DP/UF - Passion [FanFic]

[MegaZone]

ACHERON, IN THE RIGEL SECTOR OF THE UNITED GALACTICA
18 JANUARY 2091 TSC

Group Captain Kemal Mi'tian, Seventh Zardon Guards, stood at
the ramp of his company's dropship and surveyed the wreckage through
his rangefinder binoculars. Great prophets, the place was still
burning, sixteen days after the incident. The Dirty Pair certainly
knew how to make a mess...
This time, though, they'd outdone themselves. Every
inhabitant of the planet Acheron was dead, all because of the vizorium
firestorm they'd touched off making their escape from Professor
Wattsman's secret lab. The Seventh Guards had been sent for two
purposes: making certain all of the monsters reported in the Lovely
Angels' report had been killed along with all of the sentients who
once lived there, and trying to find the body of the unfortunate man
who had accompanied them on this mission and, according to the report,
been killed ensuring the Lovely Angels' escape.
It hadn't quite sunk in yet that Commander Benjamin D.
Hutchins, Wedge Defense Force, was dead, even if his funeral -had-
been three days ago...
"All right, you lot, look sharp now!" Mi'tian barked, slamming
the facebowl of his battle armor's helmet and stepping off the ramp.
"This is where they reported Ground Zero to be -- get digging. We
want the site of the control panel marked out; we want any datatapes
that can be salvaged... "
"Fat chance," one of the senior sergeants muttered.
Mi'tian ignored him and continued, "And we want... er... the
body."
"If there's any to be found, sir, we'll find it," said one of
the soldiers, kicking over a piece of rubble with his toe. "I doubt
there's any to be found, though."
"Do your best."

Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents

UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES
PASSION

A Story of the Golden Age

Benjamin D. Hutchins

(c) 1994 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited

"Sir!" came a voice on the tac frequency, hours later.
Mi'tian, catching a quick nap aboard the dropship, recognized it as
Corporal Kamara's immediately, and keyed the com set next to his bunk.
"What've you got, Corporal?"
"We've found Commander Hutchins, sir."
Mi'tian put on his helmet, activated the respirator, and left
the dropship. Following Kamara's transponder signal, he picked his
way through the rubble for several minutes, coming at last to a large
pile of angular wall sections which had formed a strange kind of
lean-to. Near it, a medical tent had been erected, the green chevron
clearly marking it as such (a green chevron being the Zardon
equivalent of a red cross), and, ducking through the flap held open by
a saluting subcorporal, Mi'tian entered it to see Commander Hutchins's
body laid out on the inflatable bier in the middle. He was covered in
soot and a thick tar-like substance, and blood left a crimson trail
down the sides of his face from nose and mouth. A corpswoman was
bending over him, peering intently at the reading from the small
sensor she was holding to his neck. He stopped, opening his helmet
shield and smelling the sharp antiseptic tang that marked all medical
locations.
The corpswoman looked up from the sensor, her eyes wide, and
met her commander's gaze with a look of shock. "Sir... he's alive."
"Great prophets," Mi'tian whispered. "I'll contact the WDF
imm -- "
"Sir, wait."
"What?"
"Sir... he shows signs of extreme vizorium toxicity. I'm not
certain he'll survive... there's no need to go getting their hopes up
for nothing. Also... he was conscious for a brief period when we
first found him, and he said not to let them know."
Mi'tian considered. "That's very odd. He must have been
delirious."
"Perhaps, but the other factors remain, even if we discount
his wish -- which I don't recommend."
"I... I see your point. If he doesn't survive, there's no
need to put them all through losing him again. Still... I have to
inform -someone-... I don't have the authority to finalize that
decision on my own."
"What will you do, sir?"
"Contact Command and find out what they think," Mi'tian said.
"I'll be on the dropship. Inform me at once if there's any change."
"We should move him to a full medical facility at once, sir."
"I know. I'll contact you when I'm done with Command."
"Sir!"

"Alive, you say?" General (once Empress-Designate, before
Zardon went democratic) Leeanna Zard'al said, her eyes narrowing with
interest. "Have you notified anyone else?"
"No, ma'am. Corpswoman Ilian recommended that we not subject
the WDF to any undue speculation, since his condition is so tenuous.
No need to make them lose him twice. She also recommends moving him
to a complete care facility posthaste, a recommendation I concur with.
In addition, he himself requested, before lapsing into
unconsciousness, that the WDF -not- be informed."
"Strange," Leeanna replied. "This poses a quandary... where
can we send him that he will receive adequate care, and yet the WDF
won't know where he is? Inform your corpswoman that she is to do her
best, and I will contact you with instructions within the hour."
"Yes, ma'am."

Leeanna terminated the connection and then sat, lost in
thought, for several minutes. What the hell? This was a thoroughly
weird situation. What to do?
Activating her com unit again, she tapped in a connection code
known to perhaps a dozen people in the galaxy, and then waited.
Moments later, Asrial, Queen of Imperial Salusia, appeared on the
monitor. Once, long ago, Leeanna and Asrial had been enemies, bitter
rivals in the endless war between Salusia and Zardon, and in the
battle for the heart of an Earthman named Jeremy Feeple, but before
that, they had been friends, and that same Earthman had ended the war
and made them friends again, even if Asrial did wind up getting him,
in the end. (Leeanna loved to point that detail out when in a puckish
mood; it exasperated Asrial.) Thus, Asrial smiled when she recognized
her caller.
"Oh, hello, Leeanna. How are you?"
"I'm fine, Asrial... but I have a bit of a problem."
"Oh?"
"Mm. You know my people are handling the cleanup of the EDEN
Incident for the UG, right?"
"Right."
"Well... the Group Captain in charge of the team just informed
me that they found Gryphon. Alive."
Asrial's eyes widened. "Alive!"
"Barely. They tell me he's extensively injured and heavily
poisoned with vizorium... after all, he was in the middle of that
inferno for days. He may not survive. They want to move him
someplace where he'll be cared for, but they say he doesn't want the
WDF informed that he's alive."
"That's very strange."
"I know, but he was apparently adamant about it, for the brief
period he was conscious. I don't know what to do with him, and I seem
to recall you have some sort of attachment to him, so I called you."
Asrial nodded. "He's an old friend -- you remember, I did my
military service on the SDF-17 -- and he saved Jeremy some years ago.
I had Father make him a Knight-Defender for it. I offered him a
sub-consortship then, and again when he helped me ascend the throne
after the Greub Revolt, but he turned it down both times... I was
rather disappointed."
Leeanna laughed. "Earthmen. They'll never understand you
Salusians and the way you think."
Asrial smiled. "Oh, I don't know. Jeremy learned, in time."
Leeanna grinned slyly, waggling her eyebrows, and replied,
"Don't I know it." Both of them broke for a moment at that; when they
recovered, Leeanna added, "You have the weirdest taste in men,
Asrial."
"Yes," Asrial admitted, "and the scary thing is, you seem to
share it."
Leeanna shrugged. "All in the name of galactic peace. What
do you think I should do with him?"
Asrial pondered for a moment, then replied, "Have your people
bring him here. I'll put him in one of the secure rooms in the Palace
Imperial and assign my personal physician to him. Everything will be
very hush-hush."
"Gotcha." Leeanna winked broadly. "If you find out why he
doesn't want his own people to know he's alive, let me know, ok?"
"Sure. Take care, Leeanna... and thanks for calling me on
this."
"No problem. You be careful."

So it was that, slightly less than three hours later, the
Zardon Naval Cruiser Garth Zard'al folded into Salusian space and sent
a high-speed courier shuttle to the Salusian Palace Imperial near
Saenar. There, an Imperial Watch detachment accepted the shuttle's
special payload from the Zardon Guards, and immediately took him to
the secure room in the West Tower, which had been outfitted as a
hospital in the intervening time. Watch guards were posted in pairs
at regular intervals in the corridors and stairwell of the West Tower,
and the lift had been security locked to cardkey levels. Her Imperial
Majesty herself hovered by the door of the room for the entirety of
the twenty Standard hours in which her personal physician, Doctor
Sandor Tinal, worked tirelessly to stabilize the poisoned officer.
Finally, Tinal stood up, groaning softly as his back popped
into place again, turned to Asrial, and bowed, saying, "Majesty, I
believe we've finally stabilized him."
"Thank you, Doctor. You're dismissed."
"Majesty." The doctor and his staff departed in silence, and
Asrial went to stand over the bed, looking down at Gryphon.
Several hours passed.

