[FFML] [Fanfic][Ranma/X-COM Crossover] The Road to Cydonia Chapter 17

[Justin Wagner]

Nice to see the FFML back up and in action. Looks like things are up
and in order 'for realz' this time, so I'll pitch into the postfest with my
two latest Chapter of TRTC, the one after this just now coming out
for internet release.

-----

For six years, mankind has waged a Secret War against an enemy from
Beyond the Stars. The UNETCO timetable moves ever forward, but a new
complication has arisen as the alien forces in the Far East surge out in
unexpected numbers and with surprising fury. India and Juliet Squads
have been tasked with taking the Procyon, a cargo ship operated by the
alien enthralled Sirius Group. For the first time, the terrible power of
the Nerima Crew is about to be directed at fellow humans. On a dark
December night, Operation Winter Triangle officially began.

-----

The Road to Cydonia

Chapter XVII
Winter Triangle

-----

Written by:
Capn Chryssalid
jbraveboy at gmail.com

-----

It was a little room in a nondescript hotel on the coast of China.

But there was a marketplace nearby, with a view over it, so he was
content. Below, the bustle of activity lasted well into the night, as
the cusp of the sun set over the horizon. He barely noticed the dark
shroud that fell over the world, or the multitude of lights that stood
out amidst it. Light was no longer relevant to his perception of the
world.

To any who looked up, by chance, and saw him standing by the window,
watching... he would have appeared almost human. Here, the darkness was
his ally, shielding that thing which would set him apart from the
attentions of the curious. He never moved, and no one stared or pointed.
He may as well have been Betty, his old mock skeleton from the clinic,
staring out from the shadows with wide unblinking eyes.

He rather liked the comparison, besides. It was... genuinely amusing.

Then he heard a muffled curse from inside the small hotel room, and
slowly, Doctor Tofu lowered his glasses over his eyes and turned to see
what the problem was. Not that he didn't have a good guess. A few
seconds later, Cologne emerged out of the bathroom, looking frustrated.
He'd been right in his assumption: it was that problem again.

Midway up her right thigh, he could see the blemish. The skin was dry
and pale and starting to flake. Even with the glasses on, he could see
the patch of necrotic tissue nestled among the muscle. Blood flow to the
area was almost nonexistent. To a normal person, it would have been a
crippling and terrible wound, and exceedingly painful to endure while
standing.

"You should just let it rot away," he said in calm, doctorly, measured
tones.

"Are you going to help me or not?" she snapped, avoiding the question
and sitting down at the edge of the bed in the main room. Cologne's
youthful body was otherwise flawless, and she sat on the bed wearing
nothing save a black pair of panties and a like-colored bra. Privately,
he found her facade of physical perfection slightly annoying, but there
was no point in saying as much to the proud and aggressive Amazon woman.

Sitting down and placing his hands over the blemish on her thigh, he
said, and not for the first time, "Focus your ki; let me direct it..."

She closed her eyes, and he saw the tendrils of energy creep through
sinew and bone. Inching his glasses up with one hand, so they lay
nestled among his thinning hair, he could see it all so clearly. Not
just the flesh and the bone, and not just the ki, but the very makings
of the universe. He saw molecules and atoms of different weights and
configurations, in as many colors as there were numbers. If the Gods
existed, they would have eyes like his had become.

His hands moved deftly on her skin. He could see the pressure points,
the old static ones he had learned, and now others: new ones no one had
known of before. He saw the pressure points that moved with every beat
of the heart, every change of mood... he saw the ones on the surface,
and the ones deep in the muscle, or buried in bone.

No earthly or even alien medicine could reverse the processes slowly
undoing Cologne's body. It had been remade, from the beginning, to fail.
Like a child learns to crawl, and then walk, and then run so she was to
learn to survive, and then thrive, bereft of a physical shell. Her soft,
creamy skin would peel and flake like dried asbestos. Her perfectly
toned and shaped muscles would wither and shrivel away. Her bones would
crack and fail. If one cared for appearances, her perfect young body
would - in only a few more months - be far more hideous than she had
been before she had been abducted.

Beneath his fingers and tender ministrations, Cologne's great power
began to work its miracle. He could see the branching network of
capillaries expand, feeding fresh blood. He could see new tissue grow,
displacing and quickly consuming the necrotic tissue. As it did so, he
couldn't help but marvel at the natural control and quantity of ki she
had at her disposal. This woman... was truly the equal of any Ethereal,
even one of the Ancients. The recent addition of alien portions of her
brain had only unleashed the full potential locked within her mind and
genetic code.

Cologne had boasted in his presence that she was the greatest Amazon
warrior of her generation. The truth, he suspected, was that Cologne was
likely the most gifted Amazon to ever have lived. In their prime, she
and Happosai would have likely been awe inspiring. And that young
Cologne, that human woman, would be like a plaything to the creature she
had now become. With anyone else under his hands, the treatment would
have taken longer than an hour. With Cologne, her leg was restored in
just seven minutes and fifteen seconds.

He noted that it was twenty seconds shorter than the last time had
taken.

"You're getting better at it," he remarked, and slipped his glasses back
down onto the bridge of his nose. "How pointless."

Cologne didn't move her body, but she did toss her long hair
contemptuously behind her. "I'd take care of it myself, but..." she
frowned a bit, disliking admitting weakness or ignorance.

The truth of the matter was that she didn't have his medical training or
knowledge, and she didn't have his eyes either. Even if she could
manipulate her own pressure points, she couldn't find them, constantly
shifting in the body. The failing of her body was not something that
could be corrected normally, not even by a Master of ki healing like
herself.

"I know, but it should not concern you. Who is going to see it, anyway?"
he smiled, just a little. "Besides your doctor, of course."

"You don't know what it's like, Tofu," she replied, tucking in her legs
and stretching them out on the bed like a cat. "You can't imagine...
growing old... losing everything. And then getting it all back!"

"I would've thought that living as long as you have would have made this
easier," he argued, standing up and slowly heading back to the window.

"I was always meant to be beautiful," she explained, reclining on the
bed, her long dark hair splayed out over the pillows. "When I went
through the Breaking Point training without even a scar, I knew it was
destiny. The strongest, the most skilled, and the most beautiful. For so
long I was... perfect..."

She opened her eyes and looked up at the ceiling, remembering. "Did you
know I managed to put off actually looking my age until I was almost
seventy? I was still the jewel of the Amazon village. But then..."

Her face tightened up, her frown deepening.

Tofu, however, just smirked. "The natural human body is also built to
inevitably fail. Consider yourself lucky that you never had a stroke. Ki
healing and life extension is impossible with brain damage."

"I searched all over the world for a technique to give me just a few
more decades. In the end, it came back to him... Happosai... he had the
answer, damn him." Cologne's expression wavered slowly between
frustration, and anger, and finally a certain cruel amusement. "But I'd
be damned if I used one of his techniques, no matter how effective it
was. And in the end, how appropriate! It was his death."

Tofu was less amused, though he had done the deed at the time.

"I doubt the men of the world would have slept soundly had you adopted
Happosai's method of life extension," he said, and went back to watching
the people below in the market. Seemingly changed by having her perfect
body restored to working order, Cologne went off to take a shower,
leaving him in peace. As for himself, he would not shower nor bathe. It
was pointless, now, and irrelevant given what his body would become.

Perhaps, when he was ready, he would bathe in the vacuum of space, and
the burning radiation of a stellar mass. Such a liberating experience
would surely wash away the last of his lingering humanity, and leave his
mind free... free to enjoy sensation in its purest form. He was close to
that already, but he wanted more. Sight, hearing, touch, taste, smell...
all would be gone, all would be as one: one primal and fundamental
sense, a single unified and perfect perception of the universe!

It would be the culmination of a life spent looking... searching... for
meaningful existence. His parents had been traditionalists, and given
his natural talent for acupressure and acupuncture, it had been natural
for him to enter that field. He had dreamed, a lifetime ago, about
working to bridge the gap between traditional medicine and the modern
western model he had learned. He had perceived a right and meaningful
life to be one that only helped others, never harmed them, and that
benefited mankind.

