As the last of the Gemini Boys flew back into the Blue Earth, he started turning the ship around in preparation for the trip back to OSDG Headquarters. He'd wait until Aki had left, so she wouldn't start in on him for what he was going to do, and then he would rake those Gemini Boys over the coals for being stupid, having more altruism than sense, and for nearly getting themselves killed for something that wouldn't even have worked in the first place.
Gently guiding the Blue Earth back to her hangar, he shut down the engines and made his way into the hold. That was where Pegas would have landed, and so it was where D-Boy would have ended up once he came out of it. Sure enough, he found D-Boy, though oddly enough he was asleep in Pegas' arms.
The strange part wasn't that he'd found the kid sleeping, since that was what he always did when he transformed out of that armor of his, but seeing him in Pegas' arms.
"D'you think you could let him down, now?" he asked, knowing that Pegas' A.I. would respond to him just as much as D-Boy.
"Roger," Pegas said, lowering D-Boy gently to the ground.
Taking the kid's weight before he could fall to the deck, Noal thanked Pegas and left the hold. Aki and D-Two were gone by this time, and so he made for D-Boy's room on his own. The kid would need his sleep if he was going to be made to properly appreciate just how much he had screwed up. When they were both finally back in the land of the lucid, Noal fully intended to sit them down – probably in his quarters, since there would be less chance of them being interrupted there – and lay out, in no uncertain terms, just what a pair of complete and utter idiots the two of them had been.
Still, for that he'd need them awake, and so he'd have to wait; it'd give him more time to think, anyway, so it wasn't all bad.
I
The loss of Dagger, while it would not halt the invasion or even seriously hinder his efforts at conquering this little planet, was still in the end a setback. He himself could not be burdened with commanding legions of Radam monsters in battle with the traitor twins, particularly in light of how easily they were dealt with by those half-humans. He had already made his selection as to just who his newest front-line commander for those creatures would be, but there were still imperfections in his form that needed to be dealt with before he could be released.
There was also the matter of his mind to be dealt with, but that would be handled presently.
II
It was strange, like a revelation; he still knew who he was, of course: he was Tekkaman Spear, a loyal servant of Omega and the Radam Empire, but now he remembered who he had once been. Aiba Kengo had been his name; he had possessed four younger siblings, and had been about to marry the love of his life before the Radam had taken him and all of his family – and several friends, he now recalled – into their service. He didn't know just how many of those friends had survived the transformation process, but he was fairly sure that all of his family members had come through all right.
Opening his eyes, he waited for a moment for them to adjust to the interference from the tekkapod fluid that he was still suspended in. Well, there's two of them; Miyuki-chan, and Sasuke-chibi. I wonder where the twins are, though? There isn't a chance that they wouldn't have made it through. They had the same training as the rest of us, and they're both incredibly stubborn, besides.
As soon as he had that thought, however, something like a mental databurst erupted in his mind. Escaped? How in the world did they- Father. He must have done it; that idiot. Just because he wasn't strong enough to serve the Empire, that didn't give him the right to steal Takaya and Shinya away from us. Seething at the sheer audacity of his late father – the fail-safe would have killed him once he had been rejected, though it was a shame it hadn't happened faster – Spear resolved to try to convince the twins to return to the service of Omega and the Radam Empire with him.
They would all be much better off if they were back together, after all; it was the way family should be.
Closing his eyes with as much of a sigh as he could manage in the fluid-filled environment of the tekkapod that still enclosed him, Spear settled himself back down. It would do him no good to waste his time thinking about someone who was already dead; it was the living who needed his attention, now. His poor little brothers; they must have been so confused, all alone on that little planet with no one like them, no one that they could properly relate to.
He was doing them a favor, really; they would be much happier once they were back where they belonged.
III
When he woke up, yawning and stretching and curling his toes in the sheets just for the feel of it, the first thing Shinya was consciously aware of was a screen set flush into the wall on the opposite side of his bed from the computer. A glowing screen, one that was currently displaying an image of Noal.
"I hope I'm not still dreaming," he muttered, briefly scrubbing at his face with both hands. "Dreaming of Noal would just be too weird."
"Real funny, D-Two," Noal shot back, rolling his eyes. "Look, there are some things I need to discus with you and D-Boy, so come up to my quarters after you're finished washing and dressing up."
Noal's face vanished, and was replaced by what he quickly recognized as a map indicating the quickest rout from his own quarters to the other man's, before Shinya could begin to berate the blond for his complete lack of manners. Sighing and shaking his head, Shinya climbed out of bed.
(Ta-kun,) he said, padding across the floor with another yawn. (Noal just contacted me; he sounded like he wanted to talk about something. And he didn't sound happy, either.)
(Yeah. He contacted me, too. I wonder what he wants.)
(I think it has something to do with what happened yesterday.)
The link between them went dormant again, and Shinya continued on his way to the attached bathroom that he had come to appreciate so much during his time as a Space Knight. Going through his morning routine, with only a glance at the shower unit to promise himself that he was going to have a long, hot one when he got back there, Shinya left his quarters and caught up with his brother.
"You really think he wants to talk to us about what happened yesterday, Shin-chan?"
"I think he does; he didn't like your plan any better than I did, brother," he said, nodding. "Oh, and there's something else."
Before Takaya could get more than half a syllable of his question articulated, Shinya spun his brother around and slapped him right across the face.
"Shinya?" Takaya asked, holding his reddening right cheek.
"Hopeless. You're my hopeless Ta-kun," he said, then yanked his brother forward and wrapped his arms around his neck, burying his face in the cloth of Takaya's Space Knight vest.
(Shin-chan?) Takaya asked, an unmistakable warmth in his tone.
(Ta-kun, don't ever change.)
There wasn't anything more to say, after that, so the two of them continued on their way to Noal's quarters.
IV
When the privacy chime on his door was rung, and he headed over to open it for the boys that he suspected would be right there waiting on the other side, Noal smirked slightly as the doors parted. The Gemini Boys were there, just like he'd told them to be, so that was one less thing to yell at them about. He still had a lot of other ground to cover, so he really didn't want to waste time on trivialities.
Grabbing the Gemini Boys by their respective collars, he dragged them into his quarters before either of them could say anything.
"Noal." D-Two groused, straightening his collar; D-Boy just glared at him.
"Well, I just didn't want you boys running off on me before I could get all of this out in the open," he said, reaching past the two of them to engage the privacy lock. "First, though, there's something I'd like to get out of the way."
Before either of them could ask just what it was that he was starting off with, he belted them both a good one on their right cheeks. Oddly enough, both of them seemed to find that funny. He'd never taken them for closet masochists; their amusement was fairly short-lived, though, so at least they were fairly normal.
"You stupid kids," he said, sighing. "Don't you understand yet? We Space Knights are a team. That means we don't go running out on each other whenever something big comes up. We support each other; and, no matter what happens, we stand together." As D-Two started to open his mouth, Noal pressed his pointer finger against the kid's lips to shut him up. "I know; I know. You had your reasons and all that, and Dagger's little message riled you up but good. Still, you should have known that we'd be doing all that we could to get you two back on your feet. You kids have to start trusting us with more of the work; and not just the people who spend their time out there fighting with you. There's a reason we have support staff, and Levin and Honda are two of the foremost technical geniuses that I've met in my time."
Folding his arms, he looked from D-Two to D-Boy; neither of them seemed to be inclined to say anything else, so he decided to press on; maybe some of this would actually sink in this time. He hoped so, at least.
