[Fanfic][Eyrie] Street Fighter: Warrior's Legacy - Battle 02: Detente

[Benjamin D Hutchins]

G
It was Thursday, July 7, 1994. It was hot in Worcester. We
were working the day watch out of...
... forget it...
I was in the back yard of the house in Worcester, slamming my
fists and feet against the top of a large plank. Said plank was
around twelve feet long, and was buried for a little less than half
its length in the rocky soil of the yard, leaving a seven-foot expanse
jutting up -- just about the height of the opponent I would soon face
in Russia. The top foot or so was wrapped in heavy rope, and that was
the bit I was concentrating most of my attention on.
This wasn't a hell of a lot of fun, but I figured it was
necessary. After all, the man I was going to Russia the following
week to fight was one Sergei Zangief, a seven-foot monster of a man
whose hobbies, if the word on the circuit was to be believed, included
wrestling with Siberian bears. And usually winning. He was also
reputed to be none too fond of Americans, thanks mostly to the martial
skills and abrasive personality of one Captain William F. "Bucky"
Guile. (Well, OK, I don't know if people call him "Bucky", actually,
but I would.) I had seen Guile a couple of times; he was an
excruciatingly patriotic and preachy fellow, rather Captain
America-like in his Middle American conservatism. I can see where he
would easily get on the nerves of a proud Russian who was still
smarting from the near-total collapse of his motherland. Hell, Guile
gets on -my- nerves, and I'm a fellow American.
I punched the board, turned, kicked it, flipped back, and then
came at it from the other side, my mind still turning over other
things: the notes of congratulation that had filtered in after I
achieved World Warrior status in Scotland the month before; the
occasional phone call from my more vocally inclined friends; the
grudging congratulations from my mother, who didn't approve of my
fighting, and probably never would; the impending phone bill from what
Zoner had laughingly dubbed my ongoing telepresence experiment with a
particular party in Scotland. Our household could be up for a
controlling interest in AT&T.
There was a time when, to prepare for a fight like this one, I
would have been sparring with Rose, my Valdritkar, my teacher, rather
than pounding the hell out of a piece of rope-wrapped wood. That had
stopped when she returned from Thailand in '92, battered and in pain
and unwilling to talk about it. She hadn't, to my knowledge, lifted a
hand in battle, even mock battle, even solitaire, since then, and that
bothered me. What bothered me more was that she wouldn't tell me what
happened in Thailand that had changed her outlook so much. "I'll tell
you when you're ready to know," she said, and I accepted that, because
I always accepted what she told me. In eighteen years I had only
questioned her twice.
I accepted it, but that didn't mean I liked it.
I hit the board again.
I knew it had something to do with her renegade student, my
predecessor in her tutelage. She had told me a little about him, when
I got to the age where I became curious about her life. Maxim Bison
was, he claimed, his name, though it was most likely an alias. Not
tall, but powerfully built and dark; not handsome, but with a certain
curious undeniability. Probably Russian; probably a former KGB or
NKVD officer. Rose didn't answer many questions about her background,
so she didn't ask very many either; all of that was stuff which she
strongly suspected but didn't really know. What she did know was that
he displayed a lot of potential, possessed a natural affinity for Ler
manipulation, and had a mean streak a mile wide, which he was good at
concealing if the situation warranted.
He had concealed it from Rose -- who I would classify as a
nearly preternatural judge of character -- for nearly a decade.
I hit the board again.
But then, when he started out he probably didn't intend to go
the direction he did. Power corrupts, they say, and Bison developed
more power faster than any other warrior Rose had ever known. It had
twisted him, she said, and one day he had informed her that he felt
she had nothing more to teach him and vanished. It hurt, being
abandoned by her brightest pupil, but she put it behind her.
Until she started hearing about him in conjunction with a
small-time crime syndicate called Shadolu. At least it started out
small-time. Then, slowly, it became not-so-small-time. I didn't get
most of this information from Rose; instead, I pieced it together from
information I gathered on the circuit. It seemed that Bison had
appeared from nowhere, started out as a lieutenant to the Shadolu boss
in Thailand in the early seventies, and rose meteorically within that
organization, taking complete control of it by 1975. By '77, Shadolu
had either crushed or absorbed most of the other crime syndicates in
Asia, and was well on its way to becoming the most powerful organized
crime organization on the face of the Earth.
Incidentally, that was the year that Rose appeared in my life.
I hit the board again.
Rose very rarely mentioned Bison when she spoke, and then only
for as brief a time as possible to make whatever point she was making.
She never compared me to him in any respect, as far as I can remember.
Then again, Rose was never long on any sort of comparison -- she
thought it was an unfair way to motivate, and anything I did, I should
do simply because I wanted to be better. It worked for me. How else
could a young man as naturally inclined to sloth as I have come so far
in such a demanding field? Rose is a... unique... motivator.
I hit the board again, but this time I was smiling.
I knew what Rose had done in Thailand, even though she hadn't
told me. It was practically legendary on the circuit. She had worked
her way through the fighting circuit as it stood in 1991, flattening
everybody between herself and Bison, working her way toward her former
pupil with the single-minded determination so highly prized in Ler
Drit.
Then she fought Bison himself. Sadly, here I had heard no
first-hand accounts, so the particulars of the fight as I had heard
them were suspect, but the long and short of it is, it was, at best, a
draw. To put it less kindly, Rose lost, but injured Bison severely
enough that she escaped with her life. The rest, I already knew.
I hit the board again. I was no longer smiling.
I got the shock of my life when she turned up on my doorstep,
so to speak, halfway through my freshman year at Worcester
Polytechnic. We hadn't spoken in months; when I left Millinocket for
college, our parting was not exactly an amiable one. I had been
filled with the hubris of youth and it had colored my actions and
statements. Both of us had been too proud to make any contact
afterward, even when both of us cooled down and regretted our actions
and our words. It took being thrashed by a former student gone bad to
bring Rose to the point where she would seek me out for help, and by
then I was quite willing to apologize.
And so, my career at WPI ended. I hadn't been having such a
great time there anyway, I must admit.
I hit the board again.
I would have gone on with this for who-knows-how long,
reminiscing and hitting the board, except that Zoner leaned out of the
back door and hollered, "GRYPH! PHONE!!" So, I took a break, wrapped
a towel around my neck, and went inside to answer the phone.
"Hello," was the highly original opening I chose when I picked
up the kitchen phone from the sideboard.
The voice which answered was low, throaty, and extremely
female, the kind of voice which books are always claiming can cause
chills up the spine. In this case that old cliche held true, and that
was even -with- knowing whose voice it was.
"Hi, honey," the woman on the other end whispered. "I hear
you beat the big, bad British champion. Think that makes you tough
enough to take -me- on?"
Brr. I chuckled. "I'll never be man enough to take -you- on,
Mai."
Her voice changed to a more natural, less seductive register
as she replied, "And don't you forget it, bub!"
"But am I still your Love Rhino?" I asked, trying to make my
voice plaintive around the smile on my face.
"I dunno," she replied coyly. "Am I still your Great White
Hunter?"
"Mai!" I said, trying to sound as wounded as possible by the
mere concept that she might not be. "You'll always be my Great White
Hunter."
"Mmm... then I guess you can still be my Love Rhino," she said
cheerily.
In the background on her end, a faint, extremely puzzled voice
asked, "Mai, who on Earth are you talking to??"
I threw back my head and laughed; on the other end, I could
hear that Mai was doing the same. I recovered, but she didn't, so
there was a bit of a clunk as the phone on her end was handed off to
somebody else.
"Uh," said the second voice, "er, hello... who is this?"
I debated for a moment whether to reply, "I'm Batman," "Your
worst nightmare," or "I am the Law!" before deciding to put the poor
boy out of his misery with, "It's just little old me, Underdog."
"Ben!" said Andy, relief flooding his voice.
Andy Bogard and Mai Shiranui are the closest couple I know.
Really. You might not think so to watch them in action, but they are.
Mai likes to tease Andy, but her heart is in the right place, and so,
at the risk of being crude, are all of her other parts. For his part,
Andy tries to pretend that he's completely uninterested in the entire
affair, which is, to put it bluntly, a big fat lie. The truth is that
he would walk through Hell and back for her, and she would sooner
swallow broken glass than be unfaithful. Not that either of them will
ever admit it.
"Last time I checked," I replied. "How goes?"
"Fairly well, I suppose," Andy replied. Andy was never very
good at the fine art of phone conversations. He always sounded like
he was talking to somebody through a door that they refused to open,
like he thought the only reason they were talking to him on the
telephone was because they couldn't stand him in real life. "Hey, I
heard you made World Warrior, good work."
"Thanks. Heard from Terry lately?"
"Not for a month or so. Last I knew he was someplace in
Canada, working the docks and waiting for something to happen."
I chuckled. "Yeah, that sounds about right."
There was a long silence, in which I could sense that, as I
became more silently amused, Andy became more uncomfortable. Finally
there was a brief clatter, and Mai returned to the line:
"Give me that, Andy. My God. You are the most useless person
on the phone." Her tone turned from scornful to breezy in a heartbeat
as she continued, "Well, anyway, darling, we must be going, places to
go and things to do, but I just couldnt let the day go by without
calling you up and congratulating you. So you take care, now, and
well see you soon. You're coming to the Christmas party, right?"
"Wouldn't miss it," I replied. We played with each other's
mind for a few moments longer as per procedure, and then Mai hung up.
I stood in the kitchen for a couple of minutes, looking down
at the phone in my hand. I had done all the requisite mental math and
figured out what time it was in Scotland (about six P.M.) before I
realized I was doing it; then, shaking my head, I hung up the phone
and went back out into the yard.
Once there, I cleared my mind of all external distractions and
set about beating the hell out of the board some more. I kept at it
until I noticed I was having trouble seeing the board, and realized
that it was because darkness had fallen.
I knew then that there must be something heavy on my mind. I
never lose track of time that completely, thinking about nothing,
unless I've got something major to think about.

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents

A Third Universe from the Right Production
of a
Straight On Till Morning Film

STREET FIGHTER: WARRIOR'S LEGACY

BATTLE 02: DETENTE

Benjamin D. Hutchins
MegaZone

with the gracious assistance of The Usual Suspects

Copyright 1996 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

I went into the house. Zoner was out someplace, apparently,
and I was still feeling the vague discontention I'd felt all day. I
didnt know exactly what it meant, but I knew it didn't bode well --
when I'm feeling like that it usually means I'm not ready for whatever
task I'm about to undertake, and thats not a good thing when I'm
preparing for a fight.
When faced with a problem like this, many martial artists
meditate. I suppose, in the strictest sense of the word, that's what
I do too, in that I try to clear my mind of conscious thought. For
some, this state comes from incense and sitting in a darkened room.
Others like to go up mountains or sit under waterfalls or train as I
had been doing all afternoon. During one of our long phone
discussions, Cammy told me that she likes to go up to the main tower
of Castle MacLir and watch the Northern Lights when she's feeling
out of sorts mentally. I wasn't surprised by that; militarily trained
or not, she's an aesthetic. Me, I like to get out on the highway.

