Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fiction ❯ Bubblegum Avatar #2 – "Born to be Killed" ❯ Chapter 19 - “Romeo and Juliet, MegaTokyo Style” ( Chapter 19 )
[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]
By: Trboturtle 
While Mason and Larego try to sort out what happen, the USSD makes some progress, and Craig and Sylia have a talk....
Anime/Manga: Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Cyberpunk / Action | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 12.01.2006 | Pages: 6 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 1.0K | Status: Completed
While Mason and Larego try to sort out what happen, the USSD makes some progress, and Craig and Sylia have a talk....
Anime/Manga: Bubblegum Crisis Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Sci-fi / Cyberpunk / Action | Type: Self Insertion | Uploaded On: 12.01.2006 | Pages: 6 | Words: 5.3K | Visits: 1.0K | Status: Completed
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Chapter 19 - “Romeo and Juliet, MegaTokyo Style”
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Mason strode out of the elevator, his expression cold. Two large men, actually bodyguard boomers, followed close behind.
The few early arriving employees already on the floor took one glance at Mason before they moved swiftly out of the Senior Executive’s path. He paid no attention to them but continued to stride down the corridor.
As he approached the target officer, the secretarial boomer said, “I’m sorry, but Mister Largo does not –“
Without slowing, Mason pulled out his pistol and shot the robotic secretary three time. Even as the dead boomer slumped face down on its desk, Mason placed his hand on the office’s doorknob and turned it. It turned without effort. Pushing hard, Mason flung the door open with enough force to hit the wall behind the door, resulting in some damage to both wall and door. Still holding the pistol, Mason stalked into the room, followed by his bodyguards.
“I take it you are upset about something?” Largo asked. He was standing at the windows, watching the city move into sluggish life after a too short slumber.
“Chang is still alive,“ Mason growled.
“I know,” Largo said. “Cahira reported as such. She tried to take out Chang herself, but she failed.”
“So where is she?”
“She is like Freya and the rest of the assault team – no longer functioning.”
“What happened last night?”
“What happened was our opponents managed to outplay us.”
“This is not a game!”
Largo turned from the window. “You fail to understand – it is a game, one with high stakes. Chang’s removal was never a main objective.”
“So what is the main objective?” Mason snarled.
Largo smiled. “The removal of the Knight Sabers, of course.”
*****
The Detective squad room at the ADP headquarters was usually a rowdy place, but everyone was speaking softly and working as quietly as they could, in order to hear the conversation going on in Chief Todo’s office between him and two of his Inspectors.
“What is it with you two?” Chief Todo asked. “For the second time in two days, a running gun battle flies right by you, but by the time you catch up with those involve, you find nothing but wreaked cars and dead boomers.” His voice began to rise in volume and anger. “How do you explain it?”
“Just lucky I guess,” Daley replied with a straight face.
“Lucky!” Todo bellowed. “What are you two waiting for, an invitation to the next one?”
“I think the two incidents are connected,” Leon said, glowering at the Chief.
“Oh?” Todo growled, glowering back at Leon. “In what way do you think they’re connected, besides you two’s inability to arrest anyone in either case?”
“In both cases, it was a boomer chasing someone, and in both cases, someone else killed the boomer and whoever they were pursuing got away clean. We haven’t had a chance to look over the remains from last night’s incident, but I think that one and the one from the first incident are the same model boomer.”
“Someone did shoot the boomer at the first incident with an machine cannon of some type,” Daley said. “And whatever took the head off that boomer in the second incident was a heavy caliber round of some sort.”
“Any witnesses?” Todo asked.
“Not that we’ve been able to find,” Leon said.
“What about those two BU-55s you found at the second site?” the Chief demanded. “How were they killed?”
“By someone or someones who was extremely pissed,” Daley said. “One caught a dumpster in the head, while the other one was hacked apart by someone who really didn’t like it.”
“Any ideas who might be doing this?”
Leon too out a small pad of paper and began writing. The redheaded Inspector shrugged. “The Knight Sabers seem like the obvious choice, but the second incident doesn’t quite fit their usual style. Still, I think they should be at the top of our list.”
“I think we can also include USSD and GENOM on that list also,” Leon said. “Anyone else is way down on the list.” He haded the notepad to Todo. The chief glanced at it. ‘The female boomer that was head shot looks a lot like the one we found at the first incident,’ the Inspector had written. ‘We think that someone killed it before or right after it killed someone else.’
“We’ve still got people searching the scene,” Daley stated. “We wanted to have a look at that boomer’s remains first.”
“According to my report,” Todo said, “you found three dead boomers at the accident scene.”
He scribbled something on the notepad, the gave it back to Leon. ‘How do you know?’ it read.
“We’re headed down to the morgue right after we talk to you,” Daley said, as Leon wrote a reply to Todo’s question.
“I want these cases solved!” Todo roared. “Which, if I recall correctly, is your job!”
“That may be difficult,” Daley said.
Leon slapped a hand down on the Chief’s table. “GENOM won’t let them be solved!” he shouted, handing Todo the notepad. ‘We found traces of human blood outside of the van,” he had written. ‘We’re running a DNA match.’
“Don’t blame them for your own incompetence!” Todo shouted back, scribbling something on the notepad.
“We’re not dealing with regular people!” Leon yelled. “Normal people do not carry around heavy ordnance like that!”
Todo’s face became an unhealthy shade of purple He shoved the notepad back at Leon. “Get the hell out of here!” he bellowed. “And don’t come back until you have some answers!”
Leon quickly pocketed the notepad and stormed out of the office, Daley trailing behind and closing the door. He watched as his partner stalk through the squad room like an angry tiger and out into the hall. He followed, careful to keep a resigned look on his face as he did so.
