SEa Vixen 8 + final (32 pages!)

[simon leo barber]

SEa Vixen 8, and final, folks ! After this, the plot carries on
in "Eldritch Hop", and the latest, "Curse Of Kawaii". If anyone
wants me to post this, let me know (it's getting expensive for me!)

Simon (I know chainswords on mechsuits are a silly idea really!)
Barber

CHAPTER EIGHT

It was, outwardly, a familiar enough scene in the echoing expanse of
the underground submarine pens. Rising from the black depths in a
welter of foam blown from the ballast tanks, the great black bulk of
the submarine gently nudged towards the waiting dockside.
But this was not the Sea Vixen, nor were these docks the hidden
basalt fastness of Site Three, far out in the Pacific - the docking
bays were painted with the flaking designer pastel hues of late
Twentieth Century Corporate Colours, and the name on the sail was in
old American, not Cyrillic characters.
The Good Ship Ivan The Terrible had come home.

"Finished with engines, Mister Celt," the Captain smiled
towards his multimedia screen "reactors to shut down any time you're
ready."
It was an ill wind that blew no good, Captain Temple mused,
switching to an exterior view of the flooded road tunnel that formed
the heart of their base - at least, when the earthquake of '06
finished, we ended up with one of the world's finest harbours.
Protected by the fortress and trading post of New Tsushina on the
Straits of San Francisco, the Gulf of San Joanquin was home to many
private enterprises like his.
"Yo, Sir !" The ship's Security Accountant, Washington
Washington the Twenty-third, handed him a thin folder of time-
unstable paper "We got de-tails of our next mission just in. Looks
like we got major Media customers, they REAL irritated with that ol'
Russky sub done popped off three satellites they done paid fair and
square for."
Captain Jim T. Temple XVII slapped the polished hull of the
reconditioned Typhoon Class submarine appreciatively, the faded
sleeve of his old Administrative Combat Camouflage (* 1) uniform
strained to bursting point by the overweight human inside it. "Hell,
boy, don't you go badmouthin' Russky subs ! You ride one, dontcha ?
I reckon it'll be a cryin' shame to off that Sea Vixen - but,
business is business." He took the orders and memorised them before
holding the paper up to the sunlamp, and watching the printing
vanish. "So, ayuh, we're going to get us some Fox huntin'."

....................

Back at the real Van Morgan's Spires hideaway, the atmosphere
was cheerful as the now wealthy and well-supplied crew transformed
the long-abandoned complex into Home. While the Engineering team
assembled the encrypted radio links to stitch them tracelessly into
the world communication systems, the rest of the crew had spent
their time in making their accommodation comfortable.
"Need any help, Ma'am ?" Viktor Solynon cautiously poked his
muzzle round Suzuko's door, a few days later.
Foxes cannot whistle, but they can hum beautifully. The vixen's
surprisingly deep, ululating tone broke off as she turned to greet
the young canine.
"Viktor ! Come on in and sit down !" She gestured towards a
cluttered stool, and swept the tools off it with a flick of her
glossy silver tail "I haven't seen you for simply Days !"
The youngest member of her crew shyly picked his way through
the piles of tools and materials. This was a side to their commander
he had never seen before. He had imagined she would have left the
room in bare traditional simplicity, like most of the rooms of Toho
Academy - but no. Red-brown fabric draped from the ceiling and lined
the walls, creating a softly lined den within the hard-edged
concrete of the old Covertine Corporation TM building.
Suzuko threw herself down on the round, deep-cushioned bed, and
gazed at him bright-eyed. Behind her, the bed seemed to have an
inner curtained alcove, almost like something she had excavated
herself.
Viktor swallowed nervously. Of all the crew, he was most fluent
in the languages their commander spoke. Captain Broznov's French was
fairly good, and Gregor Eisenberg knew some English and a few words
of American - but nobody spoke Japanese. He was grateful that he
lived in cosmopolitan St. Petersburg, and that their Commander was a
Diplomat's daughter.
"Is there anything you need help with ?" He volunteered "My
room's all set up - it's the first time I've had one all to myself."
Even modern Imperial military accommodation tended to be cramped and
ultra-spartan, and that was doubly so on submarines.
Suzuko rolled over on her side luxuriantly, bare silver fur
hissing on sheer fabric. She looked up at the billowing sheets of
cloth that made a darkened den of the cold square prefabricated
room, and closed her eyes for a moment. Indoors, she had happily
shed the constricting silicone suit and all its associations - it
wasn't as if she had anything to hide from her own crew any more.
Her eyes were wide, calm pools as she turned to face Viktor.
"Thanks, but .... I want to do this for myself. This could be
sort of important to me, and if I get anything wrong I want it to be
my fault. But how about you and the rest of the boys - I've hardly
poked my nose outside here since I started. Is everything coming
along ?"
Viktor opened his mouth, then suddenly frowned. "Mostly it's
fine. But there IS one thing. About our pal Totchka."

(* 1) [ By the Millenium, the forces of the then U.S.A. consisted of
90% office and support personnel, all of whom objected to not
wearing "real" combat clothing at their desks. Indoor Urban
Camouflage was arrived at by taking an office full of last year's
equipment, throwing in a few large fragmentation bombs, and
computer-scanning the colour pattern of the resultant debris.....]

"Oh ?"
"Yes. I .... uh, I mean, I know it's sort of hard to tell, but
I think he's finally gone over the edge. Captain Broznov ordered him
to see the Doc; he's over there right now."
Suzuko's ears rose in alarm. She rather liked her psychotic
Weapons Officer. In fact, she liked anyone who lived life to the
full - and of all her crew, Totchka certainly put the most
dedication into his work. (Whether you asked him to or not.)
She stretched and rose, picking up a waterproof cape and a
torch for the long walk across to the other end of the site. Short
of building airlocks, the Covertine CorporationTM had been unable to
affect the morning downpour as tropically moist air condensed in the
cool underground chambers.
"I'll go and see him," her voice was full of concern "It's no
bother - the Doctor said he wants to see me once a week now anyway."

"I DID see it." The Weapons Officer of the Dh110 sat stubborn in his
chair. "Definite. I DID."
"Sure you did, midshipman. But after HOW much Vodka, eh ?"
Doctor Zarin, their skeletally thin weasel medic, paced the room
with whiskers bristling in irritation. "Look, Totchka, this has gone
far enough, nuh ? We all know what it's like on those lower levels;
you stare into the dark too long and your eyes start playing tricks
on you. But that's all it is; we've explored everywhere VERY
thoroughly now, and there can't be anything like that hiding down
there."
"Like what ?"
Doctor and patient turned, to see Suzuko shaking the water off her
cape in the doorway. Zarin threw his hands in the air helplessly,
and grabbed a translator from the desk drawer.
++ Maybe you can talk to him, Commander Lady. Mad beast here
claims he being followed everywhere. I doctor, fix broken bones and
peroxide burns and all. Not trained on straitjacket cases. ++
Suzuko's tail rose in surprise. "Something's following you ?"
She asked curiously "What sort of thing ?"
Totchka took the translator and stood for a minute, thinking.
At last he began to type. Doctors, he never had trusted. As he'd
pointed out before his last psych board, all you had to do was mix a
psychologist with an osteopath, and you got a psychopath.....
++ Four days ago. Finished blasting pen to drydock First Cub,
finished slinging hammock in room. Went walk lower levels. Felt
being followed. Saw nobody, smelt nobody. Went past security camera,
still feel followed. Ran back, replayed tape, nothing on it but me.
Forgot about it but yesterday ... ++
The canine's eyes went wide, and his ears stood up rigid in
shock as he stared at Suzuko. After an instant, she realised. He was
not looking at her - but at something BEHIND her in the doorway.
"ZAIIZ !" He yelped, pointing past her as she spun round.
For a second she stood eye to eye - if that is what they were - with
something the Cryptozoology and Arcaneology students would swim from
the Academy to glimpse. And then it was gone. Like an image viewed
between rotating polarised films, it simply faded out of existence.
She stared at the empty air for a second, and picked up the
translator from where Totchka had dropped it. With a grim nod, she
read the description he had written there.
"I can't improve much on that," she grimaced "Like a starfish
mixed in with a crab and an octopus - and a helicopter."

..................

