[FanFic] - DP/UF - Secrets, a prelude to UF4: Crossroads

[MegaZone]

Gryphon stood in the engine room of his ship, hands folded
behind his back, as the crew of radsuited engineers moved about,
connecting pieces of equipment to the intermix chamber and the warp
power conduits. Lt. Finney was lying on her back on the deck, buried
up to her waist in the guts of the engineering patch panel, as two
assistant technicians stood ready with tricorders taking readings and
offering advice. Chief Engineer Lang stood off to the side, directing
and monitoring.
Gryphon stepped into the one-man lift to the portside of the
massive intermix column and set it into downward motion; seeing his
captain on the way down, Lang broke off from what he was doing to move
toward the lift base, offering a progress report as he went.
"Everything is proceeding according to schedule, Captain," the
tall, mustached engineer reported in his melodic Russian accent,
pointing a thick finger at the intermix chamber's central nexus, where
the matter and antimatter streams came together and the dilithium
crystals focused the reaction into energy for the ship. "Intermix
calibration is 56% complete, computer telemetry is nominal, and we
should have the warp field modifications complete within the hour."
"Excellent work, Mr. Lang," said Gryphon. "This is a very
important job, and you're performing it with your usual exemplary
skill."
Lang smiled. The mission was not important, not to Starfleet,
and he fully well knew it. It was important to his captain, though,
and that made it important to him. They had been through too much not
to.
Gryphon walked toward the patch panel, standing next to Lt.
Finney's feet for a second before saying loudly, "Lt. Finney, report."
Finney backed out of the panel and got to her feet; standing,
she was a full head shorter than the captain, and the captain was not
a tall man. Finney was short, and slight of build, which led many
people to discount her in combat situations; that was a mistake.
Jaime Finney had, in her time, defeated more than one Klingon warrior
in hand-to-hand combat, and no one was a deadlier shot with a phaser.
Although her official position aboard the USS Invincible was
that of security chief, she was also something of an assistant chief
engineer, and knew the engine room almost as well as Lang.
"Sir," she reported, her left hand holding a hydrospanner as
her right tried unsuccessfully to get her mop of (currently somewhat
dirty) reddish-brown hair under control, "the new computer systems are
almost ready to be tested. I estimate we'll be ready for dimensional
transit in less than an hour."
"Excellent work, Lieutenant, excellent." Gryphon smiled
again. "I'll be in my quarters, Lieutenant; I want to be informed
immediately when the modifications are all complete."
"Aye aye, sir."

In his quarters on deck five, Gryphon lay on his bunk,
contemplating. He was about to try something that might cost him his
life, and he felt no fear; he wondered if that was odd, then decided
it probably was not. After all, he had done worse, and probably would
again.
How far he had come, he mused to himself. His humble
beginnings as a college student--and not a very good one--at Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, on Earth, in 1991, had led him here, but the
road was not a straight one...
First, he had encountered a computer constructed by (he
thought) an alien intelligence, hidden in the basement of WPI's Fuller
Laboratories. This computer had contained software which he did not
completely understand, software that, through a typographical error of
his, created, out of thin air, two living, breathing women, one of
whom he came to love over the next few months.
Then, another gweep had discovered the software and
accidentally created a malevolent presence named Largo, a being of
complete evil, bent on the destruction of Gryphon and all those like
him. The battle with Largo had led to the rediscovery of a cosmic
heritage for WPI's Wedge Rat community, and the utter destruction of
Worcester as the Wedge Rats fled into space in the starship that had
once been their symbolic home.
A month of travel brought them to a far-off planet called
Planitia, where they were met by the most dazzling starshipyard they
had ever imagined (none of them having ever seen one), and a man who
called himself Fahvergnugen, who said he was their father, of a sort.
He discovered that he and his kind were an army, designed to battle
the great evil that threatened all creation. Thinking back, Gryphon
realized that none of them had ever found out what that great evil
was.
A great battle followed; an encounter with a time traveler
from the year A.D. 413,000,000 and change made them immortals. For
nearly three hundred years he and his fellows had traveled space,
spreading peace and justice, and fighting wars when the necessity
arose, led by one great man, a man called MegaZone. And for those
nearly three hundred years, Gryphon had been happy. He had been a
fighter pilot, the most famous and revered in the galaxy, and the
executive officer to the Wedge Defense Force's great leader. He was
madly, deliriously in love. Life was good.
Then a treacherous plot by Largo--still plaguing them, and
most especially him, after all these years--shattered the WDF.
Gryphon became a marked man, wanted for the slaughter of children, a
crime he most emphatically didn't commit; Kei, the woman he loved, set
out to find and slay him; Yuri, MegaZone's lover, believed in him and
helped him escape, in the process destroying her relationship with the
WDF's leader; MegaZone, demoralized and heartbroken, resigned his
commission and disappeared.
Shortly thereafter, GENOM's incredible space dreadnaught had
attacked the demoralized, understaffed WDF Wayward Son, and despite
her new command staff's valiant efforts, the WDF's fabled flagship was
destroyed. The crew and vessel had already elevated to the status of
folk heroes, larger-than-life icons; now they became martyrs as well,
except Gryphon, who was seen as a universal scourge by all but a
dedicated few.
Gryphon had been running for his life since then; for over
sixty years he hopped about the galaxy, determined to better himself
and prove himself innocent at the same time. He gathered information
everywhere he went, looking, always searching for the pieces to the
puzzle of Largo's frame. He chose places of learning to hide: Meizuri
University, the finest college of arts and sciences in the United
Galactica, the rebuilt Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Mega-Tokyo's
fine Institute of the Technologies, the Olympus Institute, even
Salusia Tech, learning to be a starship engineer and designer,
cyberneticist, roboticist, and whatever else he could learn. In
between, he ran from Kei, who still hunted him, and whoever else tried
to make a legend of himself by destroying a legend from the past.
Running from one such pursuit, Gryphon's damaged warp fighter
threw itself into an imbalance that took it across time, crossing the
dimensional barriers and landing him here, in the universe of the
United Federation of Planets. There were many parallels between here
and home. In his home space, there was a Klingon Empire and a Romulan
Empire, there were Vulcans, Gorn, Andorians, and Orions, and, after
the United Galactica's collapse under its own bureaucratized weight,
there was even a United Federation of Planets. But this universe had
not seen the incredible technological diversity that had existed back
home; it had never known the United Galactica or the Wedge Defense
Force; the Worlds Welfare Work Association did not exist here. And no
one had ever heard of Gryphon.
His damaged fighter was picked up by a Starfleet vessel, the
USS Excelsior, under the command of Captain Hikaru Sulu. He presented
himself as a dimensional traveler (a claim that was verified by Sulu's
science officer's studies of the fighter and the wormhole phenomenon's
repercussions in the celestial area) and requested asylum in the
Federation. The Federation offices granted him that, and, after a
year of residency, citizenship. He immediately applied to, and was
granted entrance to, Starfleet Academy.
Gryphon was graduated a Lieutenant Commander, in only one
year, his vast previous experience in similar naval operations and
many degrees taken into account by Starfleet. He was assigned as
helmsman and assistant chief engineer to the USS Enterprise under
Captain James T. Kirk, and a young lieutenant named Saavik had been
assigned to assist him in his engineering sciences duties.
After eight happy years aboard the Enterprise, Commander
Benjamin D. Hutchins was transferred away with the retirement of
Captain Kirk and most of his command staff. He was mildly
disappointed, having hoped to be the next commander of the legendary
vessel, but that disappointment was eased by his assignment to command
the USS Invincible, another Constitution-class vessel and very much
like the Enterprise, instead.
Captain Hutchins and his ship proceeded to serve an exemplary
twenty years, his command staff never seeming to age around him (only
he knew why; he had administered to them, in order to ensure a long
and productive career, the same retroviral treatment that had given
him his immortality). Several times they saw action in open combat,
with the Romulans, the Gorn, and the Orions, mostly in minor border
skirmishes and defense of Federation shipping. In their one major
battle, against a rogue Romulan battle group, the Invincible proved
her name, earning her place beside Captain Chekov's Enterprise in the
fight.
But now, after thirty years of service, Gryphon faced a fear
of his for the first time. The Invincible had, according to Starfleet
Command, reached the end of her useful life. The Constitution class
was outmoded, her bag of tricks finally exhausted; she was being
rapidly superseded by the Excelsior class as the mainstay of the
fleet. Even the Enterprise was now an Excelsior-class vessel, bearing
the number NCC-1701-B. Gryphon had received orders not two days ago
that the Invincible was to put back to Spacedock to be decommissioned
and scrapped. He would receive a new ship, an Excelsior-class ship,
the USS Endeavour, but he wasn't happy. Invincible was a friend, she
deserved better than an ignominious scrapping after all of her fine
service.
That was when Gryphon got the plan to imbalance the warp
engines and go home again. He had demonstrated considerable foresight
after his original accident in preserving the computer records of his
fighter's engine imbalance; all the necessary data to recreate the
event was there. The ship could come about and make for Spacedock
(having already reported delays related to engine problems), send out
a distress call indicating warp engine imbalance and possible wormhole
(all terribly garbled by subspace interference from the malfunctioning
engines, of course), and then--poof!--vanish across the timestream.
The question was simple; would reversing the steps that had
led to his being here take him home, or further down the timestream,
to a still different reality?
There was only one way to find out. He had asked his crew,
and they had stood unanimously with him. They wanted to explore, and
none of them were leaving anything behind. It had warmed his heart
when, on the rec deck, not a single member of his crew had come
forward when he offered to let them off the vessel in lifeboats and
shuttlecraft, to signal for aid and tell a convincing story of the
Invincible's destruction, before attempting the experiment. He knew
his crew and his relationship with them. None had held back for fear
of recrimination; they all sincerely stood with him. It made him feel
very, very good.
With this ship and crew behind him, he felt he stood a better
chance than ever of clearing his name. With the USS Invincible on the
case, how could there be any doubt of eventual victory?
The door chimed, bringing him gently out of reverie. He sat
up. "Come in," he said, his voice activating the door. Lt. Finney
stepped in.
"Captain," she reported, "all engine preparations are
complete. We're ready for you on the bridge."
"Good." He stood up and beckoned Finney to enter the room;
she did so, and the door closed behind him. "Jamie...are you certain
you want to go through with this? I know the records of most of the
crew, I requested them specifically for their lack of family. You
still have family here...are you absolutely sure you want to follow me
on some mad quest for another dimension where your captain is a wanted
criminal and you may never see your home again?" He stepped forward
and took her shoulders gently in his hands. "I can't make you abandon
your home like this."
Finney smiled a small smile and said firmly, "Captain, this is
my home. Here, on the Invincible, under your command. To go anywhere
else would be...well, this is where I belong. You couldn't put me off
this ship if you tried."
Gryphon pulled Finney to him, enfolding her in his arms and
giving her a long, warm hug. "Thank you, Jamie...it means more to me
than you can know." Releasing her, he said with a smile, "Now then.
Let's get up to the bridge and start exploring new worlds, eh?"

They arrived on the bridge to tension. Everyone on Gryphon's
bridge crew had faced down leaving his or her home reality, and all of
them had accepted it; the tension here was that pleasant tension that
comes before a great exploration. They were anxious to get started.
Anxious to discover what lay across the timestream for them.
"Engineering status?" Gryphon inquired as he took his center
seat.
"Nominal, Captain," Finney replied, stopping by the
engineering console to check readings before taking her usual station
at weapons and defense.
"Communications?"
"Messages concerning engine delays have been sent out, sir,"
Lt. Vanessa Leeds, his young comm officer, replied. Vanessa was new
to the crew, just out of Starfleet Academy a couple of months ago, and
had already acquired the kind of loyalty and thirst for knowledge that
would take her across time with her captain. Gryphon figured she had
a good future in the Wedge Defense Force, once his dream of absolution
had come true and he could rebuild the Force.
"Distress signals are processed and ready," Leeds added,
meaning that she had added the appropriate garbling and static to
already-ambiguous messages about warp core problems.
Gryphon smiled. "Helm?"
"Standing by," Lt. Cmdr. Max Hunter replied, turning in his
seat to grin at the Captain. Max was the hottest helmsman in
Starfleet, considered as good as, maybe better than, the legendary
Hikaru Sulu (or so said Captain Sulu, when they met).
"Navigation?"
"As though," Rick Sterling said with a grin that mirrored his
helmsman counterpart's, "I have anything at all to do with this little
excursion. I got us to the point where you first entered this
dimension...now it's all up to you and Lang." Going to the original
crossover point had been Sterling's idea; very few other navigators
would have been able to even find the place.
"Just checking," Gryphon replied with his own smile.
"Science?"
"All sensors are calibrated and ready to record data
concerning cross-time rift," Commander Saavik replied. She arched an
eyebrow in her commanding officer's general direction, still bent over
her instruments. "It will be intriguing to monitor the subspace
distortion in the general rift area." As usual, the half-Vulcan
officer had her Romulan half firmly under control, allowing only the
tiniest bit of the eagerness she was feeling to escape her
professional veneer.
"Intrigue yourself to your heart's content, Commander,"
Gryphon said, settling back and keying his intercom. "Engine room,
this is the Captain. What've you got for me, Henry?"
"Everything's all set, sir," Lang replied, unnecessarily. The
whole thing was a formality, and a tradition. "Just give the word."
"Mr. Lang," Gryphon began, "the word is--"
"Captain!" Saavik cut in. "I am monitoring a subspace rift,
opening at zero mark one five--it is exactly like the type of rift we
expect to generate." She turned and fixed him with a look.
"Intriguing, would you not concur?"
"Very intriguing," Gryphon replied. "Lt. Finney, go to yellow
alert and stand by on shields. Navigational deflectors to full
power."
On the viewer, the outline of a vessel was materializing,
shrouded in seething blue energy, trace lightning racing over it, and
a white brilliance spreading rapidly. The viewer whited completely
out, and when the glow faded, there was a Klingon Bird of Prey,
painted bright red, sitting in their viewer.
Or at least, that's what most of the bridge crew thought it
was. Gryphon recognized it instantly. "Son of a bitch!" he cried,
coming half out of his conn. "Red alert!" he barked. "Shields
up--all weapons to full power! Engine room, hold that thought--we
have an emergency situation here." He cut Lang off before the
engineer could inquire further.
"I do not understand, sir," Saavik observed. "The Klingon
Empire and the United Federation of Planets are allies. There is no
need for--"
"Captain," Leeds interrupted, "we are being hailed."
"On screen. One-way visual."
A red-haired woman appeared on the screen; around her was the
bridge of a small starship, white-lit and compact, almost
cockpit-like. Definitely not the standard Klingon layout, nor was
this woman even remotely Klingon.
"Attention, unidentified starship. This is the WDF Lovely
Angel. Please identify yourself. Do not fire. We come in peace."
"Two-way visual, Lt. Leeds." Gryphon turned to address the
screen. "This is Captain Benjamin D. Hutchins of the USS Invincible,"
he said. "Somehow, Kei, I doubt that."
The woman recoiled in shock. "You!" she cried. "I knew you
had come here--but I had no idea I'd find you so fast--"
"`Star blessed for having found you,'" Gryphon quoted, "`star
crossed because it's only to see you go.'"
"You've got it wrong," Kei replied. "It's `star crossed
because it's only to see you die.'" The screen shifted back to
exterior visual as she cut off transmission; the Bird of Prey swung
toward them, its forward torpedo tube glowing, and fired. "All ahead
full impulse--evasive!" Gryphon shouted; Hunter's fingers flew over
his controls, and the Invincible surged into motion, pitching down and
rolling to relative starboard as the torpedo streaked under the saucer
and just outside the portside nacelle pylon.
"That isn't a Klingon ship, Commander Saavik," Gryphon told
his exec. "That ship is from my home dimension. Trust me, I'm quite
familiar with it." Then, musing almost to himself, "I'll be damned.
She's chased me across time. She must have researched everything I
did, found out about my altercation with the Reavers and
disappearance, traced my course, found the wormhole traces in
subspace, figured out the proper warp field geometry to produce that
kind of trace...it's incredible."
The vessel shook as a phaser spread raked her rearward
shields. "Marvel about it later, Captain," Finney advised.
"Right. Jamie, target the Angel's weapons and engines. I
don't want the crew harmed. Disable her, cripple her, but don't
destroy her, whatever you do. I just want to get home in one piece."
"And if we disable the vessel?" Sterling asked. "Are you going
to leave her behind?" The "her" he referred to was not the Lovely
Angel; his tone of voice made that perfectly clear.
"Of course," Gryphon replied. "Don't worry about her, she'll
pull through anything."
Against a standard Klingon Bird of Prey, the outcome of the
battle would have been pretty much assured; even without the ability
to maneuver at warp speeds, the Invincible's firepower and shield
strength was several times that of a Bird of Prey. The Bird couldn't
win; at best it could cloak and flee. However, the Predator class of
cloakscout, to which the Lovely Angel belonged, was not a standard
Klingon Bird of Prey, any more than the Angel was a standard Predator.
She was packed with the cutting edge of Worlds Welfare Work
Association starship technology; two naval phasers, one torpedo tube,
missile racks with afterstage accelerators, jammers, a more efficient
cloaking device, impulse thrusters that were entirely too large for a
vessel of that size. Add to that all the modifications that Kei and
Yuri themselves had made to the ship in the hundreds of years they had
owned it--the Lovely Angel was the 3WA's answer to the Millennium
Falcon.