Leon went down to the morgue, glaring at anyone who crossed his path. It wasn’t until he entered the morgue did he slow down and relax. By the time Daley caught up with him, Leon was reading what Todo had written. He handed the notepad to his partner.
Daley read the note. ‘GENOM is pressuring the ADP to close the investigation over last night’s incident and turn over the boomer remains to them for ‘study.’ The point man is Brian J. Mason. You have twenty-four hours. That’s the most I can give you. Good luck.’
“That’s no surprise,” Daley said, handing the notepad back to his partner.
“It tells us GENOM is interested.”
“We already knew GENOM was interested. Or at least Mason is.”
“Now why would he be interested?”
The phone on Leon’s belt chirped.. He answered it. “McNichol.”
“Sakura here,” said a growling male voice.
“And good morning to you too,” Leon said. “What’s on your mind?”
“We had a building collapse here in the Fault last night.”
“And you find something that needs our attention, right?”
“Well, beside the fact the building was demolished by a carefully arranged series of explosions, we’ve found the remains of at least three boomers, including a design I’d never seen before. You guys interested?”
“Very. What’s the location?”
“Three-seven-two-two Seventh street, District seven.”
“I’m on my way over,” Leon said. “Anyone else know about the boomers?”
“Besides my people? Nope. But no telling when our friends from the Tower will show up. They always seem to have a nose for these sort of things.”
“Keep it quiet as long as you can. I’m on my way.” Leon broke the connection and looked up at Daley. “Sakura,” he said. “They’ve got a bunch of mangled boomers in a collapsed building in the Fault.”
“You think there’s a connection?” Daley asked.
“The address isn’t far from where we picked up that running gun battle, plus he said that one of the boomers was a type he wasn’t familiar with.”
“I see. What do you want me to do?”
“Find out from Hiero if that boomer from last night’s chase is the same type as the one from the first chase.”
“And if it is?”
Leon smiled slightly. “Then we’ll know there’s a connection between the two chases, and if Sakura’s unknown boomer is the same, then we have another piece of the puzzle.”
The redhead sighed. “But we don’t know anything about what the picture looks like!”
“We have to start somewhere.” Leon slapped Daley on the back. “Think of it as doing our job, for once.”
“That will be a unique experience,” Daley muttered as Leon walked away.
*****
Rowleyfrowned as she read over the report in her hands. “How accurate is this transcription?” she asked Dyachenko.
“About ninety-five percent,” The USSD Captain replied. “Three of our best lip readers watched the entire tape and came up with the conversation separately. All three reports were then merged into one.”
Rowley nodded. “So Mister Mason is talking to the Frenchmen about securing electrical components that are on our list?”
Dyachenko nodded. “It looks like GENOM has the black box plans and are building it.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but its nice having some confirmation.” Rowley tossed the report on her desk, leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “The question is now, what are we going to do about it?”
“We could tail Mason and see where he goes.”
“We could, but if we blow it, we’ll lose any chance of finding the black box plans. No, I think we should first hack into GENOM’s network and see what we can find about Mason’s actions over the last week or so.”
“What do you think they want with the black box?”
“I don’t know. We don’t even know if this is GENOM, or Mason acting on his own. We have a direction to start looking in, but no more. Get Van Pelt to start tracking Mason’s movements over the last seven days. Let’s see if we can generate some more leads.”
“That’s risky. GENOM doesn’t like people nosing around their systems.”
“So is letting Hikigane fall into the hands of a man like Mason.”
“True,” Dyachenko replied. “But wouldn’t it be easier to change the command frequencies the black box uses? At least, that would give us some extra time to work with.”
The Major shook her head. “Not that simple,” she said. “Hikigane has a sophisticated frequency hopping program, designed to prevent the enemy from tracing and blocking the signal. And before you ask why don’t we just change the command protocols for the satellites, we can’t. Hikigane is designed to override all command protocols, even future ones.”
The Captain’s face took on a pained expression. “I did not think anyone would be so . . . “
”Stupid?”
“Da, that is the word I was looking for.”
“You’re not the only one who thinks that, but its best not to go down that line of thinking too much further.” She stood up. “We have a lead. Let’s see what we can get from it.”
*****
Jeremy didn’t know how long he stared at the bandaged figure in the bed before he looked at the White Saber. “W-what happened?” he stammered.
“The safehouse was attacked by a strike team of Boomers,” the leader of the Knight Sabers replied. “While my people held off the strike team, Irene and her friend managed to escape. But there was a boomer who followed them. My people pursued them, but the boomer reached Irene before they could. In order to save Irene, one of my team had to shoot the boomer in the head at a distance of a hundred meters. The boomer’s head exploded, but Irene was standing right next to the boomer and was struck with shrapnel.”
Jeremy looked at the hardsuited figure. “Is that what they told you?” he asked harshly.
“I reviewed the data from the hardsuit’s onboard data recorder. Irene would have died three seconds later, have the shot not been taken.”
“Look at her!” Jeremy growled. “You nearly killed her anyway!”
“She still has a chance,” The White Saber said. “That is more then she would have gotten from the boomer.”
Jeremy’s shoulders slumped. “How badly is she hurt?”
“Both of her forearms are severely damaged, and her face was disfigured. She’s stable, but she’s not out of the woods yet.”
“I see.” Jeremy was silent for a moment. “What about her face?”
“When she is stronger, I have some connections that will get her into one of the best reconstruction clinic in the country. By the time they are finished, they will be no evidence that she had ever been disfigured.”
“I-I can’t –“
The White Saber held up a hand. “You two were going to have some plastic surgery anyway, in order to assume your new identities. In Irene’s case, it will be a little more extensive.”
“Why are you doing this?” Jeremy asked. “Who’s paying you to help us?”
“No one is. We became involved when we found out that GENOM had stolen plans for a fire control system from USSD. A system designed to be hidden inside and controlled by a boomer.”
