I remember. I was eating at Father Bourgeois, yelling at some of the junior editors of Father Knows Best, the high school website. I was mad at them because they weren't exactly pleased with my column on "Useful Stuff"--among which was a fairly detailed inventory of various household chemicals that could serve as makeshift stimulants for the intoxicant-deprived. I thought it was witty, unique, and sufficiently inflammatory to increase readership. They didn't agree. Anyhow, I was stuffing food into my mouth as fast as I could belt out insults when the big HDTV in the cafeteria lit up--something it's not prone to doing when nobody has activated its power switch. It took us about ten seconds to realize that it had done so because the incoming broadcast was a Primary Alert, a global emergency message. It was Senator Sakurai, one of the pompous asses from up north, in MegaPrime. He spoke in a low, even voice. However, it wasn't anything interesting--no meteor shower or space calamity. After several minutes, I decided that I had better things to do besides listen to the old fart defend himself against corruption charges. So did the others at the table. We all went back to flinging insults and gorging ourselves. And then somebody started screaming. Rawlings remembers it also. He watched all of it, though, and that is where this memory comes from, the tight winding knot of realization in his stomach so much of a contrast against my innocent ignorance of the entire situation. His sheer raging impotence versus my complete naivete; it makes for a strange ride, a searing buildup of fear in the older man's mind, and then the sudden drop-kick back into my own sensations, my own memories. This part of the story I know. But it doesn't make it any easier to relive. "Fellow citizens, I address you tonight for the grim necessity of revealing the truth. The truth is your right, the people's right. I will relate it to you, so that after the capricious bent of public opinion has restored itself to a natural state of tranquility, you may judge my words, my deeds, and myself in a more objective light. "As of sixteen thirty, MegaPrime Standard Time, a majority of the City Senate agreed to commence a trial of impeachment . . . upon myself. I bear no ill will against my honorable associates; in fact, I am confident that the greater of their numbers mean me no harm and only seek these procedures as a means of properly disposing of the charges arrayed against me, all of which are undeniably and unquestionably false. "These allegations are as follows, and I relay them to you so that you may hear, from my mouth, my full, unconditional denial of them: misappropriation of funds, which I did not knowingly do; currying of political favor in exchange for financial reward, which I never did; fraudulent reporting of my taxes, which I did not do; and slander and libel against a number of corporations, which I did not do, as I have only the highest respect for the truth. "Let me repeat that my colleagues have simply brought about these proceedings so that I may be fully exonerated of the slow sediment of malice that my enemies--those who fear the truth--have brought against me. I am by no means associated with any of these terrible charges, and I rest assured that history shall prove me in the right. "However, those among us who profess to worship the truth are few in number. You, the people, live and breath in its warmth. But in the high circles of the government, where so many have shrugged aside real work for simple social advancement, the truth is a precious commodity, ridiculed but envied. We are truly jaded, we who live and work in the ivory tower of the Senate. A day--a year--a lifetime among you, the lovers of the truth, could only begin to cure us of the slick dark coat of cynicism that deforms its light, absorbing it and perverting it to our sick whims. "And so my word, which I have sought for the ninety-nine years of my life to be so firmly grounded in the truth, is now empty in the eyes of the world. My quiet voice no longer carries to the ears of the Senate nor the will of you, the people. Have I become nothing but a doddering old man, trafficking incoherence and fantasies? "This is what some among you would have you believe. The truly cruel would have you believe that my voice means nothing. That I don't believe the words from my own mouth. That even my most eloquent professions of innocence are but the well-worn verses of a politician scrambling for his survival. "My colleagues I respect and cannot picture bent by these harsher, dark lies that strike not at myself as a politician, but at myself as a man, a human being. I have heard these lies--lies, not allegations, not suspicions, but outright lies, falsehoods spread to deceive and destroy--I have heard them whispered everywhere from the crowded marketplaces and the innerspace chaos of the Intranet to the highest halls of the government, to the oak panelled boardrooms of industry. I have heard these lies and I cannot leave them unanswered. "I have had nothing to do with my great-granddaughter's disappearance. "I will not elaborate upon these dark rumors, and I cannot say who conceived such a dread lie. Such a festering wound! I offer my word that I did nothing, nothing to my great-granddaughter. I could never do anything that horrible. I love her very much and have searched the city for her." Sakurai sighs. "But that means nothing to you. As I said before, my word is no legal tender, nothing anyone would lay anything of value upon anymore. Has my gold corrupted so? My treasures reduced to heaps of lead? I beg you, MegaPrime, to look back up on this, some day in that great and golden future I so tirelessly strove to pilot you toward, to look back not in anger or disgust but in deep sadness." The velvet unsheathing of a knife. "Look back in a great and overwhelming melancholy, for you . . . you and I, deserved better than this." Sakurai's fist comes up, a thin, utilitarian dagger clutched within. It goes back down, disappearing. The Senator's face displays only the slightest of twitches. The scream started when someone looked up before the camera panned down. A swish, the flash of metal--steel--and a sickening THWOCK followed by a muted "thud." Blood, a quick, moment's glimpse down at the body. Static, quickly resolving into a Sensovision test pattern as ten thousand employees scrambled to their monitors, still not quite believing what they'd just broadcast. "Oh my God," cried Teresa, the editor who I'd been on the verge of strangling. "YOU FUCKING MOTHERFUCKER!" I scream, a wrenching roar from the depths of my soul. "FUCKING BASTARD! SHE'S ALIVE AND YOU FUCKING GO AND RIP YOURSELF OPEN!" I put a fist through the antique television set emblem of Sensovision. "Fuck!" I yell, quieter, as blood from the ripped skin on my knuckles wells up, thick and black. I've done what Nanotech says I shouldn't be able to--I just cracked one of their Heavy-Duty flatpanels in half. I think my right hand is broken. "Sir?" shouts Karwoski from someplace nearby. "Get a team into the Senator's office or apartment or where ever he just offed himself. I want his files, his diary, everything." "The sword, sir?" "What?" "Should we retrieve the sword, sir?" One of his servants must have done the little decapitation trick. Which makes it a murder weapon, at least in the eyes of our dear Western trained Megapol. "Yes." "We may experience some difficulty with that, sir. Megapol-" "It's already killed one man, a few more won't hurt." "Maximum priority, then. Is there anything else, sir?" I look down at the other flatpanel I was reading moments before Kazutoshi started his speech. SENATOR SAKURAI SEXUALLY ABUSES GREAT-GRANDDAUGHTER; GIRL DISAPPEARS reads large and glaring on the Sensovision Scoop Website. The article is so much diarrhea, splashed across that page and across Kazutoshi's reputation. I know where it came from--Hawthorne. That bastardly, cowardly molester FUCK took everything he did to his daughter--HIS FUCKING DAUGHTER--and turned it around, replacing his name with Kazutoshi's. All the incestuous, demented torture he put that girl through he twisted around and pinned on Sakurai. Everything! I know how he did it, too. Hawthorne did it with the help of his Osiron friends, the greasy men in dark suits who carry plasmas . . . but weapons don't make warriors. Only honor, loyalty, bravery can do