------------------------------------ */ Marco Beltrami, "Main Titles" _Hellboy_ /* Illuminati International Pictures presents a tale of the J I H A D U N I V E R S E 3 . 0 Line in the Sand written by S. Malalcypse Breen, Dan DeRosia, Kirk Felton, Rens Houben, Aris Merquoni, Patrick Stewart, Warrior Tang, and Kat Templeton Directed by S. Malaclypse Breen (c)2005 The Jihad to Destroy Barney ------------------------------------ KINGMAN, ARIZONA MONDAY, APRIL 5, 2004 9:02 PM LOCAL TIME "Nemesis," Dee muttered to herself. She had, in truth, left not long after the Maenad was stabilized at Mt. Blanca. All the people clustered around him highlighted the fact that she had no idea what to do. Being useless had never sat well with her. Fortunately, Minerva knew her well enough to understand, and had opened her a gate back to Athena Heavy Industries after she had slipped away. Right now, she was reclined in a swivel chair, pondering the situation. "The Slayer's been... touched almost definitely," she spoke to herself. Slowing her thoughts to the speed of speech gave her plenty of time to ponder all the implications of every aspect of her words. Besides, it was night and Damo was off... somewhere. "Ergo... them around... likely." She was afraid to call the Lyrans by name, as if doing so would invoke their appearance. "Thus, definitely need to cook up something to kill them, as one Maenad is only maybe enough." Put that way, it was a research problem, which she knew full well how to deal with. She thought a moment, then opened up a direct JihadLinker communication to Minerva. "Konban-wa, Minerva," Dee thought through the link. "Is there any news on Felton?" She knew that Mina would know from her tone what she needed, perhaps why. Dee and the AI were very good at reading each other's minds like that, a fact that may have impressed Malcalypse if he knew. "Konban-wa, Dee," Minerva replied. "Felton seems to be recovering, though he may be out a while. The encounter with Owsen before he arrived seems to have taken a lot out of him. What can I do for *you*?" Dee smiled at her 'sister' cutting to the heart of the matter. "Well, thinking about some old friends of ours," Lyrans, though she still wasn't going to say the word. "I'm trying to figure out some stuff that I can make in a hurry that would be unpleasant to magic users, so I need to access some of the more esoteric databanks. My files are a bit spottier in that area than I'd like." "You do realize that we have magic users too?" Minerva asked with the hint of an edge to her voice, as if to warn her to be careful about what she proposes. "Right, of course. Which is why I'm looking for stuff with experimental data already done, so I don't have the risk of failed field experiments. Mostly just after a force multiplier vs. a single target, not anything with larger areas of effect." "I figured, but I had to ask. All right, VRDET's back open for your perusal plus some of the boss's private files that are relevant. We don't have copies of JPV's or Zeta's files though, unfortunately." "And I've got my own sources too, of course." "Of course." "Let Mal or I know when you come up with something, and I'll let you know if anything comes up in the meantime. Good luck." "Thanks, later Min." Dee checked that the computer in her bionic arm was finding the new data over the network before triggering off a smart search to find anything relevant and summarize it. She shifted her feet on her desk, inadvertently knocking some papers to the floor, and semi-patiently waiting. Her arm's mp3 player had only gotten through its first two songs before useful results started trickling in. She scrolled the summaries and blinked. "Hey, does that work? Whoa, hum, that's just about what I had in mind..." she paused. "Yeah, we have some of that in storage for raw materials from that one guy..." she swept her boots off the desk and flew downstairs to the machine shop, busily getting to work. "Guh, hell, stupid brittle iron," Dee muttered to herself. The main project she was working on were cold iron bullets, and it just happened that some strange person had gotten ahold a piece of meteoric iron that he had wanted milled into gun parts. Order never came though, so here she was turning it into bullets. Or rather cutting into rectangles and turning down those on a lathe into bullets. It was the 12th successful one, and would fit the plastic sabots perfectly. There was a lot more metal, but... if it didn't work, not much point. She sipped her coffee and grimaced at the mess she'd made. Only one beer over the night, but she'd been up a while. Have to pick all that up before Damo gets home. Or hell, let *him* do it. She started cutting crossed lines on the tips in a star pattern with the computer controlled setup, fine lines that she knew would expand and break into little sharp bits upon hitting something. That process started, she reviewed something that had come up last night in researching mana-reactive metals. Between her own files and Mals, there was most of the analysis of the original Barney Slayer, made back in the day and responsible for Jihaddium alloy among other things, though the Owsenite remained unique. But a comparison of those materials data vs. the data of the new blade fragments would perhaps provide some clue what was going on. "Hey, Minerva?" She opened up the JihadLink connection without thought and tried to get her sister's attention. "Found two things." "Ah? Which one of them qualifies as the bad news?" "Heh. Well, the first is I've put together some bullets that... well, should cut through magic, or something like that. I don't claim to understand why, but they should. The second..." "Spill it." Dee fidgeted. "Well, while I was thinking about metallurgy, I was thinking about the Slayer. Between Mal's files and mine I pieced together most of the reports on its study, and on Jihaddium, the offshoot. Only thing is... well, when that hit its opposite it blew up. And now we have the Owsenite opposite and..." "We don't have nearly as much data on it. I don't disagree about that." "Right, but I wanted to know if I could get authorization to take a fragment of the dark Slayer to Spiral; I know the Blanca has most of the good R&D labs cannabalized, and that Spiral should have a big Black department." There was a pause. Minerva stopping to think, or maybe getting ahold of Mal. "That could be important. I'll ask him when he gets in. But in the mean time, *you*, young missy, are going to get some sleep." Crap, of course Minerva could tell when she had pulled an all-nighter. "But oneechan..." "Sleep, at least a couple hours. I'll ring after I talked it over with Mal." "Haiii..." Dee trailed off before curling up on her desk and closing her eyes. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 10:00 PM LOCAL TIME Aris hadn't moved her stuff from the dark nook at one end of the hangar, and was starting to think it might be a good idea. Still, while it was there, she wanted to take advantage of having a wide area marked off as personal space and practice a little bit. Practicing meant casting wards, which took a while. The last thing she wanted was to damage the facility. She was supposed to be its guardian, and Mal would be angry if she broke anything. Once the walls, floor, and ceiling had been adequately (she hoped) magicproofed, Aris adhered an old powerbar wrapper to the wall, stepped back to the middle of the room, and started launching fireballs at it. Katze stopped just outside the limit of the chalked wards and watched the dragon's progress. Aris had a slightly befuddled look on her face, and there was a spiralling array of black spots on the opposite wall. None had come closer than a foot to the powerbar wrapper. Aris looked over and grinned sheepishly. "You know, I hit an acetylene torch on my first try once." "And they're not much bigger than two meters?" "Something like that." Aris stared at her target and frowned, almost a pout. "This is getting silly." "Maybe you need to relax a bit. You know, feel the energy flowing through you." "Easy for you to say. You've *never* missed with that bow of yours." Katze grimaced. "I missed that guy in the park." "Okay. Once. Still." Aris flipped her ponytail back, then reached back and started re-wrapping it in her scrunchie. "At least I'm getting better at casting. I think I can actually be useful in a fight now, as something other than a really bad Third-Gunner." Katze jerked a thumb at the elevator. "I think KJ got the targeting range working again, if you want to practice with an X-Rifle or your sword... gun... thing." "Yeah, that's probably a good idea." Aris looked around and sighed. "I should probably clean up this crap, too. I've aired out my old rooms, so there should be room there for everything." "Want a hand with the videos?" "Sure," Aris said, as she started to scuff out the wards. Katze bent down and picked up a couple of the Red Dwarf casettes. "They have these on DVD now, you--" *SNARL!* *THUD* Katze looked up to see Aris flat on her face a few feet away. "Um," Aris said into the ground. "That was uncomfortable." Katze put down the tapes and stepped forward gingerly. "What just happened?" "Uhhh... dragon instinct took over, and I forgot I was human. Overbalanced." Aris looked up, moved her arms around so she could prop her chin on her hands. "I didn't even realize I'd started hoarding stuff." "Hoarding stuff?" "Different dragons hoard stuff in different ways." Aris started picking herself off the floor. "My particular race gets it in waves, sort of like brief obsessions. They start coming on after maturity, and the time spent on one hoard gets longer as a dragon gets older. My mom's got the best collection of Phil Folglio porn of anyone in the multiverse." Katze blinked. "It can be tragic, too, though, if you hoard the wrong stuff. I remember mom telling me about dad--Galactic dragons don't tend to keep the male in the family, you know, it's all matrilineal, so I never knew him--but apparently he was hoarding Hostess snack cakes in the wrong dimension and got captured by a group of superheroes." "I... um," Katze said. "Here," Aris said, picking through the Red Dwarf. "Why don't you take the Series 7 tapes? That should be okay." "Why don't I just get a library cart or something? Or better yet, why don't we put everything in your backpack?" Aris brightened at the second suggestion. "That's a really good idea. Why didn't I think of that?" "Too busy falling on your face?" "Right." Aris took off her backpack, opened it, and scooped the tapes inside, followed by the TV. She zipped the pack closed and shouldered it. "Cool. Dinner?" KINGMAN, ARIZONA 10:00 AM LOCAL TIME That orange marshmallow was beeping strangely, Dee thought... oh no, it was about to explode! But then she remembered that it was just the message dialog telling her that Minerva was calling back. Dee groaned and flopped backwards into her chair, brushing papers off her face. "Braiiiins." "Good morning to you too, zombiehead. Mal wanted to talk to you about the idea in person so I'll send a gate to pick you up... in 20?" "That should be enough," Dee muttered, rolling out of her chair and remote controlled the coffee maker to start through her arm while simultaneously staggering towards the showers in the locker rooms that were set up. "Any objections did he have?" She was still talking to Minerva, even standing under the spray of hot water. "Minor stuff... some precautions. Normal stuff." "Right, normal." She turned off the shower and stepped out, drying off before getting dressed. Her standard pistol rig went on under her standard motorcycle jacket and she grabbed the important looking briefcase she used when traveling so that people wouldn't feel put-off at her having no notes or references or anything. It was loaded with something far more useful; a couple changes of clothes, a bag of Cheetos, and a couple bottles of Powerade. "Also might have a chance to do some testing on the new stuff so pack that too." Nodding to herself and gulping down the cup of boiling hot coffee, Dee wandered into the shop and boxed up the 2 dozen loose rounds that she had finished making from scratch. Both they and a holstered matte silver Smith & Wesson revolver fit in the case without much problem... a good thing she wasn't flying. She grabbed the coffee and took a gulp of the steaming liquid. "Okay, let's do this," she transmitted to Minerva, walking through the gate as soon as it formed. "All right, Minerva gave me the gist of things. I want to hear it from you." Dee sipped her coffee and tried to hide her apprehension; talking to Malcalypse alyways made her nervous. "Well, I was working on metallurgy for another project and the thought came that maybe from analyzing the fragments we could figure out a bit more about why Owsen needs the real Slayer. And what might happen if he had it." "Right, and you thought there was some sort of 'black' lab at Spiral that would have more working equipment than there currently is at Blanca?" He paused a beat, long enough for Dee to start worrying. "Of course there is. Hidden in plain sight, really." "Oh... good. Minerva said you had a couple conditions?" "Right. Keep the fragments near you at all times, for obvious reasons. Don't do anything you think will blow up without precautions... again for obvious reasons." "Well, that's obvious enough." Mal nodded. "Don't get the normals involved, they know better than to ask some questions. Take notes in case something does blow up. And be careful." He thought a moment. "Oh, what did you come up with about the other thing?" No question if she had come up with anything. "Ah, right..." She set the briefcase on his desk and flipped the catches, making sure to open it such that he had no view of the contents. She pulled a bullet out of one of the boxes and passed it over. "Meteoric iron... some weirdo placed a strange order and never followed through with the rest of the payment. Tried various methods of getting it into shape. It's in a plastic sabot so as to not wreck the gun, and is prefragmented." Mal nodded and passed it back. "We may have a way to test that. But let's get you on with the Slayer analysis first." The man at the front desk might have wondered why he was giving Dee an unlimited access ID badge to Spiral. The girl was wearing a plain black motorcycle jacket over a plain white shirt, black slacks over black boots that clicked on the floor as she walked. She looked like someone's kid, there on a 'take your daughter to work' day. On the other hand, she carried herself like a suit, someone who knew intrinsicially that she belonged there, and the brushed aluminum briefcase lended credence to that. "I just need you to to confirm your identity, maam. Please put your eyes up by the scanner." Not that he was thinking too hard about things. The fact that instructions came down from on-high to issue the pass to this gi... woman, he corrected himself, meant that he probably shouldn't be wondering about it at all. Dee let the machine take a scan of her retinas and then got her badge from the guard. She was overall pleasantly surprised by the security; she'd expected far worse after Mal had suggested gating in from across the street and walking in the front door. The retinal scanner being fairly standard also impressed her. The elevators, though... the elevators were just cool. As she stepped in and the doors closed, the transciever package in her artificial arm picked up a burst transmission and an answering one from her badge. A touchscreen displayed the floors she was authorized for, presumably all of them, but it was obvious that there could well be more and she'd never know. It did make her wonder though, what would happen if people with different security levels were on the elevator. Mentally shrugging, she pressed the button for sublevel 2. The lab, she was relatively unsurprised to see, was laid out almost identicially to how the Verthandic labs had been since... well, it really made sense to clump related research together, and the openness made perfect sense when everyone had the security to know about each others projects as people could go try to lend an idea. What was more surprising was some of the projects she glimpsed as she walked past. Breadboard circuits tapping into systems that used the same carriers as the JihadLinkers had, energy storage setups similar to the power cell designs used in some heavy energy weapons of the Jihad, even some rudimentary pseudo-musculature work. None of it actually Jihad tech, as she could tell from subtleties in the designs, but derived from technology beyond mundane for sure. Not that it mattered much, as she crossed to a seperate elevator and descended into the true black labs. "I could have worked here," she muttered under her breath as she passed by some of the labs. Down here they were a lot more closed off, but she couldn't resist peeking in on a few as she went by and saw some high energy experiments; a refined X-Rifle plasma generator featuring in its capable role of a holepuncher through increasingly durable materials. She was more than a bit tempted to take some time and investigate further but curiosity over that warred with curiousity over the corrupted Owsenite and lost. The materials science lab was currently unoccupied, as she had been told it would be. Dee considered the gathered equipment and nodded to herself, setting the case with the fragments on a table before taking off her jacket and shoulder holster and folding them on another table. "Let's see what you can tell us," Dee muttered to herself before preparing the first part of one of the samples to go through a mass spectrometer, the first of a battery of tests. 