The Golden Age: Chaotic Cosmos

by Maderfole

Book 1 of The Golden Age trilogy. Peace is attained, but even worse chaos lurks just below the surface, waiting to consume the entire Seed cosmos in a war to dwarf all previous wars. The beginning of the epic story. FINISHED. Continued in Eden Disaster.

91. The Isolation, Balance Point

When the first shockwave hit, right as the port Lohengrin blew itself to smithereens, Alkire had been sitting in the cockpit of the Skygrasper, doing another preflight check to fill the time, swapping tall tales with the head mechanic, Chief Murdoch, who was very adamantly a AMC (Aviations Machinist Chief Petty Officer) not a MMC (Machinist Mate Chief Petty Officer). The Navy was very picky about things like that... they didn't just have mechanics, they had at least four or five different type of mechanics, though they all did basically the same thing, as in being responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of the mechanical and sometimes electrical systems under their purview. Apparently the prime difference, as far as Alkire could see, was the AMC's worked in the hangar, while MMC's worked in engineering, though of course Murdoch had done both during times when the Archangel was short staffed. Maybe that was why everyone just called him Chief. It made things less complicated. Their pleasant conversation was totally ruined when Murdoch was suddenly tossed forty feet across the hangar bay into a tangle of crash netting, while the Skygrasper itself jerked free of its moorings and slid across the hangar floor, almost crushing Murdoch as it too slammed into the starboard bulkhead, along with ninety percent of everything in the hangar that was not bolted to the deck.

Strapped into his control chair, and clad in the durable combat flight suit to boot, Alkire suffered nothing more than a few light bruises from the unexpcted turbulence... which even as he thought it he realized wasn't turbulence, judging by the sound of the alarms that were wailing and the way all the lights had gone away and were only slowly returning. "You okay, Chief!?" Alkire yelled, digging at his harness buckle releases. "I think we're under attack!"

"Nah, you coulda fooled me!" Murdoch rejoined sarcastically. "I'm alive, and I'll be just FINE... AFTER someone gets this FUCKING JET off my THIGHS!" Until then though, Murdoch reflected, he was pretty much stationary. And his arm was probably broken, but he was doing his best not to think about that. It was right about this time when the Archangel suddenly listed sharply to port as it systems regained their balance for a brief moment, only to discover that the port altitude thrusers were pretty much gone and entirely nonfunctional anyway. "Oh, BALLS!"

The Skygrasper slid back the other way across the hangar, along with all the other loose gear and people that had just been collecting themselves from the tumble against the starboard bulkhead. Alkire had just been standing up in order to get out of the cockpit and he almost fell face first out of the jet, managing to catch himself at the last moment using his legs, so he was only hanging half in-half out instead. The Skygrasper slammed into the port bulkhead this time, just forward of the sliding doors that lead into the cross-ship maintenance bay that connected the port and starboard hangers. Alkire was briefly pelted by bolts, wrenches and other assorted mechanical debris and then a heavy but yielding weight slammed into his back hard enough to loosen his legs where they were wedged into the corners of the cockpit and he dropped headfirst onto the deck about five feet below. Fortunately his helmet was already on, but it still wasn't a fun thing to do, even if whoever had crashed into him broke most of the impact from his back down to his legs.

"Uhh... that you, Chief?" Alkire groaned, more than a little woozy. He didn't receive an immediate reply, so he cautiously shifted around, testing his body for broken bones or other serious injuris, of which there were thankfully none. There were advantages to being in a padded and semi-armored flight suit and helmet. Advantages that Murdoch, in his coveralls, didn't share. The Chief was lying on the deck, one arm twisted back at a real bad angle, with a bloody nose and smashed lips and a few minor cuts on his face, not to mention one serious bruise on his forehead. His eyes were closed and though he was visibly breathing, it was equally obvious that Chief Murdoch was currently in dreamland. "Damn it, Chief, wake the fuck up!"

"This is the starboard hangar! We've got a lot of wounded here... we need help!" Alkire heard another mechanic yelling into the intercomm system. Murdoch was far from the only injured man... in fact the injured outnumbered the noninjured, though Alkire could only see a few bad cases... one compound thigh fracture, one back injury, and two guys who wouldn't be needing medical help, because their necks were snapped in a way Alkire could instantly recognize as unsurvivable. Alkire slowly climbed to his feet, casting a wincing eye over the Skygrasper as he did so...the left wing was all but bent in half, while the right wing was warped and torns as well. He could probably get airborne, but it would be much more ballistic than controlled.

"Hey! Is it just me, or does it feel like we're sinking!?" another mechanic hollered. Everyone frroze for a few moments. "BALLS!" three or four people shouted at once, one of Chief Murdoch's favorite ways of expressing serious bad shit going down.

"EVERYBODY HANG ON TO SOMETHIN', WE'RE GOIN' DOWN!" another senior mechanic yelled, seeing that Murdoch was down and thus leaving him in charge. "Hang onto the wounded as best you can, don't let them go flying around the hanger!"

"ALL HANDS, REPEL BOARDERS. REPEL BOARDERS!" That 1MC (shipwide intercomm) announcement caused everyone to freeze in their tracks again. They didn't even run repel boarders drills, it was frankly considered at best a fanciful scenario. After all, who could board an armored warship in flight?

"You gotta be kid...!" The senior mechanic started to yell, but thats when the bottom dropped out of the world and the Archangel made its first re-acquaintence with the surface. Alkire couldn't make much sense of his surroundings... everything was flying everywhere, bouncing of walls, off mobile suits, off other flying things... it was all he could do to hang onto Murdoch so the unconscious Chief didn't do the same thing. As it was he couldn't avoid slamming the Chief's broken arm into the deck or bulkhead a few times, though he did manage to keep the Chief's head and neck still to prevent any more damage to those vital regions. The first impact was bad. The second impact felt like the entire ship was coming apart at the seams. The third impact SOUNDED like the entire ship was coming apart at the seams, though Alkire knew from the sounds that it was just the Archangel carving out a trench through some fortunately NOT solid granite ground. It wasn't some of his prouder memories, but he'd had occasion to be in more than one crashing plane over the course of his life... he knew what the various sounds meant anyways.

At length... probably not more than ten or twenty seconds, the sounds and shaking stopped. The Archangel had come to rest at last. Lighting was down, but the red emergency lights were mostly coming back on, allowing at least a minimum ability to see. The lurid light of blossoming fires in the mechanical storage bays nearby added some additonal illumination, though Alkire could certainly have gone without that form of help... those bays were close to where the ammo and jet fuel was stored, and those were two things you never wanted to be near open flames. Alkire slowly lowered Murdoch to the deck in a location where he wouldn't be easily stepped on and then started pushing his way through the milling mechanics and damage control personnel towards the doorway that led back into the main part of the ship. Sirens were blaring, everyone was shouting at once, flames were crackling and secondary explosions went off every few seconds, though they were muffled by distance. In short, it was a pretty accurate look at pure chaos.

"You three! Come with me now! That's a direct order!" An imperious but obviously worried and instantly familiar voice ordered. Alkire peered through the gloom and managed to pick out a very distressed looking Cagalli Zala-Attha across the hangar, beckoning frantically at the three closest Damage Control responders. "Bring rope, medical supplies, prybars and flashlights and follow me!" She ordered. The crewmen looked at each other and shrugged, then complied. One was not too likely to get bawled out for following a direct order from your national leader after all. Alkire contemplated trying to get her attention, but by the time he opened his mouth she was gone, disappearing on whatever her own mission was. Alkire gave a mental shurg and continued working his way towards the hangar exit. The medical and damage control crews needed help, but he couldn't ignore the danger of a "Repel Boarders" alarm, something that was clearly not in the ability of the regular Archangel crew to deal with. He just hoped he and Victor and Raine could make a big enough difference.

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Victor peered around another hatchway and nearly lost his head to spray of bullets from the Tiamat goons working with Asmodeus. Again. He cursed his lack of preparedness, but even he hadn't expected the Archangel to be boarded while in flight to a combat zone. He was down with just his combat essentials, not all the specialty tools he would normally use or want to have with him when fighting in narrow corridors and cramped quarters inside a ship. For instance he really wanted a shotgun right now, not the tactical SMG and pistol he had. There was nothing like filling a deckway with a cloud of shotgun pellets to ensure it was safe before you made your next dash from cover. A bunch of smoke or tear gas grenades would be nice too, though from his few brief glimpses of the foe, they looked to be equipped with full face masks, undoubtedly with gas filters and HUD optics. And finally, a goddamn mirror on a wand, so he could look around fucking corners without getting his head almost shot off.

He took stock of what he did have as he mentally counted through the seconds, waiting for the Tiamat goons to make their own movements towards cover as they steadily progressed towards the ship's Engineering decks. He had his SMG, with ten more forty round magazines for it, plus one half full one in the weapon itself. He had a 9mm pistol with six fifteen shot clips. He had his own full face mask, his emergency pack of bomb making/disarming supplies, an abbreviated medical kit, body armor, four flash bang grendes and his combat knife. And his saber, though currently it was more a hindrance than help, banging against things and almost tripping him up as he dodged from doorway to doorway. But he couldn't bring himself to just leave it behind, it was almost like a afety blanket item for him, so he just put up with the annoyance. His mental count reached seven and he threw himself through the doorway he'd glanced through before. No hail of bullets. He'd gotten their rythym down, which brought a smug smile to his lips.

