TCS.PRODUCTIONS.LTD Presents A Virtual Experience of Epic Proportions The First Untitled Geek War Epic: "OTAKU RISING" Written by J. Daedalus Govoni with Contribution and Consulting (Insulting?) from Mario Di Giacomo CAST ==== (In the order I remembered them) J. Daedalus Govoni.........................Corinthian Paul J. Cummings....................Mystic Maxx/MMaxx Suzie Simms....................................Tareah Carley Paynting..................................Kali Thomas L. Carney.................................Wolf Nicholas McNab...............................Zebediah Michael R. Frost II............................Frosty Mike Stewart...................................Marius Mario Di Giacomo.....................DigiCom/DC/SSSOK Special Cameo Appearances and Walk-Ons by Pete Rose as the One True Lord-God PARTIMGR, PRose And introducing John Patrick O'Hanley as the Silver Falcon Visuals by the Psychotropic Chain Reaction Special Visual Effects by The Sixties Acid Flashback Group Lighting by GOD and Son Cool TechnoStuff by TooLittleSleep, Unlimited. Robot and Cybernetic parts lifted from the Quinn Labs Demolitions, Explosions, and Things-That-Go-BOOM by Dr. DAD From a kinda original screenplay by J. Daedalus Govoni Original Animation by Etch-a-Sketch FOLEY editing by Moe, Larry, and Curley Sound System by THUD (The audience is now deaf) Vehicles provided by GM, Chrysler, and the DMC The UPS Truck from HELL created by Vulcan The UPS Truck from HELL generously provided by PRose Original Score by Mercury Falling Tape Collections Stunts by Super Dave Osborne and the Incredible Crash Dummies Stunt Driving by Toonces the Driving Cat Toonces handled by Jim from Wild Kingdom Costuming by TheBigRedSal'sBin MechaFashions by Mr. Mario Stunt Llamas by Hannibal's House of Expectorating Quadrapeds Titles and Credits by This Little Piggie Went to Market Catering by Little Sleazer's Pizza Green Eggs and Ham proviced in loving memory of Dr. Seuss Caffeine provided by JOLT Cola, The Jolt Company, Inc. Psilocybin, Ovaltine and FiddleFaddle generously provided by Sandoz, Inc. Published by URIACC.URI.EDU bitnet (c) 1992 by TCS.PRODUCTIONS.LTD DISCLAIMER: All the events and persons portrayed herein are purely fictional, despite what THEY might try to tell you. :) Well, there seems to be a plethora of this "write-yer-own" fan fiction stuff around lately, so it's time for myself and crew to jump on the bandwagon... This story is dedicated to anime fans and general science fiction fans in general. Some stuff you might recognize, some you might not. Some of it only an obscurist like myself might hint at, and some of it is original. Special thanks goes out to Zoner, Gryphon, ReRob and the WDF at WPI for providing zaniness and inspiration in my times of writer's block (like this summer... yuck). I couldn't have done it without your model, guys. For Paul, Mario, Carley, and Mike for help with editing and coming up with some really weird stuff to write about. You guys are really whacked. Thanx, gang. For all the writers whose stuff I enjoyed growing up and tried not to steal TOO much of for this story: William Gibson, John DeChancie, Robert Heinlein, and most of all, the late Isaac Asimov. We'll all miss you, Uncle Isaac. For all the writers/creators whose stuff we DID rip off... Oops. (Innocent-looking shrug) Thanx to all the DJs at 94.1 WHJY for giving me the proper musical state of mind for this madness. Lou, yer a nut. Don't ever change. And last but by FAR not the least... For Naomi, the woman I love, for standing by me in all my times of need, and for truly believing in me and my writing ability. Baby, you are the BEST. Beginning__________________________________________________________ONE "God does not play dice with the Universe." -Albert Einstein > n It's bright and yellow, and Mr. Neutron is here eating a bowl of cereal! Mr. Neutron > kill neutron You smash Mr. Neutron with a bone-crushing sound! Mr. Neutron missed you. You hit Mr. Neutron very hard. Mr. Neutron missed you. You smash Mr. Neutron to smithereens! Mr. Neutron missed you. You smash Mr. Neutron with a bone-crushing sound! Mr. Neutron died. > get all from corpse A spoon: Ok. 5020 gold pieces: Ok > dest corpse destruct: corpse of Mr. Neutron Ok. > home Corinthian's Workroom. Ok. > dest all destruct: A spoon destruct: a HUGE plasma rifle destruct: Bust of Corinthian Ok. > tell darkwalker I'm outta here. *poof* Ok. > quit Saving Corinthian. Ok. Goodbye. Session ended. to return to CMS. Telnet terminated -- Connection closed Ready; T=1.24/1.25 11:22:31 log CONNECT= 00:09:49 VIRTCPU= 000:27.26 TOTCPU= 000:28.37 LOGOFF AT 11:22:44 EST MONDAY 03/02/92 Press enter or clear key to continue DISCONNECTED RUNNING URIACC WELCOME TO THE URI ACCESS MANAGEMENT NETWORK VALID SYSTEMS ARE: ECL1 FSVM PR1 TELNET KASMS-1 ENTER SYSTEM _ "What the _hell_ is KASMS-1?" Corinthian mumbled to himself. He'd never seen that before. He looked around the room at the other terminals. He was seated in the back of the room to give himself a good vantage point, and to re- main relatively undisturbed. Only two other people were here in the "Dungeon", or more properly, the basement VMS terminal room in Chaffee Building. Busy today. Usually the room was as quiet as a tomb, perfect for MUDding undisturbed, or programming if one was so inclined. The other occupants, one male one female, seemed engrossed in some code they had just printed out of the local SPOOL, CHAF, and were not paying any attention to him. "Let's see what this is all about." ENTER SYSTEM kasms-1 SYSTEM INVALID VALID SYSTEMS ARE: ECL1 FSVM PR1 TELNET KASMS-1 "Since when are you case-sensitive?" Corinthian asked. ENTER SYSTEM KASMS-1 ENTER CARRIAGE RETURN: ENTER ID NUMBER: SCA114 NEW USER. ENTER ORIGINAL PASSWORD: (Like I'm gonna tell you guys. NOT) Please wait. Ten minutes ticked by. Cor idly played with a pen, doodling on a piece of code-encrypted 132 character printer paper from the SPOOL. ACCESS TO TOP-LEVEL SYSTEM DENIED LINK CLOSED WELCOME TO THE URI ACCESS MANAGEMENT NETWORK VALID SYSTEMS ARE: ECL1 FSVM PR1 TELNET KASMS-1 "There's more than one way to skin a cat, but most are messy," Cor said and tried again. "Top-level, eh? Hmmmmm..." ENTER SYSTEM KASMS-1 ENTER CARRIAGE RETURN: ENTER ID NUMBER: AAA101 AUTHORIZED SYSTEM OPERATOR - AAA101 RECOGNIZED ENTER PASSWORD: (Insert creative license here) shirley Please wait. PASSWORD ACCEPTED KLARION SYSTEM LOADED - STANDBY WELCOME TO THE KLARION ACCESS SUPERCOMPUTING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM MARK-1 (c) 1992 by KLARION DATACORP INC. All rights reserved. > _ "Hot damn, I'm in..." Cor grinned evilly. Let's see what I'm in TO. He quickly did a DIR and got a long list of technical-looking subdirectory headings. One in particular caught his attention: drx-xxyz-mx1 6510 022992 kdcrecord 1020 KDCField <- ROOT What kind of a crazy directory is THAT supposed to be? he thought. He quickly CD'd to it and did another DIR. Another list of tech- nical-looking stuff passed before his eyes, including the following two files: --xr--kdc--a 3255 022992 root 74506396 KDCFieldGENPrttype.KST --xr--kdc--m 651 022992 help 120605 KDCFieldGENManual.ARC He asked the system for README on the 00INDEX file and came up with the following listing for the files: KDCFieldGENPrttype.KST = KST-Code for the Klarion DataCorp Random Flux Field Generator. This file is still in the developmental stages and is not approved for outputting or printing. KDCFieldGENManual.ARC = User Manual for the Klarion DataCorp Random Flux Field Generator in ARChived format. This is nuts, he thought. I have to get a copy of these files. He asked the system for HELP on outputting files. After several minutes consideration, he decided to try a default output. He typed the fol- lowing: M_OUTPUT KDCFieldGENprttype KDCFieldGENManual / local He sat back and waited. He slapped his forehead. WHERE was the local output going to? He queried the system for the output site. The system said: OUTPUT LOCAL - BLDG 101 WARNING! OUTPUT OF RESTRICTED FILES WILL RESULT IN IMMEDIATE TERMINATION OF CPU ACCESS TIME! FATAL ACCOUNT BACKLOOP SEQUENCE INITIATED. ACCESS PRIVILEGES REVOKED. CONNECTION CLOSED DISCONNECTED WELCOME TO THE URI ACCESS MANAGEMENT NETWORK VALID SYSTEMS ARE: ECL1 FSVM PR1 TELNET "Ooops...It's gone," Cor said. "Shirley's gonna be pissed." He looked around again. The two people in the room had left. He was alone. He quickly packed up his bag, stuffing printouts and note- books in as fast as possible. He shut off the VT100 terminal and left. Once outside, he paused for a second. Where was building 101? He didn't know, but knew where he could find out. He set off for the Carlotti Administration Building at a fast clip. They had piles of class schedules and directories outside the Registrar's Office with campus maps in them. He ducked into the north end of the admin bldg., walked down the hall, and grabbed a directory. Flipping to page 19, he looked at the building list. Building 101 was at the northwestern corner of campus behind the old Dairy Barn parking lot, adjacent to the Central Receiving building. He looked at the name for Building 101: Property and Space. Strange name for a campus building, but then again, it was a strange campus. He scooted back out through the doors at the end of the hall and headed for the P & S building to get his output. On his way behind Davis Hall, the bells started to chime 12 o'clock (or rather, a recording of bells started to play a clavanova), followed by the theme music from "Chariots of Fire" (I hate when they do stuff like that). He covered his ears and yelped audibly. <<> He ran as fast as possible away from the Bell-Tower-from-hell. Once behind the library, he felt the pain in his eardrums ease a bit and low- ered his hands. As he passed the FiGi fraternity house, several brothers were busying themselves tipping over a Dodge Horizon in the staff parking lot. One looked up, saw him, and belched loudly. He ran on. He skirted the Heathman Dormitory, where he once lived so long ago, and jogged through the Dairy Barn parking lot. Someone had beaten up a VW Beetle and spray-painted grafitti on it in various colors, then pushed it into the swamp. Some Oceanography students were attempting a salvage operation from an inflatable raft, to no avail. Cor shook his head. Making his way down the access road behind the Administrative Ser- vices Ctr., he saw several state employees sleeping in a campus util- ity truck, obviously overworked. Cor looked down the road and saw the Central Receiving building. He slowed to a walk. His goal was in sight. Stepping around the other side of the building, he saw a small 10x10 shed-like addition to the CR building. This had to be the place, but it didn't look very promising. It was built out of grey ash-blocks and had a rusted steel door set deep into the only visible opening. A faded, blue-on-white sign said "Property & Space" and looked about a hundred years old. The door had an old rusted handle that looked about to fall off... and a brand new padlock on it. Cor scratched his head. It was a _big_ lock. No way he was going to pop that monster off it's hasp. He bent close and examined the rest of the door. He knocked on it. Rusted, but still solid. He gave the handle a tug. Nothing. Hmmm... Wait a second. Putting down his backpack, he quickly rummaged through it. The door opened out, he noticed. Maybe... "A-ha!" he stood up, an eight-inch prybar in his right hand. (You mean YOU don't carry one in YOUR bookbag?) He bent down and got close to the bottom hinge. Slipping the prybar under the pin, he shoved up- wards. It gave a little. He looked around to see if anyone saw him. No one. He popped the hinge all the way out, catching it as it came free. Cor quickly popped the other two hingepins and inserted the pry- bar in the crack of the door. It groaned, but opened slightly. Pull- ing it open just far enough, he slipped inside with his bag and closed the door behind him. His eyes adjusting to the gloom of the dimly-lit room, Cor looked around. Flicking the light switch next to the door, he got a better look around. The place was a mess. Everything looked as if it hadn't moved in ages... except for two things. A new-looking table in the middle of the mess, and a strange looking box on top of it. Moving closer to the box, he saw that it was unlike anything he had ever seen. It looked like a large microwave oven, except where the controls usually were there were four buttons, two of which were lit. There was no front window on the box like a microwave, just flat steel. He also noticed that there was a bunch of cables about as big around as his wrist snaking out of the side of the box and away to the far wall. This is getting weird, he thought to himself. He looked at the buttons. They said "RECEIVE", "ONLINE", "RESET", and "POWER". The "RECEIVE" and "POWER" buttons were lit. This seemed like the ouput device that KASMS-1 refered to. He looked at the door of the device. There was a small lever at the top of the door that he hadn't noticed before. He pulled it down tentatively and swung the door open, looking inside. Inside the device there appeared to be a bound text and what looked like a cube. Reaching in, he grabbed the book. The cover was jet black and the words "Klarion DataCorp" seemed to dance just above the surface. Flipping it open, he saw that it was the manual for the KDCFieldGEN that he had "outputted". His senses reeled. He hadn't even considered HARD output. He looked into the output device again. A small cube, approximately three inches per side. The lighting made it hard to tell. He reached in and picked it up, rotating it to get a better look. It appeared to be seemless and the sides seemed to give slightly under pressure. Looking closely at it made his eyes hurt, because the edges of the cube were very hard to fo- cus on. One thing was for sure, it was _black_. Not black chrome black, not annodized steel black, not light-absorbing black. BLACK. Like outer space black. Black hole black. (You get the idea.) This is incredible, Cor thought, looking around. He closed the door of the outputter (what would _you_ call it?), and tucked the manual in his bag. The cube he pocketed in one of the deep pockets of his jean jacket. he shut off the light, went back outside, replaced the hinge pins and headed for the Memorial Union as nonchalantly as possible. Applications_______________________________________________________TWO "Why sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast... or madly squeezed a right-hand foot into a left-hand shoe." -Lewis Carroll Paul looked up from his terminal in the corner of the Communist Lounge as Corinthian walked in and put his bag down on the Multiplexer. "Jonny, m'lad, how goes it," Paul asked, barely looking up from his screen. A quick glance showed Cor that Paul was reading his TELEC notes and talking to Kali online. "Not badly, MMaxx," Cor returned, addressing his friend by his long- time PARTI name. "Just had the strangest thing happen..." he trailed off as he logged into FSVM and checked his reader. 59 notes, most from rec.arts.anime. Some things never change. He started to plod through the notes, discarding the boring looking ones. He looked up as Kali walked in. "Morning, Carley," he said, though it was after 12. "Geek," Kali replied jovially. She proved herself likewise by log- ging in next to him. "Just get off work?" Cor asked. MMaxx reached over and slapped him in the back of the head. DUH. "Why, yes, I did," Kali grinned. Cor shrugged and pkunzipped his bookbag, reached inside, and extrac- ted the KDCFieldGENManual. He looked over the manual more closely than before. It was a very nice, bound text. Strange. Poking at the words on the cover, he decided that they were illusionary the way they just floated there. He opened the cover and flipped to the table of con- tents. Klarion DataCorp Random Flux Field Generator PROGRAMMER AND USER MANUAL Compiled by Dr. S. Laurence Sheuchster (c) Klarion DataCorp Inc. All rights reserved. Introduction.............................a Background...............................1 Hypothesis..............................17 Theory and Practice.....................65 Physical Reality.......................129 Application and Utilization............155 Field Testing..........................213 Usage Notation and a Warning...........287 Appendix A.............................304 Appendix B.............................312 He flipped throught it randomly. There was a LOT of scientific jargon in the "Theory and Practice" section, but the "Application and Utilization" part seemed pretty straight forward. He took out a sheet of paper and started writing down notes. MMaxx looked over at the book, noticing that it looked like some- thing Cor could not possibly have been able to pay for. "What's that, Jon?" he asked. "Something I outputted this morning from a strange system... pretty weird stuff." "What system?" "Something called KASMS-1. It's gone now. I hacked into it and outputted a couple of files to a toolshed. The whole system crashed me out. Really strange." "Ah," MMaxx said, and turned back to his screen. Cor scratched his head and looked at his notes. This was going to take a little bit of work to figure out. "You outputted to a TOOLSHED?" Kali asked incredulously. She worked for the Accademic Computer Center part time and knew where all the prin- ters on campus were. "Well, not really a toolshed. More like an old storage area." "Oh, that's different. NOT. What building was this in?" she asked, her Aussie accent really coming out. "Building 101. Property and Space. It's waaaaaay over on the other side of campus," he pulled out the map and showed her. "WHAT system was this on?" she prodded. "KASMS-1. The Klarion Access Supercomputing Management System. Or something like that." Cor shrugged. "It's gone now, though." "And you got a hardbound _book_ for output?" "Well, it's not exactly _hard_. It's a softcover." He flipped the pages at her. She grabbed it away from him and stared at the holographic words floating above the surface. She *looked* at it from the side. The words looked printed on the cover. She flipped it open to the table of contents and glanced at them. "What the _hell_ is a Random Flux Field Generator?" she asked. "That's what I'm trying to figure out," Cor gestured at his notes. "The title caught my eye in a subdirectory when I was in KASMS-1. I outputted a file called KDCFieldGENPrttype.KST, too. I think it's supposed to be a working prototype. If what that book says is true, this could be a true technological breakthrough." "What did you do with the generator?" MMaxx asked, his curiosity piqued. "It's right here," Cor said, reaching into his pocket. He withdrew his hand and held out the Cube for them to see. They 'Oood'ed and 'Aaah'ed for a few seconds, marveling at it's blackness. I'm gonna try and hook it up to one of the PC's over at Tyler. The book says it's multi-system capable, and that MSDOS works just fine. I haven't quite figured out how to hook it up, though..." he trailed off. "I'll go with you," Kali said. She had been flipping through the Manual again. "Paul, you coming?" Cor asked MMaxx. "Sure, let me send some stuff to the LASER, and I'll be right with you. I can pick it up over there." Soon the three of them sat hunched around an IBM PS/2 in Tyler 108. Kali had the manual open, Cor manned the keyboard, and MMaxx looked over the stuff he had printed, occasionaly glancing up at the other two. "It says here that MSDOS v5.0 is compatable, but that v4.anything is not to be used," Kali said. "THAT figures. The 4 series' SUCKED in a major way," Cor quipped. "What's it say about hardware hookups?" "Hmmmm..." she flipped a few pages. "A standard printer port cable hooked up to an external drive port should work. Is there one on the back of that PS/2?" Cor stood up and looked behind the terminal. There was a port, but no extra cables to be seen. "Port, yes. Cable, no." Just then MMaxx stood up and walked over to the Programming Assistant's station. Talk- ing fast and furiously, he managed to talk the PA out of his direct line printer cable and five bucks for being a dufus. Paul walked back over, holding up the six foot section of cable. "Here ya go," he said, handing it to Cor. Cor looked at Kali for a second, and they both laughed. "That was beautiful, Paul. Just beautiful," Cor snickered. Kali Milky Way-ed. Taking the cable from MMaxx, Cor plugged it into the back of the PS/2 and held the other end out towards the Cube, which was sitting on the table next to his bookbag.zip. "Where do I plug this in, Kali?" he asked. "It doesn't say. Just try sticking it in somewhere in the middle." The three of them held their breaths as Cor did so, sticking the cable into the side of the Cube. The surface there shimmered (How does something that black shimmer? Your guess is as good as mine.) and the jack slid in like as if there had been an actual port present. Cor looked up at the screen. No error messages. He told DOS that the new port was to be the B: drive, and changed to it. Then he crossed his fingers and toes and did a DIR/W. Only one file came up: Volume in drive B: has no name. KDCFLDGEN EXE 2 file(s) specified. 14E37 bytes free. "Jesus CHRIST, look at all that free storage!" Cor yelped. "It does seem to have a lot of room," Kali understated. "Wonder what it does..." MMaxx said. "That's odd...it says '2 file(s)'..." Cor remarked. At the B:> prompt he typed "KDCFLDGEN", and stopped, his finger poised over the key. "Well? Should we see what it does?" "Go for it," Kali and MMaxx said in chorus (with five-part harmony :) Cor stabbed his finger down on the key and sat back, arms crossed. The screen went blank for about a half a minute, and just as Cor, being an impatient operator, was about to hit the escape key in the hopes that it would do SOMETHING, a really cool graphic rezzed up on the VGA term. It looked like a three dimentional (maybe four) image of the Cube, and had lots of swirling colors on it's black surfaces, similar to the ones you see in an oily puddle. The Cube was slowly rotating at a 45 degree angle to the screen. Underneath this was the words "Klarion DataCorp" and a small symbol underneath that looked like a shield with a black alicorn on it, flames coming from it's nostrils and hooves. Cor hit the return and a window opened up with the shield&alicorn design in the upper left-hand corner. Paging ahead through the HELP menu, they saw that the actual use of the Cube was quite simple, once all the TechnoJargon and Bullshittius Maximus was eliminated. (User Manuals tend to be written BY supertechnicians FOR supertechnicians. Don't believe me? Try to walk your mom through the manual for your VCR.) Going back to the main menu, Cor pulled down the file list and saw that the other file the DIR referred to was a demonstration/example file that was packed into the main file. At the prompt he typed: KDC> GEN demo The black cube started to fuzz slightly and a faint image appeared on the top of it in the center. As the image rezzed in, they saw what looked like a chrome sphere about an inch in diameter. When the prompt came back on the screen, the sphere looked so real that it cast a shadow on the table. "Jeez, look at that," Cor said and reached out to touch the image. He put a finger against it and pulled his hand back as if he had been bitten. "What is it?" Kali asked. "Did you get a shock?" "No. Just surprised. It's REAL," Cor replied. "Shyeah, RIGHT," Paul chimed in. Cor tried again and this time touched it with two fingers. It was real, all right. He squeezed it slightly. No give at all. "It seems to be just what it looks like, guys. A silver ball." Kali reached for it and gave it a little nudge. It rolled off of the Cube and hit the table, making a solid sounding *whunk*. Then a funny thing happened. As soon as it left contact with the Cube, the sphere started to de-rez and break up. In seconds it was gone. "Hmmmmm..." MMaxx said thoughtfully (?), "As soon as it lost contact, it vanished." Cor gave him a "DUH" look and turned back to the screen. Under the heading of INPUT_OPTIONS, he had noticed that there was an entry for HANDSCANNER. "I think I know how we can make this thing portable," he said, and went over to the PA, who was reading a catalog. "My GOD! Look at the size of that CAT!" Cor yelled and pointed out the window at the back of the room. As the PA jumped up and ran to look, Cor snatched the catalog and walked back over to Kali and MMaxx. "That guy is SUCH a dufus," Cor said and began flipping through the catalog for "Zaphod's House of Electronic Goodies" that he had just liberated. He flipped open to the section on Hewlett Packard computer equipment and calculators and lay the catalog down on the table. "Watch this guys," Cor said and punched in HANDSCANNER at the KDC> prompt. An IBM styled hand scanner rezzed in next to the Cube with a cable connecting it to it. Cor picked up the scanner and scanned page 37 of the catalog with it. A new window opened up on the PS/2 screen with the scanned image. Cor put down the scanner. Typing fast and furiously, Cor trimmed the image down to a single entry from the page: The HP950 Palmtop and the appropriate optional external drive cables. Cor saved the image into what looked for all intents and purposes was a .gif file and got back to the main system prompt. MMaxx had been looking at the entry in the catalog that Cor had scan- ned. Passing it to Kali, he said, "Do you think that will work, Jon?" (Paul never DID like to call him Corinthian, God knows why.) Cor shrug- Cor shrugged. "Only one way to find out." He did a DISCARD on the scanner, which promptly de-rezzed out of existence. Kali put down the catalog and whistled. "This thing's legit?" she asked of the HP950. Cor nodded as he entered "GEN palmtop.gif" at the prompt, and waited. He didn't know if this would work. The catalog didn't go into schematics or electrical capabilities. He crossed his fingers. An image started to appear on top of the Cube of a large, wedge-shaped object with a myriad of buttons on it and a three-inch diameter LCD screen. A rolled up ca- ble appeared on the table next to the Cube, with one end attatched to the wedge-shaped object. "Hot damn," Cor said as he gently touched the HP950. It was in es- sence a portable computer. But it's capabilities blew the PS/2 away. This little baby was a true hand-held computer. Not only was it port- able, it had 5 meg of RAM and could run an external drive on it's own power. Will a little creative programming, it was perfect for this ap- lication. The catalog listed it's price at just under $4000. Cor grinned evilly. This could be a lot of fun. He unrolled the cable and plugged it into the other side of th Cube. Booting up the HP950, he downloaded all the system files from the IBM through the Cube to it. Now they had a portable CPU running on MSDOS v5.0 to play with wherever they wanted. He told the HP that the Cube was drive C: and shut down the IBM. He handed back the station card to the PA, who was pouting about losing his magazine, packed up his stuff as Kali and MMaxx put on their jackets, and the three of them headed out for the Onion, big smiles on their faces. Heavy Metal______________________________________________________THREE "We are the American Dreamers, driving down the holy road to true knowledge that's paved with blood and gold." -Neil Gaiman Tareah looked up from her screen as the trio walked in. "Hi," she said to Kali and Corinthian. MMaxx she gave a long passionate kiss to. "Oh, please, not before lunch," Cor joked, though it was close to 2 o'clock. Kali just rolled her eyes. Tareah turned back to her game on PixieMUD where she was killing a dragon or something. "Hi, Suzie," Kali said to Tareah, sitting down and logging in as she did so. Cor and MMaxx did the same, leaving only one of the five VT100s free. "What are you three up to?" Tareah asked, noting the smiles on the trio. Cor just grunted as he looked at his mail. 35 MORE notes from rec.arts.anime and five from GIF-L. Kali didn't say anything, and MMaxx said that he had picked up some stuff at Tyler. "Did you say something, Suzie?" Cor turned and asked. She repeated the question, frowning at the fact that she had been ignored the first time. "Oh, I picked up a new computer today," Cor replied with a wink to Kali. He pkunzipped his backpack and pulled out the HP950, leaving the Cube in the bag, cable snaking out. He showed it to her, and she whis- tled. "Where did you steal that from?" She asked. "He didn't steal it. He made it," Kali said. "Yeah. RIGHT," Tareah replied. "Don't tell me." Feeling a bit put off she went back to MUDding. Cor shrugged and booted up the HP. At the prompt he changed to the C: drive and loaded the KDCFLDGEN program. at the KDC> prompt he start- ed to page through the HELP menu again. "Kali, got that manual? I'm trying to find something I thought I saw in here..." She handed it to him and he flipped to the section on "Applications and Utilizations", paging ahead the HELP as he did so. After about ten minutes of flipping and scribbling on a piece of scrap paper (actually the back of the campus literary magazine "The Great Swamp Gazette", a true rag if there ever was one), Cor looked up at MMaxx. "Think