<<< Def Leppard: Another Hit and Run >>>

Invincible ducked to port, pitching down, as the Angel zipped
past like a fightercraft, peppering the saucer's shields with a spread
of missiles. Finney cursed and locked on the aft torpedo tube as the
Angel executed a sweeping turn; the torpedo shot forth just as the
Angel came into the Invincible's slot. Aboard the Angel, Kei cursed
back; she hadn't known that Constitution-class starships were equipped
with aft torpedoes. They weren't back home. She tried to evade,
letting loose a phaser barrage in the process, but the torpedo slammed
into the Angel's right wing, pitching her off course.
"She's too damn maneuverable," Hunter growled as, on the
viewer, the Angel recovered and bored in for another pass. "Makes us
look like a washtub."
"We'll see about that. She probably expects a vessel this
size to handle like a washtub, after all. She obviously wasn't
expecting the aft torpedo tube; she wouldn't screw up so much as to
put herself into its arc of fire that long unless she didn't know it
existed." Gryphon sat back in his conn and secured the emergency
panels over his legs, tapping the all-ship. "All hands, this is the
Captain. Brace for heavy maneuvering, repeat, brace for heavy
high-speed maneuvering." Turning back to Hunter, he ordered, "All
ahead flank, Mr.Hunter. Enter heavy maneuver protocol."
"Entering heavy maneuver," Hunter replied, "all ahead flank."
He touched his controls; the Invincible surged forward, her roll
attitude suddenly altering by ninety-five degrees. The Lovely Angel's
next missile spread went almost a shiplength wide.
Hunter's console was in Heavy Maneuver Protocol; that meant he
had free reign to do anything within the vessel's physical ability.
There was something he had always wanted to try.
"Finney, stand by all forward weapons," he said tersely.
"Hang on, everyone."
"Forward weapons?" Finney asked even as she readied them. "We
can't turn fast enough to--"
Hunter didn't reply. He was too busy tapping a complex
sequence into the helm. The pitch attitude pulled up, sharply, as
their speed dropped off to three-fourths impulse.
Kei could see an opportunity; whoever Gryphon's helmsman was,
he was obviously an idiot. Showing her the bridge like that, in such
a slow maneuver. Pitiful. She throttled back and keyed in firing
sequences--
Hunter punched the Invincible's impulse engines wide open; the
great ship rushed forward, clawing at space as she pulled up and over
the top, then rolled back into her original roll attitude, to complete
a perfect Immelmann turn. (Hunter knew perfectly well the roll was
unnecessary, but the classic maneuver specified it, so...) Kei
shouted an oath as she yanked back to keep from slamming into the
ship--
"Fire!" Gryphon ordered as the Lovely Angel showed her belly.
Three forward phaser banks lanced out, raking across the
Angel's shields. Torpedo one knocked them down; tube two blasted into
the smaller ship's armored hull right under the engines. Her impulse
thrusters going dark, the Lovely Angel spun off into space, powerless.
Kei screamed in impotent rage, slamming her fists against the dead
helm.
"Engine room!" Gryphon shouted, punching his intercom. "Still
ready for dimensional crossrip?"
"Ready as we'll ever be," Lang replied. "Thanks for warning
us a second or two in advance of throwing us all around the engine
room."
"There wasn't time, Engineer. Prepare for warp crossrip.
Bridge out. Mr. Hunter, now, before she can get auxiliary power
online--maximum warp, get us out of here."
"Engaging," Hunter replied. He threw the warp engines online,
pushing their power grudges right up to maximum speed. Outside, the
stars stretched, colorshifting slightly as the Invincible approached
lightspeed; then they were streaking past in the normal pattern of
warp speed.
A couple of seconds of normal warp travel later, an orange
tunnel materialized in front of them, drawing them into a mad plunge
down it; the ship began to shake and wormhole alarms blared. Time
began to stretch; the command staff's Detian time-sensitivity
protected them from the worst disorientation. They hurtled through
nonspace, Invincible's spaceframe singing with vibration as the warp
engines pounded out their out-of-tune sonata on the fabric of
spacetime. The blue glow they had seen before suffused everything in
the bridge; white radiance blanked everything and, with a strange
sound reminiscent of a photon torpedo being fired and a wrenching
sensation, faded away. The warp engines had shut down automatically;
the wormhole was gone. Outside, normal space glittered as they
coasted, powered down.
"Mr. Hunter," Gryphon said as his crew began to recover,
"engage impulse power. All stop."
"All stop, aye," Hunter replied, keying the commands.
"Engine room, this is the Captain. Everything all right down
there?"
"Looks good, sir," Lang's voice replied. "All systems
nominal."
"Excellent. Lt. Finney will be down to help you reset the
engines to normal operating parameters shortly. Bridge out." Finney
got up with a nod of acknowledgement and headed into the portside
turbolift. "Navigation, can you get a fix on our position yet?"
"Yes, sir...it's coming through now. We're in sector one one
six, subsection three...the nearest Federation-registered star is
Tantalus. Sir, the Federation Maximum Security Prison Complex is on
Tantalus V."
"I imagine it's the same here as well...there are many
parallels between your home dimension and mine." An idea occurred to
Gryphon. "Hmm...I wonder...set a course for Tantalus, Rick...I want
to find something out. In the meantime, I'll be down in the engine
room." He got up and left the bridge.

<<< Information Society: Seek 200 >>>

Eyrie Productions, Uninc.
presents

A Psychosomatic Production
Not a Film at All, Really

Benjamin D. Hutchins
Kei Morgan
Yuri Daniels
MegaZone
and
Vaughn Gross

SECRETS
An Undocumented Features Story

Written by Benjamin D. Hutchins
Contributing Hassler Brian "MegaZone" Bikowicz
Special Visual Effects by Industrial Light and Chocolate Coated Peanuts
Interdimensional Effects by Project Quantum Gweep
Weapons Systems by Joe Martin Destruction Systems International except
where noted
'Tronix by British-AnimeTech, Limited
Refreshments Provided by "Tea. Earl Grey. Hot." Incorporated
with thanks to:
Haruka Takachiho, creator of the Dirty Pair
Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek. You are missed.
Joel Hodgson and the crew at Best Brains
Digital Equipment Corporation
The U.S. Playing Card Company
Hewlett-Packard
Packard Bell
Rolls-Royce Packard
Packard Motors
IMH Associates
Music Performed by Dracolich
Original Soundtrack Available on TARDIS Records

(NOTE FOR THE CONTINUITY IMPAIRED: This story takes place eight years
and four months before Crossroads: Undocumented Features Volume Four
begins.)

Captain's Log, 17 February 2380 Terran Synchronized Calendar, 1545
hours. We have, according to sensor readings and communications
intercepted from the local subspace com net, successfully transferred
ourselves and our ship into my home reality. At this point the USS
Invincible is transferring all ship's systems to operate at optimal
levels in this dimension, realigning the subspace com system to local
bands, resetting the warp engines to proper operating parameters, et
cetera. We are currently making for Tantalus V on impulse power;
there, at the Federation planetary base, I can obtain proper
registration for my ship and catch up on the news of the past thirty
years. I'm certain it hasn't been dull...

