Chapter 3: Thieves and Vandals
--September 18, 2017--
--14:30 GST--
The Macbeth's gravity control system was far from fully operational by any standards, and happened to suffer a crippling electrical short at nine hundred feet above the water next to the dock. Everyone on the ship was rattled by the impact, and more than half of the crew was either too tired or two injured to haul themselves up again. Kai Chan and most of his platoon were laid out on the top level of the city block where the macronian barracks were housed, all of them too bruised or just too tired to bother to right themselves. SDF-07's hull was battle scarred and exhausted from it's ordeal on the frontlines, a depressing scene to the crew and assigned pilots; Megaroad City was a welcome sight for their weary eyes to behold. The soldiers counted their blessings to be home, banishing memories and nightmares from the recent defeat at Gulara corridor. Once the crew was offloaded again, the Macbeth was scheduled to be moved to Alpha Factory for a short refit to return the command cruiser to combat status.
Half an hour after the ship splashed down and snuggled up to the warf, the crew started to disembark from the ship in droves, eager to find something less depressing than the sight of their mangled battleship they were leaving behind. Two gangplanks were laid; a small one for the ships micronian crew, and a cargo ramp for the macron mobile infantry. Dozens of human and Zentradi soldiers began to file out of the ship, some leaning on each other tiredly, others actually sleepwalking off the ship to find a soft place to pass out. Kai Chan was the last one out, with a pair of marines walking on either side of him ready to catch each other should they pass out and fall over. "Was that not the longest tour of duty in the history of war?" Kai Chan grumbled.
Sergeant Alako yawned, Lieutenant Beecher just shrugged. "I think I'll be seeing missile spreads in my nightmares now. Those new variable armors they're using are just..."
"I know what you mean." Kai Chan's arms were still sore from almost non-stop battle in his Stormlord armor. Glancing at Beecher he found her in a similar if not worse state, forearms and wrists swollen from the control units of her Queadlunn-Rau. "I can't imagine what this would be like trying to fight them in our old suits."
"Or battlepods, for that matter." Alako interjected. "You saw what happened to that Shiar contingent this summer? When those new fighters showed up over Horace V?"
Borris nodded in remembrance. "They were cut to pieces. Even our own VFs couldn't keep up with them."
Forest scratched his head as a new idea filtered in, "Dey always outnumber us, Skippa. Aint der some way we can add mo' mecha to da ships?"
"You wish." Alako said with a mixture of condescension and regret, "The only way to do that is to shrink the powered armors AND the soldiers, and if we do that the powered armors won't be worth a damn."
Speaking of which... Kai Chan thought with a grin. The resizing chambers were on the other side of the mecha hangar, closer to the medical wing where newly micronized officers received the routine medical checkups with a sensor pod to make sure everything was working properly and no bizarre side effects would manifest. The cloning chambers were lined up against the far bulkhead, and Kai Chan at first started towards them, looking forward to the hour-long transfiguration process...
Something zipped past his head like a ballistic missile; instinct took over and he dove across the hangar around the corner of the huge sliding door. When he looked around the corner again he saw nothing there, but after a moment or two something very small descended before his eyes from directly above, hovered for a moment, then gently dropped to his feet. It was a plump, metallic figure with arms and legs, and a tinted-glass faceplate over a dome of a helmet. Kai Chan recognized it instantly. "Is that what I think it is?"
With the little machine landed on the ground, and the entire upper section of the torso containing the shoulders and helmet opened upwards and hinged back to reveal none other than a highly amused Dr. Varcus in an old UN Spacy flight suit. "One of your curiosities, Mr. Lao. A civilian company picked up the idea last year while you were working on the Stormlord design."
The other soldiers crowded around it, first the squad members from Kai Chan's platoon, but others as well looking over their shoulders. "What the hell is it?" Beecher said, kneeling down to look more carefully.
"PX-150. We're calling it the Apache. It's a prototype based on a design your Captain provided us with."
All eyes turned to Kai Chan, who immediately dropped to his knees and hung his face directly in front of the tiny mecha, "Varcus, what the hell did you do?! The PX-150 was nine meters tall! I never designed any little pipsqueak thing like this!"