that. Hired men like that cheap prick don't know shit about that. Hired men who don't know a God damn about right and wrong. He turned it around . . . I promise you, Nathan Hawthorne, that if I ever catch you, I'll revenge Kazutoshi and his great-granddaughter a thousand times over. I'll burn you, freeze you, tear you down to your nerves, remove your organs one at a time and keep you alive and feeling through the whole fucking ordeal . . . "Sir? Anything else?" My hand throbs, throbbing with pain but already on the mend. "Yeah. Anything new from our deep covers on the street? About the girl?" "I'm sorry, sir. We are still unsure of the whereabouts of Natalie Sakurai Hawthorne." I wake to the shriek of alarms. Pulling on my pants, I stumble out into the common room. The old Race of Man officer, who evidently crashed for the night on the couch, is coughing up phlegm and craning his neck around. Leah bounds out of her room, a pair of lawpistols in her hands. She tosses one to the Race man; I catch her eye. "Hey hot stuff! Didn't Rawlings give you some firepower?" I smirk at her and dive back into my bedroom, putting on a shirt and a belt. I return brandishing the deadly matte black of my plasma pistol. Leah ignores me--the HDTV speaks. It is Hageny. "Employees and guests of Mars Security Corporation, this is a war alert," enunciates the "Vice President of Security", a concerned frown upon his flabby face. "Unidentified craft have entered MegaPrime airspace and are inbound for the Rawlings Building. Initiate full war procedure. Evacuation to the lower levels of the Building is mandatory. Do not exit the Building! Repeat, this is a full war alert, evacuation to the lower levels is mandatory." "Is that us?" I ask Leah. She shrugs. "Only Internal Security will remain in floors ninety through one hundred and seventy five. All other personnel are to evacuate to the lower sections! Follow full war procedures; the armories have been opened. Move quickly! At current velocities, hostiles are two minutes out." The old Race operative is the first one to the door. We're on the hundred and tenth floor, which means we need to haul ass. The gravlift here only goes down to the hundredth floor, the same level as the Sanctuary. As we step out of its green folds, I feel the floor beneath my feet quake with the coming of the gods. "We need to find an armory," Leah yells. "Fuck that," I shout back. "We need to get out of here." We run past the executive cafeteria. I happen to glimpse inside; a number of people are standing in line. "What the hell-" A pair of secretaries jog out sporting light armor vests and M4000 assault rifles. "Leah! Get your friend over here!" The Rawlings Building begins to shudder lightly with a succession of what I assume are the opening volleys of a bombardment. We fall into the cue; the cafeteria staff is handing out Flight Shotguns and Oswald sniper lasers. An older woman with one such Popo weapon slung over her back steps up beside us. "Mister Williams, Miss Hierro," she nods, as if we were simply standing in line for breakfast. "Sergeant Rawlings is eagerly awaiting your arrival." I glance at her again--it is Thorpe, the head secretary. She's in a black-and-red jumpsuit, and a squad of Centurions loiter behind her. "What's going on?" I ask her, an armor vest thrust into my arms. I shake my head when I'm offered an M4000. A wide belt of plasma cartridges will have to do for now. "Bugs," she says as I pull the vest over my head. "We've got six squadrons of Valks and Hawks up there, but they've got a short- range air-to-surface teleportation system. It doesn't take them fifteen seconds to transfer their terror units." "What?" I murmur, tightening up and strapping on my pistol. "They're beaming down soldiers. We;re giving them a helluva beating in the air, but we're still going to have to go at them on the ground." The lights fluctuate momentarily. "Wait--I'm no soldier, I can't-" Thorpe smiles, heading for the door. "None of us are, dear. But we are Marsec, you know. We've got to keep appearances up." Leah and the other Race of Man nut chase up behind me. We pursue Thorpe down the hallway. Rawlings. He stands five centimeters taller than before, his heavy gray armor built around him, its lines smooth and fluid. His forearms are bulging, heavy with electronics and retracted blades. His hands look small in black gloves made from spun cydonium and advanced carbon polymers, his left holding his helmet and his right gripping a tremendous, muzzle-heavy plasma cannon. It has only a three by four centimeter square made of surgical alloy tubing as its sight, its gigantic E-115 accelerator a shark aimed by instinct. The remora on its belly is a grenade launcher, six high-explosive slugs fired by a second trigger under Rawlings' middle finger. His feet are hooves. "Jinia! Get armored!" he shouts, looking up from the swirl of grey mist resolving above his left forearm. "I found Karl," Thorpe replies. "Do you want me to take him to the hangars?" "No," Rawlings snaps. Thoughtfully, he continues, "The bugs are planted overhead. They took out everything--the plasmas, the SAMs, the laser batteries. Nothing is going to come out of our hangars in one piece. I've got what Hawks and Valks that did launch engaging at long range, mainly using Judgment Central for cover." "Any . . . are they going to send . . ." she asks. "No." Rawlings looks over the twelve armored Centurions at his back. They wear the glossy black flight suits with the red double helixes down their legs, a few grenades on their belts, but mainly plasma type fours hanging off their arms, vicious rifle things not quite on a par with Rawlings' beast but still excessively deadly. Their faces are masks of polarized thermoplastic. "But we are Marsec," he continues softly. "AND NOBODY MESSES WITH MARSEC," rumble the Centurions, this chant burnt into their very DNA. "So what do we do with Karl?" repeats Thorpe. The building shudders. "Hostiles have been detected! Floors one hundred and seventy through one hundred and fifteen! Hostile units are within the Building! All Internal Security units engage with caution!" bellows Hageny from the PA system. "The Crisis Center--shouldn't I go to-" Rawlings shakes his head at me. "No, Glen's got everything under control down there. You'd just get in the way. You'll just have to stay with me." I'm gonna get fucking killed! my mind screams. The short soldier glances down at the hologram on his arm--a slowly revolving truncated pyramid, its every detail rendered in high- definition green wireframe. It is the Rawlings Building, and its tip is rife with red and awfully sparse with the yellow flash of friendly units. "All platoon leaders," Rawlings evenly speaks, the mike on his throat relaying his words, "Draw a line at the hundred and tenth floor. I don't want anything getting through there. If you're above the line, then work your way down. And hold the grav lifts. We must not allow them to fall." A new set of blue symbols begin to flash in his tactical map. "What the hell?" he rasps. He glances again at the readouts on his forearm. "Damn." He glances up. "Jinia! I thought I told you to get armored!" "Yes sir," she replies, jogging off with her Centurions in tow. "Epiphanes! Plautus! Flaminius! Maccius!" he rattles off, "follow me! The rest of you take up positions at the northeast grav lift and wait my return." Rawlings turns to me. "Karl! You can come also. Might be educational." We stride away from the Sanctuary, between a pair of stucco walls. The thunder of plasma fire and the insidious muffled roar of explosions reach my ears from someplace far away. We are headed for the edge of the building, for that strange cluster of blue dots. "Stay to the rear," orders the short soldier. I shift my plasma to a better position. Lower. Nearer my hand. "What are we doing?" I ask Rawlings. He ignores me. "Epiphanes, Plautus, lead us in. Rifles down--I don't want to panic them. If I think they're acting funny, I'll be the first to fire. If they engage first, which they won't, you know the drill. Neutralize them fast and clean. That's not going to happen, but if it does, I don't want them transmitting anything." "What are we-" "Shut up and stay back," growls Rawlings, latching his helmet to his belt and hoisting up his heavy plasma. "It's XCOM. Not that you need to know, but we're playing welcome wagon, not doormat. This is our facility