The Main Event

Bearcat, Red Menace, and Killotron closed in on the final concrete wall protecting the police base. Killotron stopped, and prepared himself to rake the top of the wall with plasma bolts from his forearm blasters, as Red Menace rose to cover the point position Bearcat was taking at the wall.

Bearcat tensed to leap over the wall as Red Menace rose into firing range.

Honor Guard was rushing in through the gap between the office installation and the inside of the wall. Thresher advanced, covered by a hovering Jolt guarded by The Eye, at her left.

Red Menace thrust her arm towards Thresher, and a small golden needle, made of a holmium alloy covered in a thin, shiny yellow oxide layer, trailing a hair-fine thread flew from her palm, wobbled for a moment, then shot out at hypersonic speed into Thresher's hip section.

The young girl triggered a Z-pinch. A powerful magnetic field contracted, driving a hundred billion amperes of current into its own induced field over the wire, which vaporized into a conductive plasma. Thresher's ceramic hips detonated, sending his legs and his torso flying -- resistance was, in this case, futile.

The air stank of ozone. Jolt rushed Red Menace, and jigged hastily to the side as Killotron locked his blasters on to her. Red Menace gestured towards Jolt, and a powerful magnetic flux built up around the flying heroine.

Jolt swerved suddenly in mid-air, tumbled drunkenly, and corkscrewed into the ground just inside the compound wall as her negatively-charged body was caught in Red Menace's magnetic flux.

Meanwhile, on the roof of the installation, Thresher double-checked his vital signs. The lower half of his cyborg body was missing, but his brain, liver, kidneys, heart and lungs were functioning again -- the magnetic pulse had briefly knocked out his life-support, but a watchdog system had brought it back on-line.

Red Menace rose into the air, and targeted the armored door of the installation with a second golden needle.

Thresher pushed himself over, onto his chest, and extended his forearms back to the battlefield. A chainsaw blade extended from his left forearm, and his gaze locked on to the hovering Red Menace. He dug the chainsaw into the gravelly roofing polymer and gunned the motor.

Another tearing blast of electricity vaporized the doors, blasting a hole into the front facade of the squat concrete building.

He skidded towards the edge of the roof, just before the wall of the smoldering crater in the front of the building, aiming his right forearm at Red Menace.

A tennis-ball sized lump of white fluff followed by a superconducting tether arced towards Red Menace. Caught in her magnetic field, the ball spun around the young girl soldier, wrapping her in a superconductive tether.

Red Menace fell from the sky from a height of about three meters. Flopping on the ground, she struggled with her bonds just outside the wall. The superconducting coil suppressed her magnetic fields and bound her tightly; the more she tried to use her powers to free herself, the tighter the tether would compress her magnetic field.

Thresher grinned at the edge of the building as The Eye glanced up to him. "Got her!"

Bearcat leapt down from the wall and confronted The Eye, who drew one of her diamond knives as she reached for a flash-bang from her utility belt. He lunged, and she leaped into the air above him, tossing a small canister in front of the feral monster's face.

It detonated, creating a halo of light around the beast's head for a fraction of a second before he fell on his face in the dusty courtyard. The Eye landed between Bearcat's splayed legs. Drawing her second knife, she hamstrung him with simultaneous thrusts.

"You... beat me." Bearcat gasped, writhing in pain on the ground.

"And people get on my case for stating the obvious." The Eye countered, and ran to the wall.

Killotron swept his guns over the edge of the wall as Red Menace continued to struggle with her cocoon of super-conductive tether. The Eye climbed up the wall, hanging over the inside edge. She reached into her utility belt and took a handful of flash-bangs.

She lobbed the bombs into a loose arc, scattering them in Killotron's field of vision. Five simultaneous flares of brilliant white light overloaded his visual receptors. Vaulting over the wall, she leaped into a roll that took her to the robot's feet. As she righted herself at the end of the roll, her legs pumped and drove her towards the momentarily confused Killotron.

She drove her left knife into Killotron's sensor array in his metallic mushroom-shaped head, which sparked and died. Killotron staggered and fell to his knees.

