The Day When Heaven Was Falling

[Sir Chaos]

I´m still here, FWIW. I just have nothing to add that would be worthy of your masterpiece here.

[Dubble_g]

I´m still here, FWIW. I just have nothing to add that would be worthy of your masterpiece here.

Oh hey, that's cool too. Thanks for reading!

[Kidd]

Thou shalt not end on a cliffhanger, for it is an abomination unto the Lord.

[Dubble_g]

Thou shalt not end on a cliffhanger, for it is an abomination unto the Lord.

But it's a double cliffhanger, and since two negatives make a positive that makes it A-OK. Pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere. Probably Revelations.

[Sir Chaos]

But it's a double cliffhanger, and since two negatives make a positive that makes it A-OK. Pretty sure that's in the Bible somewhere. Probably Revelations.

11th Commandment: Thou shalt not be a smartass towards thine readers, for thou art crunchy and tasteth well with ketchup.

[pensiveswetness]

A malfing Dallas ending... W.T.F... :D

[DOC_Agren]

WTF..  I think I missed something there at the end

[mikecj]

 :o :o :o :o

[Dubble_g]

Hmmm, well, without giving too much away, my current idea for "Season Three" is to explore more of both Aric's and Reina's pasts. Pity we don't have spoiler tags, but broadly (and with minimal smart-arsedness):

- "In the past" -- Vukovic was mentioned in Aric's recount of why he quit the Corps. Given Vukovic's role in that history, and that the narrator (i.e. Aric) appears to be familiar with what happened, the identity and motive of the mystery person is, I hope, guessable. Future, yet-to-be-written flashback episodes would follow this strand.

- "In the present" -- This ties back to the ending of "Season One" (Episode 1-10), the very last line of which was meant to foreshadow what would happen. Most I can say is that there's only one person who has been hinted at in the story so far that Aric would potentially mistake for Reina, but who wouldn't know who he is.  Future "present-day" episodes would follow this strand.

Anyway, the intent was not to confuse, but to give observant readers a clue as to where the story is going next.

[cpip]

I'm enjoying it. I've got a theory as to who both people are, and I am absolutely looking forward to finding out.

[snakespinner]

Been following you all the way, I'm the one underneath the cactus behind you.
A double cliff hanger (followed by a long drop) set's the stage for your next masterpiece. O0

[Dubble_g]

Well, now that snakespinner is comfortable (?) under the cactus, on with the dropping. We can see if cpip has guessed right on one count today.

* * *

SEASON 3: Esprit de Corps

EPISODE 3-1: The company of wolves

In the present:

“Who the hell are you?” she asked.

Which is funny, because I was about to ask her the same thing.

It’s hard to focus on someone’s face when it’s on the other side of a Core Arms pulse laser pistol, but there was no mistaking hers. So like, and yet so unlike. The same jaw line, same almond eyes, same long wavy black hair. The left side of the face was a mass of scar tissue though, a twisting network of angry red lines.

The hand holding the Core Arms twitched. “YOUR NAME?” she shouted.

“Hey, it’s me: Aric.” I slowly raised my hands. “Reina?” I said, dumbly. Still watching her, but now paying attention to my peripheral vision, too. Every drawer in Reina’s desk had been opened, the contents dumped on the floor. Muffled crashing noises came from the bedroom located adjoining the commander’s office. A 2D picture of Reina and me had fallen on the floor, just by my foot. I shifted slightly, to cover it with my boot.

“She malking stole MY NAME,” the woman hissed, the barrel of the pistol jumping with each word. Nasty-looking piece of business is the Core Arms, a long black tube with a handle halfway down its length, the laser equivalent of a machine pistol. “I’M REINA PARADIS. IT’S MY NAME.”

Jagged, broken pieces of memory were starting to fall into place—the story my ‘Reina’ had told on the DropShip from Poulsbo. Of a rich aristocrat who’d fallen afoul of the New Avalon triads. I assayed an easy smile. “Hey, look, whoever you are, I’m sure this is all one big silly misunder—”

“Shut up,” she snarled. “Just shut up, shut up. We’ll find out who you are later.” Then, a little louder, “Cutter, Saw, in here.”

A pair of hard-faced men tramped in from the bedroom. Wearing blue-and-grey Commonwealth security uniforms, but I’d never seen either of them: buzz cuts with a lightning bolt shaved into the sides, Core Arms pistols filling their hands.

Good money said: Triads. Better money said: This was the original Reina. Best money said: Oh, crap.

They looked hard at me, then at the woman.

“Come on, we’re going,” she told them. “He’s coming with us.”

“Look, much as I love to meet new people, I kind of have a thing—”

“If he talks again, shoot his kneecaps,” the woman said, striding past me. The men grinned evilly, and one waved his pistol to indicate I should follow the woman.

I sighed, turned and followed the woman out the building. There was a ground car there, in Port Moseby government livery, with a crowned, cursive ‘PM’ on the front doors and four silver stripes running down each side. A driver was waiting behind the wheel, evidently produced from the same factory that had churned out Cutter and Saw, the two guys behind me.

The woman climbed into the front seat, while one of the grunts opened the back door. His buddy shoved me in the small of the back and I clambered in. One of them got in either side, sandwiching me between them, each with the muzzle of their pistol pressed firmly against a kidney.

The car was stopped by the security checkpoint at the edge of the base. The guard took the papers the woman thrust under his nose and eyed them suspiciously, then caught sight of me in the back. I nodded, just a fraction. The guard blinked twice, and returned the papers. Banged the car on the roof. “On your way,” he said.

The ride was as silent as it was uncomfortable. Reina—the real one—in the front seat pulled out a long thin white tube, stuck one end in her mouth and lit the other with a match she struck on the dashboard. It filled the cabin with cloying, sickly-sweet smoke that made me feel torpid and drowsy.

They drove into the suburbs of Feintuch, turning towards the neighborhoods that had been shattered when the Dracs fired an asteroid at the Arcturan headquarters, about one month before. Smart-looking glass office towers and neat residential apartments gave way to ruins and deserted, garbage-line streets. Buildings with a thousand shattered windows like jagged, broken teeth, buildings where one wall had collapsed leaving a kind of layer cake slice visible inside, beds or chests teetering at the edge of the gaping hole, buildings that had collapsed in the center like a V, the two sides leaning drunkenly together.

The car stopped in front of one relatively intact apartment complex, squat like a boxer, with thick concrete walls and some of its windows still intact.

Inside the dented front doors, the lobby had been cleared out and a series of long tables set up, lined with a mismatched array of office chairs, armchairs and stools, filled with people who could have passed for my escorts’ extended family—buzz cuts, unsmiling faces, personal artillery stuck in a waistband or left carelessly on one of the tables. Banner in one corner with two Chinese characters, black ink on white: ‘White’ and ‘Tiger.’

The instant we entered all conversation stopped and the men jumped to their feet, watching me with shark-eyed hostility.
 
“Upstairs, with the doctor,” the real Reina said to my two boon companions. “I’ll see to the other one.”

My eyes followed the chipped and battered steps as they hugged the walls, going up and up in a right-angle cyclone, the top levels lost in shadow. “Can’t we take the elevator?” I asked. A jab in the back with a laser pistol was my answer.

About five levels up, they shoved me into a room off the main staircase. A thin man in a long white coat stood beside something that looked a bit like a dentist’s chair, with cracked green padding and suspicious red-brown stains underneath. The man wheeled a trolley next to the chair, laden with an array of sharp-looking implements I’d bet had never seen the inside of a real hospital.

“Got another case for you, Doc,” said Cutter. Or was it Saw? Whichever.

“Make him comfortable,” said the Doc, waving at the chair.

“Oh jeez, nice of you to offer but I only just had an appoint—oof” I said, as Cutter (or Saw) kicked me in the back of the knees. I staggered, falling against the trolley with all its shiny little toys. “Hey, on second thoughts why not.” I muttered.

Saw (or Cutter) strapped my wrists to the arms of the chair with those plastic zip ties the cops use on criminals. He tested the tightness once, grunted in satisfaction, then went out the door. Cutter (or quite possibly Saw) folded his arms and leaned against the wall next to the door, watching me with grim anticipation.