Gryphon lay back in his bunk, listening to an old Canister
tape and smiling. Even though he was still a wanted man, it felt good
to be home. He had confidence in his ship, and his crew, and his own
ability to command...very soon, he would prove his innocence, and
rebuild the Wedge Defense Force.
It bothered him slightly that the imperative "rebuild the
Wedge Defense Force" had taken the place of the original corollary to
"prove his innocence", which was "win back Kei's love". He wondered:
had he become so enamored of his work, so in love with the center
seat, that he had forgotten the woman he had loved for three
centuries? Granted, the first time he had sat center seat, back on
the Enterprise, he had loved it instantly and applied for command
school the next day, which had surprised him at the time. He had been
a fighter jock, and became an engineer first as a necessity, and then
because he found he loved starship engineering; now command.
Or was it just the passage of time, his mind finally adjusting
to the idea of immortality and rebelling against his old value system?
Or was there something else?
Or someone?
That last disturbed him considerably less than he thought it
would, and that disturbed him. His mind pegged it as a definite
possibility, but when he scanned it for any indication of who that
might be, it remained blank. Subconscious, then. How the hell could
he love someone enough for Kei to be displaced, for pity's sake, and
not consciously know who she was?! It was maddening, and the longer
he ruminated on it, the more perturbed he became. It was deeply
unsettling, he decided, to not know things that your mind knew.
Somewhere in his head, a name was buried between two fnords, and he
wasn't seeing it.
Shaking his head, he tried to dismiss the train of thought; it
was doing him no good. The intercom whistled.
"Saved by the bell," he muttered, tagging the intercom on his
bedstand. "Hutchins."
"Captain," Hunter's voice called, "engine room reports full
power available. We may proceed at warp speed at any time."
"Excellent. Continue on present course, warp six. I'll be up
presently."
"Aye aye, sir." The intercom light went out as Hunter closed
the channel; Gryphon got up and pulled on his uniform jacket, and made
for his door, feeling the deck vibrate under him with a warp power-up.
Then the deck heaved, and he staggered, almost falling. A
resounding impact roared throughout the ship. Immediately, the lights
dropped to combat red, the red-alert siren hooted, and Saavik's voice
rang through the ship. "Red alert! All hands to battle stations. We
are under attack. Captain to the bridge. Repeat, we are under
attack."
Gryphon punched the intercom on his way past the door,
reporting himself on his way up. By the time he arrived, the vessel
had rocked with hits twice more; photon torpedoes on shields, he could
tell from the feel of them. (He had plenty of experience with that
aboard the Enterprise at Khitomer.)
"Situation," Gryphon said as he made for his conn.
"We are being fired on by the Lovely Angel," Saavik reported.
"Damn! She regained power faster than I thought she
would--and her engines were already adapted for transdimensional
slip...damn! Tactical, what's our status?"
"Shields are holding," said Finney. "The warp engines were
shut down by the sudden disruption of warp buildup induced by torpedo
hit; this has cut off phaser power. Torpedoes armed and ready, but
the Angel is maneuvering too fast for me to--dammit!--get a solution."
"Mr. Hunter, you are cleared for heavy maneuver," Gryphon
said. "Helmsman's discretion for all maneuvers until further notice."
He hit the all-call. "All hands, this is the Captain. Stand by for
emergency maneuvering." His next call was to Engineering. "Henry,
how long before you can give me warp power back?"
"I cannot!" Lang shouted over the chaos in the engine room.
"Not unless you know some way to magically regrow the aft quarter of
our port nacelle!"
"It's that bad?"
"Da, it's that bad, and it's going to get worse if you don't
get us out of this--the backlash from the nacelle damage overloaded
the entire portside conduit. Intermix index is toppling--I'm going to
have to shut main power completely down in ten minutes, barring some
miracle."
"Stand by, engineer," Hutchins said, and cut off the intercom.
"It's my fault, sir," Finney said miserably. "I didn't even
notice them until they'd fired--and by then it was too late."
"No, sir, the fault is mine," Saavik reported. "My sensors
should have detected the subspace arrival traces from the Angel's
dimensional rift."
"With all respect, sir, the Commander is not at fault here, I
am," Hunter disagreed. "I should have been able to avoid the
torpedo--I was too slow."
"I appreciate your willingess to own up to your errors, all of
you, but it's my fault for getting us all into this," Gryphon told
them all. "Now let's all concentrate on getting out of it."
"Aye, sir." Hunter hunched grimly over his controls, making
the wounded starship dance away from several more torpedoes as Finney
tried desperately to get torpedoes to lock. Gryphon had an idea; all
those years as an engineer weren't wasted. He opened up the engine
room channel again. "Henry, I've got an idea."
"I'm open to suggestions," the engineer replied.
"Modify the configuration of the starboard warp nacelle's
field. It's possible to get emergency warp out of a Constitution
class with only one nacelle."
'In theory, Captain, but--"
"Would you rather die because of a warp field breach, or a
photon torpedo?"
"Good point. I'll get right on it." The channel went dead.
"Keep us out of her fire arc, Mr. Hunter--that takes priority
over firing position."
"Understood, Captain."
A few tense minutes of this spatial ballet later, the intercom
light pinged on. "You have warp power, sir--I think," Lang's voice
came. "God only knows how I got that intermix index reset without
blowing the entire secondary hull from under you."
"And She's not telling, Mr. Lang," Gryphon replied with a
grin. "She's not in the habit of explaining herself. Get us out of
here, Max."
"Aye, sir," Hunter replied, pressing the controls that ordered
the ship to warp speed. Instead of her usual instant response, like a
thoroughbred behind the lightest of reins, she gathered herself
slowly, haltingly, like a draft horse with a lame leg, before leaping
gamely forward into warp. No structural alarms howled; the vessel
didn't tear herself apart in an incomplete warp field.
The Lovely Angel took perhaps half a second to pursue.
"Sir, the Lovely Angel is gaining," Hunter reported. "Even
damaged, she's got a better warp drive than we have at the moment."
"Dammit," Gryphon growled. "She always has some advantage,
doesn't she? Henry--can you give me anything more?"
"Not likely, Captain," Lang replied. "Stress readings on the
starboard nacelle pylon are in the red zone as it is, and if the
nacelle shears off, bang goes our damn warp envelope--from the front
of the ship to the back, in little bits."
"I hear you." Gryphon shut down the intercom. "Max--time to
Tantalus?"
"Four minutes, present speed."
"How long do we have until the Angel overhauls us?"
"Two minutes, twelve seconds," Finney replied.
Gryphon sat back for almost a minute, chewing at the flesh
around his left thumbnail. Then he sat bolt upright in his seat.
"Saavik--do we still have those subspace marker buoys in cargo two?
The leftovers from the survey mission?"
"Yes, sir," Saavik replied. "Why?"
"They might just come in handy. Lt. Finney, get a positive
firing lock on the Lovely Angel from the aft torpedo tube and await my
command."
"Sir, firing a torpedo aft at warp speed--"
"I know, Jaime--just trust me, ok?" Gryphon got up and left
the bridge at a dead run, not even bothering to give Saavik the conn.
In twenty seconds he was in cargo two, buried up to his elbows in the
guts of a class-1 subspace marker buoy.
The subspace marker buoy, designed to be deployed from a
standard Federation torpedo tube, was designed around the casing for
the standard Mark VI torpedo. In place of a warhead was a powerful
subspace transmitter head which sent out a constant location signal,
programmed slightly before launch. They were the first steps toward
mapping a system, and the first footholds of the subspace com net as
well.
Gryphon knew a few things about subspace; he was, after all,
an engineer as well as a captain. Many elements of Starfleet
technology relied on subspace radiations to operate. Transporters;
communications systems; warp drive. A starship's warp envelope was
based on subspace emissions, and dependent on them. Warp nacelles
were nothing but huge subspace modulators; the warp torus buried in
the Lovely Angel's engine room was quite the same thing.
Within another minute, he had grabbed a gravtruck and wrestled
his modified buoy torpedo up to the aft torpedo bay, where, ignoring
the protests of the junior gunnery officers, he loaded the thing
himself, then lunged at the intercom.
"Jamie! Fire!"
"Aye, sir," Finney's voice replied, as Gryphon turned to the
torpedo secondary control panel and toggled on a viewer, setting it
for mag one aft. The Angel was filling a disturbing amount of the
screen. The torpedo room rumbled slightly with the buoy's departure;
on screen, Gryphon could see it shoot out, glowing orange with its own
warp sustainer field. Kei didn't have time to react; she was banking
on the fact that a torpedo, fired aft from a starship moving at warp
speed, would very quickly lose anti-matter containment in the
conflicting warp fields and self-destruct, usually blowing off the
firing ship's warp engines and shuttlebay with it.
This torpedo contained no anti-matter. Instead, it streaked
free, left the Invincible's warp field, and, just as it passed into
the Angel's orange corona, it flared into a tiny white pinprick.
The Lovely Angel's warp field disintegrated; she dropped,
unharmed, to sublight speed, dwindling to a pinpoint and vanishing in
the screen in an instant. Gryphon let out the breath he had been
holding and returned to the bridge.
"What did you do, sir?" Finney asked as he reached the bridge.
"Simple physics, Lt. Finney," Gryphon replied with a grin.
"The subspace buoys are designed to emit a powerful subspace pulse at
regular intervals. I bypassed the interval circuit and stripped out
the power limiters, so that when it triggered, it would channel all of
the battery's power through the transmitter array in a single
pulse--burning out the entire buoy in the process, but so what? It
wasn't programmed with any information, so it was a simple matter to
tune it so that it transmitted nothing but a large subspace
distortion. Then I jury-rigged a trigger mechanism that would set it
off when it entered her warp field."
"So when the torpedo entered the Angel's warp field, it pulsed
out a huge amount of subspace distortion and disrupted her warp
field--forcing her out of warp speed! Brilliant."
"Why, thank you, lieutenant. Actually, I'm pleasantly
surprised...I hadn't expected it to work. Max, time?"
"Entering Tantalus system now. At full impulse power,
estimate orbital insertion, Tantalus V, in one minute."
"Excellent. Bring us out of warp." He sighed. "If I'm
lucky, the pulse burned out the Angel's warp modulators completely,
and she'll have to limp into the system on impulse power. That'll
take days."
"If not?" asked Saavik.
"Who knows? Maybe all I've done is bought us another five
minutes of life. I'd suggest you all try and enjoy them."
"Inspirational, as always, sir."
"I try, Commander."

"Nice trick, Ben," Kei muttered to the main viewer. "I'll
give you credit; it sidetracked me for a second. If Yuri hadn't've
stuck those compensators things into the warp drive last time we were
in dock, the whole drive would be fried right now. As it was, you've
bought yourself a couple of seconds more. I hope you enjoyed them."
She disengaged the cloaking device and fired.

"Captain!" Finney shouted. "Incoming fire!" Her finger was
already stabbing the shields button--
--too late; the torpedo ripped into the secondary hull just
aft of the dorsal, between the warp pylons. The portside pylon tore
free, the already-wrecked nacelle spinning into space; the starboard
pylon buckled, power discharge rippling over it and the nacelle.
Bridge Engineering exploded in a shower of sparks. The lights went
out, then came back up low and red; emergency power.
"Engine room!" Gryphon shouted. "Damage report!"
"That's got us," Lang reported, coughing. His voice sounded
strange--throat mike, Gryphon realized. Respirator. Must be some
kind of coolant leak--that's not a good sign. "She's destroyed the
portside pylon completely, and fractured the starboard conduits. The
whole thing's feeding back into the engine--I give her a minute, maybe
less until complete warp core breach!"
Gryphon deliberated for a second or two, then made a decision.
He punched the all-call. "All hands, this is the Captain. Evacuate
secondary hull. Thirty seconds to saucer separation. Repeat,
evacuate secondary hull. Thirty seconds to saucer separation." He
turned to Finney. "Jamie, scrounge up whatever weapons power you can
and return fire."
"Bypassing warp-phaser interlocks," Finney said, her fingers
working the computer console. "Drawing phaser power from impulse
engineering." She wasn't supposed to be able to do that, but it came
as no surprise to Gryphon that she and Lang had cooked it up.
"Returning fire."

"Iai!" Kei shouted as the crippled vessel's portside saucer
phaser array lanced out with a volley that bashed the Lovely Angel's
forward shields. "Where the hell did they get phaser power? I'm no
engineer, but those warp engines are definitely down." She fired
again; somehow, the battered starship managed to dodge, lurching to
starboard with an almost human defiance. The phasers streaked out
again, the aft saucer bank this time; again the nimble Angel wasn't
nimble enough to dodge. The shield panel strobed a warning; forward
shields were becoming dangerously low. Kei shifted power to the wing
disruptors, setting them into rapid-fire mode, and raked a spread
across the Invincible; the energy chewed into the ship's aft quarter,
blasting away the useless starboard warp engine and blowing out the
shuttlebay.

"All secondary section decks evacuated," Saavik reported. "No
lifesigns."
"All power, computer, and personnel connections severed and
sealed," Sterling added. "Explosive charges primed and armed. Saucer
section autonomous and ready for separation."
"Mr. Sterling, separate saucer on my mark.
Three...two...one...mark. Max, full power. Get us out of here!"
Sterling jabbed the separation key. At the juncture of the
connecting dorsal and the saucer section's underside, there were a
series of flashes of light; explosions boomed through the saucer's
spaceframe even as Hunter was ramming the impulse engines to full
throttle. The deck lurched as, suddenly freed of the useless mass of
the dead engineering section, the saucer section leapt free, trailing
sparks and glowing pieces of wreckage from the separation scar. The
impulse engines were powered independently, from their own fusion
generators; without the mass and volume of the engineering decks to
power, they had all the power they needed to supply the saucer. Even
with more than half of her destroyed, the Invincible remained a potent
fighting machine.
"Jamie--now that we've dropped the engineering hull, do you
have enough power for shields?"
"I'm not certain, sir," Finney replied, and hit the button.
The familiar rippling cascade of indication glowed around the saucer,
which was now the only part of her tactical display visible. "Looks
that way," she replied with a smile.
"Well, that's one thing, anyway," Gryphon replied. "Max, make
for Tantalus V at maximum speed. Rick, check the maps for an
uninhabited area away from the urban area and the prison complex.
We're going to set her down."
"Sir?"
"If we orbit, the Lovely Angel will blow us to hell,"
explained Gryphon. "Tantalus is a prison world for a number of
reasons. Its ionosphere is extremely volatile, highly charged, and
loaded with subspace distortion. Without dirtside amplification
stations, sensor examination of the surface is very difficult, and
communication and transportation from or to orbit virtually
impossible. If we can get under the ionosphere, the Angel won't be
able to find us. Kei will have to set the ship down at Tantalus
Station and look for us dirtside, and that'll take a lot longer--long
enough that we'll have time to think of something." I hope, he
continued in his mind.
"Course computed for atmoshperic entry," Rick reported. "I
have a probable location for touchdown. I dunno how well our charts
transfer to this dimension--I hope there isn't something there on this
particular Tantalus V."
"If there is," Gryphon replied, "we'll just have to miss it.
Sound collision; all decks secure for emergency planetfall."
"All decks secured," Vanessa replied, securing the arms of her
own seat around her. The bridge crew locked themselves down.
"Time to atmospheric entry?"
"Fourteen seconds." The saucer was rocked by a photon torpedo
hit. "If our shields come down before we can get through re-entry--"
"I know. Jamie?"
"Working on it, working on it," Finney replied abstractly,
hunched over the targeting computer. The aft phasers darted forth
again, lashing the Angel's forward shields. Kei cursed as the forward
shield collapsed, veering off. What could they be planning to do with
what was left of their ship?

<<< AC/DC: Highway to Hell >>>

"Atmospheric penetration in five. Four. Three. Two. One."
Hunter didn't get a chance to call zero; in any case, the deceleration
so abrupt that the inertial dampening system failed to catch much of
it was a good sign. Gryphon hung onto his seat for dear life, fingers
almost digging into the tough plastic. The bridge was shuddering so
hard that it was almost impossible to hear. It reminded Gryphon of
the flight recorder footage he had watched once of Kirk's solar
breakaway in that Klingon Bird of Prey, during the Probe Incident.
The lights went out and didn't come back. Now there was no
illumination on the bridge except the orange glow of the re-entry
effect in the viewer, and the glowing of various panels and controls.
"Entry profile looks good," Hunter bawled over the roar of the
saucer's tortured superstructure. "Skin temperature within emergency
tolerances."
"Shields holding," Finney added.
They rode through the violent ionosphere; no one tried to
defeat the din as it grew even louder. Then they burst free from the
ionization layer, into the clear atmosphere beyond. The viewer
cleared a little, and they could see the ground, far below, through
intermittent breaks in the cloud cover. Everything was white and
gray. Lightning danced around them. The noise abated a tiny bit.
"Navigational subsystems completely inoperative," Sterling
shouted.
"Helm is not responding." Hunter turned his seat to face his
captain. "We're out of control."
"Just fire all the braking thrusters you can find," Gryphon
hollered back, "and hang on!" He turned to Finney. "Jamie--see if
you can get more power to the inertial dampening systems!"
"What power?"
"Dig!" He hit the intercom. "Engineer! Engineer? Henry!"
No luck; the intercom was out. Most of the panel lights had died.
"Altitude ten thousand meters," Hunter called. "Nine
thousand. Eight thousand. Seven."
"No good, you've got to slow us down!"
"I'm working on it, sir! Six thousand! Five fifty! Five
twenty-five! Five thousand!"
"Fire all braking thrusters at five hundred," Gryphon ordered.
"Aye, sir. Four thousand!"
The main viewer went out. "Shit!" Hunter cried. "Sir, I've
lost altitude readings."
"Then estimate!"
"About all I can do, sir--estimate two
thousand...one-five...one...firing all thrusters!" His fingers rayed
over the thruster panel, stabbing any control that happened to be lit.
A deep bass rumble tore through the ship, undercutting the wail of air
over the tortured hull, the vibration, and everything else. An alarm
howled for a couple of seconds, and then all remaining power was lost.
The thrusters' rumble died away, and with it, all the other sounds.
There was dead silence on the bridge, although Gryphon could imagine
the soft whisper of air over the hull as they fell, much slower now,
but probably still too fast. He felt weightless with the descent, now
that artificial gravity and inertial dampening were both out. Without
the latter, he didn't rate their chances of survival high.
I've come all this way, he thought to himself, only to die on
the same planet as victory? Zoner would have appreciated an irony
this pathetic.
And then...

C-R-A-S-H-!-!-!

Gryphon saw his bridge convulse around him, felt the arms of
his chair hit his ribs very hard, and sank into blackness with pain
radiating from his hips to his collarbones.