"Unnngghh... "
Pain.
Fire.
Cold.
Fire.
Pain.
How interesting. A Mobius loop of suffering. Oddly detached
from what he was experiencing, Gryphon watched himself slide toward
the abyss. He'd been hanging on for days, trying to stay with it,
fighting the poison as it crept through his body, destroying him.
He'd lain there in the wreckage and felt his skin crisping as the
flames licked at him, and not had the strength to pull away because of
the oxygen debt, the smoke searing his throat as his lungs liquefied
inside his chest from the vizorium fumes. He'd felt with queer,
clinical detachment as the mucous membranes inside his nasal passages
had disintegrated and blood had flowed freely, the exquisite agony of
choking on that blood as it flowed into his raw throat and made his
tortured lungs cough, his body reflexively fighting to breathe.
Through it all he'd refused to let go of his life. They had to be
told of his betrayal.
[Left me to die... ]
Once, just before the Zardons had found him, Teleute had come
to him and asked him to let go and cease his suffering; he'd refused
with all the strength he had left, and to his surprise, she'd
respected his will and gone away. That was why he was able to move
and speak when they found him, why he'd had the strength and
adrenaline to force his shattered vocal chords to tell them not to
alert the WDF, not to alert -anyone-. Keep me a secret, he'd said.
They mustn't know.
Then it had all gone black. He'd lost consciousness, finally.
All through the ordeal he'd hung onto at least semiconsciousness; only
with that message delivered did he surrender to the dark, secure in
the knowledge that they wouldn't let him die now.
Now, he felt horrible -- terrible beyond words -- but he
wasn't hanging onto his mortality with his fingernails. He didn't
have to concentrate to not seize up and expire; his body was working
on its own again. He could awaken and pay attention to other things.
The fires were gone. The smoke and dust were gone. No new damage was
being inflicted.
He opened his eyes, wondering if they would work, and was
rewarded with a fuzzy image of brown and grey. Blinking a couple of
times restored moisture to his eyeballs, and the world resolved
itself.
The room didn't look like a hospital room. It was a bedroom,
and a fairly opulent one at that. The bed was huge, twice the size of
a traditional king-size at least, and had actual posts at the corners,
not high ones, but there, and topped with knobs of some grey
marble-like stone. The walls were paneled in some rich brown wood,
the ceiling was of the same material, and the floor was the same kind
of stone as the knobs on the bedposts. There were fixtures of brass,
and a huge red brick fireplace dominated the far wall, a fireplace
with a mantel of that same grey stone, and above it, a painting of a
Cheltari Salusian man in a naval uniform.
[Where the hell am I?]
He wasn't alone. There was a chair next to the room's massive
door, a large wooden one, which didn't look very comfortable, and
curled up in it was a woman, blonde-haired, dressed casually in a
t-shirt and jeans. Human? No; Salusian, humanized; there were the
extra ears. In fact... wasn't that... ?
He tried to say a name, but nothing came out; he coughed,
feeling spikes of agony ray out from inside his chest when he did so,
and tried again. This time his voice emerged, as a sharp, hissing
rasp, but audible.
"A... Asrial?"
She stirred, then awoke with a slight start, looking over at
him with crystal-blue eyes. Yes, that was definitely Asrial, all
right. What was -she- doing here?
"Gryphon," she said, rising and walking over to kneel by the
side of the bed. "Thank the gods you're all right."
"I'd hardly call myself 'all right'," Gryphon rasped, "but I'm
alive. Wh... where am I?"
"Salusia. The Palace Imperial."
"How'd I... how'd I get here?"
"The Zardon commander whose unit found you didn't know what to
do with you, so he reported your discovery to his supreme commander,
who happens to be Leeanna. She called me, since you're a
Knight-Defender of the Crown, and asked me what I thought should be
done."
"And you had me brought here?"
"There's no physician in the universe I'd trust with the life
of a Knight-Defender above my own Dr. Tinal."
"Thank you. It seems I owe you my life... " He remembered
his manners, then. He'd taken Salusian citizenship a bit less than a
century before, when he'd been a student at the WDF Academy -- since
his own homeworld didn't want him back, it seemed the thing to do.
That made Asrial his Queen, and there were certain observances to be
made. "Majesty."
"Please, my friend. Formalities don't become you... "
Gryphon smiled weakly and replied, "Well, you -are- majestic."
"You haven't changed; you're still a flatterer."
"I feel obligated to flatter people who have saved me."
The fire.
Great gods, the fire.
The memory crashed back down upon him like a boulder, and he
would have screamed, but it was impossible. He twisted in agony
half-remembered and half-real, and Asrial was at his side in a moment,
the Queen of Imperial Salusia mopping the forehead of a wounded
soldier with a wet cloth like a common battlefield nurse. Asrial, for
all of her propensity to give grandiose titles, was not one to stand
often on ceremony. The action didn't particularly do anything,
physiologically -- he was not feverish -- but the gesture, a simple
act of compassion and care, did much to calm his mind. Momentarily,
the flames receded, leaving him, as they always did, with a cold rage
burning below his skin, and the elemental need to avenge himself.
Asrial felt his hand grip her forearm with surprising
strength, and looked down at him with that surprise evident in her
eyes. He relaxed his hand and smiled weakly up at her.
"Seems it'll be a while before I'm well enough to get out of
your hair, Majesty," he said apologetically.
She looked into his eyes and saw the rage and pain lurking
behind them, overshadowing the mere physical suffering his wracked
body was subjecting him to. It frightened her a little, and she
wondered what he could possibly have experienced in that hellish
firestorm that could leave his mind so wounded. She had always been
fond of him -- fond enough to offer him a sub-consortship years
before -- and now, seeing him broken in body and tormented in mind,
she felt her heart melting. What had happened to him? How could she
help him to recover from it?
"Don't worry about it," she told him firmly. "All that
matters is you, getting better."
"All?" he replied, his weak, apologetic smile becoming
stronger and more familiarly quirky.
"All," she repeated.
To that, he replied with a characteristically unexpected
action, and kissed the back of her hand with dry, cracked lips.
"My liege," he said.
She swatted him.

For two months, he slowly recovered, his body knitting itself
back together as the simple, natural medicine of the Salusian people
flushed away the remaining poison in his system. During that time,
Asrial remained with him, true to her word. Ambassador Feeple, as
charmingly unassuming and friendly as ever, visited often, as did his
"obligatory ninja bodyguard", Ichi.
It was during one such visit that the Ambassador brought up
the possibility of informing the WDF of his survival.
"I can't do that," Gryphon replied. "Not yet."
"But why not?" Asrial inquired. "You never have explained
just why you forbade us to tell them the Zardons had found you in the
first place, after it was clear that you weren't in mortal danger any
longer."
"I would think you owe us that, at least," Ichi observed.
"True enough," Gryphon replied, and sat up a little straighter
in bed. "True enough. All right... I'll tell you... but what I am
about to tell you doesn't leave this room. Agreed?"
"Agreed," said Jeremy, and Asrial nodded.
"You have my word," Ichi added.
Satisfied, Gryphon leaned back against the pillows and closed
his eyes, and started recounting the tale as it played like a film
behind his eyelids.

