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-- Attached file included as plaintext by Listar --
-- File: TSG-32.txt
SLDFS
_Coronet_
19:03 Local Time, T-minus 21 minutes to impact
"Conn, Sensory: Orochi main satellite Closest Point of Approach bearing
two-seven-five, plus two-five; range: two-eight thousand kilometers. Time
to target CPA: six-zero seconds."
"Sensory, Conn; aye," Captain Hinako remarked, throwing her hair back
over her shoulder with a determined whip of her hand to let it uncoil in
freefall in dark silken strands. They were maneuvering the Star League
cruiser to attack the falling orbital battlestation with their spinal mount
particle beam, a weapon of fearsome destructive power they hoped would be
enough to vaporize the Orochi before it could smash into the planet. The
entire royal family of the Confederation might be killed if that happened
- not counting Nabiki, whom Hinako no longer considered one of them for her
terrible betrayal of the Grand Duke.
"Seven-zero seconds to firing point," Fire Control updated. Captain
Hauptmann hunched over the displays with the two techs they had manning the
section, his face drawn with concern. He knew the importance of the next
few minutes as well as any of them. "Main Gun acceleration ladder indicates
ready. Pre-firing checklist complete."
"Helm slaved to Fire Control," the Helmsman announced. The starship
continued its slow rolling turn to put its bow directly on the Orochi in
preparation to fire. Her work done for the moment, she leaned back in her
acceleration couch and worked the kinks out of her shoulders.
"Engineering reports ready to fire the Main Gun," the Chief of the
Watch added. This time around they had locked shut the vital circuit breakers
that fed the starship's systems in advance of firing - just in case the gun's
powerful magnetic fields threatened to disrupt them again. There was the
potential for danger in overriding a safety feature, but there was an even
greater danger in becoming a sitting duck for the Orochi in the event the
attack failed to destroy it.
"What about the Combine ships?" Hinako asked as the seconds ticked
down.
"
_Imperator_ is descending from high orbit, ma'am. Her intentions are
unknown at this time," Sensory declared. "She's trailing vapor from several
locations, ma'am, and her drive outputs are unsteady, but she seems to have
a little fight left in her."
"That could go badly for us," Hinako replied. "Especially if our
precautionary measures fail, and we lose power and drives again."
"You could always put the zap on the next bunch who tries to board
us," Hauptmann suggested wryly. "Like you did earlier."
Hinako arched an eyebrow at him. "I'd rather not," she said in a
husky voice. "I feel a little bloated right now as it stands." She put her
hand on a curvy hip. "In any event, it won't help us if they simply decide
to blast us to bits instead of making another boarding attempt."
___________________________________________________________________________
J. Austin Wilde and Fission Park Press proudly present:
BATTLETECH: THE SAOTOME GAMBIT
PART THIRTY-TWO
by J. Austin Wilde
Super Critical Reactor Axe Man,
Fission Park Press
wildeman@gci-net.com
http://www.gci-net.com/users/w/wildeman/
The characters and situations of Ranma 1/2 are the
creation and property of Rumiko Takahashi and
Shogakukan/KITTY/Viz Video. Battletech and its
related materials are the property of FASA, inc.
No infringement of copyright is intended nor
should be inferred by this work of fanfiction.
___________________________________________________________________________
Chapter One
Test Area North
19:05 Local Time. T-minus 19 minutes to impact
Shampoo saw the line of black smoke rising from the treeline and knew
that she was already too late to stop Mousse. The brick-like shape of a
Musk Leopard Class DropShip hovered into view as she recognized this fact,
the shriek of its vertical drives piercing even from a kilometer away. She
watched the DropShip maneuver in a slow circle around the line of smoke, the
draft generated by its engines whipping the oily vapors into a brown haze as
it drew near.
Against her better instincts she clicked open her tac-net mic and
tried to reach Mousse. There was no answer, nor did she expect one. She
continued advancing in her captured Assassin through the woods to see
with her own eyes what she already feared had happened.
A mech-door on the DropShip began to slide open as she dashed through
a break in the trees a scant hundred meters from the smoke, and she caught
the flash of a Musk Panther in the green and red livery of General Herb's
personal guard plummet feet first fifty meters to the ground before
triggering its jets to slow its descent. A flick of Shampoo's eyes to her
unfamiliar displays assured her that the Assassin's weapon systems, a mixed
bag of low-end firepower that included everything from missiles to lasers
and machineguns, were armed and ready. She eased back on the throttle to
bring the battlemech to a walking pace as she caught flashes of smoke and
the flickering of flames through the trees before her.
The Panther stalked in front of her field of view less than forty
meters away, though she cursed at having no clear shot at it through the
trees. She advanced cautiously now, adjusting the focus of her bifocal
cameras to get a better look at the clearing beyond. What she saw brought
a lump in her throat in spite of herself.
The blackened, ragged mass of Mousse's Crusader lay sprawled over
the wreck of a Grand Dragon. She could see that the Crusader's left hand
had clenched the head of the Musk battlemech in an attempt to crush it,
but that the cockpit hatch was open. General Herb had obviously escaped
death, and the Panther had come to deliver him from the battlefield.
That wouldn't come to pass if Shampoo had any say in the matter. She
checked her medium laser array a second time, knowing that it was her most
powerful and most precise weapon in the Assassin's inventory. She reached
the treeline of the clearing as the Panther's head dipped to examine the
wreckage of the two 'mechs in detail, her finger curling around the weapon
trigger of her laser as the aimpoint floated before the Panther's jump jet
pack. A lucky hit on the thin rear armor could detonate the pressurized
liquid oxygen tanks used as propellant for the jets in vacuum, and the
resulting fireball would add massive amounts of heat to the 'mech - which
would hopefully discourage the use of its arm-mounted PPC.
The Panther raised its head slowly, and began to stomp away from the
wrecks, causing Shampoo's finger to ease off the trigger. What was going
on? she wondered as the DropShip began to pivot in midair.
The sizzle of missile fire answered her question as vapor trails
fell from the cloud bank above. LRMs exploded into the armor of the
DropShip, slamming the Leopard into a slow spin as the pilots fired
attitude jets to regain control. A second volley streaked in, half of
which hit their target, and left the rest to plunge into the forest
around Shampoo. The explosions rocked the woods and toppled trees into
the clearing as leafy bits burned and fell from the sky.
A double sonic-boom buffeted her as she regained her battlemech's
footing, and she caught the electric-blue flash of two Furinkan Combine
Shilones from Prince Kuno's Blue Thunder regiment streaking past overhead.
The DropShip's weapon systems answered with a weak volley of laser and
autocannon fire as the Panther fired its jump jets in a desperate bid to
climb aboard while the spacecraft was still airborne.
Shampoo aimed her weapons at the open door of the DropShip as the
Panther boosted aloft for its rendezvous. As the Musk battlemech reached
out to grasp the hull of the DropShip, she let fly with her entire
arsenal. Laser fire and machinegun tracers sang into the open Mech Bay
as her missiles corkscrewed past the Panther and struck home. Explosions
rocked the internals of the ship, and it rolled queasily to port.
The Panther missed the open bay, and scrabbled for a single hand-hold
on the deck, dangling precariously fifty meters above the verdant forest
of Ryuugenzawa. Shampoo fired another full volley into the open Mech Bay
as the DropShip's gunners trained their turrets around desperately for
a sign of enemy fighters that were not there.
The second volley of fire knocked the Panther loose from its hold
on the deck, and it plummeted straight down. The pilot in his panic fired
his jump jets, but as the battlemech began an end over end tumble in its
descent, he managed only to rocket himself straight into the woods at high
speed. The crash of his impact shivered the trees around Shampoo as she
watched the unstable DropShip roll completely over to dive nose-first
into the forest beyond the clearing.
The DropShip's impact knocked her to the ground as a silvery flash of
light erupted from the woods, scorching and starting a dozen small fires
in the ground cover even as a thick plume of smoke and flame rose from the
crash site. The DropShip's fusion reactor, or perhaps the reactors of one
of the other 'mechs aboard had just crashed-out, and she knew to expect no
more trouble from that quarter. Shampoo eased her 'mech to its feet to
discover for herself what it was that the Panther had seen.
She reached the wrecks of the Crusader and Grand Dragon as the woods
to the south began to brew up into an inferno. The first thing her bifocal
suite focused on was the man who lay sprawled on the torso of the Grand
Dragon. Thin lines of red streaked down the battered hull where he lay,
mingled with long tangles of black hair.
Mousse.
There was no sign of General Herb to be found at first, only torn
earth and clods of sod from the struggle between the two stricken war
machines. Craters littered the ground where missiles had fallen, their
impact points still steaming from lingering heat. Shampoo reached up
unconsciously, undogging the hatch even as she searched for her nemesis.
She did not even realize that she was climbing out of her cockpit
until she was clear of the hatch. At that point she decided that she could
only go on, climbing down from the Assassin until she was close enough to
make a leap for the wrecks below. Her eyes began to water, and she told
herself it was only because of the acrid smoke that began to drift her
way in the wind from the crashed DropShip.
She found General Herb by chance, crumpled against the hull of his
Grand Dragon. Judging from the way his limbs were splayed, it looked as
if he had been thrown with great force against the unyielding armor of
the 'mech. Shampoo approached cautiously in spite of what her eyes told
her, and reached for his head. She noted with a detached sense of
satisfaction that the silvery white hair of the hybrid general was
matted with blood, and she touched by accident the long sliver of metal
that projected from the base of his skull.
Herb's red reptilian eyes were open, yet glassy and unfocused in
death. His face seemed frozen with the expression he had shown in the
instant of his end; haughty, mocking, and cruel. Feeling cold all over
inside at the sight of her enemy, Shampoo released her grip on his hair
with a grunt of disgust and let Herb's lifeless body collapse to the
ground.
Herb was dead, and that left only Mousse. She pulled herself up the
hull to see for herself if he had joined his former master in death. She
knelt over Mousse as he lay face down, his head hanging over the edge of
the Grand Dragon's torso. He was very still, and his ragged indigo robes
fluttered restlessly in the hot breeze. She could see where the wound Lime
had given him had struck, and knew that it had been very bad indeed.
"<Mousse,>" she said to him, not wanting to touch him at first for
fear of seeing his face frozen in the same agony of death as General Herb.
"<Wake up.>"
He stirred at the sound of her voice, and she felt faint with the
realization that he was still alive.
"<Shampoo...?>" he rasped.
She wasted no more time with words, leaning over his body to lift him
by his armpits and carry him from the wrecks. She choked back a gasp as she
saw his face at last, and the place where his left eye had been. The eyelid
was glued shut with a thick clot of blood, but she could see the streamers
of flesh and filaments of thin grey optic nerve fibers that projected from
the clot.
"<Don't bother,>" he replied weakly as he sagged in her grip.
"<Shut up,>" she barked at him, struggling to raise him up and back
to drag him clear.
"<I meant it, Shampoo,>" he managed in a voice drained of vitality.
"<There's no point in doing this. I'm already dead.>"
"<You are not dead, idiot!>" she snapped in his ear, her eyes awash
with moisture. The damned smoke was getting thicker. "<There is a doctor
in the Confederation camp. He's a good man. He'll take care of you.>"
She cradled him up into her arms, wincing as the muscles in her back
twinged with protest. She was in no shape after so much intense combat to
be doing this, but she continued without complaint.
"<You don't understand,>" Mousse continued. "<Radiation...>" he choked
out. "<Too much to survive.>" He tried to worm his way out of her arms.
"<The baby...>" he added, a note of worry creeping into his voice. "<You
shouldn't be this close to my 'mech right now.>"
His struggles made Shampoo pull a muscle in her back, and she
twisted in pain, dropping Mousse and falling to the churned ground with
a yelp. Mousse toppled over the edge of the Grand Dragon torso to land
limply at her feet.
"<Idiot!>" she cried out in pain when she could finally speak.
"<Still trying to play the martyr for me? I won't stand for it!>"
She forced herself to sit up, her back tingling and her nerves raw
with the sensation of being torn apart. She pulled Mousse up to lay his
head in her lap, his bruised and blood-stained face drawing taut in a
rictus of agony well beyond the little hurts that Shampoo endured. Wisps
of grey smoke from the fires whipped past her, stinging her eyes and
making her cough in irritation.
They lay together for some time as the woods crackled around them.
The fire's intensity was checked for the moment by the heavy rains from
earlier in the day, but the grey smoke of green wood trying to burn filled
the air. Mousse's breathing was slow but steady, though his skin was
growing cold. He had lost a great deal of blood.
She was too exhausted to move, and sat numbly with Mousse in her lap
while she regained her strength.
"<How did General Herb die?>" she asked at length, seeking any kind
of conversation that would keep Mousse conscious and pass the time until
she felt that she was able to get up again.
"<I killed him,>" Mousse replied with great effort and a little pride.
"<I set off one of my unexploded missiles with a grenade, and I managed to
catch him in the blast.>" He coughed then, sharp and loud. Pink foam frothed
at his lips, which Shampoo wiped away with her hand, not wanting to look at
it and what the sight of it foretold of Mousse's limited future.
"<I wanted to be the one who killed him,>" Shampoo returned quietly.
She had looked forward to the opportunity to kill Herb, and now had to live
once more with disappointment. It wasn't enough that the hybrid general was
dead and his treasonous Musk Dynasty put to rout, she wanted to tell him how
much she despised him, and how he would never have her.
Mousse tried to smile. "<Can you forgive me?>"
She sniffled at this against her will.
"<I forgive you,>" she told him. She brushed at the tangled locks of
hair at his temples. He managed a weak smile at her reply.
Angry at herself for becoming so maudlin, she pulled herself to her
feet, and dragged Mousse with her. Her back protested with a vengeance but
she would not give in.
"<Stop it!>" she cried, whether to Mousse or to herself, she did not
know. "<That's enough.>"
Mousse was nearly limp in her arms, a dead weight that wanted nothing
to do with continuing on.
"<Let me go,>" he sighed.
"<I'm not going to let you die,>" she growled against the pain. "<I'm
not going to go through life haunted by your death today. You're going to
live - do you hear me!?>"
Mousse didn't reply.
"<Mousse?>" she chirped worriedly.
His head lolled against her chest, his skin bled white.