These men were on a timetable, or a time constaint anyway. Every fifteen seconds they would stop and cover, watching their backtrail for ten seconds, then they would rinse and repeat. Even though they knew he was following them, had shot at him several times, they didn't break their routine, because they were obviously trying to reach Engineering as fast as possible. It was sloppy. Second rate. Asmodeus clearly hadn't brought his best troops, which was puzzling, because Victor would have wanted his A team for a crazy ass mission like this... unless... "God damn it." Victor realized something. The grenades, the bombs, the fanatical soldiers... Asmodeus didn't plan to get off the ship alive. He was building his own pyre and planning on taking the entire Archangel out with him. He tapped a wall comm, hoping to contact the bridge and inform them of the unpleasant news, but it wasn't working. Little wonder, given the damage the ship had taken even before it fell out of the sky, or before whatever it was had blown out the generators. Initially Victor had thought that to be the fault of Asmodeus and his men, but they were only now just getting near Engineering, so that had shot that theory down. Victor flattened himself against the bulkhead next to the hatchway the Tiamat soldiers had to have gone through.

"Ten." Victor muttered, after doing his count again. He darted through the hatch just as the enemy were turning away and starting their next forward movement. The hallway took a sharp turn about twenty feet away, and Victor knew from his time spent learning the ship that the main hatch to Engineering was only ten feet further down the hallway from that bend. The rearmost Tiamat soldier was just headed around the bend when Victor cleared the hatchway, but even thoug he was no master sniper like Raine, a twenty foot straight shot in a narrow hall wasn't exactly a challenge either. His shots blew out puffs of armor cloth as his fire tracked through the man's back, mixed with two jets of scarlet as lucky bullets struck twice on his lightly armored shoulder area, though Victor could not confirm the kill because the man managed to stumble around the corner, though he'd definitely hurt him. He tapped the magazine release and was just in the process of reloading when something pricked his danger sense.

Working in Victor's line of work for any reasonable amount of time developed a sort of sixth sense in most people. A feeling right before something bad was about to happen, a sensitivity to the calm before a storm. It was never specific, never "there's a man pointing a gun at you behind you", but he definitely knew something bad was about to happen. Victor spun, his unloaded gun coming up to point back through the hatch he'd just dived through, to see the actual rearmost Tiamat soldier just leveling his own assault rifle at him. Asmodeus had compensated for his underlings linear thinking, of course. He should have known better. 'Deus would let him read the pattern, then let him get overconfident, then change it suddenly. It was what he was best at, using the foe against themselves. So he'd had one man hide behind the hatchway opposite the one leading to Engineering, waiting to hear firing before revealing himself to take the enemy in the back. Victor could not fire, so instead he threw his empty gun at the man as hard as he could.

It was only a partially successful gambit. He still felt two hot flashes of pain and several more dull ones as bullets slammed into his torso armor, throwing him backwards off his feet from the sheer kinetic impact. If he'd taken the full burstin the chest he'd have been dead, no two ways about it, but his thrown gun deflected the Tiamat soldier's aim, so instead Victor took two bloody and painful wounds to his lower right torso and right hip and the rest of the burst missed wide. The Tiamat soldier cursed and charged through the hatchways, because now Victor was lying out of his line of sight below the lip of the hatchway. He should have hung back and waited for support, but he was in a hurry to catch up with his leader. It would cost him his life. He was just clearing the second hatchway when Victor's combat knife struck him in the chest. Ballistic cloth like kevlar stops bullets very well. It does jack shit against edged weapons like knives. The knife sank in to the hilt and the Tiamat soldier suddenly had a lot more trouble breathing.

"Don't rush." Victor advised, his pistol rising in his other hand to put three shots into the Tiamat soldier's head, pretty much decapitating him. Victor couldn't relax long though, almost as soon as the corpse collapsed, he heard several metallic clanking sounds from behind him. He cranked his neck around and saw three metallic objects sliding down the passageway towards him. Grenades, from Asmodeus and the other Tiamat soldiers still working on getting through the Engineering door. "Never a fucking break...!" Victor hauled himself through the hatchway as fast as he could, but it was hard... the wounds in his hip and right side were making that leg move very stiffly. He was only most of the way through the hatch when the three concussion grenades detonated. Victor wasn't pulped, since the hatchway took most of the force, but what force went through the open hatch was more than enough to pick him up and throw him across the passageway into the far bulkhead hard enough to make him grey out.

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"Damn it!" Alkire skidded into the lounge area between his and Victor's and Raine's sleeping cubicles, TEMPEST's unofficial ready room. Guns, ammo, explosives and other implements of death and destruction, as well as spare medical kits, pieces of body armor and the odd personal item were all scattered everywhere, tossed by the explosions and crash. Alkire didn't have time to do a full inventory... any boarding action would have two primary goals, which the invading forces would waste absolutely no time in heading after. Engineering and the Bridge. Currently Engineering was on the far end of the ship, and most of the ship's power and flight systems were down anyway, so Alkire had decided to head for the Bridge, seeing it as the real weakness of the ship. Alkire snatched a pistol and a few extra magazines in one hand, and grabbed a backpack with the other. He shoved the pistol and ammo into the bag, not having a proper holster or combat webbing on his flight suit in which to secure them. The next thing he grabbed was a full face mask with gas filters and integral light amplification lenses, so he could see properly again. He slung the bag over his shoulders and then picked up his assault rifle and five magazines, stuffing the ammo into his exterior pockets as he headed towards the bridge at a trot.

He passed several bodies on his way up, all crewmembers with multiple gunshot wounds, or else gore patches where someone might have stood before taking the full force of a frag or high explosive grenade. The explosions he'd heard down in the hangar and thought to be crash related started taking on a whole new light. But why risk damaging a vital system with grenades? Wasn't the whole point of boarding a ship taking it mostly intact? Something fishy was up. He almost tripped rounding another corner, but this corpse wasn't a crewmember. It was a man dressed in black and blue combat body armor, an assault rifle similar to Alkire's own gun lying half empty nearby, lying face down on the ground. It wasn't until Alkire looked twice and realized the corpse was lying on its back, but still face down, that he figured out how he'd been killed, since there was no blood on the ground. "Raine's not exactly helpless in close combat, you silly bugger." Alkire stepped over the man with the broken neck and continued on his way. Still, the sheer number of grenades and other explosive devices that were on the corpse was unnerving... the guy looked ready to blast a path to the bridge through every wall between here and there.

He heard the sudden sound of rapid pistol fire and retailiating full automatic burst fire coming from nearby and slowed his pace. The last thing he needed to do was barge around a corner and step in the middle of a pitched gun battle. It would be especially embarassing to get shot by Raine, since she was likely to just shoot first and ask questions later. Fortunately, his full face mask also had a shortwave radio in it. Reception sucked inside the ship, but he figured if he was close enough to hear the bullets, he was probably close enough for comms. "Raine, honey, you hear me?"

"Fuck, Robert, where the FUCK have you been!?" The reply was interrupted by a blast from what sounded like a concussion grenade. "FUCK!!"

"Where are you!?" Alkire demanded. "I'm at hatch B-2-4-9!" (interior note, A is top level of ship, Z is bottom level, first numeral is what section of ship, 1 being forward, 2 middle forward, 3 mid aft, 4 aft, second numeral is which door headed forward/aft, third numeral is which door headed port/starboard, even numbers port side, odd starboard side)

"I'm at hatch A-1-4-7!" Raine answered, telling him that she was still one level above him, though only a little bit closer to the bridge as the bird flies. Given how loud everything was, that meant he was near a staircase, which clicked with his mental map of the main passages of the Archangel. The doorway to the bridge was A-1-1-1, so that meant the invaders were pretty damn close, only 3 hatches away, on a straight shot to the bridge. "There's two left, both heavily armed and showing no inclinations for focus firing! Some support would be wonderful!"

"On the way, dear. Just try not to shoot the guy in the flight suit." Alkire picked up the pace now that he knew there were no enemies left on this level. He bounded up the staircase three steps at a time, listening to the exchange of fire. It sounded like only two people shooting, one the guy with the automatic rifle, the other Raine with her two pistols. Where was the other guy Raine had seen then? Alkire was pretty sure he knew what he'd be doing if he were that guy, which meant that were really running out of time. The doorway to the bridge was perhaps the most reinforced and secure on the entire ship... but that didn't mean a determined man with plenty of explosives and the will to use them couldn't get in anyway. "Coming out of the stairs." Alkire warned, poking his head around the corner. When he didn't get shot, he shoulder rolled forward and then pressed himself flat against a hatchway. Peering around the corner, he finally made out Raine, pistol in each hand, two hatchways further on. He wasted no further time in hustling up to her, sliding into concealment on the opposite side of the hatch from her.

"Noisy bastard, isn't he?" Alkire commented as the enemy lit their hatchway up with constellations of sparks as he hosed the metal down with full automatic fire. Raine gave a barely perceptible nod, pistols held next to her head as she reloaded them. Alkire noticed that she was always keeping one arm pressed close against the left side of her chest, as much as she could anyway. "You hurt?"

