[UF][FanFic] Twilight - Fifth Seal: Toccata

[Benjamin D. Hutchins]

Fritz Koopman kicked his right rudder pedal as hard as he
could, winged his Dragon over, lined up on what felt like the
second-from-an-infinite-number of Wyverns, and blasted it out of the
sky. Like most of the enemy's equipment, the Wyvern was an inferior
aircraft; that was one reason for the tremendous kill ratios the Air
Force was piling up. Another, Koopman was noting with increasing
satisfaction, was the fact that he and his pilots far outstripped the
abilities of the dark elves who almost exclusively flew the fighters
of Svartalfheim and Niflheim. He had no way of knowing it, but at
their prelaunch briefing, those elves had laughed uproariously at the
idea of a bunch of dead mortals flying Asgardian jets into battle
against them. Well, they weren't laughing any more.
Not, Fritz reflected to himself, that that necessarily meant
it was a free ride.
As if some supercelestial authority had decided that thought
needed reinforcement, a flash caught Koopman's peripheral vision.
Turning his eyes but not his head, he saw one of his flight's Dragons
break up.
"With regret, I must abandon my killercraft!" came the voice
of Pilot Officer Kerliss, a male of the reptilian Race, over the tac
net. His ejection seat parted from his dying fighter with perhaps a
half-second to spare, and Fritz spotted one of the Wyverns twisting
out of a half-roll and turning to strafe the pilot as he descended in
his parachute.
"I don't think so," Koopman growled, nosing his Dragon over
and punching the afterburner momentarily online. Preserving the life
(if that was the right word) of his stricken pilot took precedence
over conserving his more sophisticated ammunition; he tasked a
Skymaster missile with the destruction of that Wyvern and sent it on
its way, then radioed for a rescue unit for Kerliss.

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents

UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES FUTURE IMPERFECT
-=TWILIGHT=-

FIFTH SEAL: TOCCATA

Benjamin D. Hutchins
Lawrence R. Mann
MegaZone
Kris Overstreet

with the gracious assistance of the usual suspects

(c) 1998 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

The thickening weather settled over the battlefield, and the
sleet slashed down like a live thing, live and angry. Up to their
ankles in icy slush in one of the Einherjar trenches stood a
group of World War I soldiers, men well versed in trench warfare. An
officer of the Kaiser peered out over the battle lines, trying to make
out something, anything, through a battered set of field glasses. To
one side of him stood a British infantryman, clutching his SMLE rifle
as if it were his only link to reality; to the other, an American
doughboy did the same with his Springfield.
>This is pointless,< growled Leutnant Josef Halder at length,
reverting to his native language since he was mostly talking to
himself.
"At least they're not using gas," the shivering Tommy
offered.
>Small favors,< Halder replied.
"I think small favors are the only kind we're going to get, my
friend," said the American doughboy.
The German nodded, but said nothing, his gaze still intent on
the all-too-near horizon. Suddenly his eyes caught motion, a great
dark shape moving behind the line of the enemy -- too big to be one of
those verdammt crawlers of theirs, and its motion was wrong. It moved
as if... alive?
"Was ist... " he murmured, adjusting the focus and wiping
ineffectually at his glasses' wet lenses.
"Fenris," the Tommy gasped.
"Scheiss!" cried Halder. "ACHTUNG!" he bellowed at the top
of his considerable lungs. "FENRIS APPROACHING!"
Down the line, the men of the 121st Einherjar Infantry readied
themselves, for the great wolf and his vanguard were bearing down on
their position, and there was nary a god nearby to help them; only one
of the mortal warriors, who observed the approaching enemy with
narrowed eyes and knew that it would take more than a pair of
automatic pistols to get him out of this one.
Gryphon knew that his powered armor was in sorry shape. He
had been meaning to overhaul it, repair the damage done to it in his
fight with Largo, but he'd never gotten around to it. It was still
sitting in pieces on his workbench, out in the garage of his New
Avalon home, awaiting the weekend when he finally had the time and
initiative to piece it back together. It had seemed so low-priority
-- after all, he was Chief of the Utopia Planitia Yards and a flag
naval officer, hardly the sort of jobs where one expects to need a
powersuit.
At least, he remarked ruefully to himself, you didn't tear
it any further apart. Aside from being disassembled for manual
removal, it was in the same condition it had been at the end of the
battle; he hadn't stripped any systems. He wasn't sure if the
hyperquantal call signal from his armor matrix chip would work across
whatever gulf separated New Avalon and where he was now, but he knew
that simple space was no barrier to its action, so it was certainly
worth a try.
He activated the chip and hoped for the best. For a moment,
nothing happened, and he had resigned himself to the probability that
he was too far away (in one way or another), or it was too badly
damaged, for it to respond; then he was frozen in place by the aligner
field as the scan lines gridded his body.
The process had always amazed him; he had never pretended to
understand how the armor matrix worked. It was simply another product
of CLULESS, yanked protesting into existence in the winter of 1991
when he needed a weapon and had enough data on the fictional version
of the original GRF-3N Griffin Mark III armor to generate one with the
HoloDECstation's reality engine. When he'd abandoned the -3N on 03F8,
he'd taken the matrix client module out of it first, and integrated it
in the -S4N later. One day, maybe he'd find or figure out how it
worked.
Now, though, he was content to know that it did, as the
battered but functional GRF-S4N Griffin Mark IV materialized around
him. Its armor plating was cracked in a few places, some of the
myomer-servo intersections were a bit dodgy, but the master power cell
was at full output and the weapons were hot. He noticed a draft at
his back; environmental integrity was compromised. He tried not to
notice it as he targeted one of Fenris's standard-bearers and
discharged his left-hand-held main gun.
The blue-green particle bolt flickering over the Einherjar
trench and blasting down their standard-bearer alerted the Fenris
vanguard to the presence of someone better armed than the soldiers in
the trench. Immediately, they fanned out into a wider pattern,
scanning the greyness with peering eyes, but they couldn't see
Gryphon; with his suit in terrain masking mode, he was all but
invisible.
He closed in on them from their left flank and burned another
of the giants before they spotted him. Then he shut down terrain
masking and melted out of the sleet, a sharp-edged white phantom,
faceless with the visor of his helmet down.

"The Midgardian is distracting the wolf -- let's go get those
troops, Kraut!" cried Corporal Jones.
"That's -Leutnant- Kraut to you, doughboy," said Leutnant
Halder with a grin. "Let's go get them indeed!"
The 121st scrambled from their trenches with a concerted cheer
and waded into the dark elves and giants, bayonets set.

The dark and choppy sea had gotten choppier, Admiral Yamamoto
noticed; choppy enough to roll even his mighty flagship slightly.
This was not a good sign, but as the old sailor considered the
situation, he knew that at this stage it didn't matter all that much.
The navy of Niflheim was all but routed already; the main body of
their force had been pinned within the harbor and chopped to pieces
just as planned, and the rest were out of position. The battle for
control of Asgard's great harbor was effectively over; this inevitable
coda would not change that.
Grimly, Yamamoto ordered his vessels into a ring around the
harbor, directed his field glasses to the center, and waited.
Presently, he got what he was expecting: bursting out of the
dark water came the head of a nightmarish serpent, all the monstrous
sea beasts of sailor lore on a thousand worlds come to life, huge and
green and horrific: Jormungand, the Midgard Serpent, mightiest of the
progeny of Loki. In his jaws he clenched the twisted remains of a
submarine, like a dog holding a bone. As he turned his baleful yellow
eyes toward land, he released it, letting it crash back to the surface
of the harbor and sink out of sight.
"All ships, open fire!" ordered Yamamoto, and the guns of the
Asgardian fleet began raining fire on the serpent. Undaunted,
Jormungand surged for the shore, smashing straight through the
aircraft carrier Shokaku and writhing his vast green bulk over the
mountains toward the land battle zone. The Asgardian fleet kept
hammering him with fire until all of his impossible length had passed
over the mountains and out of sight, to no visible avail.

Gryphon figured he might have a problem with Fenris almost as
soon as he entered battle; the particle cannon, given insufficient
warming time in the cold, went almost immediately offline, its
charging coils cracked. Cursing, he slapped it onto his left-hip
magmount and detached his hand from the locking plates that normally
held it in place on his forearm. The wolf slashed at him with a huge
paw; he ducked backward, but his stabilizers were off and his right
leg was having an intermittent problem with its knee joint. The duck
turned into a stumble, spilling him on his back. Before he could roll
out of the way, one of Fenris's forepaws slammed down on him,
shattering the transparent facebowl under his solid visor, knocking
that visor out of true, crushing the already damaged chest and abdomen
plates and his own chest with it, and driving him further down into
the feet-deep packed snow. Snow and ice poured into his helmet
through the broken visor.
As he desperately tried to lever the huge wolf's paw off his
chest, Gryphon wondered if he would suffocate from having his chest
crushed before he drowned in the meltoff of the snow that was pouring
into his helmet or simply choked on his own blood.