and we're more than capable of defending it ourselves." A heavy blast door is around the corner. Rawlings signals for his Centurions to spread out. "But we could sure use the help," he finishes. The door slides up and open at a nod. The XCOM delegation awaits us impatiently, four of them total. All wear cumbersome Megapol heavy armor, a suit of cydonium and superhard thermoplastic that sacrifices freedom of movement while achieving nothing special the way of protection. And all their helmets are off, symptomatic of their clumsy design that limits their fields of vision. A black man, crouched on the floor, has a PDA wired to the door's controls. Thin and bald, he looks distinctly uncomfortable, sweating, embarrassed to be caught in the act of breaking and entering. A knobby, double-bored weapon of some extraterrestrial nature rests at his side. He glances down at it; and then, the eyes of our Aryan honor guard upon him, he slowly backs away from it. The commander is the tallest of the batch, fiery mane of golden hair laced with red streaming off his head. His arms are crossed, a plasma pistol resting in his left quite comfortably. His chin is broad and chiseled, and his narrow brown eyes scan us six. He is the high point of human evolution, achieved without the demonic touch of DNA resequencing. His nostrils snort in disgust, the smell of stock genes irritating. I do not recognize these two. The others, however, I know all too well. It is the janitor! Bleach blond hair cut down to a conservative "punk" spiking, his twin blue lasers evaluate my presence, a thin, nasty smile forming on his lips as he silently marvels at fate. "Mayhican," his mouth says, and he smiles broadly, a plasma pistol on holstered under his left armpit and an M4000 resting easy in his firm hands. "Mayhican, que pasaba?" he repeats. And then there is Grocke. Dark brown hair cut short and held down with the hood of her armor liner, she meets my eyes, smiling feebly. I stare at the roman numeral on her right breast, the color rising in her face. Stock in the crook of her arm, she carries an Oswald, a sniper laser. An adrenaline-soaked silence muffles the moment, XCOM soldiers still clutching their weapons, Centurions taut and ready. It is only Rawlings and the XCOM commander who stand easy. "Lieutenant Commander Epstein," breathes Rawlings. "Marsec Internal Security, I presume?" answers the big 'COM soldier. His easy drawl takes me off guard; I can feel the tension slowly drain from the air. Rawlings shifts his plasma to his left and offers up his right hand. Epstein takes it. "Who may I have the pleasure of addressing?" asks the big man as he shakes Rawlings' hand. "Sergeant Jack Rawlings," replies my boss. Epstein's twin brown eyes go crimson, focusing in on the shorter man's scarred visage. He slowly, raggedly sucks in a long breath, his whole body going tense, his muscled chest inflating until it seems that he must burst or scream. Rawlings continues to shake his hand, but he might as well be working the arm of a slot machine. "Jack Rawlings," echoes Epstein. His broad face is slowly going red. He does not release Rawlings' hand. "Rawlings the butcher," he rasps. The short man dips his head. The knuckles in both men's hands must be going white. "I should kill you where you stand," hisses the XCOM commander. Rawlings returns the man's glassy red stare. For a long moment, the only sounds are those of distant plasma fire--and bones crunching. The janitor leans forward, the snout of his M4000 creeping up. Epiphanes or Plautus--both--tense up, the muscles of their legs and the servos around them tightening; the tips of their short swords showing. Grocke and I both glimpse at each other at the same moment. My hand dangles by my plasma. "That was another war," calmly asserts Rawlings, breaking the quiet. "If either my Marsec or your so-called XCOM," and he spits the word, "wish to survive the day, we must bury that . . . here and now." "Bury," snarls Epstein, "just like half my colony." It is the janitor who steps between the titans. "Boss," he quietly states, "our reinforcements were forced down. Mallory's crew is on the run, and unless we get up there . . ." The XCOM commander and the XCOM veteran glare at each other for another moment. "Boss . . ." Epstein breaks the deathgrip. "Take Atlas Team. Connect with Mallory." "Yessir." The blond trots off, his teeth grinding. He glances back. "Grocke-" "Squad Leader Grocke will stay with me," orders the commander. "Yessir." We meet eyes again. She wants to hide that Oswald in her arms . . . Epstein, still eye to eye with Rawlings, steps back just the slightest of millimeters. "Another time," he promises. Rawlings nods. He nods and then touches his PDA again, the gray fog quickly returning to a computer rendition of the Rawlings Building. Transparent, he zooms in on the upper half. It is shot through with red specks. Aliens. He magnifies it even further, concentrating on the upper few floors of the building. The yellow of Internal Security is here and there. Blue dots are on the highest level. "XCOM units," says Rawlings, pointing to them. "Those are Mercury Team," confirms Epstein, bending over to see better. "They need reinforcements and ammunition." Rawlings points to a yellow constellation on a nearby floor. "I. S. units. I'll order them to merge with your forces." "Be sure that they do not fire upon them in error," chides the XCOM soldier. "The same for yours," smiles Rawlings. He tilts back his head and speaks to the ether. "Platoon leader six three, platoon leader six three. Proceed to the northwest quadrant, one seven four floor. Northwest quadrant seven four floor. Friendly antiterrorist forces are present, exercise caution, yada yada." Epstein frowns at this. I know that Rawlings' orders are rerouted through Karwoski and the supercomputers, that his manservant is monitoring our every word, and that Rawlings is not leading this battle, his droid is. But it still makes for a very bad scene, and the XCOM soldiers wince. "Sir," speaks a Centurion, "Aemilius reports that the northeast grav lift is under assault . . . our forces at the lift on the one hundred ten level have been routed!" "Northeast grav lift?" asks Grocke, glancing down at a flatpanel PDA on her arm. "Northeast? Isn't that the one-" I start. "Yes," answers Rawlings. He turns to his Centurions. "To the lift. Now." "Yessir," they chorus, sprinting off. "You have any reserves?" asks Rawlings of Epstein. "Atlas Team was my reserves." Rawlings' face twitches. "We could have used them. Come on, the bugs are coming." Rawlings turns toward the Sanctuary, his plasma back in both hands. I turn to Grocke again, to cut her apart with my eyes. She is profiled against the blast. The doorway explodes outwards, pulling along an unwilling frame and a good portion of the wall beside it. Ceiling lights flicker and shatter, and the beige stucco walls shiver and throw off a shower of dust and chips. The strength of the concussion is such that the wall opposite crushes outwards, a concave dish of cracks. Thick boiling smoke pours from that open wound, and flames lick its edges. A gust of unnatural wind forces a dense, oily cloud from the doorway. I pull myself up, my hand touching Grocke as she rolls over. "What the fuck?" I hear her ask. The smoke dissipates. The profile of a tall, robed figure takes its place. Firing from the hip with speed propelled by the nitroglycerin mix of surprise and fear, Rawlings throws his safety off and pumps a burst of superheated plasma lightning into the newcomer. But instead of ripping the tall one to boiling ribbons, the blazing bolts ricochet from the shimmering air a half meter from his chest. Epstein dives for cover. The black man lunges for his weapon. He twists around, and opens up on full automatic, a seething barrage of razor-thin, one molecule wide beams of pure destruction cleaving the air. The volley flares up the air, turning it white with heat. Reflected shots tear back among us, scathing the walls and kicking down Rawlings. Scrambling across the floor into the refuge of a doorway, I catch a glimpse of Grocke sighting up her laser. She has somehow thrown her helmet on. Which is good, considering that her whole Oswald goes cherry red and explodes in her hands. "Casey!" I yell, but nobody hears. "RRRAAAAWWWLLLLLLIIIIIINNNNGGGGGSSS!" it moans, a low bass roar that shakes my teeth and kills more