How foolish he had been. How blind!

What was humanity but a flock of sheep on a distant mountaintop? A
teeming mass of arrogant meat, walking and talking and eating and
shitting through life? It perplexed the aliens so... that the vast bulk
of humanity remained fit for nothing but experiments and harvesting.
None of the others had, at the same time, both leaped forward and lagged
behind. For centuries, the Mind had watched and waited, confused even,
and undecided as to whether to keep mankind as a harvest species or to
elevate them and accept them as worthy servants.

Caught between Animal and God, there stood Man.

Looking down, there was much the Doctor's dead eyes could see. That
woman walking with her young daughter... he knew her age, knew she had
caught the cold two weeks ago, he knew she had broken her leg when she
was six or seven. He knew, within a margin of error and barring outside
interference, when she would die, and from what. Her mental powers were
nearly non-existent. What he didn't know... was why.

Helping humanity as a whole was pointless. What was important, what did
have value and substance, was making humanity into something worth
saving in a post-stellar perspective. This was what the Mind wanted. If
humans became more important in the grand scheme of things, then it
would as well. If this meant only one tenth of a percent of humanity was
saved, and the rest kept alive solely for their flesh or their wombs,
then that was still surely right and meaningful. It was simply necessary
to divorce "humanity" from the vast majority of "human beings."

The Mind hummed with pleasure at his thoughts, always there... always.

Cologne emerged from the shower looking placated and refreshed, a too-
small towel wrapped tightly around her torso. He had long been aware of
how Cologne's great granddaughter, Shampoo, tended to have little
problem drawing attention to her body. By this point, he figured it had
to be a cultural trait most Amazons likely shared, and very briefly, he
entertained the notion that she was even...

His eyes saw it.

"I see." He looked away; just a glance was enough to access, in
totality, her physiological status "You had plans to go out tonight.
Don't even consider it."

"It did cross my mind," Cologne admitted. "But I know better. It is
typical, though, that I finally get back my perfect body... and I don't
even get to do anything with it."

"You indulge that 'new body' of yours too much as it is."

"Don't tell me that part of you has rotted away as well, Doctor?"
Cologne slinked up behind him. "What about little Kasumi? Just the mere
mention of her name used to send you into a nervous fit."

She reached over his shoulder and placed her hand over his heart. "Not
even a flutter for an old flame?"

He turned to face her, his glasses off, black holes where eyes had once
been.

"Love? Lust?" he asked with a sneer. "I loved Kasumi, from the moment we
met, when she was just a young girl. I dreamed of when we could finally
be together. I always thought she would complete me... complete my
life."

"But..." he slowly reached up, and removed Cologne's hand from over his
heart. "My heart no longer beats. Why would it flutter?"

Cologne smirked at him, and took a step back. "She'll die, you know."

"A great many will die," he replied, coldly. "But tell me, Cologne, are
you trying to take your mind off what is about to happen by bothering me
with trivial matters from the past? It is... unlike you."

The ancient old crone in the young body still managed a cackle or two.

"My Doctor, when I think about what is about to happen, far from wanting
to be distracted..." Her smirk grew, and her violet eyes gleamed. "I
want to celebrate! I only wish I could be there to see it. A building
that has fallen into disrepair... is better off burning to the ground
than falling apart."

-----

"When I think back to it... my most vivid memories are of the sound of
broken bones... the smell of blood, sweat and shit. It was the worst
night of my life."

-----

The suit's sensors recorded the water all around them at a chilly
nineteen degrees Celsius. Inside the stealth suit, however, it hovered
around perfect body temperature. They had been dropped discretely off in
the middle of the sea and pointed at the target of Operation Winter
Triangle. It was upon entry into the water that the mission officially
began, and their systems linked up with Command and Control.

Tatewaki Kuno sucked in a mouthful of air and tightened his grip on the
underwater leader device he and Mousse had been given. It would do most
of the work taking them to their target, conveying them under the waves
without leaving a trace of a wake on the surface. He tried not to think
about the bottomless abyss of the sea below them, and what could
possibly be lurking in those lightless depths.

Allegedly, Ranma Saotome (that currish dog) had swum from Japan to China
during a training trip, and Kuno steadfastly refused to feel any
apprehension that a rogue like Ranma had previously overcome. If any
terrors from the deep arose to challenge the scion of House Kuno, they
would taste first and foremost the edge of his sword. Though,
admittedly, wielding it effectively underwater would be somewhat
difficult. Next to him, Mousse also clung tightly to the robotic device
pulling them through the water, and supplying them with oxygen.

Seeing his Chinese comrade, Kuno quickly focused on the mission at hand.
He was getting distracted, and that was (he had come to learn) not very
professional. As a modern day samurai, he had to remain as focused and
honed as his blade. Indeed, this mission more than any other would test
his samurai character. He would prove to those he had given his word to
that he could be relied upon, and that he would execute his orders,
regardless of their nature.

It was today that he would take his first human life.

"Don't think about it so much," Mousse had said, before they had jumped
into the water. "Just do it."

For sixteen minutes, they cruised under the water, dark starlight sky
above, depthless black below. There were no lights in the water with
them, and Kuno could only check the progress of the rest of India and
Juliet Squads via a positional display on his helmet HUD. As the minutes
passed, he tried to not think, morally, about what was to come. Instead,
he went over the mission again and again in his mind. He had studied the
maps of the ship they had been given by Intel, and he had practiced over
and over for this moment. He was at the peak of his abilities, fighting
for a just cause, and on an important mission.

Mousse nudged him.

They were in position, and the underwater machine they had been using
turned itself off. Cautiously, the two headed for the surface for a
visual check on their location. Just barely, he could make out two other
human shapes near the surface. He ignored them for the moment. Everyone
had their objectives, and stuck to them. Just a couple hundred feet
away, he could see the vast metal flank of the Procyon. It was a massive
thing, even this far away, crowned by looming crane towers, and the main
above-decks bridge castle.

He and Mousse quickly began to swim towards their designated position,
discarding the air tube connecting their helmets to the underwater
leader device. They swam the rest of the way with careful strokes,
minimizing their surface wake and impression. Soon, the others began to
report in that they were in position. Mousse and Kuno waited, floating
near the almost vertical steel side of the Procyon.

"Blue One." Ryouga's voice came in from the secure wireless. "Go."

Kuno and Mousse exchanged brief looks, before latching onto the hull of
the cargo ship. They had been given devices to use to scale the side of
the ship, and while he had no idea how they worked (they seemed like
ninja or thief's equipment to him, and no respectable person should
delve too deeply into such fields), they did nonetheless. Carefully, he
began to climb, tightening his grip on the device to activate it and
lock it in place, and loosening his grip to make it release. He only had
two of the things, one to fit in the palm of each hand, and thus relied
entirely on upper body strength to ascend.

Luckily, for one in perfect physical shape as he was, and possessed of
that indomitable and insurmountable Kuno spirit, it was mere child's
play to reach the top. Of course, Mousse also seemed to have little
difficulty, but Kuno was sure he had had even less difficulty than that.
In fact he had had none. No difficulty. He made a mental note to be sure
to phrase it that way when he wrote his report, post-mission.

Kuno was just pulling himself up and over the edge of the ship when he
saw Mousse move in the corner of his vision. The Master of Hidden
Weapons flipped acrobatically over the edge, and straightened his arm
out sharply. Before the Chinese fighter had even landed softly on his
feet, a body was being pulled - retracted even - through the air towards
him. The victim was clutching his neck with one hand, the other snapped
awkwardly behind his back. He had never even had the chance to draw the
assault rifle that hung, from a strap, over his shoulder.

Mousse motioned Kuno to move to the right, while his other hand clenched
into a fist. Kuno could guess that Mousse had used wires from his
sleeves to snare the other man, but as he moved, he couldn't help but
watch as his squadmate reeled in the poor mercenary. Blood was running
in a long thick line from his neck, but despite his open mouth, not a
sound escaped to alert the rest of the ship's crew.

Mousse made a quick motion with his hand, and the man fell to the
ground, still tangled tightly in razor wire, and still silently bleeding
and choking to death. Mousse gently pushed him with his foot, hiding him
in a dark corner. It was grim work, and Kuno reached down to the hilt of
his new sword.