"<No,>" Shampoo moaned. "<You can't die on me like this, Mousse!>"
She sank to the ground, cradling Mousse's head against her bosom. "<Not
like this...!>"
He was still breathing, she could feel the faintest tickle of it
agaist her throat, but it clear even to her now that he was almost gone.
Her eyes smarted and her throat stung, and she couldn't lie to herself
anymore that it was just the smoke.
"<...Mousse...>"
She looked up into the heavens, to the broken formations of dark clouds
pregnant with rain, and to the waning sun sinking into the west. To the south
came the steady roar of plasma rockets boosting what remained of the Musk
Dynasty into orbit, their white-hot streaks difficult to look at directly
even twenty kilometers away. High above them was a faint smudge of light,
barely visible against the darkening sky. It seemed to be growing bigger and
brighter with every moment.
She held Mousse's head against her bosom and wept. She wept with the
reckless abandon that she should have shown in her prison cell on Tau Ceti.
This time, there was no inner peace. There was no cool acceptance of fate.
There was only the one burning question: what had all of this struggle and
death been for, here at the end?
Herb was dead; it was a relief but yet no real comfort to her. The
Musk Dynasty had been crushed and its power broken, but what did that matter
to her, trapped on Ryuugenzawa? Mousse lay dying in her arms, and that was
the only thing that moved her. Mousse was the architect of the Musk's
downfall, far more than the Orochi that crippled its fleet or the Combine
troops that drove them even now from the planet. Mousse was the hero of the
Joketsuzoku, and at best he was a traitor to them.
Mousse didn't kill Herb for her sake, or even for his own. Shampoo
understood his motivation after all that had passed between them that
afternoon. He had fought for the life of his unborn child; a daughter
whose mother had sworn would be fated to hate and oppose her father at
every turn.
"<Mousse,>" she began, choking on his name with grief as she said it.
"<I don't hate you,>" she went on. "<I've never hated you.>"
"<I-- I know that, but... It's not important anymore. Just let me go
now,>" he whispered, stirring briefly before fading once more into semi-
consciousness.
"<But what, Mousse?>" she asked him sharply. She didn't know who she
more angry with in that instant, herself or him. "<But it wasn't enough for
you to have me not hate you?>" She cradled her chin against his brow and
rocked with him. "<I know that. But not hating you was all that I could
give. Do you know that? Do you really understand why I couldn't do more
than that for you?>"
The distant scream of DropShips fleeing for the heavens was her only
reply.
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
19:05 Local Time. T-minus 19 minutes to impact
"Time's wastin'," Ranma declared brusquely as she checked over her
LAM once more. The bomb had been loaded into the Phoenix Hawk's left hand,
itself currently stowed within the forearm of the LAM. There was so many
things that could go wrong on the ascent, things that could damage the bomb
and prevent its function, that she could not shake the feeling that her
mission was doomed from the start.
Still, she had to go. Too many people she cared about were depending
on it. The Orochi was growing larger in the dimming sky, and the clock was
ticking.
She reached for her pressure suit helmet with a dismissive shake of her
head, wanting to put doubt behind her before it sabotaged her reflexes and
made mush of her brain. Davidge had said that the Orochi was in some kind of
safe-mode, that it would not shoot back at her - but she could not afford
to lower her guard on an assumption.
"Forgetting something?" Akane asked her.
She turned to see her fiancee holding a thermos of hot water for her.
She was still upset with Akane over the bomb - for not being trusted to
know about it for so long - but she wanted more than anything to put the
matter aside. She did not want to leave with nothing but resentment between
them.
"Uh, yeah," she replied quietly. She had spent most of the day as a
girl, and had let it slip her mind.
Akane poured the thermos over Ranma's head, changing her back into a
guy once more. Before he could thank her, she wrapped her arms around him
and held him as close as the pressure suit and its life support pack would
allow. Ranma closed his eyes in her embrace and held her tight. This was
what he wanted from her, a silent affirmation of what she meant to him, and
how much he cared about this uncute tomboy who had turned his life upside
down and inside out at every turn.
"Remember what I said to you, Ranma," she whispered. "I don't want you
dying up there - not even to save me."
"Nothing's gonna happen to me," Ranma assured her. He looked over her
shoulder to see his father, Grand Duke Tendo, Kasumi and Doctor Tofu, Ryouga
and Akari, Ukyou, Konatsu, Shinnosuke and his grandfather, and even Yuka
standing off at a safe distance, their eyes meeting his with a blend of
anxiety and hope.
Akane stepped back enough for him to raise his helmet over his head,
then dove in to kiss him sweetly on the lips before finally allowing him
to twist and lock it in place with a hiss. His gloved hand caressed her
cheek before he turned and climbed the boarding ladder to his cockpit.
"Be careful up there, Ranchan," Ukyou called to him.
He gave her a cocky 'thumbs up' in reply, and slipped into his ejector
seat. The LAM's engines shrilled to life at the touch of his finger, the
SLDF 'mech powering up for what was the most important mission of its two-
hundred year lifetime. Ranma lowered and locked the canopy, then turned to
offer a final wave. Akane and the others moved well back as he prepared to
lift off.
He goosed the throttles and the LAM leapt into the air on twin columns
of thrust. He put on as much speed as possible as he climbed into the air,
concerned that a Combine fighter might spot him and attempt to ambush. Long
streaks of white light filled the distant southern horizon as DropShips fled
for orbit. He had to agree with them. It was definitely time to get off the
planet.
* * *
"Get that shuttle out of here!" Grand Duke Tendo called to its pilot.
The pilot nodded his head from the cockpit, and the loading ramp began to
retract. The engines spooled up as the rest of the assembled Confederation
forces headed back to the bunker to wait out the Orochi.
A
_Tautog_ sailor, spared from his duties aboard the
_Coronet_ to
attend to the shuttle, reached over to draw Nodoka Saotome away from the
boarding ramp. She craned her neck to look one final time at the LAM as it
rocketed skyward.
"Please, milady," the sailor begged her. "We don't have much time to
make orbit, and we can't lift off with you out of your seat."
Nodoka nodded sheepishly. She should have known better, but to see her
son - even from a distance while in his 'mech - had meant the universe to
her. She only wished that she had been given the chance to hug him before
he took off to destroy the Orochi, but there had simply been too much to do
and too little time in which to do it.
Her no-account husband had explained this to her, and while she
understood the reasons why, she sensed that Genma was purposefully trying
to keep her from Ranma. Wasn't seventeen years enough for the man!?
She was still fuming about it as the sailor checked her acceleration
couch straps and then went forward to the cockpit. The Shogun's hula girls,
a few of the non-combatants from both the DropShip
_Palomino_ and the lost
_Dragonfly, - including the _Dragonfly's_ enlisted hospital corpsman - and
finally the unconscious Aerospace Pilot, Sayuri, were all aboard with her.
It was all the shuttle had room for, and there would not be time for a
second trip before the Orochi completed its plunge.
The next chance she would get to see Ranma again would be after he
had done what he needed to do, and everyone went aboard the
_Coronet_ to
go home to the Confederation. Surely it wouldn't take that long?
She closed her eyes as the shuttle lifted off for the safety of low
orbit. She had waited seventeen years to see her beloved son. She could
wait a few more hours.
* * *
Shogun Kuno stood with Hikaru Gosunkugi at the door of the bunker
as the Grand Duke and the others approached. The look on his face was as
carefree as always.
"I understand your right to stay, your Eminence," Soun said to the
Shogun. "But I can't for the life of me figure out why you wanted to."
The Shogun smiled as he made way for Akane and the others to pass
through the door.
"No room for de rum punch on de shuttle," he replied with a hearty
laugh. "I say, get de others outta here - den we got more for me an my
bruddahs." He slapped Hikaru on the back at this, nearly bowling the
Gosunkugi heir over.
Hikaru straightened himself up. He had been torn with the decision
of fleeing while he still could, and of remaining close to Akane. She had
even smiled at him once since his arrival at the bunker, and he would give
anything get another one from her. Perhaps something terrible would happen
to Ranma Saotome; a noble sacrifice that destroyed the Orochi and left the
matter of Akane's marriage prospects open. He could be there to comfort
and console her! Perhaps this was what his prophesies had been steering
him towards this entire time!
"As long as you're staying here, your Grace, I see no reason to do
otherwise," he said in a weedy voice. He tried hard to sound like he meant
it.
"Father," Kasumi said to Soun as the Grand Duke acknowledged the
League heir's courage. "We should be getting inside now. Time is running
out."
Soun nodded. "Of course." He looked to the Shogun and the Gosunkugi
heir. "You just didn't want to give up on the limbo contest right in the
middle, eh, your Eminence?"
The Shogun flashed his teeth in a knowing grin.
Chapter Two
SLDFS
_Coronet_
19:05 Local Time, T-minus 19 minutes to impact
"Conn, Sensory; Surface launch detection. Multiple Commonwealth
DropShips on orbital insertion trajectories."
Hauptmann turned to look at the displays. On the main telescope
monitor, the streaks of light and vapor from several DropShips glowed
against the dark clouds of the planet. The DropShips were well-armed
for a close range engagement against the
_Coronet_, whose primary and
secondary gun batteries had not yet been tested. Still, the Orochi was
closing between them, and he did not expect the Commonwealth to do
anything other than keep their distance from the falling battlestation.
"Conn, Fire Control; Firing point procedures complete. Main Gun
aligned with primary target. Acceleration ladder presets continue to
indicate ready."
It was moment of truth time now. Hauptmann exchanged glances with
Hinako, who mirrored his sanguine mood with a silent nod. The last time
he had issued this order, he had nearly crippled his own ship.
"Fire Control, continue to match bearing rates and fire the Main
Gun," Hauptmann ordered.
"Fire Control, aye." The tech flipped open the red safety-striped
cover over the weapon trigger and removed the baton-like control from
its sealed vault within the console. His thumb smashed down on the top
button with gusto. "Firing the Main Gun!"
Once more, a strident alarm hooted three times in warning as the
_Coronet_ prepared to fire its spinal mount particle cannon. The lights
dimmed as power reserves were shunted away from hotel loads to the massive
superconducting loops that fed the spinal mount. A low droning rumbled
up from the depths of the Star League light cruiser as motes of starflame
began to leak from the muzzle aperture at the bow of the ship. Without
further warning, a gout of blinding light erupted from the muzzle, sending
forth a lance of blue-white radiance stabbing down towards the Orochi.
The particle beam lingered for several seconds, connecting the
falling battlestation to its Star League contemporary with a bridge of
white hot relativistic annihilation. Hauptmann, Hinako, and the others
stood in rapt silence on the
_Coronet_ as the particle beam cut through
the dorsal armor of the battlestation with a wash of sparks and plasma
flame, bursting bulkheads and exploding with undiminished brilliance
through the ventral hull and continuing down into the upper atmosphere
of Ryuugenzawa. A crimson glow flowed from the blackened rent in the
Orochi's hull as it continued its fall.
"Did we kill it?" one of the techs manning the diminished Commo
section asked.
Hauptmann watched in disbelief as the Orochi fell on towards the
planet. A slow spin had started on the disc-like battlestation, and
fires continued to burst out from the rent, but the thing seemed
otherwise unharmed.
"How soon can we fire another shot?" he demanded.
"Ten minutes at the least," Fire Control declared. "I'm showing
malfunction lights on several portions of the acceleration ladder due
to overheating."
"Conn, Engineering," Lieutenant Fulton piped up from aft. "The Main
Reactor's a little unstable after that last shot. I don't recommend
putting any more hits on the power distribution system until we can run
through some checks on our end."
"Damn!" Hautpmann slapped the console with his hand. "Ten minutes
is too long. Fire Control; commence fire at the Orochi with our primary
and secondary weapon mounts." Fulton would just have to deal with the
transient power demands from the weapons as best he could.
"Fire Control; aye. Commencing fire now with Turrets Alpha through
Delta."
Hauptmann was about to issue further orders when the Orochi shot
back at them. The particle beam merely grazed the bow armor, but the
blast effect rocked the bridge crew violently at their stations.
"Conn, Sensory; the Orochi is powering up gun directing radar and
other weapon systems! EMS sweeps from the hostile arrays are being
considered by Threat Analysis to be erratic but valid."
"Thanks for the warning!" Hinako barked to Sensory.
"It happened during the power drain. Passive sensors went down
for a few seconds after our shot," Sensory explained weakly.
"Port side 'E' Deck depressurization alert!" the Chief of the Watch
announced as part of his ship's status board shifted from green to amber,
and then to red. "Pressure curtains in position. Leak contained to outboard
ring section 'Charlie,' port side. No fires or other malfunctions indicated
at this time."
"Captain Ninomiya, get us the hell out of here," Hauptmann ordered.
"Fire Control; let that thing have it with whatever you have available
to shoot."
Hinako was already issuing commands to the helm. "Helm; All Ahead
Flank! Left full rudder, ten degrees negative pitch. Come to steady course
one-five-five minus one-zero!"
"Manuevering answers All Ahead Flank!" the Helmsman cried as she
yanked at the control yoke for the helm. Lieutenant Fulton's voice
assured them over the intercom that the ship could still put out in spite
of its woes.
The
_Coronet's_ main engines blazed forth high energy plasma in
confirmation of his assurances, generating a semblance of gravity for
the crew as they ramped up to their full three gravities of thrust. Naval
Laser cannons from turrets on the starboard side rippled fire at the Orochi
as the starship rolled to port and continued a dive towards the atmosphere
to get out of the Orochi's dorsal firing arcs.
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
19:08 Local Time. T-minus 16 minutes to impact
"Something just happened up there," Davidge declared as red damage
warnings lit up across his displays. "Safe-Mode disengaged! The Orochi is
arming and readying its weapons! The various targeting systems were damaged
in the battle with the Combine, but the thing is still trying to shoot."
"Give Captain Saotome the bad news," Malloy ordered. "All those
fleeing Musk ships must have riled the thing up."
"Captain Saotome is already airborne, sir," of the
_ex-Dragonfly's_
commo techs declared.
"Tell him anyway."
* * *
Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002
25,000 meters MSL above Test Area North
Ranma didn't need the warning from the bunker to know that his
situation was taking a turn for the worse. The blinding shaft of charged
particles ripping through Ryuugenzawa's lower atmosphere from the
_Coronet_
told him in very clear terms that things were already going south.