Above, Kei watched with disbelief as the saucer plunged into
the turbulent atmosphere and vanished from her viewer and all her
sensors. "I don't believe it," she muttered to herself. "Son of a
bitch always has an escape hatch." She entered a course for the
planet's one spaceport almost vengefully.

* * *

Gryphon came to slowly and painfully. He got to his feet and
was relieved to see that his legs worked. His ribs still felt a
little tender, but they had knitted and mostly healed while he was
out. Around the bridge, the rest of his crew was rousing from similar
states. The emergency lights were on, and some stations seemed to
have power.
"Status report," he said, turning his chair--the swivel still
worked--toward Saavik's station.
"We're on batteries," Saavik replied. "Life support is still
functional, for the moment, and Mr. Lang thinks he might be able to
get one of the impulse fusion plants working again, at least to
provide heat and power. The spaceframe is almost totally destroyed,
although the saucer still makes a fairly solid building. The crew
have suffered over 80% casualties, most of them in engineering."
"Damn," Gryphon said. "I should have known better than to do
this." He slammed a fist down on the arm of his conn. "I've led all
those trusting, idealistic kids to their deaths!"
"Sir," Saavik cut in from her station, "may I respectfully
remind the Captain that all personnel involved volunteered for this
mission, and all of them were aware that your status in this dimension
might lead to armed conflict from which this vessel would not emerge
victorious?"
"The Commander is correct, sir," Finney agreed. "I must
concur. We fought well against the Lovely Angel, but the damage to
the warp drive so severely compromised our main powersystems that we
could not mount an effective defense. Our situation
was...unavoidable."
"If I hadn't've been so damned arrogant about the damage we
did to the Angel before we crossripped, she wouldn't have damaged the
warp drive."
"Sir, that was my fault," Finney protested. "I didn't get the
shields up in time to--"
"We've covered this already," Gryphon interjected. "Everyone
in this room is pointing the finger at him or herself. Forget it.
I'll be overcome with guilt about all of this later--right now our
first priority is to survive. We can't hide here forever--sooner or
later she'll find the wreckage, and we have to be gone when she does.
What do we have left for crew?"
"The bridge crew, Engineer Lang, Assistant Engineer Naraht,
seven junior engineers, Chief Giotto, twenty security troopers, six
Marines--ranking officer is Sergeant Major Breckenridge--and
thirty-seven people from the sciences department."
"All right. At least Gunny Breckenridge and Giotto
survived--shit, we might just get out of this with those old bastards
on our side." Gryphon smiled briefly, then hardened again. "Assemble
all remaining crew members in the biggest room you can find in half an
hour. I'm going down to the cargo holds to see what I can scrounge
up. We've got to get moving, and soon."

THE OFFICE OF 3WA COMMISSIONER JULIAN AMBERSON
PORTFIELD
TANTALUS V

"Commissioner, the man is a dangerous fugitive!" Kei shouted,
leaning over the large, ornate marble desk. She hated Commissioner
Amberson already; a dark, bearded, and not overly big man, he looked
barely older than twenty-five or so, probably just out of college with
a shiny Law Enforcement degree and enough connections to get him this
posting, Commissioner of the 3WA security forces on a planet whose
security wasn't the 3WA's job. Let him crawl around in the mud with
the scum for a couple of years as a Trouble Consultant Fourth Class,
then she would see about respecting him. Right now, he did little to
inspire respect, leaning back in his big leather chair and sniffing
his little inhaler bullet that Kei had the incredible urge to shove
right up into his brain.
"He is also, most likely, dead," Amberson replied in his
measured, cultured, accentless and emotionless voice. "If he did
indeed crashland in the Northern Wastes--as my telemetry stations have
informed me was probably the case--then his ship undoubtably broke up
on impact, and probably exploded. Even if it did not, he had lost
power. He has frozen to death by now, even assuming he survived the
crash. You are wasting your time, Consultant. My advice to you is:
refuel your ship and return to your vacation. There's nothing for you
to do here."
Kei stood before the desk almost shaking with rage. Then she
slammed an open hand down on the marble desktop so hard the stone
cracked and shouted, "Idiot!" The word echoed round the huge office
like a gunshot and brought Amberson's head up with a start as she
continued, "The bastard never dies! He always has an escape hatch!
He is not dead, and he will never be dead until I put a particle
charge through his face! Crashing in the mountains won't kill him!
Crashing into a volcano wouldn't kill him! Armies of Kilrathi
fighters couldn't kill him! The Kessel Run couldn't kill him! The
Deltanus Asteroid Field couldn't kill him! For Christ's sake--even
the entire 14th Meltrandi Battlegroup couldn't kill the son of a
bitch! I have made it my life's mission to bring the Butcher to
justice, and that's exactly what I'm going to do, you, your cushy
little job, your tiny little mind, and your pathetic authority
notwithfuckingstanding!"
"Did you say...`the Butcher'?" Amberson asked, looking
suddenly interested.
"Yes, I did! The fucking Butcher of Musashi, right here on
your goddamned icy rock, on the brink of getting away from me again!
And this time, if he does, it's your fault."
"There must be some mistake. You must have misidentified the
man you chased here."
"I did not misidentify the motherfucker!" Kei screamed. "I'd
know the bastard across a dark room after a biosculpt and a fucking
sex change! It's him I'm after!"
"That cannot be," Amberson replied calmly. "Benjamin D.
Hutchins, the Butcher of Musashi, is currently, and has been for some
twelve years now, incarcerated right here on this very planet,
awaiting execution."
"What?!!"
"Please try to calm yourself, Consultant," Amberson said
mildly. "You seem very distraught."
"Do you mean to tell me you've got him here?"
"Yes. And we have, for twelve years. I remember the day they
brought him in."
"You couldn't've been more than twelve years old. If they
kept it out of the papers so effectively that I didn't know--"
"Could I? Neither could you, to look at you."
"What the hell are you getting at?"
"It's not important right now. You don't like me, do you?
More to the point--since I could really care less if you like me or
not--you don't respect me. You figure I'm just out of college, with a
shiny new law enforcement degree, and an uncle or someone who got me
this job. Doesn't look like much of a job, does it? Commissioner of
the 3WA forces on a planet whose security is the bailiwick of the
Federation Starfleet and Starfleet Support Services. There's a side
to this job that makes it the toughest post in the Association, bar
none." His eyes were deadly serious as he spoke. "We have to track
down and recapture anyone who manages to break out of the prison
complex--and even though it's the finest prison in known space, that
happens fairly regularly. As long as there are prisons there will be
people who can, and do, escape. Once they pass the prison frontier,
they become my responsibility. If my people and I have to chase them
round the moons of Nibia and round the Antares M‘lstrom and round
Perdition's flames, that's what we do. That's not an easy job. How,
you're wondering, did I end up with that? That's easy. I requested
it. I love it. It's what I was born to do. I'm a hunter."
"Suffice it to say, I have been a 3WA agent since there has
been a Worlds Welfare Work Association. Granted, that does not equal
your record of service--you were a 3WA Trouble Consultant for...let me
think...four years before there was a 3WA, if I remember correctly."
His dark eyes glittered as he stood up and smiled at her. "Don't
worry, none of your comments to me will be placed on record. You're
obviously beside yourself, emotionally wrung out. It happens."
"But--but--"
"I'm not certain what we're dealing with here," Amberson went
on, "but it seems to me that this merits some kind of investigation.
If the man you are chasing was so very positively identified as this
man Hutchins, then just who do we have here? And if the man we have
here is in fact the real Butcher of Musashi, then just who looks like
him enough for you to chase him across space? And, if the real
Hutchins was here and escaped somehow, for you to chase him back, that
definitely falls under my jurisdiction. I've read your record,
Consultant Morgan. I know of your previous connections to the
criminal in question. Damn shame, but it happens to the best
sometimes. Maybe he snapped after three hundred years of combat. Who
knows? The important thing now is to find him, identify him, and, if
need be, arrest him." He tapped a key on his desk. "Marjorie? Take
over, would you? I'm going on a field op. Don't know when I'll be
back."
"Sure thing, boss," a woman's voice replied from the intercom.
"Thanks." Amberson let up on the intercom. "I'll be right
back. I suggest we take a field trip over to the prison and see what
Warden Cantrell has to say about all this." He vanished into a side
room before Kei could protest, leaving her alone in his office with
her thoughts.
Who the hell is this guy? she wondered. He's not one of the
original WDF--I knew all of them. I wonder if he could be one of
Edison's relatives?
Her train of thought was interrupted as Amberson emerged from
the side room. Gone was his slick-looking grey suit. He had replaced
it with a suit of goddamn armor, for Christ's sake, enameled white
scale armor over what looked like a standard-issue 3WA Trouble
Consultant's uniform, Male, Polar Urban Camouflage Standard No. 14-44.
His dark eyes were hidden by mirrorshades; a headband marked with a
unicorn seal was tied round his forehead. At his side was a
large-framed automatic slugger and a fucking sword, and an ExoSalusian
Arms Ranger X gyrostabilized compound bow with laser sight was slung
over his shoulder, its quiver of ammunition across his back for easy
reach by his right hand. Even his bearing had changed. He wasn't the
languid young rich man now, with his easy job and his easy demeanor.
He had hardened somehow, and walked with the measured, careful stride
that Kei recognized instantly. She had seen it before: in Gordo
Ripperfang, the old SSS's Kiokis Predator commander; in MegaZone, when
he was on the warpath about something; in herself. It was the stride
of a hunter in the course of the hunt.
"Let's go," he said simply, and even his voice had changed,
dropping half an octave and becoming colder, harder-edged. Like a
lump of memory plastic turning into a knife, thought Kei as she
followed the Commissioner out the door. This man just got more and
more fascinating all the time.

WRECK OF THE INVINCIBLE
79 DEGREES 240 MINUTES NORTH LATITUDE
14 DEGREES 7 MINUTES WEST LONGITUDE

Gryphon stood in the bottom of the small cargo bay that was
directly under his old quarters, a duffel bag containing most of his
shipboard possessions over his shoulder. The deck was slightly
buckled under his feet--he was on the lowermost level of that part of
the saucer, right out on the starboard edge of it--but it had held.
The impact had jarred the big doors that made up the outer hull side
of the chamber partly open, and some snow had drifted in, but
otherwise the room was undisturbed, and its contents intact.
A VF-1FS Hyper Valkyrie starfighter sat, in fighter mode, on
its landing gear before him. It was still painted in the same
markings it had worn when he had flown it away from the SDF-17 for the
last time. The big "01" on the nose, just forward of the
red-and-white WDF insignia, had faded a little, but it was still
there, big and stark, and so were the WDF insigne on the booster pods
and the big black eight-balls on the supplemental leg armor. The
coaming below the cockpit windows still read "Pilot Cmdr. B.
Hutchins". The GU-11 gunpod, slung underneath it, was still gleaming
and ready, the soot on its muzzle from decades of use a quiet
testament to the longevity of this fighter and its pilot. Nine
hundred ninety-six kill markers, of types ranging from little Kilrathi
flags (the most numerous) through Zentraedi, Klingon, Decepticon,
Gorig and GENOM to a single black WDF flag (renegade pilot from a
Raptor squadron--bringing him down had been a bitch) decorated the
other side of the nose under the cockpit, in a microfilm-resolution
patch the size of a legal envelope above the WDF insignia.
Eight-Ball One was ready to fly. Gryphon thanked his
instincts for making him prepare this little fighter bay underneath
his quarters during Invincible's last refit, rather than go on keeping
the fighter in the shuttlebay. If it had still been there, it
would've been destroyed. As it was, it contained his means of
salvation. He climbed up on top of it and tabbed the thumb lock on
the access panel just behind the cockpit. It slid back, revealing the
Emergency Equipment Compartment. Inside was a field rations kit, an
emergency field medkit, a survival kit, and one (1) storage-mode
VR-052 Battler Cyclone, fully stocked. His CVR-3 was above his head,
hanging in the closet in his quarters, patched and mended since his
last encounter with Kei, in Olympus.
He hauled the Cyclone and associated field kits out of the
compartment and closed it. He'd come back for the fighter when the
time came. Right now, it would just stick out. Besides, he had to
stay with his people. He took the microlift back to his quarters and
left the Cyclone in the closet, then went to the observation deck,
where Vanessa had organized the briefing.
Finney, Master Chief Petty Officer Albert Giotto (ranking
Security noncom), and Breckenridge had their men ready to go; all
twenty-six of them were dressed in full combat armor and had Type-4
phaser rifles slung over their shoulders, cold-weather field packs,
and ready-hung sidearms. They were organized into a single platoon,
Marine-style, with Finney in command, Giotto as ops chief and
Breckenridge as platoon sergeant. That surprised Gryphon momentarily;
the rivalry between Starfleet Security personnel and Federation
Marines was well-known. On the other hand, so was the consummate
professionalism of both groups. As he entered, all twenty-six young
men and women came to attention and saluted, eyes front. Gryphon
looked them over, young, eager, ready to follow their Captain into
hell even after he had gotten most of their comrades and friends
killed, and marveled. He didn't think he had the kind of charisma it
took to inspire loyalty like that in his troops. For a moment, he was
reminded of Hitler, and shivered involuntarily.
Noah Breckenridge, a six-foot-four mountain of a man, walked
over, noting his commander's discomfort, and, leaning close, said
confidentially, "They love you because you're their Captain, sir, and
they know you're a good man. Most of them fought to get their
postings under you. All of them volunteered to be here. We'll get
you through, sir."
"Thanks, Gunny," Gryphon replied. "I'm surprised to see you
and Finney got your people working together."
Breckenridge grinned. "Well, those Secs--they're good kids,
even if they ain't Marines. Seriously, though, sir, I think Giotto
had a lot to do with it. The man's a goddamn good leader. I'd put
him up for officer training at the end of this, if we still had a
Fleet."
"We might yet, Gunny, we might yet."
"Sir?"
"Shh. Tell you later, if it works out. Right now, you and
Giotto work on keeping your people happy."
"Like I said, sir, the Secs are good kids, we'll have no
problems. Hell, they're even taking orders from me."
"I know I would." Secretly, Gryphon had to admit that, even
though he was several centuries older than the Marine, and well-versed
in a jillion forms of combat, the big Sergeant scared the hell out of
him.
"You ought to tell Finney not to be so scared of me, though,
sir," Breckenridge added with a sardonic grin. Gryphon had
encountered the two of them having a loud argument on the firing range
one day, and found it highly amusing that the diminuitive
Lieutenant--she was just under five feet tall--was shouting down the
enormous Marine.
"Finney? Scared of something? That'll be the day."
"Give 'em hell, Cap'n sir," Breckenridge said, clapping
Gryphon on the shoulder. Then he rejoined his platoon, leaving
Gryphon to address his remaining personnel. He took the floor in
front of the shuttered observation windows with some trepidation. He
had led all these people out of comfortable careers and into a frozen
hell a zillion of any unit of measure from home, and he just couldn't
believe that not a single one of them was mad at him. So that was the
first thing he told them.
"Captain, please," Henry Lang broke in. "No apologies. We
all knew the risks. Let us not dwell on this." The rest of the
gathered crew murmured their assent. Not a single voice was raised in
opposition. Gryphon felt a sudden swell of pride.
"All right," he said. "You'll be relieved to hear that,
although I got you into this, I have an idea for getting you out of
it."
"We knew you would, sir," said Lieutenant Phillips, who,
Gryphon recalled, was the head of the exothermonics division. It was
good that he had survived, for operational as well as humanitarian
reasons.
"I suppose you'd kind of like to know what it is."
"If you want to tell us, sir," replied another of his
surviving personnel, whose name, if Gryphon recalled right, was Birch.
Yeoman Birch.
"God, am I that predictable?" The assembled crew laughed--in
the middle of all this, they laughed. Gryphon couldn't help but
smile. "You're right, though, Yeoman...I don't want to tell you yet.
There are pretty good odds it won't work, in which case I'll have to
think of something else, and there's no sense in getting all your
hopes up again. Personally, I'm amazed that morale is this good.
Here's the bare outline of what I have planned, though:
"Most of you--most of the science personnel, the engineers,
and a security squad--will remain here, getting what's left of the
ship turned into the best fixed base of operations you can manage.
The rest of us are going into town. There are a couple of trucks in
one of the after holds that survived the crash--we'll use those.
Military units move around on this planet all the time; no one will
notice. I hope. Hopefully we'll be back to the ship for the rest of
you.
"You don't need to worry about being attacked; the woman who's
after me is a professional, and even though she'll have help, more
troops, to help here, she won't just attack the ship. She'll contact
you first and demand me. Tell her the truth. Tell her I'm not here.
She'll leave--she's too hung up on catching me to care about you.
You're not important. The local authorities will probably have some
questions about where you and this ship came from. Again, tell them
the truth. Crosstime transit is not unknown here. They'll do some
investigation into the local subspace for the last few days and
verify, and that should be that.
"If I pull off what I'm going to try in the city, all of us
will be gone within a week, and our legal status--mine included--will
be a whole lot rosier.
"If not--if you don't hear from me in a week or so--it's up to
Doctor Selar. She's ranking officer; I'm leaving her in command of
the people who stay behind. Do what she says." He looked to the
Vulcan physician, who nodded gravely. "That's all, then. Lieutenant
Finney, detach five personnel to stay here, and get the rest of your
people to after hold six within thirty minutes. Bridge officers, you
too, and Ensign Phillips. I need your expertise. Dismissed."
As his people filed out of the room, Gryphon sat down in one
of the big soft chairs and looked at the inside of the tritanium
shutters, and let out a big sigh. He was taking an awful risk, but
what did he have to lose?
It was the rest of them who would suffer if he screwed this
one up. All he could do was die. The thought weighed heavily on him.
After all this time, he wasn't afraid to die. His training as a
samurai and, before that, a fighter pilot had taught him that. He was
just afraid of fucking all these poor kids over still further...
...is clearing my name worth this?
He smiled. Yes. It was. Not just to clear his name, but to
accomplish the goals he had set for after that, the things he could
not do unless he did that first...yes, it was worth it. It was worth
almost anything. He stood up and went to his quarters, where he
started putting on his CVR-3. If what he had planned worked, he, and
the rest of the free universe, was home free, and if not, well, he
wouldn't be around to worry about it, now would he?

