Chapter 28: The Secret is Out

--July 11, 2016--

--10:55 GST--

Misa entered into a large room containing 6 people. 3 of them were standing; Broli and Corina were leaning against the wall and Sara was filling a glass of water in the sink. Hikaru and Kai Chan were sitting in chairs against the wall, and Minmei was in the hospital bed, wrapped in bandages over much of her body. Two IV bags were connected at her hand, one containing a clear liquid, the other blood. Misa set a chair at the foot of the bed and sat with her back to Minmei, facing Hikaru. "What happened to her? Car accident or something?"

Hikaru shook his head. "Looks that way doesn't it?"

Misa turned to look at Minmei, and then nodded back at Hikaru. "Then what happened? It looks like she was hit by a bus."

"Nope. It was Richard."

Misa stared at him blankly. "Richard? Are you sure?"

"He was trying to cut her open when I came in." Kai Chan said. "She was lying in a pool of blood on the floor and he was..."

"I don't want to know." Misa said turning back to Minmei. "What I would like to know is how this happened? How could he did this to her?"

"That's what I keep asking." Broli said. "Would someone please explain all this to the poor Zentradi?"

Sara sat down in a chair next to the bed and dropped two alcoseltzers into the glass of water. "He's an alcoholic. And besides that, he gets REALLY crazy when he gets drunk."

Broli snickered. "Sounds like Kamjin Krashvera. Now THERE was a guy who couldn't hold his liquor..."

One of the medics came into the room staring at a handful of papers and stopped next to the bed while he read the last of the data. He looked up at the group of people in the room, then down at Minmei, then at Misa in the chair by the bed. "Captain, you DO know how illegal this is, right?"

Misa nodded. "I'll take responsibility. Just give me the bad news."

The doctor shrugged. "Her left arm is broken in two places, along with three ribs, collar bone, and a skull fracture and a few others. She's lost alot of blood, not a dangerous amount, and..." The doctor gestured to her fingers, the tips wrapped in gawz. "She has third degree burns on her fingers and wrists. Thanks to all this new technology we've been finding in the old city she should heal without too many scars, but of course she probably won't have any fingerprints." All 6 visitors stirred uneasily, and the doctor continued. "Now for the GOOD news."

"What good news?" Corina said, slightly agitated.

"It would seem she is..." The doctor looked at the papers again. "Three and a half months pregnant."

None of them even reacted at first. The doctor wasn't even sure if they'd been listening to him, but then Hikaru looked up suddenly. "Say that again?"

"She's 3 months pregnant, Colonel."

Hikaru nodded. "Right, that's what I thought you said."

Kai Chan sighed. "Well that explains why he was trying to cut her open..."

"Thank you for that wonderful image, Lieutenant." Misa groaned, looking back at Minmei. "Did she tell any of you?"

"She told me." Corina said. "I figured she'd tell the everyone else when she was ready."

The doctor looked at the papers. "As best we can tell, her injuries have not affected the baby, but it would be best for her to avoid any kind of activity until her system's had a chance to recover. I'm still worried about a miscarriage or something."

Hikaru moved his chair to the other side of Minmei's bed and put his hand on her shoulder. "Doc, if there's one thing Minmei does NOT know how to do, it's avoid activity."

"I know. I saw the movie." He put the papers down on a table in the corner of the room and started to leave. "Let me know when she wakes up. I'd like to speak with her..."

"...and get an autograph, right?" Misa said grinning.

"Well... something like that."

--10:59--

By this time in history, all Zentradi knew the stories about Shikari Raskanos. Though all were infinitely embarrassed at having been afraid of her for so long, every one of them recognized and respected her cunning. There were few more ambitious Zentradi in the galaxy than this woman; some believed she desired to conquer a vast empire or maybe even restore the protoculture's Stellar Republic to rule with an iron fist. At the same time, Shikari had become well known among her own soldiers for her confidence and her inflated ego, making the little spec of a meltran aggressive almost to the point of recklessness. All this passion and ambition, combined with years of competition and training, were balanced with the equivalent human IQ of 280.