“Now,” said the Doc suddenly, standing over me. He switched on an overhead light, shining it right into my eyes. He picked up a datapad and stylus. “Let’s start with the basic questions before we get creative. The woman you know as Reina Paradis is a fraud, an imposter who has stolen the identity of the real Reina Paradis.”

“No.” I said. “I’m shocked.”

“This is a serious crime of course, and you would be doing your duty as a law-abiding member of society in helping us bring her to justice.”

“Yes, I can tell being law-abiding means a lot to you people.”

“So let me ask you,” he continued, ignoring my levity. “Where is this woman now?”

“I would shrug, but you know,” I looked down at my wrists meaningfully.

The Doc tapped something on the pad. “Shortly before her disappearance, the imposter placed a hyperpulse message to the planet Galatea. Who would she be trying to contact there?”

Now, that was news to me. I frowned a little in thought. “I dunno Doc, that’s a tough one. Let me ask you something first,” I said. “Where did you get your license Doc? Because frankly, your bedside manner is the pits.”

He smiled thinly. “I got my ‘license’ by studying human nature. For example, when they are brought to me, some men stay silent, some shout insults, some beg, and then some use jokes and sarcasm. In my experience, those in the last group are trying to cover their fear. They don’t last long under torture.”

“Trying to cover their fear?” I asked, raising one eyebrow. He nodded. “You’re sure about that? Not trying to cover the sound of themselves sawing through their restraints with one of your scalpels?”

He frowned. Then eyes widened.

My right arm was free. Brought it over, sliced the left one loose. Then I was out of the chair like a shell from an Imperator, the scalpel I’d palmed when I fell against the trolley in my hand. I grabbed the Doc by the front of his coat, then stabbed him in the throat with the scalpel. Once, twice, three, four times. Blood fountaining down my arm as I bore him backwards, ramming him against the wall. Stabbed him once more in the chest for good measure, twisted the blade and left it there. Left him bubbling and gurgling as he slumped to the floor.

Whirled on Cutter (I’ll just assume it was Cutter), only now getting over his shock and pulling his Core Arms pistol free. Ducked and charged right at him, felt the heat as a burst of laser fire passed right over my head. Grabbed the wrist with the gun, then threw myself backwards onto the floor. Sudden shift in the center of gravity and a foot planted in his abdomen sent Cutter flying over my head, landing with a bone-crunching crash on the floor.

I scrabbled for the Core Arms, now lying on the floor. Saw burst through the door. Found my new pistol jammed against the bottom of his jaw. Fired a burst that went right through Saw’s brain and blasted the top of his head across the wall behind him.

Swung back to Cutter, struggling to his knees, and pointed the Core Arms at his head. “She said there was another prisoner,” I said to him, quietly. Keeping my voice level despite breathing hard. “Where are they?”

He bared his teeth. “I’m not telling you a damn thing.”

“Okay,” I said. And shot him twice, once in the head, one through the chest.

The room was silent, except for the feeble gasping and flopping from the Doc, lying in an expanding pool of his own blood. Should’ve stuck to medicine, Doc; far safer than the company of wolves.

From outside, I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

I peeked through the crack in the door. There were four men on the landing outside, just coming out of a room on the next landing up. Two more thugs, with a bloodied white-clad man held by the armpits between them. A fourth man, armed with a Cudazzo revolver like the one Reina had on Poulsbo, was squinting suspiciously at my doorway.

I ducked back around the side of the doorway just as he fired, splinters of wood fountaining from the door as the bullets punched through. Then I went through the door in a roll, came up firing, three shots taking the gunman full in the chest.

The other two dropped the man in white, reached for their own guns. Too slow, far too slow. The Core Arms punched right through them, leaving scorch marks and sprays of blood on the walls.

I raced up the steps and bent over the man on the ground. Turned him over: A face I didn’t recognize. The uniform, however, I did. ComStar. “Acolyte,” I said. “Acolyte, can you stand? We’ve got to get you out of here.”

The man only moaned. “Galatea…” he whispered.

What had the Doc said earlier? Something about my Reina sending a message to Galatea. “Yes, Galatea,” I leaned down to hear him better. “Who did she contact on Galatea?”

His next words were a shock. “Brett Anderson,” he said.

“Okay,” I blinked. Put one of his arms over my shoulder, levered him to his feet. “Okay. Okay. Okay. Sure. Why not.”

He smiled and nodded. “Brett Anderson,” he said again.

A burst of laser fire stitched into him. One shot went into my arm. Now, lasers don’t have the kinetic impact that bullets do, but your nervous system does tend to react a little to being suddenly stung with what feels like a 1,000-degree needle. I dropped the gun and ComStar Acolyte, clutching my arm.

The real Reina strode from the interrogation room, Core Arms held in both hands. Oh right, should have remembered she’d said she’d be in the interrogation room, too. “You knew,” she said, accusingly. “You knew she took my name and YOU DIDN’T CARE. YOU LET HER GET AWAY WITH IT.”

“No hard feelings, huh?” I gasped. Which would have been pretty pathetic as far as last words go.

There was a detonation from the ground floor, followed by the unmistakable thudding of a heavy-barrel machinegun opening fire. A blast of hot air boiled up the staircase, followed by a cloud of dirt and soot. There were screams now, coming from below, mixed with the whipcrack of gunfire and the sizzle of lasers.

Reina-the-original looked down in horror. Then spun and ran back into the interrogation room. I staggered after her, but found the room deserted, a window open. Ducked my head outside but jerked it back in as she fired a spray of shots at window, slagging parts of the frame. She’d gone down the fire escape, where a ground car was parked.

I cursed, ran back for one of the dropped guns, but by the time I got back the car was already gone.

I threw the gun aside, sat down and waited. Didn’t have to wait long. Commonwealth security forces came pounding up the staircase, led by the guard who’d been on duty at the Black Arrows base. The cavalry had arrived.

“Tracking bug on the roof of the car?” I asked him, remembering how he’d banged the car as we left.

He nodded happily, then his smile disappeared. “The woman?”

I aimed at thumb at the window. “Got away,” I said, tiredly. “S’Okay, though. Got an idea where she’s going.”

Galatea. Brett Anderson.

Not much of a start, but maybe there was an old favor I could call in.

[snakespinner]

An exciting way to start the day.
The fake Reina really needs to clean up her mess. O0

[Dubble_g]

EPISODE 3-2: The firing squad

Yeah, a favor. It actually started with me asking him for something, funnily enough. When I first started down the path that ended with a surprise guest in Baz Vukovic’s office.

In the past:

He didn’t look like much. Sitting in the back office of a dingy, grungy, cluttered, foul-smelling auto shop. Overflowing ashtray on his desk. Oil-stained overalls, oil-stained hands holding a cigarette to nicotine-stained teeth. The air pierced by the metallic squeal of power drills and the hissing whine of saws cutting through metal.

All the workers bent over the dissected bodies of ground cars and custom-built bikes, hover buses and ATVs. Not tattoos, no missing pinky fingers, too easy for the law to spot in that case, but no mistaking the muted sense of threat they kind of threw off in waves like cheap tobacco smoke. All of them kind of watching me without watching me, you know, corner-of-the-eye stuff. Ready to turn those saws on me if the order came. If the oyabun gave the word.

“Gaijin,” he muttered, which was rich. I’m about as Japanese as Hanse Davion, but he still had me beat in the paleness department. I held my tongue, though. This white-faced, white-haired weathered old man was Tadamasa Shibata, the head of the Shibata-kai—a branch of the local yakuza syndicate—and my ticket off the miserable sand trap that was Altair V.

Dealing with the yakuza is a tricky thing. They’re loyal to the Coordinator but not to the Combine. To the culture but not the government. Does that make sense? Probably not, but I’ve noticed if there’s one thing human beings excel at, it’s at holding two mutually contradictory opinions at the same time without batting an eyelid. They revered Kurita as the figurehead and symbol of their way of life, then cheerfully ignored and subverted every law and dictum he tried to enforce. They fiercely believed in the superiority of Combine language and food and fashion and music and morals and behavior, but wouldn’t hesitate to murder a Combine bureaucrat who got in their way.