Toho Academy was also seeing something quite rare; a quiet and
peaceful day. Those few folk there were making the most of it; in
another two weeks the first-year students would be arriving for
their induction and initiations before the term proper began.
"Some folk, of course, are going to need a lot more time
adjusting than others." Mangana Kohaki was lying on the clean, empty
sand beach, relaxing while Horst Graben gently massaged suntan oil
into her back.
"Cousin Kazuko should be back on the planet by now," she fumed
"We're bringing Broohilda over here for the first time - she'll have
to get used to the world, before she tackles the Academy."
Horst smiled. There was more than hair colour to distinguish
the two Manga girls; Mangana had, from her own accounts, spent most
of her mid teens "rescuing" her little cousin from one "fate worse
than death" or another. Until the string of coincidences grew too
great, that is, and Kazuko was left to find her own way back. If Kaz
really HAD been the totally vacant brains-in-the-tail that she
usually appeared to be, Mangana would perhaps have pitied her, but
certainly liked her better. Nobody did so well in class without
having a sharp and agile brain - it was the fact that Kazuko simply
PREFERRED to behave as she did, that irritated people.
"Don't say we've got more of Those Obnoxious Aliens coming to
stay." Thick muscles in the boar's wide shoulders bunched and
knotted as he firmly kneaded her tension away. Mangana rolled over
to offer her front for his attentions, and he saw her eyes were
troubled.
"It was the only thing we could do." The huge orbs were bleak
as she looked out over the ocean "We had to bring her here - she
saved my life, and anyway, if she stays on Glarata's World, hers is
what you might call uninsureable. That's why she's been in hiding in
Mother's tower, on the edge of The Twisted Zone: anyone from my
neighbourhood simply shoots people like her on sight."
There was a long silence, as the surf crashed on the sand
below, and far above them contrails slashed down towards Japan from
the edge of space.
Mangana stretched out luxuriously. She had the whole afternoon
and evening to herself, and by a rare coincidence on the medical
roster, so did Horst. Neither had to be back on duty at the Medical
Centre till nine the next day.... which would even allow them a
comfortable lie-in in the morning. With a glass of lager-free
alcohol in one hand, and the other firm about his bristling waist,
she looked out across the unending Ocean.
"Broohilda's never had a friend, till we met her," the image
could not quite leave her alone "But she's lovely ! More like you
than me, really - she's got straight horns, a soft little tail and
fur like honey in moonlight. The gentlest little doe you've ever
seen." She nuzzled him affectionately, and her grip tightened.
Horst's biology was quite different from a human's in many ways she
found delightful, but needed plenty of advance warning to warm up.
He raised an expressive eyebrow. "They don't like Furs over
there ?"
"Furs, yes - we've twenty-six species, Newbloods they're
called. But nobody likes HER folk. They aren't a Species, exactly,
more an anti-species. They can breed with literally Anything but
each other. Broohilda's unique as far as I know; the rest of the
Entropes you really would want to exterminate to the last one, for
good reasons. But her Mother was human, and raised her the way none
of that kind ever have been, as far as I know."
The boar snorted. "Her mother was human ? So they can't be all
THAT unpopular - at least one human certainly liked the idea of ..
Entropes, you say ?"
Mangana twisted round to face him, eyes (if possible) wider
than ever in alarm.
"Horst ! Please - don't you EVER mention that to Broohilda !
Her mother only carried her to term because she was a healer, sworn
to never harm anything... well, most Entropes are forced on dumb
animals because they don't have a choice in the matter either.
There's a place on the far side of The Zone where that sort of child
gets left for the others to find. And Broohilda would have been
brought up just like the rest of them. But she'd got her Mother's
beauty if not her shape, and she was born to a priestess, so nobody
could do anything to her as long as she stayed inside the Temple ...
when she was orphaned, if we hadn't been around, the poor girl
wouldn't have lasted a week."
"Sounds like she'll get the chance to catch up on a few
things," Horst said quietly. Mangana smiled, and wrapped both arms
around him.
Never mind if airheads like Mae and Kaz DO think he's dull, she
thought contentedly. He's thoughtful, dependable, rock-solid - and
what he decides to do, he does well. No wonder he's breaking new
ground in Arcaneology. Give him a task and he takes all the time it
needs to be thorough, flawless - you just DON'T see Horst missing a
single detail. When he does a job, he gets it right. And I don't
just mean in Arcaneology ......
Her eyes gleamed as she looked up at him. "Well - this IS Toho
Academy. It was founded just for people in unusual circumstances to
make the most of what they've got, and catch up on what they've
missed out on." She kissed him full on the triangular front plate of
his snout, and was gratified to see his cheek glands starting to
respond already. "In fact, I'd better make the most of this week -
I'll be busy guiding her around when she gets in.... and she could
be a VERY popular girl."
For a full minute she just held him close, feeling the
invigorating needling of his freshly trimmed bristles on her sun-
warmed skin. Then Horst pulled away, his eyes troubled.
"Ach, Mangana - you truly do not ... mind ?" Her oil-glistening
face and chest was doubly shiny with the hormone-laden saliva that
spilled uncontrollably from his sharp-tusked jaws at times like
these.
She grinned. "Ach, Horst - you can't help which end Nature put
your musk glands ! Anyhow, it looks like my Mother's genes approve
of the idea - maybe by this time next year, I'll be doing it
too....."
Mangana Kohaki had recently discovered another gift from the
immortal side of her family. Heavily magical creatures tended
towards long lifespans, and individuals might expect to live through
many changing conditions. So their Immune system had a long-term
role - instead of just responding to microscopic partners, the body
adapted to suit larger-scale demands. Old portraits of her mother
had always puzzled her; a century ago her parent had far less human
features than today.
Still, she mused - I suppose it's nothing stranger than
building up muscles after the stimulation of exercise.... except
that I know just where I want the stimulation to be coming from !
What the hell, she chuckled to herself, eyes closed and
enjoying the sensation as Horst almost worshipfully stroked the
extra assets she had developed over the last few months - I've seen
Boar girls, they look fine to me. And it's not as if I can't afford
a couple of extra bikini tops....
Suddenly, what looked very like a standard medical pager on the
beach-towel started to beep urgently - but not with the standard
Medical alert tone. With her customised one.
"Oh, NINJA ! " She swore venemously "Now, of all times !" (The
offending word had fallen out of use at the end of the Twentieth
Century, vanishing from polite usage after becoming the most over-
worked five-letter word in the dictionary. Now referred to only as
the "N-Word", it had vanished from conversation much as a dense
enough piece of matter vanishes from sadly abused spacetime.....)
Reluctantly wriggling her eel-slippery body out of his arms,
she switched the radio into Interactive mode, and jammed the headset
on.
"Yes ? Mangana here ... oh, Suki ! Interrupting anything ? No,
but in another ten minutes... oh, you have ? You've got the Datalink
working and secure both ways ? That's great, I'll call you from the
Medcentre after nine local tomorrow, then. Bye !"
She switched the radio back to standby mode, and turned back to
Horst. Whether it was his aura or his body chemistry that was
telling her nonhuman genetics how to adapt, it was certainly working
- and not just cosmetically. At the base of her spine there was an
itching that reminded her of the one time she had healed from a
broken bone - though in this case it was going to be an addition
rather than a repair as her vestigial tailbone began to develop. And
thinking of making little additions - an ultrasound scan the week
before had told her just how far she had already departed from the
main thread of humanity. In another month or two, she was going to
seriously think about taking some form of Precautions......
"Now then. Where did we get to ? " She kissed the corner of his
flowing jaw, relaxing as musk she could not taste slipped inside her
to continue its work of transforming what had only superficially
been a human body in the first place. With a nature spirit and a
Daemon for grandparents, she was hardly going to be speciesist about
this.
The boar grinned engagingly, his tusks glistening. Bowing his
head, he pressed the flat plate of his snout against her stomach,
convulsively champing jaws flooding it with slippery foam that ran
down onto the beach towel as his mate's eyes softened and her own
scent bagan to enrich the air . "We were just about here, I reckon,
when -"
Mangana's whole body went pale in anger as the radio beeped
again.
"When THAT happened." She snatched up the headphones again.
"Hello, Mangana here. MAE ! What do you mean, you hope you're not
interrupting anything ?"

....................

Across on Ogosowara Island, a wide-eyed Mae Tzuko put the
transmitter down a minute later, trembling in shock.
Piotr nudged her knowingly. "You'll have to give me some more
language lessons," he grinned. "I didn't recognise half of the
things she told you to do."
Mae swallowed noisily. "Me neither. And some of them, you'd
need a VERY strange anatomy to try it, and probably an extra
Dimension."
"Anyway, Ilania nodded "She did arrange to pick us up tonight,
since she's got nothing else scheduled to do. We'll have to have
this radio checked out, though - it sounded just like she was saying
it through clenched teeth....."

As evening fell across the Island, Mangana showered and swapped
her beach-towel for a flying suit, as she ran down the pre-flight
check list on Mae's replica Junkers 287.
"Well - it looks OK from here," Horst called up from the hangar
floor "One cockpit, two wings, three wheels, four engines - how
fussy did Mae say to be ?"
His sadly unmated mate stuck her head out of the escape hatch,
and thumbed her snub nose at him. "I can tell you've never skimped a
safety check, and ended up with spilled peroxide eating through your
boots . I'm flying with them for this one, and - " despite the day's
disappointment, she raised a grin "If you mess up and we all get
killed, I swear I'll never speak to you again !"
The boar's face was suddenly serious, as he recalled his school
days on a timeline where that aircraft was recorded as flying in
Year 22 of the Empire. "You DO know, Mae didn't have time to rebuild
this antique the way she'd planned to ? She's put decent engines
inboard, but the outers are the original JUMOs. Ach, they're good
for getting marks in the exam, but they've only got twelve hours
life in them. And I DON'T think she put them in yesterday, either."
She shrugged, shoulders almost touching her pumpkin Manga head.
"The two turborams should keep us in the air, once we're aloft. And
as for danger - a pair of dodgy turbojets are NOTHING, compared with
the rest of this trip ."

.................

Most aircraft in the 2030's were equipped with a Strapdown
Inertial Guidance System for navigation - but in Mae's case, she
only had the cheaper Naildown version. The coordinates being fed
into it were for the Naval Air Base some ten kilometres outside
Vladivostok, where that evening yet another visitor was touching
down to make Admiral Rhuzkov's life miserable.
The metallic tyres of the hypersonic transport screamed on
concrete as the needle-nosed craft returned to Earth, skin still
glowing from the long slanting re-entry across Siberia. Standing
ready to greet the new arrivals were a pair of figures whose long
red cloaks flapped in the storm of reversing turborams, hands
clasped to protect their ears as the huge spaceplane taxied past
them.
"This gets better by the minute." Commissar Bhigliev shouted,
though even Vhang a metre away could barely hear him "Lady Tanya's
in charge of the Imperial Investigative Team - she's an old flame of
our dear Admiral."
"So ?" Vhang smoothed down his freshly cleaned uniform as the
boarding ramp hastened up and a plump figure stepped out onto it.
"So... I took a peek into her private files, what else ?
Rhuzkov dumped her as soon as he got his first big command, on Kola
- but she worked her way up after him, and ended up marrying into
the Court. That's one MEAN mountain of mink that's about to fall on
him. Why -" and the Wolverine's eyes almost vanished in rapt
contemplation "I'll bet she gets him on things even WE hadn't
thought of...."
Above them, Lady Tanya Valkin checked her jewelled watch, and
smiled. Seventy-nine minutes from the pad by Lake Ladoga to here,
across the width of the entire Empire. Her gaze flashed across the
ranks of the assembled welcoming committee...... just as she
expected. As always, dear Ioseph was too busy to come and see her.
Behind her in the doorway, the crack team of Combat Accountants
stood assembled, ready to move out at her word. Tanya nodded
graciously. "Dear" Ioseph was soon going to have a long, long talk
with her - like it or not.

...................

In the Naval Aviation barracks some thirty kilometres up the coast,
Sergei flopped onto his bunk like a filleted fish, and lay there
trembling.
"Hey ! Sergei-boy !" his roommate Andre Andrevich grinned down
from the bunk above "Your Colonel keep you back for "special Duties"
again ? Maybe she thinks your experience, or something, needs
expanding."
The bear lay like a wrung-out dishrag. Two futures lay before
him - one where the Comrade Colonel stopped looking for the accursed
submarine and released him for safer duties (such as testing the
lethal dosage on interrogation drugs) - and the other future, where
she continued to work out her considerable frustrations on him. That
he had lasted longer than her other navigators was less due to her
softening temper than because his ursine frame could survive large
doses of damage and still function.
He opened a bruised eye. "Andre - did you get the message out
onto the Worldnet ? Here's the stuff you asked for, Saint Rasputin
alone knows why." He made a devout gesture at the Icon on the wall
as he passed the flask of "Genuine Japanese Single Malt Flavoured
Whisky-Type Healthful Beverage" up to his friend. "I wouldn't pour
that stuff in the Manta's tanks, let alone in ME."
Andre raised the flask towards the Icon in a grave salute. "If
anybody finds out who put THAT message on the public access files,
the Saint alone knows how we'll get out of it."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx File Startxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

++ If anyone knows of a way to make a certain Submarine being sought
for its scrap value by the Imperial Fleet less attractive as a
target, please respond. Pacific Fleet WILL hunt it until it is Paid
for or confirmed destroyed. Answer required urgently, please append
to this file. ++

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx File Ends xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Mangana dropped her kitbag in shock, and stared at the wallscreen.
One of her cyberspy programs had come home literally at the minute
she was leaving for the airfield.
"Now, that has GOT to be a trap of some kind," she muttered.
But even so, she initiated a call along a newly installed covert
cyberspace line, to where a certain peroxide vixen was liable to be
VERY interested INDEED.

