UF:FI - Days of Miracle and Wonder - [FanFic]

[The Shadow]

It was a slow day/And the sun was beating on the soldiers by the side
of the road/There was a bright light/A shattering of shop windows/The
bomb in the baby carriage was wired to the radio These are the days of
miracle and wonder/This is the long distance call/The way the camera
follows us in slo-mo/The way we look to us all The way we look to a
distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky/These are
the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby don't cry It was a
dry wind/And it swept across the desert and it curled into the circle
of birth/And the dead sand/Falling on the children/The mothers and the
fathers and the automatic earth These are the days of miracle and
wonder/This is the long distance call/The way the camera follows us in
slo-mo/The way we look to us all The way we look to a distant
constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky/These are the days
of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby don't cry It's a turn around
jump shot/It's everybody jump start/It's every generation throws a
hero up the pop charts/Medicine is magical and magical is art/Think of
the boy in the bubble and the baby with the baboon heart and I believe
These are the days of lasers in the jungle/Lasers in the jungle
somewhere/Staccato signals of constant information/A loose affiliation
of millionaires and billionaires and baby These are the days of
miracle and wonder/This is the long distance call/The way the camera
follows us in slo-mo/The way we look to us all The way we look to a
distant constellation that's dying in a corner of the sky/These are
the days of miracle and wonder and don't cry baby don't cry don't cry
don't cry...

EYRIE PRODUCTIONS, UNLIMITED

presents

UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
- DAYS OF MIRACLE AND WONDER -

Benjamin D. Hutchins

(c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

MONDAY 6 MARCH 2389

Admiral Benjamin D. Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force Strategic
Commander in Chief, was beside himself with a unique combination of
fear, worry, rage, frustration, and borderline stress madness. He
had, four hours earlier, received a priority field communication from
WDF HQ at Utopia Planitia informing him that Kei had been placed in
the shipyard's hospital, but the fieldcom was jammed partway through
transmission, so he had naturally assumed that she had, somehow, gone
into labor some seventeen days early, despite the fact that they had
both been assured almost daily that things could not be proceeding
more normally.
He had managed to break through just in time to get to Zoner,
who had agreed to bring Wandering Child out to replace Concordia; when
the SDF-23 had folded in, Concordia had folded out. A lifetime ago.
Back then, he had only been concerned and a little worried, mostly
that he wouldn't get back in time.
Then he had come pounding into the base hospital to be met not
by Dr. Sevrin, Kei's Vulcan OB/GYN, but Dr. Rockford Stone, the Wedge
Defense Force Medical Corps' head trauma surgeon. This was not what
he expected. He didn't like it.
He had good reason. With all the brutal bluntness that had
made Stone both somewhat feared and well-liked by the WDF's soldiers,
the trauma doc had shoved Gryphon's butt down into a very
non-ergonomic chrome-and-plastic chair (Gryphon couldn't've argued if
he'd wanted to; Stone, a Tenctenese, was much stronger, and Gryphon
just about slack with confusion and worry), closed the doors to the
soundproofed briefing room off D Ward, and informed him that Kei was
not even vaguely in labor. No, instead, she was in a state of
exceptional unconsciousness, following an attempt by a person or
persons unknown to permanently remove her from this particular mortal
coil.
Gryphon's knuckles whitened on the chrome arms of the chair.
Continuing in his quiet, calm, matter-of-fact voice, Stone
recited her list of injuries in harsh detail. Multiple lacerations to
the forearms, shoulders, and one lower leg, apparently from
partially-successful attempts at fending off a vibroblade of some
kind. Both bones of the right forearm crushed by a blunt
instrument--judging by the puncture wounds intermixed with the
contusion, some kind of spiked mace. That same mace had made a play
for her head, but had only grazed the right parietal area. Several
invasions of the thoracic cavity, some by the same vibroblade that
made the lacerations, some by 9mm projectiles of some kind.
Second-degree burns on both hands. More contusions than could be
counted--marks of a severe beating. Crushed and bloodied knuckles and
one fractured heel seemed to indicate that she gave almost as good as
she got--the CID would know more about that. The situation was made
even touchier by the fact of the pregnancy, which, Stone was quick to
assure as he saw the dagger of pure white agony behind Gryphon's eyes
flicker at its mention, had not been compromised.
Detians are hard to kill. The same holds true for their
children, even before they are born.
Gryphon absorbed it all. Part of his mind made notes and took
down dispassionate memos, like a disinterested party reading a report
on a total stranger. Another part writhed in torment. A third wanted
to shriek and tear the room apart with his bare hands. He sat and
absorbed. Dr. Stone continued his litany of harm.
In his unmedical opinion, she'd put up one hell of a fight.
There had been blood all over her hands which was not hers, and the
pattern of damage indicated that she had been engaged in combat with
someone a good deal stronger and faster than she--someone against whom
she hadn't a chance, but she apparently never stopped fighting.
Gryphon's dispassionate investigator side expressed mild
surprise at this. Someone against whom Kei had no chance in combat?
Granted, a woman nearly on the doorstep of delivery is not the most
dexterous combatant in the universe... but Kei was one of the finest
fighters in known space, one of the 3WA's most highly decorated
officers. For someone to be so powerful as to completely outstrip her
abilities, even now...
He was hardly listening to Stone as the doctor continued,
zeroing in on the real problem areas. One lung punctured. Hardly
surprising considering the number of times she'd been shot. A truly
vast amount of blood lost. They had the same blood type, it occurred
to Gryphon abstractly as Stone mentioned it. He wondered if any of
the blood he had donated the last time had been used, and kind of
hoped it had. One hand completely punctured by the vibroblade,
tendons and nerves severed, the hand useless. That wouldn't be a big
problem. Lots of burns--odd. The CID would know more. One eye
destroyed. Sounded horrible, but it wasn't actually a big problem.
If she were only human, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that
she'd've died before her attacker was even half finished. Not only
was she a Detian, she was, to use Stone's somewhat folksy phrase,
"tougher than thermoplastic."
The worst factor involved here, Stone said, was that, in a
final attempt at finishing the job, whoever had done this had played
one final trump, and poisoned her as she lay unconscious on the
ground. Few toxins are effective against the Detian physiology. One
of them, the most infamous and the nastiest, was a vicious compound
developed by GENOM's Military Division during the Golden Age, without
much subtlety as to its purpose. This compound's name was NeuroKill,
and it was a truly awful way to die.
With this many severe injuries and a dose of NeuroKill burning
away atop that, Kei's system was taxed to its limits trying to cope,
maintain her life, repair the damage, and keep the child alive as
well. Perhaps it was taxed beyond its limits--no one knew. She had
fallen into healing hibernation, a Detian phenomenon shared with some
of the galaxy's more holistic races, such as the Salusians and
Tenctenese. Only time could tell now--having stabilized her from a
trauma state, there really wasn't a hell of a lot the hospital could
do but keep her comfortable and watch. This was unexplored ground;
before now, there had never been a Detian so badly hurt. Before now,
they had either been lightly injured or utterly destroyed.
Particulars of place, time, and circumstance could be had from
the CID, who wanted to talk to him anyway as soon as he was ready.
Oh. Stone had almost forgotten, but the Admiral would want to know.
There was absolutely no evidence of anything even remotely resembling
rape. Perhaps the Admiral felt a little better knowing that? Sir?
"Can you hear me?"
Gryphon shook himself out of the semi-trance he had allowed
himself to fall into, so as not to completely destroy the briefing
room. When he spoke, his throat had dried, and his voice failed and
simply rasped.
Of course the Admiral could see her. Right this way. "I warn
you, sir--it isn't a pretty sight."
It wasn't. Gryphon was reminded again of why he hated
hospitals. He had thought originally that it was the smell, then that
perhaps it was the overpowering orderliness of the places, so anathema
to his own chaotic nature. Finally, he had realized what it was--it
was the air of helplessness that permeated the places. For example,
Kei, stretched out on the monitor bed, swathed in clean white sheets,
festooned with tubes which Gryphon would have found comical had he not
wanted so much to scream and kill something (not necessarily in that
order), with a large white tape-and-gauze affair obscuring half of her
face and the other half purple and black, looked very, very small and
powerless right now.
It was a terrible contrast to her usual self--dynamic, strong,
self-sufficient, and... and... and _alive_. She didn't even look
asleep. She looked--for one wild vertiginous instant of horror
Gryphon's subconscious entertained the notion that there had been a
terrible mistake and that she actually was--dead. He shook his head
violently to rid himself of the notion. Stone was the finest trauma
physician in the galaxy--had it been otherwise, he would not have held
his post. Besides which, Gryphon could read monitor beds as well as
the next layman, and he knew what flatlines looked like. These
weren't a flatline's readings.
Quite.

/* Queen "Forever" _A Kind of Magic_ */

Almost four centuries of a brutal whirlwind life had taught
Gryphon a few things about rebounding from shocks. In instances like
this, he used a trick that ReRob had taught him--something Rob called
"getting on with your job, and falling apart when it's convenient".
He went to Kei's side, looked down at her, and whispered something
neither Dr. Stone nor the two guards caught. Then he gently kissed
her gauze-covered forehead, straightened, turned on his heel and
stalked from the room, hands clasped behind his back.
Admiral Hutchins was not a tall man, and as such lacked long
legs; nevertheless, Stone had to trot to keep up with him as he strode
down the corridor toward D Ward's exit.
"Admiral," he was saying, "please try not to worry unduly.
Her injuries are grave, yes, but she has great fortitude, and this is
the finest facility in space." No boast; simple fact. Gryphon liked
Stone. "We'll pull her through."
"Perhaps," Gryphon replied tightly. "I'm going into the
field. What's the name of the CID officer assigned to this case?"
"Bailey. Inspector Donald Bailey."
Before Gryphon could respond to that, he stopped in his tracks
at a somewhat startling sight, even by his standards. About ten feet
in front of him and slightly to his left, a rectangular area
approximately eight feet high and three feet wide had differentiated
itself glowingly from its surrounding space, becoming a glittering
blue grid of six-inch neon squares looking into a void. Out of this
void, a familiar figure stepped--hawk nose, brown hair, spectacles and
all.
"I got here as soon as I could," Edison Bell said, folding the
silver card in his hand in half and pocketing it. Behind him, the
grid doorway collapsed into nothing, and there was once again nothing
but corridor behind him. "You must be Rock Stone," he said without a
hint of humor. "My name is--"
"I know who you are, Mr. Bell," Stone replied, for his part
without a hint of surprise. "You've come to take charge of Consultant
Morgan's treatment?"
"I have. If you have no objection."
"I have none, but it's really the Admiral's decision."
"Gryphon?"
"By all means, Edison." Gryphon stepped closer to Bell and,
lowering his voice, said, "I'm going into the field to find the
dirtbag who did this and rip out his lungs. Take care of her."
"I will," Bell replied, and grinned. "I've cheated Her
before, and I'll do it again." He produced a large fan of Tarot cards
from nowhere and sent them back to same in a quick flickering motion.
"Nothing up my sleeve."
"Thanks, Edison," said Gryphon. He clasped the ancient
Detian's hand briefly and then, turning to Stone, said, "I'd like you
to stay on this case, barring emergencies which demand your precedence
as trauma chief, as a consultant."
"Certainly, Admiral."
"I don't know when I'll be able to check with you again. Send
any reports to Commander Saavik on Concordia. I'm going down to CID
now." He nodded briefly at the two of them, then walked through the
huge power doors that separated D Ward from the base hospital's common
area, which housed the labs, reception area, et cetera. He turned
left and swept into the transporter room, tersely ordering a linkup
with Concordia on Quadrant XC, Dock Nineteen.
"Energize."
As the blue glow died in Concordia's number-three transporter
room, Master Chief Petty Officer Melissa O'Brien saw the worry lines
etching their way deep into her captain's face as he stepped down from
the pad and knew instinctively that something was terribly wrong. He
murmured a desultory thanks to her as he passed, and headed for the
turbolift as fast as he could go without actually running.
He arrived on the bridge to utter silence. Everyone on his
bridge crew had turned to watch the lift doors, and every eye was on
him as the doors opened.
He ignored them, marched to his chair, sat, and paused for
some time, collecting his thoughts. Then he stood up and announced,
"Open starship log, WDF Concordia, CVS-65, 1844 shipyard hours, 6
March 2389 TSC. As of this time I am temporarily transferring command
of this vessel, her Carrier Task Force, and the Strategic Fleet
Operations Arm of the Wedge Defense Force Navy to Commander Saavik,
service number D-four-four-two-stroke-seven-eight-four-nine-A-X,
Deputy Commander in Chief Strategic, with field grade advancement to
Fleet Captain. Emergency authorization Gryphon, authorization code
Omega four six. Vision, take care of the forms, would you?"
"Aye, sir," the ship's ACI replied from her small conn screen.
She knew already what had happened, having heard it from Hawkeye, the
base hospital's CI. Despite her somewhat irrational tendency to view
Kei as a sort of rival, she was concerned, not only for the trouble
consultant but for her captain's sanity. She sensed that now was not
the time for flippancy. Instead, she made a desperately quick,
spuriously prioritized 19.2-megabaud subether communications link with
Eve, Wandering Child's ACI. Approximately seven picoseconds later,
she ducked through a logic hatch and had no locatable icons on the
Major Net. (Vision, like Eve, had no locatable object files anyway.)
Saavik rose from her seat, well aware of the protocols of the
situation, and said quite formally to Gryphon, "Admiral, I relieve
you."
"Captain," Gryphon said in a heavy, tired voice, "I stand
relieved."
As they passed halfway between the lift and the conn, she gave
his forearm a surreptitious squeeze, and that was all he really needed
to know.
"One other thing, Vanessa...call down to the deckmaster and
have my personal fighter prepped for extended operations, would you
please?"
"Aye, sir. Good hunting."
"Thank you, Lieutenant."
Just as he was about to pass through the lift doors, the voice
of his security chief and weapons officer, Lt. Cmdr. Jaime Finney,
halted him. "Sir?"
He turned. "Yes?"
She threw him a small, glittering object, which he flicked out
of the air and studied. It was the holdout phaser she always had
tucked into one of her boots.
"Good hunting, sir."
He smiled the first smile which had come since he had entered
the base hospital. "Thank you." He stuck the phaser into his trouser
pocket and left the bridge.
"What do you suppose that was all about?" Rick Sterling, the
navigator, asked the helmsman, Max Hunter.
"Damned if I know, Rick-o, damned if I know," Max replied,
leaning back and cracking his knuckles and then running his fingers
back through his blue hair. "He's on the warpath, and gods help
whoever he's after."
"Amen to that, brother."

"All right," said Gryphon to the CID Inspector, "let's see
what you have."
"Well, sir," Inspector Don Bailey replied as he seated his
long, skinny frame behind his desk, "not a bloody great lot, at this
point." His accent, bearing, and dress were all classic Scotland
Yard, and Gryphon wondered briefly where he had come from. Was he an
actual Terran Englishman, or from one of the Crown Colonies, or
someplace else entirely--could the whole thing be a massive
affectation? At any rate, from what little he had managed to skim out
of Bailey's file on his hell-bent flight across the Zeta Cygni Dyson
sphere to CID Headquarters, the man was a top-flight detective and a
good cop.
"We have the physical evidence from the scene, and that's
about all," Bailey continued, opening the file on his desktop computer
and shunting the video to the VDU/whiteboard on the opposite wall.
Gryphon was out of his Navy uniform and dressed in what those
who knew him best called his "hunting clothes"--black fatigue pants,
battered Doc Martens, black Salusian armorwool commando sweater, black
Inverness cloak, fingerless gloves and a sharp-looking snap-brim
fedora hat. He had rammed an indefinite administrative leave down the
WDF admincomp's electronic throat, flown to his quarters near Naval
Shipyard Operations Control, showered, dressed, and then flown
hell-bent across the Sphere to CID HQ for this briefing. He hadn't
bothered to shave.
On the screen opposite Bailey's desk, a high-definition
vidimage of an alley appeared. It was quite obviously the scene of
conflict--anything in the alley that had any physical possibility of
being overturned had been, and there were a lot of marks on both the
walls and the ground.
"This is an alley off the Kolverstrasse in Berlin," Bailey
said. He knew that Gryphon knew what planet it had occurred on--Kei
had, once her condition had forced her off operations, insisted on
going back to her homeworld, Niogi, to wait until Gryphon came back
from the Cardassian front. She had been treated initially in a Trauma
Team facility in Berlin, but had been almost immediately medevac'd to
D Ward via a specially-equipped 3WA Concorde-class ultrawarp shuttle.
"As best as we can reconstruct it from medical evidence,
thermographic trace scans, and whatnot--there were no eyewitnesses, or
at least none have come forward--what happened was this: Consultant
Morgan was walking past this alley when her attackers--who had been in
place in the alley for a long time, long enough so that there were no
thermotraces--"
"Attackers? Plural?"
"Yes. We've figured that for certain. I'm not surprised the
medical people didn't know about it--it's not obvious from the wounds.
There were at least two humans, one individual of the Vulcan/Romulan
persuasion--we'll know for certain on that one when the serology comes
back from the lab--and a mechanoid, probably a Telosian Cyberman."
Gryphon felt moderately better at hearing this. Now his adversaries
were multiple, but mortal--no mythic Goliath of Gath for him to face
down with a sling in his hand. He had never liked that story.
"At any rate, her attackers had been in position for some
hours when they jumped her. The mechanoid--we can tell because of the
footmarks and IR traces--was the one who actually got her into the
alley. The one with the vibroblade tried for her almost at once--I
think they intended originally to make it quick, but she fended him
off and got her blaster out. Shot the hell out of one of them--there
was B-neg blood all over the alley--probably put that one right out of
the fight. Maybe even killed him. Then the one with the mace took
out her gun arm. The 'blader--we figured that one was the
Vulcanoid--went at her again, got her in the upper torso this time.
She got the cuts on her leg from kicking him away. One of his canines
was imbedded in the heel of her right boot, along with a sizable
amount of his green blood, and a number of other front teeth were
scattered on the ground. Unfortunately, knocking him clear left her
open for the one with the slugger."
"Have you identified the gun yet?"
v Bip. A section of the VDU sectioned itself off and became a
ballistics report. "As we speak, Admiral," Inspector Bailey
announced.
"Don't call me that," Gryphon said, more harshly than he
intended. "I'm off duty. It's just 'Gryphon'." He examined the
report section, which included a constantly rotating 3-D picture of
the weapon in question.