the ACC would miss those manuals?" Cor asked him, gesturing to the ponderous volumes strapped into really heavy and hard-to-use bin- ders behind him on a table. "Nah. No one ever uses them," MMaxx said, raising an eyebrow. "What do you have in mind?" "Reality," Cor answered and punched a few buttons on the HP. "How big would you say that thing is?" pointing at the manuals. "Pretty big," MMaxx replied. "And heavy." "Good," Cor said. He pulled down an entry for CONVERTER_M from the INPUT_OPTIONS menu, and typed MCONVERT at the prompt. He hit return. On the table next to his backpack, there rezzed-in a good-sized steel box-like device. It was square, about a foot and a half per side, and stood ten inches high. There was a large opening at the top, with a funnel-like lip around the edge. Looking in, the box looked empty, but VERY deep. Tareah and Kali both turned (They had had their backs to Cor and MMaxx before. The terms are laid out in an 'L' shape and they were at the two on the west wall.) just in time to see Cor type in INPUT and stand up. Grinning crazily, he walked over and picked up the manuals with some difficulty. Coming back over, he stood the manuals on end over the device and dropped them into the opening. <<> Cor jumped back as there was a blinding flash of light that shot straight up out of the opening of the device, bathing the ceiling in a ghostly glow, and a *FWASH* sound was emitted. It stopped abruptly and the device was silent again. Looking at the screen of the HP, Cor saw that the INPUT had been accepted. At the prompt he typed OUTPUT palmtop.gif. The INPUT device shimmered and changed. Now it had an opening on the side and the top was flat metal. Cor recognized it, it was the same type of device that he had gotten the Cube and it's manual from. He smiled. The light on front said "RECEIVE". He opened the door and withdrew an identical HP950 to the one he had GEN-ed before. But this one was different. It looked slightly sharper than the one the Cube had rezzed. Also, it was not in contact with the Cube and yet was still real. He held it out to Kali. "What do you think?" She was speechless. Tareah's jaw hung open. MMaxx was the first to speak. "MATTER CONVERSION?" Cor nodded as he closed the door on the outputter. Then he had it output a handscanner. He hooked up the HP to the other one and downloaded most of the files. Unhooking the real HP, he handed it and the scanner to Kali. "See what you can come up with. This thing seems like it can repro- duce anything you input through the scanner to a .gif file. Have fun," Cor said, packing up the other HP and the cable connecting it to the Cube. "Where are you off to?" Tareah asked. "Got some work to do tonight," Cor answered. "Also, I'm gonna fiddle around with this thing for a while later on. Maybe try another idea I came up with." He grinned. MMaxx had seen _that_ grin before. "See you tomorrow, Jon," Kali said. Cor finished packing up and left. Cor woke up the mext morning at about 7:40 (A miracle considering his alarm had gone off at 7 and he had hit the snooze button no fewer than 5 times). His mom was up puttering around in the kitchen and had made some coffee (THAT'S what woke me up). He got up, showered, ate, read the funnies in the BloJo, and got his stuff together for school. Stepping out into the garage, he grabbed his red motorcycle helmet and went outside. He'd been up late last night scanning stuff into the HP for the Cube to use. This should be good, he thought. He took the Cube and the HP out of his bag and turned the HP on. He had rezzed up a hard case for them both, so it was a one piece affair now. He typed GEN kaneda.gif and stepped back. On the driveway in front of him there rezzed in a large, red, racing motorcycle with various sponser stickers on the cowling. The bike was long and low-slung, with the rider's area partially enclosed. Cor grin- ned again. There was a coil of wire like a telephone handset wire con- necting the Cube to the bike. The wire maintained the necessary contact between Cube and bike that was needed to keep it real. Cor opened a small compartment under the seat and slipped the HP in- side, coiling the wire under it as he did so. He lifted the front cow- ling away towards the front wheel and got on. Pulling the controls and the cowling downwards, he flicked on the onboard computer and started the engine. It purred like a tiger. Flipping up the kickstand, he opened the throttle. Sparks arced around the front wheel and the ceramic double-rotor two wheel drive kicked in, lifting the front wheel off the ground slightly and Cor roar- ed out of the driveway. Once out on route 4 south, Cor opened the throttle up halfway. The bike handled like a dream, and seemed to have unlimited power. Darting around a slow-moving semi (like there IS such a thing. Most of them move at about 75 through here.), he came onto an open section of high- way. He pushed it faster, reveling in the speed as the wind whipped at his denim jacket. <<> He looked down at the instrument cluster. He was running at about 7000 RPMs, just over half of the bikes 12,000 RPM redline limit. He grinned. Beautiful. He'd always wanted a bike like this. Dropping off some speed, he turned right onto Route 138 and opened up again towards URI, passing a line of cars moving near the speed limit. Normally it took about 20 minutes to get to campus, today he'd made it in under 10. Great. And he wouldn't have to worry about parking, not when he could de-rezz the bike. Hopping the curb in front of the Student Onion, he nearly flattened several student council wannabe's and screeched to a halt at the base of the front steps. He got off the bike, took the HP out from under the seat and de- rezzed the bike, drawing several odd looks and raised eyebrows from the students around him. Taking off his helmet, he went inside, whistling the theme from Star Wars. Kali looked up as Cor entered and dropped his helmet on the desk next to his usual VT100 term. "Morning," he said, a devilish twinkle in his eyes. "What have YOU been up to?" she asked. "Scanned in quite a bit of anime stuff last night," he replied, "I rode a really cool motorcycle here." He pkunzipped his bag and dropped a large sheaf of papers on the table. Next to this he put the manual. "What's that?" Kali asked. "Stuff I printed out," he said, flipping through the papers. "What do you have for me?" "A really neat Bose system," she beamed. "Ah...great," he said, slightly disappointedly. He had expected some- thing a _little_ more imaginative from her. "We need a place with a little more room than the Communist Lounge to do some of the stuff that I want to do... any thoughts?" Cor asked. "Well, we COULD use Lippitt Hall...I have a theory that that building is hollow anyway," she said. "Yeah. You might have something there... no one ever goes there... it's right on the Quad... Wanna go take a look?" Cor asked. Kali nodded and gathered her stuff together. Cor did likewise, stuffing his kipple back into his backpack.zip. Cor stood up and swung his backpack.zip onto his back. On the way out, he inadvertently bumped the back of SSSOK's chair, who groaned and turned over. Lippitt Hall hulks over the Quad on the northern side next to Ballen- tine Hall. At one time it was used as the gymnasium, about a hundred years ago. Now it houses the Academic Computer Center and the Oceano- graphic Research Center in the basement. Cor and Kali stood outside, looking up at the edifice. Big. If it was hollow as Kali surmised, it would have plenty of room. If it wasn't, well, _that_ could be remedied. They went up the stairs and went in- side. Inside was large and spacious, and not a _bit_ gloomy. Actually, there was about a foot of dust on the floor. No one had been in here in years, seeing as how everything was in the basement. The long, high windows let it plenty of light, which filtered through the dust. Cor looked around. "This is good. This will work," he said. "But it's not hollow," Kali commented. "THAT can be remedied quickly enough," he chuckled. "I can use all this extra matter for _something_, I'm sure." "You've got that evil look again, Jon," Kali grinned. "Yup. I think we should cordon off the building, don't you? Oh... is there a garage door on the back of this building?" "If not, I'm sure there will be soon..." she smiled. "Right." Two weeks later: MMaxx walked casually across the quad towards Lippitt Hall. Cor had said that it was the new hangout place, since the Union was going to be undergoing renovations in a few weeks. Also, Cor had said that he had been doing some renovations of his own, including adding several WYSE terminals and food dispenser units. MMaxx went up the steps and looked at the twin glass doors. A large sign said "BUILDING CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS - TCS CONSTRUCTION CORPORA- TION INC." He tried the door. It opened easily. Going inside he no- ticed a second, heavier set of doors where the stairwell used to be. He knocked on them. Ouch. They felt armor-plated. A slot opened up on the door like an ATM machine and an LCD display asked him to insert his ID card. Scratching his head, he did so. The door gave him back his card and he heard a click. Opening the doors, he stepped into a huge room. Bright lights and <<> the high windows illuminated the entire interior. Along one wall was a bank of WYSE/VT100h terminals and IBM PS/2 clones that had been upgraded with the HP950 series microprocessors to 5M RAM. Along the opposite wall there was a large bank of electronic equipment and what looked to be a complete diagnostics and repairs section for automobiles. Sitting in the middle of the room there hulked a large, brown truck. Cor spotted him and walked over, a large grin on his face. "You've been busy, I see," MMaxx said, noticing Kali sitting at one of the PS/2 hybrids. She turned and waved. "Yup. What do you think? I had to completely gut the existing stru- cture to make room for all this. Converted the second, third and forth floors, the stairwells, and the heating system into all of this other stuff. I also reinforced all of the existing exteriors of the building from the inside so no one would notice. So. What's up?" Cor finished. MMaxx just looked around for a few seconds. "What is all of this other stuff for?" he asked, jesturing towards the electronics and the diagnostics stations. "Oh, that. Well, the big thing over there is the KDCFieldGENerator, with coresponding output and input stations," he pointed at the array of scanners, keyboards, camera, and other input equipment, then at the big box-like structure that looked like a large version of the outputter he had seen in the CLounge earlier in the week. "The computers are for the gathering of data from outside sources and various FTP-type stuff, not to mention standard geeking and MUDding," Cor continued. "And this," he pointed at the brown truck, "is an experimental weapons platform that I'm tinkering with." MMaxx looked closer at the truck. It looked like a standard GMC step van, albeit a large one. It had standard commercial license plates on it and a gold shield-shaped symbol on the side with the letters "U.P.S." inside it in gold. "A UPS Truck?" MMaxx asked, perplexed. "Sure. They're big and bulky, with lots of room inside and out. And EVERYONE respects them on the road," he grinned evilly. "You should've been here yesterday when we put the engines in. I mean, this place is plenty big, but we were packed to the gills at a few points," he chuck- led. "I mean, disarming a few gunships and fighters can take quite a bit of effort." "Gunships!?!" MMaxx goggled. "What the _hell_ did you arm that pig with?" "C'mon, Wolf and I will walk you through it," Cor replied, gesturing Thom away from the rear of the truck. Wolf walked over, flipping back his shoulder-length hair and grinning like a madman. "Hi, Paul. Like our toy?" MMaxx, just nodded slowly. "Toy. Right." The three of them approached the truck head on towards the nose. Cor took a large remote control from Wolf and pointed it at the truck. Several things started to happen all at once. A small panel slid open on the hood, and what looked like a group of omni-directonal micro- phones popped up. The center of the front bumper retracted and a large, evil-looking gun extended from the front cowling. About a quarter of the way up the sides of the truck, halfway to the rear, large panels slid open and a four foot wing stub extended from each side, bristling with weapons. Two panels just behind the front doors slid open, with more guns extending from them. Some sounds were heard from both the rear and the roof, more panels. "Okay," Cor said when all the chages were done. "Let's see what we've got here. Okay. We left in the original GMC Detroit deisel power plant. It's a good engine: 480 horsepower, top speed of 125 MPH, and a range of 200 miles. Really sucks gas. We added power with a pair of twin Pratt&Whitney TF30-414A Afterburning Turbofans, modified to provide 78,000 pounds of vectored thrust. Round trip range just over 300 miles at a cruising speed just under 1600 knots." "It FLIES??" MMaxx gulped. "Yes. Don't interrupt," Cor went on. "The Pearson Yachts hull is protected by British-made Chobbam layered ablative armor over 1/2" indus- trial steel plate. The windscreen and the side windows are made of ALON. That's Aluminum Oxy-Nitrate. Really tough stuff the Army just came up with a couple years ago. They use it for the guidance cones on the front of the Tomahawk Missile. It's optically perfect and is harder than steel. We put in two inches for good measure. "Let's see... primary weapons systems are the sixteen laser-guided Hellstreak Air-to-Air missiles mounted under the wings on those pylons you see there," he pointed. "The Laser Target designators on the hood have split beam capability, to guide four missiles at once, thanks to a huge, onboard computer system. On the ends of the wings are two AIM-9M 'Sidewinder' AAMs per side, providing fire-and-forget capability. Um... That thing sticking out of the front bumper is a M61A1 20mm 'Vul- can' cannon that fires up to 6000 rounds a minute for close in ballis- tic combat. There's one on the back, too. "On the sides of the body, just rear of the front doors are two Mark-17 40mm grenade launchers, one on each side. They are each fed with 50-round belts of alternating HE and WP grenades. Great for clearing a room, or for that matter, a stadium. Let's see... on the roof is a pop- up Phalanx CIW System for defense, and behind that are the main bay doors, which house a ZUNI 5" missile-launcher that's loaded with 3 mis- siles. There is a Chaff/Flare dispenser under the rear bumper, and cen- tered slightly forward of the rear wheels is a mine-dispenser, which is loaded with 16 proximity-fused anti-vehicle mines." He took a breath, and a sip off a can of JOLT. "Internal systems in- clude a rudimentary Nav/Ranging radar system, Pulsed IR jammers, A GE Wide Spectrum Anti-Laser Refraction System (WISPARS) to prevent laser guided missile lock, and an integral fire-suppression system. Crew of four and lots of weapons lockers inside. What do you think?" MMaxx stepped back and looked at it for a second. He rubbed his chin and said, "great, but what's it FOR? I've heard of offensive driving, but _that_ is ridiculous." "Why? This is _fun_," Wolf said, grinning evilly. "Damn straight it is," Cor agreed. He pressed a button and the UPS Truck reverted to it's standard form, that of an ordinary delivery truck. "I figure that this might just come in handy. After reading about what went on up at WPI in the papers, I figure we might as well be prepared." "Ah." Next Day Air______________________________________________________FOUR "Boy...that makes a BIG hole." -Tareah Zebediah pedalled swiftly up Route 108 towards Campus as he did every morning at around this time, the wheels of his black mountainbike cutting smoothly through the excessive amounts of sand on the side of the road that the overzealous R.I.D.O.T. puts down when it even _hints_ of snow. A rush of air whisked over him as a UPS Truck pulled to the side of the road ahead of him in a spray of sand, gravel, and loose pavement. (We have loose pavement and potholes like you wouldn't BELIEVE.) A head popped out of the driver's side door, and yelled back towards him. "NICK! NEED A LIFT?" Corinthian shouted. Zeb stopped pedalling so damned fast and furiously (he didn't feel like running into the back of the truck) and scratched his shaggy head. "Jon?" he puzzled. "Where on _earth_ did you steal that thing?" "WHY does everyone think I STOLE everything nice?!? I built it with a little help. *wink wink* *nudge nudge* *knowwhatImean?*" "Right. Okay. Do you have room for the bike? I'm headed for work." Zeb said. "Sure. Hang on." He leaned back in and pressed one of the myriad of buttons, knobs, dials, and doohickeys on the control cluster. The back door rolled smoothly up and a ramp extended down to the pavement. Zeb carefully rolled his mountainbike up the ramp into the exterior, the ramp retracted, and the door rolled down. Looking around, Zeb immediately noticed that there actually wasn't much room in the back of the truck. There was a narrow center aisle a- bout three feet wide and the walls were covered with doors and panels of some kind. Leaning the bike against a wall, he made his way forward to- wards the crew compartment. He glanced at the navigator/communications stations and plunked down in the co-pilot/gunner's chair next to Cor. "What's all this?" he asked, jesturing around. "Oh, the usual," Cor replied, pulling back out into traffic and send- ing a Dodge Omni leaping for cover. "Weapon controls, guidance systems, radar and navigation equipment, tactical displays. You know." He tromp- ed on the accelerator and the big behemoth leapt forward, the engine sur- ging with power. He loved this. Another driver saw him coming and quickly took a side street. Just then the radio crackled on from under the dash, and a strained voice came out of it. "Cor...Cor...you out there?" Cor picked up the headset and put it on. "Cor here. What's up, Kali?" "We have a...hmmm...problem here...I think..." she paused, "We're under attack..." "What's the situation?" "We're in the HQ in Lippitt, but we can't get out...heavy fire from the quad...doesn't seem focused on us...collateral damage heavy...what's your ETA?" "Just picked up Nick. Be there in..." he looked at his watch, "under five minutes. Out." "And just _how_ do you plan on managing that?" Zeb asked. "It'll take ten minutes alone just to get through the 108/138 light." "Trust me," Cor winked. "Oh, and put on your seatbelt." He buckled his own four-point harness across his chest and reached behind the seat. As Zeb befuddledly buckled his own straps, Cor put on a helmet similar to those used in the old _AIRWOLF_ television series. He reached for the dash and said, "hang on." Flipping a series of switches, he activated the sequence to extend the wing pods. The driver behind them was surprised to see the two lower corners of the rearend disengage and fold back, revealing two enormous jet engine cowlings, and slammed on his brakes. The rear of the roof elevated to form a spoiler/guidance system. A digital readout on the dash alternately read "SINED" "SEELED" "DELIVERED" as it went throught the phases necessary for air travel mode. Zeb looked around as a building whine from the Turbofans escalated to a roar. Cor depressed a detent on the wheel and Zeb was squished into his seat as the UPS Truck launched itself skyward on a pillar of flame. Cor grinned as he pulled back on the wheel and they gained more alti- tude. Leveling off just under 1000 feet, they could see the chaos on the quad a mile to the northwest. Opening the throttle, Cor dove slight- ly towards the treetops and picked up speed. "Jon, have you done this before?" Zeb managed to ask. "Maiden flight," he grinned evilly. "Ah," he said and sat back. Glancing at the radar cluster and the NOE navigation system, Cor guestimated their ETA at oh... say... 45 seconds. He brought the laser designator for the Hellstreaks online and extended the fore and aft 20mm cannons and armed the Sidewinders for good measure. Never know _what_ to expect around here, he thought wryly. He banked around the eastern side of campus and aproached the quad on a due westlerly heading. Sweeping low across the church parking lot he shot through the space between East Hall and Washburn at just under 150 knots, rattling the windows and doors on both buildings. <<<_AIRWOLF_ theme song>> Heads on the quad turned as the UPS Truck shot across and brushed past Davis Hall, banking to the north. "What's the situation, Zeb?" Cor asked as he deftly came around for a second pass. "Looked like a bunch of fraternity brothers battling it out. God only knows why." "Well, they've got our friends pinned down. Looks like a little con- structive disruption is in order, eh?" he flipped back the covers on the 20mm cannon triggers and had the computer plot a straffing run. He ex- tended the Mark-17 40mm Grenade Launchers, just in case. One of the brighter fraternity brothers on the quad (NOT one wearing a Theta Chi sweatshirt, this is SF, not Fantasy) turned and looked up in the sky and said, "Was that a UPS TRUCK?!?" He then resumed shooting at the brothers on the other side of the quad with his Ruger. The UPS Truck banked around and came from the north. Flying on a line directly between the opposing factions of students and other riff-raff, Cor laid down a heavy line of fire from the 20mil cannon and threw in a few grenades to get their attention. A few rounds plunked harmlessly into the sides of the Truck. "They seem to be shouting at each other, Jon," Zeb said. "Listen, you stop calling me Jon, and I won't call you Nicholas, all right? I prefer Corinthian or Cor, okay?" Cor said. "Let's see what they're saying, shall we?" Cor pressed another button and a tiny hatch opened above the front windshield and an omnidirectional microphone extended. Adjusting the gain, Cor put the sound on the inside speaker system. Over the sounds of heavy gunfire and the innumerable exposions of HE rounds they heard two phrases repeatedly shouted by the two sides. The western side was shouting "LESS FILLING", while the eastern side was shouting "TASTES GREAT". Both sides seemed very insistant on impressing the other with their point of view, supported by heavy arms fire. Cor banked back around and came to a halt directly over the quad at about 90 feet up. Cor pressed a button and the exterior public address system lanced the crowd with 200db of mind-numbing (real hard with frat brothers. NOT.) feedback. He spoke into the microphone in his helmet: "CEASE AND DESIST ALL HOSTILITIES IMMEDIATELY. YOU HAVE EXACTLY TWENTY-FIVE SECONDS TO VACATE THIS AREA. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED." He clicked off. The crowds paused for all of four seconds before bombarding the UPS Truck with an enormous volley of fire from various types of weaponry ranging from spitballs to a stolen AT-4 Medium Anti- Tank Weapon. "I don't think they are going to listen," Zeb overstated as the air- frame rocked with impact after impact. Cor made a few slight attitude adjustments, both types. He switched on the windshield wipers to get rid of all the spitballs and shrapnel dust collecting on the windshield just as a frisbee careened off the driver's side door with a *TANG*. "All right, no more mister nice gunship pilot," Cor snarled. He laid down suppressing fire from both 20mils and the Mark-17s and lowered the Truck to a scant two feet over the quadrangle. The WP rounds proved rather effective against the alcohol-sodden brothers, who tended to be quite flammable. He withdrew the microphone and punched another button on the PA system. Looking out the window, Zeb noticed the brothers on that side start to clutch their ears and drop to their knees in a very good rendition of the 'Chekov Maneuver'. A few started to bleed from the ears and writhe uncontrollably on the ground screaming, instantly creating a new dance craze called the 'Dryland Flounder Flop'. "What's happening to them?" Zeb asked. "Pain Field Generator. REAL nasty. I'm just lucky that their tiny minds are receptive to such stimuli," Cor grinned evilly. "I think that they've had enough." He shut off the PFGenerator. The brothers, now mollified, slowly left the area, dragging their fallen comrades behind them so that the Food Services crew wouldn't get them and thus deny them a proper burial. (Or for that matter, medical attention for the living ones.) Cor cycled down the engines after touching down on the south side of the quad. He drove down towards the Memorial Onion and pulled to a stop in front of the west entrance. Pushing the button to roll up the back door, Cor hopped in the back to check for damage. Walking off the ramp, he noticed that there was a noticable dent in the port-side rear quarter. "Must have been that AT-4 round... or maybe a frisbee," Cor mused. "I'd better think up something to coat the exterior armor with." "Well, it's been interesting, Jon...Corinthian. Thanks for the lift," Zeb said, pedaling off towards the doors. Cor got back inside the truck and closed the door. He shifted back into [D] and drove back towards Lippitt. The large doors trundled upwards on the north side of Lippitt Hall and the UPS Truck rolled in. As the door rolled down behind it, Cor hop- ped out and tossed the keys to Kali. "All yours, sweetheart. Be careful, it flies like a truck," Cor grin- ned. "Good... what is a truck?" she smiled, playing along with the refer- ence. She pocketed the keys and noticed the big dent in the side of the UPS Truck. "HEY! You scratched the paint!" "Yeah, well, anti-tank weapons can do that occasionally. Any word on just where all those frat-rats got that heavy armament?" "Nope. We were just as surprised as you were. DigiCom is busy rez- zing up some KAMS of our own," Kali said, pointing at a lone figure bus- ily typing away at the KDCFieldGENerator keyboard. Cor walked over to him and dropped a hand on his shoulder. "What'cha got for us, Mario?" Cor asked. "Mmmmm... Trust me. You'll love it." "Good stuff?" "You betcha," he grinned evilly. "Wait a second... grinning evilly is supposed to be a contract exclu- sive only *I* was given." "Okay," DC grinned maniacally. "Better," Cor grinned evilly. Cor walked back over towards the UPS Truck. Looking thoughtfully at the dent, he called Wolf over. "We need to do something about this, Thom," Cor said. "Some body work?" Wolf said sarcastically. "No, the fact that an AT-4 could do this kind of damage." "Well... we could always molecularly bond the outer surface." "Yeah, that would work... and maybe a thin coat of molecularly bonded ALON over the top of it, for that no-wax shine," Cor said. "How long do you think it would take?" "After pulling out that ding and patching the Chobbam armor? Day and half, tops." "Good, get on it. I have some stuff to do." He turned and swooped out of the room, heading towards the west entrance. "How does he do that?" Kali asked no one in particular. "Practice," no_one_in_particular answered. "Ah." Cor took the elevator down to sublevel D of the ever-expanding Lippitt Complex (When you need matter to make tangible objects, you tend to get a lot of empty space. Going down makes it unnoticable.). Stepping out into the red-lit corridor he went to the left into the telecommunications center where his friend Frosty sat at a huge console covered with banks of dials and keypads. Frosty looked up at the sound of the glass doors sliding silently open (huh?) when Cor walked in. "What's up, Frosty? Any word on what happened upstairs?" "Nothing on the government channels...only minor chatter on the local. No one seemed to notice, I guess," he shrugged. "A small war and a flying truck, and not even the Air National Guard at Quonset Point noticed?? Something is going on..." "Yeah, that's my general impression... but what?" "THAT is the twenty five thousand dollar question. Call me if you hear anything, Mike. I'll be upstairs in the lab on B." "Still working on that armor system?" "Yeah. Still a bit more field testing to be done. Almost got it though." "Later." "Right," Cor said and walked out. Cor stepped out of the elevator into a dimly lit corridor to the only door present. Placing his IDCardTM in the awaiting slot, he stepped throught the door as it slid apart in four directions. As it closed behind him, he said the word "light" and a large bank of overheads clicked on, revealing the interior of a large laboratory complex. In the center of the room there sat a black leather jacket with a stylized em- blem resembling a red and white circle with a double capital "B" in it on the left breast and a black belt on a dress dummy, with a pair of black leather boots next to it. Strewn around the room on various lab benches were bits and pieces of what looked to be armor plates and partially as- sembled weapons of varying types, as well as a pile of back issues of "The Mighty Thor" issues 420-424 and a BGC synopsis. In one corner of the lab, there stood an identical KDCFieldGENerator to the one upstairs. Cor said the word "demo" and a huge panel slid back on the far wall, revealing a large, bare room on the other side of a sheet of ALON three feet