He was pushing the LAM for everything it had, making demands on the
engines he knew from recent experience were dangerous in the extreme. The
mach indicator on his HUD continued to roll towards double digits as he
climbed through the lower stratosphere. Water vapor on his canopy had
frozen into a thin rime of frost along the edges of the clear
polycarbonate armor.
At best he had about ten minutes to reach the Orochi, find a place
to plant the bomb, set it in place, arm it, and get the hell out before
the battlestation's plunge through the thermosphere brought it deep enough
to begin ionization. It would take most of his ten minutes to get up there,
even with him practically killing himself with the frequent ramp-ups from
five to eight gravities of thrust to escape the planet's pull as swiftly
as possible. His vision was starting to blur as his pressure suit squeezed
against his thighs and stomach to keep his blood where it was needed, and
his head swam in spite of his conditioning.
It would have been an impossible ascent if he hadn't been able to
control his fighter directly with his brain through his neurohelment link,
as he couldn't even lift his hands from his seat under the acceleration
forces he endured. As it stood, he was fighting back the nausea and
dizziness that assailed him, focusing his will on Akane's survival below.
The blessed Star League automedic that was a part of his pressure suit
sensed his distress and flooded him with stimulants and blood-doping
chemicals to maximize oxygen transfer. He barely heard the hiss of the
suit's injectors in his armpits over the banshee keen of the plasma drives
and the bass rumble of the fusion plant in the pit of his stomach, nor did
he feel the cold pricks against his clammy skin.
The minutes sped away in an amphetamine-induced blur, the ghosty
green alphanumerics of his HUD forming vapor trails in his watery vision
as he locked onto the battlestation's radar reflection in his racing
mind. A final ramp to eight gee's hit him in the gut, driving him into
his ejector seat with a vengeance as the Orochi grew ever larger. His
reflexes, keyed up to the breaking point, sang out in warning as laser
fire began rippling down at him.
High in the thermosphere, in what was essentially low orbit, there
was virtually no air to restrict him as he juked the LAM out of harm's
way. At the literal top of the world, the horizon sank away in a violet
arc to either side of the canopy, lit only by the fading sun and the
frantic drives of the escaping Commonwealth DropShips in the distance.
Ranma transformed his LAM into the more agile Airmech Mode as the Orochi
split its smaller weapon mounts between him and the light cruiser _Coronet,_
higher still above him. He took care to keep the battlemech's left hand
stowed during his Phoenix Hawk's transformation to protect the bomb.
Ranma streaked past the falling battlestation, firing his engines
to adjust his ballistic arc in order to put him on a position and course
above the Orochi while descending upon it. The center control node Davidge
had described to him was there, and so were a bevy of point defense
batteries, all shooting at him. The beams and bolts crazed his armor and
flashed across his canopy as he defied all instincts for survival and
closed with the doomed satellite.
* * *
SLDFS
_Coronet_
19:18 Local Time, T-minus 6 minutes to impact
"Conn, Sensory; Phoenix Hawk LAM detected, bearing zero-zero-nine,
minus seven-eight."
Hauptmann trained one of the high speed telescopes over to the
indicated bearing from his position at Fire Control.
"One of ours?" he asked.
"Ranma!?" Hinako cried from the conn as the Cameron Star of the
SLDF became clear on the LAM's silver hull. "What does he think he's
doing up here?"
"Looks like suicide," Hauptmann concluded. "Continue to fire on
the Orochi," he added to the Fire Control section. "We'll keep the
heat on if it will distract that damned machine."
A hit on their starboard beam shook them at their posts, reminding
them that the Orochi was far from out of the fight.
* * *
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
19:18 Local Time. T-minus 6 minutes to impact
Akane watched the telemetry displays in the control room in
silence, her teeth set against her lower lip and her hands moist with
perspiration. The steadying hand on her shoulder from Shinnosuke as he
looked on was appreciated even if she was too busy worrying about Ranma
to mention it. Hikaru Gosunkugi lurked close by, quietly pouting that it
was the local bumpkin and not himself who was giving Akane comfort.
"Point defense batteries continuing to fire," Davidge announced for
everyone's benefit. Akane wanted to hit him for pointing out in clinical
detail how the battlestation intended to kill the man she loved. She
remained glued to her chair instead, watching the tiny point of light
on the display that was the radar abstract of Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002.
"How much longer until the Orochi reaches the lower atmosphere?"
Grand Duke Tendo asked the lieutenant. Genma remained quiet and still
at the Duke's side, his mind wracked with doubt and the unspoken fear
that even seventeen years of intense training had left his son unprepared
for such a suicidal task.
"Three minutes," Davidge replied. "After that, we'll lose our
telemetry feeds and have no more contact with the Orochi."
"Look!" Shinnosuke shouted, pointing at the displays. "He's making
another pass!"
All eyes focused on the Threat Engagement board as radar-directed
autocannons and heavy lasers swung to bear once more on the offending
fighter. The radar image began to blur, then became multiple images as
the LAM's onboard ECM systems spoofed the gun-directors, but a quick
glance at the nearby Electronic Warfare display showed that the Orochi
was already processing countermeasure algorithms to defeat the spoofing.
"Please," Akane whispered over and over as the LAM commenced yet
another attack.
Hikaru silently prayed that Ranma would succeed as well - but not
live to tell of it.
* * *
Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002
"SonuvaBITCH!" Ranma swore as the beams burned around him, lancing
through the armored engine/weapon pods and destroying the twin medium
pulse laser mount. His vernier thrusters flared in every direction as
he loosed another volley of countermeasure decoys in what was his third
failed attempt to reach the hull. The Orochi's weapons were too well
coordinated in spite of the gun-directing radar damage for him to dodge
them all, and he was taking hits. His own heavy pulselaser lashed out in
return, hosing fire into the gun batteries as he aborted the approach.
He soared as close as he dared to the saucer's edge and dove once
more below the Orochi. The ventral gun mounts were waiting for him, and
another blizzard of high energy laser and particle beam fire wove lines
of electric death around him. The last of the countermeasures popped
from the dispenser as he punched his plasma drives for another crushing
eight-gee evasive burn.
He went blind for a moment, clawing his way through numbing waves of
unconsciousness as he fought off the acceleration effects. His Electronic
Warfare panel hooted an alarm declaring that the Orochi had once again
unlocked his radar spoofing patterns, and then shifted to another set of
countermeasure routines. He was running out of options, and all it took
was one lucky hit on his left forearm to damage or destroy the bomb he
needed to take out the battlestation.
Seems like the fire is worse on the dorsal side, he thought
frantically. If I attack the ventral side I won't be protected by the
hull when this thing hits the mesosphere, but I don't stand a chance
trying to take on the upper half.
His mind made up, Ranma pulled a hard turn and came back at the
Orochi from straight on the narrow edge of the saucer. Both sets of
guns could theoretically fire at him from this point, but he found that
they could not depress enough into the other side's firing arc to make
it a problem. If anything, the volume of effective fire thrown at him
was lower.
Nine hundred kilometers, he noted on his radar altimeter. He had
seventy-five seconds to pull this off before the Orochi hit the atmosphere
in earnest.
* * *
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
19:19 Local Time. T-minus 5 minutes to impact
"Akari?"
Ryouga's voice seemed to carry much farther than he would have
preferred among the muted voices of the others gathered in the dining
area of the bunker. In the event that Ranma was unable to destroy the
Orochi, everyone had been sent down to the belowground portion of the
bunker to ride out the impact as best as they could.
"Yes, Ryouga?" she replied.
If she sensed what he was thinking in that moment, she did not make
it clear by the tone of her voice. Ryouga swallowed nervously before he
continued, while Captain Grant called out the five minute mark to impact
from the dining area table.
"I..." he began, but his voice trailed off. His face turned red even
though he could see that everyone else in the room was busy with their
own thoughts, or making nervous small-talk with their neighbors to pass
the time until the Orochi crashed into the planet. No one was paying any
attention to the two of them.
"I was going to ask you something," he managed after several more
false starts. "S-Something very important." He wanted to let her know more
than just how he felt, he wanted her to know how much a future with her
meant to him, and with their immediate future uncertain, it had become a
crisis within his heart.
She turned in his lap to look at him.
"Ryouga?" she asked, her voice now suggesting that she knew exactly
what he had in mind, and her gentle eyes lighting up with surprise.
He nodded, allowing the question to pass between them unspoken - at
least for the moment.
"Would you?" he finally asked her. "If we survive this, I mean."
She buried her face in his shoulder and nodded with a soft cry of
happiness at his proposition.
"We'll survive," she assured him as his arms closed around her to
hold her close in his lap. "For this, we
*have* to survive." His face
continued to blaze bright red as she answered him, an effect thankfully
lost upon their neighbors in the dim emergency lighting of the bunker.
* * *
Elsewhere in the bunker, Ukyou Kuonji sat in brooding silence on the
steps of the stairwell leading down to the control room. Konatsu hovered
close by, his eyes fixed with concern upon her.
"Are you all right, sir?" he asked.
She looked up to regard him. His pretty face was streaked with dirt
and sweat from his excursion into the forest. The sight of him; so
beautiful that it hurt to think about when she considered her own modest
looks, and so lost without her that she felt pangs of guilt whenever she
thought about why he was always there by her side. A sigh of remorse
escaped her lips against her will.
"I'm worried," she finally replied. Worry and guilt were both
evident in her eyes.
"About the Orochi, or Captain Saotome?" he asked in return.
Ukyou bit back the soft oath that sprang to her lips with Konatsu's
question. As usual, her former majordomo cut to the heart of the matter,
knowing exactly what she was feeling.
"Ranma," she said to him. "If anyone can do what he's trying to do to
stop the Orochi, I know it's him, but that doesn't mean that something bad
can't happen in the process."
Konatsu nodded silently. There wasn't much he could add to her
statement, but he felt that her concern for Ranma was not the only thing
that was bothering her.
"Do you have any regrets, sir?" he asked.
"Stop calling me 'sir,'" Ukyou snapped, irritation rising in her
voice. "I didn't like it even when it meant something between us. You
know that."
"I'm sorry," Konatsu pleaded, abashed by her rebuke.
"And stop being sorry," Ukyou returned. "You are your own person,
Konatsu. You're not my servant, and you're not my slave. We aren't part
of the Federated Shiratori anymore. Our relationship can't be based on
that."
Konatsu bowed his head and remained silent.
Ukyou stood to face him, lifting his chin gently with her hand to
look him in the eyes.
"Look, I couldn't ask for any friend more loyal and dedicated than
you," she said to him. "You've repaid any debt of kindness you might have
owed to me in the past a thousand times over. So now I want you to stop
living your life as if it were at my sufferance. Can you do that?"
Konatsu's face began to redden.
"I-- I don't know," he said, unsure of what he felt, much less
what he could say in reply.
"You're so hopeless," Ukyou sighed, drawing Konatsu into her arms
for a hug. "If anyone should be apologizing around here, it's me. We're
probably gonna die down here in this hole; forgotten on a lost planet
that no one else in the Inner Sphere knows exists." She squeezed him
even tighter to herself. "I'm the one who led you here. I did it because
I fooled myself into believing that I had a chance with Ranchan, and if
my mistake gets us killed in a few minutes, then I want to apologize
right now for it."
Konatsu brought his arms up to return her embrace. It was a
bittersweet moment, for while he had never felt Ukyou's affection for
him so strongly in his life, he knew in his heart that the love she had
for him was not the love that he felt in return for her.
"I have no regrets," he managed. "I came with you because I wanted
to."
"I know that," Ukyou sighed, giving him another squeeze. "But I
also know the reason why you wanted to, and I feel like I've somehow
taken advantage of you because of it." She wiped at her eyes, still
holding him close. "I'm going to keep telling myself that we'll be okay,
so humor me, huh, sugar?"
Konatsu nodded in reply. Ukyou was grateful for the silence. She
needed time to think about where she was and where she was going - and
if worse came to worst, she had all of five minutes in which to do it.
* * *
Blue Thunder Regimental Headquarters Company
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds, Test Area North
19:20 Local Time, T-minus 4 minutes to impact.
"My lord Prince!" Kyle pleaded with his commander from high orbit.
"I urge you to take shelter at once!"
"Bah!" Tatewaki snorted in retort. "I've had enough of your girlish
chatter, Kyle!" He switched off the commo link to the
_Imperator_ with
a flourish. His Operations Officer was becoming an embarrassment to him,
and worse, infecting the men with fear. It took every gram of his command
presence to keep them in ranks because of Kyle's clamor.
And for what? he asked imperiously, for he could see battlemechs
standing in a line near a hill in the distance, and felt in his bones
that Akane Tendo's was among them. Two of the 'mechs bore the distinctive
cannon-armed silhouettes of Warhammers, his love's machine of choice.
"I go forth with glad heart to meet my destiny this day," he said
lightly to himself and to his men as his Thunderbolt stomped towards the
Orochi bunker.
Chapter Three
Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002
19:20 Local Time, T-minus 4 minutes to impact.
Ranma wrenched at the controls as his battered Phoenix Hawk LAM
skidded across the scorched lower hull of the Orochi in Airmech Mode. Once
in contact with the orbital battlestation, he was too close for the point-
defense guns to draw a bead on him, and he gasped for breath in the sudden
respite from weapon fire as the LAM came to a halt. He could feel the
Orochi's internal rumblings through his own ship as the suffuse glow of
red-hot metal lit up the artificial horizon created by the massive half-
kilometer disc.
Vents of flame shot up from the point where the
_Coronet's_ spinal
mount particle beam had blasted through the battlestation, fanning out
into flat clouds against the weak air resistance as the Orochi burned from
within, giving Ranma hope that his bomb would be enough to finish the job.
Forgetting for a moment that with his present orientation, he was
essentially upside down, and facing the looming planet of Ryuugenzawa
'above' him, the slope of the hull 'rose' to the center of the disc,
where Davidge had said was a vulnerable spot. He scooted the Phoenix Hawk
carefully along the hull, blasting the domed turrets of impotent point-
defense guns as he went to make certain none of them shot him in passing.
The main drive exhaust nozzles at the very center of the ventral bulge
seemed like a good place to set the bomb.
