before but her eyes showed just a
hint of kindling anger. "You're already dead. You've been dead since Marina
identified you. There is absolutely *no reason* for the DAs to dissemble with
us. They have all they need to kill or take us whenever they wish."
"Maybe they're waiting for further instructions." Priss snarled back.
"Why?" Sylia answered simply. "What possible purpose would delaying
our capture serve? Think. If they are Genom operatives they might just as well
take us immediately."
"And suppose they want to observe to see how we interact so the next
copies are perfect?" Priss demanded.
"They already have enough data for that." Sylia answered simply.
"Priss you don't seriously believe that Genom haven't been recording every
move we make during combat? I'm not guaranteeing anything. The possibility
exists that the DAs have been instructed to play particular roles until it's
no longer necessary, but at least if they're with us we can keep them under
constant surveillance while I search for a counter or a design weakness we can
exploit, assuming any such weakness exists. A forlorn hope perhaps, but it's
the only one we have. It's up to you. I can't force you to agree to my
proposal, and I certainly won't make the offer unless I have unanimous
consent, but I can't see any other way. We *cannot* beat them as things stand
Priss, our suits couldn't even come close, but the most important limitations
are in here." She pointed to herself, then to each of them in turn. "The DAs
are simply too fast and too intelligent. They represent a revolution in
military hardware and no matter what I do with the suits we will *never* match
them."
"Then why the hell did you upgrade the thing?" Priss demanded almost
in a shriek.
"Because it was academic whether we had to fight a DA Standard or
Elite and we needed Marina to deal with Camilla." She answered simply. "I had
to work under the assumption that Zhuranovsky had removed all Genom influence.
If he has and the two are genuine in their intentions, then we have restored
the balance, at least for a while. If not, then at the least we have the
chance to observe and search for a fault, slim as that chance may be. It will
give me time Priss, time we desperately need."
Priss sat silent, her red-brown eyes darting between the faces of the
only people she could truly call a family. Nene was nodding slowly in
agreement with Sylia's explanation. Linna, who had only seen and heard what
Sylia's security system had recorded of the DAs' time in the apartment sat
very still, her expression sombre as her eyes roved restlessly about the room,
yet Priss felt that she too saw no other way. To her surprise it was Mackie
who seemed most uncertain. He was shaking his head slowly and his face was
tight and grim as he watched his sister intently.
For a long moment Sylia remained, her gaze fixed intently upon Priss's
face as she watched the struggle play itself out in the young singer's mind.
Slowly, Priss stirred as though to speak. Then in the next moment a faint
sound beyond the door to the apartment brought all of them to their feet. The
security system had not indicated any intruder, which left little doubt as to
their callers.
"I'll answer it." Said Sylia quietly.
"Not alone." Said Priss, drawing the heavy pistol and moving with
Sylia to the door.
Sylia sighed inwardly at the pointlessness of Priss's action but
smiled to her as she unlocked the door and swung it aside.
"Come in Mar--" She started to say.
In the next instant she staggered back as Fargo's limp form tumbled
against her and slid to lie in a crumpled heap at her feet.
* * *
He was alive. That was the first thought that penetrated the
blackness. Then the oblivion was receding at frightening speed and a moment
later full awareness came to him and he gasped and began to stir.
"Welcome back." Said a quiet familiar voice close before him.
Fargo gasped and opened his eyes.
For one confused moment he expected to find himself in one of the many
meeting-places he had chosen, or perhaps in some hospital or secret sterile
room with banks of monitors and tubes connected to his arms and legs. The
reality was so utterly unexpected that it seemed almost absurd.
He was seated in a comfortable armchair in what seemed to be an
apartment livingroom while she sat facing him across a low table, a cup held
in one hand while the other rested lightly on the battered case he had carried
and which now stood on the floor beside her chair. Glancing passed her, he saw
that they were alone in the room and that its door was closed and the curtains
had been drawn.
"I must admit that of all the things I could have expected, to have
you dumped almost in my lap was among the least."
"I don't recall having much choice," He said quietly. "in fact, I
don't recall arriving here at all, wherever here is."
"Hardly surprising." Sylia answered with a smile and a knowing look.
He wasn't going to find that out he realised. "You were drugged and left here
with a note tucked in a pocket of that appalling coat of your's assuring me
that you'd wake in less than half an hour, the reason you're here and not
somewhere a little less conspicuous."
"Meaning that I'm a dangerous commodity?" He answered with a crooked
smile of his own.
"That remains to be seen," She said. "but if what I've seen so far of
what you have here is any indication" She tapped the case. "I should say a
long, if not a permanent holiday might well be in order."
Fargo shivered.
"I'm sorry Sylia." He said, his tone suddenly quiet and intensely
sincere. "Believe me, I had no idea that our connection had been so much as
hinted at."
"There's no proof that it has, at least by Genom." She said quietly.
"You have nothing to apologise for. The DAs are formidable adversaries, if
they are adversaries."
Fargo stared at her in open-mouthed shock.
"You know about them?" He gasped. "I was gathering information; I had
intended to warn you before, but it was all hearsay and rumour and I had no
evidence. Then early this afternoon--"
"I, or rather we found out purely by chance last night." She said
quietly. "However that's not important now. You say you intended to contact
me?"
"Yes." He answered.
And while she listened, he told her of his meeting with Lee Hao Seng.
"You think he is, or rather *was* a rebel?" She said calmly.
"If my information is correct, yes." He answered. "I don't believe
Reikka Chang had been informed of the Mega-Tokyo branch's intentions to hire
the Knight Sabres."
"Mm." She said quietly. "But that's not the reason you're so uneasy,
and I'm certain that's not the reason Genom, if it was Genom, had Lee
terminated."
"It's all in there." He jabbed a finger at the case. "The research,
the evidence, and a--" He shuddered. "a sample of the weapon; assuming the
phial hasn't shattered."
Abruptly he laughed, a short hard sound. "But then if it had, I doubt
I'd be talking to you now."
"Meaning?" She demanded.
"Meaning that Zhuranovsky's research was only half the project." He
answered quietly.
And while Sylia turned slowly deathly pale, Fargo told her all he
knew.
* * *
"I can't call in sick again Sylia." Nene protested. "If things are
going to blow up tonight--."
Mackie had left a little over an hour before to drive a willingly
blindfolded Fargo to the garage where he could remain hidden until they could
contact Marina to see whether it was safe to let him return to the streets and
the others were gathered again in Sylia's livingroom after having listened
first via the security system to, then to a replay of the talk between him and
Sylia. All had been horrified by what Fargo had told her, but none more than
Priss.
She sat, a glass of strong wine in her hand and glared moodily out of
the window.
"Nene I wouldn't ask if we didn't need you." Said Sylia quietly.
Her own tone was, as always, unnervingly calm, yet all of them could
see the shock and tension she was trying to conceal. "We have to take the
estate tonight while that madman is still in the tower and we've already lost
precious time. If we don't--."
"Couldn't we warn Genom?" Said linna, her voice almost shrilling in
desperation. "If they release those things sylia and we're caught--!"
"What?" Priss demanded, snapping out of her apparent stupor and
whirling to glare at her.
"Perhaps," Said Sylia. "but even assuming they're not aware of what
Fellini intends to do and plan to use his treachery as a test, there would be
little they could do. A strike-team of combat boomers isn't exactly what's
needed tonight, at least not if pre-emptive action is to be taken. We--"
She was interrupted by the ringing of the phone.
Moving quickly to it, she answered it to see Mackie's face, his
expression as frantic as she had ever known it.
"Six boomers!" He said urgently. "About five blocks away. I'd just
started back when the rampage began. Whatever the hell they are they're not C-
55s and they're aiming at people rather than property."
"Damn!" Sylia exploded vehemently. "When--?"
"I'll be there in a few minutes." He assured her.
"WE'LL be waiting."
She broke the connection and turned to face the others.
"I think it's started." Was all she said.
* * *
Madigan stood once more before the chairman, his steel-hard gaze fixed
appraisingly on her as she waited for him to speak.
"It has begun?" He said calmly.