thick. Kicking off his Reebok's and shucking off his denim jacket, he put on the awaiting leathers and stepped to the door of the Demo Room. Buckling on the black belt (which looks like a black version of a utility belt), he irised open the door and stepped through. Cor stood in the middle of an enormous, empty room and looked around. "Initiate sequence four," Cor said and prepared himself. The room a- round him started to shimmer and change, and in moments it looked like he was standing in the middle of a street in downtown Boston near the John Hancock Tower. The ground below him shuddered several times, as if something large was making it's way towards him. Spinning around, he saw a Zentraedi Command Pod treading down Massachusetts Avenue, it's huge feet leaving gaping holes in the asphalt. Several more Pods were visible behind it as it turned towards him and drew a bead with it's weapons systems. Cor stood his ground and sent a mental command to his leathers, really a highly sophisticated battle armor commonly refered to as a HardSuit. The leathers instantly started to retool around him, totally enclosing him in jet black armor that seemed to crackle with energy. Cor checked his HUDs and onboard systems displays. All systems at optimum level. The Pod opened fire on him with it's energy cannons. Cor deftly leapt over the beams, landing near the south entrance to the Hancock Tower. His right arm retooled itself to form a pair of particle cannons and he fired on the lead Pod. <<> The Pod reeled back under the tremendous impact and promptly exploded. The two Pods behind it split up behind some buildings and circled around on either side. Cor retooled again and leapt into the air on his boot jets as the left-hand Pod fired on him. The shot went wide, but the momentary distraction allowed the other pod to nail him from behind, sending him crashing into the Hancock Tower between the seventeenth and eighteenth floors. Extracting himself from the wreckage, Cor said, "THAT was a cheap shot, dammit" through his teeth, and retooled again. In mere moments both pods were smoking hulks with large holes in them from a pair of ion bursts. Three more Pods tromped down the street towards him. As they rounded the corner, one fell through the pavement into the Green Line subway tun- nels. "Good realism," Cor commented. Cor touched down next to an armored car, lifted it over his head and threw it at the nearest Pod, sending it ducking for cover. A sound be- hind him made him whirl, just as a foot crushed him into the pavement. "Ouch. I actually _felt_ that," Cor said from deep in the sidewalk, retooling the armor yet again. The Battle Pod above him started to rock as he pushed upwards against it's foot. Fully extending his now heavier- armored limbs, he toppled the Pod over on a nearby parking garage. The Pod that had fallen into the subway, after extracting itself, re- grouped with the one remaining Pod and charged forward en-mass. Cor blasted the two of them to hot, smoking chunks of metal with a burst from the newly formed plasma projectors on his shoulders. Righting itself from the parking garage, the remaining Pod tried a slightly different tactic. It ran away. Cor rocketed after it, closing in seconds. The Pod shuddered and convulsed as it suffered a large hole through it's midsection as Cor shot through it. The resulting explosion shattered windows for three blocks and sent fiery chunks of falling de- bris tumbling into the Commons. Cor landed near the statue of Nathan Hale on Massachusetts Avenue and said, "end sequence," as he retooled the armor down into a black "Nike Air" sweatshirt. "Didn't suck," Cor said as he walked back towards the outer lab. The door irised open and he went out. Grabbing his jacket after putting back on his Reeboks he went back out towards the elevator, shutting down the lab behind him. Interlude_______________________________________________FOUR POINT TWO "...I'm in charge here now. Men, we're going to the Olympics." -The Colonel KLARION DATACORP HEADQUARTERS, Langley, VA Doctor S. Laurence Sheuchster was troubled by something, his brow furrowed deeply in thought as he walked down the long corridor. The board was calling an emergency meeting this afternoon to discuss the recent problems that had arisen involving the prototype KDCFieldGENera- tor that he had been working on. Someone had hacked into the sytem and downloaded it. As if that had been bad enough, it seemed as if the in- dividuals in question had had no problem at all figuring out the usage of the generator, and were at this moment using it for what was no doubt nefarious purposes. Recent infrared LANDSAT photographs of the south- eastern New England area showed huge amounts of energy being produced and destroyed in the area of Kingston, Rhode Island. Also, local intelli- gence had revealed repeated sighting of a heavily armed, low-level flight capable vehicle in and around the area of the University of Rhode Island. This was not unusual, due to the fact that the Quonset Point Naval Air Station had fourteen attack helicopters stationed there. What _was_ un- usual was the fact that there were no helicopters performing manuevers in the area at the time, and that the vehicle in question seemed to be radar-invisible. The doors hissed open at the end of the corridor and he stepped into the boardroom and glanced at the people seated around the long table. All of the directors were here, even the long-missing Dr. Robert Lars, who had reportedly been doing research at the bottom of the Marianas Trench in the Pacific Ocean into the effects of extreme pressure con- ditions on a few new alloy vehicles that had been developed. His pres- ence made Dr. Sheuchster even more nervous. They wouldn't call him in unless something important was being decided on. Sheuchster took his seat midway down the long table and focused his attention on the back of the Director's chair, who was turned towards the large windows on the far wall that looked out over the vast grounds the building was located on. Gregory Versimyand handed Dr. Sheuchster a folded piece of paper and quickly turned away. Sheuchster glanced towards the man on his right and slowly unfolded the paper, revealing five words hastily scratched there: This is all your fault. Refolding the paper, Sheuchster slid it under the folders he had brought with him. All heads turned as the Director slowly rotated his chair towards the assembly. A hush fell over the room as the chair stopped and the Dir- ector leaned forward. With his right hand, the Director placed a square glass of a clear blue liquid on the edge of the table before speaking. "Gentlemen," the Director said, his voice resonating liquidly, "we seem to have a matter of some interest developing as a direct result of one of our projects that threatens this organization. Our systems have been infiltrated by unknown means and a very potentially dangerous pro- totype has been, shall we say, lifted from them. I am giving this mat- ter my full attention." This elicited several meaningful glances and a few of the boardmembers wrote things down. "Furthermore, the leak will be found. This is not a request. I want this situation resolved by as simple means as possible." The words flowed fluidly, but the meaning was quite clear: plug the leak by whatever means. "Also, I have al- ready briefed Security, and retrieval teams are being assembled as we speak. This project has a Sierra Clearance on it, so all those not cleared may leave." He dismissed the half dozen or so members not so cleared with a wave of his hand. Dr. Sheuchster nodded significantly. A Sierra designation meant that the retrieval teams were authorized any and all means of operations, up to and including extreme sanctioning. The doors closed again after the non-cleared members left. The Director resumed speaking in a slightly more hushed tone. "Gentlemen, I cannot stress the importance of this operation," he said soothingly. "Those individuals responsible will be dealt with most harshly, I'm afraid. That is all, gentlemen. Dismissed." Complications_____________________________________________________FIVE "I've got a real firm grip on reality... by the throat." -DigiCom KINGSTON, two days later A small group stood in a rough circle in the middle of the quad look- ing at a rather large, black touring motorcycle. DigiCom was spieling on about all of the features this new model came equipped with as Corin- thian walked up. "...the WHG-1a also has an optional cd player for the stereo for the touring model," DigiCom smiled, glancing at Corinthian quickly. "Great, but what kind of mileage does it get?" Zebediah quipped. This got a few chuckles from the group. "Very funny. The Richards/Cross cold fusion drive operates on water and sunlight, and has high-efficiency fuel cells for operation at night," DC answered glibly. "The answer man himself," Cor laughed. "Let's see what you've got here, DC." With that DigiCom hopped on the bike and kicked it over, the huge en- gine roaring to life immediately. The rest of the group moved back from it, they had heard what it could do. Cor stood still. DigiCom circled the quad twice to pick up speed, and then roared down the middle towards Cor. Seconds before the emminent collision, DigiCom triggered the trans- formation system and several things started to happen. The side panels of the big touring bike slid forward and inwards to enclose DigiCom's legs and lower torso. The wheels stopped turning as the leg units hit the ground, the front fork telescoping into the main body. With the leg units solidly planted, internal gyros maintained equilibrium as the windscreen retracted and the front fairing covered his chest and arms. The rear portion of the bike moved up to cover the back of the rider and pods deployed over the shoulders as the right arm reached back and withdrew a weapon from the rear. There now stood in front of Cor a very heavily armored mecha with a large rifle it it's right hand. "Boo!" crackled DigiCom's voice over the unit's speakers. Cor stood in front of the unit with his arms crossed, now fully en- cased in his HardSuit, sans helmet. "Impressive. Reminds me a bit of the Cyclone armor. Bulkier, though. What's it got for weapons systems?" DigiCom smiled behind his faceplate. "I thought you'd never ask. Okay, it is quite a bit heavier than the Cyclone. Heavier armor, more ammo, stuff like that. Eight minimissiles in the two shoulder pods. Ta- ser darts in the wrist units. Xenon strobes in the lamp assemblies for blinding. Optional speaker systems for vertigo producing sound waves. And this." He hefted the rifle. "This is the GGR, the Grey Goo Rifle. Nasty little thing. It fires a shell containing molecular disassemblers, which feed on the target, converting metal, plastic, and rubber into copies of themselves until the target is gone or the built-in time limit runs out. You can set this for the target size. Then the magnesium charges in the disassemblers trigger and the effect dissipates." "Very nice," Cor said thoughtfully. "Can we have half-a-dozen by thursday, and are there other models in mind?" "Yes, I have a few ideas for other models," he said knowingly. "Just need more matter to play with." "Great," Cor said as the group came back together. MMaxx and Tareah kissed each other as they walked over, and Zeb grinned. Kali and Frosty smiled a greeting towards Cor. "I.. LIKE IT!" Zebediah said enthusiastically. Cor stepped over to DigiCom's armor and knocked on the chestplate. "Solid. What do you call this pig?" DigiCom flipped back his faceplate (don't you hate people who insist on talking through those things?) and rubbed his eyes. "Funny you should put it that way. It's the WHG-1a, also known as the WarHog. I'm working on a model called the WHG-1b, the RazorBack. Pretty much the same, but a few nice toys added." He grinned. "I'm sure," Cor grinned evilly. "Good gyros in here?" "Not really, but the souvlaki is phenominal," he replied. Everyone groaned, and Cor pushed him over. Righting his WarHog, DigiCom said, "I deserved that. NOT! By the way, is that a HardSuit you're wearing?" "Are those Bugle Boy jeans your wearing?" Cor mocked. "Of course." "Good," DigiCom answered, and punted him across the quad. Cor sailed through the air and formed his helmet around his head be- fore nimbly landing on his feet. He walked back over, laughing as he did so. "Okay, *I* deserved that. Good reaction time. That pig is a lot more agile than it looks. You _look_ like a brick shithouse." "Wait till I finish the paint job," DigiCom retorted. There was much rejoicing. TUESDAY, 06:30 Hours "Tight pants and lipstick/she's running on a razor's edge/ She holds her own against the boys/cuts through the pomp just like a wedge." -Sammy Hagar "Heavy Metal" The white convertible hovercar whooshed down the interstate just east of New Haven, Conn. at seventy MPH over the posted limit. The driver checked the outside mirrors again for pursuit. The souped-up '72 Road- runner in the mirror was gaining, red lights strobing from it's grill. It had been back there for a good ten minutes, ever since crossing the Milford town line; plenty of time for the driver to see the lack of plates and wheels on the hovercar. The State Trooper swung out into the passing lane as soon as the traf- fic allowed and pulled up even with the hovercar. A speaker crackled to life on the Roadrunner somewhere, and a voice came blaring, "ALL RIGHT, PULL THAT THING OVER! NOW!" The driver of the hovercar glanced over at the trooper's car. Nice restoration job. Porsche-red with white trim, and a Holley Supercharger with a blower sticking out of the hood. A fast car, but not fast enough to catch the hovercar. The trooper scowled as the hovercar pulled away from the Roadrunner as if it was standing still, it's afterburners flar- ing. <<> Accelerating to just under 200 MPH, the hovercar rocketed eastward down I-95, leaving the trooper far behind. The driver knew that that would not be the end of the pursuit, figuring correctly that the trooper had radioed ahead for either backup or a roadblock. Neither would prove to be much of a problem. The Roadrunner was still in sight behind, the trooper must have kicked in the blower to compensate for the sudden ac- celeration of the hovercar. Good. That would keep it interesting. Cresting the top of the hill that led down to the bridge over the Connecticut River in New London, the driver noticed that there was indeed a road block set up on the other side. Three state police cars were lined up on the road, and a long line of cars were backed up over the bridge in the eastbound lanes. The driver smiled wryly. It would take a bit more than a mere traffic tie-up to stop _this_ vehicle. Flipping several switches and pulling the wheel to the left, the dri- ver hopped the concrete jersey barrier and leveled off at twenty feet a- bove the tarmac, rapidly gaining the approach to the bridge. Several mo- torists momentarily lost control of their vehicles as the hovercar caused quite a distraction. Before the police could re-orient the blockade, the white hovercar was over the bridge and was a speck on the horizon. "What do you think that thing was, Bob?" asked a bewildered officer of his colleague. "Don't know," Bob answered, scratching his head, "must have been some new import. Japanese, maybe?" "Could be. Like those bullet train things." "Maybe." KINGSTON, 10:40 AM MMaxx looked up as the elevator doors opened and Frosty stepped out, looking slightly puzzled. He had a large sheaf of papers and printouts in his hands and was flipping through them rapidly. "What's up, Mike?" MMaxx asked. "...." Frosty said. "That much, eh?" "Oh... sorry, just a bit distracted," Frosty replied. "You seen Jon or Nick around?" "Nick's down on B, having fun in the Lab," MMaxx answered. "Jon seems to be missing. Probably logged-in somewhere." He quickly did a WHO, but came up blank. "Couldn't tell ya, sorry. What's up?" "OH, there's been a _hell_ of a lot of net traffic on the encrypted frequencies. Lots of ALPHA traffic, too. Something's going on," he rub- bed his eyes. It was obvious he hadn't slept in a while. "Just thought I'd bounce this off the guys and see what they think. Any thoughts." "Not a one. Try Nick." Frosty turned back towards the elevator and walked into the doors. Stepping back, he pressed the button, the doors opened and he stepped in, rubbing his nose. MMaxx tried to stiffle a giggle. The doors opened on sublevel B and Frosty walked down the short hall- way to the Lab. He slid his IDCardTM through the magslot, the door parted and he stepped through into the Lab proper. There had been a few changes made lately, as evident by the fact that most of the tables had huge piles of kipple running off of them onto the floor. Amongst the refuge, he noticed several AD&D modules and handbooks from T$R. One ta- ble had the Mage's Handbook open to a very nasty-looking graphic of a man caught in a huge clenched fist. Bigby's, no doubt. There were also quite a few comic books lying around opened to various pages. Frosty looked through the large windows into the Demo Room and saw Zebediah engaged in a conversation with himself while waving a stick at a large CyMech that was advancing slowly on him. Frosty picked up an "Immortality Belt" off the table next to the door to the Demo Room and buckled it on. The "Immortality Belt", as it was nicknamed, prevented the Demo Room from harming someone who was not pay- ing attention or only observing a training session. Switching on, he opened the doors and stepped into the Demo Room. Zebediah whirled to face this new threat and saw Frosty walking to- wards him with lots of papers in his hand. Seeing Frosty pointing be- hind him, he spun back and dove sideways out of the CyMech's clutches. Discarding the stick, now evidently a wand of some type, Zeb pointed his clenched right hand at the CyMech. A large, green fist shot out of a ring on his right finger and grab- bed the CyMech. The CyMech struggled briefly before being crushed into powdered parts and wires. The green fist vanished into thin air, and the ring glowed slightly. He turned back towards Frosty. "Hello. What's up?" Zeb asked. "Hi," Frosty replied, shuffling papers. "There's been a helluva lot of ALPHA traffic and encrypted stuff on the net lately. I'm trying to find Jon to ask him about it. Paul said that you might be able to help. Nice ring, by the way." Zeb paused, digesting all this. "As for the noise on the net, I don't know," Zeb said, "But Jon's up there." He pointed at a window high on the north wall of the Demo Room, obviously an observation room of sorts. "Thanks, Nick," Frosty said. "Ummm...how do I get up there?" The observation room was a recent addition, as the place was rapidly expand- ing. "Oh, through the outer room the way you came in. There's a door there labeled 'O.R.'." "Right. DUH. Thanks." Frosty went back out and ditched his belt on the rack next to the door. He opened the door labeled 'O.R.', and stepped through. Climbing a dimly-lit flight of stairs, he came face to face with a large steel door with a black and red traingle on it. The letters 'TCS' could be made out underneath as well as the phrase 'Observation Room'. He turned the nob and went in. Cor turned and waved Frosty over towards where he was seated looking into the Demo Room. Frosty sat down next to him at the large, blinking- light covered console he was seated at. Cor rubbed his eyes. "What's up, Mike?" he asked. "Like I told Nick: lots of ALPHA traffic and encrypted stuff on the net. I've got the Cray II working on it now... shouldn't take too long to decypher. It's got me a little worried, though." "Okay. Glad you told me about this. Let me know when you find any- thing more out, or when HAL comes up with something. I'll go find Kali and have her put the whole Lippitt Complex Operational Group on PAISLEY Alert. I don't want to be rudely surprised here." "Sure thing, Jon," Frosty said. "Oh, by the way, have you been work- ing out?" "Oh, you noticed? I have been doing a little... ah... self improve- ment," Cor answered. "Right. Catch you later." "Later." Arrival____________________________________________________________SIX "Get away from that car or I'll drink your blood!" -Scooter Lindley KINGSTON, The Crack of Dawn (keep your smart remarks to yourself) Light filtered in through the high windows on the east side of the Lippitt Complex (ground floor), bathing a SSSOK in a golden yellow and slightly crisping his pasty-lab complexion. He screamed and scam- pered under a nearby crate. A small yet persistent light flashed to itself over the inner door frame. <<> The 'lift doors hissed open and Corinthian stepped out. With a re- proachful glance towards DigiCom cowering under a box, he moved to the door and punched up the exterior monitor. What greeted his gaze sur- prised him. There were two cops outside wearing State Police Uniforms. Cor spun away and shouted the word "cloak" to the nearly empty room. The entire room began to shimmer and meld as a modest VR field not unlike the testing room on sublevel D was equipped with changed the room from the garage/weapons storage area that it was into the Paint-stripped gutted huld of a campus building undergoing renovations that*It*was sup- posed to be. Fortunately, the UPS Truck was out at the moment. It ten- ded to resist cloaking from outside sources. With a thought, Cor's armor changed from the black 94-WHJY "DO IT LOUD" T-shirt that he had been wearing into a pair of paint-covered, battered coveralls and a gleaming white hardhat with a red and black triangle on the front proclaiming "TCS CONSTRUCTION CORPERATION". His face aged and weathered to belay his youthful appearance. A red name- tape saying "JON", with the word "FOREMAN" underneath completed the costume. "Mario, get out of sight, you bastard," Cor quipped to DigiCom, who had since recovered after installing a pair of Rayban Wayfarers on his head. DigiCom ducked into the open 'lift door and closed it, the opening vanishing into a tarp-covered scaffolding. Officer Mark Golden was not having a good day. Having to wait for fifteen minutes outside a big ugly building on a college campus first thing in the morning after a really bad night didn't help any. He nervously shifted his weight from one foot to the other and back im- patiently. His partner just stood and looked out over the quadrangle. Bastard. He'd been with Jason Keppler for two years, and he'd never seen him lose his perpetual cool. Never took off his mirrored sun- glasses, either. Thought he was fucking John fucking Wayne. Bastard. Golden started as the door opened and a hardhat greeted him with a broad smile, the smile of a man who'd been working steel for years and knew it. "Morning, gentlemen, what can we do for you today?" Cor asked courteously. Golden tried to look over the "foreman's" shoulder without trying to look like that's what he was doing and almost succeeded. "Good morning, sir. Sorry to disturb you so early, but we picked up a fellow who says he works here," Golden gestured towards the cruiser parked at the curb. Cor followed his hand and looked at the shiney new Ford Crown Vic- toria. Gods those new ones were ugly. Robocop cars. Zebediah waved to him from the back seat sheepishly. "What'd he get himself into this time, officers?" Cor asked with a smirk as he shook his head slowly. "You wouldn't believe us if we told you," Golden replied with a side- long glance at Keppler. "We're just dropping him off. He IS one of yours, right?" "Yup. Believe it or not he's a damned good structural engineer," Cor lied. "I'll take him from you." "Right." Cor closed the door after the troopers had left and said "cloak off" as Zeb looked around confused. Things resumed their real appearance and Zeb wiped his forehead in relief. "I just thought I'd taken too many drugs in the 60's," Nick said. "Nick, you weren't around in the 60's," Cor quipped as he himself resumed his normal look. "That's better." "THAT was creepy... it looked like yoau just lost ten years." "Yeah, well, ain't technology wonderful?" Cor laughed. "So, what'd you get?" "What'd I get? Well, I had to pay fifty dollars and pick up all the garbage in the snow..." "Alright. Arlo Guthrie, you ain't. What did you do?" "Suffice to say that I was testing out this ring and the owner of the parking lot that I was using got a little upset." "Jesus, Nick, that was dumb," Cor scowled. "They could have locked you up with all those mean, nasty, horrible father stabbers and mother rapers!" "Not to mention the FATHER rapers!" "Right. Try not to get bagged again, 'kay?" "You have no sense of adventure, Jon." "SURE I do... Nicholas." 9:17 AM The white hovercar whisked down Route 138 east and slowed as it turned north onto Lower College Road. A cloud of dust was kicked up as it dodged around a white Volkswagen Rabbit driven by a bimbo-esque blond. It swooped around the Union Turning Circle and halted near the Carlotti Administration building. The driver carefully surveyed the area. Nice, quiet campus, not un- like most across the United States... annoying bell tower. Typical. Well, there was one less than there HAD been... WPI's was gone. Two engineering students came out of Quinn Hall and stopped short. THAT was one beautiful car. No wheels. Nice. Eyes wide, they walked slowly by the hovercar. One of them walked into a tree. The driver didn't have to wait long. From the northeast side of the quadrangle a lumbering vehicle turned north and drove behind Lippitt Hall. That had to be it. Too casual for an _actual_ UPS driver. No one had gotten run over. The hovercar lifted slightly on it's antigravity cushion and slowly glided past Davis Hall towards Ballentine. Nothing moved as it slid to a stop in front of Lippitt Hall and the driver exited the vehicle. Wolf and Kali climbed down out of the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) and walked over to the console on the north wall. After both logging in as users on the LCC System, Wolf poured himself a huge, fissionable cup of coffee that someone thoughtful had brewed earlier in the week. Kali grimaced at the thought, and Wolf hamburglered in return. She tried to slap him and failed miserably. The 'lift doors opened and Frosty, Cor, and MMaxx entered the room, with DigiCom arriving soon afterwards. "Hail, hell, the gang's all here," Cor quipped. "What the fuque do we care, what the fuque do we care," Kali chimed in with a laugh. "All right, who called this meeting?" Paul tried to play straight. "Coincidence? Fate? DESTINY??" Frosty sarcasmed. "Mike," Cor said soberly,"YOU are suffering from a severe case of rectal-cranial inversion. I want you to reach down BETWEEN your legs and pull your head out of your ass. And I want to hear a POP." "Sheah, RIGHT." "Now that _that's_ out of the way," Wolf said. "'Sup?" "Not a whole helluvalotte," Kali said. "It's damned quiet for a PAISLEY alert, don't you think?" "Who came up with that _stupid_ name, anyway?" Paul asked. "Hey!" Zebediah said as he walked in from the storage area west of the main room. "I happen to LIKE paisley." Wolf glanced down at Zeb's Birkenstock's with the holes in the soles. "You would." Just then, the light over the door started flashing per- sistently to itself again. "MORE company?" Paul asked. "We'll see," Cor answered, walking over to the door and punching up the exterior monitor. Silence descended over the room like a veil as they waited for Cor to move. He didn't. MMaxx finally DUH-ed him on the back of the head and said, "cat got your tongue, Jon?" Cor glanced sidelong at him with a look that could kill. Mmaxx's Perip-Sensitive Glasses shifted to 90% dark. "Whoa, ease up. You look like you've seen a ghost." "Not quite... more like a feeling of deja vu..." he nodded towards the monitor. "Is that who I _think_ it is?" Mmaxx shrugged. "Well, let's go out and greet our unexpected guest, SHALL WE?" "Can _I_ do it this time, Jon?" Zeb asked with a twinkle in his eyes. "No cloak this time, Nicholas. Pointless anyway with _this_ particu- lar... individual... I think." "NICHOLAS?" Kali mocked, then blinked. "CLOAK, what CLOAK?" "We don' need no steenking CLOAK!" Cor grinned and opened the doors. They stood at the top of the steps, all seven of them eyeballing their visitor. Mmaxx was the first to break the silence. "Jon, I think your right... This is creepy... It _is_ her." "Oh yeah, it's her alright." <<> "UH, oh," Zeb said softly as he looked at the driver of the hovercar. She shook her head slightly and her long, silver-blond hair shimmered in the morning light and the light reflected off her mirrored singlasses. Cor just stared, taking in her long, long legs and all of the supple curves of her athletic body. That jumpsuit really didn't hide much, he thought. "Oh, GOD, another bimbo," Kali complained out loud. Mmaxx just looked amused. "Hello," Cor stammered. "Hi," she replied, and smiled. Conflict_________________________________________________________SEVEN "Pardon me while I change into something more formidable." -unknown ONE WEEK LATER "...I don't care, Jon, I still don't trust her," Kali was saying as she swung the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) east off Reservoir Avenue in Cran- ston, RI, onto Route 12. She had been dead-set against letting the woman known as "Jane