Their first mission, as 'designation Blue Team,' was to clear the front
of the bridge tower. While they were doing so, the two man 'Red' team
was clearing the rear of the ship, while 'Gold' and 'Green' took the
front. Kuno moved quickly, searching the dark shadows that drew across
the ship's deck with technology-assisted night vision. It seemed like
only a few seconds after he started, he saw someone, an unidentified
non-friendly, moving in from behind some equipment kept under a tarp.

Kuno felt the edge of his thumb brush past the tsuba, or hand guard, of
his sword, even as he began to silently run. His fingers softly moved
down the length of the hilt, before reaching a spot he knew almost
instinctively. It was there, where his hand just encircled the very end
of the sword's hilt, that he began his draw. Kendo was his specialty,
and his practice, but he knew several different sword styles directly
applicable to actual kenjutsu. The man before him had no armor to speak
of, but in his arms, he held a formidable weapon: the AK 74, the 5.45mm
rounds from which could easily penetrate over 60% of the surface area of
Kuno's stealth suit.

He adjusted his stance, and struck, aiming for the Migi Nagi or left
waist, as he had practiced many hundreds of times. Taking a step after
the strike had been followed through, Kuno reached in and pushed aside
the other man's right arm making it physically impossible to hit the
swordsman with it without a severe change in angle. It was a sound
precaution Kuno felt more than justified taking. He had been shot once
before (though that had been by a plasma rifle), and never intended to
be so again.

The rifle never got off a shot, but the man's left arm did shake
fiercely as his body divided in half just above the pelvis. The cut had
been clean, almost surgically so, and the very next heartbeat, a spray
of crimson seemed to erupt in every direction. It was not exactly what
Kuno had expected or imagined. There was a single great spurt, and then
only a trickle that arced through the air as the upper torso fell back
and away. Kuno bit back a hiss of revulsion as he quickly hopped away,
getting some distance. There was blood everywhere and he didn't want to
touch it, even though his environmentally sealed stealth suit.

And for some reason, he remembered when Kodachi, just a little girl, had
killed a snake in her garden and taken it to show him. He had been
repulsed then, and he felt that same thing now, directed at himself. He
stumped back another step, and steadied himself against a metal pipe
that rose up out of the floor. It was then that a new feeling coursed
through him.

He felt...

It had been so easy, so effortless almost, to kill that man. One single
move. One single strike. The exotic alloy sword had gone through his
flesh and bone like it had been warm butter. All those times he had been
humbled in battle, by Ranma especially, he had never really...
considered...

He was strong.

No: he had known he was strong. He had been strong. He was, after all,
one of the world's finest kendoists. But this was different. He briefly
closed his eyes, and remembered. He was samurai. He had always felt that
way, always strived for that ideal: to be that warrior poet he had so
deeply admired. Having taken a man's life like this, could he still
think of himself as a kendoist at all? Could he go back to a sport like
that? His strength was something new and terrible now.

Opening his eyes, he snapped his sword out, sending a lick of blood
flying into a nearby wall. His heart was beating so much faster than the
exertion warranted. His mind was racing, the rote memory of the mission
dragging his flesh and blood along for the ride. He moved through the
route planned out beforehand, leading up to a door - the only one in
this side of the ship leading into the main deck level of the tower.

"In position," he said, voice betraying his eagerness. While Mousse
finished clearing the outside fore of the castle, and Ryouga the rear,
he and Ryu were to begin the assault of the tower itself.

"Samurai," he mentally reminded himself. "Samurai. Samurai!"

The go signal came, and he opened the door.

There were two men inside, just getting their weapons ready after having
come up from above decks. Both were sailors, by the looks of them. Ryu
was closest to them, having entered from the aft door. A single vacuum
blade beheaded one, and crippled the other for life, before leaving a
clean slice in the metal wall behind them. At that moment, another man
opened the door to what Kuno recognized (from his memorization of the
floor plans) as the sick bay.

Kesagiri.

The downward diagonal cut entered the man's body just to the right of
his left shoulder. What bone was in the way may as well have been
bundled straw. Kuno's sword was all but unbreakable, with an edge that
was virtually impossible to physically deform. Through his hands, Kuno
could feel his progress: first, the clavicle, then the third
vertebrosternal rib on the left side, and then in, cleaving the heart in
two. Kuno took a step back, drawing his sword down and out of the man's
body, completing the perfect cut.

Samurai.

He was Samurai; this was what he had been born to be!

Looking into the sickbay behind the fallen sailor, Kuno didn't see any
other men, or anything of interest. He left Ryu to finish clearing the
floor, and guarding it against reinforcements from below, while he
continued on up and towards the bridge. Stepping over the two men Ryu
had killed, he carefully made his way up the metal stairway. Reaching
the top, he quickly identified the two doors, along a short L-shaped
hallway, that lead to the electronics/repair room, and what Intel
guessed was the normal ship's armory. He primed and tossed a proximity
grenade down the hall, denying access to both doors.

Rounding and heading up the next stairway, located 'above' the previous
one; he was rewarded by the sound of gunfire, and someone cursing in
what he assumed to be Thai. There were living quarters on this level, so
running into mercenaries wasn't exactly surprising. Reaching down to one
of the pockets by his thigh, he fished out a small canister of tear gas.
Pitching it underhand up the stairs, he counted down to six.

A second after the grenade went off, filling the room in a cloud of
thick eye irritating smoke; he bounded up the stairs, and saw one of the
mercenaries (wearing grey fatigues, rather than the work clothes of the
sailors), shielding his face and standing behind the cover of a doorway.
He was about three meters away. Kuno instantly fell to a crouch, arm
extended in a single handed thrust aimed for the sakakaze point, between
the legs. As expected, the man cringed at the initial contact, bringing
his head forward.

Kuno straightened out, standing back up with legs only slightly bent,
and twisting his wrist, he sliced upwards. His left foot took a step
forwards, and the corresponding arm and hand came up to support the
strike by pushing upwards on the blunt edge of the sword. The upwards
strike opened the right half of the man's neck.

But Kuno's (somewhat nascent) sakkijutsu was still warning him of
danger. He could guess that more shots were coming, and that they were
from behind him, and the other door facing the stairs. He pivoted on the
balls of his feet, and summoned his Kokuzan or 'Sky Arc Decapitation'
technique. He preferred to use it cutting upwards, but in this case, his
momentum was downwards. The sword in his hands hummed a soft melody of a
tachikaze, like the sound of a chiming pitchfork. The smoke-filled air
in front of him wavered, just as shots rang out.

They hit the "solid air" (as Kuno liked to think of it), and veered off
course or ricocheted. The shield would only last for a second or two,
however, and Kuno set his stance before beginning his most infamous
move. It was the very same that he had used on Ranma, two years ago, and
even at close range it had failed to defeat the pigtailed martial
artist. But here, against normal humans?

His upper body blurred as he began to strike at the air. The shield
formed by the Kokuzan in front of him dissipated, and in its place,
lances of piercing overpressure flew through the air. Within a body
length or so, they were powerful enough to crack solid stone. Twelve or
thirteen feet away, they still retained enough force to knock a man off
his feet, and punch holes in him. Immediately, one of the mercenaries
cried, and fell backwards. The other screamed, and withdrew back into
the other room behind him.

Racing towards the door, Kuno quickly delivered a killing blow to the
man prone (but still breathing) on the floor, and stepped into the
officer's quarters. It was clearly meant for two men, with bunks one
above the other. The rest of the room stored personal effects. Kuno
quickly saw the man who had survived the previous exchange pointing a
handgun at him. His right arm was bleeding badly, and hung limply by his
side. He was trying to aim with his left hand, but it was plain he
wasn't used to it.

His finger was just a half second too slow.

Grabbing a towel off one of the beds, Kuno cleaned his sword with it and
hurriedly left the room (and its dead occupant) behind him. There was
one more floor. After peeking in on the other officer's quarters, he
headed upstairs without resistance. From the ship's schematics, he knew
the two main rooms on the third level were the Captain's Quarters and
the Command Center and Radio Room. Above that was the bridge. The
Captain would be in one of those, for sure.