Wedge Defense Force Criminal Investigation Division
Forensic Ballistics Department Standard Report
CASE #4045-7aC
WEAPON TYPE:
Heckler & Koch MP40A-SS Convertible Submachine Operations
Weapon (Stealth Silenced). Weapon ID Number TT-7079-4150-AxA.
Manufactured: Berlin, Niogi, 1 August 2388.
WEAPON CALIBER: 9x19mm cased, AKA 9mm Luger, 9mm Parabellum,
9mm Browning Long, 9mm Salusian Standard, .38 Automatic.
PROJECTILE TYPE: Full copper case, 125 grain.
REGISTRATION: None.

There followed a number of dry, rather boring technical
details on the weapon itself. Gryphon made mental notes of them--they
might prove useful to know later on. He also made a mental note to
pick up a similar weapon for testing.
"One thing seems obvious to me, Adm--Gryphon," Bailey offered.
"Hmm?" Gryphon replied, turning to look at the policeman.
"Whoever these guys were, they never expected this op to go as
wrong as it went. They thought it'd be an easy job. Watch the target
for a few days, determine her patterns, wait, grab, slash and run.
Make it look like a random gang thing. They never expected her to
blow one of their guys in half and knock another one's front teeth
out. Never expected her to put up so much of a fight."
"You're of the opinion that this was a professional job,
then?"
"No doubt whatsoever in my mind, sir. This kind of hardware
doesn't find its way to gangs. To venture an opinion, I think the
mace was just for window dressing--add a few gang-type marks to the
picture when they were finished. I don't think they ever expected
they'd have to use it in the fight itself."
"What else do you have?"
"After the gunner used his clip--we checked, thirty-five
rounds all accounted for somewhere in the alley--the three of them
went in hand-to-hand. Even then she probably did all right until the
mace caught her. Probably stunned her, and it was all downhill from
there."
"So why didn't they finish the job?" Gryphon wondered, to
himself as well as Bailey.
"Probably scared off, sir. Like I said, they probably
expected this to take fifteen, twenty seconds at most, and by now
they've been here for at least two minutes, and expended a clip of
ammo to boot. Even silenced, that makes a considerable amount of
noise. What with all the blood, they probably figured they'd done
enough damage to make it stick, so they policed the brass from the
MP40, recovered their hors de combat colleague and got the hell out.
But only after they did their last bit of devilment--the one that, in
my opinion, they should be flayed alive for."
"What was that?" Gryphon had a feeling he already knew--there
was a part of Dr. Stone's report that had not yet been accounted for
by Bailey's report--but he needed his information to be complete and
accurate.
Bailey looked as if he didn't want to say, but relented
finally and, in a quiet voice, said, "The bastards set her on fire,
sir. Around a liter of what tests out as nitrothylene and a simple
sulphur match." The tall, thin policeman's long, bony fingers
clenched on the corners of his desk, and the muscles in his cheeks
jumped with the tension in his face. He seemed to be taking the
knowledge even harder than Gryphon, who pigeonholed it away for later
screaming about. Apparently, his rational side mused, no one told
Bailey about the NeuroKill -- and the way the man was reacting, it was
probably a good thing, too.
"If I might mention it, Inspector, you seem to be taking this
poorly," Gryphon observed, curious.
"Well, sir... it's rather embarrassing..."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Gryphon
replied. "I was only curious."
"Well, you see, sir... I grew up on Shoreditch III, sir. I'm
thirty-seven. Back in the sixties, the Consultant and her partner had
a TV series..."
"I know," Gryphon said with a smile. "I've seen it in
reruns." Kei really did such a bad job of acting herself in those
re-enactments... she always reminded him of Joe Friday. "Get out of
the car, kid... keep yer hands where I can see 'em..."
"Well, I was just starting secondary when that show came on,
and...well, I hate to say it, especially to you, sir, but I had the
most terrific crush on the Consultant. I suppose I still do, in that
way I guess we all retain our boyhood fantasies." Bailey looked as if
he wished the floor would open beneath him and swallow him up,
preferably messily. His embarrassment was almost causing Gryphon
physical pain, and for the first time since this whole thing began, he
laughed.
"Don't worry about it, Inspector," Gryphon said with a genuine
grin. "I know the feeling. I did, too." Bailey looked confused.
"It's a very long story--perhaps when this is all over I'll tell you
about it, if you remind me."
"I'll do that, sir... then... you're not upset?"
"Gods, no, Inspector. I try hard not to be the jealous type."
He grinned again. "I think of it as a compliment to my taste, even
though I really had terribly little to do with it."
Long, long ago, "Why me?" had been relegated, in Gryphon's
mind, to the same Realm of the Unanswerable as "How many licks does it
take to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop?"
"Thank you again, Inspector," Gryphon said, getting up from
the hard, uncomfortable guest's chair (probably most often used for
"guests" under interrogation) and shaking the policeman's hand.
"You've told me just about all I need to know."
"Thank you, sir," said Inspector Bailey, and watched the man
in black leave, wondering what the point of all that had been.

Feeling very drawn, very tired, and very small, Gryphon
stopped at a public phone in the area and called Medical for an
update; upon receiving it, he decided to take a few minutes and go
back there, where he was strangely reassured by the clean order and
procedure which permeated the place. Nurses, doctors and orderlies
went here and there, secure in the knowledge that they knew what they
were doing and where they were going, not fumbling about in a blind,
half-scientific way as Gryphon felt he was doing. He concealed it
well, walking purposefully down the corridors, taking the turns with
confidence, and stopping at an intersection with a modicum of surprise
as he realized that there was already someone standing in front of the
door which was his destination.
The man standing by the door was not a uniformed guard, at
least not of the sort Gryphon had expected to see. He was a tall,
thin man dressed all in violet, with a darker purple cloak gathered
around him, partially concealing the mutedly gleaming buttons of his
cavalry-style purple jacket. Sharp eyes glittered out of the
concealing shadow of a wide-brimmed grey slouch hat, and the lower
half of his face was hidden in a combination of upturned collar and
swathing purple scarf, the latter of which trailed over his right
shoulder and down his back, although Gryphon couldn't see that, since
he was facing the corridor. His arms were folded and he stood
immobile and silent, like some kind of violet colossus, and he exuded
immovability and resolve. It would take a catastrophic space-time
event to move him from that spot -- or at least a forklift.
Gryphon walked down the corridor toward him, raising a hand in
tired greeting. Martin Rose broke his stone-like tableau, reaching
up, drawing down his scarf, and pushing back his hat a bit.
"Hey, Gryph," he said. "You ought to get some sleep. You
look like hell."
"Do I," Gryphon replied drily. "I don't see you sleeping
either."
"I don't need as much as I used to."
Gryphon chuckled. "What does Eiko think of you standing a
vigil over another woman?"
"Ask her," Rose replied, angling a thumb toward the door.
"She's inside." Gryphon chuckled again, then removed his own hat to
run a hand through his hair. Hammer realized something about his
friend's appearance then, and chuckled himself.
"Something funny?" Gryphon inquired, replacing the hat.
"Your outfit. All you need is a red lining in the flap of
that cloak and a scarf, and you'd be dressed up like my predecessor... "
Gryphon's tired brain missed the connection. "Predecessor?"
Martin affected a look of exaggerated patience. "Hammer is an
extension of Darkwing, who was a parody of?"
Gryphon made the link this time, and grinned, mentally chiding
himself for not realizing it earlier. He and Rose had discussed that
very pulp hero often enough, after all -- he was one of Gryphon's
favorites -- and Gryphon himself had worn the identity once, a long,
long time ago.
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" Gryphon
intoned, and smiled, taking off his hat and regarding it. "You know,
you're right. A little bit of work, and I could have myself a
MO-tif," he drawled, causing Hammer to snicker again.
"If you decide to use it, make sure you identify yourself
often," said Hammer. "Wouldn't want people mixing us up."
Gryphon chuckled, envisioning it. "'Keep it straight. I'm
the one in -black-, with the -guns-. He's the one in -purple-, with
the -swords-.'" He was clearly warming to the idea. More than that;
it was as if he were rediscovering a long-lost part of himself.
Rose looked comically mock-horrified. "Oh, lord. I've
created a monster."
"Whoever fights monsters," Gryphon replied, "must be careful
lest he become what he fights."
"Innat the truth."
Lacking anything else to say, Gryphon went through the door.
Rose, similarly out of words, merely laid a hand on his friend's
shoulder as he passed. It was enough.
Within, the lights were muted, the only source of illumination
the small, underpowered lamp sitting on the small table next to the
bed. Eiko Rose was sitting in the steel-tube-framed chair next to it,
her long, wavy red hair disorganized, as it tended to be whenever she
didn't bother taking the time to comb it. She and Martin had
undoubtedly come here straight from sleep, when the word had made its
way down the information chain to them, and she'd been crying, to
boot. In the few months since she'd returned to Zeta Cygni, Kei had
become quite a good friend of Eiko's, which had pleased Gryphon
immensely. With the amount of time Gryphon had spent with the Roses
during the eight years in which he'd rebuilt the WDF and lived alone
and waiting, it had been inevitable that Kei would be drawn into the
same circle when she returned to him, and he and Martin had both been
very pleased they'd become friends rather than the alternative.
Eiko looked up and smiled weakly as Gryphon entered, getting
up and going to his side.
She said basically the same thing that Martin had: he looked
terrible. Yes, he knew. There was nothing for it. They chatted in
strained uncertainty-of-what-to-say for several minutes, and then
trailed away into silence, Gryphon gazing sadly at his comatose wife.
He was startled by Eiko's hand on his own, and her voice,
pitched soft, saying, "The two of you will make wonderful parents, you
know."
[Trying to get my mind off this and into our future... a good
technique, I think,] Gryphon remarked wryly to himself. He smiled and
said sadly, "Thanks... "
"It's true. I know you'll be a good father -- the way you are
with Noriko's all the proof I need. And Kei..." She looked at the
battered, forlorn figure in the bed. "...I understand Kei. She's a
lot like me. A warrior to anyone who doesn't know her ... and a
genuinely caring person to those who do ... but you already know
that." She looked back at him. "She'll be first-class, you'll see."
He smiled again, and it felt a bit more genuine on his face
this time. "Thanks," he repeated. The look in her smile made him
pause. Was there something besides comfort in those blue eyes? It
looked like ... jealousy? Not of him, or Kei, but ... what?
He shelved the thought and patted her hand. "I have to go."
"I know. You have that look in your eyes. I've seen it in
Marty's from time to time, when something he loves is threatened ...
that look that says there's nothing in the universe that'll stand in
your way. And given your history, I think you're right." If he was
startled when she took his hand, he was shocked by the light kiss she
placed on his cheek. It was a good sort of shock, though. "Go get
'em."
"I will," he vowed, and left, making his way from the sphere
wall to New Avalon.
New Avalon was the City in the Sphere, a magnificent place
built on the Zeta Cygni Dyson Sphere's north pole. Gryphon had first
envisioned it, had laid out the city and its surroundings and given
them their names; it had fallen to a team of terraformers from the
Cianbro Corporation, the same general heavy contractor which had built
the sphere itself, to make his dream reality. Along the way, given an
enormous budget and a truly vast amount of space in which to work,
Cianbro had wrought a minor miracle of their own -- through an
intricate combination of optical tricks, huge mechanisms and
technological near-magic, they had given New Avalon and its
surrounding area -- already indistinguishable from one of Earth's
temperate zones -- night and day and seasons. The weather took care
of itself, as it would always do in areas with atmospherics on a large
scale -- it wasn't even controlled. The sun rose in what seemed to be
the east, and set in the west, and when you looked at it, it was
definitely Zeta Cygni. The "stars" were the windows of the vast
shipyard complex shining out from the inside of the sphere, but who
cared?
The city itself was huge and curiously unmodern, spurning
steel-and-glass towers for great, craggy, masonry monoliths of
buildings, very deco. The whole place had an undefinable Gotham City
feel to it, but without the gloom and foreboding, for though it could
be rainy at times, New Avalon was a happy and relatively clean city,
its seventeen million inhabitants enjoying clean air, nice weather,
and few restrictions. It had been called the best city in the
Federation more than once in the six years since its founding, and was
Gryphon's proudest accomplishment.
Gryphon himself lived in a modest-sized house in the outskirts
of New Avalon, what would be called the suburbs save that they weren't
considered to be separate townships, on a short loop of a street
called Morgan Lane. His house, number 105, had been raised during the
first phase of New Avalon's construction, before even the largest
buildings downtown, and from its back porch he had watched his city
take shape in the few moments of free time he could steal.
Most of those moments had been shared with at least one member
of the Rose clan, which at the time had numbered three: Martin, Eiko,
and Noriko, who was recovering from a terrible injury that had left
her mindless, a blank slate to be started over again. Lonely without
Kei, unhappy despite the great work he was doing, Gryphon had taken
almost as large a hand in the second childhood of Noriko as had Martin
and Eiko, and she, now at the mental age of twelve or so, regarded him
as, effectively, a third parent.
As he let himself into the front door of number 105 Morgan
Lane, Gryphon glanced across the street at 108 and saw the light
burning in the front upstairs room he knew to be Noriko's. No doubt
she was upset as well. He briefly considered going over and talking
to her about it, but having no idea what he would say, he opted for
just getting on with what he was doing. No need to confuse the poor
girl.
Halfway into his living room, he froze with a sudden terror
that something similar would happen to Kei -- that she would awaken
and have nothing but an empty shell for a mind, that all their history
together, bad, good and routine, would be erased, and he would be left
with two children, both echoes of her, to raise. He had seen, on the
odd occasion when fatigue would cause his facade to slip, the torment
that Martin Rose felt raising Noriko, constantly with the child-woman
whose face was the face of a lost love. He didn't think he could
handle anything similar.
Then he chided himself for being a fool. Stone hadn't said
anything about permanent neurological damage -- there were excellent
treatments for NeuroKill. Kei was going to be fine, and they were
going to raise their child together.
With this resolution firm in his mind, he set to work putting
together the identity which Martin had suggested to him, piece by
piece. He interrupted his work only to make a couple of telephone
calls, one to the WDF's HQ, where he made an unusual request of the
quartermaster, and one to Andrew Petrarca, of whom he made another
unusual request. Both took their odd tasks in stride, the
quartermaster because it was his job, Andrew because he'd had weirder
ideas himself.
When day broke over New Avalon, Gryphon had finally gone to
sleep.

The next morning, in his shipyard office, Gryphon looked over
the reconstruction data--telling, in bland, dry, soulless officerese
what Bailey had already told him in color--for the nth time, burning
the details of the crime into his mind. Suddenly, the corner of the
screen of his EyrieTech Mark VI lapframe divided itself off in a
familiar manner, and a familiar face filled it.
"What are you doing here?" he asked Vision. "You're supposed
to be on Concordia."
"Eve's got one her minions covering for me," Vision replied.
"You'll need me."
"Well for crissake I hope it's not Shakespeare again."
"No, she said she'd send Gurney this time."
"Good." Gryphon sighed. "Did I program you with this
tendency to do what I need you to do, and not what I tell you to do?"
"Must have," Vision replied with an impish grin. "We'll never
know, I guess, since you never really coded me."
"True." Gryphon had created Vision in a drug-induced haze, on
a stolen lapframe, in a dumpster on Kane's World, many years before,
during one of the darkest periods of his exile. She'd sprung into
existence like Minerva in the myth, full-grown from the brow of her
creator, created in an instant by the synergy of CLULESS and Gryphon's
reeling brain. Her third act upon inception was to summon paramedics
who dried the bonding interrogation drugs out of Gryphon's struggling
system; her second was to hack into the planetary defense net and
order one of the orbital defense satellites to commit a "firing-test
error" and "accidentally" wipe the stronghold of the people who had
done it to him off the planet; her first was to shut him down,
forcibly, before he burned out. Since then he had rarely gone
anywhere without a computer, any computer, she could access.
"Anything you need right now?"
"Not that I know of, thanks." Except some semblance of a
plan, he didn't add.