Royal" into the BUILDING, nevermind actually _joining_ their merry band of adventurers. Everyone knew how _Corinthian_ felt about her. "Fine, BE that way," Cor snickered. It was true. He'd been enamour- ed by her from first sight. He was funny that way sometimes. Fortunat- ly he hadn't acted upon his lust overtly. Miss Royal was a dangerous woman. Cor yawned and sat back in the passenger seat of the behemoth. A slight smile crossed his lips as Kali deftly prevented a Honda Civic from passing her on the right by running it into a huge pile of trash. The Cranston DPW must be on strike. Again. The Honda mired it- self door-deep in three-week-old garbage, knocking over a blue OSCAR re- cycling bin in the process. Kali grinned. "I really like this thing, Jon." "I had a feeling you would." She turned onto I-95 South, heading back towards URI. As she did so, Cor caught a slight hint of movement from behind. "Kali, grey sedan. Left side, about three-hundred feet back. Am I paranoid or are we being followed?" "Nope, it took the last four turns with us. There's a canary-yellow Porsche with blacked-out windows trading off with it." "Can you lose them?" he asked rhetorically. Kali was a very good driver. "You know, I never asked if you have a pilot's license. Do you?" "Well, I have an organ donor card," Kali deadpanned. "Good enough," Cor smiled. Kali's brow furrowed as she noticed a steel-grey Crown Victoria drop in behind her. "I think the State Police have taken an interest in us, Jon." Cor glanced back. Grey unmarked. Driver wearing a dark suit and tie, wearing sunglasses and an earpiece. Could be a Statie... maybe not, though. No plates on the front. The crown-vic seemed to be coor- dinating it's movements with the other two vehicles... make that three. "Red, VW Microbus on the starbord side, two lanes over. Driver wear- ing similar suit to crown-vic... Earpiece, too, Kali." "Shit. That's a lot of vehicles to keep track of," Kali cursed. Cor was already punching them into the targeting computer and had a lock on all but the yellow 911. "I can't get a lock-on for the Porsche." "Good enough. Let's see if they really mean business," she said as she reached back and grabbed a helmet. She looked over at Cor, who did likewise. She tromped down on the gas and the vehicle leapt forward eagerly. It was made for this kind of fun. A glance told her that the other four vehicles matched her speed, all pretence of stealth and subtlety forgotten. <<> "All four are still with us, Kali," Cor said as he both checked the targeting computer and got a visual on the stealthy 911. "I have an idea for our friend the yellow Porsche." Cor manually aligned the cross- hairs on the targetting screen over a realtime video of the 911 and flipped over to infrared. The Porsche was shielded well, but the driver still made a faint hot-spot on the image. Must have insulated glass, too, Cor thought. He fine-tuned the lock. Now all the computer had to do was maintain it. "I've got the Porsche now, too," Cor said. "IBM. It's Better Manually." "Heh. Sometimes," Cor smiled. Kali accelerated some more as soon as an opening in the flow of traf- fic allowed and grinned as the Microbus got stuck behind an elderly gen- tleman wearing Terminator-style glasses driving a Pontiac Land-Yacht. Her grin faded as the crown-vic dropped in behind her again. "These guys aren't kidding around," she said. "I wonder what they want with _us_?" "YOU gonna stop and ASK them?" As he said this, the original grey sedan, now clearly a late eighties Caprice Classic shot by them in the far right-hand lane. "Bloody bastard," Kali cursed, the Aussie in her coming out. The Caprice started to move back over towards their lane, obviously attempt- ing to cut them off. Kali checked her right outside mirror to verify the crown-vic's location before giving the UPS more power. She kissed the Caprice, forcing it to back off a lane. Cor checked for the Porsche. It was hanging back on the far right, behind a big International Harvester cab-over. Sneaky bastard. The Microbus had scooted around the Pontiac and was gaining somehow. It must have been modified from the original designs. A glance told him that they were doing better than eighty miles an hour. Yup. Modified. "Kali, the Microbus is _gaining_. You got that Caprice, or should I vape the snarky bastard?" "I got him. Where's the Porsche?" "Behind the International, far right. Whoa! Watch that Reliant!" he said as she skated around it. "I saw it," she said, trying to act hurt. "I'd better call this in," Cor said, reaching for a handset under the instrument cluster. Putting the handset to a modem set on the dash, he opened a line to his helmet comm system. He punched open a link from the STU-III Secure Telephone Unit he was using back to the communications center of the Lippitt Complex. Frosty picked up on the second ring. "Mike, we've got a situation here," Cor went on for a couple of min- utes. "Right. You've got us located on the grid, right? Mmm hmmmm... Any chance of some backup? I see. Who's around, then? Just her? Oh. Think she'd willingly put on some armor and help us out? Well, see what you can do, then." He rang off and replaced the handset under the dash. "Well?" Kali asked impatiently. "Frosty's going to see what he can do. Hardly anyone's around down there right now. If worst comes to worst, he'll suit up himself and jet up here." "Christ, where _is_ everyone?" Cor shrugged, "He didn't say." The crown-vic nudged up on the right of them, hanging back just behind the doors. "That does it, I'm arming all onboard systems. I'll leave the wings in so you can still move in all this traffic, though." It DID seem a little thick for this time of day. "We don't want too much collateral damage, right?" "Collateral damage. Yeah." "Hey, Kali," Cor said as he brought the systems online. "You want me to hold back on the Turbofans?" The HUDS came up, and all the green lamps flashed once, then twice as the computer ran the diagnostics and prepped the weapons systems. "Yes," she muttered as she noticed the Microbus closing from directly behind. A small flash in her mirror told her that something had been fired at them. "Incoming!" she hollered. "Shit! Where?" Cor checked the scopes. Nothing. Something thumped into the back of the UPS Truck. "Dammit, what the hell are they firing at us?" "I don't know what it is, but it's effective. Something's slowing us down," Kali said as the UPS shuddered. Whatever it was, it had a firm grip on them. Cor punched up the rear viewscreens and the directional camera. What he saw surprised him. There was a dark-grey mass stuck to the lower rear section of the Truck. As he watched it seemed to crawl and bubble, ad- hering itself to the back bumper and the lower portion of the door. He thought it strange that the sensors hadn't picked it up as an incoming hostile; it obviously was. "Kali, what did it look like when they fired it?" "I don't know, they just kind of lobbed it at us." "Ah. Subsonic projectile. Too slow-moving for the sensors to worry about. Probably fired from a mortar. Wonder what it is?" "Me too. It feels like they threw a tow-line at us and they're reel- ing us in like a bass." "Ummm hmmmm..." Cor fiddled with the outside sensors. "Here we go... It's an iron, graphite, and plastic compound... Internal chemical reac- tion heat source... Um... It's molecularly bonded to the hull, Kali. I think 'Adhezosfero' is the Russian name for this thing. Damned tacky- ball if you ask me." "Can we get rid of it?" Kali asked dubiously. "I don't think so. It's had time to bond. He should start reeling us in any... URK!... second." The Truck shuddered again as the Minivan applied it's better-than-average brakes. It had been specially construc- ted for just this purpose. "He's got it in the right place, that's for sure," Cor said. The damned thing is right over the hatches covering the rear Turbofan ports. We're grounded. Oh, and the 20-mil back there is jammed inside. We're harmless from behind right now... Let's see if I can hit him with the Mark-17s." He flipped a pair of switches and two panels on the outside of the UPS Truck opened up, the 40-millimeter grenade launchers extending to their operable positions. He plotted the range and elevation of the port side '17, leaving the starbord one pointing straight out and slightly downward. He held his finger over the triggers. "When I say 'go', slide halfway into the next lane," he said, gestur- ing to the right. "There's a car there, Jon." "Don't worry about it... it's a hostile," he double checked the range. "GO!" Kali did as told and jerked the wheel to the right, bumping the crown- vic and forcing it over a lane. Cor depressed both triggers and several large explosions rocked the UPS Truck. A glance told him that the crown- vic was out of commission, a huge hole gaping where the front left fen- der used to cover the wheelwell. The wheel seemed to be missing, also. The dying crown-vic veered sharply to the left behind and made intimate contact with the jersey barrier. Meanwhile, the second, third, and fourth rounds fired from the port side '17 were raining down on the Microbus in a hailstorm of high explo- sive and willy peter. The VW jogged right and dodged left, but with the tether line still connected to the tackyball it's maneuverability had been cut down considerably. An HE round landed on the roof towards the rear and shattered the passanger compartment. A WP round hit just in front of that, setting the exposed interior on fire. The remaining WP round overshot the van and added another pothole to the road surface. Several things started to go wrong for the driver of the Microbus. As he vainly tried to recover from the concussion and deal with the flames behind him, his head snapped around forward again just in time to see the Crown-Victoria hit the jersey barrier ten yards ahead. He threw his hands up in front of his face to ward off the crippled cruiser and screamed. The front of the Microbus jerked to the left as the tackyball tether was pulled tight by the wreckage of the crown-vic. The Bus slammed into the wreckage, throwing most of it in the air and to the right. The gas tank on the crown-vic detonated, further shattering the debris being tossed about. "Holy _shit_!" Cor understated as the collision behind them jerked on the tackyball, throwing him forward against the instrument cluster. "Damn!" Kali shouted, trying to maintain control of the fishtailing UPS Truck. "What's going on back there?" Cor looked in the outside mirror. "We don't have to worry about the crown-vic anymore..." SNAP! KRACKLE! POP! BA-THOOOOOOOMMM!!! Cor winced as the ammunition stores in the Microbus cooked off. He cringed as he caught a glimpse of what remained of the driver lolling out of the driver's-side window. Good seatbelts, at least. "...Or the Micro," he finished. Kali checked her mirrors again for the other two vehicles that had been persuing them. The Caprice was still there, far to the right now, and the Porsche... where was the Porsche? "Um, Jon, where did the other guy go?" she asked. "Which one?" "The yellow 911." Cor looked at the scopes again. It seemed to have vanished. He fid- dled with the fine-tuning again, retracing the heat signature of the 911. Nothing. It seemed to have vanished about thirty seconds ago. Cor looked out the windows. Nowhere. Strange. Just then the big International cab-over rocketed past them in the next lane, rocking the UPS on it's springs. "Who the FUQUE does HE think he is?" Kali bellowed after it. "Um... I think he's more trouble for us," Cor replied nervously as he watched the back door of the semi hydrolic downwards to the road surface, forming a ramp. The back of the yellow Porsche was visible in the back of the trailer. A pair of jet-black motorcycles could be seen, also. "I see what you mean," Kali said. Cor took off the Airwolf-style helmet and stood up. "Let me go see if I can get that damned thing off the Turbofan hatches." She nodded and he walked to the rear of the swaying vehicle. Dragging the remains of the Microbus was sure causing Kali a lot of problems steering. He braced himself with his hands against the walls as he got down on his knees by the back door examining it. "Kali," he called over his shoulder, "this stuff ain't coming off. We'll have to wait until we get back to the shop." He picked at the few globs of the stuff that were visible inside the seam of the rear door. Whatever the stuff was, it sure had penetrating power. These doors were airtight. Or rather, they _were_ airtight. He stood up and headed back up front, pausing just long enough to remove two long, cylindrical ob- jects from one of the storage compartments. "No good, eh?" Kali asked. "Nope," Cor replied, his eyes trained on the trailer ahead of them. As he watched, two figures climbed onto the black bikes and fired them up. "Hmmmmmm," he puzzled, and entered a new firing solution for the Mark-17s. "Kali, extend the forward 20-mil, would you?" "Suuuuuure," she grinned and flipped the lever that rotated the front 'Vulcan' into the locked position. The bikers both looked up in time to see the 20-mil start rotating. "That got their attention," Cor said, depressing the 'fire' buttons on his controls. Sparks and bits of steel plating flew as he swept the gun across the rear of the semi. This was like shooting ducks in a barrel. Make that a shoebox. The bikers ducked behind their now-dented bikes as bullets flew around them. Several ricochettes from the Porsche made living uncomfortable as well. "That bloody car's bulletproof, too!" Kali said incredulously. "I suspected as much. Must be the leader's vehicle." Cor fired a WP round from the starbord-side '17 right into the trailer, and an He round made a manhole-cover-sized (okay, PERSONhole-cover-sized, geesh -PC Cor.) crater in the ramp. "That should dampen their spirits some." They waited as the smoke cleared. Kali was startled to see the two bikes come rocketing out of the cloud, unscathed by the burning white phosphorus that she was sure had hit them. Cor just set his jaw in a hard smile and picked up the two long cylinders. "Now what have you got there?" Kali asked. "A surprise for our friends," he grinned evilly. "Looks like it's time to take this on the offensive. Can you take care of our friends in the truck?" "Sure. As long as I don't have to deal with those bikes, too." "I'll take care of them," Cor said. "Okay." As they spoke, the two bikes circled around the rear of the UPS Truck and took positions on either rear flank, effectively circling it with the International. Kali noticed this and told Cor about it. "Right. Good luck, Kali." The biker on the right flank looked over the outside of the UPS Truck. The briefings they had been givin on it didn't do it justice. This thing was _much_ more heavily armed and armored than they had been told. Tough to take down. As he watched, the door on this side slid back. He tapped his brakes just as a large, red racing motorcycle seemingly materialized next to the Truck as it's rider dropped onto it. What looked like a pair of missile pods formed on the sides of the red racing bike. Cor armored up with his STELLARIS armor right after leaving his seat. After he slid back the door, he held one long cylinder in each hand and jumped out. As Kali shouted something to him, he retooled the armor so that he was seated on the bike from the kaneda.gif, the cylinders taking their place on either side of the bike in specially made housings. He grinned evilly. This should take the battle to the enemy. He goosed the accelerator and slid two lanes to the left. Dropping back, he looked at the rear of the UPS Truck. That tackyball shit was messy. The biker on his side dogged right, trying to stay on his six. That was fine with him. He wanted to lead this guy away from Kali. The other biker came around the front of the UPS Truck to engage the new target. Obviously in radio contact. Good. Cor opened up the throt- tle and rocketed away from them. They followed suit almost immediately. Better and better. Cor watched in amusement as Kali proceeded to bombard the tractor- trailer with a hail of grenades and 20mm rounds. The biker to his left tried to jockey himself in front of Cor's own bike. Let them think they have the upper hand. < You online, Sam? > There was a pause for a few seconds. [ Right here, Corinthian. ] < I told you to call me Cor, Sam. > [ As you wish. What can I do for you? ] < Can you get these two bastards targeted with the new payload? > Again, there was a pause for a few seconds. [ I have the target to your immediate left locked on, Cor. ] < Good. I'll take care of the other one. Thank you, Sam. > [ No problem. I am glad I could help. ] Cor smiled as he launched the port side 'Lobo' missile at the biker Sam had targeted. He made a mental note to upgrade Sam's colloquialism file to include contractions. It still sounded too stilted. The medium-weight, short-range proton missile designated as the 'Lobo' Revenger-III left the port side of the bike on an air jet before the en- gine kicked it and it zipped off to make mayhem and destruction a person- al problem for the target. The biker vainly attempted to dodge the in- coming, and got blasted to atoms for his troubles. All that was left were a few scattered bits of debris and a license plate. "Niiiiiiiice missile," Cor whistled appreciatively. His radio crack- led. "Nice shooting, Cor. I wasn't sure what you were up to," Kali said. "Thanks. I'll be back to help as soon as I'm done here." Checking his mirrors he caught sight of the remaining biker behind him. This guy would be more wary. Cor leaned way over to the right and shot up the ramp for exit 14. His friend followed. They both covered the two miles to the Route 2 north ramp in under a minute and a half. The biker behind Corinthian was angry. He'd just watched his partner blasted to smithereens and their backup destroyed. Now this bastard was leading him on an untamed aquatic waterfowl chase. There'd better be a bonus for this 'milk-run' job he'd gotten roped into. He slowed slightly as the red bike leaned over and down an exit ramp. I'd better wrap this up quickly, he though, we're heading into a residential area. Or so he thought. He then made the fatal mistake. As he banked into the S-curves of the ramp, he lost sight of the red bike for a split second. As he banked into the turn, Cor lost sight of the bike behind him for a split second. Good. Cor brought the bike to an instant halt and re- tooled the armor around him, bulking him up to the anime equivalent of the proverbial 'brick-shithouse'. He extended his arms and waited. The biker came around the bend and saw the hulking, armored form in front of him. His screams were drowned out by the sound of his brakes locking up instinctively. As he braced himself as best as he could for the inevitable impact, the old joke about the last thing going through a bug's mind when it hits a windshield being it's ass came to mind. Cor took a step back from the impact as the biker tetsuo-ed against him, sending huge gouts of flame billowing up and clouds of smoke wafting into the sky. The explosion shattered a few windows of the women's cor- rectional facility nearby. Cor ears rang for a few seconds as he stepped away from what little remained of the motorcycle and it's rider. He opened up the line to the UPS Truck. "How you making out, Kali?" Cor asked. "All set. You?" "No problem. Not much left, though." "That's too bad... no one to question," Kali said. "Oh, the yellow Porsche got away. Real strange." "How so?" "I got a glimpse of the driver..." she paused for dramatic effect. "He wasn't human, Jon." "Well, what was he? A red lectroid from planet 10 by way of the 8th dimension?" "No... he was blue." "Great. Giant, killer smurfs." "..." Road Trip________________________________________________________EIGHT "At 100,000 feet up you're talking serious, _serious_ long underwear and oxygen." -Professor Ralph Nobel THE NEXT DAY "Damn, that thing's _royally_ fuqued up, Jon," Kali commented upon inspecting the rear of the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) for the nth time in the last day and a half. "It's all mouth and trousers." Corinthian just looked at her strangely. Damned Aussie slang shit. he shook his head. There was no help for it. She'd done a good job a- gainst those guys yesterday, and was snarking off because of it. He hoped her ego wouldn't get _too_ overinflated. "It's okay... we can rebuild it," Wolf said, refering to where they had had to torch off both of the rear hatches to remove the tackyball. "Just don't let it happen again, dammit." Cor started whistling the theme from the Six-Million Dollar Man and got slapped for his troubles. "I don't have to hang around here and take this kind of abuse, I've got THOUSANDS of people waiting to abuse me," Cor said plaintively. "Yes, but we've got all the low deli numbers, Jon," Kali grinned. With that Cor swooped around and headed for the 'lift. "I really _would_ like to know how he does that without a cape," Kali giggled. The 'lift doors opened on sublevel D, and Cor stepped out. Rather than going left into the communications center he went right along the red-lit corridor towards the computer center. The glass doors silently slid open and he stepped into what looked like the command center from Quantum Leap, sans the quantum accelerator. DigiCom and Marius turned to see Cor enter and waved him over. He looked around as he walked up. They'd been busy. "Hi, guys. 'sup?" Cor asked. "Hiya, Jon, my left nipple just shot off and poked somene's eye out," Marius grinned. It WAS cold in here. Must have the air conditioning on extra high for all the extra computer equipment they were hardwiring in. Marius was a good guy, and usually in a silly mood. His long hair was pulled back in a ponytail and he needed a shave, as usual. "Keep that up and we'll all be blind eventually," Cor laughed. "How are the mods to 'HAL' going?" Marius nodded towards the stacks of the Cray-II they'd been using for the last month and a half. "We've gotten most of the bugs out of it... But we really don't need it anymore." Cor looked puzzled. "DC and I just finished bringing SHEILA online." "Sheila?" Cor asked. "Yes, Corinthian?" a disembodied voice replied. Cor spun about, ar- moring up at the same time. DigiCom and Marius both laughed at his sil- liness. "Who or what was that?" Cor asked, pointing a pair of partical cannons at DigiCom for emphasis. "Jumpy, are we?" DigiCom asked. He sighed. "Sheila is short for (an acronym, of course) Sentient Holographic Element Interactive Logistics Apparatus. She's basically a combination of a Holodeck and Ziggy." "Oh... That's an interesting combination," Cor said. "Show the man, Sheila," Marius said, crossing his arms. <<> As they stood there a flickering light appeared in roughly the center of the chamber, a myriad of colors both in the visible spectrum and with- out coruscating and cascading from floor to ceiling and back. A figure defined itself in the center of the light. There appeared before them a slim female form, about five-foot-nine, brunette, large brown eyes, and wearing a very pretty blue dress. The light effect diminished and she smiled at Cor. He saw that all her teeth were perfectly straight and gleeming white. "Hello, Corinthian," She said, her dulcet voice climbing melodically, with just a hint of an Australian accent. Cor shook his head. Kali would love it. "Uh... hi," Cor said, looking around the chamber again. Now that he knew what he was dealing with... ah, there it was. Based on what he knew, Cor guessed (correctly) that the large crystal sphere flickering with light near the ceiling in an elevated portion of the room was SHEILA's mainframe. Holographic memory. Amazing. Cor turned to Digi- Com. "That's a hologram, right?" Cor asked, gesturing at the girl. "Yes," DC replied. "I'm surprised you didn't use the tech stuff that I used in the Demo- Room to make it appear and 'feel' real," Cor said. "It wasn't necessary. This way we can place small banks of Omnidirec- tional Holographic Diodes (OHDs) throughout the complex. Good for com- munications in-house, too. Naturally there's a manual override system through voiceprints and passwords." The image of Sheila looked hurt at this. DC turned to her. "Sorry, but I felt it necessary. One can never be too careful." She smiled devilishly. "A sense of humor too, I see," Cor said thoughtfully. "Nice touch, don't you think?" Marius grinned. "Her personality is based on the Heinlein computers. She's smart, too. We utilized a sim- ulated Hooloovoo for that. That's why her dress is blue." "Here's something you'd like, Jon," DC said with a grin. "Did you know that one of the elements the OHDs are made out of is called, would you believe, 'Keiyurium'. Another one is 'Silicon Animide'." "Seriously?" Cor said doubtfully. DC held up his copy of the Star Trek: Next Generation tech manual and nodded. "Geesh. That's corny." "True. But it is amusing," DC said with a smile. "Who's the model? She looks familiar... and rather attractive," Cor said. But not overly so, he didn't add. That was good. "She's a cross between Amanda Pays, who used to be on the Flash TV series, Paulina, and Misa Hayase from Macross," Marius said proudly. "We had Kali do a few voice demos for her voice, though. But you can hardly tell, what with all the modifications we've done." "The accent does come through some, though," DC added. "I noticed that," Cor commented. "I think she's just fine, Guys. I don't think I could have come up with better." I hope she and Sam get a- long though, he thought. No reason why they shouldn't. "Thank you Sheila," DC said, and with a wink to Corinthian and Marius, she vanished. "Frosty will want to know about this. She should be able to help him with the external communications net as well," Cor said. "Already done," Marius said. "She and he are working on installing a subspace tranceiver array as we speak." "Multi-task capable too. Real good, guys. DAMN good," Cor said. He was pleased. Just then a loud PING interrupted the silence in the room (if you can count the constant drone of the stack cooling fans as silence). "Guys, could you come in here for a minute," Frosty's voice said over the old intercom system. "There seems to be a war going on." "Sure. Be right there," Cor replied. "Coming, guys?" "Yeah," Marius said. "Sure," DC said. The glass doors slid open and the three of them stepped into the re- modeled communications center. Now it looked like the command center from the movie WarGames. Frosty could be seen sitting at the superuser station playing with a myriad of knobs, buttons, and machines that go 'BING!'