The Day When Heaven Was Falling

[Spite]

I read this as well. Every post, every great story.

The post verification is just too much of a hassle.

[DOC_Agren]

Think maybe 10 of those are web bots.

or WOBBIE looking for hidden messages }:)

[snakespinner]

Be reasonable, there's only 23 bots following this story. ::) >:D O0

[Dubble_g]

@Kidd: See, I made a crack about bots in one of my other threads, and everyone was memeing about it for the rest of the story.

I've learned my lesson. You're all wonderful, real human beings, especially you, michael11899181!

@2ndacr and Spite: Great to hear from you guys! Not trying to discourage people from lurking; just commenting there seems to be a pretty tightly-knit group that follows the fan fiction posts.

Still scribbling the next episode...

[smcwatt]

Not a bot, but not one for typing much, either. I am enjoying a story about aero jocks rather than mech jocks. However, once Maverick & Ice Man show up, the carcharhiniform shall be truly leapt over. That way lies madness.

SMc

[XaosGorilla]

I was under the impression that it had already been established that I am one of those bots....

I have been checking in and reading every couple of days. 

[mikecj]

If we're all reading this- are we a botnet? ???

[Dubble_g]

Oh good lord, this has turned into a reverse "I'm Spartacus" scene. (Or "I'm Brian" scene, given the number of Monty Python fans there seem to be). Quick, I'd better put something up to distract them.

This turned into another long one, so here's part one.

* * *

EPISODE 3-6: A division of labor (Part I)

In the present:

There are times in one’s life, times when one is beset by failures and setbacks, when the galaxy itself seems to fold space and time like a rug, just to catch your foot and trip you up, those are those times when you just have to take a deep breath, hold it in a few seconds, let it out slow.

And then scream “GOD. DAMMIT.” Up at the sky, as loud as your lungs can manage. I highly recommend also falling to your knees and pounding the sand in frustration.

Doesn’t help none, but does convey your displeasure with the universe in convincing style.

Those times are blessedly few and far between, but there was one, right there, in the middle of the deserts of Galatea, standing in a ragged hole torn in a wrecked aircraft, at the foot of a disabled LAM, next to a man—perhaps one of the only people who’d known where one of the few human beings I still cared about was—staring sightlessly up at the clear, turquoise sky. A slightly, I don’t know, disappointed look on his face.

“Don’t look at me like that,” I told the corpse. “Your own damned fault.”

The pilot gave me a strange look, then clambered back up into the cockpit. I could hear her voice, talking indistinctly, someone replying with crackling, digitized distance.

I levered myself back to my feet. Two deep breaths. There had to be some clue, some trace, some trail we could follow to find Reina again. If Anderson had trapped or imprisoned her, he hadn’t done it alone. Find the accomplices, find Reina.

I emptied his pockets—yes, I know, no respect for the dead, add that to my long list of crimes—found his handheld communicator, a timepiece, his Circumpolar Star invite, his biometric ID and credit card. I used my stolen vibro-blade to hack the invite to pieces and destroy its GPS tracker. The ID said nothing I didn’t already know: name, address, nationality and occupation, age, height and weight and hair and eye color, fingerprint, retinal scan, blood type.

Tried the communicator next, flipped through its address book. Evidently this was the one he used for pleasure, not business. Long list of names, almost all of them female, with numbers next to them: Adrienne 3.5, Ayalee 4, Batira 3, Becky 1.5 (ouch, sorry Becky), Caroline 3.5, Charlize 4.5, Dizzy 3, Evangeline 4.5, Fiona 4, Five—that was a weird one, maybe the name was the score—Gina 2.5, Helena 3, Imogen 3, Kaori 4, Khaleesi 4, Marlene 4.5. Anderson was a busy man. No Reina though.

I tossed the communicator back on the body, disgusted.

The pilot wandered back from the cockpit. “Made a call,” she said, and went over to stand at the foot of the immobile LAM. Shading her eyes and looking up at it, in wonder maybe, or just wondering how they’d get it back to Galatea City.

“What now then?”

The pilot turned around and shrugged. “Sit tight and wait. Hashiba’s crew is sending someone to get us. Shouldn’t be too long. We’ll be fine as long as smugglers don’t find us first.”

“They dangerous?” I asked, thinking of the armory the plane still had tacked up to the wall.

“Only if they think they can get away with it,” she said, reaching out to pat the LAM’s leg. “They’ll steal this, if they can, and whatever else they can carry from the plane. Sell it to black market traders. Kidnap you for ransom too, if you’re rich and famous. You famous?”

I indicated the suit I was still wearing. “This is a rental.”

“Ah, well then,” the pilot nodded. “No need to worry; they won’t kidnap you then.” She winked. “Only kill you.”

Something itched there, a memory, and how it connected with the present.


In the past:

The Coriolis Comet looked like your standard ST-46, though its belly was a patchwork of black and grey where worn heat tiles had been replaced, and its once-purple paintwork had faded to a smudge-stained lavender. It ran one of the milk runs to Wendigo, carrying up food, water and other essentials, taking down waste on the return leg: not to the Eyrie itself, of course, but to the zero-G marine training base.

Her captain was named Hal Vinewood. Big guy, with the wild-eyed stare of a man who’d probably spent too much of his youth being a little too experimental with his own brain chemistry. Disconcertingly twitchy smile. “Any friend of Anton,” he said, smile appearing and vanishing like a broken LED. “Used to be a small-time crook ‘til he found me and hired me to run guns for Liberation units on places like Pencader. Owe him this much.”

I recognized his accent. “You’re from Andurien?”

That got another gap-toothed smile. “Hey man, home isn’t a place, it’s a state of mind, a feeling. Home is family and people.” He nodded towards the cockpit where his co-pilot, a woman named Ivy, was running through a pre-flight check and studiously pretending I didn’t exist. “People like Anton and Ivy, you know?”

I nodded, thinking of the people who’d brought me to this point, whose memories stuck their spurs in me every time I felt like giving up. “You know why I’m going?”

“I can guess. Morgana was my niece.” He ambled over to a storage box while I stood there, stunned. “Home is family,” he told the box, then turned around. “Here, put this on.”

He tossed me a large, heavy package. Inside there was a body suit, more shadow than physical thing, weirdly frictionless beneath my fingers. Touch-activated fasteners at the throat and either wrist, with a hood that covered the entire face except the eyes. Matching boots and gloves. Finally, a face-covering mask with cyclopean visor, offering three-sixty low-light and IR vision, air filtration and even its own internal air supply.

“You want me to put this on now?” I asked him.

“Naw. But I would put it on before we land,” he grinned lop-sidedly, then giggled a little, high-pitched. “Unless you’re real good at holding your breath.”

I stopped with the mask halfway up to my face. “Why? Where am I going to be hiding?”

He pointed behind me. I turned, saw a stenciled label on the bulkhead: Waste Water.

“Is that…”

He nodded, shoulders shaking a little with laughter. “Sure is. IR/ECM sneak suit keeps you off the scanners, and they’ll never look for you there themselves. Hell, you’d have to be crazy to go in there.”

Well. Quite.


In the present:

“Smugglers?” I repeated, and the pilot nodded. “What is there to smuggle around here?” I waved my hand towards the endless sand dunes, the endless acres of nothing that there were to smuggle.

The pilot sat down on the foot of the LAM, leaning back against the leg. “Ah, you’d be surprised,” she said. “Galatea’s a mercenary hub, so there’s a huge market for black market military tech. Some of it they smuggle in from other systems, some of it they just straight up steal. Plenty of merc units come out to the desert to train, to test new equipment, even to settle their differences, and some of their stuff always goes missing.” She patted the ’Mech foot under her. “Like Land-Air ’Mechs. Plus there’s all the old favorites: drugs, guns. People, either willing or unwilling.”

I remembered my own trip as human cargo on the Coriolis Comet, back on Atreus. The waste tank on your standard shuttle was tiny—not much waste water with only a dozen passengers and crew, and flight times of 10-20 hours, tops. Curled in the fetal position, in total darkness, aware only of the distant rumble of the drives and the press of deceleration as we’d come into land. Hoping we’d arrive before my air supply ran out.

“Willing or unwilling?”

“Yep. Kidnapping and extortion are quite a racket. Slipping people across the borders to the League or Combine, even to the Fed Suns, is another.”

The itch was back, that prickling at my scalp that said I was on to something. “What about the yakuza? Are you on friendly terms with the smugglers too?”

“Nah, not really. They don’t take well to organization, and we’re all about the hierarchy. Most of them work in small, independent bands, extended families sometimes. Though there’s rumored to be a big gang based out on Galatea V.”

That was the second time I’d heard about that planet today. Who’d said something? Anderson? Graves? Hadn’t seemed important at the time. And something else. More recent.