The plan she came up with this time was simple in principle, yet nearly impossible to pull off. It still amazed most of the fleet that her little stunt with Thor's Hammer had gone as well as it did, but this seemed like a suicide mission. The way she'd explained the operation to the crew, it just didn't seem possible. And yet Shikari was so confident with her plan that she herself insisted on leading the attack group with her personalized powered armor, a Queadlunn-Rau suit adjusted to fit her smaller-than-average body type.

The attack group folded ahead of the enemy fleet with one ship, a Tou-redir class scout ship packed with powered armors and Lighting fighters. All of the pilots were female; Shikari wouldn't settle for anything less than the finest combat pilots. Shikari's brain had been chewing on fold calculations for hours, and now she was almost ready to move the last units into position. "First and second unit, move fold boosters to coordinates 101... point 5. Adjust alignment to 10 degrees down from solar orbit."

6 powered armors carried the fold booster into its position and adjusted its alignment. Shikari looked at it and held her three fingers up to the sun to judge the angles as Commander Elensh's powered armor came up alongside her. "General, this isn't going to work! There's no WAY they're not gonna notice this!"

Shikari found her first officer's nervous demeanor quite amusing. "C'mon Imura, have I ever been wrong before?"

Commander Elensh shook her head. "I just don't think this is going to work. Hell, if those ships de-fold just TEN METERS off target from where you say they'll be, we're all dead!"

Shikari rolled her eyes. "Relax, I did the calculations myself. And besides, their navigators are as predictable as machines, they'll be exactly where I told you they'd be, don't worry."

Imura moved off to supervise the realignment of the fold boosters in the patterns. Shikari moved towards the center of the formation and activated the powerful jamming beacons that would shut down the enemy radars just long enough for them to get what they needed and leave. She'd been fighting the Supervision Army for almost 200 years, she knew their patterns by heart. "All booster units make final checks... booster three, you're too far in. Adjust your formation... uhhh... exactly 6.2 meters outwards from beacon C." The powered armors moved the booster and Shikari looked over the formation. "Perfect. That's just perfect."

And then the moment came; the scout ship's sensors picked up a defold reaction in hyperspace approaching them. Shikari almost trembled in anticipation. "Here they come! All units take positions now and DO NOT MOVE! Switch Radio transponders to wave four!"

The powered armors moved into position and the Lighting fighters moved up next to them in gerwalk mode. "General, they're here...!" The space around Shikari's powered armor began to sparkle and glow, and then all of the pilots felt the sudden rush of gravity as the distortion of a space fold began pulling them downwards. The energy release washed over all of them, and even Shikari and a dozen other pilots found herself screaming in excitement. And then when all of them looked around, they were right where they expected themselves to be, floating in space barely 2 meters from the hull of a Supervision Army command ship.

With the lightest tap of thrust, Shikari and her strike team planted their feet on the hull of the ship and crouched down as low as possible to avoid detection. They were smack in the middle of an enemy fleet, and more and more ships were defolding around them. She knew it would be difficult for them to notice her force on the hull of the command ship, especially if they were not looking for them, and everyone knew that no one would be crazy enough to try wait in the middle of an enemy fleet's defold to catch them off guard. All of the enemy sensors were directed outwards, scanning the space around them for hostiles. "1st and 4th squads, find and airlock and run a bypass. Second and third squads, check the jamming beacons." The powered armor pilots carried out the orders and Shikari carefully helped one of the other units securing the massive fold boosters to the side of the hull. There wasn't nearly enough power to fold the entire ship, but it was more than enough to get them out of there once the mission was completed.

"4th Squad reporting, we've gained access through the number 5 airlock."

Shikari carefully moved the suit along the hull of the ship towards the airlock, along with nearly a dozen powered armors of the two squads. The Lightings were standing by right behind them, pilots ready and willing to fulfill their part of the mission. One by one, the 50 powered armors and 24 fighters slipped inside of the ship and found themselves surrounded by rows of deactivated Glaug battlepods. "Armor units, secure entry hatches and battlepods. Fighter squadron, you know the drill."