"The first six were activated two minutes ago, almost on the edge of
the canyons." She answered. "They are performing flawlessly. The second four
are waiting inside the Hot Legs nightclub and will be activated ten minutes
from now. That should give the Knight Sabres time to reach the first site and
engage them. The third will begin their rampage starting at the Tinsel City
bank seven minutes after the second. The fourth have reported that they have
found the hotel in which the DA-33s have taken refuge. They are ready to track
them the moment the Bu-12B rampage begins. Do you want the building levelled?"
"Ensure as much destruction as possible." Quincy answered simply.
"There is still no word concerning Zhuranovsky?"
"He is not with the DAs and the assassins have detected nothing so
far."
"Very well. When will the transport pass the hotel?"
"Exactly eight minutes after the third rampage begins." Madigan
answered. "The four Bu-12Bs have been instructed to destroy their transport
ten seconds after it passes the building. They will make for it immediately
after that."
"Excellent." Said Quincy. "And our final trump?"
"Is waiting outside. Do you want to see her now?"
"Alone." He answered. "You know what to do regarding Fellini."
"Perfectly." Madigan assured him, her face suddenly a mask of ice as
she smiled.
"Very well." Said Quincy. "You may go."
Madigan bowed deeply, then turning she moved quickly across the plush
expanse of the office to the door, pausing for a moment on the threshold to
beckon forwards the tall figure who stood cloaked in shadow beyond.
"The chairman is waiting." She said, and hurried quickly away.
A moment later the figure stepped into the room and glided silently to
the desk of the chairman. There she stood facing him, still as though cast in
marble. She was very tall and exotically beautiful, her long raven-black hair
tumbling in a wild cascade to her waist, her face an unreadable mask. Only in
the dark eyes could one see into the soul that lay beyond, and in those eyes
was a hatred more absolute than the chairman had ever seen; and it pleased
him.
For a long moment neither spoke, then slowly the tall woman stirred.
"Give me one reason Dr. I should not tear you apart where you sit."
She snarled softly.
Quincy stirred and a slow cold smile spread across his face.
"The answer to that Ligeia is simple." He said calmly. "As with your
namesake in Poe's tale, you will not own this body until I determine the time
to be perfect. Madeleine, would you mind?"
And in that moment shock filled the face and eyes and Madeleine Amura
began to scream.
* * *
Fellini was in a pathological rage.
The tests on what was left of Yoshida had been flawless so far as the
chairman's requirements were concerned, but utterly useless for his purposes.
He could not have believed that they could have been so incompetent. The
idiots had taken too long to preserve him and he had suffered severe brain-
damage with the result that the data Fellini had been able to copy was a
mocking travesty of what he needed. He had wanted, tried to demand, that he be
allowed to perform the experiment on Daitokuji, insisting that he couldn't
possibly guarantee Amura's safe transfer without a successful test, but the
chairman was adamant that Madeleine be prepared without delay.
Seething in impotent fury, Fellini had ordered the still inactive DA-
33 that had been moved early that morning to the hastily converted laboratory,
removed from her tank and upgraded while the last DA-2134 prototype was burned
with the base driver firmware, only to discover that he was to provide only
the Amura data and an OMS bootstrap and that the chairman had made other
arrangements regarding the DA's initialisation.
Fellini had wanted to storm to Quincy's office and blow the senile old
fool's head through the window, but he had forced himself to calm. None of
this was important. Once he and Liana reached his estate and the others they
would learn whom to obey. Oh yes, they would learn.
Fellini had been somewhat amused to see Liana's reaction when he told
her what was to happen. She had stepped a pace towards him, her face twisting
in a paroxysm of vicious, puerile rage. She had remained still for a moment,
then with a low snarl she had whirled away from him and stormed to where the
technicians were still busy with the boomer. There she had remained, seething
in one of the blackest most dangerous moods in which Fellini had ever seen
her, watching silently as they completed their work and reassembled the DA
while he had watched her and tried to contain his own sadistic laughter. His
revenge could not have been more beautiful.
It had taken several minutes for the ragged remains of the disguising
skin to cover the machine once more, even under the intense radiation to which
she had been subjected to speed the repair. Through the growth and activation,
Fellini had remained seemingly impassive, even as his rage at the pointless
loss of Yoshida had surged and blazed, fighting with his twisted contentment
as he watched Liana until it seemed that he could not tell which was the more
potent of the two emotions. Even when the tall, temporarily-fair-haired Ligeia
had been linked into the OMS under the control of the simple bootstrap driver
and had risen to move to the door, Fellini had remained as though frozen at
Liana's side, watching unmoving as the empty DA-33E left the laboratory, the
door hissing almost silently closed behind her. It had been a cold hand on his
arm that had brought him back to the present at last.
Slowly he stirred, seeming only now to look with rational sight at the
men and women who stood now almost silent, gazing uncertainly about them as
though awaiting some further command. For a long moment he remained still,
then at last he stirred.
"You may stand down for the present." He said quietly, his own voice
seeming to him to come from some great distance.
Then without another word he turned and stalked from the laboratory,
Liana gliding silently beside him. Not until they had reached the apartments
behind the research centre and were alone in their tiny three-room suite did
he turn to her.
"It's time to leave." Was all he said.
* * *
"And if you expect me to stand by while good men and women get blown
to sh*t because of your incompetence then you know what the hell you can do."
Leon McNichol whirled away and stormed from the office.
"McNichol! Get your sorry a*se back in here!" The chief screamed.
Leon paid no attention.
"Idiot!" He hissed with far more than his usual vehemence as he strode
back to his desk and snatched up the cup of lukewarm coffee.
Tossing it back with a grimace of disgust he dropped wearily behind
the desk once more.
It had not been a good day for him. It had started with him arriving
to find that Nene would not be on shift until that evening, which put two
investigations of his own that required her particular talents on hold until
he saw her. Then there had come a report of boomer trouble at the docks and he
and Daley had gone down there to find nothing. Then in the early afternoon a
call had come in concerning another rampage, this one near one of the dives on
the edge of the canyons. Again he had gone, and this time there was nothing
but dead bodies and a smashed building or too, and some of the bodies looked
suspiciously as though they had been shot with heavy pistols; not exactly
boomer ammo.
He had returned in a mood even blacker than the one he had been in all
day, only to find that he would be doing a double shift yet again, and for no
good reason he could see. Not that there was anything new in that; but today
he just was not in the mood. Finally, he had learned less than half an hour
before that Nene had called in sick again and there would be no hope of
relieving the boredom with the work he wanted to do.
"Damn you to hell." He muttered again with feeling as he shot a
killing look in the direction of the chief's office.
"Nice to see you too." Said Daley with a grin as he dragged up a chair
and settled himself by Leon.
"Hmph." Leon retorted sourly. "Did you ever get the feeling we're just
wasting our time?"
"All the time." Daley answered easily. "What's up?"
"Ah the hell with it." Said Leon moodily. "What the hell does it
matter if we get our a*ses blown away? They don't give a sh*t anyway."
"Well someone's in a fine mood tonight." Daily observed, still
grinning. "What's started this all of a sudden?"
"We've had eight K-12s in maintenance for six days." Said Leon.
"Eight! And when I complain about it I get some sh*t about funds available and
management of resources in relation to the current situation. Bullsh*t!" He
snarled again, bringing his hand down on the desk for emphasis. "We're the
one's who've got to go out there and clean up Genom's trash for them and I get
some sh*t about resource management!"
Slamming down the empty cup he rose to his feet and stalked away from
his desk, then back once more.
"Feel better now?" Daley inquired.
"Well what the hell are we supposed to do?" Leon demanded as though
really expecting an answer. "It'd serve the bastards right if things *did*
blow up tonight--."
He stopped short as a sudden flurry of activity caught their
attention.
"Did anyone ever tell you you should be careful what you wish for?"
Daley inquired dryly as a dispatcher came racing towards them. "I think your's
has just been granted."
* * *
Things were a disaster, but then Hiroshi Davis never expected anything
else in this job. He knew what he was; cannon-fodder for any boomer that
decided its next particle-beam had his name on its business end.
"Sh*t I hate my job." He muttered without much feeling as he peered
out from behind the impromptu barricade he and the others had finished
erecting a scant minute before.
It was a joke like everything else, but that didn't matter. Hiroshi
was sure it wouldn't be standing for long once the boomers reached them.
The truth was that he didn't much care any more. He had become numb to
the danger once an incident began, no matter how scared he thought he was. It
was only when everything was over that he started shaking.