A bit like your relationship with your family, maybe: The only people allowed to insult family members are family members. Any outsider tries it and you all close ranks.

So there I was, standing in this blue-smoke haze, feeling the tobacco-stink seeping into my clothes and skin and hair, asking this oyabun to help an enemy of the state escape off-planet. Would he see this as a cultural issue, and turn me in, or a legal one, and help me out?

“Gaijin,” Shibata said again. “You’ve offered us money, gaijin, because you gaijin understand nothing of honor or responsibility. You do everything for yourselves, never for the benefit of others. We Draconians are different. We understand that without society, one man alone can do nothing.”

Internally, I breathed a sigh of relief. If I was getting a lecture, it meant Shibata would help. Just to assuage his sense of propriety, he’d have to frame it so he was the wise and benevolent teacher helping the ignorant and mannerless barbarian.

“I’m sorry if I have offended you,” I said. “Money is all I have.” I’d stolen a couple of things from the landing ship—medical supplies mostly—and sold them to black market dealers. That’s how I’d come to the yakuza’s attention.

Shibata looked at me shrewdly, dropped his cigarette into a half-full coffee cup to extinguish it. He leaned forward slightly. “Not so,” he said. “A man in my position hears things. Many things. About a pirate attack on the Izumi Shipyards, for example, and the miraculous escape of the crew and their families. Funny that, considering none of them are qualified pilots.” His jaundiced smile appeared again. “As I said, for Draconians, society is a web of obligations and favors. A man of military talent could earn a favor, perhaps one large enough to earn passage off Altair.”

The next morning I was out over the Herbert Desert at the controls of a DRACO-3 light observation helicopter. Basically an egg-shaped bubbled of glass with a rotor blade glued on top, a Y-shaped boom sticking out the back and two landing skids instead of wheels, the little one-ton craft bounced about the sky with every gust of wind, dropping a couple of meters whenever we hit a patch of turbulence.

“Ah,” said the passenger beside me as we bucked up and down. “Ooh. Er. Huh.” Instead of a seat harness, he had a cord clipped to the roof, which would allow him to lean out the doorway, when the time came. He clutched the lead with one hand, a Kiltek laser sniper rifle with the other—Kiltek is a modified Intek, great for amateur snipers since you don’t have to worry about wind or bullet drop or time to target. Just point and shoot. Over a thousand meter effective range before atmospheric diffusion means you’re only tickling the target. Beam is tuned to the x-ray band, so it’s invisible to the naked eye.

His name was Kamo, and he was Shibata’s wakagashira, his first lieutenant. He’d tried to explain the mission on the flight up, but it was just a tsunami wave of Japanese names to me.

“Altair is run by the—ulp—Hashiba-gumi, but there are a lot of—woohee—factions. There’s us, the Shibata-kai then there’s the Uesugi-kai, the Takeda-kai, the Shimazu-kai—whoah—and lots of others. Each faction has their own oyabun. We’re all under the Hashiba kumicho—what’s that light on the control panel? Nothing? Okay—all under the Hashiba kumicho. Hashiba’s an evil little man, to be honest, as devious as a BattleMaster’s back side, he’ll smack down anyone he thinks is getting too big for their britches, but he basically lets each faction run its own turf the way it—hey, hey, HEY, oh thank god—the way it likes. Problem is the Takeda-kai has been moving in on our turf, so we’re going to send a message.” He patted the Kiltek.

The oyabun of the Takeda-kai must have known he’d stepped on some toes, because he’d holed himself up in a retreat deep in the Shaddam Mountains, surrounded by sheer cliffs on three sides and accessible only by a single, winding mountain road. Or, as it turned out, by air.

The plan was for a ‘peace’ delegation from Kamo’s Shibata-kai to drive up to the complex, ostensibly to negotiate a truce. When Takeda himself stuck his head out to greet them, we’d pop up and Kamo would drill him through the head. With the Kiltek’s invisible beam, it would take a few seconds for his lieutenants to figure out what had happened, allowing the ‘peace’ party to escape. For the plan to work, they needed a pilot. Enter yours truly.

For my perspective, the plan did have one major weak point. Once the job was done, I’d have to trust that old Shibata felt honor-bound to keep his word to a gaijin; in other words to someone who wasn’t a part of his web of responsibilities and favors. Instead of just seeing me as a loose end, to be quickly and fatally tied off.

I kept the DRACO-3 behind a hill while the dark blue Toyo-Matsu sedan bounced up the mountain road towards the complex gate. One of the guys down there was bugged, letting us listen in on their conversation. Once they’d confirmed Takeda himself was in the open, we’d move.

Our earpieces crackled with the man’s voice now. “Ohayo gozaimasu, Takeda-sama. Gobusata shite orimasu.”

“Ike, ike, ike,” said Kamo, bringing the butt of the Kiltek up against his shoulder and shifting to the edge of his seat, straining at the end of his safety lead attached to the cockpit roof. “Go, go, go.”

I hauled on the control column, bringing us up over the crest of the hill we’d been hiding behind, tilting forward and catapulting us towards the compound. High-walled, ferrocrete dusted orange-brown to match the rocks of the cliff on whose edge it sat. Series of low, narrow-windowed buildings inside, with a helipad jutting out over the cliff’s edge. The blue Toyo-Matsu just inside the gates, the four Shibata envoys standing in front of it, surrounded by a ring of Takeda’s men. Little pink circles as faces turned up in surprise as the helicopter appeared overhead.

“Got you know, you bastard,” Kamo hissed. Leaning out of the side door, focused on the Kiltek’s sight.

Which made it easy for me to reach over, unhook his safety lead, and kick him in the small of the back with one foot. A startled shriek and he was falling, one foot caught the landing skid and he tumbled, head over feet, somersaulting over and over until he slammed into the ground just behind the Toyo-Matsu, and his body splattered like a dropped watermelon.

The four Shibata-kai men were shocked, but not for long. Takeda’s guards opened fire. The envoys’ bodies jerked and writhed and fell in untidy heaps.

The old man was waiting as I set the helicopter down on the helipad, along with a couple of his lieutenants. They watched impassively as the rotors slowed down and drifted to a stop. I tucked my flight helmet under one arm and went to meet them.

“I kept my end of the deal,” I said to Takeda.

See, Kamo—my ex-passenger and amateur skydiver—was Shibata’s first lieutenant. Turned out, Shibata’s shateigashira (second lieutenant) and my initial contact, a guy named Uragiri, had made a deal with Takeda to bump off his boss and chief rival in one little move—two birds with one bullet. Uragiri would be head of his own faction, Takeda would gain an ally, win-win, chilled sake all around.

Takeda was Shibata’s mirror image, heavyset where Shibata had been slim, bearded instead of clean-shaven, immaculately dressed in a white suit instead of dirty overalls. “Half of it,” he allowed. He waved one of his lieutenants—same general height and build as Kamo had been, wearing the same clothes, carrying an identical Kiltek rifle. “Shibata will come out to meet you when you get back.” Takeda patted the man on the arm. “You know what to do then.”

I held up a hand. “My ID and travel papers?”

“When Shibata is dead.”

I shook my head. “Not the deal.”

“You question my honor?” Takeda’s lieutenants all looked fit to burst. How dare I question the honor of a man who’d just gunned down a peace delegation in cold blood? Guess I’m just funny that way.

“Sorry chum,” I gave him a big false grin. “You know how we gaijin have no concept of honor. Goes with the territory.”

That’s the real risk of ethno-centrism folks: Not that people will disagree when you say that you’re different from them, but that they’ll agree with you, and decide that means they don’t have to play by your rules. If your attitude is ‘You will never be one of us,’ then boom, there goes any incentive to try.

Old Takeda gave me the silent cold-eyed glare treatment for a bit, just to save face, but he produced the papers in the end. “Pleasure doing business with you,” I said, and knew if I ever saw him again I was a dead man.

An hour later, I hovered the helicopter over Shibata’s body shop. Slowly brought her down as if to land in the car park outside. Couple of workers came strolling out of the shop, hands raised to shield their eyes against the sun or keep their caps on in the wash of the rotor blades. The fake-Kamo beside me sat, rigid and tense.