"Scratch." She replied dismissively. "Bastard thought he was clever, sneaking up on me with a knife while his buddies kept me pinned behind a hatch with their guns. As if I didn't know the floor plan of the ship better than them. I gave him a quick lesson in respect for women, but he did get me once."

"Bad?" Alkire pressed.

"A scratch." Raine replied firmly, in her "don't mess with me" voice. "So whats the plan?"

"I just got here."

"Which means you had plenty of time to think on the way up." The bullet rain striking around their hatch slackened off and Raine popped her head and torso around the corner, blasting four quick shots with either pistol and then leaned back into cover. "Damn hatch opens towards us, or else I could have bounced a few into him a while ago."

Alkire thought about mentioning how astronomically bad the chances were of scoring a kill shot on a ricochet, but then again, he wasn't exactly someone good enough to actually TRY for one either. Raine was. He forced himself to think more clearly. "Just one up there, which means his pal is working on the bridge doors as we speak. He's only tossed one or two grenades, which given how many they seem to be carrying means he must have loaned all his spares to his buddy. haven't heard any big bangs yet, but he's gotta be close. Hmm... no two ways about it, this is gonna be real messy."

"You're better with bombs than I am." Raine noted, which Alkire was forced to admit was true. He was a generalist, but Raine was highly specilized in marksmanship and hand to hand, leaving little room for more than basic demolitions training. "You cover, I go."

"Professionally, I agree." Alkire said slowly. However, professionally only went so far. This was Raine, a woman he had more than passing attachment for. They'd had little enough time to indulge more than formalities during the war, but that didn't mean the feeling wasn't there. "Personally..."

"I love you too, Robert." Raine replied. "However, we don't have any choice, do we? Now cover me!" Raine didn't give him any further time to argue, ducking out the door as soon as the incoming fire slackened off again.

"Fucking hell, Raine!" Alkire shouted in frustration, even as he leaned out and started shooting three round bursts past her. It wasn't easy shooting past a running figure in a narrow passageway, and it took all his concentration to do it. Now the ball was in the enemy court. He could do one of two things. The sensible one would be retreat to his friend, where he would have backup of his own. The other would be to try and stop the person charging at his position before she could get close enough to negate his own cover anyway, regardless of the covering fire. The Tiamat soldier went with option number two. Raine was only about three quarters of the way down the passage when a figure in blue and black body armor swung into view at the far hatch, gun up and aimed in one hand, grenade cylinder in the other primed to throw. Alkire tried to get an angle, but Raine was too close, he had no shot. "GET DOWN!" he ordered.

Raine ignored him, instead pumping shots from her left hand pistol into the man's chest and abdomen region, even as shots from her right hand pistol tracked along the arm with the grenade and blew it out of the man's hand, almost blowing the hand off at the same time. The man dropped backward, thrown off balance if not actually killed by the repeated close range pistol shots, which still failed to penetrate his thick frontal torso armor, but it didn't stop him from firing his own gun at Raine. At such close range, even one handed and falling backwards, there was no way the man could miss with everything. Raine was not a particularly small or light woman, but she was still sent spinning backwards through the air from the multiple close range high velocity heavy bullet impacts. Alkire thought her armor caught most of it, but he saw quite a bit more liquid in the air than he wanted to as well. The Tiamat soldier dropped out of view even as Raine fell to the deck in the passageway as Alkire charged forward, firing through the open hatch to keep the enemy pinned for all he was worth.

It didn't turn out to be necessary, because only a few seconds after Raine shot his hand away, the grenade the Tiamat soldier had been holding went off with a tremendous bang, filling the entire room he was in with shards of flying metal shrapnel, some of which even ricocheted into the passageway where Alkire and Raine were. Alkire took several cuts to his arms and legs, one piece even buried itself in his upper right side, but he ignored the brief pain and spurt of blood, dropping to his knees in a slide that carried to him where Raine was lying on the ground. The Tiamat soldier had been shredded by his own grenade, now he had to make sure Raine was all right. There was a lot of blood, but the only gunshot injuries he could see were a graze along her skull, a clean inny-outy on her left collarbone and a fragmenter on her upper right thigh. That one worried him, because of the major blood vessels contained in the thigh, but while the wound was bleeding, it wasn't spurting like a firehose, so it was unlikely her femoral artery was damaged.

He didn't even notice the real injury until he started digging tape and cloth out of her combat gear to make some improvised pressure bandages. "THATS NOT A FUCKING SCRATCH, RAINE!" Alkire stared at the deep stab wound in her left middle torso, a few inches under the breast. The wound was at least two inches long, and who knew how deep. He didn't see any bubbles in the blood streaming out and soaking her shirt, so at least a lung wasn't likely hit, but it was no minor injury either. There were any number of organs that could be damaged, depending on the angle of strike, intestines, liver, stomach and kidney's to mention a few.

"S-sorr...y." Raine mumbled weakly, semi-conscious. At least she was still conscious, though Alkire knew that wouldn't last long, with the amount of blood she was losing. She needed a trained medic and proper equipment, right the fuck now, but neither were available. Like all members of TEMPEST, Alkire was certified in various forms of first aid and even a little bit of battlefield medicine... he could do stitches, tourniquets, set bones, hell, even dig bullets out with sticks or fingers... but deep body cavity stab wounds were beyond his ability to do more than superficially help. "Didn't... hurt... so bad... till just... n...ow."

"Fuck! Fuckfuckfuckfuck! Up or down!?" Alkire's hands were busy taping folded squares of cloth to her other injuries even as he demanded further info while she was still able to talk.

"Taller than me... ... down..."

"Straight or saw edge!?" Alkire stared at the wound. The edges didn't look torn, but most blade serrations didn't run the full length of the blade, so there might only be internal signs. There was no reply. It pained him but he stabbed a thumb into her shoulder gunshot wound. Better than a slap on the face for waking you up suddenly when you started drifting out. The scream she gave out wouldn't do much for his guilt complex later, that was for sure. "Straight or saw edged blade!?"

"... edside manner... traight... ... inded me... of... ... type... type three..." Raine faded again, this time beyond even the remit of a shock waking. But she'd told him what he needed to know. Type three combat knives were common amongst soldiers and other thuggy types that went in for a bit of flash for their cutters. A type three had a blade roughly six inches long with a needle point and a bright mirror "never polish" surface. They were double edged and reminded many of a medieval dagger. They were great knives for putting your initials on and for working wood and other utility uses. For pure stopping power though, Alkire preferred his own type two... shorter, narrower bladde, matte black except for the razor edge, with a one and half edge blade and heavy serrations on the inch to either side of the armor piercing pyramid tip. Not a knife for cutting your food with, or splicing rope or anything else besides stabbing into your enemy and giving them a debilitating wound that would cause massive internal bleeding.

Alkire covered the wound with several squares of cloth ripped from Raine's combat fatigues and put his own flight suit gloves, turned inside out so the absorbent inner liner was out, underneath. Though designed to soak sweat, Alkire bet the gloves would soak blood too and hopefully help stem the stream coming from the wound. He thanked small mercy's because the wound showed no signs of blade twisting, which would have been a true horror to deal with. He taped the compress down and then taped Raine's shirt down over the compress, anything to make sure it stayed in place. And then his first aid was done. Short of taking her down to the ship's corpsman, which would take way too much time, he'd done all he could for her. It was up to her to survive until he could get her proper medical help. And it was up to him to stop the other Tiamat soldier before he blew the bridge to hell and back, and then shot down everyone who lived. He snatched up his rifle and charged forward, throwing caution to the winds. The time spent rending first aid was probably going to cost him dearly, but he couldn't very well have not done it.

Alkire barreled through the final hatchway before the bridge door yelling like a madman, visbily startling the Tiamat soldier crouched by the obviously locked doors to the bridge. The man was obviously no demolitions expert himself, because the eight breaching charges he'd stacked up and taped to the doors were WAY more than sufficient. Alkire wouldn't have used more than two... eight was enough to get through a bank vault door. The backwash from eight breaching charges going off at one probably would have killed the Tiamat soldier anyway, though the effect would have been the same for most everyone on the bridge too, their bodies mushed by the blast overpressure wave even before they were incinerated. Still, the man, for all his lack of demo know-how, had good instincts and reflexes. Even as he jumped his hand was coming around with a pistol in it. Alkire pulled the trigger so hard he thought he would break it off. His gun spat three bullets and then clicked back dry. He'd forgotten to reload it during his mad charge. All three rounds struck the Tiamat soldier square in the chest, but they didn't penetrate the heavy body armor. they did throw the man's aim off so his psitol snap shot breezed past Alkire's head instead of into it.

Alkire wasted no time searching his backpack for the pistol he'd picked up, he threw himself bodily forward and tackled the Tiamat soldier, slamming them both into the bridge door. Alkire drove a knee into the man's gut and slammed the gun hand against the wall as hard as he could, swearing as the man's hand spasmed on the trigger, blasting a round out that buzzed as it bounced around the room. The Tiamat soldier responded by cracking his elbow into Alkire's face and pushing off from the door with both legs, sending them both crashing heavily to the floor. Unable to see clearly because his mask had been knocked askew, Alkire slammed two heavy punches into the off hand armpit of the other guy and then managed to snake a hand up to rip off his own mask. The passageway outside the bridge still had some power, and the mix of red flashing emergency lights and the normal light made for more than enough to see by. the Tiamat soldier grunted with the impact of the punches, but continued wrestling with Alkire, trying to bring his suddenly free gun hand around to get a clear shot, finger squeezing by reflex and sending more bullets bouncing randomly around the room.