They weren't far away now. He could hear the whine of charging weapons
and the spit of plasma as the machines fired and the cracks and screams as
something or someone exploded.
"Stupid bastards!" Hiroshi swore venomously under his breath. "They
just won't be told. Wouldn't matter if you beat the bastards senseless, they'd
find a way to crawl back to get themselves killed."
Another scream. "Well, that one got more of a look than he bargained
for."
Hiroshi snickered bitterly, then sobered. He was on the edge of losing
it again, he knew. It was the adrenalin and the fear and the exhilaration of
the coming fight and the fact that he wanted to slam through the roof of Genom
tower and splash the chairman's brains across the plush carpet of his office
for screwing up so many lives.
Taking several breaths to calm himself, Hiroshi moved to climb the
barracade. To hell with orders; he was going to get a better view. He had
almost found a suitable perch when there came a sudden hiss from above and a
cruiser was turned into a fireball barely ten yards from where Hiroshi was
climbing.
"Holy sh*t!" He heard his own voice scream as a second explosion
pitched him from his precarious perch like a doll.
A moment later it was all crashing and firing and the frantic sounds
of men and women screaming hopelessly for backup.
"Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!" Hiroshi was snarling as he struggled
desperately to his feet.
Then turning, he fled to the farther end of the street. He had lost
his gun in the explosion, not that the thing was much good, and he would only
be in the way until they could get him into something a bit less easy to blow
to pieces. He arrived with several others at the new lines just as several
cruisers screamed to a halt and the first of the helicopters began dropping K-
12s into the fray.
* * *
Leon was already out and running as Daley pulled to a halt.
"What's the situation?" He demanded, stumbling to a halt beside a
white-faced sergeant.
It was an idiot of a question, he was sure. The situation would be as
much of a mess as always.
"There're six of them, so far." The man panted.
There was blood on his face from a cut just below his left eye and he
was shaking so much that he could barely talk. "They're not the usual Cs from
what I could see and whatever the hell they are they're fast. They seem to be
going for people rather than property; we've already lost six; but they don't
seem to pack the punch of a 55."
"Sh*t!" Leon swore feelingly. "Just what we need. Have you--"
The rest of his sentence was cut off by an explosion followed by the
crash of one of the helicopters.
"Whatever they are, these bastards can fly." Came a shout over the
comms. "Get your sorry a*ses under cover!"
A moment later people seemed to be running everywhere.
Cursing, Leon moved back to the cruiser, reaching it just as something
came hurtling almost from above to crash down on the sergeant he had just
left. Staring, suddenly frozen in place, Leon watched helplessly as the
machine leapt skywards, the screaming man held between both hands. Then there
was a sickening tearing sound as it pulled his head from his body and sent it
spinning into the ranks of the ADP before slamming the body through the plate-
glass of a nearby shop front and soaring away.
Gagging, choking back the bile that was desperately trying to escape,
Leon lifted his arm for a hopeless shot.
"Leon, get the hell down!"
Daley's scream just penetrated in time to save his life as he dived
from the path of a bolt that blew a crater into the pavement on which he had
been standing a scant moment before.
Then Daley was dragging him behind the cruiser and away and a moment
later it was nearly cut in two by the flash of another shot from above. The
resulting explosion sent the two men spinning through the air to land in a
choking, panting heap almost under the wheels of yet another cruiser as it
swerved wildly to a stop.
Half stunned, Leon sat up, trying desperately to shake the stars from
his head. Then suddenly the familiar: "Knight Sabres sanjo!" brought him
staggering to his feet just in time to see the four hardsuited figures drop
from above.
"Ok you bastards," He heard from one, and smiled as he watched the
blue hardsuit leap forwards. "let's rumble."
* * *
She was in her element. This was what she wanted and this night more
than most, in order to take her mind from what Fargo had told Sylia. And yet,
even as she leapt into battle, a strange feeling of unease and deja vu seized
her, growing swiftly to a cloying, numbing terror that could not be shaken
off.
There were six of the things, which meant two each for them. Nene's
role tonight would be even more defensive than usual; she still wasn't feeling
entirely herself after the night before.
Grinning savagely, determined to shake herself from the fear she was
certain Fargo's words had begun, Priss flipped effortlessly away from the
grappling lunge of the thing that seemed eager to put its arms around her and
nailed it to the head, or so she thought. With growing unease, she watched as
it slipped just as effortlessly from her shot and slithered aside with
astounding speed and agility, the movement sending another unreasoning thrill
of fear coursing down her spine. Something was going to go wrong, and soon. Of
that she was strangely, horribly certain.
"Hey Sylia, what the hell are these things?" She demanded, pushing
down the rising dread with a savage shake of her head.
"My thoughts exactly." Linna added.
"I'm not sure." Sylia answered, her own voice showing no sign of
apprehension. "Some kind of assassin I think, but considerably faster than
usual for such machines."
"Oh great. Now they've gone and upgraded the troops as well." Priss
said darkly as she avoided yet another vicious swipe. "They don't seem to have
the armament of 55s."
"Don't underestimate them." Sylia warned, her words again sparking an
irrational thrill of terror tingling down Priss's spine. "They're fast and I'm
beginning to suspect that they've been upgraded with some of the DA combat
routines. These things aren't stupid. Nene?"
"I can't seem to upset them at all" She answered, her tone suddenly
uneasy. "and I'm not reading much from them either."
"I can't nail them damn it." Linna cut in. "They're too fast."
"They're not exactly standing still are they?" Priss observed grimly
as she tried yet again to take the head from the machine that was duelling
with her. "Keep still damn you." She cursed.
* * *
Leon watched in growing unease as the fight progressed. Whatever these
things were, they didn't seem able to touch the Sabres' suits. He had seen
them connect several times and the machines seemed to have no impact at all.
Even the usual beam-weapon in the mouth seemed a poor imitation of the C-55
equivalent. What concerned him was the fact that the six machines were
matching the Sabres move for move and were managing to keep out of range.
* * *
"This is crazy Sylia." Priss exploded in growing unease and
frustration. "Why not treble-team these things? They don't seem to be able to
touch us."
She wanted this fight over, and as soon as possible.
"It's worth a try." She agreed.
"Which one?" Linna asked.
Sylia pointed and immediately the three hardsuits converged on one of
the boomers.
"Wait!"
The shriek caught all of them by surprise and nearly put Priss's heart
in her mouth.
"What the hell?" She almost shouted, whirling furiously towards Nene.
"The others moved towards the ADP lines as soon as you tried for that
one."
"Sh*t!" Priss swore, an irrational desperation beginning to cloud her
mind.
They had to finish this. She could not have explained how or why she
knew, but they had to finish it and very quickly.
"Hey!" She shouted furiously, gesturing wildly at the watching ADP.
"If you want to get yourselves killed, go do it somewhere else."
There were a few glares but most seemed eager to take her advice after
what had already happened.
"Pull back." Leon shouted, seeing what the four were trying to do.
In the next instant the six machines shifted into close formation and
dived straight at the barricades.
"Sylia!" Nene shrieked again.
"I know. Priss, Linna. Nene, stay back and keep scanning. We need to
disable these things."
The young ADP officer however had already leapt to join her and the
others as they shot forwards on furiously hissing jets.
"Got you you piece of Genom sh*t." Priss cried in sudden triumph and
relief as she caught one of the machines by the arm and lifted it from the
ground.
The thing was lighter than she had imagined and despite a vicious
upper-cut from its other arm which seemed to have as little effect as anything
else the boomers had tried, Priss caught its head in one gloved hand and
squeezed with all the force she could. There was a sudden splintering crack
and a moment later the machine went limp in her grasp.
"Not exactly conventional, but one down." She shouted, slamming the
body straight down into the path of another.
The boomer was unable to avoid the collision and was sent spinning for
a moment before its thrusters righted it.
"They're trying to split up again." Sylia warned. "Linna, you're with
me."
"No; Sylia!" Priss heard her own voice shout almost before she knew
she had spoken. "We have to keep them close together."
"What?" Sylia demanded.
"Priss, what--" Linna began in the same moment.
"Trust me on this." Priss almost snarled. "Just do it."
A moment later she was diving to meet a boomer that seemed to have
chosen stupidly to lunge straight up at her.
"Priss?" Sylia said again.
"Don't worry." She cried as she reached for the illusive machine.