lights. Grocke, writhing in pain, rolls to the other side of the hallway. My boss doesn't move a millimeter, his body paralyzed where he has fallen, the siren call of the monster's voice stapling him down. His arms shake, and he nearly loses grip of his heavy plasma. "YOU ABANDONED ME!" it bellows, gliding closer on a carpet of smoke. Rawlings' eyes go wide with shock, with fear. "No," is all he can stammer, hypnotized by the bitter brown robes of the creature. It drifts to within ten meters of my boss. The black man leans around a door frame to fire again, but his alien weapon shatters in a searing flash of white flame. He screams silently, his face welted up with burns. The monster's hood falls back on his shoulders. Greased hair mangled and matted almost beyond recognition, skin grimy with dirt, wrinkles, and blood, it is the creature's eyes which reveal his true identity. His eyes, black swirling pools of pure power, rimmed by the faintest iris of gray . . . "Kaleta?" I shout. Rawlings pushes back, staggering up. "Get back, Karl, get back-" The man dives to his right as the floor where he was standing explodes in blue flame. Then Rawlings is running, scrambling for the heavy blast door. It begins to descend before he reaches them; he slides underneath with the dexterity of a gravballer. Shit! That bastard just left me with this fucking monster. But the thing that is Kaleta totally ignores me, instead gliding to within meters of the door. I watch with large eyes it raises its right forearm, a tight, veined fist extended. Slowly, but not for effort, it opens its hand. The blast door screams and squeals, arcing voltage and shredded machinery pouring from above. The door twists in its broad frame, the cydonium heating up from the stress and the harder, more brittle materials beneath it cracking, fracturing. The door's defenses die. It slides up into its ceiling socket, its geometries mangled and ruined. But it opens, and the Kaleta-thing drifts underneath. With his passage, it falls back only partially, one corner catching two-thirds the way to the floor, the other nearly making it down all the way. Wiring falls from underneath, residual electricity sparking against the smoking floor. I leap across the battleground of the hallway, my hands clutching Casey. She is limp for a moment. And then she weakly smacks me on the head. "Get your fucking hands off me," she whispers. "You hurt?" I ask, stupidly. "What the fuck do you think, prick? My fucking laser just blew half my fucking head off." I reach for the thin medikit hanging from her right leg. "Fuck that, of course I'm fine!" She sits up, pulling her helmet off. "I think my eyebrows are gone, though." I look around. Epstein stands, brushing off his armor. His helmet is missing. "Mind telling me what in hell that was?" he asks, stalking over to us. "And who's your friend, Squad Leader?" "That was our former Vice President of Personnel," I state. Epstein and Casey share a look. "You're fucking pulling my leg," she says. The last surviving PA speaker in this battered hallway crackles to life. ". . . Mars Unionists are within the building, repeat, Mars Unionists are within the building! Exercise caution, terrorist-" The speaker dies, sparks pouring to the floor. "Mars Unionists?" I ask myself. Hmm, this has all the makings of a monumentally bad day in the history of Mars Security, Incorporated. "Squaddie Thomas is dead," says Epstein, removing his medikit from the black man's body. "Oh fuck," moans Grocke. The XCOM commander stands and approaches me. "We are returning to our craft, as the Squad Leader is wounded and I must direct our side of the battle. You are welcome to join us, seeing as your superior seems to have other matters to deal with . . ." I look at Grocke's green eyes. She looks away. "I can take care of myself, thank you," I answer, standing and pulling out my plasma. "Goodbye then," states Epstein. I turn my back and run. Rawlings and Kaleta leave a massive path of destruction, the whole hallway leading back to the cafeteria smoking and scorched. It occurs to me, halfway down that stretch of shattered tile and burnt electronics, that I may well have been better off in the clutches of XCOM. After all, isn't it obvious that Kaleta has somehow become a psi, a mind-bender so potent that he needs not a neural net or an amplifier to broadcast his aura, his living energy field? And if he's that powerful, isn't it also painfully obvious that Rawlings is pretty much dead? There's only one way to kill a psi that godawful nasty. Bring in a more powerful psi. I charge out through scattered chairs and overturned tables, shattered panes of thermoplastic marking where Rawlings, and then Kaleta, punched through. Rawlings, its seems, has retreated to his Sanctuary, choosing the refuge of its ludicrously dense bamboo thickets for what purpose--to strike back? The trees are flattened in here, crushed down by the heavy mental hand of the Kaleta-beast. Smoke rises from broad patches where flames still lick at the dried leaves upon the jungle floor. I hear Rawlings' voice. "I didn't--we didn't know!" he screams, anguish in his voice. FWOOSH. I turn and spot the flames rising from the trees across another recent clearing. "For Christ's sake, listen to me!" A note of impatient frustration sounds in his words. FWOOSH. I spot him then, sprinting out of the woods ahead of me. His helmet is gone, and his armor is charred, but Rawlings still carries his heavy plasma. However, he moves too slowly. "Karl!" he shouts, "run!" FWOOSH, the sound of gasoline vapors catching fire. Rawlings staggers as a bolt of blue flame tears down out of the sky and engulfs him. A tremendous wave of heat washes over me, my eyes wide as Rawlings collapses in a heap, psionically summoned hellfire rolling over him. But then he stands up. "Karl!" he bellows again, "get the hell out of here! He won't hurt you if you don't try--shit!" Rawlings staggers a few steps and then lunges at me. FWOOSH. The dragon's breath slams us down, the hot metal of Rawlings' armor knocking the breath out of me. I swear in surprise, for though I can feel the flames, it is not the cold mental fire that singes me, but the secondary roasting of burning bamboo. "How?" I cough. "Portable psionics disruptor," grunts Rawlings, rolling over. The dry leaves under his armor crunch and then burn. FWOOSH. The hairs on the back of my neck fall out, this blast stronger than the previous. "For God's sake, knock it-" FWOOSH. My head is ringing from the concussion of the air constantly pounding against me. "-you bastard! Joe-" FWOOSH. I choke, sucking air. "-listen to me! Listen! I didn't abandon you and I'll prove it! Rawlings stands up. The Kaleta-creature hovers above us, his threadbare robes ruffled by the slight breeze of the Sanctuary's disrupted air currents. Grinning malevolently, he descends earthward, his feet touching down twenty meters away. "PROVE IT," his voice a crushing wall of air, extinguishing the small fires that flare up at my back. "I'm going to lower my disruptor, OK? That good with you? Don't do anything stupid now--no more of those flames. Got it? Just a psi-scan." Kaleta is silent. Rawlings flips open his left arm's PDA array and touches a few buttons. Deciding that I probably don't want to stick around and see whether that psychopath is going to keep his word, I stagger up, raising my head directly into the line of the crisp white needle, the monster's psi-lance. I stagger up the stairs, backwards, knowing full well that Tadashi and Kosaku won't be following me. I hear a something fall to the floor with a crash behind me, and I swing around, plasma rifle up and barking bolts into the lunging monster. I manage to miss the crab at damn near point blank range, barely scraping its shoulder. A black chitinous scythe clips my head, and I go down. But my rifle comes to bear, and I blow the guts out of the fiend before he can lay another claw on me. His cousin is luckier. Hissing madly and his feet clicking off the buffed plastic tile of the department store floor, I bring my weapon up in time to blow off one of the creature's scaly feet. But it knocks my rifle out of my hand, the iron grip of a pincer going around my right bicep. Pain flares brightly in my head; I draw back my left and hammer it home into the monstrosity's head. Its free claw replies by tearing into my chest armor. Breathing hard and mechanically