Alkire blocked the man's arm with his own forearm even as he headbutted the man ferociously. It hurt, not having head protection, but being on the bottom of a dogpile was the way to lose a fight, not win. Alkire flipped out his trusty combat knife as the Tiamat soldier recoiled from the headbutt, and stabbed upwards into the man's groin and twisted. It had to hurt. It had to hurt bad. The groin had a lot of nerves in it. It was also a psychologically brutal place to hit a guy, especially with a knife. It also had a lot of major blood vessels running into and out of it. All three things meant it was a great place to stab or shoot somone if you wanted to drop them and probably kill them, but not too quickly. The Tiamat soldier arced his back so hard Alkire could almost hear the bones creak and let out a truly bloodcurdling shriek of agony as he convulsed backwards off of Alkire. Alkire kicked him in the chest for good measure and slowly rolled to his feet. He had to be quick, who knew what sort of trigger the bombs were on.

He breathed a short sigh of relief after a brief moment of inspecting the breaching charges. Standard radio armed/detonated devices. No special tactile triggers or motion sensors or timers. Press a button to arm them. Press it again to go BOOM. Now he just had to find the control. And he knew where to look, since what sort of bombadier wouldn't keep the control on him? It was as he turned and caught sight of something in his peripheral vision that he reflected he probably should have made sure the guy was disabled first. Or at least made sure to take the gun away. "Fucking fanatics." Alkire observed, seeing the man actually sitting up in a small lake of his own blood, gun pointing steadily at Alkire from across the room.

"For the preservation... For the Preservation... For the..." The man couldn't seem to spit the mantra out. That didn't stop him from pulling the trigger four times, the multiple impacts throwing Alkire hard against the doorway behind him. His entire chest went numb, and the feeling of numbness spread rapidly. Alkire coughed heavily and saw the big glob of gore that came out. The flight suits were durable and padded... but they weren't armored against gunfire or other types of impact. But despite the sudden leaden feeling in his legs, Alkire found that he was still standing, still able to control his body. There was actually very little pain. Slowly, ever so slowly, he slid the pack off his back and fumbled it open. Meanwhile the Tiamat soldier had kept trying to shoot him, only to discover the pistol was empty. Frantically, his blood slicked hands clumsy, the Tiamat soldier struggled to reload the weapon. It was tough, because he could feel his life slipping away with every breath and the pain in his groin was unbearable. He dropped the magazine twice, covering it liberally with his own hot blood, and fumbled it twice more before it slammed home in the grip of the pistol with a protesting screech. He aimed at the bastard who'd killed him. "... of our Blue and Pure World." he spat and pulled the trigger, even as his other hand found the detonator control at his waist.

Alkire remained calm, searching out his own pistol and fighting to keep his mind steady and focused. He was glad he'd loaded it before putting it in the bag, because he didn't think he could have managed to load it in his current state. The Tiamat soldier was thrashing around, blood flying everywhere, as he fought with his own pistol reloading process. Alkire found a glimmer of respect for the guy... it couldn't have been easy, ignoring the wound Alkire had given him. Alkire was pretty sure he couldn't have done it. Of course he wasn't a die hard fanatic either. Alkire watched and felt himself smiling, despite the copper taste filling his mouth and dribbling down his chin. The stupid bastard had put the magazine in with the bullets facing backwards and then forced it in. Well, perhaps the pain was getting to him after all. He slowly brought his own pistol up, feeling like his arm weighed a couple hundred pounds. The Tiamat soldier aimed his own gun at Alkire and squeezed the trigger. Of course, nothing happened, since the firing pin was on the other side of the bullet from the hammer. Alkire's weapon didn't have the same problem, and his shots blew the Tiamat's face out through the back of his head. A simple box with two buttons on it fell out of the soldier's suddenly limp off hand. The control circuit, obviously.

Alkire was just walking over to pick it up when the world went topsy-turvy and he found himself on his face. He reached for the box, but it seemed to be just outside the reach of his hands. He was still reaching when he lost consciousness, at roughly the same time the bridge door hissed open and Katie barged out, crying his name. At least, thats what he thought he heard...

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Victor swam back to full consciousness with an incredible noise ringing in his ears. It sounded like a church bell dropping from the top of a ten story tower onto a solid steel floor. He slowly crawled up the wall he was lying against and spat blood ad a few tooth chips into the facepiece of his mask. The back of his head felt like it was made from a pain sponge. He remembered getting shot, his leg wounds were still bleeding sluggishly, but everything after that was just a dull roar and confused images. Probably due to some sort of explosion throwing him into an unyielding surface, like the steel wall. He slapped some duct tape over his gunshot wounds to staunch the bleeding and took stock. After a few moments thought and analysis of the smoke now filling the corridor he was in, he had to assume Asmodeus had managed to breach the security door leading into the Engineering spaces, no doubt that was the source of the echoing noise that had woken Victor again.

Asmodeus was down a man, and had another injured, but that still elft him and one more fully able bodied soldier opposing Victor. But he couldn't let the long odds stop him, he was likely the only person in any sort of position to stop whatever it was Asmodeus was planning. Victor found his gun on the ground and slid in a fresh magazine and then headed towards the door to Engineering as fast as his stiff injured leg would let him. He could hear sporadic gunfire coming from inside Engineering... Asmodeus and company slaughtering everyone they found, likely, since it was long odds that the engineers had automatic weapons just lying around waiting to be used. The crump and crash of concussion and fragmentation grenades further indicated that it was Tiamat doing the killing, not the other way around. Victor poked his head around the bed in the passageway, wincing when he saw the smoking ruins where the hatch had been... someone had been a little heavy with the demo. Engineering was entirely unlit, except for flickering illumination from several fires now raging out of control, with the damage control crews dead.

Victor made his way slowly... even with the ability to see reasonably clearly granted to him by his mask, there was no reason to rush into another ambush. His foes outnumbered him three to one after all, even if one was moderately injured. Smoke swirled around him as he rounded a corner, heading down some strairs that would lead him into the spaces underneath the main generators. He was glad of the mask, or else he would have had to worry about running out of breathable air with all the smoke. There were two bodies at the base of the stairs. One was a Tiamat soldier, the one Victor had wounded earlier. There was a massive bloody wound on the back of his head, it looked like someone had struck him with something large and heavy, very hard, crushing the entire back of the skull. The other body was a crewmember, a burly mechanic. One of the massive tools nicknamed BFW's (Big Fucking Wrench) lay nearby. Nearly four feet long with a head as big as a bowling ball and made from solid steel, it certainly fit the bill for what had hit the Tiamat soldier. Victor was glad to see the crew fighting back, even if the man had obviously lost his life for it.

The crewman looked almost peaceful, except for a neat little incision in the middle of this throat, barely more than a half inch wide. Well, that and the massive crater of shredded organs where his stomach used to be. Asmodeus wasn't someone you wnted to try sneaking up on, unless you were a serious expert. A noise from nearby caught Victor's ear as he bent over the dead crewman. The sound of a ring being pulled. He cursed and dived off the stairs as fast as he could, just barely clearing the area of a frag grenade that minced both corpses and left his back feeling like he'd just laid down in a bed of cacti. He ignored the pain as best he was able, feeling his leg flare up as he rolled to his feet in time to spray a burst of fire at the Tiamat soldier as he charged by on a maintenance walkway on the other side of a bank of machinery. Bullets whined and sparked, but Victor was fairly sure he hadn't hit the man. He reloaded again and limped in the direction the man had run. He was heading underneath the generators again. Victor tried to think of what was under there.

Nothing had come to mind by the time he came under fire again, heavy bullets knocking divots in the deck as the Tiamat soldier reached a ladderway that led both up between the generators and down into the support machinery below. The Tiamat had climbed several rungs to get a superior field of vision and fire, but it turned out to be a mistake. Having missed Victor, the soldier had no easy path of movement left open to him. Certainly there was nowhere to dodge Victor's return blurt of automatic fire, which tore into his lighter armored legs and waist. Maybe not instantly fatal, but that was okay because the soldier lost his grip and dropped assfirst down twenty feet of enclosed ladderway onto a steel deck, his chin and skull bounching off every rung on the way down. Victor reloaded again and shot the body again a few times, just to be sure, but he'd known the man was dead the moment he fell. He looked at the ladder... why had the man run to it, it was quite exposed. It made no sense, unless the man was also planning to use the ladder. Now the question was simple. Up, or down? Which way had Asmodeus gone?