Skuld spotted Fenris just as he smashed Gryphon into the snow.
She gave out the obligatory call for reinforcements, but none of her
personnel were close enough to help; having expected little else, she
kicked in her Black Talon's boosters and made for the 121st
Einherjar's position at top speed.
Alighting behind the trench line, she had to swallow a small
knot of fear at the sight of the great wolf, the pain of her dream
still fresh and raw in her memory. Then she pushed it aside, dropped
her targeting scope onto the wolf's left foreleg, charged her #1
Hellbore and burned it.
Fenris jumped back, alarmed, as the orange powerbolt seared
his leg, releasing the pressure on Gryphon's chest. Fighting the
desire to black out, Gryphon tried to force his way back up out of the
snow, only to discover that his power systems were compromised and the
suit was losing motive power. Soon he'd be as trapped in its
unyielding metal bulk as a man buried in concrete.
Skuld reached up with her right gauntlet and pulled Bjarnnil
free from the magnetic mount, whirling the mallet in her hand as the
handle sprang to its usual three-foot length. One of the dark elves
charged toward her with a wide-throated power rifle in his hands; she
brought the hammer round in an arc and crushed his skull like a melon.
The others fell away, knowing themselves to be outmatched, and turned
to the trenches as the wolf they heralded turned to face Skuld. She
whirled Bjarnnil to the ready and stared Fenris down, her fear
entirely absent now.
There was nothing of the compassionate patron of technology or
the loving, cheerful goddess of a benevolent future in Skuld now; nor
was there anything of the fearful girl she had been the night before.
Today there was room in the Black Talon only for the Valkyrie leader
for whom it had been constructed -- dark and terrible and beautiful,
without mercy for the enemies of Asgard. Today Skuld fully embodied
that most sinister aspect of her position among the Norns, the one
which few realize exists and even fewer care to acknowledge:
The future is where all must die.

/* Bad Religion "Fuck Armageddon... This Is Hell" _All Ages_ */

Fenris turned toward Skuld, upper lip curling in a hideous
snarl. His jagged fangs and slavering tongue were obviously not built
for normal speech, so when he spoke, he spoke with a sort of
telepathy.
[Well, well,] he said, his voice cold and evil as he sidled
away from the rest of the battle and the downed Midgarder. [What have
we here? Looks like a little girl pretending she's a warrior.]
Fenris's eyes narrowed, his nostrils flared, and if he could have
smiled, he would have. What that would have looked like is left as an
exercise for the reader. [No... not a little girl any longer, are
you? An eleventh-hour coming-of-age, or I miss my guess. Clever, but
it won't save you.]
"Shut up," Skuld snapped, and unleashed the full power of her
right arm's weapons battery. For a moment, Fenris and Skuld vanished
from sight as the raw power released by the twin miniature Hellbores
and the high-output particle gun built into the Black Talon's vambrace
plate vaporized the snow and ice around them. When it cleared, the
wolf was definitely wounded, but just as definitely unfazed. Blood
dripped steaming to the cleared ground from the rents in his side, but
he remained steady on his enormous paws, and the hate in his eyes was
undimmed by pain.
[Is that the best you can do, dirty little goddess?] He
advanced a step, mocking her with his eyes.
"No," replied Skuld, and fired her left arm's battery next.
The vapor cloud was less impressive without the reserves of grounded
snow, but the ionization layer arising from the burst of high-volume
railgun fire and the three heavy lasers managed to obscure the
combatants briefly. When it cleared, Fenris was bleeding on both
sides, but didn't appear to care.
[Don't you understand?] asked Fenris with mock sadness.
[Silly girl. You can't hurt me. You can't. I am destined to devour
the Allfather and avenge myself and my brother and sister, but before
I do, I think I'll kill the future. Call it... symbolic.]
"No!" Skuld repeated, and raked the wolf with both batteries
at once, a precipitous action that elicited alarmed power-status
warnings from her Black Talon's resource-management computer. She
ignored them. The wolf had to die, he had to! She could not permit
him to pass this spot; if she did, nothing would stand between him and
the city, the castle, the Allfather.
The weapons discharge alone threw up a cloud of smoke for a
moment as it tore the air, but before it could clear the great wolf
was charging through it, and Skuld evaded him by the narrowest of
margins as his massive jaws closed with an almost seismic snap on the
air where she had just been.
[This is the end for you, girl, and the beginning of the end
for Asgard. Father will be pleased with my work this day.]
There was no power left in Skuld's Black Talon for weapons
fire. The three sustained bursts she had unleased on Fenris had
embodied enough destructive power to level a city, and though
bloodied, the wolf remained unbowed. She had nothing left, except
Bjarnnil.
Whirling the mallet again, she settled back on her center of
gravity and waited for the wolf's next charge. Bjarnnil was more tool
than weapon, certainly no Mjollnir, but maybe it wouldn't have to be.
Fenris sprang with a speed entirely belying his bulk; Skuld
barely threw herself aside in time, bringing Bjarnnil around in a wide
arc that connected with the wolf's nose. The crack of the impact
jolted her arms through the armor, and Fenris reared back, baying in
sudden shock and pain, as blood from his wounded nose spattered the
ground. Where the weapons of the Black Talon, mighty but mundane, had
failed to cause him pain, a blow from the enchanted mallet stung deep.
But not for long.
Angered, the wolf dove again, and Skuld knew she would never
be able to hold him off for long. Where was Gryphon, why hadn't he
come up yet? She switched her visor over to thermographic imaging and
tried to locate him by the heat his suit's power plant must surely be
kicking out.
Where Gryphon was, was just about at the end of his rope. His
helmet was more than half full of extremely cold water now, his legs
were completely immobile, his arms felt like lead, and the cold was
spreading throughout his suit as the environmental systems failed
completely. Soon the motive systems would fail as well, and he would
be completely trapped. Soon, for that matter, his hammering heart
would give up, denied oxygen and finding itself with less and less in
the system to pump. He would slip into hibernation, or perhaps die
altogether. The cooling fins for his now-defunct power plant were
still hot, though, and Skuld spotted him shortly, a few yards off to
the side of the cleared patch where her high-powered face-off with the
wolf had happened.
She could tell by his sluggish movements that his suit was
badly damaged, and he himself was probably injured. Cursing inwardly,
she wondered what she could do out here; then she remembered part of
their shared dream, and with a leap of intuition, she knew.
That moment of consideration cost her dearly. Given an
opening, Fenris took it, lunging and catching her in his powerful jaws
before she could escape.
Just as in her dream, Skuld was being crushed by the jaws of
Fenris. For a moment, the parallel terror of that sensation shattered
her composure, and she screamed; Fenris shook her violently and tossed
her away. Shattered, powerless, unable to move, the Black Talon suit
she wore was now the galaxy's most amazingly sophisticated collection
of junk. It had done its most important job, though; the woman within
was stunned and bloodied, but not mortally injured.
Fenris knew this, but was not concerned. He stalked toward
her slowly, intending to enjoy this kill for as long as possible.

Jormungand plunged over the mountains into the west flank of
the battle, tearing through the White Legion's lines and scattering
troopers, tanks and walkers before it like tenpins. The enormous
serpent seemed absolutely unstoppable as it tore through the GENOM
troops, devouring some, smashing others and throwing the remainder to
the four winds. As he abandoned the doomed command post with the
others, Lawrence Mann began to know the first inkling of true
despair. What could stand up to -that-?
A moment later he had his answer. With a tearing peal of
thunder, spinning his magic mallet above his head like the rotor blade
of a helicopter, Thor Ironhammer charged from the Asgardian line,
leaped in the air, and brought Mjollnir smashing down on Jormungand's
head with such force that the serpent was slammed to the ground,
sending up a spray of snow. The White Legion cheered, and Larry
cheered with them; then that cheer turned into a concerted howl of
horror as the serpent reared up again, narrowing its serpentine eyes
to regard the god standing on its nose.
"So," it observed, in what to Larry's somewhat addled
mind was a perfectly atypical voice for the universe's biggest snake
to have. Shouldn't it hiss whenever it said the letter 'S'? "At last
we come to our prophesied battle."
"I'm changing the ending," replied Thor, leaping back off the
monster's head, performing a tidy somersault as he fell past its nose,
and lashing his hammer out in an arc that caught its jaw and threw it
sideways a good dozen meters. As he landed, though, Jormungand was
rising, and preparing the first of the torrents of venom which the
prophecy said would kill the thunder god.
Thor was faster than the prophets had anticipated, though; he
leaped aside as the jet of smoking green noxiousness slashed into the
snow. Hissing his displeasure, Jormungand struck at him with his
fangs; Thor backpedaled and crashed his hammer down on the monster's
nose, causing Jormungand to recoil with a hiss of pain. This game of
cat and mouse went on for a while, until even Thor began to tire; as
he did, he stumbled, and caught the edge of a venom stream.
Screaming, he collapsed in convulsions.
Hissing triumphantly, Jormungand drew himself back for the
kill.
Later, R-Type would not be able to say why he did what he did
next. Instinct, he would say. Reflex. An inability to just stand by
and watch a good man die. Whatever the reason, he slammed his helmet
on his head, broke away from Kawalsky and Feretti, and charged,
running as he never had occasion to run in his regular life. As he
ran, he unleased one-handed a sustained stream of autofire from his
blaster, raking Jormungand's face and causing the serpent to draw back
more in consternation than alarm. His other hand pulled a grenade
from his belt, and as he approached the fallen thunder god, he primed
the grenade and threw it into the massive serpent's hissing maw.
As it exploded, startling and blinding the serpent momentarily
but doing it no real harm, he threw himself over Thor's prone body,
hoping like hell his icetrooper suit would resist what he knew was
coming next.
Incredibly, it did. The acidic green slime poured down over
him, melting the snow and scorching the earth around him, but it did
not penetrate the suit. Thor was, momentarily at least, saved.
Snarling with rage, Jormungand drew back and collected his
fury for a second barrage -- one which Larry's suit computer was
informing him with some alarm it would not withstand so handily.
Outer skin thickness was down in some places to less than half a
millimeter.
Lawrence Mann covered his head with his hands and prepared to
die.