Inside the smoking crater where the doors of the police station had been, Demonslayer stood in her exoskeleton's pulpit-like cockpit. Her calves extended into the upper thighs of the bipedal apparatus, and her forearms slot into the biceps of the upper pair of a quartet of artificial arms.

She stepped forward towards the wall, and her right pair of arms brandished an enormous, T-shaped piece of metal. Demonslayer paused for a moment, and two meter long blade of pulsing ectoplasm formed from the artifact. She swung her out-sized energy blade at the wall, and the concrete exploded outwards, making her an improvised gate.

Demonslayer grabbed the softly moaning Bearcat by the scruff of his neck and dragged him towards The Eye and the blinded, sparking Killotron. She made a blocking gesture in The Eye's general direction with her free left pair of arms, and a wall of force swept The Eye off her feet.

"Come to my voice, Killotron! We are defeated." She turned to The Eye, who was struggling to her feet. "You're the winners. You won."

With three soft pops, Demonslayer and Bearcat, Killotron, and Red Menace were teleported from the battlefield.

Jolt came to slowly, and got to her feet hesitantly. She walked through the hole Demonslayer blasted through the wall to The Eye, who was pointing up into the sky.

Above them, first tens and then hundreds of lifted off from the twilight urban wasteland surrounding the police station. Jolt screamed.

"WHAT'S GOING ON? WHAT'S HAPPENING?"

The sky was thick with candy-colored fighters, lifting off into orbit.

Axle and Wheel

The perimeter alarms at the police station noticed the intruders as they approached, three marks, moving slowly and inexorably from the outer ring of sensors. Troopers rushed to their barracks and retrieved their suits of powered armor. Seventeen young men and women disappeared under shells of plastic and metal, pulled over-sized guns from gun racks, mustered into a four-by-four square as their commanding officer performed a last inspection before combat.

The three marks pulled closer.

Orest Kelrast, once a captain, sat sobbing in a folding chair, arms crossed on a cheap table, his head lying on his crossed forearms. He was too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice Demonslayer sit up in her bed and open her watery blue-grey eyes.

The monitor on the view-screen behind her was unchanged -- she was still asleep.

"Stop with the tears, it is unbecoming for thee." Demonslayer approached the table.

Orest looked up at her, his face stained with tears, his eyes filled with horror. "You're awake."

"No. Not really. There is a sense and logic to dreams. If you can dream awake, you learn when things need to happen."

Outside, five snipers took positions at the concrete wall surrounding the police station. They carried bazooka-sized long rifles, and covered the arc where the three were approaching.

Six troopers launched. Backpack thrusters activated -- the troopers flew in a ballistic arc towards the intruders.

Half-way to the targets, one of the trio -- Killotron -- raised his arms, as if to catch the inbound troopers. An improbable array of guns folded out from his robotic limbs, and began to fire, filling the sky with plasma blasts.

Two troopers were shredded instantly. Four landed, readied their over-sized guns.

Inside, Demonslayer sat at the table with Orest Kelrast, holding him transfixed in her watery yet firm gaze.

"As for you, Kelrast... you come from a military family, yes?"

"Yes. How did you--"

"Your name. Before the bombs burn the home-world, the knights of the dark wizards called themselves 'thralls' -- 'kel' in the old language -- of their dreadful masters. You, your father, your father's father -- you all have been sacrificing yourselves for evil men who would be gods."

Orest was silent. He straightened his back, tried to look Demonslayer in the eye. His face was stained with tears.

"They taught them honor, and pride, married them to the fairest women, sent them to die for their ambitions. They would die, alone and unmourned on the battlefield, once the people found the courage and wisdom to join together and take them down." Demonslayer continued.

"And now we come to you. You, sad little man, so unworthy of love. Nasty, needy little men like you don't deserve to be cared about. All you can do is make others suffer."

Kelrast sat, helpless. Demonslayer retrieved a vial from beneath the table.

"I kept this in case they sent me to one of the places they will be sending you. They will read your mind, discover you know nothing of value, and torture you until you think of a capital crime -- and then you will die, a traitor in disgrace. It is a poison. Embrace death that you may learn the value of life."

Orest Kelrast stared at the vial. His lower lip trembled.

