The Doorstop (story)

[Iaculus]

Massively-multiplayer crossover fanfic. Discussion is here.

Prologue

The pedestrian tunnel was poorly lit, a state of affairs only exacerbated by the dull, rainy sky outside. Nevertheless, sufficient illumination remained to distinguish three humanoid figures a short way inside the entrance, all dressed in heavy rain-gear. They spoke amongst themselves, the oppressive weather drowning out their words – not that their sole witness, a half-asleep and very damp pigeon, would have been able to understand them anyway.

Tiny though its avian brain was, even it could recognise that the beings inside the tunnel were rather unusual – indeed, two of them, despite their appearance, were very obviously not human, and it wasn’t all that sure about the third, either. It did not pause to consider whether or not all of them knew this, though, seeing as the gnawing emptiness in its stomach was a rather more pressing concern.

Eventually, two of the figures walked back out, their features becoming more apparent as they stepped back into the grey morning light. Both were young (or, at least, had the appearance of youth), but that was all they had in common. One was a male of slightly above-average height whose floppy brown hair was plastered to his scalp by the rain and whose aura of world-weary lethargy projected some distance from his actual body. The other was immaculate by contrast, a diminutive, expressionless female who appeared quite unaffected by the weather. Her hair was the same lavender-grey as the pigeon’s feathers, a most unusual hue for a human, and appeared, from the bird’s limited perspective, to be completely dry.

The remaining figure stayed where he was until some time after they left, before retreating noiselessly into the shadows, which embraced him as if he were an old friend. By that point, though, the pigeon had left to examine a discarded bento box, and saw none of it. Indeed, what it had seen was swiftly forgotten – barely-digestible detritus proved far more interesting than first contact with extradimensional life, but then, that was pigeons for you.

***

The star system had once been home to a prosperous trading world, a commercial hub for its entire subsector. Ships from tens of light-years away had come to and from its massive orbital docks, flooding its markets with exotic goods and its citizens’ pockets with abundant wealth.

Now, though, it was a graveyard. The once-bustling docks were silent, their twisted, ruptured metal guts spilling out into the void and the mangled saucer-hulls of wrecked defence craft lazily orbiting them like flies around a corpse. Through it all glided the vessel responsible for the carnage, otherworldly energies dancing across its cathedral-like form. The last of the prisoners had been brought on board hours earlier, time enough for the lengthy explanation of how their lives would be from now on and why they deserved every little bit of it. There weren’t many of them left, which simplified matters a great deal.

At last, only one task remained.

The enormous spacecraft approached the battle-scarred planet, its shields sparkling as they shunted away debris from the fight. It came to a halt just outside the outermost limits of the atmosphere, retro-thrusters puffing away gamely, and hung there a moment as if to admire the view.

A dorsal laser swivelled into position and opened fire. Though the beam itself was invisible, its sheer intensity created a pillar of flame as the oxygen it interacted with spontaneously caught fire. The turret swept back and forth, inscribing a message in the landscape that just happened to occupy the same space as the ruins of the planetary capital. It was short and crude, as much a threat as an announcement, as much a challenge as a boast.

Aboard the bridge, the captain watched, her eyes ablaze with guttering hellfire. A small, numbered cube was held in one clawed hand, tossed idly up and down as she observed the weapon’s handiwork.

A flick of her wrist, and the die skittered across her command desk, attracting the attention of all crew present. A broad, toothy grin spread across her face, and she theatrically glanced down at its result.

“Right then,” she said. “Who’s next?”

***

Across the multiverse, strange events began to crop up with increasing regularity. A fortress-city with a secret at its heart lay at the mercy of incomprehensible invaders, only to receive aid from a most unexpected direction. A sleepy Californian city was shaken to its core when one of the occasional skirmishes amongst its supernatural community turned into something much, much worse. A fanatical theocracy’s display of power went horribly wrong, creating something new and terrible whose birth-cries echoed across time and space...

... And far, far away, four beings that had once been human and now were considerably more watched their children’s progress with hungry anticipation. They had millions of new worlds to explore and trillions of new souls to bend to their will, and were ready to seize the opportunity with both hands and whatever other appendages they could muster.

It was both unfortunate and wholly predictable, therefore, that there was something of a spanner in the works. Several, in fact.


1. Meet the Neighbours

Several days had passed since his encounter with the emissary, and Kyon was still wondering if he had indeed made the right decision. The thing was, he hadn’t been entirely honest when he had said that they had no way of stopping said emissary’s masters. He did indeed have several options for doing just that, but was rather reluctant to use any of them given that (a) he wasn’t in the habit of starting interstellar wars with people he’d only just met, and (b) several of those options could quite likely result in the destruction of the universe. Again. Weighty concerns for a high-school student, but after a while in the SOS Brigade, you got used to them.

Nagato’s contributions to the situation had been particularly disheartening – the Integrated Data Entity had been tracking the movement of heavily-armed warships quite in excess of what was likely required for the ‘exploration’ the emissary had mentioned, and when he had asked her for some sort of explanation as to what exactly their visitors were, she had handed him an H.P. Lovecraft anthology and said, in her usual deadpan monotone, “Like that – but worse.”

He was pretty sure she wasn’t talking about the purple prose and howling racism, either.

As if on cue, North High School’s own resident cosmic horror stuck her head over his shoulder and gave him a bright, cheerful smile. “Hey, Kyon! What’re you drawing? Can I see?”

Kyon looked down and realised, with a ghastly sense of impending dread, that he had been idly sketching out the name the emissary had given him. He’d tried to forget it – the last thing he wanted to do was summon those... things, whatever they were, but it had kept creeping back like that oddly squidgy burger that you’d downed a bit too fast, fervently hoping that the green bits were some sort of herb. Desperately, he tried to tug the sheet of paper out of sight, but Haruhi was far too fast.

“Aww, c’mon. Why so secretive? It’s just some writing, for crying out loud. Wait – what is that? Zinchy... Zeen-chee... Tzintchi...”

“Oh, it’s just the username of a guy on a forum I visit,” Kyon replied airily. “Potato farming – my family’s looking to start a vegetable garden, you see. So, you hear about that newspaper contest?”

“Newspaper contest?” Haruhi’s eyes lit up. Appealing to her competitive streak was always a safe bet.

“Umm... yes.” Kyon scrambled for ideas. Damn it, Koizumi, where are you? This is supposed to be your job. “They wanted people to send in pictures of interesting and unusual things happening in their neighbourhood. Winners would get a cash prize and their photos printed in the paper. I thought you’d heard about it, to be honest.”

“What? Of course I didn’t! It’s your duty as a loyal member of the SOS Brigade to keep me informed of these things! Honestly, why do I have to deal with such incompetent underlings? Come on, Kyon – we’re going to show the world our photographic expertise!”