As Skuld's mind cleared, she saw, fuzzily, the wolf
approaching. Sensor power was failing, but she dared not open her
visor; she wasn't even sure she could at this point, anyway. She put
it out of her mind and looked around. Gryphon's position was a few
yards away. With the power train to her suit's legs crushed, it might
as well have been a light-year.
Or might it?
Slowly, painfully, she inched Bjarnnil's handle through her
right hand until she held the pointed end, the end with the brazing
torch built into it. She balanced the hammer this way in her hand,
upright, using the strength of her fingers to keep it that way as she
turned it to a precise heading. This was chancy -- all it would take
to screw it up would be for Fenris to realize what she was doing and
leap, or the wind to change -- but it was all she had.
Skuld tripped the hammer's handle extension command in her
mind, and as it sprang up
she
let
it
tip
...

"NO!"
R-Type at first though that he'd said it; then he looked up,
and his heart nearly stopped. Dashing through the snow, coming
straight for him, was Yuri, her coat flying around her in her haste.
He wanted to wave her off, but discovered with some consternation that
his icetrooper armor had fused into the position it was in. If he
wanted to take it off at all, he'd need help; right now he couldn't
move. All he could do was watch.
Jormungand reared back and opened his jaws to strike, and as
he did, Yuri leaped straight up into them. The torrent of venom the
serpent vomited forth struck her full-on before even leaving
Jormungand's mouth.
Larry screamed in sympathetic agony, his muscles knotting so
powerfully they broke the fused back parts of his armor as he curled
into a ball atop Thor's unconscious form. Dimly, looking up, he could
see Yuri still silhouetted in the monster's mouth as the venom rained
down, its discharge ruined by the blockage, several feet away from him
and the thunder god. When the torrent was over, though, she remained
there, burned and convulsed, but alive. Even as she uncoiled from the
convulsive crouch she had assumed, Larry felt his own pain easing, the
muscles uncramping, as the sympathetic reaction faded. It didn't
clear, not entirely, but at least he could move.
Yuri drew herself standing, raised the Ruger in her hands, and
let off ten shots straight down Jormungand's throat. The serpent
screamed and thrashed as his venom glands were destroyed; as he did,
Yuri took the opportunity of his confusion to jump out of his mouth
before he could close it on her. She landed heavily, unsteady on her
feet, beside R-Type; her clothing was tattered and smoking, and, for
that matter, so was her flesh. She used her coat to hide her face
from him, and judging by the blistered, blackened ruin of her visible
hand, that was probably a good idea.
"Don't look," she said, her voice stiff and guttural, "you
shouldn't see me this way," as her hat settled out of the sky onto her
head. Thor looked up, blinking, and shook his head, conscious but
unable yet to move much.
Jormungand, his major weapon destroyed, roared with rage and
struck at Yuri, intending to rend her with his fangs. She jumped
lightly onto his nose, lowered the Ruger, and shot out his eyes.
No - not his eyes. They weren't her target; they were just in
the way. The magic bullets issuing from her enchanted sidearm were
destined for a very different spot: the back of Jormungand's reptilian
brain.
The monster thrashed and howled and thrashed some more as its
brain was destroyed, but Yuri somehow kept her balance and her aim
until, with one last great effort, the Midgard Serpent straightened
almost a full half of its bulk in the air, gave a massive convulsion
that flattened many of the GENOM fortifications, and collapsed, slain.
"Odin's wintry beard," Thor breathed.
Yuri tumbled out of the sky, plowed into a snowbank, and lay
still, face down, her hat fluttering out of the sky to land over the
back of her head a moment later. R-Type shambled through the snow
toward her, his movements hampered by the residual stiffness of his
muscles and the damage to his armor.
Then, in one terrifying moment, he realized he wasn't feeling
anything from her. The subtle, often entirely subliminal, connection
he'd felt to her for the past year or so (which had become stronger in
the hours they'd been on the world of the gods), had gone out, snuffed
like a candle the instant she hit the ground.
That realization staggered R-Type; he stumbled in his run,
then fell to his knees, unable to keep his balance. He kept on,
anyway, in too much of a hurry to try and regain his footing,
wallowing in a clumsy half-crawl through the snow to the fallen
woman's side. He didn't want to look, but he had to, he had to know.
He reached out with a trembling hand, took her shoulder, and turned
her over.
Her face was not the charred, withered ruin he had been
dreading to see; it was reddened and a bit blistered, but it was still
the face he knew so well. Her hazel eyes, almost green in the cold,
were intact... and staring up glassily at the unforgiving grey sky.
Dr. Lawrence Mann felt as if the bottom had fallen out of the
world. He wanted to say something, but he wasn't sure what, so he
ended up making a long, inarticulate noise somewhere between a groan
and a howl.
So busy was he with this little matter that he didn't notice
her eyes twitch, flicker, and then snap back into focus; didn't hear
her draw a ragged breath. Nor did it particularly register on him
when she sat up and put a hand -- red and blistered, but not the
horrific ruin it had been minutes before -- on his shoulder.
"Larry," she said softly, "get down."
Then she shoved him face-down on the ground, leaned over his
back and shot the dark elf who had been about to burn him with a
proton rifle, at about the same time Kawalsky and Feretti cut him down
from their longer range.
Sputtering and spitting out snow, R-Type sat up, wiped his
eyes, and blinked.
"I don't believe it," he whispered hoarsely.
Yuri smiled. As R-Type watched, the skin of her face
smoothed and whitened, the angry red burns fading and then vanishing
altogether. She held up her hands; they, too, were clear and
unharmed, except for a small patch on the back of one which cleared
and disappeared before his eyes.
"Everybody's got a talent," Yuri said with a grin. "Mine, as
Kei and I discovered a few years back, is coming back to life."
"Why didn't you tell me you could do this?" asked R-Type.
Yuri shrugged, hauling him to his feet. "It never came up."
"Yeah, I guess it didn't," Larry croaked, willing to leave it
at that. There was, after all, plenty of stuff in his life which
hadn't been talked about yet because it 'never came up'. Indeed, for
a moment a whole slew of things he still hadn't told Yuri flashed
before his eyes, along with a bunch of different impulses and things
he wanted to do. He wanted very much to just sweep her up in his arms
and hold on to her for the rest of his life, but he also knew there
was no time for any of that. The danger was still far from over. So
he settled for sending the strongest and foremost thought he could
through their reestablished (and had it gotten still stronger?) link,
not trusting his voice to do it right.
[I love you so much.]
She smiled softly and her hand tightened around his, the sound
of her beautiful voice ringing with crystal clarity in his mind. [I
know.]
"BOSS!!"
About that time the hollering and the sound of rapidly
approaching footsteps became sufficiently annoying to distract the
two, as Kawalsky and Feretti came charging toward them, with Skarne
not far behind.
"What the hell were you thinking?" Feretti sputtered, not
bothering with the usual first question since the answer to it was
fairly obvious. His face remained unreadable behind his icetrooper
helmet but his body language and the tone of his voice compensated
quite easily.
"I was thinking I couldn't just stand there and watch the man
get killed. And don't yell at me," R-Type grumbled.
"Well, sir, if you don't mind a suggestion, next time you
might consider using the hazmat blanket that's in your equipment
belt," said Kawalsky. R-Type would never know if he had been
straight-faced or not, but his voice had betrayed no amusement.
"... Oh," said R-Type, a loud "DUH!" resounding in his brain.
He resisted a powerful urge to slap himself.
About that moment a shadow fell over them and Larry found
himself looking up at Thor, who had regained his footing and joined
them. "Are you all right?" he asked the Thunder God.
"I will be," Thor replied, holding his head and still looking
a bit out of sorts. "Just a few more minutes." He looked down at the
two mortals who had saved his life, still holding hands. "I thank
you, both of you."
Yuri shrugged. "It's a job," she said with a grin.

