A/N: In the 'Emperor of Mars' AU, Inaho was killed by Slaine at Novosibirisk. Dr Troyard is still alive. Slaine saves the Princess with his father's help rather than Saaazbaum's, becoming a Versian Duke and Asseylum's fiancee. Asseylum forces an armistice with the UFE, but the Versians have already conquered most of the world.


"Harklight? Could you do something, for me?"

"Your Highness?"

"When I was on Earth during the war, I met many Terrans who were kind to me. They protected me. No. We were friends. Now the war is over, could you please seek them out?"

"Certainly, Highness. And should I succeed in locating them?"

"Well, do find out if they're in any kind of trouble. I've repaid their kindness very poorly…nothing in my power would be enough. Except to ask their forgiveness."

"Princess, you saved them!" Her little handmaiden chirped, "They ought to be jolly grateful!"

In the centre of her splendid garden of flowers, Asseylum rested her brow upon her hand. Took a sip from a cold drink. Harklight silently reflected that the Terrans left struggling for life in the ruins of Earth would surely choose that jug of clean water before an apology.

"One more thing, Harklight," Asseylum flashed the aide a smile he would remember every time he saw a beautiful woman for the rest of his life, "Please don't tell Slaine or his father about this."

-0-

"Her Highness asked such a thing of you, did she?" With a tiny, bitter smile, Slaine looked aside. Harklight waited at ease before his desk. "Didn't you consider making the most cursory search, before reporting failure?"

"I am your loyal servant, your grace."

"And that would be the action of a loyal servant," Slaine really smiled this time, as Harklight did, "However, I would like you to truly seek out these Terrans, and do whatever we can for them. But they must not have any communication with the Princess. Dr Troyard and the security services must know nothing of this, assuming they haven't tracked down and killed them all already."

-0-

Every morning, Inko broke the ice on the water bucket and washed her face. She didn't care about the cold anymore. Even in Zombietown, she just wanted to be clean.

It had been a gulag, a mining settlement, and then a ghost town of crumbling grey towers. And now the ghost town had risen from the grave as a teeming refugee camp. The old, the crippled, the deserters. They fled from Versian slavery, or conscription into a useless resistance, into the darkness at the end of the Earth.

It was something like the army, Inko had decided, or the student council. You must always have something to do. Chopping furniture up for burning. Working sorry patches of vegetables. Looting electrical goods from the villages. Or swilling vodka, like the three old women outside her window, until you passed out in the street and froze to death.

Zombietown, teeming with worms. Fat with winter layers, dirty. Crawling through every street, with dull, ravenous eyes. But as Inko wrapped a rough coat around her body, and stepped out into the snow, she knew her eyes were only dull. All she'd ever know of desire had died before Zombietown, in an instant of fire and blood.

-0-

A month after Novosibirisk, news of Castle Cruhteo's destruction had reached Russia, and a small fleet had been dispatched to retake Japan. Wondering if Shinawara would look like home, Inko had been there. They had landing in Niigata bay, and the white kataphract had been waiting for them.

"Attention, United Earth Forces. Flee, and save your lives. You will not pass me."

Nothing could hit it. The kataphract danced through an artillery storm from the ships, cutting down Kats like some dreadful Hong-Kong thriller. It leapt across the water–within minutes, the first ship was burning.

In her Areion cockpit, Inko fought to stop the shaking. It didn't stop. Eyes blurred like a snowstorm. Stomach plunging, falling, from Siberian sky.

"Nao-kun. Need you. We. Need you. Need you now, or we're all–!"

He was dead. Weight on her side. Blood on her face, his face, gone–

Officer Yuki and Lt Marito had to drag her Kat back to the ship. They were almost back in Russia before she stopped screaming.

-0-

"Clear PTSD," Dr Souma had smiled comfortingly, as if it wasn't her fault, "I'll recommend immediate transfer to non-combat duties."