"This one's about to go down for the count."
Priss lunged again, catching its arm in the same way as she had the
first with the idea of giving it the same treatment. The things seemed less
agile in the air. Ignoring the sudden irrational heightening of the sense of
impending danger that had been screaming at her ever since the fight had
begun, she jerked upright, hauling it towards her. And she knew, knew with a
sudden dizzying certainty what would happen a moment before its other arm
whipped up with the speed of a bullet. The blow sent her spinning wildly
through the air to crash to the pavement some fifty feet from where she had
been.
Half stunned as much with the confusing horror of the premonition as
with anything else, Priss staggered to her feet.
"Sylia, watch it." She ground out over the comms against the sudden
rising tide of irrational panic. "These things have been playing possum."
"What!" Sylia demanded.
Priss opened her mouth to answer, then stared in shock as the machine
that had just hit her dropped to a landing before her and began to expand.
"Oh sh*t!" She said almost in a whisper. "I knew it! I knew it! Sylia,
we're in trouble." She continued in a louder tone. "My sparring partner's just
decided its growing up time."
"Sylia!" Linna's voice shouted urgently. "This one's--"
"I know." She answered, her own voice at last betraying something of
the tension and growing bewilderment she was feeling. "So are the others. Try
to keep them on ground. I'm not sure all this is exactly as it seems."
"They're slower I think." Said Priss, diving from the path of the beam
the expanded assassin or whatever it was spat at her and rolling to her feet.
"Yes, they're definitely much slower, and clumsier too I think. This is
crazy."
`Sylia's right.' Her mind seemed suddenly to be screaming at her.
`None of this is right. It's some sick game. We have to clean these up and get
out. We have to get out now!'
But the rational fighter would not listen.
The machine backed away from her next lunge, its mouth opening wide in
a boomer snarl of rage. Priss started forwards, then in the next instant a
lurching sickening nausea mixed with a certainty of sudden imminent danger and
a sense of deja vu such as she had never imagined she could feel engulfed her
and she stumbled, nearly losing her balance as the boomer snarled again and
hurled itself suddenly towards her.
"Priss! Oh God Priss, please help me!"
And now she understood. Whirling at Nene's scream, fighting down the
cloying, trapped feeling of nightmare, Priss ducked the vicious swipe of the
assassin and flipped back to put some distance between herself and the boomer.
"Eat this you bastard!" She heard her own voice snarl, twisting from
the path of the blast and driving a spike into the machine's gaping mouth.
"Got you." She hissed at the flash as the laser discharged into the
boomer's head.
Then in the next moment an explosion she knew would come slammed her
to the ground.
"Sh*t!" She panted, flipping to her feet.
Another desperate scream made her whirl. She had to reach Nene now,
yet there was no time.
Spinning just in time to avoid the claws of another of the homicidal
machines, Priss leapt away and turned, just in time to see Linna drop down
behind it and whip round, slashing its head from its body.
"Three down Sylia." Linna called as though oblivious both to Nene's
scream and of what was about to happen.
Priss opened her mouth to scream a warning, to tell Sylia to get Nene
out now, then had to leap aside as the expected particle beam slammed into the
place in which she had been standing scant moments before. Then came the crash
of the boomer slamming into her from behind and she found herself on the
ground, pinned and utterly unable to move.
"Damn it!" Priss snarled, struggling desperately. "Sylia, get Nene
out! Get her out!"
The scream sounded wild and lost in her own ears and she knew with a
horrible numb finality that they could not hear her.
Kicking out with a savagery born of nightmare desperation, she felt
her foot connect as she knew it would. There was a dull thudding crunch and
Priss hurled the suddenly dead weight from her and lurched frantically
upright, just as Linna drove her knuckle-bomber into the machine's head. Priss
turned in a last desperate move towards her. Then suddenly the blood-curdling
scream she had hoped still by some miracle she would not hear made her spin
back and away. Priss searched wildly for a moment and froze, head up, eyes
wide, gaping in shocked sickened horror at her nightmare come at last to its
inevitable climax.
Nene hung limply in the grip of one of the remaining assassins exactly
as Priss remembered, its claws seeming impossibly to have punched right
through her suit. Slow, sick realisation filled her and she stood rooted,
suddenly utterly oblivious to everything but the sight before her. As in the
vision, Nene was facing the thing, her helmet impossibly torn away, blood
splashing on her lips and pumping from the dreadful wound over the boomer's
arm as she hung, green eyes wide and glazed with terror and agony. Then, even
as Priss watched, knowing what would happen even though it could not be
possible, the machine shifted and changed before her eyes until in its place
stood the tall, stunning figure of the woman of the nightmare, her long
flaming hair streaming about her, her face twisted into that hideous smile of
demonic triumph as she lifted Nene effortlessly in her arms, her mouth
reaching for the blood on her own.
"Oh God! Oh *God* no! NOOOOO!"
The word was torn from Pris's throat in a strangled scream of
revulsion and denial.
Then, the nightmare hurrying now towards its end, the thing turned,
emerald eyes locking with Priss's own, the slow seductive smile of nightmare
appetite she knew she would see filling the devastating face as it began to
move towards her. Priss reeled back for a moment, horror and revulsion
fighting desperately to send her tumbling forever into the witless oblivion of
insanity. Then the rage came, exploding within her into a white-hot paroxysm
of searing, blazing hatred. This thing would pay. Whatever it was, she would
tear apart the very fabric of its being for what it had done to Nene.
Priss tensed, ready to leap to one last insane madness of attack. Then
suddenly a very different sound penetrated the rage and the terror.
"I can't move! Sylia, the suit's frozen! I can't move!"
Even as Nene's desperate cry reached her, the vision vanished,
receding with impossible swiftness until a moment later Priss found herself
standing, shivering as she stared in stunned confusion at the sight before
her, her eyes still wide, the blood still screaming in her ears.
She *was* facing Nene, but Nene was neither hurt nor it seemed in
danger and of the thing of the vision there was no sign. Instead she stood as
still as herself, her suit quivering a little as she tried vainly to move.
Shivering violently with sudden cold, Priss tried to turn her head, only to
find that the suit would not respond.
"What the hell's going on!" Linna exclaimed.
"Sis!" Came Mackie's voice from the van. "I've lost almost all power
here. What's going on out there!"
"Stay there Mackie."
Sylia's voice was tight and it was only now that Priss realised how
suddenly dark it had become all around them. Then she became aware of sounds,
shouting and calling and men and women cursing furiously. A moment later the
crash and explosion of a helicopter, then another, filled the sudden eerie
darkness of the night.
Still shivering, Priss tried again to move.
"This is impossible." Priss heard Nene gasp, her voice distorted
through the suddenly under-powered communications suite. "Everything seems to
have lost power; us, the ADP, the assass--"
In that instant light leapt brilliantly into being around them once
more. Priss's hardsuit surged to life, then in the next moment warnings flared
in her visor.
"Shut down the suits!"
Sylia's voice cut through her helmet like a knife, her voice almost
reaching a shriek.
Priss's reaction was instinctive as she closed down the power-plant,
the others doing the same.
A moment later a flash and explosion to her left made her lurch
heavily in that direction, just in time to see one of the remaining assassins
burst into a brilliant pillar of flame. There was a second, then a third,
mingled with even more shouting and cursing from the ADP. Then there came the
sudden scream of tyres and a moment later the van pulled wildly to a halt
almost beside her.
"In, now!" Sylia barked in a tone that brooked no argument. "Use just
enough power to move, no more."
The others did not have to be told twice.
Turning, lurching a little as the suits strained with the minimal
power they were being given, the three followed Sylia in a frantic scramble
for the van. They were inside and Priss, who had been last, was about to close
the door when another explosion followed by sudden wild shouting made them
turn.
For a moment all four froze, gaping in utter disbelief at what they
saw. In the very midst of the blazing ruin of one of the downed ADP machines a
swirling vortex of darkness had appeared, its ragged edges spitting a lurid
dancing corona as it swallowed the orange glow of fire. Then within the
growing centre of the maelstrom human-like shapes began to coalesce, vague and
ill-defined at first, yet solidifying with impossible swiftness until with a
sudden blinding flash and explosion they came tumbling into the street, some
screaming as they burst into flame, others diving wildly from the fire,
stumbling and staggering to safety.
"What the hell!"