7:00 PM LOCAL TIME Dee stifled a yawn as she walked into Malcalypse's office after a good while spent commiting acts of technology upon metal fragments. In the end she'd found out more than a bit, but not exactly what she wanted to know. "Well, there's bad news and kind of interesting news," she began before being prompted. She'd been up too long and she knew it, so some of the usual modes of behaviour of being intimidated by Mal and stuff could take a temporary shelving. "You've no idea what will happen if it's combined with the real Slayer," Mal stated. "Yeah, that's the bad news. The other news is that it's definitely Owsenite, though it's different in some mundane ways." "Howso?" "Well, it's got the same molecular composition but it's packed differently... some of the fragments are densely packed and aligned like ceramic, while others are... well, foamed. At a guess, it's the best way to make use of a severely limited amount of material; the edges are ceramic while the rest is just foamed filler. Should be harder and lighter, but more brittle... thus why it left little shards behind." "Interesting, but doesn't really answer a lot of the questions we had." Dee nodded tiredly. "Yeah, I know. Probably need a magic user to really tell how it's kinked..." she commented in a way that sounded more like a question. Mal nodded. "I managed to get ahold of Katze Brenner, and she should be able to help tomorrow." "Ah good, that should be interesting." This time she did yawn. "Get some sleep, Dee." "Yeah, I know... eesh, you and Min both," she commented with a chuckle as she turned and walked out of the office. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 8:00 PM LOCAL TIME "All right, here we go." Lacroix breathed in and started dealing eleven cards out to each of the five players: Damocles, Dee Greist, Miranda Delgado, Tangaroa, and himself. Delgado finished a swig of her drink and turned to ask a question of the new ally who was introducing them to this game. "So, Tangaroa, you're with the Doberman Empire?" "Yeah", he replied in a calm tone. "I'm in Intel." "Oh." Delgado's face blanched a bit. If this guy was anything like the other Dobe from Intel that she knew... "Do you know a DobeIntel officer named Curtis?" "Not personally", Tang said, picking up his cards and shifting them upright. "Curtis, huh?" he asked, his voice picking up a hint of emotion. "I might have met him once or twice." Dee withdrew a card from her hand and laid the rest face down on the table. "I'm pulling from Joe this round, right?" "Joseph", Lacroix corrected her on the pronunciation, stressing the second syllable rather than the first. "And yes, I think you are." Dee handed the card across the table to Lacroix, who picked it up and winced emphatically. He drew out his best card in the same suit and grudgingly handed it over. "That was a good hand, too." Lacroix considered the remainder of his hand. "I'll bid two. I can still make two tricks out of this." "That's still a good hand." Tangaroa said. Damocles gave up staring at his twelfth card, the 8"x5" with the rules written on it, and followed with his bid. "I'll take two." Dee added Lacroix's card to her hand, set aside her copy of the rules from her bionic vision field, and bid. "Three". Delgado noted that it was her turn. "I should bid, shouldn't I." She took up her cards and sorted through them. Tangaroa continued his conversation with Delgado. "So this Curtis, do you know him?" "We meet every so often for coffee," Delgado said succinctly, folding her cards. "Three." "Three, huh?" Tang gave a last glance at his hand and ruled out the possibility of going nil. "I'll take one, and that wraps it up." "And I start this off too, don't I?" Lacroix asked. "Yep," Tangaroa said. "Well, here we go." Lacroix tossed out a ten of spades. "Anything between you two?" Damocles asked Delgado suggestively. Delgado's cheecks flushed pink for a moment. "Oh, no, nothing. We just keep each other up to date on Jihad stuff." "Is he all right?" Tangaroa asked. "I haven't seen him around here, and I'd expect anyone in the Jihad--" "Oh, no," Delgado interrupted, "he's all right. He just doesn't want to get involved." "With Owsen running around, I can't blame him." Dee said. "Me either," Lacroix agreed, and examined the table. "Let's see..." He turned to Dee. "You take that one." "Looks like you two are partners again," Delgado said. "I played the eight, and you played the queen," she motioned to Tangaroa, "so we're partners this round." Dee turned to Damocles. "And that makes you the Ronin, Damo." "That's a good thing, right?" Damocles asked, looking at his rulesheet again. "In general," Tangaroa said vaguely, his face showing a hint of mischevious amusement. As Dee led off the next trick, the television droned on in the background, tuned into a 24-hour news channel. "...and in a shocking new development in the Woodsborough murder case, Frank Lancer's second mistress took the stand today..." Damocles muttered. "They're going on about Woodsborough again?" Lacroix shrugged. "It beats news about our people getting killed." "Yes, but people are killing people all the time," Damo explained. "Owsen could be killing people and they won't tell us because they're only interested in Woodsborough. I want to know if anything has happened to our people." "We all do," Delgado said. "Miss Lancer was somebody's people, too," Tangaroa mused. "She had a family." "Yes," Damo agreed, "but four hours of news coverage a day at the expense of everything else?" Tang unneccesarily looked back over his shoulder to address the base's artificial intelligence system. "Hey, Minerva, anything new on the newsfeeds?" A disconnected voice responded over the intercom. "I'd have told you if there was." Delgado grabbed the remote. "Let's see if there's anything on the other stations." The TV flipped over to another 24-hour news station, this one featuring a political talk show. "...and the *problem* with you and *your* people is that you're nothing but *partisan* *liars* whose *only* interest is money and *making* *themselves* *rich*, and you engage in these *ad *hominem* attacks, attacking other people's *character* instead of their *arguments*. You are *slime*! You know what I think should be done..." Before Delgado had lowered the remote, everyone else said in unison: "Turn it back." They didn't really need to ask. "...and Woodsborough continues to be a town in shock 238 days after the horrifying discovery..." Damo looked down at his cards and grumbled. "I don't know why they even highlight every little thing about the case when he's so obviously guilty." "There's a problem, you've already convicted him," Lacroix said. "They're still having the trial." "Yeah, but I can think what I want." Delgado threw out a spade and returned to chatting with Tang. "So what kind of work do you do in the Empire?" Tang grinned in embarassment. "Well, it's not the sort of thing we're supposed to talk about. Here, have a trump." "If he tells you, he'd have to kill you," Lacroix chuckled. "It's not as if there are any secrets any more," Delgado said. "The Jihad's long gone." "I don't like that trump," Damocles said, throwing down a joker. "Bastard," Tang muttered, then objected. "Wait, you're Ronin. You're supposed to go last." "Oh, that's right." Damo withdrew his card. "I wouldn't say the Jihad's long gone," Lacroix mused, "we're right here and we are fighting against.. something which is making Owsen do what he's doing." "I still don't like that trump," Damo said, throwing down the joker again. "Bastard." Tang smiled. Dee pulled in her second trick and tossed out a three of hearts. "I'd better play this now." "The reason I'm asking", Delgado continued to Tang, "is that I worked in Intel myself, for TRES, and maybe there's something we do differently between TRES and the Dobermans that we can learn from." "Perhaps." Tang said. "Aris told me she's glad you've been here on the night shift. She might have been in hibernation the past three years, but the 24-hour days were starting to wear her out." Tang chuckled. "I've been pulling the night watch because I'm still on East Asia time, and we don't get any sunlight down here to reset my body clock for Colorado." Delgado nodded. "That's the same reason Rens is on the third shift, though it's kind of odd that that's night time for Europe." "That's Rens," Tang said simply. "You know him?" Lacroix asked. Tangaroa nodded. A few moments later, noticing that the other players were waiting for a deeper explanation, he started talking. "The Empire sent me to Europe to start my intel career. Since we didn't have many European assets and TRES did, we had sort of a cooperative exchange cross-training program. Shad was one of the ones who helped train me." Lacroix smiled. "I served under Captain Houben for a time. He's a good officer. A good man. I didn't know he was into intel." "He's more.. operations than the back-end intel stuff that Delgado and I do, though he can obviously do the back-end stuff too, as we've... damn." "Sorry." Lacroix smiled as he took the trick. Tang sighed and leaned back. "That was the last card of mine that was going to take." Lacroix tossed out a jack. "And now I take my last trick." Dee slouched low, and Tang tossed out a joker. "No you don't." "Damn." Damo looked at the table in mild astonishment. "Hey, I made my bid." He gathered in the cards and led off the next trick. Delgado played a card and turned to Tangaroa. "Now, hold on, Tang. Did you just describe yourself as some kind of back-room analyst and paperpusher?" "Yeah, sort of," Tang said. "Why?" "I work in Intel." Delgado smirked. "We've heard about some of the things you've done, especially after the war." "What did he do after the war?" Lacroix asked. "Enh.." Tang shrugged. "Blew a few things up." "Half of Moscow?" Delgado asked wryly. "It wasn't half of Moscow," Tangaroa explained, "just a few Mafia businesses in one quarter." "So what did the Mafia ever do?" Dee asked. Damo snickered. "What'd the Mafia do?" he asked sarcastically. "Pissed me off." Tang said. "They're the Mafia," Damo smiled. "Use your imagination." "Guess you don't want to talk about it," Lacroix surmised. Tangaroa nodded. "It's under wraps. National security." Delgado was surprised. "You went into international relations? Jihaddi aren't supposed to do that." Tang gave half a smile. "International relations went to me. I sort of had to extricate myself from the situation." "So that's why we didn't hear from you for four years." Tang nodded and tried to change the subject. "So, what have you been doing since the war?" Delgado idly tossed out a trump and replied first. "I do some reporting for the Oakland Tribune." "Did you break any big stories?" Dee asked. "No.. actually, I'm thinking of quitting, but I haven't made up my mind yet. When I'm not being sent out on some utterly useless fashion assignment, it's just boring desk work." "What are you thinking of doing instead?" Delgado sighed and pulled in the trick. "I haven't made up my mind yet. That's part of the reason I haven't made up my mind yet on quitting. So, have you gotten any new designs working?" Dee smiled. "I've been working on some power armour, but I haven't finished getting the stress tolerances in the knee joints to acceptable levels. I think I'll have to use titanium bearings instead of steel." Some of the other players stared at her after she mentioned her hobby project. Not just for a young girl to be working on something that advanced, Jihaddi generally weren't supposed to be taking their skills into the private sector. "Is that... kosher?" Delgado asked with more than a slight edge to her voice. "Oh!" Dee chuckled nervously. "Yeah, don't worry. It's a hobby... not that I *couldn't* make Jihad-tech stuff, but if I make a setup completely out of mundane technology I can take it out in public and play with it." "Play with it how?" Delgado asked, expecting to be horrified at the answer. Dee grinned. "Ah, well, Damo found a 20mm autocannon from a crashed fighter, so I was going to rig it up like a giant rifle and truck it to the Knob Creek machinegun shoot to make people really jealous. Thing can do 30 rounds per second on full auto, and I should be able to get ahold of some HE shells for it." There was another uncomfortable pause as the other players seemed to be trying to figure out what to think about that. "Everyone needs a hobby," Lacroix said, breaking the silence. "What about you, Damo?" Damocles spoke next. "Dee and I have a machinery shop out in Arizona. Athena Heavy Industries. Maybe you've heard of it? We do customizations of weapons and motor vehicles, build our own models-" "Weapons and *fun* motor vehicles," Dee interrupted her business partner. "Or vice-versa." Damocles shrugged. "Okay, *she* does bikes too." Dee objected. "I hardly think being behind last year's winning AMA Superbike team was anything to sneeze at..." "It's still not our main business though," Damo replied. The bickering had the feel of a well-worn joke being brought out for form's sake, but Lacroix broke in to head things off. "So what kind of things do you guys turn out?" he asked. Dee and Damo stopped arguing back and forth and Dee gestured slightly for Damocles to tell it this time. "Mostly custom jobs, reworking pistols and stuff. We made a name doing some competition Colt 1911s but have expanded out to all sorts of other high-end stuff. We're working on introducing a shotgun of our own design though." "That's acually why we were at the gun show in Vegas when Owsen..." Dee trailed off uncomfortably, before