I *finally* got this part finished.  I'm still really unsure about it,
so let me know what you think.  After this, though, they should go a lot
faster.  I know where I'm headed, now.

----------

BGC/WHO:  Slipt, part 6.

	Their footsteps echoed hollowly down the corridor leading to the
central complex beneath Raven's garage.  Ace was sullen, watching the
suited trio with ill-concealed suspicion as they continued down the
corridor almost mechanically, without so much as a backward glance.  She
still knew very little about them.  They were freedom fighters, of
course.  It wasn't clear so much whom they were fighting against,
though.  Or perhaps, better termed, *what* they were fighting against.
        She stole a quick glance at the Doctor, still smiling cheerfully
as ever.  His trust was not easily misplaced, and she knew without
asking that he trusted these mysterious women, if women they were.
True, they had saved both her's and the Doctor's lives, but that seemed
almost an afterthought.  It was as though they were unconcerned with
danger unless it affected them, directly or indirectly.
        Ace knew she wouldn't feel safe until they were back in the
TARDIS and on their way.
        The complex proper manifested itself as nothing so much as door
after featureless door, corridor after branching corridor down the main
tunnel in which they walked.  No welcoming lights offered themselves out
of the gathered gloom clinging in patches to the ceiling and the farther
corners.  Barely a sound save their own footsteps greeted them until a
door opened at their approach, revealing an older man in jeans and
off-white T-shirt.  He was slim, but well-built, with a tangle of
graying hair raked back over his head.
        The man bowed slightly, deferentially, to Ace and the Doctor,
then beckoned them inside.  One of the women turned slightly to regard
her for a tense moment, finally turning to follow her comrades into the
darkened room.
        The woman lying on the bed was in sorry shape.  A needle from an
IV drip was buried in her arm, the bag of viscous red fluid hooked on a
bit of wire trailing under a hanging shelf just above her.  A small,
wheeled table nearby held a dusty machine which hummed faintly, beeping
in a regular fashion, in double time to the woman's chest, rising and
falling nearly imperceptibly.  A glass and metal canister was strapped
to what was left of one arm, severed inches below the shoulder.  The
canister was filled with a thick, greenish liquid tinged slightly with
red.
        The woman's eyes flickered open at their approach.  "Linna?"
She whispered, grimacing in sudden pain.  "What happened?"  She hissed,
more softly this time.
        One of the women flinched at her voice, then turned to regard
the Doctor with an uneasy stare.  "Can you do anything?"  The Doctor
frowned.  "Difficult to say.  I'm a doctor of science, not medicine.
She'll recover, given enough time, though."
	The woman on the bed focused on the Doctor with an effort, gazing
at him through slitted eyes.  "Who is this?" she whispered.
	"I'm the Doctor," said he, "and this is Ace.  We're here sort of
by accident, although it's rather a cozy nook on the whole.  Yes, it must
do very well against that smog outside, I think."  He pursed his lips into
a crooked, childish smile, gently extending his hand.  "My compliments to
the hostess."
	The woman regarded him curiously, as her eyelids slowly began to
droop.  "A pleasure."
	Seconds later, she was asleep again.
	One of the women coughed softly, beckoning him aside.  "We kept
the severed arm packed in ice.  Is there any chance--"  "No," the Doctor
finished for her.  "Not unless you can regenerate what was burned away,
and even then she won't have any more than a limp, lifeless husk.  I'm
sorry, but Earth's medical science simply isn't up to it."
	"Earth's medical science?"  She said in a voice darkened by
anger.  You're *not* from Earth!?"
	"I'm not," the Doctor admitted.  "Ace is, well, a bit ahead of her
time.

	Linna stared at the Doctor mutely.  She had been expecting some
secret, some dark past, but not this.  His sudden appearance from the
ruins of Old Town, quickly followed by his capture and release by the
forces of Genom now took on a new and more frightening meaning.
	"What are we gonna do?" whispered Nene over the suit's comlink.
"They've seen the Garage now, so--"  "Quiet," hissed Linna.
	Any unknown was a security risk, and an alien even more so.
But both of them had been chased by advanced boomers sent from Genom, and
Ace had even destroyed two of them.
	Chemical explosives had fallen into disuse during the first decade
of the century, with the rapid development of hand-held neutronics.  The
devices could easily kill anything within a confined area, leaving the
surrounding structures intact.  Such was the value of life these days.
Perhaps, in a sense, it was fortunate that Ace was a legacy from an
earlier time.
	Nonetheless, she'd quickly learned from her experience as an AD
police officer, as well as a Knight Saber, that nearly everyone had an
agenda.  These two were likely no different.  Respect, they'd earned, but
honest trust was a much more precious commodity.
	She wasn't Sylia, however.  She knew she couldn't take Sylia's
place, and be the leader she was.  Sylia would have known what to do, but
she had to stumble along as best she could.  Until Sylia could maintain
more than a few minutes of consciousness, however, she was the leader of
the Knight Sabers.
	The Doctor and Ace had seen the Garage, that was true.  No matter
that their flimsy luck had held until now, Linna couldn't let them wander
through Megatokyo freely, where they might be killed or captured by Genom.
But, the Knight Sabers couldn't be at the Garage to watch over them for
very long, either.  They had their normal lives to consider.  Even Tom
couldn't spare that kind of time from his business.
	Sylia would present even more of a problem.  An excuse would have
to be found for her absence, another when she was well enough to return to
managing the Silky Doll, and yet another for her missing arm.
	Linna fought down her indecision, and said, "Doctor, is there a
place you can stay out of Genom's reach for a while?"
	The Doctor frowned again, taking off his hat and fingering it.
"Actually, Genom is the reason we're here.  Something or someone on this
planet found a way to disturb the Space-Time continuum, and I suspect--"
"The WHAT??"  Linna said.
	"Our ship, our TARDIS, crashed on the far side of the Fault.
It'll take time to repair, and meanwhile I'm sure we can make a few
discreet inquiries in the right places."
	"I see," Linna said flatly, not seeing at all.  Either the alien
was brave beyond reason, or had no concept of the danger he was in.  Linna
suspected the latter.  "Doctor, you're only being difficult."  "I'm not
being difficult," he retorted.  "What would happen if Genom were to
perfect time travel?  What chance of defending against its might would you
have?  None at all.  We have no choice."
	The Doctor regarded the Knight Sabers each in turn.  "We can't
risk doing nothing," he murmured.  Pointing at Sylia, he said, "She might
not have a month to recover.  If we don't stop Genom, we won't have any
time at all."