Outside, the last of the troopers tried to bring his gun to bear as Bearcat leapt upon him. The monstrous atavism twisted the trooper's helmet back and forth until his gun arm went limp, wringing the trooper's neck beneath his articulated armor. Bearcat cast the trooper aside, turned to his comrades, and asked, "Gotta can openah?"

Inside, Orest Kelrast reached for the vial. His face had tightened, and he looked at Demonslayer intently.

Outside, the snipers fired. Flechette shells sped towards the trio of attackers, burst in mid-air, began to spread out into a deadly wall of needles -- then fell to the ground as Red Menace's eyes flashed a brilliant green.

The snipers chambered their second rounds.

Inside, Orest raised the vial to his lips, hesitated for a moment, and sent the contents flying into Demonslayer's face with a flick of his wrist. Demonslayer kicked the table, lifting it into the path of the liquid.

Outside, a rack of rockets extended from Killotron's back. "The virtue of a sniper is his aim / That every shot will fall the same / But in virtue's arms does vice lay / He doesn't think to move away!" Five guided missiles launched from the robot's back, twisting in the air, homing into the hardpoints on the final concrete wall. Five warheads detonated. Fortifications and snipers disappeared in a cloud of shrapnel.

"Yer poo-tree suckth," quipped Bearcat.

Inside, Orest Kelrast's death rattle echoed in the grim concrete room. Demonslayer stood, whispering killing words under her breath. On the far wall, her vital signs registered deep, relaxed sleep.

She gestured, and a large metal case appeared in the room in a cloud of mist. She opened it, and retrieved her weapons.

Outside, the trio approached the wall. Red Menace rose into the air, and, in her loudest voice and best Corporate, cried --

"CAN HAS DEMONSLAYER NOW!?"

The Hidden Base

Arsenal suspected that this last site might be the right one when he felt a ward spark as he approached the front gate. He checked his communications implant, but it didn't work at all.

He looked carefully at the front gate in the crumbling, three meter high concrete wall. He shook his head, and opened the latch slowly, letting the door swing open. His left hand was balled into a fist -- hovering next to it was a glowing ball of plasma. He closed his eyes, probing the facing corners on the other side of a concrete barrier wall with his powers, but there was nothing there for him to find. Bracing his left hand in his right like a pistol, he and his glowing ball of plasma entered the courtyard.

He walked slowly, taking even, regular steps, pausing to scan behind the irregular clumps of rubble that dotted the courtyard. After a few paces, he came to an area where the dirt and debris were noticeably less weathered. With his right hand, he triggered the sound recorder on his hand-held computer.

"Arsenal here. I found a site protected by a ward, which disabled my comms implants. It appears to be deserted, but there is evidence of recent activity. I see a depression in the ground, approximately the size of a shipping container."

His eyes traced a path scraped into the ground, as if someone or something had dragged the container to the middle of the courtyard. He examined the rough, dusty ground, and then concentrated for a few moments.

"It appears that shipping containers have been moved to an underground chamber. I believe that there is an elevator platform in the middle of the courtyard, and my scans indicate a large underground area, approximately the same size at the courtyard. Entering now."

He passed through the ground into complete darkness, quickly finding the chamber. Setting down in a clear area, he used his powers to probe the darkness. He used his powers to turn on the overhead lights, illuminating the chamber with a grid of overhead spotlights.

The room was filled with shipping containers; line-of-sight was limited, even with the illumination. Arsenal walked to one of the containers, found the consignment number, and checked the number on his hand-held.

"I've found a shipping container belonging to one of the lost vessels. It looks like stolen goods were processed here. I'm going to see what's inside."

Arsenal walked to the end of the container, concentrated, and the large metal door on the end swung open. He used the plasma ball near his left hand as a flashlight to illuminate the interior of the container. A mock-up of a cockpit sat between two large pads, connected by cables to a cubical white box, which was attached to a pair of tripod-mounted projectors in the lower corners of the far side of the container.

"It appears to be a flight simulator. I see a cockpit and control yoke between two accelerator pads, a holographic display, and a control computer. I'll try to find out what scenario they were running on the computer."

He extinguished the plasma ball, sat in the cockpit and looked at the while cube, concentrating. The model cockpit rose into the air as the accelerator pads flickered to life. The holographic projectors displayed the hazy gray-blue surface of a planet as the simulated vessel accelerated, pulling away into a higher orbit.