KLONK.
Bjarnnil's mallet head dropped from the sky and struck a blow
to the chestplate of Gryphon's ruined powersuit that would have rung,
had the suit not been partly crushed and buried in snow. As it did,
providing the necessary contact, Skuld tried something she had never
done before. Without any prep time, without extensive design work and
preliminary enchantment, without even creating an incantation for the
final assembly, she visualized a design and bent her will to its
creation, using the material of the damaged armor as its basis.
A brilliant blue-white glow surged out of the hole in the snow
where Gryphon lay as the metal shell and the flesh within it twisted
in the grip of the goddess of technology's will. For a moment, he
felt uncomfortably like a man standing in the middle of a giant
Rubik's Cube as somebody else tries feverishly to solve it; then he
smiled as his shattered facebowl reintegrated itself, the outer visor
of his helmet snapped into true, environmental systems sucked away the
water, and reorganized but still familiar readouts glowed to life
within that reconstituted facebowl. The pain and the crushing
sensation in his chest dissolved into a feeling of unspeakable
vitality.
Power rushed back to his limbs, and getting out of the snow
was no longer a problem; he burst free with just the slightest of
mental taps to the flight jets on his back, dropped lightly back to
the ground, and scowled through the clear new holographic display at
his massive lupine foe. Fenris could not see his face, but the sharp,
deadly lines of his new armor, a perfect amalgamation of the
features which distinguished the Griffin suits and the razor-edged
lines of the Black Talon series, spoke volumes. The suit's surface
was a gleaming, opalescent black, the sort of abyss of colorlessness
which, when you look into it, looks also into you. Understated silver
striping offset its base color nicely and added to its perceived
sleekness.
The domed, faceless helmet still had the Griffin's trademark
TV-antenna-like twin aerials jutting up from the back; the chestplate
had the same panzer-turret-like slope. The shoulders and knees still
had their distinctive armored baffles. The vambraces were sharply
straked on the outside edges, a close-quarters combat modification
Gryphon had considered for the Mark IV but never gotten around to
implementing. The whole suit was trimmer, cleaner-lined and sleeker
than the Mark IV, and moved with a fluid grace which the earlier suit
had come a long way toward from the Mark III, but still fallen short
of. Above the left shoulder, the two ancient samurai swords jutted up
from the slots reserved for them in the backplate, just as in the
previous mark.
"Let's try that again," said Gryphon as he pulled up a weapons
diagram from the battle computer and acquainted himself with his new
combat capabilities. He still had a particle cannon on his hip --
improved, according to the stats the battle computer was giving him --
a popup missile launcher in his right pauldron and a contact
concussion blaster built into his right vambrace; the rest of his
weapons loadout had been rearranged into something like that of the
Black Talon, complete with the two 30mm Hellbores on the strong-side
(left, in his case) vambrace.
He wasted a little time with those, burning and dodging,
before reaching the same conclusion Skuld had before him; attacking
Fenris with conventional weapons was meaningless. What, then, could
he use? He had no magic weapon, no special power. All he had were
the armored suit he wore, its weapons, and his swords.
[But,] he reasoned, [the swords are an extension of my will,
is that not so? And if it is my will that Fenris shall die...
[What the hell? It can't hurt the situation.]
He reached back and pulled the katana from its socket.
Dropping into a single-blade stance, he waited for Fenris's next move.
The wolf sprang; Gryphon ducked to the right and struck,
opening a long furrow in the beast's right side. Blood spattered the
snow, and Fenris yowled in pain. Slavering, eyes burning, the great
wolf twisted, driving his merciless jaws at his tormentor.
Slowly, as if in a dream, Gryphon pivoted smoothly and struck
again. This time the wolf's yowl of pain was cut short, as the
Midgardian warrior's blade slashed neatly through Fenris's massive
neck, beheading him.
The cheer that went up from the 121st Einherjar as they mopped
up what remained of Fenris's vanguard was almost palpable.

Kris and George Patton stood, one on the hull and the other in
the hatch of the Einherjar panzer, observing the battle directly
before them. The retreat had seemed total at first, with the enemy in
complete disarray. Now, however, Jormungand had scattered or destroyed
a large section of the defensive line, and Patton's panzers were
spread thin attempting to cover the gap while Tyr and Butch scrambled
what was left of their reserves to rebuild the lines. Despite
Jormungand's death, the enemy was still pressing the attack, if
anything harder than ever.
Kris grunted as more bullets and blasts hit the shield he was
barely maintaining over the command panzer. The quick recharge from
the lightning and a handy pork riblet MRE hadn't relieved his fatigue,
and his energy reserves were running low again. Concentrating on
maintaining the shield was taking up a great deal of his
concentration, and now simply standing became a difficult task.
Man, Kris thought, when this is over I'm gonna need a
loooooong rest.
"Looks like we're about to get outflanked," Patton growled
around his cigar. "How you holding up, kid?"
"Been better," Kris admitted. "Better call Dad and tell him to
pull what's left of the left flank in closer to the city, and then
pull back ourselves."
"Not me, friend," Patton growled. "I'm consolidating a
division for another counteroffensive. I want a shot at whatever's
driving these bastards."
Kris nodded grimly. "You aren't the only one," he said. "Now,
if you'll be so kind as to duck down into the tank, I can drop the
shield and clear us a path. Sir."
"You're the boss, Admiral," Patton chuckled, and he dropped
down into the turret. As soon as the general was out of the line of
small-arms fire, Kris dropped the shield and began throwing small,
rapid-fire bolts in front of the command panzer, slicing up the enemy
wholesale. Taking the hint, the tank advanced, flanked and followed by
others like it.
The armored spearhead plunged through the Jotunheim
troops. Here and there, a panzer would be hit and disabled, or
forced to turn and retreat, but in their wake lay dozens of the giant
crawlers of the Jotunheim armored forces, not to mention uncounted
numbers of infantry.
Kris looked out over the masses of enemy troops, and with a
start he noticed a small empty pocket off ahead and a little to the
right of the Einherjar advance. Curious, he changed the aim of his
blasts, guiding the lead panzer towards the gap. The others followed
his lead, and before long the command panzer broke through into the
opening.
In the center of the opening stood a tall humanoid figure,
dressed in a hideous business suit and smiling a toothy smile. Aside
from the loud green tint of his face, and the smallish dark-haired
woman lying gagged and hogtied in the small Radio Flyer wagon he
pulled behind him on a string, he might not have seemed to be anything
more than the new winner of GQ's Worst Dressed Sentient poll.
Whoever he was, Kris guessed, he was a Heavy Hitter. "HOLD
YOUR FIRE!" Kris shouted into the tank. "General, get your tanks out
of here! This one's mine!" Then, he jumped out of the panzer, called
a beamstaff into existence, and hurled it like a javelin at his
opponent.
The bolt blew straight through the green-headed man, boring a
hole roughly three inches in diameter through his abdomen. Slightly
startled, the man stopped his formerly leisurely pace and looked
amazed at the hole. "Well," he said, "talk about a window to your
soul." He then reached a hand in and rooted around for a moment, then
pulled it out, empty. "Just like I thought," he said mock-sadly,
"don't have one." Then he laughed, a cold, chilling and totally insane
laugh, as the hole closed up and vanished, without so much as a rip in
the fabric of the suit.
Kris landed, igniting another beamstaff and trying to conceal
his true weakness. The odds, he decided, are really sucky about
now. Not bothering to issue a challenge - a mistake he wasn't going to
repeat anytime soon - he swung the staff in a wide arc towards the
green-headed man's neck.
The man -caught- the energy blade in midswing, tsking and
shaking his head. "Shame, shame," he said. "Attacking someone without
warning, without formal challenge. Why, I'll bet you don't even know
who I am."
"You're evil," Kris said. "That's all I need to know."
Dissipating the beamstaff, he ignited a smaller blade in his left hand
and attempted an underhand stab at the green-faced man's gut. The
blade stopped dead on impact, and Kris heard a hollow 'bong' sound.
The green-faced man pulled his jacket aside to reveal a
section of heavy iron plate. "Cast-iron stomach," he grinned. "I can
eat anything - Mexican, Klingon, cyanide, anything - except cheese."
Bending over to Kris, he whispered mock-conspiratorially into his ear,
"It plugs me up something awful."
"Who are you anyway??" Kris asked.
"Oh, that's right, allow me to introduce myself. I am the
Trickster, the Shapechanger, Father of Lies and Mother of - well,
that's another story, one for the New York Post," he chuckled. "But my
blood enemies just call me... Loki!" Brushing dust from his lapels, he
said, "Oh, sorry about my appearance, had to snag this body at the
last minute, and then I had to go pick up Peorth - I suppose a heathen
like you would probably call her Eris - and then the traffic, the
delays, the people to massacre..." Shaking his head melodramatically,
he said, "Did you ever have one of those Judgement Days?"
Kris considered what had happened with his energy blades, his
own flagging power levels, and the general tactical situation. Simply
put, it stank; he'd be best advised to butt out while he still could -
if he could. Quickly, he sprang back from Loki, still rambling on to
himself, and then, concentrating, he leapt up and over the evil god,
aiming to rescue the goddess captive in the wagon behind him.
About five feet before Kris would have landed, a butterfly net
appeared beneath him, and he dropped neatly into it. Loki swung the
net over, and Kris slammed into the ground. "Uh uh uh," Loki grinned,
"that's not for you!" Then, the net changed into an immense golf club
(5 iron), and Loki yelled, "FORE!" As Kris struggled groggily to his
hands and knees, the club caught him in the head, sending it and the
rest of him flying over the Niflheim army.
"Well, that's that," Loki said. "Now then, where was I?" he
pondered aloud. Snapping his fingers, he said, "That's right! I was
busy avenging myself on the gods! How silly of me, forget my own head
next!" This amused him further, and his mad laughter rang over the
battlefield, urging his still-powerful forces on to more frenzied
attacks.
Reluctant to leave, but well aware of the limitations of his
force, George Patton took the opportunity presented by the dark god's
laughter to get his group the hell out of Dodge, pulling back to a
position on the ridgeline above the left flank. There, Patton ordered
his panzers to go hull-down and began surveying the lines through his
rangefinder binoculars, hoping that something would start to break his
way.
Above, Kris struggled to regain his senses. He couldn't focus
his eyes, he was having trouble feeling his feet, and his head
throbbed with the double impact. Beneath him, the ground began to grow
closer again, as he passed over the rapidly disintegrating Asgard
lines.
[I'm sorry, Washuu,] Kris thought, [I tried.] Then, right
before the ground hit him, he thought wryly, [Y'know, I thought I was
done with the Low Orbital Human Flight Lessons back at the WDF Academy
gym...]
Then the weight of the world caught him across the temples,
and everything went black.