That was the nice thing about dealing with Haruhi, Kyon thought as he was dragged out of the room by his elbow. Even if the distraction you came up with was entirely fabricated, you could be fairly sure it would exist by the time you got to it. Normally the idea of a Suzumiya-coordinated photo op would fill him with quiet dread, but it was infinitely better than tentacular horribleness creeping out from the walls or whatever.

I mean, that can’t possibly have counted. She didn’t even pronounce it properly the first couple of times. I’ve got nothing to worry about. Right?

That evening, once he had finally staggered back home, he got his answer.

***

The invite was majestic in its simplicity – a gold-embossed card bearing the logo of one of the most punitively expensive hotels in town and adorned with a few brief lines of extravagantly-flowing script.

Main Lounge
5:30 p.m.
Your fellow potato enthusiast, Tzintchi

Kyon couldn’t resist having another glance at it as he approached the hotel’s main entrance. It wasn’t every day that he got to handle something quite so forebodingly expensive, after all.

A quick chat with Nagato had provided him with some typically efficient (if curt) directions, and once school had finished he had made a quick stop by the bathrooms to wash his face and comb his hair, before setting out to meet his enigmatic hosts.

The lobby was as spectacular as he had expected – a carefully-designed riot of rare woods, intricate carpeting, and tastefully-applied gilt. He stood around in it for a moment, feeling deeply awkward, before one of the immaculately-dressed porters bustled up to him.

“Ah, hello, Master Kyon. Your friend Master Shinji said to expect you. Please follow me.”

Shinji? Ah, right, Tzintchi. Imaginative alias, there.

Nodding his thanks in what he hoped was an appropriately dignified manner, Kyon did so. He briefly wondered how the man had recognised him on sight, but dismissed it as a simple demonstration of the service the hotel’s patrons paid for. After all, it wasn’t as if they likely had that many North High School students wandering through their doors.

The porter stopped at the door to the lounge, held it open, and gestured for him to go through. The room beyond was a warm, low-ceilinged place whose aura of homeliness would have been rather more convincing if its array of armchairs, sofas, and coffee tables had not been entirely uninhabited apart from the four beings slouching casually in the centre.

There was something... off about them, Kyon saw as he walked towards them. They were human, yet not, standing out against the background of the room like bad special effects. One wore the appearance of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her late twenties, squeezed into a deep purple dress that was practically sin incarnate. Another was a quiet, reserved-looking girl who looked like Nagato’s more personable older sister. The third was another teenage girl, this time an inhumanly confident-looking redhead in a bright scarlet gown that subtly warred with that of the older woman for the title of ‘Most Likely To Make Kyon Swallow His Own Tongue’. The last was the only male of the group, a short, thoughtful-looking young man in a deep blue dinner jacket who looked vaguely lawyerly to Kyon’s inexperienced eye, and who looked up and gave him a friendly wave as he approached.

“Afternoon, Kyon. How’s it going?”

“You’d be Tzintchi, right?”

“Please, call me Shinji. Or Mr. Ikari, if you want to be formal. It used to be my name, after all, when I was human.”

“Ah? So how did you get the extra consonants?” Mocking the eldritch abomination was, of course, the smart thing to do.

“By being able to do things like this.”

The besuited apparition made a complicated hand gesture, and a not-unpleasant but otherwise indescribable sensation washed across Kyon’s body. He looked down, and saw that his school uniform had been replaced by immaculately-tailored black tie garb. A couple of seconds passed, and then his neatly-folded uniform appeared in front of his eyes with a loud pop, before falling into his outstretched arms.

Tzintchi grinned. “Like it? It’s yours now. Borrowed the design from a little place in London I visited once back home. Can’t have the staff giving you the stink-eye because you’re violating their dress-code, can we?”

Kyon tried desperately to regain control of the situation. “Um... thanks. And your friends are...?”

“Oh, sorry, we should have said, shouldn’t we? Ladies?”

“Misato Katsuragi. Pleased to meet you,” said the dark-haired woman in a voice that made the wonderful new suit suddenly feel uncomfortably tight.

“Rei Ayanami,” stated the blue-haired girl flatly, with an odd bubbling undertone that made him wonder about her health.

“Asuka Langley Soryuu,” the redhead announced with unassailable smugness. “So, Shinji, this is the guy? Doesn’t look like much.”

Temper, Kyon... He forced an awkward smile. “Nice to meet you, everyone. So, may I ask why you wanted to pay me a visit?”

The redhead, Asuka, raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me? It was you who summoned us.”

Kyon sighed and pinched his nose. “Right. Which is why you used a summoning-word that wormed into the recipient’s head and didn’t even need to be pronounced properly. And why you all turned up at once rather than just Mr. Ikari. And why the invite you sent me referred to something that happened at about the same time as the summoning, implying prior observation. I’m not an idiot, you know.”

Ikari chuckled genially. “All right, you caught us. Mostly, we just wanted to meet the neighbours, see if you had any questions that needed asking. You know, being good interdimensional citizens.”

And if that’s the truth, then I’m a teacup. “I... see. Actually, I did have one question. You’ve been sending through a lot of military vessels lately. Why is that?”

“Oh, it’s quite simple, really,” Shinji replied. “We want to safeguard our own interests. Do you know how many people are still alive on our world, excluding daemons?”

“Wait – daemons?”

“It’s a bit snappier than ‘sentient psychic constructs’, don’t you think? Anyway, our current population is two billion – and yes, we do indeed come from a parallel Earth. In the past eighteen years, we have managed to rise from a low point of nine hundred and fifty million through careful social management after a group of scared, greedy old men nearly ended up killing everyone. The only way we were able to prevent it was by hijacking the process to fuel our own apotheosis.”

“And fifteen years before that,” Misato interjected, “half the human race – three billion people – died in a disaster that shattered the world. Same people responsible.”

“Indeed so. You will understand, therefore, Kyon, that we have no intention of allowing another catastrophe of that magnitude to befall us. Our policy is to act on our own terms – firmly, decisively, and with overwhelming force. We understand that you are likewise. That business with the Integrated Data Entity a while ago impressed us greatly.”

All four politely applauded him with eerie unison.

“That’s one of the reasons we want to help you,” Misato explained. “So far, you’ve been doing pretty well when it comes to keeping Haruhi occupied, but how long can you keep it up? How long can you hold the fate of the universe in your hands?”

Kyon said nothing.

“Let me tell you a little story. A long time ago, in a place far from here, there was a race called the Eldar. They ruled their galaxy without question. Their fleets were invincible, their civilisation unassailable, and their scientific achievements unmatched. Every planet was a paradise, every citizen a model of aesthetic and intellectual perfection. Of course, it couldn’t last. It wasn’t political strife or an external threat that did them in, though. They were beyond that. It was boredom. The myriad wonders of thousands of star systems were at their very fingertips, and it still wasn’t enough. They experimented with ancient rites and forbidden pleasures. Blood flowed in the streets, and the empire slowly tore itself apart. Some saw their doom approaching and escaped, but most remained, only realising their mistake as their race died in darkness and fire, its final agonised, ecstatic screams giving birth to a new and terrible god.”