lamely adding "well, you know." A few heads nodded sympathetically. "But yeah," Damo cut in. "We had similar interests so we've been out in the middle of the desert playing with toys since VR closed down." Dee swallowed and nodded. "Beats working for a living, eh?" she commented with a slightly forced grin. "So what about you, Joseph?" Lacroix gave a quick grin and answered. "Well, after the war, I went to college, got my teaching credentials, and I'm now an English teacher at Skyview High in Denver." "You too, huh?" Tangaroa said. "I teach English myself. Just private one on one tutoring, English as a second language for Japanese children and any other subject they need help on. Actually, I only have one student at the moment, a high school girl. She's a nice girl, and the family's nice." Damocles couldn't help but notice a certain twinkle in Tangaroa's eye. "Tang, you're not, um.." His face scrunched a bit in disbelief. Tang blushed, shook his head, and laughed. "No. Her sister. A businesswoman in her mid-twenties, named Natsuko. *She*'s a nice girl." "Okay, so you're not a total pervert." Damo chuckled as the whole table broke into laughter. "Yare yare," Dee muttered in Japanese and rolled her eyes. "" she continued in the same language. Tang blinked slightly; the girl's Japanese came as easily and rapidly as if she were a native speaker, though there was still a hint of an accent. "Your Japanese is quite good," he remarked. She smiled, more easily than the forced grin a few minutes before. "Thank you. I grew up in VR and it was quicker than waiting for anime to be translated." He looked taken aback by the statement that learning a new language was so easy to the point where Dee chuckled. "" she continued in Japanese. "" Dee tapped her forehead with her natural left hand meaningfully. "" She grinned impishly for a moment. Lacroix coughed politely. "Sorry to interrupt, but it's not very polite to be carrying on conversations in languages other people don't speak." "Oh, you're absolutely right, I'm sorry." She winked at Tang in a not particularily subtle way and flipped her last card onto the table. "Merci", Tangaroa smirked at Lacroix, extracting grins from Delgado and Damocles. Delgado took the last trick. "I get the over and I'm pulling from you this time," she nodded towards Tang. "Actually," Damocles said as he started to rise, "we'd better be getting back to the shop. We have orders to fill." Lacroix also excused himself. "I really need to get my grading done; as far as Skyview's concerned, I'm not exactly here. If there's nothing going on that I'm needed for, I'd better be going myself." Tang nodded in agreement. "I need to get some sleep before my shift. It's been fun playing with you all." "Great game," Delgado added as they all shook hands and exchanged parting pleasantries. THE SPIRAL BUILDING DENVER, COLORADO TUESDAY, APRIL 7 10:07 AM When she showed up for another day's round of tests on the sword fragments, Dee wondered what Mal was thinking, having her working with a mage. And not just any mage - Kazte Brenner was one of the founders of VR -and- the JPV, after all. That kind of reputation was a bit awe-inspiring, and it was with that in mind that Dee walked up to the security desk where Katze was waiting and said, "Uh, good morning Ms. Brenner." Katze blinked at the slightly awkward formality in Dee's voice, but otherwise replied calmly. "Morning, Dee. I think we're going to the same place, so could you lead?" "Sure thing." The two Jihaddi crossed the lobby to the bank of elevators. On the ride down Katze attempted to come up with something that could break the ice between them. She mentally composed and discarded a half-dozen openings by the time they got from the elevator to the doors of the top-secret lab where Dee had been working the day before. Katze shrugged inwardly and just asked, "Something the matter, Dee?" Well, okay, that may not have been the best opening. Dee winced at the sound and looked uncomfortable. "No, ma'am." Kazte suppressed a sigh and tried again. "Call me Katze, okay? VR closed down a long time ago, and it's not like I'm your superior officer anymore - not that I think I ever *was* technically." She continued, "If anything, you know more about this stuff than I do right now." "Um, well... old habits die hard?" Dee offered, a bit lamely. Katze smiled. "C'mon, I can't possibly be -that- intimidating," she said. Dee didn't say anything, only ducking her head a bit. "...Really, I can't. Can I?" "Well..." "You're seriously intimidated? By -me-?" Katze looked incredulously at the diminutive engineer, unsure whether or not she should be amused or outraged. "I'm not scary like Mal." Dee shook her head. "Well, not for the same- forget it, let's get to work." Thankfully for Katze, the next four hours of work loosened Dee up considerably. While they hadn't started off very well, it seemed that the very act of working together made Dee feel more comfortable with the older woman, reputation or not. Unfortunately, the subject of all their work didn't seem to warm up in the same way. They had made progress on analyzing the Owsenite, if only in the sense that they knew what -wouldn't- work. The problem was, they were running out of available options to try, and they weren't coming up with any good answers. Their mutual frustration was climbing, and when Katze heard Dee's almost inaudible growing at the shards, she figured it was time for a break. "Lunch?" Katze inquired. Dee looked up from the microscope she had been using to examine the shards for the thirtieth time and blinked. "Huh, what?" she asked, a bit out of it. "Lunch," Katze repeated patiently. "It's the meal that happens between breakfast and dinner..." "Oh. Oh! Right! Sure, that makes sense. This isn't going anywhere." "Okay, great. What's to eat around here?" "Well, there's a whole bunch of places on 16th..." Dee broke off, looking thoughtful. "Actually, before we head out, there's an experiment you could help me with." "Oh?" Dee nodded. "Yeah. I've been doing some research on developing ways to cut through magic." Katze gave her lab partner a skeptical look. "I'm not entirely sure I like where this is going." "Well, cold iron seems to do the trick according to all the stuff I've read, but I'm not sure of the exact criteria." Dee rummaged through her briefcase, pulling out a large Smith & Wesson revolver. "So I made up a few bullets..." Katze began sidling for the door as Dee started loading the revolver. The tech looked up and blinked, realizing that Katze had gotten the wrong idea. "Oh no, no no I'm not planning on shooting you," she said hastily, "I just need a spell or something to test on them, and well, we're kinda short on mages - and Maenads too, for that matter..." "I get it. Hm. How about I cast a shield spell on a target and you try to shoot it?" "That's perfect! We ought to move over to the ballistics lab, though." the short tech pocketed the case with the Owsenite samples and led them to another lab that resembled a firing range more than anything else. She set up some soda cans at the far end of the range and jogged back. "All right, that should do it," Katze said as a blue glow appeared around the cans momentarily. Dee nodded and fed cartridges into the revolver, snapping the cylinder closed and aiming at the first in the row. "Might want to cover your ears." Dee squeezed the trigger and let off the first round. Obligingly, it passed straight through the shield and can without slowing down, as did the next shot and can, though the third shot only went through one side and the last three simply knocked the cans over with no holes. Dee sighed. "Figures, it just had to be the cold -worked- ones..." "Problems?" "Nah, not really. Just that the ones that worked are the hardest to make." Dee shrugged philospohically. "Can't make the job too easy, I guess. C'mon, let's go get some lunch." The two wandered off from the Spiral Building to a Mongolian barbecue a few streets away from Coors Field. Not being well-versed in the joys of Central Asian food, the two played it cautious and ordered nothing too unusual. After a meal of relatively-ordinary stir-fried chicken, rice and tortillas, Dee and Katze left the restaurant for the walk back to Spiral. "Well," said Katze, "shall we wander back towards Spiral, and see if we've overlooked anything in the shard analysis? Or maybe just bang our heads against the lab bench for another couple of hours?" "Headbanging sounds like a plan," Dee said, "for all the good it'll do. Not that Owsenite is your everyday material to begin with. I know somebody in the old Skunk Works went and did a full analysis on it back in the day, but all that data went poof." Katze nodded. "Worldwalk?" she asked. "Mm, yeah. The Blood Jihad got hit pretty hard by it. We lost a lot of stuff..." Dee trailed off, staring into space for a second before adding in a soft voice. "Not to mention my mom." Katze blinked. "... Oh," she said, a bit lamely, unsure as to what else to say. Dee shrugged and continued, her voice deceptively light and calm. "In a lot of ways, it was worse than if she'd gotten killed. I mean, if that'd happened, then at least we -knew,- you know? But it didn't, she just... never met us. She was out there - she's -still- out there, as far as I know - but..." She shook her head. "Dad went looking for her, not long after. I don't know if he found her or not, but that wasn't long before Arsenal left, so I guess not." "Must have been tough," Katze said. "Yeah..." Dee paused, then continued speaking in a much more casual tone of voice. "Anyway, that Owsenite data would've been really handy about now. They came up with the data on equipment that's a couple of years older than the stuff we're working on." Katze nodded. She recognized the change of subject for what it was, and didn't pry. "They probably had a lot more time to analyze it, too." "There's got to be -something- there." Dee mused. "From what I've heard, Owsenite wouldn't leave splinters in something as wimpy as brick." "Yeah, that's kind of surprising. Plus what Aris found out, that the thing's got -holes- in it. I wish we could figure out how it was done." Dee frowned, an idea forming in her mind. "Maybe it was something like a composite layup," she said, "like it could only regrow so quickly, so it's just a solid shell on the outside, and the inside's foamed to fill the volume." "That sounds like a possibility." Katze agreed. "Part of me is curious how much of -our- Slayer's grown back since we last saw it." "I'm not sure I -want- to know until this whole thing is over." Katze raised an eyebrow. "Oh?" "Well... one of the things we got out of analyzing the Slayer in the old days was Jihaddium. It was kind of a cheaper copy," Dee chuckled. "'Cheaper' meaning we could make it at all. But the other side managed to make an equivalent, we called it B'harnium. If the two metals hit each other, they exploded." Katze blinked. "... Wow." she said. Dee nodded. "Yeah. I'm pretty sure that I don't want anything as heavily magicked up as the Slayer to explode. That would suck." "I see your point. But if Owsen's looking for our Slayer, it makes you wonder what he's planning." Dee paused. "Shit. You don't think there's something to my idea, do you?" she asked, suddenly worried. Katze shrugged. "I don't know. Owsen's not exactly sane these days." "Can't argue with that. This whole thing is crazy." "Tell me about it. It's been almost five years since the end of the war, and now here's Owsen, back from the dead. And it looks as if he's a Lyran pawn. So, why is he showing up -now?-" Dee flinched at the casual use of the name 'Lyran,' but soldiered on. "Well... I've got a theory, but I don't know if you want to hear it." "Try me. It's got to be better than Josh's theory." Katze smiled. "Okay. Well, we know that we managed to at least -hurt- Charn'El. And the Slayer shows signs that it's been forcegrown. I can't help wondering what they've been up to in the last few years. I'm pretty sure this means that they haven't forgotten us." Dee said. "So what was Josh's theory?" "Oh, he's convinced that it's all his fault." That caught Dee off guard. "You're kidding," she said, more statement than question. Katze shrugged. "Nah, see, he thinks he upset karma by proposing. Five days after, Owsen showed up." "Hey, that's great! Too bad about the timing, though." "No worries, we'll get there eventually." Katze paused, then returned to her original train of thought. "As for Charn'El, ponder the idea that he got out of... whatever it was the Maenads put him in on Pacifica." Dee let out a sound that was half chuckle, half sigh. "Great, something I'd rather ponder my lack of a love life than contemplate." Katze nodded, not really paying attention to anything but the question at hand. "Uh-huh. But what if he found the sword -and- Owsen in the void, and escaped? It makes sense with everything we know, except why Owsen wants our Slayer." "Hm. I'm on weak ground here, but. How about this: assume something big happens when the two Slayers meet." Dee frowned thoughtfully, trying to work the problem out. Katze nodded. "I can believe that." "Okay, now what -kind- of big things? Explosion? A beacon for an invasion? Reopens the Babylon Road? Locusts, famine, another decade of 'Friends?'" "Out of that list, I'd prefer the explosion. At least it'd be over quickly." "Mm." Dee agreed. The two Jihaddi walked down the street a little longer in silence, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. As they turned the corner approaching the Spiral Building, Dee finally broke the reverie. "Um?" "Yes?" "I was just wondering..." Dee began hesitantly. "Oh?" "What do you think of Mal?" Katze blinked. That was a bit unexpected. "Eh? How do you mean?" she asked, unsure as to where this was going. "Well, it's just... after all this time, he's still so... well, -Mal-! I can sorta talk to him and stuff moreso, but..." "Er." "I mean, that is--" "Wait, are you trying to say..." "But it's like--" "...You're interested? In Mal?" "I.. um, well... yeah. Kind of have been for a long time." "Wow. Just... -wow-." "I thought it went away and that I'd outgrown it. You know, just a schoolgirl thing... not that I ever really -went- to school much, but you know what I mean... but now he's around and we can actually -talk- about stuff and I don't feel like he's talking down to me... well, not that he ever did that much, but..." Dee trailed off, suddenly realizing exactly -what- she'd been saying, and to who she'd been saying it. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, face burning. "I shouldn't have said anything." "Hey, it's okay," Katze reassured her. "I'm good at listening, and it sounds like you needed to say it to -somebody.