"Zero Phase," Kuno said, addressing his sword and activating the
concealed switch in the hilt. Instantly, the memory metal reformed
itself into a blunt bokken. He had more than a few things to take care
of here, but first he had to find the Captain. He kicked in the door to
the radio room first, knocking it off its metal hinges. Sure enough,
there the man was, along with some other younger man, probably the radio
operator.

Both immediately drew handguns on him.

Kuno's sword was still an instant faster, and it struck like lightning,
knocking aside the Captain's colt semi-automatic, even as the swordsman
stepped to the side, avoiding the radio operator's own arc of fire. The
Captain's .38 Super went off, pointed in the wrong direction, the first
two shots hitting the wall, and the third intercepting the radio
operator's face with predictable results. The previous two bullets
ricocheted in the small room, and another ended up hitting some wall
mounted electronics with a spray of sparks.

The Captain was on the verge of cursing when Kuno's gauntleted fist
nearly caved his face in. He slumped, out like a light, and would have
hit the floor if Kuno hadn't caught him. The kendoist's heart was still
beating like mad, and he felt powerful enough to march into an alien
battleship and take it single handedly. It took a few seconds, just
standing there, before he realized it: he'd accomplished his part of the
mission.

Unless someone called for his help, he was almost done.

It was kind of... disappointing.

"I have my target," Kuno announced over the secure comm. "Moving onto
secondaries."

There was little (essentially no) excessive chatter on this mission, he
noticed.

"Good work, Kuno," Ryouga's response came, just when he was wondering
when one would. That was it, though.

Acting without further distraction, he turned the ship's Captain onto
his chest, and bound his hands together behind him with plastic ties. He
then quickly checked in on the bridge (empty), and came back down the
stairs. As expected, the Captain's quarters had a lock on the door, and
it wasn't open. Kuno was tempted to try breaking the door down, but an
impulse told him to check the Captain's pockets first, and sure enough
he found a small electronic key card there.

His battle fever had all but faded by the point he opened the door,
though it sounded like some of his team members were having an
interesting time. The Captain's Quarters, as expected, were private and
relatively spacious. Not that he was one to look at the effects and come
to any great revelation; his job here was just to find the Captain's
personal computer or laptop. Sure enough, there it was: a small black
tower, and a good sized black flat screen monitor. He made sure it was
on, and found one of the USB ports on the front.

"Command, this is Tatewaki. I am inserting the data probe now," he
announced, addressing the distant men and women watching his every move.
He withdrew a small electronic device, the size and shape of those
"flash drives" he'd seen people use back at college. He'd never used one
himself, but he had been briefed on what to do for this mission.

Plug it in.

A few seconds later, a female voice answered him, "Looks like we have
contact. We're cracking the password as we speak."

"Nabiki Tendo?" Kuno recognized her voice instantly. "Why am I not
surprised?"

-----

Hundreds of miles away, sitting at her desk in Seiran Mountain's Signal
Intelligence Division, Nabiki smirked at his comment.

"Surprised?" she asked with a chuckle, watching the feed come in from
the data probe. It was now connected to both the Procyon Captain's
computer, and one of the isolated mainframes in Seiran specifically set
aside for hacking and data retrieval. Soon, all their hidden little
secrets would be at her fingertips.

"Imagine getting paid to do this!" Nabiki exclaimed with a light hearted
laugh. "How could I possibly refuse?"

Of course, it wasn't just her. Truth be told, she was just a data
coordinator. The data probe Kuno had inserted into the Captain's
computer was really just an uplink to the India Squad transceiver on
Kuno's back, and built into his stealth suit. It was then sent to her
department, where powerful cryptography programs quickly cut through any
opposing password protection on a different, isolated computer system.
Before her eyes, the eight digit password was cracked in under thirty
seconds.

>From there, the task was divided among three groups. The first scanned
the computer, and ensured no back hacks, viruses or worms posed a threat
to their operation. The second copied, uploaded, and did a preliminary
database search on everything on the distant computer's hard drive. The
third group worked to hack into any remaining folders, and the next
major obstacle: the wireless computer network on the Procyon.

She worked mostly with the second group, uploading and sorting the
information from the data probe. The hard part was searching quickly
through megabytes or gigabytes of data for anything of use to the
immediate mission, or that could be used within the immediate timeframe
elsewhere in the world. Nabiki's eyes darted from one computer monitor
to the next, sorting through four different search algorithms.

"Bingo!" she identified a deleted file, and quickly restored it,
bringing up the display so it took up half of one of the screens. She
tapped a button on her headset. "I've got a report on something dated
December 1st, and some kind of rendezvous. Forwarding it now."

She highlighted the relevant data, and sent it along for a more thorough
analysis. There, the date would be linked with any suspicious activity
detected on that time, or extrapolated by time and place. If anything
relevant could be gleaned from what she had found, the data hounds
working in SigInt would sniff it out. Soon, her own search parameters
began to include other computers in the network they had gained access
to.

It was all a matter of knowing what searches to run, what to look for,
and that intangible aspect of what to expect. She had been told, on the
day of her transfer, that "experience was what was most important" in
the field she had chosen to enter, and to compliment her initial psionic
training, she had been run through simulations for hours, taxing her
mind and even her eyes. Still, she had persevered. The men and women of
India and Juliet Squads didn't know it, or at least likely didn't think
of it, but in her own way, Nabiki Tendo was fighting alongside them.

Her eyes narrowed, as she pulled together traces of information on how
much the sailors (and Thai mercenaries) on board the ship were being
paid. Doing some mental calculations, she could guess at the number on
board. It led to a related bit of data, and some interesting notes and
figures regarding certain safety equipment...

But what on Earth would they need all that fire suppressant gear for?

-----

A man could get spoiled, wearing impenetrable armor and wielding weapons
that burned hotter than the surface of the sun. Or at least, Mousse felt
he had gotten a little spoiled by it. But then, his fighting style was
heavily reliant on his gear, so when some of his favorite new toys were
taken from him, on the grounds that they violated UNETSO's precious
"Section Seven" ... it left him feeling just a bit naked. He had been
given his pick of so called "conventional" arms for the mission, but
once in the thick of things, he'd found that the old ways were often
still the best.

A trio of stainless steel throwing knives buried in his target's skull,
one so deeply that it came out the back of his head, scraping against
the wall behind him as he fell to the floor. He then turned and watched
passively, as Ryu speared his opponent with his right hand, slicing
through cartilage, muscle and bone to impale the man's heart. To make
such a clean cut, as if the hand itself was really a giant blade, the
Dokuja Tanketsu Sho, or Poison Snake Deep Hole Blow) was truly an
impressive technique. As Ryu withdrew his hand, and avoided the spray of
gore from the wound, Mousse turned away.

Behind the Chinese fighter, Ryouga slowly walked out of the ship's
galley, his left arm covered in blood up to the elbow. His face was
hidden behind the three eyed helmet that was an integral part of the
stealth suit, the third optic being used for the expanded vision modes.
Mousse silently wondered what Ryouga was thinking - both squad leaders
had been very quiet today, and without their prompting, everyone else
was inclined to keep their mouths shut, too.

'He's internalizing his battle aura,' Mousse thought, this close to his
commander. 'If he's purposefully hiding his emotional state, then...'

"Incoming message!" a display on his HUD warned. "Priority One!"

"Attention," the voice of Command and Control spoke to them, but Mousse
didn't recognize this operator's voice. "All Winter Triangle Operatives,
please be aware of the likely existence of incendiary weapons in the
lower levels of the ship. The possibility of encountering improvised
devices incorporating either high pressure napalm, white phosphorus, or
Triethylaluminium is around 80%."

"Ooooh?" Mouuse mused, surprised and rather fascinated by the news.
Triethylaluminium was a powerful compound used as an ignition source in
rocket and jet engines. For a short time, he'd considered using it in
his own flame-based special technique, the Ikkatsu Kakudo Hou or Enraged
Male Phoenix Roar. It would be interesting to see how others used it
here. He would have to be mindful of any potential traps.