"Yes ma'am!" one of the pilots said, opening the canopy. "Alright people, the comm room should be about 800 meters inside the ship from here, and 12 levels down. Split up and proceed by separate routes."

"General, what do we do if we're spotted?" Another pilot asked, standing at the foot of Shikari's suit.

"Don't sweat it. The regular crewmen are like zombies when the ship isn't at battle stations." The pilot seemed reassured and scurried off to join her comrades. Even as she spoke, the room started to spin around her head. She felt the slight change in gravity as the space around them began to bend. "The ship's folding again. Hurry up people!" The ship entered hyperspace at almost the same time the 12 meltran fighter pilots disappeared into the micron-scale passageways. Shikari now turned to the larger passage and checked for motion or any sound of activity. "Squads, set up a perimeter around this hangar. Get into the passageway and stay quiet"

"Roger." Other powered armors slunk into the macron corridors of the ship and crouched down around the corners of intersections, watching and listening for any signs of something coming. Shikari knew that thanks to heavy brainwashing, the commanders of this ship would not be expected to know any of the details of the operation. The main computer on the ship would have no relevant information, which was the reason why it wouldn't do simply to capture it or interrogate the crew. If she really wanted to know what Lacul was up to, all she had to do was wait until the ship got to Bokata, and then she would ask his computer.

--11:30--

Richard walked into to the military hospital calmly and deliberately, doing well to suppress the burning terror in his heart over the possibility that he may have just murdered his wife and his unborn child... again. He had figured that the soldier, or maybe Colonel Ichijo even, had probably informed the hospital staff not to admit anyone looking for her, so he came up with a plan to gain entry. "Excuse me," He said to the woman at the front desk. "I'm looking for someone who was admitted here recently, a young woman."

"Name and CO?"

"Uhhh... well it's a special case. She was brought in the early this morning with burns and possibly a broken arm..."

The woman glared at him. "I'm sorry sir, but this facility is not open to the public. If you're a registered serviceman, you can go right in. If not, you need a pass. Now what's her name and commanding officer?"

Richard seemed to remember that this was a military hospital and that civilians were not legally allowed to be treated here without some kind of special permit. He thought to try another approach, but then something occurred to him. "Well... you see I'm a friend of Colonel Ichijo..."

The woman looked around and lowered her voice. "Are you here to see Minmei?"

Richard nodded. "You know where she is?"

The woman pointed down the hall. "West wing, room 415. It's right by the cafeteria."

"Thank you." Richard walked on down the hall, then started to walk faster, then picked up the pace almost to a jog. He got into the elevator and took it to the 4th floor, and by the time it stopped he was running.

--11:31--

Time moved in slow motion for the 6 people in or around room 415. Minmei was still unconscious, but she had started turning over every few minutes and seemed to be slowly coming around. Corina and Hikaru were sitting next to the bed to look after her, while Misa waited outside with Broli, Sara and Kai Chan. Even Misa felt the gravity of the situation weighing down her heart. Over the years since Megaroad left Earth, Misa had come to think of Minmei as one of her closest friends. The idea of such a pleasant person in such a predicament turned her stomach.

The three of them had been sitting their in a daze for almost an hour before Hikaru poked his head out the door. "Hey you guys, she's awake."

Misa, Sara, and Broli stood up from their chairs and filed into the room, all pulling up chairs in a half circle around Minmei's bed. Hikaru came to the side of the bed and adjusted it so she could sit up, and Minmei slowly opened her eyes. She looked around for a few minute in a daze, and then blinked quickly as she realized just where she was and what was going on. "I'm... what happened...?"

Kai Chan stood up and patted her hand. "You've been injured very badly. You have 8 broken bones and a concussion, and you've lost alot of blood."

Minmei's fragmented memory was slowly falling into place. Bit by bit she started to gather from what she could remember that Richard had gotten drunk again and this time had gone much farther than ever before. And then she remembered him walking towards her with a carving knife in his hands... "W-What about... what about the...?!"