“Inside? But –“ the technician snapped his fingers. “The missing component!”
“Yes, the missing component for the BU-99CX1 Combat Superboomer.”
“H-how did you know about that?”
“The fire control system GENOM stole is designed to aim and fire the particle beam satellites.” The young man’s face went ashen, but the Saber continued. “I know some of the details, but not all of them.” She turned to look at him. “That’s why you are going to sit down and tell me everything you know about the project. Also, you are going to record an interview for the police and the press that details GENOM’s involvement with the BU-99CX1 project.”
“But GENOM will come after us!”
“Not if the recording is dated three days ago,” The White Saber said. “By the time GENOM finds out about it, the two of you will have disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I don’t suppose I have much of a choice,” Jeremy said.
“Not if you want to stop GENOM. You are about the only person left alive who can.”
“All right, when and where?”
“As soon as I can arrange it.”
“That’s fine. Can I say here in this room for a while? I need to be close to her.”
“Of course. Just don’t expect her to waken. She is heavily sedated and will be for the next couple of days.”
Jeremy nodded his head. “That’s fine.” He sighed. “She wanted me to walk away as soon as she found out what I was involved in,” he said in a soft voice. “I told her as soon as the project was finished, she and I would get out.”
“Did she tell you anything about her background?” the White Saber asked.
“Not really. She has a grandfather and an older sister living outside of Japan. Her parents are dead.” He dropped his head and looked at the floor. “I don’t even know how to contact them.”
“Let us handle that,” the White Saber said.
He looked at her. “You know? But how?”
“It’s Irene’s place to tell you, not mine.” The White Saber went to the door. “Would you like anything to eat?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Maybe later.”
“Very well. The bathroom is through the door on the far side of the bed. The door to the hallway will be locked. If you need to speak to one of us, there’s a intercom on the wall near the bed. Somebody will be in every half hour to check on Irene.”
Jeremy didn’t watch the armored figure leave the room, or hear the door lock behind her. Instead, he took a chair and placed it next to the bed, sat and watched Irene.
*****
Once out the hall, Sylia removed her helmet.
“How did it go?” Mackie asked.
“About as well as can be expected,” she replied. “Is Craig awake yet?”
“Yes. He seemed calm. I sent him to take a shower and change into street clothes.”
“No chance of him leaving?”
Mackie shook his head. “We’re still locked down. Armory is locked, and only yours or my access code can open it. Besides, his suit is in no shape to be used.”
Sylia nodded. “Tell him I want to see him in the main control room in fifteen minutes,” she said.
*****
By the time Craig reached the control room, Sylia had changed out of the hardsuit, showered, changed into street clothes and walked to the control room.
The control room was the center of operation under Raven’s Garage. It wasn’t a large room, three meters by five. One wall was nothing more then a bank of monitors, some showing the area around the garage from every conceivable angle, others showing the internal areas of the base, while several others were tuned to the local news channels. A pair of large chairs sat in from of a consol set right in front of the monitors. A pair of heavy sliding doors stood open on each short side of the room, ready to slam shut at the touch of a button. Most of the other three walls were lined with computer banks, communication relays, a couple of disguised weapon lockers, and a last-chance escape route leading down into the sewers. There was a coffee maker in one corner, along with a small refrigerator, the only evidence that the room was actually used. From here, anyone could watch the surrounding area, and if attacked, activate the base’s defenses, and escape if need be. Sylia spent a lot of time here, watching the news and thinking.
When Craig walked in, she was sitting in one of the chairs, watching the monitors. “You wanted to see me?” he asked flatly. He turned to look at him. Craig’s hair was still wet from the shower. His clothes, a pair of jeans, rugby shirt, and sneakers, made him look younger. His expression was guarded, but she noticed that his body was tense, and he never looked right at her.
“Take a seat,” she said. He reluctantly sat down in the other chair, looking like a kid being hauled up in front of his teacher. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” he replied. “How is . . ..”
“She’s stable.”
“And the others?”
“Linna’s suffered a mild concussion and has assorted bruises, but she is fine. Priss has a few bruises and a strained shoulder. No one else was hurt.”
“Well, thank god for small favors.”
“I want to discuss what happened last night,” Sylia said. “From your point of view.”
He nodded slowly. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start from the beginning of the attack. Where were you?”
Craig told his story quietly. Whenever he tried to rush by an event from the evening, Sylia stopped him and had him go through the details. Priss’ alert, the fight in the hallway with the female boomer, their escape the ride through the streets, his shooting of the boomer about to kill Irene, and the aftermath. Not once during the entire conversation did he look directly at her, choosing instead to look at the floor, the ceiling, or at the wall behind her. He sat on the edge of the seat the entire time, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
“I guess I lost it, huh?” he said after Sylia leaned back in her chair.
“To put it mildly,” Sylia replied. “I have never seen you so angry before.”
“I was having a very bad night.”
“That isn’t an excuse. You let your anger get the better of you. In another time and place, that could have be fatal, to you and any other member of the team.”
“I know.” He was staring past Sylia’s right shoulder.
“Craig,” Sylia said firmly, “Look at me.” He did so, reluctantly, but even then, he avoided her eyes. “Sometimes events are beyond our control,” she said in the same firm voice. “You had no choice in the matter. A few more seconds, and Irene would have died, just as she did in the series.”
“I should have been quicker!” Craig replied, his voice harsh. “If we had been there ten seconds sooner, I could have killed that boomer before it even got close to Irene!”
“Maybe, maybe not. You can’t second guess yourself. If you hadn’t gone out and taken on the boomers coming up the stairs, Irene and Linna might have died long before they reached the garage. You chose the best course of action, as you saw it. You also chose the best option, as you saw it, when you fired that shot.”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“You did. You could have let Irene die.”