I bent back over Anderson, picked his communicator up again. Flicked through the address book.

Dizzy, Evangeline, Fiona.

Five.

Pressed the number. Listened to it ring. Click.

A voice at the other end. “Yeah, Anderson?” Unfamiliar, but male, impatient. “You make a deal for the woman yet?”

Cut the connection. Five. Galatea V—Galatea Five. What had Graves said? ‘We know about your smuggler friends on Galatea V.’

Loosened my tie, threw it onto the fuselage floor. My jacket followed. Rolled up my sleeves. Went to the weapons rack in the aircraft fuselage, moving fast, grabbed the first gun I found. Sunbeam, my old favorite. Tapped the charge indicator, confirmed it was green. Strapped it to one hip: good to go. Next one: Nambu auto pistol. Slid the magazine out, checked it was loaded, slapped it back home again. Felt the weight of it, the balance, tried looking down the sights. Slid back the receiver. Other hip.

“So, hey,” I called over my shoulder, wrestling down the sniper laser. A Kiltek, just like the ones on Altair. Slung it by the strap, over my shoulder. “Just supposing I did want to meet some smugglers, what would be the quickest way of doing it?”

[Kidd]

Niiiiiice.

I don't speak fluent lounge lizard. What the hell does a "0.5" denote?

P.s. Bwian, do we have a Bwian?

[snakespinner]

That soldier from the Marian Hegemony, Bigus Dikus will be the star of your next story.
He was in Life of Bwian as well.

[Dubble_g]

@Kidd: A .5 indicates a score in between the two intergers: a 3.5 is between a 3 and 4. This gives a 5-point scale greater granularity. I had a roommate who did precisely this. We don't have a Bwain, but we do have a XaosGowilla and a DOC_Agwen.

@Snakespinner: My my, BTech does have some very inside-jokey names doesn't it? I remember one unit was led by Colonel Hardy Harrharr. 

Part II today. Part III to come.

* * *

Part II

In the present:

Turned out the fastest way to meet smugglers was to sit right where I was. Our crashed tiltrotor and its friendly neighborhood Stinger LAM were the biggest bits of debris for hundreds of kilometers in every direction. As Galatea’s sun began to set and the sky elided from turquoise into indigo, a small convoy of one-man ATVs, dirt bikes, jeeps and armored cars appeared at the top of a nearby ridge.

I’d climbed up to the top of the LAM, and from my perch on its shoulder watched them cautiously edge closer through the Kiltek’s scope. One man standing in the roof hatch of one of the armored cars seemed to be the leader, a wiry little guy with pencil-thin moustache, in a poncho and dusty goggles pushed up onto his forehead, where they held back a wild tangle of curly hair. His face filled the scope, seemingly close enough to reach out and touch. I shifted my aim slightly, putting the scope crosshairs over a pair of binoculars the man held in one hand, and pulled the trigger.

The binoculars went spiraling away into the night sky, a neat orange hole drilled through the center, and the car jerked to a sand-slide halt. The man lost his balance, flipped out of the cupola, rolled down the car’s windscreen and landed in a heap on the sand dune in front of the radiator grille.

“That’s far enough,” I shouted. “Who are you?”

“Mighty fallen,” he man shouted back, voice muffled by the poncho that had fallen over his head.

“Yes, I can see that,” I said testily. “Now, who are you?”

The man sat up, pulling his poncho down to more or less the right place. “No, that’s our name: Red Savage’s company, The Mighty Fallen. Has kind of a double meaning, see?”

“Smugglers?”

“Free agents,” he said, offended. Slowly he stood up, brushing dust from his trousers and poncho. He’d lost his goggles in the fall, and peered around in the ground for them.

“In that case, I’ve got a proposition for you,” I shouted. In the scope, the man was still turning in searching circles. “Behind you, two paces. No, little more to the right. That’s it.”

“Ta,” said the man, scooping up the googles, shaking the sand from them. “A proposition?”

“Yeah. I want to know where the base on Galatea V is.”

“What’s in it for me?”

“Well. How about I don’t kill you?” I fired again, blowing out one of the armored car’s headlights, perhaps three centimeters beside the man’s arm.

The man jumped a little, and replied in half a heartbeat. “Y-y-y-okay.”

“And what security measures there are.”

“Sure.”

“And a floor plan of the base.”

“Gotcha.”

“And how many men there are, what weapons they have, and where prisoners are kept.”

“You got it.”

“And the hand of Romano Liao in marriage.”

“No pro … what?”

“Just checking.” I lifted up the barrel of the Kiltek, butt braced against my hip. “You know, I thought you’d take more convincing.”

“Are you kidding?” the man laughed. “Been hoping someone would take out that old bastard Savage for years.”

Machiavelli might have said it was better to be feared than loved, but trust me, being feared isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There is, for example, the incentive it gives your people to either side with your enemies, or at least stand aside when they come knocking. Or, if you’ve been especially naughty, come after you themselves. Eh Vukovic?

“Fair enough,” I said. “The boys will be disappointed though.” I put two fingers in my mouth and whistled. As I slug the sniper rifle over my shoulder and slip down a chain-link ladder from the LAM’s head to the ground, a dozen heavily-armed yakuza emerged from the aircraft fuselage and rose like phantoms from hidden pits surrounding the smugglers.

“Oh, whoah, hey, how’s it going guys. Nice to see you.” The leader turned in a circle, taking in the laser rifles, auto grenade launchers and recoilless rifles being held in his general direction. He looked up as I approached him, and whispered “Who are these guys?”

“Think of them as potential business partners,” I said, and slapped him on the back, then held out my hand. “Aric Glass.”

“Derek Forrest,” he replied, shaking my hand. Up close, I could see he had a short-circuit smile and bright, blue-eyed stare that reminded me a lot of Vinewood.

I swept my arm in the direction of the fuselage. “Won’t you come into my office?” I said grandly. “Oh, and one more thing.”

He took a step towards the aircraft, stopped mid-stride. The smile flickered off, then returned. “Yeah?”

“You got anyone who can fix a hole in a LAM’s head?”


In the past:

“Who the hell are you?” asked Vukovic.

Alarmed, but not scared. Not yet. The black sneak suit and pistol leveled at his head were fairly strong signs I wasn’t friendly, but then I hadn’t shot him. Not yet.

“Former member of the club,” I told him, with a tight smile. “Before your time, if only just.”

It had taken hours of crawling after I’d unscrewed the waste water tank lid and slithered off the Coriolis Comet, thankfully dry (sneak suits are hydrophobic—not much use in having a stealth suit you can’t use anytime it rains), through the marine base armory (found a rack of Sunbeams—first one with a depleted power pack, but the charge on the second was green), through Eyrie maintenance tunnels and ventilation shafts, until finally, I’d reached the commander’s quarters.

He set his drink down slowly on the desk. “If you’re an assassin, you’re either incompetent or an idiot,” he said. “The longer you sit and talk, the more chance there is you’ll be discovered. So what is it you want?”

Like Anton had said, we were all prisoners of power’s gravitational pull. By that logic, Vukovic’s betrayal had been as inevitable and blameless as an avalanche, just what was necessary to maintain the trajectory of his career.

More than anything, I wanted to defy that certainty.

“Sit down. I want to tell you a story.”

If society was just the mathematical product of people’s mass and motion, then my presence there was just as inevitable as Vukovic’s betrayal, the equal and opposite reaction demanded by power’s peculiar physics. A distorted and distended military snapping back into its rightful shape.

For while Generals and Colonels get to kill their own men as readily as the enemy’s—a necessary feint, a useful diversion, a time-winning last stand—they do so based on the promise that the lives they’re spending are bought with the currency of victory, security, the safety of one’s comrades and fellow citizens. Betray that promise, and your rank no longer protects you.

“A story.” He slowly sank into one of the chairs on the opposite side of the desk. “You are mad.”

“In the sense of ‘very upset,’ sure,” I agreed. “In the sense of ‘crazy,’ well I guess that’s a matter of perspective. Consider this krvna osveta, a blood vendetta. Some people might call that crazy, I guess.”

“Krvna osveta?” he sneered, but in our neo-feudal times vendetta among noble houses was something of a tradition (of course, it didn’t apply to commoners like me, but hush). I’d deliberately used the Serbian word for it, playing on Vukovic’s own heritage. “You won’t get away—”

“Can we skip the empty, formulaic threats?” I interrupted. “As I said, I’d like you to listen to a story. It’s an unfinished one, and the ending depends largely on how closely you listen.”

“Go to hell.”

“Now, now, Colonel,” I got up and walked around to his side of the desk, and sat at the corner. “It’s not a long story, and I think you’ll find it’s quite familiar. You see, there once were seven eagles who were sent to steal something from their enemies, only when they arrived they found the enemy had been told that they were coming, and all but one of them died. Ring any bells?”

