mjackso6@bigfoot.com I've already posted this to alt.fan.bgc, and an HTML version is available at http://www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Bay/5853/stories.html. This is set immediately after Bubblegum Crisis Pt. 8, "Scoop Chase" but well before BG Crash! (Which I prefer to pretend doesn't exist). Also, events in this story obviously differ from the Crash! continuum, so consider it an alternate reality. Enjoy! Small Tragedies (Pt. 1) Miraculously, the night had ended without disaster. After all was said and done, after ADP headquarters had been overrun by Miriam's boomers, even after they'd done their best to blow the entire building in place, the tower still stood. The boomers were junk, their creator was in cuffs, and the public was safe again. Mostly thanks to the Knight Sabers, of course, even Investigator Leon McNichol had to admit that. Without the Sabers, especially the Red Saber, the ADP and a good chunk of Tinsel City would've been in a world of shit that night. Yeah, all around, things'd turned out just fine. If, that is, you ignored the little tragedies, the little sacrifices. And that's what most would do; TNN was focusing on the positive aspects of the night, the happy ending. Being the most respectable news service on scene, their version of events became the definitive one. A dry, dignified, version in which the dozens of dead cops and civilians were only referred to in a respectful, numerical fashion. But, for once, in an ironic swapping of roles, the story that was told by Vixen 16, the city's premier televised trash-rag, was far more truthful if a lot less respectful. Vixen 16's cameras were right there, right at the scene of every chopper crash, explosion, and gory death. They were there as screaming, broken, and burned men and women were loaded into ambulances and whisked away. Some of them were even waiting at the hospitals to see how many made it, and to catch the inevitable moments when stricken family members came running in to find their broken and bleeding loved ones. They caught every nuance of grief, pain, and horror that TNN deemed unsuitable for their audience. And that included one scene that came back to Leon as he worked on the antiseptic paperwork that inevitably followed a messy spectacle like the previous night's. It was a long shot of one of the buildings directly adjacent to the ADP tower, a tall, slim skyscraper that was perfect for positioning overwatches. Or snipers. The shot panned a bit, and then zoomed in on a particular darkened window, switching to the familiar emerald green of lowlight lenses as it moved in. At first there was nothing apparent, just a dark window, but then there was just the barest hint of movement, and a slight realignment of shadows that revealed the silhouette of a long rifle barrel. The shot held steady there for a moment, and just as it began to pan away, something else entered the frame. There was a bright flash that briefly whited the entire frame out, accompanied by a distant boom and a shrill scream. When the camera recovered, where the window had been there were only shattered fragments and a gaping hole underneath. As the camera panned down, there was another distant scream, and then the frame centered on the source. Hanging from a ledge below the window, some seventy-five meters above the street, was a lone ADP officer, a young woman to judge by the outline. She hung there, one handed, helmet-less, long raven hair snapping to and fro in a vicious cross-wind. She hung on for long seconds that seemed to stretch for an eternity, trying desperately to catch hold with her other hand. But, finally, her grip faltered and, screaming all the way down, she fell. The camera, obviously run by a gifted professional, followed her the entire way, catching her rebound from the pavement, and the abrupt end of her screams. Though it had little to do with the reports he was working on, for some reason Leon couldn't get that scene out of his head, nor the queasy knowledge that that wasn't the end of the story. No, it seemed that particular officer, one trooper first class Akiko Natomi, was a tough one. He remembered her from a few of the cases he'd worked on, a little china-doll of a woman, but tough and smart, and such a crack shot she'd become her squad's designated sniper. A little green at first, but lately shaping up into a first rate cop. It didn't even surprise him much that she'd survived the fall. Of course, survival was a relative term. Even now, over eighteen hours later, news from the ICU said it was touch and go, and even if she pulled through she'd never be the same. Not even with the best that modern medicine had to offer. A pretty shitty deal, Leon thought, especially for a single mother. `But,' he thought, `the public doesn't know or care. All they see are a bunch of faceless uniforms who can't even keep them safe anymore. Hell, we can't even hang on to our own headquarters! Why should they care that we're suffering just as much as they are? That's our job, right? Shit, sometimes I wonder why I still bother.' Leon sighed, and, standing up abruptly, said aloud, "Enough of this crap! I'm going nuts in here! If the chief wants all these friggin' reports by tonight, I guess he's just shit out of luck! DALEY!!" From an office down the hall there was the sudden clatter of an overturning chair and a muffled curse. A moment later, a somewhat disheveled and rather annoyed Assistant Inspector Daley Wong stepped out into the hallway and said, "Dammit, Leon! You don't have a tactful bone in your body, do you?" Leon grinned and said, "Nope! Time for you to wake your lazy ass up anyway. I'm starved and I need to get the hell out of here for a while." "Huh! Chief'll be thrilled, I'm sure." Daley said. "Well, where're we going then?" "Beats me," Leon replied. "You're buying so you pick!" "Buying, huh? Well you know that obligates you then, right?" Leon rolled his eyes heavenward momentarily, and then said, "Oh, sure, and what'd you have in mind for payment?" Daley grinned slyly, and said, "Oh, I'm sure we can work something out in trade, hmm?" "Yeah, right," Leon said sardonically. "I just can't wait to hear this. Would it help if I said it was my time of the month?" "Shit, Leon, how could I tell? You're always on the rag! Oh, well, maybe some other time..." Leon's eyes narrowed with mock seriousness, and he said, "Yeah, yeah, sure thing, smartass! Now you want to eat or what?!" Daley laughed in reply, and the two friends headed for the parking garage below. Deep down in the darkness of her mind's eye she lived it over and over again. She was there, lying prone on the thin, rough carpet, tucked behind the cheap metal desk. The Pig, her 13mm heavy sniper rifle, was there with her, pulled reassuringly into the pocket of her shoulder, just as she'd been taught, the barrel protruding through the small hole she'd cut at the base of the office window. Her eye was at the high-power IR/lowlight scope, lining up the crosshairs on the unsuspecting boomer who rampaged through ADP's headquarters across the street. She was patient, also as she'd been taught, and applied principles of Zen archery, waiting for the factors of