Up lay access ports for both main generators and their associated cooling and power distribution systems. If the ship had been flying and operating at full power, that would have been the obvious place to go. But it was crashed and mostly disabled... bombs there would do nothing to change the current state of the ship. That left down, which lead to various hydraulic systems, oil and water tanks, bilges and... the battery room. Victor climbed on the ladder and descended as quickly as he could. The battery room. With both main and emergency generators offline, the ship could only be drawing power from the massive batteries. Take those out and the ship would go from being MOSTLY helpless to ENTIRELY helpless. No firefighting gear, no lights, no automatic doors... anything electrical would cease working, and in this day and age that was basically everything. Indeed, after only a brief search, Victor found the floor hatch leading to the battery well, as it was called, standing open. There was even less light in the well than the rest of the engine room, but there was no sign of Asmodeus. Victor slowly climbed down the ladder, it was awkward going because of his wounded leg and the need to climb facing into the room vs facing the ladder, so that Asmodeus wouldn't have the oppertunity to shoot him in the back. Suddenly, without any warning, the remotely operated battery room hatch slammed closed and audibly locked, leaving Victor in near total darkness.

It took him a few seconds to realize that the darkness was slowly growing lighter. The source of the glow seemed to be coming from some ways away, to what a quick tought determined was the front of the ship. The battery well was huge, because the battery itself was huge. It was actually multiple high storage capacity batteries, each as tall as a grown man and more than two feet on a side. The Archangel had more than eight hundred of them connected in series-parrallel, which could provide power for up to ten hours of non combat operation, more if the ship ran with reduced electrical loads. Fairly certain he was walking into a trap, but not seeing any other option, Victor headed towards the light as silently as his wounded leg allowed. He made it more than eighty feet, aware of the rows of batteries extending below him as well as marching in monolithic blocks to either side, before he made out the source of the light. Three unidirectional chemical lanterns, much bigger cousins of the glow sticks many militaries used for discreet illumination, were set up next to a central diagnostics machine, where Engineering crew could assess the state of the battery as a whole and the individual batteries that made them up.

Asmodeus, distinctive in his horned Hellhound mask, leaned casually against a row of batteries just in front of the lanterns. He'd taken off his body armor and seemingly discarded his guns. Victor was pretty sure he could make out blocks of plastique adhered to the central diagnostics machine and to several batteries nearby, but there was no ticking doomsday device, like he'd half been expecting. He wasn't sure what sort of game Asmodeus was playing, but he wasn't going to let him just sit there, backlit, without making him pay for it. He carefully aimed with his SMG right at the area below the chilling blue glow of the Hellhound mask optics and was just about to squeeze the trigger when Asmodeus spoke.

"You really don't want to do that, Victor." Asmodeus said clearly, across the twenty or so feet that seperated them. "I've cut the ventilation system power, and put a few good holes in the hydrogen removal system. These are hydrogen-sulfate batteries. Of course, you knew that already, since you've studied this ship thoroughly, being a passenger and sometime protector of it." Asmodeus sounded totally calm. "As if that wasn't enough, I opened up a few batteries. Hydrogen isn't particularly harmful to breathe, especially with our masks on... but if you remember your basic chemistry..."

"Yes, hydrogen is highly explosive in a gaseous state." Victor said disgustedly. "I don't see that stopping me, 'Deus. I could blow myself to kingdom come by shooting you, but that's better than letting you do whatever it is you're doing."

"Is it?" Asmodeus replied archly. "You obviously haven't thought things through. Do you have any idea how much explosive power is contained within these batteries? We're talking hundreds of gigajoules, Victor. That's why they have all the safety precautions preventing fires in here and indeed a way to jettison the entire room if need be. If all the batteries went off at once... say due to my bombs or your stray gunshot... there wouldn't be a piece of this ship left bigger than a deck of playing cards. And while I don't doubt you'd still do it if it killed you, I don't believe you'll do it if it means killing everyone else on the Archangel."

"I don't see as I have much choice, 'Deus. If you're going to blow the bombs anyway, I might as well take my chances."

"Ah yes, but you haven't heard me out yet. Behind me, on that diagnostics console, lies the switch that will unlock and open the hatch you climbed through. With that source of ventilation, hydrogen levels in this room will bleed off to safe levels in only a few minutes, since hydrogen is lighter than air and will rise out the hatch first. All you have to do is get by me. Which, if you can, will incidentally solve your bomb problem as well, because, as you can see by looking past me, the control circuit is also next to that switch. My gift, to whomever wins." Asmodeus turned to fully face Victor, and that was when Victor saw the long rapier held in Asmodeus's hand. "All you have to do is get by me without using a gun and salvation is yours, Victor."

"Why, 'Deus?" Victor asked, slowly lowering his gun. "Why give me a chance?"

"Because it's just about the only thing that makes life fun anymore." Asmodeus replied easily. "And either way, I get to die, which is the point of it all, isn't it?"

"Not exactly my venue of choice for saber fighting." Victor noted, unencumbering himself of his armor and guns as well. The armor would do him zero good against Asmodeus's laser sharpened blade. His leg protested stiffly. "I don't suppose you'd take a handicap for a wounded opponent?"

"The venue is what it is." Asmodeus replied. "And I'm crazy, not stupid, Victor. You may be injured, but you're almost twenty years younger than me as well. That should be plenty of handicap." Asmodeus took a side on stance, seemingly in quite good balance and health for a man who brought up a twenty year age difference. "Ah yes, you'll want to be careful of slashing too widely... it would be quite an unfortunate death to strike a bus bar and short several megavolts through your arm."

"Anything else to say? Want to laugh maniacally and tell me there is some damsel in distress tied across a rail line somewhere? Twirl a mustachio? Throw back your dark cloak dramatically? Tell me you're secretly my father?" Victor drew his saber and took his own side on stance. He felt a bit rusty, and his injured leg twinged constantly, throwing him off a bit.

"I'll tell you if anything comes to MIND!" Asmodeus lunged on the last word, rapier point darting for Victor's face. Victor parried it high, but had no time to riposte as Asmodeus withdrew his blade and stabbed again in a lightning fast reversal, now aiming for Victor's forward thigh. Victor only barely managed to evade by leaping awkwardly backwards, putting far more weight than he'd wanted to on his injured leg, which was probably exactly what Asmodeus intended. Asmodeus continued to advance, stabbing and thrusting, always trying to make Victor keep weight on his injured leg, never giving him time nor space to set up a defense strategy. Truly, in the confined space of the battery well, a saber was almost a hinderance, relying mostly as it did on slashing attacks made with the blade's edge, vs thrusting attacks from the point like a rapier.

That is, until Victor parried low again, letting Asmodeus's blade slide aginst his all the way down to the hilt, where there was a slight notch in which the blade caught. Thus bound, Victor lunged forward himself, bringing his fingerguard smashing upwards into Asmodeus's chin, throwing the man back as their blades disengaged with a squeal of metal on metal. Now it was Victors turn to go on the attack, using short chops and limited overhand sweeps of his sword to batter at Asmodeus's defenses. Much as a rapier was well suited for thrusting attacks, so too was it best suited for defending against the same... the slashing attacks of a saber were hard to block fully with the thinner bladed sword. Victor pushed Asmodeus back almost into the circle of radiance cast by the chemical lanterns before Asmodeus rallied, ducking past a slice at his head and bulling forward, something Victor had not expected the older man to do. The saber was much better at close range combat, with its steel fingerguard almost like a set of brass knuckles, than the rapier. But then Victor spied the knife Asmodeus had palmed into his other hand, shortly before the jagged bladed combat knife sliced a deep gouge along the forearm of his sword hand.

Asmodeus continued his charge, dropping his shoulder and slamming Victor backwards a few steps, smiling as he heard the younger man grunt with each step he made with his injured leg. He spit blood from his split lips and vowed he'd make this a fight to enjoy. It was going to be his last after all. "What's the matter, Victor? You're slower than I remember." Asmodeus took up a new stance, sword held low and angled high, knife held high and angled low.

"Some of us had better things to do than concentrate on sports." Victor growled. His arm hurt and it was bleeding freely. If he didn't regain some sort of advantage soon, he was done for, as the blood loss made him dizzier and lightheaded. "Like trying to make the world a better place!" He studied Asmodeus's stance frantically, searching for an opening or weakness. Wait a minute...

"It is a better place, isn't it?" Asmodeus answered calmly. "The war is all but over, only Orb stands against Sai now. Then there is just Frost and me, us poor dying sparks trying to make a last impression on the world. After we're done, the world will be peaceful."

"Assuming you can drown out the cries of millions of starving Coordinators, yes." Victor retorted. "Me, my hearing is a bit too keen to just ignore that." This is gonna suck, but its the only way.

"Well, you don't need to worry about that too much, I can do quite a bit to help you drown out the noise!" Asmodeus lunged again, again aiming for the forward thigh. It wasn't near time to end this yet, but another wound would certainly make things more fun. The blade slipped through Victor's lethargic defense and stabbed cleanly through the meat of the quadriceps. Asmodeus smirked and was just withdrawing the blade when Victor's hand stantched around and grabbed the blade, its laser sharpened edges cutting deep into his fingers and palm as he stomped forward with his impaled leg, aggravating the injury even as the sudden awkward angle locked Asmodeus's sword in place. "Damn..." Asmodeus commented as Victor's saber sliced upwards in a long sweep that left a inch deep cut from Asmodeus's left hip to his right shoulder.