Then he was walking out across the asphalt, old Shibata himself. Big grin, thinking his lieutenant was back from the hit on his worst rival. The sniper in my passenger seat raised his Kiltek, sighted and fired. An invisible beam struck Shibata square in the forehead. He staggered a step, then collapsed.

The sniper was grinning beside me. Shifted his aim and fired, and fired again. The two workers closest to Shibata’s body dropped slackly to the ground. Some of the men were running now, others staring about in confusion, a few more were pointing at the copter. The sniper laughed, fired again.

A storage shed at the edge of the car park exploded outwards in a shower of shattered roof tiles and wooden beams. From the explosion strode a six-meter high monstrosity: tree-trunk wide, whirring metal legs, gorilla arms under which multi-barreled machineguns had been strapped, a barrel torso topped with an open-air cockpit. A WorkMech. It raised the two arms towards the copter and fired a double burst—barrels blurring as they spun, giving a high-pitched whine like a runaway sowing machine, spent brass fountaining out the back.

The bullets slammed into the passenger side of the DRACO-3, cracking the glass into a frosted white sheet, tearing silver-rimmed holes through the boom, the engine, the fuel tank. Tearing into my passenger, throwing him against me with a started squawk before he pitched headfirst against the control panel. Might have saved my life, suddenly jerking the control stick as he fell against me so most of the burst missed.

The helicopter was mortally wounded though, slewing about the sky even though I had both hands on the stick, dropping like a stone, thick oily black smoke belching from the engine.

As I dropped, I got a good look at the WorkMech pilot: Uragiri, the second lieutenant who’d hired me to betray his own boss. Looked like I wasn’t the only one doing a bit of double-crossing that day.

Uragiri fired another knitting-needle burst, but the bullets zipped overhead as the smoke I was dumping obscured his vision.

I had one weapon, and one way to use it.

Jammed the stick forward, using both hands, then adding a foot to keep it there, angling the rotor blades downward and forward. The helicopter burst through its own smokescreen meters away from the WorkMech, giving Uragiri a split-second to look up before the two machines crashed together.

The whirring rotor blades sliced him in half, fanning blood and gore across the car park like rain. Then one blade hit the WorkMech metal, snapped and sent the copter pirouetting away, spinning around and around until it crashed into one of the body shop work bays with the scream of tearing metal, throwing me brutally hard against the control panel before finally skidding to a halt.

I think I passed out then. Next thing I knew, the copter was surrounded by dozens of black-suited men, forming an arc with a short, thin, smiling, grey-haired man at its apex, a white coat thrown over his shoulders. Two men hauled me out of the smoking ruin of the helicopter and dragged me before him.

“Glass-sama,” he said, smiling.

“Hashiba kumicho,” I said. This was the man himself: leader of the entire yakuza syndicate on Altair. Probably the most feared man on the planet.

“I see my subordinates have been … overzealous,” he sighed, rubbing at the back of his neck ruefully. “Didn’t know Uragiri had an armed WorkMech. I suspect he harbored ambitions above leadership of the Shibata-kai. My own fault, of course. If the student learns nothing, then the teacher is to blame. I will have words with Takeda.”

I felt sorry for Takeda, then. Just a little.

“But thank you for bringing this to my attention,” Hashiba said. Yup, triple-cross on my part. As soon as Uragiri came to me with his plan to betray his leader, I’d found someone in Hashiba’s inner circle and warned them. They’d had me play along—and intended to catch Uragiri in the act. My impromptu rotating guillotine had saved them the bother. “And you seem to have tied up all the loose ends for me. Very neat, Glass-sama. Now, I feel you will be anxious to leave our little colony on Altair, and given the way dead bodies seem to multiply when you are around, I can’t say I will be sorry to see you go.”

He snapped his fingers and a lieutenant stepped forward. “Take Glass-sama to the spaceport. I believe Takeda-oyabun has already provided him with the necessary documentation.” To me, he said: “Thank you again, Glass sama. I am in your debt.”

Now that’s real power. Shibata or Takeda, they would rather have killed me that owe me anything. Hashiba could acknowledge his debt to me without any cost to himself. Any favor I might ask would be trivial for him to fulfill. “Whatever we can do for you.”

I nodded. “Thanks. I’ll keep that in mind.”

Then, as now, I had a DropShip to catch.

[pensiveswetness]

*clapping LOUDLY* :D

[Kidd]

Very nice. Enough content here that you could've spun it out to a story of its own, frankly.

BTW I sense Richard Morgan has influenced you quite a bit.

The double-crosses here reminds me of tales from the office... wonder what that says about corporate culture...

[snakespinner]

That was an impressive amount of betrayals for a short story. [notworthy] [applause] [cheers]

[Dubble_g]

Still working on the next episode, but thought I'd stop by for a chat.

@pensive: Thanks for that!

@snakespinner: Absolutely. Our man Glass with a hat-trick there. I started out with a double, then realized I'd done those before, so upped it to a triple. The irony is meant to be old man Shibata going on about how honorable the yakuza are, and then they spend the rest of the story back-stabbing each other.

@Kidd: Re length, while I do try to break up some of the longer posts for easier reading, I'll admit I don't pay too much attention to pacing. Might be different if I was doing this for money (and would be open to offers, eh CGL? *finger pistols*), but really this is just me writing whatever ideas come into my head down on paper (OK, on screen), and then hoping other people find them entertaining. If it ain't fun, don't write it, is my motto.

Re influences, this is something I could talk your ear off with VERY little encouragement. You're right though, I'm now re-reading Morgan (e.g. Broken Angels), and I think his use of dialogue and description of action have influenced me. My biggest influence though is definitely Iain M Banks (Use of Weapons in particular), e.g. the cynical/sarcastic main characters, the large-scale worldbuilding, the tongue-in-cheek tone. William Gibson is another, especially the way his characters feel a natural part of the setting.

Blade Runner, Mad Max, Ghost in the Shell and Appleseed are other touchstones. Finally, I've been reading a lot of World War 2 & Vietnam history and fiction for this story too. Len Deighton's Bomber and James Jones's Thin Red Line are probably the two that affected me the most.

[Dubble_g]

EPISODE 3-3: Nosebleed section

In the present:

I’d left the Black Arrows (or what was left of them) in the care of Irina “Nova” Desiderata, under the cover that I was going to Galatea to recruit replacements to fill out our ranks. After the bruising fight on Port Moseby, the Commonwealth had agreed to rotate them back to Summer to rest and refit. Summer was Duke Aldo Lestrade’s personal fief, so I figured they’d be safe there.

Couple of jumps later I was on Galatea.

From a distance, the Circumpolar Star looked more like a cruise ship than a train. Twenty cars long, each car four floors and twenty meters high, a hundred meters long, making the whole train stretch for two kilometers. It ran in the flat, shallow U of a maglev bed, itself supported on titanic ferrocrete pillars 100 meters off the ground.

The line ran arrow-straight from Galatea’s north pole to its south, crossing Galatea’s wide band of equatorial desert at a stately 40 kilometers an hour, taking three weeks to complete its journey, then reversing and following its own path back again (Once the loop had extended right around the planet, until fighting between the SLDF and Amaris forces had left a two-kilometer gap in the loop on the Western Hemisphere that had never been repaired).

It was the plaything of the Inner Sphere’s aristocrats and military nobility, a kind of mobile casino, nightclub, resort spa and desert safari all rolled into one. The lead car was three-quarters covered in gold-tinted glass, with four-story windows that let Great House recruiters and their mercenary clients sip cocktails while being serenaded by classical musicians, watching the great desert dunes slip by in supreme comfort as they negotiated the cost of destruction, the price of death.

Behind the observation car were two flat-topped heliport cars, allowing passengers to board or leave at any time, or to participate in excursions in helicopter or tiltrotor aircraft stored in hangars underneath.

Next were the four dining and entertainment cars, packed with restaurants, casinos, dance halls, karaoke parlors, sports gyms, even an open-air swimming pool at the top of one car. Then ten cars of luxury suites, and finally bringing up the rear were three cars for cargo and storage, as well as the quarters for the crew and staff.