/* Vivaldi "The Summer, III" _The Four Seasons_ */

We found the vizorium mines easily enough, and wandered around
inside them for a while with a total case of the creeps, getting
filthy with various forms of crud we stumbled into down there. When
we stumbled upon what had been a miners' barracks area, Kei and Yuri
were overjoyed -- especially when they found out that the baths
worked. I was standing guard outside the door to the bathroom,
waiting my turn, essentially, while the girls took a much-needed bath,
and anticipating my own with a good bit of pleasure -- I hate being
dirty, too.
Then all hell broke loose in there, and by the time I made it
through the door, Kei and Yuri were standing there, dripping wet, in
towels, holding some guy at gunpoint. Kei had seen him before -- he
was apparently a small-time thief and mercenary, who had been running
a vizorium sideline of late, and she'd seen him while undercover
tracking a preliminary lead into this case. Charming fellow, really,
handsome in a rakish kind of way, very roguish, of course. His name,
unlikely enough, was Carson D. Carson.
Carson started out as a prisoner, and then, as we made our way
deeper into the mines (sure, we were -looking- for the way out, but we
were good and lost by then), things started getting hairy.
Bio-engineered monsters started popping out of the woodwork -- it was
like a Nightmare run in CyberDoom. Before long we were all separated,
and I was wandering around alone, lost in the catacombs. It was quite
a bit like being in Hell.
Eventually, I met up with Yuri, more by accident than anything
else, and between the two of us we wound up blasting our way out of
the tunnels and into a big central chamber -- and who was there but
Kei and Carson, and a wackmobile scientist-type who had apparently
mistaken them for his own creations -- why, I have no idea. At any
rate, he was trying to scan-and-map them onto a new batch of the
monsters, and ended up accomplishing little except making them meaner.
Doctor Strangelove there sort of snapped when Yuri and I came
blasting into the room, and sent a couple zillion of those things
after us... we got Kei and Carson free, and at that point, survival
was a bit more important than prisoner protocols. We figured out
where the exit tunnels were, but by that point, the whole place was
going up in flames -- secondary damage from our firefight with the
monsters was causing the operation to come down around our ears. Kei
and Yuri caught the Nutty Professor and his big butler-type, and when
the last wave of monsters came rushing out of the hole in the ground
that used to be Professor Wack's headquarters, and Lovely Angel still
needed preflighting, I grabbed a SSIIVA unit and went back in to hold
them off.
Carson came with me, I thought because he had a shred of
decency -- he seemed to be one of those gentleman-thieves you hear
about, like Arsene Lupin and his ilk. What he was actually after went
a bit deeper than that. We mopped up the monsters without much
trouble, and then, as the place started to get -really- unfriendly and
it became obvious that the firestorm was going to get out of any
semblance of control, I turned to him to suggest that we get the hell
out of there.

Gryphon stopped speaking then, and simply sat for a moment,
silent, his eyes squeezed shut, his breathing slow, even, regular, and
entirely too controlled.
"What happened?" Jeremy finally asked.
Gryphon's eyes snapped open -- they burned like blue coals as
he looked up and said, "He shot me."
Asrial sucked in a sharp, hissing breath through her teeth;
Jeremy blanched; Ichi remained impassive, but her eyes narrowed a bit.
"He had a bottle of wine in his hand -- supposedly he'd stolen
it once and Professor Nutcase had gotten it away from him. He popped
out the cork, took a big drink of it, and said to me with a grin, 'You
know something, pal? What Carson D. Carson wants, he takes -- no
matter what.' I couldn't think what that had the first thing to do
with, so I gave him one of those 'And?' looks, and his grin got wider
as he continued, 'Guess what? I want something of yours!'
"Then he shot me with a pulser rifle. I could feel it blowing
my armored chestplate to bits, chewing into my flesh, the impact
throwing me back against a wall... my faceplate shattered and the
flames and smoke clawed at my face and my throat... and as everything
went black and red, I could hear him laughing."
He paused, took a deep, shuddering breath, and released it.
"The next thing I remember is waking up in this room. I don't
remember talking to the Zardons at all, or being transported here."
"It makes sense, now... " muttered Jeremy.
"What makes sense?"
"Uh -- nothing."
Gryphon leaned forward and repeated sharply, "-What- makes
sense, Jeremy?!"
Ichi put her face in her hand as Feeple murmured, "Really,
it's nothing."
"Tell me!"
"Uhm... "
Asrial cleared her throat and interceded. "When the Lovely
Angels returned to the SDF-17," she said, "Carson D. Carson reported
that you had heroically sacrificed your life so that they all might
live. You... you were commemorated a week later, an empty coffin
buried-at-space."
Gryphon fell back against the pillows and looked up at the
ceiling. "Son of a bitch," he said, eventually. "Told them I died
for them. Shot me and left me to die, and told them... My goddess,
Kei must be... " He sat up again, eyes narrowing. "No, no, oh christ
no... get me a phone, please, I have to have a phone."
"Gryphon -- "
"Please! I need a phone."
"All right... all right, just a minute."
"Perhaps we should be going," said Jeremy, rising to his feet.
"I'll look in on you later, all right?"
"All right," said Gryphon with an absent wave, his mind six
million miles away. Looking as if he had expected just that response,
Feeple left with Ichi right behind him. Moments later, Asrial placed
a small vid-phone on the stand next to Gryphon's bed, then excused
herself as well.
Gryphon sat for a moment, trying to will his pounding heart to
slow down, hearing the blood roaring through still-dangerously-weak
vessels and threatening to burst free again. Vizorium poisoning is a
tricky and dangerous affliction, and pushing it now could send him
spiraling into relapse.
Eventually, he got himself under control; then, filled with
trepidation, he reached out, picked up the handset, and dialed a
well-remembered number.

0 11 207 508 723 798 6650 0166

RING

RING

The screen flickered to white, then resolved itself as the
phone was picked up.
The world ground to a sparking halt around Gryphon's reeling
mind as he recognized the face looking out of it at him.
"Carson," his throat squeezed out past his dropping jaw.
Carson D. Carson, recognizing his caller, looked momentarily
surprised, then moved closer to the camera (putting more of himself in
front of the screen, probably). "Well, well, well," he said. "Look
who's still alive."
"You son of a bitch," Gryphon grated. "What the hell are you
doing answering my phone?!"
Carson sneered. "I'm doing a hell of a lot more than
answering your phone, dead man," he replied. "This happens to be -my-
phone now. My phone... my quarters... my life. Yours is over, and
you're dead and buried. Your position has been... filled," he added
with a leer.
Gryphon's eyes widened as a sick feeling welled up from the
pit of his belly.
"She's just about forgotten about you," Carson continued, his
sneer becoming an even crueler cheery grin. "Do us all a favor and
don't put her through hell twice by trying to come back. She's in
better hands now."
Faintly, in the background, Gryphon heard a familiar voice:
"Carson? Who is it?"
Carson turned away from the screen, replying as he reached for
the Disconnect switch, "No one important."

NO CARRIER

CALL DURATION 01:31

Gryphon stared in mute, uncomprehending, flatline horror for a
moment, his muscles becoming tenser and tenser. He felt the pain
knotting at the back of his skull as the muscles of his neck went into
spasm, and couldn't care. He felt his heart racing dangerously, his
blood raging as if on fire, and couldn't care.
Then the world burst apart into a million red fragments, and
he was spiraling into merciful blackness.

INTERCESSION

Your friends make you small
And I hate them all
Why be miniature
When you were so tall?

I know where you go
I can't go there so
My heart's turning blue
I'm all over you

Over you...