.....................

"We are going WHERE ?" Suzuko sat down heavily on the edge of the
table.
Captain Broznov had been on hand when Mangana's call had come
in; quickly he had called his officers together and they had devised
a plan.
"For sheer sense and safety," she looked around them, wide-eyed
"that sounds like something Totchka on a bad day would come up with.
On an Off day."
There was a long silence, while the bleached bear looked his
Commander up and down.
"Ma'am," Pavel said gravely "Our loyalty IS to you; we're
outlaws. But unless we can get Pacific Fleet off our tails once and
for all, one day they WILL get us. Maybe we can run for a long time,
but our luck runs out sometime. You know this."
Suzuko gave a long sigh, scanning from one face to the next.
"All right. It's my ship, as you say, so it's my funeral too.
Get the Sea Vixen ready to sail - I'm coming with you."

..................

Commissar Bhigliev was feeling better than he had done in a
very long time. Lined up for inspection was a full squad - two five-
man teams of fully suited Naval Infantry, under his exclusive
orders.
Yes, he thought, savage glee flooding the mustelid mind - yes,
and they're even from the same company that lost eight comrades the
LAST time we hit Shahaguo Island. One blasted to pulp and seven in
hospital with their minds half wiped - yes, these are the troops who
will do EXACTLY what I want.
Almost gloatingly he surveyed the nearest black-armoured
figure, Corporal Ilych Dernilov, leader of the second team. Clad in
the latest Model 11 bis power armour, he carried the firepower of a
main battletank of old - but one that could run and leap with the
agility of a martial arts champion ! That was the advantage of Mecha
troops; they were fast enough so that no weapon heavy enough to
breach their armour stood much chance of hitting it. Only another
mechsuit posed a real threat - and that angle too had been
considered. One arm of the suit was elongated to carry the squat
barrel of a recoilless cannon, the "Nifty Fifty" that they had
bought from the last battle armourers in what was now Japan's East
Coast Colonies. And just in case THAT was not enough.....
Bhigliev's grin widened ferociously at what was in the
trooper's other fist. Mechs often fought at grappling range, within
the danger zone of their own cannon. No problem. Thirty thousand
watts of liquid-explosive energy drove the rending fury of an
armour-piercing chainsword that could slice through a tank's
reactive armour like so much crisp toast !
"The last time around, we all underestimated the opposition,"
his heavy frame was bouncing with energy like a ball, as he
addressed his forces "and we WON'T be doing that again, hmmmm ? Just
to make certain, I've obtained some Very Special Services, that you
won't find in Jane's All The World's Fighting Suits. Trooper Adriak,
you notice, carries something less mundane than a chainsword. And in
that ermine head, rest assured, he's got a lot more than big sharp
teeth."
So, Bhigliev mused. You want to up the stakes and use psykers
on us ? Fine with me. Psykers, we got psykers.

...................

The Dh110 was becoming a rather cosmopolitan vessel. It had a
Russian crew. It had a Japanese commander. And now it had acquired a
mascot, origin unknown.
"I don't know what it IS," Chief Palmyetnich grumbled "but it's
a damned nuisance, I know that much."
"I dunno," Gregor observed as a polychrome blur streaked down
the corridor past them "looks a cute little beastie to me."
Something had attached itself to the Sea Vixen's crew without
the formality of a job interview. Mangana had cursed sulphurously
when she heard the description of the new acquisition, that had
possibly been wandering the dark corridors of Van Morgan's Spires
since the original builders had departed.
"Sounds like you've got the only Lessor Servitor Being in
mortal hands - and you got it FREE ! There's about TWO of those
described in the last six thousand years. Don't lose it, Suki - get
it over here and that's my Arcaneology Degree in the bag. That thing
could be Aeons old, brought out of N-Space by someone like Hastur
The Unspeakable, Kx'vk'll'gpgv The Unpronounceable, or The One Who
Is Half Man Half Biscuit. Get it over here, PLEASE !"

That evening was a Friday, and there was only one bar open on
Shahaguo Island. Piotr had agreed it was as safe a place as any;
tracking teams would be looking in the best-concealed corners of the
island for his team, and not the most populous one. As for listening
devices - a fight the previous week had ended in a Pavlovski
Electronic Blast Grenade being used, which had fried every circuit
in the building.
This place was as safe as anywhere for their last night of
peace, he decided as the oil lamps cast flickering shadows across
the walls - and it's by FAR the most comfortable.
"Well, Good luck to us," Mae raised her glass of catmint julep
"and Confusion to our Enemies !"
"Kampaii !" Piotr and Ilania returned the toast, their eyes
meeting hungrily over litre flagons of Standard Grade Euro-Lager
(*2 ) . Which was about as near to Beer as it was to distilled
water, but had the advantage of being cheaper than either.
There had been a slight delay in their trip to Vladivostok. An
hour before, the cyberspace links in Mangana's room had been open to
Suzuko's channel on one side, and an anonymous Russian voice in the
other, while at last Piotr contacted his base. And was told to wait.
Their plan had been approved, but certain events must occur before
they put it into motion.
Horst drained his glass. They had one last night of peace,
before embarking on a mission where no preparation would alter the
unguessable odds of success. Or survival. Mangana caught his gaze,
and gave a quick twitch of a smile.
"So, Ilania, how's the brain coming on ?" She addressed the
ermine lightly "If Mae's taught you her PsychoThermal Stare, I'm
sure you'll find a use for it tomorrow."
Cat and ermine exchanged glances. Several days of practicing
had only refined what they had achieved on that first night; Ilania
could use all Mae's powers when they were linked, and even add
touches of her own. But all the power still came from Mae - her own
abilities, if they existed, felt as if they were locked in
permafrost.
Mae sighed. "I don't know. When I'm in with her, it's like ...
I can almost see the right kinds of things in there, but they're
just shadows. Like a town at night that you know by its street
lights, when the lights are all out. The pattern's there, all right,
but it just doesn't Shine."

(* 2) [ A product that still existed as a legacy of the evil
Brussels Empire, in this case part of a project designed to
rationalise brewing and reduce global warming in one fell swoop. All
the independent breweries were closed, and new ones built to remove
excess carbon dioxide from the air by putting it into the beer.
Fortunately, their activities came to an abrupt end in the
Euro-Yankee War of '28, assisted by St. Breslin The Hacker. His
divinely inspired interference with the Union's targeting computer
ensured that nothing of any importance or interest in Europe was
damaged - since all the particle beams fell on hamburger bars, and
all the warheads hit Belgium instead.]

"Or maybe like the way they used to make circuit masks for
chips," Ilania put in "You'd start with a base with all the
transistors printed on, and you'd etch away the insulators where you
wanted to link a circuit through. Then a burst of power to blow
through the weakened bits, and there's your custom chip. It feels
like that - Mae's printed her pattern inside me, but nothing's going
through it yet."
"Ha ! We'd better make damn sure everything ELSE works when we
need it," Dmitri grinned mirthlessly, patting the sports bag at his
side with a metallic chinking "this mission is a Kolyma Fishing
Party if EVER I saw one."
For over a century, the mines of the bleak Kolyma Hills had
served as a one-way posting for guards and troops who had committed
blunders that they had failed to cover up. That they survived longer
than the prisoners they guarded in the lead and uranium mines meant
little. Nobody was expected to return from that assignment.
"You don't have to come past the airfield," Piotr addressed the
Japanese girls for the fifth time since the plan had formed "we
appreciate the help, but it's not your fight. You're not trained for
it."
Mae gave an aggrieved yowl of protest. "Piotr ! You think I'm
going to just sit back on my tail while I might be helping ? I don't
DO that to friends of mine."
A second of silence fell. Then the Arctic Fox's deadpan face
suddenly spilt into a long-toothed grin. Raising his foam-filled
glass, he addressed his new team. With five he had left Vladivostok,
and with five he would return.
"Just as long as you know what you're in for," his gaze flashed
round the table "Welcome to Team Asiwara !"
Mangana joined in the toast, but kept her thoughts to herself.
She hated to spoil an occasion like this with cheerless facts. And
it was a certain fact that the next time the Naval Mechs came to
Shahaguo Island, they would not be fussy about who was on whose
side.

All was now ready. Mae's aircraft sat fuelled, checked and ready to
roll, secure in a hangar ringed with infra-red and
vibration sensors that Horst swore could detect a mech's tread
halfway across the island.
Inside, all was peaceful, if not entirely quiet. Dmitri had his
equipment laid out on a groundsheet in regulation manner, re-
checking every item with the serious air of one whose life
frequently HAD depended on it. Satisfied at last that all was in
order, he threw himself back on the sleeping mat and stared at the
arched metal roof high above.
The thin forward-swept wing of the replica Junkers quivered
slightly as Piotr and Ilania put the bombardier's couch to more
peaceful uses; tactfully Dmitri resisted asking Mae if she was tuned
in right now. The feline girl had mastered Stadazna combat in record
time, and he wanted no fresh bruises on top of the lumps she had
given him in earlier sessions.
In the far corner, Mangana shut down her portable computer with
a sigh of relief, and unplugged it from the Net socket.
"Well, that's that. I managed to call home, to tell them I'm
off on another jaunt. I hope Kazuko doesn't want picking up from
Japan - it'll serve her right if she misses the boat, but
Broohilda's going to need all the time she can, to get used to us on
Earth."
"This place you come from," Dmitri asked curiously, unable to
sleep "Everything works different there, you said ?"
She nodded. "My Father's Japanese, but I grew up mostly over
there. Things are different, all right ! I've got a set of jewelry
in the Academy safe that's just gemstones on Earth - but go
somewhere that's Magic-heavy, and it's like having a Porsche-built
Mechsuit ! And if you DID get a mechsuit over to Glarata's World,
you'd find you'd got nothing but a very heavy and expensive statue
as soon as you went through the Warpgate."
"Warpgate ?"
Mangana sighed. This was going to be a LONG night.