-" "It's just.. I don't know what to do here. I mean, I -like- Mal and we share a lot of interests. But we're both so busy and I don't think he notices me... well, like that." "To be utterly frank, and I really shouldn't speculate, but I don't think Mal notices -anybody- 'like that.'" Dee nodded dejectedly, as Katze continued. "And who knows? Maybe you'll find somebody who isn't a Jihaddi. After all, it's my oldest friend that ended up proposing to me." "Yeah... but that limits it in my case a lot. Besides, I don't think Minerva's all that interested, either." "Well, what I'm trying to say is that there's a big world out there, and you're still young." Dee sighed. "I know. Thing is though, aside from Damo, I don't realy hang around with people all that much. Like today, I was going to go sit and figure out how to deal with the data we got today after we split up, and bascially do that or work in the lab until something came up." "My guess is something's bound to come up pretty soon now." Katze shurgged. Dee's attitude towards the situation was getting a bit repetitive, and Katze's dormant matchmaker complex was beginning to surface. "What about Damo?" she inquired, trying to keep the question as innocent as possible. Dee laughed. "That'd be -way- too weird. Don't get me wrong, he's a nice guy and we get along great, but it'd be like dating an older brother or something." "If there's an age problem," Katze noted with a slight frown, "you know there's a reason we call Mal the Old Man." "Despite being short, I -am- legal," Dee muttered. "Not doubting you. But if Mal had -grandkids-, they'd probably be your age. Or older." "Damn. So there really is something to all those stories about him being older than he looks?" "I don't know exactly. He's pretty close-lipped about his past, but... well, probably." "Yeah. I was afraid of that. Oh well, maybe in another twenty years or so." Dee shook her head and chuckled darkly. "What a life, fate of the world on your head and nobody to date..." "Speaking of fate of the world stuff, is it just me or are we being followed?" Dee blinked as she caught a reflection in a window, suddenly tensing as she walked. "Yeah, Katze, I see them too. Pretend we don't notice them and turn right at the next corner. It could be a coincidence." She had noticed a wireless security camera on the corner of a building and very quickly brought up the sorfware on her arm's computer to find the signal and crack its mild (even by mundane standards) encryption. She watched the feed overlayed in part of her visual field as they turned the corner. "Damn," Dee muttered a few seconds later, closing the video once she'd seen the group of 3 follow them around. "Now what?" Katze asked, quite reasonably. Dee quickly flicked her eyes across the street and found an answer. "First car on our side; go by the passenger door and pretend you don't know I can steal cars." She extended a narrow bundle of micromanipulators from the tip of her artificial thumb and shoved it into the lock cylinder before Katze could object. Running the SkeletonKey program she'd written for emergencies like this that automaticially controlled the bundle, she was astonished that it diddn't open the lock instantly. "Uh, Dee? They're running now... is this wise?" "Just another second...." It was just a Toyota Solara, albeit a new one, but nothing should have this good of a lock. She watched in horror as SkeletonKey scrolled up to lock types that were only theoretical. "They're getting closer," Katze mentioned, shifting her posture. Closer was an understatement, it was another few seconds before the trio would be upon them. Whose car is this thing, Dee wondered as the program finally found the right key to pretend to be and opened the car doors. Both the ladies jerked open their doors and got in, Dee having the presence of mind to fasten her seat belt while Katze took the far more useful option of hitting the door lock. The men running after them tried the door handle an instant before Dee got the engine started, and had begun to draw a pistol out from under his jacket as Dee mashed the gas. "Get down!" she yelled to the 6 foot tall former basketball player as the car weaved, trying to make a harder target. There were a pair of pinging noises and then they made it around the corner. "Where am I supposed to have gotten down to?" asked Katze, quite reasonably. "Also, it seems to have been unnecessecary." Dee glanced to where the bullets had hit the back window, only to flatten themselves harmlessly without making more than a slight smudge. "Oh... kay. Katze, could you try to figure out whose car we just stole?" Dee was just adjusting her seat when a green conversion van ran a red light and almost hit them. "Asshole!" Dee instinctively screamed, only to have it mutate into "oh shit" as the sliding door flew open and someone raked the Toyota with automatic rifle fire. She turned the wheel to dodge down a side street, her unplanned turn taking out a newspaper box in the process. "Every time I go out with Jihaddi lately, I swear," Katze muttered as she pulled open the glovebox, distracting herself by figuring out the owner. The first thing in it made her pause. "Uh, Dee? There's a pistol in here." She pulled it out and held it where Dee could see. The tech blinked at what she recognized as an X-Pistol, which were so far just in prototype stages, and started to get a sudden sinking feeling. What she found around another corner didn't make things any better, a brown sedan moving to give chase too. Katze frowned as she found the Toyota's title. "Jonathan Fnord," she stated flatly. "We stole Mal's car," Dee remarked in shock. She paused, unfortunately in the middle of a turn, though the crunch of side-swiping a parked car brought her back to her senses. "Right. Well, maybe we can finish this before he finds out and put it back." Right about then the man in question, Malcalypse the Seeker, was walking out of the pleasant little sandwich shop he had gone to for a late lunch. He crossed to his car and had gone so far as to take out his keys before he realized that his car wasn't, in fact, actually there. Against all odds, someone had taken his car. Considering the situation for a moment and clamping down on the irritation that the whole thing was causing, he casually reached into his pocket for his cell phone. Dee and Katze almost blinked in unison as the phone built into the car started ringing. Neither made any move to answer it at first, but after the third ring Katze picked it up. "Hi Mal... uh yeah, about that... it was an emergency and..." at that instant the car sounded like it had been struck by a giant hammer and slewed sideways, Dee working franticially with the wheel and pedals to retain control. The burning smell told her what had happened even before Katze glanced back at the fist-sized hole punched in the driver's side rear door. "... look, we're kinda busy, can we talk about this later?" she said into the phone before hanging up. "Uh, Dee, there's a hole in the car." "Yeah, they probably hit us with a grenade launcher. Notice how well the climate control system is dissipating the stink?" she replied casually, mind racing. Probably an old M79, she thought, meaning that they would have to manually reload it and would be getting off a second shot about... now. A monumental crashing sound happened as she jerked the wheel to one side and crashed through part of a glass storefront which fortunately didn't have anyone in that part of the store. A cloud of glass and underwear flew up behind the car... oh, that was a Victoria's Secret, part of Dee's mind thought. Pity, but at least we're not dead the thought continued as the errant explosive blew a parked car in half. "This is insane," Katze commented rather more calmly than one should talk about a car chase of this sort. "I agree. Going to see about getting us a gate out of here," Dee replied in mid-jink, the next grenade carving a brand new pothole for city planning to ignore. She instantly called up the JihadLinker package in her arm and got ahold of Minerva. "Emergency, accidentally stole Mal's car and am in a car chase with people shooting at us, how accurately can you do gates on the fly?" Dee transmitted as one giant run-on sentence at the speed of thought. Min didn't even pause. "Need a couple seconds to get a fix to a new location." "Shit, that's too long. Be ready to open one to some coordinates I give though; we'll probably be coming through with a lot of delta-v." Dee closed the link, barely two seconds passed in real time. "Can't just gate where we are... have to predict where we'd have to be too accurately not to get shot." "So why don't we just run then if we can't get a gate." Dee shook her head. "Can't go too fast in city streets, not many pedestrians now, but also going straight would make us a good target." A series of jinks and turns kept the next grenade from plowing into the Toyota as Dee flogged it for all it was worth. "Just need to get creative... at least they're not coordinating that well... shit," she broke off just as the green van pulled across the side-street in front of them and again opened fire. The bullets spraying across the windshield seemed to be working better, small cracks appearing here and there. "Hang on," Dee yelled, resisting the urge to duck down or veer away from the van, instead pressing harder on the gas pedal. Katze and the gunner figured out what was about to happen at the same time and their reaction was much the same, both covering their face with their arms and tensing in anticipation. The Toyota slammed into the van with a sickening crunch, the whole event taking place far too fast for even the adrenaline-hyped perceptions of the people involved to see it actually happen. "Urgh," Dee muttered, taking note of the ruined van wrapped around the car which was miraculously still running. She shook her head to clear it as the airbags deflated and, unusually packed themselves back away. "Can we not do that again?" Katze pleaded as Dee noted the brown sedan with the bigger stick come around the corner. Dee growled an expletive under her breath and slammed the gearshift into reverse. "I make no promises," she muttered as the car lurched backwards in a cloud of tiresmoke, irritatingly taking the van with it. In her adrenaline fueled state, Dee saw the breech of the grenade launcher click closed and come bearing down at them. She snapped the wheel to one side with the accelearator still to the floor, the mass of the van snapping both cars around just in time to interpose itself in the way of the explosive shell. The blast was even nice enough to dislodge the van. Dee took in the surroundings as quick as she could and slapped the gearshift into drive, making for the gate to a parking garage. "Okay, I think I've got it now," the tech muttered as she kicked the car around the concrete spiral ramps heading upwards. "Got what? Isn't the top a dead end?" There was silence, except for screeching tires for a second. "Well, isn't it?" "Not... exactly." She opened a connection to Minerva and very quickly gave her coordinates for a gate portal as they came to the top, open level of the parking structure, the brown sedan hot on their tail but far too busy driving to try for a shot. "You're not..." Katze noticed the edge of the roof coming up, over a back alley away from the main streets. "Yep," and the car crashed through the chain-link fencing on the edge, Dee tapping the brakes to orient the car properly. Behind them the people in the brown sedan continued on, not realizing what was happening until an instant too late, plowing through the hole that the Toyota had made. The results were far different, the Toyota dropping straight down the alley while the sedan flew across the gap to slam into the side of a neighboring building. There were screams as the car fell towards the pavement, and another crash that Dee's consciousness decided to edit out. Back in the Mt. Blanca hangar bay, Mal stood and watched the area where Minerva was opening the gate to. He was rather curious to hear what explanation the two would have to offer, and also somewhat interested to see what shape his car was still in, though he didn't place too much importance on that by comparison. It was just a car after all. Events proved that that was a fortunate attitude for him to have. The gate opened and there was an incredible crunch as his car fell out and hit the concrete floor at probably 80 miles per hour. The front end crumpled and air bags had gone off, but the fact that the car impacted with the body verticially was worthy of comment. It resembled less a car and more a piece of abstract art, some strange monolith that had planted itself in the bay. Even as he strode over to check, there was a thumping and the passenger door opened and fell off, clattering to the floor. "I still say that could have gone better," Katze said to the interior of the car as she jumped down, looking disheveled but unhurt. "Any crash you can walk away from," came Dee's reply as she climped out of the car and then noticed Mal standing nearby watching them sternly. "Uh oh. Uh... I suppose you want an explanation." "That would be helpful, yes," was Mal's reply. Dee nodded, then winced as behind them the car fell over onto its roof, with a crash and tinkle of all its remaining windows shattering. "... right." VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO 3:00 PM LOCAL TIME He awoke slowly, and immediately regretted it. Everything hurt. His entire body was one congruous ache. Breathing was a chore, and each lungful of air might as well have been liquid fire. He cracked an eye, and bright, pale light stabbed into his retinas. "Nngh?" Felton hazarded. "Ah, good, you've returned to the living," said a familiar voice, in a tone of well-practiced patience honed by a career dealing with people ill-equipped for keeping up with his thought processes. Felton shielded his eyes from the overhead lamp and squinted toward his feet. His vision swam for a moment, but eventually he managed to focus dully on the figure at the end of his bed, where Malaclypse sat calmly, hands folded over his crossed knee. "You're lucky to be, even by your standards." Felton tried in vain to swallow, but his mouth felt like he'd been sucking on cotton balls. "W'time s'it?" he managed to choke out. "Tuesday." "... Oh." He tried to sit up, but a firm and gentle hand on his chest held him down. He rolled his eyes to look into Keili's softly smiling face. "How are you feeling?" she asked. "Like the worst bloody hangover of my life, only I didn't get to enjoy getting there first." He tried to glare at the light, but only succeeded in making his eyes sting. "Why's it so bloody bright in here?" Mal slid off his chair and moved to the dimmer switch on the wall. When he could see comfortably again, Felton picked at the bandage around his left shoulder. The gash beneath was still angry and red and oozing. He could move the arm in its sling a little, but it took a lot of effort and discomfort. "The autodocs managed to suture you up fairly well," Mal said, moving his chair to the side of the bed and sitting back down. "You're not quite back up to speed yet, but you managed to do a several weeks' worth of healing in only a couple of days. You should be lurching around the facility in no time." Kirk tried to wiggle his feet, but a searing pain around his ankles made him quit the attempt. "Great," he said, rubbing two days' worth of sleep out of his eyes. "Okay. Somehow I doubt you're just here to wish me well. What's up?" "I think you know." "Yeah... Owsen?" Mal shrugged. "He's fallen off the radar. Either you dealt him a pretty serious blow or he just can't find anymore Maenads to kill." That comment made Felton grimace slightly. "Seems he's learned a few new tricks," he said. "I wouldn't count on him being down for long." "You got a good look at the sword?" Mal asked. "Closer look than I would have liked," Felton mused, rubbing at his shoulder with a wince. "Looked just like the Barney-Slayer, but black." Mal nodded. "We suspect that it doesn't just look like it. That it's actually the regenerated missing half." Felton started to look a little alarmed. "I think I can believe that. It smelled like Owsenite. Hell, it /bit/ like Owsenite. But it also smelled... no, /reeked/ of Lyran magic." "That we've also suspected, but were hoping wasn't the case." Mal produced an enlargement of one of Dee's photographs and put it in Felton's hands. "Can you read this inscription?" The Maenad studied the photograph. "Well, tell you the truth, I've hardly mastered the language, but..." He looked at it thoughtfully in silence. "I recognize the root word. I think it means 'irony' or somesuch. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but..." he hesitated. Mal cocked an eyebrow. "What is it?" Felton handed the photo back to him and then pointed at the line of scrawl in the blade's furrow. "You see that glyph at the shoulder of the blade? As far as I've been able to tell, it's not a standard character of the Lyran alphabet. But it's been on many of the texts we pulled out of Pacifica." Mal twirled his finger in an impatient "get on with it" gesture. Felton grimaced. "It's a personal mark. A signature. It belongs to Charn'El." Now it was Mal's turn to look alarmed. "This could be more serious than we expected," he said, rising to leave. "Get some rest. I have a feeling we're going to need everyone in top condition in the coming days." He hesitated for a moment, and then stated the question that was bugging him, but wasn't important enough to pose until now. "Weren't your eyes green?" Keili took Kirk by the chin and turned his head to look. "It's happened again," she said. His eyes, in fact normally green, had become streaked with dark red. "It'll pass," Felton said, dismissively. "Happened once before, after we moved the 'Slayer to the JPV campus. But there's something else, Mal. Owsen said something about a 'Scourge' coming. To purge this world of its filth." Mal scowled. "The connotations of that are unsettling. Especially if Charn'El has managed to find his way back to this plane." Felton nodded. "Aye. I'd really like to know what Owsen is up to right now..." EDINBURGH, SCOTLAND 11:00 PM LOCAL TIME The man quietly occupying the corner table of a nondescript Edinburgh pub was drawing a lot of curious glances. Not because of his clothing, though even in Scotland the kilt as daily wear was a bit out of place. Nor was it really the scraps of armor he wore, but their battered, slightly charred and apparently well-used state certainly did nothing to deter it. Rather, it had a lot to do with the broadsword laid casually across the table next to his pint of Guinness. It had a certain sinister feel about it, but above all it looked quite a sharp, serviceable weapon. No one had mustered up the nerve to ask him to remove it. Tilden Owsen was flustered. Things were moving along so nicely until his encounter with Nemesis. It was bad enough that the pup had proven so difficult to track in the first place, but he had had the means to the sword in his grasp and had foolishly allowed it to slip away. He had lost the scent again, and God knew how long it would take him to pick it up. Worse yet, there was still no trace of the other three, which led him to believe that they were no longer a part of this world. To Owsen this might have been good enough, but he couldn't be certain his master would be in agreement. In all, his mission had reached an impasse, and it made for rather sour spirits. So he was doing what came naturally to an Irishman in a foul mood: he was attempting to get drunk, to varying degrees of success. He was focused on his drink when the dull hum of background conversation suddenly ceased, as though the atmosphere had been sucked right out of the house. Owsen looked up curiously. ATTEND. The command resonated through his pysche, booming impossibly loud in his ears for words spoken without sound. He bolted to his feet, knocking over his pint, and dropped to one knee with his head bowed. "I am here, Great One." THE HUNT PROGRESSES? "Y... yes, Great One. I have located the youngest of the cubs..." DO NOT PRESUME TO CONCEAL TRUTH FROM ME, OWSEN. "The eldest and her mate elude me yet, Great One," Owsen said hurriedly, face twitching. "I battled the one called Nemesis, but he has escaped your wrath. He claims to know the location of the sword, my lord, but I fear the trail has grown cold." YOU ARE MY HERALD, OWSEN. FAILURE WILL NOT BE ACCEPTED. "Yes, Great One. I will not fail you." There was a brief, puzzled silence. WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND? "Found, Great One?" Owsen asked. It took him a moment to understand. "Oh... a mere trinket, my lord." He retrieved the medallion from his pocket. SHOW ME. Owsen frowned. Show? Shrugging, he held the medallion up, allowing it to dangle in front of his eyes. He then felt it -- a cold, sharp presence, like being stabbed in the brain with an icecicle. The feeling was not unlike trying to share the view through a knothole in a fence, only the fence this time was his body. It was a touch disconcerting. WHERE DID YOU FIND THIS? "Around the neck of Nemesis, my lord. What is its significance?" Owsen asked. He heard a chilly, broken hissing sound, like freon escaping from a punctured hose. He realized that his master was chuckling. SEE. His mind exploded. Dark and disturbing images flooded into his consciousness, memories he didn't have that forced their way in. Memories of Lyran biomancy in dark places, of experimentation to change human beings into... something else... Of helpless women, held fast by fleshy tendrils and unconscious, implanted with, no, infested with... Of vague shadows, at once so human and yet not... Of burning villages, stalked by monsters wearing small amulets not unlike the one in his hand... Of the mages' victory turned defeat as the monster-men ultimately self-destruct. The waking-dreams gradually faded, but the memories lingered. "I understand, Great One," Owsen said, squeezing his eyes shut until the invasive memories faded into a dull throb in his skull. "But what use is device for tracking if it is no longer around his neck?" DO YOU QUESTION MY INTELLIGENCE, OWSEN? Owsen bowed his head deeply, a tremor of sudden fear shuddering his body. "No, Great One. Forgive your servant's tongue, for it has been affected by drink." INDEED. There was a thoughtful pause. LEARN. Another storm of memories, all magical rites and symbology. It had seemed hopeless, but now he understood. He knew what he had to do. And then he was alone. Except for the rest of the pub's patrons, who had found themselves very interested in the lunatic kneeling on the floor in the midst of some sort of psychotic episode. Owsen stood up, brushed off his knees, and took notice of the stares. "What? Have you not seen a man communing with his god before?" he said, and lifted his sword from the table. Suddenly nobody was interested in him anymore. He nodded in approval, and left the pub, sliding the black sword into its scabbard at his hip. He grinned up to the afternoon sun, which somehow seemed brighter. It would all be over soon, he was certain of it, and this made him happy. The last Maenad of the Holy Albino left on this wicked earth would be dead, and in the process he'd have the means of getting back what was once his. And then the Scourge would begin. It was going to be a good day, after all. BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, APRIL 8, 2004 Katze ran her finger along a row of books, looking for the one that was in English. She had figured it wouldn't be hard to find, she stuck it specifically in with the few books Josh and her had in foreign languages so that she could find it on quick notice, but it wasn't coming up. She could have sworn she'd stuck it in between the Russian-language copy of the Brothers Karamazov and the history of Marraketh Rene had given her. But there wasn't any book there, which both puzzled and worried Katze. She stood there, staring at the bookshelf, when a voice over her shoulder said, "Well, look who's actually at home." Katze turned, only to find Josh standing there, still in his work clothes, and she wondered why she hadn't heard him coming in downstairs. "I was looking for something," she offered, and instantly regretted it. It came out sounding somewhat lame. She hadn't really offered Josh an explanation of her whereabouts over the last week. Not that it was necesary, of course, but if they were going to build a relationship on trust, it was something she ought to do. "A book, I would assume," Josh said, with a hint of a smile. Katze frowned. She didn't understand why Josh seemed to be playing with her, unless he was actually angry with her and wasn't admitting it. "I'm sorry," she said. "The whole Owsen mess is picking up speed, and I'm not sure how long it's going to last." Josh nodded. "I figured as much," he said. "It's what I get, I guess, for falling in love with a do-gooder." His eyes sparkled at the last line. "But it would have been nice if you'd told me beforehand. As it was, I had to find ways to amuse myself." "You would have had to find ways to amuse yourself whether I had told you or not," Katze said. "But with that said, I had a book here that I need to find, and I could have sworn I put it right here." "Well, the project I started working on was sorting and rearranging the bookshelves. I did find a book over here, but I thought you had just misfiled it. It was in English in the middle of the foreign language books." "Yeah. I did that on purpose so I could find it. What did you do with it?" Josh frowned in thought. "I threw it in the box of books I took back to Moe's last night." Katze took a deep breath and tried to control her temper. Josh didn't quite realize how important that book was, and it wasn't his fault he had boxed it up and taken it back to the used bookstore. "Then I guess we're just going to have to go to Moe's and see if we can find it, aren't we?" she said. "Why are you mad at me?" Josh asked. So much for attempting to keep her temper, Katze decided. Josh continued. "I only put books we had more than one copy of in that box. We talked about doing this when we moved. You know that." "That book was important, Josh! It was the only clue I had..." What Josh had said sunk into Katze's head, and she stopped her tirade. She stood silent for a moment and then said, quietly, "More than one?" "Yeah. I have two copies of _Colour of Magic_, because one is a first British edition signed by Pterry himself. And then one for reading, because I don't want to destroy the one by repeated rereadings. I figured we didn't need a third copy. When did you get interested in the Discworld novels anyway? I thought fantasy reminded you too much of home." Josh frowned. "If I had known you were so interested in it, I'd have lent you my books, you didn't have to go get a new copy." Katze stared at him dumbly. "Discworld? Fantasy? Pterry? Err?" "You didn't read it, did you," Josh said. It was definitely a statement and not a question, but Katze nodded anyway. "So if you haven't read it, why did you have it?" "You're not going to believe the story," Katze said. "Lesse. My fiancee is the liberator of my homeworld, killing my father in the process of doing that work, and in her spare time, when she's not busy pretending she's as normal as everybody else despite the fact that she is very much not, works as part of a team that fights things the rest of us should not know about. And I believe all that." Josh looked at Katze. "What are you going to tell me that could top the utter unbelievability that is your story, Kats?" "Touche," Katze said. "Okay, then. A friend of mine, at the closedown, relocated himself and a good chunk of the property of his JAO to somewhere else, and the only clue I have as to where he went was the copy of that book. He said to read it and that's where he is." Josh's mouth fell open, and it took a few moments before Katze reached up and tapped him on the chin. He closed his mouth, and then said, "Wow. I didn't expect that." "I *told* you it was a bit of an unbelievable story," Katze said. "Now, the point of this whole thing is, what can you tell me about this Discworld? Because, if that's where this book is set, then that's probably where my friend is. And it's rather important we check on him, because he's in possession of something important." Josh nodded sagely. "How much detail do you want? I know a lot of it." "Just enough to give me some idea where to go. I'm not even sure Mal can find this place, let alone get me there." "Hmmm, I'm going to guess your friend is a mage, going to Discworld wouldn't make much sense otherwise." "Right on, oh wise one." Katze smiled after saying it, and Josh couldn't resist smiling back before his face settled back in a serious expression. "Okay. Discworld is a flat disc, hence the name, that is carried by four elephants on the back of a turtle. They've all got names, but we'll not worry about that now. On this disc, there's a city called Ankh-Morpork, and that's where Unseen University is. That's the wizard's college. He's probably somewhere near there if I don't miss my guess." He walked over to a bookshelf and pulled a small paperback novel out. "Here, this is my reading copy. Don't lose it." Josh flung the book at Katze, who caught it. He then came back to her, smiling. "I hope that helps," he said. In response, she kissed him, and said, "I don't think I'll be back tonight. I have a trip to make." And she disappeared before he could say anything in return. Josh stood there for a second, and then slapped his head. "I forgot to tell her that the wizards at Unseen are going to boggle over a girl on campus." He turned around and grabbed a book off the bookshelf and smiled to himself. _Equal Rites_ seemed like good reading material for the night. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO THURSDAY, APRIL 9, 2004 Katze appeared in the middle of the lab. Malaclypse didn't even look up, instead continuing to ready the 'Gate. He did, however, point towards a garment bag hanging on some random piece of machinery. She opened up the garment bag. Inside were petticoats and a frilly dress. She looked at them incredulously and turned towards Mal, who was wrapped up in getting the 'Gate ready. "You can't be serious," she said. Mal continued to work, smirking slightly. "Well, from what I can tell, based on a quick reading, is that you're looking at Victorian. From that, the only other option I can see is dressing as a man." He turned to another console and typed some commands. He paused for a moment. "You sure you want to do this?" Pulling on the dress, Katze said, "With Owsen running around like this, I need to make sure that the 'Slayer... the -other- 'Slayer is still fine. When I know that it's safe, I'll feel much better. I'm sure you will too." She smoothed out the dress. "So, what do you think?" Mal looked up. "No, you're right. I--" "What," she said. Mal adjusted his glasses. "Well, you probably aren't going to want to wear those jeans under the skirt." THE DISCWORLD Katze stepped onto the grass. She set a metal suitcase on the ground and unlocked it. She pulled a canvas sack out of the case and set it on the ground open. Looking up briefly, she noticed a cow staring dumbly at her. It chewed on some cud, blinked, and bent back down to eat some fresh grass. Katze removed some small taped bundles from the case and placed them into the sack. She opened the last one in the case and placed the contents in her-- Wait. She didn't have any pockets. She looked all over the dress, but couldn't find anywhere to put the small silver coins. Taking a quick check of the area, when she was satisfied no-one was around, Katze put the coins in her bra. She pulled out a book and consulted a small map in the front cover. She looked around and started walking towards a road in the distance. It is a cliche about cities that they never sleep. Even in the depths of the night, something stirs and cities take on a life and a personality of their own. Whether this is a function of the collective unconscious, or just inanimate objects being endowed with the spirit of the idea behind them is unknown, but cities live. Ankh-Morpork, Katze decided, not only suffered from multiple personality disorder, but also a case of attention deficit disorder, antisocial tendencies, halitosis, and some creeping skin infection one really didn't want to think too hard about. Add to this the sheer general feeling of being one step too close to the edge to back away, and Katze was generally rather sorry she had decided to come looking for Pupp in the first place. She didn't have the first clue as to where to find Pupp other than what Josh had told her. One would think it wouldn't be that hard to find a university, but among Ankh-Morpork's charming habits was the tendency to put things in the least bloody obvious place, and after wandering through the streets, Katze found herself completely lost. She sighed and continued walking, idly wishing she'd actually bothered to read the book Pupp had given her before this whole mess came to this. It couldn't be helped, she thought. She was here now, and bloody-minded enough to find Pupp and do the errand she had been sent on. In the meantime, she was trying to find a soul who could possibly give her directions, but nobody really seemed to be all that welcoming, let alone friendly and helpful and all those other adverbs, which just served to frustrate our lost adventurer even more. As it was growing dark, Katze figured she would try her luck at one of the taverns by the river -- if you could call that a river. It looked something much more akin to an industrial waste accident happening in slow motion. Even Cleveland got the hint when its river caught on fire, Katze thought, and then realized she'd actually compared something to Cleveland in a manner in which Cleveland came out favorably. This realization did not help Katze's opinion of the place, but as she was still trying to do her duty, she picked a tavern at random and pushed open the door. There are certain places too dodgy to be called disreputable, and the Mended Drum in Ankh-Morpork was one of these fine establishments. Of course, our heroine, being ignorant of what passed as culture on the Disc, didn't realize that the Mended Drum was probably one of the best places to practice stuff like your beating up somebody with a table leg or axe flinging from fifty paces or other related skills as opposed to what people normally go to taverns for -- this being the wine, whiskey, and song. So it probably should not have come as a surprise that the Mended Drum was full on engaged in the middle of one of the greatest bar fights in its history (which happened every other night and twice on Thursdays) when Katze walked in. "Excuse me..." she started to say, but was rudely interrupted by the sounds of a dwarven battle axe whistling through the air very close to her left ear and thudding into the door she just walked into. Before Katze's conscious mind could catch up to the fact that yes, there was a rather large and heavy axe wobbling gently next to her head, her subconscious mind reacted in self-defense. Long buried instincts reared up and, sensing danger, lashed out. Even for the Mended Drum, the bang was quite impressive. Much later, after the dust had cleared, people from as far away as Pseudopolis would claim to have seen the flash, and unscrupulous traders of all sorts would market bits of charcoal they found lying around as "genuine debris from the Great Explosion." UNSEEN UNIVERSITY AN HOUR OR TWO OF QUIETLY SNEAKING AWAY AND ASKING DIRECTIONS LATER Katze walked through the open gates to the courtyard. Awestruck, she paused and stared at the abstract tangle of towers, parapets, balconies and mobius loops of Unseen University. "Wow. Pupp sure knows how to pick 'em." She continued through the courtyard, not noticing the shocked stares and muted exclamations following close behind. As she approached the door she was grabbed around the shoulders. "Aye wouldn't go that way, may gel!" The large woman aimed her towards the side of the main building. As they were walking, she talked about this, and that, and how the Dean was doing that, and how they were doing that with this, and oh yeah, the Bursar. See, he was fighting with the ArchChancellor and they-- Right. Anyway, Katze was shown to a non-descript side entrance from which she was guided into the kitchen. Some kitchens are prominent in their distinct lack of use. You know, the squeaky clean pots, perfect floor, empty sink, and the acute lack of smells. Not this one. The University kitchen was full of smells, some good, some bad, some unintelligible. The only way to tell that the black dripping mass hanging from the ceiling was pots would be to use a metal detector. A broom was pushed into her hands and she was directed to a hallway. She tried to protest but trying to get a word in while the woman (who Katze found out was Mrs. Whitlow) talked constantly about all the goings-on in the University was like trying to nail a noodle through a two-by-four. "Now you just go ahead and start sweeping this hallway, gel! If you see hanything that might disturb you, just close your eyes and hwait a few moments." Mrs. Whitlow turned and strode back down the hall. Katze looked at the broom, then at the rapidly moving figure of Mrs. Whitlow. "Wait, but--" The older woman fluttered her hand and continued walking. "You will be fine may gel! Don't warry, aye know you'll do me proud!" She faded into the distance. The hallway was empty. Katze shrugged and started sweeping. At least no-one was going to question what she was doing there if she was cleaning. She leaned the broom against a wall and lifted the canvas sack off her shoulder. Katze reached inside the sack and pulled out a JihadLinker[tm]. She punched in Pupp's address and hit 'trace.' I hope he's left it on, she thought. Underneath a large stuffed alligator, left behind by the room's previous occupant who as the result of an unfortunate magic misunderstanding, the Unseen University's newest faculty member carefully positioned a medicine dropper over a bubbling cauldron. The slightest wrong move could be highly inconvenient. He wiped a stray sweat droplet from his forehead. Carefully... caaaaarefully... almost... aaaand... "PUPP!!" ...ohshit. *WHOOMPF* Lifting the blanket off of Pupp's head, Katze cautiously smiled, "So.. bet you weren't expecting to see me, were ya?" She handed him a mug full of what she was hoping to be water, which he promptly poured over his head, dousing his still-smoldering hair. "Katze? Wha-- Kat! What're you doing here?" Pupp grabbed her and hugged Katze tightly. He let go and held her at arms' length. "This has to be the first time i've ever seen ya in a dress... not too shabby!" He paused for a moment. "Wait. What ARE you doing here," he said. "Well... it's a long story." Katze explained the situation, putting extra emphasis on the parts involving the Owsen's rampage and subsequent multiple killings of Maenads. "Wait. Owsen? Big guy, kilt, really awful accent?" Katze nodded, "that's the one. I don't know if you remember him or not, but he disappeared in a nicely vague puff of smoke when all the mucky-mucks tossed Charn-el out of this dimension on Pacifica." Pupp was recruited into the jihad in the brief period immediately after Operation:Phoenix and just before Pacifica. He remembered hearing through the grapevine about the events on that island, but never got many details, even after having become a Trium Adjunct. The only solid thing he knew about the operation was that it was where the BarneySlayer was shattered, bringing about the events leading to his and JPV's holding on to the remaining half of the sword. He reminded himself to slide by the vault and check on it, as he hadn't really been worried about it since he'd arrived on the Disc. He showed Katze around the office, and tried to answer her questions about why he chose a medieval culture to call home. "You see, THIS is why I chose this particular reality to hunker down in," Pupp explained. He very casually flicked his wrist. A small, bewildered rabbit appeared in his outstretched hand. "On Earth, i'd merely create an illusion that there was a rabbit. The ambient magical energy in our universe is very faint." He stroked the rabbit between the ears, calming the animal, who now started looking around the room looking for food. With another flick of the wrist, the rabbit was gone, leaving nothing but a small puff of purple smoke. "This world is absolutely SATURATED with magical energies, so rather than create just the illusion that a rabbit is in my hand, I actually can create a living creature where before there was nothing." He rolled his eyes, correcting himself, "Well, not exactly nothing. It's actually pretty complex involving base elements from the surrounding area and chemistry and such, but because of the heavy magic saturation, it's no effort at all." Katze had noticed from the first moment she stepped onto the Discworld that she was utterly enveloped by magic. Stepping out of the 'gate, it felt kind of like walking into a heavy fog which you can't see, can't smell, and which has the effect of making a mage feel like they're taking a constant methamphetamine shower. "I noticed." She let him go on for a few minutes, but ultimately, the reason she was on the Disc was to check on the 'Slayer. She interrupted Pupp in the middle of a demonstration of how he was able to pull a hat out of a rabbit, a pretty bad pun once she stopped and thought of it. "Pupp. I need to make sure the 'Slayer is fine. Could you take me to it? She noticed his face drop when she stopped him. "I'm sure it's okay," she said. I mean, you have been checking on it, right?" "Uh.. yeah. It's just fine." He looked off into the distance. "Checked on it.. oh, last week or so." "Great. Let's go. I gotta get back to Earth, and I want to know that it's safe," Katze said. Pupp nodded and headed for the doorway. "It's at JPV HQ. We can take a coach." He stopped at the door. "You sure you don't want to relax a bit first?" Katze was puzzled. "Uh, no. I need to see it now." She had a moment of suspicion, and decided it wouldn't be too soon before she saw the 'Slayer. They walked out of the office and headed for the JPV campus. The coach pulled up at the main building of the JPV campus. Pupp tipped the driver with a single Ankh-Morpork dollar. Katze was struck with how over-run the buildings were. What looked like years of plantgrowth had moved in on the Praxeum's space. It looked like a ghost town. "Pupp, where is everybody?" She noticed a raccoon peeking out of the window of what was her office when she was helping him get the fledgling JAO off the ground. "I know you went to the University, but didn't anyone stick around?" He nodded, "yeah, some of them stuck around for a few months, but those of them who didn't come with me to the 'U' went out on their own. Last I heard some went to other countries, and some have just camped out in small villages and towns." He sighed. He pulled some vines out of the way of the entrance to the main building. "It's still down here in the vault. There's no electricity, of course, so..." He snapped his fingers, and a ball of light appeared in front of them. the light revealed the main entrance to be just as overgrown as the outside. Katze grabbed Pupp's arm. "Tell me you've actually checked on the 'Slayer. This looks like no-one's been here for years!" She couldn't believe that he would leave the Jihad's single weapon supposedly able to kill the Purple Bastard unguarded. Her temper flared. "Pupp. You KNOW how much B'harnii and the Lyrans want the BarneySlayer! HOW COULD YOU LEAVE IT LIKE THIS!?" She disappeared. Puppeteer leaned up against the wall of the entrance. "But.. you don't..." He stepped towards the stairs. "Kat, wait!" Katze appeared in the vault. She stomped over to the platform where it rested. She couldn't believe it. The glass was completely covered with dust and dirt. It was obvious that no-one had been in the room since Pupp had brought the JPV to Discworld. She heard Pupp opening the locks. Katze brushed off the dirt. The door opened and Pupp practically fell into the room, breathing heavily. "Kat, look... I mean, I know I haven't, you know... kept WATCH on it, but the 'Slayer's been safe! Look, I'm sorry, I..." He noticed Katze staring at the BarneySlayer, mouth agape. "What?" Pupp peered into the case. "The fuck? You've gotta be kidding me." Katze opened up the case, reaching in to remove the sword. Pupp just stared, not believing what he was seeing. The sword was whole, like nothing had ever happened to it! Katze pushed it into his hands. "Here. From this moment on, this sword stays in your possession at all times." She rubbed her forehead. "The Lyrans grew Owsen's shard into a full replica of the original sword. Now we have our own. You need to protect it with your life, you understand?" He took the sword from her grasp. All Pupp could do was to nod silently. As Katze turned and left the room, over her shoulder she said, "please don't let me down." The ride back was filled with deafening silence. As they approached the South gate of Ankh-Morpork, Pupp tried to apologize, but Katze cut him off. "Look, you don't have to apologize. I'm not mad." She looked into his eyes. "But i'm very disappointed. I never would have imagined that I couldn't trust you in this. And what's worse is that I don't have any choice but to trust you again. I have to go back." She tapped the Barney-Slayer, which was sitting next to Pupp on the seat. "I already asked you once, but just to make sure, please do not let it leave your sight. Don't disappoint me again." She disappeared, leaving Puppeteer alone with the Barney-Slayer. "Fuck. Now what?" KINGMAN, ARIZONA FRIDAY, APRIL 10, 2004 Dee blazed across the pavement on the back of a bike, lost in thought. The bike was for a customer, a brand new Yamaha, and ostensibly she was taking it out to flog the hell out of it before she completely disassembled it. She always reserved the right to do that. Customers knew that she was a capable rider, and it was far easier to get a feel for how to improve things once you'd ridden them to the limit and experienced their shortcomings yourself. Obviously it was also for the fun of getting to ride a lot of top-end sportbikes, as all her customers knew, but noone could argue with some of the results she could achieve. That was only part of why she was out here though. The dry streambed was one of what she thought of as a personal course, twisting and winding through scrubland. It was quite good when she had found it, but she'd gradually and painstakingly laid a layer of real concrete over the concrete-like surface the mud had baked into, turning it into a budget test-track. She often came out here to clear her head; over the last couple days she'd been out here as much as she could. Which wasn't to say she wasn't getting useful data about the bike, but it was far from the only thing on her mind. "Okay, we ran," she muttered to herself, clicking the shifter down two gears, then leaning into a corner and getting on the throttle again. The bike screamed. "They had guns and it was in public. How the hell did they know where we were?" It was that last part that had been really bugging her. They hadn't been followed, she knew that, and for them to have been found after randomly wandering the city was too much of a coincidence. Several more corners flashed past, brush and occasional trees lining the sides forming into a blur. 135 miles per hour she knew, the bike's instruments piped directly into her sensorium via her