He needed to pry open the massive thirty centimeter thick armored
louvers for the drives to get inside, as there was no obvious place to
plant the nuke on the exterior hull, and no way to ensure that it stayed
put. The Phoenix Hawk strained at the armored shutters, working them back
and forth with its one free hand and the other forearm until he had
weakened their mounts enough to squeeze inside the nozzle. He did so with
trepidation, knowing that if the Orochi was capable of reacting to such an
intrusion, one good blast of plasma from the Main Engines would utterly
incinerate him.
It was nearly pitch black inside the house-sized nozzle; a long
tunnel of magnetic coils that led directly to the fusion reactor in the
heart of the battlestation extended beyond. He activated his landing lights
to see what he was doing, then unlocked the left hand of his LAM, which
slowly extended from the forearm to reveal the thermonuclear device from
the Tendo Armory. At first blush the thing appeared to be intact.
He stole a glance at the clock function he had called up to the HUD,
and knew that he had less than fifteen seconds to arm and plant the bomb
before the Orochi started hitting thick atmosphere. Some of the buffeting
he already felt was from the falling battlestation's flirtation with the
mesosphere. He set the bomb between a series of plasma accelerator coils
that ringed the tunnel, figuring that it would be secure enough for the
two minutes or so he had remaining before the thing needed to explode.
Hurrying without being careless, and mindful that he had a slight case of
the shakes from the speed his automedic had prescribed, he extended the
three micromanipulator arms from the right forearm of his LAM.
The control panel cover was slid aside to reveal that all appeared
normal with the weapon. It was armed, and required only the timer function
to be set. He moved one of the manipulator waldoes over to the key pad,
and punched in a ninety-second delay. It was the longest he dared to give
the thing, knowing that he would have to squeeze his way out past the
nozzle louvers and still manage to put as much distance as possible
between himself and an explosion that was going to be at least a megaton
in yield.
As he touched the 'enter' button on the keypad with his manipulator
waldo, he offered up a brief plea for it to work.
The bomb's function display flashed several times in acknowledgement,
then shifted to a series of red failure lights.
"You gotta be shitting me!" Ranma cursed as the bomb sat inert
within the nozzle of the Orochi's plasma drive. The battlestation began
to oscillate as it dug into the thin atmosphere of the mesosphere, and
a thin stream of vapor flowed through a gap in the nozzle louvers to
coil around his cockpit canopy.
* * *
Black Rose Terror Regiment DropShip
_Thorn_
19:21 Local Time, T-minus 3 minutes to impact.
Sasuke watched Kodachi's battered Marauder limp out of the distant
treeline from the vantage of the Overlord Class DropShip's bridge. Troops
from her brother's forces were in obvious pursuit, though he had ordered
what little remained in the way of the regiment's aerospace fighters to
harass them to buy his mistress time.
Time was something they had very little of, for he now understood
that the Orochi was going to crash into the planet, and they were judged
close enough to the projected impact point to be wiped out by the blast
such a collision would generate. The ninja had already overridden the
captain of the
_Thorn_ at the point of his dagger over the idea of
abandoning Kodachi before it was too late to escape, and now the First
Officer kept an uneasy watch from the command chair. Sasuke did not know
what to make of the fact that Tatewaki had apparently written off the
incoming Orochi as inconsequential, other than to dream of the
possibilities that would come from the Prince's death.
"Hurry, Mistress!" he called to Kodachi over the radio. "We have
to lift off this very moment!"
"You'll hold your position," she returned coolly. Sasuke cringed
to see Tarou sitting more or less in her lap on the display. He had
hoped that Kodachi's paramour had been among the regiment's fallen.
"Of course, Mistress," he demurred. He cast a sharp-eyed look to
the newly minted captain of the _Thorn,_ telling him without words that
there would be no further discussion of the matter of leaving without
Princess Kodachi.
"Mech Bay Door Number One is open and standing by for retrieval,"
the former First Officer replied.
* * *
Phoenix Hawk LAM ASX-002
19:21 Local Time, T-minus 3 minutes to impact.
Ranma tried entering the time delay a second time without the desired
effect. Then he punched at the sixty-second manual release. Still nothing.
The bomb was locked out on numerous incomprehensible errors. Had the
changing environmental conditions contributed to the device's malfunctions,
or was it something else?
There wasn't any time to waste with a useless piece of junk. He needed
results, and he needed them now. Turning to activate his twin rack SRM
launcher, he prepared to loose a volley of missiles down the tunnel of the
plasma drive, and to the gigantic fusion reactor beyond.
He stopped himself just short of firing the missiles. If he did what
he had intended, there would have been no time to escape. Cursing to
himself as the seconds ticked away, he yanked at the release for his cockpit
canopy, venting the atmosphere within to the tunnel. He'd save the missiles
for the absolute last second, but in the meantime, he was going to try and
hotwire a thermonuclear weapon.
How hard could it be?
He moved in freefall down the arm of his LAM to the bomb, pulling
himself along while he fished in his thigh pockets with his other hand for
the small array of portable tools he kept on his person. The bomb's display
continued to glare at him in angry shades of flashing red as he popped the
LCD panel out of its mount with a screwdiver. The only thing he had going
for him was the fact that by properly arming the device for full release
before he left the planet, the standard anti-tampering interlocks had been
removed.
He flipped up the LCD panel and let it hang in free-fall by the
slender length of wiring bundle that tied it to the rest of the bomb,
and was relieved to see that a schematic diagram of the arming and
firing mechanisms were present on the backside. His eyes scanned the
schematic voraciously as the Orochi continued to bite into thicker air,
and a thin scream of vapor whistled through the gaps in the armored
shutters of the nozzle. All of his years of training as a Scout and as
a burglar were coming down to this moment as he determined where and how
the bomb could be overridden manually.
He found it with an exultant cry. The manual sixty-second release
switch, although determined to be 'dead' with a touch of his voltmeter
probe to its 'hot' side, could still bypass the keypad input function if
he found a way to energize it - but as it relied on the timing circuit
itself, he would have to depend on that part of the bomb to be functional.
He didn't have time to figure out what had gone wrong with the bomb's
control system, so he would have to take the chance that it worked.
He searched for and found an available 24 volt power input with his
voltmeter probe. All he had to do now was short across the manual release
with his screwdriver. He took a deep breath and touched the conducting
surface of the screwdriver to the voltage source and the switch. A flash of
sparks and the felt hiss of pressurization within the guts of the bomb told
him something had happened. An LED began to glow next to the fission-primary
casing - the tritium gas boosting charge had been loaded into the primary as
a preamble to the big firecracker going off.
He spun the LCD readout panel around to see that the MANUAL FIRE light
had come on, and that a sixty-second countdown was already three seconds
into its progression. Stifling the urge to piss himself, he scrambled for
the open cockpit of the LAM as the thermonuclear bomb counted down to
detonation. He did not want to be there to check the validity of the firing
circuit's function firsthand.
Ranma dragged himself up the arm of the LAM to the cockpit and pulled
himself into his ejector seat, securing seat straps with one hand as his
other hand closed the canopy. He pivoted in the middle of the engine
thruster to face the shutters, and gripped a section of them with both of
the Phoenix Hawk's hands to wrench them open. He could only guess at how
much time he had left before the bomb exploded, and no matter the accuracy
of his guess, it wasn't a comfortable margin.
He pushed and pulled at the louvers to force them open, fighting the
blasts of atmosphere as much as the mounts. Wisps of ionization streamed
past his 'mech as the Orochi began to heat up with the atmospheric friction
of reentry. If the magnetically-shielded louvers hadn't been designed to
withstand the incredible radiant heat of million degree plasma rushing past
them, he would have been concerned about them melting to his battlemech's
hands. As it stood, he was having more trouble getting out of the Orochi's
innards than he had getting in.
Straining the myomer bundles to their limits, he finally wrenched the
louvers open, but a flick of his eyes to the clock function on his HUD told
him that he was already too late. He gave a defiant shout over the radio
and launched himself free of the nozzle with the last few seconds of his
reaction mass, and was propelled into the violent wash of superheated air
trapped beneath the plummeting orbital battlestation. He crashed against
the ventral hull of the Orochi as he cleared the nozzle, his LAM tumbling
against the glowing red hull to the ragged edge of the half-kilometer disc.
There was no fighting the controls - he had no fuel left, and in the
maelstrom of superheated air, no way to stabilize himself. Battered with
each jarring hit against the Orochi's ventral hull, he could only hope
with wildly frantic thoughts that his Phoenix Hawk would hold on to enough
of its structural integrity to keep from flying apart in a thousand pieces.
He was so occupied with the idea of being smashed to bits against the red
hot hull that he completely forgot about the thermonuclear bomb he had set
to go off inside the Orochi.
Fortunately for the people on the planet below, the bomb had not
forgotten what it was supposed to do.
SLDFS
_Coronet_
19:22 Local Time, T-minus 90 seconds to impact
"Conn, Sensory; the Orochi has reached the point of ionization.
Estimated time to impact is nine-zero seconds."
"Can we fire another shot?" Hauptmann demanded from Fire Control.
"We don't have any more time to lose."
"Malfunction lights haven't cleared," the tech replied. "And I
don't know enough about this system to figure out a way to bypass the
safety interlocks."
Captain Hinako Ninomiya looked on helplessly at the main telescope
monitor. The battlestation was about to crash into the planet, and probably
kill everyone down there. What had Ranma been up to in his mad attacks on
the Orochi? Where had he disappeared to when he attacked the battlestation's
underside? Surely the boy couldn't have been trying to destroy it with only
the tiny weapons array of a Phoenix Hawk LAM?
"Any sign of Captain Saotome?" she asked as the
_Coronet's_ sensors
looked down at the fiery trail of the falling Orochi from a scant thousand
kilometers above the planet. She concluded that Ranma was stubborn enough
to try such a thing, even if there was no hope of success.
"No, ma'am," Sensory replied. "All I have on my scopes along those
bearings are the fleeing Commonwealth DropShips plus the IFF ping from our
shuttle at a range of four thousand kilometers."
Hinako was going to ask another question when a loud squawk of
electronic protest sounded over the intercom speakers. She caught the
brilliant flash of light from the Orochi in that same instant, and was
grateful for the auto-dampening features of the telescope array. Blinking
away the spots before her eyes, she watched as the battlestation fountained
a column of plasma from the very center of its dorsal bulge, a column that
continued to rise like a beam of pure energy well past the Star League
cruiser off its port bow, and into medium orbit.
"What the hell?" Hauptmann grunted from Fire Control.
The rest of the Orochi began to break apart as the inner half of
the disc evaporated with the heat of the exploding bomb. Sections over
fifty meters in length scattered from the blast, while smaller pieces
were propelled into crazy spirals by a combination of the explosion and
the air resistance caused by their plunge into the atmosphere. Hinako
watched in awe as the Orochi fanned apart into a glowing tracery of
debris that expanded over the darkened face of Ryuugenzawa below.
At first she thought it had been some malfunction within the Orochi
caused by the stresses of entering the atmosphere. As she watched the
sections of the wrecked battlestation burn, she came to understand that
its destruction had been engineered. It could only have been Ranma.
Chapter Four
Test Area North
Shampoo winced at the brilliant flash of light that overwhelmed the
early evening sky, and looked up to see thousands of streaks of flame
fanning out across the heavens from a central ball of annihilation.
Unaware that it was the Orochi's disintegration, she wondered if one of
the starships in orbit had come to a bad end, and wondered if it had been
a Furinkan Combine or Musk Dynasty ship. Bits of debris rained down in
fiery white streaks as they burned up in the atmosphere, while larger
pieces of the battlestation continued their fall all the way to the
distant ocean.
"<So beautiful,>" she heard Mousse whisper, and she had to agree with
him. At a distance, such cataclysmic destruction had a compelling allure.
She looked down at him, stroking his matted hair and thinking about how
much time he had left to live. His skin was so cold beneath her fingertips,
and his breathing was so faint that she could no longer detect it. A pang
of dread shot through her at the realization that Mousse was lying very
still in her lap.
"<Mousse?>" she called to him quietly, almost pleading for an answer.
There was none. Mousse had passed on in that moment while her attention
was drawn to the sky, and his eyes, half open, seemed to be fixed upon her.
A touch of her hand to his chest told her what her she already knew, for the
weak and thready beat of his heart had ceased.
She felt something break inside her then, a part of her that she had
always kept at arm's length within her soul. It was as if the last nineteen
years of her life had belonged to someone else, a person she no longer knew,
or even recognized. It was the last of what had been many ruptures, great
and small, with her old self; the Shampoo that had tried so hard to live up
to the demands of her family and clan - and most of all, her great-grandmother
- and failed.
Mousse had been her final link to that other self, and now that he was
gone, she was cast adrift. Alone.
A fluttering in her belly stirred her to sob just once; a wracked,
anguished cry that ended abruptly as she reasserted herself with an angry
grunt of determination. Perhaps she wasn't alone, for the baby was still
with her, but she would never be the same woman she had been before she
came to Ryuugenzawa -
*could* never be that woman. That Shampoo was gone
- as dead as the man who lay in her lap - and now she was reborn to a new
life. It was a life of uncertainty and hardship, but she had learned in the
last six months to expect nothing else.
She rose slowly to her feet, taking care to close Mousse's unseeing
eyes and set his head down gently in the forest grass as she did so. She
wanted to go back to the bunker, to the only people she had left on this
world who would have her. Part of her wanted to go home, but she doubted
that such a thing was possible even if they had a starship to do it with.
* * *
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
"What the--?" Davidge squawked as he strained his ears to listen over
a headset for the tiniest trace of electronic signals, and was bombarded
with a blast of intense noise.
"What is it?" Akane asked.
"I think he did it," he replied. "I really think he did it!"
"The Orochi is gone?" Genma cried expectantly.
Davidge nodded, pointing to one of the displays. "You can see here
that there was a huge pulse of electromagnetic energy, and now there's a
continuous buzz of static consistant with a large explosion high in the
mesosphere. It's got to be the Orochi."
"Well, in two more minutes we'll find out for certain," Malloy
pointed out. "If it's gone, then nothing will happen. Otherwise we're
definitely going to feel it when it hits."
"Can't we radio Ranma and find out for certain?" Akane asked.