TWO DAYS LATER
WRECK OF THE INVINCIBLE

"Not here?! What the fuck do you mean, not here?"
"Captain Hutchins is gone," Selar replied evenly to the angry
face on the main viewer. "He departed soon after the crash."
"Did he have anyone with him?"
"No. He departed alone." It was true; Gryphon had left the
vessel a good half hour before the security team and the Marines. Of
course, he had waited for them several miles away, but that was
academic.
"Why should I believe you?" Kei asked skeptically.
"I am a Vulcan. Vulcans cannot lie," Selar replied with just
the vaguest hint of a smile. No one who did not know her would have
spotted it.
Kei looked irritated. "Great. Just great. Don't go
anywhere." She cut the connection.
"Where would you expect us to go?" Selar asked the blank
viewer in a textbook example of Vulcan sarcasm. Then she turned to
the assembled crew. "Word from the Captain?"
"One message, a tight-beam squirt across the highest subspace
band, an hour ago," Vanessa--the only member of the bridge crew to
have remained behind--reported. "`Situation proceeding normally.
Stand by.'"
"Stand by. All right, then...we will stand by."
Vanessa turned back to her station, admiring the doctor. She
wasn't line personnel, but she had infinite patience. All part of
being a Vulcan, she supposed.

O BLOCK
TANTALUS CITY

Gryphon edged around the corner, his eyes narrowing. It
wouldn't do to get spotted by some cop here. The street beyond was
clear; just random pedestrians and such. He rounded the corner
casually, Saavik and Breckenridge right behind him, the rest of the
party scattered around the streets. They were wearing standard
Starfleet thermocloaks, and had removed their insignia of rank and
service to avoid drawing attention to themselves. With any luck, they
looked like a group of survival nuts, rather than a group of Starfleet
officers, now. The Marines helped; not many people even knew what
Marine uniforms looked like. The cloaks made it hard to tell they
were wearing uniforms anyway, and hid their weapons. The longarms,
all their armor except the chest and back pieces, and the Cyclone had
been left with the trucks, concealed in an abandoned warehouse in D
Block. They had come to O Block because that was where the subspace
transmitter tower was--and Gryphon needed to use it.
They rounded the next corner, working their way in a seemingly
random fashion toward the tower which loomed over that part of town,
and passed a large billboard displaying the day's top stories.
Gryphon pulled up short when he spotted the headline:

BUTCHER ESCAPED??
Planetary Officials Offer No Comment

He stepped a little closer and read the smaller print below.
"The Tantalus V Prison Authority has voiced no comment on the
increasing rumors that Benjamin Hutchins, the infamous Butcher of
Musashi, has escaped from prison and is running wild in Tantalus City,
save to assure news agencies that the Butcher is indeed in custody,
and the recent rash of child murders is the work of a copycat.
Hutchins was imprisoned in 2368 after..."
There was a picture of him; it was old, dating to before he
grew the beard and the extra thirty years' worth of ponytail, and he
was wearing his old glasses, but it was still fairly accurate.
Cursing quietly, he pulled the hood of his cloak up a little further.
All he needed was to be recognized by some public-spirited citizen and
have a potshot taken at him.
Wait a second--what was that about his having been imprisoned
in 2368?!
"Saavik--look at this." His first officer stood next to him.
"What do you make of it?"
"Intriguing," she replied. "It looks as if your doppelganger
has had the misfortune of being arrested for his crimes in your name.
It is almost ironic, is it not?" She half-smiled, which was as close
as she usually came to true mirth.
"Yeah, a bit. But if they have me, then why is Kei still
looking for me?"
'"It's possible she didn't know, sir," Breckenridge observed.
"It's a big universe. She might not be up on the prisoner listings of
the Tantalus V prison--whereas the citizens of that planet's only city
probably would be. I doubt this is big news anywhere else--won't be,
unless he gets offworld. He probably got caught here. Figured hiding
so close to the prison would make him safer, or some such. Who the
hell knows?"
"Well, if they've got him, then I won't need to use my old
plan," Gryphon said with his "an idea is forming" smile. "All I need
to do is prove that, A, he did the shooting in the school that day,
not me, and B, he's not me."
"Oh, yeah. Simple." Finney snorted. "Personally, I liked
your old plan better. At least it had a 14% chance of working. Sir."
"Stop calling me that. We're in the middle of a street, for
Christ's sake."
"Sorry, sir."
"I have to get to that tower now! Come on."

They arrived at the base of the tower shortly. It was a
corporate tower, not run by the state, and Gryphon was glad for that.
Corp security was usually not quite as tight, at least non-GENOM corp
security. Two guards stood at the entrance, one on either side of the
door; they were wearing non-armored GT&T uniforms and armed only with
Smith and Wesson Model 121 laser pistols. Gryphon looked them over
from across the street; they were standing absolutely still,
professional, but they were underarmed. Unless, of course, they were
Buma, which was always a distinct possibility. He had noticed that,
even here, GENOM accounted for a goodly percentage of the consumer
goods.
He gave a subtle hand signal to Breckenridge and Finney, who
moved in under the cover of a large group of pedestrians passing the
tower. The Sergeant himself broke away from the group and moved up
the stairs; one of the guards stopped him. Breckenridge seemed to
protest politely for a moment; then he turned as if to comply, whirled
back, and phasered the guard back against the door with a heavy stun
setting. The other turned, drawing his sidearm, but Finney dropped
him from the curb.
"Go!" Gryphon shouted, abandoning his cloak and running across
the street. The rest of his group followed him, right up the stairs
and through the doors.
Inside, several shocked technicians stood around, having
stopped what they were doing when they heard the phaser fire.
Gryphon's group stunned them almost immediately and secured the
office. While Breckenridge and two of his men kept watch on the door,
Gryphon went to the back and found a transmitter console. Keying it,
he started setting its controls and hoped for the best as the tower
linked up with its satellite booster and drove its signal up through
the roiling ionosphere intact.
Connection came in less than five seconds; the screen showed a
smallish office cubicle through static, and the woman at the desk had
just pressed the "ACCEPT" key. She was a pretty Oriental woman with
long, blue-black hair, and she was wearing a gold 3WA uniform, Trouble
Consultant First Class. She blinked when she recognized him.
"Gryphon!" she said in a harsh whisper. "Don't ever call me
here! What the hell are you thinking? You're going to get us both
killed!"
"Shh," Gryphon replied, "and listen carefully, I don't have a
lot of time. I need one last favor."
"Oh really." TC1 Yuri Daniels looked singularly unimpressed.
"What is it this time?"
"I need you to come to Tantalus V and help me break someone
out of jail."
"What?!"
"It's important. If we pull it off, it'll mean clearing my
name at last. Yuri, please, in the name of everything important, I'm
begging you. I can't pull this job without your help, and if I don't
pull this job, I'll never clear myself, never rebuild the WDF.
Please. Help me."
She considered for a few seconds, then relented. "All right.
I'll hack up a first-class departure pass, prep the Valkyrie and haul
within the hour. It'll take me a day or so to get there--it's the
best I can do."
"You're a rare gem, Yuri. You won't regret this, I promise
you."
"I regret it already. Kei is there, isn't she?"
"Probably, I'm not certain. Better assume that she is."
"Great. You're gonna get us both killed, Gryphon. I'll see
you the day after tomorrow." The screen went blank.
"Got it!" Gryphon shouted, scrambling all the settings on the
transciever and yanking the transcription disks. "Let's blow."
"Out the back," Breckenridge advised. The team vanished into
the back of the installation, out onto the street, into an alley and
down a manhole. By the time the cops arrived, they would be safely
back in their D Block bolthole. A perfectly performed operation;
Gryphon was fairly glowing with pride at the prowess of his personnel.
Now he had to contact the Invincible and make arrangements for Phase
Two.
"Sir," Breckenridge said as they hurried along the sewerside
walkway.
"What is it, Gunny?"
"I thought I ought to mention, sir--as we were entering the
comm tower, I noticed somebody watching us."
"Understandable--there were only a zillion people in that
street..."
"No. I mean surveillance watching us. A pro. On a rooftop a
couple of blocks away."
"How'd you know he was watching us?"
"He was dressed in black and crouching on the rooftop like he
didn't want to be noticed."
"How'd you notice him then?"
"Sir." Breckenridge looked affronted, but respectfully so.
"It's my job."
"Good work, Gunny. I think I know who it was. If I'm right,
I don't know if I like it or not." Gryphon shook his head and sighed.
This was just getting messier and messier.

N BLOCK
SEVERAL MINUTES EARLIER

<<< The Doors: People are Strange >>>

A lone figure crouched on a rooftop. He was clad entirely in
black, including the flak vest and jet-assist boots (fun new toys he
built to play with). Behind a set of black shades, his eyes narrowed
as he focused in on the action in front of the GT&T Tower across the
blockline. His mouth turned up in a very small, tight smile as he
enhanced the picture that gave him.
"So," MegaZone muttered to himself. "He is here. What's he
up to...?" Zoner stood up and turned back toward the other side of
the rooftop; his car waited in the alley below.
He figured he knew the answer to his own question, as he
stepped off the roof edge and let the jet boots cushion his drop to
the pavement some 45 stories below. He was wandering around the city,
killing children. But where had he gotten those Marines? What kind
of Starfleet Marine associated with, let alone took orders from, the
Butcher of Musashi? Maybe he was here because of the killings, trying
to find out who was doing it and prove his own innocence. Of course,
that theory assumed he was innocent, something MegaZone had a hard
time believing these days.
No matter. He was here to do a job; a citizens' group was
going to give him a lot of money for the head of whoever was killing
Tantalus City's children. If it turned out to be Gryphon, well...
All the Marines in the Federation couldn't save him.

TANTALUS V FEDERATION PENAL COLONY

"As you can see, Consultant, the Butcher is right there in his
cell. Being surprisingly quiet this afternoon, in fact." Warden
Edwin Cantrell seemed inordinately pleased over this fact. He had
made it perfectly clear to the Federation Prison Authority several
times that his was a prison, not a madhouse, and that the Butcher
rightfully belonged in the Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane, on
Gotham. That they had chosen to ignore his recommendations was a sore
point with the Warden.
"Shut up, Cantrell," Commissioner Amberson said shortly. He
disliked the fat, sweaty little man intensely, in no small part
because he kept bitching that the Butcher belonged in Arkham Asylum,
as though the Commissioner of the local 3WA could goddamn do anything
about that. "The Consultant has eyes."
Cantrell took a step back, affronted, but said nothing. He
was somewhat afraid of the Commissioner. Amberson stepped closer to
Kei, whose eyes had narrowed on the small security monitor, and leaned
toward her.
"Is it him?" he murmured.
"I don't know," Kei replied. "Once, I'd've told you without a
doubt that yes, that's him...but now...I don't know. I'd have to see
him in person, talk to him."
"Do you think that's wise?"
"No."
"Neither do I."
"But I have to do it anyway."
"I was afraid you'd say something like that."

