Tempest

Priss's mind flooded with memories as GENOM's artificial mountain of a headquarters loomed larger in her vision. Twice she had been there before, both times for a confrontation with a single man. Mason. Largo. The cycle began anew...

Uncertainty tore at her heart as they raced toward destiny. With Sylia out of the picture, the leadership had fallen to her. More memories... lessons in command she had not wished to learn; now she was glad for them. Sylia had seen this day coming, and once again her foresight might just save them all...

In her mind, Priss reviewed the mission objectives. As their identities had been compromised, there were now several levels of threat to be neutralized. First and foremost, they had to know exactly what GENOM knew about them, and that meant accessing the Tower's central computer net. After that, they had to find Quincy... his very existence was now a threat to their survival.

A chill passed through her at that thought. She had often wondered how Sylia had felt when she came to the conclusion that Mason had to die; now she knew. A cold knot formed in her stomach as she steeled herself to the task at hand. Finding Quincy would not be easy... killing him might be more difficult still. Nevertheless, it had to be done.

Trying to put aside that line of thought, she looked up at their destination. The monolithic Tower now dominated their vision, looming like an omen of ill will. "Defensive strength?" she asked, almost mechanically.

"Heavy, but spread thinly," Nene responded. "We should be able to punch through the front gates if we strike quickly."

"Let's do it, then." Closing her eyes for a second, she felt the sudden rush of anger and the desire for vengeance--It could be held back no longer. "For Sylia!" she cried, "Knight Sabers, sanjo!"

"For Sylia!" came the unison response as they throttled up their motoslaves and charged to the attack.

As the defenders came into visual range, Priss was surprised at how undefended the front gate was. "Didn't they learn from the last time?" she thought to herself, then answered, "Guess not." Using her left hand to steer, she raised her arm cannon and fired two shots. Armor piercing rounds slammed through the front door, caving it inward, and a third blast blew it down.

"Seven rounds left," she reminded herself.

Four boomers, two from each side of the gate, charged out to meet them. Each pair consisted of one 34-CX and one 55-C, with the modular variants equipped for artillery. Cannon fire blazed on all sides as the Sabers closed in, getting frighteningly more accurate. "Enough of this," Priss growled and transformed her motoslave. As the massive armor slowed, now hovering inches above the ground, she lifted the gun and fired two bursts. The 34-CX's exploded, leaving only the smaller opponents, and their last shots deflected harmlessly off the Typhoon-IIB's armor.

"I've got the left one," Linna called, leaping from her motoslave. Even as she jumped, a beam of energy from the boomer she was targeting seared the space she was departing; before the laser was even shut down she was upon her foe. The knuckle bomber flared, and one defender remained.

Christine swerved left and right, taking the motoslave right up to the target in its cycle mode. Deploying her newest weapon, a micro-serrated knife in her left gauntlet, she was rewarded with a shower of sparks. The boomer's head fell to the ground, and it collapsed. Not stopping until she reached the ruined door, she called out, "Clear inside."

"Great," Priss answered, unable to shake the feeling that it had been too easy. Still, she wasn't about to complain... the worst would not begin for some time.

Nene and Linna quickly slipped into the building behind Christine and Priss, and they set off down the entrance corridor. "No pursuit," Nene noted, "but this whole building is full of boomers."

"Try to steer us around them as best as possible," Priss said, then thought, "Did I just say that? It's the right decision, though..."

"Right. Primary computer core is fifteen floors up. Secondary is thirty up, and Tertiary is buried four sublevels deep. There should be stairs that way," Nene pointed.

"Very good. Linna, Nene, Chris... send your motoslaves in the opposite direction... it'll make a nice diversion. I'll keep mine a little longer for the firepower."

"Can they fight much on their own?"

"Oh, yeah." This was the first outing for the Typhoon-IIB's, but Priss remembered very well the fighting capabilities of their predecessor. Her Typhoon-II had saved her life.

After a minute, the motoslaves charged down the corridor with their new orders.