right arm. Not too bad, but she scrubbed some speed off for the long sweeping left-hand corner, leaning all the way into things. And then in a flash she saw the truck, parked across the width of the lane and concealed by the brush until she was right on top of it. Dee struggled to change directions and slow down, but had just enough time to straighten up before the front of the bike slammed into the bed of the pickup, sending her flying. Well fuck, she had plenty of time to think as she sailed through the air. The world had slown down to a snail's pace and more than anything she felt an intense wave of irritation. Her mind instantly connected the truck to her attackers a few days earlier and to, of course, the Owsenite shards she still carried in her jacket in anticipation of getting back to work on analysis Monday. They must have some way of tracing them. Then she noted the ground about to run into her and wondered exactly how much this was going to suck. The first bounce sent her flying an additional 20 feet, her forearms scraping into the ground from where they had instinctively come up to protect her head. While she was wearing state of the art - Jihad state of the art - riding gear, a type of synthetic fabric that hardened to the stiffness of steel on impact and resisted abrasion, the impact still hurt. A lot. The next bounce was off the bank of the stream and the one after that into a few small trees which she probably destroyed; Dee wasn't too keen on paying attention by then, though. In fact, it seemed a fair place to rest a little while. It was less than a minute later that she heard rustling through the bushes. Dee raised her head enough to see the figure approaching, and recognized it as one of the three men who had chased herself and Katze in Denver. "Fuck," she muttered. The man spotted her and called out to his companions in some language she'd never heard before, then grinned slightly as she raised her right arm towards him, interpreting it as a pleading gesture from a battered foe. There was a loud explosion, and he looked downright surprised as the shotgun blast took him full in the chest. Dee started hyperventilating, smoke rising from the hole the concealed one-shot gun in her arm had blown in the palm of her glove. Then she very quickly regained her senses, tore off her once shiny chromed helmet and scambled towards the brush and concealment, staying low so any others wouldn't see her. They came running, crashing through the brush and making it dead simple for her to tell where they were. Amateurs, part of her mind said. You are too though, another replied, to which the first told it to shut up. Smiling grimly, Dee reached inside her jacket and pulled the Sig P210 she always carried out of its shoulder holster. She clicked the Swiss pistol's safety off, started the targeting software specificially for it, and took a couple deep breaths to calm herself. Here goes, she thought to herself as she quickly pushed herself to her feet. There were two of them, both by the body of their comrade. Both were scanning the area alertly, on guard for whatever had fired. One was facing her and shouted, bringing his pistol to bear. 103 feet away, the targeting software calculated from watching through her eyes. In his excitement, his first shot went wide, passing at least a foot to the side of Dee's head. Her return shots didn't go wide. The incredibly powerful computer in her bionic arm used a variety of algorithms to calculate exactly where the gun needed to be pointed and fine-tuned her aim, an electricially driven finger stroked the trigger twice, and the man went down with a pair of hollowpoint bullets destroying his heart. The second one had barely started to spin to face her at the warning; her next two shots took him in the temple and he fell as well. Dee lowered her pistol and opened up a JihadLinker connection to Mal. "Hi, just so you know, I just got attacked by the same people as in Denver. I don't need medical assistance, but I have three corpses, a wrecked bike, and a truck that need disposal." She sounded far too calm to herself, even given that it was transcribed directly from her thoughts. "Right," Mal replied. "KillJoy just showed up; I'll gate him through to help clean up." "Thanks." She closed the connection and then, all of a sudden her nerves caught up to what had just happened and she threw up in the bushes. VRDET HQ BLANCA MOUNTAIN, COLORADO SATURDAY, APRIL 11, 2004 2:13 AM He had to admit, as he strolled down the darkened corridor at god-knows-how-early in the morning, that he was rather impressed with what these kids had going for them. TRES HQ had a pretty substantial underground facility, but it was nothing compared to this compound-under-the-mountain. Still, in the end, it wasn't going to be about who had the best toys, was it? The man in black tossed his head from side to side, chuckling at the irony of that thought, because, really, there was one toy that really mattered, wasn't there? Say true, because if that wasn't so, he certainly wouldn't be here right now, in this inevitable tomb that they all so cleverly dug for themselves. And the security! Well, it was certainly impressive. He was sure he saw all manner of automated defences on his way in, all sorts of nifty little high-tech gadgets that stared blankly at him with their all-seeing eyes that somehow did not see him. And all that rock and debris in the access tunnel? Well, that was certainly bothersome, but the master had shown him a rather clever way in. He smiled and waved cheerfully at the camera watching him as he walked casually through another one of those interesting laser grids that were no doubt meant to trip an alarm or something worse when someone crossed them. Very clever. Well. We shouldn't let ourselves get distracted now, should we? Now, let's see... ah, of course. Hospital. And rightly so, he imagined that the little pup was probably still a bit broken, and it served him right, didn't it? A little suffering for not dying on schedule as he should have. The wild-eyed spectre couldn't help but smile at this. He almost didn't notice when the door a few paces down the hall slid open, and out strode this giant of a man. He quickly spun around a corner, drawing his sword with his back to the wall. This could get quite a bit messy, couldn't it? Good, very good. He grinned, flexing his fingers around the grip, tensing, ready to strike... KillJoy strode on by without a single glance, disappearing down another corridor. Oh. Well, just as well. He was here for a purpose, after all. Now, where was he? Ah, yes. Sheathing his sword, he skipped off briskly into the hospital wing. Not far away, in one of the many recovery rooms, former Grand Admiral Kirk Felton slept, and dreamt. This in itself was not unusual, but it was the first time in several days that he had what one might call a 'conscious' sleep. In it, a chilled wind caressed his skin, and he felt the reassuring solidness of the haft of a wood-axe in his hand. It whistled through the air, thumping into the log stood on the block, splitting it neatly in two. He left the axe embedded in the block and turned. Sure enough, below the short but steep ridge on which he stood squatted a small cottage erected almost haphazardly from stone, white smoke curling from the rough chimney poking through its thatch room. He was home. He rolled his head back, closing his eyes to the cloudless blue sky. He inhaled a lungful of the crisp air, heightened Feral senses detecting on it the faint scent of blooming heather. It was familiar, all of it, and in spite of that he couldn't supress the faint smile that touched his lips. It was the day when everything changed. He half-ran, half-stumbled down the incline to the threshhold of the house, pausing with his fingers splayed on the weathered wood of the door. He looked at it thoughtfully, knowing what he might find inside, but shook his head with a small sigh. No, things had indeed changed, and even in dreams it was better to allow some ghosts to remain buried, no matter how much they were once loved. His tiny little homestead was only a brisk twenty minute walk from the edge of town, a walk that would be relished on a day like this. It was a walk which passed quickly, such as they always do in these sort of dreams, and as he crossed into the muddy lanes of the little community, the wind once more picked up, caressing his skin, only this time carrying on it the faintest sound, whispers on the breeze. Curious, he thought, and then the pain seized him. Keili was awakened by her husband's stirring next to her, not entirely surprising given how tiny the bed on which she lay next to him was. She rolled over muzzily, slipping an arm around his waist and kissing him lightly on the back of the neck. She cracked a sleepy eye, and what she saw started her to instant lucidity, lunging for the dagger she kept sheathed near the bed. She deftly drew, but before she could stab into the grinning spectre's neck, it pressed a finger to its lips and gave her a soft shush. As darkness overtook her, her eyes rolled back in their sockets and she flopped limply into her pillow, the slim stiletto slipping from her fingers and clattering onto the floor. Tilden Alexander Owsen watched her fall unconscious, and turned his attention back to Felton, and leaning close enough to the Maenad's ear to kiss it he whispered into his dreams. Felton convulsed and stiffened as the final syllables fell from the lips of the fallen Feral. Faint traces of violet light wound themselves across the surface of his skin, forming intricate patterns like luminous tribal tattoos, eldritch in design and purpose. His eyes fluttered open, unseeing, glowing red. Owsen smiled with satisfaction, briefly, but then his face grew deadly serious. "Now, me boy... where is what's mine?" Red. The color of passion. Of life. But also one of violence, of hate. Also a color of death. It filled his mind, it filled his vision, it filled his soul, even in this dream-place. And a horrible liquid warmth, tasting of tin and copper, filled his mouth, coated his throat. It was a taste that he had not experienced, had not allowed himself to experience in a long time. He'd killed since, yes, and feasted, oh certainly, but never this, never did he allow what little shreds of humanity he could hold onto in such a state to slip this far from his grasp. This was human blood. Memory gave way to nightmare. Fingers of orange fire scrabbled for the skies as the fresh corpse, still warm in his hands thumped wetly to the ground. He felt like a puppet, strings pulling unresponsive limbs. Trapped in his own body, experiencing everything but controlling nothing. He bellowed at the sky in animal rage... or was it simply terror? He couldn't be certain. The village in Felton's mind was now ablaze. This isn't right, he thought to himself as he snagged one of his kinsmen in taloned claws and tore off his head with ease. This didn't happen, this was not as he remembered it. This wasn't memory, anymore. Not his own. And as he raged, struggled against his traitorous dream-body, somehow, while he knew it wasn't right, it FELT right. Good. Full of purpose. And that was what horrified him most of all. People fled from his monstrous form, brown alligator-skin slicked with blood, and he pursued with glee (horror!), slashing them to ribbons with great swipes of his talons, scorching them to ash with the merest effort of thought. He was bred for this, he felt somehow, as he pounced upon a woman fleeing a burning house. he turned her to face him with teeth poised to tear out her throat and glimpsed her face. The face of his wife. Keili. No! And as his fangs closed around her soft throat, the world swam away from him, blurring, ripped away from his thoughts and memory. A wave of nausea ran through his dream-body, seizing his guts like a clenching fist, and for a fleeting moment, as a fog overcame him, he felt once more attached to himself. And he heard that voice again, that presence, probing at him, at his mind. Searching for something. Clarity returned. And that sense of riding back-seat in his own body. And now his fingers were clenched around a Lyran's throat, fingers that ended in talons gleaming like steel in the afternoon sunlight. This was memory again, real memory this time, and not long ago. He ripped the mask away from the mage's face, revealing the terrified visage beneath. With detached curiosity, he noted a sensation of prodding, as though his brain were a book and eager fingers were paging through his memories. And then sense of satisfaction flowed over him, satisfaction not his own. He knew, as the Claws flashed and flayed the Lyran's chest open, that Nemesis, at this point of the kill, wasn't capable of that sort of satisfaction; his was much more animal. Feral. Closer, was the impression he was feeling. Closer to what? The world sucked away again, recollection of seconds ago already fleeting. It grew dark. Acrid odors filled his nostrils, the smells of fresh paint and new carpets, and yet something else; it had a faint copper scent, a greasy texture to the air that wasn't tactile and yet felt nonetheless. Magic, he reckoned. His ever-betraying puppet-body turned, leaning his weight against a vault door which seemed chillingly familiar. What he glimpsed inside as the door swung close with a thumb alarmed him greatly even in his detached state. The shards of the Barney-Slayer. A sense of alien delight filled his mind, delight that was also not his. He began to understand now, with growing terror as he turned to face Puppeteer in his full Arch-Chancellor regalia. Delight became urgency, and he lashed out against his metaphysical bonds as he experienced that paging sensation and his memory swam... Control. He had to have it. Concentrate. Steer the memory if you can. Resist! Pennsylvania. Where in Pennsylvania? More urgency. No! By God, if he wants it, you sure as hell aren't going to hand him a roadmap! You want to know where your damned sword is? Well, here you go, me bucko! See it well! The JPV campus. Closing ceremonies. He wants to know where it is. It's overwhelming, the need, the desire. So strong! Isn't he going to be surprised? Joke's on you, me boy! The campus vanishes. The sword with it. It's gone, you sick fuck! GONE! RAGE. And that moment, that one fleeting moment where emotion subverts control, that's all he needed. Felton awakened. No, that's not precisely correct. He did awaken, but it was Nemesis that looked Owsen in the face as the magic scrawlwork faded from his skin. "You," he hissed. "Me!" Owsen said with a spiteful cheer that masked his anger far too well. Nemesis lunged from the bed, his healing body screaming in agony as he did so, Claws sliding from his fingertips as his arms closed to catch Owsen in a deadly bear-hug. Instead he got himself a face full of a glass-faced cabinet. He sprawled in the broken glass, bleeding freely from fresh lascerations on his head. He rolled over, slashing up his hands and elbows, trying to focus on Owsen through the stars that swam in his vision and the blood that was running into his eyes. How did he move so damned fast? He tried to shake the cobwebs from his head, and already whatever recollection he had of the dream just a few minutes ago was slipping away. He tried to stand, but his tendons still refused to support his weight. "W-what...?" he started. His head throbbed something fierce. "What was I doing? Oh, just learning something new." There was a soft moan behind Owsen as Keili began to awaken. "I'd love to stay and kill you, but I have someplace I need to be and I have a feeling it's going to