Vukovic shifted slightly in his seat, his eyes narrowing. “Altair?”

I nodded encouragingly.

He drew breath. “Captain Ezekiel Juhasz was a fine soldier, and I know he would have gladly sacrificed—”

“The three last things "Gawain" Juhasz did were shoot Merlin, murder a child, and try to kill me,” I snapped. “He didn’t sacrifice anything, and while I hated him for it at the time, I realize now he was a victim of circumstance. He should never have been put in that position.”

Vukovic scoffed. “If he cracked under pressure, that is hardly my fault. What do you want me to do about it?”

“You tipped off the Combine.”

“Nonsense. The mission failed, these things happen son. I repeat: What do you want me to do about it?”

“I want them remembered,” I said, leaning towards him. “I want them recognized. Give them all medals. Look after their families. I want you to take responsibility for what you did.”

His smile was steel. “What I did was nothing more than—”

He exploded out of the chair, grabbing the barrel of the Sunbeam while chopping down on my wrist with his other hand. Twisted the Sunbeam free, in the same motion his elbow caught me in the chest, knocking me back off the desk and onto the floor.

He stood over me, panting, Sunbeam aimed at my head.

“You little idiot,” he smiled. “Krvna osveta? Revenge, for your poor dead friends? You idiot. Death is part of the Corps, son, and the only way an eagle learns to fly is being thrown from the nest.”

“You admit it, then? You betrayed the mission?”

“I did. I did what I had to. It was a stupid, futile mission and I minimized the risk to the Corps and the League.”

“You killed them, sure as you pulled the trigger yourself.”

“I killed them. And speaking of pulling the trigger.” He squeezed the Sunbeam. It beeped dully at him. He squeezed again, again.

“Just wanted to hear you say it yourself,” I admitted, and took the other, loaded Sunbeam out of its holster in the small of my back.

Vukovic was drawing breath to shout for help when I fired, so the wide beam blasted his lower jaw into two large fragments that blew away from his face and ricocheted against either wall of the office, before punching out the top of his skull and pasting most of its contents across the ceiling.

I stood up, took the recording device clipped to my belt and extracted the data crystal, and placed it carefully in the middle of the desk.

They say revenge is an empty endeavor, for it does not restore the dead nor heal the living, but let me be honest, in that instant I felt only satisfaction. If revenge was such a hollow pursuit, we would not love it so—but instead it’s coded into us, that red-jawed atavistic urge to take an eye for an eye. It was done, and I did not feel sorry.

The door to the office crashed open. Two guards stood there, submachineguns held to their shoulders. I slowly raised my hands.

“Alex?” said one of the guards, looking from me to the body on the floor. Anger and confusion warring on his features. “Why?”

“A blood feud,” I said, simply. “The crystal explains.” I indicated it with my eyes, keeping still, my hands where they were.

The guard plugged the crystal into the noteputer on Vukovic’s desk while the other covered me. Listened to the recording, to Vukovic’s voice. He nodded. “Gdikiomos,” he said. Greek, means the same as krvna osveta, a vendetta. “We’ll give you five minutes. Go.”

As Red Savage would find out too, Machiavelli was wrong: it is better to be loved than feared, because it’s pretty much guaranteed that if you’re in any position of authority people are going to fear and hate you just on basic principle, while there is zero guarantee that anyone will love you enough to lift a finger when those people come calling.

[Kidd]

@Kidd: A .5 indicates a score in between the two intergers: a 3.5 is between a 3 and 4. This gives a 5-point scale greater granularity.

Do you work for Microsoft too?

[pensiveswetness]

I now know two new words, words that mean the same thing... *claps*

[Dubble_g]

@Kidd: No, I lived with two Australians for a year.
@Pensive: BattleTech is easily the most educational 31st century giant robot combat tabletop game on the market!

Here it is, third and final part (and the reason this ep took so long to write...having too much fun with this)

* * *

Part III

In the present:

Planets come in an astounding variety of sizes, compositions and colors, but when you get down to it, really there’re just five types: hot dry ball, cold dry ball, wet, frozen or gassy. Venus is a hot ball, Mars is a cold one, Earth is wet, Europa is frozen, Jupiter is gassy. You get the picture.

Galatea V was as dry as a Kurita’s sense of humor, as cold as a Katrina’s husband, as big as Hanse Davion’s ego, as full of holes as Liao’s claim to be First Lord, and at 0.7G had all the gravity of a Marik threat. The whole package was wrapped in a thick haze of carbon dioxide and nitrogen that made flying interesting and breathing impossible. However, what made pilots weep was what made smugglers smile, for it was those very clouds that kept prying eyes away from whatever they did down on the surface.

So there was nobody to see when a deep fissure off the planet’s Polar Depression was suddenly illuminated in staccato flashes of light. The snug blanket of atmosphere didn’t carry sound very well, but if you’d listened carefully, what you would have heard was this: Crash. Bang. The howl of a jet engine. Some screaming, followed by a lot of choking. The crackle of laser fire. Bit more screaming, followed by more crashing, gradually growing in volume and frequency until it was more or less constant, before abruptly cutting off.

I can’t claim to be an expert on Land-Air ’Mech pilot training, save to say that I’m fairly sure most manuals do not recommend becoming self-taught while flying a hastily-patched LAM through subterranean tunnels. This method, however, does have the wonderful effect of focusing your attention.

My lessons had started out unpromisingly, as I did my level best to kill myself switching from aerospace to AirMech configuration on approach to the Mighty Fallen’s base. Only the planet’s low gravity had saved me from decorating the Polar Depression with bits of Glass, but after a short but sharp bit of plummeting, the LAM switched configurations and I had things more or less under control.

The AirMech handled a bit like a wing in ground effect vehicle, which was handy to know if you’d ever flown one of those. I hadn’t, so. Yeah.

Flew down the fissure with only a few minor bumps into various rocky obstructions. Gained entry by the simple expedient of lasering a circle in their front door and kicking it in. The interior had mostly been built to ’Mech scale, so I roared down corridors, following the map Forrest had given me, pausing only to incinerate the odd pirate who objected to my presence.

The prisoner cell block was human-scale, so I parked the LAM in the tunnel outside, exchanged my flight helmet for an oxygen mask and slid from the cockpit. Blasted the door hinges off with my Sunbeam. Inside was a guard room, bathed in jumpy shadows and yellow-orange light as oxygen warnings blared (I’m afraid blowing open the front door had not helped the atmospheric integrity of the place).

The prison guard was still trying to fit on his oxygen mask. He froze and looked up in panic as I walked through the smoking doorway, tossing the now-depleted Sunbeam aside and drawing the Nambu. “Open the cell doors,” I told him over the keening alarms.

He clawed for his sidearm. “Nev—”

I emptied all 12 rounds of the Nambu’s clip into him. I was done screwing around. Kicked his body sliding off the console and took stock. The door controls were easy enough to find—a row of numbered, green-lit buttons controlling the electronic locks on each cell. I shrugged, hit them each in sequence so they all glowed red.

Reina’s cell was at the end. Bed carved right out of the rock with a thin mattress, single feeble light in the middle of the ceiling. She had her bed sheet wrapped around one arm as a shield, held a plastic eating knife in the other, crouched and ready when I entered the room. Her head drooped in relief when she saw me, shoulders shaking. She dropped the sheet and knife before looking up, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands.

“Hello stranger,” she said. In the background, lights flashed, alarms blared. “I see you’ve opted for the subtle approach.”

“I was in a hurry.” I threw her the oxygen mask I’d taken from the prison guard. “Good to see you, too.”

“Yes, yes, oh thank you my brave gallant knight.” She braced one hand on the rock bed and pushed herself to her feet. Instead of pulling the mask down over her head she left it hanging from her neck, then stepped forward and pushed mine up onto my forehead, grabbed my head in both hands and pulled it down towards hers. We kissed long, brusingly, like we were trying to push ourselves into each other’s skin.

She drew back. “That do for now?”

“For now,” I agreed. “You, me, explain later, much talk. Ride’s this way.”

She stopped when she saw the battered Stinger LAM, braced on its two stubby legs, parked in front of the prison door. “You know how to fly one of those things?”

“Nah. Not really.” I climbed up, then offered her my hand.

She clasped it, and hauled herself up to the cockpit. “What stopped you from crashing?”

“Um, sense of self-preservation?” I offered, strapping myself into the pilot’s chair, shucking the oxygen mask and pulling the helmet down over my head.

“Says the man who single-handedly attacked an entire planetoid filled with ’Mech-armed pirates.” There was a fold-down jump seat behind the pilot’s, where she pulled on her own harness and fitted a spare helmet.

“Yeah,” I agreed, powering up the LAM. “Wait. The what-armed?”