. An image of Sheila was sitting next to him, blowing in his ear. "Ahem," Cor said tactfully. "Oh, that was fast," Frosty said, trying to look as if nothing was going on. Her being a hologram made it easier, but she was tough to ig- nore. He twiddled a few knobs on the console (NOT on Sheila :)) and a bank of screens lit up on the far wall. A parade of images showing images of a huge battle in progress flashed across the screens, the call letters of most of the major networks could be seen in the lower or upper corners of each screen, as well as a few overseas reports. One screen in the middle had an image of a reporter in a trenchcoat, holding a microphone, and trying to be heard over the tum- mult of explosions behind him. "Put that one up on the big screen, Mike. I want to hear what he's saying," Cor requested. Frosty nodded and a large image appeared center screen with a frame on other images from the other networks. He adjust- ed the volume control. "...again reporting LIVE for WBZ-TV, channel 4 Boston, from Worcester, Massachusetts, where a battle of epic proportions is being fought out be- tween two or more unknown groups at this time. It wasn't long ago that this very city was totally annihilated by an explosion believed to have been nuclear in nature. Once again, this city is rocked with conflict. "Behind me in the distance you can see what seems to be the focal point of this battle: a huge, gleaming tower in the center of the recen- tly rebuilt city. This tower is the corporate headquarters of a myster- ious organization known as GENOM. Little is known about this corporation other than the fact that it was solely responsible for the economic and physical recovery of Worcester from nuclear holocaust. "The primary assailant of the GENOM tower appears to be an enormous Unidentified Flying Object that recently appeared in the skies northeast of the city. Eyewitnesses say that small groups of what appear to be fighter jets emerged from this UFO and were engaged from the ground by what appear to be previously hidden anti-aircraft emplacements of an un- known nature as well as large, robotic creatures, again, origin remains _unknown_. The anti-aircraft emplacements are currently firing on the large craft. "Hold on," the reporter said, pressing his earpiece deeper into his ear. "We are now getting reports that a fleet of UFOs has just entered Earth's atmosphere. Bob, see if you can get them on camera." The view shifted to the sky and seven large ships could be seen decending in formation on the original UFO. The reporter continued. "Who these new assailants are is unknown... wait... they are opening fire on the first craft... their fire seems to be taking a heavy toll... Oh, my GOD! Bob, get that on film!" They watched as a huge section of starship broke away and plummetted earthward. The concussion of the impact was deafening and the image on the screen flickered severely. "The first craft is returning fire. WOW! Look at the size of that... whatever it is... it fired! The newcomers are firing back. The first craft is hit hard! CHRIST! It fired again into the ground! Worcester is burning! Five of the newly arrived fleet have perished under the UFO's might!" The reporter cringed and a huge howling sound was heard. "What the HELL was that? Oh, my god... Bob, get that on film." the camera turned in time to see the UFO listing sharply in the sky. As they watched, a huge bolt of azure energy shot straight down from the heavens and tore into the UFO. "Holy shit! The top of the GENOM tower just exploded! Did you see what happened, Bob? Damn. Wait... the UFO is glowing... What the hell? Oh my god..." The reporter looked right into the camera and pressed it face close. A light could be seen getting brighter behind him. "Bob, I think we're going to die... I hope this report gets out... It has to... someone has to be responsible for all this..." An explosion rocked the camera back. The sound went out. Cor read the reporter's lips for the rest of the people in the room: Mary, I love you. There was a huge white flash and then nothing but static. The WBZ-TV logo, as well as that of NBC appeared on the screen. The surrounding screens did likewise almost simultaneously. "My god," Marius said. "My fucking god." "That about sums it up," DC said. "Now. What do we do about it?" Cor asked thoughtfully. What they had just seen unfold was both incredible and unbelievable. Cor knew that Marius and DC both recognized the type of craft the reporter called 'the UFO'. They'd all watched 'ROBOTECH' in their younger days, and that had been unmistakably a Superdimensional Space Fortress. But not the SDF-1 Macross. This one was new... or rather had been new. "Did you record all that, Sheila?" Frosty asked. She put out her lower lip and pouted. "Of course, Michael." Cor re- frained from the obvious _Knight_Rider_ jokes. "Good. Thanks, Sheil," Cor said. She glared at him. He ignored her. "I propose that we put together a recon team once the UPS Truck is back online up to Worcester. I for one would like to know what happened up there. Mario, all the WHGs are ready to go right?" DC nodded. "Half a dozen by Thursday, just like you asked. Most ev- eryone's cleared on them, too." "Good. I don't think we'll need them all, but I think having an emer- gency strike team ready would be a good idea. I'll see what Paul and Kali can come up with for high-speed transport." "Okay," Marius said. "Works for me," DC quipped. Frosty just rolled his eyes. TWO DAYS LATER... Wolf stood back and admired his handiwork. Not too bad for a rush job, he thought. Hulking in front of him was the newly rebuilt UPS Truck >From Hell(tm). The new paint glistened in the sodium arc lights of the Fine Arts Parking Lot as the sun set slowly on the western horizon over campus. The molecular bonding that he'd given the outer hull during the 'Fraternity War' had held up fairly well during the latest of what seemed to be ongoing hostilities directed at them. He'd replaced the damaged rear hatches and beefed up the servos in the door motors. They now could provide four thousand pounds of force to open the doors; more than enough to dislodge another tackyball. Not that that would be a problem anymore he hoped. "Okay, what's up, Thom?" Cor asked him. Wolf turned towards him and the assembled group. "I think we've got this problem licked, Jon," Wolf replied simply. "Oh, really?" Kali asked. She made some final adjustments of her new lightweight R.O.A.C.H. body armor. The Robotic Organism Amplifying Cy- bernetic Hardsuit was the latest thing out of the seemingly bottomless well of stuff from DigiCom's Lab. Extremely tough, the armor can survive anything except extreme pressure, like those exerted by something really big stepping on it; hence the name 'Roach'. Most of the others gathered there were dressed similarly. "Yup. Allow me to demonstrate," Wolf said, hefting a handy Light Anti-tank Weapon. The others stepped away to either side as he aimed it directly at the driver-side door. "I'm purposely aiming at the seals of the door to show off how I fixed this problem." He looked over his right shoulder behind him and shouted, "BACKBLAST AREA ALL CLEAR!" Then he de- pressed the detent button. The round streaked out of the LAW and slammed into the side of the UPS Truck. Everyone could see that it was a dark grey glob of goo and that it was sizzling and bubbling over the door and the side of the hull. What happened next surprised Kali. It stop sizzling and slid off the side of the Truck, landing on the pavement and eating harmlessly into the pavement. "What the HELL?" Kali asked incredulously. "Nice job, Thom," Cor said. "Better than I'd hoped." Wolf did his best to look hurt. "Teflon?" "Among other things," Wolf said with his patented kinda-sorta-some- thing-like-that-but-not-quite look(tm). "I mixed a little of this, a little of that, a bunch of ALON, some teflon, a can of 'Pam' cooking spray, some graphite, and this neat rock I found outside. I took all this and anodized the hull with it. I'm happy with it." He smiled. "Is that why it sparkles?" DigiCom asked. "No. That's because I washed it," Wolf answered. "This is a nice touch," Kali said from over by the driver's door. She pointed at the small silhouettes of two sedans and a tractor-trailer that had been painted on the side of the front fender. Cor rolled his eyes. Snake-eyes again. "What else did you do to her?" Cor asked. "Oh, this and that," Wolf said. "_Trust_ me." "I hate when people say that," Kali said, grinning. "Shall we load up and get ready to go?" Cor said. Kali and Wolf both nodded and climbed into the UPS Truck along with Marius. DigiCom hopped onto his personalized WHG-1 'WarHog' and fired up the engine. This par- ticular model was equipped with the new E.R.I.S. sensor package and a new Multiple Ammunition Kinetic Energy Rifle (Class I), aka the 'Maker' or 'Black Widowmaker'. He put on his headset and his wraparound sunglasses, then gave Kali a thumbs-up. Cor retooled his STELLARIS armor into a slick-looking lightweight ar- mor, the kaneda.gif bike, a brown leather bomber jacket, and a long white scarf. Kali looked at his theatrics and snickered. He thinks he's the fuquing Red Baron, she thought. Cor remembered the Massachusetts helmet law and made himself one. DC took the heads-up and borrowed a helmet from the UPS Truck From Hell(tm). Kali fired up the UPS Truck. All the dials and readouts settled into their familiar places, except for the power register. Instead of the usual 14 megavolts it was pegged to the right. "Um... Wolf, what's this mean here?" she tapped the dial to see if it was stuck. It didn't move. "It means that there's a _lot_ of juice available. You guys didn't give me enough time to recalibrate all the instruments," Wolf said. "Ready?" Cor asked over their headsets. Marius gave a thumbs-up from the co-pilot/gunners seat and Wolf nodded vigorously from the navigators station behind Kali. "Good deal. After you, Kali," Cor said. The UPS Truck pulled out of the lot onto Flagg Road and turned north onto Old North Road. Cor and DigiCom followed on their 'bikes'. SOMETIME LATER... (Hey, speeding tickets are very un-cool) "Um, we have a problem here, Cor," Kali said over her headset. "I see it... hang on," Cor replied. They had just come around a long bend on Route 146 going into Worcester, Massachusetts, and they had come face to face with a U.S. Army road blockade. Cor zipped out past Kali and crew and pulled over to the side, just out of site of the military police vehicles. DigiCom and Kali did likewise. They dismounted and collected in front of the UPS Truck. Kali unfolded a standard issue Peoples' Republic of Massachusetts road map in front of the headlights. ***(Author's note: I fully realize that the proper name is 'Commonwealth of Massachusetts'. Several friends of mine in the NRA, one of whom is a federally licensed arms dealer in Virginia, call it the PRM due to the extremely harsh gun laws there. -Cor) "Should we circle back to the Mass Pike and try to bypass this mess on Route 122?" Kali asked. "Probably the same story there... Fort Devens is only about twenty to twenty-five miles northeast of here. I'm surprised there isn't any air cover," Cor said. As he spoke, a pair of fighters streaked overhead and a Cobra fast-attack helecopter followed seconds afterwards. "Geesh, don't overdo it," he said in an aside to the author. "Probably best to find a secondary road," Marius chimed in. "Or even better, an access road." "Good idea. See any on the map?" Cor asked. Kali shook her head neg- atively. "Then we'll have to head overland. DC, that thing isn't flight capable, is it?" "No, but it can jump real far," DigiCom replied. "Tigger-Transit, eh? Well, that should work for now. If we have to go to high speed, I'm sure Kali has room for you either inside or on the roof," Cor said. "Land-Surfing!" Marius joked. "Right, just like in 'Teen Wolf'," Cor agreed. Wolf's ears perked up. "We'll see if we can find a nice ridge overlooking the city... er... the remains of the city, by all accounts. Everyone set?" Nods all around. "Who's leading?" Kali asked. "You are... the NOE system in the Truck will guide you. I'll cover your right flank," Cor said. "Okay," she agreed. Kali tried to refold the map and failed to make her dexterity-with-folded-maps check. She gave up and wadded it up, then stuffed it under the seat. They all mounted their respective vehicles. DC changed modes on his WarHog into the Cyclone-on-steroids-that-someone- hit-with-an-ugly-stick armor. He held the new 'MAKER' in his right hand. Cor retooled the red kaneda.gif bike into his black HardSuit, the exter- ior crackled with energy as he tooled up his wrist particle cannons and high-thrust boot-jets. He'd had too many surprises as of late and he wasn't going to take any chances. Kali brought the nav systems online and warmed up the P&Ws. The Truck seemed to be going through the paces much faster than before, the display reading 'SINED', 'SEELED', and 'DELIVERED' almost twice as fast as usual. She commented on this to Wolf. "I told you I made some improvements... do me a favor, though. Go light on the gas until you get used to it," Wolf advised as the wings locked out and the weapons systems green-lighted themselves. She nodded. She knew Wolf could be funny sometimes, but he rarely lied about the dan- gerous stuff. RARELY, she reminded herself. Lifting off, she banked to the right and took off at tree-top level northeast around the city. Cor rocketed off after her, and DigiCom took a huge flying leap. <<> DigiCom bounded along, his landing points leaving spots of crushed kipple behind him. The only exception to that was a Yugo that he just "couldn't" avoid landing on and turning into an ashtray. Cor flew along just to his right and slightly behind him as he made his unique way ac- ross the landscape. "Bouncy, bouncy, bouncy..." Cor giggled over his headset. "Fun, fun, FUN, fun, fun..." Kali chimed in. "The wonderful thing about DigiCom..." Marius picked it up. "Is I'm the ONLY ONE!" DigiCom finished. "Now _CUT_THAT_OUT_!" His headset filled with laughter. At least they were having fun about this. The air traffic in the area seemed to be picking up. Fortunately there seemed to be some sort of commotion off to the east so they were being ignored for the most part. The owner of the Yugo wouldn't being ignor- ing their passage, though. "See a good place to put down, Kali?" Cor asked. He himself was look- ing around with his HUD infrared. "How about you, DC?" "Nothing yet... Wolf upgraded the HUD in this crate, though," Kali said. "You should see this! It's fantastic." Meanwhile, DigiCom was piercing the night with the brand new E.R.I.S. Enhanced Radiation Imaging System he had come up with, and was getting a slight headache. The 'Geordi LaForge Syndrome' caused by the overwhelm- ing amount of input he was getting took some getting used to. Being able to 'see' everything in the available electromagnetic spectrum could drive you nuts. He adjusted the dampers he had built in for that reason. Much better. "There's a nice, flat spot about half a klick ahead of us about five degrees to port, Kali," DC said. "Where... Oh, now I see it... You must have some good eyes," she com- mented. "Well, what nature can't give me, *I* can," DC said simply. "Heh," Cor snarked. He zipped ahead and touched down on the flattened ridge that DC had eyeballed for them and looked around. He de-tooled his helmet and took out a pack of Clark's Teaberry Gum. He thoughtfully chewed on a piece as Kali and DC landed, the former leaving scorch marks, the latter a crater. DC reconfigured back to 'ugly-touring-bike' mode and hopped off the WarHog. Marius and Kali climbed out of the UPS, and Wolf hung in the doorway. Kali stood there and looked at Cor funny. "What?" Cor asked her. "See anything green?" "Um...no... It's your eyes I'm looking at," she said. "They're kinda, well, _glowing_." "Oh," he said. "Hang on." As she watched, they stopped glowing their slight reddish glow and reverted to his normal blue-green eyes. "Is that better?" "Much. That was bloody freaky." "Good, See anything, DC?" Cor asked. "Nothing except the obvious," he said, gesturing towards the huge starship at the bottom of the crater to the west. They all turned to face the blackened hulk. It was in really bad shape. There were large chunks missing from the hull on the side (they were looking at it from broadside starbord) and there was a hole clear through the forward section of the hull on this side. With a pair of extremely highpowered binoculars from the UPS Truck, Kali could read the marking on the side of the hull near the bridge despite the fact that they were three klicks away. "It says... 'S.D.F... 17... Is that right?" she asked. "Underneath that are the words... this is hard to make out.... looks like... 'Way- ward Son'?" "Let me see that," Marius said. She handed them over. "Yup, that's what it says. 'S.D.F.-17 Wayward Son'. Wonder where it came from." Cor stood there quietly looking at it. His eyes had a faroff look in them. Not to mention a green glow. "You realize what this means, don't you?" he asked. Marius shrugged and Kali just waited, knowing that the question was rhetorical. "There _is_ intelligent life in outer space." "We already _knew_ that," DC said. "You saw that news footage. This ship was under attack from near-earth orbit." "Jon, stop it with the glowing eyes thing, will ya? It's giving me the willies, for chrissakes," Kali asked. "The 'Bruce Willies'?" Marius asked. He got DUH-ed for that one by Wolf. "Oww." "Cut it out," Wolf said. "Hey, just remember: pound-for-pound, lame puns are your best enter- tainment value," DigiCom said flatly. This elicited groans all around. "We're tiny, we're toony..." Cor sang. "We're all a little loony..." DC picked up. "And in this cartoony..." Cor continued. "They're invading your TV!!" DC finished. Kali groaned and shot Cor. He laughed and stood up, dusting off the futile attempt at penetrating his body armor. "Okay, no more silly song parodies," Cor said jovially. "You have to admit that it _was_ amusing." She nodded. "AND you were in on the 'Tig- ger Song'." "True, but enough is enough," she said in exasperation. "Can we get back to the reason we're here, please?" Wolf begged. "Don't beg, Thommy, it's unbecoming a carnivore," Cor said. "I don't care," he pouted resolutely. "Um... There's something going on in the hole," Marius interrupted. Indeed there was. As they watched, a large black fighter of some type emerged from the ship and streaked off, passing just under a klick to the north of their position. Marius followed it with the binoculars until it was out of range. "You guys get anything off of it? I could only main- tain a visual on it, but it also had a very slight IR trail. Still, it was tough at the speed it was moving. It seemed to be stealth-capable." "I tracked it on my E.R.I.S., Mike," DC said. "It definitely was stealthy." He looked at Cor, who nodded. "Obviously not Earth technology," Cor said. "Maybe it will come back soon." "Oh, by the way, there's a pair of heat signatures on the hill two klicks to the north of here, as well," DigiCom said. "Looks to me like an observation post of sorts." "Think they saw us?" Marius asked. "Nah," DC answered. "Fuck 'em, then," Marius snarfed. They waited for about twenty minute before the black fighter returned from wherever it had gone. This time it had friends. Two F-15C Eagles were hot on it's tail. As they watched, one of the Eagles launched an AIM-9L Sidewinder after the black fighter. All three fighters and the missile climbed out of visual range almost immediately. The Eagles circled back down after a few second, and the black fighter snuck back past them to the 'Wayward Son'. "Shit! That bogey must have been pushing mach-5 when it went ballis- tic!" Marius exclaimed. "Closer to mach-8, I think," DigiCom said. "Hey, Wolf!" Cor called out to the UPS Truck. "Anything fun on the commo-net?" "_Lots_ of chatter about that bogey... wait a second... The Air Farce is denying a request by the 'Wayward Son' to lift off," Wolf said. As he spoke, the huge engines of the 'Wayward Son' cranked up and it lifted slowly and ponderously from the ground. "Christ, look at the size of that landing gear!" Kali exclaimed. It was huge, even from here. Cor was surprised to see actual _wheels_ under it. The Air Farce was trying it's damnedest to shoot it down, but with little or no effect. The only notable exception to this was a very large chunk of loose debris that was dislodged during liftoff from the remains of the main gun of the 'Wayward Son'. In a remarkably bizarre twist of events, this huge piece of scrap metal plummeted to earth and impacted a scant twenty me- ters behind them, completely pancaking the WHG-1 'WarHog' and startling the small group standing nearby. In a matter of minutes, the 'Wayward Son' was out of the atmosphere and a flash of light indicated a fold manuever taking place. As small tendrils of smoke drifted out from the sides of the chunk of space garbage, DC's jaw hung open. Then he closed it and shrugged. "Well, that was interesting," Wolf said. "Really crunched your bike though, eh DC?" "Crunch all you want, we'll make more," Cor giggled. "_That's_ true," DC said goodnaturedly. Kali just shook her head. "Think we should take some of it back with us?" "By all means. The spectro-chemical analysis should prove quite in- teresting," Marius spocked. Kali walked over to the chunk of hull. "How much would you like?" "Two-hundred pounds of debris (pronounced 'der-briss'), please," DC said. "Thinly sliced," Cor added. Kali groaned again and clicked on her left-hand Nega-Blade, and sliced out a goodly sized portion with a slight whistling sound from the blade and a blinding white flash. Ouch, she thought. Sharp. The Nega-Blade was a modified matter convertor. It turned all forms of matter that it touched into white light. The blade itself appeared visibly about eighteen-inches long, coming to a point from a three-inch base on the back of her wrist. (Picture the flame-blades from the 'Batman: Sword of Azrael' miniseries. The new armor.) "Thank you, Kali," Cor said as he hefted the chunk and went around the back of the UPS Truck. Wolf keyed open the door, and Cor set it on the floor. "Anything else, folks?" "Nope," Wolf said, closing the door. "Wait, I need a ride home," DigiCom wesleyed. "Should we make him take the shoeleather express?" Kali joked. "Nah. He's useful," Cor said. "Awwww... Okay," Kali shucks-ed. "Gee, thanks, guys," DC said. "Don't mention it," Cor said. "I wasn't going to." "Don't worry, I won't." Burning Down the House____________________________________________NINE "Nice girl, but she's as sharp as a sack of wet mice" -Foghorn Leghorn Sheila slapped Marius, her hand passing right through his head. "I'm not that kind of girl," she said, fuming mad. "I can fix that, you know," Marius said making a move for the keyboard on the table in front of him. "Will you two cut it out?" DigiCom said. "I'm trying to work here." He turned back to the mecha he was working on. Since his WarHog had been destroyed in Worcester, he had some work to do. The other 'Hogs just weren't 'personal' enough for his tastes. "Well, I didn't start it," Marius said. This elicited a stream of ex- pletives from Sheila. "Whoa, ease off." DC sighed and gave up. The two of them had been going at it since early that morning when Marius had asked Sheila to wear a bunny-girl cos- tume so that he could see if her breasts jiggled. She had, and they had; much to Marius' amusement. Of course, _Sheila_ hadn't thought it was all that funny. DC stood up in disgust. If they were going to go on like this all day, then it was obvious he would get little or no work done. He turned towards the both of them. "Sheila. Voice Override Code Blue-412. Ver- bal Command: Chill. I've had quite enough of this nonsense today, thank you." And that was that. Sheila was visibly dissapointed with the override, this new game that she and Marius had been playing was thought provoking. But she was still only a program and had to follow orders. "Aww, you're no fun, Mario," Marius complained. "Well I'm sorry. As much fun as you were having, I can't get anything done with you two going on like that in here," DC said. "Next time, rent a room." Marius grinned. I wonder what it would be like to see her in the DemoRoom? he thought. Sheila glared at him as if she'd heard the thought. An armored female warrior came crashing through the wall of a small, Italian bistro in downtown New York City, sending tables and chairs scat- tering in a shower of splinters and plaid tableclothes. She uprighted herself and plunged back out through the hole she had entered by. As she landed softly on the cracked sidewalk with an audible 'tak', a large group of armored soldiers marched down the street towards her po- sition. They all brandished large, menacing-looking weapons of one sort or another. As she started to raise her own weapon, they opened fire on her again. This time she was ready. She leapt straight upwards and lay down a spread of suppressing fire, blazing out a swath of distruction and death. Several armored soldiers fell, and a few exploded spectacularly as the blue bolts from her weapon detonated their power-cores. Obviously robots of some kind, she thought. Just then a bolt of red energy hit her square in the back, sending her sailing across the street to crash into a blue U.S. Postal Service box. Using her armor-enhanced muscles, she tore the box free and held it over her head, turning to see this new foe. Two dozen more armored robots were rushing her, leading their attack with fire from a large mobile gun emplacement. That was what had hit her in the back, she figured. Best to take it out. "Prepare to meet your mail!" she screamed, hurling the letter-receptacle at the approaching forces. As the postal box rendered the mobile gun so much scrap, a loud, boom- ing voice could be heard addressing her. She turned back towards the first set of troops in time to see a tall, white robed figure approaching through the crowd of robots. This newcomer seemed to be almost nine feet tall, and nothing could be seen of facial features. It was almost as if there were none. Jane also noticed a large, red, rectangle-shaped jewel on a chain around it's neck. "I am the Queen of the Crown! You will surrender to me now, or suffer a ghastly death at the hands of my Slaver Lords!" the white robed figure proclaimed. As it said this, an image of a purple-faced woman appeared in the air in front of the robed figure's "face". (She kinda looks like the witch from Disney's "Sleeping Beauty", for those of you who haven't figured out where she came from.) Jane Royal responded by setting her jaw and firing on the figure. She fired three quick rounds, which all passed through the robe harmlessly. The Queen tilted her head back and cackled gleefully. As Jane prepared for another volley, the image of the Queen's face flickered for an in- stant to that of Corinthian. He winked and then the image vanished. "Bastard," she said under her breath, smiling. He heard her, of course, in the observation/control booth over her throat-mike. "Touchy, touchy," he laughed. "*I* thought it was a nice touch." "Cute," Jane replied. "Got anything better than these damned 'bots to throw at me? They're annoying." As she said this she blasted seven more of them. "I'm sure I can think of something," Cor said. "How's the armor hol- ding up?" He looked at the display panels in front of him. Her current stats put her at 89% shots-to-target efficiency. By no means perfect, but a lot better than it had been when she started. She learned fast. She still had the problem of getting distracted easily, he noted. "Not bad," she replied. Actually, the beefed-up R.O.A.C.H. Armor she was wearing was responding like it was a part of her. She'd taken to it rather well, liking it's clean lines the first time she saw it. Cor had finished off her equipment with a large parbeam pistol, a 3WA flight pack, and a boosted power supply. That, in addition to the armor's stan- dard Nega-Blades and E.R.I.S. system, made it quite formidable. "You seem to like it," Cor agreed. "Incoming." The sound of huge feet hitting the ground at a dead run made her for- get the ground troops of the Queen she had been picking off from behind a parked Volvo. She turned to look down the street in the direction of the United Nations building and paled. There running at her was a huge mechanical feline, red and silver in color, and definitely headed her way. "Oh, damn," Jane breathed as the red lion got closer at a breakneck speed. "That's not fair, Jon." He chuckled. "Who said life was fair. Pay attention." As he spoke, a large, curved double-ended blade appeared in the lion's mouth and was hurled at her. She narrowly dodged the spinning projectile, and it spun back to the lion, who caught it on the fly in it's teeth. The blade van- ished, and it fired several man-sized missiles at her from it's shoulder pods. "Shit," she said, diving into a roll behind the Volvo, which was im- mediately blasted to postage-stamp-sized bits. (Hey, even Volvos aren't THAT tough.) The lion stopped running and glared at her, it's eyes glow- ing redly. "Give up yet?" a mechanized voice asked from the lion. "Go to hell, furball," Jane answered, firing a volley at it's head. The shots bounced harmlessly off the lion's refractive coating. "_Now_ what do I do?" she asked herself. "Use your mind," Cor answered over her headset. "Fight or _die_," the lion rasped, leaping towards her. As she put up her hands in a desperate attempt to ward off the impending attack, a huge gout of flame burst forth from the lion's mouth, bathing her in a scorching inferno of death. "Um, nice kitty. GOOD kitty," she said. She rocketed skyward with her flight-pack, trying to flee. Her relief turned to fear as she saw the lion leap after her on it's own jets. Run- ning away wasn't going to solve this, she thought, and headed back down to earth. She had to use it's size against it. It was big, powerful, and _very_ maneuverable, but it's sheer bulk could be used against it... _if_ she was quick enough, she thought. She touched down and looked around desperately. This simulation _was_ extremely accurate in most ways, she noticed. She ran across the street and stood by what looked like a small kiosk of some type with one side of the roof slanting downwards to meet the ground at a forty-five degree angle. I hope this works, she thought. As the lion was about to crash-land directly on top of her in an at- tempt to crush her, she rolled out of the way at the last second. As the lion's head turned to follow her movement, it's momentum carried it into the ground and through the pavement to the tunnels below. Thank heavens for mass transit, she thought. Now for the hard part. As the lion recovered from it's landing and prepared to leap back up through the hole in the sidewalk it had created, Jane stood just to one side and activated both of her Nega-Blades. As the lion rocketed back up to ground level, she sliced along the full length of it's hull with both blades as it passed her. The lion let loose an earshattering roar that blew out the windows of all the storefronts for three blocks. Jane leapt clear as the lion tossed about in seeming agony at it's gaping wounds. It landed hard on it's starbord side and exploded, throw- ing her up and back with the force of the blast into the side of a high- rise office building. She extricated herself from the wreckage battered, bruised, but none the worse for wear and looked around. The red lion lay still, it's hull burst apart and it's inner mechanisms exposed and fused. A few wisps of smoke curled up from the shallow crater caused by the explosion. "How was that?" Jane asked. "Very good," Cor replied, reviewing the data. "You should notice a slight bit of hesitation from the armor. I'm reading a 12% reduction in mobility due to the blasting you took." She flexed her arms and legs. "It does feels a little stiff," she said. "What's next?" "You sure you want some more?" Cor asked. "Not really. What did you have in mind after _that_ thing?" she pointed at the remains of the lion ship. "OH, I'LL THINK OF SOMETHING," Cor's voice boomed from behind down the street. She whipped around to look and saw something that caused her to pause. There, hovering just over the tops of the buildings about a half- klick away was an enormous red, blue, silver, and black humanoid-shaped mecha. It had a huge, flattened, red "V" on it's chest, the ends extend- ing to the shoulders. In one hand it slowly twirled what looked like a long staff with curved sickle-like blades on each end. "What the hell is _that_?" Jane asked. "JANE ROYAL, MEET GRANDIZER," Cor's voice boomed from the mouth-grill of the giant robot. "That's it, you win," she answered meekly. Frosty looked at the printout in his hands again. It seems that the press was calling the departure of the SDF-17 a "startling route of the interstellar invaders by the valiant American Armed Forces." The fact that the ship had just up and _left_ was lost on them. Of course it _was_ hard to believe, not to mention the fact that many of their col- leagues had been vaporized during the battle between the SDF-17 and the forces of GENOM. "Take a look at this, Paul," Frosty said, handing the sheet of paper to him. "I just love the American press." "Hmmm..." MMaxx read the sheet. Handing it back, he said, "I know what you mean." MMaxx yawned, stretched, and looked around the now-quiet Communications Center. Tareah was sitting next to him, playing Tetris on the local screen. "Hey, Suzie, where's Carley today?" MMaxx asked. Tareah shrugged and stacked another row of blocks on the screen. The blocks flashed several times and vanished. Kali and Zebediah sat in two of the many chairs in the main room of the Lippitt Complex going over the newly revised plans for the UPS Truck >From Hell(tm). Wolf had been very busy. Kali looked at the blueprints and Zeb held the remote control device that Wolf used for running diag- nostics. "Try sequence fourteen, Nick," Kali said. Zeb nodded and punched it up. Nothing seemed to happen, except for a small click and a sliding sound behind it. Zeb stood up and walked around the back of the UPS Truck. He bent down and looked at a small opening where the rear license plate had pre- viously occupied space. The inside of the chamber seemed to have a slight reddish tint to it. "I give: what is it?" Zeb asked. Kali came around the rear and double-checked the blueprints. "Well, I don't know where the controls are, but it says here that that's an im- pulse drive. I wouldn't go sticking my head in there if I were you." "Ah. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon." Kali rolled her eyes. She must have a high eye-rolling proficiency, Zeb thought. Cor stepped through the doors as they slid open into DigiCom's Lab. DC and Marius looked up. The hologram of Sheila acknowledged his entry. Cor was alone, DigiCom noted. "What's up, guys?" Cor asked jovially. "Not much," DigiCom replied. "Marius is still being the sexist pig he is," Sheila said. Cor just smiled. Marius was a hentai of the highest order. "Where is Miss Royal today?" DigiCom asked. Cor could sense an edge to his voice when he asked the question. "Don't worry, she won't be down here unless she's with me," Cor re- plied. "I ran her through the DemoRoom earlier. That R.O.A.C.H. Armor is impressive, DC." "You didn't let her _keep_ it, did you?" DigiCom scowled. "Geesh, I don't know what you've got against her," Cor said. "After all, she _did_ suggest that we maintain tighter security on the computer equipment against outside probing..." Cor held up his hands against DC's attempt at a rebuttal. "Besides," he continued, "I removed her ROACH's Nega-Blades before letting her use it. Those things are _dangerous_. When she was in the DemoRoom the effects were simulated." DC didn't tell Cor that he already knew this. Sheila had monitored the DemoRoom se- quence for him. "Good thinking," Marius commented. "Not much can hold up against those blades." "Tell me about it," Cor said. "I'm still testing them against field effects... By the way, has Wolf been in today, Sheila?" "No, Cor. I last saw him last night." "I wonder where he's gotten off to," Cor mused as he walked around and poked into things in DC's lab. There was a _lot_ of stuff in here. One table in particular caught his attention. It had a gold metalic cloth over the top of what could have been an outstretched hand standing straight up. "May I?" Cor asked. "Sure," DigiCom answered bemusedly. <<> Cor lifted the cloth and blanched. What he saw there was a long, heavy glove of sorts made out of a goldish-bronze material. It had five gems of different colors set into the knuckles and another one centered on the back of the hand. He'd seen it before, and the idea of it scared him. He noticed that it glowed slightly. He shakily replaced the cloth over it. "I'm going to pretend I _didn't_ see that," Cor choked. "Don't worry," DC laughed. "That's just a mock-up. The original is magic-based. I'm having difficulty coming up with the tech-equivalents for the Gems' purported capabilities. After all, you yourself saw that the KDCFieldGENerator can't produce magical items. It's tech-based, af- ter all. I'll figure it out eventually." "I'm not so sure that's a good idea, Mario," Cor said seriously, still eying the cloth covering the Infinity Gauntlet. "No, but it _IS_ fun," DC grinned maniacally. "_And_ it does offer a bit of a challenge." "He's tapped, I'm sure of it," Marius laughed, tapping the side of his own right temple. Cor entered his own private Workroom.C on SubLevel G and the lights came up. He yawned and looked around. Quite a mess in here, he thought. Oh, well. Flopping down into one of several leather chairs around the table at one end of the room he rubbed his eyes. Too much work to do, he concluded and stood up. "Sam, online," Cor said. [Hello, Cor.] "Any progress on that little problem I left you with?" [Um... Not much right now. It's an interesting concept, though.] "Thanks," Cor said. "Frosty have anything new to report?" [Nothing except the misconceptions of the press.] "Nothing new, then." [I'm afraid not.] Cor shrugged and walked over to a small table that had a myriad of small parts on it. Turning on an overhead worklight and pulling over a magnification armature, he looked closely at the collected kipple. He picked up a small, round device that was on the center of the table and turned it over several times in his hand. It was an amazing device. So simple and unassuming, yet so potentially powerful. Flipping it open, he re-read the inscription artfully carved on the inside: "tempus unum hominem manet". He glanced over at a stack of video cassettes and a VCP/Monitor com- bination he had on an adjoining table. Putting down the disk-shaped de- vice he walked over to the KDCFieldGENerator Station that he'd moved down here from SubLevel-D where the DemoRoom was. It was too vulnerable up there, he'd decided. Firing up the matter converter, he went back over to the table with the video cassettes on it and picked them all up. He hated to do this, but if he could, anyone with access to the GENerator could. Best not to leave the idea around, though. He dropped the cassettes into the conver- tor and they vanished in a flash of light. Then he retrieved the disk- shaped device and dropped it in as well. It was the second one he'd made, the first one having been retooled into the S.T.E.L.L.A.R.I.S. Ar- mor. "Well, Sam, that's that," Cor sighed. "By the way, how are you and Sheila getting along?" [Not too badly, Cor. She did have a few problems with your selective lock-out setup on this room, though.] "That doesn't surprise me any." [She's quite attractive, by the way. Bit of an attitude problem, I have to admit, though.] "She's a hologram, Sam." [More than _I_ am right now.] "Diode-envy, Sam? I thought you were above that," Cor clucked. "I'll see what I can do for you about that... It would limit the usage in the combat mode of the armor, though. I'll figure something out." [Thank you, Cor. I appreciate the thought.] "Hey, what are friends for, eh?" It was then that all hell broke loose. <<> A massive explosion ripped through the first floor of the Lippitt Com- plex, cracking the heavy ALON windows slightly. The UPS Truck From Hell (tm) slid across the floor, leaving large skid marks and crashed into the overhead door, buckling it outwards. The KDCFieldGENerator and accom- panying workstation were pulped into microscopic fragments, as they were the center of the explosion. Kali and Zebediah happened to be inside the UPS Truck at the time of the explosion, and the resulting concussion slammed them about. Kali was thrown first against the driver's-side door and then across to the pas- senger side door. She impacted hard with the sickeningly wet snapping sound of several bones breaking, including three ribs. Fortunately for her, consciousness left her almost immediately. Zeb wasn't so lucky. He had been in the rear of the Truck when the force of the blast threw it across the room. Zeb impacted two of the lockers in the rear, and they popped open, spewing their contents. Two of the 'Lobo' Revenger-III missiles fell outwards and bounced on the deck. Zeb slid on one of them and fell. As he fell, a 3WA flightpack crashed downwards on his right leg, snapping it at the knee. Various other bits of kipple and equipment cause severe lacerations and abra- sions, not to mention contusions. The unlucky part was the fact that he didn't pass out, pinned under a mass of metal and plastics. An armored figure stepped out from behind the remains of the elevator door and moved quickly towards the buckled front doors. "What the fuque was _that_, Sam?" Cor asked as the room shook slight- ly, rattling all the small tools on the bench in front of him. [There was a large explosion on the first floor, Cor.] "Shit!" Cor leapt up from his chair and concentrated. The world red- shifted, and he made for the doors at a fast pace. The doors refused to open. Cor re-tooled his armor and tore to doors off with his armor- enhanced strength. Sprinting down the hallway to the elevator shaft, he asked Sam for a status update. Fortunately, Sam was unaffected by the red-shift. Cor had built most of the mainframe into the armor. [The elevator's on 1, Cor. Demolished, too.] "Okay, we'll go up the shaft," Cor said, retooling his armor to in- clude jet-boots. He stepped into the shaft and rocketed upwards. In seconds he crashed through the bottom of the 'lift car and stopped, hov- ering on his jets. Cautiously he drifted into the room and looked around at the destruction. The UPS Truck was in sad shape, but fixable. Just needs a paint-job, he thought. And a little Bondo. He landed and walked over. Looking in the windows, he saw that Kali was in bad shape and that Zeb would need medical attention as well. They looked strange, frozen in place as they were. "I don't know how many times I watched that movie, but that effect al- ways freaked me out," Cor said. [Which one?] "The way everyone is frozen like this," Cor replied. He turned and looked at the KDCFieldGENerator. Smoke and flame hung frozen in space all around it. "What happened here, Sam?" [I can't tell. Looks like someone set a bomb off.] "I was thinking something along those lines myself. I _know_ there are too many failsafes on the FieldGENs to explode like this." Cor saw a familiar armored figure poised at the doors to the Complex preparing to wrench them open. Cor shook his head. "I was afraid of that," he said simply. [Minute's almost up, Cor.] "I'll have to fix that," Cor said. He looked closely at the figure by the doors. It was a shame, really. He squinted and his eyes glowed slightly red. Now, _that_ explained a lot. [Twelve seconds.] "Right," Cor sighed. The armored figure on the first floor of the Lippitt Complex pulled again at the buckled doors. This time they moved slightly. Another hard wrench and the right door dropped to the floor, it's hinges severed. It dropped to the floor with a loud *K-RANG* and the figure ducked out through the doorway. And came to a screeching halt. There, standing at the bottom of the steps was Cor, bulked up to his armor's maximum size. "Why did you do this, Jane?" Cor asked through his faceplate. She replied by firing on him with her parbeam pistol. The shots ric- ochetted off of his hulking mass harmlessly. She threw the pistol away and tried to activiate the Nega_Blades on the backs of her wrists. She growled in frustration and leapt at him. He brought up his right hand and fired with both of the particle cannons on the back of his forearm. The force of the blast tore through the R.O.A.C.H. armor at it's narrow- est and weakest point. It also neatly decapitated her. Her body pitched forward and landed with a hard thump on the stairs just as DigiCom came barreling out the door. A glance told him what had happened, but not why. Cor de-tooled back down to his standard HardSuit mode and slowly bent down to retrieve the head of Jane Royal. "Bad first date?" DC asked as he looked at the oily-grey fluids drain- ing from the body. "You ever have one of those days?" Cor asked rhetorically. "Constantly." Extrapolation______________________________________________________TEN "She's wasn't bad, she's just programmed that way." -The Red Tape War by Chalker, Resnick, and Effinger FOUR HOURS LATER "What do you suppose _that_ is?" Corinthian asked DigiCom. He was holding a greyish-green mass of what appeared to be synthetic organ ma- terials, but it was hard to tell. "I'm really not sure. I've never taken one of these apart before," DC said. They'd been at this for just over an hour and a half. Cor had to agree: he'd never taken one of these apart before, either. "Sheila, status of Kali and Zebediah?" Cor asked the hologram standing beside DigiCom. "They're both stabilized, Cor. The Howard Foundation equipment is working just fine. They should be out of the tanks in a couple of days," Sheila said. "Well, _that's_ good news, at any rate," Cor said. "I wish I knew what the hell we were looking at." They were slowly dissassembling what remained of Jane Royal in DigiCom's Lab. Cor had taken the time to ex- plain that he had figured out that she was a construct before blasting her. How he had done that, not to mention gotten outside, DC hadn't asked yet. Cor knew he would, eventually. "I'm not sure myself, but I think I know how we can find out," DC said with a slight grin. "Sheila: access Fictional Technologies Database, parameters: humanoid, lifelike artificial construct." "Sure thing, boss," Sheila replied. "That should take a few minutes... there's a lot of stuff for her to sort through," Cor said. "Just wait," DC smiled. "Search complete, guys," Sheila said after about thirty seconds. "You want a list?" "Match available data on present subject," DC said. "Hardcopy, please." DigiCom tore off the paper and glanced over it. "Hmmm... Data... T-800... Questor... Norman One... Bishop... Elsie Dee... Matrix.. Vision... Shasti... Human Torch... Briareos... R. Daneel Olivaw... wait a second... something about that one..." He paused and walked back over to where they had taken apart the cranial assembly. "Cor, what would you say that this here looks like?" "Um... a simple positronic brain?" Cor guessed, looking at the 'brain' and most of the readouts and technical stuff they had grokked from the autopsy. "Bingo. I think we have a match... now why didn't she follow the Three Laws?" DC mused. "Maybe 'human' and 'mankind' were redefined..." Cor trailed off. "Pardon?" DC asked. "Well, Kali _did_ say that the guy driving the yellow Porsche we tan- gled with wasn't human," Cor concluded. "That's a possible," DC agreed. KLARION DATACORP HEADQUARTERS, Langley, VA "Um, we seem to have lost contact with our operative, Director," the messenger stood shakily beside the Director's chair at the head of the conference table. The man was sweating noticibly and the paper in his hands trembled slightly. The Director took the paper from him and scan- ned the content. He looked up and fixed his gaze on the man beside him. "How unfortunate," the Director said softly. He noticed the man's trembling. "Be at ease. This isn't the Roman Empire, where the bearer of bad news is struck down by the recepient." The man relaxed noticibly. The Director waved his hand and two large men in dark suits stepped for- ward and grasped the young man's arms. "That's what the hired help is for. Take him away. I don't wish to see him again. Ever." The Director turned towards the group assembled around the table. The people collected around the table all maintained a respectful if somewhat tense silence. "Gentlemen, we indeed seem to have a problem. The first retrieval team has failed to regain possession of the prototype that was stolen from us. Also, our inside operative has lost contact and is as- sumed compromised." He looked around the table as he spoke, fixing his gaze on each of the seven seated there in turn. Dr. S. Laurence Sheuchster tried hard not to fidget in his chair as the Director paused slightly longer on him than the others. It was ob- vious to him that the Director and several of the members of the Board blamed him for the current situation. He guessed, correctly, that his technical knowledge and ability with computers were the only reason he still maintained his position in the Company, or for that matter, his life. "Dr. McGreggor," the Director addressed a middle-aged, bearded member to Dr. Sheuchster's immediate left, "is your group assembled?" The man addressed shuffled his notes slightly before replying. "Yes, Director, we achieved full strength just this morning. Also, with the assistance of Madeline Khinde, the team has assumed full capability with the new... equipment your research section provided us with." "Yes, Ms. Khinde has shown a remarked proficiency with technological advances. Very well," the Director folded his hands on the table in front of him. Dr. Robert Lars cleared his throat at the other end of the table. "Yes, Robert?" "The boys in R&D have expressed concerns over the reliability of the new power sources that Nigel Brenton has come up with. Several of the tests show extreme energy spikes under adverse conditions," Dr. Lars paused for a second, wondering if he should continue. The Director had a right to know everything he concluded. "I respectfully request that this phase of the project be put on temporary hold until all of the bugs have been worked out." Dr. Lars removed his glasses and wiped his fore- head with a white handkerchief. "I appreciate your concern, Robert, but we will continue on schedule with the final assembly sequence," the Directory responded. "Request denied." "Thank you, Director," Dr. Lars said half-convincingly. Fool, he thought. If what I suspect is correct, the new reactors could very well go critical at any time during operation, not only during operational ex- tremes, he thought cynically. "You have something further to add, Doctor?" The Director leaned for- ward slightly, his words soft and melodic. Dr. Lars thought for a brief moment that the Director had read his mind. Panic filled him and almost overcame him in those few seconds. "Um, no, Director, that is all," Lars choked. "Good," the Director smiled. Lars hated when he smiled. "I thought as much. That will be all, gentlemen. Dismissed." The assembled group started to collect their papers and prepared to return to their various sections. As they stood one by one to leave, the Director said, "Dr's McGreggor, Lars, and Sheuchster, would you three be so kind as to meet me in my office after everyone else has left? I wish to go over a new proposal with you for 'Group X-Ray'. Thank you." KINGSTON, RI "So what you're telling me is that Miss Royal was a positronic robot filled with explosive and all kinds of spy equipment sent here to under- mine our base of operations?" Frosty asked dubiously. "Well, in so many words: yes," DigiCom answered. "That's a little farfetched, don't you think?" MMaxx countered. "Paul, you didn't see the results of the... autopsy, or her perfor- mance earlier in the DemoRoom," Cor said. "And just _how_ did you figure out she was a 'killer droid'?" Frosty asked. "I've been wondering the same thing. How _did_ you figure that out, Cor?" DC asked. "Like I said, you saw the data from the DemoRoom. She performed well above normal human standards, even accounting for the increase in power provided by the R.O.A.C.H. Armor. I mean, she _tore_the_doors_ off their hinges to get out of here! Also, Sheila says that the KDCFieldGENerator on 1 was destroyed by a limpet mine, which she must have stored internal- y in the compartment we found," Cor answered. "Yes, but she _could_ have been a cyborg," DC said. Cor shook his head. "Trust me, I knew what I was doing when I blasted her. There wasn't a scrap of living tissue inside her." "So you have x-ray vision now?" Frosty asked. "What the real problem is here, is that someone is gunning for us," Cor deflected the question. "Kali and I were both attacked earlier last week, and now this. It's obvious that _someone_ knows what we're up to. Frosty, were there any low-frequency emminations from this building dur- ing the time that 'Jane' was here?" Frosty thought back for a few moments. Marius made a crack about wood burning. "Yes, as a matter of fact. Several times. I figured you guys were up to your usual craziness in the labs," Frosty said. "Wonderful. She was transmitting information on us to an outside re- ceiver. Is it possible to triangulate where the replies came from?" Cor asked of Frosty or Sheila. Frosty shook his head. "No transmissions like that came into the building. She must have just sent reports 'home' and assumed reception." "Well, that kills that idea," DC concluded. "Maybe not... Sheila, is it possible to decode those transmissions and work out some way to trick the reciever into replying?" Marius asked. "Maybe. I wasn't online for all of them, but I think we caught the last three messages out," Sheila said. "Thanks, lucious, don't ever change," Marius grinned toothily. "Pig," Sheila said with a smile. DC just sighed. "Good idea, Marius. See what you can come up with, Sheila," Cor said. "Anybody else?" "Yeah, who died and made you Grand Poobah of the Universe?" Marius snarked. "Funny," Cor said. LATER THAT DAY... <<> Kali felt herself drifting and floating as if she were weightless, totally free of the constraints of her body's limited capabilities and those forces that gravity exerted on her fragile human form. She felt as if she were tumbling through outer space, or swimming through a semi-per- miable sea of gelatinous fluids. This feels wonderful, she thought. { Only for a little while, Kali. While you heal. } * Who's there? * Kali asked. { Only me, Kali. Sheila. You were badly injured, but you are healing nicely. } * Where am I? * { You are floating in a Howard Foundation Rejuvenation Tank that Cor and DigiCom set up in the DemoRoom. Zebediah is in the tank next to you. His injuries were not as severe as yours, but he suffered severe trauma. He was in shock by the time we got the tanks set up. } * Ouch. How bad am I off? * { Better that you rest and concentrate on healing, Kali. There will be no permanent damage. I'm sure DC will fill you in on the extent of your injuries when you are finished healing. Best you rest now. * DigiCom double-checked the monitors on the Rejuvenation Tank and then looked into the tank itself. It was truly amazing, what these tanks were able to do, he thought. His attention returned as Cor walked into the room. "How are they doing?" Cor asked. "Sheila just told me that Kali was aware of her surrounding for a few minutes," DC replied, scribbling down a few notes. "How about Zeb?" "No change. I think he's going to be okay, though," DC said. "Jeez, this really sux. This shouldn't have happened." "Well... I hate to be the one to say I told you so..." Cor whirled on DC, his eyes glowing a bright crimson. "Do _you_ want to wind up in one of those tanks too?" he snarled. "In a word: No," DC said calmly. "Have you tried decaf?" Cor's shoulders dropped. "Sorry. Stress. Don't take it personally." "Don't worry, I don't take much personally," DC joked. "By the way, that glowing eye thing really _is_ disconcerting, you know." "Sorry, I thought it was a good idea at the time," Cor replied. "Is this better?" As DigiCom watched, two chrome hemisheres slid down over Cor's eyes from just below his eyebrow ridge. They slid under the skin below his eyes and completely sealed them off. "Subdermal lenses? Going cyberpunk, are we?" DC asked. "Well, the HUD effect in these is much clearer than the intra-occular ones I was using." Cor responded. "Less eye-glow this way too." "If you don't sprout razors from your fingernails, I won't call you 'Sally'," DC smiled. "If you do, I'll break you," Cor deadpanned, then smiled as well. He paused and looked faraway for a few seconds. "There, I also added a sub- liminal suggestion program to the external displays," he grinned. "Care to see an extended version?" "Why not?" As DC looked on, several images flashed across the outsides of the chrome lenses: raging flames, swirling spirals (for hypnosis and doing Twilight Zone voice-overs :), the words 'YOU LOSE' and 'GAME OVER', and two matching sets of gnashing, razor sharp teeth. "Ah. You're a jerk, Corinthian, a complete eye-biter," DC paraphrased goodnaturedly. "Nice effects, by the way." "I thought you'd like that," Cor grinned evilly. "I can also do the 'clear, non-reflective version, so as not to attract attention." As he spoke, he did so. "Much better... I think," DC said thoughtfully. "I won't ask why, of course. Still, that thing about your getting outside incredibly fast has me thinking." "Heh," Cor chuckled. "Oh, I have an idea for a new algorithm for the tanks..." "Tell me again how this is going to work, Sheila?" Frosty said, lean- ing back in his chair. "Well, it's pretty straight forward," Sheila replied. "I've decrypted both of the messages that we had recorded that 'Jane Royal' sent out. I then made several passes on the syntax of the messages and then the con- tent. The rest is simple; we just figure out what we want to say and try to get a reply message sent back that we can triangulate." "Okay, simple enough," Frosty said. "Can you ask Wolf to come down here, Sheila?" Sheila did so. "Mike, would you go with him on this mis- sion? It's a cake walk." "Sure, why not," Marius replied. "What's up, guys?" Wolf said as he walked in from the hallway. "That was fast," Frost said. "Where were you?" "Across the hall in the DemoRoom," Wolf said with a nasty grin. "Oh dear," Marius sighed. "Where are Kali and Zeb, and what have you done with them?" Frosty said pompously. "Me?" Wolf asked incredulously. "Why, _nothing_. I was just checking up on them and letting Cor and DigiCom know that the UPS Truck is ready to go. Again. I really wish you guys would stop beating it up. I'm go- ing to have to raise my rates again." "How are they doing?" Frosty asked. "Pretty good, actually," Wolf replied. "They should be out tomorrow. So, what's up?" "Well, I'm glad that the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) is back up and run- ning. We need you to fly a mission," Frosty said. "Okay, I'll play your silly game," Wolf snarked. "Well, Kali's laid up right now, and you're one of only two others cleared to pilot the UPS," Frosty continued. "We need you to do a recon so we can triangulate a signal. We're trying to find out who sent 'Jane' out here to spy on us." "Sure, why not. Who's coming with me, and where am I going?" "Marius will go with you to do the triangulation and act as your se- cond for the mission," Frosty said. "When do we leave?" Wolf asked, rubbing his hands together anxiously. "As soon as possible. Just head west from here. Say about two hun- dred miles or so," Frosty said. "Around Buffalo, New York, should be good. _Try_ not to go into Canadian airspace, okay?" "Aww... and I hear Niagara Falls is nice this time of year," Wolf said. "Sorry, Thom," Frosty said. "Stay out of trouble." The UPS Truck From Hell(tm) rolled out of the hole where the overhead door had been cut away. As it turned out of sight, Cor sighed. DC just looked clueless, and Frosty kludged back over to the refitted 'lift. "Sheila, can you fix that hole for us?" DigiCom requested. "Sure," her hologram waved her hands for dramatic effect, and a new door rezzed itself into existance. "That'll do until you guys get the exterior of the building patched up. That mine did a lot of structural damage." "True," DC agreed. "We'll rezz up some generic workmen disguises for a few robotic drones later on." Cor just stood there thoughtfully for a few seconds. Now we just have to wait and see, he thought. He turned and headed for the 'lift doors. "You coming, DC? This might be interesting," Cor said. "I'll be long in a little while," DC replied. "I have a few things I want to go over first." "Whatever," Cor shrugged and stepped into the lift. What the hell are you doing? DC thought after