trading punches with the beast, I can feel the bone in my arm snapping like a dry twig. My God, the pain is unbearable; I drive home another shot and I can feel my legs turning to jello. Frantic, panicking as I realize someplace that this crab will have others coming to join it, I hit harder and harder, a chitinous blade hacking its way through my alloy plating. It embraces me in a chitinous death hug, raking my back with its free claw. I could scream for help, but nobody would hear. A savage twisting jab rips open one of the bug's compound eyes. It shrieks in pain and draws back; I dive to the floor and snatch up my plasma with my good arm. It bolts for me again, its hissing jaws making contact with the open snout of my rifle. I blow its head off. I stand, knowing full well that these bugs have friends. Quickly, I move away from the stairwell--these things seem to know what it is for, and they congregate in them. Staggering along and dragging my crushed arm, I no longer feel pain beneath my shoulder. The nerves have been severed--it is a very serious injury. I need immediate medical attention. I touch my helmet, warily holding my plasma rifle before me. "Hello?" I ask. There is not even static. My stratcom command radio has been destroyed. I move faster. A shelf filled with toasters and blenders topples over behind me. I can't fight these beasts out here--I run for the nearest doorway, a bathroom. Kicking open the door, I stumble in, stepping in something soft. I look down; it is someone's arm. I close the door, my light amplification displaying a small men's bathroom. Two urinals and one stall. I step over to the stall, plasma held out before me. I find the rest of the civilian, his face contorted, frozen in rigor mortis, a sick snapshot of a final and consuming pain. His chest is a gaping cavity where a crab must have emerged. Turning back to the doorway, I lay my plasma rifle down and fish out my medikit. I plug it into a diagnostics socket on my powered armor's belt. My arm flashes red on the display. The status bar reads: "Servos disabled. Possible critical wound." I could have determined that. I sit back and wait for the device to perform its wonders. "Unit Malfunction." What? I stare at the ominous message, turning the little portable over. As I do so, its delicate innards fall into my lap. No! I stare at the tangled tubes and vials and electronics that had been my medikit, uncomprehending the fact that my fate has been sealed. Yes, I'm sure to die now; I can't leave this infested building, but if I don't leave, I'll lose too much blood or go into shock . . . I look down at my arm. It is horrible; I can see torn muscle through the shredded armor. Spam in a can. A can opened through its side. With my good hand, I reach over and unfasten my shoulder guard. Underneath is exposed armor liner--the top of my shoulder-- and a notched strap. I yank on this plastic belt, tightening it sufficiently. It will have to serve as a makeshift tourniquet. Hissing at the doorway. I snap up my plasma rifle, amazed at how slowly I move. My arm trembles and I must steady the weapon upon my knee. I don't remember having sat down. Shock. I'm going into shock. The click-click of the crabs is closer now. They have my scent, they know where I am. They are coming for me. I couldn't say it before, but now I can. I will miss XCOM. I will miss the mad scrambles of the alarms and the monotony of weeks without one. I will miss the soft green forests of Kansai just as much as the seas of golden wheat in Kansas. I will miss the pain, misery, surprise, drudgery, the epic hate and love I have experienced in this final army of man. The door slowly swings inwards. I will miss XCOM to a man. Schancer, with all his paranoia of baldness and curious visions of greatness in himself, in others. Dillan, his stoic nature a breakwater against the wind-lashed waves of the bug horde. And all the soldiers, cynical heroes who, names etched in granite for a thousand millennia or buried nameless in the ashes of mankind, will at least be able to say they did something when something needed doing. I will miss XCOM. But most of all, I will miss Mariel . . . Something breaks in my head at the mention of her name! I feel a white hot pain nestled between the lobes of my brain, its burning, breaking corruption the same as my useless, useless toys. The medikit crumbles from my lap as I struggle up, the door swinging wide; my head is aflame, pure oxygen foaming through my veins, incinerating my insides! My nose snorts fire, and I scream wordlessly. MARIEL! It is an aneurysm, the cold realist in my head states. A blood vessel has burst in my head. I will crumple to the floor and die. The crab steps through the threshold. My plasma tumbles uselessly from my hand. The bitter irony! I smirk. To die now, not from the sledgehammer blows of a crab eviscerating me, but from an ambush, a betrayal, a base mutiny of my body! Give me a few minutes to mull over the complete idiocy of my situation, I speak to the bug. It nods, a wry grin formed by its insect's mouth. Take your time, he replies. I can wait. The searing rush of bleached pain fades, replaced by the bass thump of the blood in my veins. And darkness. I am physically flung backwards, a trail of gray smoke pouring off my forehead. I land on my rear, my hands on my head, clutching the writhing space between my ears. My skull feels like it is a box, a cage for some rabies-crazed animal thrashing around in the tumultuous climax of its death throes. My cerebrum is melted, a snake boring its way out of my head through the bone between my eyes. "FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK-" I squeal, my legs spasming randomly. By degrees, I realize that there is no audience for my play acting. The rodent trapped within dies, the throbbing ache of its frantic scratching a fresh memory. I open my eyes, the dying artificial light of the Sanctuary still too bright for me. Flash-burned bamboo smolders underneath me, dry leaves crunching. "What happened?" I groan, half expecting Rawlings to snap "shut up!" But as I prop myself up on my elbows, I realize that the soldier is in far worse shape than myself. Rawlings is a statue, frozen in a hideous testament to the full force of the psi-bolt that glanced me. Sizzling sweat pours from his scarred face, his eyes screwed shut, his teeth grinding, clenched shut. His arms are out at the ready--his heavy plasma dangling from his right--and his feet are apart. But he is not going anywhere, a crisp, crackling line of pure aura, of pure memory, touching his skull, his head thrown back on his shoulders. And the beast hovers above. Threadbare brown livery flapping in the warm breeze caused by the fires--I smell wood and flesh burning--it hangs beneath the too- low heavens of the Sanctuary, pouring down through that needle a savage scouring of Rawlings' mind. Arms on his hips, I can make out the stained, ruined traces of a tailored suitcoat and trousers upon the creature. But it is not Kaleta. Oh, the body belongs to Ken Kaleta, former Marsec Vice President of Personnel . . . but might makes right, and whomever or whatever has set up shop in that tall, gray-eyed walking corpse is surely mightier than all the kings and emperors of Earth. And whomever or whatever that may be, it surely isn't Ken Kaleta. The flaming psionic probe dies then, cut from the air like it never was. There is no thunderous report with its departure, there is no luminous flash, and there is nothing but the silent sighing of the bamboo as its kindred burn. I look upon the beast as it stands there, above us. Its glassy- eyed gaze still rests upon Rawlings. Rawlings--I turn to him. Still paralyzed in his former rictus of pain he is, but something other than that sharp metal sensation oozes from his pores. His plasma's muzzle swings up, his muscles alive again. I look upon his face. He smiles. The plasma slides down his arm to his him, hanging from its broad cydonium-weave strap. Rawlings smiles. His arms spread wide, seeming to engulf all that is the Sanctuary, all that is Marsec, his. Rawlings smiles. The years wash from his face, his scars fading away, his eyes sharper, brighter. Rawlings smiles, and the monster descends from the sky. "Jesus H. Christ." The distant roll of gunfire. "Jesus H. Christ and all the angels in heaven," he quietly repeats. "Your comparison flatters me," chuckles the