MEGATOKYO, NEW JAPAN
ROUGHLY THAT SAME MOMENT

In a senior faculty office of the Stingray Institute for the
Technologies, some four miles outside the city proper, Professor
Emeritus of the Department of the Computer Sciences Nene K. Romanova
was seated at her desk, organizing her equipment. At seventy-five,
Professor Romanova had been running cyberspace since before the Great
Crash of 2335, and knew more about the Internet and transtellar
cybernetic link dynamics than any currently living carbon-based life
form. Which meant, of course, that as a netrunner she was virtually
unstoppable.
Humming a little tune and smiling, she opened the port on the
top of her desk which led to her secured fiber-optic dataline, plugged
her Cyberdyne 4000XLT imaging deck into said line, and flipped the
deck's collapsible top up, exposing its small control panel. From
there she drew out its two hardwired leads, jacking them into the
interface plugs behind her ears (an out-of-fashion location, but
coming back in), and hit the big green GO switch.
There was a short burst of sensory static, and she was in the
Net, surrounded by the rushing superhighways of data which connected
the Institute, a major net.island, to the rest of the Internet. In
the cybernetic distance she could make out the GENOM Tower, various
other corporations' strongholds, and the numerous subether I/O towers
which linked New Japan to the Enigma Sector ComSubNet.
Her destination today: Megatronics Incorporated, one of the
newest and hottest cybersystems manufacturers on the planet. They
were rising fast and threatening to take over GENOM's old spot as the
impetus behind Buma crimes in the sector--Buma crimes which had been
severely curtailed since Caine took control of GENOM New Japan in
2340. She had heard through the grapevine that Caine was running all
of GENOM now, since Largo's demise in the Second Battle of Zeta Cygni;
she hoped it was true. He'd put the Knight Sabers out of a job, true,
but he had been a good guy.
Her icon--a much younger version of herself (after all, she
used to say, what's the point of an electronic dreamland if you can't
dream?)--slid through the electronic pathways with ease, negotiating
the master datastream toward the Megatronics Pyramid, hiding among all
the other bits of data that the Pyramid was inputting and outputting.
Maybe, with a little luck, she could find either evidence of their
illegal activities or, better yet, the actual control systems for
their production units. Trashing those would set MT back a good six
months. It felt good to be back to work again.
As Professor Romanova ran the Net, a black hovervan pulled up
in front of Gibson Hall. The back doors banged open and eight people
in black jumpsuits piled out. Their leader, identifiable by the red
armband around his upper left arm, had an H&K MP40A-SS. They ran
almost silently up the stairs, through the front doors, and into the
building. They made their way, unseen and unchallenged, to the fire
stairs, and got as far as the fourth floor, the Admin floor, before
they were spotted emerging from the stairwell by a security guard, who
shouted for them to halt and went for his pistol.
There was a rattling, coughing sound as the squad leader
opened fire on the guard with his silenced submachinegun; the guard
stumbled back, dropping his gun, as 9mm slugs plowed into him, ripping
away chunks of his flesh and sending blood fountaining. Then, as the
copper-jacketed hailstorm stopped, he regained his balance and,
gritting his teeth, seemed to flex all his muscles to superhuman
proportions.
Then the illusion was dispelled as the guard burst out of his
uniform and flesh, growing to a full nine feet tall and becoming a
huge, powerful Bu99-CX3 series Combat Buma, one of the GENOM Security
line. 99's were usually red, but in keeping with the Stingray
Institute's color of choice, this one was a vivid shade of violet.
Snarling, the security Buma fired its particle cannon, blowing
the squad leader and one of his subordinates in half. The others
fanned out behind their dead leader's position and opened up with
their own weapons, mostly laser-converted Uzi-9's or Thompson M2127's.
The Buma ignored the small arms fire, stalking forward and sending a
signal to the Campus Police headquarters at Murphy Hall.
One of the commandos in the back stopped firing and unlimbered
a Kilrathi-manufactured RPL-9 anti-armor weapon, a shaped-charge
plasma weapon with a one-shot lithium-fusion battery pack. Shouting,
"Clear!" to his teammates, he came to one knee and sighted.
The weapon worked perfectly, spreading the unfortunate
security Buma across half the Quad and making a nasty hole in the wall
of Gibson Hall.
Meanwhile, in the Net, Professor Romanova was closing rapidly
on the Pyramid's defense perimeter. Activating a cloak utility whose
pretty-effect was to render her icon invisible, she ducked out of the
datastream near the Pyramid's "northern" face, hoping she wouldn't
have to get violent with defense programs. Not that she was worried
about her capabilities; she just hoped she wouldn't be forced to make
so much noise.
There was a deep electronic snarl from somewhere to her left;
she turned to look just in time to get jumped by a Baskerville-7
attack program. Her cloak shattered, she rezzed back into visibility
as she tumbled back with the Baskerville, coming dangerously close to
the edge of the net.platform. (Falling off would mean dropping into
the endless reaches of net.void, wilderspace, which lay "below" the
plane of this particular node, unless there was another one down there
someplace.)
A wicked knife, the icon of a Dagger-9 Close Quarters Assault
utility, appeared in her hand with a sizzle of static; she jammed it
into the Baskerville's ribs and regained her feet as three more
spotted the battle and ran to assist their compatriot. Cursing, she
activated her own personal creation, the last word in personal
net.protection: the Hardsuit-3 defense daemon.
Hardsuit-3 was a combination of many programs, the foremost
among which were Armor, Dagger-9, Lazer-8 (a ranged assault utility),
CodeBuster, Trap-4, and BoostMaster 3.1. A cutting-edge multi-util,
practically an OS, Hardsuit-3 had cost several hundred thousand
dollars' worth of net.resources (mostly stolen from GENOM) and many
hundred workhours. It had taken her nearly a year to complete. Its
icon took the form of its name, a hard power armor which formed around
the user's regular icon.
Eyes narrowing, Professor Romanova faked back and, raising her
right arm, let one of the B-7's have it with the Lazer-8 attacker.
The beam burned star-bright for a fraction of a second, then snapped
off, leaving the Baskerville with a neat hole burned through its icon.
Crashed, it dissipated as the other two pounced.
Outside, the commandos kicked in the door to Professor
Romanova's office, causing an alert signal to appear in her current
net.location, in the form of a large red billboard flashing "OFFICE
COMPROMISED". Romanova initiated an emergency dump.
The commandos leveled their weapons and perforated the entire
office, including its occupant. Feedback screamed through the
fiber-optic leads and her icon started to de-rez. She knew what had
happened. She also knew she had about four nanoseconds to do
something about it.
A good hacker is never without a backdoor. Nene Romanova, the
acknowledged Queen Mother of Hackers, was very certainly no exception.
She reached back into the darkest recesses of her mind and enacted her
Final Failsafe Command, not knowing who had whacked her or why. It
didn't matter. They weren't going to get away with it.
A new utility sprang into existence, the code-heavy core
backbone around which the rest of Hardsuit-3 had been constructed,
just for this eventuality. It sprang out from the backpack of the
suit-icon like a metallic spider, its umbrella-armature-like legs
wrapping around Romanova's icon and surrounding it in a chrysalis of
coruscating colors. The two Baskervilles stumbled back, whimpering in
incomprehension, as the chrysalis of energy flared, pulsed, and then
imploded.
In the real world, three point seven four six nanoseconds had
passed. The commandos' fingers had not even relaxed on their triggers
yet. The last laser pulse had not yet blasted through the copier in
the corner. Nene Romanova's perforated body had not yet slumped to
the desk.
It wouldn't get the chance to; Professor Romanova had planned
carefully, knowing that, in her long, colorful career, she had made
enemies who might try some day to even the score. When her neural
signal disappeared from her cyberdeck's carrier -- when she flatlined
-- the cyberdeck transmitted a special failsafe signal. This had two
effects. The first was a rather dramatic explosion as several
specially placed charges in her office detonated, blowing that corner
out of the top floor of Gibson Hall and scattering the strike team and
what remained of their victim to the four winds. The second was a
rather belated summoning of additional security -- to clean up the
mess, apparently.
When the smoke cleared...

GRYPHON'S OFFICE
SEVERAL HOURS LATER

The telephone rang with its usual strident three-tone, jolting
Gryphon out of the unsound sleep he'd fallen into on the blotter of
his desk. Muttering something incoherent, he reached for it and
picked up the receiver, his little finger stabbing the "VID" button as
he did so, and then he dropped it on the desk with a clatter as the
VDU powered up.
He looked up and blinked. Of all the people he expected to
see on his vidphone on this particular -- he checked his watch
surreptitiously -- evening, Sylia Stingray would not have rated high
had you asked him for a scale. Not because he didn't like Sylia, or
tried to avoid her; it was just that he hadn't seen her in over fifty
years, and wasn't entirely certain she was alive.
Nevertheless, here she was, or someone who looked just like
her, and it didn't occur to him for a moment just how -odd- it was
that she would look exactly the same. After all, it had been
fifty-four years since he had last seen her. Still, it was with more
pleasure than surprise he smiled, perking up a bit.
"Sylia," he said. "Hello."
"Hello, Gryphon," she replied, as formal as ever -- he thought
he detected an undercurrent of something else in her restrained voice.
He had always been good at reading Sylia's hidden moods, and this time
he could feel a twinge of sadness, and see it lurking behind her dark
eyes, and in the fine stress lines around them. No... more than a
twinge. She was just getting better at concealing, or he had
forgotten how to see.
"What's wrong?" he inquired, shaking off some of his own
tiredness and worry.
"Nene," Sylia replied, her voice heavy. "She's been killed."
Gryphon's heart sank.
"Oh, no," he murmured.
"She requested that you be at her funeral if it were at all
possible," Sylia continued, as if only fixation on her mission in
calling kept her together. "Finding you hasn't been as difficult as I
expected."
"I'm a bit on the high-profile side these days," Gryphon
replied, nodding.
Sylia took a deep breath, let it out slowly, and said, "The
funeral is on Friday."
"I'll be there," Gryphon promised. "Are you all right?"
"I'll be fine," she replied, and then smiled sadly. "But
thank you for asking. Oh... I almost forgot. You can bring a guest
with you... if you like."
"Thank you," said Gryphon as an image appeared in his mind.
"I will. Are you sure you're okay?"
"Fine," she repeated. "I'll see you on Friday."
"Count on it," Gryphon said, and the screen went blank as she
hung up.
For a long, long time, Gryphon sat looking out the window of
his office, thinking, silent tears dripping down his cheeks and onto
his shirt. Dear little Nene... aged and gone while he gallivanted,
never returning as he promised. All of them, waiting, wondering if he
would come back. Reika...
Wait.
Sylia hadn't said Nene had -died-... she said she was
-killed-.
Was it possible... ?
He picked up his telephone, put it on the hook, and then
picked it up again and dialed a well-remembered number.
"Hello, Noriko... is your Papa there? Sure, I can wait... "

Two hours later, Gryphon, showered and changed, entered a
small, cluttered lab, its workbenches and floor strewn with what, on
closer examination, would prove to be millions of credits' worth of
cutting-edge-and-beyond scientific equipment and parts. On the one
clear spot in the worktable were two gleaming metallic objects, and
despite the way the last few days had gone, he grinned widely at the
sight of them as Andrew "Android" Petrarca, the stocky, pale-skinned,
galaxy-renowned pan-disciplinary scientist, welcomed him to the lab.
"You finished them?" Gryphon asked with audible glee.
"Of course," Andrew said. "Bit of a rush job, but I think
they'll work just fine." He indicated for Gryphon to take the
objects: two slab-sided Colt M1911A1 .45 automatics, which it had
taken the quartermaster well-nigh all the previous night to find.
Gryphon picked up one of the weapons and ejected the magazine.
His brow furrowed as he looked at the magazine in his right
hand. It looked like an ordinary .45 clip, complete with a shiny
brass-cased hardball round at the top, but through the slots in the
side, he saw not more rounds, but a tangled rat's nest of wires, some
of them glowing or pulsing, and chip boards.
"How's it work?" he asked Android.
"Oh, I based it on my hyperdimensional Pez dispenser," 'Droid
replied with a self-satisfied grin on his bearded face. "It draws
ammunition from that hopper over there." He indicated a large metal
case marked "CAUTION: GRAVITIC DISRUPTORS", standing floor-to-ceiling
in the corner. "You should be set for the forseeable future -- that's
just the bottom. There's a room on the next floor full of the stuff."
".45 Grav?"
"But of course. Regular ammunition would be useless against
modern body armor."
"True. Oh, the sacrifices we traditionalists must make," said
Gryphon with a grin, and slapped the clip back into the gun, taking it
and the other and making them disappear under his coat.
"You're a genius, Andrew," he said, clapping the scientist on
the shoulder. "When I get back I'm going to buy you the biggest damn
dinner you've ever had."
"That'll be a chore," Andrew said with a grin. "Just be
careful," he called after Gryphon as he left the room.

Galactic Air Flight 960, New Avalon to MegaTokyo, New Japan,
touched down one minute forty-six seconds late at MegaTokyo Starport
on the tenth of March, 2389. Among the passengers who got off the
Lockheed L-1099-A widebody were the two men who had occupied all of
First Class, each of them carrying a small case, each looking somber.
The shorter, stockier one was dressed in baggy, faded blue jeans, a
black t-shirt printed with the white logo of a band called Hangman's
Joke, a pair of battered old Doc Martens, and a grey duster which was
a bit tattered at the edges. A pair of samurai swords rode easily on
his back, their grips jutting above his right shoulder, in flagrant
violation of several airline regulations. His hair was an
unremarkable shade of brown, and long, pulled back away from his face
and into a long ponytail that trailed away down his back. There was a
white headband around his forehead, imprinted with a rising sun and a
few kanji. His eyes were blue, and looked tired behind
gold-wire-framed, octagonal spectacles.
The other man was considerably taller -- nearly a foot and a
half -- and wiry. He wore jeans as well, with sneakers of some
indeterminate brand and a a black turtleneck sweater emblazoned with
the logo of the Wedge Defense Force's Criminal Investigation Division,
under a worn-looking leather flight jacket. His hair was darker, and
shorter, but thick and somewhat unruly. Hazel eyes nearly blue with
the rainy weather narrowed as they surveyed the starport.
The two men crossed the tarmac in silence, walking toward the
side entrance to the terminal building; still without a word, the
taller one held the door for the shorter with an over-elaborate
gesture, which the shorter one acknowledged with a nod and a grunt as
he passed through, leaving his companion to shrug and reply, "Hmph,"
before entering the building himself.
Inside, the two men passed through customs with barely a
moment's delay, and were into the main terminal concourse before most
of the other passengers of GalAir 960 had left the plane. Ordinarily
Gryphon would have felt rather amused at the treatment he and Martin
were receiving -- today, though, he was too busy brooding.
So busy, in fact, that he almost didn't notice the man waving
for his attention until he'd almost walked past him, and the woman who
was standing next to him. When he -did- notice, he halted and turned
to face them, and the first smile he'd worn in several hours came to
his unshaven face as he recognized them.
"Mackie!" he declared. "Sylia! You didn't need to come down
here and meet us -- "
"Maybe not," the grinning, dark-haired young man replied as
Gryphon took his hand and shook it enthusiastically, "but Sis
insisted."
"We haven't seen you in fifty years," Sylia Stingray said,
calm and reserved as always, but with a dignified smile on her face --
which, Gryphon noticed, still looked as young and lovely as it had the
day they'd met. "The least we could do is meet you at the airport."
She stepped forward and, with great dignity and gravity, hugged him
tightly, whispering in his ear as she did, "It's so good to see you
again, old friend."
"You too," he replied quietly as he returned the embrace.
"I'm sorry I didn't stay in touch -- things happened so -fast- -- "
"There's no need to apologize," she replied, releasing him.
"Your life has been a whirlwind, if the reports are even half true."
"They only know half the story," he said with a pained
expression. "But enough about me. Sylia, Mackie, this is Martin
Rose, a friend of mine from the old days. You said I could bring a
guest, well... here he is."
Sylia looked surprised, but recovered well as she greeted
Martin politely and said, "Pardon my surprise -- I had assumed Kei
would be your guest, Gryphon."
"Kei is... indisposed," Gryphon said. "Don't worry... she's
going to be all right, but Edison didn't think travel was a good idea.
Anyway, Martin... knew Nene."
"Oh," Sylia said, and looked momentarily downcast, then
surprised again, as if something had just dawned on her. "You're
-that- Martin Rose, then. The leader of the Thunder Force."
Martin fought back an urge to reply, "Well, we aren't
available in stores, you know," saying instead, "I suppose I must be."
"I must apologize for not inviting you directly," she went on,
"but I wasn't aware of your whereabouts."
"I've been trying to avoid the headlines," Martin replied with
a smile. "It's no problem."
"I'm glad you came, in any event; there are a couple of things
she wanted you to have, and I had despaired of finding you. We have
time now, if you like, to go to the Institute and take care of that
bit of business before the funeral."
"Sounds okay to me," Martin said; Gryphon nodded.

The ride to the Stingray Institute's campus was short and
silent. As the four disembarked into the rain in front of the
enormous Gothic pile that was apparently the admin building, Gryphon
let out a surprised "Hm!" as he saw the large bronze plaque bolted to
the stone wall next to the main entrance, a pair of huge black wooden
doors.

