Endgame 2, by DarkBeta
(Victory has not been good for Katze.)
In the middle of the night, the viewscreen in hydroponics flickered on. Jinpei started to scream even before the static resolved to Berg Katze's image.
"Did you really think you were forgotten? Overlooked?" he asked. "I'm coming for you now. I'll hold your hand in Mine, pretty Swan. Great Eagle, we'll stand face-to-face one more time."
Jun hunched as if he'd struck her, cradling the damaged hand. Ken was gray-white, and swaying on the crutches.
"The hours until we meet will feel like days. How shall we fill the time? You've been alone in that little underwater shell for a long time. You must be eager for news of those you left behind."
His image dissolved into a montage of faces and bodies in agony. Parents covered the eyes of their children, and closed their own eyes against nightmares. Behind recorded cries for mercy or release, Berg Katze laughed.
"The physics lab is shielded," Hakase said. "His transmission will be blocked."
The ISO refugees fled Katze's laughter as they would a whip. The Kagutai Ninja Tai followed. Joe slammed the lab door shut, cutting off the howls of pain and amusement. Only Jinpei was still screaming.
Ryu carried him. The boy had curled into the smallest possible compass, with his hands over his ears.
"Shhh. Jinpei. Please come back to me!" Jun begged.
At last he looked at her. His last scream trailed into a moan. He didn't speak – he never did any more – but he launched himself from Ryu's arms to hers.
The lab was roomy, a reminder that research was the original goal of the base. Jun was still astonished that everyone could crowd into it.
"How can we scuttle the base?" a man asked.
"Don't cry, honey, don't cry. I promise I won't let him have our baby."
"Thy kingdom come, thy will be done . . . ."
Hakase's voice cut across the whispers, though he had not raised it.
"I need to speak to the Kagutai Ninja Tai."
People looked around. Those closest to where the team stood moved aside, and hissed at others to do the same. The path opened through a crowd so dense it seemed they could barely breath. Hakase waited under the rim of his construction, the project he'd toyed with for the past several months.
"Ryu, can the God Phoenix sustain a brief flight?"
"H-hai. I don't know how quickly I can get down to the launch bay, with no lights in the corridors . . . ."
"I can get him there," Joe said. "I've learned the base's layout. There's nothing left to throw at them, though."
"Except ourselves, and they're prepared for that attack," Ken said quietly.
Hakase rested a hand on the mechanism looming behind him.
"Has Jun mentioned this project? My intention was . . . well, it was a remote possibility. Under normal circumstances I wouldn't risk testing it, even if I had access to a power source. The annihilation of a halfkilometer of the space about us would not be an acceptible cost."
"Now . . . at the very least we rob Galactor of its trophies," Jun said. "If luck is with us, Katze and some of his troops go too."
Across Jinpei's bowed head her eyes were very fierce.
"This machine needs power, Hakase?" Ken asked.
"It can draw the energy it needs from the God Phoenix effect, if the ship is close by."
Ryu looked grim, but he ducked his head in assent. Ken's protest was mild.
"Hakase, we are not what we were. We can't sustain the Phoenix effect, not for long."
It would kill them, he meant. Ryu was in the best shape of the five of them, his weight melted down to bone and muscle. The other four looked like inmates of a Galactor education camp, only a week or two from places in a vast mass grave.
"We aren't necessary," Joe growled. "The five vehicles are docked. Ryu has to pilot the ship, and I have to get him there, but the rest of you would slow us down."
He was being tactful in a way, not mentioning Ken in particular, but perhaps he shouldn't have been. Whatever words he used, Jun thought they could not be as painful as the ones Ken heard.
"Cripple. Useless. Failure."
"True," he said. "Ryu, Joe, are you willing?"
"H-hai," Ryu stuttered again.
Joe grinned joylessly.
"One more chance to make Katze pay!"
Their briefings had no audience, in the past. Jun was startled when she looked away from Ken's white, fixed face and found they were the center of attention. Explanations rippled outward from those nearby, until Hakase raised his hand. The mass of refugees went silent.
"Do we let them try?"
". . . yes . . . Yes . . . Yes! . . . YES!"
"I'm here in front of you, Joe," Ryu said.
Joe's hand found his shoulder without fumbling. The path opened again between them and the door. Ryu took a breath and stepped forward. Joe pulled him to a halt.
"K'so. I almost did it, too."
He turned around.
"Ken."
Ken was slow to answer. Joe had lost control of expressions he no longer saw. Jun saw his doubt, his head turning as he tried to drag information from the buzz of the crowd.
"We're here," Ken admitted.
"You'd let us go . . . and then come after, right? Wander around in the dark until you fall down a stair, or run into Galactor."
"Get started, Joe. You said it already. I'd slow you down."
"The Phoenix goes to face Galactor. Her commander should be aboard."
Reason and desire warred in Ken's face. Reason didn't have a chance. Ken swung a step forward. Jun moved alongside him, and he frowned at her.
"Jun, if you stayed with Hakase . . . ?"
"That question does get a 'no', Ken."
She let Jinpei slide from her arms to stand on the deck.
"You should stay here though, Jinpei. Where we're going will be dark."
Jinpei didn't let go of her hand. He tugged until she leaned over and he could whisper in her ear.
"oneechan," he said, in the smallest of voices, but it was the first word she'd heard from him in months.
"All right, Jinpei."
"Five who move as one . . . ." Joe quoted, with unexpected approval.
The refugees parted for them again. Ryu stopped at the door, reluctant to slide it aside and hear Katze's hated voice again. Ken turned around.
"You have my deepest regrets . . . that I could not live up to the hopes you all had. Hakase, I'm sorry."
"Is that what you believe? That you failed us?"
Nambu's voice was strained and rough. A middle-aged man, one of the engineers, shouldered out of the crowd.
"Those cowards in Earth Gov who surrendered to Galactor, they're the ones who failed us. And the bastards in Command who got the Kagutai Ninja Tai out of the way by sending you to a Galactor ambush!"
"Ten thousand years, team. May you live ten thousand years," Hakase said.
Others took up the chant. When the door slid open, Katze's inveigling voice (and the screams; there were always screams when he spoke) could not be heard.