Alarm Klaxons rang throughout the Tower as the Knight Sabers easily blasted their way through the outer defense. The security chief sat comfortably at his desk and started giving orders.

"They're on the ground floor now, making for the main stairway. Groups Alpha-Seven and Gamma-Six, move to intercept."

"Affirmative, "a very synthetic-sounding voice answered.

"Gamma-Five, three signals just broke from the main cluster... they're headed your way. Take them."

"We've got two groups of boomers closing in on us... they're not going to let us have the stairs," Nene warned.

"Like hell they're not," Priss answered. "Get ready for a fight."

They set up defensive positions in the corridor, with Nene giving continuous updates on the boomers' locations. The wait seemed eternal to Priss; every decision she made and every order she gave weighed heavily on her heart. Was sending the motoslaves as a diversion the right thing to do? Should she have kept them for the firepower? "Second-guessing is part of the territory," she remembered Sylia telling her, but knowing that didn't make it any less nerve-racking. Quickly she was coming to understand why their leader had always seemed so dispassionate, when they all knew she wasn't really that way, and she found her respect for Sylia increasing.

"Here they come!" Nene called out the warning.

"How many, now?"

"Two groups of four. We'll get about one minute between groups."

"All right, work fast, then." As she said it, the first group of boomers burst around the corner. Raising the motoslave's massive gun again, she blew the first cyberdroid to oblivion. Linna charged the second, dropping into a roll at the last second to avoid being struck. Her razor-whips trailed out to the sides, and with a flurry of sparks the boomer's legs were severed at the knees. It fell, and she drove the knuckle bomber into its back to finish it. Two remained.

"Fifteen seconds," Nene warned as she gave her suit a mental command. "Time to see if this works," she thought. Suddenly, a piercing screech was torn from the nearest boomer as it fell to its knees. Nene quickly finished it off with her arm laser.

"What the hell was that?" Christine shouted as she dodged an attack from the fourth boomer. Leaping backwards to get some clearance, she fired three discs into her foe, and it fell.

"My new weapon," Nene answered, gesturing to the second group of boomers as they rounded the corner ahead of them. "I'll explain later!"

"Right," Christine agreed, selecting her energy web...

"You're sure these stairs aren't booby-trapped, Nene?"

"I'm sure, Priss."

"All right, let's go."

As they cautiously ascended, silence dominated them. Finally, Christine spoke up, "Now... what did you DO back there?"

"Well, we each got something new, and that was mine. It scrambles the artificial synapses of a boomer's neural net."

"Ouch," Christine shuddered, feeling particularly glad to be human. "Effective."

"Very," Priss agreed. Looking up the stairs, she could see that they narrowed as one ascended. "I'm going to have to leave the motoslave behind," she said. Climbing out of the bulky armor, she slapped it on the back and said, "Go raise some hell." With that, they resumed their ascent.

By the time they had reached the fifteenth floor, a reception had been prepared for them.

"Looks like they have no trouble tracking us," Priss scowled as she fired her arm cannon with its usual devastating result.

"No kidding," Linna answered with more edge than usual on her voice. Ducking underneath a Bu-12's machine-gun barrel, she planted her left hand on the ground and drove both feet toward the boomer in a savage kick. Electrified blades extended from her heels, and with all the force she could manage she rammed them into its knees. A loud crackling drowned out the sounds of battle momentarily, and the boomer collapsed, its systems fried. Even as she withdrew her feet and moved to stand, the blades retracted.

"Nice," Priss commented, trying to ignore the strong smell of ozone. Picking off another Bu-12 with her rail cannon, she argued, "This is too easy."

"You complaining?" Christine shot back.

"Yes!" she growled as she dodged an energy blade swipe. She responded with a sharp strength-enhanced uppercut that crushed the offending 34-CX's armor. "Something's not right about this!"

"Some of the defenses still haven't been mobilized, and I can't pin down why," Nene observed.

"What do you mean, no response?" the security chief snarled.

"Boomer groups Eta, Lambda, and Mu are not responding, sir."

"Find out why!"