Ninety years ago, as time was counted there, the world of her
birth had been a much quieter place.
"There was a really major - well, you'd call him a scientist,
really, living just a day's journey from Mother's tower," Mangana
mused. "These sort of folk don't tell people what they're doing, not
when they're spending their lives creating knowledge. Knowledge is
power - and it's about the most stealable thing there is."
Dmitri nodded. He had helped in the "redistribution" of
sensitive data often enough himself.
"Well, despite that, there are - techniques - you can use over
there to look back in time, if you know exactly where and when.
We've worked out just about what happened, but it wasn't easy.
Things got sort of Distorted in the final minutes."
The humanoid girl gave a wry smile, brushing back her bob of
glossy black hair as she continued. "He was transmuting metals on
something like an Industrial scale - and THAT'S the sort of secret
you hang onto. Oh, the principle's well known - I remember Mother
turned a few kilos of coal into Neon, that time we installed
electric light in our tower - but it gets expensive in all sorts of
ways, and hideously unreliable, when you work on the heavier stuff.
Lead into Gold is the one everyone has a go at, and fails miserably;
anything up past Iron is totally unreliable. Dozens of outside
factors to throw you out." The laws of Sorcery were not the same as
those of Earth science, but on occasion some surprising parallels
did indeed show up.
"But - he'd actually done it a couple of times ! He was using
ten-kilo lead balls like they fire from siege engines to make it
worthwhile when somehow it worked; he'd made enough quicksilver to
pay for the experiments, even if he couldn't make THAT on order
either. And if he thought that was bad luck - well, one day the last
of his luck ran out."
Mangana explained the apparatus such experiments involved. A
series of concentric rings were drawn on the floor, with various
items precisely arranged to act as focusing devices for the
transformation required. Energy was often released as a by-product,
so the outer ring was designed to reflect and focus whatever touched
it, intensifying the transformation at no further psionic cost to
the scientist.
"So, there he was, ten or twelve kilos of lead sitting smack in
the middle like a thousand times before, no reason to think this was
going to be any different. And this time it worked, if you can call
it that - he turned base Lead into something MUCH more valuable than
mere Gold...."
"And ?" Dmitri prompted, intrigued.
She winced. "We only worked this out in theory, since that part
of spacetime never recovered. Folk call it The Twisted Zone now, for
good reason ... remember, the outer ring was set to reflect
EVERYTHING back into the centre ? He released rather more energy
than anyone was expecting." Taking a chinagraph pencil from her
flying suit pocket, she scribbled on the clear map panel.
Half the symbols belonged to some arcane-looking system Dmitri
had never seen before. But some of the chemical ones he DID
recognise - and the bear's ears went flat as he read the final line.
"He missed Gold and went straight down the periodic table - eat your
heart out, MYAK Project !"
The last line of the Thaumo-Physics equation was brief and
simple, and perfectly predictable under the natural laws of the
universe where the experiment had taken place:

2 Pb208 + (MThaum > 20) -> Pu244 + 2 Rb86 + 4 n

Mangana nodded grimly. "That's what's called learning physics the
hard way. A ten-kilogram lump of Gold is a wonderful thing to have
at home - the same supercritical mass of Plutonium, is NOT."

...................

"It'll be a long night, and a longer day to follow." Ioseph Rhuzkov
was looking out from one of the observation posts in the sheer
cliffside that housed the old Dh Fleet submarine pens. "I may not BE
an admiral next week. If I am, it'll probably be somewhere on the
North Coast, where ten months of the year the only things moving on
the sea are sledges."
Katya gave a neutral grunt before realising, to her own
surprise, that she had her arms round him. "So tell me," she asked
seriously "what about this Aristo, Lady Tanya, that they've sent
after your hide ?"
"Jealous ?" Ioseph gave a brief flash of a smile.
The she-bear looked down at him, her deep-set eyes glittering.
"If you'd have thought her worth keeping - you'd have found ways to
keep her. No - tell me, how it is that she shows up in broad
daylight with a team of "Combat Accountants" - who we all know are
Osnaz, who don't officially exist any more ?"
Osnaz had been the military arm of the Secret Police in the
last century, much like Spetsnaz in principle, but operating within
the Empire. Their rather - Excessive - zeal had led to their total
abolition by royal decree of the restored Tsars. The only thing was,
some detachments didn't seem to read Royal Decrees.
The mink let himself be held tight in the bear's embrace for a
full minute before he gave his careful reply.
"Katya, there are things they do not tell you until you reach
the Higher Staff levels - by which time, you are expected to have
uncovered a lot of Forbidden information for yourself. Do you know
why we still have Commissars, Katya ? It is because the Empire runs
on rules, like a great city packed with traffic, each vehicle on its
own orders. But sometimes, the Tsar knows, there comes a time to
jump out into the middle of that traffic, commandeer a car and drive
through every red light in the way."
"And if a few people get run over, tough, eh ?" Katya nodded
approvingly.
"Yes. Of course, the city can only take so much of this before
it grinds to a halt. The Commissars operate beyond the law, so to
keep THEM in line, the Tsar has his own methods. When people have
abused the law too much, he sends in the people he calls his Combat
Accountants. And if you think my Red-cloaks are ruthless, pray you
never discover how much worse Osnaz can be."
"But," Katya's tone was puzzled "Why to send them after you ?
You've only done what was in your brief. Maybe the books don't
balance - but I'm sure they knew that before they ever sent you
here."
"Ha." Ioseph thought hard, with all the force of a mustelid who
had channelled that family's voracious libido into power-seeking.
"Maybe ... I gave Vhang and Bhigliev a free hand in tracking that
submarine. Useless even to ASK them what they've done about it. It
could be, that they've been caught out by the Court somehow - and
whatever they've done, of course they WOULD claim I ordered them to
do it."
"If you can only find out what Osnaz are here for - then maybe
you can get in first ! Now, if you could just..." Katya's voice
dropped to a whisper as the inspiration for a plan suddenly formed.
Both Ioseph's eyebrows raised as the implications sunk in.
Then, for the first time ever - he kissed her, human style, on her
blunt grey muzzle.

..................

The skies above Shahaguo Island were deepest black, far from
the urban skyglow that ruined stargazing on the Japanese homelands.
Looking up into the pre-dawn dark, the clear star seas swam with
moving dots of satellites, and faster-moving lights of aircraft
tracing their courses across the globe.
Nothing whatsoever distinguished Flight 1707 from any other
cargo airship on the Petropavlovsk-Perth route. Every metre of its
course was watched by powerful radars, who saw and tracked its
uneventful closest approach to Shahaguo Island, easily ninety
kilometres away across the cold and empty ocean.
Flight 1707 droned on. And one minute after its closest
approach, with an unheard rustle of fabric, Sergeant Velysianov's
Stealth glider unfolded its carbon fibre wings. Like a flight of
nocturnal albatrosses, the five-man squadron behind him began their
silent, eighty-eight kilometre glide downwind towards the airstrip
of Toho Academy.

"I HATE pre-dawn starts." Mae Tzuko paced around her aircraft
as it stood on the concrete apron outside the hangar. Her flying
suit was unzipped in the humid night air, and it flapped noisily as
she rechecked the tyres in their big streamlined spats.
"Original's one word for this," Dmitri grunted as he squeezed
on an ill-fitting helmet "And so is Unique. Not to mention Bloody
Silly. Building a four-engined jet, and flying it with fixed
undercarriage !" The only Junkers 287 to fly had done so in 1945,
and (except on Horst's timeline) had never progressed beyond a
hastily improvised prototype.
"Oh, I don't know," Mangana reflected "At least you know it's
there when you need it. Count yourself lucky she's got one ! My
Komet lands on skids; anything less than a perfect landing, and I'm
right off sitting down for the rest of the week."
Dmitri hefted his sports bag, and lobbed it up through the
fuselage hatch to Ilania. He had to admit, Mae had certainly earned
her high marks in Historical Engineering. Above him spread a twenty
metre sweep of forward swept wings that would hold the revamped
Junkers in the thin air of the Stratosphere, and bear it across
Japan without refuelling.
For the first time since leaving Vladivostok, he was suddenly
glad of his thick fur. Eight miles high in an unpressurised aircraft
- it was going to get COLD up there .

Four thousand miles higher than Mae's wings would ever bear
her, giant solar satellites basked in the endless sunlight. From
that high vantage point, the Hawaiian Isles were swinging into dawn
below, while Japan glowed dim beneath a hundred million streetlamps.
Those lamps were lit by the waterfall of microwave energy
cascading down from Space onto the island collecting stations of
Mikura Jima and Hekura Jima, to be relayed via the best
superconductors Science could provide to the myriad hungry homes and
factories.
Yet no transmission system was one hundred per cent efficient.
The multi-Gigawatt energy beams lost a tiny fraction of their
cohesiveness hitting the atmosphere; on that wavelength the skies of
the Pacific glowed dim as moonlight filtering through thick cloud.
Compared to the searchlight precision of a radar, the glow was far
too faint to be used for locating anything.
Unless, of course, you happened to have one of the new Ambient
Field Radars. Which, though it was not widely publicised, the
airfield at Shahaguo Island DID.

"Move it ! Horst's voice suddenly crackled over the radio
"you've got Company coming in !"

And Mae was caught flat-footed, stranded with engines cold, in
clear view at the end of a mile of naked concrete.
"This ... isn't a ..... sportsplane," she gasped, muscles
bunching under her flightsuit as she helped Piotr haul the bomb
doors shut on their rattling chain winch "I can't just.... flick the
switch and go.."
Mangana glanced hurriedly into the darkness as she slid into
the flight engineer's seat. Fully laden with fuel in the hot
tropical air, they would need the full power of all four engines to
get them off the short Academy airstrip. The inners were modern
turborams, already warming up nicely - but the outer engines were
the tricky, temperamental JUMO 004 D-4s that Mae had spent two
months in building and four more to even partially master.
"Don't you say ANYTHING", she warned Dmitri, as Mae scrambled
past towards the pilot's seat. "Just grab that crank handle and
start turning."

Alone in the control tower, Horst could only watch helplessly
as five specks closed in for the kill.
"Twelve kilometres out now," his voice was urgent "I think
they're about light aircraft size, but they're stealthy as hell....
definitely five of them." His tusks glistened in the incongruously
cheerful light of the computer display. The ultra-sensitive
microwave horns turning on the roof above him scanned the skies,
tracking what were simply "holes" in the dim skyglow around them.
"Get it moving, Mae, get it moving," he prayed silently "this
time, they don't have to worry about bystanders. You're all alone
out there - the only thing between you and them is ten thousand
metres of empty air !"

Panting in the humid cockpit, Dmitri and Mangana furiously
worked the starting cranks, linked by long chain drives to the
Reidel petrol motors thirty feet outboard in the wings. With a
rasping bark the port starter caught, then the starboard, and the
turbine shafts began to turn.
"Hope we don't have to do that again," she gasped, moving up to
monitor the engine instruments behind Mae's seat "if the engines
stall we've had it - we're out of time as it is."
The Junkers had won its builder top marks in Historical
Engineering, being a faithful copy of the original, problems and
all. Warming up a JUMO engine was no easy task, without automatic
throttle controls; one false step and the primitive turbojets were
liable to stall or burst into flames. They were not ideal for sudden
getaways.
"Come on up, come on up....", Mae murmured, her world fixed on
the R.P.M. gages as the revs rose towards ignition speed. Eight
hundred RPM and she could start trying to light up; at two and a
half thousand the main throttles would become operational.
"Company, Boss," Dmitri poked his head into the forward
compartment "caught a glimpse against the stars North-Eastwards;
drop gliders coming in. Two minutes away."
"We've got th - HEY !" Mangana's eyes lit up as she scanned the
flight engineer's instrument panel. "Mae - they're coming in behind
us. Stand by to take the brakes off and taxi us as soon as you've
got power - the way they're coming in they CAN'T know what you've
got in the tail."
Mae jammed both fuel pumps into the "START" position, and black
smoke belched from both outer jetpipes. "Revs one thousand, we roll
on three", she muttered "just call out the angles, we'll enlighten
them...."