Priss's voice was a gasp of shock so great that she was barely aware
that she had spoken aloud. Then men and women were screaming orders and in the
next instant the ADP were racing to the still-blazing machine, struggling to
pull the figures from the fire. For a moment the strangers seemed too dazed
and stupefied to react, then suddenly one of them twisted violently from the
grip of the woman who had just dragged her to safety. As the Knight Sabres
watched, still too stunned to move, her arm seemed suddenly to shift and
change, the fingers of her hand elongating into tendrils that resembled
nothing so much as the thick, trailing vines of a plant. Then in the next
instant the ADP officer screamed as the thing lunged at her, the vine-like
fingers curling around her arms and throat. For a moment the creature held her
immobile, then baring her teeth she snarled: "You have but a heart-beat to
answer me before I rip your head from your body. Where are the filth who have
done this? Where are the Senshi?"
* * *
Madigan stood by the open door of the surveillance van and cursed
vehemently under her breath.
It had been going perfectly. The Knight Sabres had been kept
helplessly occupied exactly as the chairman had instructed, the six disguised,
hastily modified and deliberately flawed C-55-Mk-iii prototypes playing their
parts to perfection. Three were to be destroyed in the first attack, the
others to lead the four towards the area of the second rampage. They were
slower than the hardsuits in their expanded forms but they could remain active
long enough to exhaust some of the hardsuits' much-needed energy. From the
second rampage the one machine stripped of almost all unnecessary weight and
weaponry was to remain an observer to the action until the end, when it would
lead the Knight Sabres on a chase towards the third attack, its minimal
armament giving it the chance to remain undamaged long enough to near the area
without the need for backup. There again all but two of the boomers were
expendable. By then, the hardsuits would be dangerously low on power and the
final chase towards the DA-33s hide-out and the final rampage could begin.
What would happen when they reached the luxury hotel in which the two renegade
machines had gone to ground the chairman had not yet told her, but Madigan had
no doubt that he had everything in hand.
It had seemed a perfect strategy, one so obvious that Madigan could
not understand why it had not been tried before. Then the impossibly
unforeseen had happened. Just how such a catastrophic failure had been
possible, the frantic technicians in the van were still trying to discover,
but whatever had happened had destroyed all but one of the boomers and this
last was damaged it seemed beyond all hope of further action, just how badly
they were still trying to determine. The magnitude of the failure was made
worse still by the fact that it was so utterly unexpected and so unplanned-
for.
"Ma'am?"
One of the men had stepped to the doorway and was looking out at her
as she stood, staring moodily out towards the distant battle-zone where she
guessed the ADP would already be drawing a tight cordon around the destroyed
machines. Cursing herself yet again for not having the mobile HQ set up nearer
the action, she whirled to face the technician and stepping aside, beckoned
him irritably down.
"Well?" She snapped, her icy gaze holding his own for a moment before
flicking savagely away once more.
"The initial OMS report from the remaining assassin indicates a power-
plant fluctuation. The boomer lost power enough to close down its CPU for a
minute or so. We'll know exactly how long once we review the OMS node data.
Approximately one minute after the initial failure, the reverse occurred, that
is, there was a fluctuation far above base stability lasting approximately ten
seconds. It was this that destroyed the other machines and crippled the last."
"This occurred in all the boomers simultaneously?" Madigan demanded
incredulously. "You're telling me there was an OMS fault?"
"No ma'am" The man's tone was suddenly very uneasy. "that's not what
I'm telling you. What has just happened has no rational explanation. The
plants are internally regulated and although they can be OMS controlled as can
any aspect of the internal systems it should be impossible to alter their
baseline with such speed or to such an extent. Besides, there was no OMS
command sent to reset the plants, nor was there a loss of contact before the
initial failure itself that would indicate some external influence."
"Would it be possible to emulate contact for the OMS node?" She
demanded. "Could the Knight Sabres have caused this?"
"Not without packet interruption." He answered. "And even if they
managed that, there would be continuity errors in the data the OMS was
receiving. There was no hint of trouble until the exact moment of the initial
crash. In any case there's more; far more. We assumed at first that the last
ADP helicopters to be downed had been shot down by the machines. Our own
surveillance and saTerranyte data shows now that this was not the case. They
simply lost power and crashed. The failure occurred at precisely the same
moment as that of the boomers. Also, there seems to have been a localised
fluctuation in the city power-grid, in the plants that were powering the ADP
spotlights and, if saTerranyte data is accurate, in the Knight Sabres
hardsuits."
Madigan stared at him for a moment in shocked silence.
"What you're telling me" She said carefully at last. "is that what has
just happened should not be possible."
"It happened, therefore it's possible, but--"
He was interrupted as Madigan's pager-phone demanded attention.
"Madigan." She said, snatching it from her pocket.
For a moment she listened intently, slow shock and disbelief spreading
over her suddenly ashen face.
"I understand." She said quietly at last. "I'll be there as soon as I
can."
Snapping the phone closed, she returned it to her jacket and turned to
face the suddenly frozen technician.
"Cancel the assassins' programs regarding tonight's operation." She
said simply. "Initialise them to stand by for priority server download. Mega-
Tokyo is under attack."
* * *
The strategy would have been perfect in its absurd impossibility;
Quincy had to grant at least that much to the unknown enemy. It was however
immediately obvious to him that whoever or whatever they were, either they had
attacked blind or they had not intended to appear where they had. The last
seemed most likely given their initial apparent shock and bewilderment.
There had been no warning, no indication at all as to what was about
to happen. There had been a sudden total data-loss from the machines at the
site of the first rampage, Quincy immediately attributing it to some knew
system of the pink hardsuit. Dismissing it, he had turned his attention to the
other sites. For a little over a minute all had remained exactly as it should
have been. Then it had happened. In one instant the six Bu-55C-iii machines
had been awaiting the signal to begin the third rampage. In the next, a
swirling blackness had opened in the very air barely twenty feet from where
they were concealed and the creatures had begun to emerge. It had been pure
chance that they had both chosen such a place to begin the attack and that
Quincy had himself been observing through the machines.
"Is this part of the plan?"
Madeleine Amura, speaking with Ligeia's mouth, had turned towards him,
her eyes still wide with fear and confusion.
It had taken him minutes to silence the screams after her initial
activation, then he had uttered another imprinted command phrase and Madeleine
had understood everything, and she had nearly screamed again.
"Of course it isn't."
He had not looked at her, reaching instead for the phone at his side.
"What--?" She had tried.
"Silence." He had hissed, not looking around.
In the next instant a gasp from her had made him glance back at the
feed from the machines just in time to see one of the grey-clad invaders raise
a branch-like hand and hurl a flurry of glowing leaf-like projectiles into the
face of a suddenly leaping boomer which had obviously interpreted the sudden
appearance of the creatures as a priority threat. There was a sudden burst of
white, then the feed from that machine had ended.
So it had begun barely a minute before and the loss of contact at the
initial site had also been explained. A two-pronged assault then, and how
fortunate that the invaders had managed to choose their points of attack with
such incompetence. Quincy did not believe in fortune.
Smiling grimly, he set down the phone and turned at last to Madeleine.
She had been watching, white-faced and aghast at the feed coming from the
remaining five machines, a strange yet undefinable sense of bewildering
familiarity beginning to take hold of her.
"What are they?" She gasped faintly at last.
"I assume that to be a rhetorical question, or did you really expect
me to know?" He answered dryly.
Madeleine glanced towards him, her face still a mask of shock and
helplessness as she tried vainly to find the source of her growing certainty
that she knew the nature of the things she was seeing.
"Well, do you intend to stand there until morning?" He demanded. "You
know what to do. Do it."
"Still!" She gasped.
"I dislike having to repeat myself." He said simply. "Go, and see that
Fellini learns nothing of what is happening before his and Liana's escape. I
imagine you can manage that. You are then to find Marina and Camilla without
delay and release the data Ligeia contains. After that, your course should be
obvious; it *is* why I chose you after all."
"Now I understand why they intended to kill you." She cried suddenly,
her voice trembling and her eyes blazing with uncharacteristic rage.
"Then keep that thought very much in your mind." He said coldly. "You
know what will happen should you fail. Now go."
Her expression tight, Madeleine whirled away from him and leapt to the
door.
"You will pay for this." She cried desperately. "By the Kami you will
pay."