Somewhere on the Circumpolar Star, like a lump of black carbon amid all those glittering diamonds, was Federated Suns recruiter Brett Anderson. The last person my Reina Paradis had contacted before she disappeared.

I’d placed a message with my yakuza acquaintance before hopping the DropShip for Galatea. Old Hashiba had come through, and arranged for a guest invitation and transportation. The former was a thin, business-card sized wafer of platinum with a built-in holo emitter that would display my host’s credentials as well as my own. The latter was a LoCBM Turmfalke tiltrotor aircraft, sort of a narrow pencil suspended between two huge engine nacelles and rotors like windmill blades.

The pilot, a pixie-ish Asian woman with bug-eyed black sunglasses, had noticed my interest in the cockpit and jokingly offered to let me fly. She spent the rest of the flight clutching the arm rests of the co-pilot’s chair as I dove under and around the maglev line, weaving among the ferrocrete pillars, standing the plane on one wing, then the other. Been ages since I’d had so much fun.

At the helipad I was met by a security detail that scanned my invitation, as well as me for any weapons. Dressed only in a grey three-piece suit and tie, I felt strangely naked. “Welcome, Mister Glass,” said the guard. “Your host, Miss Graves, is currently in the observation car. Please carry your invitation with you at all times: It functions as a key to all electronic doors to which you’ve been granted access, and the GPS chip allows us to locate you in an emergency.”

The guard extended his hand as if to shake mine. When I clasped his hand, I felt something hard pressed into my palm. “A pleasure to have you with us, Glass-sama,” the guard said, very quietly, though his face remained in a rigid smile. “There have been a number of other unusual visitors to the Circumpolar Star today. Hashiba-sama would be most … disappointed if anything were to happen to you.” He withdrew his hand, leaving the whatever-it-was in my palm. “The observation car is that way.”

Figured the yakuza would have somebody on board. Crime knows no boundaries. That’s why you find yakuza on Galatea, the triads on Port Moseby or New Avalon, the Bratski Krug on Tharkad and Atreus, the Cosa Nostra everywhere there’s gambling, the Zetas everywhere there’s drugs.

I nodded my thanks, and headed to the exit he’d indicated. Casually put my hand in my inside jacket pocket, which gave me the chance to see what he’d given me: a Nambu Toge hold-out needler, a five-shot flechette gun only effective up to about 10 meters but would puree the insides of anyone at less than that. A thoughtful little gift.

My contact, Laetitia Graves, had skin like burnished mahogany and a dress like molten gold. Her close-cut hair was shaved into abstract whorls and spikes across the back of her skull. “Ah, my foreign guest,” she said as I found my way through the chattering crowd of cocktail-swilling people in the observation car.

She shimmered like flame as she turned towards me. “That old coot Hashiba has been holding out on me. If I’d known his boys looked so delicious, I’d have ordered room service.” She winked and took a sip of something the same ice blue as her eyes, then slowly licked the moisture from her lips.

I shrugged apologetically. “I’m the surprise ingredient,” I said. “Since we’re here, think you can serve up Brett Anderson for me?”

“Ah well, guess there’ll be time for desert later.” Her lips pursed in disappointment. She tilted her head upwards towards the roof. “Balcony, fourth floor. You’re not the only one interested in Anderson today, you know. Mind you don’t bite off more than you can chew.” With a wink and a wave, she disappeared back into the crowd.

Anderson was leaning against the railing of the exterior balcony, as promised, looking much as I remembered him: designer suit, designer stubble, designer smile. A mirror-shaded bodyguard, easily over two meters of swollen muscle that suggested a daily diet of protein and steroids, stood a few paces away, glowering at everyone.

My invitation card unlocked the sliding doors and I stepped outside, feeling the faint rustle of air as the train trundled along. Anderson looked up as I approached.

“Oh hey,” he frowned a little, reaching for a memory. “Eric, my guy, so good to see you again. So nice of you to stop by and say hi. What can I get you?”

I smiled tightly. “I’m looking for Reina Paradis.”

“Fantastic, fantastic,” he beamed at me. “Popular girl, got a lot of people looking for her. Folks from New Avalon. Even got folks from the Combine asking about her, something about a war crime. As it turns out, you’re in luck. I know just where she is. Nothing simpler, my guy. Anything for an old friend.” He waved a casual arm, elegantly vague. “She’s right behind you.”

I slid to one side so I could keep him in my field of view, and glanced back.

“I told you once, I’m Reina Paradis.” She wore a red evening gown that matched the livid red scars crisscrossing the side of her face. Held her fists clenched tightly at her sides, and looked at me with murderous intent. I guess the ComStar Acolyte back on Moseby had cracked and let Anderson’s name slip before I got to him.

“Oh, you two know each other?” Anderson clapped his hands, once, twice, exaggerated. “Oh that is just too precious. Old friends, huh?”

“Well, she’s taken a great interest in my health,” I allowed. “Tried to do a pre-mortem autopsy on me last time we met.”

“Just stay out of my way and you can keep your liver where it is now,” she shot back, then looked at Anderson. “All I want is a location, a location we’re prepared to pay you well for. We had a deal, Anderson.”

“Sure, sure, sure,” Anderson nodded. “Of course we do, doll. And I want you to know how much that means to me, really it does. But doll, thing is, information’s like any other product, supply and demand, am I right? The higher the demand, the higher the price. And looks like we just got a bit more demand right now.” He tilted his head towards me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

“Oh, jeez, I dunno,” he tapped his chin in mock thought, then snapped his fingers. “How about my own private aerospace force?”

“You want the Black Arrows?” Knowing I would say yes, I’d give it to him if it meant getting my Reina back.

“Black Arrows? Great name, really great,” he nodded. “Maybe Anderson’s Arrows? Has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”

The real Reina stepped forward. “Let’s not be hasty,” she said, one leg sliding out the slit of her dress suggestively. She hiked it up a little higher. “There are other ways I can reward you.”

Anderson threw his head back and laughed. “No offense doll, but I can have the real thing any time I want.”

Her face contorted hideously. “I’M THE REAL THING YOU MALKING BASTARD!” Her hand running up her leg came up, holding something cold and glittering that burned along its edge with white fire. A vibro-blade.

With a roar Anderson’s bodyguard lumbered forward, pulling out a small black baton that telescoped out into a nightstick with the flick of his wrist. He swung, Reina ducked under it, knife slashing a red line across the guard’s abdomen. He grunted, reversed his swing, caught her right on the elbow. A jarring blow that made her drop the knife, sending it skittering across the balcony floor.

She glared up at the man, teeth bared in rage. The guard grinned, raised his nightstick over her head. Then glass behind him shattered. Red spots appeared across his chest. The nightclub fell from his nerveless fingers.

Reina wasn’t the only Triad on board. A dozen other guys had also snuck on board, some as guests, some as crew. One of those emptied his Cudazzo revolver into the bodyguard’s back.

The effect on the crowd inside the car was unexpected. For the triads. Half the people, the recruiters, aristocrats, socialites and hangers-on did the expected things: screamed, cried, pleaded, begged, threw themselves on the floor. Looked terrified. The other half, however, were the most ruthless, brutal killers humanity had produced in three centuries of warfare. Some of them, I realize now, didn’t look terrified. They looked, well. Happy. They grabbed anything that came to hand—bottles, knives, corkscrews—and fell upon the triad gunmen like they were a Star League cache.

One triad made it through the crowd, out onto the balcony. I saw Anderson lean back over the railing, grab the lip of the roof and haul himself up, out of sight.

Then the Nambu was in my hand and I was firing. Needler pistols are really quiet, until they’re really noisy. The quiet part comes when you pull the trigger: compressed gas hisses like a spitting snake, ejecting a cloud of ceramic needles out the barrel. The noisy part comes with the screaming, when those needles rip right through some triad gunman’s face. The gunman took a few more steps forward, his face turned into a red and white pulpy mass. I put out a hand and the body thumped blindly into it, then fell backwards.

Quick glance around. Inside the observation car, it was chaos, fighting everywhere. Reina was on her knees. Her vibro-blade was by my foot. No time for revenge; Anderson was up on the roof of the train—if he went, there went my only lead to my Reina. I grabbed the blade, stowed the Nambu, took hold of the roof and pulled.