Varcus shrugged shyly. "You gave the dimensions for a full-sized mecha, but the mass-ratio you provided was for a much smaller machine than the dimensions would have suggested. R&D assumed you made a mistake, and adjusted the mass ratios to match the size of the mecha, but the resulting performance drop was so dramatic that they decided to keep the ratios and changed the dimensions instead.."
"They WHAT?!" And then it all came back to him: the fateful coffee break during the test phase of the Stormlord Prototype, just three months after Soccoro- Delcaan. Over a ham sandwich and a cup of coffee he had been calculating the mass of one of his own designs on a laptop computer, when a colleague looking over his shoulder had pointed out that the design program had been set to the wrong scale and was calculating ratios for micron sizes. Kai Chan was about to change the settings when a courier entered the cafeteria and handed him his weekly letter from Minmei; he'd lost track of what he was doing, saved the file and turned it into R&D that same day without making the corrections. And the tiny mecha standing in front of him now was the result of this error. "Varcus, do you have any idea how ridiculous that thing looks?"
The Doctor grinned at him, dropped the micro-armor on one knee and climbed out completely. "Looks can be deceiving, Captain."
"You've tried it?"
"I have."
"And?"
Varcus grinned again. "What is it one of your prize fighters used to say? 'Floats like a butterfly, stings like a bee.'"
Beecher raised a brow, partly in skepticism but also curious. "Yeah, but a bee sting won't really kill you unless you're allergic."
"Of course, one won't. But two dozen of them..." He gestured with his hand deeper into the hangar, and all of them looked to see an entire row of similar machines lined up against the walls, each linked to a computer terminal running diagnostics on the key systems. Like Varcus' machine, each of them were prototypes, but all of them were fully equipped with a variety of weapon types, some even with new weapons none of them had ever seen before. "Would you like to see for yourself? We have alot of bugs to iron out."
Kai Chan gave it a moment's thought, but the aching in his legs decided for him. "Maybe later. Right now, I just want to shrink down and relax."
All of the other soldiers seemed to agree with that resolution, and moved off towards the cloning chambers in one gargantuan mass.
Varcus watched them as they stepped over and around him, his mission finally accomplished. The ball's in their court. Now all we have to do is wait for the grunts to pass their verdict.
--17:13 GST--Hikaru felt a thousand years old with the swarm of hyperactive creatures darting around at his feet. Misa should have done this, he thought, She's the one who deals with kids, He banished the thought with a knock on the side of his head. Today was his turn and he knew there was nothing he could do about it. What seemed like dozens of kindergarteners came tumbling out at the heals of their older siblings and friends in the higher grade until at last there was Miko, skipping along with a few of her friends jabbering to each other so quickly he was sure even they had no idea what they were saying.
Hikaru approached them with a smile, not wanting to interrupt but not wanting to be waiting here all day for Miko to notice his presence and come over to him. He tried to discretely eaves drop on their conversation... and immediately was stopped at a language barrier. "Te Benny... Kelkasuta zikai de'alma! Hal ayar'deng!" Miko said to the girl behind her with a chuckle.
"Fodants, oyei prankayar lechat!" The girl said, looking over at one of the boys on the other side of the schoolyard with one of his fingers about knuckle deep into his nose. "Te siet kesta!"
All of them laughed, even Miko. Hikaru laughed too, not from the joke but from a sudden urge not to look like a fool in front of his daughter's friends. "Hey Miko, we have to get going now."
Miko remembered and turned back to her friends. "Ju'kai!" She shouted, walking along with her father.
"Ju'kai!" they shouted back, then went back to talking amongst themselves.
Hikaru walked with her for a few steps until they were out of the crowd of small children and the roar of compound chatter where he could actually hear everything she was saying. "Miko, where did you learn to speak Zentradi?"
"In school." She said plainly. "Nobody here speaks English. My teacher speaks alittle Japanese, but I talk to her in Zentradi."
Hikaru was confused. "Yeah but… well of course most of your classmates are protocrans but where in the world did you learn how to talk to them?"
Miko shrugged. "I dunno. I just do."
"Huh. Well what were you talking about with your friends?"
Miko laughed. "Benny's this boy in my class, and he doesn't do anything because he picks his nose and eats his buggers! Shumi says he's gonna pick his brains out one day."
Hikaru laughed, even though he felt older by the minute. Miko was telling him the kind of stories he was too old to remember from his own life, like his own childhood was eons ago, something out of ancient history. "Do they at least teach you how to speak English in your class?" He said, changing the subject.