Craig shot to his feet. “That was never an option!” he snarled.
“For you, no. For someone else, maybe.” She stood, using her small height advantage over Craig to its fullest. “I watched the video and data feed from your hardsuit. You had only two choices, and you chose the only one that had a chance of Irene surviving.”
“I should have taken in account the shrapnel that would –“
”If you had, we would be discussing Irene’s death. It wasn’t a perfect outcome, but it’s one I can accept.” Sylia sighed. “You’re taking this too hard.”
“Then how should I take it?” Craig demanded. “‘Oops sorry about that, how do you want your face rebuilt?’”
“Would you prefer, ‘sorry about your dead friend, fiancee, sister, granddaughter. I’ll do better next time.’?”
“That isn’t funny!”
“No it isn’t.” She took a couple of steps toward him.. “You had to make a life or death decision in seconds. Most people would have hesitated. You didn’t. Because you didn’t, Irene is still alive.”
Craig sat down again and leaned back in a tired slump. “There should have been another way,” his said in a soft voice.
“I couldn’t find one,” Sylia said. “I analyzed the data from both your hardsuit and Priss’. There was no other way. I know, I looked for one.”
“I don’t know if I should be happy about that.”
“I always analyze our missions, and under the circumstances, I took great care in reviewing the data. Priss’ rail gun didn’t have the range or accuracy. Only your weapon could have made that shot.”
“I still don’t feel good about it.”
Sylia sighed. “How much worse would you feel if you hadn’t made the shot?”
“Probably a lot worse,” Craig admitted.
“We can’t win as completely as we did at Aqua City every time.”
Craig exhaled slowly. “I suppose you’re right.”
“We’ll come back to that later. I received a message from Ishmael while you were unconscious.”
“What, he left you a fortune cookie too?”
“Actually, his pocket watch.”
“Ah,” Craig replied. “Did he tell you anything useful?”
“He said he had a talk with you, and that he told you something about Mason and Largo’s plans.”
“He did. You want the good news first, or the bad?”
“There’s good news?”
“Yeah.” Craig exhaled, “The good news is that Mason and Largo have only one black box. The bad news is that they have more then one of the those big red boomers to put it in.”
Sylia nodded. “A case of find the right boomer with the black box.”
“More like a case of Russian roulette,” Craig replied. “Only, if we’re wrong, we go boom!”
“Did Ishmael give you an exact number?”
“He just said, and I quote, ‘While he has only one black box constructed and ready to go, he has several choices for which boomer to put it in.’ End quote.”
“So, between three and seven,” Sylia said.
“Not to mention the assassin boomer babes.”
The leader of the Knight Sabers nodded. “But we have a couple of advantages that the Sabers in the episode didn’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like the data on the black box you retrieved from USSD headquarters.”
“Not a lot of help, if Nene was right. We only have about forty percent of the data, because the boomer attack wiped the rest.”
Sylia nodded again. “True, but there are a few areas in the recovered data where we can either completely reconstruct or made strong educated guesses. Between the two, we can recover another twenty percent or so.”
“Who’s ‘we’, boss? That sort of stuff is way over my head.”
Sylia smiled slightly. “It’s going to take a couple of days to reconstruct the data. Hopefully, there will be something in it that we can use. In the meantime, the team is standing down three days.”
Craig frowned. “Is that wise?”
“First, your hardsuit needs to be reconstructed, almost from scratch. Second, I want Irene to have some more time to recover. And third, I want Kwan’s interview recorded and passed on to the AD Police and a few press sources I know.”
“That’s not going to make Mason happy.”
“We’re not on the business of making Mason happy.”
“True, but there’s no telling what Slime and Slimier will do once the tape breaks into the news.”
“What I am hoping is the publicity will force Quincy into making a move against Mason and Largo.”
“That’s a big hope.”
“Maybe,” Sylia replied. “At the very least, it should distract them long enough to make our move.”
“Which brings us back to boomer roulette,” said Craig
“And to our second advantage, foreknowledge.”
“Which isn’t a good thing to rely on.”
“I think in this case, we can. At least some of it.” She walked over to the coffee machine. “Would you like a cup?”
“No thanks.”
Sylia poured herself a cup. “I doubt Mason and Largo would make wholesale changes to the
the plan beyond the changes we already know. It’s not going to be easy – I need to work out a way to detect and jam the black box.”
“You know that we can’t go in there as a group. We’re going to have to split up to cover that factory, and that’s going to leave us vulnerable to the boomer bimbos and those superboomers.”
“I’m well aware of that.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I don’t like it either. Nene is downloading the construction plans for the factory, but we’re going to have to risk it.”
Craig leaned forward in his chair. “Does it get any easier?”
Sylia looked at him. “What get any easier?”
“Playing tag with GENOM.”
“No.”
“You realize that all we are to GENOM is an irritant,” Craig said. “Granted, we’re an armored and technologically advanced irritant, but short of assassinating Quincy – the real one, not one of the doubles – we can’t stop GENOM.”
“Do you want out?” Sylia asked.
Craig shook his head. “I’m still in. I gave my word, and I’m going to stick to it. It’s just, how do we do more then buzz around GENOM?”
“We can’t.”
There was silence for a few seconds. Then, Craig stood. “But you have a plan, right? A plan to slow GENOM down, or at least change their course.”
“Yes,” Sylia replied, walking back over to her chair. “And no, I’m not going to tell you what they are.”
“At least you have them. Anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Not right now. What are you going to do for the next three days?”
“Help Mackie get my hardsuit back up and running. We’re going to need it.”
Sylia sat down. “I want you word that you will not undertake actions of any sort against Mason for the next three days, no pranks, no taunting, and no attempts to kill him. Is that understood?”
Craig nodded. “I need to think about it before I actually do anything else to that slimeball, so I promise you that I won’t do anything to or directed at Mason for the next three days. But if I see him during the raid, and I have the shot, I will take it.”