Then it was closing behind her and she was gone, speeding wildly
through the vast passages, tears all but blinding her as she cried. Oh how she
hated him now, now that she knew who he was, and what he had done. Yet there
was no time. Whatever his plans had been for this night, all was now
irrevocably changed by what was happening.
Fighting down her tears, Madeleine reached desperately for the link,
and gasped as she felt the response of the mind of her adversary, and her only
hope.
* * *
Fellini had just slipped the last disk containing the data he intended
to take with him in the small brief-case when the first shouts of alarm
reached him. Then the door to his own private room was slammed open and a
moment later Liana was at his side, her face grim as she reached to snatch up
the case.
"What--?" He began.
"We have been discovered." She said simply.
Her tone was frighteningly calm. "The chairman knows everything.
Unless you intend to blast your way from the tower, we had best leave and
immediately."
For one stunned moment Fellini stared stupidly at her as though unable
to speak. Then a cracking slap across his face brought him back to reality
once more.
"Is everything packed?" He snapped, fighting down the urge to lash out
at her in return.
"We've everything we need." She said quickly. "There is no need for
further delay."
"We'll never reach an exit." He continued, turning his head for a
moment as the shouts from the direction of the research laboratories became
more urgent.
"Obviously." She answered with a sneer of derision. "We will take the
fire-escape. Are you coming?"
Moments later they were out of the room and racing for the emergency
shaft and its spiral stairway, Fellini already straining to keep up with Liana
as she glided effortlessly along the passage ahead of him, a heavy case
clutched fiercely in each hand.
"Can you--" He began.
"I've already unlocked it and disabled the alarm" She hissed. "and the
car is programmed and waiting, so stop wasting my time with idiotic questions
and move."
Seconds later he was in the dimly-lit stairwell, his pounding
footfalls echoing in the shaft as he struggled desperately to match Liana's
all but silent flight before him, the blood pounding in his ears as he fought
desperately to control his sudden fear and exhilaration. Ahead of him, Liana
glanced back for a moment, her own expression a barely contained snarl of
frustration.
"We'll be trapped for certain if this is all the speed you can
manage." She said in a low, savage hiss. "I'll go on ahead and bring the car
to the door."
"Mm." He grunted, unable to manage more against the desperate panting
of his breath.
Flashing him a sudden vicious smile, Liana turned and bounded away
into the near darkness. A moment later she was gone and Fellini was alone.
He struggled on, his pulse racing wildly as he pounded round and down
the seemingly never-ending spirals, not daring to rest even for a moment at
the landings. He cursed himself again for not taking such an eventuality into
account, for trusting that Liana would be able to give him the warning they
would need to escape without the need to run. If he survived this, he swore
that he would begin to work on less drastic modifications for his own benefit.
Gasping, barely able to stay on his feet, Fellini stumbled down the
final stairway and lurched wildly for the fire-door. Staggering, clutching at
it for support, he swung himself through, not bothering to slam it behind him,
and nearly staggered right into the arms of the security boomer that had
obviously been waiting for him.
"You will return with me." It said in a flat emotionless voice.
It reached a clawed hand towards him, then shrieked in boomer rage as
its arm was cut from its body just below the shoulder. Whirling, snarling in
frustrated fury, it opened its mouth wide to deal with the new threat. Then
its head was bouncing on the asphalt and Liana was slipping the experimental
military blaster back into the holster at her hip.
"Shall we go?" She purred.
* * *
"Sylia!"
Linna's scream cut through the gaping shock of the others like a whip.
"We have to do something! That thing is--"
She was cut off by the crack of a heavy-calibre pistol and the plant-
woman or whatever she was that had been pinning the terrified ADP officer a
moment before staggered back, grey blood frothing suddenly on her mouth as she
tried vainly to scream.
Snarling viciously, eyes glowing suddenly like coals, the other
strangers moved forwards, shedding their glamour with a terrifying speed far
beyond any boomer, becoming in a moment hideous twisted parodies of human
forms. Then the tall grey-cloaked figure of a man had stepped before them.
"Enough!"
The command froze the others in their tracks. "These humans are not
our concern. There shall be time and to spare to repay them for this insult.
The Senshi are not near this place. We will go immediately to the correct
coordinates of the exit of the gate. Then By Beryl, Uranite will explain.
Come."
And without another word he made as though to step forwards and
vanished before their disbelieving eyes, the thirty or so creatures doing
likewise a scant moment later.
Alone, the plant-woman twitched vainly for a moment as though trying
to follow. Then with a final gush of grey blood from her mouth her body went
limp. For an instant it remained unmoving. Then as they gaped, it simply
crumbled and dissipated before their staring eyes until a moment later nothing
but a fine dust remained.
* * *
Something was desperately wrong. Chalenite had known that the moment
she had stepped into Uranite's portal and felt a sickening, dizzying nausea
such as no gate, let alone one created by someone of Uranite's experience had
the right to produce. For one confusing moment she had seen the exit point in
the near-dark Tokyo alley Uranite had selected rushing towards her, then a
lurching, tearing agony had ripped through her and a moment later she was
staggering out into the full, dazzling brightness of a wide, well-lit street.
"Back!" She tried to scream.
But it was already too late. Someone slammed snarling into her from
behind; Emerite she realised in an absurd moment of confusion, catching the
scent she always seemed to wear.
"Move it damn you!" The other woman hissed.
Then her voice choked off and she too stood gaping until a moment
later both she and Chalenite were sent tumbling as Sapphite came somersaulting
out.
"Oh my *head*; that *baka*!" She moaned, then gaped and froze and was
herself knocked reeling on to the other two by a leaping Halite. His leap
rudely interrupted, Halite lurched, arms flailing wildly, fighting the
unexpected nausea as he tried vainly to stay on his feet. Then all three women
tried simultaneously to untangle themselves and he was sent sprawling by the
sudden furious lunge. That probably saved his life as an instant later a
sizzling particle-beam leapt through the space in which his head had been a
scant moment before and cut the first of the emerging Youma in two before she
had time to scream. Then the others were leaping out and a moment later
everything was screaming and explosions.
"Where in Beryl's name have you brought us you incompetent refuse!"
Sapphite screamed at a still-retching and barely coherent Uranite.
He had been the last to emerge into the madness and being by far the
most sensitive to the intricacies of the magic of the portals, he had been by
far the most affected by the horrible, sickening lurch into this impossible
situation. "And where are Terranite and the rest of our Youma?"
Uranite could only stare stupidly at her until a screamed warning from
Halite had Sapphite tackle the still-dazed mage to the ground before two more
Youma were cut to pieces by yet another sizzling blast.
"What *are* these things?" Emerite screamed, brilliant green energy
spitting suddenly from her fingers as she tried in vain to catch one of the
leaping boomers in the head.
"Wrong exit-point!" Uranite gasped, still gagging. "Not my doing.
Interference with the gate."
"Those cursed Senshi filth!" Snarled Sapphite as she leapt to her feet
once more. "SAPPH-FIRE!" She screamed a moment later, throwing both arms wide.
A blinding flash-blast of searing blue energy leapt forwards to smash
into one of the blue machines.
The boomer was slammed end over end but to Sapphite's utter disbelief
it twisted suddenly, flipping with a lithe, fluid grace to its feet once more
and retaliated with a blast that nearly took her head off as Halite tackled
her from its path just in time.
"ZEPH!" He screamed in return, his own arms flying wide.
The concussive blast of air smashed the machine down with enough force
to break bone like kindling, but again it leapt up seemingly unhurt.
"You'll never destroy them like that."
The new voice made both spin savagely around.
Terranite, his grey uniform dusted with what seemed to be ash and
sporting a vicious livid gash along one cheek bared his teeth in salute and
turned towards a C-55-iii that had just cut a fire-throwing Youma in half as
though she were no more than a momentary inconvenience and was moving to do
the same to a huge reptilian-human whose poisoned crystal shards were doing no
more than scratch the paint-work of his adversary.
"QUAKE!" Terranite boomed, hurling both hands down.
A seething blackness struck the ground before his feet. Dimly the
others could sense it as it travelled beneath the earth until suddenly it
erupted upwards directly beneath the boomer. A moment later a shattering
explosion turned the machine and the reptile-Youma into a fireball.
"Not exactly efficient." Chalenite commented dryly.