H U T C H I N S H A L L
Constructed 2345
This Institute is dedicated to Benjamin D. "Gryphon" Hutchins
Shidoshi, Comrade, and Beloved Friend

He turned, disbelief on his face, to Mackie and Sylia; the
former grinned broadly as the latter favored him with a smaller smile
of almost private amusement.
"I don't know what to say," he finally admitted.
"Not a popular dedication, that, at the time," Mackie said,
pointing to the plaque. "That's, what, the fourth one of those we've
put up there, sis?"
"Something like that," Sylia agreed, nodding. "You were not
well-liked in those days, but I've always stood by my decisions."
Martin grinned. "Talk about public support."
Inside, the building was cavernous and somewhat dark and
gloomy; the entrance opened into the only exception to that rule, a
large and well-lighted rotunda with an ornate oriental rug on the
floor and the Institute's motto, "Ex Tenebras Ad Luce" (Out of Shadows
Into Light) carved into the lintel. A staircase curved up at either
side, and beyond those, identical doors led into parallel corridors.
In the center, facing the doors so that it was the first thing a
visitor to the building saw, was a painting, and Gryphon pulled up
short with a gasp as he saw it.
It was a painting of a woman, sitting on a hardwood floor with
her legs folded under her, wearing a red martial-arts practice garment
secured with a black sash. Her hands were folded in her lap, her long
brown hair was tied back, and the expression on her face and in her
curiously scarlet eyes (which matched her clothing near-perfectly) was
quiet, attentive, perhaps even a bit expectant. The light source
seemed to be coming from somewhere to the picture's right, in front of
her, as she was turned in a 3/4 profile. Underneath the simple oak
frame around the painting was a small brass plate on which was
engraved a title: "A Study in Scarlet". The signature, visible in the
lower right corner, was a double-dash, a capital G formed into a
recursion arrow, and a period.
"You kept it all these years," Gryphon whispered.
"Of course," said Sylia, putting a hand on his shoulder from
behind him. "You know how camera-shy she was. This is the only good
picture of her... the fact that it was made by your own hands was more
than reason enough besides."
Martin nearly quipped, "Gee, it's nice to be remembered, eh,
Gryph?" but held his tongue as he saw the near-tears expression on the
other man's face -- whether tears of joy, mourning, or both, he
couldn't tell. He'd heard Gryphon say from time to time that he'd
inherited those samurai swords of his from a long-lost friend and
pupil... if he'd painted the picture on the wall, then there was
little guesswork involved in figuring out who.
Sylia conducted them through the door on the left (Gryphon
paused for a long moment beside the painting, then continued on), past
an outer office, and into her own office, which was large and paneled
in dark wood, most of it concealed by bookcases neatly crammed with
various books on cybernetics, biocybernetics, and robotics. Martin,
giving one shelf a cursory glance, noted a copy of HiQ of Nebulon's
_Techno-Cybernetic Conversions in Humanoids_, and made a mental note
to see about obtaining a copy for himself (again).
"Nene didn't leave a complex will," Sylia said, going behind
her desk and removing a document from the top drawer. "She had no
desire to see her possessions tied up with locating services and
shipped around the universe like... how did she put it? 'The remains
of a garage-cleaning', or something like that. Instead she just left
everything to me and then sent me a long letter detailing what she
wanted me to do with her things, if I found myself able."
Gryphon and Hammer both nodded mutely as she went to one of
the bookcases and opened it like a door to reveal a closet full of
boxes and such. Selecting and removing one, she returned to her desk
and opened the top.
"Mr. Rose," she began, and Martin stopped her with an upraised
hand.
"Please. 'Martin' is fine, or 'Hammer', if you must. Being
called 'Mr. Rose' always makes me feel like somebody's talking to my
father."
"All right. Martin... these are things she wanted me to give
to people she wasn't certain I could find. One of them was for you,
if I could find you." Martin sat down in a chair on the other side of
her desk and watched, partway between expectant, self-reproachful for
that expectance, and simply depressed.
The item Sylia took from the box was a brown manila envelope,
eleven by nine, clipped together at the back and addressed in a firm
and flowing hand, "MARTIN ROSE". Martin took it from her with a
conscious effort to keep his hand from shaking and opened it, tipping
it up onto the green blotter atop Sylia's enormous mahogany desk. The
first item that fell out was a small black leather object, like a
wallet; picking it up, Martin opened it, revealing a gleaming piece of
silver and gold metal -- a MegaTokyo Advanced Police badge.
[So she did become a policewoman after all,] Martin said to
himself with a sad smile, noting the rank bar across the upper arc of
the shield (Sergeant) and the number (714). He flipped the wallet
around and examined the ID card, which was slightly faded with age.
It was expiration-dated 1/1/2340, had a picture of a smiling adult
Nene, and listed her rank as Detective Sergeant (Advanced), her date
of birth as 4/14/2312, her clearance level as Black, and her blood
type as AB+.
"When asked," Sylia said to him, "she always credited you with
her decision to join the police force, and blamed the incompetence of
the bureaucracy for her eventual resignation."
Martin nodded and put the badge into a pocket of his coat,
then fumbled with the envelope, discovering a few three-inch opticals
labeled "TOO MUCH INFORMATION" one through five and a Post-It note
which read, "Junk I had sitting around for a video game I was playing
with, based loosely on our little adventure of long ago. Doesn't look
like I finished it, so I thought you might want to take a shot. -NR-"
Smiling to himself again, with the same tinge of sadness, he found
another pocket for those, and then, as he prepared to hand back the
empty envelope, felt something rattle inside it.
Cupping his hand under it, he inverted it again, and a small,
hard object fell out into his palm. He dropped the envelope and
looked at the item, turning it over and over with his fingers. It was
a little tarnished and a little worn, but it was still quite clearly a
Thunder Force commbadge. He squeezed it between his thumb and
forefinger; it beeped, and in his ear he heard the half-forgotten
three-tone that he'd marked this particular signal with. A tear
leaked out around his eyelid as he closed his fist around the badge,
and his eyes with it.
"Thank you," he said at length, when he felt reasonably sure
he could say it without his voice breaking, and then, slowly, he
pinned the badge to his jacket.
"You're welcome," Sylia said softly, and, putting the envelope
back in the box, placed the box back into the closet. Briefly, she
rummaged, and then emerged carrying two objects, apparently destined
for Gryphon.
"Ben," said Sylia, holding out the item in her right hand,
"she very specifically asked that I give you this."
"My Goddess," Gryphon breathed, taking it carefully from her
and slinging it over his shoulder. It was a guitar, a left-handed
Fender Stratocaster, the white faceplate in stark contrast with its
glittering black body and rosewood fingerboard. The tremolo gleamed
silver, and the pickup plug sported a micro-amp sticking out an inch
or so, like a truncated patch cable. "All these years she kept this?"
"Of course," Sylia repeated, reflecting that he'd said
something very similar not long before. "She never played
professionally, but it was always a hobby, and she would rather have
starved than give up that guitar -- not that there was any danger of
that."
Martin looked quizzical; Gryphon smiled and explained briefly,
"I've told you about Reika? I used to play guitar for Reika's band;
this was my axe. When I left New Japan, Nene joked that she would
take my place, so I left it for her. She wasn't left-handed, so I
never figured she'd bother actually learning to play it... "
Martin smiled indulgently. "You underestimated her."
"I guess so," Gryphon replied ruefully. He switched the
micro-amp on, then tinkered with the knobs and the toggle setting for
a moment before finding the pick wedged behind the faceplate and
trying a lick. The solo-intro from Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing"
rang clear and in tune through the office, and Gryphon smiled his
first sorrowless smile of the day as he held the neck of the guitar in
his right hand and made the last note trail away.
Sylia smiled as well, and then handed him the other item she'd
taken from the closet, a small, oblong black box, like a jewelry box.
Gryphon looked at it quizzically, and then, letting the guitar hang by
its strap, took it and opened it. Inside, nestled on a bed of black
velvet, was a small black triangle of plastic, an Isosceles triangle
of long and narrowish proportions, about an inch long and half an inch
wide at the base. The long edges were wickedly sharp-looking, and
marked with equidistant gold bars -- contact strips -- and its
obsidian surface was filigreed with an elaborate tracery of gold. It
was a cybernetic interface chip, but for what, he wondered? In the
top of the case he could see, tucked behind the elastic-edged velvet
pouch, some folded papers; they probably explained. Curious, but in
no mood to investigate just now, he closed the box and put it away in
his coat.
"Thank you, Sylia," he echoed Martin, and Sylia nodded. For a
moment, she appeared to hover on the edge of saying something else,
but then she closed her eyes, opened them slowly, and said somberly,
"We have to get ready for the funeral."

An hour later found Ben and Martin standing at the back of the
large group of black-clad mourners who had come to the cemetery on the
city's outskirts, most of them students and colleagues of Professor
Nene Romanova's from the Stingray Institute. They felt set apart from
this group somehow, mostly because they had known her before her
Institute days, long before in Martin's case, and didn't know any of
the other people there (except Sylia and Mackie, and Martin didn't
really know even them). So, feeling apart, they stood apart, looking
with curious detachment at the tear-streaked faces of the bearded
professor men, the coifed professor women, the fresh-faced young
students who had never really understood death, didn't really
understand it now. Sylia and Mackie had gone to the front of the
group; Mackie was standing next to the open grave, looking downcast as
the rain ran off his hair, while his sister conferred with the suited
funeral director who was apparently officiating.
Gryphon sighed, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his
black leather trench coat, feeling the rain wet the black necktie and
white dress shirt which the open top button of said coat exposed,
watching it drip from the brim of his fedora. He had dressed up
startlingly conventionally for him, black suit, black coat, black hat,
his boots polished and concealed by his trousers to pass as dress
shoes. He had shaved. The black guitar hung at his side -- the rain
would certainly not bother it -- and his swords, as always, were on
his back.
Beside him, Martin stood like a hovering storm cloud. He was
wearing a formal version of his Shadow-esque Hammer costume, a more
somber one crafted in a deeper shade of violet and a darker shade of
grey. The buttons on the tunic were silver, as was the small braid
which held his cloak together and the band on his hat. A darker
purple scarf hung below his chin; inside his cloak (which was, at
present, folded back over his shoulders to reveal his tunic), his arms
were folded across his chest as he stood, silent as a stone. For
several minutes nothing was said.
Finally, all appeared ready; the group, already silent, fell
into an attentive order as the funeral director stepped to the
headstone and began to speak.
"My friends," he began, and already, he was grating on
Gryphon's nerves. What the hell was he doing here? Why wasn't one of
Nene's friends giving the eulogy? He knew Sylia wouldn't do it -- she
was far too reticent about that sort of thing, and ran too great a
chance of showing emotions in public if she were to speak before this
gathering. Mackie, who for a time had dated Nene back in the old
days, was similarly likely to bow out. He had noted without much
surprise when they arrived the headstone beside Nene's -- that of Leon
McNichol, whom she had apparently married and more apparently survived
by several years. Had they had children? He thought he could detect
Leon's strong jaw in the face of the tall man standing near the head
of the larger group of mourners, and echoes of Nene in his high
cheekbones and the salty copper color of his hair... but that was only
speculation. Why, if she had descendents, were -they- not seeing her
off?
No, instead there was only this man in black who had clearly
not known her, who was standing behind her headstone mouthing the same
meaningless platitudes and garbage he had undoubtedly been asked and
paid to mouth at a hundred, perhaps a thousand, funerals for old
widows whose friends had all died before them... people who died alone
and without anyone to defend their memory from the calcification of
this stranger's meaningless goodnesses. Pillar of the community.
Fine educator. Role model. Probably true, but probably not the way
the man assumed they were. Serious and methodical researcher? Right.
-That- was an outright lie, and without even realizing it, Gryphon had
reached the point where he could take no more. Before he knew what he
was doing, before Martin had a chance to notice it himself, Gryphon
was pushing his way to the front, challenging the man.
Not all of Nene's friends were dead yet, damn it.
"How dare you!" the man blustered at whatever it was he'd said
to challenge him -- Gryphon honestly didn't remember, and hoped it
hadn't been profane. That would shoot his credibility down right
away. "Have you no respect for the deceased?"
"More than you'll ever know, pal," Gryphon replied with thinly
veiled venom, and pushed the man aside, taking his place behind Nene's
headstone, facing the congregated mourners, who were murmuring among
themselves such shocked, consternated fragments as "the nerve",
"bringing a guitar to a funeral" and "does he think he is".
"Did any of you people -know- Nene Romanova?" Gryphon
demanded, putting his hands on the top of the stone and leaning
forward to fix the mourners with his ice-blue gaze. "Did you? You
people here in front -- you look like you were students of hers, am I
right? You others -- faculty members, colleagues? You here in front
-- you, if I'm not mistaken, are her son?"
"I am," the man he'd noticed earlier said with halting
indignation -- as if he knew the situation dictated that he -should-
be indignant, but yet he agreed with what Gryphon was doing.
"Well, then, you should know that this is a complete farce!"
Gryphon declared, pointing at him. "Did your mother teach you nothing
of life? Did you not know her better than to believe that she would
want -this-? Forgive me for being presumptuous, but Nene and I were
very good friends, long ago, and I would like to think I know better."
The man did not reply; the faculty were murmuring among
themselves with a tone of indignation, and the students were too, but
they sounded excited. Gryphon saw a hook and went for it.
"You, the students! You're young. You know what it's like to
be alive. Probably most of you have never seen death this closely
before, and it's probably scared you. It still scares me, and goddess
knows I've seen a lot of it. You probably knew her ten thousand times
better than those old folks behind you did." This elicited gasps of
indignation and "I never"s from the faculty group. "Do -you- think
she would have wanted a bunch of people hanging around a pit in the
ground being depressed and listening to a man she never even met
ramble on about what a marvelously, boringly virtuous woman she was?"
The group of students looked uncomfortable; then one of them,
a pretty, dark-haired, slender girl whose face looked hauntingly
familiar (but which Gryphon couldn't place) said softly, "No."
"Aha! You see? Some of you are still alive in there...
what's your name, kid?"
"Lisa," the girl replied, a bit bolder this time.
"You knew Nene."
"Very well."
"You took classes from her?"
"Yes; and sometimes I even learned from her," Lisa replied
with a wry grin.
Gryphon threw back his head and laughed. "A-ha! I've found
the one who knows the difference between classes and learning.
There's hope for this bunch yet! All right, kids, I'll walk you
through. The first day of class -- did you all show up neatly dressed
and pressed, skirts, blazers, dress slacks, ties, pens all in a neat
row, notebooks uncrumpled, textbooks shiny new... " His voice
darkened and he smiled an equally shadowed grin as he continued, "With
a terrible, creeping sense of dread? The Professor Emeritus, you
know, Emeritus, from the Latin meaning 'older than time' -- I hear
she's over seventy, my GOD I thought they made them RETIRE when they
got to be that age, probably thirty years out of date, I hear she's a
friend of the president's, that's probably why she's still teaching
classes, dear LORD is this going to SUCK... "
The faculty had stopped murmuring by then; they were simply
dead-sheet-white and silent with shock. The students, on the other
hand, were either fidgeting, reddening, snickering, or all of the
above -- caught red-handed. The dark-haired girl named Lisa said with
a smile, "That's it exactly."
Gryphon's smile brightened. "And then," he said, without
losing any of the manic energy that had been carrying him throughout
this little digression, "she came in -- neatly dressed, looking years
younger than she was -- probably surprised some of you with that --
and she put her notebook down on the lecture table and went to the
old-fashioned chalkboard and wrote, in big, neat block capitals,
'FUNDAMENTALS OF CYBERNETIC INTERFACE 109', and under it, 'PROFESSOR
NENE ROMANOVA'. And then she turned around -- stop me if I get this
wrong -- and smiled, and said,
"'Well, look at all of you. So nicely dressed... so
attentive... so upright... so -uncomfortable-! God! Lose the ties,
for pity's sake, and slouch a little, you're making me
uncomfortable!'"
The students, caught totally off-guard by this statement's
uncanny correctness, began to laugh, and Gryphon, loosening his tie
and unbuttoning the top button of his shirt, continued, "And THEN, I'd
bet -- stop me if I'm wrong, again -- that she turned around, erased
the board and wrote something like 'BASIC BRAINDANCE', and underneath,
'INFO', and said something like, 'This is what everybody calls IT, and
this is what everybody calls ME, so let's not waste any time.' And
she knew all your names, and your userids, and preferred nicknames.
Am I right?" There was a chorus of affirmative responses.
"I have a few other guesses. She didn't leave the lab monitor
work to her TA. In fact, I'd bet she didn't even -have- a TA. Am I
right?" Again, a chorus of affirmatives. "If you went to the lab
during lab hours, she was there. If you went to the lab during
NON-lab hours, chances are she was there, or in her office. I'd bet
you -never- couldn't find her if you needed her. The syllabus
probably had her home phone number on it, call anytime, day or night,
if you need a hand. Hmm?" Again the answer was yes. "I'm not
finished yet! Once or twice, on lab days, you'd come in and find her
playing a game, hm? And she'd invite you all to help her with it, or
play your own, and to hell with lab that day! We're gonna crank up
the InSoc and have ourselves a party!" The affirmative choruses were
starting to almost resemble crowd yells at sports rallies. "The first
really nice day of spring, she probably came into class and said,
'It's a beautiful day. You're only young once unless you're damn
lucky. Let's go waste some time at the amusement park while I'm still
tall enough to ride the log flume.', and then you all trooped across
the foot bridge to Funland and blew off the afternoon."
"How did you know -that-?!" Lisa demanded.
Gryphon shrugged. "I can't see her -not- doing that, with a
Funland right across the parkway from campus. It all comes down to
-who she was-." He brought the energy level down, and said in a
calmer tone, "You're all dedicated computer engineering types, aren't
you?" They all nodded. "You discovered after that first class, the
required one, that if you wanted, if you planned your schedule right,
you could take -all- your classes from her. You all took her as your
advisor, and you all were surprised when she -made- you take classes
from other profs once in a while, because it was good for you. You
did the Funland thing. She probably had a big party every spring on
Turing Day and invited everybody to her place for a barbecue. You all
came to know and love Professor Nene Romanova. We all know that. But
do you know -why-?"
The students looked thoughtful, then puzzled, and Lisa looked
up and asked, "Why?"
"Because she was one of you," Gryphon replied solemnly. "Who
-was- Nene Romanova? What was her calling? Was she a wife by nature?
No." He glanced over at the other headstone and shrugged, adding,
"Sorry, Leon... but no, that was a factor of life. A mother? Hey,
when you're married, these things happen." The man who was her son --
Gryphon had still not found out his name -- looked caught between
indignance and agreement again, but the small boy standing next to him
-- apparently -his- son -- caught the importance of the statement and
grinned, tugging his father's hand and nodding as if to say, I know
where this is heading.
"A programmer?" Gryphon continued. "An occupational skill,
not a calling in itself. A teacher? That was a hobby -- a way to
pass on the joys of her true calling to others, you people, and those
who went before you. No. Nene Romanova, down at the core of her, was
none of these things. Nene Romanova was one of you... one of -us-,"
he said, pushing his ponytail aside to show them the interface jack
behind his left ear. "Nene Romanova, first, foremost and always...
was a hacker.
"And hackers don't want to go out with platitudes and
ashes-to-ashes. I know I don't. None of you have probably really
thought about it yet, but trust me, you won't. And just as sure as I
know that, I know that Nene doesn't. Would she be shocked? Hell, no.
She's probably watching me right now and laughing herself silly --
there goes Ben, ranting again."
Gryphon looked up into the raining sky as the drops fell on
the lenses of his glasses and made the lumpy grey sky lumpier still
and prism-edged to boot, and then swung the guitar strap so that the
instrument was positioned in front of him.
"I know you're listening, Nene," Gryphon said to the grey sky.
"I'm sorry I never called... I hope this will help make up for it."
Then he dropped his hands onto the guitar, flicked the
switches and knobs into position, deftly flipped the pick into his
left hand, and began to play, a sharp, lone, wailing modification of
an intro that rightfully belonged on a synth-keyboard. Then, keeping
with his voice a series of chord progressions, he began to sing, low
and sad.