Everything's a mess
And you could care less
Somebody heard you say
You changed your address

I know what you know
I don't want to though
No point in seeing you
I'm all over you

Over you...
--The Curtain Society "All Over You" _Chelsea_ (7" single)

The next month was a repeat of the previous two, albeit at
accelerated speed; his relapse had been bad, but nowhere near as bad
as it could have been. Before long, he was strong enough to get out
of bed and walk around, and within another month he was training
himself, getting back into shape as his para-human physiology finally
came back up to speed, flushing away the last of the poison and
repairing the last of its long-term damage. He would leave the palace
for long periods of time, to walk around the Imperial Forests
surrounding it, exploring the small mountains and hiking about.
Equally long sojourns found him in the palace library, studying
Salusian; before long he was reading anything that came to hand in its
original text, having added the language to his repetoire in short
order (languages had always been one of his strong points). To
strengthen himself, bring back some of his tone, he took lessons in
combat and the arts of darkness from Ichi -- by no means a long enough
tutelage for him to take any title, but long enough to acquire some
useful skills.
As much of the time as she could, Asrial accompanied him,
watching as he got stronger, recovering more and more fully. At
length, as they sat on a grassy hilltop a few miles from the palace,
looking at its gleaming, turreted majesty in the gathering twlilight,
she raised the topic of his returning.
"I'm not certain," Gryphon replied, "that I should."
"But why not? Surely you don't intend to let Carson get away
with what he's done."
"It's a bit late for that, Asrial. I see now what he did...
he came out of that hellstorm saying I sacrificed myself for them, and
when Kei needed somebody, there he was. The bastard murdered me and
then used my death and its effect on Kei to get into her bed. How can
anyone be that low, Asrial? I've seen a lot of things in my time as a
soldier... but war, for all its horror, seems somehow more... more
humane than that. To cold-bloodedly kill a man, and put a woman
through hell, just to make yourself look good, to get into bed with
her... " He shivered. "I can't even imagine... "
Asrial moved closer to him, putting her arm around his
shoulders and pulling him closer to her. "So do something about it,"
she said softly.
"Something he said to me, though -- it made sense, in a way.
He said... 'she's just about forgotten about you... don't put her
through hell trying to come back.'"
"That's a lie and you know it," Asrial said flatly.
"Forgotten you! No one who has ever known you can forget you, my
friend... least of all Kei Morgan. The two of you are bound by
something that Carson D. Carson could never understand. Your souls
are twined together at their very roots. No shallow scheme like this
can put the two of you apart forever."
"You seem very... I dunno, -certain- about this."
"I am," she replied.
"She thinks she loves Carson now."
"No; she loves someone she thinks Carson is. No doubt he's
acting very much like you -- it's the only way he can succeed at his
twisted goal."
Gryphon ruminated on that for a moment, and was rewarded with
a flash of white agony as his mind's eye saw the two of them together,
Kei all unknowing with that smiling demon in the bed that had been
theirs... he cried out in anguish and fell to his back on the ground,
looking up at the stars above Salusia and wishing he had the power to
fling thunderbolts through the ether.
The stars were blotted out, then, by Asrial leaning over him,
and before he could think, she had lain on the ground next to him, her
arm over his chest, and brushed her lips across his own. For a moment
he enjoyed it; then he regained his wits and put a hand on her
shoulder, murmuring for her to stop.
"You need me," said Asrial in reply. "You're in terrible
pain, Ben... you need warmth, you need companionship. You need love,
and it just so happens that I'm here to give it to you."
"But I -- you, you're -- "
"We Salusians think differently than you Earthers, Ben. We're
not bound by the constraints of the outdated, puritanical system you
were raised under -- especially when and where you come from.
Remember, Jeremy is about your age, and from the same area of Earth.
I had to go through all of this with him... explain to him what love
really is. At first, he didn't understand it either, but eventually I
got through to him."
"So you think you know what love is."
"I know. Love is the greatest thing in the universe."
"Well -that's- specific."
"I remember a particularly insightful verse from an Earther
song I heard once... 'love can make the time move fast or torture time
so slow / love can heal a gaping wound or make the pain explode / love
can be the difference between life and a hangman's rope / and that's
why love don't come easy'."
"I know that song."
"You Earthpeople seem to think that love is an object, like a
video disc or a car. You talk of giving your love to someone, of
taking it back when a relationship goes sour -- you seem to think
that, like a video disc, you have to get it back from the first person
you gave it to before you can give it to another. Love is a fountain,
Gryphon, a well -- a great many people can drink from it, and none
detracts from any other's helping."
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying," she said, kissing him again, gently, "that what
we do here tonight won't detract a bit from what I have with Jeremy,
or from what you will soon have again with Kei. Tonight, here, you
and I are going to give to each other what we need, and express the
love that's built up between us over the past months. You -have-
noticed that, haven't you, even as you tried to deny it to yourself?"
she asked with an amused grin.
Gryphon reflected. It would be absurd, if it didn't make so
much sense...
... and yes, he had to admit as he looked at it, he -did- love
her.
"What happens after that, though?" he inquired.
"Who knows?" she replied. "We may never pass this way again.
We may never need to. Tomorrow you're going to leave -- you're going
to go back to the SDF-17 and take back the place that's rightfully
yours. No arguments, Knight-Defender... that is an Imperial order."
Gryphon snickered. "Yes, Majesty."
"Tomorrow, my brave knight, you're going home; and so we
should enjoy tonight as much as we can, h'm?"
As it happened, Asrial was quite right: freeing himself from
the shackles of his New England upbringing -was- a simple matter for
Gryphon. Forever after, the memory of that cool late-summer evening
would bring a nostalgic smile to his face. The cool, dry air; the
soft, enveloping darkness, the sparkling stars... the smell of
Salusian conifers alone would bring the whole thing back to him in
later years, the memories of Asrial's sweet, strong body, enthusiasm
and skill, and how very right she had been, how very much he had
needed exactly what she took such relish in giving to him.
In that one conversation, he learned more of love than he had
ever known before; and in the events that followed, he learned still
more. It was the finest gift anyone had ever given him.

The next day found him arriving at the Imperial Spaceport near
the palace, a small bag of clothing and equipment in one hand and a
slip of paper in the other. He was dressed for the cool, bright
weather, in the well-worn jeans, slightly tatty checked flannel shirt,
and comfortable boots he had worn for most of his hiking around the
Imperial Preserve. He hadn't shaved since his arrival on Salusia, and
by now his beard had grown in fully enough that he'd trimmed it back
this morning. No need to be too scruffy, after all. He stood in the
main concourse of the spaceport for a moment, looking around from
under the brim of an ISMC cap, and then, remembering his directions,
moved southward, adjusting his grip on the satchel.
Before long, he found the parking dock he was looking for. He
could tell that by the vessel parked there; Asrial had warned him when
she told him where to find it that it was "distinctive".
The ship he was looking at now appeared to have been made of
parts of two different ships; one, sweeping and graceful, encompassed
the entire foresection of the ship and swept back and up to form what
he took to be a flying bridge tower, while the other had been stuffed
into the after-underquarter, where the drives belonged. The other
seemed to his spacer's eyes to be Corellian; it had the usual row of
three large ion-drive exhausts jutting out, and the knobbly
power-regulator protrusions and such that went along with Corellian
drives. Apparently this ship had lost its drive core near Corellia at
one point, and been patched together rather haphazardly, but what the
hell, he had seen worse patch jobs.
He walked up to the tall, silver-haired man standing next to
the ramp; said man, dressed in what seemed to be a CVR body-glove and
a baggy jacket which formed a semblance of uniform, turned to watch
him approaching, and Gryphon could almost feel him trying to recognize
the man walking toward him and failing.
"Something I can do for you?" he asked.
Gryphon handed him the piece of paper he held in his right
hand; the other man unfolded it, scanned it, and raised his eyebrows.
"You realize," he said, "I'll need some sort of verification."
"Of course." Gryphon pushed back his right sleeve, revealing
what appeared to be a bar code tattooed on his inner forearm, just
before the elbow joint. "All the verification you need is right
here."
"Wait here," said the man, and went up the ramp into the ship.
A moment later he returned with another member of the ship's crew, a
tall and pretty woman with her ash-blond hair cut in a near-cascade
down one side of her face. Her CVR-glove was red, and the shoulders
of her jacket were adorned with large red crosses against the white
material. Apparently, she was a medical officer.
Shrugging, Gryphon held his arm out to her; she took it in
strong, gentle hands and turned it, then scanned the code with a
light-pen. Then, with that somewhat amusing clinical detachment
medical people have, she let his arm drop and took his head in her
hands instead, turning it and peering intently into one of his eyes.
Then she turned back to the man.
"It's genuine," she told him.
"Excellent." The man took Gryphon's hand and shook it. "Good
to see you, Commander. My name is Joshua Balboa, and this is Mei Lin.
Welcome aboard the starship Cha Cha Maru. Come up... our captain will
want to talk to you."