"Sa."
"What's 'sa'?"
"Sa means sa. Don't you know?"
"I don't speak Zentradi, neither does your mother."
Miko stopped suddenly and stared at him. "You don't? How come?"
Hikaru turned around to look at her. "When I was growing up we'd never even heard of the Zentradi, let alone spoke the language."
It seemed like Miko was having a hard time understanding this, as if some basic understanding about her family had been interrupted somehow. "But mommy's a meltran though."
Hikaru raised a brow. "Who told you that?"
"My friend Shumi told me that Zentradis are soldiers. I said Mommy's in da army, and she said that's because Mom's Meltran and officers are Meltran."
For some reason Hikaru found this amusing, and he wasn't sure why. It reminded him of something his friends used to tell him in pre-school, though with very much the opposite spin. "Well your friend Shumi is wrong. Not all Zentradi are soldiers and not all soldiers are Zentradi. And you, little lady, are many things, but you are NOT a Meltran." Even as he said the words, a part of himself doubted the truth to them. In too many ways, on too many levels, Miko had more in common with most Zentradi than she did with her own parents.
"Oh… You sure?"
"Pretty sure." He said chuckling. "You're a human. Humans come from a planet called Earth. That's where I'm from."
"But I was born on the spaceship. Aren't Zentradis born on spaceships?"
The conversation seemed to have taken a turn for the weird. Hikaru wasn't really sure how to answer her questions in a way that would make sense to a four-year-old. "It's complicated, Miko. It used to be like that for a really long time, but then everything changed and now they haven't figured out what to call everyone yet."
Miko thought about it and seemed to get the idea he was trying to get at. "Okay, but if Mom's not a Meltran, how come she's an officer?"
"Well like I said, not all officers are Meltrans. And because the humans came from Earth before you were born, alot of us are officers too. But don't ever generalize... if you start thinking of entire groups of people as being one thing or another, you'll never really get to know anyone and you might even end up in really bad trouble."
As always, Miko took this to heart and filed it away for later, but for now she had another question, "Dad... Am I a officer yet?"
Hikaru smiled again. "No, you're not an officer."
Miko seemed disappointed by the revelation. "Can I be a officer? Pleaaaaaaase?"
When he thought about it, it made sense that Miko had so much enthusiasm for all things mechanized. The intermixing of Zentradi and humans had been less one-sided than anyone had expected; the Zentradi had been affected be culture, but culture had been just as affected by them. Hikaru both chuckled and grimaced at the thought, This little girl can't tell the difference between a space battle and a soccer game. "Tell you what," He knelt down in front of her and looked into her sparkling eyes, "When you finish 7th grade, we'll think about letting you become an officer."
"Really? That's like..." Miko counted the number of years on her fingers and smiled, "That's not long at all! That's like next week!"
Hikaru smiled at her. "Take your time, little bird. By the way, you know we're going back to Gallaron in a few days. Is there something you want while we're in port?"
"Can we visit Aunt Minmei?"
"If there's time."
Miko jumped up excitedly. "Rau'ta! I can't wait to see the babies!"
Hikaru laughed to himself. "Come to think of it, neither can I."
--19:50 GST--Misa couldn't tear her eyes away from the tactical plot on the radar screen on the bridge, but every time she looked at it her heart filled with dread. Gallaron's front line was collapsing bit by bit, soon the enemy fleet would be able to push all the way through them to the home world. The orbital fleet was on constant alert and the planetary defense grid had been completed only weeks earlier, but everyone knew that if the final lines fell it would be up to the survivors to make sure Lacul never gained control of the planet for his own purposes. The last resort for Gallaon, if captured, was to send a directive to each city on the globe to overload its reaction furnace and blow itself up, destroying anything nearby that might be of use to the Supervision Army. It was a horrifying possibility, from a scenario the Admiral would prevent at all costs.
But the question facing her now: were they only delaying the inevitable? Could the enemy fleet somehow be halted from its advance long enough for them to build up their forces and truly resist them on equal terms? Gallaron moved fleets of just under a hundred vessels to battle enemy battle groups three and four times their size. She knew this couldn't go on. Something had to be done, she just had to think of something... "Targets." She said at last, the source of her frustration crystallizing in front of her, "They have no strategic targets, only ships and weapons. They control the pace of the battle because they don't have to defend anything." Misa thought about this some more. "That's an advantage, but it's also a weakness. There has to be some way we can exploit it..."