time, target, and bullet to come into alignment of their own without anticipation. Just as she felt her finger tightening on the trigger, as the moment came into conjunction, the boomer's head suddenly snapped around in her direction. She froze, momentarily stunned, as the boomer looked straight at her. It seemed almost to smile as its jaws gaped, and the laser lens jutted forth, framed by gleaming fangs. The horrible moment was crystal clear to her through the telescopic sight. Finally, her body unfroze, and her finger started to tighten on the trigger again, but then it was too late. There was a searing green flash and the world first caught fire then slid from under her. She screamed, blinded, and flailed wildly for something solid as she fell. She caught hold of something cold, hard and rough-edged that tore her hand but supported her weight. For long moments, still unable to see, she tried desperately to grab hold of something, anything, with the other hand, terror washing over and drowning her mind. But her efforts only made it that much harder to hang onto the hand-hold she had, and finally she slipped. There was an instant when the terror peaked, washing away everything else, and the scream that tore itself from her as she fell was a product of that. But, strangely, as she fell, the fear receded from her mind, leaving behind a kind of calm detachment. The scream continued, but it was really only an afterthought. Her last thoughts before striking the pavement were of her little girl. `Maiume.' And then it wasn't pavement she was hitting, it was water, a black bottomless expanse that swallowed her as she hit, without even a ripple to mark her passage. As she slowly sank, drifting leisurely toward the bottom an infinite distance below, an overwhelming sense of peace slowly descended upon her, and she just barely made out voices somewhere in the distance, urgent voices, but carrying a message that was meaningless to her. "Shit! She's flatlining! Get that crash cart over here! I need ten cc's ephenepherine, intracardial, now! Get that thing charged! Clear! Shit! Again! Clear! Dammit, nothing! Nurse...!" In fact, as she sank deeper, away from the voices, only one came clear to her, with a message that cut like a knife through the dreamlike calm that enfolded her. "Mommy!" But, as much as it tore at her heart, `Kiko knew that she was powerless to halt her plunge. A part of her accepted that calmly, but another part fought the knowledge vehemently. She struggled briefly, flailing for the surface, wherever it might be, but the frantic surge of energy just wasn't enough. Spent, powerless, she felt herself sinking again, faster now, down toward the murky depths. `No! Dammit, no! Maiume!' And once again, fleetingly, the voices: "Goddamn it! We're losing her! She- ah, Christ, that's it. She's gone. Dammit..." And then the blackness pressed in, smothering sight and sound and thought forever. The phone rang jarringly, jolting the Chief out of some private revelry. Frowning, he picked it up and said, "Todo." His frown deepened at first, then slowly relaxed, giving way to a resigned, vaguely sad expression. "I see," he said neutrally. "Yes, of course I'm sure you did all you could. Well, I'll have my administrative staff make arrangements with the family and- What!!? What do you mean the body's been taken?!" As he said this, the Chief surged to his feet, body suddenly rigid, and as the voice on the other end explained, the color slowly faded from his face. "They've invoked clause 113?! Yes, I know she was an organ donor, but-! Jesus Christ, you stupid bastard! Do you know what happened the last time that clause was invoked?! Do you know how many cops died when Fanward went nuts?! And now they want to try it again?! I'll be godamed if they will!!" And with that he slammed the phone into its cradle, hard enough to send shards of plastic flying across the office. The Chief remained standing for a moment, breath coming in ragged gasps, and then collapsed into his chair. "I'll be godamed if they will!" he repeated vehemently, then reached for the battered phone to begin the battle he knew awaited. The Chief's fight was destined to be extremely one sided. Even calling in all the markers he'd accumulated over the years and citing numerous city ordinances and national laws, not to mention past precedents and departmental policy, did him little good. At every level, from the Diet on down, the appropriate exceptions to policy were issued, and all the pre-existing loopholes in Boomeroid laws were exploited. In the end, all of the Chief's connections told him the same thing: it was going to happen. Everything was just coming from too far on high to stop. And that was enough to make the Chief reconsider some very fundamental decisions he'd lately made. Even before the Miriam crisis, before his niece had almost died in his own building, the Chief had been thinking about calling it quits. Lately, with all the setbacks ADP had been experiencing, he'd begun to wonder more and more whether he was still up to the fight, whether or not the department might do better with some fresh blood at the top. And, yes, he'd been tired. Hell, he figured he had a right, as long as he'd been in the game! But this setback was just too much, it pissed him off. And more than that, he began to wonder just how much of ADP's troubles were actually their fault. Oh, sure, he'd realized from the beginning what the score was with Genom. But he'd always figured that as long as they tread softly in some areas, they'd be left mostly alone. After all, somebody had to be able to take down rogue boomers. But now he wondered: mightn't it make sense to weaken the ADP to the point where it was no longer able to take care of itself? Mightn't that present an opportunity to do a little tuning up? A little automation? Wouldn't it suit Genom just fine to have an ADP made up mostly of boomers and boomeroids, with only a few human supervisors? Wouldn't that make them a lot easier to control? And wouldn't it just be playing right into their hands for the Chief to call it quits now? Christ only knew who or what they might get to replace him! No, after long, hard thought, the Chief decided that maybe he should stick around just a little longer, if for no other reason than to see the department through whatever was coming with this new cyborg project. After the last time, almost seven years ago now, he had a hard time believing anything good would come of it. But, on the other hand, Natomi had been a good cop. Better than Billy had been, and a lot more stable. If there was still any of her left after the cyberdocs were done, if they didn't wipe her mind and soul away, then who could tell? Part of the problem with Billy, the Chief had always thought, had been the way people had treated him. Granted, that bitch of a cyberdoc had abused him physically and mentally, but he'd always wondered what might've happened if Billy hadn't been treated like a damn combat boomer by all the other officers. With all the other strikes against him, it had probably only been a matter of time, but what about Natomi? About that, the Chief was adamant. If he couldn't stop the project, then