“As long as you don’t forget your primary mission,” The Knight Saber’s leader said. “The destruction of the boomers are the main mission, not killing Mason.”
“I’ll remember.”
Chapter 19 - “Romeo and Juliet, MegaTokyo Style”
**************
Mason strode out of the elevator, his expression cold. Two large men, actually bodyguard boomers, followed close behind.
The few early arriving employees already on the floor took one glance at Mason before they moved swiftly out of the Senior Executive’s path. He paid no attention to them but continued to stride down the corridor.
As he approached the target officer, the secretarial boomer said, “I’m sorry, but Mister Largo does not –“
Without slowing, Mason pulled out his pistol and shot the robotic secretary three time. Even as the dead boomer slumped face down on its desk, Mason placed his hand on the office’s doorknob and turned it. It turned without effort. Pushing hard, Mason flung the door open with enough force to hit the wall behind the door, resulting in some damage to both wall and door. Still holding the pistol, Mason stalked into the room, followed by his bodyguards.
“I take it you are upset about something?” Largo asked. He was standing at the windows, watching the city move into sluggish life after a too short slumber.
“Chang is still alive,“ Mason growled.
“I know,” Largo said. “Cahira reported as such. She tried to take out Chang herself, but she failed.”
“So where is she?”
“She is like Freya and the rest of the assault team – no longer functioning.”
“What happened last night?”
“What happened was our opponents managed to outplay us.”
“This is not a game!”
Largo turned from the window. “You fail to understand – it is a game, one with high stakes. Chang’s removal was never a main objective.”
“So what is the main objective?” Mason snarled.
Largo smiled. “The removal of the Knight Sabers, of course.”
*****
The Detective squad room at the ADP headquarters was usually a rowdy place, but everyone was speaking softly and working as quietly as they could, in order to hear the conversation going on in Chief Todo’s office between him and two of his Inspectors.
“What is it with you two?” Chief Todo asked. “For the second time in two days, a running gun battle flies right by you, but by the time you catch up with those involve, you find nothing but wreaked cars and dead boomers.” His voice began to rise in volume and anger. “How do you explain it?”
“Just lucky I guess,” Daley replied with a straight face.
“Lucky!” Todo bellowed. “What are you two waiting for, an invitation to the next one?”
“I think the two incidents are connected,” Leon said, glowering at the Chief.
“Oh?” Todo growled, glowering back at Leon. “In what way do you think they’re connected, besides you two’s inability to arrest anyone in either case?”
“In both cases, it was a boomer chasing someone, and in both cases, someone else killed the boomer and whoever they were pursuing got away clean. We haven’t had a chance to look over the remains from last night’s incident, but I think that one and the one from the first incident are the same model boomer.”
“Someone did shoot the boomer at the first incident with an machine cannon of some type,” Daley said. “And whatever took the head off that boomer in the second incident was a heavy caliber round of some sort.”
“Any witnesses?” Todo asked.
“Not that we’ve been able to find,” Leon said.
“What about those two BU-55s you found at the second site?” the Chief demanded. “How were they killed?”
“By someone or someones who was extremely pissed,” Daley said. “One caught a dumpster in the head, while the other one was hacked apart by someone who really didn’t like it.”
“Any ideas who might be doing this?”
Leon too out a small pad of paper and began writing. The redheaded Inspector shrugged. “The Knight Sabers seem like the obvious choice, but the second incident doesn’t quite fit their usual style. Still, I think they should be at the top of our list.”
“I think we can also include USSD and GENOM on that list also,” Leon said. “Anyone else is way down on the list.” He haded the notepad to Todo. The chief glanced at it. ‘The female boomer that was head shot looks a lot like the one we found at the first incident,’ the Inspector had written. ‘We think that someone killed it before or right after it killed someone else.’
“We’ve still got people searching the scene,” Daley stated. “We wanted to have a look at that boomer’s remains first.”
“According to my report,” Todo said, “you found three dead boomers at the accident scene.”
He scribbled something on the notepad, the gave it back to Leon. ‘How do you know?’ it read.
“We’re headed down to the morgue right after we talk to you,” Daley said, as Leon wrote a reply to Todo’s question.
“I want these cases solved!” Todo roared. “Which, if I recall correctly, is your job!”
“That may be difficult,” Daley said.
Leon slapped a hand down on the Chief’s table. “GENOM won’t let them be solved!” he shouted, handing Todo the notepad. ‘We found traces of human blood outside of the van,” he had written. ‘We’re running a DNA match.’
“Don’t blame them for your own incompetence!” Todo shouted back, scribbling something on the notepad.
“We’re not dealing with regular people!” Leon yelled. “Normal people do not carry around heavy ordnance like that!”
Todo’s face became an unhealthy shade of purple He shoved the notepad back at Leon. “Get the hell out of here!” he bellowed. “And don’t come back until you have some answers!”
Leon quickly pocketed the notepad and stormed out of the office, Daley trailing behind and closing the door. He watched as his partner stalk through the squad room like an angry tiger and out into the hall. He followed, careful to keep a resigned look on his face as he did so.
Leon went down to the morgue, glaring at anyone who crossed his path. It wasn’t until he entered the morgue did he slow down and relax. By the time Daley caught up with him, Leon was reading what Todo had written. He handed the notepad to his partner.
Daley read the note. ‘GENOM is pressuring the ADP to close the investigation over last night’s incident and turn over the boomer remains to them for ‘study.’ The point man is Brian J. Mason. You have twenty-four hours. That’s the most I can give you. Good luck.’
“That’s no surprise,” Daley said, handing the notepad back to his partner.
“It tells us GENOM is interested.”
“We already knew GENOM was interested. Or at least Mason is.”
“Now why would he be interested?”