"Not with the ionization effects I'm detecting," Davidge replied.
"We could be out of direct radio contact with anyone in space for hours,
perhaps even days with a blast that big."
"So we wait," Shinnosuke observed.
"I'm not worried," Hikaru added with a shake of his head. Nervous
about Saotome's survival, yes. But not worried.
They watched the clock as it ticked off the seconds. When the time
for impact passed without any noticeable effect, a whoop of joy went up
from those in the control room that carried up the stairs and was echoed
by everyone remaining in the bunker. The Orochi was destroyed, and the
planet spared catastrophe.
Akane hugged both Shinnosuke and Hikaru, and then anyone she could
reach in the crowded control room. The stress and tension of nine long
hours of conflict evaporated with the knowledge that they had beaten the
odds and survived the battle.
"I'm going outside," she declared, wanting to be there when Ranma
returned. "Who's coming with me?"
* * *
General Prince Tatewaki Kuno started at the blinding flash of light
that filled the sky. His commo suite squawked in protest, and harsh static
blared from the speakers. Battle management links went down, severing his
connections to his command staff.
"What manner of skulduggery is this!?" he demanded. There was no
response from his troops, who stopped their advance to watch the long
streaks of fire that raced across the sky towards the distant sea.
Snarling curses that they did not hear over the hiss and crackle of
the disturbed ether, he continued on towards the bunker. The battlemechs
that stood around the low grassy hill were silent. None offered any
resistance, and as he closed the distance he realized that they were
unmanned. Even more curiously, they were adorned with the Cameron Star
of the Star League Defense Force.
Finally, shamed at seeing their general get ahead of them, the rest
of his troops closed ranks and continued their advance. The brilliant
meteor shower continued above them as small bits of debris actually
reached the surface, pattering the ground and in rare instances spanging
off their diamond-hard battlemech armor.
Tatewaki was beside himself with anger, but as the radio interference
continued undiminshed, he could do nothing to berate his troops for their
distraction. He reached the line of SLDF battlemechs, and upon close
examination, confirmed that they were inactive. Their crews were likely
hiding within the bunker.
What he wanted to know more than anything was that Akane Tendo was
among them. He felt that it was so, and yet not knowing was driving him
mad. It only then dawned on him that the terrible flash of light in the
sky had been the Orochi exploding high in the atmosphere, and at this he
barked out a fey laugh at the miracle. Destiny was truly calling him to
her bosom, or, more specifically, to the bosoms of Akane Tendo and the
Pig-Tailed Girl.
"Come out!" he called out over the external speakers to the bunker.
"Show thyselves, be ye Star League or mine own Confederation foes! I have
come to make the peerless Akane Tendo my bride!"
"That sounds like Kuno," Ryouga said in a hushed voice from the
bunker door. The Prince of the Furinkan Combine continued to rant over
the loudspeaker of his Thunderbolt on the other side of the door.
"Kuno?" Akane asked worriedly. "You're kidding me. He didn't leave
the planet with the others?"
Ryouga shrugged uneasily as Akari curled up behind him to listen.
"From the way the ground's shaking, I think he brought his whole guard
with him."
"Shall we make a run for our 'mechs?" Ukyou asked quietly as Kuno
continued issuing demands for their appearance.
"It might be suicide to try," Akane returned, mirroring Ukyou's
apprehension. She looked to her father and Kasumi. "What do you think,
Dad?"
Soun in turn looked to the Shogun of the Furinkan Combine. "He's
your son."
The Shogun nodded his head. "Yah, bruddah. Dat be true. Mebbe it
be time to settle tings wit' de keiki."
"Just what did you have in mind?" Genma asked the Shogun.
The Shogun shrugged. "Gonna see if dat boy done got himself a
proper haircut, first." He motioned for Ryouga to open the bunker door.
Ryouga looked to Akane for confirmation, and she turned to her
father. Soun nodded slowly in agreement.
Tatewaki Kuno was stunned by the appearance of his father from the
door of the bunker. His troops, recognizing the Shogun of the Furinkan
Combine, dropped their battlemechs down to one knee in a display of
fealty and respect. The Shogun gave them a jaunty wave and a wide
grinning smile.
"Hey, boy!" he called to his son's Thunderbolt. "You gonna come
down and say aloha to your papa?"
Tatewaki choked back a rush of bile in his throat. How had this
man come to this place? Had Nabiki made a mistake somewhere along the
line, or had she planned this from the start when she pointed him
towards the Ryuugenzawa System, and if so, why?
Slowly, taking pains to preserve his dignity, he opened the hatch
to his battlemech and appeared. There was no sense in letting on to his
feelings of anger and confusion regarding his father's presence. He did
enjoy looking down on his hated father, and he toyed briefly with the
idea of stomping him into the ground with a well-placed battlemech foot.
"You gonna come down, Tachi?" the Shogun asked, his voice taking
on a hint of annoyance.
"Of course, Father," Tatewaki replied with mock enthusiam. "Let
me embrace you as a son to his father." He climbed down the Thunderbolt
as designated members of his personal guard did the same from their
'mechs.
The two men walked towards the center of the space of ground that
separated them as Ryouga, Ukyou, and Akane looked on from the door. As
the two neared each other, Tatewaki threw open his arms to accept his
father's love. The Shogun did the same. It was a surreal moment made
even more bizarre by the fact that as they came within half a meter of
each other, the father produced a pair of hair-clippers, and the son a
wooden bokken.
They passed like dueling samurai from ancient legends. Tatewaki
Kuno's bokken flowered into a bouquet of wooden slivers and sawdust
while the Shogun sheathed his clippers with the grace and dignity born
of a master's skill.
"You never could beat me, keiki," the Shogun crowed, turning to
see Tatewaki's face purpling with humiliation. "Maybe you shoulda took
up stamp collectin' instead o' tryin' ta rule da Combine."
"Curse you, Father!" Tatewaki retorted. "Whilst I hath expanded
the mighty Furinkan Combine into many new systems in the tender years
of my youth, thou'rt squandering thy hours away in frivolous pursuit
of base pleasure. Speak not of matters regarding who is fit to rule
and who is unfit!"
The Shogun nodded his head. "Perhaps you right, boy," he replied.
This took Tatewaki aback.
"You say this not in jest?" he asked with an arched eyebrow of
surprise.
The Shogun turned to his companions in the bunker instead of replying
to his son's question. "You come out now. Dere ain't no sense in resisting
anymore. Da boy won fair and square."
Tatewaki saw the Grand Duke of the Confederation step out of the
door, his face red with anger. Truly, Nabiki's lies went even farther
than he dared dream if her father walked free on the planet Ryuugenzawa,
and was not in custody on Nerima.
"What's the meaning of this?" Soun demanded of the Shogun as
Ryouga and Genma tried unsuccessfully to pull him back inside. "You
said you were going to talk to Prince Kuno, not compell us to surrender
to him!"
The Shogun shrugged. "It's like I been saying all along, bruddah.
If da boy is willin' to struggle and sacrifice for what he wants, den
he deserves ta get it when it comes along." He nudged his thumb towards
his son. "Da boy was crazy stickin' around on de planet when de smart
ting to do was get going - but it done paid off."
Soun failed to see the point. "I will not surrender to the Combine!"
he shot back. Ryouga and the others filtered out to lend the Grand Duke
support, and perhaps make a break for their 'mechs - though Captain Grant
and Ukyou had to drag Genma out by his arms to do it.
When Tatewaki laid eyes upon Akane, his face brightened as if looking
upon the rising sun.
"Akane Tendo!" he cried, and ignoring the other Confederation types,
made a beeline straight for her with his arms thrown wide for an embrace.
Shinnosuke and Konatsu quickly stood in front of her to block his path,
while Hikaru Gosunkugi pretended not to exist in the hopes that Tatewaki
wouldn't notice him standing there with the Confederation heir.
Tatewaki drew his katana and leveled it at her escorts. "Stand
aside," he ordered them. The whine of battlemech weapons zeroing in on
the crowd added emphasis to his demand. "Come not between the Blue
Thunder of the Furinkan Combine and his prize if thou dost value life
and breath."
Akane stared Tatewaki down. "Speaking of breath, Kuno; I will defy
*you* to my last breath," she said coldly to him.
Her defiance was unnerving, but he swallowed his disappointment
by directing his wrath towards Hikaru Gosunkugi. "Bloodless coward,"
he snorted imperiously. "Slow death upon thy cross is assured for thy
treachery this day."
Hikaru tried not to wilt under Tatewaki's withering gaze. All this,
and yet still disaster struck! However terrible the thought of certain
death was to him, the agony of crucifixion paled in comparison to the
agony of seeing Akane Tendo made Kuno's wife.
The Combine prince didn't give him a second thought, returning
his attentions to Akane. "Pray tell, fairest of all Nerima, whither
the churlish Ranma Saotome, that I might impale him upon the prow of
my mighty battleship as a trophy?"
She cringed at his plans for her beloved while her hands crackled
into fists.
"He'd dead," she spat. "Your troops killed him in battle today."
She gave the lie to puff him up, and at the same time put him at ease
in the hopes that Ranma's return to the surface of the planet would
come as the surprise they needed to make their escape. Ryouga gave
her a quizzical look, only to be stabbed in the ribs by an elbow of
the much swifter Ukyou Kuonji to shut him up before he gave the show
away.
Tatewaki Kuno expressed both satisfaction and dismay at the news.
He had hoped to face the cur one last time before putting him to the
sword, just to hear him beg for mercy.
"No matter," he returned coolly. "I have what I have come for."
"Not so fast," Akane retorted. "I said I will defy you to the
end, and I meant it."
Tatewaki chuckled. "I value and prize thy defiance, Akane Tendo.
Indeed, thy fierce and unbroken spirit is what draws me hither to thee,
as a moth to the flame. Though perhaps you speak in haste, having not
long had the pleasure of my companionship."
"The last time I had the pleasure of your companionship, you
were hurting my friends and threatening them with death!" she yelled
back at him, letting emotions flow through her that she had suppressed
since Capra. "So you can imagine how that might have poisoned me to
your so-called charms!"
The Shogun stepped between them, flanked by the fuming Grand
Duke Tendo and several of Tatewaki's dismounted troops. He gave Akane
a smile and a wink, making her blink in astonishment, and leaving her
wondering just what he was up to.
"Maybe tings ain't exactly like you'd hoped, eh, keiki?" he
asked his son with a rhetorical aire.
"Nonsense," Tatewaki spat. "I've won. The Confederation is as
good as mine, and so too the lovely Akane Tendo. I need only to feast
my eyes upon the vibrant Pig-Tailed Girl to make my victory utterly
complete."
Akane made a face at him, but kept silent. Pig-Tailed Girl?
Does he mean Ranma!? She cast a furtive glance to the sky, where the
fiery fingers of the obliterated Orochi satellite continued to expand
and fade away into flickering streamers of light.
"Maybe you ain't quite earned what you tink you got," the Shogun
broached casually as Akane searched the heavens for a sign of Ranma.
"Maybe you got one more challenge to overcome."
"If this is about one of your ridiculous limbo contests, I shall
have nothing to do with it!" Tatewaki fulminated.
Akane, distracted as she was, understood what the Shogun was
getting at.
"Kuno, I challenge you to a duel!" she cried, taking her eyes away
from the sky and fixing them upon the Combine prince. "It's my right as
a mechwarrior and a lady of the blood!"
Tatewaki turned to regard Akane with wide eyes.
"Challenge me?" he asked, intrigued. "The Blue Thunder of the
Furinkan Combine?"
She nodded slowly in reply. "If you defeat me in battlemech combat,
I'll submit to you right here and now. The Confederation will be yours
without any more resistance." Soun and Kasumi gaped at her offer, but
remained silent pending the Combine prince's response.
Tatewaki blinked in surpise. "You shall become my dutiful wife?"
he asked her dubiously. "My queen and my sovereign empress? Bearing
our children in the fullness of time?"
"I'll marry you right here and now," she replied, working herself
up for the other end of the bargain. "And I'll be your wife and the
mother of your children."
Tatewaki was beside himself with joy. "Done and done, Akane Tendo!"
He leaped forward to embrace her once again.
"Not so fast, Kuno," she snapped, pushing him away. "If I win, the
Furinkan Combine will withdraw from all Confederation territory taken
since the beginning of the Third Succession War."
It was Tatewaki's turn to gape, and he was not alone.
Akane continued, projecting for Kuno the same steely determination to
do what was right for the Confederation that had earned her the adoration
of her people.
"Furthermore, you will agree to an immediate cease-fire between the
Furinkan Combine and the Confederation, to last a minimum of ten years from
this day. You will also pay reparations to the Confederation in the sum of
twenty billion c-bills - one quarter of which will be due in six months to
the Bank of Sol on Earth, and the rest in annual installments to the same.
All compliance with this agreement will be monitored by Comstar, and with
the appropriate penalties for any breach."
Akane knew from past conversations with Nabiki that Comstar was
always looking for ways to check Tatewaki Kuno's ambitions without seeming
arbitrary, and allowing them to enforce the cease-fire would be just the
opening they needed to keep the House of Kuno in line, while keeping up the
appearance of being impartial in the Succession Wars. She had mulled over
these very terms in her thoughts ever since Ryouga's recovery of the Library
Core from Happousai - though at the time it had simply been a way for her to
buy off the Combine's assaults in exchange for a share of the secrets. Now
she could keep the Library Core for the Confederation and still get what
she wanted. She had defeated Tatewaki Kuno in battle before, and she was
confident that she could do it again.
Soun began to gibber incoherently at his youngest daughter's
apparent insanity - at least until Kasumi gently placed a hand over his
mouth to shut him up. A look passed between the two sisters as Kasumi said
without words that she understood what Akane was doing - and approved.
"Preposterous!" Tatewaki thundered in dissent. "Thy demands go beyond
the limits of reason! I refuse!"
Akane faced him down, moving aside Konatsu and Shinnosuke to deliver
a fingertip to his chin. "That isn't your decision to make, Kuno." She
turned and offered a sweet smile to the Shogun. "Do we have a deal, your
Eminence?"
The Shogun let out a long loud laugh. "Ho yeah, wahine! I gotta say
you da most akamai keiki to evah come outta da Confederation. If da boy
wins, you submit. If you win, you get everyting you asked for, wit' my
compliments!"