"You were still fighting like you want to save your life!" Victor shouted into Asmodeus's face, releasing his sword and whipping out his knife in almost the same motion. He drove it home into the base of Asmodeus's neck, even as Asodeus used his own knife to stab Victor in the chest. The two former college rivals stared at each other through their masks, bodies twitching, each willing the other to fall first, neither willing to be the first to show weakness. In the end though, age did tell, and Asmodeus's legs turned to water despite the ironclad orders from his brain. "That... that was... always... your... weak... ness... 'Deus." Victor staggered back a few steps, looking down at the knife in his chest. From its location he was pretty sure he had a lung wound, which meant withdrawing the blade would only make things worse. "You never... let yourself risk... it all."

Asmodeus did not reply, he was too busy vainly attempting to staunch the hideous wound Victor's knife had left in the juncture of his throat and chest. It wasn't the pain, it was the lack of air... he needed to breathe... just catch his breath and he'd be fine to put his arrogant rival in his place again... just breathe. Victor slowly tottered past the gargling Asmodeus, collapsing up against the diagnostics machine when he reached it. His stumble knocked the bomb detonator to the floor, but he forced himself to stay awake long enough to turn the switch that ventilated the compartment. There was no rush of gale force winds or anything dramatic like that. Just a metallic "clunk" of the hatch opening. Victor's vision was starting to grey out again, but he was reasonably sure that his wound wasn't totally life threatening. Long as he didn't bleed out over the next couple hours, he should be fine. Should be just fine... Victor sank slowly to a sitting position and scrabbled weakly for the bomb controller. It was while he was doing that he noticed the LED timer taped to the bottom of the console desk. It read 1:30. Then 1:29. Then 1:28.

"Motherfucker, you put a timer on the bombs?" Victor swore without feeling able to get angry. He struggled to maintain focus as he reached under the console to examine the timer box. It looked like a standard device of its nature, there would be anywhere from three to ten wires going off it, depending on how much was hooked up to it and how tricky the designers were feeling.

"I knew... my own... overconfident... nature." Asmodeus gasped, vomiting a bit of blood with each exhalation. He slowly climbed a battery, using it to lever himself to his feet. Casting about for a weapon, he picked up Victor's discarded SMG and saber. "I would... suggest cutting... the blue wire."

"They're all fucking blue wires." Victor replied after a moment's investigation. "All five of them."

"Heh." Asmodeus's laugh was more like a death rattle as he slowly took aim at Victor, who had his head and shoulders underneath the console desk while he worked on the timer. "Looks like... I do know... how to risk... it all."

Victor peeked out from under the console as he levered the case top off the timer. It read 0:57 and continued to tick downwards. No pressure. "Don't be a sore loser, 'Deus." Victor went back to work under the console, tracing the wire paths out as best he could. Have to keep him talking. Give the room time to ventilate. Never mind the bombs. Just keep him talking. "I won the duel, it would be dishonorable to strike me now."

"I am a dead man walking, even before these wounds, Victor. What do I care about honor or decency or anything like that? My family was killed in this war, Victor, before it even started. I thought I'd found closure when I killed that girl, but I was wrong. It didn't make me feel better at all."

"Don't even fucking bring that shit up now, 'Deus, you sick fuck. How could you try and force someone to make a choice like that?" Just a little more... almost got it... just a few more seconds...

"But he did end up making the choice, didn't he? Oh, but the emotional scarring he must have. It must truly eat at him. That was the only thing that made me feel better, thinking of that pain, so unlike any other in the world." Asmodeus replied wistfully. "I must sound like Frost. Hmmp, what do you know? The litte bastard was right after all." Asmodeus squeezed the trigger, sending almost thirty bullets crashing into Victor's legs and torso. The recoil was too much for him in his wounded state, sending him slipping backwards, arms flailing.

He was still holding Victor's saber in one hand, when the blade whipped around and slapped against the metal bars running along the tops of the batteries securing them together both electrically and physically. The contact wasn't for long, but electricity travels at the speed of light. In an instant more than two hundred batteries discharged their entire potential down the path of least resistance, through the saber and into Asmodeus, charring him to a blackened skeleton clothed in ashes in an instant. The only thing that remained even partly intact was the Hellhound mask, fused to the blackened skull, lifeless blue eyes still staring upwards.

Victor felt the world slipping away from him, lying spread eagled underneath the diagnostics console. He couldn't see or feel anything below the neck. Probably a good thing, he'd get sick to his stomach otherwise. Assuming he still had one, which wasn't assured. He stared upwards at the timer. 0:37. He blinked and forced his eyes open again. 0:37. "Fuck... I'm good." Victor closed his eyes again. It was too much effort keeping the open. "Hey... James... Vlad... good to see you guys again. Never guess what we did with that vodka, Vlad. Yeah... we been having a grand old time since you guys got off the bus. Can't wait to catch up, eh? Damn... is it... is it just... me... or... or is it... really... really fucking cold...?"

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Frost stared at the Fury's left arm. Or the charred and blackened stump where it had been anyways. "I cannot believe I let a total moron like Elsman actually damage me in combat." Frost commented to the void. "Haven't you humiliated me enough as it is, cruel world, with the Archangel still in one piece and that bastard Yamato not even deigning to take the field against me? Must you continue to pile more shame onto my pride? What's next, is Fiery Zala-Attha going to come bitch slap me to death now? Huh? Is that it? Huh?" As usual, the world declined to answer verbally. Frost sliced his remaining beam saber around and severed the control wires linking the grounded GP pod to the Fury. No sense getting burned twice.

Frost kept most of his attention on his foes, even as he complained. Loser Zala-Attha in his big red machine with the flyer packs was in front, now without a shield but a beam saber in each hand. Fiery Zala-Attha, in her pink machine, was advancing from the right, spear and shield raised. Scarface was behind him, also coming in with sword and shield. And Cray-bait Elsman and his girl were on the left, no doubt patting each other all over the back for their stroke of good luck. "You think I can't beat you all with just one arm!? Haven't you learned anything from our times together!?" Frost shouted, offended. "You should know, that when the going gets tough... the TOUGH GET GOING! And there is no one TOUGHER THAN ME!"

Frost didn't wait for them to jump him en masse, he charged directly at Loser Zala-Attha, but that was just a feint. He faked a dodge to the right, because that's what Loser Zala-Attha would always respond to first, a threat to his lovely sex-toy. In the instant when Zala-Attha commited, Frost burned left, grinning through the G-Forces, firing three of his remaining grapples at Elsman as he came about, ducking under the sweeping slice from Scarface, pivoting on one leg to drive the other knee first into the cockpit region of the Duelist. Frost lifted the standing leg up, twirling the Fury into a somersault to avoid losing the limb to Loser Zala-Attha's predictable attacks, and then brought his GP pods around in a mass, moving them into position around Fiery Zala-Attha. A few taps on his thrusters momentarily disengaged him from melee combat with Scarface and Loser Zala-Attha and Frost tossed his beam saber straight up. Elsman had managed to avoid the beam grapples again, but he was out of position and off balance, so Frost could ignore him for the next few seconds.

Frost drew his beam rifle with his operational hand and blasted a dozen shots at the general area of Fiery Zala-Attha. By then of course both Loser Zala-Attha and Scarface were in his face again, trying to overwhelm him with beam saber attacks from two directions at once. As if he'd never trained against multiple opponents in a melee environment, with various sorts of disadvantages. The Fury was DESIGNED for melee combat almost to exclusion, he had reserves of maneuverability they could only dream about. He would appear to almost blur to them as he let the Fury drop like a stone before pulling out scant inches from the ground, igniting the very dirt with the flames of his thruster wash as he stowed his rifle and caught the sword on its way down, stowing it and drawing an armor-schnieder knife. He angled his GP pods to continue bouncing the beam blasts he'd fired and caught earlier, content for now to keep Fiery Zala-Attha pinned with confusion as he wove a mini-Web of the Warped around her.

Elsman was back in the fight again, missiles and beam blasts once again trying to track him down. That was likely the girl then. Coordinators could at least recognize an ineffective tactic when they saw it. He wove past the beam blasts and as many of the missiles as he thought prudent, letting the others strike him to zero effect as his anti-beam coated transphase armor negated them. He flew dead straight at the Grand Buster, even as it aimed it's hyper impulse cannon at him. Frost made no attempt to dodge, even as the crackles of reddish-blue energies started leaping around the muzzle, sure sign that it was about to fire. "Monkey see, monkey do." Frost admonished, throwing the knife directly up the barrel of the weapon, which caused it to short out and explode rather nicely. Now the Fury wasn't the only machine with just one arm. "Gonna be hard to use that big clunker on your back one handed..." Frost giggled and turned his attention elsewhere, idly kicking out as he zoomed past and knocking the overbalanced and ungainly Grand Buster flat on its ass.

Scarface was right behind him, sticking like a limpet no matter how Frost dodged and wove, started, stopped or maneuvered. Frost shrugged slightly. If he wanted to be that persistent about it, so be it. The railgun and gatling 25mm beam gun on the shoulders of the Duelist spat and whined at him, but he ignored them as inconsequential. Even the low caliber beam darts wouldn't be much of a problem unless he bathed in them for a while. He checked the Web around Fiery Zala-Attha. She played at being a mobile suit pilot, but her skills were barely mediocre in Frost's opinion and he only had to turn his partial attention to her every few seconds. The Web would need refreshing in the next ten seconds, but nothing immediate, the girl was still standing immobile in the middle of the confusing tangle of bouncing green beams, obviously too terrified to move. Frost turned his sights on the greatest threat, despite his name, Loser Zala-Attha was just about the only one he wasn't entirely sure was a pushover. Frost just called him that because of their little meeting in the subway of Orb, which was of course where Fiery Zala-Attha had also gotten her new name.