Commander Gashi had been listening to her think out loud for almost half an hour, and now started coming up with ideas of his own. "Perhaps we should intensify attacks on enemy supply lines?"
Misa nodded. "I've considered that... Shikari's already doing so, and we could always ask her to step it up a notch." She looked out the window briefly as hyperspace rippled around the ship. They were only a few days away from their home port at Gallaron, and then she would have a long chat with Varcus about this. "The way they're attacking they must have some kind of base or something nearby, a fixed point from which to launch their attacks. Lacul's fortress is pretty much their mobile headquarters, but it still hasn't moved from Soccoro-Delcaan. There's got to be something else."
"Whatever it is, finding it won't be easy." Gashi pointed out. "There's the possibility of a smaller base ship, sort of a mobile battle station where a field commander can direct a very large fleet. If they have one, I'm sure it's well defended and probably well hidden."
"That's true... I think we'll let Shikari handle this one. If anyone can sniff out an enemy base, she can."
Gashi's control board started flashing, and he took a coded message over the channel from the defense outpost in the Gralla System. "Damn... signal from Gralla station, they've spotted enemy warships in hyperspace."
"Out here?" Misa spun the wheelchair and came up alongside him. "They have a reading on them?"
"Identifying... medium assault fleet, looks like about a hundred vessels, an even mix of cruisers and destroyers with several support frigates. It's headed directly for Gallaron."
Misa felt her skin start to crawl in a cold sweat. The defense network on Gallaron had kept the planet relatively free of harm for over a year now, and steady improvements had brought a still-greater sense of security to all the citizens back home. But even a small fleet as this one penetrating so deeply into Gallaron space was a threat that none of them could stomach. "How did a fleet this size get through the mine fields undetected?"
Gashi shrugged. "My guess is they slipped through when we diverted our reinforcements to the Gulara corridor. There's only one battleship their formation, so they're probably just a sweeper group that got lucky."
"Great." Misa rolled back to the center of the bridge and locked her wheels next to the captain's chair. "Are we close enough to intercept?"
After a short pause, the officer turned back with a grim expression on his face. "Not by a longshot, Admiral. They're taking chances with their folds, so they'll probably get there within the next thirty hours."
Misa sighed. "And we're still two days away."
"Fifty six hours, at present speed." Gashi said. "If we could fold straight there we could head em off, but in this kind of space God only knows where we'd end up."
"I know that." Misa weighed her options, and she decided there was no sense risking her entire fleet or even just her ship to pick off three enemy carriers. She only hoped the defense forces were up to the job. "Signal Alpha Factory and tell them to expect an attack. And have any ships close enough to make it in time head straight for the interception point."
--September 19, 2017----04:50 GST--
A flash of light and a gravity wave; a Supervision Army command ship defolded into orbit of the supply base on Fodarus-315 with an escort of cruisers and destroyers. Admiral Bennet's battleship was already well en route to the command fortress where Lacul waited to debrief him, but Kraken was several weeks ahead of schedule. He surveyed the assembled fleet in orbit of the planet and the transports going in and out of that massive underground complex on the surface. Almost as soon as the crew started post-fold systems checks, Kraken's monitor crackled on with Lazuli's sullen expression framed by light-years of jet black hair. "We are honored by your presence Kraken. It is good o be fighting under your command sir."
Kraken tried to resist a gag reaction. The only reason he tolerated Lazuli's sniveling platitude was because she was such an intelligent leader and therefore vital to his own ambitions. "What's the situation on the front Lazuli?" He said curtly.
"The Gulara Corridor has taken its toll sir. We don't currently have enough military strength to continue the advance on this front, but capturing that region of space has given us a strategic advantage once reinforcements become available. It's really just a matter of when we can resume our offensive."
Kraken hung his head sadly. He had expected the need for reinforcements to be high, but Lacul's orders were clear that no reinforcements would be allowed. Even though they didn't have the strength for it, they had no choice but to collapse the enemy lines and still try to capture Gallaron. "I don't think I need to tell you how troublesome the Zentradi usually are. The Botoru fleet on our opposite flank has ten times our numbers, and even though they don't have reaction weaponry they are a very serious threat to our forces. Lacul cannot spare any ships from the Botoru front to assist us in this."