Just as he was about to start speaking again, though, the emergency-alert went off. Great timing, he thought, barely suppressing the urge to roll his eyes. Disengaging the lock, he opened the door and let the Gemini Boys dash out, before following them at a slightly more reasonable pace. This was important, or else the general-alert would have sounded instead, but there was no need to wear himself out over the situation.
When they all made it to the comm. room, he found that the others had arrived before them. Oddly enough, though, they weren't being sent out to deal with an attack by Radam monsters this time. Apparently, the Radam had decided to switch back over to the laser attacks they had been using in the early days of the invasion, the same tactics they'd been using before the Gemini Boys had come crashing down to Earth. In fact, they'd been using the lasers since before any of the Tekkamen had showed up, and they'd only stopped using them once Dagger had made his little debut.
No way was that any kind of a coincidence.
Still, it wasn't as if he missed the psychotic Tekkaman; although if the whole constant-rain-of-lasers kept up for too long, he'd probably start feeling morbidly nostalgic for the guy. If only because the Gemini Boys had been the ones on the front-lines fighting him. And, knowing how much those two had suffered for it, he wasn't about to say anything.
As he flew the Blue Earth to the evac-point for the people whose city had come under attack by the Radam-controlled Orbital Ring lasers, Noal hoped that the people who had been living there had managed to get to the evac-point. He didn't know if all of them would have managed it, not with the usual lack of warning the Radam gave before one of their by-now-infamous laser bombardments, but he at least hoped for some survivors. Pushing away the thought of what their last mission to rescue what they had been lead to believe were survivors of a Radam attack had been like, Noal kept flying.
Dagger had been atomized by Tekkaman Blade just a day ago; no way this could be another of those kind of traps.
The rest of their week pretty much went like that: the Blue Earth was dispatched to various sites, where they either aided in an evacuation, or the Gemini Boys were put on search-and-rescue detail, and the Blue Earth would ferry the evacuees to another of the growing tent-cities that had sprung up all around the countryside as more and more of the remaining cities came under threat of either attacks by Radam monsters or Orbital Ring laser-bombardment.
Most of the larger cities had been steadily emptying out, in fact, as people came to realize just how dangerous it was to stay in one place with the constant threat of the Radam almost literally hanging over their heads. Noal was glad to hear it; while city life did have its perks, it just wasn't worth risking your own life for. Not many people were stupid enough not to accept that.
Having returned to OSDG Headquarters after their latest efforts at search-and-rescue, Noal couldn't help the slight smirk on his face. Both of the Gemini Boys had been sleeping in the arms of Pegas this time. The big mech's left hand had been supporting D-Boy, and its right hand had supported D-Two; the fingers had been gently curled around both of their bodies at hip-level, with both boys leaning against the arm that supported them. It had been cute, really; Noal had found himself wishing for a camera right then.
Too bad they hadn't been able to land in the secondary air lock; then he would have been able to copy the recordings from the camera, then single-frame the footage to get a good shot of those two in Pegas' arms.
Leaving the Blue Earth for the sanctuary of his quarters, after having dropped D-Boy off in his room, Noal decided that now was as good a time as any for a nice, long nap. He'd been almost constantly "on" this week, and who knew just when the next rain of Orbital Ring laserfire was going to start coming down. Besides, pretty much everyone in OSDG Headquarters had been keeping weird schedules lately, so why should he be any different?
V
Researching every scrap of data about the laser satellites controlled from the Orbital Ring, with a fresh mug of coffee close at hand, Heinrich von Freeman, Chief of the Outer Space Development Group and head of the commando team known as the Space Knights, worked to devise a plan to finally end the threat posed to the people of Earth by those satellites. Taking another sip of his coffee, black with one sugar this time, he continued to peruse and assess the data he had pulled up about the computer that controlled the satellites. That was clearly the point most vulnerable to attack; the linchpin, as it were.
"Greetings, Chief Freeman. Hard at work, I see."
"General Colbert," he acknowledged. "What can I do for you this morning?"
"High Command has decided that, in light of their recent, public actions, the public has a right to get to know the Space Knights on a more personal basis." The smile on the General's face left no doubt in Freeman's mind that Colbert himself had proposed this.
And also, that he had some ulterior motive for doing so.
"And how do you propose to go about that, General?" he asked; he wouldn't be able to find out the specifics of Colbert's intention directly, the General was too canny for that, but he could at least determine what he would soon be dealing with. "I hardly think that any of the Space Knights could find the time to participate in an interview during this kind of crisis."
"I know a reporter; he's a war correspondent, and he's done very good work in the past," Colbert said, and Freeman noticed that the other man was deliberately trying not to seem too eager; this reporter was one of his agents, then. "Given what High Command has ordered, I propose that you allow the reporter to quarter himself within OSDG Headquarters, so that he – and by extension, the public – can come to better appreciate the sacrifices that the Space Knights make on their behalf."
"Very well," he said, knowing that there was no reasonable counterargument that he could offer; the Space Knights were hardly top secret, and the Outer Space Development Group was not involved in any research projects that the general public was likely to disapprove of.
He would still be reporting to Colbert, of course, and Freeman knew just what the General was looking for. He'd been collecting data about D-Boy and D-Two, as well as their other forms Tekkaman Blade and Tekkaman Varis, ever since the twins had first arrived in OSDG Headquarters all those months ago, and updating it with every battle that those young men participated in. Colbert would want that data; he had wanted it ever since he had become aware of them, and he was not the type to give up simply because he had been rebuffed by the young men in question.
Still, it was always better to know what your adversaries were planning, and Colbert – while they were both on the same side – was clearly at odds with his way of doing things. He had known that their worldviews often diverged, but he hadn't known until this invasion had begun in earnest just how deeply Colbert's hunger for power truly ran. But then, war often brought out hidden facets of a person's character; the struggle for survival pushing one beyond limits that were often left undiscovered during peacetime.
He himself had not truly known how far he was willing to go to protect his people until the Radam had appeared to threaten them.
VI
When he woke up, his sleep having apparently been too deep for his usual bouts of nightmares, Takaya stared up at the ceiling for a few moments. He wasn't particularly in the mood to get out of bed right then, since pretty much all he had to look forward to was likely search-and-rescue duty with the other Space Knights. And, while he knew that it was a worthwhile aim, to keep people from dying under the near-constant barrage of lasers that the Radam were raining down on them now, he couldn't deny that it took a lot out of him.
He just wanted a bit more time to himself, before he got up and had to face the Radam's continuing offensive.
When the chime on his door was rung, Takaya briefly considered rolling over in bed and pretending not to have heard it, but then whoever was outside – he took a moment to hope it wasn't Noal this time – would probably just ring it until he gave up and resigned himself to answering the thing.
(Ta-kun, I know you're awake,) Shinya said, and he could tell that his brother was likely to be smiling at him. (Honda says he wants us both to come down to the main machine shop quickly. He wants us to start learning about Pegas' internal workings, or something like that.)
(All right,) he said, rolling over on his bed so he could push himself up and out. Settling his full weight back on his feet, he yawned. (Tell him I'll be there in a couple minutes, brother.)
(I will.)
Yawning again as he made his way to his personal bathroom, Takaya tossed his old shirt into the hamper and stepped through the door. Going through his typical morning routine, Takaya shucked his pants and tossed them in the hamper as he came back out. Pulling on yet another of the seemingly infinite number of Space Knight uniforms that he had been provided with, Takaya stretched as he made for the door.