Captain Tita Mu Koshigaya was not what Gryphon was expecting
to see in the commander of the ship Asrial had called "one of my best
intelligence ships." He had rather been expecting... well, he wasn't
sure what he had been expecting, but a water nymph wasn't it.
Tita, all five feet and perhaps ninety pounds of her, leaned
back in a swivel-rocker office chair and put her grav-booted feet up
on her immense oak desk, looking for all the world like a high
schooler at the principal's desk. For a moment, after reading the
paper Gryphon had given Balboa, she was silent, a pensive look on her
sprite's sharp-nosed face.
"Docking with the Wayward Son is no problem," she said at
length. "We do that a couple of times a year to pick up supplies and
current charts. Putting a 'member of the crew' off permanently...
-that-'s tricky."
"You don't have to worry about the internal security systems,"
Gryphon assured her. "I can get past those easily. It's the
personnel that might be a problem. The SDF-17 is a big ship, but I'm
pretty well-known. I'll have the advantage that they won't be
expecting me to turn up, but there's still a chance I might be
recognized."
"Would that cause trouble?"
"No, but it would ruin the surprise."
"Surprise?"
Gryphon outlined for her what had happened that brought him to
Salusia in the first place, and what he planned to do about it, and at
the end of the story, a slow smile spread across her face.
"Right!" she declared, getting to her feet and nodding her
auburn head. "Don't worry about a thing, Commander -- we'll get you
there."

INTERCESSION

There's a girl with a crown and a scepter
Who's on WLSD
And she says that the scene isn't what it's been
And she's thinking of going home
That it's old and it's totally over now
And it's old and it's over it's over now
And it's over it's over it's over now
I can see myself

At the end of the tour
When the road disappears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of the tour
The engagements are booked through the end of the world
So we'll meet at the end of the tour

Never to part since the day we met
Out on Interstate Ninety-One
I was bent metal you were a flaming wreck
As we kissed at the overpass
I was sailing along with the people
Driving themselves to distraction inside me
Then came a knock on the door which was odd
And the picture above me changed

At the end of the tour
When the road disappears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of the tour
The engagements are booked through the end of the world
So we'll meet at the end of the tour

This was the vehicle, these were the people
You opened the door and expelled all the people
This was the vehicle, these were the people
You opened the door and expelled all the people
This was the vehicle, these were the people
You let them go...

At the end of the tour
When the road disappears
If there's any more people around
When the tour runs aground
And if you're still around
Then we'll meet at the end of the tour
The engagements are booked through the end of the world
So we'll meet at the end of the tour
And we're never gonna tour again
No we're never gonna tour again
--They Might Be Giants "End of the Tour" _John Henry_