Lazuli looked confused. "Then how are we supposed to…?"
"Thanks to that fool Bennet, we don't have the manpower or the resources to effectively wage war against Gallaron. We outnumber them in ships and mecha, but they make better use of their equipment and at the rate we're going they will force us into retreat. Our only advantage in this battle is that THEY don't know that."
Lazuli raised a brow, considering the idea for the first time. "Then if we can keep them on the defensive…"
"We can find a weakness and exploit it before they have a chance to discover ours. More allied ships are joining us from other parts of the Galaxy, but that won't be enough to tip the scales. And with Gallaron's factory satellites undoubtedly being salvaged in orbit, if we don't capture that planet within the next eighteen months, chance are we never will."
Lazuli nodded. "Then we have to do this quickly. We'll come up with a plan to keep the enemy fleets in sufficient disorder until we can find a way to push through them." Lazuli paused to think, then reminded herself of one other thing. "I should mention to you, sir, that some Gallaron units have begun an offensive campaign of sorts against our forces."
Now it was Kraken's turn to be surprised. "An offensive? Are you sure?"
"They've been raiding the supply lines consistently for the past couple weeks. They're using hit-and-run tactics with mid-sized protoculture destroyers to launch reaction missile attacks, and they've been using some old protoculture colony ships as booby traps for our scout teams."
This he found interesting. There were only a few military minds in this part of the universe with such a penchant for guerilla tactics. Jinai was one of them, Kamjin Kravshera had been another one. Along with a few others he knew to be long dead, Kraken knew the only one known to be affiliated with Gallaron… "That's Shikari's M.O. What's little pipsqueak after this time?"
Lazuli, as usual, saw this as yet another opportunity to earn additional brownie points. "Leave it to me, Kraken. I'll deal with Shikari's fleet, you should concentrate on forcing your way through the Gallaron defenses…"
There was a tiny burst of light in the horizon of the planet from a twin defold in extremely low orbit. Kraken's radar officers watched it for a few moments before identifying both of them as enemy ships, but before any of the Supervision Army warships could even bring their guns to bear against them the two ships each fired off a barrage of reflex missiles straight down towards the surface of the planet, following up with a salvo from their particle cannons at targets on the ground. Several nearby ships finally managed to lock on and fire off a burst or two from their cannons, only to be deflected by the reflex barriers of the two ships. Supervision fighters and attack pods launched from a number of ships around the two, but then the destroyers both launched a second barrage of missiles at the fleet ships around them before disappearing again into hyperspace.
Both missile barrages hit their targets at the same time, with 30 missiles hitting the docks on the ground and 30 others exploding amidst enemy warships for dozens of miles. Kraken didn't bother to give out any orders, just watched the damage reports come rolling in on his monitors. "15 ships destroyed, 23 badly damaged both on the ground and in orbit." Said one of the tactical officers.
Kraken looked at the timepiece next to his chair. "54 seconds... they folded into orbit, fired their missiles, and used fold boosters to escape into hyperspace..." He reopened the channel to Lazuli's flagship and stood up straighter. "Lazuli, take a contingent of warships to the Gallaron front and start probing for weaknesses. I'll handle Shikari myself."
Lazuli almost seemed offended, but her brown-nosing nature kept her from raising any kind of complaint. "As you wish, Kraken."
--18:35 GST--Of the larger variety disappointments in her life, Minmei found this one fairly petty and mundane. Once again, Jason wasn't returning her calls. Neither was Sanchez, or Mr. Giovanni her agent. So many plans, so little time, so many more disappointments. She didn't mind single life, and were it not for her two children she would have given up on men altogether. Taosan and Yu weren't getting any younger, and neither was she.
Just shopping now was something of an adventure. Despite her various disguises and alias's every once in a while there was someone who would recognize her and discretely ask for an autograph or have a friend take a picture. Sometimes, she even managed to find someone interesting, either who recognized her or not, who might have made a likely candidate. And every time, something went terribly wrong and she was forced to back out. One of them had actually sold her home phone number to a number of his friends and drinking buddies, which was one of the main reasons she only used a cellular phone to contact people these days.