She rose from her chair and sashayed towards him.

“Do you understand me? You can’t do this forever. People change. It’s how they are. Will Haruhi always be satisfied with her cosy little prison of a high school? Will you? Sooner or later, she will demand something you are unable or unwilling to give her. It needn’t even be something particularly big. She once nearly destroyed the world over a baseball game without noticing, remember? It will happen, though, and everything – your friends, your family, your home – will be gone.”

She was standing in front of him now. Her voice had dropped to a husky whisper, and he could faintly detect the scent of unnamed, exotic spices. He clutched his uniform in front of him like a protective blanket.

“We can help you, Kyon. We have power at our disposal, and the willingness to use it. Having your universe destroyed won’t benefit us either, after all. We can make your life easier; buy you a few more years of existence...”

She smiled seductively, and plucked a hair from his head.

“And we can teach you how to fuck three girls up the ass at the same time and blow their minds.”

Kyon’s expression froze. “This conversation is over.”

He turned and walked out of the room. As the door closed behind him, he heard Shinji’s voce.

“Just remember – if you ever change your mind, give us a call. We’ll be waiting.”

***

Once he left, the four young gods turned to each other.

“Did you get it?” Tzintchi asked.

Mislaato smiled and showed them the short brown hair in her hand. “Could you ever doubt me?”

Asukhon peered at it dubiously. “You think this’ll be enough? I mean, given that he’s... you know.”

Their leader grinned and stretched his arms out behind his head, not noticing as they passed through the chair he was supposed to be seated on.

“With Chaos, all things are possible,” he said confidently. “Think of it as a Plan B.”

 

[Iaculus]

2. First Day at the Office

Quartermaster Sergeant Frederick Jones strolled along the endless grey corridors of the Time-Space Administration Bureau central office, the people walking past and the ever-shifting green-and-purple miasma outside the windows providing the only splashes of colour. He checked his battered old watch again, relieved to note that they still had twenty minutes until their appointment.

‘They’, in this case, being him and his old friend and superior officer Quartermaster Gunther Krebs, who nodded to him with typical curtness.

“Brief me.”

Gunther was a logistical genius, processing and allocating resources with stoic professionalism, clinical efficiency, and mathematical impartiality. When coupled with his nigh-obsessive standards of cleanliness and frankly lousy aim with an Intelligent Device, his rapid promotion to his current rank had been something of a foregone conclusion, as had been his complete lack of upwards mobility ever since. Gunther didn’t mind, though – he’d found his place in the universe.

Frank, on the other hand, was his natural compliment. A second-generation immigrant to Mid-childa whose family had originated in a small and unregarded part of Earth called Wales, he was blessed with the sort of big, friendly smile that made people want to spill out their life stories to him, ravenous curiosity, and a near-unrivalled talent for office politics. The end result was someone with connections all over the Bureau and information-gathering skills that put some intelligence agents to shame, which almost made up for his general incompetence regarding his actual job.

Not knowing what to do with him, his superiors had aimlessly shuffled him around for a few years before placing him under Gunther, and the two had managed to hit it off famously despite their wildly disparate personalities. They made a formidable team – Fred would keep his boss informed on the latest gossip and office rumours as well as ensuring that he got the supplies he needed, while Gunther would just... well... be Gunther. Though he would never sneeze at a shot at promotion, Fred was content. The pay was enough to keep his family well-maintained and his daughter into a good school, and the little perks they picked up on the side for their work were nice.

“The outfit’s called the First Military Expeditionary Force,” he began. “Only recently-founded, and pretty small, but they’ve been hiring talent and lots of it. C.O. is Colonel Hayate Yagami. Early twenties, SS+-ranked mage, recruited after the Book of Darkness incident and been climbing the ranks like someone strapped a rocket to her tail ever since. Other personnel are from all over the place – Interstellar Navigation Bureau, Disaster Planning, even some clerk from the Infinite Library. Boss, I don’t even want to contemplate how contorted the chain of command’s going to get. Two common factors, though. First, they tend to be young hotshots with lots of magical power and odds on promotion ranging from ‘good’ to ‘spectacular’, just like their boss. Second, most of them were either part of or connected to something called ‘Riot Force Six’ three years back. Supposedly an artefact-retrieval group, but way overgunned, and involved in some pretty highly-classified stuff. I hear they had something to do with the Scaglietti incident – you remember that huge ship that got blasted to bits by the fleet?”

Gunther nodded.

“Right. Anyway, what I know is that they got disbanded shortly afterwards and went their separate ways. Tactical training, yadda yadda, cyborg zombies, yadda yadda, environmental protection, yadda yadda. Now they’re back together, they’ve been hiring, and we got headhunted. End of story.”

“Cyborg... zombies?”

“You heard me.”

There was a brief pause.

“Equipment?”

That was the other thing about Gunther. The man was near-pathologically averse to using any more than the bare minimum of words needed to convey his meaning, and sometimes even balked at that much. Fred always felt as if he had to fill in for both sides of the conversation.

“One Prion-class heavy frigate, the Eventide, fresh off the production lines. Fast, quiet, very heavily-armed for its size – it’s even packing an Arc-en-ciel. Long-range patrol vessel for the sorts of places you don’t want to send long-ranged patrols into, basically.”

“Good ship,” Gunther commented, his gaunt, lined face creasing into an approving smile.

“Most of the other equipment requests are classified, but I had a chat to one of the folks in the loading bays, and they’ve got a year’s worth of food supplies on board. That’s some pretty deep exploration.”

“Another cover-up?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the labcoats in DSS found something bad out there. We’ll find out when we get to it, I guess.” He glanced at the sign above their heads. “Ah, here we are.”

The door slid open obligingly. Inside was the sort of chaos that inevitably occurs when a lot of people try to do a lot of things in very little time. A short, blue-haired girl was desperately trying to stuff a bewildering array of apparel into a tiny suitcase whilst being berated by a clearly exasperated redhead, someone else’s Barrier Jacket kept switching on and off at random intervals, a can of meat had spilled across the floor for no readily-apparent reason, and two large dogs were picking their way daintily through the whole melee with military-issue backpacks clutched in their mouths.

“May I help you?” a voice from behind them asked.

Fred turned around with a start. The speaker was a tall, stern-faced woman with pink hair and oddly-shaped eyes who had a tiny winged humanoid sat on her shoulder dressed in a miniature version of the brown TSAB uniform. Despite all this, she managed to look like a veritable bastion of sanity compared to the mayhem around them.

“Umm... yes please. We’re looking for Colonel Yagami, Captain...?”

“Signum,” the woman replied. “Mistress Hayate is in her office. I will take you to her.”

‘Mistress Hayate’? Oh, right, must be one of those bodyguards Yagami’s supposed to have. Scary lady.

“And you are?” Captain Signum asked as they carefully skirted around the meat spillage.