That night-cycle, after the ship was away and in hyperspace,
Gryphon lay in the bunk of the stateroom he'd been shown to, looking
up at the ceiling. He was, of course, quite unable to sleep. The
combination of a strange bed in a strange place, his own mental
agitation at finally being active again, and a strange but
overwhelming feeling he couldn't identify effectively prevented that.
Instead, he stared at the ceiling in the darkness and thought.
He needed some kind of a plan. Just showing up, pretending to
be someone else, wasn't going to do it. The charade wouldn't hold out
forever, and anyway, what would he do then? Roam around until he
found Carson, and then what? Confront him, and risk losing
spectacularly and getting himself spacked again? Get a big rifle and
wack him from a distance? Not very satisfying. And what of the
others? Just showing up alive would be a bit of a shock for them,
wouldn't it?
What about what he had just come from, for that matter? He
wasn't entirely sure -what- had happened back on Salusia that last
night. Well, he knew what had -happened-, but... Hmm. Curious
feeling, this. His anticipation at seeing Kei again, at proving to
her that he hadn't died, hadn't left her, was running high. At the
same time, he had to wonder when he would next see Asrial. What was
she, now? His Queen, his savior... his lover?
Once, at least. That fact was recorded for posterity in the
bar code on his arm; it identified him to anyone who knew the Salusian
High Military Code as a Knight-Defender of the Crown and Imperial
Consort of the First Circle, which, under Imperial law, afforded him
quite a few powers under law. Both of them were complex people, and
though they loved each other on many levels, they could not be said to
be -in- love, not the way he and Kei were.
Idly, as he turned the situation over in his head, he wondered
if it really made as much sense to Asrial as she claimed, or if she
was just making it up as she went along like he did most of the time.
Ah, the heck with it. Why argue with any system that works?
Carson.
What the hell was he going to do about Carson?
Under the WDF's conduct code, he was quite entitled to just
kill him out of hand. Anyone who survives a direct attempt on his
life has the right to return the favor. Under UG law, such conduct
was still frowned upon; the UG's legal code would prefer that Gryphon
report the incident to his local law enforcement authorities, who
would then build a case, make an arrest, and try the accused before a
court of law. This had the disadvantages of taking the situation out
of Gryphon's hands, taking forever, and being singularly unsatisfying,
so Gryphon much preferred the WDF way. Besides, since Carson was
living aboard the SDF-17 now, he was subject to the WDF's laws, not
the UG's. Even if he hadn't, his crime was committed within the
confines of a WDF field operation for which he had been deputized...
So legally, there were no worries regarding just walking up to
him, sticking a gun in his mouth and blowing his brain stem out the
back of his head.
An entertaining image, but impractical.
Perhaps a better thing to think about would be, rather than
playing with images of Carson suffering indescribable torments in the
name of vengeance, how he would go about putting the pieces back
together afterward. No doubt Gryphon's return would startle a good
many people, not least of whom by any means would be Kei. She would
undoubtably be upset: hurt and angry at being deceived, perhaps even
suffering mixed emotions at the loss of the person she -thought-
Carson was even as the trauma of learning the truth was hitting her.
This would have to be handled carefully.
Fortunately, handling Kei's emotional state carefully was
something Gryphon had a great deal of experience with.
Explaining what he had learned... that could wait, but he was
certain that she would find it interesting, if nothing else, once the
unpleasantness was taken care of. Her thinking had run closer to
those lines than his, anyway; she'd actually reproached him for being
rude enough to turn down Asrial's initial offer, several years ago,
which had at the same time confused and amused him.
That would go a long way toward assuaging any worries she
might have about him not wanting to return to their old life after
knowing what had happened to her in his absence... assuming she wanted
to. No. Don't think about that...
Damn the man! He should die a thousand deaths... but there's
only the one. It would have to be a good one, then. Some sort of
elaborate scheme to drive him over the edge before ending his
torment... some way to drive him into bleak madness before the final
stroke.
Aboard the SDF-17? Right. The corridors and chambers of a
Super Dimensional Fortress are ever-so-scary.
If only...
Gryphon's mind was interrupted from its tail-chasing by the
chimer on his stateroom door, pinging softly, almost diffidently, in
the darkness. He looked at his watch, pushing in the button so that
the dial lit up bright blue (his favorite part of the entire
timepiece), and discovered that it was nearly midnight. How long had
he been up? Since... what, seven, eight that morning?
"Come in," he said, wondering if the locks in this ship worked
in such a way that he'd have to get up and do something with a switch.
That turned out to be unnecessary; the door pinged a different tone as
the locking mechanism disengaged. The door hissed open, and as
Gryphon blinked in the light streaming in through the open rectangle,
he made out a small silhouette in the doorway.
"Oh, I'm sorry," Tita said. "I didn't know you were asleep --
it's not important."
"That's all right," he replied, raising a hand (partially as a
signal, and partially to shield his eyes from the bright light of the
corridor). "I wasn't sleeping. What's on your mind?"
"Nothing, really. I just wanted to be sure you were settled
and all that. You're a guest on my ship, after all; it's my
responsibility to be sure you're comfortable."
Gryphon chuckled. "I'm fine, thanks."
"Lucky you," replied Tita, walking into the room and sitting
down on the edge of the bunk. "I can't sleep at all my first night in
a new place." As she spoke, the door hissed shut again, plunging the
room back into darkness.
"Actually, neither can I, but I didn't want to mention it.
It's nobody's fault but mine, after all."
"See? It must be some kind of universal thing." Tita kicked
off her boots and leaned back, putting up her feet; then, as if
realizing that what she was doing could be considered impolite, she
turned to him and said, "Uh, do you mind?"
"No, not at all." Gryphon moved himself over a bit, putting
his hands behind his head and looking up at the ceiling. "How long
before we rendezvous with the Wayward Son?"
"Two weeks. They're on patrol at the Outer Frontier, so we'll
be meeting them right around the Rigel Rim."
"Ah, good. I haven't seen the Rim for a couple of years
now. The starbow near black hole Rigel X-91 is the prettiest one I've
ever seen... "
"I'm surprised military people notice things like that."
"Well, the WDF isn't your usual military organization." He
chuckled. "Hell, -I'm- one of the officers."
"How'd you ever get involved with that anyway? You don't look
like the soldier type to me."
He shrugged. "Damned if I know. I just sort of fell into it.
Come to that, you don't look like a spy."
"Is that what Asrial told you?" He nodded. "Ha! We're not
spies. We're civ hunters. We're just observant, and we report back
anything we notice that we think Salusia might be interested in,
that's all. We're just another pair of open eyes out here."
"Civ hunters, eh? I've never really understood the charm in
that, even though the WDF has dabbled in it ourselves from time to
time. It's like archaeology, but on such a huge scale... where's the
hook?"
"Well... " Tita paused for a moment, then shrugged. "It's a
calling."
"Mm. So is the Wedge Defense Force. Not very many of us are
soldiers by nature... which is probably what makes us so effective at
what we do. We've never forgotten the basic problem that civilians
have with trusting a military organization. Hell, we're more of a
police force than an army. The 3WA's operation is a lot bigger than
the WDF proper, but they get less press because they're less visible."
"With a few exceptions."
He smiled. "A few, yes."
There was a long period of silence, as both of them lay in the
quiet darkness and thought their private thoughts; then Gryphon was
broken from his reverie by the sensation of a fingertip tracing a line
across the inside of his right elbow -- his Defender's Mark. He
glanced to his side to see Tita contemplating it in the gloom, that
pensive look on her face.
"Mm?" he queried.
"I was just thinking... wondering how you came by this. All
the other Knights-Defenders I've seen are members of the warrior
caste, native Salusians, pure soldiers."
"I got that... " He shrugged again. "I got that for doing my
job. I was assigned to cover a transport which was carrying
Ambassador Feeple; we came under attack and I covered the transport.
When the smoke cleared, I had a big hole in my left side and Salusia's
highest military honor."
"And the First Circle."
"No, that came later... and I'm not certain precisely why."
In the darkness, he could just make out Tita smiling as she
replied, "Oh, I think I know. Queen Asrial is something of a
romantic, you know, and you're such a textbook picaro... well, it was
bound to happen sooner or later."
"Oh, you think so, do you?" he replied, grinning.
"I've read about you," she said. "I think I know as much as
anybody who isn't part of the WDF's inner circle can know about you.
You're the easiest one to learn about, you know... compared to the
others you're a public figure. Your captain... nobody knows
-anything- about him, not even his real name."
"He thinks being secretive and mysterious is funny. Me, I
never saw anything to be gained from secrets, so I don't often keep
them. My life is pretty much an open book... one that someone
recently thought he would write the last chapter of."
"What happened there? Her Majesty's orders didn't mention
it."
With considerably greater calm than the last time, Gryphon
recounted the events of the EDEN Incident again.
"That's... awful," said Tita, sounding almost at a loss. "I'm
so sorry. I saw you and Kei once, while the Cha Cha Maru was docked
with the SDF-17 for restocking, a couple of years ago. You were... I
dunno how to put it. You were interesting to watch. You weren't
terribly obvious about it, like some people, but it was obvious that
you were very much in love... " Tita sighed. "You don't see
something like that very often. I hope I find something like that for
myself one day... but, I'm young yet."
"How old are you?"
"Well, that's a complicated question. Objectively, I'm not
really sure. The best guess I've heard puts us all at around three
hundred Standard years old. Subjectively, I'm eighteen, or close
enough."
"Time dilation?"
"How'd you guess?"
"I know someone else who has a similar age discrepancy."
"Oh. Yeah... that's what it was. I turned fourteen in a
relativistic pseudo-warp... "
"You said 'us'. The rest of the crew?"
"Mm-hmm. The crew of this ship is my father's original crew.
It's because of him that I do what I do, really... he was a surveyor.
Cha Cha Maru was originally a scoutship, a survey and observation
vessel, for the Atlantean Empire."
Gryphon blinked. "Atlantis? I thought that was only a
legend."
"No, it was real, once," Tita said wistfully. "Dad and his
crew were surveyors... they kept an eye on the Santovaskan Empire,
since Atlantis had trade agreements with the Santovasku. When he
thought I was old enough, he let me go out with them. We were out in
the fringes of the Empire -- a long way from home -- when the
Santovaskan Civil War broke out, and while we were compiling our final
report, we were attacked by Loyalist forces. Apparently the Loyalists
had gotten the idea that Atlantis was backing Kahm's rebels."
Tita paused, then continued, "They just about destroyed the
ship. We only got away because of what Dad did... he jettisoned the
engineering section and imploded it. The implosion destroyed the
attacking Santovasku ships, and the rebound effect threw us back to
our own galaxy... but... he had to stay behind to initiate the
implosion. And without a dimension motor we made the whole trip at
.98 C, so time had no meaning. To us, it took two months to be
intercepted -- by a WDF ship, no less -- and slowed down.. but... "
Comprehension dawned on Gryphon. "But Atlantis had
disappeared in the interim."
"Yes. Gone without a trace. The others made me the captain
because that was how it was always done back home, but it's Balboa who
really knows what's going on most of the time. But I'm the one who
has to make the big decisions, and that's why we're civ hunters. I
keep hoping that someday... someday... we'll find out what happened to
our home." Shrugging off her sadness like a coat, she cheerily
continued, "But in the meantime, Her Majesty has very graciously taken
us in as Salusian subjects, and arranged for the Kuat Drive Yards off
Corellia to rebuild the ship for us... she's done a lot to help us get
acclimated. We owe her so much... so we do little favors like this
for her sometimes."
"Well, I'm sorry for the inconvenience. You should be able to
get back to your search as soon as you drop me off."
"Oh, it's no problem. Truth to tell, I just about demanded
the job when Asrial mentioned that she needed somebody to do it. I
told you I've read a lot about you... well, since we got here I've
been fascinated by the WDF, you know. How a professional fighting
force can keep up such a level of informality... you know, the
Atlantean Navy was a very showy affair, and very disciplined. We wear
the uniform out of respect, but we were always glad that Exploration
and Observation was never part of the fleet proper. Anyway, like I
said, I saw you once when I was on the SDF-17, and I wanted to meet
you... I'm sorry, here you are trying to get some rest and I'm
babbling away."
"Ah, it's all right. After the last few months I've had, I
could use a good bit of babble. Besides, it seems to me we've
something in common, at least."
"What's that?"
"Each of us, in our own way, is trying to go back home."
She considered for a moment, then nodded. "You're right."
"I hope you make it back someday, Tita. If there's anything
the WDF can do to help, just name it."
She blinked at him. "Y... you mean that?"
"Of course! It's the kind of thing we exist for."
"You'd divert the resources of that kind of organization to
help a bunch of lost spacers find their missing homeworld... why?"
Gryphon shrugged. "Can't help it. I've recently decided that
I like you."
She blinked again, and this time the action cast loose the
water that had been building up in her eyes for the last few seconds,
so that it trickled down her cheeks. Rather unexpectedly, she burst
out with a sob and buried her head against his shoulder, which caused
him to start slightly and instinctively put an arm around her
shoulders.
"What's wrong?"
"Nothing, I'm sorry... it's just that I only just met you, and
you're offering to do a huge favor for me, just because... you like
me... "
"I've made it a goal in life to make as many friends and as
few enemies as possible," he replied, and brushed some errant hair
back away from her eyes. "It's a curse of sorts, being a Nice Guy."
She laughed, the morose mood shattering as rapidly as it had
crystallized, and hugged him. "I like you, too."
Long moments of further silence passed; again, it was Gryphon
who was removed from his reverie, this time by a soft rattling noise
which it took him a moment to identify as snoring.
He fell asleep.