One shower later, I was in my room getting dressed when I
noted the presence of a nose poking around the edge of my door,
followed shortly by its owner. My dog Fury, feeling much better since
his brush with medical care the previous month, trotted into the room,
jumped up onto my bed with effort exaggerated for my benefit, and
settled into a sitting position, leaning his rawboned mass against my
shoulder as I pulled on one of my socks, tail pounding a funky
backbeat on the mattress.
"You silly mutt," I told him, and pushed him away so that he
toppled over and sprawled on his side. He looked solemnly up at me,
drooping jowls and ears deceptively framing unexpectedly merry eyes,
the classic bloodhound effect.
OK, story time. You might expect that "Fury" wasn't his full
name -- that, like most purebred dogs, he had a tremendous long
pompous name (yeah, I know what you're thinking, "Oh, like 'Fury'
isn't pompous?" At least it's short) given to him by the breeder as a
pup, under which he was registered with the AKC. Had he come from a
conventional breeder, well, then I'd say you were right; but he didn't
and you're not.
Fury was, in fact, a gift to me from a friend of mine
overseas, one of the most unlikely and yet perfectly suited people
I've ever encountered on the circuit. How unlikely? Brother Thomas
O'Hara -- or "Brother Tommy" as we always call him -- is a Catholic
monk of the Order of St. Ignatius the Defender (an obscure saint, not
to be confused with St. Ignatius Loyola, who, although he founded the
Jesuits, does not have a proper monastic order devoted to him).
I first met Brother Tommy four years ago in Spain, at a
tournament -- where else? At first, I thought he was just an
observer, or perhaps a brother skilled in medicine and borrowed from
the local abbey, for there was one, to attend the fighters injured in
combat. He was tall, and though it couldn't really be told from his
voluminous black habit, he was built like a bull, with a wild, curly
tangle of red hair surrounding his tonsure like a thorn hedge and
eyebrows you could hide a pencil in -- not the sort of man one expects
to find in the habit of a monk.
But then, the monks of the Order of St. Ignatius are no
ordinary brothers. According to Brother Tommy, who told me all
this some time later, the Ignatines were founded sometime in the
Middle Ages, whenever it was that the Turks were overrunning half of
Europe, after the example of Brother Ignatius, a Benedictine who had
fought as a knight in the Crusades and taken the cowl late in life.
Ignatius was a martial scholar, having studied the fighting styles of
dozens of peoples in his travels all over the world, and he believed
he had adapted and amalgamated the best and most spiritually
meaningful parts of all of them into a single form, which he taught to
some of the younger brothers at the Benedictine abbey to which he had
gone when he took the cowl.
Apparently Ignatius didn't believe that it was right or
Christian for the monks to flee before the heathen incursion, but
rather thought that they should stand their ground and fight back.
The Church held that this violated the peaceful tenets of the Rule of
Benedict, though Ignatius replied that he had written his own Rule and
wished to establish his own order. Still, Ignatius was not eager to
be branded a heretic, and was ready to bow to Rome's wishes and leave.
Apparently the Turks overran the monastery in question before the
brothers could go, forcing their hand, and in the ensuing battle
Ignatius was martyred, fighting without a blade, for the abbey had
none, to buy his brothers time enough to flee.
The Order of St. Ignatius was founded shortly after Ignatius
the Defender was canonized for his martyrdom, with the sanction of
some obscure medieval Pope or another, and since then they've kept a
fairly low profile, maintaining Ignatius's unique fighting style.
Having watched Brother Tommy fight, near as I can figure, I'd say it's
got elements of Shaolin kung fu and Kabaddi, that funky Indian
monastic style that's becoming more popular of late, along with
traditional Anglo-European staff and blade-arms techniques and boxing
and savate and gods only know what else. They train with modern
weapons, too -- the presence of the Remington 12-gauge pump-action
shotgun in their arsenal led Zoner to dub them "The Shotgun-Totin'
Monks of St. Ignatius" when we first visited the Ignatine abbey, which
didn't amuse their stiff-necked prior, though old Abbot Heribert and
Brother Tommy found it funny enough.
I didn't fight Brother Tommy in that tournament -- he fights
with a quarterstaff and, at the time, I wasn't fighting freestyle --
but I did get to see him flatten Gilles Lombard, the reigning savate
champion at the time, in sixty-two furious seconds, culminating with a
maneuver the monks of St. Ignatius call "St. Ignatius's Blessing". I
was most impressed, even if the wording of that blessing put me on the
ground with laughter. (Suffice it to say, it involves invoking the
saint's blessing, in Latin, while battering one's opponent senseless.
The juxtaposition tickled me then and it tickles me now.)
Later that day, we wound up working together, informally --
defending a restaurant from the predations of a group of Antonio de la
Vega's Spanish ninja, in what may well have been my first encounter
with them. That event pretty much sealed our friendship, and a year
later, when we met in his native Ireland around Christmastime for
another tournament, he gave me the pup who would grow up to be Fury.
Turns out they breed bloodhounds from the old Belgian St. Hubert stock
at the Abbey of St. Ignatius, and when he's not roaming the world
furthering his order's goal of toppling Shadolu, Brother Tommy, the
abbey's assistant precentor, doubles as kennelmaster. He suggested
the name; actually, he suggested I preface it with "Righteous", but I
decided against it. That would sound too much like a computer game.
Whenever I got into this kind of contemplative go-for-a-drive
mood, Fury always followed me to the garage, demanding to be in on
everything I was up to. He tended to get irritated if I did something
without him, which sometimes made traveling an adventure in
misdirection (many countries don't particularly like it if you just
fly on in with your dog). Zoner had gotten to the point where he
could usually persuade Fury to do what he wanted if I wasn't around,
but by and large he only listened to me.
I have a theory that dogs like women more than men, and
one-person dogs often make exceptions based on that bias. Fury hadn't
met Cammy yet, so I hadn't had a chance to put that theory to the test
in his case, but I was confident of the outcome when the time came.
For that matter, I had been trying valiantly, since the first time the
subject of pets came up in on of our conversations, to prevail upon
her to get a dog of her own; so far I had been unsuccessful.
"I think I'm wearing her down, though," I told Fury with a
grin, and ruffled his ears a bit in the course of standing. He
favored me with a mournfully speculative look and then jumped down
from the bed with an ungainly galumph.
I paused by the door to pull on my shoes and shrug into a
light jacket, and then, with Fury meandering at my heels, went out to
my car.
OK, story time. Like most things which figure prominently in
my life, the car had a story; also like most, I didn't know it all.
My father and I had found it rotting in a junkyard in Maine, while
hunting for parts for our regular car, in fact. Dad was a mechanic,
both amateur and professional, all through high school and college,
and had infused in me some of his gearhead spirit; but where both of
us reveled in the hunt for something new and unusual, the
tracking-down of something rare and the gleeful finality of "the
Deal", there our tastes diverged. Dad, an inveterate taker-apart of
things, liked to buy piles of shop manuals and get them greasy tearing
his new acquisitions apart and putting them back together into
like-new working order. Personally, I've always preferred to get
behind the wheel and see what they can do.
This divergence of interest gave us a decent working
arrangement during my high school years, especially the last two
years, during which I had my driver's license. We would hunt down the
vehicles together. With the Deal complete we would drag our latest
find home and Dad would tear it apart. During this phase I would
endure, sometimes with interest but usually bored, and serve as an
assistant, light-holder, and tool-fetcher. Then, when everything was
back together, we would strap in and I would test drive it. If all
went well, we'd drive the car for a while, then sell it and find
another project.
The car I had taken to Worcester with me was our first and
longest-lasting project, a distinction which made it special enough
that we had kept it through the succession to follow. (Of the eight
or so projects we undertook before I moved away to college, we kept
three.) It had been the longest-lasting, mostly because it was in the
worst condition of any of them when we acquired it.
We found it sitting forlornly in the mud of the Central Maine
Auto Salvage lot behind a heap of squashed AMC Javelins and
seventies-era Impalas, where, hidden from view, it had escaped the
jaws of the cube crusher which had come through the area for all cars
over twenty years of age a couple of years before. It crouched in the
mud on disintegrating suspension, four long-flat tires crumbling away,
the interior long since rotted to a tangle of rusty springs, the
engine and transmission stripped away decades before.
But the frame was straight, the sheet metal was dingy and
rusty but still strong... there was still a car in there, if we could
strip away the rust, rot and grime and make it live again.
Never let it be said that we backed down to a challenge.
So we bought it, dragged it home, tore it apart, sanded for
what I would conservatively estimate, in hindsight, to have been just
shy of forever, and performed a complete frame-up restoration; and a
little over a year later we rolled out of the garage at the wheel of a
shiny, like-new 1957 Chevrolet 210 sedan.
This car has two strikes against it from a Serious Collector's
point of view:
- It's the mid-range 210 model, not the luxury Bel Air which
is so sought-after, famous, and seen on calendars; and
- It's a sedan (meaning it has metal frames around the
windows), not a hardtop.
But oh, we loved it. It has the same magnificent, classic
lines as its uptown brother the Bel Air, the same two little chrome
"missiles" on the hood, the same cleverly hidden gas tank filler that
gives full-service gas attendants (not that there are any of those any
more) such fits (trivia: it's hidden behind one of the pieces of
chrome molding down the back of the driver's-side tail fin). With its
multitudes of chrome shined up and its fire-engine red paint waxed and
polished, it was every bit as capable of turning heads and garnering
compliments.
And with the running gear we fitted to it, it was faster than
most. We realized the instant we found it that it was a lost cause to
try and restore it authentically, so instead we had fun with it:
balanced 327 small-block V8, nice big racing headers, four-speed
manual transmission. Fun, fun, fun.
This was the car I learned to drive in.
When the time came for my split from home, I won't say I won
it easily; my father and I weren't on the best of terms at the time.
But that, as they say, is water under the bridge. We're all a little
older now... Dad is a bit mellower, I'd like to think I'm a lot wiser,
and damn, now that I look at it, the Chevy really needs a wash.
I held the door for Fury ("After you, sah") and then slid
behind the wheel with the ease of long familiarity. The engine came
to life with its usual understated rumble. We cruised out of the
garage and onto the streets of Worcester in grand style, me feeling
better already to be at the wheel of my favorite car, Fury at his
station leaning out of the passenger window. Our house was right on
the corner of Cedar Street (a fairly minor street) and Russell Street
(fairly major), with the driveway and hence the address on the former,
so two right turns in fairly short order put me on Russell heading
toward WPI with Elm Park on my left. Evening was fully entrenched by
now, and Elm Park was lit along the paths and dark in the thickets,
deceptively peaceful.
But that was somebody else's problem, as I turned right onto
Highland Street and headed downtown toward the Interstate. Tonight
was a wind-in-the-hair highway night, balmy but not oppressively hot
as Worcester is wont to be in the late summer, with a peculiarly
fragrant feel to the air. One of Tortorelli's searchlight trucks was
parked in front of the New Aud; I missed the reason as I guided the
Chevy through the lights.
Once we were securely Eastbound on Interstate 290, I reached
down to the dash and flipped on the stereo, having forgotten what tape
I'd left in there the day before.

Don't tell me about the Answer
'Cause then another one will come along soon
I don't believe you've got the Answer
I've got ideas too
But if you've got enough naivete
And you've got conviction
Then the Answer is perfect for you