Months passed, with no news of a transfer, and a rumoured fresh offensive. Inko told Nina that if she was sent back into combat she would shoot herself.

"I put everyone in danger. I won't do that again. I can't watch them all die. And I can't see Nao-kun again, never again, not like that! I want to see him like he was! I want to go to where he is!"

She tore her best friend's heart to pieces, over a boy who might have liked her a bit. Nina held her on the bed as they cried together. Told her to pour it all out, but never ever leave.

Then Magbaredge came to Inko in secret. The only non-combat assignment the UFE would give her was Kaizuka Inaho's girlfriend.

"Your experience, your piloting scores; they won't let that go for anything else. You'd brief the top generals on how Kaizuka won his battles, but mainly you'd be PR. Living proof of our resolve to resist the evil Martians unto death. You'd have to tell a crowd of schoolkid conscripts what happened at Novosibirisk, every week."

Magbaredge had reported Inko and Nina's deaths in an accident. The girls had left Magadan, weeks before it was retaken by Vers. Novosibirisk was safe and under solid UFE control–but to deserters, that was hardly a comfort. The girls had to keep heading further north. Magbaredge had told them to call if they got into deep trouble, but they'd never called. Every Terran on earth was in deep trouble.

-0-

As Inko trudged through the frosty streets, she greeted two teenage girls with a truck full of building materials. Then a group of amputees with a football, in the few midday hours they could play outdoors. From a tower block, she heard a screaming woman's voice, a man's. A blow, sobbing, another blow. She walked on.

The ex-student council president largely spent her days organising. Zombietown had clinics, schools and markets, but never enough of anything. Someone had to decide who got what, in their district, and she was prepared to do it. Hulking Russians loaded down with weapons and beard listened to her. The grubby, quick-eyed children talked with her freely. Smiles slid from her heart into darkness and ice, but every blank, stoic face gave her strength. They could endure. They could survive this world. Trudging from work to work to bury herself in dreamless, sleepless bed.

In the evening, she went to visit Nina at the children's clinic; the grey building was as crowded as always. There were a couple of doctors; most of the volunteers were church workers, or ex-military. There had been no morphine for a week, and barely enough hydration fluid. Nina looked up from a comatose child with dysentery. Her hands were dirty, so she kissed Inko on the cheek.

Inko had taken a long time to ask her best friend about America. With East and West coasts wiped out in Heaven's Fall, she knew Nina and Calm had suffered.

"That's nothing to be proud of," the blonde had answered, "I just wanted, wanted, wanted. Pretty clothes, food to eat every day–everything Mom and Dad knew. I was really happy to come to Japan, but, if we couldn't stay there...I want to help everyone else, this time."

And she had. Inko helped in the clinic all she could, but Nina had spent days there at a time. With a skirt over her leggings, and her inseparable pink scrunchie, Nina had tended haemorrhaging casualties, and held hands with children who took days to die. She'd changed as much as Inko had; she never screamed at the sight of blood. A Russian boy had asked her to move in with him, but she'd promised not to leave Inko.

"Where's that new girl? Sonia." Inko asked, as they collected makeshift bedpans.

"No one's seen her. Who knows, maybe she wanted to go home?"

"Where did she live, before…?"

"No one knows."

Maybe she was home–nothing was certain, nothing was stable. Maybe mafiya or militia had killed her who knew why? Maybe her family had left to risk the attacks and universal conscription in such UFE-held cities as Novosibirisk; or take their chances in a Martian labour camp. Inko herself might have left Zombietown, to reach her parents. But neither she nor Nina had a clue where their parents were. They might not even have got out of Shinawara.

"Would you...go back to Illinois? If the war really ended?"

"It never felt like home, you know? We didn't have meals, or a real place to live." Nina's bunches brushed Inko's face, "I don't care where it is. One day, we'll make a home together."

As Nina went back to the girl with dysentery, Inko went sit to with Kenji. His family had fled Japan after the destruction of Tokyo. Flesh wounds and gangrene had kept his leg from completing the journey, and now he had dysentery too. His face was pinched and pale, but still a little cute when he smiled.