"This isn't over yet," said R-Type, watching the scene from
the White Legion's ridgeline through binoculars. "Loki just took out
Admiral Overstreet, I hope not fatally. What's our status?" he turned
to Skarne and asked.
Skarne glanced back at the wreckage which Jormungand had made
of the GENOM lines in his death throes. Troopers were working
frantically to extract other troopers from what remained of the
crushed fortifications, all while fending off opposing fire from the
surviving soldiers of the dark army. "Overall, not good," Skarne
replied evenly. "Admiral Yamamoto's fleet has the ocean secured and
the airspace is ours, but ground lines on all fronts are falling
apart. We won't be able to hold this line much longer.
"General Ravenhair reports that Fenris has been killed by
Gryphon, but he did a lot of damage before he went down," Skarne
continued. "General -Patton- reports that, now Loki's finally
appeared, the enemy is mounting a new spearhead attack behind him.
They're cutting through the Einherjar the way Jormungand cut through
us; so far nothing's been able to stop Loki."
"Damn. They kept their trump cards for the end," R-Type
nodded grimly. "We mortals can only do so much against gods."
"Perhaps, but you've changed fate twice already," Thor
rumbled, glancing back at Jormungand's corpse. "You may yet do so
again."
"I say we fall back to the city and regroup with the Home
Defense there," R-Type said to Skarne. "If they get within firing
range of Yggdrasil then this is all for nothing."
Otto Skarne didn't get to the position he was in by being
indecisive. He considered for a moment, then used his belt computer
to key the com in his right ear to the GENOM vehicle network. "Major
Veers, this is Colonel Skarne. Are you still alive?"
"Surprisingly enough, yes," replied Veers's voice, scratchily,
in Skarne's earset.
"What is your unit's current strength?"
"Two walkers and four advanced scout walkers, plus about a
platoon and a half of TIE tanks," replied Veers. "The Jotunheim
gunners seem to have a hard time hitting the little things."
Skarne frowned. "Only two walkers?"
"They're big targets," replied Veers. As if to underscore his
words, the dull crump of a shell exploding against the heavy side
armor of his walker rang through the com connection. Veers barked for
a damage report, then returned to the channel. "Fortunately they're
also tough, and the Jotunheim tankers aren't very good shots. Your
orders, Colonel?"
"Consolidate your unit on our east flank and cover the main
force," said Skarne. "We're pulling back to the Golden City."

The scene at the gates of the city was growing more chaotic by
the moment. The hospital had been rushed inside the city, and as Frey
organized a last-ditch defensive line before the gates, Washuu
supervised triage for the incredible number of casualties being
brought back from the lines.
"Gut wound, prep him for surgery stat," Washuu said, pointing
to a Mongol tankman still clutching his submachinegun. The next one
over, a Hessian from the days of the American Revolution, had a neat
hole through his skull, and his breathing came weakly and
erratically. "This one's lost, set him aside," she said angrily,
frustrated that many, so many, were beyond her help.
Then, she saw the figure in the blue windbreaker lying
senseless on a stretcher.
"We found this one in an impact crater behind what's left of
the line," an orderly said. "I don't know why he isn't paste, he musta
been really moving when he hit the ground." Indeed, Kris was streaked
with blood in several spots, and his arms both had more bends in them
than nature had originally intended. Washuu put a gentle hand to his
face; his neck moved much, much too freely.
But he was still breathing.
Sighing relief, Washuu said to the orderly, "I want you to get
him an IV feeding drip set up. Let me know the instant he wakes up."
[I'm sorry, Kris,] she thought to herself. [There are so many others
who need me now... please hang on for me... ]
The next patient was an Asgardian with a shoulder wound, ugly
but not quite life-threatening. "Get him a unit of blood and some
blankets," she barked, and continued on down the line, sorting out the
dead and the dying. In the background, the thunder of artillery and
gunfire grew slowly closer, as Loki drew closer to the home of his
enemies. Louder still were the moans of the suffering, crying for
water, for morphine, and occasionally for a weapon to finish the job.
Washuu didn't hear a sound.

"This is no good," George Patton growled around his again-dead
cigar, surveying the battle lines with his binoculars. "They're going
to come through the line right around there, and there's not a damn
thing anybody can do about it."
A quarter-mile away, Butch Overstreet took a look, then
nodded, sighing, and said into his radio, "We've got no units at all
in that area?"
"None that I know of," Patton replied. "I don't have a big
board like the boys in the War Room, but if I remember right the White
Legion are all pinned down on the west ridge and the Regular Army is
in the center. 121st Einherjar Infantry and 10th Panzer are too far
out of position and there's no way I can see that -- "
Just then, as the black-coated Asgardian Army defenders broke
away from the weak part of the line and fell back in an attempt to
regroup before being overrun, a pair of black-trimmed white Viper
panzers burst from the drifts to the east, their chevron Hellbores
blasting the lead tank in the Jotunheim formation and blunting the
giants' armored charge. Behind those two panzers came a dozen more,
and behind them a squad of cavalry vehicles and infantry, including
Jeb Stuart's mini-tank brigade. Standing in the cupola of the lead
Viper, Patton saw, was a thin man in a grey uniform, pointing toward a
frost-giant tank which the panzer's gun killed a moment later. The
whip aerial on the back corner of the panzer identified it as a
command unit, and pinned to the top of that aerial was the proud, if
somewhat incongruous, pennant of the 10th Panzer division of the
Wehrmacht Afrika Korps.
Patton grinned around his cigar again, reaching into the
cupola of his tank and switching to the tac-net. "Rommel!" he
bellowed. "How in the hell did you get over there from Sector 3 so
damn fast?"
The voice which came back was cultured and still bore a trace
of a German accent, but it betrayed its owner's high spirits as it
replied, "Patton, you magnificent bastard -- I read your book!"
Patton guffawed; he and Rommel both had given up marveling at
the situation they found themselves in long, long ago.