"Ryu," Ryouga asked, pointedly.

"That's all of them," Ryu confirmed, checking in the large crew's
quarters below-decks.

"Proceed to Blue Three," India Squads commander said, facing Mousse. The
Hidden Weapons Master nodded. Blue Three meant Kuno was to take the
captured Captain to the extraction point, while Mousse went on to begin
demolitions work and engineering the sinking of the Procyon.

"Control," he spoke normally into his helmet microphone. "This is Mu
Tzu. I am ready to begin demolition of the target."

"Patching you through now," Control replied curtly. Nearby, Ryu and
Ryouga continued on downstairs.

"This is Lieutenant Stirling," a man with a distinctly American accent
picked up the conversation. "I've got all your data right here and the
structural weak points for the ship. Let's take it nice and slow, now,
ok?"

"Yes, sir," Mousse answered. This man was an officer, after all.

"It says here you're carrying eight M112s... that can't be right...?"

"I actually am carrying that many, sir."

A pause. "Really? Damn, son!"

Mousse just chuckled "That's not even the half of it, sir."

"Well, let's take care of the boiler room, first. We can make due with
just two M112s in there, if you can reach the right points."

Access to the boiler room was through a separate staircase, behind a
heavy sealed door. This one probably shouldn't be kicked in, or else it
would just jam. Mousse carefully tested the lock, and sure enough, it
was open. That was good - it saved the time and trouble of having SigInt
hack the code. Turning the handle and unlocking the heavy door, he
headed down the flight of steps, taking note of the broken light that
hung from the ceiling.

Getting to the bottom, his sakkijutsu was already a silent presence in
his mind. For him, it came as a tense of wrongness, and a bad taste in
the back of his mouth. He enhanced his low light vision, and looked
around. Normally his vision was terrible, but with corrective and up-to-
date prescription optics, and the other gear built into his helmet, he
could see the face of a coin from forty feet away. Well, maybe that was
a slight exaggeration...

Kneeling, he found a wire wedged into the door seal.

"Trap?" he wondered aloud.

"Could be," Lieutenant Stirling concurred. "Check the grating in the
floor..."

-----

Shampoo looked down at her prey, perched high on the upper scaffold of
one of the cargo cranes. Behind her helmet HUD, she narrowed her eyes at
the man far below, weaving desperately between the cargo containers on
deck, like a rat darting through a maze. Shampoo smiled - if he was
truly a rat, than that made her an owl.

Taking two light steps, she veritably danced off the end of the crane.

It was difficult to admit, even to herself, but she wasn't a hundred
percent sure of picking off the man below with her rifle. For a few
seconds, she had been content to watch and weigh her options. Rolling in
midair, she reached behind her and withdrew a long combat knife. Despite
the vertical drop, her feet alighted softly and soundlessly on the red
and black cargo container directly behind her target. Her grip on the
knife tightened, a hint of the edge reflecting the light from the moon.

On the ground below, the man turned sharply to the right, and then all
the way around. At the slightest hint of movement, the frightened
mercenary let loose a barrage of automatic fire. In almost any other
environment, in almost any other fight, he would have been considered
more than capable. But his fear and his only casual level of personal
training were his twin dooms in this one terrible scenario.

As he reached for a grenade strapped to his chest, a hand came in from
the side, catching his weapon just above the grip, and the stock.
Turning his head in surprise and fear, emotions easily visible in his
wide brown eyes, he came face to face with her.

"Slow," she said, and pulled the weapon in her grip down and to the
side, locking his hand in the handle, and against the butt of the rifle.
She side stepped, twisting his arm with an audible crack, and locking it
behind him. Shampoo's technique was flawless, and compared to her, the
man had all the strength and experience of an infant.

His arm broke, and a second later, she shouldered him into the steel
wall of a cargo container, breaking his nose and spraying blood over the
burnished metal. His finger spasmed, and the AK 74 fired several rounds
harmlessly into the ground, a dozen feet away. Purposefully, her as yet
unused left arm came up, the knife in hand. She opened his throat and
quickly avoided the resulting carnage, not letting more than a drop hit
her stealth suit.

It wasn't his fault he was dead.

Compared to the soldiers in XCOM, compared to any of the aliens, his
reflexes and abilities were simply not comparable. The aliens, it should
be said, were uniformly faster than any normal human being, with better
reflexes, better aim, and in many cases, they were stronger as well.
Only the very best of the best stood a chance against them. What was a
man like this, then? Against a normal XCOM soldier his chances would
have been grim enough, since Section Seven narrowed the technology gap
XCOM could use. Instead, the poor fool faced an Amazon Warrior, the
finest of the Joketsuzoku tribe.

She cleaned the knife on the dead man's pants and put it back into the
sheath strapped to her right arm. Still, she Shampoo found herself
unhappy with things.

"You should be right on top of it," an annoying voice reminded her. "The
Satellite feed is reading the ship's deck as clear, so you can focus on
finding the hangar."

"Do you really find it necessary to remind me of my mission every
minute..." Shampoo grumbled, looking around. "Mercenary girl?"

Nabiki Tendo scoffed at that. "Just a friendly reminder, Shampoo."

The Chinese Amazon gritted her teeth at the woman's voice. It wasn't
that she particularly disliked Nabiki as a matter of course, but being
at the beck and call of this third wheel was... irritating. Ranma had
assigned her the easy duty of keeping the main deck of the ship clear
while everyone (except Kuno) went below decks, to pick a real fight.
Shampoo would never have said as much, but she felt like she was being
sidelined.

Ukyou should have been given this assignment.

But, of course, she wasn't. The spatula freak had always been one of
Ranma's favorites, even though she dressed like a man and never cooked
anything except slimy okonomiyaki. So she had held her own against
Konatsu; what did that prove? Only that she'd gotten better, not that
she was anywhere in Shampoo's league. The very thought of being the
weakest in Juliet Squad... it made her blood boil.

So being pulled aside to run an errand for Nabiki, the selfish sister of
that damned Akane Tendo - was it any surprise she felt like beating
someone into the ground? The pride of the Amazons was at stake! Still...
the mission... if nothing else had been drummed into her over the last
couple weeks, it was the mission. The mission came first, no matter what
other problems she'd have to deal with back at the base.

Shampoo jumped clear over a cargo crate, and took the opportunity while
in midair to get a close look at the area. There was no obvious opening
for a hangar. If it was there, it was concealed somehow. She gently
landed and walked towards a suspicious number of the giant cargo
containers. There were four of them side by side, each half as long as
the ship was wide. Most of the rest on the ship's deck were laid out
rather randomly, but these four were right in the center of the deck on
a large flatbed.

"That's it!" Nabiki chimed in, conforming Shampoo's own conclusions.
"Look for a switch or lever or something."

'I am!' Shampoo thought, but instead replied more calmly. "I know."

Unfortunately, there wasn't anything obvious in the way of 'how to get
the thing to open' but there were some rails partly concealed by paint.
Shampoo was just able to slip a finger into the groove, and bending down
low, she could see how the bottom of the flatbed ran along them. Pacing
back over to the flatbed itself, she followed along the edge, looking
carefully... and there! Reaching down, she unlocked the handle and
pulled it out. It didn't get anything moving, but a tentative tug
indicated it was probably used in case of electronic failure to manually
maneuver the flatbed.

Shampoo sighed; so it was like that, huh?

"Shampoo," Nabiki interrupted. "What are you doing? There's nothing
over..."

"I do know what I'm doing, so please just sit back in your chair and
watch," Shampoo cut the other girl off, and picked up a heavy steel
chain coiled up on the ground nearby. Unclipping it from where it was
anchored, she took the whole length over to the heavy flatbed handle,
and snapped it in place.

Shampoo measured out about two body lengths (in her case, around ten and
a half feet), wrapped the chain around her right arm twice, and started
to pull. Adding in her second hand, she continued, despite her right
foot slipping on the wet pitted metal of the deck. She huffed from the
effort, but when it seemed like she wasn't making any progress, the
flatbed started to move, taking with it the two cargo containers lying
on top. Another step back... and another... and another, until she
seemed to be doing it with little trouble at all, tons of metal moved
along the groove set in the floor.