"Yes, sir," the comm specialist replied, having no way of knowing that it was in impossible order. Triggered by the Knight Sabers' attack, a long-dormant and nearly untraceable computer virus was running rampant in the Tower's systems and causing massive degradation of their internal comm-net. Sylia's foresight was at work again.

"Where are they now?" the chief asked himself as he stared at the monitor. Glaring at the security chief, he said, "Looks like they've split up. See if you can get ANY security forces to respond."

"I'll try," was the response, accompanied by a sigh.

"They're diverting forces to stop the motoslaves," Nene informed. "They STILL haven't activated all of their defenses." "Then lets move before they fix that," Priss prodded. Two empty corridors later, they were confronted with a heavily- armored security door.

"This is going to take time," cautioned Nene as she set to work.

Priss nodded. "Set up a defensive position, in case we get company." So far, so good, she thought. Things were going a little too well for her to be entirely comfortable, but if GENOM was setting up a trap they had waited too long to spring it. Any second now they'd be at the primary computer core.

"I'm in!" Nene called triumphantly as the doors parted for her. Greeted by a hail of laser fire, she barely managed to get under cover.

"Be careful!" Priss hissed. "We need to access that computer before we trash it." Once again, she was surprised by her own words. Perhaps Sylia had taught her better than she believed.

"Right," Christine answered, a trace of sarcasm evident in her voice."

Priss almost repeated the order, not liking the sound of Christine's response. Just as she opened her mouth to speak, however, she realized that it was exactly what she would have said--even if she intended to obey. With that thought, she wondered what it was like for Sylia to deal with her.

Another burst of gunfire pushed such thoughts from her mind. "Christine, can you web those bastards down?"

"I can try," she responded dryly as she prepared the weapon and waited for enough of a lull to get off a shot. Eventually the break came; she stepped into the doorway and fired the web. Leaping backwards to avoid the retaliatory fire, she nodded to Priss. "Got most of them, anyway."

"It'll have to do. Let's go!" she yelled as she charged through the door. Machine-gun fire ricocheted off her armor as she dove for cover. Once she was safe, she started picking off guards with the needle cannon.

"Cover me," Christine called, then dove through the doorway herself. Immediately, three of the boomer guards turned to fire at her, but Priss was faster. Three armor-piercing rounds took out the defenders, and Christine set herself up on the opposite side of the door.

"All right, we've got them now," Priss couldn't help but grin as she and Christine finished off the remaining guards. "Come on in."

Linna and Nene hurried into the room, and Nene immediately set to work on the computer.

"Guard that door," Priss ordered vehemently. While Nene worked on the computer she was terribly vulnerable, and if she should be hit it was all over.

"Accessing... I'm in," Nene informed. Quickly, she began to search for certain keywords in the databanks. The amount of data she found was frightening.

"Priss..." she breathed. "They know almost everything."

"Damn." Suddenly, all their plans had been shot to hell. "Destroy it."

Nene nodded, downloaded one last packet of files, performed a quick command on the workstations, and fired stepped away from the databank. Firing several shots, she rendered the machine little more than melted scrap. "Let's go."

"Sir, the primary is down!" the communications officer cried in a panic. "I'm getting nothing on the comm-net, either!"

"No point for us to hang around, then... let's get the hell out."

"Right with you, boss."

Priss's mind was reeling as she tried to salvage some form of a battle plan. They had not counted on more than a few higher-ups having access to their identities, but it turned out that the data had been keyed to only a moderate security clearance. Hundreds of people might possibly know.

Sylia would know what to do, she thought... damn. Any hope of a quick solution was lost now; GENOM had to be taken out of the picture entirely, or they would never be safe... but how? "Think, Priss!" a voice in her head cried out.

"All right. We still have to achieve our primary goals, then we can worry about whatever is left," she sighed. "What kind of defense are they putting together, Nene?"

"Not much. Their entire communications system is down for some reason."

"Good... we can split up. Linna and I will hit the secondary computer core, you two go after the tertiary. Destroy anything you happen to find along the way."

"Right," Christine nodded. "Let's go, Nene."