The phone on Leon’s belt chirped.. He answered it. “McNichol.”
“Sakura here,” said a growling male voice.
“And good morning to you too,” Leon said. “What’s on your mind?”
“We had a building collapse here in the Fault last night.”
“And you find something that needs our attention, right?”
“Well, beside the fact the building was demolished by a carefully arranged series of explosions, we’ve found the remains of at least three boomers, including a design I’d never seen before. You guys interested?”
“Very. What’s the location?”
“Three-seven-two-two Seventh street, District seven.”
“I’m on my way over,” Leon said. “Anyone else know about the boomers?”
“Besides my people? Nope. But no telling when our friends from the Tower will show up. They always seem to have a nose for these sort of things.”
“Keep it quiet as long as you can. I’m on my way.” Leon broke the connection and looked up at Daley. “Sakura,” he said. “They’ve got a bunch of mangled boomers in a collapsed building in the Fault.”
“You think there’s a connection?” Daley asked.
“The address isn’t far from where we picked up that running gun battle, plus he said that one of the boomers was a type he wasn’t familiar with.”
“I see. What do you want me to do?”
“Find out from Hiero if that boomer from last night’s chase is the same type as the one from the first chase.”
“And if it is?”
Leon smiled slightly. “Then we’ll know there’s a connection between the two chases, and if Sakura’s unknown boomer is the same, then we have another piece of the puzzle.”
The redhead sighed. “But we don’t know anything about what the picture looks like!”
“We have to start somewhere.” Leon slapped Daley on the back. “Think of it as doing our job, for once.”
“That will be a unique experience,” Daley muttered as Leon walked away.
*****
Rowleyfrowned as she read over the report in her hands. “How accurate is this transcription?” she asked Dyachenko.
“About ninety-five percent,” The USSD Captain replied. “Three of our best lip readers watched the entire tape and came up with the conversation separately. All three reports were then merged into one.”
Rowley nodded. “So Mister Mason is talking to the Frenchmen about securing electrical components that are on our list?”
Dyachenko nodded. “It looks like GENOM has the black box plans and are building it.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised, but its nice having some confirmation.” Rowley tossed the report on her desk, leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling. “The question is now, what are we going to do about it?”
“We could tail Mason and see where he goes.”
“We could, but if we blow it, we’ll lose any chance of finding the black box plans. No, I think we should first hack into GENOM’s network and see what we can find about Mason’s actions over the last week or so.”
“What do you think they want with the black box?”
“I don’t know. We don’t even know if this is GENOM, or Mason acting on his own. We have a direction to start looking in, but no more. Get Van Pelt to start tracking Mason’s movements over the last seven days. Let’s see if we can generate some more leads.”
“That’s risky. GENOM doesn’t like people nosing around their systems.”
“So is letting Hikigane fall into the hands of a man like Mason.”
“True,” Dyachenko replied. “But wouldn’t it be easier to change the command frequencies the black box uses? At least, that would give us some extra time to work with.”
The Major shook her head. “Not that simple,” she said. “Hikigane has a sophisticated frequency hopping program, designed to prevent the enemy from tracing and blocking the signal. And before you ask why don’t we just change the command protocols for the satellites, we can’t. Hikigane is designed to override all command protocols, even future ones.”
The Captain’s face took on a pained expression. “I did not think anyone would be so . . . “
”Stupid?”
“Da, that is the word I was looking for.”
“You’re not the only one who thinks that, but its best not to go down that line of thinking too much further.” She stood up. “We have a lead. Let’s see what we can get from it.”
*****
Jeremy didn’t know how long he stared at the bandaged figure in the bed before he looked at the White Saber. “W-what happened?” he stammered.
“The safehouse was attacked by a strike team of Boomers,” the leader of the Knight Sabers replied. “While my people held off the strike team, Irene and her friend managed to escape. But there was a boomer who followed them. My people pursued them, but the boomer reached Irene before they could. In order to save Irene, one of my team had to shoot the boomer in the head at a distance of a hundred meters. The boomer’s head exploded, but Irene was standing right next to the boomer and was struck with shrapnel.”
Jeremy looked at the hardsuited figure. “Is that what they told you?” he asked harshly.
“I reviewed the data from the hardsuit’s onboard data recorder. Irene would have died three seconds later, have the shot not been taken.”
“Look at her!” Jeremy growled. “You nearly killed her anyway!”
“She still has a chance,” The White Saber said. “That is more then she would have gotten from the boomer.”
Jeremy’s shoulders slumped. “How badly is she hurt?”
“Both of her forearms are severely damaged, and her face was disfigured. She’s stable, but she’s not out of the woods yet.”
“I see.” Jeremy was silent for a moment. “What about her face?”
“When she is stronger, I have some connections that will get her into one of the best reconstruction clinic in the country. By the time they are finished, they will be no evidence that she had ever been disfigured.”
“I-I can’t –“
The White Saber held up a hand. “You two were going to have some plastic surgery anyway, in order to assume your new identities. In Irene’s case, it will be a little more extensive.”
“Why are you doing this?” Jeremy asked. “Who’s paying you to help us?”
“No one is. We became involved when we found out that GENOM had stolen plans for a fire control system from USSD. A system designed to be hidden inside and controlled by a boomer.”
“Inside? But –“ the technician snapped his fingers. “The missing component!”
“Yes, the missing component for the BU-99CX1 Combat Superboomer.”
“H-how did you know about that?”
“The fire control system GENOM stole is designed to aim and fire the particle beam satellites.” The young man’s face went ashen, but the Saber continued. “I know some of the details, but not all of them.” She turned to look at him. “That’s why you are going to sit down and tell me everything you know about the project. Also, you are going to record an interview for the police and the press that details GENOM’s involvement with the BU-99CX1 project.”