Shopping today especially was something of a drama. Minmei was wearing overalls and a pair of dark sunglasses, hoping not to have to avoid any of her fans for a change. She had found all the things she needed, diapers and formula for the babies, food and red wine for herself, and a newspaper for no one in particular. And there it was again on the headline, the picture of Gallaron's newest warship the SDF-09 Victory. The cruiser was almost complete now, with final assembly scheduled for the end of the month. The city block had been completed, the weapon systems were being tested, crew members for this great warship were being interviewed already to see who would be most qualified to operate this vessel. But Minmei already knew this ship from her nightmares. They had stopped a few weeks ago, but she could still remember the image of that very ship being slowly blasted to bits in the middle of a battlefield.
It was snowing today, but it wasn't that cold. Ice clung to the sidewalk and people walked along peacefully in Megaroad city with clouds of vapor hovering in front of their faces. Minmei was walking home from the market with a large paper bag in her arms, once again contemplating her next step when she caught movement out of the corner of her eye; someone was behind her, and she felt something sticking into the small of her back. "Don't make a sound, just follow me into that alley over there."
She was about to raise a protest or start screaming for help, but at that moment the air-raid siren started ringing all over the city. In the time it took for a drop of sweat to fall from Minmei's forehead to the ground, everyone out on the streets was scattering in all directions to get to the shelters. In a matter of moments, the streets would be clear, and there wouldn't be any witnesses in case he decided to kill her. "Oh great..." she grumbled to herself. Minmei turned her head slowly and could just see the polished silver of a pistol in his hand, half concealed under the sleeves of his coat. She let the man guide her back around and into a narrow alley behind what looked like an old office building and set the grocery bag down on the ground. The man with the gun stayed back behind her with the gun pressed against her back. Not at all surprising.
"You know the drill. Money and credit card." Minmei pulled out her wallet and handed it back to him, and the man stuffed it into his own pocket. He seemed about ready to move on from here, but then he noticed the bottle of wine in the bag and had second thoughts. "How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"Really?" The man pressed the gun harder into her back and put his other hand on her hip. "Take off your clothes."
Minmei's heart skipped a beat. "Oh, c'mon, I gave you my money. Can I go please?"
"Take em off!" The man said impatiently. "You don't wanna die here do you?"
"Don't do this..." Minmei started trembling. This wasn't the first time she'd been mugged before, but it wasn't usually a problem as long as the guy left her alone once he had what he wanted. This man seemed to want something she was not about to give him. "Look, I have two kids at home..."
"Then don't make orphans of them. Strip." Just for emphasis, the man pushed the gun harder against her back.
Minmei searched her memory for something that could get her out of this, something she was probably overlooking. The man's voice sounded familiar, but then again everyone sounds familiar when they're stealing your wallet. In an effort to stall him she dropped down to her knees and started working on one of the straps to the overalls, but in this position she finally remembered. She thought back to the 7th grade... something Kaifun taught her for situations like this... "Oh, now I remember..." she said out loud.
"Remember what?" The man said, growing impatient. "Stop wasting my time, I'm a busy man."
"Okay, just don't hurt me." Minmei knew she needed a distraction, something to get him to turn his head for just a second. There was nothing within reach on the ground, no pebbles or garbage, but there was the sound of what could have been a plane overhead. She only hoped that would do the trick. "Do you hear that? That sounds like..."
"Dammit lady!" The man lost his patience and pushed her face down on the ground. He pressed the gun against the back of her head and started pulling at the straps, but then both of them stopped and looked up as the sound of jet engines suddenly grew louder and louder...
There was a whistling sound, and then a thunderous concussion as the roof of the building next to them exploded. Blasts of fire ripped out of the windows of the top floor, raining broken glass down into the alley around them. Minmei couldn't have asked for a better distraction. "What was it now?" she whispered, thinking back to Kaifun's little trick. "Back..." She shifted her weight back. "Front..." she sprung off one leg and twisted her body in position "Snake..." the man behind her was definitely caught off guard by the move, but before he could react Minmei grabbed onto his hand and threw herself into his body. The sudden shifting of weight caused both of them to fall, but as she had expected, Minmei came up with the gun. He tried to grab it back from her again, but barely managed to get a hand on it before she sprung up to her feet and put some distance between them. "You son of a...!" this was the first time she saw the face of the man who had just mugged her, now she stared in recognition. "Adrian?!"