him. SOMEWHERE OVER RHODE ISLAND AT 10,000 FEET <<> (Think about the Blue Angels video version) "You know, this thing never ceases to amaze me," Marius said as he scanned the instrument cluster. This was only his second flight in the UPS Truck From Hell(tm), and his first with it's primary builder. "I'm glad you like it," Wolf grinned evilly as he banked gracefully through a light, fluffy cloud. "I've wondered though, where are the fuel tanks?" Marius asked. Wolf shook his right index finger in a tut-tut motion. "Trade secret, I'm afraid." "Fine, _be_ that way," Marius laughed. The radio on the panel crack- led and Wolf put it on the cabin speakers. "BUFFT, this is Lippitt Tower, do you read?" Frosty's voice said from the speakers. "What, is he speaking in code?" Marius asked. "He's just fucking around, he knows the subspace freak can't be tapped by any current tech-rats," Wolf replied. "This is BUFFT, Lippitt Tower. We read you loud and fucking clear," Wolf said into his microphone after keying it open. "No need to get hostile, Thom," Frosty laughed. "'BUFFT'?" Marius asked. Wolf covered his mike. "Big Ugly Fucking Flying Truck, of course." He uncovered it again. "What's up, Mike?" "We're just wondering about your ETA at point Bravo, Thom." "How long would you say it would take us to go 200 miles at just under 1500 knots, Marius?" Marius did some fast math in his head. "Just under three and a half hours, why?" "Good, we'll have time to stop for dinner," Wolf said, looking at his neat digital watch (this is earth, remember?). "I'd estimate ETA at 1630 hours, Frosty." "Um... okay, that would be fine," Frosty said, more than a hint of confusion in his voice as he did the math himself. "Right. Talk to you in a little while," Wolf keyed off the subspace. "Explain to me how we're going to get there in an hour and a half, _and_ have time to stop and get something to eat," Marius requested. "Watch," Wolf said with a smile. He double-checked their current po- sition with a NAVSTAR satellite in geosynchronous orbit over Philadelphia center. He then flipped a small switch on the upper right-hand side of the control cluster. Marius looked on curiously as the gauges rolled over and changed their incraments of measure to something called m^2C. "What's an 'm^2C'?" Marius asked. "One-thousandth thousandth of a C," he replied matter of factly. "Or, one millionth of a C." The needle on the m^2C-ometer barely crept up- wards as Wolf applied more power and the sound of the jet engines died down and finally stopped. All that Marius could hear was a faint mechan- ical hum from somewhere in the rear. "Ah. By 'C' do you mean what I think you do?" Marius asked rhetor- ically. Wolf nodded. "Oh, so you added an impulse drive while you were fixing this tub." "Yup, the TurboFans were good, but just not fast enough for my tastes. I figured the fuel economy wouldn't hurt either," Wolf grinned evilly. "Just so," Marius agreed. He looked out the forward windscreen at the clouds as they blurred faster and faster. "Can I ask another question of you, Thom?" "You just did, but go ahead." "How come the front window _isn't_ being blown in on us? I would think that at this speed that would happen," Marius said. "Um, how fast _are_ we going?" Marius had noticed that Wolf had stopped accelerating. "Um," Wolf turned a small dial two clicks to the left and the numbers on the m^2C-ometer changed from 1-669 to 1-133. The needle rested just below the number 25. "We're doing just under mach-25." He started de- cellerating, and the needle dropped some. "I'm dropping to mach-10 so we don't overshoot Buffalo. I can answer the first question in three words: good force fields. Does that help any?" "Much, thanks," Marius said. "Any thoughts on where to get some grub?" "I _think_ there's a _Lum's_ just southeast of the city. Wanna go there?" Marius suggested. "Sure, why not?" DigiCom wandered back into his Lab. He was engaged in a conversation with both himself and Sheila when Cor walked in. "...once I've got the gravitics down, I can start on the phase modula- tor." DC trailed off. "An explosive space modulator?" Cor asked with a grin. He was always amused by DC's inventiveness-- not to mention a little concerned. "Nah, I ran out of Illudium P-38," DC said with a wink. "Don't wink at me. People might start to talk," Cor grinned. "What's up? Anything new on that?" Cor pointed at the remains of 'Jane'. "Not really," DC replied. "You come up with anything?" "I worked up a personality profile for Sheila so she could send the message out later. So what's this thing over here?" "That's my new bike. It's not quite finished yet," DC replied. "Looks good," Cor said. "Guys, we're ready to transmit," Frosty said over the intercom. "Jesus, that was _fast_," Cor said. "Wolf must have pulled out all the stops." "Mmmm hummm," DC agreed. Cor headed for the doors. "Coming?" "No, you go ahead." "Ah, good, have a seat, Cor," Frosty said as Cor walked in. Cor did so, and looked at Sheila. "Sheila, is the message ready to go?" Cor asked. "Of course, buddy-boy." "I take it that Wolf and Marius broke a few speed records getting to Buffalo?" Cor asked. "Yup, Wolf said that they even stopped for dinner," Frosty answered. He laughed. "Marius says that the new impulse drive works well. They got there an hour ago." Cor sighed. "You realize that there will be no dealing with him when he comes back, of course." "Naturally," Frosty chuckled. "As tech increases, ego bloats. It's a pretty direct ratio." "Exponential in DC's case," Cor snarked. "I heard that," DC said over the intercom. "Can we shut him up?" Cor asked. Sheila shook her head no. "Pity. Let's get on with it." Frosty punched up a huge map of the northern hemisphere on the main screen. A dot of light represented them and another showed where Wolf and Marius were currently. He spoke into a microphone. "Ready to trans- mit, Thom." "Roger that, Frosty," Wolf responded. "Transmitting," Frosty said, and pressed a small, black button on the console. A high-speed burst was transmitted out through the antenna set- up that they had removed from 'Jane'. They had made sure that the signal was broadcast on exactly the same frequency and signal strength that the first messages were sent out on. They waited. All eyes were on the map. The tension in the room could have been cut with a vorpal blade. The board chirped. Frosty leaned forward and pressed three buttons in rapid sequence. "_Well_?" Cor said. "Hang on..." Frosty said. "The signal was extremely short. This might take a little bit of fancy footwork... I've tracked it to a TDRS NASA satellite in geosynchronus orbit over Grover's Mills, New Jersey... Backtracking earthward..." A small pinprick of light came on the board somewhere towards north-central Virginia. "At least we have a rough location of the transmission," Cor said. "Whereabouts is that, anyway?" "Near or at Langley, Virginia," Frosty said, increasing magnification on the map to just show the northeastern quadrant of the United States. "We've been infiltrated by the fucking _CIA_?" Cor said incredulously. "I have the decription of the message, Frosty," Sheila said. "Let's have it." "It says, 'Nice try.'" ======================================================================== 760 Firefight_______________________________________________________ELEVEN "Killing never solves anything, but it keeps people out of your hair while you think of what to do next." -Lazarus Long THE NEXT DAY Corinthian opened the new overhead door on the rear of the Lippitt Complex and hopped into the vehicle parked just inside. The gravitics sprang to life and the former Jane Royal's hovercar lifted from it's parked position. Cor had been dying to try this baby out since 'Jane' had gotten there and this was his first opportunity since then. He glided out of the door soundlessly and keyed the overhead shut. It was a beautiful day out; sunny, breezy, and not to warm. Perfect for a drive in a gorgeous convertible. No matter what her bosses had program- med her to be, she had nice taste in transport. Cor was lost in the rev- erie of his own thoughts when he almost flattened a man wearing a fedora. "HEY! Watch where you're walking, asshole!" Cor shouted at the man he'd almost creamed. The fact that Cor had drifted over the sidewalk and partway onto the grass was moot to him. "I must say, that's a fine looking car you have there, sir," the fel- low with the fedora said. "Mind if I ask you a few questions?" Cor just then noticed the press-card stuck into the man's hatband. Shit. The man was also built like a linebacker. Something familiar about him, Cor thought. "I'm sorry about almost flattening you, buddy," Cor said. "What's this all about?" "My name is Clark Oppenheimer, and I'm from the Weekly World Planet," Clark said. "I'd like to ask you about the recent strange goings-on here and in the local area, if I may." Cor slapped his forehead. Perfect. The Caped Wonder. At least he wasn't reporting for the Providence Urinal Bulletin. (Author's note: the Providence Journal, aka the Pro-Jo, or Blo-Jo, is the only state- wide daily newspaper in RI. It's swamp-yankee ownership has been the butt of jokes in the NewPaper and other quality literary publications.) "Um, I don't know what you're talking about, sorry," Cor started to reverse away from Oppenheimer. "Gotta go. BYE!" He zoomed off. "It will only take a second of your time, sir!" Clark shouted. "Why do people keep doing that to me around here?" he said aloud to himself. "That fellow seemed to be acting slightly suspicious. I'll have to go after him with my _very_quick_speed_." He started running very fast af- ter the hovercar. The passage of his running disturbed two coeds who had been giggling near the planetarium. "Wow, what was that?" said coed#1. "I don't know, but it was a fast as _ten_fast_men_!" remarked coed#2, "No, that's that _other_ guy," said coed#1. "Silly me, you're right," replied coed#2, and they continued on their way. Cor turned onto Upper College Road and opened the hovercar up, heading south. He noticed in his mirror Clark running after him, his necktie blowing back over his shoulder comically. Cor sighed. Perhaps another tactic might be better. Oppenheimer looks stupid running after me like this, Cor thought. Clark came running up next to the stopped hovercar, barely breathing hard. He whipped out a little notepad and a ballpoint pen. "Now then, sir. Where were we?" Clark asked. "You were asking me about strange happenings?" Cor prompted. "Yes. Well, let me get some information about you first," Clark said. Your name?" "Mr. Nedd," Cor replied. Clark scribbled this down. "Occupation?" "Crossword editor," Cor said. Clark wrote this down as well, to Cor's amusement. "And where are you from, originally?" Clark asked. "Ottercreek." "Ottercre... " Clark stopped writing and looked up. "Now wait just a second here..." "I can see right through those very clever hypnotic secret-identity glasses, Clark," Cor said. "Oh, and you can forget about inspecting my possessions with your _see-thru_vision_ or melting my car with your _very _hot_vision_." Clark looked flustered. "Hold on here..." Clark sputtered. "Forget it, _Caped_Wonder_, you're cover's blown," Cor grinned evilly. "By the way, have some _Ottercreekite(tm)_!" Cor tossed a small rectan- gular green eraser at Clark, who immediately started to cower and shrink at the site of the deadly substance. As Cor sped away he could hear Clark talking to himself and cursing his fate. "I can feel myself weakening! Oh, the pain, the pain! The world is going dim! My short career, ended!" Clark fell to his knees as he watched the white hovercar drive away. As he passed out he could distinctly hear Cor's laughter: "Hahaha_HA_ha! Hahaha_HA_ha! Hahaha_HA_ha! HAHAHAHAHA!!" Frosty looked again at the blow-up of the LANDSAT photographs he had color printed off of the computer. With a magnification reader light he was looking at both the normal spectrum stills and the infrared ones. He was looking at a large clustering of buildings surrounded by acres of asphault. Thousands of cars could be seen in various states of park, and there were people running around outside the building. Must have caught this one at lunch-time, Frosty thought. Impressive layout. In the last fifteen years the Central Intelligence Agency had centralized most of their offices to Langley. There was even a guided tour. A pair of large, green busses could be seen parked near the south en- trance. Must be the shuttles to the residential areas, Frosty thought. Several hundred of the employees at CIA lived on the grounds nearby in large, barracks-style buildings he knew. He looked at another group of photographs that appeared to be almost identical to the first. The confusing part was that the LANDSAT grid coordinates put the two groups of pictures as being twenty five miles a- part. The second set even had the same green shuttle busses running to and from the buildings to an identical housing layout. Frosty rubbed his eyes. The only difference seemed to be in the signs at the front gates. One of them appeared to be a meter shorter than the other. Due to the overhead angle of the shots, they were unreadable. "Sheila, any success at narrowing that signal down anymore?" "No, Mike. The short duration of the burst only let us get it down to a two hundred and fifty square-mile area," Sheila replied, fading into sight in the chair beside him. She was wearing a double-breasted blue dress with a high collar and a white scarf wrapped loosely around her neck. Even though she was a machine, albeit a damned smart one, she tried to dress differently for Frosty every day. Frosty smiled at her. He knew she was a machine, but she was a damned good-looking one. And she honestly seemed to care about the people she worked for/with. "Okay. When will the next bird go over?" he refered to the net of LANDSAT mapping satellites that orbited the earth at 11,000 miles out. "Next pass for that one will be in thirty-seven minutes." "The same one that took these?" Frosty asked. Sheila nodded. "Good. Both of these signs seem to face east. There might be a bit of afternoon shadow on them, but I think an oblique angle shot around sixty degrees should get them both." He didn't say that he hoped the cluttered ground foliage in the area didn't block the shot. Both areas had a lot of trees screening them from the road. "Sure thing. I'll get started on sending the telemetry to LANDSAT-9. I think I'll bounce the signal off the Hughes Aerospace WESTAR 4 bird on the west coast to the northeast Pacific Rim COMSAT, this time," Sheila said. "Ain't technology wonderful?" Frosty laughed, appreciating the irony of what he said. Sheila smiled at him and winked. DigiCom was aimlessly tinkering in his lab when the intercom buzzed to get his attention. "Yes?" DC asked, turning his head slightly. He'd set his intercom for limited access while he worked, so anyone who wanted to talk to him had to signal in. "DC, is Cor down there?" Frosty voice said. DC sighed. "No, he went out earlier in the hovercar." "Ah. We found something interesting on the LANDSAT pictures I think you might want to see," Frosty said. "Okay, let me wrap this up and I'll be there in a minute." Frosty keyed off and DC paused to throw a tarp over the HHG-1 he'd been working on. DC stepped out into the corridor and almost ran straight into Marius, who had been headed towards DC's Lab. "Hiya, DC, what's up?" Marius asked. "Frosty wants to see me in the Communications Center," DC replied. "You coming?" "Sure, why not." DC and Marius walked into the ComCent and Frosty slowly rotated his chair around to face them. Marius noticed that MMaxx and Tareah were also in the room. "Even better. Pull up a chair," Frosty said. As they did so the doors slid open and Wolf walked in, chatting with Sheila. Marius laughed as he saw Sheila walk over to the Sheila that had already been in the room. They stood side-by-side with their arms fold- ed glaring at Marius. "Now _this_ is interesting," Marius chuckled. He looked from one to the other. The one that had been in here before had that silly white scarf on, and the other one that had just walked in had on blue leather and high-heeled biker boots. Marius laughed out loud and started singing the 'Doublemint Gum' jingle. The Sheila in the leather glared at him doubly-so and did an 'I Dream of Jeannie' blink affect. Marius stopped singing as he found himself surrounded by seven more Sheila's, all wearing CVR-3 body armor. "You were saying, laughing boy?" the Sheila with the scarf asked. Marius gulped and sat down meekly. "That's what I thought," the Sheila with the most rank on her CVR-3 said. All but one Sheila laughed and flickered out. Frosty, MMaxx, and Wolf were rolling around on the floor laughing, Frosty laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. "It wasn't _that_ funny, guys," Marius said. Sheila (the one with the scarf) walked over to Frosty and offered a hand up. The lights dimmed minutely as he took the proffered hand and got back to his feet. Marius' jaw hit the floor and shattered. "Wha... wait... but I thought.... um," Marius stammered. Sheila winked at him, a nasty grin on her lips. DC just smiled. Frosty sat back down wiping the tears from his eyes. "Well, now that the comedy part has been take care of, what I have to show you guys is slightly disturbing." "What is it, Mike?" MMaxx asked. Frosty answered the question by pun- ching up the large screen on the wall. They were all looking at a split- screen image of two aerial photographs that appeared to be identical. Frosty stood and walked over to the screen and extended a light pointer. "What we're looking at are satellite photos of the Langley, Virginia, area. As much as these two pictures may look the same, they are actually two areas twenty five miles apart. The only difference we have been able to discern from the photos, beside those of foliage, are these two signs here... and here..." He pointed them out with the beam of light. "Approximately an hour later, these two photos were taken using the same LANDSAT satellite, but with an oblique angle of sixty degrees off of the perpendicular. Notice that the areas again appear to be identical." He pointed generally at similarities. "Paul?" "This is all fine and dandy, but _why_ are we looking at this?" MMaxx asked, obviously bored. "Good question. You weren't here yesterday. The reason that we are interested in this area is that because yesterday we attempted to send a signal to wherever the entity known as 'Jane Royal' had been transmitting data about our setup here. We actually did get a response, and by trian- gulating the source using the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) as a second signal receiver. We managed to trace it back past the relay satellite they had been using to this area," Frosty said waving the pointer at the photos. "Oh," MMaxx said. "Go on." "Thank you. As I said, they do look a lot alike. But, as we increase the magnification on both photos..." Frosty paused as the shots doubled, trebled, and then got _really_ close. The signs were now barely readable to the naked eye. "Um, can you focus that, Sheila? Thanks." "Oh, boy," DC commented. "What, what?" Marius asked. "I think I understand our problems, now," DC said as he sat back. "...the sign on the left," Frosty continued, "is the one that is at the front gates of the United States Central Intelligence Agency, as is evident by what it says. The one on the right..." "Isn't that the symbol for..." Wolf interrupted. "Yes, Thom, you're right. The 'Klarion DataCorp, Incorporated, World Headquarters' seems to be an exact duplicate of the CIA, physically. It seems that the wonderful people responsible for all of our new toys are pissed off and trying to repossess our copies of their files," Frosty concluded. "That could be bad," Marius said. Two squadrons of black helicopters flew northward, just skimming the wavetops of the dark Atlantic Ocean. They flew without lights, the dim light of the moon and stars their only illumination. Extremely sophis- ticated night-vision gear and guidance equipment pierced the darkness for the flight crews. They maintained radio silence as they approached the south shore of the Ocean State. The crews knew that their enemy pos- sessed very sensitive communications equipment, and stealth was a key factor in the completion of the mission. The pilot of the lead helicopter in the forward squadron, designated Gold-One, looked down to his left as they passed to the east of an island just south of the Rhode Island coastline. "Checkpoint Two, cleared," Gold Leader said into his cabin mike. "Got it, Bill," his co-pilot replied and glanced at the red navigation computer on the panel between them. "ETA in approximately twelve mi- nutes." "Roger, Raz," Gold Leader, Major William F. Jackson U. S. Army (re- tired), replied. He pulled back on the collective ever so slightly, bringing up the nose of his modified AH-64 Apache 'Longbow'. He leveled off at two hundred and fifty feet and glanced around to verify his wing- men duplicated the change in altitude. Behind him the other thirteen choppers in the two attack wings of his squadron followed their leader in two ragged reverse 'V' formations, the second behind the first and slightly below. Blue Squadron followed one-half klick behind that, in similar formation. Two kilometers south of the two helicopter squadrons, a lone aircraft followed them. It glided along easily at four thousand feet, keeping easy pace with the twenty eight helicopters. The commander of the craft watched the choppers cross the coast on his scopes and smiled faintly. "Looks like a slow night, Sheila," Frosty said as he yawned and then reached over his head in a stretch. "Oh, I'm sure something will come up," she smile at him, causing him to raise an eyebrow in curiosity. No way, he concluded. He turned as a light flashed on the board. Pressing a button, he activated the STA. "Frosty here. Go," he said. "Hi, Mike, anything interesting going on?" Cor asked. "Nah, just that briefing I told you about earlier. Nice and quiet tonight for a change," Frosty replied. "Okay, I'm going offline for a little while. Gonna catch some z's." "Right. Where can I reach you if I need you? Where are you anyway?" "Um..." Cor paused for a second. "I'm parked on a scenic overlook on 95 just south of Mystic, CT. I'll be back later tonight. All this dri- ving in the fresh air tired me out." "How'd that ragtop do?" "She's beautiful, Mike. Too bad we'll probably have to dismantle it," Cor replied about the hovercar. "Right, see you later, I guess." "Uh, huh. Sheila can reach me through Sam, if you really need me, Cor, out." Who's Sam? Frosty asked himself. DC tinkered and fiddled. He was just completing the finishing touch- es on the HHG-1 HellHog when Marius walked in aimlessly looking bored. Marius looked around at all the assorted piles of kipple and refuse that seemed to have multiplied over the last week. He slid a box of what to his untrained eye looked like a bunch of large, elongated Christmas tree bulbs in odd shaped holders. DC glared at him as the box was unceremon- iously dumped on the floor as Marius sat down. "I wouldn't have done that if I were you. You could have gotten a very nasty shock," DC said. "Why? What are those things?" Marius asked. "Do you know what a Krytron Switch is?" DC asked tiredly. "Um," Marius thought about it for a few seconds. "A way to turn the Man of Steel on and off?" "No, not a Krypton Switch. A Krytron Switch. They are used in the triggering mechanism of most nuclear weapons." Marius almost leapt out of the chair. "NUCLEAR WEAPONS?" he exclaimed loudly. DC chuckled. "Don't worry, those are mostly harmless by themselves." He gestured towards the box. "They _do_ however hold a nasty electrical charge for extended periods of time." "Ouch," Marius said simply. "Quite," DC laughed. He reached down and closed the last access panel on the side of the left rear quarter of the HellHog. They both turned as Sheila rezzed into the room. DC noticed immediately that something was wrong. "Hiya, toots," Marius leched, glancing sidelong at a light fixture to see if it dimmed. "Hello, yourself, little boy," Sheila replied. She turned towards DC. "Mario, we're going to have company in eight minutes. I've already aler- ted the others." "Explain," DC said. "I picked up two groups of fourteen attack and assault helicopters headed towards Quonset Point about three minutes ago. They then veered in this direction after passing over Narragansett Beach. I don't think they're coming here to see the centennial library renovations." "True. Have everyone assemble in the garage. I'll take the HellHog up the cargo elevator and see you there in a few," DC said. "Oh boy, a fight," Marius smilled nastily. <<> DC looked everyone over on the ground level of the Lippitt Complex. Marius, Wolf, MMaxx, Tareah, and Frosty were there in various states of armor and weapons. Tareah stood there bemusedly looking over all the stuff they all had. She wasn't into this 'big-nasty-fight-scene thing'. Sheila stood next to DC looking resplendant in an Air Force Lt. General's uniform that did nothing if not flatter her figure. "Okay, folks, I hope we're all set... um, Sheila, could you kill that _really_ annoying music? Thanks," DC said. "This is the deal: we are about to be attacked. Twenty-eight helicopters, no waiting." "How do we know they're hostile?" Tareah asked. "Let's see... they're flying with no lights, they're headed right at us, and their bristling with weapons. That would do it, wouldn't it?" DC sarcasmed. "I... see. Yes." "Good. Now that we're all ready, any last minute questions about your armor or weapons?" DC asked. He looked at Frosty, who looked slightly uncomfortable straddling a WHG-1 WarHog. "Not really... I just wish I had something nastier, that's all," Fros- ty replied. "I'm not too fond of motorcycles." "Well, there's no helping that now, what with Kali and Zeb still laid up downstairs," MMaxx snarked. Frosty pouted and Sheila winked at him. This made him blush, as he was only a second lieutenant in the Army Re- serves once a month, and she currently outranked him by a _lot_. "You know your jobs. Let's get into position. Have fun, conserve ammo and don't shoot anyone you recognize or like," DC said and signalled Sheila to open the overhead door. She did so, and they mounted their respective vehicles of destruction. Wolf and MMaxx buckled themselves into the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) as Wolf ran through the startup cycle. DC started the engine of his HellHog and did his pre-fight checks. Frosty kicked over the WarHog, got off of it, righted it, and then started the engine. Marius... "What the _hell_ are you going to do with _that_?" Frosty asked Marius as he finally got the WarHog running. "I'm gonna kick some major _ass_, what do you think?" Marius replied. He sealed the final clips and catches on his custom R.O.A.C.H. armor and clipped what looked like a blade-less hilt on his utility belt. He picked up his rather unorthodox method of transportation and smiled, his silver armor glinting prismatically. Wolf led the group out of the door, driving the UPS Truck around the building towards the quadrangle. DC took the right, leaving the HellHog in bike mode for now. Frosty wobbled to the left, still unsure of him- self. "Frosty, flip the toggle switch on the center of the cluster to change to armor mode. You're more familiar with that," DC said into his com- link. "Uh, thanks," Frosty said, and changed over to battloid-style armor mode. DC looked at him and agreed with Cor that the armor was UGLY. MMaxx looked out of the co-pilot's side window as Marius whisked by the UPS Truck. He keyed open his comlink. "Jay-sus, Mike, are we going to have to call you Norrin Radd now?" he laughed as he watched Marius do a loop-to-loop on a three-meter-long silver surfboard. "Surf's up, dudes!" Marius partied-on. "Target in sight, Gold-One," Gold-Three's voice came over his headset. This was the first break of their silence in two hours. "Roger, Gold-Three, head's up people, I think we're expected," Gold- One said into his mike. Captain Thomas "Raz" Rasinski U. S. Army(re- tired) double-checking their armamaments and gave Bill a thumbs-up. "Let's get the job done." They started their attack. "Here they come, gang," DC's voice came over all their comlinks. "Now let's get _dangerous_." "Can we have some music, Sheila?" Marius requested. Wolf cut in, "I've got just the thing..." "What the hell is that thing, Gold-One?" asked Gold-Seven. "Would you believe a UPS Truck?" Gold-One replied. "Um... no." Wolf cycled through the preflights and extended the wings. He'd made sure that he was carrying a full load of armaments, not to mention a few surprises. The UPS leapt skyward on a pillar of flame; Wolf still liked the look the P&Ws gave her, even though they were redundant with the impulse drive. "Bogeys at eleven to one spread, Thom," MMaxx said. "Long odds, but I can handle them," Wolf grinned. "'This looks like the start of a beautiful relationship.'" MMaxx just groaned, keyed up the HUDs, and brought the weapons online. In a matter of seconds he had all of the choppers on his scopes and three with lock-ons for the AIM-9M