“But GENOM will come after us!”
“Not if the recording is dated three days ago,” The White Saber said. “By the time GENOM finds out about it, the two of you will have disappeared off the face of the earth.”
“I don’t suppose I have much of a choice,” Jeremy said.
“Not if you want to stop GENOM. You are about the only person left alive who can.”
“All right, when and where?”
“As soon as I can arrange it.”
“That’s fine. Can I say here in this room for a while? I need to be close to her.”
“Of course. Just don’t expect her to waken. She is heavily sedated and will be for the next couple of days.”
Jeremy nodded his head. “That’s fine.” He sighed. “She wanted me to walk away as soon as she found out what I was involved in,” he said in a soft voice. “I told her as soon as the project was finished, she and I would get out.”
“Did she tell you anything about her background?” the White Saber asked.
“Not really. She has a grandfather and an older sister living outside of Japan. Her parents are dead.” He dropped his head and looked at the floor. “I don’t even know how to contact them.”
“Let us handle that,” the White Saber said.
He looked at her. “You know? But how?”
“It’s Irene’s place to tell you, not mine.” The White Saber went to the door. “Would you like anything to eat?”
Jeremy shook his head. “Maybe later.”
“Very well. The bathroom is through the door on the far side of the bed. The door to the hallway will be locked. If you need to speak to one of us, there’s a intercom on the wall near the bed. Somebody will be in every half hour to check on Irene.”
Jeremy didn’t watch the armored figure leave the room, or hear the door lock behind her. Instead, he took a chair and placed it next to the bed, sat and watched Irene.
*****
Once out the hall, Sylia removed her helmet.
“How did it go?” Mackie asked.
“About as well as can be expected,” she replied. “Is Craig awake yet?”
“Yes. He seemed calm. I sent him to take a shower and change into street clothes.”
“No chance of him leaving?”
Mackie shook his head. “We’re still locked down. Armory is locked, and only yours or my access code can open it. Besides, his suit is in no shape to be used.”
Sylia nodded. “Tell him I want to see him in the main control room in fifteen minutes,” she said.
*****
By the time Craig reached the control room, Sylia had changed out of the hardsuit, showered, changed into street clothes and walked to the control room.
The control room was the center of operation under Raven’s Garage. It wasn’t a large room, three meters by five. One wall was nothing more then a bank of monitors, some showing the area around the garage from every conceivable angle, others showing the internal areas of the base, while several others were tuned to the local news channels. A pair of large chairs sat in from of a consol set right in front of the monitors. A pair of heavy sliding doors stood open on each short side of the room, ready to slam shut at the touch of a button. Most of the other three walls were lined with computer banks, communication relays, a couple of disguised weapon lockers, and a last-chance escape route leading down into the sewers. There was a coffee maker in one corner, along with a small refrigerator, the only evidence that the room was actually used. From here, anyone could watch the surrounding area, and if attacked, activate the base’s defenses, and escape if need be. Sylia spent a lot of time here, watching the news and thinking.
When Craig walked in, she was sitting in one of the chairs, watching the monitors. “You wanted to see me?” he asked flatly. He turned to look at him. Craig’s hair was still wet from the shower. His clothes, a pair of jeans, rugby shirt, and sneakers, made him look younger. His expression was guarded, but she noticed that his body was tense, and he never looked right at her.
“Take a seat,” she said. He reluctantly sat down in the other chair, looking like a kid being hauled up in front of his teacher. “How are you feeling?”
“Better,” he replied. “How is . . ..”
“She’s stable.”
“And the others?”
“Linna’s suffered a mild concussion and has assorted bruises, but she is fine. Priss has a few bruises and a strained shoulder. No one else was hurt.”
“Well, thank god for small favors.”
“I want to discuss what happened last night,” Sylia said. “From your point of view.”
He nodded slowly. “Where do you want me to start?”
“Start from the beginning of the attack. Where were you?”
Craig told his story quietly. Whenever he tried to rush by an event from the evening, Sylia stopped him and had him go through the details. Priss’ alert, the fight in the hallway with the female boomer, their escape the ride through the streets, his shooting of the boomer about to kill Irene, and the aftermath. Not once during the entire conversation did he look directly at her, choosing instead to look at the floor, the ceiling, or at the wall behind her. He sat on the edge of the seat the entire time, ready to bolt at the slightest provocation.
“I guess I lost it, huh?” he said after Sylia leaned back in her chair.
“To put it mildly,” Sylia replied. “I have never seen you so angry before.”
“I was having a very bad night.”
“That isn’t an excuse. You let your anger get the better of you. In another time and place, that could have be fatal, to you and any other member of the team.”
“I know.” He was staring past Sylia’s right shoulder.
“Craig,” Sylia said firmly, “Look at me.” He did so, reluctantly, but even then, he avoided her eyes. “Sometimes events are beyond our control,” she said in the same firm voice. “You had no choice in the matter. A few more seconds, and Irene would have died, just as she did in the series.”
“I should have been quicker!” Craig replied, his voice harsh. “If we had been there ten seconds sooner, I could have killed that boomer before it even got close to Irene!”
“Maybe, maybe not. You can’t second guess yourself. If you hadn’t gone out and taken on the boomers coming up the stairs, Irene and Linna might have died long before they reached the garage. You chose the best course of action, as you saw it. You also chose the best option, as you saw it, when you fired that shot.”
“I didn’t have a choice!”
“You did. You could have let Irene die.”
Craig shot to his feet. “That was never an option!” he snarled.
“For you, no. For someone else, maybe.” She stood, using her small height advantage over Craig to its fullest. “I watched the video and data feed from your hardsuit. You had only two choices, and you chose the only one that had a chance of Irene surviving.”