Her voice was distorted by the helmet’s mic. “Didn’t you wonder why all the tunnels are ’Mech-sized?”

The AirMech’s ground-effect jets roared to life, jerking us up off the cavern surface in a billowing cloud of dust, idling about two meters off the ground. “Think I was too busy not crashing to think about it,” I admitted. “How many?”

“No idea. Let’s not find out.”

“Let’s not,” I agreed, and pushed forward the throttle.

The LAM roared down the cavern, back the way I’d come, twisting through tunnels, flying around corners. Then I slammed it to a stop. The tunnel in front of us had collapsed—either from damage or deliberately sabotaged by the pirates—leaving me faced with a sloping wall of scree and boulders.

“There a problem?” Reina asked from the back seat.

“Shortcut,” I said, spinning the LAM around and racing back the way we’d come. Down a side tunnel. T-junction: left or right?

Right.

Massive metal doorway blocked the tunnel. “Hold on,” I said, and fired the lasers, burning three molten lines the top and sides of the door. It held firm. “Ah,” I said, yanking shut the throttle and firing as the door loomed larger and larger, filling the cockpit view. The lasers lanced out again, carving deeper in to the metal, making the door sag, not falling yet, but our inertia was carrying us forward. I slewed us sideways so an arm hit the doorway first, echoing like a gargantuan bell, and the door fell inwards.

In the HUD display, the side armor flashed yellow and a brief message displayed. Didn’t have time to read it, but pretty sure it was something to the effect of, ‘please do not do that again.’

Beyond the caved-in door was a short, brightly-lit cavern. Twenty-meter high metal scaffolding and cranes on either side. Three held BattleMechs, a Javelin, a Valkyrie and an Assassin. The fourth was empty—mainly because the blood-red Spider it had held was just stepping free. The heads of four ’Mechs turned toward us.

“There he is. Stop him!”

Left, definitely left.

I slammed the throttle all the way out and kicked us back out of the Mech bay on twin pillars of superheated air and a thunderclap of noise, careening down the tunnel outside. Lasers belatedly chased after us, slamming into the cavern ceiling and walls, fragments of rock rattling off the armor. Thunderous footfalls echoed behind as the smugglers gave chase.

The tunnel opened up into another cavern. Like a medieval torture chamber for BattleMechs. The arms and upper torso of a Commando leaned against one wall. Dismembered arms and legs littered the cavern floor. A series of massive pedestals held a mournful Trebuchet head, a pair of derringer forearms from a Marauder, the axe of one of those spanking-new Hatchetmen. The smugglers’ storehouse of salvaged, stolen or black market ’Mech parts.

I weaved among the vivisected machinery, under a leering Banshee head suspended from the cavern ceiling, around a clutching Archer arm, keeping them between us and our pursuers. The arm rang like a bell as four missiles struck it, toppling it over.

Another cavern, this time lined with a forest of pillar-like liquid storage tanks. “Ugh, not waste water again,” I muttered, remembering my trip in the Coriolis Comet.

“Aric, that isn’t water,” said Reina. “That’s liquid hydrogen fuel!”

“Oh, great.” Hydrogen is a wonderful propellant, because it’s light, non-toxic to humans, and burns very, very hot. “Perfect.” There was enough explosive material here to bring down the entire complex, and reduce the Stinger to very, very fine dust.

“An elevator or lift shaft,” shouted Reina. “We need to get vertical.”

“See what I can dooooooo—”

On the other side of the tank farm: darkness. And we were falling. In AirMech mode, the LAM’s jets fire downwards, creating a cushion of hot air between it and the ground, much like a hovercraft. That does, however, required you to have some ground on which to cushion.

We were over a sloping cargo lift shaft, hundreds of meters deep. Our air cushion vanished, and the AIrMech promptly nosed down and dropped like a stone. Wind screamed around us. At the bottom of the shaft was an open cargo lift, racing up towards us a breakneck speed as we fell. I slewed us around in the buffeting, shaking air, got the Stinger’s legs pointed at the sloping side of the shaft, and fired the jets again.

Got us under control. Jets pointed the right way, but still falling, still hurtling towards the cargo lift..

Fired the jets again, towards the lift this time, flinging boxes and machinery that had been stacked there around in a furious vortex, the metal of the lift turning orange, then red under the heat. We slowed. Stopped. Hung there.

Reina pointed over my shoulder, towards a pinpoint of light just visible at the top of the shaft. “Launch bay,” she said. “The way out.”

We shot back up the shaft like a bullet down a gun barrel, keeping the jets aimed at the shaft sides now to give us lift, back up towards the cavern holding the hydrogen fuel. Three Mechs stood at the ledge, firing downwards at us—the Assassin, Valkyrie and Javelin.

The LAM shuddered as laser pulses tore into the nose and wing armor. I fired back wildly as we hurled past them, laser tracing fiery lines across the shaft walls. We drew level with them. I fired the arm laser as we flashed by—missed. Hit a fuel tank instead.

Liquid hydrogen sloshed around. Met the oxygen of the air inside the complex. Was gently warmed by the lingering 5,000-degree heat of the slash the laser had carved in the tank. Exploded.

The hydrogen in tanks on either side caught the full force of the blast, and they too, went up in balls of flame. There were a string of massive claps of sound as the remaining tanks blew like dominos, incinerating the entire level, including the three ‘Mechs still firing at our rear as we zoomed up the shaft, before a billowing wall of flame burst out into the tunnel behind us and began racing up the shaft.

At the top of the shaft was a domed DropShip landing pad, with a round launch bay door irised shut above it. I kept my finger jammed down on the laser trigger, blasting away at the doors. Blew a hole right in the center. A rain of metal fragments fell around us, rattling off the armor, shaking the LAM like a tornado.

Was the hole big enough? I aimed for the center, and prayed.

Then we were through, out into the atmosphere. My shoulders relaxed. “Oh thank—”

There was a flash of something huge and red just as we cleared the doors. The LAM suddenly dropped a wing, flying nearly sideways. An engine overload alarm blared. My eyes flashed to the external sensors: there, hanging from the leg, both arms wrapped around the foot, was the last ’Mech, the blood-red Spider.

“That’s Red Savage,” Reina spat. “Bastard who’s been keeping me prisoner.”

“It could be Blessed bleedin’ Blake for all I care! We’re overweight,” I shouted over my shoulder. “We’re going down!”

“Fighter mode,” Reina shouted back.

I slapped the controls to shift us back. First thing the LAM does when switching to fighter mode is stow its arms and legs. Arms folded into the sides. Feet retracted. The Spider clawed desperately as its handhold disappeared, clutched futilely at the leg as it was drawn up and slid into the back of the fuselage.

It fell. Not far, maybe 30 meters or so. Trivial for a BattleMech to survive. Unless you fall right into the path of a volcanic eruption of exploding hydrogen fuel. The Spider disappeared into the middle of a rising mushroom cloud of fire as the LAM’s engines kicked in and we soared away.

[Kidd]

Very nice!

at 0.7G had all the gravity of a Marik threat.

Ouch. Ouuuch.

[pensiveswetness]

he could still survive... Bah! hahahahaa....

[mikecj]

Oops.

[DOC_Agren]

Blood feuds, go on and on

Love the Stinger LAM action

[Dubble_g]

Ouch. Ouuuch.

Don't get me wrong, I'm a purple bird guy first and last. But you have to laugh at the way they've been treated by the fiction.

Gonna follow my three-part actioner with a short talky one. It's like classical music: the big loud parts are followed by the soft quiet ones. That's right. I just compared my fan fiction to Beethoven.  :))

* * *

EPISODE 3-7: Flight of imagination

In the present:

The LAM landed in the center of the Tabula Rasa salt flat, high in Galatea’s equatorial mountains.

It was night when we climbed down, and out here, in the cooling desert far from the busy heat of the cities, the icy crystals of evening stars revealed themselves in a slow and sinuous arch scattered from horizon to horizon.

The smooth surface of the salt flat, covered in a thin film of rainwater, perfectly reflected the sky, so the ground itself disappeared, and we stood suspended among the mirrored stars—no forward, no back, no up or down—in all the universe, there were only us, only her head beside the heartbeat in my chest, only my arms around the impossible reality of her, only the ticking of time like the long, slow exhalation of a galaxy already tired of existence.

I closed my eyes as I held her, and told her about a woman without a name, about a doctor who healed no one, about a train that went nowhere, about a people-person who’d died alone. And then, because it seemed part of the same story, about a broken shipyard, a broken moon, a broken man.

The was symmetry there, I had been the one seeking vengeance, now I would help the one on whom vengeance was sought. A vendetta begun, another ended.

I talked and held her.

She listened. She listened and said just enough to keep the story going until the end, which was its beginning. She held me back.

“Your turn,” I said.

For a while, she didn’t answer, and I didn’t rush. Finally, she said: “I’m going to New Avalon.”