There's no time for us
There's no place for us
What is this thing that builds our dreams
Yet slips away from us?

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?

There's no chance for us
It's all decided for us
This world has only one sweet moment
Set aside for us

Martin had stepped up beside him without his noticing, and as
he kept playing and singing, Martin, from somewhere, began to
accompany him with what sounded like a complete orchestra.

Who wants to live forever?
Who dares to love forever
When love must die?

Accompanied by Martin's invisible orchestra and drum set,
Gryphon walked through a slow, pretty solo; then the music swelled
around him and carried him into the next verse.

But touch my tears with your lips
Touch my world with your fingertips

And we can have forever
And we can love forever
Forever is our today

Who wants to live forever?
Who wants to live forever?
Forever is our today

The music died away again, leaving the last line quite
solitary and plaintive.

Who waits forever anyway?

Gryphon tinkered around with a trailing end-solo as Martin
made the invisible orchestra ebb and flow around him, and then, with a
final chord and fade, the song was over, and for a few moments, there
was complete silence.
Gryphon switched off the guitar and looked up from it, his
face tracked with tears that were obvious even with the rain. For a
moment he looked very nearly a broken man, and Martin, standing next
to him, his face similarly, unrepentantly tear-streaked, mirrored the
look. Then Gryphon turned to look at his companion, and held out his
hand, and, smiling, Martin took it and shook it.
"Goodbye, Nene," Gryphon said, his voice even and clear.
"Some may call what we did here today disrespectful, but I think the
people who count know better." He looked at Nene's son, who looked
back at him and smiled.
"Dmitri!" one of the elder faculty members said in outrage.
"You aren't seriously siding with these maniacs, are you? They've
ruined your mother's funeral -- you should call the police!"
Dmitri McNichol turned to face Professor Byron Twain with a
beatific smile on his face and said, "On the contrary, Byron. They've
saved it." He crouched, gathered a handful of earth, and threw it
into the open grave, where it rattled against the lid of the casket.
"G'bye, Mother. Rest." He turned to his son, who was smiling up at
him with the adoration of the very young, and, ruffling his coppery
hair, said, "C'mon, Nikolai. Let's go home."
"Just a second, Pop," the boy replied, and tossed his own
handful of earth into the grave. "Bye, Grandma."
Then, serene in their approval, the heirs of Nene Romanova
left the cemetery, feeling considerably better than they had when they
arrived. The faculty didn't even bother to comment further after
Professor Twain's utter failure to impress upon the elder McNichol the
enormity of the offense committed by the two outsiders -- they merely
dispersed, bandying comments among themselves about filing formal
complaints and muttering about desecration.
The students largely dispersed at the same time, most of them
well at ease like the McNichols; a few lingered to cast earth, as did
Martin and Gryphon. Rising from casting his handful, Gryphon found
himself meeting the eyes of the pretty young girl named Lisa, who had
been something of a leader among the students. He smiled, and she
returned the smile, her grey eyes sparkling. Again, Gryphon though
she looked irritatingly familiar; again, he failed to figure out who
she looked like.
"Bye, Professor," she whispered, throwing in some earth, and
then, straightening, she addressed Gryphon. "Thanks," she said to
him. "I was too scared to say anything."
"Never let people in suits intimidate you," Gryphon said with
a grin, shaking her proffered hand. "Nene never did."
"True enough. I wish you'd been around at my grandmother's
funeral. Was that ever sad... well, I have to go. See you!"
"Grandmother?" Gryphon muttered, quizzically regarding her
back as she ran to catch up with some friends, the last of the
students to leave.
"Lisa," Sylia explained as she walked up beside Gryphon, "is
Linna's granddaughter."
Gryphon looked surprised, then sad. "Linna's gone too, then?"
"For fifteen years now. She was ill -- she kept the details
from us, but I gather it was some sort of rare blood disorder. You
know how proud of her health she was... when it began to affect her
significantly, she became depressed. One night, she was out walking
around, and passed a building fire... she knew there was no way she
could get out if she went in, but she did anyway, and saved the six
people who were trapped inside."
Gryphon nodded, taking the information in, and then sighed.
"Seems I'm spending this whole visit saying goodbye."
Sylia gently touched his arm, and when he looked up and met
her eyes, she smiled sadly and said softly, "Perhaps not all of it."
He smiled, putting his hand over hers, and said, "Perhaps
not."

Some time later, as night gathered around the city of
MegaTokyo, Gryphon and Martin sat in one of their hotel rooms at the
MegaTokyo Marriott, apparently well on their way to sitting up long
into the night trading war stories of the Exile. Gryphon had,
appropriately enough, been talking about his time on New Japan, and
included in that was the time he spent with Henzo Takanaka, the man
who taught him the way of the Zanji-Sankate samurai school.
"Takanaka explained to me that the Zanji-Sankate school was an
evolution of an older one, the original Asagiri warrior school," he
explained. "The old one was called Zanji-Shinjinken, and in the early
twenty-first century, one of the first spacefaring Asagiris brought it
into the stars. His name, in case you wondered, was Tetsuo Asagiri.
"Tetsuo was a wanderer, by nature; he rambled around the
United Galactica, doing whatever job he had to do in order to eat and
not minding, meeting all sorts of interesting people... the usual.
One of the people he met, though, was different from your average
frontier-world local."
"How so?"
"His name was Talar Kem... he was a Jedi Knight."
Martin blinked. "I thought they were only a rumor."
"They are, today. I don't believe there are more than two or
three surviving Jedi in the universe now, let alone Master Jedi. Kem
was a wanderer like Tetsuo, and had a similar hunger for knowledge and
enlightenment -- the two of them knew right away that they were
kindred spirits, so they began traveling together, teaching each other
their skills. Tetsuo saw the resemblance between the Jedi Force and
the Zanji ki right away, and realized that they were the same thing,
with different social influences. He was, from our standpoint, a bit
more objective about morality than Kem -- the Jedi have a rather
narrow moral code -- and made what we would think of as quite an
effective synthesis of the two.
"Shortly thereafter, Kem was killed, and Tetsuo, to honor his
friend's memory, finished his fusion of the Jedi and the Zanji. The
final form he renamed Zanji-Sankate. Generations passed, and students
not directly in the family were taken in, eventually. The clan
settled on New Japan, and here it was that they were betrayed, like
the Jedi centuries before, and nearly wiped out. This time, though,
it wasn't the Santovasku Empire that was doing it... it was GENOM New
Japan. Largo saw the Zanji as a potential threat on the order of the
WDF, so he ordered the Asagiri clan annihilated in 2311... and very
nearly succeeded.
"There were only two survivors: Henzo Takanaka, the old
shidoshi, and the infant daughter of Torinaki Asagiri, the current
clan-leader, Priscilla. Takanaka fled into the badlands; Priscilla
was found in the ruins of the Asagiri compound, still cradled in her
mother's arms, by missionaries, and was raised in the MegaTokyo
orphanage system... which accounts for a good deal of the attitude she
developed." He paused, momentarily, and looked sadly at the Pepsi can
he held in his left hand.
Martin sat for a moment, taking all that in, parsing it, and
combining it with what he already knew.
"So... you learned it from Takanaka, and taught it to
Priscilla."
"Right. Only I never got to finish Priss's training... " He
sighed. The memory was so far in the past that, while it would never
stop hurting, it at least didn't make him actually break down any
more. "Largo finished his extermination of the clan before I could
get the chance."
Uncertain whether or not he should go on, Martin said slowly,
"I gather you were close."
Gryphon blinked away tears, smiled sadly, and said, "You could
say that, yes. We were going to be married."
"Really. I'm sorry, I didn't -- "
"It's all right. I like to talk about her. The memories, by
and large, are happy ones." He sighed. "After she died, I met Reika
-- Reika Chang, who Vision is based on. I started to teach her, too,
but then Largo left New Japan, and I was so obsessed with my Mission
that I followed him. Reika didn't want to go... she stayed behind. I
never saw her again."
Martin was unsure what to say, so he just adopted a querying
look.
"She was a good student," Gryphon said, smiling, "and a good
wife."
"You married her."
"I married her. About a year and a half after Priss died. We
had a year or so of happiness, and then... " He punched his left fist
into his right hand. "And then I abandoned her for the sake of my
all-important Mission In Life. My priorities were so screwed up back
then... "
"Did you at least ask her to come with you?"
"Of course. She didn't want to leave. She told me to go --
practically insisted on it -- but it doesn't make what I did any less
reprehensible. I never contacted any of them again, and they had all
meant so much to me... and now, I can't apologize to any of them
except Sylia and Mackie. I've done a good many things I'm not proud
of, but leaving Reika behind is right up there."
"Does... " It occurred to Martin a bit too late that this was
yet another in a long series of things he should probably not have
said, even as it came out. "Does Kei know about this?"
"Of course," Gryphon replied, relieving him yet again. "I
have no secrets from her -- I have few secrets from anyone, as far as
that goes."
"Is it possible that she's still alive, somewhere?"
"No. I did some checking, once, during the reconstruction,
when a few bits of my sanity filtered back. She left New Japan in
2342, seven years after I did. Her trail ends on Earth in 2357 -- two
years after I left -there- and wound up in a parallel dimension for
twenty-odd years. I believe she died there... there's no actual
record, but most of the records were kept sealed by the Olympus
government and then destroyed during GENOM's takeover last summer."
"That's a shame."
"I know."
There was a long, uncomfortable pause.
"Anyway, the Zanji had a lot of interesting insights into the
nature of ki -- the life energy that we all generate, which surrounds
the living universe." He chuckled. "Seems silly to say 'the
Zanji'... I'm the only one left."
"For now, anyway."
Gryphon nodded concession of the point: "For now. Anyway...
I've gotten a lot more sensitive to that kind of energy since my
training with Takanaka, and a half-century of practice has helped,
too. I can see it, if I concentrate. I can read it, sense the way
people affect it, move through it. By reading the way they affect the
field, I can sense people's emotions, and sometimes... just
sometimes... even their thoughts. I can manipulate it, too. Change
the way -I- affect the field. The way I affected the crowd today --
the way I could read what they were feeling -- I'm sure that was
partially because of my Zanji training. Zanji concentration is what
kept me on my feet during my fight with Largo -- that and sheer
obstinance. The force of personality that can be achieved through
concentration has saved my butt on more than one occasion -- once, it
kept a platoon or so of 3WA riot cops from shooting me long enough for
me to get a confession out of the real Butcher, even."
Martin sat back in the chair, his long fingers steepled,
taking it all in.
At length, he spoke.
"Somehow," he said, "I'm not surprised."
"Oh?"
"You've shown signs of it," he said enigmatically. "I have...
certain sensory tricks of my own, and I've noticed since your return
from exile, you've been different. Calmer. Surer of yourself. I've
seen you command your ship with a confidence you never showed when we
met during the Exile -- one you only showed before when you were
behind the controls of a fighter. You always had that kind of Zen
awareness around you when you were flying... personally, I think
Takanaka just made you see it the rest of the time."
"Perhaps," Gryphon said, smiling at the thought. "Still,
there are things I can do now I could never do then."
Martin's interest was piqued. "Such as?"
Gryphon smiled again, narrowed his eyes, and suddenly vanished
as if engulfed by mist, leaving nothing but an empty chair.
"Neat trick, eh?" said his voice.
Martin blinked.
Gryphon faded back into view like a Cheshire cat, grin first.
"I take it," Martin said dryly, "that's not a Predator cloak
you're using."
"Nope," Gryphon replied. "The clouded mind sees nothing. If
you had looked closer, you would have noticed that my shadow was still
on the wall behind me -- I still block light, so I still cast one, and
making people miss seeing -that- is a bit outside my reach."
"Maybe there was more to what I told you before than I
thought."
"Maybe. There's still something missing, though. I feel
like... I feel like something's incomplete. I feel -wrong- if I put
on the suit... it's like I'm not ready yet."
Martin shrugged. "It'll come. Or something else will.
Either way, you'll find something you feel comfortable with."
"Probably." Gryphon looked at his watch, then went to the
window and peered through a slat in the Venetian blind. "Oh, good.
It's finally gotten dark outside. C'mon, Martin."
"Where are we going?" asked Martin as Gryphon shrugged into
his black Inverness and donned his slouch hat.
"Digging."

Two shadowy figures rustled through the rubble of Nene
Romanova's office, which was still marked off as a police
investigation site. They were hoping to discover something the police
had missed or not reached yet... and they were not to be disappointed.
"Bingo," Gryphon whispered, holding up a small brass object.
He and Hammer vanished into the night.

"You're pretty good at the skulk-in-darkness routine, too,"
Martin commented back at the hotel room, as they examined their find.
"Thank you," Gryphon replied, smiling. "Mm-hmm. This," he
said, holding up the object, "is definitely a 9mm Salusian Standard
shell casing -- the same type that was used in the attempt on Kei.
Ten will get you one it was the same gun, or at least one of the same
type." He turned it around in his fingers. "Ah-ha!" he announced,
indicating a bright scar in the metal with his thumbnail. "Bingo.
This striation was left by an H&K MP40's extractor -- it's distinctive
as hell."
Martin, who had never really had much to do with firearms,
shrugged. "You're the gun freak."
Ignoring the comment, Gryphon took the Portable Digital
Assistant he had brought along out of a pocket of his coat, flicking
it on. "Vision? Got anything more on that gun report of Bailey's?"
"A little. Turns out that gun was part of a shipment of forty
which was stolen from an H&K warehouse last month."
"Warehouse where?"
"That's the interesting part," she replied. "New York City,
on Earth."
"New York City? Weird."
"Weirder still is the fact that they were apparently
misdirected via the shipping computer to that warehouse... they were
supposed to go to -- get this -- Berlin, Niogi."
"Someone -wanted- us to find out those were stolen in New
York," Martin said. "Someone wants us to go to New York."
"So we go to New York," Gryphon replied, grinning and standing
up as he reached for his hat. "But first, there's something I have to
do."
"What?" Hammer inquired, preparing to get back into costume.
"Visit Priss, of course. She'd never forgive me if I came to
New Japan and didn't stop by. Don't suppose I could trouble you for a
lift?"

The Rotofoil came to a gentle stop in a small valley outside
the city, and its single black-clad passenger disembarked; then, with
the typical sound, it returned to being Martin Rose, in costume. He
placed himself at what he felt was a respectable distance away as
Gryphon approached the huge boulder which plugged the mouth of a cave;
the rain had stopped, and the lettering on the stone was clearly
visible in the near-full moonlight.
"Hi," said Gryphon softly as he approached. "Sorry I didn't
visit sooner... I've been awfully busy."
[I'm sure. Save the universe yet?]
"As a matter of fact, yes. If you paid more attention to the
news you'd know that."
[We don't have cable here, I'm afraid.]
"Wiseass."
Martin, feeling slightly uneasy, wondered who the hell Gryphon
was talking to, then realized he probably didn't want to know.
[Yeah, I know what's been going on. Do me a favor and get the
son of a bitch. I never really let it slip, but I liked Nene, damn
it.]
"Count on it."
[Oh, and thanks... thanks for taking care of Largo.]
"Next time I visit I'll leave his skull in your marker."
[Cool.]
"I have to go... I have to follow this up while it's still
warm. But while I was here, I wanted to come by and visit... and tell
you I love you." He reached forward and touched the still-wet surface
of the boulder.
[Love you too. Oh, hey... don't forget to have a good life.
You're gonna be one hell of a father... makes me wish... well, hell,
you know.]
He sighed, tears leaking from his closed eyes, and whispered,
"Yes, I know."
[Don't cry for me, Ben. I'm still with you. I always will
be.] For a moment, Gryphon felt a strange sensation, as if he were
being kissed; then it passed. [Goodbye, lover.]
"Goodbye," he whispered, slowly pulled his fingers away from
the stone, turned, and walked away.
Martin said nothing as he transformed and took them back to
town.

"Sylia, I have a lead I need to follow up immediately... so
Martin and I will be leaving as soon as the next flight to Earth is
available. Sorry I couldn't stay longer... I promise, though, I'll
come back as soon as I can, and it won't be fifty-four years this
time, either."
Sylia's face on the vidphone smiled her sad smile, and she
said, "I know it won't. You needn't wait for a commercial flight,
though... we have a couple of ships. You can use one of ours, if you
like."
Gryphon considered. "Have anything fast?"
Sylia's smile became less sad and more wry. "Oh, I think
you'll find the one I have in mind acceptable."