“I should have taken in account the shrapnel that would –“
”If you had, we would be discussing Irene’s death. It wasn’t a perfect outcome, but it’s one I can accept.” Sylia sighed. “You’re taking this too hard.”
“Then how should I take it?” Craig demanded. “‘Oops sorry about that, how do you want your face rebuilt?’”
“Would you prefer, ‘sorry about your dead friend, fiancee, sister, granddaughter. I’ll do better next time.’?”
“That isn’t funny!”
“No it isn’t.” She took a couple of steps toward him.. “You had to make a life or death decision in seconds. Most people would have hesitated. You didn’t. Because you didn’t, Irene is still alive.”
Craig sat down again and leaned back in a tired slump. “There should have been another way,” his said in a soft voice.
“I couldn’t find one,” Sylia said. “I analyzed the data from both your hardsuit and Priss’. There was no other way. I know, I looked for one.”
“I don’t know if I should be happy about that.”
“I always analyze our missions, and under the circumstances, I took great care in reviewing the data. Priss’ rail gun didn’t have the range or accuracy. Only your weapon could have made that shot.”
“I still don’t feel good about it.”
Sylia sighed. “How much worse would you feel if you hadn’t made the shot?”
“Probably a lot worse,” Craig admitted.
“We can’t win as completely as we did at Aqua City every time.”
Craig exhaled slowly. “I suppose you’re right.”
“We’ll come back to that later. I received a message from Ishmael while you were unconscious.”
“What, he left you a fortune cookie too?”
“Actually, his pocket watch.”
“Ah,” Craig replied. “Did he tell you anything useful?”
“He said he had a talk with you, and that he told you something about Mason and Largo’s plans.”
“He did. You want the good news first, or the bad?”
“There’s good news?”
“Yeah.” Craig exhaled, “The good news is that Mason and Largo have only one black box. The bad news is that they have more then one of the those big red boomers to put it in.”
Sylia nodded. “A case of find the right boomer with the black box.”
“More like a case of Russian roulette,” Craig replied. “Only, if we’re wrong, we go boom!”
“Did Ishmael give you an exact number?”
“He just said, and I quote, ‘While he has only one black box constructed and ready to go, he has several choices for which boomer to put it in.’ End quote.”
“So, between three and seven,” Sylia said.
“Not to mention the assassin boomer babes.”
The leader of the Knight Sabers nodded. “But we have a couple of advantages that the Sabers in the episode didn’t.”
“Like what?”
“Like the data on the black box you retrieved from USSD headquarters.”
“Not a lot of help, if Nene was right. We only have about forty percent of the data, because the boomer attack wiped the rest.”
Sylia nodded again. “True, but there are a few areas in the recovered data where we can either completely reconstruct or made strong educated guesses. Between the two, we can recover another twenty percent or so.”
“Who’s ‘we’, boss? That sort of stuff is way over my head.”
Sylia smiled slightly. “It’s going to take a couple of days to reconstruct the data. Hopefully, there will be something in it that we can use. In the meantime, the team is standing down three days.”
Craig frowned. “Is that wise?”
“First, your hardsuit needs to be reconstructed, almost from scratch. Second, I want Irene to have some more time to recover. And third, I want Kwan’s interview recorded and passed on to the AD Police and a few press sources I know.”
“That’s not going to make Mason happy.”
“We’re not on the business of making Mason happy.”
“True, but there’s no telling what Slime and Slimier will do once the tape breaks into the news.”
“What I am hoping is the publicity will force Quincy into making a move against Mason and Largo.”
“That’s a big hope.”
“Maybe,” Sylia replied. “At the very least, it should distract them long enough to make our move.”
“Which brings us back to boomer roulette,” said Craig
“And to our second advantage, foreknowledge.”
“Which isn’t a good thing to rely on.”
“I think in this case, we can. At least some of it.” She walked over to the coffee machine. “Would you like a cup?”
“No thanks.”
Sylia poured herself a cup. “I doubt Mason and Largo would make wholesale changes to the
the plan beyond the changes we already know. It’s not going to be easy – I need to work out a way to detect and jam the black box.”
“You know that we can’t go in there as a group. We’re going to have to split up to cover that factory, and that’s going to leave us vulnerable to the boomer bimbos and those superboomers.”
“I’m well aware of that.” She took a sip of her coffee. “I don’t like it either. Nene is downloading the construction plans for the factory, but we’re going to have to risk it.”
Craig leaned forward in his chair. “Does it get any easier?”
Sylia looked at him. “What get any easier?”
“Playing tag with GENOM.”
“No.”
“You realize that all we are to GENOM is an irritant,” Craig said. “Granted, we’re an armored and technologically advanced irritant, but short of assassinating Quincy – the real one, not one of the doubles – we can’t stop GENOM.”
“Do you want out?” Sylia asked.
Craig shook his head. “I’m still in. I gave my word, and I’m going to stick to it. It’s just, how do we do more then buzz around GENOM?”
“We can’t.”
There was silence for a few seconds. Then, Craig stood. “But you have a plan, right? A plan to slow GENOM down, or at least change their course.”
“Yes,” Sylia replied, walking back over to her chair. “And no, I’m not going to tell you what they are.”
“At least you have them. Anything else you wanted to talk to me about?”
“Not right now. What are you going to do for the next three days?”
“Help Mackie get my hardsuit back up and running. We’re going to need it.”
Sylia sat down. “I want you word that you will not undertake actions of any sort against Mason for the next three days, no pranks, no taunting, and no attempts to kill him. Is that understood?”
Craig nodded. “I need to think about it before I actually do anything else to that slimeball, so I promise you that I won’t do anything to or directed at Mason for the next three days. But if I see him during the raid, and I have the shot, I will take it.”
“As long as you don’t forget your primary mission,” The Knight Saber’s leader said. “The destruction of the boomers are the main mission, not killing Mason.”
“I’ll remember.”