“What’s on New Avalon?”

“The White Tigers, the ones backing Reina. The real Reina.”

“Okay.”

She drew back from our embrace, titled her face up to me. “Just like that, okay?”

“Just like that,” I nodded. “Look, I am disappointed. That you didn’t come to me for help, that you didn’t trust me enough. But I’ve been alone and hunted, too, so I’m trying to understand what I can, and taking the rest on faith. If you need to do this, that’s good enough for me.”

“I think I do,” she said, and put her head back on my chest. “Problem is how to get there. Anderson’s really dead?”

“’Fraid so. Glass.”

“I knew you didn’t like him.”

“Na, not me, the clear transparent stuff. Not to worry though—got a good feeling about this Forrest guy. Reminds me of someone I used to know. Crazy as all hell, but a good guy deep down.”

“Mmhmm, reminds me of someone, too,” I felt her head tip up again form where it lay. “Can’t think who.”

[Dubble_g]

EPISODE 3-8: Not single spies, but in battalions

In the past:

After Vukovic’s death, I wandered, lost, for many months. Vinewood put me on a freighter headed for the Rim. I paid my way by working as a shuttle pilot or DropShip crew. A storm-blown cloud, I went wherever the currents of intergalactic commerce carried me. Days and nights smudged and ran together, as though a great hand was pressing me down and spreading me across a sheet of time like paint across a canvas.

My vendetta was done, but once you achieve your life’s goal, how then to go on living?

My dreams of flying for the League were dead. My squad was dead. My family might as well have been—no way I could return to them now. I didn’t even have revenge to keep me going any more.

I wound up on Lesnovo, way out in the Rim Commonality, the world Colonel Yildiz—Arthur—had come from. Don’t know what I was planning, don’t think I even had a plan, just some weird notion of finding his family and, and, and what? Telling them what he’d meant to me? I knew any such pilgrimage would be about me, not him, not his family, so. No.

I’d taken a place in the City of Atropos, little one-bedroom place above a coffee shop. I’d sit outside with a thimble of black espresso, watching the people flow past like raindrops. You know how you can’t see each individual drop, just blurred streaks? That was crowds to me—streaks of humanity, falling past my table outside.

The owner would smile behind the counter and nod as I came down each morning, and hand me my coffee, unasked. A slim young girl, his daughter I think—a pretty face, but eyes always downcast, shy—wiped the tables with a pink and white cloth. The music was almost always something bluesy with a slide guitar, over which a woman with a whiskey voice crooned patriotic ballads: ‘It’s cold in space, my love, but I have heat enough for two.’ The man would hum along as he poured the coffee, “Heat enough for two,” and set it on the waarwood counter. I think I envied him, more than a little, maybe even hated him, for the easy comfort he seemed to take in each day’s rhythm and routine.

“Not from around here?” he’s asked me one of those mornings as he poured.

“No.”

“Oh? Where then?”

“Somewhere else.”

“Come a long way?”

“Yeah. Too far, maybe.”

Atropos was a university town, its streets filled with cetacean-slow pods of students, nobody ever in a hurry to go anywhere or do anything, unless it was to get drunk at parties.

It was wedged tight in a high river valley, and I’d spend the day wandering blind streets and forgotten paths, or just leaning on the railing of one of the iron-filigree arches over the river, watching boats float their inevitable way down towards the sea. It was startlingly beautiful and peaceful, cupped between snow-capped mountains, quiet but for the rhythmic slap of waves against the river banks.

Even in this Eden though, you couldn’t escape the shadow of war.

There were a lot of statues—Atropos University was famous for its visual and performing arts programs—displayed on either side of bridges like bookends, or sprinkled like confetti across the city’s plazas and parks. BattleMechs were a favorite subject, as were birds of prey, the Selaj family (Lesnovo had once been part of the Principality of Regulus), and suffering soldiers atop plinths listing the names of the glorious, fallen dead. There were a lot of those.

It struck me as sad how deep it had wormed its way into our souls, this love affair with death and battle, that when we thought of beauty now, we pictured engines of destruction, the terrible majesty of war machines, Like every moment of peace was just a squalid refractory period while we prepared to plunge in again.

One morning: The man, humming, holding out my espresso (“Heat enough for two”).

“You said you were a pilot?”

I had. Nodded.

“If you need a job, an outfit called the ACES is hiring up in Zletovo, the capital.”

“Huh.” Took the espresso. “Keep it in mind.” I wouldn’t though, I swore. Leave war to its other admirers, those who would sell themselves to with a light conscience and heavy wallet.

The waitress cleaned the table next to mine, met my eyes and smiled, before blushing and looking down. Scrubbing a little harder. I said I had to go, and left my coffee half-finished.

Not strictly a lie—I wanted to do some climbing up in the hills about the city, try to keep in shape. Atropos sits in a narrow V of land, so after just two hours walking I was out of the city and found a hiking trail, a narrow dirt path that scissored its way up the hills and vanished among the thickly-clustered trees.

I’d just reached the tree line when the sirens began to wail all across the city. A screeching caterwaul that rose and fell and echoed down the valley.

I stopped just inside the tree line, shielded my eyes with the flat of my hand and watched the valley below. Nothing. A few scattered ground cars along the main highway had pulled over, tiny dots of passengers standing around in confusion. Someone was making an announcement, some muffled and distorted warning that came to me only as a bass counterpoint to the shrill alarm. The dots scattered, running under bridges or into buildings.

Then I heard it, that familiar rolling boom of aerospace fighter jet engines. Black shadows against the underside of the clouds—squinting, I figured them for F-90s by their V silhouettes. Probably from the garrison, the 8th Orloff Grenadiers.

There was a blinding flash of blue lightning from the clouds that struck one of the fighters. When I could see again, the two dots were twisting, turning, now joined by two more. Pulses of light flickered back and forth as they circled, slashed, and fell apart again.

“Break left, break left, towards him … left you idiot … “ I found myself urging the Grenadiers on. “Wait, hold your fire, wait until you’re on top of him. Damn.” I punched a tree, then shook my hand ruefully. “Yes, hit him again, again!” My depressed detachment completely forgotten.

The two enemy fighters had taken enough, and dove for the ground, one trailing streaks of grey-white smoke. The Grenadiers tore through the skies close behind. Two more bolts of crackling light, booming like thunder, and the second enemy fighter shattered. An angry red sun blossomed in the sky, a wing came spiraling off, then the plane itself was falling, falling in a drunken helix, plunging down, down. Towards the city. Towards Atropos.

It was a 60-ton fighter, a Hellcat, part of a pirate raiding force. It crashed through three houses—shearing the roof off one, obliterating the second floor of the second before its remaining wing bisected the living room of a third—then plowed on its belly through a convenience store and an Italian restaurant before smashing into the front wall of a shop. The wreck sat for a second, almost like it was thinking, then exploded, a thunderous detonation that shattered every window on the street and reduced the store to a broken, burning tangle. The pilot and two people inside were killed instantly.

From my vantage point on the hill above, all I could see was the line of destruction it carved through the city, and then the night-black mushroom cloud of smoke rising from its final resting place.

I knew I wouldn’t be doing any climbing that day. So I started walking back into the city, back to my room above the coffee shop. Lost sight of the roiling cloud of smoke once or twice with all the buildings around me, but every time I spotted it again it always seemed to grow bigger, nearer.

Couple of blocks away there were clumps of people standing in the road, some with their hands to their mouths, others with them on their hips, talking over each other in random bursts of shock and confusion. Debris was scattered across the streets from damaged houses—roof tiles, broken brick, shattered glass. The smoke almost filled the sky now, blocking out the sun.

Must have hit really close, I thought. Hoped the old man and his daughter were okay.

And then I turned the last corner and saw where the Hellcat had crashed. There was an overturned table in the middle of the road, blown clear by the explosion. A shredded scrap of pink and white cloth hung from one of its legs.

There was a police cordon across the street, a dozen cops with their backs to the crowd, watching the blaze, and a ring of firemen hosing water onto the shattered building. Even at this distance, the fire was intensely hot.

I tugged the arm of one of the policemen, pointing at the inferno. “Was anyone inside?” Knowing the answer already.

The cop turned away from the fire and looked at me. “You family?”

“No, a tenant. I rented a room there.”

“Oh,” he turned back to the fire. “Yeah, two people. Owner and his daughter. Tragic.” (Heat enough for two). A thought occurred and he looked at me again. “You got a place to go?”

War finds us, wherever we go. Like a jealous lover, striking out when it is rejected, finding a new victim. Easier to sink into its embrace, worship its cold and demanding beauty.

I remembered the morning’s conversation. “Yeah. Maybe. Maybe I do.”

[pensiveswetness]

Kinda expected that... but it does fill in the gaps...