"Good morning, Honda," he said, stifling another yawn. "What was it that you wanted?"
"I think it's time you boys started learning more about how Pegas works," the portly, tanned mechanic said with a smile. "Especially you, D-Boy, since you're going to be working so closely with him. It's a good idea for you to know how to handle any minor problems that might come up."
"All right," he said, leaving his room and falling into step beside Honda.
The rest of their trip to the main machine shop was silent; even he and Shinya didn't really have anything to say. When he saw Pegas again, he smiled slightly; it almost felt like greeting an old friend. Which was probably apt, considering how much help Pegas had been to him: giving him the power to transform into Tekkaman Blade again after Dagger had set up that trap of his, being able to fight beside him and Shinya when Tekkaman Blade and Tekkaman Varis when they were sent into battle together, and even helping with the search-and-rescue operations that the Space Knights had been participating in ever since he had obliterated Dagger with his Voltekka.
Learning about Pegas' inner-workings could only help him, during all the battles that he was sure to face in the future.
"So, where do we start?" Shinya asked, looking from Honda to Pegas; Takaya had been wondering that, himself.
"First, I want you two to help me reroute power away from the interlock-chamber," Honda said, as he continued to lead them toward the scaffolds surrounding Pegas. "Then we'll start familiarizing you two with Pegas' inner circuitry."
"All right," he said, climbing up onto the scaffolding beside Shinya.
VII
It felt like someone or something was taking a knife to his mind, trying to pare him down to almost nothing. Sasuke didn't know just what was happening to him, but he was determined not to lose anything more than what he had. He remembered what had happened before, he remembered, and he wasn't going to give in to these creatures, these- Radam. They were the Radam Empire, they were the ones who had captured the Argos and everyone aboard her, killing those they couldn't use and brainwashing the ones who were unfortunate enough to survive the horrors of the transformation process into obedient little slaves for the greater glory of their Empire.
He hated them for all that they had done, he wouldn't forgive them; that was the only thing he could think about for several moments. He hated the Radam for what they had done to his family, for how they had ripped apart his life.
Holding on to the fiery passion of his hatred, using the emotion to bolster his will to resist, Sasuke tried to meditate the way Goddard-sensei had taught him to do. He hoped that Miyuki was all right; he hoped that Kengo was all right, and the twins, and everyone else who had been on the Argos and had managed to make it up to the point where he himself had passed out from the pain. Of course, in this case hoping that someone was all right meant hoping that they were dead; he wouldn't wish this kind of horrible fate on anyone. Not even the people that he'd honestly hated back on Earth.
No one deserved to suffer this.
Pulling his consciousness inward, concentrating on hoarding his memories like the precious treasures they were, Aiba Sasuke willed himself to withstand whatever was coming next. Hoping, all the while, that his friends and the other members of his family hadn't survived to be subjected to this.
VIII
"Hey, D-Boy," he directed the boy, continuing on with his own part of the work. "Is there anything wrong with the field-control system?"
"No, but I still wonder if this is going to work" drifted up to him from where D-Boy had stationed himself.
"Idiot!" he returned, affronted. "Who do you think built this, anyway?"
Before he could begin to chastise the boy, or at least tell him off for having such a complete lack of faith in his teammates, he felt D-Two's hand on his arm.
"You shouldn't take what brother says personally, Honda," the younger Space Knight said, his expression more solemn than any that Honda had seen on the boy in all the time he'd known him. "He's not saying what you think he is."
"What do you mean, D-Two?" he asked, as D-Two started to turn back to the work that he had assigned him earlier.
"It's not that brother doesn't have any confidence in you," the lad said, as he started working again. "Brother just worries a lot. He's probably hoping Pegas doesn't fail because of something he does."
D-Two had been muttering during that last part, as if the boy hadn't intended to say it, but hadn't been paying enough attention to avoid doing so. The same way he and D-Boy always seemed to avoid talking about anything that dealt with their past or what they really thought about… anything, really. Knowing that D-Two would only dodge the issue if he tried to ask the lad about the second part of what he had said, he decided to keep it to himself.
"All right, D-Two," he said instead.
He could hear Levin and Milly talking nearby, though not well enough that he could make out what they were saying. He suspected that Levin was hard at work, though; D-Boy had said that Pegas had seemed slow, during the last search-and-rescue mission that he had participated in. So, this served the dual purpose of introducing D-Boy and his brother to the basic workings of Pegas, and improving the mech's response-time.
Before he could start working on the next part of this round of maintenance and upgrades to Pegas, Honda heard a distinctly unfamiliar voice. He knew most of the staff here well enough to identify them by voice, and the few he didn't he at least knew by sight. This newcomer, a blond man with a mustache and a full, bushy beard, was no one he knew.
He also hadn't received any word from the Chief about them bringing in any new personnel, so that meant that this guy wasn't supposed to be here.
"Who are you? This place is off-limits to everyone but staff!" he called, having already climbed down from the scaffolding in preparation for bringing up another set of tools for the next part of his work.
IX
When Honda grabbed the newcomer by the collar of his olive green jacket, he heard Shinya's amused chuckle over their link. It was kind of funny, if only for the reminder of their own first meeting with the man. Still, he didn't like the look of the blond, either. There was something about him...
(I don't like this, Ta-kun,) Shinya said, his earlier mirth nowhere in evidence, as the blond gave them a disturbingly intrigued look from over Honda's shoulder.
(Yeah.)
Even Noal hadn't triggered this kind of an immediate, almost aggressive response in either of them; at least not until he had started talking. The look on this man's face suggested that he wasn't going to be satisfied with just talking, though; he was after something else. Something much bigger, Takaya suspected.
Whether or not they would be willing to give it, would depend on just what it turned out to be.
There was also the man himself to consider; whether or not their initial estimation of him would turn out to be accurate. There were times when you could look into another person's eyes and know the essence of their character, but there were other times when people could surprise you. The way that Noal had done, when they had started getting to know the man. Time would tell if this man was anything like Noal in that respect... still, he couldn't help the bad feeling he had.
He might have been being paranoid again; he'd talk with Shinya about his suspicions later, his younger brother always had been better with people than he was.
X
When he woke up again, not bothering to open his eyes since he already knew where he was, Spear realized that he could sense one of the others; one of the others was awake. Now, who could it- Sasuke-chibi! He almost laughed; his baby brother had come through all right, and they would soon be together again. I wonder if he can hear me, yet?
(Sasuke?)
(Kengo-niisama?) His youngest brother sounded so confused, so frightened; poor thing. (Is that really you?)
(I'm still here for you, Sasuke-chibi,) he said, smiling. At least there were no more of his family had gotten lost the way the twins had. (I'm glad to see you made it.)
(What do you mean?)
That was odd; the closer he examined it, the more he examined what he was sensing, the more the mental signature he was getting from his youngest brother resembled that of a human. A telepathic human, yes, but still… (Sasuke-chibi, you're not still fighting the transformation, are you?)
(You know what these things did to our family, Kengo! I can't forgive them for that; I won't!)
(Sasuke-chibi,) he would have reached out to cup his baby brother's cheek, if he hadn't been confined to his tekkapod and prevented from moving by the fluid within it. (You poor thing; you haven't been finished yet, have you? Still thinking like one of them.)
(What?! Kengo-niisama, what are you saying?)