Frost wished he could listen to what his opponents were saying, as he curved around and oriented on Loser Zala-Attha, who was now facing him head on, dual bladed beam saber in either fist. Frost fired all his remaining beam grapples directly at the Righteous, studying the play of the beam sabers as Loser Zala-Attha cut them from the air. It was painful, letting himself lose an entire section of armament like that, but he'd make up for it. He blitzed into the Righteous, beam sword and amputed arm both battering away at the shiny red Gundam. The Beam sword came down high and from the right, Zala's sword was up to meet it. Frost's amputated arm speared inwards and Zala raised the other sword to parry and slice into the arm... but his parry stopped short, the dual beams entangling with the second beam from the sword parrying Frost's blade. Having two blades on each sword was an enormous offensive advantage, giving you many more angles to strike from... defensively, if you were say distracted by a loved one being in danger, well, it was more a hindrance. The spearing inward arm stopped just short of actual contact though, as Frost needed the Righteous to remain exactly where it was.

Frost didn't need the ringing proximity alarms to tell him what Scarface was up to, he could almost taste the beam sword's roiling heat as it thrust towards the back of his head. Scarface was going to stab him in the back while he was clinched with the Righteous. Almost admirable. Frost waited until the last moment, and then an instant longer. The Duelist's beam sword tip actually scored a path along the rear torso armor of the Fury as Ysak thrust forward at full extension, only to have the Fury seemingly melt away as Frost sideslipped the attack and then suddenly Ysak was thrusting at Athrun. Not something he'd entirely mind, in other circumstances, but not when facing Frost together. Ysak jerked his arm in a full abort maneuver, but he still sliced a deep cut in the Righteous's right shoulder. Ysak was just opening his mouth to shout in dismay when the Duelist ran headlong into the Fury's upraised amputated arm stump. Though the arm could no longer do any real damage, the physical shock of the two machines colliding was massive. The arm stump splintered and sheared away at the shoulder joint as the Fury was knocked sprawling past the Righteous, while Ysak and the Duelist stopped so fast he snapped a seat restraint... for all its small size, the Fury massed more than the Duelist. Choking and momentarily out of breath, Ysak could only watch through stunned eyes.

Far from helpless, Frost once more swapped sword and rifle, firing eight more beam shots as the Fury slid across the ground before he used what remained of his momentum to roll the Fury to its feet. The Web was refreshed, and he even allowed a blast or to to score against Fiery Zala-Attha's shield, ensuring that she would stay put just a while longer. By the time the Fury regained its feet and charged back at the stunned Duelist and Righteous, Frost once more had a sword in hand. Loser Zala-Attha's wingsabers came zooming around, but Frost cut one in half and kicked the other away contemptuously. It turned out to be a mistake, because the Righteous hammered into him in a charge of its own, Athrun having done his own study of Frost's movements. It was impossible even for Frost to block four beam blades with just one of his own, and steaming rents opened up on the Fury's torso and limb armor. Seeing that, Frost declined to even pretend to defend any longer, trusting in his own and the Fury's resilience. He took a deep slice on the left side, deep enough that he could feel the heat of the melted armor in the cockpit and several screens shorted out from the damage.

In return, Frost scored hard on the Righteous as well, slicing off the right arm at the shoulder. Frost kicked at the same time Athrun did and their sweeping legs met in a clash of sparks and warping armor plates. Both pilots stepped back a half pace and then prepared to go at it again, even in their determination to destroy the other. Until the Rubicon burst out of the Web of the Warped that Frost had built to immobilize her, her overriding concern for Athrun causing her to ignore the near fatal damage the Rubicon suffered from multiple beam blast impacts which left the Rubicon crippled and barely able to walk much less fly. But the desperate move allowed her to throw her beam lance as straight and true as a javelin on the Olympic field, if a bit low. But Frost hadn't accounted for any interference from her, and so he was too busy dealing with Athrun to avoid the beam lance crashing into the Fury's right leg, severing it below the knee. There was a brief pause as the Fury's leg fell away and then the Righteous kicked again, and sent the Fury tumbling to the ground.

Frost went berserk. The Fury alighted from its fall so fast it barely seemed like it touched the ground at all. One armed, one legged, the Fury turned on the Rubicon, which was starting to have trouble standing due to damage to the legs and waist from the beams of the Web. Almost unarmed, barely able to hang onto her shield, Cagalli could do nothing to stop the beast bearing down on her. She closed her eyes, wanting the last thing she ever thought about to be of Athrun. However, there was no searing pain, no tearing metal... no death. Cagalli cracked open her eyes again and her jaw dropped. The Fury was right in front of her, balancing on long leg, sword arm raised high... but it was unable to swing the sword down. Unable to because the Pulsar had materialized behind it and was holding the Fury's wrist. With only one leg to stand on, Frost couldn't get the leverage he needed to swing the sword.

"K-Kira?" Cagalli asked, stunned.

"I won't let you hurt my sister." Kira's voice replied on the international channel.

"YOU! So you finally decided to show up!? I can't tell you how HAPPY THAT MAKES ME!" Frost turned and blanched for a moment... it wasn't the Liberty behind him, it was the Pulsar. "Uncle?"

"Nope." Kira fought to control the Pulsar. SEED mode helped some, but he didn't think he could hold it long. The Pulsar wanted to kill the Isolationists. Kira had no problem with fighting them, but if he gave in to the Pulsar he would massacre the entire task force down to the last man and woman, and that he could not allow. The bloodthirst was almost a living thing by itself, perhaps a flaw in the system, Kira didn't know. He released Frost's wrist and slammed a punch into the Fury's head, sending the shorter machine teetering for balance on its one remaining leg. Kira breathed a sigh of relief... except for that last attack on Cagalli, his friends looked to have Frost... well, if not well in hand... at least on the ropes. Frost swung at the Pulsar, but by the time his swing got halfway there Kira wasn't within fifty meters.

"Still tormenting me, UNCLE!? I just can't get a break!" Frost muttured vehemently. He jetted after the Pulsar, swinging his sword madly. No matter how hard he tried though, he never even got close. Whenever he'd close the distance and start swinging, the Pulsar would blur and vanish, appearing a few dozen meters away, calm as could be. It was really, really pissing Frost off. "Stand still, DAMN IT!"

"You've lost, Frost. This is your end." Kira replied. He didn't have long... minutes at the most. He could taste, in that faraway part of him that was Kira and not the Pulsar, blood in his lungs. The NIC was fighting him for every movement, and Kira was still winning, but he was pushing the line. Too much more and he would be crispy bacon, just like Athrun had said. And Lacus would never forgive him, much less herself, if that happened. And that wouldbe the ultimate hell for him.

"WHEN has no hold over me! I still haven't found the perfect HOW yet!" Frost spat in reply. He snatched out his beam rifle and blasted at the Pulsar. Damn him for its crudeness, but if the bastard wouldn't stand still Frost would be glad to hurt him till he did. But it was to even less avail than his sword swings had been. Each beam got to wtihin about ten meters of the Pulsar's upraised palm and then just disappeared in a flash of light. If he really looked, Frost could see a faint red shimmer in the air, in the rough shape of an oval shield. Whenever the beams hit that shimmer, they just ceased to be. "Hide behind your shield then..." Frost brought his GP pods back to him, ready to defend against any finishing blow his enemy had. "... I have a shield..." Frost never got to finish. The Pulsar disappeared again, reappearing directly in front of him, five silvery threads bunched in one hand. The control wires for the GP pods. A claw popped out of one of the fingers of the Pulsar's free hand and sliced the control wires apart. Now uncontrolled, the GP pods drifted aimlessly through the air, at least until their power supply ran out.

"... of my own!" Frost's mouth caught up to what his eyes had seen. "No fair... he gets claws and I don't?" The Fury crashed backwards, after being struck with the flat of the Pulsar's beam zweihander. A heat whip lashed out and sliced the Fury's right hand off at the wrist, the superheated metal links having no problem melting through the trasnphase shift armor. "Fine then! This isn't how I wanted it!" Frost shouted, keying the Fury's self destruct device. He looped an arm into the straps of the escape harness/jetpack that Asmodeus had stashed in his cockpit without his permission, citing it was always better to live again to fight another day, and hit the cockpit release. The beam zweihander loomed overhead and started to come down. "THIS IS NOT MY HOW!" Frost activated the harness and let himself be yanked out of his seat even as the massive beam sword crashed into the cockpit area, and the Fury blew itself to cinders. Only a few feet clear of the machine when it blew, Frost was hurled three hundred meters in the air and had almost all his clothing and surface skin seared off him. One eye was blasted out of his skull by the shockwave and he had more than a few broken bones even before he crashed into the ocean from a height of nearly one hundred meters. But he was not dead... he would not let himself die so simply. Even as he surfaced, he was swimming for shore again.

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Kira jerked in the cockpit as the Pulsar surged and overrid him, reacting faster than he could comprehend to save itself from being enveloped in the blast from the Fury's destruction. When he awoke again, the taste of blood in the cockpit gel was a lot stronger, and his body felt even more numb than usual. He had to get out, and soon. But the Archangel was all but wrecked, and suddenly the Clyne Faction had an entirely new problem.