[Dubble_g]

Kinda expected that...

Right, the theme here was the inevitability of what happened--wanted to write something where the reader can see what's coming, and has that kind of foreboding to it. That's why the city is called Atropos ("inevitable"), who was the Greek fate who decided how each man died.

Next episode might end up going long again. Still writing.

[Dubble_g]

EPISODE 3-9: A legion of demons (angels)

Part I

In the present:

If you thought the Steiner-Davion alliance disrupted the political map of the Inner Sphere, spare a thought for what it did to the criminal one. Organized crime follows the paths of people and power, latches onto the veins of influence and money like a leech. Suddenly, new paths were opening between the Commonwealth and the Suns, people and money began moving in new ways, and the New Avalon triads and families, the Tharkad brotherhoods, and every gang in between slashed and clawed at each other in a scramble to the top of the new heap.

In our conflict-addicted times, the heat map of organized crime is nearly identical to one showing military deployments—just as money and power accrete around military commands and contracts, so too does the underworld.

Take either one of those maps (like I said, they are much the same). Zoom in here, in the system of New Avalon: one such point, glaringly white, incandescent even. Zoom in further, until individual grains of power become visible like salt crystals—the capital, the NAIS campus, the Guards Brigade HQ—but look now to the opposite side of the system. There, about the L3 Lagrangian point, on the opposite side of the system’s star from New Avalon.

It was called a SHEL—Space Habitat: Ecliptic/Langrangian—a 24-kilometer long, 6-kilometer diameter rotating cylinder of inhabitable atmosphere, attached to a great bowl of solar sail, and the unofficial black market capital of the New Avalon system.

Our DropShip—Derek Forrest’s Buccaneer—docked with one of the rings around the long tube’s center. Three of us stood in front of the airlock, waiting for it to cycle: Derek, myself, and Reina.

“And the government knows about this place?” Derek was asking.

“Yes, and yet they tolerate it,” said Reina. “Politicians, allowing crime to go unpunished? Shock horror, I know.”

“Some of them are regulars here?” I guessed.

“Those that have … interests you can’t indulge back on NA,” Reina nodded grimly.

“You grew up here?” Derek looked at Reina.

She nodded again.

“No place like home, huh?”

“Thank god.”

The airlock hissed slowly open. On the other side was a small antechamber, filled with about a dozen men. Most were dressed in black fatigues and combat boots, with light impact armor over their chests and upper arms, with stun sticks on one hip and pistols on the other. In the center was a tall, slim man, dressed in a grey suit and black turtleneck, leaning on a cane despite his youthful face. The face was familiar: narrow, angular jaw, aquiline nose, wavy black hair. Very familiar.

I felt Reina beside me suck a sudden breath and go completely rigid.

That man’s familiar face broke into a wide, toothy smile when he saw us. “Sister!” he said, and raised his arms as if to embrace Reina.

Reina stood statue-still. “Lucien,” she said icily.

“Come now, Alys, is that any way to greet family?” He kept his arms raised. “Come on, come on, step aboard, don’t wait for a formal invitation or we’ll all die of old age here. We’re not big on ceremony. So good to see you again. I see you brought your attack dog as well.” This last directed at me.

“Woof,” I agreed, following Reina/Alys through the airlock into the antechamber. “Alys?” I mouthed silently at her. She grimaced and shrugged.

The man named Lucien hobbled forward and enfolded Reina in a hug that she didn’t return. When he broke away, she asked, “What are you doing here?”

“Well, damndest thing, sis,” he grinned at her. “While you’ve been away, I seem to have become boss of the White Tigers. Isn’t that something?” He laughed as if this was quite the strangest coincidence he’d ever heard of. “But let’s not stand here jawing. Travel tubes are up in the hub, I’ll take you to my office and we can do all our catching up there. Oh, but first, your weapons.” Looking pointedly at me again.

A guard stepped forward, metal detector baton in one hand, which he ran up and down me with practiced precision. I slowly handed him my pistol, barrel up—a holdout Nambu needler, like the one I’d used on Galatea—as well as the vibro blade I’d taken from the real Reina. He placed both in a black pouch, which he fitted to his belt at the small of his back.

Lucien led the way, flanked on either side by black-clad guards. Another four fell in behind us, with the other six remaining in the airlock antechamber. From the airlock we went ‘up,’ away from the hull and towards the center of the habitat, climbing in zero gravity through a two-meter wide transparent tube. Looking down, we could see the curve of the habitat’s interior surface, cluttered with ramshackle buildings that seemed to roll endlessly beneath us. Near as I could tell, the landscape seemed to cycle around about once every two minutes or so.

“About 30,000 people, living in a simulated 0.9G down on the hull,” said Lucien, noticing my gaze. “Front and back halves rotate in opposite directions to cancel each other’s gyroscopic forces out. Ah, here we are.”

At the center of the hollow tube of the habitat were the travel tubes, a cluster of eight elevator-like shafts traversing the length of the station from top to bottom. Lucien led us to one labeled “EXECUTIVE,” inserted a card and pressed the button, and waved us inside with a bow and a flourish.

The elevator car was cylindrical, carpeted, with semicircular plush leather sofas arranged about the rim. Looking up at the ceiling, I could see an identical arrangement of furniture there, for when the car accelerated in the other direction. Lucien floated over to one, waved us to another. “We’ll get a touch of gravity when we get underway. Make yourselves comfortable.” Two guards stood by the elevator control panel, two more on either side of Lucien.

Sure enough, acceleration pressed lightly down on us as the car jetted away from the boarding platform, and Lucien crossed his legs with a sigh.

“Nice place you have here,” I offered.

He smiled coldly. “It’s not all drug dens and hitmen—”

“Those are just kind of a hobby, are they?”

“—we have a number of legitimate enterprises run through, aha, ‘shell’ companies.” His mouth quirked in amusement at his own joke.

“Shell companies? SHEL companies? Reina, are you sure you’re related to this guy?”

“Sadly, yes.”

“Oh, between us we can drop that ‘Reina’ nonsense,” he sniffed. “How’ve you been Alys?”

Reina-who-was-Alys sat ramrod straight at the edge of the sofa. “On the run from my murderous doppelganger,” she said. “That was your work?”

He smiled and nodded. “Guilty!”

“You let her off the leash. Why?”

“Why, to bring you back to us, of course, little sister. I knew you’d come back when threatened.”

“Most people just send a postcard,” I offered. He didn’t even glance at me.

“After our late, dearly departed leader accidentally shot himself—such tragedy—I knew I wanted to make some changes,” he explained. “The times are changing, the triads must change with them. This business with the Commonwealth, for instance. We need a toehold on their side of the border. We need muscle to protect it.”

“After what we survived, what we endured as kids under these people,” Reina/Alys shook her head. “After all that, when you climbed to the top you just, what, decided to keep on doing exactly what they had before?”

“Well, now that I’m here, I can see what good sense it all made. Including keeping the real Reina around—always useful to have someone you can wield as a weapon, eh?” he winked at her.

“I think he might be talking about me again,” I put in helpfully.

Reina/Alys sighed and put her fingers to her temples. “What do you want, brother?”

“What do I want?” he repeated. “I want to have my cake, and eat it too. I want stability and continuity, but at the same time I want the Tigers to grow and expand. I want to maintain my position amid the reshuffling and reordering of the landscape that the Federated-Commonwealth alliance will bring. I want an army to enforce and defend that position.”

“And what, you thought she would scare me into joining you? Into agreeing to let you use the Black Arrows?”

Lucien’s smile faded, and he gripped the top of his cane with both hands. “We gave you the best education any human can aspire to, opportunities not one millionth of a percent of people ever experience, dear sister.” Those last words came out between bared teeth. “And how did you repay us? By turning your back on us, by suddenly vanishing into the cosmic night. You owe us, Alys, but more than that, you belong with us.”

“Not anymore.”

“No? Who do you belong with then? This ravening dog you call a lieutenant?” He took one hand from the cane, and waved it in my direction. “Have you seen what he’s been up to in your absence? Have you seen the scores of broken and mutilated bodies he’s used to pave his trail after you? You may think me cruel, little sister, but at least I’m human—he is a monster, a wolf in human skin. Violence follows him like a shadow.”

I shrugged modestly. “Hey, I don’t like to brag.”

The elevator car slowed as it approached the ‘nose’ end of the habitat, opposite the station-keeping thrusters and solar sail. “End of the road,” Lucien said, standing. “Don’t be stubborn now, Alys. Before you said ‘No’ definitively, there’s someone I think you should talk to.”

Reina/Alys reluctantly stood, and I followed. Aware of the guards now standing uncomfortably close.

The elevator doors slid open, revealing another landing platform, two guards. And the grim, red-scarred face of Reina Paradis.