				*	*	*

	The next few weeks had seen little obvious change in the lives of
the Knight Sabers, and even Genom had been strangely benevolent.  Their
biggest difficulty had been moving the TARDIS to Raven's Garage
discreetly, without arising undue suspicion.  A sign, swinging slightly in
the breeze next to the closed and shuttered Silky Doll claimed that the
manager was away dealing with an urgent family matter.  The Hot Legs had
been quickly repaired through the graces of an anonymous gift of several
hundred thousand yen, and Priss' concert had gone on only a week late, a
smashing success.
	Sylia's condition had stabilized and begun to improve.  Standing
for any length of time still made her dizzy, nearly enough to pass out,
but her deathly white pallor had slowly receded into a darker, more
burnished bronze.  A few minutes of consciousness and speech, once
draining her to exhaustion, had stretched into several hours of lively
conversation and humour.
	Meanwhile, Sylia's younger brother, Mackie, had toiled furiously
on Sylia's hardsuit. Genom had stolen her arm from her, but that left
space for a larger hand-laser, and a deadly explosive fletchette gun.  The
latter, Sylia had sternly insisted upon.
	The TARDIS itself was functional again.  Thanks to an engineering
miracle in the form of a microminiature graviton flow enhancer, provided
by Genom's none-the-wiser research division piece by piece, the damage
caused by the continuum's rupture was as if it had never been.  The
Doctor, content until now to remain in the TARDIS rather than
inconvenience the Knight Sabers, was restless for action.

	As the sun sank through the last of the murky mists and vapor
hanging over Megatokyo to glower redly, already halfway below the horizon,
three dark figures crept silently along a darkened back street.  Only the
slight glint of reddish light, reflecting dully off of the metal forms,
gave any warning as to their presense.
	"Nene," Linna murmured over the suit's comlink, "check the
displacement scanner again."  Moments later, the figure furthest from her
pointed at a second story window in the large building they were
approaching.  "It's in there, in Genom's research lab, just like the
Doctor said."
	A minor tweak, and a few anachronistic bits of electronics added
to Nene's hardsuit's standard set of detection equipment, courtesy of the
Doctor, had given them a reliable indicator as to the source of the
temporal disturbance.  Worse yet, the energy reading, which had remained
fairly low for the past several days, had risen tremendously within the
last hour.  The battle was joined now, the Doctor had warned, or not at
all.
	There was a tiny ledge below the second story window, no more than
an inch and a half wide.  Linna gazed at it for a long moment, and said,
"I can make it.  Stand back."
	She quickly walked over to stand next to the building, not quite
under the window.  Gathering herself, she jumped, firing her suit's
boosters for a fraction of a second to boost her skyward.  Two slight
clicks sounded in the still night air, as she landed on the ledge next to
the window, balancing carefully.  She breathed a quiet sigh of relief that
her balance practice at the aerobics class had paid off.
	Stepping gingerly along the ledge, she inched closer to the
window.  Testing it, she found it securely locked.  Two quick bursts from
her hand laser took care of the problem, and she quietly slid open the
window, gesturing to the Knight Sabers waiting below to follow.
	Moments later, they were gathered at the end of a long, darkened
corridor.  Nene pointed again.  "Down here, turn right, and it's at the
end of the hall," she whispered over the comlink.
	They walked down the hallway, their footsteps muffled by the plush
red carpet covering the floor.  Priss was the first to reach the
intersection of the corridors, and turned to walk almost directly into the
arms of a waiting boomer.
	There were six of them altogether in the corridor, none with human
skin.  Almost at once, their eyes flickered and glowed a deeper, more
deadly red.
	The first spoke.  "Welcome, Knight Sabers.  My master sends his
greetings, and a message:  Good bye, Sylia.  Even you cannot defeat me
now."

	Somewhere outside, as the sun finally sunk past the horizon and
the night deepened, they heard a car speeding away, and a deep, echoing
laughter.

Damon Casale, damoo@carmelnet.com
Spam, spam!  WONDERFUL spam!  ^_^