He cast an amused look at his son. "So, boy. You gonna do right
by da Kuno family, and end dis silly war - one way or da other?"
Tatewaki returned his father's look of amusement with a baleful
glare. "I shall, Father. For the glory of the Kuno name, the honor
of the indomitable Furinkan Combine, and the love of Akane Tendo; I
shall prevail this day."
"Good," the Shogun snorted. "'Cause you gettin' a shaved head from
me if you lose." He looked to Akane. "Hope you don't mind doin' dis in
de dark, as we almost outta daylight. You got twenty minutes to prepare,
wahine. De rest of your people stay out here with us as guarantors."
Chapter Five
Star League Defense Force Proving Grounds
Bunker Nine, Test Area North
19:54 Local Time
The last of the summer evening's daylight faded into the gloomy
darkness of impending rain as Akane Tendo prepared to climb into the
cockpit of the Warhammer her father had operated for her duel with
Tatewaki Kuno. If she defeated him, the Confederation would earn ten
years of peace and stability to rebuild and rearm with the lost technology
from the Library Core. If she lost, the Confederation was doomed to become
a vassal state to the Furinkan Combine, and she the wife of Prince Kuno.
Ranma wouldn't stand for it, but she needed to give Tatewaki
something to bite on for her to land the deal. She hoped that her lover
would back down from doing something stupid - like honoring his promise
to kill Tatewaki before letting the Combine Prince take her away. A
quick glance skyward for a sign of his Phoenix Hawk LAM returning from
low orbit ended in disappointment.
"He should have come back by now," she said to Doctor Tofu, who was
acting as her Second in the duel.
"He probably went to rendezvous with the _Coronet,_" Tofu replied,
understanding exactly who Akane meant by her remark. "Heck, he probably
used up almost all of his fuel just trying to make orbit in time." He
closed an inspection hatch on the Warhammer, satisfied with what he saw
within. "Don't worry about him up there," he continued. "You need to keep
yourself focused on what's happening down here."
"I know," she returned softly. "But I can't help worrying about the
jerk. He's probably doing this to
*make* me worry about him."
Tofu smiled. "You're probably right about that. But you can punch
him for it after you've defeated Kuno, so stop thinking about it now."
Akane smiled. "I'll try."
"Good," Tofu said, moving over to rub at Akane's shoulders to
loosen her up. "Now you've fought Kuno before, so you know how he acts
in a battle. He likes using that sword of his, and it'll cut through your
'mech like butter, so keep your distance from him. Don't let him close on
you. You've got a decent mix of armament, at least as good as his inside
of one hundred meters, so pound on him from there."
"I know," Akane replied, letting Tofu work the kinks out of her.
"And watch for a jump attack," Tofu added. "He might try to close
the gap with that."
"I know," she repeated, impatient to get on with it. Thinking about
how much was riding on this duel was distracting her.
Tofu backed off. "Good luck, Akane."
Ukyou stepped up to take his place as Akane fastened the straps of
her cooling vest.
"What is it, Ukyou?" she asked the woman.
Ukyou offered a weak smile. Though she considered herself one of
the Confederation now, it wasn't without a certain amount of discomfort
that she wished her rival well. If Akane lost the duel, then Ranma was
fair game once more, and even though Ukyou knew that Ranma loved Akane,
the faint hope that he might come around to her still lingered in her
heart.
"Kick his ass, hon'," she said finally to Akane. Even if it breaks
my heart for you to win, she thought to herself. It makes my life a lot
less complicated this way.
Akane nodded in agreement. "Thanks, Ukyou. I mean that."
The former general shrugged her shoulders. "Just remember me when
it comes time to hand out the medals for all of this, okay?"
"I can't do that," Akane said with a grin. "Only Confederation
soldiers can receive decorations."
Ukyou rolled her eyes. "Jeez, now I have to
*enlist* after all we've
been through on this mudball? You should have been a recruiter instead of
a royal."
"I'll see about getting you a commission when this is all over. I'm
going to need you for something very important in the very near future;
the most important diplomatic assignment I can imagine," Akane returned,
then lightly threw her arms around Ukyou for a hug. Ukyou blinked twice
in surprise before returning the embrace. Diplomatic assignment? It was
what she had wanted as a way to escape Mikado Sanzenin, and yet there was
something in Akane's voice that told her taking the job would mean going
back to the Federated Shiratori for a little while.
She'd do it, she decided. If Akane could win even her rivals over
to her cause with such ease, her future as the ruler of the Confederation
would be a bright one, and Ukyou wanted to be a part of it.
"Make me a captain and we'll see," she said, half-joking.
"Major at the very least," Akane returned.
"Deal," Ukyou laughed, thinking about how she would outrank Ranchan
and Ryouga both.
They separated, and Akane started up the leg of her Warhammer as a
light rain began to fall. "I'm not going to lose to Kuno," she told
everyone within earshot.
The battlemech awaited her command. Like the Warhammer she had
used against the Black Rose forces, this one bristled with all of the
Star League's advanced technology. Such technology gave her some
advantage over Tatewaki Kuno, but against his deadly katana and his
sheer determination to win everything in one fell swoop, she knew
there were no guarantees.
Tatewaki Kuno ascended the ladder to his Thunderbolt's cockpit, sure
in the knowledge that he would prevail. Akane's challenge was welcomed by
him, not only because she would be his once he prevailed, but also because
it suited his sense of drama to resolve everything in one grand duel. He
looked out at the rabble of Confederation troops below him and scoffed.
There was no glory to be had in capturing them without a fight.
"You wastin' time, boy," his hated father called up to him from the
ground below. How he despised that man - almost as much as he despised his
cursed sister.
"Keep silent old man," Tatewaki snarled under his breath. "The Blue
Thunder of the Furinkan Combine shall deal with you in turn."
The Shogun waved once. "You lose, boy, and it won't jus' be a haircut.
You gonna be waxing surfboards for me for da next year, no shit."
Tatewaki winced at the threat, however unlikely it was to happen, for
it brought back memories of a misspent youth doing just that.
"Akane Tendo, prepare thyself!" he cried as he pulled the hatch shut
and sealed it.
The field of honor was the bowl shaped valley that opened up from the
door of the bunker. The forest made up the boundaries on three sides, and
the hill of the bunker the fourth. All in all, there was about five hundred
meters of clearance from one end to the other, making this a close range
fight in battlemechs. The spectators withdrew their battlemechs to the safety
of the treeline, and those on the ground were forced to watch from the bunker
door. Tofu and Ukyou acted as her Seconds, and were mounted up in their
battlemechs. Tatewaki had two of his personal guard in his own corner of the
field.
Akane wasn't worried about it being a close range fight. If she could
avoid Tatewaki's katana, her battlemech had the firepower to get her through
a fight at short range with his Thunderbolt. As Tofu had said, she knew how
Tatewaki fought, and there was no reason to expect him to change his tactics.
After all, the numerous times she had defeated him in last five years had
proven that.
The only thing she was concerned about was that at any time Ranma
might swoop down on the duel and render it null and void. The Confederation
needed this win more than anything, and Ranma wouldn't know about it until
it was too late. She wanted to know that he was all right, that he had
survived the destruction of the Orochi, but this was not the time for him
to make his grand return.
She activated her main radar, and spent several moments tuning it
against the clutter and backscatter generated by the woods on the
perimeter. This was a fight in the dark, and she needed every advantage
to deliver her weapons effectively. The Streak SRM-6 launcher on her
Warhammer's right shoulder would help, as would the deadly NARC beacon.
She wasn't going to worry herself with fairness at using Star League
technology against Kuno. If the idiot was willing to let her use her choice
of mech against him, then it was on his head. The Shogun seemed to agree
with that sentiment, though for some reason, he was unwilling to point
out to his son that he was outmatched in the technology department.
Perhaps he really meant what he said about Tatewaki earning his
victory.
"Akane Tendo," Tatewaki said abruptly on her commo display. "Know
that I hold thee in the highest reverence, and were this not a challenge
with thy hand in marriage as the prize, I would never seek ye any harm."
She tried not to gag. How many times had she had to fend off a
giant battlemech-sized katana or a barrage of laser fire from him while
he spouted the same nonsense in her direction?
"I wish I could say the same, Kuno," she replied curtly, and put
her Warhammer into a slow walk.
Shogun Kuno's voice sounded over the tac-net. "Hey Keiki, you ready?"
"The Blue Thunder of the Furinkan Combine is always ready for battle,"
Tatewaki sniffed.
"And you, wahine?"
Akane locked her NARC beacon on the distant target that was Kuno's
Thunderbolt.
"Let's do this," she replied. Please dear gods let me win!
"Then Fight!" the Shogun cried.
Akane had a lock with her NARC beacon, but Kuno was just out of
SRM range. She decided to light up his life with a twin blast of PPC
fire instead.
Her Warhammer's gun-tube Donal PPC arms ripped out a pair of
lightning bolts at Kuno, the blinding plasma arcs turning the night
into day as sonorous thunderclaps echoed off the distant treeline.
She watched in disbelief as Tatewaki evaded her shots, his Thunderbolt
leaping into the sky on a blast of jetfire. He was closing the range
as quickly as possible to deal a katana strike that would end the fight.
She waited until he touched down at a range of three hundred meters
before releasing the missiles. The Streak SRMs rippled from the shoulder
launcher with earsplitting screams, and shot at high speed in a hooked
claw formation that rode the NARC beam straight to the target. Kuno didn't
seem to care that they were about to hit, for he continued to march
straight at her.
As the six missiles came within meters of his Thunderbolt, the giant
katana flashed in the muted moonlight. Explosions popped like orange
strobes and their booming reports filled the air with hot shrapnel. Even
before the smoke had cleared, Akane knew that Kuno had cut them out of the
sky.
He could never do that before - could he? she wondered with horror
as the Thunderbolt continued to stomp inexorably towards her. All those
other times I beat him, was he just holding back from me?
"This doesn't look good," Ryouga said in taut voice to Akari from the
bunker door. Grand Duke Tendo had fainted away into Kasumi's arms with a
groan of disbelief.
"The battle isn't over," Akari pointed out. She nuzzled a little
closer to Ryouga anyway, seeking comfort.
He looked up to the BattleMaster that stood atop the bunker. He wanted
to join the fight - but this was Akane's duel! He couldn't protect her,
even though he wanted to desperately, and she would never forgive him
if he intervened. There was also the rain that he would have to face to
even reach his 'mech. Akari still did not know about his Jusenkyo body,
and he preferred to break the news to her some other way.
"He's just trying to psych you out, Akane," Ukyou said to her over
the tac-net.
"It's working," she said in reply. She selected her twin gunclusters
for a furious salvo as her missile launchers reloaded. She was going to hit
him with everything at once, and see how well he dealt with it.
"Don't let him get to you," Tofu added.
"How can I fear the beam, bolt, or missile from the woman who shall
be my wife?" Tatewaki broke in. "Nay, I shall not fear them, for they shall
not harm me!"
"We'll see about that!" Akane yelled angrily, and let fly with the
whole shebang. Her Warhammer's systems squawked in protest under the power
and waste heat loads, and she swiped at the system shutdown override button
as alarms wailed.
The Thunderbolt again leaped into the air on jump jets, though she
saw with some satisfaction that at least her missiles had struck him. Six
plumes of vapor rolled from the impact craters in his torso armor as he
touched down within a hundred meters of her.
"How was that!?" she asked him defiantly. She had hoped for much
better results, but at least she had pierced his damned mantle of
invulnerability.
"A love tap," he replied. "Oh Akane, how can you stand to let this
charade go on!? Drop to one knee and say you'll marry me this instant!"
"Go to hell!" she yelled at him, and triggered another blast of
PPC fire. The bolts blasted headlong into the Thunderbolt's torso,
shrouding it in a nimbus of electric fire as the rain began to fall
even harder around them. The battlemech staggered with the hits, but
continued on with arms wide open for her.
"Why isn't he shooting back?" Shinnosuke asked Konatsu.
"It could be because he's an idiot," the kunoichi broached delicately.
Hikaru Gosunkugi was taking no chances with that. He prayed fervently
next to them for Tatewaki's utter defeat. All of his straw effigies were in
place, each with a namesake spike embedded into them. Candles burned at his
temples, their wax dripping onto his shoulders and spilling down his tunic.
His sunken eyes seemed to take on a hellish light of their own as he chanted
the same unending mantra.
"Lose, Kuno... Lose, Kuno... Lose, Kuno..."
Akane found herself backpedaling as the Thunderbolt advanced into
point blank range, its hull armor smoldering but intact. She fired her
gunclusters at him, the laser beams and machine gun rounds chewing into
his battlemech as he raised the katana with shocking speed and brought
it down at her. She sacrificed an arm to stop the blade from cleaving
through her battlemech's torso - the gun-tube Donal PPC flying from the
elbow joint in a clash of steel and sparks.
"You're mine!" Tatewaki crowed as she nearly fell on her back with
the hit. "ONE HUNDRED BLOWS!"
The katana flashed and sparked as he threw strike after strike at
her. Bits of ferro-fibrous armor flew in all directions as he diced
apart her Warhammer's torso armor, yelling out triumphantly with each
blow. She felt the strain on her failing gyro, and knew that she was being
pushed over backwards.
She brought up her mech's leg in the only attack she could think of,
catching the Thunderbolt in the groin area with her Warhammer's knee.
Though there was nothing of vital significance in that area of the
battlemech, the blow was enough to throw Kuno off balance, and she pulled
him over in a somersault as she fell.
The Thunderbolt landed flat on its back some distance from her
Warhammer as she fought to stand up. It began to roll over to all fours
as she fired a salvo of SRMs into it, the explosions throwing Kuno to
the ground once more.
Her launchers reloaded as the Thunderbolt rose again. She had no
other weapons remaining to her - just the missiles, as Kuno's attacks
had cut up every gun mount she had. A second volley of Streak SRMs
pounded into him, blasting apart the Thunderbolt's left arm at the
shoulder.
"You are mine, Akane Tendo!" she heard him cry out in anguish.
"Let no one come between us, even if it be death himself!"