“What the hell is she doing here Lucien?” Reina/Alys gasped, one foot still inside the elevator.

“That depends very much on how our conversation goes. Sister.” Lucien was no longer smiling.

“Aric,” Reina/Alys twisted towards me. “Come on, we’re going back.”

“Oh, I’m afraid your dog isn’t going anywhere,” said Lucien, and nodded to the guards.

Two grabbed Reina/Alys as she howled, stamping down on the foot of one that tried to grab her from behind, twisting under the arm of the other charging from the front, striking him under the chin and sending him reeling back.

And the elevator doors slammed shut, leaving me inside the car with four armed guards. The car pinged politely and dropped away, heading back towards the center of the habitat, and the five of us gently sank towards what had been the ceiling.

“Going down, huh?” I asked, mildly.

“Going to hell.” One of the guards growled, and then the two behind me had each taken hold of one arm and the two in front were drawing their stun sticks.

I threw myself backwards, ramming the two behind me against the elevator glass as the other two charged forward, used the leverage to flip up from the shoulders, one of my feet connecting with a charging guard’s head with a crack, the stun baton from the other whistling beneath me and into the abdomen of the one who’d grabbed my right arm.

The stun stick crackled and spat electricity, jolting the guard into a twitching seizure, letting me wrench one arm free, pivot and slam the heel of my hand against the underside of the jaw of the man still holding my other arm.

The guard I’d kicked was the one who’d taken my gun and knife. They were there, in a pouch on his back as he sat up on the floor, shaking his head woozily. I grabbed it, tearing it away. Then the one who still had his stick was swinging at me again. I ducked, the baton connected with the elevator controls. There was a flash, an electronic shriek and the elevator suddenly juddered to a halt.

Deceleration flung us all into the air. Lost my grip on the bag, watched it go spinning. Tried to swim after it in zero G. It tumbled just beyond my fingertips.

Impact as two guards launched themselves at me from the floor, one catching my legs, the other getting an arm around my chest. Caught a glancing punch along the side of my face. The three of us went whirling, tumbling against the roof, hit, bounced back down into the middle of the elevator car. Back down towards the two with drawn stun sticks, who grinned in anticipation.

Back-up motors kicked in, and the elevator lurched into motion again.

The three of us slammed back down, the guards on my legs and chest underneath, me on top. The impact stunned both of them, let me flip back onto my feet. Something falling—the gun bag. Grabbed it as the other two guards came forward again. No time to open the zipper—just felt for the shape of the vibro-blade inside, hit the power switch. White-hot blade slashed straight through the black material, right into the stomach of the guard nearest guard.

As he blinked, unbelieving, feeling the wound, I got a grip on the knife, stabbed him in the chest, the throat, through the eye. Used the body as a shield as the other one swung at me, let the gasping, dying man take the stun stick blow, then kicked the body away, the two going down in a tangle of limbs.

The other two had drawn their guns, murderous-looking needler pistols. I dropped to the floor as both fired, lips peeled back in pain as three flechettes found my shoulder, hearing the staccato crack as hundreds more quills struck the elevator glass and stuck there, leaving it bristling like a startled porcupine.

My own holdout needler was there on the floor, where it had fallen from the bag. I grabbed it, rolled, fired once from the prone position, tearing one guard’s legs to ribbons. As he dropped I was up, firing, hitting the other in the chest—where the needles simply stuck into the armor without effect—then the head.

One still moaning on the floor, clutching at his knees. I stood over him, fired once, downwards. He stopped moaning. The last one staggered to his feet from under the body of his companion, fumbling at his waist for his gun. Let him look up, see the barrel of the pistol I had pointed at his head. Then pulled the trigger.

The spikes went right through him, pinning the body against the side of the elevator car, left him hanging there like a ragged, blood-drenched scarecrow.

I tossed the now-empty holdout needler away, and then reached up to pluck the three needles from my shoulder, like pulling shards of glass, each coming free with a tiny cloud of blood. Picked up two of the guards’ pistols, stuck one in my waistband, kept the other in my hand.

The emergency system that had activated the back-up motors brought us coasting to a stop at the next travel tube station.

A recorded, feminine voice said, “This car is out of service. Please debark here and change to another tube.” The doors chimed gently open.

I swam out of the car into the micro-gravity of the station, leaving a bubbly wake of blood as I went. A crowd of people looking at me first in puzzlement, then growing horror. Someone screamed, and they began to claw past each other to escape.

I hit the ‘up’ button, then smiled and waved my needler at the three people inside when the doors swished open. “Your stop, I think,” I told them. They scrambled off. The inside was a lot less plush that the executive transit tube, bare floor and ceiling and stirrup-shaped straps around the edge rather than sofas. I punched the button for the top floor.

The station where Reina/Alys and her brother had gotten off was empty. One wall was marked with the distinctive comet-shaped burns left by laser fire. A thin trail of blood led to one of the spoke tunnels connecting the central transit tubes to the outer rim of the station. I floated down cautiously, keeping the needler out in front of me, hauling myself along by my other hand.

Something bumped against the edge of the tunnel up ahead. I made out a foot, black-booted. One of the guards. As I passed him, I saw his throat had been cut. His partner was at the bottom of the tunnel, looking like he’d been attacked by a bear, every inch of exposed skin torn and gashed.

The corridor at the bottom was under gravity, and at the end of it a door. I flattened myself on the bulkhead beside it and pushed it open. An expensive office, waarwood desk, black leather furniture, a rug of something large and tawny. Two feet stuck from behind the desk.

I snapped around the door, covered the corners. Empty. Walked in a wide circle around the desk without getting too close, and saw who lay there.

I sighed, and crouched down beside them. “The conversation went well, I take it?”

[cpip]

Well, I've been right so far, so I presume the body on the floor is Lucien, as the conversation didn't go the way he planned, and Alys and Reina are somewhere else tearing the place apart...

[Dubble_g]

Well, I've been right so far, so I presume the body on the floor is Lucien, as the conversation didn't go the way he planned, and Alys and Reina are somewhere else tearing the place apart...

(Whispering into collar) He knows too much... execute operation "Purity Control."

* * *

Part II

Lucien’s face was grey, his breathing quick and shallow. His stomach and thighs were drenched in blood, which had seeped into the carpet beneath him. The silver handle of a knife still jutted from his chest.

He opened his eyes a crack. “Ah, the attack dog.” His whispered voice came through clenched teeth and panting breaths. “I seem to … have … misjudged how to handle … your breed.” One hand twitched feebly towards the blade in his chest.

“Reina did this, huh?” His only reply was a grimace. “No offense buddy, but I was tempted to do the same thing myself, and I’ve only just met you. I’m guessing she didn’t like your plan to bring your sister back into the fold none. Perhaps a gentler approach?”

He coughed, tried to spit, but all that came out was a thin line of blood, tricking from the side of his mouth and down his cheek. “If you are alive … then you’ve just murdered four men … do not lecture me on gentleness.” He coughed again. “Yes, I used Reina, I used Alys … just as she uses you … Power, winning, those are the only things that matter … the way the world is … I don’t expect a fool like you to understand.”

I sat on my haunches by his side. “Hey look, we could swap insults all day,” I eyed his wounds critically. “Well, I could, maybe not you. So how about we skip all that and you just tell me where they went?”

A flicker of a smile passed across his face. “No, I don’t think so, dog,” he wheezed. “I may have to spend my last minutes talking with an animal … I’ll take the small satisfaction of thwarting you to my grave … after all, you can hardly make things worse.”

I sighed, reached over to the hilt of the knife, and twisted it. Lucien gave a shocked, outraged shriek, his legs kicking feebly on the floor. “If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this funny old galaxy of ours,” I told him, giving the knife another twist before letting it go. “It’s that things can always be worse. Now: Which. Way. Did. They. Go?”

He cursed me inventively and at length in a number of languages. I reached out for the knife again. “All right, all right,” he hissed. “Reina said she would … destroy the station … something about the engines … Alys went after her.”

Back the way I’d come. Of course. I stood up. Lucien was fumbling for his cane, raising it trembling towards me. I kicked it away irritably, just as he pressed a catch in the handle, firing a beam of brilliant red light from its tip into the ceiling. I pointed my needler at him, but saw the look of eager anticipation on his face. “Sorry, Luce.” Let my arm fall, turned and walked out the office. “Just the way the world is.”

I hadn’t seen the Reinas—either of them—coming down through the office’s private hub access, so they must have gone out the main entrance. Outside the office were smooth, black-tiled corridors, now filled with knots of people looking at one another in dazed bewilderment. Knew the feeling. Must be on the right track. The few who spared a glance for the bloody-shouldered man carrying a needler quickly dove back into their offices, amid sounds of locks being turned and furniture being piled against the doors.