I must be crazy, studying the only martial art in the world
which DOESN'T have a Path to Ultimate Enlightenment.
All right, I exaggerate; but enlightenment isn't what Ler Drit
is about, unlike a lot of other forms. The Dritkar isn't concerned
with the next life or ephemeral concerns like enlightenment; he seeks
only to come as close as he can to perfecting himself, in mind, in
body, in technique. In practice, there always compromises, of course,
because people are inherently imperfect. I've accepted that I will
probably never be as fast as I'd like thanks to my build and the way
my nervous system is wired, so I make up for it by building on my
natural advantages, strength and stamina. (Rose, in contrast, knows
that she will never have really bonecrushing upper body strength, so
she concentrates on speed and accuracy instead, borrowing some
philosophical tidbits and a couple of moves from Wing Chun kung fu and
jeet kune do.)
The same thing holds for the rigorous mental conditioning;
identify your strengths and build them as high as you can, to
compensate for the weak areas which you will only be able to shore up
so far. This principle explains why I have developed a rather limited
repetoire of Ler powers, but why each of them has a great deal of
force behind it; a strong will does not often mesh well with an agile
mind. I'm no simpleton and I can think on my feet, but my true talent
lies in the Icon of Stone discipline: resolute and immovable, in
contrast to Rose's Psycho Whirlwind style.
We're radically different thinkers and fighters, but the
hallmark of our style is evident in both of us: the relentless sense
of purpose (whatever purpose that may be); the dogged loyalty to
causes and loved ones; the absolute refusal to give up, ever.
Which is why it disturbed me so that Rose had, apparently,
given up...
My chariot thundered across the bridge over Lake Quinsigamond
while I arrived at this conclusion, but other than to keep watch for
road hazards and keep the car between the dotted lines, I didn't
really notice. I was on a roll now.
I had kept the thought in the back of my mind, ever since Rose
returned to my life, and in doing so started me back down the
warrior's path my mother had so hoped I had abandoned, that I might
have to fight Bison some day. After all, he was at the head of
Shadolu, and that organization had its fingers in a lot of pies,
including several which were peripherally, or sometimes
not-so-peripherally, related to the informal street-fighting circuit I
fight on. (They're also involved with the more or less parallel
circuit the Bogard brothers and Joe "Mr. Subtle" Higashi fight on, but
not to the same extent, probably because their circuit is a bit more
formally organized -- more resistant.)
Besides which, there was always the possibility that if I
started making a name for myself, he would recognize me as a fellow
student of Rose and seek me out, to suborn me or to destroy me. The
fact that his pet ninja had started sending underlings to test me --
my ego would not permit me to think that those clowns he sent after me
in Scotland were actually supposed to be a threat -- seemed to bear
this out. I had definitely caught his interest, but whether he
intended me good or harm I couldn't tell yet.
Nor did I care, for the day I would ally myself with the man
who crushed the proudest spirit I ever knew would come shortly after
the day Hell froze over.
And now I had the source of my misgivings in my hands. I
wanted to know why I was fighting: for myself, for Rose, for the
stained name of Ler Drit? Certainly not for God or country; the US
doesn't recognize street fighting as a particularly patriotic activity
(much as Bucky Guile would like to think otherwise) and the only god I
believe in is UNIX (and it's infested with daemons -- ok, ok, the
geeky puns are done now).
The answer, when I thought about it, was easy... all of those
things. The tougher the challenges I found on the circuit, the better
I would become, and that's what Ler Drit is all about. The more fame
I could gather, as a fighter of honor and decency, the more I would
accomplish toward dispelling the cloud Bison's cruelty and
ruthlessness had gathered over the name of my art.
And if my travels on the circuit brought me face to face with
the man himself, I would have an opportunity to redress both that and
the scars he's left, visible and otherwise, on my teacher.
Now there were some causes I could believe in.
"I'm playing in the big leagues now, Fury," I commented.
"It's important that I know why I'm in the game."
The big hound glanced skeptically at me for a moment, then
resumed his intent examination of the scenery rolling past. We were
rapidly running out of I-290 to cruise; within a couple of miles I
would have a decision to make.
With a much lighter heart, I turned north.

MZ
Sometimes being a freelance spy can make you feel pretty
silly. How would you feel standing in a phone booth doing anything
but using the phone? That's what I was doing. Standing in a
telephone booth near the movie theatre in Lincoln Square, thumbing
through the phone book. In the G's I found the expected manila
envelope; something small and heavy in one corner shifted as I peeled
the envelope out of the book, so I tilted it and let that object fall
into my hand.
It was a key to the change reservoir. Of all the agencies I
do some work for, I like the way this one gives its mission briefings
the best. I unlocked the reservoir and opened the little chrome door,
revealing a tiny little reel-to-reel tape recorder. I guess they
still use those because the self-destructing tape doesn't work very
well in cassettes. I switched it on and pulled the other item out of
the envelope: it was a slightly grainy black-and-white picture of a
nice-looking dark-haired woman wearing some kind of uniform hat, the
sort that peaks in front, like Luftwaffe officers used to wear.
"Good morning, MegaZone," said the familiar voice on the
tape. "The woman you are looking at is Laura Roxanne, one of
Shadolu's top field agents. She is reputed to be a student of Lord
Bison himself. We have received information that she has been placed
in command of a Shadolu field squad tasked with obtaining the
controller for the former Soviet orbital weapon codenamed
'GoldenEye'."
I turned over the photo, and on the back was a diagram of a
thing that looked like a briefcase, with some knobs and switches on a
panel inside surrounding a big ovoid socket. Paperclipped to it was a
picture of a big amber crystal that looked like it would fit into that
socket nicely.
"The GoldenEye controller is being moved from the old Soviet
research center near Gorovsibirsk to Moscow by a special train on the
Trans-Siberian Line next Monday. Our intelligence indicates that
Laura Roxanne intends to strike the train and steal the controller
somewhere between Gorovsibirsk and Dnepropovinsk."
Well, that would explain why they were sending me instead of
Jim Phelps and his team. They'd heard I was going to be in the
neighborhood -- Sergei Zangief lives in Dnepropovinsk.
"Your mission, Zoner, should you decide to accept it, is to
stop Laura Roxanne and acquire the GoldenEye controller for our side,
or, failing that, see it destroyed. As always, should you or any
member of your IM Force be caught or killed, the Secretary will
disavow any knowledge of your actions. This tape will self-destruct
in five seconds. Good luck, Zoner."
Did any IMF agent -not- accept the mission?? I've always
wondered about that.
I put the photo back in the envelope and tucked it away in the
inside pocket of my jacket just as the tape sizzled and erupted in a
billowing cloud of white smoke. Closing the change reservoir, I
pocketed the key and shoved the booth open, trying to look like a man
who's just been smoking and having an important discussion with
someone on a pay phone. The motorcycle cop over by the theatre
wrinkled his nose and shot me a dirty look -- for some damn reason the
self-destructing tape smoke smells almost exactly like marijuana smoke
-- but decided it wasn't worth his while to hassle me. Prudently, I
left the Suburban where it was and headed across the street to get
some food at Denny's.

G
Five hours or so after I decided to head north on I-495, Fury
and I were pulling into beautiful, bustling, oh-so-urban Millinocket,
Maine, population 7,000 or so, on a good day.
OK, story time. Millinocket is a town which pretty much
sprang out of nowhere in the early 1900s, near (but not quite on) the
West Branch of the Penobscot River, apparently because some hardy
settler-types were boating up the Penobscot, got a little lost, ended
up on Millinocket Stream and said to themselves, "Boy, we're right
smack in the middle of a big ol' coniferous forest here - wouldn't
this be a great spot for a paper mill?" So they built one, and a town
sprang up around it in short order, complete with a fairly major rail
hub to carry raw materials in and finished paper out. The way it
sprang up earned the place the nickname "Magic City of Maine's
Wilderness".
Here's the punch line: the place hasn't grown notably since.
It's still a paper mill with a small town sprawled out around it -
economically depressed and deadly boring.
"You're not missing anything," I murmured, unconsciously
quoting a movie. "I grew up here, you know."
Fury ignored me, cheerily panting out the window. I drove on
through the town's two traffic lights (one at the top of Central
Street, by the McDonald's; one in the heart of downtown, the Central
Street-Penobscot Avenue intersection), onto Katahdin Avenue and on out
to Bates Street, the woods highway to Baxter State Park (home of
mighty Mount Katahdin, the state's highest peak), and, incidentally,
the road to my old neighborhood.
After the Bangor & Aroostook Railroad overpass, left off Bates
Street, across from the newest of the three entrances to the
ever-expanding Rush Trailer Park, is a street named Rush Boulevard
(despite the fact that the trailer park is entirely on the other side
of Bates). This curls out into the woods toward the old B&A rail
lines, eventually ending in a largish figure-eight in which two
streets are knotted together, Rush and Morgan Lane. On the backcurve
of the second loop, on the right, stands a house, unremarkable in this
neighborhood, smallish and brown, with a fenced yard and a nondescript
old Chevy Impala in the driveway.
I got out of the car and crunched up the gravel driveway with
Fury loping at my heels. There was a glowing bell button next to the
door, but for as long as I could remember the bell itself had never
worked, so I rapped on the door with my knuckles instead. There was a
pause... the extreme quiet of the neighborhood pressed in around me,
so different after Worcester and yet so familiar from childhood. For
a long moment, nothing moved, nothing stirred except the branches of
the trees in the wind. It was the kind of perfect peace I had
sacrificed for the urban lifestyle I loved. I missed it only rarely,
but the feeling was always keener when I returned to it for a while.
A click, and the door opened.
"Hello, Ben," said Rose, regarding me with an even gaze from
her violet eyes.
"Hello, Rose," I replied.
A beat.
She smiled. "Come in, come in. Hello, Fury."
Rose's house was finished, inside, in a curious and cozy style;
all the walls were paneled with thick tongue-and-groove boards of
blond softwood, which made the room look smaller than it really was
but also made the lighting look warmer. The floors were all hardwood,
and there was a distinct lack of nicknacks, gimcracks, gewgaws, objets
d'art, and other small objects described by cute, meaningless words.
It was also all pretty much one big room, with a narrow sleeping pad
in one corner, a kitchen in another, a couple of threadbare but
comfortable chairs, a radio, and bookshelves lining all the available
wall space (except for the spot over the fireplace, which was taken up
by a large painting of a mountain in a thunderstorm). The only
interior door led off to the left into the small, functional bathroom.
In the back, a sliding glass door led out down into the back yard,
where Rose kept a modest vegetable garden. An Oriental throw rug
covered the trapdoor in the floor which led down to the basement.
A small fire was burning in the fireplace, just enough to take
the slight chill off the unseasonably cool evening; after completing
one perimeter patrol of the room, Fury padded over and plopped himself
down with a contented canine grunt on the warm hearth stones. Rose
ushered me to one of the chairs and then curled with feline grace into
the other. She regarded me for a moment with that eerily perceptive
look of hers before she spoke.
"You've gotten stronger," she said. She wasn't speaking
simply of physical strength, of course, although that had increased
since she last saw me. In that momentary examination she had gauged
the strength of my Ler, my life energy, and that's what she was really
talking about. She smiled again, another of the small, quiet, private
smiles toward which she was given. "That's good, very good. You'll
be needing it, I suspect, sooner than you think."
I cocked an eyebrow, inviting her to elaborate. As usual, she
didn't.
"That's what I love about you, Rose; you're always so
reassuring."
She chuckled, a bit indulgently, and silence descended, warm
and comfortable, broken by the popping of the fire and Fury's snoring.
This lasted for some time, and I was momentarily tempted to start
casting about for something to say to break this silence when she
said, "What troubles you?"
"Pardon?" I replied.
"What troubles you?" Rose repeated. "You're off to Russia for
your second World Warrior bout in a couple of days. You wouldn't drop
in unexpected for a visit in the middle of the night unless something
was troubling you, something you wanted to talk about."
"Actually, you're not quite right this time," I replied with a
smile. "Something -was- troubling me, but I figured it out for myself
this time." I explained to her the line of thought I'd been mulling
over back in Worcester.
"If that is the only reason you put yourself at such risk,
both by fighting in the circuit and by making yourself a thorn in
Bison's side, stop now," she told me.
"I can't stop now," I replied. "I'm too far in... now I have
to find out how it's all going to come out. Stopping now would be
like putting down a book in the middle of Chapter 10." I grinned.
"Besides, how else will we ever be able to see how far my potential
can take me? I'm at my best when I'm questing."
She said nothing for a few moments, gazing at me in silent
contemplation, a sad look in her eyes.
"You do not have to do this."
"Don't I?" I replied. "If not me, who? Do you have some
other student out there who I haven't noticed? If you've given up,
then I'm all that's left." She stared at me, somewhere between angry
and hurt, but I couldn't stop myself now. "What's the matter, you
don't -want- the last seventeen years to have meant anything? Well,
sorry, but I don't appreciate having my time wasted! You started
this, Rose, and now I have to finish it."
"Don't speak to me like that," she said, but she wouldn't look
at me.
"You'd have a lot more credibility when you say things like
that," I replied, "if you'd make eye contact when you say them."
That got her to look up, with something approaching the old
familiar flash of fire in her dark eyes.
"-There- we are," I said. "That's better. Besides, I'm not
planning on taking him on -tomorrow-."
"You might have to," she replied.
"Nah," I said. "You said it yourself, once - events have a
kind of flow to them. First he'll have his Spanish pal send some more
of his minions after me to see if he can figure out how far I've
come. Then maybe he'll send one of his party boys after me, if I've
been a big enough pain in the ass. By the time he gets done screwing
around I'll be large and in charge, and it'll be way too late for him
to stop me."
I didn't really believe most of this, at least not with the
sort of arrogant overtones I was putting on, but it did sound like a
nice way for things to unfold. I certainly wouldn't mind being large
and in charge, in any event.
"Overconfidence of that kind is what cost me so dearly three
years ago," Rose reminded me, not entirely kindly. "If he determines
for certain that you're my student he'll hunt you until he runs you to
ground, and then he'll kill you, after extracting my own whereabouts
from you."
"It wounds me that you think so little of my skill -or- my
resolve, Rose," I said. I was baiting her on purpose, I must
confess. My grandfather once told me, if you really want to know what
someone's thinking, make him so mad he can't lie to you. Or did I see
that on TV? Probably both, actually.
"And it hurts me to think that I trained you so badly you'd
overestimate them!" she snapped. "I did not raise you to be a fool!"
"You raised me? Hmm... I suppose you did, for the most part.
But that being the case, you sure as hell didn't raise me to give up
on -anything-. Of late, you haven't been providing the best example
in the world, but hey, your generation is always saying 'do as I say,
not as I do.'"
"Benjamin," she said slowly, and I knew I had her. "You are
trying my patience."
"Well, then, we're even," I replied. "You've been trying mine
for two years now."
She paused, and for a moment, I thought she was going to back
down even from me. Then she opened her eyes, angrily meeting my own,
and growled, "That's quite enough. If you won't show me the proper
respect, you'll have to be taught better. Outside, now."
A-ha!
I must admit, I was remarkably cheery for a man who was about
to get into a fight.