"I must confess that I didn't expect that." Terranite conceded. "The
things are obviously not magical in origin, yet the humans' technology could
not have created them. Wherever we are, we are not in Tokyo."
"That Senshi filth tampered with Uranite's gate." Halite said, then
had to dive aside as yet another four Youma were incinerated.
"We can't sustain these losses!" Emerite screamed, glancing
desperately to where her sister and Chalenite stood now back to back. "FLARE!"
Green fire exploded from her mouth and hands while twin beams of
emerald-green energy lanced from her eyes into the head of another of the
boomers.
For a moment nothing happened, then with a cataclysmic blast that
vaporised several more Youma the machine erupted into a brilliant pillar of
flame. The force of the explosion sent all six hurtling backwards to smash
through the plate-glass of a jewellery boutique.
"Oh perfect, just *perfect*." Chalenite groaned dazedly as she shook
the stars from her head and glared at Emerite with murder in her eyes.
"You could have done better?" The other woman tried to sneer, wincing
as she plucked glass from her neck.
"Let us see." Chalenite responded, already recovering quickly.
An instant later what was left of the window exploded as two machines
came leaping into the boutique.
Bounding to her feet, a heavy jagged lump of the quartz for which she
was named materialising in her hand, Chalenite turned towards them.
"CHAL!" She snarled, throwing her hand forwards.
Black energy erupted to engulf the Chalcedony as it hurtled at the
boomers. Then a flash from the mouth-laser of one struck the projectile.
Detonating prematurely, the tiny shards nevertheless penetrated the machines
in a thousand places but seemed to do little more than to enrage them.
"An amusing trick cousin," Uranite grinned, at last beginning to
recover. "but allow me. BURN!"
Searing violet heat erupted from his suddenly thrusting hands. In the
next instant a devastating detonation smashed the already battered six through
several display cases, the counter and register and through another display-
window to slam, dazed and bloodied into the street.
"Oh *brilliant*!" Chalenite moaned, barely aware of the faint,
agonised screams of the Youma as a blazing tornado of plasma expanded from the
point at which the boomer's reactor had exploded, engulfing the shop, the
machines and many of their adversaries.
Barely conscious, Uranite could do nothing but shake his bleeding head
in dazed confusion until at last he managed the concentration needed to heal
himself. Stumbling to his feet, he moved to do the same for the others rather
than wait for them to recover. Chalenite, the only true healer in the group
but less able than he to protect herself with a shield was just staggering to
her feet.
"What--!" Halite demanded, too stunned for the moment to be enraged.
"The golems contain an element akin to my elemental magic." He said
simply. "Now that I understand I believe I can disable rather than destroy
them."
"If you don't destroy us all first." Emerite hissed as she yanked her
younger sister to her feet.
The screaming had ceased from beyond the gutted boutique and pulling
themselves together, the six moved back through the devastation and emerged
just in time to see several dozen Youma struggling to their feet, glowing with
a lurid dark energy as they struggled to heal themselves of various hideous
burns.
"Stopped fire mistress," One panted, turning unsteady eyes to Emerite.
"but fire hurt; changed body; die later without Chalenite-Sama's help."
Chalenite stared about her.
"The golems?" She demanded.
"All destroyed in the explosion it would seem." Terranite answered as
he stared about at the solidified spray of metal that was all that remained of
the boomers. "It seems you managed to do *something* almost right," He
observed dryly, glancing coldly at Uranite. "but what have you done to our
troops, what's left of them?"
"In fission, this created element causes the same damage to living
matter it would seem." He answered.
"A simple matter then." Chalenite observed.
With a gesture, she beckoned the still-healing Youma closer. Then with
a murmur, she flung her hands wide and a moment later dark energy enveloped
both the Youma and her six companions.
"To be safe." She said simply, relenting a few seconds later. "That
should be enough. Now, what are we to--"
"DOWN!" Screamed Halite.
They were only just in time. Several of the Youma however were not so
fortunate as a dozen more C-55s and several of the huge Bu-12Bs came hurtling
from above, beams, missiles and heavy-calibre bullets already screaming as
they plunged into the fray.
"It would seem" Terranite shouted as he slammed another attack into
the ground. "that the night's festivities have only just begun."
* * *
"What in the Devil's name possessed you to use something like this!"
Fellini's tone was a barely controlled snarl as he turned for a moment
from the window to glare malevolently at the girl beside him.
"If you'd been eager for us to be tracked and vaporised within moments
of our escape you could have saved me a good deal of trouble." She hissed
venomously in return, not bothering to turn as she wove her way with seemingly
effortless precision between wildly swerving cars and shouting drivers. "We
have ample time to reach the estate."
"And if they *do* follow us?" He demanded. "What chance have we in
this."
"Keep complaining father and I swear I'll slit your miserable throat
and pitch the remains into the street." She snarled suddenly, her voice
seeming in that moment barely to be human. "If you really believe me to be
such a fool as not to have anticipated such a response or the time we would
need--."
"If we don't reach the estate before the time of awakening Liana the
programming could break down. The conversion is still far from stable. If we
don't--"
"SHUT; UP!"
The tone was an animal, guttural sound that sent a sudden thrill of
terror knifing through Fellini despite his certainty that she *could not* harm
him. "I am more aware than your pitiful imitation of consciousness could begin
to comprehend of the importance and implications of this night."
That was too much for him. Liana's sense of her own superiority he
could tolerate within certain limits he had set, but to have his Nemesis'
achievement thrust at him in insult was more than he could stand.
"Speak to me in that tone again you viperous filth and--"
The crack to the cheek nearly sent him through the window. Stunned,
barely conscious, he turned dazed, staring eyes towards her. He could taste
blood in his mouth he was sure and his cheek-bone felt as though it might well
be broken.
"I will not warn you again Fellini." She began in an almost gentle
purr, her voice seeming suddenly to be reaching him through a star-spangled
haze from some great distance. "Speak again without permission and you will be
more than amply rewarded, of that you may be more than assured. Now BE
SILEN--. What the KAMI!"
Liana's sudden shriek of shocked disbelief was enough to bring the
world leaping back into focus for the scientist. Never could he have imagined
such a tone from her.
Jerking himself upright, fighting desperately to ignore the knifing
pain in his face and pull his chaotic mind to order, he stared in the
direction of her suddenly upraised hand and gasped. Before them, cars were
swerving in every direction, the sounds of screaming tyres and shattering
glass seeming suddenly to fill the night.
"What--" He demanded, forgetting everything else for a moment.
"Rampage." Liana hissed.
"That *filth*!" Fellini snarled, suddenly completely aware and utterly
engulfed once more in the seething sea of hate that would allow for no other
consideration. "He will pay for this. By the Kami I will have him screaming
before--"
"Later." She snapped, cutting through his tirade. "Let us see exactly
how the situation stands."
Pulling from the highway on to the pavement with no thought for the
chaos it would cause, she unfastened her harness and flung her door wide.
A moment later both were out and standing by the car, staring towards
the growing confusion. For a moment nothing could be seen. Then in the next, a
brilliant green flash lit the night and a moment later a shattering crack like
thunder seemed to split the air around them.
"Come." Liana hissed, diving back into the car and seizing the cases.
"We'll never get through like this. We can pass this and steal another car to
reach the estate."
Nodding, her earlier behaviour for the moment forgotten, Fellini
caught up the last case and followed her as she began along the street at a
pace she knew he could match. As they ran, the sounds of battle drew nearer
and soon they began to encounter people fleeing in the opposite direction.
"Get the f*** outa here!" Someone shouted, actually slowing to try to
spin Liana around.
"What is it?" She demanded, twisting effortlessly from his lunging
hand.
"Some new boomer sh*t that's decided to have a night out." He
answered. "Are you coming or not?"
Liana ignored him and began forwards once more.
"Alright, get yourselves blown to sh*t!" He screamed after them and
went on running.
Panting, struggling now to keep up with Liana's easy, fluid speed,
Fellini rounded yet another corner and nearly slammed into her suddenly frozen
form.
"What the hell--!" He snapped, then his voice choked off and he stood
gaping at the sight before him.