At the end of the corridor was a wall of glass windows, one of which lay in frosted shards across the floor. One the other side was a wide pedestrian walkway, perhaps two floors above the curving ‘ground’ floor of the habitat on the inside hull surface. Someone was on the ground out there, half-hidden by a forest of legs of passers-by standing uselessly around.

I stepped through the broken window and shouldered my way through the crowd. People pushed back until they saw my face, then parted like the sea. The figure on the ground was a man—thank Unity—one hand clasped to his neck, blood feebly pumping from between his fingers.

I ran on, following in the chaos wake the two women had left, clear as any trail. I dashed across walkways suspended above crowded streets. Ducked and wove among the slow-moving shoppers, locals and tourists. Past neon-lit strip bars and smoky Evoke or Racer dens, dead-eyed users sprawled against the walls outside. The SHEL habitat was a rough place, but luckily this meant most inhabitants had a live-and-let-live policy, and I got dirty looks but little else. Only one man, emboldened by four of his friends backing him up, was brave or foolish enough to put out an arm to stop me.

“Where you going in such a hurrrk!” he said, as he found the muzzle of my needler jammed against his forehead. “Easy now buddy.”

Our little conversation was interrupted by a muffled crackle of laser fire from somewhere up ahead. I just shook my head at the man, withdrew the needler and sprinted on. Across another bridge, around a corner, through an open shopping arcade.

People were streaming back towards me, some flat-out panic-running, others glancing over their shoulders, running because everyone else was, others just shuffling back nervously, unsure if they should be running or not.

“Police!” I tried shouting, but people just looked at me strangely. Right, probably not the best place to try that trick.

Nearly tripped over a man sprawled across the walkway, another black-clad guard, trying feebly to crawl away on his elbows, leaving a red-slick trail behind him. Saw his holster was empty. He might've been the one I heard firing, but now someone up there had his gun.

Two figures were on the bridge ahead, kicking, striking at one another. Couldn’t tell who was who, but that was kind of what started this whole thing, wasn’t it? Not like the needler is exactly a sniper’s weapon in any case. I tried to put on a last burst of speed. Watched a kick lash out, get blocked and turned aside. The counterattack caught the other off-guard, drove them to the edge of the bridge, and then over. Clinging to the edge of the bridge by two hands, dangling twenty meters above the ground.

I was close enough now to see the one hanging from the bridge wore Alys’s red jumpsuit, the one standing above her, real-Reina’s black dress. I must have shouted something, because Reina looked up, snarled and raised one foot over Alys’s hands. “No closer,” she yelled. “Shoot me and she dies.”

I halted, needler held outstretched in both hands. “Works both ways,” I shouted back. “If she dies, you’re next.”

“She deserves to die!” the woman screamed. “She stole my name, she stole my life. She left me with these animals! Killing her would be justice.”

I caught Alys’s desperate glance at me. Saw her swing her legs a little from side to side. I took a step forward. Keep Reina focused on me. “Justice?” I repeated, taking another step. “Way I heard it, you did this to yourself. Not her fault you threw your life and privileges away.” Alys swinging her legs in bigger arcs now.

“They were mine to throw away,” she shouted back. “Not another step! Not one more.”

Too soon. We needed more time. I raised my hands slowly, let the needler clatter to the ground. “All right,” I said. “You win. Just let her go.”

Reina’s face split into a wide grin. She reached into her dress—and pulled out a slim, shiny laser pistol. She shot me—

—Alys swinging her legs, hooking one up over the ledge of the bridge—

—ducking, twisting away from the beam, but it still gazed me along the temple, a white-hot line of pain—

—Alys finding her feet—

—me falling, one hand held against my temple, the other finding the second needler in my waistband and throwing it—

—Reina turning, shocked to find Alys behind her—

—Alys catching the needler, turning and firing it right into Reina’s chest—

—hit the ground, half-blinded with pain, seeing only the back of Reina’s dress suddenly balloon out as dozens of ceramic shards tore right through her—

Reina staggered back a step. Tried to bring up her laser pistol, but her arm didn’t seem to work. And then she lost her footing at the edge of the bridge, pitched over, and was gone.

[pensiveswetness]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKrkQUBysMk somehow i doubt Bloody Red Dress girl left a grenade behind but I'm reminded of this scene (that and a scene from a space movie where a woman is spaced, her suit expands then she discharges blood out her mouth, don't remember what movie it was however...) again, she might not be dead, yet Jim...

[mikecj]

Very nice, I always like smooth villains.  Very Bond.

Woof?  Can he open pickle jars too?

[DOC_Agren]

very nice
So does that mean Alys now runs this place?

[Dubble_g]

@DOC_Agren: Hmm no, I don't think the triads work on a Trial of Position basis. I'm assuming big brother Lucien worked his way up to trusted lieutenant before he bumped the old boss off, but Alys is very much an outsider.
@mikecj: I don't get the reference so I'm just gonna go ahead and say "Possibly."
@pensive: That was an impressive amount of flashbacking for that was likely a 2-3 second fall.

* * *

EPISODE 3-10: A fleeting moment in time

In the present:

The trip back to the DropShip is a bit of a haze, on account of the ‘nearly getting my brain laser-fried’ thing. I’m not sure how I managed to put one foot in front of the other, just kept moving forward blindly, like a stone rolling down a hill.

In my nauseous state I thought I could feel every millimeter of motion, the rotation of the grav deck inside the habitat, the orbit of the habitat around New Avalon’s sun, the sun around the galaxy, everything in terribly, unstoppably accelerating, an avalanche of movement. In a weird way that made walking easier—my own tiny vector added next to nothing to the hurtling speed I was already under.

I think Alys had one arm around my shoulder, her head under one arm, and that was the only thing keeping me anchored to the ground, and I clung to her as if I might be torn flying away by the terrific forces clutching at me. I was in awe of her, then. Her arm was around me, which meant she must be moving, tumbling through space just as I was, yet she could walk, seemed miraculously unaffected by the twirling, the rushing of the cosmos.

Alys, I thought, Alys. Focused on that, that tether, that connection. Alys. It was still strange to think of her that way. Must have been saying it out loud.

“Well, what’s your name then?” she asked as we lurched through spinning, fearful crowds. The needler in her hand stopped anyone from asking questions.

“Alex,” I told her.

“Oh, how dull. And far too similar to mine.”

“You can see why I stuck with Aric Glass,” I said, as the deck revolved, revolved, around and around again, unnoticed by everyone. “Little brother couldn’t say Alex, called me Sandy. Sand. Glass.”

“Brother, huh?” she asked.

I nodded and immediately regretted it, each bounce of my neck causing my vision to white out in a blinding flash of pain. The habitat hurtled heedlessly through space at over 100,000 kph, taking me with it.

“He’s not, um, the leader of any organized crime syndicates is he?”

I blinked a couple of times, until my vision focused again. “He was 15 last time I saw him. So unless he was amazingly precocious, no.”

“That’s a relief.” We walked in silence for a few minutes. “Did you … was Lucien …”

“I’ve seen people who looked healthier.” I winced as a step sent a jarring crackle of pain up the side of my face. New Avalon’s sun corkscrewed through the void, uncaring. “Been to better family reunions, too.”

“Ah, but have you been to any worse?”

“Not that I can recall,” I admitted. “Look, for what it’s worth, I’m sorry—”

“Don’t be,” she said wearily. “Lucien took lessons in brotherly affection from Anton Marik and learned everything he knew about serenity and calmness from Redjack Ryan. Would be nice if everyone’s family was a haven, but we can’t all be so lucky.”

“You still have the unit.”

“I still have the unit,” she agreed. “It’ll be a relief to have everyone who is trying to kill me armed only with 100-ton death machines. Hope Nova’s taken good care of them.”

“Summer is Duke Lestrade’s personal fief,” I said. “How much trouble could they get themselves into?”

Alys just cocked her head and looked at me.

“Right. Better get back soon.”

That feeling again, of dreaded, unstoppable movement, of floating at the edge of a vast, inescapable maelstorm. Some monolithic force dipped a finger in the fabric of the universe and stirred, whirling us all about in its wake, carrying us irresistibly onwards like a black hole, and nobody seemed to mind. Somebody stop the universe, I want to get off.

Derek Forrest was waiting for us in the airlock antechamber, wearing his perpetual look of mild distress, a laser rifle held casually in his arms and four dead guards at his feet.

“Thank Unity,” Alys smiled. “Thought you might have left without us.”

“Are you kidding me?” Forrest grinned back. “You guys are practically family now.”

Alys’s smile disappeared and Forrest looked at me in confusion.

“What? What did I say?”

* End of season 3 *

[pensiveswetness]

@pensive: That was an impressive amount of flashbacking for that was likely a 2-3 second fall.

* * *

It's Cowboy Bebop. Decades later, it's still the to-go-to example of Cool anime...