Sasuke was still clinging to the weak, lingering humanity that still remained within him; in any other person, Spear would have thought that that was deplorable weakness, but from Sasuke-chibi it was really kind of cute. (You should really relax, Sasuke-chibi. Relax; we're Radam now. This is where we belong.)
(Kengo-niisama?)
(Hush, Sasuke-chibi,) he said gently, wishing he could have run his fingers though his youngest brother's hair; it had always calmed him down in the past, and it had always made them both feel better. Especially when he would wrap his arm around Sasuke's shoulders and let the younger boy lean against him. (Feng Li is here, and Miyuki's here, and Grant-sensei is here; we're all still together.) Except for Takaya and Shinya, but they wouldn't be lost for much longer, so there was no need to get into that. (Just relax, little brother; you'll feel better soon.)
(Kengo-niisama... You can't- you can't!)
(Shhh. You're just confused, Sasuke-chibi. Go back to sleep now.)
(Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!)
(Aiba Sasuke! You may be my baby brother, and you might be very confused right now, but that does not give you the right to speak to me with such blatant disrespect!) he said, a bit snappishly, but there were limits to even his tolerance for his little brother's antics. (Go back to sleep, little brother. We belong to Radam now.)
He didn't hear anything more from his baby brother, and he even got the sense that Sasuke was actually trying to block him out, so with a sigh Spear decided to relent. Sasuke wouldn't be stuck that way forever; with the mind of a human and the developing powers of a Tekkaman, so Spear would wait. He remembered that even he had been resistant to the idea of what he was becoming at first, as hard as that was to believe at times given his new perspective.
Sasuke would come around eventually; all he had to do was be patient.
XI
The blaring of the general-alert cut into Honda's interrogation of the newcomer before the blond had actually said anything, except for some cryptic shit that he could have done just as well without, and as they all made their way toward the comm. room, Shinya couldn't help but notice the slight, niggling feeling that he was still being watched. He didn't like it, but he also wasn't going to give the blond the satisfaction of knowing just how much his presence unnerved him. He seemed like the kind of guy who would enjoy that kind of thing.
Once they were all gathered neatly inside the comm. room, Chief Freeman turned toward them with his usual all-business demeanor.
"The nullification of the laser satellites linked to the Orbital Ring, this is the most important task at the moment," he said, once the last of them had arrived in the comm. room. "This is a formal request from the Allied Defense Force."
Noal spoke, before Shinya himself could voice the same sentiment. "We're being subcontracted by the military again? It pisses me off, how they always keep shoving their dirty work off on us."
"Well, it's not hard to mistake you for an attack dog, Noal-kun," he said, and smirked at Noal as the other man made an indignant noise. He got a light punch in the shoulder for that.
"We should really listen to what the Chief is trying to say," Aki said, not sounding particularly amused. "Now isn't the time for games."
"Yes, Aki-sama," he said, smiling slightly.
"D-Two… Chief, you're talking about the nullification of the laser satellites," she continued. "But, there aren't just ten or twenty. How are we supposed to do all of that on our own?"
The Chief held up a remote, pushing a button on it to activate the comm. room's holo-screen. "It's true that it would take months to destroy those satellites one-by-one. The earth itself would be destroyed before we could take out all of the satellites. So this is the plan: we will reprogram the computer system located in the Orbital Ring so that it will be impossible to reactivate it."
"Why don't we just destroy that computer?" Takaya asked.
He snickered softly. (Ta-kun isn't subtle at all.)
(No.) his brother asked, with a smile in his mental voice. (You've always been better at that than I am, Shin-chan.)
(True.)
"No, we can't do that," the Chief said, his tone reminding them of the seriousness of the situation.
He tilted his head, folding his arms. "Why not?"
"A backup program was installed on that computer in the case of an attack. If the link between the main computer and the satellite terminal is lost, the computer will begin launching indiscriminate attacks," the Chief said. "Aki, I want you to be in charge of modifying the program."
"Yes, sir," Aki said calmly.
"Also, during the mission, this gentleman will be accompanying you," the Chief said.
(That's interesting,) he said, nibbling the inside of his lower lip; if this was who he suspected it was, then this would be an interestingtime for them.
"My name is Balzac Asimov. I'm a war correspondent with UPS Wire. I'm going to be covering you Space Knights and your exploits," a familiar voice, coming from the back of the comm. room, stated. He saw that Honda had escorted the blond in, probably so he wouldn't get lost.
"That's what he said," Honda stated, sounding like it was news to him, too.
"A war correspondent? Are you kidding?" Noal groused. "Chief, I'm not taking this guy with us!"
"Hey, hold up! I'm going with you, whether you like it or not. It's my responsibility as a journalist to report on just what it is you've all been doing around here."
"What was that?" Noal snapped.
"Chief, we can't take a civilian to the front-lines of battle," Aki said reasonably; Shinya hoped that someone was listening.
"By letting the people know about the existence of Tekkaman Blade and Tekkaman Varis, and what they intend to do, we can bring hope to the people left in despair by Radam's continued attacks. This is also a request from the military," the Chief said; Shinya sighed. Of course it was.
(I don't like this,) he said, pressing his lips together in a thin line as he continued to stare down the reporter.
(I know,) Takaya said, and Shinya could sense his brother's unease. (I don't, either.)
"The military again," Noal said, clearly annoyed; Shinya definitely shared the sentiment.
"So, there you go! Please do keep that in mind," the blond, Balzac, said, as he strode up to him and Takaya. "You're those two D-Boys, right?"
"And?" Takaya asked, sounding about as annoyed as Shinya felt.
"Rumor has it that you've both lost all of your memories," he said, with an insinuating tone that Shinya didn't like one bit. "But, what's the real story?"
"Mr. Asimov, do war correspondents like you take jobs as tabloid reporters now?" Aki snapped, stepping out in front of them before Shinya could have done something really stupid like punch ball-sack in the face.
"So lovely to look at, but such a harsh tongue!" Balzac said, not sounding at all contrite.
(You know, Ta-kun, I think I like Aki,) he said, careful not to smile, since he didn't want to give Balzac anything to work with.
(You would.)
(You mean you don't?) he said, turning his head slightly to catch his brother's gaze.
(Well, maybe,) Takaya said, the barest hint of a smile in his brother's mental voice.
(Ah, Ta-kun, do you like Aki-chan?)
(This isn't the time for that, Shin-chan,) Takaya said, a bit too quickly.
"Mr. Asimov, we won't interfere with your reporting, but there is a condition to your staying here. Under no circumstances will I allow behavior that interferes with our duties. Kindly remember that," the Chief said firmly.
"Oh, that's a scary face you're making. But, I understand," Balzac said; insincere prick. "Commander Freeman."
"Now than, we're going to start today's operation at 1200 hours," Chief Freeman said.
"Roger," he joined the rest of the Space Knights in saying.
They left the comm. room quickly after that, breaking up to head for their various destinations. And, since there was going to be copious amounts of fighting involved, he and Takaya made directly for the cafeteria. Balzac tailed them, the way Shinya had been starting to suspect he would, but they both made it a point to ignore the man. It wasn't like they were going to give him the time to start badgering them with questions neither of them was particularly inclined to answer.
Once they had ordered all the food they were going to have time to eat, before the mission to the Orbital Ring to disable the computer controlling the Orbital Ring's laser satellites, he and Takaya settled down at their table and proceeded to ignore Balzac as they ate. Eating fairly quickly, since they did have a mission in less than fifteen minutes, both of them made sure not to do anything that would invite Balzac to start talking to them.