“Quartermaster Sergeant Jones and Quartermaster Krebs.”

She inclined her head to indicate Gunther. “Does he speak?”

Gunther grinned. “Sometimes.”

Her face betrayed the faintest flicker of a smile.

Colonel Yagami’s office was a welcome haven of tranquillity. Three young women were sat on the desk, chatting idly to each other, while another of the little familiars swooped around behind them, busily sorting paperwork.

Hayate Yagami.

Fate Testarossa-Harlaown.

Nanoha Takamachi.

It wasn’t every day that you got to meet three of the Bureau’s most powerful combat mages at once.

Fred had mixed feelings about the newest wave of recruits. On the one hand, he couldn’t help but dislike the fact that they were effectively hiring child soldiers, some of them younger than his own daughter. On the other hand, he felt a disproportionate, almost paternal amount of pride for those brave boys and girls who had managed to pass through their trial by fire.

These three had done that and much, much more. They were legends, an inspiration to their peers and the subject of more stories than soldiers twice their age. Hayate had gone from a half-paralysed suspected criminal to the army’s youngest colonel. Fate had taken down the notorious terrorist Jail Scaglietti and two of his elite bodyguards by herself. Nanoha had refused more promotions than Fred had been offered in his entire life to remain on the front lines.

Fred had seen a few legends in his forty years. He fervently hoped that these ones would live a bit longer than the others.

Hayate was the shortest of the three, a vaguely motherly-looking brown-haired girl who gave them a friendly nod as they approached.

“Ah, you’d be Captain Krebs and Sergeant-Major Jones, yes? Pleased to meet you. This is Nanoha” – the auburn-haired girl on her left waved – “this is Fate” – the blonde on her right gave a grave smile – “and this” – she indicated the small maelstrom of activity behind her – “is my assistant, Reinforce Zwei.”

Both men saluted.

“Colonel Yagami. It’s an honour,” Fred stated in his most professional tone.

“Oh, no need to be so formal. Just call me Hayate. Everyone else does.” She turned to her subordinate. “Fate, would you be a dear and check with Navigation? I’d like to make sure we have a clear route out for the launch.”

The girl nodded. “Understood.”

“Oh, and Nanoha, I think things are starting to get a bit out of control out there. Would you mind trying to calm everyone down a bit?”

Nanoha smiled. “It is rather noisy, isn’t it? I’ll see what I can do.”

The two captains got up and walked out of the room, exchanging a quick peck on the cheek before heading off to their respective tasks. From the direction of the locker room there was the crackle of a magical explosion, followed by a few screams.

Fred blinked. “Oh. I wasn’t aware that they were...”

“Friends?” Hayate asked, smiling sweetly.

He frantically attempted to backpedal. “Ah... sorry, I didn’t mean to... um...”

She laughed. “Don’t worry, you didn’t. Just an old Section Six in-joke. We have a pretty loose definition of friendship around here. ‘Befriending’, too, though you really don’t want to be on the receiving end of that. Yes, they’ve been together for quite a while. Finally got it formalised a couple of months back. All of the old crowd got to attend. Yuuno was best man, of course...”

She trailed off for a second, clearly reliving a happy memory.

Signum cleared her throat discreetly, and Hayate looked up with a guilty expression.

“Oh, sorry, I was getting distracted. Not had much sleep lately, though I suppose that’s not really an excuse. Anyway, welcome to the First Military Expeditionary Force. As you’ve probably noticed, I run a fairly loose ship. Everyone here’s seen a fair measure of action, and most of them have served together before, so I trust them to know who to listen to when the shooting starts. Most of the time, anyway. You two came highly recommended, so I won’t tell you how to do what you do. The engineering, maintenance, and catering staffs have all been informed of your arrival, and look forward to meeting you. The one rule I will mention is that everyone on this ship is expected to attend a minimum of three hours’ combat training per week with Captain Takamachi. Don’t worry – she’s very good at her job.”

Her face abruptly grew serious.

“One last thing – if you have any prejudices against artificial humans, now is the time to leave them at the door. We have clones, familiars, sentient programs, combat cyborgs... the full set, basically.”

“And Rein!” the silver-haired paper-shuffler piped cheerily.

“Hey! What about me?” her shoulder-seated compatriot objected.

“Oh, I left you out on purpose,” Rein replied with a dismissive toss of her head.

In a matter of seconds, green and purple streaks of light were flickering across the room as the two tiny girls chased each other around, volleying high-pitched insults. Hayate and Signum rolled their eyes.

“No problems over here,” Fred assured them. “Everyone starts to look the same once they come back for the third tray of food.”

“Disbelieving.” Gunther elaborated.

Hayate’s eyes widened. “Wait, are you telling me you’ve found a way to make shipboard rations taste good?”

Fred beamed with reflected pride. “Yep. Not my department, but he says it’s all in how you balance the condiments. Well... something like that.”

She grinned. “You know, I might have to have a talk with you at some point, Captain. I’m something of a cook myself, you see.”

Gunther saluted. “Ma’am.”

“Well then, let’s get started. Signum will show you to the ship – you can get settled in. Briefing’s in two hours in the main theatre. I’m sure you’re wondering what all this is about.”

Another round of salutes, and the two men left the room, accompanied by Signum and her (badly bruised) companion, who loftily introduced herself as Agito, a Unison Device. Whatever that was. She’d been idly playing with a fireball the size of her head when she mentioned it, so Fred had decided that pressing the matter would not be wise.

The main locker room was rather more ordered than it had been when they last saw it, though he wasn’t sure that the scorch marks on the ceiling had been there before. The two dogs were still ferrying things back and forth, while the blue-haired girl was clearing away debris with an ancient-looking plastic broom.

“Briefing in two hours, Subaru,” Signum informed her.

Subaru looked up with a start and attempted an awkward salute, almost hitting herself over the head with the broom handle in the process. “Oh, um... right. Thanks for the heads-up, Captain Signum. Just finishing off here. It’s not as easy as it looks.”

“Pushing too hard,” Gunther commented.

The other three turned to look at him.

“Umm... what do you mean, please, sir?” Subaru asked tentatively.

“Lighter brushing works better,” he explained. “Also, remember to check the corners. Dirt always builds up there.”

As Subaru stuttered her thanks, Signum shot Fred a quizzical glance at the quartermaster’s unusual verbosity.

“He likes things tidy,” he said with a shrug.

***

The Eventide was a big ship, a hundred and fifty metres long including the two enormous Arc-en-ciel projector fins. Nevertheless, it was dwarfed by the hangar it was currently berthed in. From their position atop the boarding walkway, Fred could see the tiny specks of the deck crew scurrying back and forth, carrying out the last pre-flight checks. Glowing runes criss-crossed the air, massive containers suspended by raw magic.

A girl who looked to be no more than eight years old stumped past with the bearing of a drill sergeant, a gigantic hammer slung casually over one shoulder. She looked up, and he saw that she had the same curiously elongated eyes as Signum.