"Relax, the baby's just fine."

Minmei breathed a sigh of relief, but found herself meeting the cold stairs of her closest friends all around her. "Look... I... I wanted to tell you guys but..."

"Like it's any of OUR business." Sara said, patting her on the shoulder. "It's your life, not ours. You could have told us whenever you were ready. But for god's sake, why didn't you say something about Richard? In case you haven't figured it out by now, he's a VERY dangerous man."

Minmei looked down at her ankles. "I was afraid you'd get in the way, that you might so something to him..."

"You're damn right we'd do something to him!" Hikaru said angrily. "If I'd known three weeks ago about any of this he would have gone strait through the wood chipper!"

"He's the man I love, and the father of my child." Minmei patted her stomach again, wondering if maybe the baby had been listening to all this. "I know how stupid this sounds but I couldn't just give up on him."

Misa ran her fingers through her hair. "Minmei, I'm not going to let you endanger the lives of yourself AND your child. I want you to stay away from him until we've had a chance to deal with him."

Minmei adjusted the bed and sat up more. "Misa... guys, I'm begging you, PLEASE don't do anything..."

"Well we can't just leave it as it is." Hikaru said, leaning against the wall next to the bed. "Look Minmei, you have to know how lucky you are to even be alive right now. If it hadn't been for Corina and Kai Chan, the guys in the morgue would be gluing you back together right now."

Minmei sighed. "Look you guys, I appreciate you helping me like this but..."

Everyone in the room heard the sound of running footsteps outside and all 6 of them looked at the door just in time to see Richard dash into the room. "Minmei are you al...?!" He stopped in the middle of the room at the sight of 7 sets of eyes staring through him, all frozen in a moment of time that seemed to stretch into infinity. For that moment in time, no one breathed, no one moved, all of their hearts stopped beating.

After a few seconds that seemed like a few hours, Hikaru stood up and walked towards him. Richard found himself staring at him like a deer in the headlights of a mad truck, and in moments they were face to face with each other. "Who are you?" Hikaru said slowly. "Do you have business here or are you lost?" He paused for a minute and glanced back at Minmei. "..or drunk?"

Kai Chan stood up next to him and looked at Richard. "Wait a second, is this your wife?" He said, gesturing towards Minmei. "I mean if she is, shouldn't you be out looking for the guy who did this?" Richard opened his mouth to say something, then gave up the attempt. Kai Chan already knew what he intended to say, and now her turned around to face Minmei. "Minmei, is this your husband?"

Minmei stared at Richard for a long moment, tears running down her cheeks, and shook her head. "Nope." She said casually. "I've seen this man before in my life."

"Really? Well I don't know him either." Misa said, standing up next to the bed. "I've never heard of this Richard person."

"I have." Sara said, moving around to the other side of the bed. "I have a restraining order. He's not supposed to be within 50 meters of me. I'm not very good with math, but that looks like alot less than 50 meters."

Corina shrugged. "Maybe he's a fan of yours Minmei?"

Minmei nodded slowly. "Could be. But this room is family only, right Broli?"

"Right." Broli walked past Richard and stood next to the door. "Family only, no strangers or wandering drunks."

Hikaru turned back to Richard. "I'm sorry sir, you're obviously in the wrong room. I suggest you turn around and go back the way you came before something bad happens to you."

Richard looked around the room, and then at his wife lying in the hospital bed surrounded by her friends. More than anything in the world he wanted to hold her, to run across the room and throw his arms around her overjoyed that she was alright, but not surprisingly he knew he was in serious disfavor with her friends, and Minmei seemed content to play along with them. He wasn't about to give up on the woman he loved, but now was most decidedly not a good time for him to be there. "Minmei, I wanted to say I'm sorry for what I've done..."

"Bullshit." Minmei said quietly. "You're a horrible person. I'm glad my children will never have to know you." Richard took a step forward, but noticed Kai Chan's hand on his pistol and decided under the circumstances to back off. "Sara, could you get me one of those restraining orders?" Minmei asked innocently.