Apparently, though, Balzac didn't feel the need to wait for an invitation.
"So, you boys certainly seem to have quite an appetite," Balzac said; neither of them gave him anything in return. "Is there anything you might want to tell me, or are the two of you just getting pre-combat jitters?"
"Hey, D-Boys!" Noal called, distracting Balzac's attention for a few moments. "If you two are done stuffing your faces, you'd best be getting moving. We're heading out in six minutes."
"We'll be quick, Noal," he said, as Takaya picked up their trays, gathered their dishes, and headed to drop them off.
"Aki and I will be waiting for you two," he said, with a smile obviously directed at just the two of them.
When Takaya came back from his errand, the two of them left the cafeteria and caught up with Aki and Noal outside the door. The four of them, five if you counted Balzac though he was trying not to, ran the rest of the way to Hangar Three and the Blue Earth waiting for them there. When they reached the ship, they all took their usual seats and strapped themselves in.
"All instruments check out; we're clear," Aki said calmly, and Shinya could hear the deep, powerful, far-off thrumming that meant the main boosters of the pre-launch vehicle had just engaged.
As the vibrations rattled through him, vibrating his teeth in a way that Shinya didn't really think would ever become routine for him, he heard the sound of footsteps coming into the back of the cockpit. Probably Balzac, much as he really would have preferred to leave the prick behind.
There was a definite kick when the rest of the thrusters engaged, followed by the usual feeling of being squeezed when the acceleration started in earnest, and Shinya took deep breaths as they hit the launch-ramp and soared up it.
(Here we go again, brother,) he said, his eyes at half-mast; it wasn't like he hadn't seen any of this before.
(Yeah,) Takaya responded.
The flight itself was actually fairly uneventful this time, though he really didn't expect that to last. Omega would have his beasts out in force, since this was another of his plans they were going to stop today. Hearing the sound of footsteps leaving the cockpit, and knowing that neither of the two people who had actual duties aboard the Blue Earth would have left, at least not without taking some precautions to keep the ship flying while they were away, Shinya knew that it could only be one other person.
(Balzac just left,) he said, after looking over his shoulder to confirm it.
(I wonder why,) Takaya said, looking back over his shoulder at the now-empty seat that Balzac had been sitting in.
(Maybe he needed to use the bathroom,) Shinya chuckled softly; Takaya shook his head slightly, and Shinya just smiled at him.
Before either of them could continue their impromptu discussion, the sound of the main air lock doors opening and closing drew their attention. Takaya's eyes narrowed, even as Shinya began to have some unpleasant suspicions of his own. He and his brother were out of their respective seats and making for the main air lock nearly at the same time, moving together with the ease of long practice. The air lock doors parted before them, and sure enough, there was Balzac; with a camera, standing dead-center in front of Pegas.
"Hey!" Takaya exclaimed, clearing the distance between them and the reporter in a single, easy bound; Shinya followed at a more sedate pace, though he was no less irritated. "What are you doing here?"
"What am I doing?" the blond said. "I'm taking pictures of Pegas."
"You didn't ask if you could," he said, as Takaya turned away.
"Should I have? Is there some secret you're trying to keep about it?"
"It's brother's property," he said, ignoring the man's insinuating tone and the thrust of his words. "Anyone else would have known to at least ask," he folded his arms. "Didn't your mother ever teach you that?"
"Sharp tongue you've got there, D-Two," Balzac said, giving him a once-over. "Hey, D-Boy; can anyone who enters Pegas transform into a Tekkaman? And why do you have one, and your brother doesn't?" he paused for a moment, looking from him to Takaya. "Is it something about you, in particular?"
(I really don't like him,) he said; sure, those were valid questions, and under other circumstances he would have been happy to answer them, but Balzac had an annoying habit of making every question he asked sound like some kind of an insinuation.
(I don't like him, either, brother,) Takaya said, his annoyance clear.
"No one other than brother and I can become Tekkaman, and he doesn't need Pegas," Takaya said over his shoulder, as they both turned to leave the air lock; they'd seen what they wanted to, so there was no point in staying any longer.
"Why is that? What's so special about the two of you? Is it just because you're twins?" Balzac asked, hurrying to catch up with them. "For that matter, what is a Tekkaman? It's a Radam weapon, right? And yet, the two of you are from Earth, and both of you can transform. Do you have anything to say for yourselves, Tekkaman-boys?" he said, getting in close to Takaya as his brother worked the controls for the main air lock.
They were going to be a bit more proactive this time, taking the fight to the Radam instead of waiting for the fight to come to them.
"Can't you find that out on your own?" he asked, standing just behind his brother as he worked.
Balzac just smirked in response. "You're saying I'm right?"
What?! That miserable little- seething with the kind of fury that he usually only reserved for the Radam, he took a single step to put himself right in Balzac's face, shoved the man back far enough that he wouldn't risk hitting Blade during the arc of his swing, and slapped the irritating blond as hard as he could. "Never," he snarled.
"You know, I hate people who pry," Takaya snapped, coming forward to put a hand on Shinya's right shoulder.
"Well, since the two of you already hate me, I'll ask something else," Balzac said, reaching up to rub at the reddening mark on his right cheek. "Did you boys really lose your memories, or is there something else you're hiding?"
For once, he was entirely pleased to hear the blaring of the Blue Earth's proximity-alarms; it meant that he could get away from the annoying prick before he was tempted to drop the largest, heaviest thing he could safely lift on the man's foot. Noal's shout, and his brother's answer, was almost secondary. Pulling out his crystal, he took a deep breath; it was strange, doing this kind of thing without Takaya by his side, but anything could become routine if you did it often enough.
XII
His first attempt at getting answers from the Space Knights' prize soldiers really hadn't gone off the way he'd planned; in fact, it had been something of a fiasco. Still, what he was seeing now went a long way toward making up for that. That D-Boy wasn't even the most interesting thing in the room, since all he did was to activate that Pegas Unit of his. No, the one he was most interested in was D-Two; particularly that glowing, geometric shape he held in his right hand.
It was clearly the key to that transformation of his, and Balzac made a mental note to take a closer look at that Pegas thing of D-Boy's; he wondered if the geometric shape he had not-quite-glimpsed was unique to D-Two, or if it in itself was the key to the transformation. And, if that were true, then what kind of role did D-Boy's Pegas Unit play in enabling his transformation?
D-Two was now surrounded by a glowing, crackling cage of energy; one that took a winged, extremely geometric shape. He would have been willing to bet at least a few months' salary that that shape was an exact copy of the small whatever-it-was that he had been holding in his hand. Arcs of red energy, resembling nothing so much as the lightning he had seen in uncountable thunderstorms since he was a boy, raced up, down, around, and over D-Two's body, even as a glow the same color as his eyes began to fill up the empty, geometric cage.
In a single burst of red energy, D-Two's Space Knight uniform was shredded into nothingness, leaving him standing naked in the middle of the air lock. Pinching the bridge of his nose to erase the mental images he was no doubt going to end up with after this, Balzac tilted his camera upward so that it only filmed D-Two from the waist up. He recalled, then, a bit of old military humor that sometimes made the rounds when there was nothing else to distract them from the aggressive grimness of the war all around them.