"Sis. Don't keep coming here. You'll get sick."

"Don't worry," Inko took his hand, "We should stick together."

"You're…really cute, you know, sis?"

"Oh, hush. I'll tell your Mum on you." Kenji's pinched face broke into his familiar, painful smile.

"Yeah. I really hope she's still out there, somewhere. And Dad, and Kana…you know, I really, really hope we smash the Martians one day, and take back Earth. Do you think we can, Sis?"

Inko knew her cue. She squeezed Kenji's hand, and began.

"There was one boy I knew, who fought the Martians. He was Japanese, like you...his parents weren't around, like ours. He was always quiet, and barely ever smiled, but that was only because he was thinking so much. And he was brave. Brave and caring. Whatever they faced, he did everything for his friends that could possibly be done. The Martians sent out a Kat with a flaming sword; that boy dropped it off a bridge and put out the flame. When we met a Kat with flying fists…the boy dodged behind it, so the Martian punched itself! I don't know if he was ever scared, but he never let it stop him fighting. Because there was a girl….his princess, who swore to protect. He kept his promise to the end…then he had to go away. But all his friends who loved him remember him, even when it hurts. So he won't ever really die."

"Sis…thanks." Pain spasmed across the boy's face. "..Sis? I think…you were that Princess, weren't you?"

Inko bent over his hand, almost to her knees. With a sob, she shook her head.

-0-

Some days, she really believed he would come back. He would stroll around the corner in his school blazer. Ask, why was she crying? with his calm, unmovable face, and then she would laugh again, and walk away at his side forever.

Oh, that would be enough. She couldn't ask for the old fantasies, where they were watching fireworks on a bridge, or he'd shot down a dozen Martians to save her. He'd had to be so strong, without his parents. He'd never let himself love a girl, like Inko had loved him–but for her he would try, and then he would take her in his arms, and try and try…

NO! Could Nao-kun love? Imagine? Dream? No, he was dead, and children were dying, in cold and filth. The miracles that filled his world were shrunk to the nothing that filled her life. Weighed on her side. The wonders of his life and brain had poured out over her suit…

She was filthy. Deserter. Unworthy. She was alone, and Kenji would die, because Nao-kun was dead…

When Nina got home she found Inko on the floor, buried in a blanket. She was moaning, so deep in her chest it could barely be heard.

"You're cold. If I'd slept in the clinic, you could've died."

The blonde guided her friend to her bed, started a fire in the grate, and then lay down with her. After she'd held her for an hour, she said, you're doing better. You'll keep getting better. But nothing got better. Everything slid away into ice and darkness. Nothing could uphold it, when world's last hope was gone.

-0-

Refugees flocked into Zombietown, soon after the UFE nuked the New Orleans Landing Castle. Everyone expected their cities to suffer the Martian's idea of justice. Some of the new refugees left within days; perhaps thinking it better to end in fire than in ice. Inko thought briefly of moving on, but where could they go?

In Russia, the UFE threw a dozen missiles and several suitcase nukes at Castle Orga. It survived with light damage. The Count himself proclaimed his survival in a special broadcast, along with vows of revenge both apocalyptic and apoplectic.

A week after the New Orleans bomb, the single Sky Carrier passed over Zombietown. Outside the clinic, Inko and Nina watched the speck fall–and then the Kataphract like some jointed insect crashed down in a blast of snow.

Nina ran into the clinic, lifted up two small children, and screamed for the others to run. For all the good it did, all of them did that could. Inko watched an old Russian woman falling to the snow in prayer. RPGs thumped to the ground before the Elysium, unexploded.

At the last, she wanted to fight. There was a way to kill it. Save everyone. Nao-kun had always found it, he had fought, he had died…and if only she had a Kataphract, she could die with him!

Inko could bear the cold. She ended life on her feet, frozen in a moment, screaming defiance at death.