The Butcher of Musashi looked up as the door to his cell
opened, calculated fourteen different ways of killing the guard and
escaping, and discarded them all when he saw who walked through his
door. The man in the armor he didn't know. The woman...
He smiled engagingly. "Hullo, Kei." She didn't respond; just
looked at him, intently. "Handsome as ever, don't you agree?"
"Shut up," Amberson said.
"Who's this?" the Butcher said with raised eyebrows, not
looking at him. "New boytoy? I'm crushed. After all, I'll be out of
here in a couple three centuries. The least you could do is wait for
me."
No reaction.
"It's not so bad here, really. They take good care of me.
Nice and warm, clean clothes--although I think I look bad in
chartreuse with magenta stripes, personally, and horizontal stripes
make me look fat--all the salad I can eat. Catalina dressing, even."
No reaction.
"Did you just come in to stare at me, or what? I'm a very
busy man, you know. I have places to go! Things to do! Brats to
slaughter! It's not my fault, you know. I've always hated children.
You must remember. I'm mad. Dotty. Crazed. Round the twist.
Battle fatigue, I expect. You people really should be trying to help
me. I belong in a hospital, not a prison. Hospitals are for sick
people, you know."
No reaction.
"Well, fine. If you're gonna be such a trap-mouth, then fine.
I'm not talking to you either. Nyah. We can just sit here and stare
at each other all day." And so they did, for at least ten long
minutes.
Then Kei turned to look out the tiny transparent titanium
window at the frozen landscape outside, turned back, and said one
word:
"Salad."
"She speaks! Doesn't make much sense, but she speaks! Yeah,
what about it? They have a heck of a salad bar here, although I don't
get to visit it myself. I just tell my friendly attendant what I want
and he brings it for me. Decent service here. I'd tip them if they'd
let me have money."
Kei turned to Amberson. "Let's go."
"Aww. Leaving so soon? I kinda hoped this would be a
conjugal visit. You know, maybe you'd slip tall, dark and menacing
there a fifty and he'd just kinda quietly go away, right, and we could
try and re-enact some old-time jam sessions?"
That made her pause in the doorway for an instant, but she
didn't look back. As the door slammed, the Butcher had the last word:
"Fine! Be that way! Just don't have any kids with him--he
looks inbred enough as it is!"
"That's not him," Kei said tensely.
"What do you mean? Not who?" Amberson replied, trotting to
keep up with her pace as she stalked down the corridor, bootheels
taccing sharply on the steel decking.
"That's not Ben. That's not the man I spent three centuries
of my life with."
"How can you be so sure? If he changed enough to slaughter a
hall full of children--"
"Ben hates salad. Can't abide vegetables, except raw carrots.
They make him sick. And even if he did eat salad, he'd die before
he'd eat Catalina dressing. That will never change. Find out if he
actually eats salads, or if he just said that to throw me."
Amberson saluted with total seriousness, not bothering to
point out that she was treating him like a Consultant Third Class
instead of someone who outranked her by three steps. Perhaps he
didn't care.

<<< Journey: Who's Crying Now >>>

Kei lay on her bunk in the Lovely Angel late that night,
staring at the ceiling and thinking. The man who she had seen in the
cell earlier that day was definitely not Ben. Amberson had checked.
He wasn't kidding or lying about the salads. The man in that cell
consumed truly vast quantities of cellulose in the course of a day.
No, the man she had been chasing around the cosmos all these years had
not been sitting in that cell--he was somewhere in Tantalus City right
now. Probably wondering where she was, what she was thinking of.
Still in love with her. Only one question remained now: which of them
had done the shooting?
She knew the answer to that, but she hadn't admitted it to
herself yet. It would be admitting to herself that she had spent the
past ninety-two years almost continuously committing the most
incredibly huge fuck-up of her entire life. She couldn't handle that
kind of knowledge right now. Maybe not ever. So her thoughts kept
running around it, avoiding the thought, generally dodging the
question.
So, consciously, she didn't know why there was a tear running
down her face.
The door to her cabin hissed open and Commissioner Julian
Amberson stepped in, all got up in his field gear. He looked upset.
"Get your gear," he said tersely.
"What's happened?" Kei inquired, getting up and pulling on her
boots, her hand scooping her gunbelt off the back of her desk chair.
"There's been a breakout at the prison. The Butcher's escaped
into the city."
"Shit."

MegaZone stood on a rooftop in X Block and watched the west
wall of the prison burn. This was an interesting wrinkle. Maybe he
could work off the frustration of not getting anywhere on his
child-murders investigation by looking into this. Ten to one it was
related to Gryphon's appearance in the city.
Who knew? Maybe it was all connected. He gathered his gear
together and got ready to move.

Gryphon stood on a rooftop in D Block, surrounded by his
Marines, and looked through a biggish set of rangefinder trinoculars
at the prison. He couldn't see the west wall from his angle, but it
was obvious something major had gone down.
"...And with my luck," he muttered, completing the thought
aloud, "it's got everything to do with why I'm here."
"I would not wager against it, sir," Saavik said as he handed
her the trinoculars. "What do we do now?"
"Christ, I don't know," Gryphon replied. "Wait for Yuri.
Tell her somebody's beaten us to him."

"Thanks," said the Butcher of Musashi to his Type 60 savior,
fastening the tackstrip on the tunic it had brought for him. "I was
really getting sick of that place." He sealed the clasps on his
boots, checked the ElectroMag his rescuer had thoughtfully provided
before sticking it into the shoulder holster, shrugged into the trench
coat, pulled the floppy hat low over his eyes, and said, "Get lost. I
need to fade away, and you stick out like a sore thumb. But hey,
thanks again, brother."
The Buma did not reply. It simply turned and marched away
into the darkness.
"Stiff," the Butcher sneered before gathering his coat around
him and wandering off into the darkness himself. Not long afterward,
he encountered one of the city's ubiquitous newsboards, which was
displaying the latest on the rash of child-killings which were
sweeping the city.
The Butcher drew back in exasperation.
"Hey!" he shouted to the empty street. "Some bastard's
ripping off my modus operandi! This really steams me. Nobody rips
off the Butcher of Musashi." He grinned a slow evil grin. "Time to
shake up the streets a little, I think..."

TWO DAYS LATER

"What do you mean, not here?"
"Someone broke him out last night," Gryphon explained. "Now
don't get upset--I still need your help, and it's actually less
dangerous this way--"
"Like hell! Now, in addition to Kei in Bloodlust Mode, J.
Random Psycho, and the Black Knight, we have Zippy the Wonder
Replicant running around the city! This place gets more dangerous by
the second! I've been on legitimate operations safer than this. With
Kei on my side!"
Gryphon sighed. "Look, it's better this way. Now that he's
out, we won't have to break nearly as many laws to get him."
"Look, how the hell do you expect to get away with this in the
first place? Even if you catch the bastard, he's sure as hell not
going to give you any evidence you can use in a court of law--"
"I don't have to use it in a court of law. I have to prove my
innocence to one man and one man only: Wolfgang Amadeus
Fahrvergnugen. I only need the kind of evidence I can use in a
court martial. It's kind of funny--the Butcher was imprisoned
wrongfully. The Federation has no jurisdiction over WDF war crimes."
Yuri fixed him with a sardonic glare and said caustically,
"The WDF, in case you haven't noticed recently, no longer exists."
"Sure it does. I did a little research the last time I was on
Earth. When the Federation replaced the United Galactica, it absorbed
all the UG's legal ties and obligations verbatim, including the UG's
pact with the WDF. The Wedge Defense Force never officially
disbanded. Legally, it still exists. Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards
still exists, after all, even if they have been isolationist for the
past forty years. The Worlds Welfare Work Association, the WDF's
civilian enforcement arm, still exists." Gryphon grinned. "Ah, legal
loopholes. Now if I could only find myself a nice tax shelter..."
"You really found all this out? I mean, you're not kidding
me?"
"Of course I'm not kidding you." Gryphon leaned back in his
field chair, almost toppling it before he remembered the bad leg.
"What I'm telling you is 100% legitimate. All I have to do is
convince Wolfgang Fahrvergnugen that I didn't do it, and I'm off
the legal hook. I'll probably even rake in back pay for the last
90-odd years."
"What about Kei?"
"The hell with Kei," Gryphon said, a trifle too forcefully.
Yuri drew back a half-step. "If she's too pigheaded to believe hard
evidence being held in front of her face, what business is it of mine?
If she keeps trying to shoot me I'll have her up on charges and
that'll be the end of it."
"What about--"
"What about what? I've got a slightly bigger mission in life
than to patch things up with an old girlfriend, for pity's sake! The
Federation-Kilrah border is a mess! The Romulans have been rumbling
ominously for years. That so-called Starfleet of the Federation's is
a joke--if any serious threat hit them they'd fold like a gambler with
nothing but garbage. The galaxy needs the Wedge Defense Force back,
and I intend to bring it back--with or without Kei, MegaZone, or, for
that matter, you!" There was a long tense silence, which Gryphon
broke by sighing deeply and getting up from his chair.
"Look, Yuri, I'm sorry. I guess you hit a nerve there. Truth
to tell, I've been feeling just the slightest bit uneasy about that
whole thing of late. Maybe...I dunno, maybe I'm finally starting to
realize that it's really all over. Ninety years is a long time to
carry a torch...I dunno, maybe the winds of change finally blew it
out."
"I don't think you believe that," Yuri replied flatly. Then
she smiled and added, "I'll accept your apology, though."
Gryphon returned the smile. "Thanks." Then he unrolled a
makeshift map across the table in the corner of the warehouse and,
calling his troops round him, said, "We've charted the pattern of the
Butcher emulator who's been wandering around the city ripping kids.
Whoever it is, it's obviously someone who only read the history books'
accounts of the...um...incident, because they're getting the method
all wrong. Whoever's doing it is doing it with a knife, very messily.
The Butcher shot his victims," he added for the sake of his marines,
who hadn't, as he and Yuri had, been there.
"Here's something weird, too. Within the last couple of
days--since the Butcher escaped--there have been another rash of child
killings, very different than the originals. The only similarity
between the first set and this new outbreak are the age groups of the
victims. Other than that they're totally different. Where the first
killings were grisly and bloody as hell, these new ones are completely
bloodless. The victims have been found, like the victims of the
original killer--the Slasher, for argument's sake--in dumpsters and
public parks and the like. Unlike the Slasher's victims, the bodies
are completely undamaged--except that they've been drained of all
their blood. There was very little blood found at any of the sites."
"That's fucking strange," observed Corporal Jack Marshall.
"Uh, sorry, sir."
"That's all right, Corporal--it was my thought exactly. There
are a couple of possibilities, as I see it. One: these killings are
the work of a vampire. There are a couple of races with vampiric
tendencies in the universe, but I discount that possibility for a
couple of reasons, not the least of which is that I believe heavily in
the second possibility. Besides which, Tantalus is a lousy climate
for vampires. Too cold.
"Which brings us to the other possibility, and, incidentally,
my favored theory: the Butcher is doing this second rash of killings."
"Sir, these killings don't follow the Butcher's pattern
either," Breckenridge opined.
"True. Very true. And to most police that would be enough.
But I know a little something about our friend the Butcher of Musashi.
He's a replicant--a Type 33/S Buma. Humaniform in almost every
way--in fact, they're popularly called `sexaroids'. (I dunno why,
really...all Buma have gender, it's in their AI programming. But I
digress.) The Type 33/S was never quite perfected. Certain of their
components tend to wear out, the first of which is the element of the
circulatory system that replenishes their nutrient fluid--essentially,
blood.
"The Butcher is old, as sexaroids go--ninety-odd years. His
cell structure has definitely started to degrade by now. A couple of
weeks at a GENOM refitting center could have him back in showroom
condition, but as he's outside their corporate influence on Tantalus,
he has to try other things. The decay could be staved off by some
mundane means--intaking and reprocessing a lot of vegetable cellulose,
to try and reinforce the collapsing cell structure--would work for a
while, but not indefinitely. No, the best way for a replicant who
can't get to a service center to maintain his cell structure would be
to intake massive quantities of blood and reprocess the hemoglobin.
The designers even thought of that in the planning stages--Type 33/S
Buma are equipped with fangs and recirculatory suction systems for
that specific purpose."
"Where did you learn all this?" Yuri asked.
"Meizuri Tech, class of '15," Gryphon replied. "You just
missed running into me on the Quad once--you were there for a lecture
session on demolitions. It was right after C-25 came out."
"That was you? Why were you dressed like a rabbi?"
"Somebody fed my rabbit suit through a T remover."
Yuri gave him a quizzical look as he went on: "So now you see
why I think the Butcher's doing these killings. He's been in prison
since '68. He was probably doing the vampire routine even back then
to keep himself up. Then, since he was in prison and had to pass
himself off as human, he has to try other things. I think if we
cracked his prison record we'd find he's eaten a truly amazing amount
of salad since his incarceration, but that's just a guess. And now
that he's out, he's gotta be mighty thirsty. So thirsty that this is
only the beginning."
"His trail is the one in red?" Finney asked suddenly.
"Yes. The other killer's is in blue."
"They're converging. That's very interesting. You don't
suppose the Butcher is working his way toward his copycat? I know it
sounds nuts, but if he's as crazy as you say, he might be feeling some
kind of...oh, I don't know...professional courtesy is in order."
"I think you might just have something there, Lieutenant,"
Gryphon said appreciatively. "I hadn't thought of it that way."
Gryphon mused, tracing the red and blue lines on the map with his
fingertips. "If you're right, and he is trying to make contact with
the other killer, then they should meet..."

A lone figure sat in the dark interior of his car, his face
lit only by the glow of the plasma display in the dash. He slowly
traced the two lines on the display with his fingers.
"...Tonight," MegaZone said quietly, his fingertips coming
gently together in the middle of the display. He smiled a slow smile,
then started checking his equipment.