he was going to do his damnedest to make sure that Natomi had everything going for her that he could arrange. After all, she'd died for the department, and it wasn't her fault those techno-ghouls had brought her back. He figured she deserved better than to have all her old comrades turn against her as soon as she walked in the door. But, once again looking at the other side, the Chief knew that this time there had to be contingency plans in place. Plans to deal with the worst if it happened, because above all else the Chief knew one thing: whatever it took, he wouldn't allow another bloodbath. If he had to, he'd kill Natomi with his bare hands first. Not that that was remotely possible, of course, he reflected with a sigh. He'd seen some of the preliminary reports on Natomi's new body and its combat potential, and it chilled his blood to think what it would take to stop her if the worst happened. As it happened, Chief Todo wasn't the only one with an interest in Akiko Natomi's future. Dr. Sylia Stingray sat at her computer terminal, a cup of cold, forgotten herbal tea next to her elbow, and pondered the latest data her colleague, Nene Romanova, had hacked out for her. She found the information intriguing, dismaying, and disturbing all at the same time. Intriguing simply because of the sheer genius of the designs she was looking at, not to mention the radical new design concept- an androidial cyber-body! An artificial body designed to mimic the original human body in form and function as closely as possible, even down to dentition, and finger and retinal prints. Not a new idea, they'd been doing it with boomers and individual cyber-parts for years, but she'd never heard of a design this comprehensive or complex before. In fact, if it turned out as good as the designers planned, you'd never be able to tell the difference. Unless she stepped on your foot, that is, weight could only be brought down so far with the materials being used. And that brought up the dismaying part; Sylia had been shocked to learn some of the materials and technologies going into this body. She'd been sure that some of them hadn't even been available to anyone but her, and some others represented technologies that even she hadn't yet exploited! Take, for instance, the body's integral armor and skeletal/muscular enhancements, which provided both incredibly tough, body-wide *hardened* armor, comparable in strength to a BU-55's heavy Abotex shell at a fraction of the weight, *and* physical strength comparable to one of Sylia's newest hardsuits! The body's micro-structure and power production was actually composed of artificial cells that contained newly designed `electrochondria' which were, quite literally, miniature catalyzed cold fusion reactors that produced usable energy from minute amounts of deuterium gleaned from normal water intake. Given that there were, as in a human body, literally trillions of cells, the body's total potential power output was staggering. The nano-reconstruction and reinforcement work done on Natomi's brain and notochord, making them almost as tough as the body's other tissues, also made them the heart of the body's holo-optical/organic processing systems, which incidentally mimiced a human sensorium as well as providing an incredible reflex boost. Universal interfacing software and police-grade scrambled radio systems with ether-net capability that provided instantaneous go-anywhere access to the Net had also been installed. In fact, it was all so complex that Sylia had to wonder how much of it had actually been designed by a human mind, and how much came from the mind of some high-level AI. But the disturbing part, in Sylia's mind, was two-fold. First, of course, were the weapons systems, especially the ranged weapon, a Largo-type gravimetric blaster. It wasn't the sheer power of the weapon that bothered her. Really, it was only comparable in destructive ability and range to more standard energy weapons. It was that it was a weapon that was currently beyond *her* ability to construct, and she hated being behind the mega-corps like that. Technological superiority was sometimes one of the few edges the Knight Sabers had, and she liked to keep comfortably ahead of current trends in weapons design. The other problem was that, according to the information she'd gotten, the body had been entirely nano-assembled. The only time human hands had touched it was during the surgical procedure to install Natomi's nervous system, and even that had been mostly handled by nanos. In fact, it seemed that all Cytech had to do to make a body like this was to pour a seed culture of the right nanos into a vat full of the appropriate heavy metal-salt solution, wait a week, and presto! Instant cyber-body! Of course, it was a little more complicated than that; the processing demands were high enough to necessitate external computer support and remote control of the nanos, and an incredible amount of capital went into R&D for every design. But overall it was an incredibly cheap, efficient, and rapid production scheme. And what it all added up to was that, pound for pound, Officer Natomi's new body was a pretty fair match for one of her hardsuits. Not that she necessarily thought the Knight Sabers would be duking it out with the ADP any time soon, but what'd been done once could be done again. Sylia fully expected that if the design panned out, if the body worked as planned and Natomi didn't go c-psycho wearing it, they'd be seeing more cybers like her. Corporate enforcers, military sales, you name it. And there was an even more chilling possibility. Looking at the designs, it had struck Sylia that it would be easier to use an artificial brain than a human one, because the life support issues were much simpler. It would be a simple matter to modify this design just a little to produce a whole new generation of C- or even B-class boomers. Boomers who were lighter, more agile, faster, and very possibly smarter than any of the current combat or battle rated models, not to mention cheaper and easier to produce. An ugly possibility, to say the least. Sylia wasn't quite sure how to deal with this potential problem just yet, but one thing was for sure, she wanted to keep a close eye on Natomi once she was returned to duty. Fortunately, she had an insider. Opening a phone window on her terminal, Sylia tapped the speed-dial hot key for ADP non-emergency, and after the receptionist's courteous greeting said, "Yes, I'd like to speak to Corporal Romanova, please..." Forever, she'd thought in her last moments, as the darkness had closed in. It had seemed at that instant that eternity was opening up beneath her, but if that was the case, then forever was a lot shorter than she'd ever thought. She pondered this as she rode silently in the back of the unmarked van which took her toward a place of absolute terror, ADP headquarters. She knew that she shouldn't be afraid, that the people there were the same friends and co-workers she'd known for over two years now. But she knew that she'd changed, and they knew as well, though she doubted they really had any idea just how much and in what ways. In response to that thought, recent