Satisfied after pulling apart the two halves of the flatbed, and
exposing what she counted out to be at least twenty feet of clearance,
Shampoo shook loose the chain around her right arm and gave the limb a
few shakes to work out the kinks. She'd long ago come to accept the fact
that she wasn't as physically strong as Ranma, or the annoying lost pig-
boy, but she was still the top of her game when it came to raw brute
force. The spatula girl was certainly no match for her in that
department.

"Impressive as always," Nabiki commented in her ear. "Now I see why you
went through the walls back home instead of wasting your time opening
the door."

Shampoo huffed.

"Anyway," the distant Tendo sister continued. "If this is the hangar,
then it should lead right into the bowels of the ship..."

Shampoo finally came to the now open area between the cargo containers,
and there was an opening in the floor. It looked deep, but there was no
lighting to tell for sure. Shampoo reactivated the nightvision mode on
her stealth suit HUD. Electronically aided, she could make out a
hexagonal shape down below, with markings on it - a landing pad,
probably. There were only a few other objects around, too, mostly
rectangular crates and some machinery.

"Hold on just a second," Nabiki spoke up, perhaps assuming she was about
to jump down. "Something's come up. Don't jump down there unless you
think you can jump back up right away."

Shampoo didn't much like it, but she pushed back from the gap and
crossed her arms. She would have done so even if Nabiki hadn't said
anything; her orders were to secure the deck of the Procyon, so while a
part of her wanted to jump down into the bowels of the ship and the
heart of the fight, she wasn't about to disobey orders to go on some
personal unsanctioned adventure.

"You have something else in mind?" she asked.

Nabiki gave another confident chuckle. "Don't I always?"

-----

"Holy...!"

Ranma and Ukyou scattered as a wall of flame bore down on them just a
second after the last security door leading into the forward cargo hold
unlocked. Ukyou had reflexively hidden behind the flat shield of her
battle spatula, while Ranma had been forced to dive to the side and
flatten himself against the wall perpendicular to the opened door. At
the bottom of the stairs, a man in a black and white battle dress -
covered face to toe in what looked like bomb-disposal gear - brandished
what could only have been a god damned flamethrower.

I mean, they had been warned about something like this, but still...!

Another gust of flame shot up the stairs, and worse, splatters of
unfriendly looking burning oil (or something like that, Ranma had no
idea what, maybe napalm) splashed against the floor and walls. No matter
what it was exactly, it certainly wasn't the sort of thing you wanted
anywhere near you. The stealth suits they wore were environmentally
sealed and offered some protection from extremes of temperature, but he
doubted it could come close to standing up to the sort of treatment the
man downstairs could dish out.

He smirked.

If he tossed a grenade down there, and the Human Torch there blew up, it
was likely that the entire room downstairs would turn into an inferno.
Another gout of fire shot out, stronger and more persistent than the
last one. It seemed that the flamer was getting a little overeager, and
coming up stairs.

Ranma held out his right hand, where a spark of psionic energy ignited
his trademark confidence-powered ki attack, the Moko Takabisha. But this
was no normal ki blast. Ranma's grin grew, and he silently imagined the
look of envy Ryouga and Mousse and Ryu would have, watching this post-
mission. They weren't the only ones practicing and perfecting their
moves!

Accumulating the energy in the palm of his hand, he squeezed his fingers
together, feeling the pulse of the emotive ki. He briefly looked down,
and saw the web of psionic energy he was weaving abound the energy ball.
A little more... just a little more... Another long blast of flame shot
out from down the stairs.

"Here we go..." Ranma chuckled, and pushed off from the wall, drawing
back his arm like a pitcher in baseball. Making sure he got the angle
just right, but never exposing himself in the line of fire from below,
Ranma threw the energy ball hard into the wall of the stairwell.

And it bounced.

Ricocheting like a glowing blue pinball, it bounced off the wall,
leaving a scorching indentation behind. In a quarter second, it shot
from one part of the wall to the next, blowing craters in steps and even
in the ceiling, leaving a glowing contrail in its wake, like an erratic
web. The sound of it shooting off the metal at such a rate was like a
rapport of a machinegun, interrupted in the end only by a loud grunt and
gurgle, and then the sound of something heavy and metallic hitting the
stairs and falling back down to the bottom.

"Amazing, Ranma! I mean Lieutenant!" Ukyou cheered, standing up and
heading for the stairwell to see what his new technique had done to the
guy with the hand held napalm supersoaker.

Ranma's chest puffed out, but he didn't let the praise show.

"Heh. It was, wasn't it?"

Ok, maybe a little.

Still, he made sure to head down before Ukyou did. If the chance came,
he intended to prove that he'd improved not only his offense, but his
defense as well. Ryouga's ki attacks had often been able to overwhelm
his own, simply by virtue of the lost boy pouring out more depressive ki
than a Goth band convention. Leave it to Ryouga to find a technique that
actually turned his depression and brooding into a weapon! For a while
now, he'd tried to match Ryouga, quantity of ki for quantity of ki.

That was a mistake.

It was pointless to try and amp up his confidence to match Ryouga's
suicidal-ness. The answer was just like the one he had realized when
fighting Saffron: to pierce the larger attack with a more concentrated
one of your own. So he'd worked to "solidify" his Moko Takabisha into
something that wouldn't disperse or radiate with distance. The psionic
training he'd undergone had been the key.

On the ground at the bottom of the stairs, the heavily armored man
wearing the full body nomex battle dress squirmed, a glowing glob of
mental energy rammed into his chest. Ranma shook his head sadly. The
"shell" if this new and improved Moko Takabisha could also be made to
react only with another ki aura. In other words, it would bounce off a
metal wall, but stick to a person, even if that person was wearing metal
armor at the time.

The man on the ground (Ranma couldn't see his face, since it was covered
by a visor) seemed to see him, and he started to lift a weapon Ranma
could only assume was his flamethrower. It did have a cord that attached
to something mounted on the man's back. Ranma could sense that, behind
him, Ukyou was tensing to make her own attack before the prone figure
could strike. Ranma sighed again, and mentally relaxed his control over
the Moko Takabisha.

The glowing remains on the man's chest exploded, tearing apart his Level
III body armor, and doing nothing less pleasant to the flesh beneath. To
make matters worse, the force of the explosion ruptured the tank on his
back, and the pressurized contents within sprayed out, tossing the man's
body to the side and smack into a wall. Even before the last of whatever
was in the fuel tank released into the air, the weapon's user was no
longer moving or breathing.

Ranma frowned; it was an ugly way to inaugurate the first battlefield
use of a new technique. But it couldn't be avoided. He motioned to
Ukyou, and pointed to one of the doors off to the side. The room they
were in, he could see right away, was different than he had expected.
They were in largely uncharted waters in regards to layout, and
moreover, the make of this area of the ship was noticeably different
than the rest.

It looked newer and cleaner, for one thing.

They were in the fourth cargo bay, as far as he could tell, and it had
obviously been refitted to contain new structures instead of bulk cargo.
Ukyou had just checked the door, and turned back to him when the one he
had been watching opened, just a crack, and like slow motion, a grenade
rolled leisurely out into the room.

There wasn't even time to shout a warning.

The concussion grenade exploded with a deafening roar, and on its
proverbial heels, a trio of men charged through the doorway, weapons
leveled and taking practiced offensive positions. They were a
professional looking group, with Level II body armor, helmets, and
little apparent fear of the men and women who had cut through the
mercenaries above decks. What they saw, entering the room, was a giant
spatula leaning against the wall, and the bleeding body of one of their
comrades, his hand still loosely holding onto his flamethrower.

"Where are they?" one of the men growled, his Russian making his
background (and those of his comrades in arms) patently obvious.

The limp body of the flamethrower operator on the ground twitched.

"Gennadiy!" One of the newcomers yelled, heading towards the fallen man.
"Are you...?"

The formerly lifeless body suddenly leapt up, standing uneasily on two
legs.