Sergeant Velysianov's glider touched down almost silently in the
long grass behind the hangars. A touch of the harness and the gas-
filled wing flopped inert on the ground, its black crumple lost in
the darkness.
They were just in time. On the edge of the runway their
designated target was lined up in clear view, all engines shining
brightly in the infra-red bands. Even as he watched, it taxied
slowly to the edge of the main strip, its glasshouse nose pointing
blindly away from his team.
Behind him, Trooper Kalin hefted his missile launcher, its
sight already flipped up to firing position. He gestured towards the
slowly moving aircraft.
++ Not yet ++ the Sergeant's words flashed silently on the
helmet screen. ++ Don't go in charging till we know where they all
are. That's what Pamelov did wrong. Wait till they're all accounted
for - you DON'T want any of THAT team getting behind you.++

"Engines coming up now, revs two point eight....," Mae chanted,
grateful she could now unclench the fuel priming switches "almost
ready to roll.."
"Two degree swing to Port, and hit the brakes - I think I see
movement," Mangana yelled, centring the tail-facing periscope as
black shadows moved at the edge of the runway behind them "just say
when."
"Three thousand, throttles steady, jetpipe gages in the green,"
Mae read off the last two items on her checklist, and turned around
with a fiendish Feline grin. "Okay, let 'em have it !"

Naval Infantry Mech Team Velysianov had been quite well and
thoroughly briefed. They had identification photos of Mae's
aircraft, and even a picture of Mae herself, taken from the Academy
Prospectus. They knew what Team Asiwara had been armed with, and
were expecting no surprises from that quarter.
They didn't know about the pair of remote-control tail
barbettes, each with a pair of authentic Mauser MG213C 30mm cannon.
But they DID find out.

...................

Commissar Bhigliev put down the communicator, and took a long
pull from the flask of vodka.
"Again ?" came Vhang's sardonic comment.
The fatter wolverine nodded speechlessly as he slumped into a chair,
hidden in the deep-dug Security Office below the Vladivostok Hills.
"They got away," he said hoarsely "Which is more than three of
our team did. And by the time the rest had got into firing position,
that antique was halfway down the strip."
"Missiles ?" Vhang queried, pressing the tips of his paws
together.
Bhigliev snorted. "I think we picked the wrong team to tackle, don't
you ? Piotr Asiwara's no fool - at least, somebody dumped a drum of
Kerosene out of the bomb bay. As soon as our boys opened up, those
damned tail cannon touched it off - and there's no heat-seeker in
the world that'll ignore a fifty-metre fireball under its nose."
"And by the time it burned out, the aircraft was long gone "
Vhang nodded, his eyes closed. "This is getting really quite
entertaining, don't you think ? " He picked up the phone, and
dialled the surviving Naval Infantry on the base. "Unless, as always
- you happen to be on the receiving end...."

................

At the bottom of the Tsushina Strait to the North of Hokkaido, a
sensitive microphone array listened sleeplessly to the traffic going
to and from the Siberian coast. Entirely automated, the system
waited until it identified the sound signatures before deciding
whether to alert the Naval Self-Defence Force on the island.
Tonight, the first unscheduled vessel caused much searching of
archival databanks before its ownership and probable mission was
decyphered. That vessel was at snorkel depth, making an economical
cruising speed to conserve expensive peroxide in favour of free air.
Not so with the SECOND vessel that pursued that course two
hours later. Reactors running at maximum emergency power, water
boiled from its twin screws as it surged through the ocean, on a
great-circle route straight into Vladivostok.
++ No military response required. ++ The computers of the JNSDF
decided. ++ Both targets identified as privately owned vessels, and
any combat 99%+ probability of being outside out territorial waters.
Recommend we leave them to it. ++

...............

Model 11bis power armour, Trooper Adriak had long ago decided,
must have had a Dorophobe (* 3) for a designer.
"CHORT !" He hissed acidly, as the faceplate seal trapped his
whiskers. Typically, the suit had come back from maintenance with
not only the defective parts replaced, but all the ones he had so
painstakingly customised to fit. Still, it would just have to do.
One last practice session, and they would be going into battle. For
real.
"NOW ." Came the voice in his earphones. Ignoring the handle of
the training room door, he dived right through it, a blizzard of
splintered wood in the air as he bounced off the floor like a squash
ball, psionic senses screaming a warning of the hurtling chain that
shrieked down behind him!
Time seemed to slow to a crawl as he whirled round in half a
tonne of servo-assisted armour, his right paw streaking to a grab
holster at his side. The blade that leaped to his grasp was a
fragile-looking thing, its iridescent black edges glittering
obsidian-like as he focussed his will into the arcane thing. Though
it felt his brain was trying to crawl out of his ears, the ermine
felt the rush of savage power as the blade came to life - and
slashed into the wrist-thick steel of the anchor chain that was
about to swat him like a mosquito !
Adriak's Kirlian Induction Screen overloaded in a flare of
unleashed energies, as two great links of battleship chain
evaporated into incandescent vapour. Vaulting high in the air, his
eyes and psionics watched the severed chain snake past his feet in a
broken-backed tangle, sparks flying as it impacted on the concrete
below.
"Nice work, Adriak," his Commander's rare praise rang in his
earphones "But we're wanted now. Save the rest till later - you'll
need it all, and they don't yet DO reloads for brains."

................

Far below a forward-swept wingtip, the lights of Kobe City
faded into the darkness. Inside the Junkers' metal womb, Mae felt
her eyes grow weary of staring into the night sky and the myriad
dials of the computerless control panel. Piotr, having briefed them
all as far as he could, had questions of his own.
"Combat Psykers ?" Mae yawned, clenching and unclenching a paw
grown stiff from two hours on the throttle levers "The way I heard
it, the first folk who used them were the Israelis."
Piotr nodded assent, his oxygen mask tight around his muzzle. Behind
them in the cockpit, Mangana monitored the flight instruments while
Dmitri and Ilania grabbed one more hour of sleep before their
touchdown in Vladivostok.
"What I heard," he said carefully "and all this has been
published - is that when they discovered the first Talents, they
made a big thing about ridiculing them, showing them up for frauds.
Nice move. Nobody took people seriously about bending spoons or
stopping watches - while all the time there were folk in training in
the Negev Desert who could put a glass rod in a sealed container,
and tie it into reef knots."
Psionic saboteurs had proved to be deadly weapons. Some of them
could damage electronics in subtle ways, hard to detect until the
equipment was put to use: one such agent in the enemy's industries
was worth half a regiment on the battlefield. But like most things,
it had a price.
The only publicly named combat psyker was Isaac Felinov, who
had received most of the honours Israel had to give. Posthumously.
Nobody had been suspicious when what was apparently a street-cleaner
collapsed and died of a brain haemorrhage after walking past a
column of invading Khakistani tanks. But when the unit started their
engines to discover their turbine shafts had somehow been
disastrously warped - THAT had been a bit of a giveaway.
"A Psyker's lot," Mae sighed as the coast of her Homeland
receded behind them, eight miles below in the darkness "Is NOT a
happy one."

(* 3) "Fear or dislike of Fur." In that culture, about as
unfortunate a complaint as a Plains Indian with Agoraphobia.

Dawn was breaking over the Siberian coast as the podded wheels of
the Junkers 287 screeched on the emergency airstrip fifteen
kilometres from the Naval Base.
Mangana pulled off her headphones with a baffled expression.
"According to the control tower, we're a Naval Reconnaissance
Ilyushin 104", her voice sounded loud as the engines wound down
"which don't have four engines, forward sweep, or big Japanese
markings on both sides. Hey, Piotr, do your air traffic controllers
ever have their eyes tested ?"
The Arctic fox pulled off his mask, and grinned toothily. "Oh,
yes. They're guarantied to have 110 % perfect vision. Not only can
they see everything that IS there - give them the correct orders,
and they'll see everything that SHOULD be there !"
Piotr had not stayed alive in his job by telling unedited
truths to those he had to leave alive on field missions like this.
Today, he was breaking into his own base, carrying out orders
exactly the opposite of those he had left it with.
Instead of working FOR the Commissar AGAINST the crew and
owners of the DH110, his superiors in Irkutsk had turned things
around completely. No problem there, since in the Imperial Russian
Forces everyone knows exactly what orders to obey. The most RECENT
ones.
Admiral Rhuzkov had not made himself exactly popular with the
remaining staff of Dh fleet. There were a lot of people who would
gladly turn a blind eye to the silent team in unmarked uniforms that
suddenly appeared in their corridors. Besides which, they did NOT
look like the kind you really wanted to argue with.

................

Modern technology is a wonderful thing, Commissar Vhang's
thoughts fumed acidly. Lady Tanya rides a scramjet to get to Siberia
- and claims it's jet-lag that's kept her from getting here till
nine this morning ! Moldavian champagne, more like it.....
"Ma'am," the two Commissars were outwardly a picture of polite
efficiency, as they showed her to the one and only unlimited-access
console on the base "Welcome Aboard."
The plump mink nodded graciously as she dismissed the two
"appatatchniks" and inserted the Inquisitorial chip into the
terminal. For an hour she scanned the information it dredged up, her
well-groomed facial fur hardly moving as she took it all in.
At last, she turned around. And even Vhang inwardly thrilled at
the expression on her face.
"Would you be - SO kind - as to arrange a meeting with the
Admiral - at earliest convenience ?" Her voice was like silk; the
silken cloth that polished the mirror-bright executioners' sword.
"There are a few little - discrepancies - that I do SO wish to have
him explain."
Bhigliev consulted his wrist screen. "The Admiral had an
incoming personal call earlier on, Ma'am, and he's been down by the
Submarine pens since then."
The mink's eyebrows raised in a manner not unlike the Admiral
she had known so well. "Why, how Perfectly Splendid. That's exactly
one of the areas I am Particularly keen on - discussing - with him."

A minute later and a thousand metres away through the rock,
Corporal Dernilov put down the phone and turned to his team, already
suited up. "That was our Commissar, folks - we've got trade. Down to
the sub pens to protect them and the Tsar's envoy. Anybody makes
trouble for them and "- the brief and hungry snarl of his chainsword
said it all.

...................

"I just don't believe we can be DOING this," Mae whispered, as Piotr
stood on Dmitri's broad shoulders to replace the ventilation grill.
"I mean, breaking into a place like this, nowadays, through the
ventilation ducts ! Surely there ought to be traps, grills, cameras
everywhere."
Ilania turned round, and winked. "Oh, you'd better believe
there are. But when you lay any sort of minefield, it always pays to
leave a safe way through, just in case any of your side have to get
through in a hurry. And as for cameras - round here, it's not just a
case of who you are, but who you belong to. Some of the people here
are OURS."