“Hey, Boob Monster, are these the logistics boys? Sure hope so, because things are really getting choked up down there.”

Fred looked straight ahead, his face an expressionless mask. The slightest snigger, he knew, would be an open invitation to swift and painful death.

“They are indeed,” Signum replied stiffly. “Vita, shouldn’t you be helping Hayate with her packing?”

“Oh, right, yeah, I should probably get going. See ya.” She inspected the two men for a second. “You know, I think you should get the fat
one to the infirmary. Doesn’t look too healthy.”

Fred seized the opportunity like a drowning man thrown a lifeline. “Actually, she might have a point. I have been feeling a bit unwell. Don’t think my lunch agreed with me. Best get it checked, right? Come on, boss, we’re leaving.”

With that, he scuttled off down the walkway, dragging Gunther behind him.

“Explain?” the older man gasped, pushing up his glasses with his free hand.

“I’m saving both our lives,” he replied, and the laughter came bubbling out as he prayed with all his heart that Captain Signum was out of earshot.

Behind them, the two Wolkenritter shared a bemused glance.

***

As they reached the Eventide’s main cargo bays, Fred saw that Vita’s analysis of the situation was rather more literal than he had expected. The cargo had mostly been left unsorted, and was stacked in a huge pile that blocked several passageways and had created a not insignificant queue of waiting deck-workers, some of them levitating containers bigger than they were. Gunther’s face lit up – he was in his element here.

He strode over to the nearest worker and grabbed him by the shoulder. “Who’s in charge?”
A panicked jerk of a thumb, and a short man in a blue coat several sizes too big found Gunther bearing down on him like the incarnate wrath of the Sankt Kaiser.

“Captain Krebs. Quartermaster.”

“Oh, um... good to see you. I’m Sergeant D’Angelo. I’ve almost got things under control here, but there’s been a few... complications. You know how it is.”

He grinned nervously. Gunther stared at him for a moment, and then thrust out his hand.

“Inventory.”

“Right! Certainly! I’ll just... um... go get it, shall I?”

The sergeant fled as fast as his dignity would allow. An emerald-green glow surrounded Gunther as he cast a loudspeaker spell on himself, and stepped up to the edge of the gantry.

“Cancel loading. I repeat, cancel loading.”

The hubbub below ceased, and there was a series of gentle thuds as airborne containers were lowered to the ground.

“You!” He pointed imperiously at one of the lifters. “Sort the cargo. Red left, blue right.”

The man saluted.

“You! Hangar supervisor here. Now.”

An NCO nodded in acknowledgement, and bolted from the room.

Sergeant D’Angelo returned, red-faced and sweating heavily, a datapad clutched in his hand. Gunther skimmed its contents for a moment, and then returned to barking orders. Fred watched as order was gradually restored, before wandering off into the bowels of the ship.

Time to meet the rest of the crew.

***

The Eventide’s briefing room was arranged in the classic semicircular theatre design, with a large holographic projector on the central stage. The maintenance crews were still busy preparing the ship, but all officers, front-line personnel, and civilian assets were in attendance. An unfortunate incident with a ration shipment two years out of date had delayed Fred and Gunther’s arrival, and they were stuck with the seats near the back, next to a lady and gentleman whose large, bushy tails strongly hinted at the whereabouts of the two dogs they had seen earlier.

Hayate and Fate were fielding the briefing, along with a bespectacled, slightly feminine-looking young man who had introduced himself to Fred earlier as one Yuuno Scrya of the Infinite Library. The display was currently showing a stylised map of the known multiverse, with a large, angry red marker labelled ‘Probable Breach Point’ on the edge of the dimensional wound that was Chaotic Space.

“Two weeks ago by our reckoning,” Fate began, “Interstellar Navigation’s Deep Space Surveillance department picked up a dimensional disturbance of massive proportions originating from the unexplored universe designated U7W-1T4.”

She indicated the marker.

“Though the universe itself is just on the friendly side of the divide between Wild Space and Chaotic Space, the disturbance originated from inside the Great Wall.”

Corporal Nakajima raised her hand.

“Excuse me, ma’am, but what do you mean by ‘by our reckoning’?”

Yuuno cleared his throat. “I’ll field this one. Time doesn’t flow normally in Chaotic Space, an effect that also occurs to a lesser extent in the Wild Space surrounding it. Among other things, this makes limited time travel possible, though engaging in this is of course illegal due to the dangers it poses and the stress it exerts on the space/time continuum. In fact, some scholars have hypothesised that given the artificial nature of the Great Wall, Chaotic Space itself may be the result of an ancient, failed time-travel experiment.”

“Who would have been capable of that?” Subaru’s redheaded friend asked.

“Several theories exist. The lost civilisation of Al-Hazard is the most obvious option – we’re pretty sure that they created the Great Wall, anyway. That said, it is equally possible that they did so to amend the mistake of an even earlier set of precursors – as an archaeologist, I can assure you that they were by no means the first.”

“Al-Hazard... the place my mother sought to reach.” Fate said softly.

“Indeed so. As a matter of fact, the disturbance occurred quite close to the Garden of Time’s last known position, though a connection between the two seems highly unlikely even given the aforementioned time-distortion effect.”

“So... we’re dealing with a malfunctioning device that may have been created by people who were myths of the myths of the Belkans?” Vita summarised.

“We honestly can’t be sure.” Yuuno replied wearily. “Chaotic Space is, to borrow a phrase from Earth, terra incognita. All our knowledge of the realms beyond the Great Wall is rooted in academic speculation. The disturbance might be a result of mechanical failure in the Wall, a natural occurrence like the eruption of a supervolcano, or even an effect of an external factor being introduced.”

“An external factor... from inside the Wall?” a short, eyepatched woman in an oversized trenchcoat asked. Fred vaguely recognised her from the TSAB’s rehabilitation program – another one involved with the Scaglietti Incident.

“Precisely. Though it is difficult, even impossible for ordinary life to survive very long in Chaotic Space, other forms of sentience, even ones existing without Linker Cores, are theoretically possible, particularly in a near-infinite multiverse such as our own.”

That observation caused a lot of perturbed muttering.

“Our mission profile is fairly straightforward,” Hayate said, pointedly raising her voice above the noise. “We will go in, investigate the disturbance, and get out. No unnecessary heroics – whatever caused this, the fact remains that it sent a shockwave across the entire multiverse, and I, for one, have no intention of being at ground zero if it does it again.”

Nanoha raised a hand. “Will we be employing power limiters?”

“Command placed that at the discretion of the expedition leader. So... no.”

There were a few chuckles from the front row.

“Any further questions?” Hayate asked. “No? Very well. Dismissed.”

As the crew rose from their seats, Fred turned to the dog-lady. “You all seem very relaxed about this. Do you do these things often?”

She waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, mostly we just deal with galactic or universal threats. This sort of thing’s more of a weekly event.”