He would not stop. A third volley crashed into him even as his
katana severed the launcher from the Warhammer's torso with a clumsy,
chopping stroke. She let out a shriek of alarm as he raised the sword
overhead for the finishing blow, and hooked her torso about to club him
with the stump of her remaining PPC arm.
Both battlemechs hit each other at the same time. The sword
cleaved down into the Warhammer's centerline torso, the edge bisecting
the cockpit visor in a flash of flame and sparks against the falling
rain as the gun-tube arm smashed across the Thunderbolt's cockpit. Both
battlemechs hit the ground with sickening thuds from the force of the
impacts and lay very still as black columns of smoke rose to the leaden
sky.
"This can't be," Ryouga gasped.
"Akane!" Doctor Tofu cried, advancing his Centurion at a run
towards the center of the field where the two mechs lay. The ground was
turning to churned mud where the two combatants had struggled, and he
fought to keep his mech's footing.
"Could we have a tie?" the Shogun asked over the commo from the
Combine side of the field. "Da first 'mech to stand up will be declared
da winnah!"
"Stand up, Akane!" Ukyou cried out over her Hatchetman's external
speakers as she caught up to Doctor Tofu's Centurion. "For God's sake,
stand up!"
Akane Tendo felt something warm and sticky running down her nose
from her scalp and shrieked. Her fingers rubbed at the stuff, and she
strained by the light of her instruments to see what it was. The bright
red color made her feel faint with fear until she noted the distinctive
petroleum scent of hydraulic fluid.
She blinked away her disorientation as Ukyou shouted in her
headset to stand up. What was going on? It was like had awoken from a
deep sleep. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing within
the cockpit of her Warhammer.
The long aligned-crystal steel katana blade imbedded through her
forward cockpit reminded her at once. She marveled at it, the way it
had cut through the armor and her control systems so effortlessly, and
had it bit just ten or more centimeters deeper, how it would have cut
her apart just as easily.
Ukyou shouted for her to stand up once again. One look at the
interior of the cockpit told her that such a feat might be difficult
indeed.
A tertiary display told her that she still had power, though she
was leaking coolant through the fusion reactor's primary bank of heat
sinks. If she was going to stand up, she would have to hurry, or else
the powerplant was going to fuse itself into slag. She wiped away the
slick oily hydraulic fluid that dripped down on her head from a line
that had been broken, and then gripped her controls.
Gyro feedback filtered into her brain from the neurohelmet. She
could do this, instrumentation or not! The Warhammer roared in protest
as she thought it into a sitting position.
"She's moving!" Shinnosuke cried.
Hikaru was evoking Jesus, the Buddha, Muhammed, anyone who could
lend a divine hand in sealing Tatewaki Kuno's defeat. He was about to
go Shaker on them when the Warhammer rose unsteadily to its feet, then
pivoted its torso to look at the bunker.
"Da winnah!" Shogun Kuno declared. "Da fine wahine, Akane Tendo!"
Chapter Six
Akane did not look upset to see two Furinkan Combine medics carrying
the cold-cocked Tatewaki Kuno away on a stretcher to a waiting DropShip.
Neither did the Shogun.
"A deal's a deal, wahine," he told her. "Da Daimyo ain't gonna like
it, but de Big Kahuna nevah go back on his word."
"I'm glad to hear that, your Eminence," she replied.
"You put up one helluva fight. Da way de boy chopped da missiles
outta de air like dat, I tink you one done wahine."
"I wasn't going to lose," she responded quietly.
"Anyway," the Shogun continued. "I'm takin' de boys home now. Dere
ain't no reason to stick around here, an if I'm lucky, dis bruddah is
gonna catch de last o de good waves back on New Hawaii." He looked at
Grand Duke Tendo and Hikaru Gosunkugi. "You bruddahs are welcome any time,
yah. Da food at de luau is gonna be jus' broke da mouth, no shit!"
"I think I'll be taking you up on that very soon," Soun agreed
heartily. He could not contain his happiness at the fact that the Shogun
appeared to be honoring his word.
"We gotta go now," the Shogun replied. "Send de hula girls and any
Combine prisoners over to de
_Imperator_ as soon as de interference
clears up. We wait. In de meantime, I send de armistice notice to de
rest of de Inner Sphere. Oh, and give me regards to dat akamai wahine,
Missus Saotome."
He waved jauntily for them and turned to join his troops in leaving.
"I do believe we'll be seeing a new era in relations with the
Furinkan Combine," Soun observed, watching the Furinkan Combine troops
withdraw from the bunker. "I just hope it lasts."
"I'm working on that, Dad," Akane replied. "I just can't wait to
tell Ranma what we just won for ourselves."
* * *
20:28 Local Time
Shampoo passed silently through the Furinkan Combine perimeter as
Tatewaki's Thunderbolt smoldered in the darkness. She did not know and
did not care about what was taking place at the bunker. All she wanted
was to find Doctor Tofu. Of all the people in the Confederation camp,
he was the only one who had cared so deeply about her well-being, and she
needed comfort for all her wounds - inside and out.
She found him standing next to a woman of willowy beauty that bore
a passing resemblence to Akane Tendo. It must have been the eldest daughter
of the Grand Duke, Kasumi. By the way the doctor stood next to the Tendo
woman, it was clear that he harbored strong feelings for her. She felt a
pang of grief at this. It was as if any man worth having was always denied
her.
"Shampoo?" Tofu asked her worriedly upon seeing her bloody and
battered, and clad only in panties and a half-shirt. "Are you all right?"
Shampoo threw herself into his arms and held him tight. She fought
back the urge to sob in his shoulder, and was mostly successful. Tofu's
face blazed red as Kasumi gave him a questioning look. Minutes passed as
Shampoo finally caught hold of herself and let him go.
"It over," she said to him.
"I know," Tofu replied. "We've been concerned about you ever since
Konatsu returned without you. Where did you go?"
"That not important," she returned. "I make decision about baby. I
keep."
Tofu blinked several times as Kasumi arched an eyebrow at him. How
did he explain - without sounding like an idiot - that the child wasn't
his?
"Th-That's great!" he managed. "What made you decide?"
She looked away to the south. "I no wish to talk about," she told
him. "I only ask one more thing."
"What is it?"
She closed her eyes. "Shampoo left friend behind in woods. No want
animals to take body away. Mousse deserve good funeral with own people."
"I understand," Tofu said solemnly, making his own guess as to who
Mousse was to Shampoo. "I'll take care of it personally, if you'll show
me where you left him."
Shampoo hugged him again. "You good good man," she replied. Then,
releasing him, she took Kasumi's hands in hers. The eldest Tendo looked
into the fierce violet eyes of the Amazon as she made her offer. "If you
no want, Shampoo keep for self. Doctor Tofu make good husband with proper
Joketsuzoku conditioning."
Tofu made a strangled noise next to them as Kasumi smiled gently.
"I think I'll be keeping him safely within my own orbit, thank you,"
she returned sweetly.
* * *
Orochi Control Bunker
07:18 Local Time, 20 June 3025
"Please tell me you've heard from Ranma," Akane said to Lieutenant
Davidge. Her face remained unwashed from the battles of yesterday, and
it was clear by the dark circles under her eyes that she hadn't slept a
wink since then.
Davidge shook his head slowly. He had been dreading this moment
since early that morning. "I'm sorry, milady. I haven't."
"Is it still the interferance from the explosion?" she asked, as
if begging for it to be true.
"No," he replied dully. "The interference cleared up about two hours
ago. Neither the
_Tautog_ nor the
_Coronet_ has seen or heard from him."
"That isn't possible," she replied, almost to herself. "That just
can't be."
"I'm sorry, Akane," the lieutenant offered. "I'll keep listening on
all channels. He's bound to turn up sooner or later."
"Please do that," she begged. Despite their victory, they would be
spending at least three more days on the planet to repair the
_Palomino_
and to make a final sweep of the Star League facilities for any lostech
before leaving for good. If Ranma had been forced down far from the bunker,
they would have plenty of time to look for him.
She only hoped that the Shogun had a firm enough grip on his son
to leave the system and keep the cease-fire as they had promised. Until
she and her friends left Ryuugenzawa, they were still vulnerable.
Shinnosuke met her in the stairwell as she left the control room
where Davidge kept his vigil.
"Are you all packed?" she asked him.
He shook his head. "Not yet. I still haven't convinced Grandfather
to come with me."
"He does realize that he's welcome to come to Nerima with us?" she
asked.
Shinnosuke nodded. "I think he's trying to get me to leave the nest,"
he said to her. "He doesn't understand that I'm not leaving without him.
I'm really the only family he's got here, and now that our duties as
caretakers are over, what does he have left?"
"I'll have Ryouga drag him onto the DropShip if I have to," she
returned. "Don't worry about it."
He nodded appreciatively at this. "Has Ranma returned?" he asked
gently.
"Not yet," she sighed. "If he's doing this just to make me worry...
I'll pound him into snail snot."
They climbed the stairs up to the top level of the bunker. The doors
were open, and the stomp of Ukyou's Hatchetman moving out with Genma's
Orion to clear the fallen trees from the
_Palomino_ echoed through the
chamber. Sunlight streamed through the open door, and Akane stepped
outside to let the rays warm her.
Her father stood with Kasumi on the slope of the hill formed by the
bunker. She joined them wordlessly, and they continued their discussion.
"What would your mother do about her, Kasumi?" Soun asked his eldest
child.
"Show patience," Kasumi replied. "Without compromising discipline."
"It's more than a matter of putting her over my knee and spanking
her," Soun returned. "She's committed high treason against us - and very
nearly destroyed the Confederation."
Kasumi sighed. "I can't condone executing her, Father."
He nodded gravely. "And yet I fear the risk of letting her live," he
said, stroking his moustache uncomfortably. "I don't broach this subject
lightly, Kasumi. Believe me. If I thought there was another way, I would
take it."
Kasumi steepled her fingers neatly together as she watched her
baby sister stride up the hill looking much older than her tender nineteen
years.
"Perhaps it would be best if we let Akane decide," she said to her
father.
"Akane?" Soun asked.
"Me?" Akane chimed in. "Decide Nabiki's fate?"
Kasumi nodded. "You are the one who rescued the Confederation from
the Furinkan Combine," she said gently. "When Father and I nearly lost
it."
Soun saw the wisdom of Kasumi's reasoning.
"I can't make that kind of decision," Akane said to them. "You
don't
*want* me to make that kind of decision. I can't show mercy to
her, not after all that she's done to us!"
"Then don't," Kasumi advised, though by her tone it was clear that
she was only playing the devil's advocate.
Akane closed her eyes and waved them off. "I can't make this
decision. Not right now. Not with so much else on my mind." She looked
to the horizon, where Ukyou and Genma's battlemechs stomped on towards
the _Palomino._ "When Ranma returns,
*then* I'll think about it."
The whine of turbojets rose in the air as one of the
_Coronet's_
shuttles lifted off from the clearing and rose for the starship in low
orbit. Doctor Tofu was aboard, as were Shampoo and the body of the man
the two had brought in from the woods last night. From what Akane
understood of the situation, the man, Mousse, had been the other
infiltrator aboard the
_Dragonfly_ when the astrogational patch had
been stolen. Mousse had also been the father of Shampoo's child.
She didn't particularly care for the Amazon, especially because of
the way she looked at Ranma sometimes, but she also knew that if she
was going to make her plan for peace in the Inner Sphere work, she needed
the cooperation of the Amazons. Shampoo was the great-granddaughter of
the Matriarch, so presumably she had some cachet with her - at least
enough to act as a go-between for the two countries.
Ukyou too, though she would no longer wear the uniform of the
Federated Shiratori. She wanted Empress Azusa's participation in her
plans, if for no other reason than to compell the Furinkan Combine to
play nice. There wasn't anyone else but Ukyou and her friend Konatsu
to carry the message to the Empress.
Hikaru Gosunkugi, already resting aboard the
_Coronet_ as a guest
of the State, was the final element in her plan to end the Third
Succession War, and gods willing, to ensure that a Fourth Succession
War never happened.
The battlemechs they had recovered had given her the idea, though
Ranma's insistence that they keep the Cameron Stars of the SLDF painted
on them had helped. The Star League didn't need the return of some ghost
like Aleksander Kerensky. All it needed was the cooperation of the Great
Houses, and with the Library Core, she had the incentive she needed to
get the others to set aside their differences and talk through their
disputes.
It was a gamble, trading secrets for support, and it could all
very well explode in her face, but she was willing to bet that if she
could realign the Inner Sphere to put the Furinkan Combine on the
defensive - that is, to get the League of Five Nails, the Jusenkyo
Commonwealth, and the Federated Shiratori to join the Nerima
Confederation in a new Star League - then the Furinkan Combine would
have no choice but to behave, even to join as well.
Hikaru Gosunkugi would be named First Lord of the Star League,
she decided, though the title would not be the hereditary dynasty
that it had been in the days of the Camerons, nor would it be a
permanent position, but would rotate among the Great Houses every
few years. Nor would the First Lord's word be law. To go back to the
Terran Hegemony and the original Star League would only lead to another
disaster.
It was going to be a balancing act of epic proportions, she
decided. The fate of billions would ultimately depend on her. If it
didn't work, then the Inner Sphere would continue it's slide into
darkness, but if it worked, then the new golden age that everyone
kept pining for would finally come about.
It was a terrifying prospect, and it wasn't something she felt
she was capable of carrying out all by herself. She would crack under
the pressure and end up going completely insane. She needed Ranma there
to steady her, and to remind her in his own infuriating way when she was
in over her head and needed help.
And where the heck was that stupid jerk, anyway?!
The steady thump of battlemechs approaching from the east drew her
eyes. The sound came from the direction the
_Palomino_ lay, and yet as
she squinted against the early morning glare, she saw that east was also
the direction of the distant sea.
The Phoenix Hawk LAM's brilliant silver and white livery was gone,
scorched and scored from the hull by a force and heat that she didn't
want to think about. Bits of dried seaweed hung in green and brown
garlands from the vents, and from the battered engine/weapon pods. Ukyou
and Genma's battlemechs flanked the 'mech proudly as it stomped slowly and
steadily towards the bunker with its sensor head fixed squarely upon Akane
Tendo.
"Oh my," Kasumi gasped as she saw the Phoenix Hawk LAM emerge from
the forest.