creature. "But while my powers are significant . . ." Modest motherfucker! It's actually talking! And not in that sonic boom-slash-nuclear detonation voice. ". . . I cannot undo the damage I so hastily wrought upon your property." It glides over to within a meter of Rawlings, Kaleta's hijacked face impassive. "Welcome back, Wilkes," smiles Rawlings, embracing the nonplused creature. "It's been a long time, and I thought I was the last of the last." "I should not have approached you the way I did," states the Wilkes-thing, "but . . . it has been, as you say, a long time. My humanity has been submerged for so long, isolated within the Quarantine of yours . . ." "I should have known-" "There was, as I stated before, no possible way for you to know. Half-measures are never appropriate. However, you have already explained yourself sufficiently-" The entire east wall of the Sanctuary explodes inwards, a blizzard of shattering thermoplastic mowing down thousands of trees. I cover my head as something large whizzes over me. The air stinks of fresh-mown hay and burning plastics. The terrible massacre is rendered only more ominous by the unearthly howls of evil things that now echo out across the wasteland. "-and there is a task at hand." "Yes." "Let us complete it." I pray that Rawlings would simply leave me here, to cower upon my very own patch of ashen forest floor, but the gods only move men to grandiose acts of courage and skullduggery. Half-measures are never appropriate. Shoot with both-barrels. Don't go off half-cocked, half-assed. Stiff upper lip and whatnot. "Karl! Move it!" The aliens pour from the elevator, having just overwhelmed that choke point. Snarling blue bigfoots and pink hosebeasts burst from the flickering green column, flames licking its doorway. Only a handful of Marsec employees stand in their path. They aren't even Internal Security; secretaries and custodial crews, barely armed and scantily armored, fire from poor cover. Sniper beams and M4000 rounds fly, ripping up the pinkies but only annoying the blues. Men and women scream and die as the bugs open up. Purple death rays tear apart the feeble resistance. The bugs advance, triumphant. This building will soon be theirs. MegaPrime will follow. And then Rawlings, Wilkes, and the cavalry show up. I crouch behind a low hillock, the executive lounge to my immediate right and the northeast grav lift dead ahead. The bugs move forward cautiously, taking what cover they can behind waste bins, potted plants, and doorframes. Rawlings crouches beside me. "That's a good number," he states. Is he speaking to me? I wonder. A pair of Centurions rise up from behind a stout salad bar. The blues don't even get to dive. With surgical precision, the two elite guards open fire, their plasma rifles barking impossibly fast for aimed shots. But their bolts fly with stunning accuracy, and the lead blues go down, hammering Elerium blasts tearing open their thick hides, flash-boiling their innards, and generally making a hell of a mess. The rear elements of this bug detachment scurry for cover, out of the line of sight of the two I. S. men in the cafeteria. However, they are perfect targets for Rawlings. Even the Centurions cannot compare with his skills. Perhaps he brewed up their DNA from some choice strand of his; if he did, then the process was flawed and the results only pale shades of his pure, crimson, killer's touch. TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-TH-THOOM, his heavy plasma stutters. The blues roar in impotence as every last one of their number are torn to shreds by the light, sensitive touch of Rawlings' index finger upon his trigger. One loses his head, a steaming stump of gore the only monument to the former appendage. The other five take double taps to their centers of gravity. "These things got any redundancies?" Rawlings is asking. A pair of thin wires winding their way up into his ears--his headset--whisper something. "Good," Rawlings states. "I always hated the damn reapers." Plasma roars on the floor above the cafeteria; I look up. A Centurion leaps into the air above and joins the fray, pumping bolts of sizzling plasma into something. The firing stops. Rawlings grunts. "Something big coming down the shaft," he mutters, leveling his weapon on the gaping wound of a doorway. "Big?" I ask. The dirt before us explodes. My right arm instinctively goes up before my eyes; even so, I see stars with them shut. "Pull back!" roars Rawlings. I hear him scramble away. Another blast throws debris down upon me. I take a sharp kick in the kidneys; something has hit my armor vest. The detonation's echoes leaving my ears, I look up. Damn. It is tall, at least as tall as two men. God damn it is tall, its head--as broad as its body--scraping this level's ceiling, at least five, six meters up. And its arms--its arms aren't, a massive collection of muzzles, pores, launchers--whatever the hell they are--in their place. Pink veins bulging under a thick tan skin that looks as tough as asphalt, manhole-sized feet mashing down the bloody shag carpet, that God damn motherfucker heads straight at me, one of its arms stitching devastation on a molecular level across the freshly-tilled dirt at my hands. I roll, pulling my plasma pistol. THOOMTHOOMTHOOMTHOOM. Fucker's laughing! And then, when it looks like curtains for Karl Williams, the Centurions open up. The air goes white with the hail of plasma bolts. Roaring like the last bull elephant being ripped into by government poachers, the juggernaut flails out with its bomb launcher, laying down a barrage of sheer, Made-In-Hell nuclear devastation. I press flat against the weeping soil as geysers walk the land, fragmenting cydonium, flash-fusing dirt, and further shattering thermoplastic. I try to burrow, to become one with the churned earth, my efforts buying me a sharp pain in my legs and my left shoulder and my right ankle. Then it dies. "AAARRRRGGGGHHHBBLLLEEAAAACCCCCKKKK," it emphatically states in the manner of a harpooned whale, dropping to its knees before crunching its wide skull against the ruined Sanctuary floor. I want to stand, to walk over and examine the beast. Did it even have eyes? "Pull back, Karl! Pull back!" yells Rawlings. I stagger up, stumbling across the wavy ground to the next low hill. It's more a dune of pocked, deforested earth now, the bamboo being ripped up to the roots. "What the hell was that?" I ask Rawlings and the platoon of salarymen who lie belly-down in the warm, bloody soil, defending this hill with their M4000's and their bodies. "Get down!" yells a white-haired, overweight manager type. I turn to swear at him, but then the next wave of aliens is upon us. They are yellow and they are nasty. I sight up one of the thin-limbed mothers with my pistol. I put four bolts into it, and it doesn't even flinch, the shots splashing off the air centimeters from its nose. It just ducks behind a support column between the lounge and the hallway to the lift. "They've got shields!" somebody yells from down the line. Shit. The manager next to me pumps out a controlled burst of into one of the bastards as it runs from the lift. It screams and collapses, its hollow, tube-like legs shattered. "Fuckin' rookie," he snarls, sighting up the next. He coughs blood as a "molecular disruptor beam" tears through his shoulder blades. I glance up; the bugs are on the levels above us--with the thermoplastic bashed out, they have a commanding view of the battlefield. We are sitting ducks. "Ballistics work against them!" another soldier yells. "They're above us!" I shout. An office man to my left dies. Rawlings pumps a burst into the sniper lofts, narrowly missing. He twitches his middle finger, and a grenade sails up. A pair of yellows are tossed into the air, screeching. But they don't fall. No, can't have that; they quickly regain their balance and continue firing, hovering in midair! Rawlings burns through their shields, dropping them. A beam nicks his right arm. "WILKES!" he shouts. A yellow, crouching out around a support column, suddenly implodes, his "shield" containing the vicious casserole of body parts and equipment. Another bug dies similarly. The sniper yellows start screaming as Wilkes, towering behind us, slays them one by one, his arms raised, his fingers pointing out each new death. "Why didn't he start doing that sooner?" moans a wounded secretary. "We didn't ask?" theorizes her