Nene hesitated. For a split second, bitterness flared up inside her, and she almost asked Priss to change the groups... then she stopped. She was a Knight Saber, and a Knight Saber she would be above all. This was not the time for personal conflicts. "All right. This way," she indicated.

Priss sighed. She had seen Nene freeze up for a moment, and she had feared that their unity was too fragile to hold. Fortunately, she had been wrong. Crisis fuses a team, after all.

"Tertiary core is down," Nene called out.

"Good work," Priss's response cut through the static. Static... Nene thought. Ever since they had dropped below the ground level, the comm system had not worked quite correctly. It was almost as if there was some sort of jamming... or possibly shielding?"

"Christine," she said coldly, "There's something important in these sublevels."

"Besides this core?" Christine asked.

She nodded. "More important than that. They've got some serious electromagnetic shielding down here."

Christine nodded, understanding. "In other words, this place was designed to take an orbital strike."

"Exactly."

"Well, let's check it out. Can you put a map on the screen here?"

Nene smirked at that. "Of course."

"All right! Secondary core is down. All Tower mainframes are destroyed." Priss reported. "We're moving on to the research facilities."

"You do that," Christine responded. "Nene's found something down here, and we're going to check it out."

"Right. Be careful."

"Always. Starblade out."

Priss looked around the corner to see a small squad of boomers coming down the hall. "Linna, we've got company."

"I see them. Four Bu-12's. Shouldn't be a problem."

Priss nodded. "Let's take them."

Like a carefully orchestrated and long-rehearsed ballet, the two sprang into action. Not a word was spoken between the two, but each instinctively knew where the other would strike. Linna went high as Priss fired low, the last shells from her arm cannon taking out two of the four. Even as the rounds impacted, Linna fell on the nearest enemy, and the Knuckle Bomber flared as she rammed the emitters into its neck. Smoke and flame shot from the gash made in its armor, and it fell.

Linna never touched the ground, using the hulk of the first cyberdroid as a springboard. Flipping forward, she extended the blades from her heels and used her weight to drive them downward into the second foe's shoulders. A flurry of sparks accompanied the sizzle of overloading circuitry, and the fight was over.

"As good as ever," Priss said, her grin hidden by her helmet.

"Right," Christine affirmed. "You sure you're up to going it alone?"

Nene nodded. "I don't read any active boomers down here, and they'd have hard time activating any with the computer and comm-net down."

"Good point," Christine conceded. "All right, let's go."

Nene nodded, and they headed back out into the corridors. Moving in opposite directions ,they began their search.

Nene smiled slightly, as a predator might. Slipping through the corridors as stealthily as was possible in powered armor, she switched her scanners to passive mode. The active mode read too many signals, and she might miss something in the clutter.

Almost immediately, a small object on the wall in front of her was overlaid in red. Analyzing the threat an infrared-targeted laser, she raised her arm and cannon and vaporized it. This would be slow going, she realized.

"This floor is all labs. We need to trash them all," she said.

Linna nodded. "It's time to put GENOM out of the boomer business."

"Welcome," a gentle female voice spoke. It was a prompt of some sort, Nene realized, but for what? Guessing that she had little time, she submerged herself in the computer.

Neural transceptors in her helmet sprang to life as her mind linked directly into the machine, reading her thoughts and translating them to the computer. Her vision blurred for a moment, then data began to overlay itself on her sense of sight. Cryptography gave way to pattern-recognition, and finally she saw it. Voiceprint.

"Initiate search," she mentally commanded the unit, knowing she had only fractions of a second remaining, and it isolated the correct pattern just in time. "Playback," she commanded.

"It is I." Quincy's ominous voice came from the speaker of her comm system... a perfect replication.

"Greetings, sir," the voice responded. "Welcome home." With those words, the door slowly opened, revealing a surprisingly large entry chamber. De-synchronizing with the suit's computers and beginning a lifesign scan, Nene found that which she sought and cautiously slipped through the entryway.

"Damn!" Christine thought to herself as she rounded the final corridor and found herself looking at a blank wall. "She tricked me... but why?" Suddenly she thought she knew, and she broke back down the hallways in a dead sprint.