The first thing that I noticed about the fight was how
imprecise and sloppy Rose's technique had become in the time since she
last fought -- eroded by months of neglect, her attacks and defenses
had become almost hesitant, as if she weren't quite sure whether they
would work any more. She had kept fit -- she had too much pride even
beaten to let her appearance or conditioning slide -- but she was slow
and uncentered, with no rhythm or cadence.
The second thing I noticed was how surely an outsider, someone
who wasn't familiar with the swift, sure, economical movements she had
once displayed in combat, would still find her dazzlingly graceful and
powerful. She might be out of practice and out of step, but she still
hit remarkably hard for a woman her size, and she was still faster
than I.
The third thing I noticed was how easily I was bettering her
anyway, which, I must admit, shocked the hell out of me. I mean, I
had expected her to be slow, and off form, but gods! In all my years I
had never beaten her, never seriously challenged her, and now, I was
outmaneuvering her easily. She was still faster than I, but not fast
enough to hit me before I could block her, nor quick enough to have an
attack launched before I could figure out what it was. She wasn't
improvising. I had her angry enough to make the gesture, but not
angry enough to mean it.
Hmph. That wouldn't do.
I stopped, let my hands fall to my sides, didn't bother
blocking the next combo. The blow to my chin stung, and the fist in
my gut hurt and made me cough, but neither was powerful enough to
stagger me, or even move me appreciably. Then, no longer caught in
the momentum of the attack, she realized I'd stopped and backed up a
step, looking at me curiously.
"Well?" Rose demanded. "Defend yourself."
"Why should I?" I replied. "You're not even attacking me.
You're just swinging your hands and feet for something to do, and I
happen to be standing in the wrong place. Now are we going to fight,
or are we going to waste time?"

/* Big Country "The Travellers" _The Collection: 1982-1988_ */

Her eyes flashed with something more than just an echo of
their old fire, she let out a snarl that brought Fury awake with a
consternated bark, and I knew I was really in for it now.
In our tenure together, Rose and I had only properly fought
twice before, both times not out of disagreement but for testing. We
used to spar almost constantly, but that was different, that involved
the occasional protective pad and certain ground rules. In a fight
situation there were none of the former and few of the latter -- only
the informal etiquette of the ring bound either of us to any level of
conduct.
In both of our previous fights, it had been me who woke up in
the brown armchair with a whacking great headache.
She came at me, in that initial rush, with an ill-timed but
well-executed flying kick. I avoided it with a simple sidestep; she
landed lightly next to me and launched a punch series at my head. We
moved a few steps across the yard as our arms interlocked in a
well-remembered pattern of punch and block; then she seized one of my
arms and used it as a lever to push herself up and put a whip kick
into the side of my head.
In the old days, I would have been taken entirely unaware by
this clever trick, standing there like a goof with my arm rigid and
providing her the balance point she needed to make the kick work. Not
this time, though; I recognized the tension and dropped to one knee,
disrupting her arc and spilling her heavily to the turf. She
recovered fast, sweeping my feet from under me, but before she could
plant my face in the grass with a quick stomp I was up.
This was more like it. She caught me a nasty backfist to the
gut, driving me back a step, then drove me back two more with a kick
to the sternum; coughing, I swung into my double kick, a maneuver
which turned me completely around, three hundred sixty degrees, and
incorporated a high wheel kick from each foot in the process. Rose
ducked the first one, but wasn't expecting the second; as she rose
from the duck to throw a punch combo at my head, the second caught her
unprepared and sprawled her flat on the ground.
Her timing was improving, and her reflexes smoothing out, but
she was still using fairly generic attacks, all of them common to the
base combat form on which all of the various Ler Drit styles are
built. I supposed it was up to me to raise the ante again, and
launched myself into a semi-levitative slide kick, knocking her down
just as she got back to her feet.
Looking up at me, a sly smile creeping onto her elfin face,
she wiped at her mouth with the back of her hand, then leaped to her
feet and launched herself at me, her long-fingered, slender hands
extended before her. They flared, and blue-white discharges crackled
between them. In our first fight, she'd finished me with this trick,
and although I was stepping back and raising my hands, it was too late
for me to block her this time either.
She seized my head between those hands, whiting out my vision
in a sudden blaze of mind-numbing pain, and whipped completely over me
around that point, landing behind me, her back to mine. Blinded,
dazzled and dizzy with pain, I acted purely on instinct, dropping to a
half-crouch and whirling with one foot extended, and half out of pure
luck I caught her legs as she landed.
Following the sound of her unceremonious landing, I hopped
forward and drove out a flared fist, and the impact jolted my arm as I
caught her shoulder. Then, keeping my hands defensively in front of
me, I backed off a few paces, shaking my head to clear it.
This bought me a respite of a sort, but it also gave her time
to get up and roll out her shoulder where I'd clipped her; an even
trade, I'd say. My vision cleared and my balance steadied, and I
realized that I was really none the worse for wear from an attack
which had leveled me like a poleaxed redwood only three years before.
Now it was Rose's turn to see the surprise I had in store for
-her-. I built my Ler up as if I intended to throw another flarefist,
and, indeed, my fists did glow a bit. But that was not my intention.
Rose regarded me, a dozen paces away, with an expression partway
between exultation and annoyance, her grievance with me not quite
forgiven.
I grinned at her, and we had an understanding.
She grinned back, gathered herself, and charged me, fists
flaring, preparing to launch one of her whirlwind attacks, and I
dropped back a half-pace, setting myself. I took a breath, called my
Ler to action, and thrust my hands forward, palms outward, as if I had
a large round object cupped in them. I had invented this technique,
if it could be called such, by accident while flare training one
afternoon not too long ago, and hadn't been comfortable enough with
its reliability to try it in my bout with Cammy.
I could just as easily have done it silently, but someplace in
my travels I had picked up the habit of calling the names of the
bigger moves I used -- probably from the Bogard brothers or Joe
Higashi. So I shouted, little regarding the neighbors, as I knew they
were too far away to hear clearly and too insular to investigate:
"PSYCHO LIGHTNING!"
The bolt of lightning flew free as called from my glowing
hands, leaving me exhilarated and slightly tired at the same time, and
I noticed with approval that I didn't wobble on my feet as I had the
first few times I'd expended that much energy at once. Rose,
dumbfounded, was caught flat-footed, so to speak, in the middle of her
takeoff run -- blown off her stride, off her feet, and several yards
back by the blast. She plowed a small furrow in the yard as she
landed, skidding to a halt. Warily, I advanced, but as I drew nearer
it became clear to me that the fight was over; she was conscious, but
coughing, sputtering, and making no significant effort to get up.
It was over and I had won.
But had I accomplished my higher objective?
Still coughing as I reached and knelt at her side, Rose
hitched herself up on her elbows, glared at me, her eyes luminous in
her blackened face, and growled, "WHERE did you learn THAT?!"
I shrugged. "Figured it out myself," I replied.
She sat up and launched a punch at my head; I singularly
failed to flinch. She stopped the blow, millimeters before it would
have clipped my ear, then smiled and opened her hand, placing it
gently over the back of my head.
"I really have been insufferable the past couple of years,
haven't I?" she asked with a grin, then leaned a bit closer and kissed
me, as she always had, fondly and a little wistfully, too.
I drew her tight to me and hugged her properly for the first
time in three years; she was a bit sooty, but I didn't care.

I woke the next morning from a dream of being buried alive and
suffocating to discover that the crushing weight on my chest was Fury,
who, for some bizarre reason understandable only in the mind of a dog,
had decided that my needs as Boss would best be served if he were to
take up station draped straight across me. I tried for a moment to
shift him, but gave up the effort as hopeless within a few seconds,
subsiding to the floor.
After carefully analyzing the situation for a moment, I came
up with my first great witticism of the day: "Urgh."
"You're going to have a tough time against Zangief," Rose's
voice declared from somewhere above me, "if you can't even outwrestle
a sleeping dog."
"Sue me," I grumbled, opening my eyes to see her looming over
me. I feigned fright at her terrifying colossalness, which earned me
rolled eyes as she walked over to the kitchen. Gritting my teeth, I
gave a concerted heave and relocated the dog, who opened one sleepy
eye and made a half-hearted attempt at glaring at me before lapsing
back into unconsciousness. I got to my feet, stretched out the
residual stiffness left by the evening's exercises, and staggered into
the kitchen area, where Rose already sat at the small table, sipping
coffee.
"Rose," I said, taking a seat at the table myself, "I've been
thinking... there's something I would ask of you."
"Name it," she replied.
"I'm not worried for myself, we've covered that, but there are
some pretty dangerous people I'll probably be annoying along this path
I'm on. If they were to find out about my background, my family,
there could be trouble here. I need someone I can trust to keep an
eye on things and make sure nothing goes wrong."
She smiled, nodding. "I think between your grandfather and
myself, we can keep things under control." At my look of surprise she
laughed and continued, "Don't count the old man out just because he's
pushing seventy. He may never have had any formal training, but in
his day he was a champion, and he's lost but little of his form. He's
not that much older than I am."
That checked me for a second. I have a habit of forgetting
just how old Rose must be -- I don't know any exact figures, but given
the fact that her meeting with my grandfather reportedly coincided
with the birth of my father in 1952, she must be considerably older
than she looks, which isn't much older than I. Every time I stop to
think about it, it gives me a moment's pause, but I always pass over
it well enough. Of all the things we have done together, the only
thing I regret is the time we spent divided by anger, pride, and
foolishness.
"Ah, for a past as checkered and adventurous as his," I said
with a grin. "Although, you know, he's never told me very much about
it. I know he rambled around Southeast Asia for a few years after the
Korean War, after Dad was born, and you met him out there... "
"So I did, so I did. I was but a child in those days, fresh
from the care of my own Valdritkar, but I remember them well."
"It surprises me that Gram didn't raise any objections to him,
running around having such a dangerous life with a wife and child
waiting for him at home."
"Those were different times," Rose replied. "Women, at least
American women, were not so vocal or open about their objections as
they are now. Who's to say your grandmother did -not- object? But it
was something your grandfather felt he had to do, just as fighting in
the war was something he felt he had to do, and so she honored him,
held her tongue and waited for him to tire of the life and settle.
And so he did, eventually, and none the worse for his adventures.
Roaming the world as a street fighter was surely no more dangerous
than fighting in the war, that one or the next."
"Gramp didn't go to Vietnam," I reminded her. "He left the
Army because of his objections to that war."
"Mm," said Rose, nodding. "So the story goes today, anyway.
The real truth is far more complicated and sinister, and it's a tale
best left untold for now. Will you trust my judgment that these are
details best left to another time and place, that you are, clicheed as
the saying is, not yet ready to know them?"
My interest was piqued, but I nodded nonetheless. "Valdritkar
Rose," I replied formally, "I have only questioned your judgment three
times in this life, and twice I was wrong to do so. When the time
comes, you or he will tell me; until then, I can wait." I chuckled,
shaking my head with the irony, and observed, "My poor mother... did
she -know- she was marrying into such a strange clan?" Probably not,
given subsequent events."
"You must visit her before you leave town," Rose told me,
gazing at me intently. "She would never forgive you if you did not."
"There are many things she may never forgive me for," I
replied, "but you're right. I'll stop by on my way out of town."
Rose stood, and taking her lead I stood with her; she came
around the table and embraced me, kissed me, and then, her forehead to
mine, said softly,
"Thank you, Valdritkar Gryphon, for teaching me what an ass
I've been these past two years."
Startled, I took a half-step back and looked at her.
"-Val-dritkar? Since when have -I- achieved mastery?"
"You defeated me last night, did you not? The title is yours
by right, and well-earned, too." She gave me a last kiss and said
with a grin, "Now go on, you've got too much to do to be hanging
around here shooting the bull with your broken-down old teacher. Go
see your father, go see your mother, and get back to Worcester. If
you're going to Siberia, Zoner's going to need your help putting the
skis on the plane."
I groaned. "Don't remind me."