...................

The main submarine pen was a huge vaulted structure, grand as a
flooded cathedral carved into the granitic heart of the last
Siberian hills. Six months before, it had been bustling with life
like an ant hill, the experimental fleet and its supporting vessels
coming and going in an endless stream.
Now, all lay silent. Concrete docks and slipways echoed to the
lapping of dark waters, the hard industrial lights reflecting
starlike in their calm depths.
Ioseph Rhuzkov was standing alone, caught in a cone of cold
light as he stood on the outermost dock, looking into darkness that
could have held a battleship unseen.
"Why, my Dear Ioseph." A voice he knew sounded behind him. "You
used to be SO appreciative of a good figure - but I've been looking
at your balance sheets, and your bank accounts. I fear your figures
seem to have slipped somewhat."
Lady Tanya stepped out of the lift, the two Commissars and the
silent team of Combat Accountants behind her. From the cargo lift
beside her came a five-man team of mecha infantry, the click and
hiss of their suits loud in the echoing cavern.
Rhuzkov smiled intriguingly as he walked towards them, hands
clenched behind his back, and his tail swinging.
"Lady Tanya, as I'm told they call you now." He nodded gravely
"I'm glad my staff have been making themselves - useful - to you."
"Oh, indeed. Without such co-operation, it might have taken,
oh, hours longer, to gather enough evidence for an arrest warrant."
"Ah ? " Rhuzkov's "and may I ask, on what charge ? Or did they
just give you a blank warrant with the Tsar's seal on, as they do
these days ?"
Commissar Vhang stepped forward, pulling out a long document
that did indeed have the Imperial Court Seal dangling from it.
"Item One, that you did permit the crew of an armed Imperial
Fleet submarine to mutiny and desert, without sending the fullest
available force to effect their capture. Item Two, that you did sell
their services and official equipment to a foreign power, as
recorded in your personal account, no trace of the monies being
found."
Vhang rolled up the document. "There are other charges on the
same lines, Sir - but the first two are QUITE sufficient."
"So," Rhuzkov looked Lady Tanya in the eye, undaunted."You say
I'm missing a submarine and crew, who're in the service of a foreign
power ... is that what you're telling me ?"
She smiled sweetly. "Apart from that one little oversight, we'd
have been really quite pleased with you. But His Imperial Majesty
has tasked me with discovering - where his Experimental Submarine
Dh110 has got to. Hmmmmm ?"
Rhuzkov snapped his fingers. The outermost searchlights
illuminated what had been abyssal blackness stretching from the dock
to the outer entrance, revealing -
A submarine anchored against the far wall, its crew lined up on
deck as if for a fleet review !
"Dh Fleet 110, sold on my personal initiative for twice its
salvage value and crew redundancy cost, with the proceeds officially
registered in the Court bank as of one hour ago - and you WILL find
the papers entirely in order." He handed the bill of sale to Lady
Tanya, whose tail crashed down like a falling tree, and turned to
his Commissars. "Which is far more," he hissed "than I can say about
YOU !"
Even as Vhang frantically gestured his mecha troops forward,
there was an ear-splitting crash behind him. Dropped from one of the
metal catwalks high above, a drum of aviation spirit impacted into
the concrete, and burst like an egg.
"HOLD !" Corporal Dernilov screamed as every cannon swung on
lightning reflexes to the suddenly empty catwalk above. They had
been a heartbeat away from opening fire with recoilless autocannon -
into air reeking with high-octane fuel vapour !
"That way," Vhang's order rang out. "The traitors I told you of
- go get them. NOW !"

..................

The view through Trooper Adriak's Kirlian Induction Screen was
something like a fireworks display seen through thick fog. Other
suits carried sonar or infra-red detectors for this line of work,
where a spilt second's warning spelt life and death.
Most mecha battles were like this; leaps and sprints through
urban mazes where the enemy lurked not over the next hill but behind
the next wall, or beneath the next drain cover. A Kirlian Screen saw
the still unexplained energies of Life itself, through any thickness
of inert shielding, and no jammer or decoy yet built could deceive
it.
Around him he saw the familiar aura of his comrades, followed
by the sickly flicker of the two commissars. A trained psyker could
tell much from these traces, and the two wolverines were literally
sick with fear.
"Ahead, maybe sixty metres, four targets," Adriak reported
through the short-range magnetic links "Don't see any other psykers.
Awake, we stand out like signal flares." Inwardly he breathed a sigh
of relief. With only mundane foes to face, this was going to be
easy.

[ This is going to be difficult.] Mae's voice sounded tense in
Ilania's head [ We've never tried this before with our bodies so far
apart. What makes you so sure they'll rely on Psi Power to find us,
anyway ? ]
[ You saw that ermine with the grey helmet cowling ? That's a
Kirlian Induction Hood, which means he's a Psyker. Everybody wants
one on their team - if you get one, you LISTEN to him. And if you
couldn't spot my body when I wasn't in it, it's a safe bet he can't
spot yours either.]
The corridor was quiet for the moment as Team Asiwara waited in
what looked like a standard ambush, split on each side of the main
route. A regular trick against superior odds, but one they well know
would prove disastrous to a foe who could spot the exact position of
any conscious mind. So this surprise had an extra surprise built in,
all its own.
Mangana's inbuilt danger sense had been honed to a fine art in
the lawless wilds of her homeland. Even hidden out of sight around
one of the dozen corners in the rock-hewn corridor, she could feel
the exact position of the threat that was advancing towards them,
compact Klimov turboshafts turning in their backpacks and thousands
of muzzle horsepower ready to roll in each armoured fist. Behind
her, awaiting her signal, Dmitri crouched with a bundle of grenades
like giant Xmas tree lights on a string in his huge paw, and his AK
08 set to maximum rate.
For the last few seconds they held their breaths even, everyone
suddenly acutely aware of the specks of dust in the air, the rough
texture of the floor they crouched on ... and a totally unexpected
hum of engines from the Submarine pens below them.
Mae/Ilania cast their linked perceptions wide, like springing
into the air to get a better view of what was happening around them.
And their shared pulse raced, as they suddenly found that out.
Four-way trap ! High in the rock-cut galleries above the
wharves and pens, Team Asiwara were heartbeats away from a contest
of millisecond reflexes pitted against devastating Mecha firepower.
And below, into the cavern moved the island-sized bulk of the
bounty-killer submarine, as the Ivan The Terrible surfaced to block
the Sea Vixen's escape.
And then there was no time left at all.

...............

Trooper Adriak was leading the Naval Infantry in its cautious
advance down the corridor. This, he did not like - in the cramped
confines of the tunnel, they were robbed of all their mobility. And
mobility was what kept a mecha soldier alive, as it had done since
their first use in the Siege of Hong Kong, thirty years ago....
mechsuits were at their best when leaping into point-blank
engagement with armoured vehicles like matadors on a clumsy bull.
Ahead, he could clearly see the only conscious minds in the
area: his Kirlian Screen had given a clean bill of health to all the
side tunnels they had passed. So when the impossible happened, and
the dazzling auroral flare of a powerful psyker blossomed into
existence behind them, for one fractional second, he lost it.
"Corp ! BEHIND YOU !" He whirled to face the sudden threat -
and, much too late, his peripheral vision caught the lightning-flash
smear of energies in the corridor, as five hundred pounds of angry
bear smashed a flying Stadazna kick into his helmet !
The passage was four metres high by two across, too narrow for
mecha to walk abreast. In that one instant as Mangana broadcast her
warning, Dmitri went high, ears brushing the ceiling as a steel-
booted foot crashed into the million-rouble helmet of the first
trooper in line - and that trooper went down. In the same instant,
Piotr dived in low - his AK 08 primed and ready to roll.
"HAAAAAA !" Piotr dived in towards the third trooper, angled
towards the vulnerable joints, and his AK 08 blazed a torrent of
hypersonic needles that stitched a staggered line through the waist
hinge of the Mechsuit. The hammering recoil literally kicked him to
a halt in mid-air, as if he had dived into a brick wall. Flung to
the ground, he grunted once in pain even as he tracked the falling
figure and, still with a lover's delicate touch on the trigger,
punched the remainder of the magazine in a hole the size of a one
Kopek piece through the suddenly exposed throat armour.
** Naval Infantry are about as well-trained and well-equipped
as the Empire can afford. Nobody entrusts so much precious hardware
to anyone unless they can get every last percent of performance out
of it - and Mk. 11 mecha is superb.
But Naval Infantry are only better than any ORDINARY troops on
the planet. In the 2030's, when so much had changed, one tradition
remained. The absolute heart of the Spetsnaz teams was a core of
more than Olympic standard athletes, grabbed from every source
available, and tested until they failed the most sadistic tests any
minds could devise. Everybody failed - but the ones who kept on
going to the end, from THESE were Piotr's team chosen.
One other tradition remained. In the face of hopeless odds,
they would go in. In all circumstances. With not an instant's
thought of personal survival. **

Three quarters of a second into the fight and three chainswords
howled into savage life, liquid explosive propellant detonating in
diamond-lined cylinders as thirty thousand watts of rending fury
screamed in every fist !
Still in the air, Dmitri collided with Corporal Ilych; both
booted feet planted high on the chest armour and he heaved, like a
gymnast on a springboard. Ilych went over backwards as well, rolling
to take the fall - in one more instant he could sweep the corridor
with his autocannon....
But that instant never came. The heavy bundle in the bear's paw
wrapped around the weapon arm like a strangling snake, and five big
thermite charges erupted into incandescent flame ! Almost
mercifully, Ilych never felt the suit burn through like candlewax
before Dmitri's monomolecular edged knife found the weak seam where
the visor hinged behind the ear...
"AHAIIIIII !" Ilania's Siberian battlecry pierced the
chainsword and turbine snarl as she vaulted into combat, one scant
second after Dmitri's first move, a sharpened spade swinging in each
whipcord-muscled fist !
Spetsnaz are devoted to spades; they are about the only item
they consider standard for any mission whatever. "If you fire at
someone," she had revealed to Mae "unless you hit them straight
away, they'll fire back. But no matter what their armour, when folk
see ten pounds of spades coming at them, they forget about
attacking, and DUCK."

Trooper Adriak completed his landing roll just as the female
ermine sailed overhead, missing the thermite inferno by one fur-
scorching metre. His Kirlian Screen was cracked, but at this range
he hardly needed it - with his intrinsic powers and a suit that
could face down a motor rifle company, what more did he need ?
He was facing the wrong way. A quick jerk brought him to a
crouch, then with the full force of powered armour he launched into
the air, a back somersault and half twist that would have drawn
applause even had his sports kit been other than a half tonne of
kevlar and high-alloy steels. And as he flipped inverted, he drove
his will into the force-blade that appeared in his armoured fist,
charging it with rending fury. Ready to roll.