memories, crystal bright and hard-edged in a way that older recollections weren't, began to play through her mind. At first, there'd only been the darkness, deep and calm and all enfolding, the same darkness she'd plunged into at the hospital. But something had been different... And then the darkness had abruptly been shattered by blinding white light, the silence banished by a cacophony of synthesized sound. She'd recoiled inside herself at first, but the sensory jumble had quickly resolved itself into something comprehensible. She'd found herself lying in an antiseptic white room, staring up at a bank of perfectly ordinary fluorescent lights. And the clutter of sounds resolved itself into a voice. "Miss Natomi?" it'd said. "Miss Natomi, this is Dr. Nakatomi. Can you hear me?" It'd taken an eternity (but no! It was only 1.2337 seconds, a part of her said) before the sense of the question penetrated to her, and her answer was a sluggish, "Uhnn-huh," and then, "Werrrrr...?" The voice had seemed to consider for a moment, and then had said, "Well, that depends on how you look at it. This room doesn't exactly exist, you see." "Hrrrmm?!" "It's a high level VR sim. You really are in a very similar room, but it's more... convenient to do this through cyberspace. You see, you've had a little accident, Miss Natomi, and we're about to begin a program of physical therapy..." And that was how it'd started. She'd spent subjective months in virtual `therapy', both physical and mental, thought less than a month had passed in the `real' world. She'd been trained in the use of her new body and all its subsystems that way, re-learning everything from the most basic movements to the most complex combat and martial arts maneuvers. This had served both to acclimate her to her new situation, and to fine-tune the body's kinesthetic subroutines. Through it all, she'd been subjected to a myriad of psychiatric tests and treatments, the results of which had surprised the experts. More than one of them was concerned by the fact that she seemed to adjust far more quickly than they'd expected. So quickly, in fact, that some of them were sure she was faking, just telling them what they wanted to hear. But that wasn't the case, and `Kiko knew herself well enough to know why. For starts, she was a practitioner of Zen. In keeping with that, she believed that much of what people called `self' or `ego' was merely an illusion, an artifact of thought and memory. Since she hadn't been strongly attached to a rigid image of self in the first place, she found it easier to accept her new condition. Where another might have thought, `I'm a freak!', or `I've become a monster!', `Kiko simply thought, `I am.', quickly followed by a wry, `But who's the I, that thinks it is?' Of course, there were still times when she wondered just what she was now, times when she suffered depression, frustration, and even rage at what'd happened to her. Not to mention fear about her new abilities. But two factors besides her Zen beliefs helped her to hang on. There was her natural intelligence, which was a lot higher than she'd ever let on to her co- workers. She'd been a high academic achiever since childhood, and had been an avid student of mathematics, humanities, and the sciences in college. Once her new body was explained to her, she understood it a lot better than most cops would have, and that acted as a defense mechanism for her; it allowed her to rationalize and lapse into techno-jargon whenever she managed to frighten herself with its capabilities. And there was the last, and probably most important factor: Maiume. `Kiko remembered her near-death experience vividly, and she knew that there, at what she'd thought was the end of her life, she would've done anything for just a few more hours with her daughter. She'd never realized just how much she meant to her until that moment, and, after recovering had vowed that she wouldn't throw away this second chance. In fact, no matter how strange she sometimes felt, she was thankful beyond words just to be there. `But,' she thought, frowning slightly, `there's always a catch.' That thought, in turn, sparked another crystal-bright recollection. "What do you mean I can't see Maiume yet?" she'd said in that cold, deadly voice only an angry mother could produce. Dr. Nakatomi, his usual cool, confidently self, had replied, "Ah, it's only a temporary thing, my dear. We, that is Cytech, the Diet, the city council, and the chief of police, have agreed that a ninety day probationary period is in order. During that time, you'll be housed in a suite inside the ADP tower under outpatient care. There will be a twenty-four hour resident psychologist and a technician on hand and your comings and goings will be supervised." "In other words," she'd said slowly, "I'll be a prisoner, with work releases to handle crazy boomers; I don't like that arrangement very much, Doctor. Not at all." Still smiling, making the best as he always did of his college-professorish good looks, Nakatomi had said, "Well, I'm sorry if this upsets you, Akiko, but I'm afraid there's really very little choice. You are familiar with what happened seven years ago, I assume?" She'd looked down at the floor and very quietly said, "Yes." And then, looking up quickly she'd said, "But I'm not like Billy Fanward! He had problems that I don't! No sensory deprivation, no sociopathic tendencies, no hallucinations! What happened to him won't happen to me!" Nodding enthusiastically, Nakatomi had said, "Of course not, my dear! You know that and I know that. But the politicians and executives don't, and you wouldn't believe the amount of diplomacy it took to get this project approved at all. I'm afraid we simply had to make some concessions. But it is only for ninety days. After that... well, we'll simply have to see." Sensing that the subject was closed, but still not quite willing to give up, `Kiko had said, "But Maiume-!" And Dr. Nakatomi, without changing expression at all, had somehow suddenly become very dark. "Ah, yes, Maiume," he'd said. "The daughter you love so much." He paused for a moment, as if considering, and then continued. "Tell me, Akiko, just hypothetically now, what if you were allowed to visit with Maiume? Certainly she knows, as much as a two-year-old can, that you're still alive. In fact, at that age, I'm relatively certain she wouldn't even notice any difference in you." He stopped again, this time scratching his chin thoughtfully, and then said, "But, now suppose, in your excitement at seeing her, you were to get just a bit carried away, that you were to forget yourself for a moment. Oh, I know, you have algorithms and subroutines to control your casual strength, but what if...?" Again he paused, and then added softly, "And you know little Maiume's going to want a hug from her mother. Think about that for a moment, and then tell me what you think." `Kiko, almost in tears, had simply nodded her head and said softly, "Ok, Doctor, you win." CONTINUED IN PART TWO Small Tragedies Pt.2 Officially, everyone was supposed to carry on as if it were business as usual. At least, that was the word straight from the Chief's desk. Unofficially, of course, everyone