"Nene!" she called out, neither expecting nor receiving a response. "Dear Lord, grant me the speed!" Triggering her jump unit for further acceleration, she felt her feet lift off the ground, and she flew.

Quincy did not hear the door softly open; it had been designed to be silent. He did not hear the sounds of hardsuited feet on the carpeted floor, nor the soft whine of the armor's sensor systems. He certainly did not expect to be so rudely jolted from his rest as he was.

"QUINCY!" Nene screamed, bringing her arm laser to bear. Her voice hardened as ice as she warned, "Don't even move."

"Hell!" Christine cursed under her breath as she heard Nene's cry. She was closing down on her position, but if she didn't get there fast it would be far, far too late.

"Damn it, Nene, why?" she questioned, knowing that it was a race against time now.

"Who are you?" the old man asked, a slight crack in his voice barely betraying the fear he felt. NOBODY should have been able to penetrate this... his home, his inner sanctum. "What are you doing here?"

"I am a Knight Saber, and I am here to kill you," Nene breathed, taking two short steps toward him.

"Many have tried that before... do you really think that I would allow you to find me?" his voice echoed through the room as the wall behind him dissolved into a viewscreen bearing his mocking visage.

"Allow?" Nene mocked. "You had no idea I was coming. My scanners say that you are flesh and blood, Quincy, and no double. You hurt me, and for that--"

"NO!" Christine cried, firing her last energy web at Nene. Caught off guard, the young Knight Saber was thrown across the room into the wall, where she was pinned.

"Chris... you..." her voice trailed off, the bitter taste of betrayal choking off the words.

"I'm sorry, Nene, but I can't let you do that."

"That does it," Priss said, the satisfaction clear in her voice. "Let's go meet up with Nene and Chris."

"Wait," Linna answered. "One more thing." Grabbing a pair of ammunition crates, she dragged them into the center of the room. "Find anything that will burn."

"Ah, good idea." It took a couple of minutes, but they set up a large pile of explosive materials.

"NOW let's go," Linna said. On their way out, she turned and fired a single shot with her laser.

The resulting explosion was dramatic. "Go!" she yelled to Priss as flame shot from the doorway she had just fired through. Fleeing the conflaglaration, they headed for the stairs down.

At the abandoned security station, fire alarms wailed in protest as the blaze swept through the laboratory area of the tower. Automated blast doors slammed shut on three floors to contain the fires, but they would still cause hundreds of millions in damages.

"I'm sorry, Nene, but I can't let you do that," Christine's voice took on an apologetic tone. "Not you," she thought. "You've never shed blood, and I won't let you do it now."

Quincy looked up, the expression on his face that of a man who had just stared down death and walked away. Christine turned to face him, removing her helmet.

"My name is Christine Starblade. Do you remember me?" Quincy nodded, remembering no such thing but not wanting to offend his savior.

"Then perhaps you remember hiring me," she continued.

He nodded again. Slowly, the name started to come to his memory... but he couldn't quite recall it.

"And perhaps... you remember trying to KILL me!" she finished, her voice turning venomous.

Quincy's eyes widened, his hope shattered like so much glass. "You've hurt a lot of people," Christine added, "and now it's time you paid for it."

The old man retreated a little, stepping backwards, hoping to find a way to escape. There was none.

"This," Christine narrated, firing a razor-disc into Quincy's wrist, "was for Nene."

Shocked at actually having been hurt, he cried out in pain. Fear gripped his heart, and he backed away further, trembling.

Firing another, this time through his left shoulder, she added, "That was for me."

She paused a minute, checked the number of discs in the magazine, and smiled slightly. Two. "This one," she carried on, "is for Sylia." The disc shot through his body, narrowly missing his spine, and tore through his back.

Then, she stopped. Quincy climbed back to his knees before her, silently begging for life. She might yet spare him, he thought, but soon he saw that any such hope was in vain.