"This is Commander Markov Ashino, of the Isolationist 1st CAD, calling the pilot of the ZAFT Gundam. Surrender at once or be destroyed. We have you surrounded and outnumbered."

"I'm afraid I cannot do that. It's hard enough trying NOT to kill you guys, I think surrendering is out of the question." Kira didn't realize he'd spoken out loud until he heard the sudden shocked silence coming back to him on all channels.

"Kira Yamato, are you piloting that ZAFT Gundam?" Ashino asked, slowly and clearly.

"Listen, I didn't mean to attack you just yet..." Kira started to reply. That sounds so weird. "We still want to talk." Kira took in the Isolationist forces now confronting him. Pretty much every mobile suit in the task force was there. More than three hundred Dagger JA's and Cavaliers. Fifteen Freedoms. Twenty Cataphracts and five Archmage platforms. A massive Gundam painted in the same colors as the Bane, which had to be the Independence that Ashino was in.

"It's a little late for talk. I had hoped to give you the full twelve hours to surrender, but I see that is impossible. I am disappointed, Kira Yamato. I expected Orb to be different." Ashino replied. He switched channels. "All forces, weapons free. Bring the Isolation to Orb and don't stop until you see the white flags flying."

"Damn it, wait! I didn't attack you because I wanted to!" Kira shouted. Yeah, sure... tell them your mobile suit forced you too. That'll be believed.

"And I am not attacking you because I want to, either. Nevertheless, that is what destiny appears to have in store for us." Ashino brought his dual gatling cannons up, not that he expected it to do much against what he'd already seen the ZAFT Gundam could do. "All Archmages target and destroy the Archangel. Devilfish head for the Aegis ships. Skygraspers, head for the main island and hit their combat headquarters. All SMS flights, watch out for the M-4's."

"Well, we're here now, for all it matters." Waltfeld commed the bridge of the Archangel from the cockpit of his M-4 Guardian. Along with Kisaka and the greater portion of the Orb forces, including Bill Frost and the Orb Ace Lain Debora, Walfeld had deployed to defend the Archangel from the advancing Isolationist forces. Waltfeld was swearing up a storm inside his cockpit... things were going down the drain FAST. The Archangel was down and out of the fight, most of their Gundam's were trashed, the Orb fleet was out of position... not much more could go wrong.

"Kira can't keep piloting that machine!" Waltfeld heard Lacus say in the background. "It's going to kill him!"

"What was that? And how are things on the ship? What happened?" Waltfeld asked Murrue, who looked like she'd just fallen down ten flights of stairs.

"The Archangel is wrecked, Andrew. Ninety percent of all systems are down, we're barely managing to keep up life support and damage control. We've got a lot of serious injuries over here, many of them touch and go. Andrew, if we don't get Alkire and Raine to a hospital within the next few hours, they're going to die. And they won't be the only ones."

"Never would have thought I'd hear about those two getting banged up..." Waltfeld mused.

"We got boarded by Asmodeus and Tiamat." Murrue continued.

"WHAT!?"

"Don't ask me how, but they did it. Just before Frost shot us down, apparently. Casualties are high... they... they were suicidal, Andrew. If it hadn't been for Alkire and Raine, everyone on the bridge would be dead now. I'm still getting mixed reports... all comms are down inside the ship... but apparently theres something big happening in Engineering as well. Asmodeus is still loose on board with an unknown number of allies. Things are not stable here."

"I'll send over what I can, but you heard what the frankenstein said... the fight starts now! I'm not sure we can win this..." Waltfeld juked to avoid a series of blasts from a pair of Dagger JA's, morphing into jet form to blast them away with his missiles... or so he thought, but they were still there, unharmed behind twin barriers of greenish-blue Lightwave energy. "This is bad, when even the no name fodder is hard to kill... What was that Lacus said about Kira?"

"Kira is piloting the Pulsar, the Liberty was either lost or destroyed during the crash. But we all know what happened to the first guy we found who piloted that thing, and now Lacus is telling me how its trying to do the same thing to Kira. She can... sense it." Murrue said, only stumbling slightly over that... Newtype powers were impossible to deny, but still really strange.

"Hate to say it like this, but you're sure the Archangel can't fight at all?" Waltfeld asked again, evading yet more fire from Isolationist forces. It was getting harder, there were just so many of them and they were really working together well. "We could really use anything, for the psychology of it if nothing else."

"I can't even get lights on in medical. I'm sorry Andrew, but Orb will have to fight without the Archangel." Murrue replied.

"I understand." Waltfeld saw a different light lit on his comm board. "Yes, Kisaka?"

"So what's the story?" Kisaka asked, blasting away in tank mode, to little discernable effect on the Cataphracts he was targeting, secure behind their Citadel Shields.

"It was nice knowing you. I really had fun."

"It can't be that bad."

"I'm reasonably certain it can be. Because it is. The Archangel is flat out, in fact THEY need lots of help from US. The most operational Gundam is the Duelist and its pretty dinged up. Both the Grand Buster and the Righteous are missing arms and most of their ranged weapons. The Rubicon is barely able to stand there, much less fight. All the pilots are tired and strung out. Kira's in a goddamn machine that is apparently trying to kill him just like Borander got killed. We're massively outnumbered and their technology is not that inferior to ours, superior in some cases, like the damn shields!"

"Don't panic, Andrew."

"I'm not panicking! I'm just laying out the facts, and if they make me a little hysterical, so be it!" A stream of high caliber shells suddenly tracked into his wing and blew it off. Only a rapid change to mobile suit form kept him in the air. "Oh yes, and lest I forget, the enemy is led by a BCPU in his own specialty Gundam, fresh mind you, with fifteen Freedoms backing him up!"

"That last bit IS worrying." Kisaka admitted, swerving just barely in time to avoid being atomized by one of those self same Freedoms. "They may be Natural pilots, but they aren't bad." Before they could say more, Kira interrupted everything.

"DAMN IT! Ashino, I didn't want to do this... but I CAN'T FIGHT IT ANY MORE!" Kira shouted over the international channel. Within ten seconds after that announcement, Kira had killed fifteen mobile suits, a mixture of Dagger JA's and Cavaliers. Killed, as in, destroyed them utterly, sliced them to pieces, etc. As in the pilots died.

"Thats... Kira... in there?" Waltfeld asked, confused. "Didn't he swear the whole "never kill again" oath that causes him so many problems?"

"It's not just Kira in that machine." Lacus cut into the channel. "I don't quite know how to explain it, but that Gundam has a limited ability to learn from its pilot, acquiring skills and tendencies from its pilot. Borander was a ZAFT patriot who hated the Alliance. The machine is trying to keep acting along the lines of the impulses it learned from him. And fighting it is causing it to overload Kira's nervous system. It's killing him." Her voice was brittle, clearly kept under control only by a monstrous effort of will.

"So what are we supposed to do about it?" Athrun asked, as he finished slicing apart a Cataphract with his one remaining arm. Its comrades punished him with pounding barrages of gatling cannon and artillery cannon fire, sending the Righteous stumbling like a drunk man.

"There's nothing anyone but me or Kira can do about it, and we're both already trying as hard as we can. Just try and stay alive. And don't attack the Pulsar." Lacus replied. There was a spectacular explosion, as an Archmage platform came apart in a brilliant fireball, the Pulsar hovering overhead. Other Archmage platforms swung their positron cannons to point at the Archangel, stationary and helpless.

Leave them... its an enemy targeting an enemy. No threat to me. Kira thought, staring at the Archmages and the Archangel. What the hell am I thinking! Lacus is on there! The image of her came so strongly into his mind it was like she was there in the cockpit with him. She was trying to make contact with him, but his war with the Pulsar didn't leave him any attention to spare for her. Always have to protect Lacus. NO harm can EVER come to Lacus by my hands or anyone elses! The world blurred and he was floating in front of the Archangel as the Archmages fired. He took both shots on his Positron Reflector shields. No sweat, barely a fluctuation above twenty percent power. The Pulsar was truly astounding. He jerked as his hands seemed to catch fire. But the Pulsar's hands were undamaged, and it didn't transmit pain anyway. It's starting to burn me out. I need to get out. I NEED TO GET OUT! LET ME OUT!" He could hear Lacus yelling the same thing. The world blurred again.

"Command override 141518 accepted. Commencing emergency ejection process." The cockpit hatch slammed open, causing the GRS gel to evacuate the cockpit like blood gushing from a wound. The NIC wires and comm sensors detached from their fixation points at the same time as the Pulsar fell forward onto its hands and knees. Kira was washed out with the gel, semi-conscious at the sudden return to fully feeling his body. The two meter drop onto hard sand didn't help much either. He could feel the blood pouring from his nose, tear ducts and ears as he coughed out blood stained gel, all over the feet of the blurry shape standing over him. Kira fully lost consciousness before he could figure out who it was.

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"There... now don't you ever say I never did you a favor. Though only to make dear Lacus happy." Noah said, smiling at his computer screen. "You gave me some interesting data, Kira Yamato. I guess I can let you keep living for a while longer. And now, for the next pilot..."

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