who could found some excuse to be near the parking garage when the nondescript white van arrived, and Leon was at the head of the pack. As the van pulled in, and the cargo doors began to open, he looked over his shoulder and said, "Huh! So what d'you suppose she looks like, Daley? Some kinda' aftermarket mannequin? They said no chrome." Frowning, Daley said, "Still Mr. Sensitivity, I see. Did it ever occur to you that she might be able to hear you? Hmmm?" Flushing slightly, Leon said, "Ah, hell, I didn't mean it that way! It's just... I was thinking about what Billy looked like, and, well, shit! I just wonder, that's all!" "Well," Daley said patiently, as though speaking to a very dense child, "I guess we're about to see." As he said that, two figures emerged from the back of the van. One, a tall, silver-haired man who looked a very fit fifty, moved with confidence and poise, and led the other, an extremely attractive, dark-haired young woman in ADP dress uniform who seemed somewhat more tentative. "Hmmm, mannequin, huh?" Daley said sarcastically. "She looks pretty good for a mannequin, partner. Any better, and I'd be tempted. Almost." Nodding in agreement, Leon said, "Yeah, a little too good. I don't remember her being that... perfect before." Shaking his head, Daley said, "Never satisfied, are you Leon?" For `Kiko, it was an afternoon of mixed emotions. She had been apprehensive the entire morning, and her fellow officer's comments and guarded stares as she exited the van hadn't helped. And, yes, she had heard Leon and Daley's comments, and that hadn't helped either, but she'd known that things would most likely be difficult at first, and had steeled herself to accept that. Now, as she exited the elevator on the twenty-sixth floor and turned toward the chief's office, Dr. Nakatomi hovering behind in support, both nervousness and anticipation warred inside her and she tried to focus past both to achieve some measure of calm. Of course, she knew that she could, at will, damp at least the hormonal part of her anxiety, leaving only the intellectual component to deal with, but she considered that cheating; there were no short-cuts to serenity. As she reached the chief's door and raised her hand to knock, though, she almost reconsidered; she didn't think she'd ever been so nervous in her life. She spent a moment concentrating on her breathing (and double checking to make sure her kinesthetic subroutines were scaling her strength down appropriately), and then knocked confidently on the door. "Come in!" came the Chief's loud reply through the thin wooden door. She opened the door and strode in, stopping the required two paces in front of the Chief's desk, and coming to attention said, "Sir, Sergeant Akiko Natomi reports for duty!" The Chief, still seated, looked her over for a few moments, eyes narrowed, and then, indicating a chair near his desk said, "Huh! Well, relax, Sergeant Natomi; go ahead and have a seat." `Kiko sighed with relief, glad to have that part over with, and sat down quickly. Dr. Nakatomi seemed to take that as an invitation also, and pulled up a second chair beside her. The Chief was silent for a moment, seeming to consider his words, and then said, "Before we get too deep into this, there're a couple of things I should say up front." "First," he said, "I'm not going to lie to you; I was against this project from the start, and I still am in principal." Then, as he saw the color drain from `Kiko's face and begin to rise in Nakatomi's, he said quickly, "But, there's not much I can do about it now." "And," he continued, "I certainly can't hold anything against you, Sergeant Natomi. You made the ultimate sacrifice for this department; anything that happened after that wasn't your fault, and I'm certainly not sorry that you're alive today instead of taking up space in a rooftop cemetery." The Chief paused for a moment to let that sink in and to gauge both their reactions, and then continued. "But I'm sure you know why I have a hard time swallowing this whole project. Am I right?" "Yes," `Kiko said, returning the Chief's gaze. "I know about the Fanward incident, sir. But that's not going to happen again, and I'd be really glad if people would stop bringing it up, sir." "Huh!" the Chief grunted. "Well, don't expect that to happen overnight. There're still a lot of people here who saw it first hand, and they're not going to forget. On the other hand, no one's going to harass you over it either, or they'll be talking to me." Looking at Dr. Nakatomi, he said, " I don't know what your professional opinion is, doctor, but I've thought for a long time that Billy would've done a lot better if people hadn't treated him like a piece of equipment. As much as I don't like this whole thing, I intend to see that Sergeant Natomi is treated better than that." The doctor nodded his head and said, "Yes, I was hoping you'd see it that way. Our research has indicated much better results under such conditions." The Chief nodded slowly, and said, "Well, that's fine, doctor. Now, Sergeant Natomi, do you have anything to say?" `Kiko hesitated for a moment, and then said, "Sir, all I can say is... just give me a chance. I know this whole thing scares a lot of people; it scares me! But... well, let's face it, sir, the ADP's been getting its ass kicked for a long time now. If not in fact, then certainly in the media. I mean, as far as the public is concerned, we can't even take care of ourselves, much less them!" Seeing the Chief's face begin to redden, `Kiko quickly said, "Oh, I know that's not true! We manage to take care of all the routine boomer incidents without much trouble, but all the public sees is the flashy stuff." Sighing, she added, "And, sir, you can't deny that every time we go up against a C-class or B-class we take casualties. Lots of them." "Tell me something I don't know," the Chief muttered, and then, "So what's your point, Sergeant?" "My, point, sir, is that the reason for that is a lack of mobile firepower. Oh, sure, there are the K-suits and the heavy weapons, but how long do they take to deploy? Ten or fifteen minutes? By that time, it's too late." "And," Dr. Nakatomi added, "they tend to be rather... unfriendly to the area around them." "Right," `Kiko said, and then, "On the other hand, with me out there on the street or standing by here, you've got a much shorter response time and a lot more surgical strike power available." `Kiko was silent for a moment, and then continued. "Sir, what it boils down to is, I think I can make a difference. I'm not happy that this happened to me, but since it did, I might as well make the best of it. And if I can spare just one person, one family, what I've been through, I'll feel that I've accomplished something. And..." As she said this, her voice had risen steadily until it finally broke, and a single tear made its way down her cheek. The Chief, taken aback and somewhat fascinated by the fact that she still could shed tears, said, "And what, Sergeant?" Sniffing slightly, she said, "And I'll do whatever it takes to prove I can be trusted so that I can see Maiume again. I'm sorry, sir, I didn't mean to act like this, but-" Shaking his head, the