"Tonight," Superintendent Adam Jury said, pointing at the
convergence of the dotted lines which led from the solid traces of the
killers' patterns. "If they follow the pattern."
Kei nodded. She liked Jury, much more than she had liked
Commissioner Amberson when they had first met. Kei was usually good
at getting first impressions. The Tantalus City Police Department
officer was conscientious, professional, courteous to the 3WA even
though he probably disliked their interference on what was, after all,
his patch. He was also a hell of a detective, if Amberson's report on
him was to be believed (and Kei had no reason to doubt that it was).
He also had the most remarkably green eyes, but that was somewhat
beside the point.
"I'll have a team of my best men standing by at the site,"
Amberson cut in. He was in his field gear again, looking mean and
ready for action, and exuding that slightly frightening sense of
self-confidence. "I assume you're going to send some men?"
"I intend to be there myself," Jury replied in a tone of voice
which, while showing no arrogance, was not uncertain. "I've been
working this case for months now--I'll be there when it finally
breaks. Unless," he added, bowing however grudgingly to the authority
of the 3WA where an escaped prisoner was concerned, "you order me not
to."
"On the contrary," Kei told him, "I wouldn't dream of leaving
you out. Forget bringing TCPD personnel, though--they'll just get in
the way. My partner's on leave--just stick with me."
Amberson raised an eyebrow imperceptibly, but said nothing.
It was, after all, partly her case too.

THAT NIGHT
M BLOCK

It was Tantalus City's usual kind of night: dark, cold, and
snowy. The snow was also Tantalus City's usual kind of snow: greyish
and acidic, capable of causing a rash on those with more sensitive
skin and, over time, pitting the paint on cheap cars. For months the
Tantalus City Police Department had urged people to keep their
children inside, thanks to the supposed Butcher killings. That advice
had been redoubled when the Butcher actually escaped from the prison.
But there were those children with no people to keep them inside, and
no inside to keep in...
One such child was Katie Miller. Katie and her parents had
come to Tantalus City from Cork, New Ireland, in search of a new life
after New Ireland's stock market crash. Her brogue still marked her
as an offworlder. The Millers had not found a new life on Tantalus
V--instead they had stepped into the path of their oncoming deaths, in
the form of a hoverbus being driven by a Known Traffic Menace, a month
and a half after arriving. Katie had been so determined not to be
shipped home to her uncle and aunt in Cork (whom she hated with all
the passion of a ten-year-old) that she had eluded local authorities
and taken to living on the streets. That was almost a year ago, and
now, dug into her little shelter behind Green Avenue (the only time
she had ever seen green on the avenue was during last year's St.
Patrick's Day parade), she greeted the night with her usual
enthusiasm.
It might be cold, and it might be dark, but Katie Miller was
not afraid of the dark, and she had plenty of blankets and clothes
against the cold. The snow was no big deal either; it couldn't get
past the piece of thermoplastic that Mr. Gates, who ran the checkout
counter at the library on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes let her
sleep in the stacks when the weather was particularly foul, had given
her. Mr. Gates was a sweet old man. He even let her take books out
even though she didn't have a library card, and split his lunch with
her when he was working and she came in.
As for the killer, well, Katie wasn't afraid of him either.
The phaser she stole from the Federation officer in the market square
the summer before still worked, and Katie knew very well how to use
it.
At the moment, Katie was huddled in her blankets, under the
thermoplastic and between the three walls at the end of her alley and
a tent flap of several more blankets, reading her latest library
acquisition (A. J. Petrarca, Elementary Wedge Physics for the
Inquisitive) by the light of the small battery lamp some fool had
thrown away some time ago. Didn't anyone but Katie know that you
could make a perfectly good lamp battery with some duct tape, a little
wire, and a phaser? The light didn't even impose any drain to speak
of on the massive power cell. Honestly, these so-called "adults" were
such fools sometimes.
She had just gotten to the part about time dilation and
hyperintelligence theory when she heard the scrape of a shoe in the
alley. Instantly alert, she put the book down--carefully marking her
place--and shut off the light, detaching the leads. Closing her eyes
to give them a better chance to adapt to the darkness, she listened
carefully as her small hand tightened around the phaser, her thumb
reflexively dialing it up to Level 7. She had read in the operations
manual for the weapon that Level 7 was best for general combat, giving
reliable lethal neurological trauma without the huge power consumption
required for disintegration. She wanted to make certain that anyone
who tried to kill her ended up quite dead.
The person in the alley wasn't moving. He had jumped down
from the dumpster, she was quite sure--she cursed herself silently for
not hearing him jump from the fire escape of the building to the
dumpster roof, as he must have done. Yer losin' yer edge, Katie me
girl, she chided herself. Gonna get yersel' killed someday.
Carefully, after her eyes had adjusted, she moved the flap of
her shelter aside and looked out. Someone was indeed standing in the
alley, a shortish man dressed in an overcoat and floppy hat. Katie
felt danger--it was a talent of hers--and she could feel it all around
her right now. The man wasn't looking toward her shelter--perhaps he
had taken it for a pile of refuse, like the police always did. He was
looking for something, though. Watching the street.
Katie scanned her surroundings, looking for an escape. She
could get out of her shelter with no problem--he wasn't looking at
her, and she could move with almost total silence. But where to go
from there? She couldn't get past the man, not without shooting him,
that was certain. Up onto the dumpster, to the fire escape and then
across the rooftops? No, that wouldn't work. The fire escape ladder
made a terrible racket, and he'd hear for sure. If he was armed, or
even reasonably athletic, she'd be an easy target.
If the ladder makes s'much noise, how come y'didn't hear 'im
come down it?
Abandoning the self-berating route, Katie looked around some
more. Blank walls on three sides--good for a shelter, lousy tactical
position. She kicked herself for not having noticed it before. There
was no way out besides the fire escape or the direct route. She was
just going to have to run for it--
Someone else was there, suddenly, dropping directly from the
rooftop into the alley and only making the barest scrape of sound.
The stranger in the alley's mouth whirled; wicked blades gleamed from
both of their arms.
Two of 'em?
"Get out of here," the newcomer said in a neutral, somewhat
high-pitched voice. "You're an adult. I have no quarrel with you."
The other smiled a slow smile. As her eyes got even more
accustomed to the moonlight, Katie realized with a shock who he was.
The Butcher!
"So you're the one who's been ripping off my choice of
victims," the Butcher said with a smirk. "I'd say I've got a quarrel
with you, pal. Nobody rips off the Butcher of Musashi!" He lunged;
the newcomer blocked his blades, cyberwolvers that came right out of
his hands, with his own. They almost matched, except that the Butcher
had three blades in each hand, and the newcomer only two--but his were
longer.
Katie saw her chance and launched herself into motion, running
for the alley mouth as fast as she could. If she could get out while
the two of them were fighting--
"Hold that thought, chum," the two-bladed combatant said with
a sneer, grabbing the Butcher's arm and slamming him face-first into
the wall. "I'll be right back." He set off after Katie with an easy
lope. "Come back here, honeykins."
Katie, falling victim to the stumblefootedness of panic,
tripped over a piece of random alley debris and fell a few feet from
the mouth. As she rolled onto her back, the man with two cyberblades
in his arm loomed over her, grinning widely.
"No escape, darling," he said, and with a shock, Katie
realized that he was very young, perhaps only four or five years older
than herself. "No little rugrat has ever escaped from yours
truly--Jack the Ripper!"
Without any hesitation at all, Katie raised her phaser and
shot him. He screamed the unique scream of someone whose neural
patterns are being burned right out of his brain and collapsed on his
back, smoke rolling from his nose and mouth as his cybernetics burned.
Little traces of phaser fire rippled over his wolvers for a second or
two.
"Unnh," the Butcher commented, standing up and shaking his
head. "Punk packs a mean left." He looked over to the supine Ripper
and Katie, who was scrambling to her feet and keeping the phaser on
him. "Thanks for getting rid of the jerk for me, love," he commented,
taking a step toward her. "Not that it'll do you much good. You've
cooked him good, I can't use his blood. And besides, I so much prefer
little innocent creatures like you."
Katie pressed the trigger. Nothing happened.
Maybe the lamp did draw quite a bit of power. Or maybe she
did break part of the phaser when she dropped it under the bus that
time. The casing never had closed quite right after that.
Katie threw the weapon aside and took a step back.
At that moment, light flooded the alley. The Butcher took a
step back, shouting with irritation as he threw his arms in front of
his face against the light. There were police or something similar on
the rooftops, aiming powerful lights down at him. He whipped out his
ElectroMag and shot one of them; as he fell, his light went out.
Katie Miller took this opportunity to run like hell.
"Benjamin Hutchins, aka the Butcher of Musashi!" the voice of
Commissioner Julian Amberson rang from the loudspeaker he held. He
stepped to the front of the knot of 3WA consultants on the rooftop
directly behind the alley, Kei at one side and Adam Jury at the other.
"You are under arrest! Throw down your weapon and surrender!"
"Fuck you!" the Butcher replied, and fired. The bolt crashed
into Amberson's chest, sparkling off his white scale armor and leaving
him singularly unimpressed. With a single fluid motion, Amberson
dropped the bullhorn, took the bow from his shoulder, nocked an arrow,
and fired. The Butcher screamed and dropped his weapon as the arrow
neatly transfixed his left wrist, then scrambled to get it.
"Kill him!" Kei shouted to the ranked 3WA personnel.
"Hold your fire!!" another voice bellowed, in such a tone of
command that all the officers held their fire as ordered, without even
knowing who had issued it.
Then, to compound their confusion, another Butcher of Musashi
stepped into the mouth of the alley, this one wearing a thick black
overcoat over a Starfleet field operations uniform (trousers, boots,
and maroon commando sweater). He had a beard, and his glasses were
different, and his hair was even longer and thicker, but he was
unmistakably the same guy.
"No one fire," Captain Benjamin D. Hutchins, United Federation
of Planets Starfleet, ordered. "This is not a Federation matter. Nor
does it fall under the jurisdiction of the Worlds Welfare Work
Association. This is a Wedge Defense Force war crimes matter. As the
ranking Wedge Defense Force officer on the scene, I am taking command
of this operation, as per Section Fifteen, Paragraph Ten of the Wedge
Defense Force Code, Subsection Three, Paragraph Nine of the United
Galactica Accord, and Article Eight of the United Galactica-Wedge
Defense Force Pact 2074, all absorbed verbatim by the United
Federation of Planets 2339. Under those regulations, I have full
wartime jurisdiction with which to deal with this war criminal. Be
advised that my deputies have complete legal authority to shoot anyone
who disobeys this order."
"I wouldn't move if I were you," came a voice from behind
them. Kei, Jury, and Amberson whirled to see Sergeant Major Noah
Breckenridge holding down on them with a phaser rifle. The other
Marines were ranked around the rooftops, covering all the other 3WA
personnel present. "This is set on stun, but waking up from phaser
stun is not a pleasant experience--and I won't miss if you make me
shoot."
Kei's eyes narrowed as she looked for a way to take the big
guy out--then she noticed who was standing behind and slightly to the
side of him.
"Yuri?"
"Hi, Kei," said Yuri, her voice as steady as the muzzle of her
gun. "Please don't move."
"What the--"
"Just watch and see," Yuri told her, "and you'll find out soon
enough that I've been right all along."
"Yuri, if you're wrong about this--"
"I'm not. Trust me, partner. I'm not."
"Do as he says," Amberson said to his men. "He has all the
authority he says he does."
Kei glared at Yuri, who grinned and shrugged. Then she looked
around, checking out the Marines' perimeter. On a rooftop on the
other side of the street, directly opposite the alley, she spotted
another person in Federation field ops uniform, crouching and aiming
something down into the alley. Rocket launcher? Some kind of sniper
weapon? No--it was a holocamera. Gryphon was having one of his
people film this show. What the hell for?
"Why the attack of mercy, my good twin?" the Butcher inquired
of Gryphon as he snapped the fletching off the arrow and drew it
unflinchingly out of his arm. "I would think that anyone who had done
to him what I did to you would be happy to see me spread all over the
pavement by a couple of dozen heavily armed 3WA soldiers."
"So you admit that you're the Butcher of Musashi?"
"Admit it! Hell! With pride!" The Butcher threw his head
back and laughed long and loud. "It was a thing of beauty! One of
the little bastards even grabbed my leg. I did him first. WHAMMO!
--ha ha ha ha! These things pack quite the little zip up close," said
he, holding up the ElectroMag. "Not clean like phasers. I hate
phasers. I like a big mess. Especially now that my age has caught up
with me--I've developed a taste for blood."
"GENOM made you."
"Of course!"
"To frame me and destroy morale."
"Well, they didn't send me to play Santa Claus at the
Christmas party, loverboy." The Butcher's eyes misted over with
twisted nostalgia. "Ah, those were the days. You should've seen the
look on your face when I ran past you in the hallway! Ha ha ha--what
a rube! Never even figured it out. And the look on that bitch's face
when I took a shot at her--you know I let her live on purpose. I
hoped maybe she'd do the job right and off you when you came around
the corner, but just like a woman, she bungled the job. Still, I got
the satisfaction of know that she suffered every day since then. You
know, I bet she hasn't slept a full night's sleep in ninety-two years!
Really, how could she mistake me for you all those years?" He shook
his head in mock sadness. "What a dull-witted wench."
Kei ground her teeth so hard she thought she felt them
chipping and went for her gun. An iron grip clamped around her wrist
and pulled her hand away from the grip; she looked up to meet
Amberson's incredibly black gaze. He shook his head somberly.
"The man you love will defend your honor," he said quietly.
"Think of it as final proof."
Slowly, she nodded, and relaxed her arm.
Gryphon stared levelly at his evil counterpart, shaking his
head slowly and sadly as the Butcher babbled on.
"Still, it was quite beautiful. I understand that
empty-headed leader of yours went and broke up with his woman after
she helped you get out. Tell me, was that just because she believed
in you, or was there something more to that? I bet you Wedge types go
around checking each other off lists. Must get pretty tangled
sometimes, all that jealousy--nasty stuff. But God! It was
beautiful. All those kids, and they all thought I was Santa Claus,
the Easter Bunny, Rambo and Kerry Eurodyne rolled into one. And
then--WHACK! Oh, my God, the memories alone keep me warm at night!
Thank you, Largo, for an eidetic memory! God! It was so glorious!
All the blood! The brains! The young lives snuffed out! I'm writing
a book! I'm going to Disneyland! I want the movie rights!!"
Gryphon reached up, drew the clanswords of the House of
Asagiri from his back and whirled them in a brief kata.
"You have destroyed my home," he said evenly. "You have
wrecked my life and forced me to run from near everyone I cared about
for the past ninety-two years. You have caused the deaths of
innocents and friends of mine. You nearly caused the destruction of
the Wedge Defense Force. There will be more deaths before the cycle
is over. All that I could forgive--after all, you were built for the
purpose. You had no more choice in destroying those lives than I had
defending them--it's all a matter of purpose.
"But you tried to kill love. You had no business doing that.
No business at all. You have insulted my friends and insulted the
woman I love--the same woman who has spent the last near-century
trying to kill me because of all you did. And that I cannot forgive.
You're mine, motherfucker." With that, Gryphon attacked.
"Swords?" the Butcher said sarcastically, dodging aside, but
losing his pistol in a parry in the process. "You've seen Highlander
too many times. Next you'll be shouting `there can be only one'. Cut
me some slack."