The roof of the Circumpolar Star was a smooth, gently convex arc, broken by a few bumps of sensor clusters and power cables. Forty kilometers doesn’t sound like much, but when you’re on a slippery, sloping metal roof with no guardrail, it feels plenty fast enough. I staggered cautiously to my feet, and saw Anderson’s silhouette just reaching the far end of the car, near the edge with the next car, the helipads.

“Anderson!” I shouted, and the figure spun around. Raised one hand. There was a sizzle of superheated air. I threw myself down on the roof. Idiot was shooting at me with some sort of pocket laser pistol. I crawled behind a sensor blister. “Anderson, it’s me, Aric!” His next shot scorched the blister casing. Damn, should have said Eric.

I looked back, towards the front of the train. Two triad men were just levering their heads and shoulders onto the roof. Looked back towards Anderson. The fool was still looking my way, pistol held outstretched. Not seeing another two triads coming up behind him.

I found my feet, started charging towards him. “Down, get down!” I shouted. Fired, deliberately high, even though it was well out of range—just wanted to scare him into taking cover. Worked well enough—he ducked down, giving me a clear field of fire at the two men behind him. Hiss, hiss, hiss. Three shots from the Nambu before it clicked empty.

Hit one guy in the leg, made him scream and drop his gun, then he lost his footing and went sliding off the edge of the roof. Cracked his head on the maglev bed ferrocrete before he went falling 100 meters down to the desert floor.

Other guy just smiled, took his Cudazzo in both hands, and aimed. Footsteps from behind me too, the other two approaching. Anderson crouched down low, hands over his head, shouting “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot, don’t shoot,” over and over.

There was an ear-shattering squeal. Starting off loud, progressing to painful before moving straight on to being mind-numbing. The brakes. Belatedly, someone had reacted to the bloodshed in the observation car and slammed on the emergency brakes. The sudden deceleration knocked us all off our feet, sent us sliding, scrabbling across the roof.

One chance.

Grabbed Anderson by the collar as he slid past. Vibro-blade in my other hand. Hit the stud, brought the blade down. Into the roof of the train. Then kicked us both off the side. Blade tearing through the metal skin like butter, but slowing our fall even though I felt like my arm would tear out of its socket. Hit the edge of the ferrocrete bed beside the now-stopped train.

Looked up. Faces appearing over the edge. A whine as a bullet smacked into the ferrocrete beside us. Looked down. A hundred meters of nothing. And something else.

“What now, man?” Anderson looked desperate. “What now?”

“Jump,” I said. And pushed him.

He screamed, but only briefly.

I jumped after. And landed next to him on the roof of the hovering LoCBM Turmfalke. Dorsal hatch was open, Laetitia Graves’ standing there, visible from the waist up, a Zeus rifle held at high port. “I don’t normally pick up my orders,” she shouted over the whine of the tiltrotor blades, then fired a burst towards the train. “In your case I’ll make an exception.”

Locator in the invitation card, you see, let her know where I was.

I just grinned, crawl-dragged Anderson to the hatch and stuffed him head-first past Graves into the plane. “Variety is the spice of life,” I agreed.

[DOC_Agren]

Reina Paradis, is a witch

Mr. Anderson My my what are you involved in

[Dubble_g]

@ DOC_Agren: Let's see if he can dodge this.

* * *

EPISODE 3-4: Winging it

In the present:

The inside of the LoCBM Turmfalke was done up like an executive transport: Plush beige-and-chocolate sofa with a scattering of yarcat-skin cushions on one side, a pair of oversized reclining swivel armchairs on the other. Bit of classical 26th century music piped in, Tourmaline’s “Ode to Oleg Tikonov.”

Brett Anderson sprawled in the middle of the sofa, his multi-million C-Bill hairstyle in disarray and his gigawatt smile lost somewhere over the desert. I sat in one of the armchairs, leaning forward, elbows on my knees.

Laetitia Graves climbed down from the dorsal hatch, strode over to a weapons rack on the back wall and deposited the Zeus rifle there. I noticed there were also—in order of increasing illegality—half a dozen handguns of various shapes and sizes, a laser sniper rifle, and a shoulder-fired recoilless rifle mounted there.

Graves poured three drinks from a bar under the weapons rack, a clear, chilled sake, handed one to me and the other to a numb, unseeing Anderson, before sitting with the last in the other armchair. “Now that we’ve had the appetizer,” she smiled into her sake. “Perhaps it’s time for the main course?”

I cocked my head at Anderson. “How about it Brett? What say you cut the games for once and just tell us where Reina Paradis is? And don’t ask me which one, or I might get annoyed.”

He blinked up at the ceiling a couple of times, slowly seemed to realize where he was. Looked down, and locked gazes with Graves. “You know who I am? Do you? I’m Brett Anderson, chief recruiter for the Federated Suns on Galatea. That’s right, of the Federated-largest realm in the Inner Sphere-Suns. You do not want to mess with me.”

Should have known asking Anderson to play straight was like asking Max Liao to stop being devious or Takashi Kurita to take the stick out of his arse.

Graves sighed. “Oh dear, he’s a bit dull, this one,” she said to me. To Anderson: “We know exactly who you are, Mister Anderson, we know about your wife on Argyle and your mistress in Galatea Hills, and the other mistress at your vacation house. We know about your smuggler friends on Galatea V. We know to the last C-Bill how much you lost at the casinos last month, and how much you embezzled from mercenary contracts to cover it up. Do not think to threaten us, Mister Anderson.”

He swallowed noisily, flashed a forced smile as he rapidly reevaluated the situation. “Hey, hey, of course. You’re business people, right? Always pays to know the competition. I can respect that. Really, I can. Absolutely. So let’s talk like business people, okay? Let’s talk about profit. You know how much this woman is worth? What the triads are willing to pay for her? What the Combine is willing to pay for her after that nuke on Moseby? You get where I’m going here? Fifty-fifty split.” He flapped a disparaging hand in my direction. “Got to be way more than whatever this little guy from a nobody unit can offer you.”

Graves laughed throatily. “The triads are something of competitors, while the people I represent are not exactly. Hm. On speaking terms with the DCMS. Our arrangement with Mister Glass is of a personal nature, not a business one.”

The plane was buffeted by wind, shaking the inside of the cabin. The glasses rattled in their cup holders. Brett stared at Graves a moment, jaw visibly clenched in frustration. Bit of a shock to find there were still things that money can’t buy.

“She contacted you?” I pressed.

He nodded once, reluctantly. “Yeah. Yeah, she did.”

“Why?”

“Said someone was after her. And she wanted. Passage. Back to the Federated Suns.”

“And did you give it to her?”

He was silent, staring at his feet.

“You didn’t.” I said slowly. “You sold her out. Or you’re holding her somewhere. Where?”

In the silence, I reached into my pocket, and took out the vibro-blade I’d picked up on the train. Tossed it up and down in my hand a couple of times without switching it on. “Brett, my old chum, I’m a patient man.” I stopped tossing the knife, held it point towards him at eye level. “Why, I’ve only stabbed or shot six or seven men so far to find Reina. So rather than make it eight, why don’t you. Just. Tell. Me. Where. She. Malking. Is.” I pressed the stud on the blade, feeling it hum to vicious, thirsty life.

“If you kill me, you’ll never find her.”

“Oh don’t you worry about that,” I smiled, weaving the knife in slow, lazy loops, watching his eyes follow it, spell-bound. “I won’t kill you. No matter how much you beg me before the end.”

The pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom. “Hate to spoil the party back there but I’m going to put on a bit of speed. There’s an aircraft out there that’s been trailing us since we left the train. Strap yourselves in, this could get uncomfortable.”

Brett immediately grabbed for the seatbelt underneath the sofa cushions, and cinched it hard against his waist. Graves too, although a little more slowly.

I switched off and pocketed the blade, then pounded up to the cockpit, looked over the pilot’s shoulder at the sensor display. “What is it?” I asked.

She shrugged, pointed at the readout. “Damnest thing. Never seen anything like it.”