The journey to the SDF-17 took two weeks. For a couple of
days, Gryphon chafed, impatient; then he discovered the ship's library
and started reading everything in sight. Cha Cha Maru, being a
freelance trader, civ-hunter and exploration vessel, had an impressive
but disorganized collection of books and datatapes, and so what
Gryphon found over the next couple of days was quite haphazard.
Having finished _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_, he got
up from the table and paced across the large room to the shelf where
he had acquired it, and as he slid it back into the ranks of books,
his eyes seemed drawn to glance at another, taller book standing a few
spaces down the row. He reached up and pulled it out -- it was black,
bound in leather, and the cover had the words "ARCHIVES OF THE SHADOW
- W. GIBSON" stamped in gold foil on it.
"Wow," Gryphon murmured. "Where'd they find -this-?" He took
it back to his seat and started to read it, and as he did, a slow
smile of recognition began to spread across his face. Presently he
began to snicker, then chuckle, and then, just as Tita entered the
room, he threw back his head and laughed, long, loud, and darkly.
"Uh... it can wait," said Tita, and left.

The remainder of the trip saw Gryphon in one of the large and
currently empty cargo holds, practicing everything he had ever known
about hand-to-hand fighting and the arts of darkness. His skill level
at the latter was unimpressive, but rigorous drilling in the finer
points of remaining still and unseen in the dark improved him to the
point where he pronounced himself passable. The former, he had a good
deal of skill in already -- a Veritech pilot by trade, he had learned
to fight from the best experts the WDF had to offer, not least of whom
were Kei and Yuri themselves, the better to implement his fighter's
battroid mode and protect himself when out of the cockpit. Training
brought the old reflexes, dulled by his illness and inaction, back to
their old sharpness; pushing himself made them sharper. He was in
better shape than he had ever been before; his long walks in the
Imperial Preserve had seen to that.
On the last day of the trip, he finished his preparations and
considered himself ready; the next day, Cha Cha Maru docked aboard the
SDF-17, and its crew scattered to the public sectors, enjoying R&R
while their ship was overhauled by the Wedge Defense Force's
civil-service engineering crew.
Included among this crew was a bearded fellow, his hair brown
and cut short, dressed in the usual Cha Cha Maru uniform of CVR
body-glove (black, in his case) and loose white and black jacket.
With a small duffel bag over his shoulder, this unassuming fellow made
his way to the inner sections without arousing a great deal of
interest; then, as he approached one of the lifts which could lead to
the upper decks and were thus off-limits to visitors, he chanced to
run into a group of WDF personnel emerging from said lift.
One of them was Major Joe Elliott, the commander of Raptor
Heavy Squadron 625 (Def Leppard), a squadron which flew often with
Gryphon's own Eight-Balls. He and the brown-haired gent physically
collided; as they rebounded, Elliott made apologies, then stopped,
brow creasing.
"Don't I know you?" he inquired, his voice carrying the
Earther-British accent even after so many years in space.
"Not likely," the other man replied, shrugging and adjusting
his sunglasses, which had been knocked askew by the collision.
"Name's Don Griffin -- I came in on the Cha Cha Maru this morning.
Civ hunters."
Elliott looked intently at Griffin for a moment.
"Is there some problem?" Griffin inquired after that moment.
"No, no, not at all," Elliott said, taking a step back and
shrugging. "You just... look like somebody I used to know."
"I have one of those kind of faces," replied Griffin, and
moved off down the corridor.
Joe Elliott shrugged and continued on his way, in the other
direction.
Don Griffin ducked into the nearest unoccupied room -- a
conference room -- and locked the door behind him. A quick
examination revealed to him that this conference room did indeed have
a bathroom, which was good. He removed his uniform jacket and left it
lying across the back of one of the conference chairs, then removed a
small object from his duffel bag, went into the bathroom, removed his
shades, and shaved off his beard.
Returning to the conference room, Gryphon opened up the bag
all the way and began to remove items from it. A pair of black dress
trousers: these went on right over the CVR undersuit. Black dress
shoes: replaced the soft boots that had gone with the Cha Cha Maru
uniform. White dress shirt: tucked into the trousers. Black necktie:
obvious location. Black leather gloves: replaced the white gloves of
the uniform. Then he shrugged into a black woolen trenchcoat and
buttoned it up. He drew a red scarf taut around his lower face, just
below his nose, and then put a black, wide-brimmed slouch hat on his
head.
Now he was ready.
He threw back his head and tried out the Laugh.
Perfect.
The Shadow slipped out of the conference room and made for the
nearest seldom-used freight lift to the upper sections. Momentarily,
he located, moving quickly and surely, an armory, which he immediately
bypassed the lock on and entered. Scanning the racks of weapons,
archaic, modern and futuristic, he didn't take long to locate suitable
armaments. He couldn't find any Colt M1911A1s, .45 automatic pistols
of the old school, but there were a couple of Kuromi A-34s, small,
slab-sided machine pistols with 50-round magazines of 7mm slug
ammunition. Taking them, as well as some extra ammunition for them,
he tucked them into his coat, and was about to leave when the small
monitor next to the door plinked into life.
"Identify yourself," said Eve, the ship's autonomic cybernetic
intelligence.
The Shadow pulled down his scarf, revealing himself to be
Gryphon, and at Eve's shocked gasp, he raised a black-gloved finger to
his lips and said, "Shh," with a conspiratorial smile.
"Gryphon! But you -- "
"That's what -he- wants you to think," Gryphon replied in a
whisper. He pulled back up the scarf and continued in an icy
variation on his normal voice, "I intend to bring him back to
reality... rudely."
"But I have to -- "
"No, Eve," said The Shadow. "Not yet. Not until I finish
this. Okay?"
Eve considered, then, solemnly, nodded. "I
understand."
"Thanks, Eve. I owe you. Say... there -is- something
you could do for me, though... "
"Name it."

Carson D. Carson strolled down a corridor in the housing
section of the ship, nearly half a mile away from Armory A-D-65,
whistling a small, happy tune to himself. It had been nearly a
half-year now since he'd started this odyssey with the biggest gamble
of his life, and it had paid off handsomely. And, unlike most of his
other jobs, it had come off without a hitch. Well, with just one --
that phone call could have upset the whole thing, had he not been
closer to the telephone. The old Carson Luck ran true to form,
though, and he hadn't heard anything from that hard-to-kill
sonofabitch in months. Apparently he'd succeeded in driving him into
vizorium relapse. No doubt he was finally dead by now... no one could
recover from that, not after relapsing.
At any rate, Carson was quite certain that Gryphon was well
and truly out of the picture, despite Kei's annoying tendency to wake
in the night crying out his name even now. She was beginning to grate
on him, incredible lay though she was, and besides, it was almost time
to move on to the second phase of his plan. Sure, it would be tough
to figure a way to get the WDF's Big Boss-Man out of the way --
tougher than getting rid of Gryphon, which had been a tailor-made
situation handed to him on a silver platter by The Carson Luck, to be
sure -- but it would be worth it in the long run, and how could he
call himself successful with only half the set?
Ruminating on how to begin the next phase, he turned the
corner, and jumped when a blast door slammed down behind him. He'd
been on this ship for six months now, and had never seen one of those
actually -close- before. Shrugging -- must be some kind of drill --
he kept going. Just as he was about to pass into the next block
section, the door in front of him slammed down too.
Hmm.
He turned around and looked up and down the corridor; there
were five doors visible to him, three on one side of the corridor and
two on the other. He tried them systematically; four were locked, and
one opened immediately, into what appeared to be some kind of ballroom
or dance hall. There were tables standing along the sides of the room
with chairs up on them, and a raised stage at the far side; the floor
was polished hardwood and the walls decorated with moldings and
sconces. Elaborate crystal chandeliers bathed the room in light.
As he entered it, the entrance's blast door slammed down
behind him, and then, the lights went out, leaving only the woefully
inadequate gleam of the battery-operated emergency lights and red Exit
signs over immovable blast doors.
Uh-oh.
"Who's there?" he called, hearing his voice echo eerily in the
dimness of the emergency-lit ballroom.
In response, a laugh welled up around him, deep and resonant
and sinister: a laugh that pierced to the very core of his being,
mocking and sardonic. It raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
"Who's -there-?!" Carson repeated, fighting to keep the panic
he was feeling from rising in his throat.
"How quickly you forget," the mocking voice said. Carson
turned, trying to see where it was coming from, but he saw no one in
the darkened corners of the room. "The weed of crime bears bitter
fruit, Carson. Crime does not pay."
"What the hell -- where are you? Show yourself!"
"When I want you to see me," the voice replied, "you will,
rest assured." There was a pause; then, in a conversational tone, as
if changing the subject around the dinner table, the voice continued,
"You murdered a man, Carson."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Don't try to lie to me, Carson. I know everything about you,
every little thing. How you saw an opportunity that must have seemed
as golden as if it had been provided by Fate herself. How you took it
without regard for anyone's happiness but your own. How you twisted a
woman's grief at your own crime into a deception that got you into her
bed. What's next, Carson? Disney World?"
Carson went visibly pale, even in the darkened room. "W-what
are you -talking- about?!" he demanded, his voice becoming shrill with
defensiveness and fear.
"Still you protest? Did you really think you'd get away with
it?" The voice dropped to a conspiratorial whisper, sounding as if
the speaker were leaning over and speaking right into his left ear:
"Did you really think -I- wouldn't know?"
Carson whirled, sending a balled fist toward the source of the
voice, but there was nothing there but the dark, and the Voice laughed
again.
"I know what you are, Carson, I know what you think and how
you operate."
"Come out here!" Carson demanded. "Come out and fight!"
"Face your own crimes first. Admit to me what I already know
you have done."