"Haven't you ever seen a Body Manipulation technique before?" The dead
man seemed to ask, but in the wrong language, and definitely the wrong
voice. The three Russians exchanged confused looks.

"I guess not," the voice said, and suddenly the body lurched forward and
fell to the ground. Hiding behind it, going amazingly without notice, a
figure in a dark full body battle suit dropped to the ground. He
flickered, and the closest of the armed men catapulted into the air, his
face caved in by a kick that could derail a train car.

Impressively, the remaining two men kept their wits, leveling their
weapons and firing even as they took aim at the new target. Twin Baikal
MP-131K pump action shotguns fired, filling the air with a identical
cones of 12 gauge buckshot. Their target, however, was no ordinary
human. Between the instant when they started to depress the trigger, and
the moment when the gun fired the slug, Ranma was no longer where he had
been a heartbeat ago.

Standing perpendicular to the men, and with his back to both their cones
of fire, Ranma inclined his head, and watched as the heavy, blunt end of
Ukyou's battle spatula flew past him. Behind him, he noticed the men
already moving to fire again, guessing that he had moved to the right
even before their vision had fully informed them of that fact. They were
pretty good, these two.

By the way Ukyou had attacked, even before she hit her target, Ranma
knew which one of the men she was engaging. He watched with a smile as
she made a swift motion with her arm that sent a ripple, like a wave,
down the metal cord towards the blunt weight attached to the end of her
weapon. By his estimate, he could assume that it would hit the man on
the right's weapon, and then curve down and entangle his hands at the
wrist. If the weight had just passed him, that meant it would hit in
about a hundredth of a second. The man's arms would be immobilized after
about one point two seconds.

This analysis occurred in that split fraction of a second, without Ranma
even truly realizing it. It was not really 'thought at slow motion,' as
it was subconscious comprehension bordering on precognition. It was,
really, the only way to be able to fight as he did at such high speeds.
Ranma stepped back in front of the two men, and before they could fire
again, he seized the one on the left by the inside of his wrist. He was
relying on Ukyou to take care of the other man, but there wasn't a
single flashing neuron of doubt that she would fail to do so.

Up and over the man's arm went, until his shotgun was a threat only to
the ceiling, and then not even that. It was the weakness of weapons like
rifles and shotguns. They were shaped a certain way, and they were
basically solid. Human limbs, however, followed the natural motions and
compliances of the skeletal and muscular system. They were not solid. A
man holding a weapon properly had his arm a certain way, and though his
joints and skeletal system, his body could be manipulated, and the
threat of his weapon (which could, after all, only fire in one
direction) virtually neutralized.

It was just a matter of speed.

In just over a second, Ranma had the man's shotgun behind his head. His
MP-131 fired, spraying the wall with shot that bounced back and tore
apart his left arm around the elbow. Ranma effortlessly followed through
by flipping the man over and introducing his face to the ground. A
swift, clean strike to the back of his neck put an end to the man. It
was much more humane and dignified than an axe kick to the back of the
skull, which was his first impulse. There was no need to splatter brains
all over the place, after all.

Ranma sighed again.

Truly, this wasn't particularly rewarding work.

A gargled gasp prompted him to look over his shoulder, where Ukyou
seemed to be staring down at the man she'd just killed. By his position
on the ground alone, Ranma could extrapolate how she had done the deed.
First, she had pulled him in after ensnaring his hands and knocking his
shotgun aside. Then she had hooked the long end of her weapon up and
behind the back of his head, since her pulling stance wasn't well suited
at this range for using the other end of her weapon. Then she had leaned
inwards, towards him, and used the momentum of her swing to bring his
head down while kneeing up. His neck had broken, probably around the
third or fourth cervical vertebrae. That accounted for both the position
of the body, and why it was face up.

Ranma realized, then, that this was the first person Ukyou had killed on
this mission. She hadn't encountered any opposition back above decks,
when they had first inserted. A sad expression crossed his features, but
only briefly. She wasn't the only one to lose her innocence tonight.

"Ukyou," he said, putting authority into his tone.

"Yes, sir?" She seemed to snap out of it, and faced him.

"Let's keep moving. We don't want Konatsu to think we're slacking off,"
he tried to say it in a confident, leadership-inspiring sort of way,
like he had practiced. IT was actually hard to tell if it worked. His
squad wasn't exactly normal, and he was far from accomplished in reading
people... especially girls.

Ukyou nodded, her face hidden from him.

They quickly cleared the floor, and headed down to the next level.

-----

Despite a personal aversion to killing, Konatsu was, sadly, quite good
at it.

'As soon as I get back to base, I'm going to take the longest bubble
bath ever...' he mused, retracting the bloody garrote wire back into its
hidden compartment under his wrist. At his feet, a trio of bodies laid
splayed out, one with its throat sliced open, another with a bloody hole
where an eye had been, and the last with a knife sticking out of the
side of his throat at a thirty degree angle. All three wore body armor
far heaver than the Thai mercenaries, and to Konatsu's shock, one even
wore a flame thrower on his back.

The others all used some sort of shotgun. Intel had led them to believe,
pre-mission, that the common weapon could be some sort of assault rifle
or sub machine gun. The spray from a shotgun was difficult to avoid in
such confined spaces, so he could see why these men used it, but he
couldn't help feeling they were uniformly used here for some other
reason that just that. Regardless, their weaponry alone meant they had
to be taken seriously and taken out quickly.

Konatsu glanced up at the ventilation shaft he had crawled through, glad
to be out of it any into an area with enough room to move more than just
his shoulders. It had been a difficult little trek, even with his lithe
frame (the genuine girls on the team would have probably found it too
tight a fit), and his use of the Jatai (or Serpent Body) technique. The
security here was quite good, but rather improvised.

"Saotome-taichou, I have control of what seems to be the security
checkpoint leading into the lab area," Konatsu said, approaching one of
the panels to the left of the large clear plastic windows that allowed
the room to look out over the checkpoint itself. He could see two heavy
locked doors, and above them, the label "Lab A." The controls seemed
simple enough, with a numerical pad for entering a code, and a slot that
looked like it required a physical key.

"We'll be there in a minute," Ranma replied, after a second's pause.

Konatsu frowned. A numerical code and a key... both could be problems,
since he couldn't see any computer port or the like to attach a hacking
device. He quickly decided to start searching the bodies while he called
in for help from C&C.

"Command, do you have a security passcode for the Lab area?" he asked,
rifling through one of the dead men's pockets for anything of value. "It
would be numerical only. 'Lab A.'"

"We believe we have that, yes," Command replied, letting Konatsu wait
for only ten or twelve seconds. "Try 47521."

Konatsu nodded imperceptibly, and was just about to get up and try it
when his right hand found something interesting crumpled up in the vest
pocket of one of the Russian mercs. Unfolding it, he saw that it was a
"Farside" comic, taken from a calendar. There were a number of men in
what he assumed was Hell, judging by the fire and the devils, with one
of the men whispering something to the other. Below the printed text of
what the man had said, also in Cyrillic, were two sets of numbers, with
the top one crossed out (the bottom one being 47521). On the other side
of the paper were three lines of text, with a long set of numbers under
each one.

"Command," he asked. "Translation, please?"

"One moment," Command replied, as they patched him into contact with a
translator. Konatsu smiled slightly - they weren't any shortage of
people back in Seiran who could translate Russian. If it had been
something really exotic, though, they'd probably have had to check with
other bases or even make use of one of their civilian contacts to do a
rush job.

"Translation is as follows," Command answered with due haste. "Top line:
'Red Fox,' middle line: 'White Rabbit,' bottom line: 'Brown Bear.' The
cartoon text is 'I hate this place.'"

"Not very helpful, but thanks," Konatsu rooted around in the man's
pockets for another few seconds, and found a keychain that he simply
tore free. Three of the keys were gold, and one silver. Taking a guess,
the legendary male kunoichi tried that one first. It wouldn't turn
initially, so he put in the numeric code first. A green light lit up
over the panel.

"I have access to..." he started to say, when the door to the checkpoint
busted open. Ranma and Ukyou entered at the ready, alert for another
ambush. Konatsu waved at them from behind the heavy plastic guard
window.