He forced a smile. “Ah. That’s all right, then.”

 

[Iaculus]

3. Family Reunion

The journey into Wild Space had lasted two weeks, and had been surprisingly uneventful. The Eventide’s prototype dimensional keel had performed as advertised, ably navigating them through the heavy currents that were a constant threat this close to the Wall. As such, there had been little for the crew to do other than dine, chat, gamble, and get pushed to the precise limits of their physical and mental endurance during Captain Takamachi’s training sessions.

So far, Nanoha had reported satisfactory progress with most of the crew, though there were of course two glaring exceptions. The new logistics officers had become something of a running joke – Sergeant-Major Jones appeared to have an allergic reaction to the very concept of physical fitness, and whilst Captain Krebs at least kept himself in shape, his appalling aim at anything greater than melee range made him as much of a danger to his own side as to any theoretical enemy.

It was fortunate, therefore, Hayate mused idly, that they had managed to make themselves useful in other ways. Krebs had kept the ship clean, well-supplied and well-fed whilst expending a probability-defying minimum of resources to do so, and Jones had proven himself an invaluable source of information regarding the moods and opinions of the crew. Though Hayate prided herself on successfully maintaining an open, friendly style of command, there was still no conceivable way for her to keep track of the individual needs of over a hundred people, and certainly not from the position of an equal. That was where the pudgy, cheerful sergeant-major came in, and he fulfilled his role most ably.

Hayate checked the display again. There was a breach in the Wall – a vast, ugly rent from which seething madness spilled out. This was the result of the disturbance – this was what they had come to investigate.

“Take us in closer,” she ordered.

The helm officer saluted. “Aye-aye, ma’am.”

The currents strengthened, as if the Eventide was a true sea-vessel sailing through a storm. Hayate heard creaks and groans as the hull was placed under unimaginable stress, but paid them no heed. The ship had been designed to handle far worse than this.

“Colonel, we’re getting something on the readouts, inside the breach,” the sensors officer reported. “It’s a solid object roughly the size of a planet... no, wait, it is a planet. A planet in Chaotic Space! It’s got a crust, mantle, core, and everything!”

“Can you bring us into orbit?”

“Affirmative, ma’am. Looks like the space surrounding it is pretty calm, like the eye of a storm. I’ve... I’ve never seen anything like this...”

The creaking intensified, and the little yellow bars on several of the gauges in Hayate’s command display. She watched them intently, prepared to order the ship to turn back if any of them exceeded safe limits.

None of them did, though. As they approached the impossible planet, the currents dropped away, leaving them in a patch of tranquillity that almost didn’t feel like part of one of the most dangerous and unpredictable areas in dimensional space.

“Do we have a visual on the object?” she asked.

“That’s another affirmative, chief. Should be on the main viewer... now.”

The massive screen at the front of the bridge jumped into life, and they looked out on the world below. It had once been a lush, verdant planet – there were still signs of plant life here and there – but was horribly scarred by some disaster natural or (more likely) artificial. Craters kilometres-wide pocked the surface like a case of geographical blackheads, whilst a continent-sized arrangement of burns seemed to form a single, gigantic rune that hurt the eyes of those that looked upon it. The seas were blood-red in colour, clearly tainted by some pollutant, and the clouds sparkled with an oddly disquieting polychromatic light.

“I’ve seen more welcoming places,” Nanoha commented from beside the command platform.

Hayate nodded. Quite apart from the blatant impossibility of its location, there was something very, very wrong with this planet.

“We’re getting signs of sentient life,” Sensors reported, “but they’re really distorted. There’s even an energy spike on the southern continent that looks a bit like the result of Mid-type magic, only... not. If there is a mage down there, though, they’re triple-A at the very least. No way we could even stand a chance of detecting them otherwise.”

“Understood,” Hayate responded. “I’m taking a closer look. Magical Interface System, open.”

The command desk slid apart, revealing two glowing hemispherical crystals, each about the size of a grapefruit. Hayate placed her hands on them, channelling her will.

The Magical Interface System was another innovation of the latest generation of TSAB vessels. It employed a complex crystalline network, effectively turning the entire ship into an enormous Armed Device for a brief period of time. With it, the ship’s commander could channel their spells on a scale hitherto unseen, and for wide-area specialists like Hayate, this was nothing but an advantage.

“Eventide, initiate Wide Area Search,” she commanded, with an apologetic glance at Nanoha. The fact that a fair number of Hayate’s spells had been stolen from her and Fate by the first Reinforce was something they preferred not to talk about.

A cluster of glowing spheres detached themselves from the Eventide and hurtled down to the planet below. It would likely be several minutes until they found anything of interest. Hayate removed her hands from the interface, and stepped down from the command platform.

“Keep us on high alert,” she ordered. “I don’t want anything sneaking up on us.”

***

It was a full quarter of an hour before the search bore fruit. By that time, most of the officers had either found an excuse to be on the bridge or just sneaked on and hoped nobody would notice. All attention was focused on the main viewer, which showed a grainy, indistinct image of what appeared to be a young girl sitting on a rocky outcrop. She was pale, fair-haired, and dressed in black, and she appeared to have some sort of staff-like object held in one hand.

“This would be our mage, I presume?” Signum enquired.

“That’s what it looks like,” Hayate agreed. She gestured, and other, smaller pictures appeared around the central display.

“As you can see from these, she, whoever she happens to be, is located at a point on the southern continent several klicks from another energy spike, this time of completely unknown origin. This second site bears signs of recent fortification – someone down there is expecting a fight.”

“You think they saw us coming?” Vita asked.

“Hard to be sure. We’re certainly the most obvious threat given the planet’s relative lack of population, but there’s some sort of disturbance going on in the neighbouring realspace as well. We haven’t investigated it in detail – dropping out inside the Wall is a risk I’m not yet willing to take – but it’s something to consider. In the meantime, though, we’ll employ as many precautions as we can. The transport chambers will be prepped for emergency evacuation, and the Arc-en-ciel aimed at the target site. Worst-case scenario, we can teleport out the expedition team and vaporise the site from orbit, though I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that that’s an absolute last resort.”

Nanoha, meanwhile, had been studying the central image intently. “Fate,” she said, finally giving voice to what the other Riot Force Six veterans were thinking, “doesn’t she look like... well, like you used to?”

Fate nodded. “Yes. Very much so. It’s probably a coincidence, but...”

The rest went unspoken. There had been a lot of strange coincidences on this trip. Perhaps too many.

There was a brief pause, and then the third Wolkenritter, Zafira, stepped forward, his tail swishing agitatedly.

“You mentioned an exploration team, Mistress Hayate,” he rumbled. “Are we to assume, then, that some of us will be descending to the surface?”

“Indeed so. Sensors indicate that the atmosphere is breathable, if not exactly pleasant, and our transporters should be able to punch through the interference. It’ll be a small group – I want us to look as little like an invading army as we can. Two forwards, and two backups in orbit.”