Chief said, "No, don't apologize. I understand. And of course, if everything goes as planned, I'll make sure that you get to see her just as soon as possible. In fact I-" At that point, the Chief was interrupted by the loud jangling of his phone. Frowning at the interruption, he snatched up the receiver. "Todo. Yes. Uh-huh. A what?! How many? Where! Now? Well, who the hell's out there? Hall!? Oh, Christ! And he wants what? Huh! Well, tell him to hang on to his shorts! I'm sending him something right now!" The Chief slammed the receiver back into its much abused cradle, and, looking hard at Nakatomi said, "Well, you tell me, doc, is she ready for the field yet?" As imperturbable as ever, Dr. Nakatomi said, "I think she'd be the judge of that. Why don't you ask her?" Turning to `Kiko, the Chief raised an eyebrow and said, "Well?" Swallowing the lump that'd suddenly come into her throat, `Kiko said, "I heard the operator on the other end. Three combat-rated and a couple of mannequin type kit-bashes, running loose over in the Yokohama Chinatown. Looks like they were being stored in some gun-runner's warehouse, and got activated somehow. Sergeant Hall's squad got called to respond to one of the mannequins before the others appeared, and now they're getting the shit kicked out of them." She looked down at the floor for a second, and then said, "I guess I'd better change on the way; it'd look pretty funny to drop into a war zone dressed for the policeman's ball." "Huh!" the Chief said. "In that case, you better haul ass on down to the heliport; we don't need to waste any more goddamn time!" With a hasty, "Sir!" `Kiko sprang up, whirled inhumanly fast, and was out the door in less than a second, followed at a more leisurely pace by Nakatomi, who said he'd be of more use in the operator's cubicle. Behind them, the Chief sat silently, lost in thought, and for the first time since this had begun, he found himself thinking that maybe things wouldn't turn out so bad after all. Sergeant Patrick Hall was having a bad day. At least, that's the way he looked at it. Any sane person, of course, would've said he was smack in the middle of a disaster area. It'd started well enough, he thought, one harmless little BU-E- 35 waitress type wandering around the streets randomly asking, "May I take your order please?" Hall'd laughed when the call came in, and told his squad to get ready for a coffee break. Of course, the joke had soured a little when they got on scene. The street had looked like a war zone: burned out cars, shattered windows, and plenty of bodies, both moving and still. And there, in the center of it all, had been their `harmless' little waitress boomer with a laser lens poking out of one forearm and a wrist blade on the other, still innocently asking, "May I take your order please?" Friggin' kit-bash! Somebody's bargain basement do-it-yourself assasinoid! Well, that hadn't been so bad. Truth to tell, other than the civilian casualties, Hall was probably happier dealing straight forwardly with something that had some fight in it rather than just gunning down or trying to capture a screw-loose mannequin. Yeah, that'd been ok. Hall's squad was one of the best in the department, and Hall himself had been around since the beginning. Hell, he'd survived on the line since it all started in `27, and the only reason he wasn't an investigator like some of his peers was because he liked it where he was. So one little kit-bash was no big deal. In fact, she was down only minutes after his people rolled up with zero casualties on Hall's side. But then the shit had hit the fan. Just as they'd finished disposing of the kit- bash, there'd been a titanic explosion somewhere on the next block. "Shit!" Hall had yelled, "What the hell was that?!" And then the information had come to them through their own dispatch. Frantic calls were coming in from at least three more locations nearby, all describing full combat rated boomers rampaging indiscriminately through Yokohama's Chinatown. "Great," Hall had muttered, and looking skyward he'd said, "So who pissed in your corn flakes this morning?" Then, shaking his head in resignation, he'd started barking orders to his people, sending them out to establish as much control as possible over key locations to prepare the way for the inevitable heavy back up. He knew there just weren't enough of them to even effectively hold combat models, but he figured they could at least play speed bump until reinforcements arrived; maybe they'd save a few lives that way. Of course, he knew those lives likely wouldn't be any of theirs. At the same time, he was on the helmet com with dispatch, calmly telling the operator on the other end just what they needed down there, and where it would most likely do some good. And of course it all had to be cleared through the Chief. "Well, you'd better tell the old fart to make it pretty goddamn fast!" Hall had said, "Because if he doesn't, we're lookin' at some bargain basement urban renewal out here! And I ain't shittin' either! My guys've got eyes-on now, and they say these bastards are comin' through like a wrecking crew, smashing everything in front of `em! Somebody must've really screwed with their brains, `cause I've never seen anything short of a battle boomer do this much damage! Aw, Christ! Sorry, just ran out of time to talk! Just get something heavy out here now!" And with that, Hall'd become very busy. At the same time, back in ADP's communications and tactical ops room, Nene Romanova took advantage of the sudden confusion to slip her cell phone from her purse. Pressing a particular speed dial key, she both dialed the number she wanted and invoked a sophisticated scrambling program. On the third ring, a familiar voice answered on the other end. "Yes?" "It's me," Nene said. "There's trouble down in Yokohama. Only three C-class, but they're acting really weird and all that's out there now is one squad!" "I see," said the other. "And you don't think back up will be able to handle it?" Nene bit her lip, and said, "It's not that. It's just- well, they sent her out!" "What?!" the other voice said. "But I thought she'd just reported back in this morning!" Nene nodded and said, "Yeah, she did. I guess she was up in Chief's office when the call came in. Everybody says she didn't even take time to change out of her dress uniform before she got on the chopper! Said she'd change on the way." "Hmmm. Well, that is interesting. I think I may have to go out and take a look at this." "Are you sure that's a good idea?" Nene said, concerned. "Alone, I mean?" "Oh, I should be alright," said the other, "but I'll get ahold of the others and put them on standby just in case. You stay put; you'll be plenty useful where you are." Reluctantly, Nene said, "Well, ok, but be careful, huh?" The other laughed, and said, "Ok, mother hen, but I thought that was my line!" Nene blushed self-consciously, and said, "Yeah, but you've said it so many times it's engraved on my brain. Anything else?" "No," the other said, "I think that about covers it. Just let me know if anything changes there." "Will do." Nene said, and thumbed the `End' button. And then it was time to get back to