"This has gone far enough," Odin growled, watching as the
Asgardian lines disintegrated on the big monitor. Throwing aside his
cloak, he strode out of the room, summarily ignoring the weak protest
of the Air Force warrant officer who stood by the door. Urd followed
him, driven by some impulse she could never name, as he stormed down
the corridor to his throne room, reached up to the rack behind his
throne, and drew down his golden spear Gungnir.
Turning, the Allfather saw his sometimes-wayward daughter
lingering in the doorway, unsure whether or not she should be
following him, and he smiled. "Well, Urthr, what do you think?" he
inquired with a cheerfulness that was only half mock. "Shall we go
out there together and show these fools how to fight a war?"
Without a verbal reply, Urd crossed her hands before her chest
and closed her eyes; the court robes she still wore from the day
before glowed and then seemed to melt, running like wax into a new
shape before congealing again into the light leather armor of an
itinerant archer of old. On her back was slung a quiver of arrows,
and a great ivory bow hung from one shoulder. She looked at her
father with clear, fearless eyes, and nodded once.

From the center of the chaos that was the aid station just
within the gates, Belldandy saw them leave. At the thunder of hooves
she glanced up from her work in time to see Sleipnir, the eight-legged
horse, flash past, with her sister at the reins. Odin rode behind on
another horse, a magnificent bay beast, albeit not as impressive as
Sleipnir. Since Urd's unauthorized 'borrowing' of the eight-legged
steed for what she considered an all-important journey, Sleipnir had
preferred her to his actual owner, which in times past had been one of
the many grounds for the on-again, off-again estrangement between Urd
and her father.
This confirmed the suspicion she had gathered from the influx
of wounded: the battle was not going well at all if Urd was going out
armed for battle, let alone the powerful, but aging, Allfather. She
glanced to her right; though revolted by the gore and pain of the
surgery, Keiichi remained at her side, sword in one hand and shield in
the other, his face pasty and stiff as he contained his instinctive
reaction. Bel gave him what she hoped was a reassuring smile, then
returned to work.

Kerliss was fairly sure he had died and gone to Hell. His
actual death had come as something of a disappointment -- one of the
killercraft pilots slain in the Race's abortive takeover attempt of
the Bugrom homeworld Hive Prime, he had expected, as all males of the
Race expected in those halcyon days, that in death he would serve the
spirits of the departed Emperors as the teachers of his hatchlinghood
had promised. Instead he found himself in this bizarre place,
surrounded by beings of races he never had any inkling existed. As if
that weren't rude shock enough, most of these races had never heard of
his own, a people so secure in their supremacy in a limited universe
that they had never invented any word for themselves. They were -the-
Race, and all others were their subjects; thus were the teachings.
Their attack on the Bugrom hiveworld had changed all that, but
Kerliss hadn't lived to see it. He had found out about the sweeping
changes which were to overtake his culture vicariously, through news
reports and talks with successive new arrivals. Eventually he had
even gotten used to the idea.
What he had never quite gotten used to, though, was this
place's dreadful climate. In the golden halls of Valhalla it wasn't
much of a problem -- he could stay inside when the weather became cold
and wet and vile. As a killercraft pilot (although the Asgardians had
a different word for them), he was even mostly exempt from such
conditions when on flying duty. Now, though, he was out of his craft
and on the ground in the worst weather on record, and, being a native
of a place much hotter and drier than this, he was utterly miserable.
Clutching his emergency sidearm and shivering inside his
flightsuit, Kerliss made his way toward the lines, hoping he wasn't
overtaken and killed by a patrol of dwarves or giants before he
reached the gates of the city. It appeared the ground battle was
falling apart just as the ocean, outer space and air above were being
secured; but that was the way of it on days like this. From one of
the other pilots in his squadron, a Russian killed over Germany in the
Fourth World War on Earth, he had learned a word for situations like
this.
"Nichevo," he muttered to himself, slogging through the snow.

The remaining warriors of Midgard regrouped at the center of
the shrunken Asgardian line, along with a few of the more senior
gods. R-Type had replaced the damaged parts of his outer armor with
pieces taken from the kit of an icetrooper who wouldn't need them any
more, and was surveying the battle lines through a pair of rangefinder
macrobinoculars, trying to make some sense out of the chaos. The
command group was flanked by the three companies of White Legion
infantry who remained, a company of Asgardian regulars, and the
remainder of the White Legion's armor.
As R-Type scanned the horizon through the binoculars, Colonel
Skarne did the same with his cybereye. Yuri stood next to them,
making out whatever she could with her naked eyes. Kei sat on a
Legion pack-crate and secured a field dressing around a bloody wound
in her right thigh, cheerfully cursing the weather, the frost giants,
the dark elves, the fucking weather, the underdwarves, the legion of
the dishonored dead, the goddamned fucking weather, the dead Nazi
Vernichtunslager guard who had the gall to stick his damn bayonet in
her leg, and the goddamned miserable filthy fucking weather in a merry
stream of mixed Standard and German invective which R-Type, who
understood German, and Skarne, a Niogan native like Kei, both found
most refreshing. Presently, Gryphon arrived, in a clearly
Griffin-like powersuit neither Larry nor Yuri had seen before; he was
assisting a uniformed but armorless Skuld who favored one leg.
R-Type turned his eyes back to the front, peering through the
binoculars again. Loki was coming close enough that Larry could get a
pretty good look at him now, and as he focused the binoculars and
exercised their rather limited zoom function, he felt his blood
cooling.
"Yuri," he said in a tight voice, and handed her the
binoculars.
Yuri looked; the ruddiness in her cheeks paled despite the
cold. "Gods," she murmured. Lowering the field glasses, she turned
to Larry.
"Zoner," they breathed simultaneously.
"Huh?" said Kei, looking up.
"Remember our vision?" asked Yuri.
"Uh-huh," Kei replied, not liking where her partner was headed
already.
"We know what part of it means now. Look."
Kei got to her feet and went to Yuri's side with a faint limp,
taking the glasses from her partner.
She looked for a long moment, lowered the glasses, looked
again, and observed, "Houston, we have a problem."
Gryphon stepped up the magnification factor of his holovisor.
"Who's that with him?"
"Pardon?"
"He's got... yup, it's a toy wagon. Somebody in it, but I
don't recognize her. She doesn't look like she's having any fun,
though."
Skuld hobbled over, using her hammer as a crutch, and had a
look through the field glasses. "It's Peorth," she said. "One of the
Vanir. She's... well, mostly she works for the Relief Office, but
she's the closest thing we've had to a trickster since Loki went to
the Dark Side." By the unselfconscious way she said that, it seemed
to be common Asgardian parlance for what happened to the dark god.
"You might know her better by her Greek name - Eris."
Gryphon would have palmed his face had he not been wearing a
helmet; the gesture carried its usual significance anyway. "Well,
-that- makes sense," he observed. "If I were Zoner and I had been
possessed by the spirit of evil, first thing I'd do is kidnap my
favorite goddess." He shook his helmeted head. "Beautiful. At least
he didn't go after Teleute."
He was about to jump down from the ridge and see what he could
accomplish when two horses thundered by, one carrying a grim and
angry-looking Odin, the other a similarly grim and angry-looking Urd.
"Urd's going into battle?" Skuld observed, making a question
of it in a tone that said she didn't know quite what to make of it.
"So it would appear," said Colonel Skarne.