boss. A dread concussion shakes the whole building. I look over my shoulder as the center of the Sanctuary's ceiling collapses, a tongue of black flame ejecting some insanely fast projectile. TRUCE. All firing suddenly ceases. I turn back to my pistol; the safety is suddenly on, and I holster it instinctively. "Why the hell are you idiots-" shouts Rawlings, his eyes flaring. "Who are you?" asks Wilkes, his voice loud, silencing the soldier's. "I am but a messenger," comes the answer. I roll onto my back, my will to fight suddenly sapped. Rawlings is insanely furious, of course, and I see a pair of wounded Centurions reloading back in the remaining woods, but with the obvious exception of Wilkes, everybody else seems to have simply stopped . . . "Messenger?" replies the robed one. "Messenger of Mother." I can see him now, suspended in the air. Brushfire smoke parts like a curtain, and there is the other one, the one who tore through the whole structure of the Building. He is only a boy! Slight, with narrow shoulders and thin arms, it is but a small human boy hanging there, clothed in a white tee shirt and old-style, Japanese schoolkid white cotton shorts. His hair is tousled, black. His skin, pale white. But his eyes; I can see his eyes from here, from halfway across the Sanctuary. They burn with black fire. I squint because this surely is a hallucination . . . "What tidings do you bear, messenger?" inquires Wilkes, slowly turning to face this new acquaintance. "Ill tidings," he states, in a bored, half-awake fashion. "Such is often the case," muses Wilkes. "Tell me, boy, of what do you bring ill tidings?" "Mother is displeased with you and your kind. Mother is annoyed with your trivial messages that tear the sky and bring darkness upon us. Mother has decreed that we, her children, must bring the light into your world. We are missionaries of her light." "Light?" laughs Wilkes. "What do you know of light?" "The light of a common tongue. You, who so willingly choose your splintered paths away from Babylon, cannot return without the guidance of Mother." "The guidance of Mother?" Wilkes asks, incredulous. "Tongues? Why do you speak in metaphor? If you cannot stand the truth, then let your lies lay open and naked! There, is that poetry enough? You loose your hordes upon my brothers and sisters and now, now, when thousands lay dead in the ruins of humanity's works, only NOW do you open your mouth and have your say?" "We were not-" "Speak UP, boy!" I see the faint shimmer of blue flame gather about Wilkes. What he seeks by driving this visitor to combat, I do not know. "We were not aware of YOUR presence, shielding it so adequately as you were." "Does my intervention warrant such a sudden change in tactics? What do you see in me that you find so lacking in these allies of mine? Convince me of your honesty; I suspect you chose this dialogue as merely a method of separating me from those I call mine." The little boy frowns, his eyes burning brighter. "You can understand. These," he waves to Rawlings, to the Marsec militia, to the Centurions, to me, "cannot. They are empty, minute things, specks of dark dust to the bright solar furnaces that we are." "These 'things'," rumbles Wilkes, "are people. They are not like your little minions; they orbit no sun except that of their liking. There is no 'Mother' to oh-so-benevolently guide them-" "-and that is why you are lost." The boy is fast, sickeningly fast, and now I know why Wilkes brewed that field of fire beforehand. He swings it up, coalescing it, hardening it in the blink of a eye; even so, he barely deflects the boy's beam of brilliantly black fire. The flames lick around his shield, a living, groping terror that reaches for Wilkes' physical manifestation, seeks to touch it, to grind it out like a cigarette's cherry under a boot heel. And Wilkes, even for all his hot air and arrogance, is struggling, being pushed back by the tremendous horizontal column of psi-fire. Molecules trapped between the warring auras spit outwards from the field of contact, incinerating the earth beneath and the ceiling above. The bamboo catches flame again, the tortured forest a shadow of its former grandeur. "We move," snarls Rawlings. He clicks his heels together--and damn, can those ruby slippers haul ass! "Get up," someone commands. I obey, and start jogging for the executive lounge. I look over my shoulder though, and what I see scares me-- Wilkes flailing as he is flung backwards, his shield gone now. His frail body--Kaleta's body--slams into the far wall, spread eagle. The boy smirks and draws back his right arm. A flurry of obsidian flechetts arc from his fingers, streaking across the Sanctuary. They cut into Wilkes' robes, their telekinetic charge pinning him to the cydonium. He struggles, impotent. The boy closes his right hand into a tight fist, thrusting it forwards- A splattering of plasma bolts breaks the child's concentration. Wilkes rips free and dives aside as a freight train of pure bismuth coal demolishes the wall and the next fifteen rooms behind it. He swings his left arm down, a new shield massing around it. The boy turns his attention to Rawlings and his two surviving Centurions. Shrugging aside plasma barrage after plasma barrage, the fiend arcs black lightning into Rawlings, kicking him over but leaving him unharmed. The boy frowns; Wilkes raises his right hand. It glows blue-white with concentrated energy. A Centurion leaps into the air, hover units kicking in, and lashes at the boy with a bright arc of green--a plasma-assisted short sword. The child yawns and dodges the strike. A massive tangle of ventilation equipment, trailing cables and conduits, separates from the ceiling and comes crunching down upon that I. S. guard. The other empties his under-slung grenade launcher at the monster--who promptly detonates every explosive shell the moment they leave the sphere of the Centurion's disruptor. The man is dissolved in a cloud of shrapnel. Wilkes stands stoic, quiet, his right hand a searingly bright flare of pure photonuclear energy. Rawlings, roaring with calculated rage, kicks into the air, plasma cannon slung over his shoulder. His blades come out; those seventy centimeter cleavers that now glow fission green and thirst for the blood of his servant's killer. He dodges the preliminary array of debris that the boy tosses his way, closing with the infinite patience of a stalker, a hunter, an assassin. I'm not even looking at Wilkes--it has become painful to view him with open eyes. Rawlings closes with a sudden leap; the boy flings psi shards at him, but they all dissolve upon contact with the aural disruptor. A controlled jab with his right, a hair's miss with his left; the soldier lunges and punches with frightening virtuosity. The boy struggles to evade; he touches the disruption field and draws back, burnt. And then he smiles evilly. Rawlings nicks him then, scratching his ribcage right over his heart, but the creature already burns black hate from both hands. He jumps back, avoiding another swing of the blades. His tiny child hands go together. His fused palms emit a beam of pure lead, focussed down to a pen's diameter. It sparks for only the slightest of moments on Rawlings' disruptor--and then cuts right through, shorting out the shield and lancing straight through the soldier's armor, through his liner, boring through his right shoulder and spraying molten cydonium flavored with cartilage, muscle and bone. Rawlings doesn't scream, instead concentrating on bringing his left arm around. The plasma blade whines as it scorches the side of the child's face, cutting through his ear, touching his skull. The boy bellows with gargantuan rage, pulling down his psi lance and tearing Rawlings' arm from its socket. He flicks backwards, the tip of the soldier's sword welting the flesh across his face. Sobbing in pain, he pours a hail of graphite stones down upon the tumbling Marsec chieftain. Wilkes' hand is so bright I can feel its seething heat on my face. Now he moves, barreling across the Sanctuary, his shield long forgotten, only his flaming hand ahead of him. The boy returns his attentions to the true threat only too late; Wilkes slams into him, his right fist a furious mace. Slowly, deliberately, Wilkes hammers the child down, his right hook putting stars into my eyes! The boy weakly attempts to defend himself, raising his right forearm; but as the two drop