My visit with my father was cordial, if brief. He was never
bitten by the bug that visited his own father and son, what old-time
monks might have called the vagus, that need to wander and explore and
see the world. He had settled comfortably in Millinocket out of
college, and neither divorce nor remarriage -- check that, I reminded
myself, they're not married, not yet at least -- had served to shift
him yet. As such, he didn't really quite understand what I did, but
he was happy enough that I was enjoying doing it, and not starving in
the process. If he worried about the fact that I might be injured or
killed while about it, he kept it under his hat, probably wisely
sensing that he wouldn't be able to change my mind.
That errand done, I next walked up the steps to my mom's
house, which was closer to the middle of town, across the street from
the great brick bulk of the old George W. Stearns High School
building, which had been the Middle School since the new high school
went up in the late sixties. If luck was with me, she wouldn't have
the initiative to try and talk me out of it -again-, and would instead
be in her slightly sullen 'grudging acceptance' mood.
Anticlimactically, she wasn't home. I left her a note, went
back to the car, and drove south, and felt vaguely disoriented for the
rest of the day.

Sunday, July 12. You won't find Dnepropovinsk on any map I
know of. Other than the steel mill, there's nothing there of note;
just the permafrost and a Trans-Siberian Railway station. There was
no airport, but a big flat place just outside of the little town which
had grown up around the steel mill sufficed with the snow cover and
the skis fitted to our Hercules. As soon as we were down, a small
group of people came out of the mill and started toward us -- we were
expected.
"Try not to flash that thing around," I said to Zoner as he
checked the magazine on his Glock .45 and tucked it away somewhere in
his parka.
"Yeah, yeah," he replied. "C'mon, let's go meet the natives."
We stepped down from the main hatch; as Zoner locked it up, I
took in the sight of the group crunching toward us through the blowing
snow. I couldn't tell very much about them, really, other than the
fact that there were four of them; they were all bundled up in heavy
winter gear, just as we were, against the bitter cold which prevailed
here even in June. None of them was over six feet tall, so apparently
the local champ hadn't come out to greet his challenger personally.
That was OK; not many did, any more. Maybe he was busy beating up a
bear for practice. Fury snuffled at the snow a bit, found nothing of
interest, and regarded our welcoming committee impassively,
indifferent to the cold.
As they drew nearer, the biggest one, at the front of the
group, pushed back the hood of his parka. He was a big, fleshy
fellow, pushing the wrong side of middle age, with thinning silver
hair, bad teeth but a cheery smile, and the kind of ruddiness that
comes from taking in about half your daily caloric intake in liquid
form. He greeted me volubly in Russian, speaking fast enough that I
only caught about every fourth word. It seemed to be a welcome.
The smaller figure to his left stepped forward and pushed back
his hood as well, just about startling me out of my boots, since he
was a she, and not only that, but a she that I knew.
"He says he's Arkady Vonotov, the factory manager, and he
welcomes you on behalf of all his workers, including Zangief.
Furthermore, he apologizes that Zangief is not here to greet you
personally, but he is supervising a particularly tricky process on the
floor and cannot get away until it's done," said Cammy cheerfully.
"Hi! Surprised?"
I'd've told her I was, but she had already hopped into my arms
and kissed me into submission (which, admittedly, didn't take much).
"What are you doing here?"
"Told you I'd come and see your next fight if I could get
away, didn't I?"
"Yeah, but I figured you'd be busy. Do they know you're
here?"
She shrugged. "Probably not. They can survive without me for
a few days, though; they're big boys." She noted the presence of
Fury next to me. "Speaking of big boys. I think that's the biggest
bloodhound I've ever seen."
"It's mostly bone, too," I said, scruffling the top of his
head. "Can't be muscle, he's laziness incarnate."
She crouched before him, holding her hands open and inviting
him to check them out, which he did, cursorily, before wading forward
through the snow and landing a couple of licks on her face, which set
her to backpedaling, trying to fend him off, scratching behind his
ears and laughing all at once. Nothing like a dog to bring out a
person's inner dignity.
The Russian delegation began chattering amusedly among
themselves, apparently tickled by my incredulous reaction, even if
they didn't understand what it was about. Cammy got up, turned to
them and rattled off something in their language, and I cursed
inwardly -- I had no idea I was this rusty. I got the general gist of
it, though; she was explaining to them that I hadn't been expecting
her, and she hadn't met the dog before.
And off we trudged to the factory, me with Cammy on my arm and
a goofy grin on my face. This was turning out to be a better day than
I had expected.

The factory was about like I expected it to be, hot and dirty
and dark, with the odd river of orange-hot molten metal running
through channels and pouring into the massive crucibles. In the
middle of the process floor, pointing at some equipment and talking to
a couple of guys in dirty work clothes, was a man who simply -had- to
be, Sergei Zangief. Vonotov went over to him and had an exchange with
him, and then he turned and lumbered over to us, standing just a
little too close so that I'd have to look up at him. He was huge,
easily the biggest man I'd ever seen, and his shoulders were nearly as
wide as I am tall. Huge muscles bulged under threadbare work clothes
which seemed almost to be begging for mercy. His bushy brows drew
together as he scowled at me momentarily, as if put off by something
inconvenient in the timing of my arrival.
"So," he finally rumbled. "You are Gryphon, little man?"
"That's me," I replied.
"Well, now you have seen me," said Zangief, spreading his
massive hands and grinning wolfishly. "Want to go home now?"
"Not yet," I replied, grinning back. "You're still standing."
He glared down at me for a moment, and I wondered if I might
have precipitated the bout a day early. Then he grinned and clouted
me on the shoulder, rocking me sideways a little bit, and laughed a
big, expansive, resounding laugh.
"You have big balls, little man!" he declared. "I like you.
We have some fun tomorrow. Excuse right now, I must be back to
supervising. We talk more at dinner!"
As he headed back to the two workers, I turned to Zoner, who
shrugged.
"Great," I muttered. "He speaks English, but he talks like
Boris Badenov. Not that my Russian would sound any less lame to him."
Zoner was busy snickering into one of his mittens. It was
absurdly hot and humid in the factory, so we soon divested ourselves
of our cold-weather gear, hanging it up in the cloakroom on the other
side of the little cafeteria. This was a smallish factory, employing
only a hundred or so men, and its modest production of steel was
placed on rail cars right outside, where the Trans-Siberian line
curled into town from the nearby hills and back out again toward
Moscow to the west.
Vonotov basically gave us the run of the place, with the
rather obvious injunction to stay out of the way of the crew and not
get into anything dangerous, although I noticed the plant manager left
it to our discretion what was and wasn't dangerous (I'm guessing
"cafeteria not very, red-hot crucibles extremely"). Zoner almost
immediately disappeared, which was kind of odd, but I didn't think
much of it at the time. Maybe he went to find the john.

I spent the rest of the day catching up with Cammy and trying
to pick up what I could of the way the steel mill worked. During the
lunch hour there was a lull in the action, so I explored the mill a
little, trying to get the lay of the land, and before long I had a
looming shadow.
"Is not pretty and shiny like American steel mill," said
Zangief, "but it gets job done."
"Don't kid yourself," I said, "American mills don't look much
different." The main process floor had several small exits along the
sides and in back, but the largest exit was a pair of big side-hinged
doors which opened into a loading dock where the Trans-Siberian spur
cut close to the plant. The dock itself was closed off from the
outside world with a huge rolling steel door. I opened the small
man-door to the side of it and looked out at the gleaming rail tracks;
Zangief crowded onto the step with me and pointed off into the
distance with one enormous finger.
"Rail line comes in from Gorovsibirsk, turns right, and passes
through town." I could see the dark line in the white snow, curling
in from the east to duck through the cluster of low, square buildings,
overhung with a pall of chimney smoke where the afternoon thermal
layer was keeping it from rising. The spur snipped neatly off at the
station, came out to the plant, passed by the loading dock and
rejoined the main track just clear of the tiny town, so small we could
see the whole thing from the dock steps.
"Boy, if that train jumps the tracks on that main turn into
town... " I murmured.
"Happened once, a couple of years back," Zangief said,
nodding. "Was slowing down for town, but not fast enough. Didn't
quite make it to factory, but was close. At full speed, freight
trains on this part of Trans-Siberian go 135, 140 kilometers an hour."
I nodded. "Not pretty."
Zangief shrugged. "Nobody killed, was freight train, engineer
jumped when he knew train was lost. We put it back on tracks, no
problem." He turned and went back into the factory. Intrigued, I
followed, and watched the action back on the process floor, the huge
crucibles coming out of the blast-furnace area, proceeding in a
stately way down the long track, and tipping at the end to pour out
their red-hot molten cargo into the rollers, which spat it out into
the coolers in great flat sheets. I asked what most of their output
was used for.
"Tanks," said Zangief. "For water, gasoline, whatever. Tank
trucks, rail cars, fixed storage." He smiled. "You have lot of
questions for such a little man."
"Oh, well, we Americans are insatiably curious," I replied
with a grin, and Zangief laughed, a big, expansive, entirely Russian
laugh, clapping me on the shoulder with a hand the size of a serving
platter. It didn't, as stereotype would demand it must, make me wince
or stumble, or knock me over; it was a considerately delivered,
friendly clout, by a man who is fully aware of his own strength.
"You are funny little man," he declared. "I look forward to
fighting you." And with that, he ambled off to admonish the men in
blue shirts, who were returning to work the crucibles.

Suppertime came, the night lingered in fully falling -- this
far north, at this time of year, it came only reluctantly, and dragged
its heels about it -- and as we all repaired to the mill cafeteria, I
realized that I hadn't seen Zoner since just after we arrived. I
checked the cloakroom; his coat and boots were gone. I wondered where
the hell he could have decided to go in this wasteland. Into town,
maybe? But what would he want there?
"Something wrong?" came Cammy's voice from the door to the
room.
"Zoner seems to have gone for a walk," I replied
thoughtfully.
"Around here?" said Cammy. "Odd, what could there be around
here that would interest him?"
"Beats me," I replied. "Still... " I shrugged. "Maybe he
got bored with the movie scene and went back to the plane." I went
back to the cafeteria and bummed the use of the plant phone from
Vonotov, and, in his office, I called the mobile number of the
Hercules.
When the answer came, it was Zoner's voice, but not live; he'd
set a new message on the recording machine.
"Thanks for calling Trailing Edge Air Lines. There's nobody
aboard to take your call right now, so leave a message at the beep.
Gryph, if that's you, I've gone camping. I'll be back tomorrow, and
don't worry, I'll -keep warm-."
I hung up, not seeing any particular need to leave myself a
message. Camping, eh? He'll keep warm, with that curious emphasis I
hadn't missed. Well, well... seems this was a working vacation for
Zoner.
"Well," I said to Cammy after I told her of his message, "he's
a big boy. As long as he shows up to fly me out of here when I'm
done, he can have his camping trip."

There was no hotel in Dnepropovinsk; no one ever visited
except the families of the workers, who stayed with them. Zangief
opened his doors to me, and Cammy as well, and expressed his own
concerns that Zoner had apparently decided to go walkabout.
"Gets cold at night," he pointed out unnecessarily. "Maybe we
should look for him?"
"Nah, he'll be fine," I replied. "Thanks for the offer, but
I'm sure he knows what he's doing." I've -never- been entirely sure
he knows what he's doing, but I wasn't about to share that with a man
I'd known all of twelve hours, and who was self-admittedly looking
forward to taking his best shot at beating my head in the following
day. "We'll see him tomorrow afternoon."
Zangief nodded, apparently satisfied by my confidence. "OK!
Tonight we rest. -Tomorrow- night, no matter -who- win, we -party-!"
"Absolutely!" I agreed, and I meant it.