"Good work, Konatsu," Ranma said, and nodded in his position, as he and
Ukyou slowly walked towards the lab doors. "Gold team is in position."

"We were getting tired of waiting," Ryouga replied from where he and Ryu
stood; ready to breach the lab area from the other end of the ship.

"Alright!" Ranma gave Konatsu another quick nod. "Red Four. Gold Four.
Green Three."

Konatsu turned the key, and the security doors slid open. While Ranma
lead Ukyou across a walkway and into "Lab A," he unlocked the checkpoint
door and took up his position, guarding the entry/exit point. If the
worst were to happen (like whatever chemical weapons were stored in the
labs ended up being released), he was to re-seal the lab doors, and
coordinate the rest of the mission.

In his hand, he still held the Farside comic.

"These numbers..." he wondered aloud. "Could they be...?"

-----

Ukyou moved through the decontamination room, ignoring the spray she and
Ranma were receiving. A few seconds after the doors behind them had
closed, and their impromptu shower came to an end, the ones in front of
them yawned open. The area beyond was clean, sterile, white walled and
lit by softly glowing overhead lights. They continued carefully, unsure
of what was ahead, or even what the layout was.

A bulletin board on the wall reminded them to "sign in" whenever they
entered or left the Lab. There were the same names on that pad of paper,
over and over, but the handwriting was so terrible that she couldn't
even begin to try and read what they actually were. A few other notes,
both printed out and hand written were pinned to the board as well. One
picture, a snapshot of an ominous looking UFO hovering in the night sky,
sent chills down her spine.

"Careful," Ranma reminded her over their comm. "I've got a bad feeling
about this place."

Heading a short way down the hall, to where it curved and headed left,
they finally encountered two doors. They were both labeled, the first
being "xenobiology" and the second being "Observation." Opening a small
panel in the wall, and exposing two buttons, Ranma pressed the one near
the "Observation" door. It opened with a hiss that reminded her of the
doors back in parts of Seiran Mountain. Ranma then motioned for her to
not follow him, but instead to check out the other door.

Opening the door to the lab, she quickly ducked in, checking for anyone
hiding behind desks or equipment. Lights came on as soon as the door
opened, but she didn't see anyone around. It looked like any other Lab
she had ever seen, except for a large glass stand set into one of the
walls. Here, there were cautionary labels in both English and Russian,
along with bright yellow and black warning stripes.

"Unfertilized Roe?" she read the words aloud. "Fertilized Roe.
Microspawn culture?"

"Ukyou! Do not touch anything in there!" Ranma sounded... a little
frantic. Shrugging at the strange things behind the glass, she headed
towards her squad leader in the Observation Room.

"We've found something," Ryu interrupted then, speaking for Red team.
"It looks like there was a living quarters for scientists in the rear of
the ship."

"This seems to be some kind of engineering section," Ryouga added,
sounding a little confused. "Mousse, when you're done setting up the
explosives, head over here."

"Will do!" Mousse replied. "I'll be done in a few minutes."

'So the fight's over? But where's Aliyev?' Ukyou wondered, finding
Ranma. He was looking at one of the walls - no, not a wall, part of it
was transparent. Catching sight of just what the "Observation" was built
to observe, she turned a shade of white. There were people being held in
cells, heavy mostly transparent cells ringed with steel braces, like a
cage. There were six of them still alive: three men and three women. Two
other cells had dead bodies that looked like they'd been torn open from
the inside.

Ukyou took a step closer to the glass. There was something... wrong with
the six people. They were alive, moving around and all that, but their
skin looked rough and yellow. Like they had a liver disease or
something. Their faces were bloated and misshapen, too.

'Had they been beaten?' she wondered, watching them. Suddenly, one of
the men started throwing himself against the glass of his cage. A nearby
terminal showed a spike in one of its recordings. When he stopped
hitting the cell, it leveled off and returned to zero.

"What's wrong with them?" Ukyou asked, hoping her commander would have
some sort of answer.

"They're dead, Ukyou. Let's keep moving." There was a small lift at the
end of the hall, but they took the stairs down, leading from the
Observation room to an open area on the floor below. There was another
Lab with no one in it, but the floor seemed to mostly be used for
storage. A large door designated as leading to the "Hangar" was all that
remained.

-----

Doctor Iosif Aliyev looked down the line of despondent and defeatist
researchers. They were competent men and women, this was true, but their
spirits were more easily broken than he had assumed. They were huddled
together in an ancillary "security box" built into the side of the
Hangar, trying to wait out the firefight that had engulfed the rest of
the ship.

"What are we going to do?" One of them, a man named Gregori, all but
wailed. "They are going to kill us! What are we going to do?"

"You have a gun, Gregori," Iosif answered him. "Why not just shoot
yourself and be done with it?"

"That is not funny, Iosif!" The only woman in the group, Uliana, scolded
him and tried to reassure the jittery and frightened mouse of a man
beside her. "We should surrender! Cooperate! Maybe they will be
lenient!"

"After what we have done? After what we have made?" The fourth member of
their group, Nikolay, stared at the rest of them with fire in his eyes.
"We should just die, smiling, knowing that we will have done our part to
fight these fascist pigs!"

"The Visitors will not forget our sacrifice!" The most impressionable of
the seven of them, Kirill, looked up from where he sat, eyes hopeful.
"They will clone us! They... they must have our memories stored,
somewhere, right? They'll clone us! So it doesn't matter if we die!
Right, Iosif?"

"Exactly, Kirill. There is nothing to be afraid of. Nothing!" Iosif
patted Gregori on the shoulder, trying to at least appear conciliatory
and supportive. "Besides, have you forgotten, Gregori? We have one last
card to play. If we are lucky, it may just be enough."

The meeker scientist frowned, searching his memory. "One last card...?
What do you mean?"

Iosif just smiled. "Watch. You will see." His grin widened, pushing back
his beard into his cheeks. "It was a gift, from the Visitors, for all
our hard work on their behalf..."

-----

Ryu lead his squad commander as they ran across the umbilical connecting
the engineering section to the Hangar. He wasn't nearly as technically
inclined as someone like Mousse, who relied on tricks and traps as part
of his Art, but a lot of the stuff he had seen looked like parts for a
missile or rocket. There were also canisters of different shapes and
sizes set up for testing, rather than storing, and he couldn't help but
speculate as to what they would be used for. Intel had said a "chemical
weapon" after all...

Each cargo compartment, it seemed was almost entirely separate from
those adjacent to it. From what they had discovered, the only
connections between them were the isolated tubes or umbilicals that
stretched from one section inside the ship to the next. Reaching the
door to the Hangar, he paused, but then caught himself. Ranma and Ukyou
would be breaking the doors on the other side at the same time; he
couldn't afford to hesitate!

Stepping into the Hangar, he saw bright lights set up inside the
enclosed space. High above, a rectangular line cut into the ceiling,
revealing the starry sky. The Hangar was not large by XCOM standards,
but it did fill the hold of the cargo ship quite nicely. A slightly
elevated platform looked like a helicopter landing pad, and there were a
few pipes and crates scattered about. His HUD automatically polarized,
filtering the strong light sources nearby.

"Greetings!" a voice announced, not on the comm., but from a speaker
somewhere in the Hangar. "I'll congratulate you on your skill in taking
this ship, but I'm afraid that there is one last obstacle left."

"What the Hell...?" Ryu growled, searching for the source of the
taunting voice. It had to be Aliyev. But where was he? The sound of
machinery moving, however, tipped him off to another potential problem.
Turning his head towards the source of the noise, he saw two doors
retracting, revealing an alcove built into the wall. There was something
inside it, something large, like a HWP...

Then he felt the ground shake, perceptibly.

"Is that...?" he heard Ukyou gasp, from where she and Ranma stood on the
opposite end of the Hangar. Ryu took a step back. He knew exactly what
it was. A tree-trunk sized, three toed mechanical foot stepped out from
the darkness of the alcove, sending a ripple of vibration through the
ground as it hit the ground. A gleam of red-hued metal came into view,
and flanking it, paired metallic arrays concealing deadly firepower.

"SECTOPOD!!"
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