"I've patched the simulator's state. It's an orbital attack scenario. I'm recording this now. As you see, the tactical displays indicate that the fighter is approaching the target..."

A small dot rose above the horizon, and grew larger.

"Sedgewick Station. The Corporate HQ. They're going to attack Sedgewick Station."

A few moments later Arsenal emerged into the chamber. He took his hand-held, composed a message containing he data he had acquired, and then examined it carefully. He arranged to have the message sent to Jolt, and, after a moment's hesitation, Admiral Kelmorran, who was responsible for the garrison at Sedgewick Station.

The FTL comms interface had been destroyed by the ward, but a short-range radio adapter was still working. He thought for a moment; there was a power distribution station nearby which offered an access point. He scripted for a few moments, arranging to have the message sent as soon as his hand-held could access a public network.

He looked up sharply as he finished the script -- there was a sudden change in air pressure in the underground chamber.

Someone had teleported into the room.

Magnetic Girl Soldier

The corner of the bunker obviously belonged to a young girl. The bedroll was covered with clothes and overstuffed pillows, a mirror was propped against the wall, and an improvised dressing room made from a pair of curtains covered with pins and brooches was set up in the corner.

She walked out from behind her dressing screen, dressed in a simple, military-style body stocking made of brown-green fibers with the strength of steel. She looked at the mirror and frowned; her costume was, in fact, very ugly and drab.

She bore an unmistakable resemblance to Jolt; her fur and mane were the same auburn color, and her face had a similar bone structure.

Well out of her reach hung a black dress decorated with a huge reflective red five-pointed star on a hanger made of metal wire. She gestured towards the dress, and her green eyes began to glow.

The wire hanger resisted for a moment until the magnetic attraction of the young girl's outstretched palm pulled it off the hook on the wall and onto her hand. She relaxed, and her eyes stopped glowing. Her nimble fingers caught the hanger and the dress before it fell.

She pulled on her dress, pulled down on the hem, and looked at herself again in the mirror. She looked a little happier. She put on a pair of high, tight black leather combat boots with metal soles, laced them up, tied a short bright red cape around her neck, took a final look in the mirror, and smiled. She pulled her red hair into a top-knot, took one last look in the mirror, and smiled.

Her eyes glowed again, and she rose from the ground. Turning smartly, she levitated to her two comrades, waiting beneath an overhead light.

Bearcat and Killotron watched her hover towards them. Bearcat turned to Killotron.

"She ever fight before?"

"Yes, comrade, I fear she has."

The girl floated up to look her fellow soldiers in the eye. She pointed to herself and said. "Red Menace. Number Five."

This Could Be Anywhere

The East Pole, now in crepuscular autumn light that would last for seven cycles, was a drab gray expanse of buildings, many abandoned, some hosting small packs of squatters who lit fires for cooking, warmth and light. The columns of smoke from their shelters rose straight up slowly to be driven away by the planetary jet stream.

The former site of a warehouse, long since burned to the ground, was now a collection of tents, forming a fragile sort of fortification. On the side facing the causeway, a half-dozen sleek space-craft were parked in front of the tent city, the vessels garishly decorated with bright, primary-color paint-jobs and huge spoilers.

A seventh vessel parked in the lot, and a young man in an improvised flight suit stepped out of the cockpit. He did not remove his helmet, and proceeded to the ring of gray-green tents.

Just inside the tents, a tattered collection of cast-off people slept on mats, as a huge view-screen blared a soap opera set in the prosperous and temperate equatorial regions of Suburbia, where the wealthy controlled vast manors and squabbled among themselves. On the walls were posters in primary colors, decorated with slogans like "PEOPLE ARE NOT PRODUCTS" and "LIVE AGAIN", stylized upraised fists, and a simple, squiggly sigil, an M and a 7, arranged to look as if the right descender on the M were a lightning bolt.

It was a simple logo; other posters encouraged residents of the shelter to spread the word by spray-painting it on abandonded buildings. Many had done exactly this.

A burly, bear-like older male watched the shelter. He waved the young man thorough to the inner courtyard of the tent city.