"Wow," Gryphon said.
He, Martin, Sylia and Mackie were standing at the entrance
gate to one of the smaller slips at MegaTokyo Starport. In that slip
was a vessel, about the size of a Predator-class cloak-scout -- just
large enough to be considered a capital ship, barely. It was roughly
circular in shape, with a pair of loading mandibles jutting out of the
foredecks and a truncated-conical cockpit angled out the left side, in
a rather unusual location. It squatted on heavy three-point landing
gear, looking bulky and dangerous, its knobbly lines bulging in odd
places as if with heavy modification shoe-horned into locations which
were much too small. The dish for a heavy military sensor suite and
what appeared to be a medium railgun quad-mount jutted out of the
upper hull, and the sublight thrusters which encompassed the entire
rear of the vehicle were definitely oversized.
"Is this what I think it is?" asked Martin.
"It's a Corellian Heavy Industries YT-1300 light stock
starfreighter," Mackie replied proudly -- obviously, he had had
something of a hand in this vessel's history. "Actually, it's a 1312,
if you want to get technical about it -- the cockpit's on the other
side in the 1300. I've made some modifications, based on the notes of
Captain Han Solo himself. It's to spec with his ship, the Millennium
Falcon -- maybe even better in some areas."
"It's beautiful," Gryphon breathed, and Martin looked at him
oddly, a gesture he didn't notice. "Beautiful" was not a word Martin
would choose to describe the knobby mass of patched, grease-smeared,
pock-marked and sometimes even rusting heap of spacecraft in front of
them. In fact, the only thing he could think of was a quote applied
to its apparent role model: "You came in -that-? You're braver than I
thought."
"What do you call her?" Gryphon asked.
"Daggerdisc," Mackie replied. "Be good to her; I've worked
hard on her."
"Count on it," Gryphon said. "Thank you both. I'll be back,
honest."
"Take care, Gryphon," said Sylia, and gave him another
reserved hug and kiss. "And you, Martin," she added, shaking the
taller man's hand. Mackie, apparently granting less privilege to
seniority, clapped them both on the back and exhorted both to be
careful as he showed them to the ship's ramp, and then he and his
sister went to stand behind the blast barricades as Gryphon and Martin
made their way up into the cockpit.
"Well, it doesn't look like much on the -outside-," Martin
said as he stooped through the cockpit door and took a seat in the
back, "but inside it's nice." Indeed it was: all the controls were
well-fitted to the consoles they were in, and everything was clean and
polished within the vessel. Gryphon ran his practiced fingers over
the control panel for a few moments, preflighting, and then brought
the powerplant up, feeling it rumble through the decking.
"Ooh," he said. "Feel that? That's at least 440% of spec. I
can't wait to see what kind of thrusters he's got hooked up to that
monster." His fingers flickering over the grav controls, Gryphon
raised ship without much preamble, remembering at the last moment to
ask MegaTokyo Control for departure clearance and log a flight path to
Earth. Then he turned it for the sky and, once the grav thrusters had
them at a safe altitude, he switched over to main thrust and took the
yoke and throttles in his hands, pushing the latter open.
Daggerdisc surged forward on a bluewhite stream of power,
effortlessly ripping herself free of New Japan's gravity and speeding
toward the stars.
"I'm impressed," said Martin dryly. "What did you plan on
doing when we get to New York, anyway?"
"I'm not sure... but I'll know when we get there." Gryphon
checked the astrogation computer, found the course for Earth already
locked in, and pushed the hyperdrive throttles forward. Outside, the
stars rayed into lines, and then they were through, blasting into the
bluewhite chaos that was hyperspace. "ETA Sol system is seventeen
hours, ten minutes... we might as well get some rest."
Martin yawned. "Good idea. I'll just grab any old place out
back... coming?"
"In a minute. I want to watch hyperspace for a while... it's
been a looong time since I used a Corellian hyperdrive."
"Suit yourself. Good night."
"Good night, Martin."
Alone in the cockpit, Gryphon lapsed into thought. Abruptly,
as an idea came to him, he dug around in his pockets and pulled out a
pair of interface cables, shoving up his sleeve and jacking them into
the interface plugs in his right wrist. The other ends went into the
back of the lapframe. Then he brought the lapframe's subether
transceiver online, rezzing up its own Internet node, and hit the big
green GO switch.
A brief fuzz of static later, he was in the Net.
The shipment of MP40s had been diverted from Niogi by an
intrusion into H&K's computer system. If whoever did it didn't cover
it well enough, perhaps he could find the location of their computer
system... he began to enter a homing track for Niogi.
With a flashing stepping-disk effect, someone materialized
next to Gryphon; he recognized the effect as that of a WDF Internode
utility. He was mildly surprised again to see who it was that had
appeared next to him: the WDF Wandering Child's Great Digital
Priestess of the Almighty God-Emperor OS (a Derek Bacon title meaning
"majordomo CI"), Eve (or, properly, Enhanced Virtual Entity 1A).
Eve knew Gryphon well, and vice versa; after all, she had been
his first-ever attempt at programming a cyberside autonomic cybernetic
intelligence in CLULESS. She was the oldest surviving ACI in the
universe, having "lived" for nearly four centuries now.
"Afternoon, Eve," Gryphon said, realizing as he did so that he
had no idea what time of day it really was.
"Hello, Gryphon," Eve replied, and Gryphon was struck yet
again with the astonishing presence she had. Let anyone who says that
an ACI is just an overcomplicated collection of basic utility
functions meet Eve, and watch them change their tune. Perhaps it was
the air of complete self-assurance, combined with a peculiar sort of
deference, perhaps protectiveness, for the fragile meat minds which
imposed themselves upon her domain. Perhaps it was the exquisite
quality of the programming of her icon, so painfully clear and
realistic it made reality look grainy and out of focus by comparison.
Of course, she'd had nearly four centuries to revise and refine it.
It might just be knowing that there wasn't a trick of cyberspace she
didn't know, or, for that matter, an aspect of sentient knowledge. If
it was recorded electronically anywhere in the universe, chances were,
Eve knew it.
With the full resources of the SDF-23's massively powerful
FTL-processor computer cores backing her up, Eve could run fourteen
hundred simultaneous aspects, as well as an almost limitless number of
internalized processes. She generally used this ability to constantly
explore the Net in every direction, increasing her power and knowledge
of the Net and the world beyond it. It was not, then, terribly
uncommon for those running the net to meet her. Most bowed as a
knight bows to his queen. Those who were foolish enough to attack
were repulsed gently, without malice or harm, but in an
extraordinarily humbling manner.
In her time, E.V.E.-1A had fought Illuminati Cyberknights,
WitchHunters, the Cybernetic Inquisition, rogue CIs, and, in 2270, the
four renegade Sysops of the Internet Center on Turing III. The last
had been the most difficult, but with the WDF's finest cyberwarriors
rallying round her, it too was won. The Cyberbattle of Turing III had
been one of the costliest, per capita, conflicts in WDF history, but
was almost unknown.
And Gryphon wrote her. He found that just a little hard to
believe sometimes.
"You're going hunting for the computer that diverted H&K's
shipment," Eve said, her tone matter-of-fact.
"As a matter of fact, yes," Gryphon replied.
"I thought it might occur to you, so I took the liberty of
locating it for you."
Gryphon was not as surprised as it struck him he probably
should've been.
"That's very helpful, Eve. Thank you. Can you tell me where
it is, please?"
"I'd rather take you," Eve replied. "It's possible I can be
of some assistance."
Gryphon decided not to point out the understatement, and
instead made sure his combat utilities were loaded, including a copy
of Hardsuit-3 which had been customized for him by its creator. He
felt another brief stab of depression, maybe even the verge of grief,
run through him, but stored it. [Later.]
"Lead on, milady," he said with a smile.
"Don't go without me," a familiar voice said, and a
circuitry-covered gent with Zoner's face and general configuration
trotted up to him. Before, most of that circuitry had replaced parts
of him, in a rather hideous juxtaposition; now, since the reformation
and a lot of long conversations with a lot of people, it merely lay on
the surface, as if suggesting a symbiosis with the technology rather
than a state of being consumed by it. Gryphon remarked to himself
that Zoner looked like one of the programs from TRON.
"Greetings, program," he said, motivated in his word selection
by such thoughts. "I see you're loaded for bear." He indicated the
Attack-7 rifle slung over Zoner's back.
"Bear, hell," Zoner replied. "I'm loaded for Destroid."
They traveled in silence for some time, following Eve, Gryphon
by "walking" across the gridded surface while Zoner hovered along
beside him, looking far too pleased with himself over that little
iconic innovation. Gryphon took advantage of the time to ponder the
events of the past couple of days and try to put them in some kind of
order. An old friend was dead. He didn't think he's quite grasped
that yet, despite what he'd said at the funeral. He'd known she was
still alive on New Japan, he'd kept meaning to go and see her... but
there have never been the time, never been the time. All the time
spent preparing for the war with GENOM, pushing back the opportunists
who swept in after it, coordinating, building, remaking, finding,
forging. And now she was gone.
Damn it all to hell anyway.
He must have been in the reverie for longer than he thought,
for when he emerged from it, they were in the hinterlands of the
Internet, standing outside what looked like a mountain, its side
pierced by a massive metallic door.
"Here it is," Eve said. "A fairly respectable datafortress,
although whose it is, I don't know."
"Hmm." Gryphon rezzed up what looked like a set of binoculars
and scanned the surrounding region, then the mountain itself. "No
active security programs. Just the door and the datawalls. That's
odd. And no users that I can see."
"Me neither," Zoner added, his eyes glowing slightly. "If
there are any online, they're inside the fortress, not patrolling the
perimeter. Sloppy; they didn't expect to be found. Hang on and I'll
get the door." He floated right up to the slab then, unconcerned, and
put out his hand, touching his fingertips to it in preparation for
laying his CodeBuster on it.
Green lightning shot up his arm, making the circuit patterns
all over his icon strobe green for a second, and he was catapulted
back from the door with a SNAP.
"Goddamn!" Zoner shouted, getting to his feet, his circuit
patterns still sizzling and arcing. "Corrupted my data stream -- I -- "
Then, with a burst of static, he disappeared.
"Zoner?" Gryphon said, taking a step toward the spot his
commander's icon had occupied.
"He's all right," Eve said, putting a hand on his shoulder.
"I forced him off-line before the data corruption could reach his
signal interpreter."
"Thanks. Stubborn bastard probably would have tried to take
it on bare-brained."
"Oh, no doubt," Eve replied, shaking her head in exasperation.
"Sometimes I wonder how he survived that century without me."
"Dumb luck," Gryphon replied, failing to add, "the same as I
did." He considered for a moment. "So what's up with the door?"
"One of the cleverest hacks I've seen in a while," answered
Eve. "They have a randomized data stream running through the primary
layer of the standard door routine, so that if you touch the door to
codebust it, your cybermodem's data stream itself is randomized.
Unless I miss my guess, they have the usual killer algorithm buried in
it too -- lethal pink noise."
"Like a snake in the grass. Very clever. Must be a way
around it, though... there's a way around everything."
"I think so... let's find out." Eve walked up to the door and
put her own palm against it; the green lightning flowed out and over
her, and around her, and then down into the "ground".
"Uh, Eve... what are you doing?"
"Diverting the data stream," Eve replied from inside the light
storm. "I have no cybermodem to confuse, but the system can't tell
the difference between my super-user node and a standard netrunner
icon, so it still sends the noise to me. I can then reroute it into
wilderspace."
"Hm."
Zoner reappeared, looking annoyed. "Hey," he blustered,
"there was no need to dump me, I could've -- what's she doing?"
"Diverting the data stream that almost hosed your butt,"
Gryphon replied. "I really have to talk to 'Droid about a ranged
CodeBuster variant. Still have yours loaded?"
"No, it got wiped by the noise."
"Guess I'll have to do it then." Gryphon went to the door,
taking care not to get into the nimbus of energy surrounding Eve, and
rapped sharply on it. It shivered and rippled as he did so, then
gridded and vanished -- but the green lightning remained.
"Looks like it wasn't part of the door after all," Gryphon
observed, ducking under one of the thicker tendrils and into the
fortress. "Coming, Zoner?"
"Right," Zoner said, following. "Eve, what are you going to
do?"
"Stay here," Eve replied, "and keep this data stream occupied.
As long as I can keep this much noise flying around the entrance to
the super-node, perhaps I can keep the operator on duty, if there is
one, from noticing that the door itself is gone."
"Okay... "
"Good luck, gentlemen."
"'Gentlemen'?"
"She's been watching 'Mission: Impossible' reruns again.
C'mon."

The sight they found waiting for them inside the 'frame was
eerie, to say the least. Small burned-looking places on the "floor"
marked the places where security daemons had been crashed. The whole
place felt eerie, quiet... deserted.
"Eve," Gryphon said to his Hardsuit's communication utility.
"Did you do this?"
"No," Eve replied, patching his signal remotely and scanning
the area he was "looking" at. "This happened before we arrived."
"Which means... "
"Somebody's in here ahead of us," Zoner finished, taking his
rifle off his back. "How'd they get in without coming through the
logic gate?"
"Trans-etheric signal jump? Theoretically possible, but... "
"But risky as hell. No hacker would try it just to bust up an
outlaw frame, not without a big grudge... and we're the only ones here
with that kind of motivation."
"Are we? Nene had students... "
"Would they be good enough to trans-ether?"
"She was."
"You knew her, I take it."
"Yeah. From the Exile. One of the brighter bits."
"Old lover?" asked Zoner conversationally.
"No," Gryphon replied, in the same tone. "Just very good
friends. I'll tell you the whole story sometime, if you remind me
about it."
"Okay."
"Jesus. Look at this door."
"Wow."
The inner code door to the installation's CPU had been crashed
and crashed -hard-, its twisted hinges and some scattered,
noise-scarred data debris on the floor on both sides of its threshold
all that remained of a door that could have daunted the slickest
console jockey in cyberspace. Beyond it, the CPU was dark, and the
floor boasted more marks of crashed programs.
In the center of the "room", there was a pedestal. On that
pedestal sat what appeared to be a manila file folder. While Zoner
covered him, Gryphon went to it and picked it up, opening it. The
first page was a note, appearing handwritten, in a familiar script.

Gryph --

Thought you might be interested in this. The only location
information I could find when I went through their files here was a
map of downtown New York City, on Earth... looks like they might have
a hidden headquarters there. I don't know who they are -- they
weren't nice enough to write down their names -- but they seem to be
awfully interested in you. They've got dossier data here that rivals
what the Cardassian spymasters had (and I should know; I deleted that
last year :).

Watch yourself; I know you'll be going there personally, and I have to
warn you, these people are bad, bad news. I didn't even see them
coming.

Don't bother looking for me; I don't know how long I'll stay
'together', as it were. Just promise you'll go to my funeral and say
nice things.

Oh, and I don't think I ever told you this, back in the old days, but
I love you. I always did. Take care.
-NR-

PS: Get out of the data fortress. When it doesn't register you any
more, the logic bomb I left in the CPU is going to crash the whole
domain. They may have gotten me, but I don't have to stand for it.

Gryphon closed the folder, de-resolved his Hardsuit, and
tucked the folder into his icon's trenchcoat. Then he turned to Zoner
and said, "Let's go."
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing. Let's go. I have all the information I need."
"You sure you can handle this by yourself? You don't want me
to come out?"
"No need. You're at the hospital now?"
"Yeah, I got in last night."
"Good. How's Kei?"
"Still unconscious, but Edison doesn't look more than his
usual amount of worried. Yuri's just about pitched a tent in her
room."
"Okay. You cover things on that end, and keep the CID off my
back. The last thing I need is Gordon barking about jurisdiction, and
even if he does, I've got Hammer with me."
"Will do. You be careful."
"Trust me." Smiling to Zoner, Gryphon jacked out,
de-resolving in a flurry of noise.
Back in the real world (or at least as real as hyperspace ever
gets), Gryphon sat for a moment in the dazed world of dump shock,
getting his wits back together, and as he did, he had a rather unusual
experience: a voice, inside his head, not an unfamiliar experience of
itself after his training -- but the voice itself was singular, a
forceful but not booming intonation of a single word that echoed
explosively in his skull.
[Gryphon.]
"Wha?" he replied -- perhaps not the most articulate thing he
could have said, but effective.
[Come to me,] the voice continued. [Prove yourself worthy to
face me.]
Now completely recovered from his dump shock, Gryphon turned
around in his seat and saw no one. "Who are you? What do you mean,
worthy to face you?"
There was no reply save a mocking laugh that trailed away into
silence.
Uneasy and contemplative, Gryphon turned around again and sat
back, his hands steepled, contemplating hyperspace's rushing madness.

The next afternoon saw Gryphon -- in jeans, t-shirt and
flannel again, with a battered black pack slung over one shoulder --
and Martin -- similarly attired -- making their way through the
walking floods that are New York City's sidewalks, following the map
which Gryphon was displaying on his PDA's small monitor.
"I don't get it," he was muttering. "This is taking us
straight downtown... what kind of conspiracy headquarters itself in
downtown New York?"
"Wall Street?" Martin guessed with a grin, earning himself a
sardonic half-glare. "Maybe it's a red herring."
"No," Gryphon replied, and his voice sounded so certain that
Hammer didn't contradict him, even though their current course --
straight into Times Square -- seemed absurd. Still, Hammer's
skepticism was sorely tested as they drew into the square itself, for
Gryphon slowly became more and more intense, more sure-seeming about
his destination. His eyes rose from the display -- without apparent
thought, he pocketed the PDA. His strides became faster and longer,
such that Martin no longer had to slow himself down deliberately to
remain even with him. He walked straight ahead, eyes focused on
something in front of him, ignoring all the other people in the square
save to sidestep them or shoulder past them with muttered pardons. He
marched across the street, pace quickening still, without pausing or
looking; cars skidded to stops miraculously inches from him. Martin
hurried after him, wondering what was going on, and they plunged into
a dark alley, at the end of which was nothing but a blank brick wall.
"Gryph," said Martin, and got no response. "Gryph!" he tried
again. Nothing. He reached out and put a hand on his friend's
shoulder, hoping to slow his rapid pace a bit, but Gryphon twisted
away and turned, looking up.
"Gryph, there's nothing here but an empty -- " Martin began,
and then stopped and drew back a step involuntarily at the look in
Gryphon's eyes. They burned, almost as if lit from within.
"It's here," he replied, his voice almost hoarse with
intensity, and then he turned back and stepped up to the brick wall,
reaching up and running a hand down it.
Curious, Martin went to an edges view, and saw nothing but
what he expected -- a blank wall, behind which there was what appeared
to be a vacant office building. Then, with that same curiously manic
energy, Gryphon turned, striding to the rusting metal stairs of a fire
escape that ran up the side of a nearby building. In the manner of
old -- no, ancient -- steel fire stairs, these had flanges which
supported the step treads sticking out from the sides, and with a
single, decisive, perfectly confident motion, Gryphon reached out a
hand and shoved one of them into the side of the staircase.
It slid in smoothly, bottoming out with a suspiciously
mechanical click. Martin was momentarily without comment, and then he
was nearly startled by a loud grinding noise from behind him.
Turning, he saw the blank, featureless brick wall he'd written off
moments before shifting, a rectangular section eight feet tall by four
feet wide sinking into the side of the building as the storm grate on
the pavement next to the building sank downward to form three small
steps.
"I told you," Gryphon said as he walked purposefully past,
almost sounding as if he were talking to himself, not Martin. "The
clouded mind sees nothing."