"My pleasure. I got an ex-boyf... er... friend in the D.A.'s office. I'll give him a call."

Broli opened the door to the room. Richard took the hint, and looked back at Minmei. "We'll talk another time..."

"No, YOU will talk another time!" Minmei shouted angrily. "I've had it with you! I never want to see you again!"

Richard took one last look at her... and his handiwork... and turned to leave the room. In the doorway he stopped and looked at Broli for a few spiteful moments, and then disappeared out the door.

Hikaru glanced over at Kai Chan and spoke quietly. "Lieutenant Chan, I'm extending your leave. Stay here and keep an eye on her, and if that son of a bitch comes within 100 meters of this building, he's a dead man."

"Yes Colonel." Hikaru walked back over to Minmei's bed and looked down at her, her eyes sparkling with tears. "Minmei..."

"Forget it Hikaru." Minmei said, wiping her eyes. "I know exactly what'll happen if I go back to him. But there's no telling what he'll do if he doesn't get what he wants."

"I understand." Hikaru bent down and hugged her. "Do you need someone to stay with you?"

Minmei shook her head. "I'm fine, I just need to rest. I know you all have alot of work to do with the defense forces, and you have enough to worry about besides little old me."

"Okay." Hikaru kissed her on the cheek and started to leave with Misa and Corina. "If you need anything, Kai Chan will be waiting outside."

"Thanks." Minmei said.

Misa stopped at the doorway and turned around. "I almost forgot. When you get out of the hospital, you can stay at my place." Misa placed a set of keys on the desk next to the bed. "Now don't go changing your mind and running back to him."

Minmei looked at the keys for a moment, and then looked back up at Misa. "Just promise you won't kill him, okay Misa?"

Misa stared for a moment, not quite comfortable with the idea of letting the man get away with this. She assumed Hikaru felt the same way, but she also knew it would break Minmei's heart if she gave him what he really deserved. "Fine, I'll let him live if YOU promise me you won't go running back to him."

"I promise." She said, more to herself than to Misa. "My gambling days are over."

--12:10--

No one could believe how well it had worked. Sure enough, there were no crewmen in the micron scale passageway and all of the macron passages were guarded by half-sleeping Zentradi, obviously set to a low power status to conserve resources. If the alarms sounded, they would snap right out of it and their metabolisms would go through the roof. They would become totally insane, even for Zentradi. Despite this, all 12 pilots managed to get to the comm room unnoticed and began to uplink over a hyper channel to Lacul's fortress. Shikari had been right about that as well; they were already close enough to uplink into his main tactical computer, something no one, not even Lacul would notice or even find unusual. The Supervision ships acted in perfect synch in major battles and this was the reason why.

The data was keyed through a specially rigged handheld computer and recorded onto terran floppy disks. It only took a moment to download all the data from the computer into the disks, but getting the actual data out of Lacul's central computer took almost an hour. A small, fold capable courier ship was relaying the message, making up for the interference between the two great fleets by taking up an equidistant position between them. It obviously wasn't doing a very good job of it, but in any case they got what they came for. Everything the Supervision Army had done in the past several weeks and everything they were planning was now loaded onto a pair of disks, and the 12 pilots of the data team made 12 copies of each and distributed them evenly. Only one of them needed to make it back for the mission to succeed.

The 12 of them were about halfway back to the mecha hangar when the alarms sounded all over the ship, as well as the rest of the fleet. In the passageways outside the mecha hangars, Shikari's teeth were grinding in rage. "Ops unit, what the hell is happening out there?!"

A group of a dozen powered armors peaked out of the airlock. "A fleet of Shiar-zentran warships is closing on us rapidly! There must be thousands of them out there!"

"Shiar?" This was puzzling. Shikari had never known Shiar-zentran to venture outside of their home system in large numbers. Then again, the ship had been performing fold operations almost non-stop for two hours, which gave her some clues as to just where they had finally stopped. "All units, hold your ground until the pilots get back! Arm detonators and blow this place on my command!" At that moment, Shikari head footsteps around the corner. From the sound of it there were probably dozens of them, and she didn't have to be told just what they were coming for. "They're coming! Imura...!"