Sidewinders. He then brought up the laser designators for the Hellstreak Air-to-Air missiles. "Weapons on-line, Thom," MMaxx said. "You want these thingies here, too?" He gestured at the Phalanx and ZUNI weapon's controls. "Not just yet... I think the air-flow over the body might tear the ZUNI away from the roof," Wolf said, bringing the two M61A1 20mm Vul- can cannons primed and online. As he slaved the tracking system for the Vulcans to the new T.A.R.G.E.T. (Target Aquisition Radar Guidance Enhanc- ment Telemetry) system, he set the outside speaker and PF generation sys- tem for maximum broadcast. "Um, what did you have in mind for that?" MMaxx asked. "Trust me," Wolf grinned. "Gold-One, this is Blue-Fourteen. I have an inbound at seven o'clock. Too small for a tactical fightercraft. It doesn't match any missile pro- file that _I've_ ever seen. You got anything on visual, Blue-Thirteen?" "Negative, Blue-Fourteen, clear skies here." "Wait... I think I've got something..." came Blue-Six's pilot. "I'm not sure I'm seeing things, though... Looks like a guy on a flying surf- board." <<> Marius reveled at the feel of the wind on his faceplate as he shot south and looped up behind the attack helicopters. As he got closer, he was able to discern the different profiles of the choppers. He relayed this information to the rest of the group. "Guys, this is Marius... shouldn't we have a group code-name or some- thing?" "Okay, Marius," DC said. "From now on, you are Otaku-Two. I am Ota- ku-One, Frosty is Otaku-three, and the UPS Truck... is the UPS Truck. UPS-Prime, if you like. How's that?" "Hey, _I_ wanted to be Otaku-Two," came Frosty's voice. "Deal with it," DC said. "What are we up against, Otaku-Two?" "Looks like two groups of fourteen each, Otaku-One. I count six AH- 64 Apaches, four AH-60 Cobras, and four UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters in the second group. I'm assuming that the first group is identical. All of them seem to be carrying heavy armaments and extra fuel tanks. If they're who we think they are, them must have a KC-135 around for refuel- ing, or they aren't going to make it back to Virginia." "Oh, I don't think we have to worry about them making it back home," came Wolf's voice from UPS-Prime. "Optimistic, aren't you, Thom?" asked Frosty. He'd just managed to get his GGR Grey Goo Rifle out of the back panel of the WarHog armor. "I'm going in," said Marius. "Roger, Otaku-Two. Engage," said DC. DigiCom converted his bike to armor-mode and brought all of his avail- able weapons systems online. He checked his HUD for targets as the new gravitic drive lifted him clear of the ground and accelerated towards the incoming helecopters. He buzzed by the UPS Truck From Hell(tm) and gave MMaxx and Wolf a thumbs up. "Hey, nice armor, DC," Wolf said over his comlink. "Glad you like it. How's the paint job look?" DC asked. "Nice. Very nice," MMaxx said as he looked over the HHG-1. It was painted red, with gold flames emblazoned on it in all the dramatic pla- ces. "If you can't do it with style, don't do it at all," DC said. "Roger that, Otaku-One," Wolf said. "Leave a few for the rest of us, okay." "Only if I miss." "I have one more incoming from ten o'clock, Gold-One," Gold-Four said. "Appears to be a gold and red robot or body armor. It's a fast-mover all right... Oh, SHIT!" The rest of the transmission was lost as projectiles from DC's twin M.A.K.E.R. wrist pods tore through the canopy of the AH-64 next to him and slightly rearward designated 'Gold-Six'. "Repeat, Gold-Four," requested Gold-One. "Dammit, whatever that thing is, it just got Dutch's Apache," the pi- lot of Gold-Four said as he watched DC streak through the wreckage of the stricken chopper, completely shattering the airframe. He watched in hor- ror as his wingman and his co-pilot were obliterated by the ensuing fire- ball. "Al-riiiiiiiiiiight!" came Marius' voice over DC comlink. "First blood!" "Thanks, I needed that," DC said simply as he rocketed straight up- wards. The formations of helicopters started to break up into pairs as the remaining 'Otakus' began their attacks as well. As DC watched from his birds-eye view, Marius zipped up behind Blue- Eleven and matched it's speed slightly below it's tail rotor. Marius removed the hilt from his belt and ignited a meter-long white Nega-Blade. With a deft, overhead strike, he neatly sliced the boom of the AH-60 Co- bra, sending a seven meter section of the tail and the tailrotor spin- ning earthward. The remainder of the helicopter soon followed suit, and Marius was slightly happy to see two white 'chutes bloom and drift down- wards from the chopper. By a strange twist of fate, neither crewmember of Blue-Eleven was sliced up by the spinning blades of the dying chopper, which made a nice hole in the Keaney Gym parking lot. "This is not going well," Gold-One understated as he listened to the chatter on the net. Two choppers down, and we haven't fired a shot. Jesus. He answered this by letting loose four of the sixteen AAM-3 'Wea- sel' mini-missiles loaded under his winglets (okay, creative license is being used here, so shoot me) at the UPS Truck at his twelve o'clock. He followed this up with a seven second burst from the 30-mm Chaingun in the nose of his modified Apache which went wide, and then dove for the deck. As he was doing this, three of the eight UH-60 Blackhawks in the group touched down on the quadrangle. As Frosty watched in awe, two heavily armored figures emerged from each. The two from Gold-Three headed east, the two from Blue-Two headed southwest, and the remaining two from Blue- Ten headed directly towards him at a fast trot. "Oh, boy," Frosty said quietly. <<> (Previously unreleased) "Heads up, Thom! Incoming, twelve o'clock!" MMaxx shouted. Wolf had already spotted the two inbound 'Weasels', and had started taking evasive maneuvers. The first missile passed overhead by only fourteen meters, rocking the UPS Truck slightly with the backwash. It would be back in a matter of seconds, he knew. Wolf threw the controls over into a snap- roll to port. Hard. The UPS wallowed in the radical manuever and the starboard P&W flamed out. "Christ!" MMaxx exclaimed. Wolf completed the roll while at the same time bringing the impulse drive fully online. The only way around these things was speed. As he righted the ship, the second missile impacted with the starboard wing, shaking the entire airframe and tossing both of the crew around a bit. "Thom, I'm getting red lights for all the starboard side weapons sys- tems," MMaxx said. "I hope you don't plan on taking too many more of those." "Dammit, that's almost half our missile load, and two of the 'Side- winders' I'd planned on using," Wolf growled. "Bring the ZUNI online, and hit those two red buttons over there." He gestured towards the top center of the panel. MMaxx did so, and was surprised to see twelve more guidance packages automatically slave into the T.A.R.G.E.T. system on their own. "That shoud fix it," Wolf smiled. To MMaxx's puzzled look he said, "I added some of those 'Lobo' Revenger-III missiles that Cor came up with under the front cowling. They'll blind us for a second when we launch them, but they'll do the job." "Right." Gold-One smiled wickedly as he saw the second missile blow a wing off of the UPS Truck. That thing is heavily armed, but it's easy to hit, he thought in satisfaction. His smile faded as he saw it still airborn. Intel must have gotten it wrong, he concluded, the wings aren't what's keeping it in the sky. "Looks like a hard one to kill, Gold-One," said Blue-One. "Just being persistant, Blue-One. Another volley should do it," re- plied Gold-One. Chuck Dearborn was piloting Blue-One today. They'd gone through flight school together, and Jackson knew he could count on him in a pinch. As he spoke, two of the Cobras in his squadron dove past him towards the UPS Truck. "Go get 'em, boys," he rooted them on as Gold-Five and Gold-Eleven engaged the enemy. The two mandroids advanced on Frosty's WarHog armor, each holding a long, nasty looking rifle-style weapon in their right hands. They both were former Navy SEALs who had been hired especially for their special weapons skills, as were the rest of their group, designated 'Maxims' due to the resemblance of their armor to the giant robot Maximillian from Disney's _The_Black_Hole_ movie. The only exceptions were that they had feet and were painted flat black. Frosty didn't care what they looked like, all he knew was that they were not his friends and were probably going to cause him bodily harm. He brought his GGR to bear on the one on the left and crossed his fin- gers. I hope this thing really is non-lethal like DC said, he silently prayed. He set the target size and pulled the trigger. What looked like a Silly-Putty Egg left the barrel of the GGR travel- ing at just under mach 1 with a *BLOOP* sound and covered the distance to the mandroid in just under a second. The mandroid rocked back as the round impacted his chest plate and shattered. "What the fuck is that stuff?" the occupant of the mandroid armor asked his partner as the Grey Goo started to eat his armor and replicate itself. Within a matter of seconds the Goo had eaten his entire suit of armor, his belt buckle, his bootlaces, his pocketknife, the zippers on his jumpsuit, and his fillings. As a last hurrah before their built in magnesium charges flared, the Goo ate the waistband in his jockey shorts. The charges then triggered, and the former operator of the mandroid known as Maxim-15 stood their looking rather embarassed as his underwear fell down inside his zipperless jumpsuit. His partner, Maxim-16, watched this in both horror and amusement. Up- on seing the final result of the Grey Goo on Maxim-15, he hesitated for a moment, deciding whether to laugh at his buddy of shoot the bastard with the Silly-Putty Gun. His training won out. He fired a salvo of rounds from his heavy grenade launcher rifle just as Frosty fired a second round from his GGR. The Goo round hit the forearm of Maxim-16, and the Goo quickly ate his armor as well. Frosty strode forward through the explosions that the heavy grenades caused when they hit the ground around him. One impacted with his armor, but bounced off before exploding behind him. He pointed the GGR at the two Maxims. "You gonna come along peacefully, or am I gonna hafta get _rough_?" Frosty said in his best gangster impression. Maxim-15 looked over at Ma- xim-16, who was also having problems with his absent waistband. They both thought about running, but that would make this guy with the gun mad. They'd started to raise their arms when Maxim-15 pitched forward and fell forward onto his face. He convulsed and writhed around on the grass as his partner took a step back. Frosty moved forward towards the two men. As he got closer to the convulsing Maxim-15, Maxim-16 jumped on his back and started hammering ineffectively at his helmet. Frosty tried to reach around behind him to remove the annoyance, but the joints in his armor wouldn't allow it. Frosty did a nasty variation of the 'rolling crush', jumping slightly upwards and falling on his back, crushing the offending individual. As he stood back up, he noted that Maxim-15 had stopped convulsing. Looking at him on the infrared spectrum, he noticed a steady drop in body temp- erature. The bastard had killed himself rather than be captured. No doubt about it, someone was paying these guys _well_. DC in his HellHog armor hovered for all of fifteen seconds watching the action on the ground before his sense of danger overtook him. He opened a channel before reentering the frey. "Frosty, this is Otaku-One," said DC calmly. "I would back up a bit if I were you." "Roger that, Otaku-One," Frosty said, and dragged the remaining Maxim, now unconscious and in a great deal of pain off of the quadrangle. DC grinned inside his armor. This is like shooting ducks in a glovebox, he thought. He fired straight downwards onto the three Blackhawks that had landed and let off the six Maxims on the quadrangle. The pilots and flight crews had no chance as a rain of nitonol tangler rounds hit their rotors, snarling around the hubs of the main blades. As the choppers started to drop, DC followed them down, cutting loose with screamer rounds and both high-explosive and plasma grenades from both of his wrist M.A.K.E.R. pods. Two of the choppers exploded nicely and with lots of pretty colors as they hit the ground. DC was mildly annoyed as the third one actually managed to gyrorotate downwards for a _very_ hard crash. Calling it a 'landing' would be stretching it. DC sent a guided missile from one of his shoulder M.A.K.E.R. pods after it, loaded with a monowire net round that sliced the crippled Blackhawk to bite-sized bits. "Brutal, Otaku-One," came Wolf's voice over DC's comlink. "I, _like_ it!" Wolf banked UPS Prime around in a flat curve to port and headed back into the action. As soon as the first group of choppers was in range, he had MMaxx turn over all weapons systems to him. "That UPS Truck's coming back, Gold-One," came Gold-Thirteen's voice. "Roger that, Gold-Thirteen. Looks like he's pissed off." "Nah, just a little ticked," came Wolf's voice over Gold-One's cockpit speaker. "SHIT, we've been compromised!" Gold-Nine shouted. Wolf pressed a button on his controller, launching all twelve of the 'Lobo' Revenger-III missiles from the cowling of the UPS Truck. The ex- haust and flames blinded him for a couple of seconds, but that didn't bother him. Marius smiled broadly as he watched the salvo of missiles robotech picturesquely away from the UPS Truck before actively seeking targets. When all but one missile found a target Wolf whooped triumphantly over the open link. "Nice shootin', Tex," said Marius. "How many of them left, Otaku-Two?" asked Wolf. "Um... looks like twelve more," Marius said. "Whoops, make that ten," he said as DC sent a Cobra and another Blackhawk to a fiery grave. "'Why can't we all just get along?'," MMaxx quotes. "Why? That wouldn't be any fun," Wolf laughed. Maxim-3 and 4 advanced towards the Memorial Union, moving as care- fully and stealthily as their armored bulk would allow. They'd witnessed the takedown of Maxim-15 and 16, and decided to not assault Frosty head- on. They turned northwest, towards Roosevelt Hall. They were making good progress when Maxim-4 walked right into Pete Rose. "What the hell are _you_ supposed to be?" Pete, also known as 'Prose', asked. "Um... campus security?" Maxim-4 stammed quickly and moved to go a- round the obstruction. Pete reached into one of the myriad pockets on his sand-colored vest and pulled out his ACC ID. "I don't think so," Prose answered, holding the ID in his outstretched hand. Before Maxim-4 could respond, Prose touched the card to his chest- plate, initiating a massive core data-dump from his onboard systems. His armor now completely shorted out and shutdown, Maxim-4 collapsed under his own weight. Prose looked at the ID card briefly before pocketing it again. He looked at Maxim-3, who just stood there frozen in shock at what this un- armed student/university employee had done to his partner. "Boo!" Prose said laughingly, and Maxim-3 turned and fled. "Dammit, this is coming apart," Gold-One said as much to himself as to his co-pilot. Raz behind him grunted in agreement, and then groaned as a fletchette round tore through the sidewall of the cockpit and gut- ted him. Several more holed the canopy around Jackson's head as he dove to starboard to get out of the line of fire from DigiCom. Marius dove upwards (?) from on the deck and ran his board up through the bottom of Gold-Twelve's Cobra. As the silver surfboard shot through the gunship at four times the speed of sound, the shockwave started to tear the rotors apart in their backwash. Marius did a neat backflip in the air as the board circled around and landed neatly on it as the Cobra died. "This is fun, guys," Marius said, "but this one-at-a-time shit is for the birds." "Hey, _you're_ the one who had to go for style rather than firepower," DC said. "Yeah, stop whimpering," Wolf chimed in. "I'm heading down, Gold-One," said the pilot of Gold-Ten as he started to decend towards the Fine Arts parking lot with his Blackhawk. As he was about forty meters up, the chopper listed sharply to starboard. "What the fuck?" he started to say. Maxim-7 and 8 were in the rear of Gold-Ten when suddenly the star- board-side door was torn assunder, revealing the armored form of Otaku- One. "Gentlemen!" DC said over his outside speakers. "Let's broaden our minds!" MMaxx and Wolf "ooh-ed" and "aah-ed" as they watched a huge fireball erupt from what had seconds before been a black military helicopter. As the flames and debris settled slowly earthward, the figure of DigiCom could be seen hovering where the center of the explosion had been. "Jesus, Mario, what'd you hit them with?" Wolf asked. "I call it the 'Dragon's Breath'," DC said simply. "Scott Bernard style." "Oh," said Wolf. "Ouch." The remainder of the battle went quickly enough, the remaining eight choppers dying quickly enough. Gold-One was the last to fall, having fought valiantly against the 'Otakus' and actually scratching the paint on DC's HellHog armor with an AIM-9L Sidewinder. As the dust settled, Marius, DigiCom, and Wolf landed on the quadrangle and examined their few surviving prisoners. Wolf and MMaxx walked over to DC and looked at the captive he had been holding up by the lapels. The prisoner's feet dangled and kicked inef- ectively at DC's armor. "I think you can put him down now, Mario," MMaxx said. "Nah, let's torture him," Wolf grinned malevolently. "That comes later," DC said. "Right now I just want to see him squirm and beg." "William F. Jackson, Major, United States Army, Retired, 237-00-9412," Gold-One said from his elevated vantage point. "And you can all go FUCK yourselves." "Now, _that's_ not very nice, _Private_ Jackson," Wolf said. As this went on, Cor strolled leisurely around the side of Lippitt Hall. Marius' eyes opened slightly wider as he saw that Cor was armored up and had Maxim-9 slung over his left shoulder. "Hi, guys," Cor said. "This guy was trying to pry open the back door. His partner decided to not come along peacefully." "Ah," Marius said. "So" Cor said. "Did I miss anything?" Freefall________________________________________________________TWELVE "Paranoia is obsolete -- It's all true." -Dr. Hunter S. Thompson LATER THAT SAME NIGHT Maxim-3 was alone now, Maxim-4 having been neutralized by the strange student with the photographer's vest. The armored figure crept closer to the Lippitt Complex by way of Ballentine Hall. The bushes stirred slightly as Maxim-3 leapt over the railing on the west side of the concrete ramp leading to the front entrance. Another leap took Max- im-3 over the east side railing and back into the bushes. The armored figure froze as another suit of armor tromped by holding a large gun in it's left hand. Frosty clomped along, looking for bits of wreckage. Mario and Jon had thought it a wise idea to try and 'goo' as much of the remains as possible, after taking the least damaged for analysis, of course. He glanced briefly at the bushes in front of Ballentine. He thought he'd seen motion there, but he wasn't sure. He shook his head and continued onwards. I've spent too much fucking time in this tin can, he thought. Maxim-3 continued making progress towards Lippitt. After a brief pause to look around, the Maxim armor thumped up against the hulking form of the building in question. Now for the doors. Checking to see that the coast was still clear, a quick sprint around the outside wall took Maxim-3 to the target. The armored figure carefully and slowly opened the lefthand door, wary of booby traps. There were none, and Maxim-3 slipped inside. "What the hell is this?" Maxim-3 said, looking at the keypad and card lock setup there. After a brief inspection, a small drill was extended from the right-hand gauntlet that made brief work of the locking mecha- nism. The door clicked and swung slowly open. Maxim-3 stepped cautiously inside and came face to face with Sheila, who was dressed in a blue Imperial Klingon battle uniform, complete with a very nasty-looking semicircular sword called a batl'eH. "Bitch!" Maxim-3 shouted, bringing up the grenade rifle that had been clipped to the right leg of the armor. <<> "After you," Sheila replied calmly, hefting the batl'eH. Maxim-3 charged towards Sheila, swinging the grenade rifle wildly from left to right and back again quickly. Sheila deftly sliced off the end of the rifle, then with superhumanly blinding speed proceeded to shuck Maxim-3's armor piece by piece. Maxim-3 was quickly stripped of the armor and stood there looking rather surprised. "As I said," Sheila said as she finished and straightened her uniform. "After you... bitch." Maxim-3 just fumed and tossed her long black hair around her shoulders dejectedly. THE NEXT DAY KLARION DATACORP HEADQUARTERS, Langley, VA. The Director read the report in silence. Just this fact scared the hell out of most of those present. Raising an eyebrow, he placed the forty-seven page report slowly to one side of his end of the conference table. Dr. Clarence R. McGreggor stood to one side of the Director and silently fumed. He'd been undermanned, outgunned, and worst of all un- informed of the level of the enemies capabilities. His task force had been wiped out, and all he had been able to do was watch from afar, hav- ing had orders to not interfere at any cost. Madeline Khinde, for her part, sat frozen solid in her chair at the table. She'd lost eighty-two men that she had personally trained for this mission, not to mention sixteen sets of very expensive 'Maxim' ar- mor and several billion dollars worth of military hardware. Dr. Robert Lars and Dr. Sheuchster just sat silently, looking at their notes and trying hard to not see the Director's displeasure. "Gentlemen," the Director said, despite the presence of Ms. Khinde. "I am afraid I am going to have to handle this problem more personally than I'd like. That is all." He waved them all out of the room with a quick, disgusted wave. When they had all left, the Director slowly swivled his chair around to face the wall behind him. Bolted there was a large aerial shot of the entire Klarion DataCorp complex, as rendered by a very good, and very dead, artist. "Screen on," he said quietly. The painting pulled slightly away from the wall and swung upwards into the wall. A large viewscreen lit up instantly in the space that the picture had vacated. The head and shoulders of a man in a blue and yel- low military-looking uniform turned to face the Director. "Commander," the Director said as the man saluted but before he was able to speak. "Northeastern Seaboard, United States, area designated as 'Rhode Island'. Destroy it." He pressed the button on the chair a- gain and the screen faded as the painting slid back into place. THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON The Commander turned away from the view screen and spoke to his helmsman. "You heard our leader. Set course for 'dirt'." "Um, that's 'earth', sir," the helmsmen replied. "Whatever," the Commander said. "Just do it." As he spoke the huge starship left it's stationary orbit and headed towards the distant, blue- white globe. KINGSTON, RI <<> "How are our 'guests' holding up, Marius?" Corinthian asked. They had put them into seperate holding cells after bioscanning them for more of the 'suicide ampules' that had taken Maxim-15 from their grasp. It had been a simple matter to remove them from under the skin on the underside of the left upper arm. A portion of the DemoRoom had been devoted to holding the eight surviving members of the assault force that Klarion had sent against them. The three complete sets of Maxim armor were down in DigiCom's lab. "Well, they're not exactly _happy_ about being captured, but they're holding up. Most of them have only given that name-rank-serial-number crap. The one in holding cell four hasn't said anything," Marius paused. "The one that Frosty crushed isn't going to make it, Jon," he went on softly. "His ribs were flayed by the force of the impact and the by sheer weight of the armor." "I know," Cor said. "I saw the chart, as well as the x-rays. Do you think we should 'tank' him?" He gestured vaguely towards the other side of the DemoRoom where Carley and Zebediah were almost done playing aquar- ium. "Worth a try, I guess," Marius sighed. "No sense letting the poor bastard suffer just because he and his buddies tried to kill us." "Why, Marius," Cor smiled. "That's rather humanitarian of you. You getting soft?" "I don' think that's funny. I abhor killing where it's not strictly neccessary, Jon." "Sorry, man," Marius said. Suddenly everything shimmered slightly. "What was that?" "Eddies in the time-space continuum, I think," Cor replied thoughtful- ly. "I think the future just changed." "How'd he get in there?" FAR EARTH ORBIT, at that exact moment The Commander stood looking out of the viewport on the bridge of his ship. It was actually a pretty planet, this 'dirt'. Pity, really, that it would be destroyed in a few decades. He moved towards his command chair and pressed a button on the console. "Is the device prepared?" he asked. "Yes, Commander," came the canned reply. "Excellent," the Commander closed the link. He turned towards the tactical officer. "Do you have the target, Lieutenant?" "Yes, Commander," the young officer replied. "Fire on my mark. Three. Two. One. Mark," the Commander said fi- nally. A slight *choom* sound was heard as a large, round object left the bay of the huge space carrier. "It's done, then," he said softly. NORTH AMERICAN AEROSPACE DEFENSE COMMAND (NORAD) Cheyenne Mountain, Wyoming <<> The young staff officer at the seventh monitor board sat bolt upright in his chair. A rather large blip had just appeared on the screen, head- ed for the CONUS northeastern seaboard. "Sir! I have an incoming trans- ient in Sector One! It just appeared on my board, sir!" Major General B. Howard Simpson, USAF, stood up slowly and headed over to the Lieutenant's side. "Did you run a diagnostic on that board, son?" he asked with a slight drawl. "Yes, sir! Three times. It's still there," he said shakily. This was his first alert, and he _knew_ that this couldn't be a drill. "Good. What's the trajectory of the inbound?" the General turned to another officer who was looking on interestedly. "You got any launch transients in the Commonwealth?" The young man shook his head. "No? Where'd this bird come from then? COLONEL!" he shouted this to another staff officer who had been walking on the upper level of the large room. "Get Air Combat Command on the phone and varify this inbound!" He turned back to the young officer. "Sir, I don't have a trajectory. It seems like it just dropped out of space," the Lieutenant said, now visibly nervous. "Okay, maybe it's a meteorite or a piece of an old satellite," General Simpson said soothingly to calm the Lieutenant down. "Sir!" the Colonel said from the hotline to Strategic Air Command. "I have verification of the inbound. Shall I notify SPORTSMAN?" By this he refered to the current codeword for the Commander in Chief. "I'll handle it, Colonel, alert CINC-NORAD that we have a situation," Simpson said. He walked over to the red phone and lifted the cradle. "Where's that bird headed and what's it look like on radar?" "Sir, I estimate P.O.I. as being southeastern New England... It's tough to get a good estimate, sir. It appears to be in freefall. Oh my God! Size estimate at one-point-five KLICKS, sir!" the Lieutenant was frantic now. "It's a fucking halfaMILE across!" "Someone relieve that man!" General Simpson roared. Into the phone he said: "Good morning, Mr. President..." KINGSTON, RI "Holy SHIT!" Frosty exclaimed, almost falling out of his chair as he sat up startled. "How the fuck did _that_ happen?" "Information's still coming in, Mike," Sheila said from beside him. She had a slightly far-off look in her eyes. Frosty knew that was bad. It meant she was processing billions of data bits at once. Frosty reached towards the panel and pressed a large red button. In- stantly all hell broke loose as the lights went to red and klaxons star- ted to sound throughout the building. "What's going on?" Cor said as he flickered in next to Mike. "GAAAHH!!" Mike shouted and did fall over this time. "Jesus! Don't sneak up on a guy like that." He scratched his head. "How'd you get in here so fast, anyway?" "Never mind that," Cor said. "WHAT is going on?" Frosty regained some of his composure. "Oh, not much, we've just been put on Defensive Condition Three, that's all." "DEFCON-3?" Cor said incredulously. "No shit?" "No shit," Sheila said, coming out of her slight trance. "NORAD has picked up a huge object plummeting directly towards southeastern New Eng- land... Precise area of impact, unknown at this time." "You got anything on the satellites, Sheila?" Cor asked. "Nothing, it just appeard in space and started dropping." "Dammit!" Cor exclaimed in frustration. "I'd better go topside and have a look." He headed towards the doors. "Give me ten minutes." "Christ, be careful," Frosty said. "My Son's not here, but I appreciate the sentiment," Cor said with an evil grin. Frosty just shook his head. <<