Slowly, deliberately, she opened the magazine of the disc launcher. Carefully, she removed the final remaining blade, slipping it between two of her fingers as she walked toward GENOM's cowering CEO. Standing over him, she felt a tear roll down her cheek as a memory came back to her.

"This..." her voice broke. "This is for James, you son of a bitch!" Her whisper became a scream of pure rage as she slashed across Quincy's throat. Blood trailed from the blade as she pulled it away, and with his larynx sliced open, Quincy began to choke.

"Just die, you bastard," Christine whispered as she turned away from him, feeling her rage drain away in a torrent of sorrow. Stumbling over to Nene, she released the web and pulled her close to herself. Knowing it was over, she began to weep violently.

Behind her, Quincy fought in vain for breath. It was only a few seconds later that he died.

Ten minutes passed before a resounding explosion signaled the destruction of Quincy's secret door. Triggering the motoslave's release, Priss climbed out of the armor and ran into the room. What she saw stunned her.

Quincy lay dead on the floor in a pool of blood. Christine and Nene, helmets off, stood in the corner of the room, holding each other tightly, Nene comforting Christine. Christine looked as if all the grief she had suppressed had broken through at once, and she cried like a wounded child.

Linna came in behind her, stopping short in the doorway at the sight. "So... it really is over," she whispered.

"Perhaps," Priss said cautiously, sounding very much like Sylia might. "The beast has lost its head... but time will tell if it may grow a new one. For now, it is enough."

Linna nodded.

Fifteen minutes later, the Knight Sabers were gathered on the roof of GENOM Tower. The AD Police had just started to arrive, not having been alerted until the fire alarms went off.

"Did you leave all that data you downloaded?" Priss asked Nene.

Nene nodded. Hard copy and locked into the terminals. It should give them something to think about, anyway."

"Heads will roll," Christine added, speaking much more softly than usual.

"I hope so," Linna answered. "Maybe it really is over."

"Maybe so," Priss said, for once with no trace of cynicism in her voice. "Maybe so."

Almost on cue, the sun broke the horizon, spreading beams of light and warmth to banish the haze of Megatokyo's skies. The Knight Sabers, victorious, were the heralds of a new day.

One week later

It was one of the most beautiful days Megatokyo had ever seen. The smog was almost non-existent, and the sky was clearer than it had been in years. Sylia awoke on that perfect day, and smiled at the first thing she saw. Clustered around her bed were the assembled Knight Sabers Priss, Linna, Nene, Mackie, and Christine. Even Priss was smiling, and they all looked a little different. The biggest change was in Nene.

Sitting there in her AD Police uniform, she looked happy again; still, she was not the same as she had been before. She looked a little older, perhaps just more mature. The old light shone in her eyes again, but it seemed tempered by something, as if her innocence had grown into something more substantial.

Christine looked different, too. A sad smile graced her face, and while it was apparent that she was not over all of her pain (and probably never would be), she had let go of her anger at last. Sylia felt a swell of pride for both of them.

Seeing her gaze shift from one to the other, Christine smiled at Nene, who returned the gesture. This, more than anything, lifted Sylia's heart into the clouds.

For Sylia herself, the news was not all good. The falling debris had damaged her spinal cord, and she would likely never walk again. Still, her mood was pleasant, and even with her injury she seemed to be happier than they had ever known her. Perhaps she was simply not afraid to show it, now.

They spent several hours talking about the things that had been. The destruction of Sylia's home and business had been a loss, but not an insurmountable one. The revelation of their secret identities was worse, but even that was less severe than it might have been. Even Christine's home had been rebuilt and restored to her, though she would not reclaim the remainder of her fortune. Most of all, the final battle with GENOM, and the death of Quincy, weighted heavily in their thoughts.

For the first time, they had hope of a peaceful future. GENOM would never build boomers again; the news of corruption Nene had released had spread like wildfire in the media, and scores of government and GENOM officials went into forced retirement. The Knight Sabers were safe, even with their identities known, for none remained to strike at them. Still, they all agreed that they must remain vigilant, lest another evil rise greater than the first. They would have a new role once the last spark of hope in Megatokyo, they would now be the guardians of its flame.