get rather crowded here soon." Owsen tapped his forehead in mock-salute and with an unnecessary flourish of his greatcoat, zipped off into the hall. Nemesis managed piece his thoughts together enough to form a coherent order as Charn'El's Herald fled. "Minerva! Intruder alert!" "...I'm not detecting anyone out of the ordinary," came a response from a loudspeaker. "Just bloody do it!" Of course, Mal was in an extraordinarily foul mood when he stepped out of the elevator. Naturally, it was a scant fifteen minutes ago when he'd finally been able to relax enough to doze off for the first time in God knew how long, and so by the rules of whatever cosmic joke was being played on him something was bound to go wrong. And the klaxons were beginning to give him a migraine. "Shut the damned noise off," he grumbled, rounding the corner into Felton's room. The sirens went mute. He shouldered his way through the small crowd that had gathered there, rubbing a palm over his tired face. "All right. What's going on?" "Owsen," Keili said. Mal froze in mid-yawn. "Owsen? You're sure?" "Crazy eyes, stringy hair, beard, bad breath, kilt? Yeah, I'm pretty fookin' sure it were him," Felton said, dabbing at the cuts on his brow. They seemed to be fading already, so there was at least some good news. A vague sort of panic was starting to settle in and the Jihaddi were growing restless. The thought of Owsen running loose in the mountain was not a pleasant one. "How the hell did he get in?" asked Lacroix. "Teleport?" suggested Katze. "No," said Tangaroa. "It would have tripped the alarms. Shad and I would have seen something in the situation room. And the proximity sensors registered nothing either." "Look, guys," said Felton. "He was pokin' in me brain. I don't think I have tae spell out the urgency of the situation fer ye." Mal pinched the bridge of his nose. "All right. The only way in or out of the mountain is by teleport or by Gate. Which means he's got to still be inside somewhere. Min?" Minvera stared thoughtfully at the wall for a moment, head tilted to one side. "I'm still detecting nothing." "Shit," Mal said. It wasn't a particularly eloquent statement, but it summed things up quite well. "Okay, so he's either found a way to mask himself from our defense network or he's found another way in and out. We're going to have to confirm it either way, which means we're going to have to do it the old-fashioned way..." "You've got to be kidding," Dee groaned. There was a lot of base to cover on foot and so few of them to do it with. "No, I'm not. KillJoy, Dee, Damo, you take this level and sublevel one. Min, Katze, you're with me on level two and three. Tang, Aris, Rens, you take four and five. Lacroix, Keili, Delgado, you take the rest of the sublevels. I doubt he'd go deeper into the mountain, but it's best to check it out anyway. Oh... and avoid sublevel two. If he's gone in there our problems are probably over." "The old man is insane, thinking he can keep us up all hours..." Katze mumbled. "If I'm miserable, -everybody's- miserable." "Owsen probably isn't too goddamn miserable right about now," Lacroix said, turning to leave. "So let's correct that." Mal clapped his hands together. "All right. Arm yourselves and move!" The Gate room was clear, as were the labs. He wasn't entirely surprised. Owsen probably wouldn't have figured out how to work the Gate anyway. Mal grimaced at the daunting task ahead; having to search the Library. "Main access tunnel is secure," KillJoy's voice rumbled over the comm-link. Not surprising. "Gardens clear," Dee reported. "Garage is clear," said Lacroix. Mal sighed. "All right, ladies. Back upstairs. Get ready for a nice jog." "Hold up, I've got something," said Minerva, slowing to a trot behind Mal and Katze. "Owsen?" "No... multiple contacts... they've breached the main access road." Mal swore. The timing was impeccable. He clicked on his vox. "Tangaroa, Lacroix. Change of plans. You two meet me in the situation room. The rest of you keep looking." He clicked off his comm and looked at Minerva and Katze. "You two as well. And be careful." He ran for the elevator. Owsen smiled as he opened his eyes. Well, that certainly was very educational, wasn't it? And how they scurried around looking for him! Of course, their first mistake was assuming he was there at all and not actually a handful of miles away, but if they knew, it wouldn't have been such a clever trick, would it? He stood and dusted off the seat of his pants, snatching up the Dark Slayer and sliding it back into its sheath. Well. The little diversion he'd arranged should keep them occupied for a little while. As for himself, well... he had a date with destiny. TEN MILES NORTHWEST OF BLANCA MOUNTAIN 4:00 AM LOCAL TIME The middle of the night usually isn't a terrific time to be traipsing through the forest. The middle of the night, when winter was just starting to realize that it was supposed to be spring, was an even worse time to do so. The dead of night, in sub-freezing temperatures, while tracking an unknown number of armed spongin who seem far too connected to a renegade Jihaddi who goes through Maenads like tissue paper? That, now - that was in a category all of its own. "You gotta hand it to the man," Tangaroa mused, "he really knows how to shake up an evening." "Mmm," Lacroix half-responded, picking his way around a denser spot of brush. "That's one way of putting it, anyway. This is getting ridiculous." The night had been frantic, to say the least. Not two hours earlier, Owsen had somehow managed to infiltrate Blanca, assault Felton, and get out mostly undetected. After the first bits of panic over the breach calmed down, most of the Jihaddi on-base started scouring VRDET HQ from top to bottom. Just in case things weren't confused enough, the proximity alarms by the base entrance started going off a few minutes later when an unknown number of armed, uniformed people tripped some sensors. When it came to figuring out who would shadow them to see what was up, Lacroix and Tangaroa ended up picking the short straws. More to the point, the short straws were picked for them when Mal ordered them out after the unknowns. "You know, we were kinda rushed out the door to track these guys," Lacroix said, as much to himself as anything. "What should we do if these guys turn out to be Mundanes? Civvies, say, or maybe US Army?" "I'd track them anyway," Tang replied. "The timing was way too convenient for it to be a coincidence. From what I saw of the prox sensors, they definately aren't US military, though. Wrong uniforms. The weapons were different too; definately not hunting rifles, but they didn't look like American weapons either." "I suppose," Lacroix finally added after a couple of minutes. "I just wish Owsen could have picked some other day to send us off into the wilderness. I was hoping for Mass and a nice, quiet afternoon today, but noooo.." "Oh yeah," Tang said. "Uh, happy Easter?" "Mm," Lacroix mmd. "I think this is the first one I'll have ever managed to miss, unless we find those guys soon." "I'll add it to the list of grievances," Tang said, a sympathetic tone underlying the wisecrack. "Oh, it's four." "Huh? Oh, it is," Lacroix said sheepishly. Reaching for the once-again-familiar weight of his Linker on his belt, he called back to Blanca to report in. "Sitrep normal," Lacroix said formally. There was a snort on the other side of the line - Damocles, this time. "Nice to know *someone's* is, at least. One of the outlying sensors picked up movement, by the way - a couple of guys northwest of your position, moving in the same direction. We're pretty sure they're the guys you two are after. Keep moving." "Right. How's Admiral Felton holding up?" "About as well as you'd expect," came the reply. "Owsen didn't seem to physically harm him, but he seems more shaken up than he's willing to let on." Lacroix heard an irritated, accented "I'm *fine!*", sounding like it was coming from the room next to the one Damo was in. "Of course, Admiral! Uh, yeah. The situation appears stable here, though. We haven't found anything. Let us know if you two turn something up." "Right, Sir," Lacroix said, closing the connection after the usual formalities. "How's Felton?" Tang asked, having caught up to Lacroix while he was on the Linker. "Loud," Lacroix replied, which drew a reassured laugh from the Doberman. "We're headed in the right direction; the outliers caught our friends headed northwest." "Then lead on," Tang said, grandly gesturing ahead into the darkness. "Oh no," Lacroix said. "You take point for awhile. It's your turn to go tripping over stuff you can hardly see, so I'll know what to avoid." "Pfft," Tang said, but he went ahead anyway. Lacroix envied Tang his ability to move so silently. Time passed, more or less in silence, as the two continued through the woods. Lacroix found himself falling into the mindset of the patrol as he got more used to it. Through the occaisional bursts of smalltalk between him and Tang, fewer and fewer things nearby went unseen or unheard, and even his own movements began to get closer to the ghostlike silence some of the other Jihaddi always seemed to take for granted. Lacroix noticed that it was becoming easier to see after awhile, and was almost startled to realize the sun was coming up. "Think we're gaining on them?" he asked shortly afterwards, moving past Tang to take point. "We gotta be by now," Tang replied. "We can't tell obviously, since we passed the outer prox sensors, but they'd have to be almost as nuts as we are to still be moving after this long. Sooner or later they're going to have to settle someplace." "Yea - huh," Lacroix said suddenly with a jolt of recollection. "Where are we...?" he said to himself, taking out his Linker and checking the map of the area. "Duh," he muttered, putting the Linker away after a moment. "What's up?" Tang called from a few paces behind him. "The maps of the area are pretty detailed," Lacroix said. "VR managed to chart just about everything larger than an outhouse that's built by humans in the area, and I just remembered something. We're headed almost in a straight-line route towards a small building, probably some kind of cottage, that was put up a few miles away about the same time I was posted to Blanca. What do you wanna bet our friends are heading that way?" "That works as well as anything else," Tang allowed. "How far out is it?" "Few more miles, I think. We can probably get there by two or so if we keep up the pace, but if that's where they're going we should start keeping more of an eye out a bit before that." "We should probably call home, let 'em know what's up." "You're right, at that," Lacroix said, doing so. "That sounds like our best lead," Mal said over the Linker when Tang and Lacroix filled him in. "Check it out. We're still busy here, so you two are on your own." "Right. Any instructions in case it's them?" "Again, you're on your own. If they're hostile and you don't think you can take them, then observe and get clear, and we'll gate you back home. If you think you can, though, then go ahead. I've got a lot of questions that need answering, and I'd like to have someone or something that *will* answer them, instead of just shooting back, for a change." "Right," Lacroix said again. "We'll let you know once we start approaching the site. Lacroix out." He closed the connection and put the Linker away, and the two Jihaddi continued tramping further into the forest. 3:25 PM LOCAL TIME Lacroix peered up over the small ridge, looking down through the trees into the hollow a couple hundred meters away. There it was, alright. The cottage looked rough but comfortable, a log-built affair that was somewhat larger than most of the cabins you'd see out in the woods these days. It also had the look of something that had seen several seasons come and go, rather than being at all recent. Was this some civvie's building that had gotten co-opted, or did the spongins actually have a presence this close to Blanca during the war? He hoped it was the former, especially when he saw the pair of antennae sticking out of the roof, the two covered jeeps parked near the building, and the guards. He checked his watch. Tangaroa was probably in position on the other side of the clearing by now, but it couldn't hurt to be sure before going on. It would suck to have spent three days tracking the spongin only to screw it up or have to call it off. The plan was to plan things out with their Linkers, but Lacroix felt uneasy about the antennae - were they for listening or sending? - on the cottage's roof, and so he decided to be both cautious and minimalist about the whole affair. Lacroix took a few deep breaths to steady his nerves and quietly pulled out the linker. He decided to give Tang a few more minutes, taking a mental tally of the number of spongin in and around the building. There was a good deal of movement - they were obviously unpacking something - so it wasn't easy at a glance to figure out how many were there. A few were obvious guards, staying at certain spots and looking around with sentries' eyes, and most of them were armed. After a short time, he thought he had a good count, pulled up the 'Linker, and started typing. "7-10 5-8A G Y/N" he typed quickly, sending in burst mode. "Y" came the reply a few seconds later. "U/I1?" Lacroix thought a moment. Tang obviously wanted someone to do the diversion thing; against those odds both Jihaddi going at once would probably be less than bright. Going in sequence would be less than bright anyway, but the Jihad wasn't about playing it safe as much as it was playing it in the least suicidal manner. "U1," Lacroix sent back. Waiting a few more seconds for Tang to get ready, wherever he was on the other side of the clearing, he pulled out his XRifle and got it ready for action. Some activity in the clearing down below; someone had noticed something being sent and was consulting with the guards. Some days, being right about a guess really sucked. "Shit," Lacroix said to himself, quickly typing "G!" before putting the Linker back on his belt and preparing his rifle. They might have been quick off the mark, but with luck they were still just spongin. A few seconds later, he noticed another commotion in the clearing, and the hint of rustling in the trees on the other side. The guards looked around to place the sound, did so, and two of them started walking to the north to look. Lacroix brought his rifle up a bit more, staying behind cover, waiting to see what Tangaroa had in mind. When the two spongin got close enough to the tree line, all hell suddenly broke loose. The amount of ambient light in the area of the tree line picked up, and suddenly the spongin were pelted with small bits of debris - acorns, small branches, and the like - blown off the trees. The rain of debris wasn't major or harmful, but it was proof that something more than a breeze was kicking up. The spongin shouted something to their buddies in the cottage, split up, and started pushing their way into the woods with their weapons up. The rain of debris abated at the same time, and Lacroix thought he saw movement heading deeper into the woods. The spongin saw it too, and the pops of rifle fire began to sound across the clearing as two more spongin began to race up to support their friends. Lacroix winced and shuddered a bit despite himself at hearing that sound again, feeling the memories gnaw around the edge of his conscious. He gritted his teeth and forced it down; there was no time for that anymore. He waited a few more seconds to be sure the spongin were interested in Tangaroa, started hearing the deeper