I squinted at the icon, scanned the mass, speed and altitude data. Then felt cold. The pilot might never have seen it before, but I had. Half-fighter, half-BattleMech. A Stinger Land-Air ’Mech, LAM for short. About as rare as Takashi Kurita’s smiles, and still produced at exactly one factory in the entire Inner Sphere: Irece. In the Draconis Combine.

“Anderson,” I shouted back into the lounge. “Please tell me you weren’t actually stupid enough to let on to the Combine that you know where Reina is?”

He gave a sickly grin. “Maybe.”

I swore. In fighter mode, the jet-powered LAM could easily catch up to a tiltrotor aircraft like the Turmfalke, then switch to AirMech and blow us to pieces with its triple lasers. “Head for the maglev line,” I told the pilot. “Keep it between us and the LAM so he can’t hit us.”

The pitch of the engines scaled higher as the pilot jammed the stick down, making the aircraft tilt and lurch nose-down, sending my stomach up into my chest. My eyes bounced back and forth between the view out the cockpit and the growing contact on the sensor screen.

The maglev line appeared, a solid line of grey among the undulating ochre of the desert. We were skimming along at maybe 20-30 meters now, kicking up a double fantail of sand as we roared over the dunes. The LAM was almost in range. “We’ll make it,” grunted the pilot between clenched teeth.

She hit the rudder pedals, skidding us from side to side to throw off the LAM’s aim. The maglev’s ferrocrete pillars grew bigger, from toothpicks to solid bars. “We’ll make it.”

Red fire lanced down in front of the cockpit, blowing geysers of sand into the air. The pilot banked instinctively. The LAM flashed overhead, bare meters overhead, then seemed to come apart. The rear of its fuselage hinged down. The sides seemed to bulge and distend, birthing two spindly arms. The fuselage split into legs, thruster jets firing downward, bringing it to a hovering halt.

“Ram it!” I shouted to the pilot. Knew the LAM could avoid us, but hoped making him flinch would buy us time. The LAM went from small dot to looming monstrosity in a split second. It pirouetted back towards us, and fired again. Then skidded almost lazily aside as we blew past.

A kick, one wing hammered down. Looked out the port side, saw a torn red line in its side, guttering orange flames within. “Shut off the fuel line to the port engine!”

The pilot shook her head, both hands clamped to the stick. “We’ll crash on only one prop.”

“We’ll explode if the fuel catches. Bring us down!”

The grainy ocean surface of the desert was coming up alarmingly fast. “I’ll try,” gritted the pilot. “Hold on.”

Just got myself strapped into the co-pilot seat when the belly smacked into the top of a dune. Like being kicked by a giant. We bounced up again. Brief sensation of weightlessness. The horizon disappeared for the cockpit window, then rushed back up again like we were in a diving submarine. Smacked down again with vicious force. There was a tearing, screaming metallic sound from the aft compartment. Sand was clawing at our belly with a million diamond spikes, shaking the whole craft like we were dice in the palm of an Atlas.

And then the noise slowed, dropped in volume. With a final jerk, petered to a stop.

I hit the harness release, fighting the urge just to sit in stunned relief, staggered out the back, the pilot right behind me.
What a sight. Tail of the plane had torn right off, leaving a massive, empty round O of surprise in the back. Anderson was still strapped to the sofa, face white, bleeding from the abdomen. Looked like a shard of glass stuck there.

Graves’ chair had torn loose and was lying a few dozen meters behind us. Couldn’t see if Graves was there or not.

Sauroid, reverberating footfalls from outside. Two legs appeared out the gaping hole in the back of the plane: the LAM, now in BattleMech mode. “Surrender Anderson and the rest of you will not be harmed,” boomed the pilot on the external speakers. I believe this was what’s known—in the mystical and ancient traditions of the Draconis Combine—as “A Lie.”

“You’re not Anderson,” the pilot continued mildly. One arm pointed at something wriggling in the desert. Graves, trying to haul herself up on one broken leg. A laser fired, her scream cut short, body blackening and crumbling in seconds.

The mouth of the laser cannon swung towards us. “Now if the rest of you could just cooperate—augh!”

The first shell from the recoilless rifle dented the side of the head armor. Aside from the weight, the shoulder-fired ones are fairly straightforward to use; as the name suggests, there’s no recoil. Put the back end on your shoulder, grab the trigger, aim and fire. Just make sure there’s nobody standing behind you.

The Turmfalke pilot rammed another shell in, slapped me on the back. Ready. Aimed and fired. Full-throated roar as the shell’s rocket fired, blowing a torch of flame two meters behind me. The shell screamed through the air, blasting a hole in the front of the LAM’s head as it turned in surprise. The ’Mech staggered to one side.

Reloaded. Fired. Hit just above the last shell, ferroglass cracked and crumbling. LAM pilot fired reflexively, unaimed. Too high, just sliced through the top of the plane. Reloaded. Fired. Round black hole punched into the cockpit. Inside of the ferroglass splattered in red.

The LAM remained locked in position, like one of Medusa’s petrified statues.

I dropped the recoilless rifle, let it thump to the desert floor. Followed the pilot back into the wreck of the aircraft. The pilot bent over Anderson’s still form on the sofa, feeling for a pulse. Shook her head grimly.

“He’s dead.”

[cpip]

I remain terribly amused. And yes, I was right about who was in that chair, though I didn't expect what happened next, or any of the rest of this.

Kudos for bringing a LAM into this wild, crazy ride!

[Kidd]

@Kidd: Re length, while I do try to break up some of the longer posts for easier reading, I'll admit I don't pay too much attention to pacing.

Pacing's fine. I meant the plot content of a typical post of yours could easily clock in double the wordcount in the hands of others. Kudos.

Re influences

Your protag might as well be named Takeshi Kovacs frankly :D Now I want to look into Iain Banks' work, sounds promising.

[mikecj]

A LAM... wowsers.

[DOC_Agren]

Congrads you just captured a Stinger LAM

But now you have to find "Reina Paradis" and you lost your best lead

[Tegyrius]

That's okay. I'll bet Hashiba will be willing to accept a LAM in exchange for losing Graves' services.

[snakespinner]

A LAM could buy a lot of information or in the hands of a skilled SF operative obtain that information and cause momentous amounts of trouble.
Very nice touch there. ;)

[Dubble_g]

You know, it's odd, this thread averages about 30 views per post, but I still kind of feel like I'm sharing a story with a group of six guys. Now I know what everyone likes: LAMs. So naturally I'm going to follow up on this triumph with a post about ... you guessed it ... two people talking.  #P

@Kidd: Oh dear, I do hope not. Lots of things to like about Morgan's books, but for me the characterization of Kovacs isn't one of them--too brooding and serious for my taste. I'm aiming for somewhere in between Horza (Consider Phlebas) and Zakalwe (Use of Weapons).

* * *

EPISODE 3-5: A regimented lifestyle

Moons and smugglers and pirates. My life would have been so much simpler, if it hadn’t been for moons and smugglers and pirates.

In the past:

The old man on the bench by the canal was nothing much to look at. Short, neat man, evidently aged and worn clothes carefully mended with close-spaced stitching, thinning grey hair brushed back arrow-straight from his balding pate. Magazine tucked under one arm. Chin fallen on his chest, rising and falling in gentle, wheezing snores.

You’d never look at him twice, thinking him some history teacher perhaps, or else an accountant, a tour guide at one the less well-known museums. You’d never think this was one of the deadliest assassins ever produced by the Free Worlds League, but that was precisely because he was so nondescript. He could become invisible just by standing there, could be holding a man-pack particle cannon and your brain would still tell you to ignore him and look for the real killer.

Only thing out of place in this image was two bottles of ouzo lying on the bench beside him, one empty, one full.

“Major Kucera,” I said, and nudged him with my foot. Then louder: “Major Anton Kucera.”

The old man woke with a start, a lifetime of training coming online in a flash, causing him to lash out with deadly speed and precision. If he’d been armed with a knife, I’d have been maimed, quite possibly killed. As he was armed with a copy of the previous month’s Bird Fancier magazine, so my injuries after his slash across the ribs were a touch more survivable.

“Relax, old man. You look like you’ve seen a ghost.” I threw myself into the bench next to him. Put my arms up on the backrest.