to the floor, it is evident that one schoolboy isn't going to make it home in time for dinner. THEY ARE PEOPLE, asserts Wilkes. His right darts down, five fingers connecting with the child's forehead. The child screams primeval, and is vaporized in a cataclysmic blast of white light that turns all a stark, black and white photonegative. I scramble over ash and rubble, my eyes still wet with the pain of the light. I see Rawlings now, crouched on his knees, a look of profound pain etched across his face. His arm is gone, only a jagged shell of his shoulder myomers and servos bracketing the socket where it should be. Blood flows freely from the wound. I feel Wilkes presence beside me. "Your arm," he asks, "can it be mended?" Rawlings doesn't answer him, concentrating on something else. The veins stand on his forehead, and he breaths deeply, quickly. I feel the sweep of a psi probe through my brain as Wilkes looks for answers to his question. "You must be incapacitated for the healing," he states. "May I try to stay the damage?" "No," Rawlings pants, "it is not necessary." We stand there, awkwardly, for a few moments. "Sir, you need help," I murmur. He doesn't answer me. The blood flows black and thick now, syrupy rivulets pouring down his side. I frown at this and draw back but slightly. Then I see it happening--a finger, then a hand, then a wrist come oozing out of the torn joint, thin, black, and withered. Rawlings grunts in pain, a new arm growing where the last was . . . I turn away, unnerved. But sick curiosity pulls my eyes back, and a scaly, chitinous arm, slowly inflating, rests in Rawlings' lap. "You didn't," protests Wilkes. Rawlings opens his eyes, and turns to the other veteran. He flexes his hand, clicking the already hardening black chitin together. "Preach down to me, huh? Look upon yourself, first! 'And the victors looked upon the spoils of war, and took for themselves that which shone in their eyes.'" "I do not know which book you speak of." "It's from Crusade. It was written since." Wilkes is silent. Rawlings stands, black ooze dripping from his newly-formed arm. "You know my emotions regarding the crab creatures," states Wilkes. "I didn't like them very much either. You know that. I didn't choose this . . . DNA for myself. It was forced on me, in those last moments, before . . ." His voice trails off, and the old soldier looks skyward. Only flickering artificial lighting returns his gaze. "What was that kid?" he asks. "He was no human," replies Wilkes. "He was a changer, a psimorph, something that had no set form-" Somebody whispers through Rawlings' headset. "Shit," he moans, his alien hand going up to his forehead. "Shit," he cries again, turning and jogging away from us, towards a great heap of rubble where salarymen in ripped and bloodied shirts toil at a great heap of collapsed ceiling ducts. "Jinia!" shouts Rawlings, throwing aside his employees and tearing at the wreckage. Great slabs of metal and venting fly from his hands as he burrows into the debris. He stops and pulls a body from beneath the mountain. Another Centurion, his armor chipped and dented, makes his way to Rawlings' side. "Sir," he states. "Is the situation stabilized?" snaps Rawlings. "No, sir." "Then make yourself useful and join up with another team." "Yes, sir." The stock gene soldier sullenly marches off. "I know what she meant to you, Antiochus!" Rawlings yells after him. "I'm not brushing off Jinia--nobody is! So don't get emotional on me; there will be a time to mourn, but it's not now." "Yessir!" answers the Centurion. He kicks in his hover unit and leaps into the air, headed for the upper level of windows looking out over the Sanctuary. Rawlings falls to his knees. Wilkes and I drift over. "You have been busy during my years of solitude?" he states more than asks. "I spent over seventy-five years building this-" Rawlings waves with his claw-fingers over the raped expanse of his once grand garden "-and now it's nothing. Is this cycle going to ever end? Build something decent and then watch it all burn down, just so you can build it up again?" "Speak not in that manner," chastises Wilkes, "for you and I are gods, immortal and omnipotent. Once our shadows are cast no more, who will guide this world and its people?" Rawlings pulls the helmet from the dead soldier. Thorpe's wrinkled face emerges; I suck in a breath. There is not a drop of blood upon her lips. "I taught her how to fight like that. Did you see her? Glen-- sixteen kills, sixteen kills and she almost nailed that bastard psi. I never thought I'd live long enough to buy beer legally, and I taught her how to shoot and fly like that." Rawlings stands. "So knock off the poetry, Jonas. And knock off the stupid fucking lies. Guide? You've been locked inside old Cydonia for the last seven decades. I've been too afraid to even care about anybody or anything for the last four. What kind of gods are we? Deadbeats?" Rawlings and his old friend--I assume--are quiet. I open my mouth. "For what it's worth," I mumble, "I consider you a fairly large influence in my life. And by the freaky dreams I've been having, the life of Nat, too." Rawlings closes his eyes and smiles. "Glen?" His grin dies. "She what?" He snorts. "That's my girl; that's my girl." Rawlings turns to me. "Kazutoshi's great-granddaughter--Nat--is loose." She was in the corner of the room, huddled up behind the bed and wrapped with its sheets. Even so, she was shivering, unnaturally cold from the deep sleep she'd been in but a few minutes ago. The tank had been in the center of Rawlings' suite, two dozen cables and pipes strung in on the floor, all held to the mock wood flooring with ample amounts of electrical tape. The Nanotech tank was featured prominently before the bed, with a grand south-facing view of the Sanctuary. The thermoplastic was gone, replaced by the uneven howling of fire-generated winds. A lot of shrapnel had gone through this room, punching holes in the walls and tearing open the springs of Rawlings' antique bed. One of those shards had also evidently hit the tank, shattering one whole side and spilling Nat and the salty brine that suspended her out onto the floor. In her hands was Rawlings' First Alien War plasma pistol, its size formidable but somehow manipulated by Nat's tiny hands. She nearly put a bolt through me. For some idiotic reason, I had been the first to approach her. I took one glimpse at her eyes before retreating back beyond the corner. "You go," I ordered Rawlings. He had stepped into her line of sight, a blood-encrusted, half- burnt, maimed, scarred, and unshaven old man with an arm borrowed from alien gene sequences growing out his right side. He had stood there, his hands at his sides, blood slowly clotting on his temple where his head had hit the ground, and he had done nothing but meet her ominous glare. They looked at each other in that way for what seemed like hours, neither moving a muscle. I would have like to know what they observed, what made them fixate upon each other so immediately. Did Nat remember something from sometime long ago, some hidden memory before the hard times of the street? Did Rawlings look upon her body, did he note how she had truly bloomed in that harshest of environments? Did something actually happen in that prolonged silence as they gazed into each other's eyes--did some pheromones, some secret chemical combination click . . . or was it just professional, the courteous acknowledgment of another adept in their arcane niche of society? Two soldiers nodding to each other as one's watch ended and the other's began? The look two gunfighters give each other in that stolen moment when they both rest against the bar, beer in hand and no particular reason to test each other? Or was it love? Completely disregarding the internal mechanics of the situation, it was Nat who made the first move, lowering that pistol. Rawlings took the initiative, releasing the seals and joints of his armor. A grenade exploded nearby; the bugs had pretty much stopped fighting after their champion's death, but there were still holdouts. Then Rawlings was stepping out of his gear, his powersuit half-disassembled, his heavy plasma resting easy on the floor. Sweat soaked and stinking, he padded over to Nat, his feet muffled by the soft polymers of his armor liner. He knelt down. And they embraced. 7/29/98
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