Here's the big action scene for this story. I came up with the over-detailed environment based on Chaco Canyon, maybe the most amazing place I've ever been. And I've still been revising building specs as I write this.
The elevator door opened onto a scene from a land across a great ocean, 280 stories above the ground. It was the Stratolobby, where the tapering of the tower met the elevator core. The central area between the outer elevators and adjoining offices and the hexagonal two-level inner core was styled as a native kiva, with walls and floors of seemingly unmortared slabs of sandstone. The planters held cacti, spiny ephedra and ocotillo that climbed the walls like organic barbed wire. Overhead, the light of morning shone down from a ceiling of glass. Colonel Welrod and four of his men were waiting. Before them stood Sharon, still smoking a cigarette. "Sorry," he said. "The lifts are designated no smoking. Come on out, and let's talk."
Behind the gunmen, a broadcast played on multiple screens. One showed the faces of the Queen and Twilight projected in front of a packed an atrium. "…Never needed to do this to be heard," Loid said. "You and Yuri were liaisons with cover positions in the media on both sides. When the Ostanian state network interviewed the two of you …"
The men moved to encircle the woman as she stepped out of the elevator. "You boarded this elevator with another woman," the Colonel said. "We know she was a colleague of yours, Yor Forger. Your only stop was on the 250th floor. Where is she?"
"Hard to say," Sharon said. "Probably… behind you."
The gunmen turned at a tinkle of glass from a conference room between the elevators behind them. Double door flew off their hinges, and knocked one of them off his feet in the process. Yor stooped to fit through the door in her flight pack. "That was a lot easier than getting in through a maintenance stairway," she said. Two of her darts brought down two more gunmen.
"…Was a lie," Nightfall said. "A beautiful lie we wanted to believe…"
"You brought the suicide rate among WISE agents down 60% in one night!" Twilight cut in. "Would you tell those people they might as well have…?"
"Hm, I remember that," the colonel said at a brief glance. "I had a grenade for the job. I saw those two and thought, this might be interesting, put the pin back in. I figured out it was a dud later, of course."
"I saw you on Franky's feed," Yor said. "Who are you, really?"
"My name's Maximillian Welrod, really," the colonel answered. "I started in the Westalis Army Engineering and Logistics Corps. I went over to Ostania when their troops outflanked my position. After they agreed to send back defectors in the second peace treaty, I offered my skills to Baltica."
"You came a long way," Yor said. "Why throw in with the Cold Front?"
"They found some baggage," Welrod said. "Same as almost all of us. It was just to get my attention, really. Once she told me what she really wanted, I was all in."
"I don't suppose you'd like to tell me about it," Yor said.
"You will know soon enough," the colonel said. "She might even tell you herself." Metallic footsteps came from both directions. They were mechs, ape-like in shape. Some ran on all fours. Others walked on two legs. All took aim at the Thorn Princess. That was when the skylight overhead shattered.
"Rising hope!" Anya called out as Bond came in for landing. The cyborg's wings sliced through two mechs on a catwalk overhead before they plowed into the ranks of the machines. Yor took to the air ahead of a volley of fire. She cast down tiny bombs from each hand. The marble-sized spheres flattened before detonating, shattering metal and plastic. Then Bond burst through, back in his quadrupedal form, with Anya on his back. She dismounted and surveyed the devastated ranks of the machines. "Cool," she said.
Mama alit beside her. "Oh, Anya, I'm so glad you're here!" she said. She looked toward the colonel and his remaining man. "Are you using her as a hostage?"
The colonel glanced at Sharon. She stood in the exact same spot where she had been at the start. "Oh, no," he said. "It didn't cross my mind, actually. There really is kind of a type, you know. Ah, no offense."
"None taken," Sharon said.
"Watch out," Anya said. There was a clatter as the surviving mechs regrouped. "Every time there's a bunch of little guy robots, there's always a great big boss." She rushed forward to meet the charging mechs. Her plasma projector burned the first three in half. Bond and Mama came leaping behind her. "Awesome sequence of still-image action stuff!"
After much leaping, punching, kicking, and exploding, Anya and Bond came running back. Mama hovered overhead, struggling to stay in control with three of the four ducted fans in her flight pack. Behind them, a centaur-like mech 3 meters high came rushing on four insectoid legs. Its torso was crisscrossed by glowing trails from the plasma projector. "See?" Anya said.
"I know!" Yor said. Her bombs left only divots on the mech's armor. Its head dented the bottom of a catwalk, without slowing the machine. "But how did they get it all the way up here?"
As the giant mech circled again, Bond turned to one side, through the doors where Mama had entered. Anya trailed behind, dragged by the cable of her forearm harpoon. The shaft was lodged in a hind leg. As the mech turned, she ran a circle around it, wrapping the cable around its legs. The mech's torso swiveled, firing bolts of energy and a jet of flame. Anya finally slid under the body of the mech, drawing the line tight. The boss mech finally toppled, smashing a conference table. It tumbled end over end, crashing through the remains of the window. Anya shrieked as it dragged her after it. For a moment, the mech's hind legs found traction on a window ledge. Bond caught Anya by the arm, then she cut the cable with her plasma beam, just before the mech dropped. "That's gonna make a mess, isn't it?" she said. Bond worffed.
They found Mama holding the colonel at knifepoint. "All right, Mr. Colonel," Anya said. "Where did the crazy lady take the hostages?"
"In there," Welrod said with a wave of a hand. Anya approached another conference room over the remains of the mechs. She cut through a chain with her plasma beam. Mama pulled the door open. Five men looked up from around a table.
"Well, greetings, Mrs. Forger," said a spectacled man.
"We have visual confirmation," Yor announced. "We have secured a conference room with Donovan Desmond inside. Also present, Lazar Linkola, Rudolph Blackbell, and…"
She looked at the youngest of the group. He had a handsome face and long platinum hair that seemed straight out of a fairy tale. He rose and gave a courtly bow. "Yes," he said, "I am Prince Ferdinand, last heir to the throne of the Centralian Empire. You were pointed out to me at the Luwen conference, but we were not formally introduced."
"Who's that?" Anya said. She pointed at a man with a shaved head and pale skin common in the exotrooper corps. One arm was in a cast.
"He only calls himself the Flea," Donovan Desmond said.
"Hey, I saw his partner!" Anya said.
"It's over, Fiona," Yor said. She turned to a screen, which showed both Nightfall and Loid Forger. "We have secured your hostages."
"Oh, it looks like we have a situation further down," Nightfall said. "But that doesn't mean we can't have a conversation, does it?"
"Yes," Sharon said. She pressed a pistol to the base of Yor's skull. "We can."