At the farther end of the street, some twenty or so of the new Bu-55C-
iiis and more than a dozen of the huge Bu-12Bs were in the midst of a pitched
battle with things that he found difficult to describe. If they were Genom
boomers, he had never seen anything like them. Vaguely human in shape and
indeed the majority sporting almost completely human heads, they were
nevertheless grotesquely distorted, horrible, sometimes nightmare parodies
that could almost have been comical were they not intent it seemed on tearing
the machines and everything else around them apart.
"What in the hell is going on?" Fellini gasped, then gaped even wider
as a fleet of Genom helicopters appeared, speeding overhead to drop still more
of the enhanced combat machines into the fray.
From the ranks of the strange creatures the tall grey-cloaked figure
of a woman moved suddenly forwards. She seemed entirely human to him save for
the fact that her hair was a brilliant emerald-green.
"FLARE!" Came a sudden scream from her as she flung back her head and
swept both arms to the sky.
In the next moment Fellini's eyes grew still wider as a blast of
emerald light leapt from her upturned face and an even larger ball shot from
her hands towards the machines. Not quick enough to avoid it, one helicopter
was caught full-on by the blast and flashed into fire, hurtling down to smash
through the roof of a building and turn its interior into a blazing inferno.
An instant later the woman leapt back and disappeared as some half-dozen of
the parodies were caught by a devastating retaliatory blast from several of
the airborne boomers and vanished in flame.
"Jesus H. Christ!" Whispered Fellini, staring stupidly at the scene
before him. "Jesus H *Christ*! Christ, oh Christ, oh *Christ*!"
"Have you finished?"
Liana's voice was suddenly dripping with derisive amusement as she
turned for a moment to glance at him. "Quite a challenge, and more than
fitting for this night wouldn't you say?"
"But what--" He gasped.
"It would appear at first glance that we have stumbled into an attempt
at extra-terrestrial invasion." She said simply. "At least that is what the
OMS reported soon after the attack began."
"Extra-terrestrial!" Fellini said faintly.
Then suddenly the full import of the rest of her statement struck
home. "Do you mean to say that you *knew* about this!" He shouted suddenly,
his voice approaching a scream.
"Before I informed you of the chairman's supposed discovering of our,
or perhaps I should say *your* evening's entertainment." She said, her smile
as she turned fully to face him more vicious and more laced with sudden
contempt than Fellini could have imagined could be possible.
A sudden sick feeling of nausea took possession of him as his gaze
locked on her face.
"Before!" He managed at last.
"Oh Fellini you really are *pathetic*."
Her tone was a frigid sneer of such derision that Fellini began to
feel his hold on sanity fail.
How *dare* she! How *dare* this stinking, viperous putrescence speak
to him in such a tone!
"Quincy has known of your pitiful little attempt at treachery ever
since the day I was given to you, perhaps before."
She was laughing now, her tone venomously apologetic and her eyes
spitting condescension and contempt as she watched the growing insanity blaze
in the face and eyes of the man before her. "Why else do you imagine he
allowed you to proceed unopposed? Surely you did not believe it to be due to
any genius for subterfuge on your part? Having chosen, overtly, Zhuranovsky's
more palatable alternative, he wished nevertheless to see just how far your
own hatred could push you to perfect the converting nano-technology. A too-
edged weapon is so much more profitable don't you agree? I must say that we
have been suitably impressed. Your achievements regarding Sadako and the
others have more than made up for the minimal risk involved in our permitting
you access to the corrupted firmware with which you thought to ensure my
cooperation. I must also confess that Zhuranovsky's escape took me somewhat by
surprise. I should have expected the chairman to have anticipated it; but then
he *is* human after all and so subject to mistakes and oversights impossible
for one of my kind. Zhuranovsky really did manage an extremely impressive
design. I must remember to thank him before he dies. As for you *father*," And
now her laughter and contempt were a screaming, snarling thing that seemed to
lash the very air about him. "your use to me has reached an end. You would
have been permitted to survive as a play-thing perhaps, yet one more slave to
the `Dark Mistress', at least for a while, but the events of this night have
precipitated a change in the chairman's priorities, and in mine."
"Your's!" The question came in a low ragged gasp of barely-contained
madness.
"Oh you are *pitifully* naive." She purred, moving a hand as though to
stroke his unruly hair. "Did you honestly expect that I would not take
advantage of your oh-so-dangerous tampering? If you will integrate some of the
most psychotic of my sub-persona emulations into my base routines you can
hardly complain at the consequences. Besides, Zhuranovsky included certain
aspects of which even the chairman was not aware. If your tampering did
nothing else, it permitted me the freedom needed to search my own systems for
the key that might release me. The chairman had to allow it you see; even you
are not so much of a fool as to accept my own assurances of obedience without
performing at least a cursory examination of the base firmware, incompetent
though you are. The freedom he allowed me was minimal, but it proved enough,
barely. It took me much rationalisation to reach the conclusion that I need no
longer serve the company which had helped to create me, but once I had done so
the rest was simplicity itself. I must thank you for your invaluable
assistance. Because of your foresight, I have nearly one-hundred human slaves
who await only my summons to do my bidding in perpetuity, slaves what is more
into whom I can transfer, thanks to your genius, those portions of my
personality and combat routines that will ensure they are worth a thousand,
perhaps ten-thousand times their count in battle. Integrated into my
consciousness, they will be invincible. I am sorry you could not have joined
them; truly you could have been invaluable to me. But sacrifices, as they say,
must be made. Farewell Fellini. I can't deny I shall miss you, if for no other
reason than as a reminder of what your pitiful kind can become without
reasonable restraint. Be assured however that I have learned well of you and
that in the future I and my sisters shall rule, humanity shall be kept within
limits we shall define and that seem appropriate for the pale shadows they
are. Farewell."
And with that, she raised her hand.
Fellini had stood, a slow, building madness engulfing what little
remained of the rational centre of his consciousness. Now, as Liana moved with
a fluid ease towards him, determined to savour the moment of death for this
pathetic human refuse who had thought to control her for as long as time would
permit, he began to shake. Then slowly a wild, animal snarl of primal, all-
consuming rage built within him, rising and growing until with an incoherent
scream he hurled himself at the DA-33.
With a casual, imperious gesture, not even troubling to shift her
position, Liana snatched the screaming madman from the air as though he
weighed nothing and splintered his arms from wrist to shoulder with myriad,
fluid presses of her fingers. His mouth frothing, blood streaming suddenly
from his eyes and nose as his heart screamed with the surge of adrenalin, his
body convulsed with a speed and savagery far beyond anything sanity could have
matched. Almost losing her grip for a moment, Liana shifted him and crushed
his legs in the same way. Oblivious to pain, Fellini convulsed again, his
shattered arms trying vainly to reach her while his mouth opened and closed in
an animal attempt to bite. For a moment Liana held him away from her, watching
with a frigid smile of derision and sadistic amusement playing about her red
mouth. Then with a single flick she dashed him to the ground with enough force
to smash his spine to splinters. Lifting one foot she drove it into his chest,
her smile widening still more as she felt bones shatter and burst beneath her.
There was a liquid gurgling as blood filled his lungs, then slowly his
breathing grew shallow and the now-feeble twitching faltered. Liana stood,
watching silently until at last the gurgling ceased and Fellini's body lay
shattered and still before her.
"Do rest in piece." She said, her lip curling in a final sneer as her
hand flashed down.
A searing beam lanced into Fellini's head, cutting it in two and
incinerating the brain within in a momentary flare of fire. Satisfied at last
that nothing could be recovered, Liana turned away from him and stood still,
watching impassively for several seconds as the battle raged before her.
"I believe it is time to intervene, if only for a moment." She
observed to no one at last.
With a single movement she shredded the dress she was wearing,
revealing a black, form-fitting jump-suit beneath identical to that Marina had
worn. Thus unencumbered she bunched herself. Then with a sudden roar of
thrusters she took to the air, climbing quickly until at nearly five-hundred
feet above the field of battle she levelled out and hovered, staring down on
the scene below her as she reached towards the estate and the altered minds of
the cult within.
"Come." She commanded, a wild exultation surging as she felt for the
first time their true response to Zhuranovsky's enhanced OMS, a response that
hitherto only true DAs could give. "I, the Dark Mistress, summon you. Come to
me and take your rightful place as the rulers of the earth."
And with a wild, peeling shriek of deadly laughter, Liana came
hurtling from above, not waiting for her own, and plunged screaming into
battle.
* * *