“Haven’t I?” Kucera stared at me for a few moments, then reached out with a tentative finger, and poked me in the arm, once, then again slightly more firmly. “Feel pretty solid for a dead guy,” he grunted. Balled his hands into fists and rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “What time is it, anyway?”

“Time you stopped drinking.”

“I’m not drinking,” he said huffily, picking up and inspecting the empty ouzo bottle with owlish wisdom. Let it fall back on the bench with a disappointed clink. “I’m enjoying my retirement.”

“How’s that working out?”

“Fine until you showed up,” he grumbled. Made the sign of the cross at me, then shrugged. "Just checking," he mumbled.

Together we watched the tourist boats and barges putter slowly up and down the canal, pursued by flocks of multicolored birds cawing to one another in aerial excitement. Sunlight outlined each gentle wave in a sparkling halo, and the trees looked down and nodded and rustled their approval.

A cyclist went by, following the path along the side of the canal. Then two women, joggers, in marvelously form-fitting athletic wear going the other way. One threw me a wink and a wave as she bounced past. Lifted a hand in a half-wave reply.

It was. Peaceful.

Time was, this seemed like the worst life to me. To spend all your days in one little corner of the galaxy, going through your daily routine with same people, day in, day out. But this wasn’t so bad. Give it time, maybe I could have forgotten.

Almost gave it up right there. Leave the vendetta, let the dead lie. But there were ghosts that day, of Morgana and Merlin, of Guinevere and Lancelot, even Tristan and Gawain. Driving me forward, tearing me out of the soma haze the landscape tried so desperately to wrap around me.

“Figured you were in for life,” I said at last.

“Me too,” he admitted. “The Corps had different ideas.” Kucera had been an instructor when I joined the Eagle Corps. He tilted his head up, where the faint, almost transparent outline of Atreus’s moon Wendigo was visible, even in the daytime sky. “New man upstairs, cleaning house. Most of the old hands are gone now.”

“Colonel Yildiz?”

“Shuttle accident.”

I watched him carefully. “Accident?”

He nodded, still watching the moon. “Accident,” he repeated. “They do happen, you know. New guy, Vukovic, local lad. Wanted a fresh start, in with the new, out with the old. And here I am.” He kept his head tilted up, but his eyes slid to find mine. “And here you are, Alexander.”

Oh, yeah, well. That’s my real name. My little brother couldn’t say it when he was younger, so Alexander became Sandy, glass is made from sand, and voila: My new name.

“Here I am,” I agreed.

“Heard you were in for life, too. Emphasis on the past tense.”

“Reports of my death etcetera.”

“Gawain? Guinevere? Lancelot?” A long pause. Then, slightly more quietly. “Morgana?”

I shook my head.

He looked away for a long moment, so I couldn’t see his face, shaking his head. His voice took on the rough, coarse edge of emotion harshly bitten off. “Then why are you reporting to a drunken old bum, instead of your new commanding officer?”

“Oh, the usual ghost things. Haunting old acquaintances. Thirsting for the blood of those who wronged me.”

Kucera turned back and squinted at me. “There many of them, are there?”

I shook my head. “No, I don’t think so.” Closed my eyes a moment. Seeing Morgana there, like a fool I’d been in love with her, so utterly out of my league. Merlin, like a brother. Gawain, cold and stern as a father. Opened my eyes again. “Someone tipped off the Combine though, Major. There’s a mole in the Corps. Someone who knew we were going to Altair, someone who could send a message to the Combine before we arrived. That’s a fairly short list.”

“Very,” he nodded, sadly. “At a rough estimate I’d say it’s got about, oh, I dunno, roughly … one name on it.” Sucked his teeth. “Timing fits too well, doesn’t it?”

“It does,” I agreed. “In with the new, out with the old.” Crystallized a suspicion that had been growing inside me, ever since that day. At first, I’d thought it had to be Colonel Yildiz, impossible as that had seemed, but now learning of his death, of his replacement, that crystal became hard-edged certainty.

Kucera nodded toward the moon. “Up there?”

“Still have connections? Can you help me? Get me in there?”

“Alex,” said Major Kucera, suddenly sounding all of his 60 years. He slapped the Bird Fancier magazine onto my lap. “Alex, don’t do this. Maybe Vukovic did betray your mission, maybe he didn’t. Doesn’t matter. You’re alive now, son, that’s all that counts. In 100 years, there’s nobody in the Inner Sphere who’ll remember this, one way or the other. So sit a while. Read up on birds. Or run after that girl just now, and tell her you realized you absolutely had to get her name or you knew you’d regret it for the rest of your life. Choose life. Cause all that’s waiting for you up there is death.”

I shrugged. “Death is waiting for us down here as much as up there. That’s one of life’s few certainties.”

“Look, Alex.” Kucera shifted around on the bench so he could face me directly. “Humanity is a bit like a solar system, you know? Here, in the center, that’s our House leader, around whom everyone revolves.” Kucera pointed towards Atreus’s star. “In orbit around him—or her—are the nobles, some lesser, others greater. Each with their own retinues of satellites, rings, moonlets and cosmic dust, dragging us all along in their wake, locked into these ever-repeating patterns by the pull of money and power. What to do? Learn to live happily in the orbit assigned to you. What else can you do? Escape gravity’s pull like some Periphery lordling, cast off into the cold emptiness of the void between stars, or be pulled down into the gravity well and be crushed into nothing.”

“Maybe you’re right,” I nodded. “Maybe it’s just a matter of accepting what life hands you. Or maybe. You can fall, a shooting star, and know that if nothing else, at least your passing has been marked. Or. If you hit the right place, at the right angle, at the right speed, maybe more than that. It was an asteroid—a flyspeck of dust on the cosmic scale—that killed the dinosaurs.”

Kucera looked at me grimly. “That what you are, son?” he asked. “You the flying space rock that’s going to shatter the moon? How many more will die if that happens? I won’t do anything that weakens the League.”

“Weakens the League?” I laughed bitterly. “More than sending six men and women, men and women you trained, sending them to lonely, cold, useless deaths?” I threw up my hands. Gave up. Handed him back his magazine. Stood, slowly. “You’re right, forget it Major. You’re right. Maybe I’ll go find that woman, tell her, like what you said. Might make her day, if nothing else. Add a bit of sunshine to the world, instead of darkness. Truth is, she reminds me a little of Morgana.”

Kucera was blinking up at me, at first I thought because it was so bright. Then saw him wipe away a tear. “She was one of the best.”

“She was.”

“I trained her, you know, taught her everything I knew. Knew she was something special.”

“She was.” Stuck my hands in my pockets. “Something special.”

“You were in love with her, weren’t you?”

“Think we all were, Major.” Gave him a wry smile. “Even you?”

“Like a father.” He nodded once, slapped his knee, hard. “Like a father.”

I sighed. “Just another comet, huh? Wandered too close to a star, got burned. But hey, like you said, in a century this’ll all be forgotten.” Looked down at him, then around at the canal, the boats, the oblivious birds. “Enjoy your retirement, Major.”

“Hold on a minute, Alex, one thing before you go.” He put old a hand to stop me, still surprisingly strong. He lifted up the second bottle of ouzo. Unscrewed the cap and raised it towards me. “To Morgana, and the rest.” He took a long swig, coughed into the back of his hand, then handed it to me.

“To Morgana,” I said, tipping the bottle to the sun, then the moon. “And all the other shooting stars.” Felt the alcohol burn its way down, like a hurt, like a memory.

Kucera took the bottle back. Slowly screwed the lid back on. “A shuttle called the Coriolis Comet, landing pad six, five o’clock. I know the pilot.” Looked like he was going to say something else, then just shook his head. “He used to be a smuggler. He’ll get you in.”

[Kidd]

You know, it's odd, this thread averages about 30 views per post, but I still kind of feel like I'm sharing a story with a group of six guys.

Think maybe 10 of those are web bots.

“A shuttle called the Coriolis Comet, landing pad six, five o’clock. I know the pilot.” Looked like he was going to say something else, then just shook his head. “He used to be a smuggler. He’ll get you in.”

17,000 credits, myself, the boy and 2 droids, no questions.

[2ndAcr]

 Oh I read them...............just don't have any serious comments to make is all.