MZ
Fuck, it was cold out.
I know what you're thinking. "Well, duh, asshole -- you're in
Siberia." But still... it was July, I was expecting it to be just a
little warmer. I mean, we weren't -that- far north of the Arctic
Circle. But no, it was completely freezing cold, and I was starting
to wonder if coming out here for an evening's scouting was really
worth the intel it might bring in.
The line was fairly straight out across the tundra. No
overpasses to drop from, no hard curves to slow the train. This just
wasn't a good place to board. They'd have to slow down on the way
through town... the line curved out past the mill. And there I had my
plan. The train would be by around noon; now it was time to go back
and get my kit ready. And get my ass out of the great, barren,
frozen, rather dull outdoors. Along the way I laid a few railway
torpedoes in preparation.

It took a good half an hour to trudge back to the Herc.
Seeing her was like finding an oasis in the desert, and my fingers
were cold enough that I had trouble punching the release code into the
cabin lock. Ben wasn't aboard, so I figured he'd shacked up with
Cammy - this second World Warrior fight was important to him, and I
didn't want to screw it up by involving him in the mission if I could
help it. I fired up the APU and cranked up the heat in the living
quarters. Living quarters? Well, yeah, this wasn't your everyday
milspec Hercules; this was a custom ship I'd received by way of an old
job. Can't say much more than that, sorry.
Anyway, at heart it was an L-100-30; a stretched model,
designed originally for civilian cargo use. Military cargo tends to
be alot denser than civvie loads - plate steel, MREs, etc - so space
isn't an issue so much as weight. But with civvie loads you tended to
run out of room long before the plane was maxed out weight-wise.
Solution: stretch the fuselage. I used the extra room for an integral
bunkroom along the forward bulkhead, just aft of the cockpit. Couple
of bunks, a small lounge area, head with a shower (what a luxury, but
so nice), and a planning room. And, of course, the weapons locker.
It wasn't much, but it was enough for a couple of guys on a short
trip.
If we ever needed an extended base of operations we could
always load the MMB (Mobile Modular Base) in the back. The MMB was
basically a custom built RV that fit snugly in the remaining cargo
area. You could reconfigure it so that it made a dandy base for a
long range recon patrol, or a slick pad for a spring break in Daytona
Beach. I was playing with the idea of building another MMB which had
base facilities for an AWACS-type operation; the big stumbling block
was that I hadn't quite figured out what to do about the radome.
Maybe a contoured phased array system...
Sorry... I love my plane, so I tend to wax ecstatic about it.
The airframe itself is mostly on par with the Hotel model used
by the US Air Force, with a few of the special-operations mods; there
are the flare launchers and the mounts for IR surpressing exhaust
diffusers for the engines. I had the JATO bottles fitted, just in
case we had to make a rapid exit. A normal Herc needs a flight crew of
three, but this lovely is fitted out with an early digital data bus
system. Not quite as hot as the layout they worked up for the Juliet,
but it means we don't need a flight engineer. In a pinch I can handle
it all myself, but it is nice to have another set of eyes and hands to
share the load.
And, of course, it has the ski mounts for arctic and antarctic
missions. Last year I added an RAF-style refueling probe for a
mission I did with MI-6. As far as I know, that's a unique combination
of options. All I need now are some hose and drogue pods for
refueling and skyhook gear and it would really be a do-it-all ship.
I'll get to it - someday. Anyway, where was I?
Oh yeah. After I thawed out, I prepared my kit. I was taking
my Glock M21 (of course), with a few extra mags. But I needed
something more, something with a bit more power and accuracy, and a
larger payload. The M16A2 was out; too unwieldy in close confines.
The Uzi and MAC-10 were too wild and emptied out way too fast. I
certainly didn't need another pistol. The BAR was right out. Gryph
might get miffed if I swiped his Grease Gun, although I kind of
doubted he would need it anytime soon. He rarely carried, and never
on a street-fighting expedition, but he liked guns and had a fairly
large collection, the most utilitarian members of which he kept aboard
in case he needed them during a trip. He's the kind of guy who
doesn't shoot unless he absolutely has to, then makes it count.
I settled on the Calico-9 for a medium arm; it has a high "zap
gun" factor with that helical magazine, but it's a reliable weapon and
I wouldn't have to reload it. If I did, it meant I was in a -bad-
situation. But I needed something else. There was a certain je ne
sais quoi missing. Then my eyes fell upon it: the Pancor Jackhammer
Gryph got me for Christmas last year at the International Assault Arms
Show in Monaco. Oh yes, that was it. Nothing like a high capacity
combat shotgun to liven things up, especially in the close quarters a
train job was liable to entail.
I stuffed a few random supplies into my field pack:
flash-bangs, a few frags, MREs - the usual lethal stuff. That about
wrapped it up. I stripped down and climbed into my bunk for a night's
rest. I listened to the howling winds as I drifted into sleep.

G
I was starting to wonder if Zoner's camping trip had gone as
well as it might; it was time for the fight and he still hadn't
appeared. I didn't really have time to worry about it, though.
Things to do. I'd left Fury at Zangief's house; he was sleeping in
and anyway, he doesn't like to watch me fight.
The loading dock of the factory, as I may have mentioned, was
separated from the rest of the factory by a large set of double
doors. Today, those doors were bolted open, and the outer door was
closed. The brightest lights in the factory were out here, big white
spots installed specifically to light up Zangief's fights; it wasn't
the fanciest arena I've been in, but it was big enough and open
enough to do the job, and when you get down to it, that's all that
really matters. The steelworkers had knocked off for an hour and
everyone was crowded around the big double-door opening, staying
behind the white line painted on the floor across the doorway.
Zangief had not yet appeared, but they were already chanting his name.
Tough hometown crowd.
It was cold outside, but it was hot in the factory, so I had
dispensed with an outer shirt. Today I was sporting black BDU pants
made out of that clever ripstop fabric with the grid pattern in it, my
new red All-Stars, a black T-shirt with the logo of an obscure
Worcester band, and a bright blue Spectrum cap given to me by a friend
of mine who works for that august organization. It might have made me
look a little meaner than I intended, dressing all in black, but
that's life. In here, a white T-shirt would just get filthy. The
floor looked like it hadn't been mopped since the czars.
The steelworkers' chant disintegrated into a wild cheer, and
they parted to permit their champion to pass. He stalked through the
ranks, which closed again behind him, into the makeshift arena,
swathed in a long, red, high-collared cloak. The evening before, we
had spent a good amount of time laughing and joking; now there was no
mirth in his face. It was set in such hard angles and lines that it
might well have been cast from the steel they made in that factory.
He reached up with one massive hand, undid the clasp that held
the cloak together at his throat, and threw the cloak away.
Wow. He looked even bigger out of his work clothes. He had
on a pair of wrestling trunks and soft boots, and aside from the
pattern of scars left on his body by the claws and teeth of his most
common sparring partners and a mat of chest hair that can only be
described as impressive, that was it.
My Russian was smoothing out again with the use it had been
getting over the past twenty-four hours, so I didn't need Cammy to
translate what he said for me.
>Are you ready to lose, little man?<
"Nyet," I replied.
He smiled for the only time in our fight, nodded, and settled
into a half-crouch, his huge hands spread out before him.
This would be a unique experience for me. It wasn't very
often at all that I was the smaller, nimbler opponent in a match,
wasn't very often that my opponent was stronger and probably tougher
than I was on an absolute scale. But then, that's why Ler Drit has
multiple forms. If I couldn't match Zangief blow for blow in power,
I'd have to hit him more than he hit me. More to the point, I'd have
to keep him from getting hold of me with those iron hands.
Perfectly sound theory, anyway. At the front of one of the
clusters of watching workers, Cammy gave me a cheerful thumbs-up; I
returned it and then got my mind on the job as Arkady Vonotov gave the
order to begin.
I centered, shuffled my feet a little in the grime on the
floor, and waited. It's his arena, I figured; let him move first.

MZ
For the record, Part 1 of my plan came off perfectly. The
train ran over the railway torpedoes I laid (which, by the way, are
signaling devices; they go bang when the train goes over them, but
they don't do any damage), and the engineer, like any well-trained
engineer, hit the brakes. I jumped on a little before it was really
going slow enough, and for a second I feared I'd dislocated my
shoulder, but it turned out to have been the right thing to do.
Unfortunately, then it all went straight to hell. Part 2
didn't work out so well. While I was crouching on the fantail of the
last car, holding my shoulder and moaning, I felt the train start to
pick up speed again. That wasn't in the script -- the engineer was
supposed to -stop- the train. Had I laid out the torpedoes wrong and
accidentally set up the code for "slow down for a second, then
resume"? Did the codes mean something different on the
Trans-Siberian? Did they not use torpedoes after all? If that was
the case, the engineer might have just slowed down to make sure there
was nothing wrong with the tracks, then resumed speed when he realized
his train wasn't going to derail. But I had checked all that out. In
any case, -something- was wrong.
The problem there was that, unknown to him, it just might
derail if he kept going at full speed.
"Shit!" I said, and kicked open the door on the back of the
car. On the other side, a pair of very surprised goons in
maroonish-red Shadolu shock trooper uniforms whirled to face the noise
of the door frame shattering. I shot them with the Calico and took
rapid stock of the room. It was one of those fairly fancy cars, laid
out to be like a sitting room in an expensive hotel. A few arm
chairs, a nice rug, even a bookcase. But no emergency stop cables.
That being the case, there was no time to be, as I had
originally planned on being, subtle. If I didn't get up to the
locomotive and stop this train, something very bad was going to happen
rather soon. I stuffed the Calico back into my field pack and got the
Jackhammer ready; I had a feeling I was going to need it.
I shoved open the door in the front of the car and jumped
across the coupling, blasting a hole through the next door on the way;
there was nowhere else to go. Unfortunately, this posed something of
a problem, because the next car was a similar sitting-room kind of
affair, and it had a lot more than two guys in it.
The unwinking eye of the Jackhammer kept them from moving for
a moment; they just sort of stood there shocked and took in my
entrance. I took a quick and dirty count and called "a dozen" close
enough. Clustered in one corner was a small group of guys in
Russian Army uniforms; some were tied up and others appeared to be
dead. This wasn't going to be quite as simple as I thought, was it?
I wouldn't exactly call them 'friendlies', but I didn't want to catch
them with my fire.
The group of uniformed thugs parted, and from the front of the
car the woman the IMF had warned me about appeared, pushing her way
through the group. She had on a uniform like theirs, but a bit more
elaborate, and where they had little hotdog-bun hats like Army noncoms
used to wear, she had that officer-type cap she was wearing in the IMF
file folder. In her right hand she had a Beretta 92F; in her left,
she had a large stainless-steel briefcase. If it wasn't for that gun
I may have felt a bit differently, she was rather attractive in person.
"Laura Roxanne, I presume," I said.
"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," she said coolly.
"For what agency do -you- work? CIA? Interpol? MI-6, perhaps?
No... your equipment is too eclectic for you to be British
Intelligence. You certainly aren't Russian, either way."
"You've never heard of the agency I'm with," I said, feeling a
smirk that might well endanger my continued health slip onto my face.
It was probably true; very few people have ever heard of the
Impossible Missions Force.
"Unfortunately for you," said Roxanne, "my curiosity does not
compel me to keep you alive until I find out."
"Maybe this shotgun will do a better job."
"Perhaps." She put the Beretta away, into a cross-draw hip
holster held in place by her uniform's Sam Browne-style belt, then
turned and shoved the briefcase into the hands of one of the thugs.
"If anything happens to this, Gustav, your entire family will die."
Gustav nodded and looked a little afraid, immediately
establishing a deathgrip on the case's handle. Looks like I found the
GoldenEye controller.
"I'm not sure what you plan on doing," I told her, "but you
might be interested in knowing that there's a good chance this train's
going to derail soon."
"Is there," she said, supremely uninterested. She took a
couple of steps toward me.
"There's a better chance that if you take another step, I'll
shoot you."
"Is there," she repeated, and took another step.
I fired.
She wasn't there, but one of the other guys obligingly made
sure that expensive 12-gauge ammunition didn't go to waste.
Something hit the side of my head like a steam hammer. I
blacked out for a half-second, long enough to cause a slight stutter
in my perceptions but not really long enough to qualify me as "knocked
out". I stumbled to one knee, lost my grip on the Jackhammer, just
about lost my breakfast -- the side of my head felt like somebody had
taken a high-tension line to it. I remembered swimmingly that Roxanne
was supposed to be a student of M. Bison's form of Ler Drit, and
decided I never, ever wanted Ben to hit me and mean it. He was
unlikely to sucker punch me that way, but if he could hit nearly as
hard as this woman, let alone with the same electric zap, I didn't
want to take the risk.
I tried to get up; she helped me by giving me a good swift
kick in the gut that lifted me right off my feet for a second. This
time I did lose my breakfast, but oddly enough, the experience cleared
my head a little -- enough that I knew to fall on my back and thumb a
smoke capsule out of my equipment belt. By filling the room with
mist, I bought myself a little time to get to my feet and clear my
head out, but I still couldn't find my shotgun. If I couldn't get
some kind of a gun on this woman I was dead meat. I pulled out my
trusty Glock and hoped for the best as the mist cleared.
As it thinned I saw her, right in front of me, winding up for
a wheel kick that would have knocked my goddamn head off. I put
a round over her left ear, taking off her hat and a lock of her hair,
and that got her attention.
"Next one goes in your eye," I told her.
For a moment we eyed each other across a smoky gap of a few
feet.
Then the world turned upside down. The room shook with a
shuddering BANG and threw us all to the floor, and I was reminded that
we were on a speeding train which, by the feel of things, had just run
over that switch I threw. The engineer had been expecting the train
to take the mostly straight course through the town of Dnepropovinsk;
instead, it had just taken a sharpish left onto the spur that led to
the steel mill. It felt like we were still on the rails, but that
wasn't going to last -- we were already unstable and doing a good 130
kilometers an hour straight for the side of the factory, and there was
no way we were going to make that curve.
From my new perspective, I could see the Jackhammer; it had
slid under a table. Well, that's something, anyway, I thought as I
grabbed it and slung it over my shoulder. NOW the engineer was
getting the hint that he might have done a bad thing. The noise and
shuddering got worse as the brakes slammed in, but I knew in my heart
that it was way too late for that to help now.
I lunged across the floor, my hands finding the scattergun and
bringing it up to fire. Most of the thugs were still trying to
untangle themsevles from the heap on the floor, but a small group were
already standing and rapidly developing situational awareness. That
wouldn't do. Since Plan A was shot to hell, it was time for Plan B.
Plan B, first developed by the noted archaeologist and adventurer
Henry Jones, Jr. back in the twenties, was simple. If written out it
would simply state: Make it up as you go along.
I dropped the standing group with two rapid shots from the
Pancor. Laura was not in sight and the door to the next car was ajar,
so I didn't see any reason to stick around. The train was shuddering
something awful as it fought futily to dissipate energy in a more
controlled manner than by, say, slamming into the factory. I was
nearly to the door when the train lurched sickeningly and left the
rails.
I hit the floor, put my hands over my head and hoped I wasn't
about to start a new career as heavily armed luncheon meat.