work. The flight seemed to take forever. Intellectually, `Kiko knew that wasn't true, as her internal chronometer would show if she bothered to call it up. But she knew that for every minute they were in the air, someone else was probably dying and that made the ride seem interminable. And of course, there were the few awkward moments it'd taken her to change. There wasn't a lot of privacy in the back of an ADP air transport, and she knew the pilot and co-pilot had gotten an eyeful. Not that she particularly cared right now. `But at least,' she thought in a moment of nervous humor, `this ought to settle any stupid questions anybody has about anatomical correctness!' Finally they arrived over the target area, which had been visible for miles because of the huge plumes of smoke rolling up from the streets below, and got their first good look. "Holy Mary Mother of God!" said the pilot. "Looks like Manila after it was shelled! Where the hell do you think I'm gonna set you down in that?" Yelling from the back of the open cargo ramp, `Kiko said, "Don't worry about that! Just get me within a hundred meters of the ground! I can take care of the rest!" `I hope,' she added silently. Even before her fall, `Kiko'd had a fear of heights. Afterwards, that fear had blossomed into full blown acrophobia. But after months of virtual therapy and confidence training, `Kiko had beaten that fear back to manageable proportions. She thought. But, standing on the edge of the cargo door, hanging out over thin air, she felt a moment of almost primal panic as she looked down at the ground far below. `Oh, gods!' she thought, stomach clenched tight, `I can't!' And then, instinctively applying both deep breathing and autonomic overrides, she deliberately brought her fear under control. `If I don't, if I'm too afraid, people will die. It's that simple. I have to.' The pilot, who'd been far too busy to take notice of what `Kiko'd been doing, turned back suddenly and yelled, "Ok, one hundred meters and hovering! But I can't stay here long or we'll be an easy target! We- Hey! What the hell!!?" As he spoke, `Kiko took one last deep breath and stepped off into space. At an altitude of little more than three hundred feet, her fall only took seconds, but she recalibrated her time sense so that it stretched out to almost a subjective minute. Also, she activated seldom used avionics programs, and released the safety interlocks on her kinesthetics subroutines, realeasing the full power of her boosted musculature. Brightly colored overlays and virtual instruments came to life in her field of vision, and she used her airborne time to acquire and paint targets, and overlay them on her internal map of the area, so that even when she lost sight of them she'd have some idea where they were. Also, she established a secure data channel to ADP's combat information net through her ether link, and then brought her internal weaponry on-line. By that time, the ground was getting close, and she moved from the spread-eagled position she'd been using to slow her fall to a limber ready position in anticipation of the landing. In her time-stretched world, the landing was deceptively gentle. Only her body's internal strain gauges showed how close she'd come to actual damage as she struck, performed a perfect parachute landing fall, and rolled up into a combat crouch. She landed a few meters away from and in plain view of her first target, a BU-55C that'd been engaged in a hide and seek match with ADP forces for several minutes now. Wisely, they'd avoided a decisive engagement with the combat boomer, choosing instead to harry it from a distance and lead it away from fleeing civilians. Unfortunately, whereas the line officers' M-42A1's could barely scratch the boomer's armored hide even with AP rounds, the boomer's mouth laser only had to come close in order to kill. Already, the four-person team that'd been sent to deal with the armored giant had been pared down to three, and those three had run out of places to hide. But, as she'd planned, the crazed boomer forgot the pinned down officers as soon as it saw her. "What the hell?!" it rumbled, swiveling smoothly to face her. Briefly, she imagined how she must look to both the boomer and her fellow officers, a disheveled, sweaty young woman in ADP line fatigues and no visible weapons who'd just dropped out of the sky. Then she smiled, extended her wrist blades with an audible `snap!', and growled, "Your worst nightmare, you walking pile of scrap!" The boomer growled in reply, and opened fire with its mouth laser. But `Kiko, still living in compressed time, saw the telltale shifts in the boomer's stance that denoted it was about to fire a whole tenth of a second before its laser discharged. Plenty of time! She leaped high, over the boomer's line of fire, and somersaulted as she cleared the five meters between them. She struck it squarely in the head with a flying kick just a millisecond after the laser fired, and used the rebound to execute a mid-air back flip and land on her feet. The boomer, though not seriously damaged, was nonetheless knocked off its feet, and skidded on it's back for a couple of meters before it stopped. Without hesitating, `Kiko charged the prone cyberdroid, and before it could react sliced deep into its exposed chest with one of her glittering, faintly humming blades. A sticky orange fluid jetted from the gaping wound, splattering `Kiko's face, and the boomer made an odd grunting sound. But it was far from finished. As `Kiko followed her swing through, it cocked back its right leg and launched a brutal kick to `Kiko's abdomen. Taking her slightly off-guard, the blow connected. It lifted her bodily and threw her back more than ten meters where she slammed into a mostly intact brick wall with a loud, "Uhfff!" of pain. The three surviving officers, hidden behind a pile of masonry rubble, gasped and winced. They knew it'd been a blow and an impact that would've pulped an ordinary person, and none of them expected `Kiko to get up. To their amazement, though, she never even fell. `Kiko landed on her feet as she slid down the wall, and around the pain in her gut whispered, "Oh, you want to play rough, huh?! Well try this!" With that, moving almost too fast to see, she retracted her right wrist blade and brought her palm up toward the still prone boomer. In her field of vision, a targeting reticule flared to life, framing the BU-55's head, and almost immediately established a lock. Without hesitating, she concentrated and sent the firing impulse throughout her body. She felt the deep fire inside her brighten, an intensification of what she'd been feeling ever since she'd released her muscles' full strength, and she knew she was tapping the full potential of her body's fusion powered metabolism. It was an intoxicating feeling, and she felt a moment's brief fear as she realized how addictive the feeling might become. There was a ripple in the air between her palm and the boomer as space itself was violently bent, followed immediately by a deafening crack like thunder. The boomer's head deformed radically as the wave of compressed space-time struck it, and then was torn completely off an instant