“Requesting permission to volunteer, ma’am,” Fate said a little too quickly.

“If she’s going, I’m going,” Nanoha added firmly.

Hayate smiled. “Agreed. Signum and Vita will be your seconds. We’ll send you down in thirty minutes.”

All four saluted, and left the bridge. Hayate pinched her temples. Fate, ever the calm, reliable voice of reason, was acting very oddly. And she’d called her ‘ma’am’. She hoped she’d made the right decision.

***

“Transport chamber checked and ready.”

“Checked and ready, aye.”

Nanoha looked around the chamber with detached curiosity. As a member of the Mid-Childan air force, she had rarely been on board a starship since the Scaglietti Incident, and that had been on the Arthra, a cruiser so elderly that it was retired immediately after the battle against the Saint’s Cradle. This room was rather different from that old ship’s basic transporter stage, two-tiered and surrounded with complicated-looking instrumentation. The technicians had informed her that not only could it teleport its passengers to any point on the planet’s surface within line-of-sight with pinpoint precision, but it could also beam down their backups to their location without that restriction or even swap the forward and backup with a single action.

The forwards stood on the lower tier, the backups behind them on the upper. Signum was Nanoha’s second, Vita was Fate’s. Nanoha turned to her partner and gave her hand the reassuring squeeze that had become something of a pre-mission ritual for them.

The technicians looked up again.

“Transport in ten...”

“Nine...”

“Eight...”

“Seven...”

“Six...”

“Five...”

“Get on with it already,” Nanoha heard Vita mutter under her breath.

“Four...”

“Three...”

Iridescent charging rings began to form around the transporter pads.

“Two...”

Both of the forwards engaged their Barrier Jackets.

“One...”

“Transporter engaged.”

The walls around them blurred for a moment, and the bottom dropped out of Nanoha’s stomach. She instinctively closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she and Fate were standing in the middle of a blasted, rocky wasteland, the strange multicoloured clouds above them. She took a few experimental breaths, and tasted sulphur. Relieved that she hadn’t immediately expired, she decided that the whole breathing thing might be a good habit to keep up after all.

There was movement ahead, and she saw the young mage who had appeared on the viewer. She was even paler than Nanoha had thought – her skin was almost colourless, and her hair was the very lightest shade of blonde. Even from this distance, though, her eyes burned with power. The staff turned out not to be a staff at all, but rather an enormous scythe made of bone and some greyish metal that caught the light strangely. A glowing purple crystal adorned the head, and she leaned heavily on the weapon as she stood up. She approached them with a curious half-walk half-run, and as she came closer Nanoha saw that her face was split into a huge smile.

“Little sister!” she shrieked, and hurled herself at Fate, arms outstretched.

Nanoha’s jaw dropped. It was technically true that she had considered the possibility, but only in the way that an amateur astronomer might idly wonder about the notion of a meteorite hitting Earth only to wake up the next morning and find that a second sun had appeared in the sky. Either one of the most enormous coincidences in human history had just occurred, or they were both the objects of a very, very cruel joke, and Nanoha wasn’t sure which possibility she preferred.

Fate was even more flabbergasted. “A-Alicia? No, no, you can’t be... this isn’t real...”

“It is real, Fate,” said the staff in a voice from the two women’s nightmares. “Your sister lives, and I... I am sorry for what I did to you.”

“Mother?”

“Our new friends didn’t like what she did to you, sister, so Mother got put in here,” Alicia chirped, tapping the scythe playfully. “They’ve been ever so nice, to us, though – they taught me so many things! You can call me Ali, by the way.”

“They have educated me as well,” Precia Testarossa interjected. “I now understand that I have two daughters, not one, and I bitterly regret what I put you through, Fate. Can you ever forgive me?”

By now, Fate was as pale-faced as her sister, staring blankly at this nonsensical apparition. Desperately, Nanoha stepped between them.

“I apologise, Ali, but this is all a bit too much for your sister at the moment.” Eventide, hot-switch on Captain Testarossa-Harlaown now! Get her to the infirmary!

On it, ma’am, one of the technicians responded over the telepathic link. Hot-switch coming right up.

There was a blinding flash of light, and Fate vanished, replaced a second later by the diminutive form of Vita.

“What’s up, Nanoha?” she asked, a note of concern injecting itself into her habitually brusque tone. “Did something happen to Fate?”

“This young lady,” Nanoha explained, trying to keep her voice steady, “claims to be her sister, Alicia. Her Intelligent Device, meanwhile, apparently bears the spirit of Fate’s mother, Precia.”

Vita processed this. “Oh. Um... wow. OK then. Hold on a second, though – didn’t they both die?”

“I did,” Precia acknowledged. “My body was torn asunder by the Warp, what you call Chaotic Space. My soul remained, though, and Alicia’s stasis pod kept her safe. The gods rescued us, and restored Alicia. They are truly great and wonderful beings.”

“The... gods?” Nanoha asked. Precia had not, to the best of her knowledge, been a particularly religious woman in life. Amoral mad scientists tended not to be.

Though she was of course expressionless, they could feel the dead woman’s beatific smile as she spoke. “Tzintchi of the Nine Fingers. Asukhon, the Eightfold Victor. Reigle of the Seven Lives. Mislaato of the Six Wounds. Soon, the entire multiverse shall know their names, and soon the entire multiverse shall revere them as the saviours they are. Do you wish to learn more of them? It is a pleasure to enlighten others, especially friends of my daughter.”

“That... might be a good idea,” Nanoha said carefully. Raising Heart, I want this recorded.

Of course, my master, her Intelligent Device replied.

 

[Iaculus]

4. Strangers in a Strange Land

In orbit, the operation was rapidly going from bad to worse. First, one of Hayate’s best officers and oldest friends had come back from the surface a shellshocked, paralytic wreck. Now, the safe haven around the planet had turned out not to be as safe as they had expected. The storms had closed in from nowhere, tearing into the Eventide with savage gusto.

“Dimensional keel at full capacity! Hull integrity under threat!” screamed one of the bridge crew over the ship’s tortured groaning. “Estimated five minutes until we suffer crippling damage!”

“No choice,” Hayate sighed. “We’re going to have to drop into realspace. Transport, can you retrieve Nanoha and Vita?”

“Negative, ma’am. The chamber’s still recharging. We didn’t know we’d have to use it again so soon, you-”

“Stow it,” she growled. “Comms, can you at least send them a message? Tell them we’ll be back as soon as the storm dies down.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am.” The communications officer sounded like he was on the verge of panic.

Hayate stood up and attempted to generate an aura of calm authority. “Helm, initiate the jump. All crew, brace for realspace transit.”

Across the ship, all non-essential personnel leapt from their stations and secured themselves to the nearest solid object. The gentle hum of the engines rose to a piercing whine, and an enormous, wrenching lurch reverberated through the hull.

“Transition complete,” Engineering reported. “Restoring power to primary systems. Wait, what the-”

The hull shuddered again, and warning lights blinked across the command desk.