"I'm on it!"

Both powered armors burst around the corner and fired off a long burst from the tri-barreled beam guns on their arms into the crowd of surprised Zentradi. Between the two of them, they managed to cut down 20 of them in a matter of seconds. The others leapt out of the coridor behind anything they could use for cover and fired back with their rifles, and Shikari could see at least a hundred more in the passageway behind them, and all of them appeared to be armed. "Dammit! Where are those pilots?!" She hit her thrusters and charged into the midst of them while Imura's armor went the other way. At the instant before she impacted with them, Shikari stopped dead and fired the impact cannons randomly into the crowd. Some of the Zentradi ducked out of the way and fired back, a few stunned soldiers hesitated and were caught in a maelstrom of micro missiles and a spray of beams. Shikari boosted backwards now, firing wildly off both beam guns into the corridor behind her. The Zentradi just kept on coming, some of them trying unsuccessfully to block her beams with the bodies of their comrades, others simply running through the fire as much as they could before their legs failed to move them.

A burst of gunfire from one of the Zentradi soldiers clipped her left arm, destroying her beam guns and most of her left hand. And then a burst of laser fire shot past her from behind into the host of Zentradi soldiers and Shikari looked over her shoulder at a pair of VF-4 Lighting-III battloids. "We got it General! Let's get the hell out of here!"

Shikari fired one last barrage from her missiles into the corridor and darted back down the tunnel towards the mecha hangar. Other powered armors were emerging from passages into the hangar, some of them damaged, and Commander Elensh's powered armor was missing one of its arms. "Imura, get the fold boosters powered up!"

Elensh's unit fired a spread of missiles into the bulkhead to provided the others with an alternate escape route and disappeared with the others out of the hull. Shikari stayed behind, waited for the last of the soldiers to leave before she too started to retreat; to make sure she was the last one out today.

A group of 7 Queajaduel-Ger powered armors burst into the room and started to fire. Shikari dispatched one of them with the beam guns and another with the impact cannons on her chest. The other 5 filled the air around her with laser beams; Shikari fired off a large spread of missiles at two of them, then zipped past them as they moved to evade the missiles. She kicked the first one over, buried her fist into the faceplate of the second one, then turned fired through it into the knees of the third. All three of the armors hit the ground at the same time, and Shikari fired the last of her missiles randomly behind her as she zipped out of the hangar to retreat. "Imura! I need a fold booster!" As if by magic, the long cylinder of a fold booster appeared in front of the opening in the hull; Shikari wrapped both of the suit's arms around the booster as she emerged from the ship and immediately began powering it up. "Fighter wing, blow it!"

The Lighting pilots switched on the remote detonators on the weapons they had left in the battlepods in the hangar, and a dozen reflex warheads went off at once. A massive explosion rocked the enemy command ship, and the Lightings launched their last RMS-1s into space before their fold boosters activated. The Supervision Army never did figure out exactly what was going on, but when their command ship was suddenly rocked by a series of nuclear fireballs, Lacul himself was the only one who actually knew what had happened to it. Watching from the command center of his fortress, he was considerably less than pleased to see dozens of meltrandi powered armors leaving one of his command vessels flanked by micronian variable fighters. He ground his teeth in anger for a few moments until the light of the explosions faded and then checked his tactical computer again. "Kraken, tell all ships to break off from the Shiar-zentran survivors and fold out of this system at once."

Kraken seemed confused. "I don't understand my lord. Don't you want to finish this battle?"

"That damned Shikari..." Lacul watched the powered armors vanish into hyperspace and sighed in anxiety. He wanted to finish this battle almost as much as he wanted to finish Gallaron, but now he knew he would never get that chance. "All ships pull out now. The Gallaron fleet will undoubtedly try to intercept us before we get to Earth. If we move quickly we might be able to slip past them before they can mobilize."

Kraken seemed to understand. "Consider it done, my lord."