later. The boomer scrabbled about on the ground for a few more seconds, as though frantically seeking its severed head, and then suddenly stiffened and fell. `Kiko herself staggered back a step as a momentary wave of fatigue washed over her and thought, `Damn! I guess I'll have to space those out.' But she recovered quickly, and yelled over to the officers just starting to emerge from cover. "Hey! Everybody ok?" The senior officer, a corporal `Kiko knew vaguely, stepped forward hesitantly and said, "Yeah, we're ok," and then, noticing the pips on her collar added, "uh, Sergeant." `Kiko nodded quickly and said, "Good. Now do me a favor: get the hell out of here. Fall back, assist with traffic control, see the medic, whatever! But get the hell out of this area; this isn't a place for human beings right now." The corporal seemed ready to object for a second, but then apparently thought better of it. He shrugged, turned to the other two officers who'd been waiting nervously behind him and said, "Well, you heard the sergeant. Let's go!" As the three ragged officers turned and started to trot away, the corporal suddenly stopped and said, "Hey, sarge!" "Yeah?" `Kiko said, already turning to go herself. The corporal looked briefly at the ground, and then said quickly, "Thanks. We'd all be dead if you weren't here. That was the goddamndest thing I ever saw." `Kiko blushed for a second, and said, "Oh, hell; just doing my job like you. And I've got a lot more to do." The corporal nodded and then took off at a run with the others. High up on the roof of an untouched tenement building, unnoticed in the confusion, a white and blue armored figure lay prone, observing the events below. Sylia Stingray was somewhat impressed, to say the least. True, she'd had some idea of Natomi's combat potential from the pirated files she'd read. But the performance she'd seen went beyond mere statistics and specifications. What she'd seen was a synergistic integration of everything that went into the body, and the brain that inhabited it. The reaction times she'd measured, both during Natomi's plunge from the transport and during the actual combat, had been phenomenal. Even with the new version three synchro systems she planned for their next generation of hardsuits, she doubted that even Priss or Linna could duplicate such feats. Again she felt a sort of frustration; she was being outpaced by the enemy, and the only way she could see to fight them was to cross a line the Knight Sabers had drawn for themselves at the beginning. All she could think of to compensate on her end was to install neural taps in both suit and wearer, and that was something that neither she, nor any of her people, would consent to. What was the point in beating the bastards if you had to become like them in order to do it? On the other hand, she'd heard what Natomi'd said down there. She didn't sound like a raving cyber-psycho or a corporate combat boomer. She sounded like an ADP line cop who was concerned for her fellow officers and suddenly had the power to do something about it. Of course, from what she'd heard, Fanward hadn't been crazy at the beginning either, and had saved a lot of lives too. But in the end he'd lost it, and taken more lives than he'd ever saved. Sylia sighed, and decided it was just too early to tell. All she could do for now was watch and wait and plan. Over the course of that bloody afternoon, millions of yen worth of damage were done to the Yokohama area, and dozens of lives were lost, among them five ADP officers. The networks moved in early, well before the fighting was properly contained, much less ended. As always, TNN and Vixen 16 were right there at the front, witnessing the same events, but reporting two entirely separate stories. As they had a month before, TNN focused on the positive aspects of the day: Sergeant Hall's quick thinking and expert leadership, and the lives he managed to save by his incredible usage of a force too small by far. ADP's quick response and rapid deployment of its new cyber officer, returned to duty only that day. The subsequent courage and determination of that officer and all the other line officers who followed. ADP's quick disposal of the rampaging boomers and the low numbers of casualties they'd suffered for a change. And the subsequent help provided by ADP's cyber officer in rescue efforts for those trapped in collapsed and burning buildings. Vixen 16, on the other hand, focused as usual on the sensational. Their report had a slick, fast look that was a cross between a `Cops' episode and a music video: Shots of a beautiful, battered, dark haired young woman in tattered fatigues locked in hand to hand combat with a female model combat boomer, red and orange blood spattered over them both. Shots of a squad of ADP line officers surrounding and gunning down a rebuilt mannequin, who struck down two of their number in turn before succumbing herself. Endless shots of burning, shattered cityscape, littered with bodies and debris. And the inevitable shots of the burned and broken being loaded into an endless succession of ambulances. But for a change, both TNN and Vixen 16 wrapped their reports up with the same piece of footage, and both ran it almost silently. It was a clip that began with a long shot of a burning, partially collapsed apartment building and a number of fire trucks, ambulances, and police vehicles scattered around it. The shot focused on the building's main entrance and zoomed in, revealing it to be almost entirely blocked by heavy slabs of broken concrete and masonry. Suddenly, one of the huge slabs had shifted, and then another, and one piece abruptly exploded into dust and fragments as a small booted foot kicked at it. Outlined in flickering light from the fully involved hallway behind and almost lost in the smoke that rolled out, a small, feminine shape pushed her way through the heavy debris, scattering it as though it were made of styrofoam. As the camera zoomed in for a closeup, it could be seen that the woman was cut, scraped and burned all over, and covered in soot and blood from head to toe except for the tear streaks on her face. It could also be seen that she wore the tattered remains of an ADP field uniform, and that she cradled a small frightened child in her arms. As she staggered, exhausted and still crying, away from the burning building, another female figure raced in to intercept her from off camera, beating the EMTs and firefighters by only seconds. The child's mother reached for the little boy gratefully, and the other woman handed him over with a tired smile just as the EMTs rushed up to check them both. But as the little boy was looked over and his mother hovered protectively, the battered and bedraggled young police woman just backed off, waving away any medical aid, and sat slowly on the ground with her hands splayed out behind her. She gazed up and down the ruined street, and then back to the mother and child and smiled again. This time, at least, there'd been one less small tragedy. END -- SGT Michael B. Jackson US Army Military Police Corps "Punnish the Guilty and Keep the Innocent Nervous!" -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own