Unaware, or perhaps just not caring, that he was being
observed, Loki set upon the Regular Army regiment that was covering
the center of the line. Tyr, the Army's commander, appeared, sword in
hand, his missing hand replaced by a blaster mount. From somewhere,
Loki produced an umbrella; they dueled for a bit, then Loki seemed to
tire of the duel and shot him with the umbrella.
As he did, his aim was spoiled slightly by the fact that four
arrows in rapid succession thunked into his chest and head; his shot
went a bit wide, knocking Tyr down and bloodying him, but not killing
him as had been Loki's intent.
"Whoa!" said Loki. "Who's a-crampin' my style?" He yanked
one of the arrows out of his head and looked at it. "Saaaaay, I know
this arrow."
"Indeed you do," Odin boomed, riding up and dismounting. "I
took you into my home and treated you fairly, Loki. How many giants
can say they were adopted into the home of the gods?"
"Yadda, yadda, yadda. You're boring me, old man!" replied
Loki. "You're boring me and you're in my way." The evil god's red
eyes narrowed. "What I want right now is behind you."
A few meters behind the Allfather, Urd sat astride Sleipnir,
her bow drawn, waiting for an opportunity.
"Well, you can't have her," Odin replied, leveling his spear.
"Now stand and do battle - or will you shoot me, too, like a coward?"
Loki seemed to consider this for a moment, scratching at his
chin. Then he brightened, snapping his fingers. "Nope! I won't do
that."
"Good," said Odin, and readied himself.
"I'll do THIS!" said Loki, and a large black iron weight
labeled "16 TONS" plummeted out of the sky, crashing down on the
leader of the gods. "Ta, Pop - wish I could stay and chat, but you
know how it is."
Odin, pinned under the weight and trying to push it off
himself, made no reply, but Urd replied for him, loosing the shaft she
had been holding ready. Loki staggered back, letting out a sound that
might have been actual pain, as the arrow slammed into his head
through his right eye, burying itself several inches.
Straightening up, the dark god reached up and pulled the shaft
from his head, snapped it, and threw it away. His clothing darkened,
shifting around him, changing from that hideous power suit to
something simpler, black and ragged-edged, with some tatters of silver
trim: the court robes Loki had been wearing when he was imprisoned in
the cavern beneath the serpent, so many years ago.
He made no jokes. He did nothing wacky. He simply advanced,
fists clenched, eyes (for the one Urd had shot him through was back as
if nothing had happened) smoldering with hate.
"You and I have to have a little talk, Urthr," he growled
through gritted teeth. "But not in front of the horse."
"Just so," replied Urd; she slid down from Sleipnir's back and
waved the horse away, then put her bow and quiver aside. "Will you do
to me what you did to Father, or have you something even stranger in
mind?"
"Why, Urthr," replied Loki, his tone completely belying the
lightness of his words. "A person would think you aren't happy to see
me."
"I'm not happy to see you like this," she replied. "If you
had come back to us the man you used to be, I would be happy. I would
be filled with joy such as I've never known if I could have back the
Loki I knew as a girl. What you've become, though... no, I'm not
happy to see that at all."
"Well, that's a hell of a thing to say," said Loki
indignantly, "considering you made me this way."
Urd looked momentarily taken aback; then her cold composure
returned, and she said, "If that's what you think, you're deluding
yourself. But then, you never could face reality on its own terms.
You always had to redefine them for yourself. I'm the Norn of Memory,
Loki; I know what you were, I can see what you are, and I know what
brought you from there... to here." Her eyes narrowed, and then, she
smiled a bit. Loki knew enough about nice and not-nice smiles to know
that the smile Urd wore had never even considered the possible
benefits of being a nice one.
"And more to the point, I know how to get rid of you."
And she disappeared.
"Damn that woman!" Loki howled, flying into a rage. He began
to tear through the lines of Asgard's armies, puffing like a freight
train as he drove toward the city gates.

"He's displaying higher power levels than Loki ever did on his
own," Skuld observed. "Does MegaZone have any particular
super-ability that Loki could be exploiting?"
"Not really," Yuri replied. "He is a stage two Detian...
He's got some bionic and cybernetic augmentations, so he's a bit
faster, tougher, and stronger than an average man his size, but
nothing like... that."
"Then he must be getting his power from some outside source.
Make no mistake, Loki in his regular form is -very- powerful, but he
can't change shape so rapidly or into such radical forms, and he can't
just ignore injuries like that. To lay on that many protective wards,
he'd have to have been casting them on himself for the last, oh, seven
or eight years, and he hasn't had that much time."
Urd appeared beside her sister, smiling that same cold
smile. "I know how to get rid of him. Where's Bel?"
"Probably still at the aid station. Why?"
"Because we're going to need her to throw a Great Warding on
that son of a bitch. Find a flat spot and get started on the circle.
I'll go get Bel."

The Tenth Regiment, Freespacer Special Marines, was the
smallest independent command in the Asgard Line, comprising at full
strength 1,000 men, women, and what-not. This included five single-man
Compact Assault Vehicles (each roughly equal to the two-man
Napoleon-class minitank in power), fifteen light to medium portable
emplacement antiarmor batteries, dozens of EWHB antipersonnel cannons,
and hundreds of the best-trained, most tenacious combatants on land,
sea and space in the known galaxy.
Being the smaller, or smallest, component of any joint armed
force was hardly a new experience to the Freespacer troops,
particularly its commander, John Benjamin Harrison. He'd seen action
on New Texas, Gorlorndan Core, the Texas Free Republic, the Narn
homeworld, pirate capture operations beyond count, and most recently
on the Cardassian frontier, before he'd been given command of the
newly formed regiment on the Charlemagne. He knew damn well he didn't
have the equipment of the White Legion or the WDF Marines, but what he
did have he could use to its fullest, and more.
Odds never frightened Colonel Harrison. Like most born
Freespacers, Harrison had been raised with the stories of the
Freespacers constantly proving the odds wrong, overcoming incredible
disadvantages to victory after victory. The adage that a Freespacer
could lick five times his or her weight in (insert enemy here) had,
historically speaking, held up: it took truly astonishingly
overwhelming force to take down a Freespacer unit.
Unfortunately, overwhelming force seemed to be the order of
the day. All through the morning, the line had been pressed hard from
end to end, and it had broken no less than twice- once with Hela's
bodyguard, and once with the coming of Jormungand.
Now, even with the Midgard Serpent lying dead across the
battlefield, the Asgard line was crumbling, units pulling out in
orderly retreat in some places, in open rout in others. On either side
of the Freespacer installation, Niflheim forces were pouring through
gaps in the line. Very shortly, the Freespacer position would be
isolated on all sides, surrounded by the enemy.
A moment before, over the command channel, General Overstreet
(it still bothered Colonel Harrison to recieve orders from the dead
father of the fleet's commanding officer) had given orders for all
remaining intact line units to fall back to the secondary line and
reform. Here and there, units such as Harrison's were holding their
own, but without the rest of the line they would be swallowed up. From
the big-picture point of view, it was time to close up shop.
Harrison had no intention of pulling out.
Behind him, the five CAVs were harrying the flanking enemy
forces, helping protect the retreating Einjerhar and Asgard
troopers. Of the fifteen prefab gunnery turrets, nine were still
operational and pounding away at the heavier Jotunheim armor, while
the E-Webs and Proton Packs mowed down row after row of oncoming
infantry. Still, of the thousand men he'd had to begin with, Harrison
commanded less than seven hundred now; about two hundred fifty
troopers had been sent back to the aid station, and as many as a
hundred more were beyond all help, mortal or divine.
And if he tried to pull out now, surrounded on three sides and
understrength, he'd lose his artillery, he'd lose his defenses, and in
all probability he'd lose his command.
Besides, he consoled himself, we're serving a purpose
here. Every dwarf and giant and troll and elf and... whatever... that
wasted itself attacking his position was one less to harry the
retreating forces, one more second of time bought to allow the line to
reform, rally, and counterattack.
Harrison shrugged and turned to his orderly. "Tell the company
commanders to pick out spade details. They've got ten minutes to dig a
second trench behind our artillery. Move." Then, into his field radio,
he said, "General, this is Colonel Harrison, Tenth Freespacers. The
enemy has us boxed in, and I see no hope for retreat. We're going to
hunker down here and see how long it takes them to take us out. Over."
Butch Overstreet's angry voice squawked from the speaker,
"What the hell do you think you're doing? Get your unit out of there
right the hell NOW!"
"General, it's too late for me to get out with my men,"
Harrison said. "Get us a secure hole and we'll consider it, but I
think we can hold out here for a while. Harrison out," he sighed,
tossing the radio aside and lifting a phaser rifle. He'd always
believed that there came times in a person's life when, no matter how
shitty the odds were, they had to stand and fight.
He'd believed that Captain Condorcet's mutiny and stand at
Wilderness Station had not been one of those times.
Now, as the blaster bolts and bullets whizzed over the trench,
he figured that if the End of Creation wasn't one of those times, then
he'd never know what was.

The Great Circle of Warding was nearly complete. Skuld hoped
it was correct; she had run the most rudimentary of calculations on,
of all things, Colonel Skarne's pocket computer. Hacking the more
powerful computers in Gryphon's new armor to do the calculations more
precisely would have taken too much time.
She and Gryphon had cleared a place for the circle, on a
large, flat expanse - a roadbed, in better weather - just before the
city gates, behind the last ridge line of the snow; as the mortals and
Brunnhilde Silverspear stood watch, she worked as fast as she dared at
burning the marks of the circle into the stone with the torch on
Bjarnnil's handle tip. Behind, at the gates, Urd and Belldandy waited
for their cues.
Almost done!" Skuld announced. "Urd! Bel! Take your
places."
The two sisters did as instructed, moving to their positions
at two nodes of the circle. Skuld continued working, as rapidly as
she dared, but Loki was coming closer. If he saw what she was up to
before she was finished...
"Brunnhilde, Gryphon - hold him off! He can't be allowed to
come through here until the circle is ready!"
"This is gonna be some party," Gryphon muttered to himself,
energizing his weapons systems and striking out through the snow.