Kei Morgan was confused. Why were the blast doors in section
six closed? And why were they opening in front of her, then closing
again?
"Eve? Eve, what's going on?"
There was no response; the wall monitors, spaced evenly down
the hall, remained blank.
"Eve?"
[What in hell is going on here?] she wondered, reaching into
the multi-zippered bike jacket she was wearing over her Tactical
Response t-shirt and drawing her off-duty sidearm. [The doors seem to
want me to go somewhere... okay, well... ]

"You want to kill me, don't you, Carson? You can't abide
being shown a mirror. Can't abide the idea that there might be
someone alive who knows what you are and what you've done." The
whisper in his ear again. "Can't imagine what would happen to you if
that someone were to tell -her-... "
"No!" Carson cried, whirling, his hands seeking. "Damn you,
come out here and fight like a man!"
"I'll tell you what," the voice said. "Here. I'll give you a
handicap." There was a clatter; a moment later, one of the Kuromis
skittered across the floor, bumping Carson's heel. He turned, nearly
falling, and scooped it up, unleashing a short burst in the direction
from which it had come.
"I'm afraid you missed," The Shadow said reproachfully. "Try
over here!" In the corner of his eye, Carson saw motion in the
darkness -- a wide-brimmed shadow stretching on the wall -- he
whirled, tracking a long, rolling burst.
"Sorry," The Shadow replied. "Not there either. Boot to the
head."
Something caught him in the head from behind, spinning him
around; he saw a flicker of motion, heard a whisper of cloth, blasted
at it.
"Nice!" said The Shadow. "Almost tagged me with that one. Or
at least you would have if I weren't over -here-." A hand clamped
with iron force onto Carson's shoulder and he was swung around; for
the first time, he found himself looking into the burning ice-blue
eyes of his accuser. He had a brief impression of a hawkish nose (an
illusion perpetuated by the scarlet wrapper obscuring the mouth and
minimizing the chin) and the brim of the hat, but the eyes dominated
his consciousness. He tried to raise the Kuromi, but The Shadow had
already laid him on the floor with a thunderous left cross, and when
his vision cleared and he scrambled to his feet, he was alone in the
darkness again, and The Shadow was laughing.
"STOP LAUGHING!" Carson screamed, opening fire at nothing.

[Gunfire?! Isn't that... ]
The door trundled open, and Kei threw herself flat on the deck
just as a burst from the Kuromi tore through the air above her.
Carson kept turning, not even noticing the door opening, and Kei could
only crouch there in the doorway, wondering why Carson was blazing
away with a machine pistol, and why that laughing voice sounded so
damned familiar.
"What's the matter, Carson?" asked The Shadow's voice. "Can't
you handle the darkness of the truth?"
"SHUT UP!" replied Carson, and sent another long, rolling
burst into the far corner, the slugs ripping apart a table and
shattering its accompanying chairs.
"I've told you before, I know everything about you, Carson.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?" The Shadow laughed,
and stepped out of the darkness at the far end of the room, his scarf
fluttering in the breeze coming from a ventilator duct. "The Shadow
knows! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA"
"Son of a BITCH," Carson howled, and began running toward The
Shadow, raising the Kuromi. "I'll kill you just like I killed that
bastard Gryphon!"
[ ... I can't possibly have heard that right.]
The Shadow's laugh grew louder and more mocking as Carson
raised the Kuromi, squeezed the trigger, and was rewarded with a
hollow click. He threw it away and kept charging, intent on killing
The Shadow with his bare hands.
"I'm afraid you're quite right, Carson," said The Shadow.
"You -will- kill me just like you killed Gryphon." He reached up,
pulled down his scarf, and threw away his hat. "Because you didn't
kill me -then-, either," he added, in a snarl of his regular voice.
Carson D. Carson skidded to a halt, his eyes wider than tea
saucers. Then, as it began to dawn on his shock-frozen mind that the
man he murdered was standing in front of him with the empty, discarded
Kuromi's well-fed twin in his left fist, he twisted around and began
to run toward the door.
A hot poker slammed into his chest with the force of an
oncoming truck, once, twice, three times, and before he knew what was
happening to him, before he even had time to properly feel the pain,
he was stone dead.
Kei lowered her smoking blaster as his body crashed to the
wooden floor, and then, hands shaking, dropped it as she broke into a
dead run across the ballroom. Gryphon weathered her impact, enclosing
her in his arms and burying his face in her hair, making quiet,
soothing noises as she sobbed against him.
"It's all right, lover. It's over."
"I'm s-sorry," Kei hitched. "I th-thought -- he s-said you
were... were... "
"It's all right," he repeated, looking at her face, smiling,
and kissing away her tears. "Good shooting, by the way."
She smiled through the tears and laughed unsteadily. "Yeah?
Heh... yeah... " Then she pulled him against her with all of her
considerable strength. "I'm so sorry... "
"Don't worry," he said, and hugged her back. "Just remember,
anytime you think I'm gone... I'll be back, no matter what."
"Promise?"
"Promise. When all of your hopes have come and gone... think
about me and I'll be there." He held her for a few more moments, then
kissed her cheek, which caused her to turn to face him so that he
could kiss her properly.
"C'mon," he said. "Let's go tell the others I'm alive. I
want to see Zoner's face, I could use a good laugh after all this."
Kei laughed, and they left the room arm in arm.
It was eleven-thirty in the morning of Friday, October 19th,
2091.

/* Dire Straits "Romeo and Juliet" _Money for Nothing_ */

THE CAST
Kemal Mi'tian: Group Captain Mi'tian
Kal Zebayan: Sgt. Zebayan
Ianj Kamara: Cpl. Kamara
Mani Ilian: Corpswoman Ilian
Leeanna Zard'al: General Zard'al
Asrial Arconian: Her Imperial Majesty Asrial I, Queen of Imperial Salusia
Sandor Tinal: Dr. Tinal
Benjamin D. Hutchins: Gryphon/The Shadow
Jeremy Feeple: Ambassador Feeple
Ichi-kun Ichinohei: Ichi
Joshua Balboa: Balboa
Mei Lin: Mei
Tita Koshigaya: Tita
Joe Elliott: Major Elliott
Eve Tokimatsuri: Eve
Carson D. Carson: Carson
Kei Morgan: Kei

With special thanks to Walter Gibson and Howard Chaykin, both of whom
I borrowed from here... --G.