"RANMA!" Akane cried, and ran down the hill to meet him. Tears
spilled down her cheeks as all her fears and doubts were dispelled.
First she was going to knock his block off for making her worry about
him, then she was going to kiss him silly.
The Phoenix Hawk stopped within fifty meters of the bunker as Akane
ran toward it. It dropped into Airmech Mode with a grinding noise that
made everyone wince, then the canopy lifted to reveal Ranma Saotome. He
stretched out his arms, appeared to yawn behind his helmet facebowl, then
casually rolled over the side of the cockpit to land feet first on the grass
below.
Akane made a flying leap into his arms as he straightened up, and he
spun her around for a moment in the air as the others at the bunker drew
close.
"Everything all right?" he asked her with lopsided grin.
She tapped on his helmet. "Take that silly thing off and I'll tell
you what you missed," she replied.
He caught the fire in her eyes as she said it.
"You gonna hit me?" he asked her.
"Of course I am," she replied. "But then I'll kiss it all better."
He set her down gently on her feet as Ryouga, Akari, Shinnosuke, Tad,
Captain Grant and the others circled around them. "Maybe I'll wait to take
it off."
Akane kicked him playfully in the shin. "Jerk."
"That's me," he replied. He finally twisted his helmet off. "Man,
I'm bushed. I need some sleep." His stomach growled audibly. "And some
chow."
Akane took the helmet from him. "No food until you explain to me
why the heck it took you
*twelve hours* to return! And the airwaves have
been clear for two hours now, so you can explain why you couldn't be
bothered to radio us!"
He rubbed at his sore neck. "Radio's busted," he replied with a
yawn. "And I had to walk the whole way back."
Ukyou called down to him from the outstretched hand of her
Hatchetman. She held up a stringy garland of seaweed that dangled from
the Phoenix Hawk. "Jeez, Ranchan, what did you do, crash into the ocean?"
Ranma curled his arm around Akane's waist and pulled her close to his
side. "Crash? Gimme a break, Ucchan. Me crash? Let's just say I made the
most of a water landing, and that I decided to save what was left of my
engines by walking home instead of flying."
"He's my son all right," Genma crowed from the open cockpit of his
Orion. "Conserving one's resources is the hallmark of the Saotome School
of Anything Goes Martial Arts."
Ranma gave his father a sidelong glance. "With a beer gut like yours,
Old Man, I can see which one of us takes that more to heart."
Akane turned his face to look at her while Genma tried to think of
a stinging rebuke for his son. "
*Ahem*" she harrumphed. "Shouldn't you be
kissing me right now?"
Ranma turned red, and his pressure suit readouts began to flash.
"In front of everyone?"
She gave him a fiery, if loving, look. "Shut up and smooch me before
I change my mind about hitting you."
* * *
Nerima Confederation WarShip
_Coronet_
Leaving Ryuugenzawa Orbit
Ryuugenzawa System, the Magistracy of Canopus
23 June 3025
Genma Saotome placed both hands on his son's shoulders and held him
firmly in place within the last shuttle to come up from the planet. He had
insisted that the two of them be the last Confederation personnel to leave
Ryuugenzawa. Once the shuttle had docked with the ship, the
_Coronet_ began
slowly accelerating out of orbit to take them to the distant Jump Point
- and from there, the trek home to the Capella System. The celebratory mood
had not dampened since the defeat of Tatewaki Kuno and the return of Ranma,
and Genma had one last admonition for his son before he stepped out of the
shuttle and was reunited with his mother.
"Now remember, boy. Your mother can't find out about your Jusenkyo
body. Not now. Not ever. The same goes for me, so don't even think about
trying to change me into a panda when she's around."
Ranma scowled at his father. "You mind explaining why?"
Genma looked away. "It's something I promised your mother when you
were little," he began. "...It's... Well, it's very complicated. Just
promise me that you'll never tell her about it. It's a matter of life
and death."
"Start talking," Ranma spat. "I know how your promises go, and I want
the whole story this time."
"All right," Genma conceded. "One of the conditions for your mother
letting me take you on this training journey was that through it, I would
make you a man among men."
Ranma flexed his bicep for his father. "Not too shabby, I'd say," he
declared. "So what's this got to do with not letting Mom know about what
happened at the Jusenkyo Labs?"
Genma fixed his son with a glare. "If she finds out that you need a
D-cup bra whenever you get wet, then you aren't very manly now, are you?"
Ranma saw his point, but he still wasn't convinced.
"So what?" he asked. "Hot water changes me right back to my old
buff, manly self. If I can get used to it, then she can too."
"There is also the matter of the suicide pact I made, and that you
signed before we left Sian," Genma pointed out in an ominous tone of
voice.
"Say what!? I don't remember signing any suicide pact!"
Genma nodded gravely. "It's true. You were little more than a baby
then, but your handprint on the document is unmistakable. When I promised
your mother that I would make you a man among men, I promised for both of
us in blood. If at any time she feels that I have failed to keep my word
to her, then both you and I are to commit ritual suicide at her command."
Ranma did not believe a word of it. Still, the very thought of
having to honor such a bargain...
"That's insane!" he protested. "What kind of a father does that to
his kid? What kind of mother would honor a deal like that?!"
"There is something you have to understand about your mother, boy,"
Genma replied, skirting the issue of his own shortcomings as a parent. "Of
course, you've hardly known her growing up away from her like you did, but
once you've gotten to know her, you'll understand that she would indeed
hold us to our accounts."
He reached into his dougi and withdrew a worn stereograph of Nodoka.
Ranma had never seen it before in his life, and certainly didn't believe
that his father would have carried it on him before now. "Look at this,
boy, and tell me she wouldn't do it."
Ranma looked at the stereograph. It was taken about the same time
as his own picture of his mother. She was pretty to the eye, and he could
see how he had inherited most of his looks from her. The stereograph was
otherwise unremarkable.
"So what am I supposed to be looking at?" he asked snidely.
"See that bundle of silk on her back?" Genma returned.
Ranma looked again. There was in fact a long slender object wrapped
in silk and neatly tied to her back.
"Okay, I see it. What is it?"
"The Saotome Family sword," Genma answered him. "The sword she
will use to cut our heads off after we've disemboweled ourselves at her
command."
Ranma choked. Mom would do that?
"No way!" he finally managed.
"She's still carrying it with her," Genma pointed out. "Trust me,
I saw it on the planet when she was in the bunker."
Ranma fought back the urge to slug his father. His own mother,
whom he had not seen for seventeen years, had been on the planet with
him during the fighting, and he had not been told about it.
"So she's still carrying the sword, knowing that she might have to
cut my head off with it the second she sees me?"
Genma nodded. "She's a remarkable woman, don't get me wrong," he
hedged. "But she's a little obsessive."
Ranma grabbed his father by the collar of his dougi. "And you made
a death pact with her over something as stupid as this!?"
"It was the only way I could get you away from her long enough to
train you to become a great mechwarrior!" Genma protested. "She was
smothering you with affection - you would have ended up a limp-wristed,
slack-jawed sissy if I hadn't rescued you from her!"
Ranma's face turned purple. "Gee, thanks Pop!" he yelled, his hands
now close to strangling his father. "I can only imagine how terrible it
must have been to be a little boy with a mother who loved him that much!"
He now bobbled Genma's head back and forth. "How can ever repay you for
taking me away from that and giving me a life of hardship, suffering,
poverty, and pain instead!?"
"You don't have to thank me," Genma gurgled out. "I was happy to do
it for the sake of my only son."
Ranma dropped him on the deck of the shuttle as Akane stepped
through the airlock door from the Shuttle Bay.
"Are you coming out or what?" she asked him. "Everyone's waiting
for you - especially your mother!"
When he didn't answer her, she stepped past the fallen Genma Saotome
to brush a hand at his cheek. Ranma stood rigid and fuming, his eyes
burning holes into his father on the deck.
"What's the matter with you, Ranma?" Akane asked him worriedly.
"Tell me something, Akane," he replied tersely. "Is my mother
carrying anything with her out there?"
She blinked at his question. "I don't think so. Why?"
"On her back," Ranma added. "Was she carrying anything on her back?
A sword, maybe?"
Akane thought about it. "Now that you mention it," she began.
"There was something strapped to her back. I guess it could be a sword.
Why are you asking me this?"
Ranma closed his eyes. "You know how I feel about you, right?"
"It might be nice if I heard it from you directly, in so many words,
just this once," she pouted. "But yes, I think I
*do* know how you feel
about me."
He blushed in spite of himself. "Then if it means anything to you,
you'll promise me that you won't ever mention my Jusenkyo body to my
mother."
"What for, Ranma?" she asked.
"Do it," Genma grunted from the floor. "Promise him."
"Shut your pie hole," Ranma barked, putting a foot on his father's
face. "This is all your fault!"
"Is this going to take more than five minutes to explain, and do
I really want to know why you're asking me this?" Akane asked him.
"No and no," Ranma replied. "Just promise me. And pass it on to the
rest of your family - assuming they haven't already spilled it to her."
Akane shook her head. "This is nuts, but since when is anything
to do with you or your father normal... Okay, I promise."
"Good," Ranma said tersely. "Let's go." He took care to step on
his father on the way out the airlock door to the Shuttle Bay.
His mother was the first person he saw. She looked a little older,
and maybe a little sadder, than his stereograph of her, but it was
definitely her. He realized that he had seen her once in the bunker on
Ryuugenzawa, but in his haste, and with the Shogun's people milling
around at the same time, he had missed who she really was.
The silk bundle on her back definitely looked like a katana.
"Ranma!" she cried, and ran to embrace him.
Her voice, the voice that had serenaded him in dreams as a little
boy, now dispelled his misgivings and he ran to meet her halfway. She
was no longer the towering, almost mythic presense he remembered as a
child. He picked her up as effortlessly as he did with Akane when he
wanted to twirl her around.
In spite of himself, he began to cry.
"I've missed you, Mom," he said, trying not to sob. His father's
admonition to be manly was punctuated by the sight of the bundle on
her back, now only centimeters away from him as he hugged her. It tore
at him to think that she could do such a thing, and yet he dared not
take the chance. How many chalk marks on the wall of reasons to despise
his father was he going to make before the man redeemed himself?
"Ranma," she sighed in his ear. "How you've grown. I couldn't ask
for any son as manly and brave as you."
He wanted to say something endearing in return, but all he could
think about was how long the trip home to Nerima was going to be now
that he had to avoid cold water like the plague. He knew full well that
anything that could trigger his curse would be attracted to him like a
magnet.
"It's good to see you, Mom. It's so good to see you."
He meant it, even if she might prove to be his undoing some day.
Chapter Seven
Azure Cloud Castle
Planet Nerima, Capella System,
The Nerima Confederation
15 July 3025
The acrid smell of plasma-arc incinerators hard at work made Nabiki's
nose wrinkle in distaste as she passed through the Salon to the large bay
windows overlooking the castle proper and the city of Gondolin far below.
She looked once over her shoulder to observe her assistants frantically
destroying as much of the documentation generated during her brief reign
as possible before her father's ship arrived from the orbiting Star League
cruiser _Coronet._ She had no illusions about her fate - not with the
Furinkan Combine beginning a general withdrawal from all Confederation
territory, and her father and sisters returning from Ryuugenzawa in
apparent triumph. The best she could hope for was to make any legal
investigations into her activities as difficult for them as possible.
Though several members of her staff had committed suicide upon the
news of
_Coronet's_ arrival in the Capella System, Nabiki was not going
to give her family the satisfaction. If they wanted to exile her - or
even execute her - they would have to come down to the planet, look her
in the eyes, and do it themselves. She would not oppose their landing;
it was futile to think that she could compel even her most loyal troops
to fire upon the rightful Heir to the Confederation in her moment of
glory.
The news networks were all abuzz with the armistice, and more than
one pundit had called for her abdication as regent with Akane still
millions of kilometers away in system space. How they had defeated Tatewaki
Kuno so utterly, she did not know. It didn't seem possible, and yet she
could trace the ultimate failure of her plans to the loss of her father
and the Shogun to the damn loyalists. She should have kept them closer at
hand, and she had nearly given herself an ulcer thinking about where her
father had disappeared to after his rescue. Now she knew.
Nabiki looked away from the document incinerators and returned her
gaze to the castle's windows. Her father and sisters were taking their
time about landing. If the tables had been turned, she would have had
them arrested before breakfast. Indeed, she had spent a sleepless night
while the
_Coronet_ settled into orbit, waiting for one of her own men
to appear at her door with a warrant for her detention - or perhaps a
poisoned dagger like the one that had killed Tetsuo Gosunkugi.
Count Baldur Thuringia appeared as she thought about arrest. She
caught the reflection of his uniform in the glass of the window. He was
not alone - a half dozen Marines from the 5th Brigade flanked him, and
they were led by a grinning Gunnery Sergeant Tranh Minh Ky. Behind them
appeared the short and stout Commodore Tanaka. Additional Marines entered
the room to arrest her staff and to stop the destruction of any more
evidence.
She turned around to tell the count what she thought of his treachery;
that he didn't even have the dignity to stay bought once she had made him
her tool, but fell short of issuing her rebuke when she saw that he was in
irons.
The look in his eyes was one of placid resignation. Nothing could
be said about that. If Rolf were still alive, she would have expected him
to laugh out loud at their mutual downfall.
"Nabiki Tendo," Tanaka said to her, displaying a piece of parchment
taken from the inside pocket of his long officer's bridge coat as he did
so. She snorted dryly at the irony of the gesture, for she had done the
same thing to her own father.
"Get on with it," she replied, her voice steely and proud in spite
of her fear. The thought of a rope drawing tight around her throat made
her feel very cold and small inside.
"You are under arrest for High Treason," the Commodore declared. "By
joint order of Grand Duke Soun Tendo, ruler of the Nerima Confederation,
and Lady Akane Tendo, Viscountess of Gondolin, and Heir to the Nerima
Confederation, you will surrender to my custody immediately."
Nabiki put her back to the Commodore and looked out the windows
once more. A Leopard Class DropShip was descending for the landing pad
that serviced the family armory. It was the _Palomino,_ the ship whose
departure she had toasted over six months ago, and whose return she had
believed would never come.
The Saotome Gambit had paid off.
EPILOGUE TO FOLLOW
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