"Well, well, well. What have we here?" growled Loki as the
armored Earther and the Valkyrie squared off before him. The
green-faced being had completely dispensed with all the jokes and
wackiness now; he was a red-eyed, gritted-toothed terror, bent on one
goal and one goal only.
Unleashing a battle yell that would have shaken the rafters
had she done it indoors, Brunnhilde hurled herself at her adversary,
the spear in her hands glittering as she plunged it to the blade's
base into the left side of Loki's chest.
"Pathetic," said Loki. He slapped her away as an annoyance;
she stumbled, a spiderweb pattern of cracks raying out on her helmet
from where he struck her, as he yanked the silver spear out and hurled
it away. "Skuld has no taste - OOF!"
Gryphon cut him off by diving forward in a shrieking-jets
booster tackle, smashing into the dark god's midriff with enough force
to have all but bisected his unaltered host. In his current form,
though, Loki seemed rather unimpressed; the impact knocked them back
through a snowbank in a tumble, but Loki's hands smashing into either
side of Gryphon's armored body still caused a fireburst of pain to
envelop the Wedge Defender. He tumbled aside, crumpled and gasping,
as Loki got back to his feet and made for the gates again.
"Damn you - " Brunnhilde snarled, charging at him again,
Hellbores spitting destruction. Loki sidestepped the barrage, turned
into her attack and brought her up short with one hand clamped onto
her shoulder.
"You really must learn some manners, my dear," said Loki,
slowly closing his hand and crushing the armor beneath into a mass of
jagged inward edges. She kicked at his side, trying to dislodge his
grip; with his free hand, he punched her in the stomach, the blow
smashing the armor plate and bringing tears to her eyes and blood to
the corners of her mouth. A second vicious blow shattered her helmet,
freeing her hair and allowing the icy winds to scythe through the
tears. They froze to her cheeks as Loki regarded her lovely face, now
pale and pinched with pain.
"Well, so much for you," said Loki with a shrug. "A pity in a
way that I haven't more time to -enjoy- your company," he said with a
leer, then more cheerfully, "but you know war." He drew back his fist
for the kill, and Brunnhilde forced herself not to close her eyes and
cringe. She was a Valkyrie, by Odin, and she would die like one.
She was alert and paying attention, then, when a glittering
black armored hand seized Loki's head, the fingers actually digging
into the green forehead, and the dark god was abruptly yanked away,
leaving her to crumple into the snow.
"AURGH!" bellowed Loki, twisting free of Gryphon's grasp and
then lunging to seize his attacker. "I'll crush you with my bare
hands," spat Loki as he grappled with Gryphon in the snow, each
struggling for an advantage, neither finding it for the moment.
Teeth gritted, Gryphon gave a little ground, twisting,
shuffling up to the crest of the ridge, his back to the gates.
"Now," said Skuld's voice in his ear.
"No, I doubt that," he replied to Loki, and fell backward.
"Wha - ?!" said the startled dark god, pulled over with the
great weight of his armored adversary as the latter no longer tried to
hold himself up. As Gryphon felt the jarring impact of his back
against the stone, he drew his legs up, got his feet under Loki, and
pushed as hard as he could. Loki's grip broke and he tumbled free;
Gryphon himself turned a half-flip with his momentum and ended up on
his hands and knees, back to Loki. Before either could get to their
feet, though, Belldandy spoke in her native tongue:
>It begins.<
With a basso rumble that rattled Gryphon's teeth, the Great
Circle flared, burning away the snow that concealed it as it burst
into angry orange life. Loki shrieked in outrage and pain as he felt
the crushing pressure; the Circle pulled him down as if the mass of
the planet beneath it had suddenly jumped a thousandfold. Thanks to
his last half-tumble, Gryphon was caught in it too; he was crushed to
his knees, then flat on his face as, sizzling and sparking around him,
his armor dissolved away and his street clothes returned.
It would be impossible now to get him out of the circle, but
the Norns proceeded; far too much was at stake, and at any rate, he
had nothing to fear from the magic they were about to invoke.
>Savage darkness, foul device,< Urd intoned, working her hands
in the most ancient of patterns. >You resurrect an evil best left
buried. Memory rejects you.<
The loop of the circle she stood in thrummed with a
harmonizing note and reddened. In the center, Loki writhed as if
burned, and screamed.
>Subterfuge and cruelty,< said Belldandy, >the perversion of
good intentions and the rape of an ancient gift.< She shook her head
sadly. >Existence denies you.<
THRUM. Her subcircle turned green. Loki jerked again, as if
whipped, and shrieked.
>Deviltry and hatred,< said Skuld, >the use of a good soul to
commit an act of darkness. Foresight ignores you.<
THRUM. Skuld's circle turned blue, and the glow from all
three spread toward the center, then overlapped and spread toward each
other, obliterating the orange and merging together to form white
where they touched. Loki, trapped in the center, screamed and
screamed, the green discoloration on his face bubbling as if it were
wax and his face beneath red-hot.
>We are the Norns,< said the three together.
>We reject you,< said Urd.
>We deny you,< added Belldandy.
>We ignore you,< said Skuld.
>We abhor you,< they concluded in unison.
>In the name of the Past,< said Urd.
>In the eyes of the Present,< said Belldandy.
>By the light of the Future,< said Skuld.
>We command you,< said they in unison:
>BEGONE.<
As they completed the chant, the circle turned completely
white and its tone deepened to a howling roar.
Loki shrieked inarticulately as the circle erupted into a
towering column of white light, writhing and twisting, barely visible
in the center. The green mask peeled away from the face of MegaZone
beneath, and for a moment they drifted separate, expressions mirroring
each other.
Then the whiteness washed away all detail, and then the circle
collapsed into darkness and all was still.
>It is done,< said Belldandy softly, and the markings of the
circle on the ground faded and vanished. She would have gone on,
probably, but the sight of what lay within the boundaries of the faded
circle brought her up short with a gasp.
Where there had been two men, now there were four.
MegaZone, dressed in a battered WDF uniform, lay sprawled near
the center of the circle, and closer to its edge, Gryphon was crumpled
like a rag doll; but next to each lay another man. In Zoner's case,
the identity of his companion was easy to determine: wiry, red-headed
and dressed in tattered Asgardian court robes, he could only be Loki.
But who was the cloaked, slouch-hatted man who lay next to Gryphon?
The four began to stir, groaning, and sit up; first to arise
was Gryphon's counterpart, then Gryphon himself. Sitting up and
rubbing his temples, Gryphon didn't notice the other man for a moment;
when he did, his only reaction was to blink a couple of times and
regard him with something a bit short of a stare.
"Well," he said, and his voice rasped. Coughing, he tried it
again, and it came out better the second time. "Well. This explains
a few things."
"Do you know who this is?" asked Skuld, her confusion clear in
her voice.
The cloaked man, face partially obscured by a red silk scarf,
turned blue eyes to Skuld; they crinkled in a way that made it clear
he was smiling.
"He knows," said the man, and as he got to his feet, he faded
away, vanishing into the blowing snow.
"What the hell?" said R-Type.
"Remind me," said Gryphon, standing up and rubbing his neck,
"and I'll explain it sometime." Then he turned and noticed Loki, who
was pulling himself to his knees; putting two and two together, he
reached into his coat and discovered that his .45s were gone.
Of course, he said to himself. Should have figured.
He willed his armor back, and back it came; the experience
felt strangely different, less like the old armor matrix experience
and more like what had happened when Skuld had rebuilt the armor. He
had little time to examine the sensations, though, as Loki and Zoner
both pushed themselves to hands and knees and looked woozily up.
As luck would have it, the first thing they saw was each
other. Loki regarded Zoner with bleary indifference, while behind the
haze in Zoner's eyes, recognition sparked. R-Type could almost see
the gears turning in the bigger man's head as event connected to
event, raising him closer and closer to realization...
And then a flood of recollection burst like an atom bomb on
the horizon, and the recognition in MegaZone's dark eyes changed to
hate in an instant. His face darkened, and as he levered himself up
to a crouch his fingers tensed in an instinctive strangulation
posture. From somewhere deep in his body, a low, primal snarl rose,
building to a scream.
"nnnnnrrrrrrrrRRRRRR!!" bellowed MegaZone, throwing himself at
the still-dazed trickster god and seizing him by the throat. "LOOK -
WHAT - YOU - MADE - ME - DO - YOU - FUCK!" he raged, punctuating each
syllable with a hard shake that rapped Loki's head against the ground.
This action seemed to shatter the tableau, and abruptly
everyone was moving. Guards appeared from the city gates, and they
and the others on the scene struggled to separate the two. While
Gryphon held back Zoner, the guards manacled Loki and hauled the
still-dazed god to his feet. The others gathered around, trying to
inject some calm into the situation and failing by weight of numbers.
Finally, as Zoner raged incoherently against the metallic
embrace of Gryphon's nelson hold, Yuri pushed her way through the
crowd, laid her hand flat against Zoner's chest, and said to him,
"Stop it."
At her touch, he quieted, sagging against Gryphon's arms.
"What have I done?" he asked Yuri softly.

At the ridgetop, R-Type looked at them together for a moment,
then turned and leveled his rangefinder binoculars at the battlefield,
turning slowly to take it all in.
"Well, that's one thing taken care of," he remarked. "Now
who's going to handle all of -them-?"

END FIFTH SEAL

--
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