G
Zangief sized up the situation for a moment, then took two
immense strides forward and swung into action, throwing a clothesline
that spun him halfway around. I dropped to one knee, ducking under
it, and drove my flared left fist into his flank. It felt like
punching a brick wall, but it hurt him a little, too. Not all that
much, but a little. He dropped his right fist onto my head; I was a
little slow ducking away and caught the blow on my shoulder, not hard
enough to numb the arm, but hard enough to remind me I was trying not
to let him do that.
Still down, I swept his legs, spilling him to the floor, then
went for a jumping stomp. He rolled out of the way and grabbed for
me, but too slowly; I was already out of range. I think he was
starting to get mad. He stomped straight toward me, stopped, and
threw a short jab kick that caught me off-guard. As the kick knocked
me back, he took a hopping half-step and shoved a fist into my face;
fortunately, it was only a jab, but I still felt as if someone had
smacked me in the forehead with a baseball bat. One of his huge hands
closed on my shoulder, and another grabbed for my belt. I gathered my
wits and realized I had to do something quick, or he was going to
shove my head so far into the ground it would come out in Australia.
It was about then that we both noticed the deafening Diesel
roar, the howling train whistle, and the scream of metal on metal
drawing rapidly nearer. Near the man-door next to the big rolling
loading door, Arkady Vonotov looked out the little window, his eyes
widening to the size of dinner plates.
>TRAIN!< he bellowed. >The train is jumping the tracks, it's
heading right for us! Run, into the factory, hurry!<
"We finish later," Zangief said, plopping me down on my feet
but retaining his grip on my shoulder as he half-dragged me onto the
process floor behind the flood of alarmed steelworkers. I looked
around for Cammy, but she was ahead of us already.
C - R - A - S - H - ! - ! - !
If you haven't been inside a building that's had a train crash
into it, I guarantee you I can't adequately describe what it's like.
The locomotive had started to make the turn, so it didn't come
straight into the building; instead it caught the corner of the
loading dock and tore that wall off the building, leaving the inner
wall mainly intact. Instantly a geyser of icy air screamed into the
building, or, I suppose, more accurately, all the hot, humid air
inside burst out, the moisture condensing into a cloud of mist that
boiled out into the cold Arctic midday.
Hitting (and demolishing) the concrete slab of the loading
dock as well as most of that particular wall bled off most of the
locomotive's energy; fortunately, it hadn't been pulling a
particularly heavy or long train. It fetched up with a burst of smoke
next to the factory, its last set of wheels caught in the tangle of
rebar left from the wrecked slab.
While we were collectively trying to take in this turn of
events, the windows on the side of the second of three coach cars
behind the locomotive burst out, and a group of guys in dark red
uniforms scrambled through the holes. The same happened for the front
car a moment later. They were armed, and moreover, they were wearing
uniforms I recognized. They were Shadolu field troopers. One of
them, a woman whose officer cap showed her for the ranking officer,
had a silver metal briefcase in one hand and a Beretta automatic in
the other.
The Shadolu goons trained their weapons on us, the collective
crowd of steelworkers and fighters, and their leader said icily, "You
will provide us with transportation out of this town, or we will kill
a random selection of you."
I looked to my left; Zangief narrowed his eyes and nodded
almost imperceptively. The touch of Cammy's fingertips to my right
hand prevented me from having to look to the right as well.
"I am not thinking so," said Zangief.
I gathered my Ler into my left hand and hurled it at the
nearest submachinegun-toting thug. "CHAIN - LIGHTNING!"
The Ler lightning flashed out and zapped the nearest thug,
then arced to the next. I had tried this stunt with a succession of
boards in the yard a few times; my record was four, but the boards
didn't have as much metal on them. I got six of the thugs, right down
the line, cutting a big swath out of their right flank.
Then we all charged them, and things got straight out of
hand. Some of the sturdier steelworkers grabbed tools and charged
into the fray with us. Zangief grabbed two of the thugs and did the
classic George Reeves bash-heads-together thing with them; I had to
pause and admire that for a second, earning myself an MP5 butt slammed
into my gut. Unfortunately for the guy doing the slamming, he was a
198-pound weakling who didn't know enough about the fine art of
subgun-butt-slamming to put his shoulders into it. I took the subgun
away from him and demonstrated the proper technique. He lay down to
appreciate it for a while.
This went on for a bit, until the crowd started to thin out
and the Shadolu thugs who knew something about fighting started to
emerge. I was about to show one of them the true beauty of a flared
left hook when something plowed into my back and sent me ass over
teakettle into a tool bench. Ouch. I tossed aside a couple of random
tools and got to my feet to find myself facing their leader, the
dark-haired woman with glasses, who was standing in a slightly flawed
Psycho Whirlwind attack stance.
"Your right foot's turned out too far," I told her.
"Who are you," she demanded, "and where did you learn the
flare technique?"
"Who am I? I'm Gryphon. Where did I learn my technique?
That's none of your business," I replied. "I never tell my secrets on
the first date," I added with a smirk.
With an inarticulate snarl, she came at me with a jumping spin
kick; her kicking foot was flared and it was fairly obvious she
intended to knock my head in with it. I blocked it; the flare stung
my arm, but I was ready for it. She landed on her feet, which wasn't
bad for somebody who just slammed their ankle into a stationary
object, and then Zangief grabbed her from behind, seizing her in a
bonecrushing bear hug.
She gasped, then drove an elbow into his side where I had
already tagged him with my ducking fierce. Grunting, he loosened his
grip a little, but a little was all she needed; she got her feet on
the ground, spun, and let him have a flared uppercut that threw him
backward. He hit the lip of the big cooling-water tank at the small
of his back, teetered, then toppled backward into the tank and
disappeared.
One of the other goons grabbed me, trying to emulate Zangief's
hug technique, but he was a lot smaller than Zangief. I shrugged him
off and bounced his head off the workbench next to me, then returned
my attention to his boss, who had whirled to face me, back to the
water tank, and who still had that briefcase in her hand.
"Ya know," I observed, "most people put down their briefcases
to fight."
"Your style is a perversion of Ler Drit," she said, as if the
fact half mystified her and half disgusted her. "Where did you learn
it?"
"A perversion, is it?" I replied. "Pot, kettle. Black?"
"Enough nonsense!" she barked. "ANSWER me or -- "
I was never going to find out "or what". Zangief came rising
up out of the water tank behind her about the time she started
"answer", his massive arms spread wide. She couldn't hear him over
the din of combat and I didn't let anything in my expression betray
his presence; she'd be aware of it as soon as --
He slammed his cupped hands together on either side of her
head. I winced in sympathetic pain. Even without the agonizing air
pressure in her ears, that must feel like getting your head caught in
a pneumatic press. She crumpled like an unstrung marionette, hands
reflexively clutching at the sides of her head. Zangief climbed out
of the tank, smirking, and waded into the fray again, hurling
red-coated Shadolu minions left and right. I caught a glimpse of
Cammy in there, swinging one guy in a chokehold so that his feet
whipped into another one's head. They looked like they had the
situation in hand. I was curious about what was in that briefcase.
I turned around just in time to get a real good look at the
corner of it, and then I was blinking at the grimy floor and wondering
if I was shot. No, I guessed not... the side of my head felt sticky,
but there was no apparent hole, just a really sore spot. I turned
over, trying to fight down the swimming feeling in my head, and looked
into the barrel of the Shadolu woman's Beretta.
She was none too steady on her feet yet, but she was pissed
off enough to counteract that and the muzzle of her pistol was rock
steady.
"I don't normally use guns with fighters good enough to
challenge me," she said, louder than she needed to say it, "but I have
no time for this. You will answer my question or I will kill you!"
"I'm not answering," I replied, pulling my concentration
together and trying to get enough energy piled up to zap her.
"Then goodbye," she said. Her finger tightened on the
pistol's trigger. The hammer started to tip back, and I steeled
myself to make my move.
BLAM!
The woman cursed, recoiling and grabbing at her hand, as the
Beretta jumped with a loud report and a fat orange spark out of it and
skittered across the floor. A spatter of blood oozed between the
fingers of her left hand (which was closed around her right), and fell
thickly to the floor, landing near the dropped briefcase.
"No shooting my partner," said Zoner's voice behind me. "The
briefcase, if you please."