He stared right back at her, barely recognizing her himself. "Whoa... you're Lynn Minmei!"
There was another explosion, this time from somewhere outside of the city limits. Minmei waited for the rumble of gunpod fire and missile warheads to fade before she said anything else. "I don't believe this! You didn't call me, you didn't write me, you didn't even show up the second time after I called YOU!"
Adrian's jaw was hanging open in disbelief, finally recognizing the context of their previous meeting. "B-but... but I didn't know you were friggin Minmei! You told me your name was Ling Powel and you had on that pink wig and that little rag in your hair..."
"So you wouldn't be trying to rape me if you knew who I was, right?" Minmei walked towards him, keeping the gun leveled at his head. "Gimme my wallet back." Adrian reluctantly pulled out her wallet and handed it to her. "Now gimme yours." Adrian again pulled a wallet out of his pocket and handed it to her. Minmei opened it, took out a slip of paper he had written her number on, along with three thousand Yulins and a breath mint. "This is for making me pay the check at Guacalas, you cheapskate."
Adrian hung his head. "You're going to the police, aren't you?"
"Hell no! I'm going to the press! I want the whole world to know what an asshole you are!" Minmei kept the gun trained on him, then crept back slowly to pick up her groceries. "Now don't you follow me or I'll shoot you!"
"I won't follow you, but I think you should know, there's no bullets in that gun."
Minmei stared at him, took a few steps back, then looked at the gun in her hand. Kai Chan had showed her how to check to see if it was loaded; this one wasn't. "Well... It's mine now!" She backed away from him for a few steps, then turned and ran all the way back to her house. There was another explosion, this time somewhere inside the city. Minmei saw smoke rising into the sky from somewhere else in the city, somewhere in the direction of where her house was. She doubled her pace, running faster than she ever had before. The powered armors and fighter squadrons in the sky were doing an exceptional job of keeping enemy mecha away from the city today, especially considering how many of them usually attacked at one time. As she ran she looked up through the haze of the falling snow to see dozens of trails of vapor circling each other among the clouds, exchanging fire with beam cannons and missiles. Three of the enemy fighter pods above them broke from the formation and dove in towards the city on a suicide run; a VF-4 Lighting swooped in to pick them off with four gunpods firing under its wings and both laser cannons training on the targets. All three pods went down at almost the same time, leaving only scattering debris falling harmlessly on the outskirts of the city.
By the time Minmei got back to her house, the battle in the sky was winding down, but the air raid sirens were still to wailing and the emergency systems were broadcasting warnings on the city's PA system, "Your attention please: an emergency has been declared for this area. For your own protection, all civilians are to report to the nearest hardened bomb shelter, and remain there until further notice..." The message repeated again and again, alternating between English, Spanish and Zentradi. She didn't need to know any of the details to understand the deeper meaning of what was going on. Ground troops, she thought with a pulse of anxiety, Is it an invasion?
Pris was already gathering the twins when Minmei opened the door, one child in each arm with a diaper bag over her shoulder. "Just in time! I don't have the keys to your car!"
Minmei pulled the keys from her coat pocket, took Taosan off her hands to free one arm and handed her the keys and the empty gun. "Hold onto this for me..."
Priss eyed the pistol suspiciously and chuckled. "I get the feeling there's a story behind this."
"Yep... start the car, I'll just be a minute." Pris disappeared through the front door carrying Yu while Minmei carried Taosan through to the back kitchen, finding in the refrigerator door small plastic cooler she always kept loaded with supplies for just such an emergency. She hung the cooler on her opposite shoulder, grabbed Taosan's favorite toy from it's usual spot on the floor by the table, and scooped up her address book from the desk on her way out. She didn't bother to lock the door, but sprinted across the lawn to the car and dropped and highly perplexed Taosan into his car seat next to his always complacent brother. Pris was already in the passenger seat, Minmei took the wheel and the car sped off.
Another explosion cracked the air above them like a whip, a burst of fire crossing the air between a VF-1 Valkyrie and a pair of Supervision Army powered armors. One stray shot zipped from the sky and hit the rooftop of a building as they passed it, but Minmei didn't take the chance to stop and look. Fei Chan's restaurant was still a few blocks away. "Do me a favor, Priss," She handed the younger girl the address book, "Look up Adrian Flores and scratch his name out for me."