/* Jerry Goldsmith "The Hotel" _The Shadow_ */

Feeling more than a little uneasy, Martin followed Gryphon
down the three steps and past the brick wall -- one had to turn left
and walk through the short corridor formed by the sunken wall to reach
the inside. As he did so, he saw Gryphon flick another switch, and
the wall section ground back into place, sealing behind them with a
rather ominous thud.
From there, the only way to go was down: a spiral staircase
led down into darkness. Gryphon descended without hesitation, and
Martin followed. As they descended, lights came up slowly, a bluish
glow illuminating the six-sided room into which the staircase
descended, and the six walls began to rise into the ceiling silently,
leaving six large arched doorways into six nicely appointed rooms.
The bluish lights were ensconced on the pillars, and the rooms
themselves were finished in tan and brown stone, black and white tile
on the floors, and furniture with a tendency toward brown leather.
One room was a large, well-appointed library; another looked
to be a communications center, filled with ancient electronic gear
which was covered with dials and knobs and buttons. The third was a
bedroom, with a large canopied bed and a dresser. The fourth was a
chemical laboratory, well-equipped and stocked. The fifth looked like
an electronics workshop. The last contained a low-slung black car
which appeared to date from the same approximate time period as the
electronics in the communications room -- the early twentieth century.
"What the hoek... " whispered Martin as they reached the
bottom of the stairs.
"This is it," Gryphon breathed. "Martin, do you know where we
are?"
"Besides under a building in Times Square? No clue."
"This is his Sanctum," Gryphon replied, his voice tinged with
awe as he walked into the library and ran his fingers across the pages
of the books.
"Whose?"
"Him!" Gryphon replied, turning, becoming more animated as he
spoke. "Ying Ko. Lamont Cranston. Kent Allard. Whoever you choose
to call him -- the original, Martin, the one you and I base ourselves
on when we feel the need for a motif."
Hammer blinked. "You're telling me he was real."
"Real enough," Gryphon replied, crossing the center room and
going into the bedroom, "to have built this Sanctum and hidden it."
He opened the top drawer of the dresser and rummaged about in it, then
made a small, exclamatory noise and drew his hand out. Something
glittered in it as he turned, and, holding up his prize, Gryphon
added, "Real enough to have left this behind."
In his hand was a silver ring on which gleamed the brightest
fire opal Martin had ever seen.
"Well, I'll be damned," Martin whispered.
In Gryphon's mind, the voice he had heard earlier laughed
again.
[Very good,] it said. [You have proven yourself.]
"Who the hell are you?!" Gryphon demanded, making Martin, who
had heard nothing, jump. "What do you want?"
[I want you, of course. I arranged for my servants to murder
your women so that you would come to me, so I could see if you were
truly the worthy adversary I was told you would be. Come to me --
come to me and face me... Ying Ko.]
And again with the trailing laugh.
Gryphon's face hardened.
"Oh, I'll come and face you, all right," he muttered, looking
around at the corners of the room. "But you won't be laughing when I
do."
"Gryph, are you all right?" Martin asked, concerned.
"Leave me!" Gryphon replied.
Martin, taken aback for the nth time (the feeling was becoming
depressingly familiar), shrugged and went out to examine that
communications setup.
A few minutes later, he felt a creeping chill at the back of
his neck -- the feeling that he was being watched, watched by
dangerous eyes.
He turned around, and nearly jumped. Standing in the doorway
of the bedroom was a man, and it took Martin a few seconds to realize
that it was Gryphon.
He looked taller, for one thing, swathed in that black
Inverness cloak with the red undercape. His brow creasing, Martin
realized that he -was- taller, nearly two inches so. His face under
the red scarf and the brim of the black slouch hat had changed
somewhat, becoming longer, narrower, sharper, his nose elongating to
become more hawkish. His eyes had sharpened beyond even the level
they reached when he was angry, and Martin almost felt as if they were
burning him. His hands were gloved in black, and the girasol ring
glittered on the ring finger of his left hand.
A chilling laugh flowed out of the figure in black and filled
the Sanctum, and Martin felt a shudder creep up his spine despite
himself.
[Damn,] he remarked to himself, [he learns fast.]
"Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" the
black-clad figure intoned, his voice eerily similar to Gryphon's, and
yet, like his stature and face, subtly changed, hardened and
sharpened.
"The Shadow knows!" said The Shadow, and then his laugh rolled
forth again. In a moment, it slowed, then ceased, and Martin Rose and
The Shadow stood regarding each other for a moment.
Then The Shadow reached up and pulled down his scarf, and as
he did, he seemed to shrink, his face shifting every so subtly as he
slipped back to his original configuration -- a biocontrol trick,
Martin saw now, one that every Detian could do, given practice and
inspiration, to change the structure of one's face and body, as far as
the skeletal structure would allow. Gryphon probably didn't even
realize he was doing it -- couldn't, in fact, since he was notoriously
bad at biocontrol.
"I take it," Martin said dryly, "you no longer feel
uncomfortable wearing the suit."
Gryphon smiled and looked around the room. "Finding this
place... finding -this-," he added, holding up his hand with the
glittering girasol on it, "has made me feel considerably less like an
usurper."
Martin regarded him for a long moment, then, making certain he
had enough room around him, performed one of his rapid double
transformations, emerging in costume.
"You wear it well," he said with a smile.
"Does it bother you," asked Gryphon, "that there's a Shadow to
counterpoint your Darkwing?"
"Nah," Martin replied. "What the hell, it was my suggestion
anyway, remember?"
Gryphon smiled. "True." He replaced the scarf, and as he
did, his body shifted again, a change that Martin, Transformer though
he was, found rather unnerving. The Shadow stepped forward and
extended his hand. Hammer took it.
"I know where our true goal is," The Shadow said. "Let's get
going."

The fortress -- for that is, after all, what it was -- was
well-hidden, up in the crags of a small, nameless mountain range
somewhere in Germany. It was half hewn out of the mountain itself,
and half made of grey stone blocks, giving it the peculiar appearance
of melding into the mountain almost seamlessly, as if the mountain
were slowly encroaching upward and consuming the castle.
The original structure was raised in the fourteenth century by
Baron Klaus Karl Friedrich von Hollehammer, to protect his ancestral
homeland from bands of roaming barbarians and the like. It failed to
accomplish that task, rather spectacularly, but the castle itself
remained, a mute testament of failure and over-trust in walls of
stone. There are several such monuments to foolishness on Earth; the
best known is probably the Great Wall of China.
Castle Hollehammer then lay in semi-ruin, crumbling and
abandoned, for several centuries, until it was discovered in the early
2200s by the emerging government of Olympus, the so-called "unified
Earth" government. The Olympus leadership needed someplace secure to
serve as a last refuge against attack, as well as a place in which to
locate their more sensitive secret projects. The forgotten Castle's
location made it near-ideal, and so a team of Olympian technicians
descended upon it and raised it up out of the ruins, creating a
high-tech fortress and surrounding it with stone.
When GENOM came, the Olympus government retreated to their
last resort. It didn't save them; GENOM's Buma troops stormed Castle
Hollehammer in rather short order, despite the Olympus Police
Department E-SWAT division's vailant efforts at defense. Casualties
were grievously high among the E-SWAT police; only a dozen survived
the initial assault, and only a handful of those survived when their
leaders betrayed them in an attempt to save themselves. That handful
escaped into the catacombs beneath the castle, making a dangerous trek
to the relative safety of the European resistance-underground, while
their leaders were slaughtered by GENOM's troops. Those who survived
the journey faced nearly two years as guerilla soldiers fighting an
endless insurrection against GENOM's rule, until the day GENOM
surrendered to the WDF at Zeta Cygni.
Castle Hollehammer was not again forgotten. Among the many
GENOM Corporation documents released to the public when the company
capitulated were reports from the battlefield commanders regarding
Castle Hollehammer and the assault on it. Most people ignored these
documents, as they did almost all the other GENOM papers placed in the
public domain... but there were at least three interested parties.
One of them was a man who thought that the ruin would be the perfect
place to base a criminal empire which would eventually take over the
Federation. He moved his people in under the cover of night and
revamped the fortress with every cent he had yet stolen or earned
through drugs, prostitution, gambling and slavery in half the
Frontier, creating a bastion of lawlessness which his own considerable
powers kept cloaked in secrecy.
Thus, jutting out from the side of a mountain whose name is
lost to history, the great grey bulk of Castle Hollehammer was bathed
in light that night, the floodlamps illuminating its great walls and
courtyards for the searching, vigilant eyes of a hundred armed
sentries. The lights weren't a security risk. Anyone looking at the
castle wouldn't even notice it.

Ten miles to the northeast, an air vehicle made its way
near-silently southward. It was an unusual vehicle, by most
standards; small and angular, it had no discernible lifting surfaces,
apparently operating on a combination of anti-grav and ground effect.
It looked like nothing so much as a small purple pyramid with a pair
of small thrusters at the back, and flew almost silently.
At the non-controls of Martin's Rotofoil form, The Shadow kept
one eye on the global positioning system monitor and the other on the
Terrain Following Sensors. They were coming in low, almost, but not
quite NOE, in an attempt to come in under Castle Hollehammer's radar.
Glowing red indicators on the instrument panel assured him that the
weapons systems were fully primed and functional, as were the shields.
"How long?" inquired The Shadow.
"Not very," the instrument panel replied with a grin in its
voice, and the Rotofoil swung around the flank of a snow-covered
mountain. As it did, Castle Hollehammer swept into view, hulking,
grey, magnificent, and foreboding.
Kicking open the throttle a bit, Martin charged the last mile
to the Castle at nearly the speed of sound -- within visual range,
there was little chance they had been undetected. Best to get in
close before they had a chance to react. He targeted one of the
larger-looking turbolaser turrets at the corners of the walls and
blasted it; it made a satisfying orange fireball. As they screamed
low over the castle roof, actually below the altitude of the turret
tops, Martin was somewhat startled to notice the manual access hatch
release being actuated.
"What are you doing?" he inquired as he spun on his axis and
darted back toward the castle.
"Getting out," The Shadow replied, and jumped.
"Crazy," Hammer muttered, glancing in his rearview
point-of-view to see the inky blot of darkness fall toward the roof,
then turning back to his work at hand.
The Shadow's fall probably would have been a bit more painful,
except for two factors. His billowing coat reduced his speed
somewhat, causing as it did a good deal of wind resistance; also, one
of the castle's sentries broke his fall, however unwillingly. He
crashed into the guard's back, knees up, and as they went down, he
turned his fall into a roll, rolling off the guard and coming up on
his feet with his .45s in his hands. Several guards spotted him and
began to run toward him; laughing his eerie laugh, The Shadow mowed
them down, blasting away with guns that never ran dry. Confused and
more than a little frightened, the gangster commandoes fell back,
becoming disorganized.
One of them had the obligatory submachinegun, yet another of
the lot of MP40s stolen from H&K, and as he fell back he opened fire
with it, panicked, rapid fire, but no less on target for that. His
bullets ripped through The Shadow's dark form and clipped his fellows
running up on the other side, sending them down with cries and spurts
of crimson which The Shadow himself quite pointedly failed to display.
Within thirty seconds, the guns fell silent as the last of the
guards was felled. The Shadow's laugh continued for a few lingering
seconds, and then he turned, his guns disappearing, and waved the
Rotofoil down.
Martin transformed and landed, costumed, without so much as a
sound, making a face of moderate disgust as he walked across the
blood-slick stones to where The Shadow waited.
"You are enjoying this entirely too much," he observed.
"Close your eyes," The Shadow replied, "if the sight of cancer
being cut out disturbs you."
Then he turned, his guns appearing in his hands again, and
sent a short volley thundering into a pyramidal glass skylight which
stood a few dozen yards away. It shattered, the glass whitening and
then collapsing into the castle like snow, and within moments, The
Shadow and Hammer were at the edge, and then over it and inside.
For a moment, all was darkness and silence. Then, with an
audible hissing sound, a bar of red radiance appeared, perhaps sixty
feet in front of them, glowing and humming gently. A voice -- the
same voice -- laughed, only this time it was really present, and
Martin could hear it too.
Lights snapped on, bathing the room in white brilliance and
revealing its contents. Hammer and The Shadow were standing in the
center of the room, just about, on a splash of pebbled, ruined armor
glass. The room itself was a grand, ballroom-like place, the floor
carpeted in a beautiful blue-green Oriental pattern, the walls paneled
in what looked like mahogany. The two cloaked figures were surrounded
by uniformed soldiers like the ones which had perished on the roof
above, dressed in simple black fatigues, with black goggles obscuring
their eyes and simple SWAT caps on their heads. At the far end of the
room was a three-step dais, atop which was an opulent golden throne.
On this throne was seated a man, swathed in elaborate black
silks, his Asian features impassive, dark eyes unreadable. Leaning on
the side of this throne was a woman in red and black plate armor --
the red glow was coming from a beam saber she held in her hand. She
looked like an Iczer, but she wasn't either of the ones Hammer or The
Shadow knew.
"I'm very impressed, Ying Ko," said the man, standing to his
full height, which, while not as towering as Hammer's, was nonetheless
impressive. He walked across the room with an easy grace that spoke
of training, and of patience, and the woman followed at his side, her
long black hair trailing in the slight breeze that blew into the room
from the gaping skylight.
"You discovered your predecessor's stronghold where none had
found it for five centuries," the man in black robes continued,
smiling a thin smile. "You took his girasol and have made it and his
mantle your own. You dispatched my roof guards and invaded my throne
chamber unerringly. I congratulate you... you have passed all of my
tests."
The Shadow, eyes narrowing, replied, "Tests for what?"
"Why, worthiness, of course," the Asian man replied.
"Worthiness to rule the universe at my side! Permit me to introduce
myself: I am Senjin Shaen, and this is my partner, Atros Eternal. We
have searched the cosmos for you, my friend -- we are great admirers
of yours, Ying Ko -- you are brilliant, absolutely brilliant.
Destroying the Wedge Defense Force -- bringing the universe to its
knees for a century! -- and then, THEN, to emerge from your exile not
as a hated destroyer, but as a conquering hero -- a wronged man,
returning to put the ruin right -- that was a master stroke!"
"What in the hell are you talking about?"
Shaen looked reproachful. "Oh, Ying Ko -- don't try to fool
me with that silly tale of an android duplicate. I know full well
that the only android was the one you had built in order to pull off
your master stroke -- the one you used to convince the universe that
you were innocent of that first of crimes which earned you my
respect!" Looking nostalgic, the Asian smiled and said, "Oh, how I
searched for you, in those days. I have delayed my operations for
nearly a century in hopes of finally finding you and making you my
partner. You are an elusive man."
"And you," replied The Shadow coldly, "are a loon. Everything
about my return from exile was genuine. I was framed. I'm sorry,
friend, but I'm not the killer you're looking for. He died some
months ago, reduced to his component atoms by a weapon I ordered
fired."
Shaen laughed, then clapped The Shadow on the shoulders,
smiling broadly. "Excellent! The only other who knew what you really
are -- destroyed so that your story is safe! Safe, that is, but from
one who knows the real you... the cruel, bestial side, first given
release in combat, socially approved, acceptable... then later
demanding his day in the sun, and creating the man I so truly wanted
to be."
"Let me repeat it for you," The Shadow said slowly and
overdistinctly. "Perhaps your hearing is faulty: you... are...
WRONG."
Shaen's brow creased. He looked more closely, and The Shadow
could feel himself being scrutinized, his Force envelope examined for
every minute detail. He let his defenses drop -- he wanted this man,
whoever he was, to -see- the error he had made.
Then he was going to pound him.
"Bah!" Shaen spat, recoiling. "A pitiful defense. No one's
aura is so easily read -- you showed me a falsehood. I don't
understand -- why do you resist me, why do you seek to convince me
that you are my enemy?" The Asian strode forward and seized The
Shadow's lapels. "You are Ying Ko, the Butcher of Musashi! You and
only you deserve to rule at our side -- is that not correct, Atros?"
The dark-haired, Iczerlike woman nodded, her dark eyes
glittering as she smiled. "As you say, Senjin. Perhaps he is upset
with your tactics -- after all, you destroyed friends of his to bring
him to us."
"Bah!" Shaen repeated. "People such as we do not -have-
friends. All people to us are either partners or tools. Take this
one," he continued, gesturing to Hammer, who merely glowered silently
at him. "See how he apes Ying Ko's very dress -- how he has, for over
a century, mocked the cloak and hat which unleash the rage that killed
my revered fool of a great-grandsire. Power such as his makes a
useful tool, but surely nothing more. Not to we -- we are the true
leaders."
The Shadow stalked forward two steps, his eyes sparkling like
ice.
"I," he grated, "am not the Butcher."
Then he moved, like his namesake flickering across a sunlit
courtyard with the passing of a bird, and Senjin Shaen was sprawling
on his back on the flagstones, the indentation of the girasol showing
livid on the right side of his jaw.
"How dare you strike me?" Shaen hissed, getting to his feet.
"Perhaps I -have- misjudged you, Ying Ko -- but it matters not." He
regarded the two cloaked avengers for a moment, then turned to Atros
and said, "Destroy them both." Then he whirled on his heel and
stormed back toward his throne.
The Shadow's steely eyes flicked sideways and met those of
Hammer, who nodded imperceptibly, and then all hell broke loose. The
guards and Atros surged forward, pressing closer around The Shadow and
Hammer. Then, twin sabers sang from Hammer's sleeves, and he flashed
into the attack. The Shadow's laugh welled up and echoed in the
chamber, but he himself could no longer be seen; just the effects of
his hammering automatics as they scythed bloodily through the ranks of
the guards. Within moments, only two visible persons were left
standing in the chamber: Hammer, and Atros, her beam saber sparking
and sizzling against one of Hammer's metallic ones.