Things then seemed to happen very slowly. Two spades were
tumbling in flashing arcs at the Naval Infantry still standing, the
Commissars behind them just starting to react in stunned shock as
the narrow corridor filled with scorching flame and smoke. The fight
was now into its fourth second.
Piotr was halfway into a roll, a fresh magazine slapped into
his AK08 as Trooper Adriak's armoured heels struck sparks off the
ceiling. "Dmitri !" His words seemed to pour slowly through the
smoke-laden air of the corridor.
The bear took a finite time to pull his blade out of Corporal
Ilych's helmet and turn round, his rifle on its sling swinging
instinctively towards the new threat.
Too late ! Adriak knew how long it would take to land upright -
so instead he tumbled with the blade held above his head, making his
whole long ermine body into a throwing-knife - three metres of
armoured ermine impacting right on top of the unarmoured bear ! Not
that a battleship's alloy and ceramic armour would have survived
that attack. Moving on instant reflexes, Dmitri launched into a dive
he knew he would never live to complete, attacking with his paw
jammed in a death-grip on the trigger as Time almost seized to a
halt !
Dmitri Kolyagin died there and then as the psiblade vapourised
the side of his head, his rifle locked on full fire and ripping
pirhana-like into his foe at bayonet range. With a shattering impact
the bear and the ermine collide, inert bodies and empty weapons
clattering to the hard uncaring ground.

Ilania finished her leap to the blind side of the last trooper
and caught sight of Mae emerging from the side corridor, needle-
rifle in hand.
[ Nix -] Ilania flashed urgently [ Merge back, NOW.]
Not even eye contact was needed any more; in an instant the psychic
kitten was in Ilania's adrenaline-washed body, turning round to see
-
Dmitri lying dead beneath a feebly stirring trooper in grey-
cowled armour, now jetting crimson.
[ ............... ]

Dmitri was not the first or the thirtieth comrade Ilania had seen
die beside her. Some of them had been closer friends, some had been
lovers : her hard training ensured she kept her mind on the job and
not erupt into murderous mustelid killing frenzy. Ermines make
hopeless line infantry, but Ilania and her tribe have never been
recruited as normal soldiers - they are dedicated and ecstatic
Slayers.
And it may be that Mae was standing on the part of her brain
that held her training, right that instant.
[ WANT HIM.] Her leap took her back into the fray, even as her
savage-born mind clicked into a high and terrible gear. Adriak was
clearly dying, his right leg shredded by a dozen hypersonic shells
that had chewed through the reactive armour of his thigh. But that
was not nearly good enough. She dived, ignoring her rifle, for
nothing now could satisfy the Siberian's bloodlust but to feel the
tearing of sentient flesh between her carbide-edged sabre-like
fangs.....
"RHYAAAAAAAAAA !!!" With berserk fury she grappled with the
mechsuit's helmet and wrenched it off like the lid of a jam jar,
mindless of searing pain as muscles tore in her arms. For an instant
she was staring into the fear-filled face of the ermine psyker,
memorising it before her fangs removed it. Almost the way she stared
past Mae's eyes, before merging with her......
{ No ! You CAN'T !} Mae's spirit was almost paralysed in horror
as she realised what was about to happen.
[ WANT HIM. ALL OF HIM. ] And Ilania launched herself into the
mind of the dying psyker with the feral hunger of a swarm of
starving sewer rats. Not with the gentle interlocking she shared
with Mae - but a ravenous, gluttonous frenzy, Mae's own skills
helpless tools in the will of the Siberian girl as she took total
and monstrous vengeance.
Suddenly Mae was back in her own body - Ilania had thrown her
out. But .... Ilania had never had the power to do that before !
Casting her perceptions forwards to see what had happened, Mae
suddenly saw all too clearly.
A mere fight to the death with Mecha troops was bad enough. But
things had just got worse. A whole lot worse.

The Vladivostok complex echoed to a soundless scream, both a
death-cry and a birth-cry, that resonated in every living mind. And
now Something new stood in that corridor, bone-white fur standing
out in high-voltage sparking fury, lips drawn back exposing teeth
bared and sharp as an avenging goddess.
"Merciful Ancestors," Mae whispered flatly "What's happened to
her EYES ?"
Ermines tend towards eyes of glacial blues and greens, large
but much less so than the Manga gened species. But that which had
been Ilania was looking down the charnel corridor with a matched
pair of black voids - not merely black; in her skull was a double
event horizon's cataclysmic stare, insatiable stellar spectres
summoned to Earth and roused into soul-ravening life !
Joyously came her howl. In her right paw was the psiblade that
only a psyker could use, glittering and elementally sharp. But
instead of a single charge built up laboriously before each use,
this blade now burned. Ermine flesh melded to a thing of writhing
power; lambent blue-white fire hissed and smoked down the length of
the blade like boiling blood as she stalked down the corridors
towards the last foes still alive.
And she screamed in ecstasy as she attacked ! The first trooper
flung up his chainsword to parry, only to see it slashed asunder
like a blade of waxen grass against a white-hot scythe. With a
bound, Ilania leaped inside the firing arc of the recoilless cannon,
and wrapped her arms around his reactive-armoured chest.
The sight of a slender ermine trading bear-hugs with an
armoured suit that could crush her like an egg was literally
boggling. But Mae's reeling perceptions knew with a sick certainty
that something worse by far was taking place.
Suddenly there was one less figure alive. Shoving the
collapsing suit aside playfully, Ilania stood there, naked now as
her clothes burned off her incandescent fur from within, and black
waves of stolen power screamed from a blade that writhed and
thrashed like a shark in blood frenzy !
And that was the instant Mae turned and fled, vanishing into
the unknown side corridors and the dubious safety of the cloaking
blackness.

..................

Back on the dockside, Suzuko now realised the meaning of a
phrase she had kept hearing on the old videoblocks - Mexican
Standoff.
"Attention, Pirate Vessel Ivan The Terrible," Captain Broznov's
voice boomed from the Sea Vixen's sail loudspeaker "We seem to be
causing you some problems ! As your sonar no doubt can tell, our
torpedo ports are open and loaded; we have eight Mark Forty-fours
and a large number of point-defence missiles ready to go the instant
you open fire - and we fear your repair bills will be a lot higher
than your bounty fees. Also, you have forgotten two very basic
things. The Vixen, she has sixty tonnes of peroxide and fuel
onboard, that will take this entire neighbourhood with her if she
goes .... and your employers, they happen to LIVE HERE."

.....................

Commissar Vhang had never run so far or fast in his life, nor
for such an excellent reason. Panting in heat stress and exhaustion,
he slumped to a halt at a corner of the endless service tunnel.
He knew what had gone wrong. And it was his fault. With one
burst, any of the Naval Infantry mechs could have swept the corridor
with hails of shells from their cannon, filling the air with
splinters and lung-ripping blast. Letting rip with a snub-nosed
fifty millimetre cannon was like having a string of blast grenades
erupting in your fist - which was why only pressure-suited mecha
carried them.
But with their Commissars standing right behind them, nobody
could fire a single shot - and a textbook example of how to get
ambushed had worked down to the last detail.
Suddenly came the unmistakeable musks of hot blood and aroused
ermine - and before Vhang could turn round, an iron-hard grip locked
round his throat.
"Why, if it isn't our own dear Comrade Commissar," came a
hissing Siberian voice from the darkness " I've been SO looking
forwards to this meeting...."

...................

When Mae finally got back to a corridor she recognized, she saw
Mangana running out of hands trying to control the bleeding from an
almost unrecognisable figure on the floor.
"Help !" Mangana panted "We're losing him !"
In a mingling pool of blood lay the evidence of the final battle -
where the last Mecha trooper had fled one of Team Asiwara, only to
find its leader. Chewed and splintered walls showed where the cannon
had got off one last burst even as Piotr popped up through a floor
drain and sent a pinpoint accurate stream of AK08 needles through
the suit's waist hinge. The result looked like it might yet be a
draw.
The Arctic fox lay mercifully unconscious, blood oozing from
his ears and an unguessable number of wounds; his entire fur was
steaming crimson on the cold concrete floor.
"Left leg - raise it," Mangana's paramedic skills were being
pushed to the limit "I can't stop the bleeding - he must have half a
kilo of steel in him."
Even as Mae pressed the edges of the main gaping wound on the
fox's thigh together and raised the limb, her mind probed deep into
the shattered flesh.
"Oh Ninja," she breathed "there's a chunk the size of my thumb
in here, and it's pressed right against the artery - it's going to
go through as soon as we move him."
"Got to move him !" Mangana snapped "he's got about ten minutes
to get a transfusion, and the Sea Vixen's the only thing in range !"
From her satchel, she pulled out a one-shot injector of Lazaride
drugs, and punched it into one of the less damaged areas. With such
massive tissue damage, even if the blood loss was replaced, toxins
from the smashed and burned tissues had to be fought before they
wrecked his kidneys - before Lazarides, paramedics had lost a LOT of
patients that way.
Mae swallowed nervously. Apart from basic first aid, she had
never studied much medicine; it had become a technical and highly
automated science, apart from specialised courses like Mangana's.
"You won't get this out with forceps - you can't GET to it,"
the psychic kitten plunged her perceptions back into the living
flesh like entering a red and vivid forest "it's sort of corkscrewed
in from right the far side."
If this was a forest, she was looking at a crash site within it
- a trail of burned and torn terrain, ending in a scorched crater
where the hot metal had come to rest. Mae sized up the fragment,
getting a mental grip on it - and began to pull.
"Open up the tissue round it," Mangana instantly saw what her
friend was trying to do "slowly.. keep it on the same track... twist
where the track twists.... "
Fifteen long seconds passed as Mae held her breath in
concentration - then with a welling of bright blood, the shell
fragment popped into her waiting paw.
"Now, something like a stretcher - and get him down there FAST
!"

...................

Down on the dockside, Admiral Rhuzkov was in an interesting
situation.
"We never had the chance to get - acquainted," his voice was
neutral as he shook paws with Captain Broznov "on one hand, you
almost got me exiled to count icebergs off Novaya Zemlya. But on the
other, you did turn up like - what was the phrase ? Like the Seventh
Cavalry."
Secrecy is a wonderful thing. Nowhere was it written down that
it had been Rhuzkov's idea to send Team Asiwara after them - or to
enlist the services of the Ivan The Terrible. All that had been
handled by his Commissars; he had not told Katya the second reason
for their continued function half a century after the system that
had originated them had collapsed.
Behind them, a rising hum of reactor-driven engines sent them
all diving into cover as the Ivan made its move.
"Midshipman Totchka - I mean, Komolov - he's got everything
ready to let rip," Suzuko groaned "When you give him a trigger, he
gets sort of enthusiastic...."
The seconds passed without the boiling hiss of torpedos or the
whipcrack of the Sea Vixen's newly installed railgun. Cautiously,
Suzuko poked her snout over the sheltering harbour wall, in time to
see the huge bulk of the Typhoon class vessel reversing away towards
the entrance and the open ocean.
"I wonder why they - OH !" She clapped a hand to her muzzle in
shock, as she turned round.
Fifty metres away on the dock was a figure of nightmarish
terror and power. Ermine in form, it was naked in soaked crimson fur
that shimmered and steamed in oddly glowing vapours of red carnage !
Poised like a samurai with both swords extended, each paw held by
the ears a ghastly dripping burden.
Rhuzkov stood up, brushing the knees of his uniform carefully
as he watched the pirate ship depart his suddenly silent base.
"It seems, he murmured, "they have some good imaging equipment
onboard. They recognized their employers weren't in any condition to
sign their paycheck."