<<< Queen: Gimme the Prize (Kurgan's Theme) >>>

Gryphon's reflexes were chipped as high as they could possibly
go, but the replicant's were faster by their sheer nature. Gryphon's
muscles were as powerful as human musculature could get, thanks to
Omega-2, and made even stronger by the nanotech fiberweave interlaced
in them. The replicant's were stronger. His bone structure was
reinforced and strengthened. The replicant's was stronger. Gryphon
was at an emotional peak. The replicant was insane. There were only
two things on Gryphon's side:
1) Reach;
2) Right.
They battled back and forth in the alley, sword against spur,
for almost twenty minutes of the most awe-inspiring swordfighting any
of the assembled people had ever seen (with the possible exception of
Commissioner Amberson). They bloodied each other, attacked each
other's wrists and knees, went for the throat. Neither showed any
sign of weakening.
Finally, the Butcher of Musashi got an opening, and he used
it, lodging Gryphon's wakizashi between two of his spurs and wrenching
at it. The fine blade didn't break, but Gryphon's grip did, wounded
as his wrist was. The blade spiraled away, and as Gryphon's guard
opened, the Butcher gave him a kick to the jaw that sent his vision's
vertical hold all to hell. He stumbled back and crashed against the
garbage cans near the dumpster, landing stunned on his back.
The Butcher collected Gryphon's fallen short sword and,
spreading his arms, announced to the gallery above him, "I have
something to say! It's better to burn out--than to fade away!" He
whirled and, raising the sword above Gryphon, cried, "You're quite
right, my cinematophilic friend--there can be only one!"
A small maroon blur dropped down onto the pavement beside the
Butcher from the rooftop above, somersaulting twice and landing
perfectly with the kind of resilience only Detian or heavily cybered
physiognomy could provide. Lieutenant Jaime Finney levered herself up
on both arms from the ground, vaulting-horse-wise, and slammed both
feet into the Butcher's right side with such force that the people on
the rooftops could hear ribs splintering. He shouted in surprise and
staggered aside, dropping the blade; Finney scooped it up and advanced
on him.
"What the hell is this?!" the Butcher demanded in an outraged
tone of voice. "My great stolen scene--ruined by a Munchkin? Ohh,
you're gonna pay for this, babe. I don't usually do adults, but
you're small enough to get by the union restrictions."
Finney was an excellent combatant, but she was a) not a
replicant and b) not the proud owner of nearly a century of
experience. Besides which, now that she wasn't riding the very crest
of an adrenaline rush, she thought she might have wrecked an ankle
pulling that cute off-the-roof stunt. Suffice it to say, she was
losing. As the 3WA personnel and the Marines watched, speechless, and
Gryphon opened his eyes and shook his head, she started seriously
losing.
Oh, what the hell, she said to herself. You only live once.
It's only pain. She took a step forward, right into the Butcher's
guard, and, ignoring his spurs ripping into her shoulder, ran him
straight through the gut with the wakizashi.
"Aaaaaaauuuurrrrggggghhhh!" the Butcher announced, reeling
backward as Finney released the sword and dropped to her knees,
clutching at her shoulder. "You little bitch! You're going to eat
this damned sword!" He yanked the sword out of his gut and raised it
high.
Gryphon threw out his hand for his sword, something, anything
to throw, and came up with--
--a phaser?
Yes, a phaser, Mark One, dented and battered. The OFFLINE
light was on, but as his hand closed around it and pushed the casing
back together with a click, it went out and the READY light came back
on. Ramming the bent setting dial as high as he could get it, he
raised it and fired.
His aim was off and the phaser mostly discharged; it spat only
a small disk of orange energy which took the Butcher in the left eye
and blew the entire upper left quarter of his face off.
"YEEEAAAAARRRGGGHH!!" remarked the Butcher, dropping the sword
and clutching at his burning face. He stumbled back, hunching over
and clawing at the smoking flesh. Finney got to her feet, shaking off
the shock, and laid him right out on his back with a wheel kick that
would've done Bruce Lee proud, had he been just slightly less than
five feet tall. He crashed down in the middle of Katie Miller's
shelter and didn't move.
It was all over except the shouting.

Four buildings away, MegaZone watched the whole thing and
smiled a slow tight smile.
"Very neat. I didn't have to lift a finger. And from the
look of things, Gryphon's off the hook. Very, very neat."

BUTCHER APPREHENDED!
Benjamin Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force Cleared!
TANTALUS CITY: In an incredible turn of events, Commander Benjamin D.
Hutchins of the Wedge Defense Force, long believed to be the infamous
"Butcher of Musashi", was cleared of all charges by a Wedge Defense
Force military tribunal. This tribunal, convened at the Worlds
Welfare Work Association's Portfield facility, consisted of three
senior officers of the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards, one of whom
was none other than Karl Fahrvergnugen, son and heir to the missing
Lord Wolfgang Amadeus Fahrvergnugen--the genius who organized the
Wedge Defense Force in 1992.
Hutchins, promoted to Captain, was made Chief Engineer of the
Utopia Planitia Yards and Commander in Chief of the seriously depleted
WDF (which, contrary to popular belief, never officially disbanded
after the 2288 Musashi debacle). He has vowed to have the Wedge
Defense Force back in full fighting trim, recapturing or even
surpassing the days of old, by the end of the decade.
The real Butcher of Musashi, a GENOM Corporation Type 33/S
Buma replicant designed to exactly emulate Captain Hutchins' physical
appearance, was convicted of the war crimes for which the real
Hutchins was hunted for so long by the same tribunal, mostly on the
evidence of a holorecorded confession. He is currently incarcerated
at the Tantalus V Penal Colony, awaiting sentencing, which will take
place, according to official releases, "when the WDF is ready to deal
with such matters in depth". Speculation is that this may take
several years.

Gryphon stood on the transporter platform in the Port
Authority building, waiting for the last of his crew to join him.
They were beaming up to the Starfleet vessel apportioned to take them
to the Utopia Planitia Naval Shipyards, so that Gryphon could begin
work, at long last, on what had become his life's mission: the
reconstitution of the Wedge Defense Force. It was, ironically enough,
Jim Kirk's Enterprise. It seemed his home dimension's timeframe was
about twenty-five years off from the dimension he had spent the last
few decades in. It would be weird to see Captain Kirk again. He
reached into his jacket and unfolded the note which had arrived,
physically delivered, for him the day after the trial, rereading it
for the nth time.

Gryphon:
Congratulations on winning the trial. I never truly believed
in your guilt, but you must remember, at that time, my closest aide
had betrayed me, and I believed my dream to have died. I had to get
away and do some thinking, and when I returned to Utopia Planitia you
were nowhere to be found. I have spent these last many years remaking
the Shipyards into a true masterwork, suitable for the enterprise (if
you can pardon the pun) that you and I are about to embark upon. I
await your arrival via Federation starship Enterprise most eagerly; we
have much to discuss!
Yours,
--F.

Only one thing marred his elation at being finally free and
cleared: after the trial, Kei had refused to talk to him, running away
when he tried to seek her out in the halls of the 3WA building. He
just wanted to tell her that he forgave her. After all, he always
had. Hadn't he told her as much, in Olympus, up above, back on Gamma
Dionysia, in the Enigma Sector Border Zone before that? Time and time
again he had told her he held no grudge. Time and time again he had
told her he would still love her when it was all over. He certainly
still did.
Apparently, she didn't.
The thought was a lot more depressing than he had expected it
to be, especially considering his recent ruminations, the subject of
which he had never identified.
He sighed. Where the hell were Finney and Saavik?
The transporter room door hissed open. Gryphon turned to
greet his tardy officers and found himself looking at a familiar
figure who was neither of them.
"Hello, Zoner," he said. "Before you shoot, did you see the
news this morning?"
"Relax," MegaZone replied. "I saw. Besides, I never made up
my mind if I believed all that or not, remember?"
"Right. So what are you doing here? Come to take your job
back from me? You're welcome to it."
"No, you can have that. I just wanted to...I don't know,
really. I just wanted to congratulate you on clearing yourself. Good
luck, man." He turned to go.
"Hey, hey, hold on a second!" Gryphon called indignantly. "Is
that it? `Good luck, man'? You're just gonna walk away? The WDF
needs its leader back, man--I just stepped in 'cause I was the nearest
one available, and 'cause I've had this vision of the Force
reassembled for a while now. If I had known you were around I--"
"No," Zoner replied without turning around. "No, I'm done
with that. Just...take care of yourself. I'll see you around." He
left.
"How d'ya like that?" Gryphon asked the transporter tech, who
had no comment to offer, not really knowing what he had just seen.
"He'll come around," Gryphon said confidently. "It'll just take
time."
Hiss went the door for a second time. This time, as Gryphon
turned toward it, he saw, of all people, Vaughn Gross, barefoot and
carrying a large, thick blue binder.
"Morning," said Reality, raising a hand.
"Morning," Gryphon replied. "I see you found your binder."
"Yeah," Reality replied. "Oh hey, there was something I
wanted to tell you about that, but...oh well, that's okay, it can
wait. Hey, congratulations on winning your trial. I hope you get the
Wedge Defense Force back up and running again. How's Kei?"
"I dunno," Gryphon said. "I haven't seen her since the trial.
I think she's avoiding me."
"Oh." Reality looked momentarily downcast. "I'm sorry to
hear that. Oh well--she'll come around. Probably just needs to
think. I haven't found Iczer-1 yet, but the millennium is young.
Anyway...take it easy. I guess I'll see you around."
"Bye, Vaughn," said Gryphon as Reality turned and left the
room. He turned to the tech. "Surreal," he commented. The tech
nodded in agreement. A few seconds passed.
The door opened again. Again Gryphon turned toward it.
"Finally--" He stopped. It was Kei.
"Hi," she said softly.
"Hi," Gryphon replied. "Hey, tech--take five, huh?"
"Sir?"
"Beat it! Go find my officers or something."
"Yessir." The tech departed.
"So...what brings you to this transporter room?"
"I, uh...I dunno...I just wanted to say..." She stepped up
onto the platform and put her hands on his shoulders, then fell
against him, closing her arms around him. "I'm sorry."
"Hey, hey, it's okay," he replied, putting his arms around her
and stroking her back. She shuddered against him, and he realized she
was sobbing on his shoulder. He stepped back once and, taking her
chin in his fingertips, looked into her eyes, then kissed away her
tears.
"It's okay," he repeated. "I love you, you know. I've never
stopped. Faltered, maybe...felt disillusioned and discouraged...but
never stopped loving you."
And, to illustrate that point, he gently, very gently, put his
lips against hers. The kiss went on for several seconds like this;
then, as her arms tightened around his shoulders again, it became
different, more urgent, hungry. When they finally parted nearly two
minutes later, Kei gazed into Gryphon's blue eyes for a few seconds
before speaking.
"I...I can't..." She hesitated. "I need some time to think."
"I understand," Gryphon replied easily. "Take as much time as
you want. I'll be at the shipyards working. When you've worked it
out...call me. I'll come running. Until then...I've waited
ninety-two years. Just knowing you're on my side will be enough for a
while. I can wait...forever if I have to."
She smiled hesitantly. "You...you mean it?"
"Of course. Remember what Edison said? We have all the time
in the world! All the time in the universe." He gave her a firm
kiss. "Here's my card," he said, digging a card, newly minted by the
replicators in the Port Authority lobby, out of his pocket and handing
it to her. "Just call, and I'll be there."
"Okay..." She took the card and tucked it into a storage
compartment on her belt. "I love you--don't worry about that--it's
just that...I have to decide whether or not I'm...this sounds so
stupid...worthy of you. You've been so patient...I just...I have to
work it out for myself."
"I understand." Gryphon smiled and added, "Take care of
yourself, Kei. I love you." They fell together for one last kiss,
and then, with a long, lingering glance back, Kei left the room.
As she left she passed the tech, with Lt. Finney and Cmdr.
Saavik in tow. Finney's arm had, in the week and a half of the trial,
healed fully, and she seemed in unusually high spirits. Saavik turned
to watch Kei go, then favored her captain with an arched eyebrow.
Gryphon just grinned in response.
"Boy!" Finney said, stepping up onto the platform. "I won't
be sorry to get off this iceball, eh, Captain?"
"That's for sure," Gryphon replied. "Let's go check out our
shipyards. Energize!"
The cool dislocation of the beam whisked them away.

And the rest...is history.

THE CAST
in order of authorial remembrance
Benjamin D. Hutchins Gryphon
Kei Morgan Kei
Yuri Daniels Yuri
Robin Curtis Cmdr. Saavik
Maximilian Hunter Lt. Cmdr. Hunter
Richard Sterling Lt. Cmdr. Sterling
Jaime Finney Lt. Finney
Henry J. Lang Cmdr. Lang
Vanessa Leeds Lt. Leeds
Noah Breckenridge Sgt. Breckenridge
Jack Marshall Cpl. Marshall
Julian Com. Julian Amberson
Edwin Cantrell Warden Cantrell
33/S GRP-HN1 The Butcher of Musashi
Katie Miller Katie Miller
Jack Cote Jack the Ripper
Adam Jury Superintendent Jury
Brian D. Bikowicz MegaZone
TCH2 Michael Martin Transporter Tech
Vaughn Gross Reality

The author wishes to thank everyone whose work he may have touched
upon in this work. In addition, many thanks to the other components
of Eyrie Productions (you all know who you are) for standing by me in
my exile, and for those of you on the Net who never gave up hope that
one day, all would stand revealed.