/* nine inch nails "mr. self destruct" _the downward spiral_ */

Hammer concentrated on everything he had ever learned about
personal blade combat from anyone as he ducked back and feinted,
parrying. Atros's speed and power were prodigious, perhaps even on a
par with his own, and she obviously knew how to handle that saber. As
they went around the room, trading the upper hand a dozen times and
wrecking most of the free objects, it slowly occurred to Martin that
he hadn't had quite this much fun in some time.
"You choose an odd time to smile," Atros observed, barely
missing with a scything attack that stripped away a band of material
from the edge of Hammer's cloak. "Do all Earthmen greet Death with a
smile?"
"Only the ones who get Christmas cards from her," Hammer
replied, and parried her next attack with his left arm, driving the
right forward. She recovered and cross-blocked, suffering a shallow
cut to her upper arm and burning the back of his hand slightly; they
separated as sparks flew.
"Fear has made you a babbling fool." Atros spun and then
feinted, faking an attack from the left and coming in from the right.
Hammer parried and felt the heat as the energy blade sizzled along the
side of his coat and punched a ragged-edged hole in his cloak. His
left hand's saber vanished into his sleeve as he lashed forward with a
punch that could have dented a pressure bulkhead, and Atros stumbled
backward, momentarily stunned.
"I don't want to kill you," Hammer informed his opponent as
their sabers locked again, "but I will if it's the only way I can get
out of here."

Oddly enough, "getting out of here" was also on Senjin Shaen's
mind at the moment. He had gone into the secret passage behind his
throne, and ridden the small turbolift down to the concealed fighter
bay in the base of the castle -- the levels which were inside the
mountain itself. Atros would catch up once she was finished, and the
rest were expendable -- obviously, this castle couldn't be used any
more. Ying Ko might have left a trail his heavily armed Wedge friends
could follow.
He ran down the narrow corridor and emerged into the hangar
itself, a cavern hewn out of the stone, illuminated by arc lamps
hanging from the ceiling to cast distinct pools of light on the
polished stone floor, a massive opening gaping into the cold night
sky. Four craft sat ready in this hangar: a pair of
Federation-surplus F-44B Rapier medium starfighters, a forty-seat
Salusian Arms Firestorm attack transport, and a VAF-1J Alpha-Legios
Veritech fighter stolen from a WDF depot during the disorganized years
of the early Exile. It was to one of the Rapiers that Senjin Shaen
was running, his robes fluttering away behind him to reveal a
battered, pre-Exile 3WA flightsuit.
He skidded to a halt twenty feet shy of the ship as The
Shadow's laugh split the air, reverberating roundly off the stone
walls of the chamber.
"Did you really think your flunkies could destroy us?" The
Shadow's voice asked. "You hurt Hammer's feelings with that mockery
crack, Shaen... and Hammer doesn't like having his feelings hurt.
He's taking care of your partner right now... graciously enough
leaving me time to come and deal with -you-."
Shaen narrowed his eyes and peered into the shadows around the
hangar, searching for Ying Ko. Why could he not -see- him? Surely he
was there, cloaked by his own aura... he could not fool Senjin Shaen
with a trick so, pardon the pun, transparent.
"Where are you, Ying Ko?" he asked, smiling mockingly. "Why
do you not show yourself?"
"Let me set you straight on a couple of things, Shaen," The
Shadow continued, ignoring the barb. "Your great-grandfather tried to
murder me, and then 'consoled' my lover over my 'tragic loss' -- while
everyone believed me dead he 'understood' his way into her heart and
her bed. I survived by sheer force of will, Shaen -- sheer force of
will. I put on this cloak for the first time to destroy him, as
you're no doubt aware. I did that out of anger, out of revenge,
that's true... but mostly, I did it for love of -her-. I had to make
her -see- what he was before I could take my revenge on him.
"If you want to see pure, selfish, overabiding evil, Senjin
Shaen," The Shadow continued, "why don't you have a look up your own
family tree?"
An invisible sledgehammer smashed into the side of Shaen's
face, sending him sprawling. He rolled to his back and elbows, looked
around, and what felt like the heel of a shoe crashed into his chin,
almost throwing him over backward. Two more massive blows caught him
as he tried to get to his feet twice more, and then, as The Shadow's
laugh filled the room again, Shaen looked up through stunned, blurry
eyes to see a darkness materializing before him, a darkness split by a
slash of red below laughing, flashing eyes.
"You are a fool," Shaen grated thickly through a fat lip,
struggling to elbows and knees before The Shadow. "You could have had
a third stake in all of creation... and you've thrown it all away for
some incomprehensible revenge."
Then he rose, rocking back on his heels, and his right hand
came up clutching a spitting blaster. The bolt took The Shadow high
in the right shoulder, knocking him back, and Shaen was on his feet in
an instant, plowing a wheel kick into The Shadow's head that took him
clean off his feet -- but didn't remove his hat.
"This castle's power core will overload and destroy the
mountain in less than a minute," Shaen sneered. "You threw away
everything for revenge, and now you've failed, Ying Ko, even in that."
Shaen spat, then ran to one of the Rapiers, strapping in and
preflighting it in record time.
The Shadow got to his feet, shook his head, and replied, "The
Shadow never fails," to an enemy who could no longer hear him.
Shaen's Rapier blasted out of the hangar with the bare minimum of
preflights, and with no hesitation at all, The Shadow half-climbed,
half-leaped into the cockpit of the other and brought it up with
practiced hands.

"Still you fight the inevitable, Earthman?" Atros taunted,
ducking a slash which Hammer berated himself for telegraphing horribly
and smashing an elbow underneath his chin. He recoiled from the blow,
minimizing its impact, and spun on his heel, turning unbalance into a
turn that took him away from a cut. His cloak was looking pretty
ratty by now, and for that matter, so was he -- but Atros, as their
battle increased in intensity, could not help but notice the slowly
building gleam in his eyes. At first she mistook it for the
figurative fires that burn in almost all eyes during a dire battle;
then she began to realize that it was much more than that, that it was
actual illumination. By now, its white brilliance had completely
washed out the details of his eyes, burning like arc lamps under the
brim of his hat.
Hammer didn't reply. He regained his footing and launched
himself forward, one saber catching Atros's sword hand and knocking
her saber away as the other retracted. Snarling, she seized the wrist
of the arm whose saber was still extended, and, with strength that
startled Hammer, drove the blade into the nearby wall, pinning it
there. Then she seized his neck in both hands and began to squeeze.
"Die, Earthman," she snarled, closing her hands tighter,
tighter. Hammer's vision began to swim, and he found it, in the back
of his mind, somewhat amusing that, even with his ever-encroaching
cyberhuman abilities, he could still be throttled to death. Red fog
began to creep in from the edges.
Teeth gritted, Hammer forced the heel of his free hand under
Atros's chin, trying to push her away, but she had leverage on her
side, and with his arm pinned, he couldn't stand and gain back his
height advantage. She had already bent him so far backward that his
hat had fallen off, releasing his thick brownish hair, matted with
sweat.
"Don't... make... me... kill you," he grated, his eyes, now
returned to their normal state, narrowing.
"You're in no position to threaten, Earthman," Atros replied,
the feral grin on her face widening as she saw his eyes begin to glaze
with oxygen debt. "Goodbye."
Martin Rose looked at his own mortality and decided that, "you
shall not" notwithstanding, he still had far too much to do with his
own life.
He summoned up his will, forced a bubble of air up through his
constricting windpipe, and shaped it into a single word that rasped
past his purpling lips:
"Blade."
A brutal flash of energy erupted from his hand, the impact of
it throwing Atros away from him; screaming, she flared with red
energy, growing to intolerable brilliance in a mere moment and then
imploding to a single point which flickered and vanished.
Coughing, Hammer slumped to his knees, massaging his bruised
throat for a moment and gulping air before addressing the task of
freeing his saber from the wall.
Thus, it was his knees rather than the soles of his feet which
first felt the trembling that heralded the imminent destruction of
Castle Hollehammer.

Outside, a few seconds before, Shaen slammed his Rapier
through an afterburner slide, the sonic boom shattering the snowy
landscape and touching off a dozen avalanches, trying to get into a
good gun-position on The Shadow's ship. The two fighters had not been
armed -- their missiles were not in place -- so the only thing they
had with which to fight were their guns, paired neutron cannons and
paired laser cannons on this older model of Rapier. Shaen was a good
pilot; he knew how to handle a Rapier in the soup quite well. He
increased power to the forward deflector shields, performed a
wingover, and dove for where he expected Ying Ko's ship to be, opening
fire.
His bolts plowed into the landscape, wreaking havoc on snow
and ice, but Ying Ko was nowhere to be seen...
Just then, the Laugh rang out -- not over the radio, but -in
Shaen's cockpit-, harsh and mocking.
"You're a fool!" The Shadow's voice declared, and Shaen felt
panic rising in him like bile as he scanned all of his scopes and
found nothing -- not even a radar trace -- of The Shadow's Rapier.
"Damn you!" Shaen cried, slamming his afterburners in again
and whirling the Rapier, raking the sky with the guns, draining down
the operation capacitors and watching the LEDs on the instrument panel
climb as the fusion plant recharged them. "SHOW YOURSELF!"
"The weed of crime bears bitter fruit, Senjin Shaen!" The
Shadow cried, and Shaen's ship bucked as laser pulses and neutron
bolts leaped out of the sky and blasted away the shields.
"Crime does not pay!"
The pulses returned, from a different angle, as Senjin Shaen
screamed and screamed and turned and banked and shot, shredding the
rear deck armor.
"The Shadow knows!" rang The Shadow's voice, and then the
Laugh carried with it the last burst of white-hot hammer blows that
destroyed the engines and set their raging energies free to consume
the rest of the ship. Shaen's cockpit became a sea of white flames,
and he screamed and screamed as the burning Rapier nose over and
crashed into the side of Castle Hollehammer --
-- which burst into a brilliant white-orange flower of flame a
mere instant later, as if the Rapier's crash had touched it off. The
explosion did indeed blow the mountain away, almost to its base, as
the fusion reactor inside overran its boundaries and hungrily consumed
all in its path. Thanks to the completeness of the destruction and
the cold, stony nature of the locale, though, the firestorm was over
almost as soon as it began; as the shockwave rocked the Rapier and
fragments sleeted off the shields, the glow died away, and only a few
chunks of glowing red-hot rock remained to illuminate the spot where a
fortress had stood for centuries.
As The Shadow banked low over the spot where Castle
Hollehammer had stood, he noticed a small, angular, violet craft pull
into formation with his Rapier off the left wingtip; wagging his
wings, he turned west, and together, he and Hammer headed for New
York.

WEDGE DEFENSE FORCE MEDICAL CENTER
ZETA CYGNI DYSON SPHERE
RIGEL SECTOR
THREE DAYS LATER

Gryphon arrived at the lobby well-rested, if slightly nervous;
there isn't a lot to do while traveling in hyperspace besides sleep.
He didn't look well-rested, though; the dark circles around his eyes
and the hollowness of his cheeks had more to do with worry than
exhaustion, but the symptoms look much the same to an outside
observer. Contact with the outside world was impossible in
hyperspace, and he'd been there, on the way to Earth and back, for
upward of a week.
He was well-dressed, though, in a clean white shirt, black
trousers and his Inverness cloak, the cape buttoned down. The red gem
glittered on the ring finger of his ungloved left hand. As he entered
the lobby he took off the cloak and laid it over his arm, then went to
the desk.
The attendant on duty, a neat, professional-looking young
Salusian, looked up and smiled. "Hello, Admiral," he said.
"Consultant Morgan is conscious, and would like to see you as soon as
possible."
Gryphon's heart leaped, and he smiled and nodded, hurrying
through the big double doors, down the corridor, to the left, next
right, and out the end of the T-intersection. MegaZone and Yuri
waited on either side of the door; as he approached, they smiled, and
touched his shoulders with almost synchronized silent care as he
passed between them and through the doors.
Kei was sitting up in the bed, swathed in white, a bandage
still around her head and wrapping on one forearm; other than that,
she looked perfectly fine, and she smiled beautifully as he entered
and went to her side.
Without a word, he embraced her as best he could in the
awkward position, burying his face in her sweet-smelling hair and
clutching her tight.
"Hey," she said softly after a moment. He released her enough
to look into her soft brown eyes, and she smiled and kissed him.
"We're okay."
Tears dripped from his eyes as he smiled and returned her
kiss.
"Hey, you want to do something really nice for me?" she asked
when they had finished with that.
"Name it," he replied.
"Get me out of here."
Gryphon blinked. "But -- "
"Look, I'm fine -- if I'm awake and I feel this good, there's no
way I'm looking any 'lingering side effects', I think Stone called
them. Edison let him have the case back once I was out of danger, and
between you and me, Stone is okay, but he's way too tense. I'm going
to go nuts in here if I stay any longer." She smiled and lowered her
eyes conspiratorially before continuing, "Besides, I've seen a
calendar. It's getting close to, well, that time, eh? I don't want
our first child to be born in a trauma ward, of all places. I want
her to be born with her parents nearby, not a bunch of well-meaning
strangers."
"You're that sure it's a girl?"
"As sure as I've ever been of anything."
"And you're that sure you're okay."
"Completely."
He considered, reading the earnest desire in her eyes.
"Okay."
The room had a back door, which made getting past Zoner and
Yuri easy. No one else saw them leave the hospital...

FRIDAY 17 MARCH 2389
03h12 GMT

Hyperspace roared past outside the cockpit windows of
Daggerdisc, and in the pilot's seat, Gryphon sat, as usual fascinated
by the blue insanity of the energy rushing by outside, and thinking
about the wording of the lavish thank-you note he had to write for
Sylia and Mackie, who had insisted upon his return to New Japan that
he go straight on to New Avalon, and keep the ship for himself, with
their compliments, and their love... as long as he promised to visit
them more often than every fifty years from now on. He smiled, and
laced his fingers with those of Kei, who sat in the co-pilot's seat,
absorbed with thoughts of her own.
They sat like that for some time, absorbed in their own
thoughts and the simple feeling of presence and love that flowed
through their linked hands.
Then, Gryphon felt a strange difference, whether in his own
thoughts or the world outside him he couldn't really tell. He turned
his head to look at Kei, who had turned to look at him, and their eyes
met and locked for an infinite instant.
"It's time," said Kei simply.

The actual process of human birth is really quite simple when
it doesn't screw up, but that doesn't make it any less fascinating.
There's a somewhat mystical aspect to it, a strange spirituality
which, even in this era of science and cold logic, remains, plugged
into the deepest, darkest reaches of our subconscious. It may be
painful, and messy, and even rather comical if looked at clinically...
but if you're -there-, experiencing one, you don't -- you can't --
look at it clinically. You simply -are-, and you -do-. This
particular birth went well in the extreme, a nearly seamless procedure
taking less than half a Standard hour, and the end of that half-hour
found Kei bundled up in a blanket in the co-pilot's seat of the
battered freighter, giving her daughter her first look at hyperspace.
The baby looked like... well, let's be honest, the baby looked
like every other human baby in the universe... she was small, and
large-headed, and utterly helpless and peaceful-looking. Helpless,
that is, but for the fact that she was nestled in her mother's arms,
and with her father sitting close at hand. It was obvious from the
looks in both their eyes that, if it came down to it, either or both
of them would lay down all they had for this small creature. Although
Gryphon and Kei had both had doubts, and still were not sure, Eiko
Rose was quite right: they would make good parents.
Gryphon reached over and took Kei's hand, brushing it to his
lips, and then smoothed his daughter's sparse, wet hair, which seemed
that it was headed for much the same unremarkable shade of brown as
his own. Her eyes were brown, too, like Kei's, and Gryphon, despite
what he had heard from every parent everywhere, couldn't tell anything
more from the child's appearance concerning which, if either, of them
she resembled. He was, in fact, beginning to believe that every
parent everywhere had, in fact, been making it all up.
Not that it mattered.
"You know," said Kei, "I put off trying to come up with a name
until you got back from the field, and what with all the craziness, I
never gave it any more thought. What do you think?"
Gryphon looked thoughtful, then smiled. "Let's call her
Kaitlyn."
"Kaitlyn? Why?"
"I knew someone named Kaitlyn once, when I was young -- before
I met you, even. She was a good friend, and I haven't thought of her
in a long, long time... but for some reason, she reminds me of Kate."
Kei considered. "Okay. Her middle name has to be Yuri,
though."
"Oh, of course."
"What do you think, kid?" Kei asked the baby. "Kaitlyn Yuriko
okay with you?"
Kaitlyn burbled.
"I spose that's a yes."
Gryphon shrugged. "I don't speak baby."
"We're definitely going to need help."
"We'll be okay," he assured her, squeezing her hand. "We'll
be okay."
"You bet." Kei grinned down at Kaitlyn. "Lucky you -- you're
going to get to see Earth first thing! I didn't get to see Earth
until I was nineteen -- say, that's when I met your father! I have so
much to tell you, little one... " Her eyes misted, and she looked up
at Gryphon. "We really did it, didn't we? We really made it
through."
Gryphon smiled, blinking a tear out of his right eye, and
leaned over. "Yeah, Kei. We really made it." Their lips met,
gently, and as they parted, they looked into each other's eyes and
read the truth that burned there like a star.
"We really made it."
Daggerdisc hurtled toward Earth, the Cradle of Humanity, on a
date with destiny.

-- THE END --

/* Asia "One Step Closer" _Asia_ */