It was a list of things a, most likely fictional, solder was not to do, or say, in the military. One item in particular came to mind now: We do not charge into battle naked, like the Celts.
The crystalline-cage containing D-Two darted out and down into the space that had been vacated by the launch of Pegas, where he was certain that D-Boy was undergoing the exact same kind of transformation as he had just seen with D-Two. Moving to stand by a narrow window, out of which he could see the battle that was about to be joined between those Tekkamen and all of the Radam monsters that had been sent out to attack them.
Tekkaman Blade was ejected from his Pegas Unit, at the exact same moment that the bright blue energy surrounding Tekkaman Varis dispersed into the void of interplanetary space. Both of them were now fully transformed into those strange-looking armored forms of theirs; the ones that everyone on Earth knew to call Tekkaman, and he watched as they moved almost as one to confront the Radam monsters.
Those two... they were magnificent; each of them was an army unto himself, and for a moment he reflected that it was really too bad that the ADF hadn't managed to get their hands on these kids before the Outer Space Development Group and their Space Knights had. They might have actually managed to do some damage to the Radam, rather than just hanging around on Earth, waiting for them to attack again. He also seriously doubted that either of them had been telling the truth about their amnesia; it was an entirely too convenient façade for them to put up.
It was clearly also something that the Space Knights were only too happy to leave alone. Certainly no one in the ADF would have been so quick to disregard such obvious sources of intelligence on the Radam and their plans for Earth as a pair of turncoat Tekkamen; whatever these kids said in their own defense, they had clearly had dealings with the Radam at one point or another. That was why he had going to make it his business to find out just exactly what it was that Tekkaman Blade and Tekkaman Varis were hiding behind that little façade of theirs.
It was clearly something the ADF needed to know, and likely enough it was something that could be used against the Radam.
When a pair of lights, the same color as the eyes of the Tekkamen who were likely producing them, burst into being in the middle of a large swarm of Radam monsters and then began to shear through them like a pair of hot knives through butter, Balzac couldn't help the small grin that pulled at his lips. The Radam monsters were dying by the score, in the wake of those energy discharges; after seeing all of the damage that they had done to any of the military vehicles and personnel that had been sent up against them, it was deeply satisfying to see that kind of thing.
"We're approaching the Orbital Ring," he heard Aki announce over the comm. "Spaceport landing in three minutes."
Well, I suppose I've gotten enough footage for one day, he mused. There was no way in hell he was going to miss something like this; knowing the actual capabilities of the Space Knights, while it wasn't vital to his mission in the least, might help to assuage his personal curiosity. Moving out to the Blue Earth's storage area, he stowed away his camera and retrieved one of the four EVA suits stored there.
He suspected the suits themselves were kept for the twins, and for a whimsical moment he wondered if he was wearing D-Boy's or D-Two's. Then, putting his momentary distraction aside, Balzac continued on his way to the air lock. He knew that, as important as this mission was for information-gathering purposes, there was also the matter of the laser satellites to be dealt with.
And, as much as he knew that the General wanted to know just how those Tekkamen's powers worked, the civilian governments wouldn't be particularly happy with him if they didn't see results on this mission of theirs. The Space Knights might very well need his help before it was all over. Continuing on his way to the air lock, pausing for a moment as he heard footsteps coming up behind him, Balzac paused to watch as the other two remaining occupants of the ship came to join him.
As they all moved out into the Orbital Ring, he kept his eye out for more Radam monsters. Even with those two Tekkamen working cleanup out there, there was always the chance that one or two of those monsters would slip past them. No defense was absolute; he'd come to learn that damned well over the time that he'd spent with the ADF.
"Turn left at the next corner," he heard Aki say, from her place at the front of their group.
It turned out to be a large, imposing door; closed, of course, the way everything in the Orbital Ring had been when the Radam had begun showing up. He wondered idly if the Space Knights really had a chain of command, aside from every one of them seeming to take orders from that Chief of theirs.
The lady Space Knight quickly set to work on the computerized controls that would give them access to the next section on their way through the Orbital Ring.
The door in front of them slid open slowly, but there was Something Very Bad on the other side: one of Radam monsters. They all dove backwards as the Radam monster tried to rush them, but he was at a loss as to what they should do next. He'd seen single Radam monsters take out entire battalions; tank battalions no less, so there wasn't a snowball's chance in hell of any of the three of them even escaping from the thing unless something drastic happened.
However, while they still had a fair amount of distance to cover, another Radam monster burst out of that very hatch.
"They're going to attack us from both sides," Noal said, before either he or Aki could say anything to the other man.
As the two Radam monsters closed in on them, each raising one of their nasty, pointed legs for a killing-strike, he heard the two Space Knights discussing their extremely limited options. He knew what option was the most viable, though; he was just hoping that those kids would come through for them in the end. It felt weird, though; trusting his life to someone who wasn't part of his small circle of friends.
Still, if it was what he needed to do to survive, he'd do it.
When both of the Radam monsters were impaled suddenly, each with a strange, thrown weapon in their bodies, he knew that his momentary faith had been rewarded. He wasn't going to be giving it out in the long-term, of course, since in the end these two were just one more stepping-stone on his path to power. He didn't know just how much power he was going to get from investigating these kids, but General Colbert could be exceptionally generous when he was pleased.
And he'd wanted hard data on these Tekkamen ever since he'd found out what they could do.
Watching the two wounded Radam monsters explode left him a bit confused, but he shook it off and concentrated on the only things in the room that were of particular importance it the moment.
They were both standing on Blade's Pegas Unit, riding it like some kind of giant, mechanical surfboard, and both of them had their weapons in their hands again. He'd noticed them throwing their right arms out, but he hadn't quite known just what to make of the gesture, and the explosion of the Radam monsters had obscured anything else that might have happened between them making that gesture and them getting their weapons back.
"Are you all right?" Blade asked.
"You're here," Aki said, sounding just a bit more relieved than someone in a purely professional relationship would have been.
"Sorry we're late; it was busy out there," Varis said; sharp-tongued and sarcastic, he could already tell that getting along with this kid was going to be a bit more interesting than usual.
"All right, let's go," Noal said, already turning around.
He could hear the subtle hiss of repulsorlifts as Pegas drifted after them.
It was a comforting thought, he had to admit, having the two kids with more power than the entire Allied Defense Force at their backs; not exactly at their beck-and-call, but then the Space Knights were pretty much just glorified civilians, so you couldn't really expect anything better.
XIII
As she moved through the empty corridors of the Orbital Ring, it gave her a warm feeling to know that the twins had their backs and wouldn't let them down. D-Boy in particular, though she tried not to think of it like that; D-Two was just as reliable as his brother, and he probably wouldn't have appreciated the insinuation that he wasn't doing as much for the cause as D-Boy. Still, it wasn't D-Two who was beginning to stir new feelings in her heart.
Sure, D-Boy's brother was nice; he was sweet, funny, kind, dependable, trustworthy, and very obviously protective of his brother, but she felt more like he was a younger brother of hers than any kind of romantic prospect. She didn't quite know what made D-Boy so different, but the fact remained that he was. Still, she could explore her feelings in more detail later; now there was a planet down there that wanted saving, and everyone on it was depending on them.
"It's just beyond this point," she informed them, trying to ignore the drifting bodies that they were starting to pass as they made their way into the more heavily-used sections of the Orbital Ring.