The young man bowed his head as the tent flaps opened and he saw the communal fire-pit in the middle of the courtyard. Here the fellowship feasts were held, where the lost and the lonely taught and sang songs forgotten generations ago and learned the strange language still remembered in fragments by their great-grandparents.

He proceeded around the firepit, crossing it on the left side. A flap opened on the tent facing him, held by an absurdly large hand ending in triangular black claws.

While the guard in the common room was large, the guard in the temple was gigantic; if he were physically capable of standing fully erect for more than a few moments, he would have easily been twice the height of his colleague.

"Thu come inn. I am Bearcat. Da mithstresh ish waitling."

The monster's fangs gave his speech a lisping quality. His eyes were gentle, but his face was a rough parody of the young man's, with heavy brows and powerful jaw muscles. The young man hesitated for a moment, but quickly regained his composure and entered the tent.

Bearcat nodded directly to the camera, and the floor descended into a hangar-like undergound complex. It was dark, illuminated only by overhead spots. Outside a polka-dot grid of yellowish light, the hall was in deepest darkness.

A voice came from that darkness, speaking an alien tongue.

"Pee my nah ghey peh zhnolazh. Nah dey medzh yo nagada. Djodo mah ghey?"

Convenient sub titles were added in post-production.

(You are not the one, but you will do nicely. We are being watched, secrecy is paramount. Do you understand?)

The young man hesitated for a moment, and then spoke.

"Umm. Snow my a delidoh. Nop peh-ha..." The young man struggled to find a word, and before he could stop himself, he said "...umm."

(Yes, proceed. I am a carrier of a message. How can I -- yes, proceed.)

A light came on in the darkness. An old woman sat on a folding chair, wearing a remarkable hat; a skullcap of bone-colored cloth with a veil in the back and two flaps, flipped down over the eyes. The flaps were decorated with a simple, stylized pattern of an eye in black ink.

"It is regrettable that Corporate culture keeps you from your proper tongue. A better hesitation word is 'erm'. In addition, forgive me for not removing my hat. It is for dreamingfor which I sit in the dark. You, of course, need not remove yours."

The young man was chastened, and sunk his head. "I apologize, Demonslayer. Honor Guard is coming! They will be landing soon, near here."

"I am aware of this. Don't panic. It is not your concern." Demonslayer sat back in her chair.

As Bearcat came up behind the young man, a second form emerged from the darkness with heavy, metallic footsteps. It was a robot, a very large one, another parody of the Fe Arran form in shiny alloy, curves and angles.

Its had two glowing yellow lights where the eyes should have been; they glowed like a campfire, flickering to orange, and were strangely mesmerizing.

"Today I salute you, reckless youth facing death. Know now it awaits you, empty space takes your breath."

"Very pretty, Killotron. Now shut up before he wets himself." Demonslayer reclined back into a sleeping position. "Bearcat, see him out. Pleased to meet thee."

Approximately one thousand kilometers above their heads, the Nightstalker began its descent. The hull, for what it was worth, was pristine.

Jolt was still in command, and did her best not to look nervous. To her right, the First Mate scanned the rest of the crew. Thresher didn't need an acceleration chair, but the Eye and Arsenal did.

The Eye was optimistic, but Arsenal was badly shaken. He had restored the ship to its former state, but not completely; the state of the internal registers in the ship's computers no longer matched the data in memory. Every single system failed, nearly simultaneously.

Nearly everyone agreed that while the superficial damage was gone, the Nightstalker still needed some time planetside to ensure that critical systems were still working. Feeling guilty, Arsenal resolved that he would not make the same mistake again.

Suburbia loomed large below, and the sphere gradually became a horizon. A powered descent down a military corridor began, and the crew was tense.

It was over rather soon. The star-ship dove through the sheath of insubstantial flame, entered the frigid upper atmosphere, fell beneath the clouds decelerating as the planet's gravity began to clash with the artificial gravity aboard the Nightstalker.

A few moments later, the spade-shaped starship hovered over the military starbase, and, silently, descended to the cheers of a waiting fire crew.

"All crew, prepare to disembark." Jolt relaxed visibly, and Honor Guard filed out of the bridge to the dull gray landscape of urban ruin in which they would be spending the next cycle.