MZ
Shit. The train crash must have knocked me out harder than I
thought. My vision was still snapping in and out of focus. I think I
bounced my head off of the door frame in the crash; it would explain
the volume of blood matting my hair and annoyingly running down my
neck into my shirt. I was trying to kill her, not pull off that
fancy-ass John Wayne disarm shot. I also should have had the presence
of mind not to mention the briefcase, since now she'd realize she'd
dropped it and try to pick it up.
I shouldn't've worried; Gryph was on the ball. Even as she
was looking down for it, he had already hooked the handle with his toe
and kicked it into his hand. He got to his feet, touched the welt on
the side of his head gingerly, and glared at Roxanne.
"Gryphon, may I introduce Laura Roxanne, supposedly one of
Shadolu's top field agents."
"Charmed," he said.
He would have said more, I imagine, but the sudden, loud,
metallic SPANG noise that echoed through the factory ended all the
ongoing conversations, and most of the brawling, too. Everyone looked
up to see the big master crucible sag on one hinge. Apparently the
impact of the train with the building had broken the other, or
accelerated an existing crack; but it wasn't going to stay up there
for long on one hinge anyway, and that was very bad news.
"RUN FOR IT!" Gryphon bellowed, repeating the suggestion in
Russian for the others' benefit. Everybody, including Laura Roxanne,
took his advice, running for the gaping hole where the loading dock
had been. That may have been a mistake, in retrospect; it was the
obvious course, but though there was a big hole in the building, there
was also a pretty sizeable drop and a wrecked train out there, a
lovely little obstacle course to be run before one could break to
either side and get out of the inevitable path of the steel in that
crucible.
We reached the outside of the inner doors ahead of the main
body of the melee, despite the fact that we started on the other side
of them; it took the bulk of the group that long to figure out what
was going on. By then, the crucible's other hinge let go, and the
thing crashed to the process floor, doing just what I feared it would
do: it toppled toward the doors, unleashing a flood of orange molten
steel toward the loading dock doors, where everyone was crowding out.
"Here," said Zangief to Cammy. "You catch." He seized her by
the scruff of the neck and tossed her off the stump of the loading
dock, into the snowbank off to the side and, hopefully, out of harm's
way. She tumbled into the snow, got up, and turned, waiting.
Zangief reached into the mass and started yanking people
bodily out and hurling them to her; she didn't actually catch them,
but she was there where they landed to keep them from falling on their
heads and to encourage them to run like hell in the proper direction.
What a novel evacuation approach. The mob of steelworkers and Shadolu
goons made it through the inner doorway, but milled at the shorn-off
edge of the concrete, unsure what to do. They couldn't jump down into
the jagged tangle of rebar and train parts; indeed, the only path to
safety seemed to be getting hurled by Zangief.
Gryph looked from one side of the doorway to the other, and
his face lit up in that way that meant he'd had an idea. He tossed me
the briefcase, ran to one side and grabbed a chunk of I-beam, shot
back the bolt that held the door on that side open, and started
shoving it closed.
"Zoner!" he shouted to me. "Shoot out the other bolt!"
So I did. I saw what he was planning, shot the bolt out and
had the door most of the way closed by the time he arrived.
He plopped the chunk of I-beam down on the concrete floor,
stood on it, and shoved the doors shut. A moment later the flood of
molten steel reached them; I could see the muscles in his back bunch
as he fought to keep the doors from bursting open. A trickle of steel
oozed under the doors, pooling around the I-beam.
"GET - THESE - PEOPLE - OUT - OF- HERE!" he shouted, pushing
with all his might and, I would imagine, hoping like hell the piece of
beam he was standing on was heavy enough that it wouldn't slip and
drop him face first into the molten metal.
I put my Glock away and ran to help Zangief chuck people into
the snow. Shadolu thug, steelworker, it didn't matter to us; nobody
deserves to die like -that-. Laura paused for an instant to glare at
me before allowing me to toss her into the snow; I'm not sure what it
meant, really. Finally it was down to just us; Zangief threw me, and
then turned and headed past Gryph to the other side of the dock.
Getting up a good running start, the big Russian charged
straight through the pool of molten steel, catching Gryph under his
arm like a football, and sprinted as fast as he could go (which was
faster than I expected) across the dock, performing a terrific running
long jump off the end of the platform. In my mind's eye I can still
see him in slow motion, leaving a comet trail from his burning
wrestler's boots, soaring like the Tick from the loading dock to the
snowbank and plowing into the snow like a meteor.
The doors banged open and the river of molten steel gushed
out, pouring over the end of the dock, setting ablaze the flammable
parts of the wrecked train cars, and hitting the snow with an huge
hiss and a curtain of steam.

We stood in the snow at the edge of the furrow of destruction
plowed by the train, watching the still-molten steel bubble and cool
where it had pooled in what was left of the middle train car.
Ben's hands were singed from holding closed the hot doors, and
Zangief's boots were just about gone, but both had escaped serious
burns, and Ben looked pretty content about having his hands salved by
his Scottish angel anyway.
The whole scene would have been most beatific if there hadn't
come from behind me a familiar loud metallic click and the sound of a
clearing throat. I turned around to see Laura Roxanne pointing an MP5
at me.
"The briefcase, if you please."
"Oh, come -on-, are we going to go through this -again-?!" I
demanded. "Look, can't you just admit you've lost?"
"Never."
"Sure, you can kill me. And then you'll have to kill
Gryphon. And then Zangief. And then all the rest. You're
outnumbered, and besides, you'd run out of ammo first." That damned
smirk was back on my face. -Why- do I do that?
"I do not have the patience for your weak attempts at humor."
"OK, so I need new mater -- "
I was interrupted as Gryphon reached over, took the briefcase
out of my hand and, with a negligent flip of his shoulders, tossed it
into the molten metal.
"NO!" cried Roxanne, dropping the submachinegun and shoving
past me to lunge after it. I restrained her; I think she really would
have charged after it. The steel was cooling, but it hadn't cooled
fast enough to save the GoldenEye controller. It took only about
twenty seconds to deform, and forty to vanish completely; only a few
chunks of especially tough wiring insulation and the gemstone, cracked
and worthless, floated on the surface.
Laura realized I was still holding her in my arms and
shot me another odd look as she pried herself free and stepped clear.
About then occurred to me that the thing my partner had just
destroyed was the object of my mission. "Hey!" I cried indignantly,
feeling a momentary solidarity with the Shadolu terrorist leader. "Do
you have any idea what you just destroyed?"
Gryphon shrugged and grinned at us both. "Nope, not a clue.
But hey, this is detente, guys," he said. "Shadolu doesn't get it; we
don't get it; the Russians don't get to keep it."
Zangief laughed explosively and clapped Gryph on the back.
Laura Roxanne shot Ben a look that would have slain an
elephant, turned on her heel, and stalked away. A few paces
from us, she stopped, spun around again, and snarled, "You'll regret
this entire incident." I'm not sure if she was talking to Gryph, me,
or both of us together, so I just put on my sweetest smile.
Then she pivoted and tried to leave again, followed by those
of her men who could still at least stagger.
"Don't you want to stay for the rest of the fight?" Gryph
called after her.
"Da! Aren't you curious who wins?" Zangief added.
She turned again. "You're going to finish your fight?" There
was a note of something that might have passed for interest in her
voice, but she was keeping it pretty well hidden.
Gryph shrugged and looked at Zangief. "I dunno about you, big
guy, but I hate leaving anything unfinished."
Zangief grinned sharkishly. "How can we have party if we
don't finish fight?" he replied.
Laura Roxanne seemed to consider it. For a moment I thought
she was going to stay, and I kind of liked that idea for some reason.
Then she glared again, turned on her heel again, and stomped away into
the snowy tundra. My orders were to stop her from getting the
GoldenEye, not to apprehend her, and besides, I wasn't up to a chase,
so I let her go. Nobody seemed inclined to call me on it.

G
I'm glad Zangief and I finished our fight outside. The snow
was bracing, and soft enough to keep him from crushing my skull with
his spinning pile driver. We pounded on each other for five or six
minutes, feeling the fatigue of our day's activities, and eventually
we were reduced to kind of staggering around trying to grapple, like
boxers in the tenth round or so.
Unfortunately, Zangief's punch-drunk stagger was a little more
feigned than mine. I launched a particularly sloppy punch combo at
him, and he sidestepped it, gathered me in with one massive arm, and
locked me into his bear hug.
He would have been better off just punching me out, which he
would have been perfectly capable of doing. The confining feeling of
the hug and the sharp pain it raised in my sore shoulder muscles did
more to revive me than the crushing did to stun me. There was no way
I was going to break his hold with my own muscle power, but I had one
more trick up my sleeve, and it was time to see what Zangief thought
of it.
I gathered my Ler and concentrated it like a flare, but
centered instead of focused on a limb. I didn't throw it in any
particular direction; I just let it out. This had the amusing side
effect of flaring my entire body; Zangief was suddenly bear-hugging a
man who was, for all intents and purposes, on fire. He reeled,
releasing me, and staggered back. With the last of my energy, I drove
in an old-fashioned left cross, with a lot of shoulder behind it. If
this didn't do the job, I was sunk for sure.
It crashed into the side of Zangief's jaw and hurt me almost
as much as it did him. We both stumbled back a step; his eyes seemed
to clear for a moment, as if my punch had roused him and made him mad
instead of stunning him. Then they glazed, and he toppled over
backward, sending up a spray of snow as he crashed to the ground.
It wouldn't do to pass out myself at this moment, but I wasn't
feeling up to an end-zone dance either, so I settled for giving myself
a good bracing whitewash with some snow and lurching over to the
spectators -- cheering despite the defeat of their hometown hero -- to
see if anyone had anything to drink.

MZ
When Zangief woke up, he was true to his word. We all walked
into town, and they threw one of the biggest feasts I've seen just
about anywhere, whether it be a steel mill town celebrating a street
fight or a high-class state dinner. The food was better than at any
state function, too. We drank more than we should have, laughed so
loud and so long into the night it would have bothered the neighbors
if they hadn't've been with us, and generally raised the roof. There
was music and dancing. Watching Gryph try to negotiate a kazakhchok
dance in his battered state was incredibly amusing; he didn't have
much to drink, but I could tell he was feeling pretty sore. He made
up for his sloppiness with sincerity, though.
Zangief amended his nickname for Gryph after experiencing his
full fighting skills. Instead of "little American buddy", Ben had
become "little American bear", a nickname that would probably stick
with him until Zangief's dying day. The other ironworkers took to
calling them "Big Bear" and "Little Bear". Gryph didn't seem to
mind.
The steelworkers weren't particularly distressed over the
demolition of their factory. Apparently they'd been trying to get the
management to update the facilities for some time. This was as good
an excuse as any, and they were pretty sure it would be followed
through. If not, well, the Russians have a word for that: nichevo.
It means, roughly, "Oh well, what can you do?" They'd move on. They
had skills, they knew how to live in lean times, and they were part of
a big and generous people who were learning how to be free again.
They weren't worried about their futures, however uncertain they might
be. I kind of envied them.

The following day, I transmitted my report to IMF. Hi,
guys... the good news is, Shadolu didn't get the box. The bad news,
it was, um, destroyed in the train crash. Wasn't my fault, honest.
They probably weren't going to pay me for this one, but screw it, I
can afford to give away a favor now and then. I think they were more
interested in getting it away from Shadolu than in keeping it anyway.
That taken care of, I went up to the cockpit and made sure
everything was set for takeoff. Great... all I was missing now was my
crew. I went down and stuck my head out of the hatch.
"You ever need anything, little American bear, you just ask
Zangief," the big Russian was saying.
"I will," Gryph promised. He stuck his hand out, and Zangief
took it in one of his big paws, shaking it firmly but not turning it
into a contest of strength. "You guys take care, all of you."
The steelworkers, led by their huge chieftain, fell back, but
they weren't leaving the field until we were away. They were better
hosts than that.
"Sure we can't drop you in Scotland?" Ben asked, turning to
Cammy. "We have to stop somewhere around there for fuel anyway."
"I wish," she said, "but I'm not going straight back. Can't
tell you where I'm headed instead."
He shrugged. "That's life in the industry," he said with a
wry grin. "I'm glad I got to see you here, anyway."
"Me too," she replied. "Take care, I'll see you soon." She
gave him the kind of hug and kiss I wish I'd get more often, and he
was still glowing when he and Fury climbed aboard and locked down the
hatch.
"Ugh," he remarked, settling into his seat and attaching his
harness points. "I think I'll take a month or so off. And spend the
whole time in the hot tub."
"You'll feel better after a good night's sleep."
"I've -had- a good night's sleep."
"How disappointing." I was smirking, I could feel it.
"Grow up," he growled, but I could tell he wasn't really mad.
We fired up the Hercules and headed for home.

END BATTLE 02

--
"Captain Scarlet was killed, but is expected to make a full recovery."
gry...@world.std.com -><- gry...@sidehack.gweep.net S.I.G.