The doors parted slowly for them, and Tekkaman Blade took point. Tekkaman Varis brought up the rear, probably since the Radam monsters still infesting this place were notoriously unpredictable. Something she'd had demonstrated to her in a particularly unforgettable manner not a few minutes earlier.
She was glad to see that the twins had been thinking ahead.
Checking the mini-computer she'd brought along with her, she found that they were right on track. What they saw beyond the door, however, reminded her uncomfortably of when she, the twins, and Noal had first confronted Dagger: there was a huge, pulsating, eerily flesh-colored Radam construct, wrapping itself around the main control-node of the computer. Strange, purple lights flashed on and off, in exact time with the pulsating of the organic construct that the Radam were using to control the computer.
"So, that was manipulating the lasers?" Noal demanded, as they all stared up at the towering, pulsating form of the Radam construct.
Just then, several vine-shaped, almost tentacle-like things shot out of the side of the construct that was facing them. Shouting at them to look out, Blade tackled them all to the floor, and she winced slightly as she felt the breath driven out of her by the force of his landing. Varis was clearly making himself scarce, since none of the vine/tentacles were trying to attack him.
When Blade stood back up, obviously intent on dealing with the Radam's construct in the most immediate, permanent way possible, she took a deep breath and shouted to him before he could do anything irreparable.
"D-Boy, no!" she said, as she saw Varis hurrying back over to his brother's side. "remember what the Chief said!"
As Blade paused, his weapon still slightly drawn-back in preparation for unleashing his fury on the Radam's computer-controlling construct, Varis raised his own weapon. She felt a flash of apprehension, right up until Varis actually turned the flat of his blade to face downward, and then thumped his brother on the head with it. Pointing to the Radam construct, his body-language clearly irate even in spite of the fact that she couldn't hear his voice, he switched hands on his weapon so that he could make the finger-spinning-around-the-ear gesture for crazy; then switched his weapon back to his right hand and swatted Blade on the back of the head.
"Those two are definitely brothers," she heard Noal chuckling over their shared comm.
"I'm sorry; I overreacted," Blade said, sounding sheepish, as he turned to face them. He quickly became all business once again, though. "Pegas!"
"Roger!"
Pegas moved forward, quickly responding to Blade's commands as it lifted the Radam construct up and off the floor of the Orbital Ring and allowing them a bit more leeway to access the computers' controls. Not a lot, however, since Radam monsters began to arrive almost instantly after Pegas had fully secured the construct. It was almost like they had been alerted somehow, but that was probably just her imagination overreacting.
It was a bit difficult, making herself turn away from a battle that was being fought just a few feet away from them, but Aki knew that she had to trust the twins to hold the line. Trust them to have their backs while they occupied themselves with matters in front. She would, but it was still hard; every shriek of one of Radam monsters, every roar of a battlecry, and every time Varis would taunt one of his mindless foes, reminded Aki of just how close they all were to the action.
They were usually at least marginally protected by the bulk of the Blue Earth while the twins fought Omega's Radam monsters.
"Hurry, Aki!" Noal urged.
"I'm almost done," she reported, continuing to enter the commands that would complete the upload of the shut-down program that she and Levin had worked so hard to create; hopefully, with the Radam's construct out of the way, their program would be able to render the computers inoperable, and thus save the millions of people who were in harm's way with the laser satellites under the control of the Radam.
One last sequence, and that computer goes down for good, she mused, with a definite feeling of relief and satisfaction. A feeling that lasted until she saw the red glow of a Radam monster's eyes reflected in the computer screen. Turning, wanting to at least face the creature that was trying to kill her, Aki caught sight of Blade moving to intercept it. He hit it, true, which stopped the monster dead in its tracks.
But it also caused it to explode in just the same way as all the Radam monsters that the twins had killed ended up exploding.
One of the claws, torn loose from the body and flung by the detonation, flew toward the computer core. Aki thought that she could hear people shouting in dismay; thought that she herself might have even been shouting with them, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Varis moving. He had his weapon up, as if he was planning to bat the claw away, but he must have moved too slowly, because the next thing she was fully aware of was Blade shouting for his brother as Varis himself screamed.
As Varis turned himself around, standing perpendicular to them where before he'd had them at his back, Aki stared in horror at the Radam monster's claw that was sticking out of the joint where his armored shoulder met his body.
"I didn't mean to do it like this," Varis said, his voice strained and hoarse as he grabbed the claw and struggled to pull it out of his body.
With the bloody claw now lying on the floor, and Varis leaning over to try and catch his breath, Aki let out a small breath of her own. Now, at least she would have the time she needed to complete the sequence. Her relief, such as it was, lasted until she heard Varis' low, pained moan.
Turning to look back at the man who had just saved all of their lives, not to mention the lives of a few million people down on the planet below them, she saw that he had his left arm bent in a manner that suggested he was holding his head, and that he was starting to sway slightly on his feet. Before she could wonder too much about that, a cage of energy that resembled Varis' tekkaset formed around him, and his entire armored body was overshadowed by blue-white light.
His armor retreated almost instantaneously, and just as the light obscuring his human form vanished, D-Two fell backwards to the floor. At least, he would have, if Balzac hadn't rushed forward to catch him just as he had started to tilt over. Balzac caught D-Two just as he would have smashed his head against the deck, but he couldn't really do anything about the wound in his shoulder.
The wound that was bleeding enthusiastically all over the floor.
The sound of gasping breaths reminded Aki of just why they had been wearing the EVA suits in the first place. The atmosphere in these sections of the Orbital Ring was too thin to allow a human to survive unprotected for very long.
"D-Boy!" Balzac shouted, D-Two's head cradled in his lap. "I need you to come over here and put pressure on your brother's wound," he said, sounding more like a combat medic than any kind of reporter that she had ever heard of.
Tekkaman Blade, of course, was at his brother's side almost instantly, after he had checked to make sure that no other Radam monsters were going to come after them. Pressing his armored hands down on both sides of D-Two's perforated shoulder, Tekkaman Blade knelt next to his brother with the air of someone hoping desperately that everything would turn out all right. Meanwhile, Balzac himself went over to the console next to the one she was working on, and pulled out a small oxygen tank with a breather-mask.
Affixing the mask to D-Two's face, Balzac knelt down opposite Blade and waved the Tekkaman away. Blade backed up slightly, and Balzac clearly dismissed him from his mind, since the next thing he did was to quickly remove D-Two's Space Knight vest and begin tearing it into strips. Blade, who hadn't let go of his brother's shoulder up to this point, moved his armored hands away from the wound and sat back on his knees. He stared at his armored hands, smeared as they were with his brother's blood, and his large shoulders slumped in a way that suggested he was sighing.
"All right, he's not in danger of suffocating anymore," Balzac said, as he picked D-Two up and carried him so that the oxygen tank could rest on his lap. "Let's get him out of here before he can freeze to death."
That was a distinct possibility, much as she didn't like it; with so little atmosphere to hold the heat of anything that might be radiating it, it would be so much easier for someone unprotected the way D-Two was right now to suffer a fatal drop in core-body temperature. Still, moving him had its own set of risks: the convection currents that would normally cool someone down were disrupted in this environment, true, which meant that the heat that D-Two's own body produced would ordinarily stay close enough to his body to do him at least some good, but since Balzac was going to carry him that wasn't going to be allowed to happen. They would have to move quickly, if they were going to keep D-Two from freezing while they walked.