...................

Only one person was anything but pleased to see the DH110 slip
back into the Sea Of Ohtosk that afternoon, bound first for Shahaguo
Island and then for points unknown.
"You let them go. Again." Katya Vassilov fumed, staring out
over the cold ocean from their vantage point above the main
entrance. "After you promised I could have first go at them !"
Ioseph polished his claws on his sleeve. "Katya, they DID save
my hide. It was worth it all, just to see the look on Lady Tanya's
snout when I handed her the sale receipt ! And now the whole
wretched operation has even shown a profit. How'd you like a new -
well, reconditioned, Manta Three to fly ?"
The bear snorted moodily, and suddenly swept her beloved
Admiral off his feet, to hold him tight.
"Ah, if it wasn't for them, I suppose I'd be saying farewell to
you now. But - " and her eyes glittered "I want to meet them again
sometime ! Hopefully if they send a team to the Toho Wrestling
Contest, I can get leave to legally stomp them !"
Ioseph smiled. "They may. And I'll see you get your chance,
too."

.....................

Consciousness returned for Piotr like a slow red dawn of pain. His
first thought was of amazement that he was alive at all. And later
came a strange sort of confusion. He had been wounded before, if
never so savagely - and these felt like injuries already starting to
heal.
How long, he wondered silently as he drifted back into
welcoming darkness, away from the body-wide pain - just how long HAVE I been out ?

"He can't hear you," Mangana sat by the bedside of the ground-
floor room in Toho Academy's Medical Centre "even when he comes
round, it'll be days before we know whether the operation on the
eardrums worked."
She would not forget that day if she lived as many millenia as
her grandparents. The Vladivostok hospital was too far away for
Piotr to have reached it in time. So it had to be the cramped but
well-equipped medical bay of the Sea Vixen where she and Doctor
Zarin laboured five desperate hours to stabilise the fox's
condition. And then back to Toho the slow way, Mae's flightplan
never rising above ten thousand feet, mindful of Piotr's perilous
state.
The Junkers was not at its best in the thick, heavy air of the
lower atmosphere, and the unsophisticated JUMO engines drank their
tanks dry before they had got halfway back. But that had proved
useful, in one way. Acting on a hunch, Mangana had suggested one
particular airfield to refuel at - and they had picked up another
pair of passengers.
"Will he ... recover ?" The question came from a tall, willowy
doe with long, neatly brushed fur of a silvered honey colour. "I
tried to do a Healing on him - Kazuko told me it wouldn't work here,
but I hoped it might." Her great brown eyes, almost the size of a
Manga breed, filled with gentle concern as she looked down at the
strange tangle of pipes and wires that tied the Arctic Fox to the
living world.
"Well, he'll live," Mangana said cautiously "I can say that
much. But we pulled forty-six splinters out of him - you could have
picked him up with a magnet ! That's a lot of holes in one body -
it's a miracle none of them were in the brain or the spine. Even
twenty years ago he'd have lost that leg. Now we've put it together
with coral bone and carbon fibre, he'll even walk on it someday -
but I don't know if he'll ever get into Olympic fighting condition
again. Even the specialists won't say till next year."

.......................

"SUKI ! It's been AGES !" Kazuko Leclerc had been the second
passenger camped in the airport awaiting the weekly Toho flight with
Broohilda. "I've been back a week, and nobody'll talk to me." She
threw her arms around the silicone-suited vixen the instant Suzuko
stepped onto the landing stage.
"Like the jewelry," Suzuko commented. The blonde Manga girl was
wearing long tubular bracelets and anklets of some obsidian-like
material, and a flat-linked girdle of the same pattern. From the
pale untanned skin around her neck, she had recently been wearing a
wide collar and little else.
Kazuko giggled. "It's not just jewelry, over there. It's got
sort of .... effects on you, that make most things fun to do. I
suppose you could get the same kind of effects with advanced
chemistry over here, but ... I rather liked it. Auntie Shakarna,
that's Mangana's mother, she put this Geas-thingy on me years ago,
so nobody wants to do anything, like, nasty to me. This time, I got
bought by this noble sorceress who had these real exotic tastes !
You should have seen us when she summoned up that... oh, that
reminds me. How did that suit I built you hold up ? I built it for
sort of heavy duty - you and that little navy, all to yourself down
there. How did it go ? I checked your calendar before I left - was
there someone special, or just 'canines on first' ?" Her blue eyes
gleamed bright as a slim furless hand traced a seam on the slick
black suit Suzuko still wore against the ocean spray.
Kazuko had discovered she was no longer on speaking terms with
her cousin. Having to be rescued by Broohilda was bad enough,
considering Broohilda was meant to be the rescuee - but getting in
that situation by losing at Paxiian Death Whist while getting drunk
with a caravan of slavers, put a different light on things.
Especially since Kazuko somehow managed to have exactly the same
sort of "accident" Every time they were in the area.
(Maybe all would have been well between the two cousins had
Mangana not overheard her boast about splitting the proceeds with
the auctioneers, and being worth twice what she'd made LAST
year....)
The vixen's tail trembled as she stared out across the wide
Pacific, where Pathwan and the Freedonia roamed in financial freedom
in the great realm of Offshore Tax Land. Her eyes mirrored the
bleak, empty oceans.
She sighed, but not at Kazuko, who had once claimed to have had
her morals surgically removed. Two days ago, she had sadly taken the
drapes down from her room in Van Morgan's Spires - it now looked
more like a student's quarters than a cub's play den. And form
followed function.
"There was only once I might have tried that. But - well, when
I first met Pathwan, I wasn't wearing it - and afterwards, there
wasn't much point. Have you heard about - Genus Hybrids ?"
Kazuko pulled a face. "Doesn't everyone ? They're, like, a
REALLY bad idea - and it's not just those Rising Sun jerks who say
so. Maybe in a few dozen generations in the wild, the survivors
would reach some sort of stable gene pattern. Like, Mariko worked
judging for the male section of "Le Guide Rose" in Panyatta one
holiday, she said they're great fun, but you don't even think of
marrying one. They're a mess of lethal genes - you'd need genetic
surgery if you wanted children: if you just leave it to chance, nine
out of ten times the hybrids just aren't even born viable."
Suzuko's ears fell flat, and she closed her eyes. "I know."

...................

"So - not quite the way we'd planned it, but you're not in trouble
any more.", Horst Graben raised his glass to the crew of the DH110.
The bar was crowded; not all the facilities on the island were
open yet, even though the returning flow of students was growing by
the day. Captain Broznov was onboard the boat, supervising the
installation of some new sonar and weaponry that should give them a
fighting chance against the Ivan the next time round. Nobody had
forgotten that the Commissars were not the only ones who had offered
a reward for their heads. But fully a third of the crew, twenty
sailors, were piled into the corner where Horst had last sat with
Team Asiwara, now two eventful weeks ago.
"Oh, aye," Gregor Eisenberg cautiously sipped a glass of
Micronesian Mindwarp, a local brew amongst whose many properties was
a wondrous ability to clean engine blocks "Oh aye, we're all
officially listed as having bought our tickets out; they won't throw
us down the Uranium mines if we want to go see our folks back home.
But our new job, like - there's folk not happy about us popping off
satellites they've paid honest money to 'ave stolen. We're not
reckoning it as an easy life for us."
"That's not all," Alexi Pabst put in, leaving Gregor to translate
into PlatzDeutsch for the boar's benefit "this cost more than money.
We've no quarrel with Naval Infantry, but nine of them ended up in
the Gorshkov Square cemetery, chasing us and that Team Asiwara that
was watching our backs. And only one of them's left, in hospital."
Alexi was mercifully unaware of the fact that Piotr and his
team had first set out not to protect him and his friends, but to
slaughter them - and had the circumstances not changed, they would
have quite happily done so. Only three people now alive knew this -
Piotr, Mae and Admiral Rhuzkov - and for a variety of reasons, they
were keeping their snouts firmly shut.
"But Ilania survived the fight, Suzuko said," Horst protested
"What happened to her ?"
Gregor shrugged. "When it was all over, like, she just wasn't
there no more. They follows the blood to a blank wall, and .... it
stops, end of story. I tells you though, not many folk was that keen
to find her ! She was gone, and our ship's mascot an' all, like
they'd just gone eloped out of space together. Bad sort o' business.
Even that Mae Tzuko, she says the ermine didn't just kill folk fair
and square. What was that she said, Alexi ?"
Alexi Pabst shuddered as he recalled what she had said, with
eyes wide and bright in horror. Even a childhood playing with
(Klaus) Barbie Dolls and "My Little PhonyTM " French Abattoir Sets
had not hardened Mae to everything.
"I.... I don't think those folk are even going to get
reincarnated, or anything," she had said in a hushed voice "Because,
what Ilania did to them - there was absolutely NOTHING left ...."

Mae Tzuko is having trouble sleeping, since the dreams began.
Most of them follow the same pattern; an endless boreal forest of
dark Autumnal tints, the mists glowing with the dim auras of plant
and animal life as seen in a psyker's vision. Scenes there are of
great avenues of grey stone, half buried under permafrost and choked
in tangling willow scrublands; great Cyclopaean stones oddly carved.
She never sees the eyes through which the dreams unfold - but the
watcher is a carnivore, as several of the dreams have made
spectacularly obvious. And there is something else in the corner of
her vision, a polychrome flicker of undefinable shape, keeping the
hunter company in the Cold Wastes.
Mae has tried to contact Ilania many times by day, and failed -
possibly the mind she knew is changed beyond recognition. But she is
very sure that Ilania is alive and well - unlike anyone who happens
to meet her.

So. As the new term at Toho Academy begins, and Satori's Hughes
Hercules touches down in the harbour laden with returning students,
Suzuko Hoki waves farewell to the Sea Vixen. Her peroxide bleached
fur is blushing coppery at the roots as its natural colour grows
back; by half-term day she will be, outwardly, back as she was.
Leafing through her course notes on the next Historical
Engineering project (armoured vehicles, this term), she counts the
gains and the losses made since she first heard about the submarine
that now carries her glyph proudly on its sail.
Eyes closed, she stands there for a minute on the Ocean's edge.
And suddenly, Suzuko smiles.
"Anything for a weird life !" She laughs, and starts back up
the hill towards Toho Academy.

THE END (For now...!)