XIV
"Pegas!" Tekkaman Blade said, knowing that it was best to get rid of the thing before the Radam tried to use it for one of their other plans; or even tried to reactivate the computers with it somehow.
There was no verbal response from Pegas, but it quickly yanked the Radam's computer-controlling construct up off of the floor hard enough to break every last one of its anchoring-points, lifted the hideous thing up and over its head, and threw it at the far wall of the Orbital Ring hard enough to knock a hole in the metal. The two Radam monsters that had been standing there were knocked outside as well, and he was relieved that he at least wouldn't have to deal with them.
"Voltekka!" he screamed, firing the weapon that he had begun charging just before he had ordered Pegas to throw the Radam construct out of the Orbital Ring.
When the coruscating energies had obliterated the Radam construct entirely, he turned away from the new hole he had made in the wall of the Orbital Ring and quickly followed Aki, Balzac, and the others out of the room before it had permanently sealed itself to the vacuum of space. He wished for a moment that there had been another way to deal with the Radam construct and the Radam monsters that had been guarding it, some way that wouldn't have ended up exposing Shinya to even more danger than he had already been put in, but there hadn't. All that remained was to get back to the Blue Earth, and then back to OSDG Headquarters so that Shinya could be taken care of in the infirmary.
That was the foremost thought in his mind, as he climbed back onto Pegas and ordered it to keep pace with the other Space Knights and Balzac.
When they all reached the Blue Earth at last, Aki suggested to him that he should transform back and then go eat something. He was grateful to her for not revealing his weakness to Balzac, since he didn't know just what the reporter would have done with that kind of information, and it was just best not to push his time-limit in any case. Heading for Pegas, after a last look over his shoulder at Shinya to make sure his younger brother was really all right, he ordered Pegas to open its interlock-chamber and tiredly climbed inside.
As the energies of his transformation left him, and the expected rush of weariness came in their place, Takaya all but fell backwards out of Pegas as it closed up again. He would have probably ended up falling on his butt if Pegas hadn't reached out to catch him in one of its large hands. With most of his energy gone, all Takaya really wanted to do was sleep.
Still, he at least wanted to have some food before he fell asleep somewhere, if only so he wouldn't feel so light-headed when he inevitably woke up.
Heading into the storage area, he grabbed a ration bar and peeled it open as he made his way back to the cockpit. Noal and Aki had already come back inside, and Shinya had been strapped into his seat. He was glad for that, since that meant that there wasn't much that he had to worry about, besides getting himself fed and trying not to fall asleep with food in his mouth.
Once he had finished the ration bar, he shoved the wrapper in his pocket, turned his chair enough so that he could keep his younger twin brother in his line-of-sight even while he slept, and closed his eyes as another wave of tiredness washed over him. The Blue Earth had just been starting its descent back into the atmosphere, and so he suspected that they would all be back home before he woke up again.
Home… he would have smiled, if he'd had the excess energy; after all that had happened, he and Shinya finally had a home again. It was a nice feeling, all the moreso since they hadn't even been looking for it when they had started out. Home had been them and their family, and with the Aiba clan gone, he hadn't ever expected to have a home again.
Now, though, he and Shinya had another home; and, while their first one would always hold a place in their hearts, OSDG Headquarters was their home now.
XV
D-Boy, having fallen asleep while staring at his brother, was in Noal's arms, while Aki was carefully carrying D-Two. They were all making for the infirmary; even him, since both conscious Space Knights had insisted that he come with them, at least as long as they needed to talk to him. Or, that was the impression that he got from the way Noal had looked at him while they were walking.
"So, Balzac, you seem to know a lot about battlefield medicine for a reporter," Noal said, his voice only slightly lowered; those twins of theirs must have either been extremely deep sleepers, or else the man just didn't care if he woke them or not.
Balzac wondered for a moment which it was, before deciding that something like that wasn't really his concern.
"I'm a war correspondent, remember?" he lied easily, giving the two Space Knights a sidelong smile. "You think I haven't seen my share of battlefield injuries? Treating them is something that every one of us learns, sooner or later, just to be able to survive in the kind of dangerous situations we always seem to end up finding ourselves in."
"What I'm more interested in, is how you managed to find that oxygen tank," Aki said, looking up from her study of D-Two to pin him with a look that mixed gratitude, curiosity, and something that Balzac wasn't sure he could interpret. "D-Two would have died if you hadn't, and I'm sure D-Boy would thank you for if he were conscious," the other emotions on Aki's face smoothed into plain gratitude then, and she smiled at him. "But, how did you know to look for that oxygen tank?"
"The ADF laid in some emergency supplies for the more heavily-used sections of the Orbital Ring," he said; and this was the complete truth. "After all, no technology is completely infallible. There were even a pair of EVA suits, but it would have taken too long to get him into one of them."
Besides, they had been stored in a locker on the far side of the room; there had been no time to even get to that locker before D-Boy's Voltekka had vaporized such a huge section of the wall. Sure, he'd gotten rid of that weird Radam construct, and the rest of the Radam monsters that had been guarding it, but there probably had been an easier way for him to do it. No one human would be able to get into that section of the Ring without an EVA suit and a way to override the door-controls, but the same wouldn't hold true for any of the Radam that tried to start this whole debacle over again.
He was going to have to bring that up in his written report, since he wasn't going to risk getting into the logistics of D-Boy's battles with the Radam over a channel he could only keep open for a short time.
"I guess that makes sense," Aki said, looking back down at D-Two.
"If that's all you wanted to ask me about, I'm going to go turn in now," he said; it was a half-truth, really; not that he was going to tell them that. "It's been a long day."
"All right," Aki said, giving him a warm smile. "Thank you for everything you did today, Balzac."
"Of course," he said, turning and heading down the corridor that would lead him to the room he had been assigned.
He needed to get his comm. setup prepared, and he needed to get his preliminary report straight in his head before he spoke with General Colbert for the first time since he'd been installed in OSDG Headquarters. Then, since today had been one of the most trying days he'd had in a long time, he was going to shuck his boots and jacket, then fall into bed and sleep.
Making his way back to his room at last, yawning widely as he punched in the code to open his door, he scratched at his thick, scruffy beard. He hated the damned thing; wished he could shave it, but it served the purpose of making him look like the man in his photo I.D. The man who had never really existed in the first place, if what he'd been told by the ADF's Intelligence Network had been true. He didn't know if it was, since there were levels of secrecy that even he wasn't privy to at this point, but then he didn't really care either.
It was convenient for his purposes that the picture in the I.D. looked so much like him, so he was going to use it until he fulfilled his mission, and then discard it like he did everything that no longer served a purpose; he'd be particularly pleased to get rid of the beard.
Settling back into his room, he began setting up his transmitter and carefully preparing his initial report to General Colbert. Things had definitely been more interesting than he had originally planned, and on top of that he had gotten a great deal of usable footage of both Tekkamen in battle as well as Tekkaman Varis' actual transformation. The latter would probably provoke a bit more interest than the former, but both of them had their importance in the grand scheme of things.
In either case, what he had to focus on now was delivering his preliminary report.
"Yes, sir; it was much more than I expected," he said, thinking back on the events of the day. "He was a bit more than I expected." Seeing Varis take that Radam monster's claw to the shoulder had shown him a lot of what he'd needed to know about the kid's character. "Yes; I'll continue with my investigation."
He shut down the transmitter after that; no point in risking discovery if you didn't have to. After all, it was only a matter of time until he completed his mission. He always completed his mission.