“Report!” Hayate snarled.

“Energy weapon impact,” Sensors said, disbelief creeping into his tone. “Glancing hit. Minor damage to the starboard hull. It... it went through our wards like they weren’t even there!”

If it isn’t one thing... “Engineering, do we have motive power?”

“A-affirmative, ma’am.”

“Commence evasive manoeuvres,” she ordered. “Sensors, can you please find out what is going on out there?”

The sensors officer looked up from his station, his face pale. “Well, ma’am... it looks like we jumped into the middle of a warzone.”

Images started to appear on the main viewer, and an overall picture gradually emerged. On one side were eight enormous ships shaped like hollow, flattened teardrops with glowing hoop-like structures in their centres. Four of them were engaging their enemy, while the other four were taking up formation several thousand kilometres away. It was into the firing lanes of the first group that the Eventide had inadvertently jumped. On the other were a rag-tag flotilla of smaller ships of several different shapes and sizes, ranging from bulky, functional dreadnoughts to oddly angular saucer-shaped vessels with pyramid-like structures at their hubs, assaulting the hoop-ships with suicidal courage. The system’s star had apparently collapsed recently, and near it was a blue-glowing ring-shaped structure several hundred metres across with the wreckage of several hoop-ships scattered around it.

“Helm, keep us out of this mess until the dimensional storms die down,” Hayate ordered. “This isn’t our fight.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am. Entering low-visibility mode.”

The Eventide cut its emissions, drifting in space as harmlessly as a passing asteroid. Satisfied that nobody still wanted to shoot at them, Hayate contacted the infirmary.

“Shamal, how’s Fate doing?”

“She’s calmed down a little, and I prescribed her some sedatives,” the fourth Wolkenritter responded, her motherly voice etched with worry. “It looks like she suffered a nasty shock down there – she was saying something about her mother, of all people.”

“I... see. Thank you, Shamal. Could you inform me when she wakes up, please?”

“Of course.”

It was then that the four rearmost hoop-ships did something very strange indeed. Crackling beams of light emerged from their centres, intersected with each other, and formed a colossal ring fourteen thousand kilometres across.

“Colonel, according to these readings, those ships are generating some sort of dimensional disturbance,” Sensors reported. “Magnitude is... off the charts.”

A curious rippling effect appeared within the ring, and something huge began to emerge.

“I... think they’re trying to drag that planet into realspace,” he continued, aghast. “Is that even physically possible?”

Possible or not, it was indeed happening. The Eventide’s crew watched in awe as the lost world nosed its way into the system, shyly displaying its scarred face to the surrounding ships.

The firing line began to retreat towards the planet, keeping up a frankly terrifying rate of fire as they did so. The battle began to swing in their favour as more and more of the opposing ships died... when one of the vessels maintaining the ring abruptly exploded.

The energy beam lashed out, catching another of the generator-ships and obliterating it utterly. With two now gone, it flickered and disappeared. The rippling ceased, and the storm-wracked planet began to disappear into Chaotic Space once more. Two of the hoop-ships smoothly detached themselves from the firing line and took up position where their fallen compatriots had been, restarting the forced transit.

“Sensors, what just happened?” Hayate demanded.

“High-velocity kinetic impact,” he replied. “As far as I can tell, it came from the planet’s surface.”

They have ground-to-orbit weaponry? Wonderful.

“Take us towards that planet,” she commanded. “We’re getting Vita and Nanoha out of there now.”

The engines hummed smoothly to life, and they watched intently as the Eventide closed the distance to transporter range. Twenty thousand kilometres... nineteen... eighteen...

An alarm sounded, screaming across the bridge.

“Weapon lock!” the sensors officer shrieked. “One of the guards is bringing its main gun to bear on us!”

“Magical Interface System, open!” Hayate shouted desperately, slamming the palms of her hands onto the control crystals.

“Eventide, Flash Move!”

Two huge, magical wings unfolded from the heavy frigate’s sides as it pirouetted away, the ravening energy beam passing a mere hundred metres of it. Hayate reached a decision.

“Lieutenant Rostov, begin charging the Arc-en-ciel. Target the closer of the two guard-vessels.”

The weapons officer saluted. “Roger that, ma’am. Commencing barrel expansion.”

The Eventide smoothly rolled into position, a series of glowing white charging rings appearing in front of the two huge projector fins that formed its prow.

“Firing Lock System, open,” Hayate said, and watched as a small, transparent box appeared above her command desk in a pillar of green light.

She took a nondescript red key from around her neck and inserted it into the box, nodding with satisfaction as the device turned the same ominous colour.

“Power spike from the target!” Sensors yelled. “It’s going to attack us again!”

Hayate turned the key and closed her eyes.

“Arc-en-ciel, fire.”

The charging rings vanished, replaced by a ball of pale blue energy that dwarfed the frigate. A gigantic, cloudy lens formed in front of it, and it shot forwards, reshaping itself into a beam a hundred metres across that struck the nearest hoop-ship dead centre. Space tore itself apart around the two remaining ships of the firing line, obliterating them on the molecular level in a dazzling display of pyrotechnics. The transit ring around the planet shut off, and the four generator-vessels advanced towards the Eventide, their energy signatures flaring as they charged their weapons.

As they did so, however, the flotilla opposing them closed in, presenting an artificial barrier between the hoop-ships and their prey.

“I think we made an impression,” Lieutenant Rostov remarked drily.

***

...tain Takamachi... currents rising... realspace transi... back for you...

The communications officer’s voice over the telepathic link was faint, garbled, and distorted, disappearing altogether at random intervals.

Say again, Eventide! Nanoha demanded. We’re losing you!

...rry... The link went dead.

Vita swore colourfully, and Alicia looked at them in puzzlement.

“Is something wrong?”

“We’ve lost contact with our ship,” Nanoha explained. “You wouldn’t happen to know why, would you?”

The girl’s forehead creased. “No, but Toji might. I’ll ask him.”

She held what appeared to be a muttered conversation with herself, before Nanoha realised that her outfit contained some sort of throat-mike.

Alicia looked up, her expression worried. “Toji says the warp-storms are back, and something’s coming. Something bad.”

“Bad like what?” Vita asked.

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I hope it’s enemies, though. I haven’t killed anything yet. We should get back to the others. Follow me.”

She set out over the rough ground, using the scythe as a walking stick. Nanoha and Vita shared a glance, and then followed.

Nanoha, is it just me, or is there something wrong with this kid? Vita asked.

I’d noticed that myself, she replied. Keep your eyes open, Vita. I don’t like this at all.

A silence fell on the little group as they trudged across the plain. After a while, Nanoha decided to break it.

“Alicia, who is this Toji person?”

The girl gave a sunny smile. “Oh, he’s my best friend! He’s big and he’s strong and he’s in charge of a whole chapter of soldiers! I’ll show him to you when we get to the base!”

“Please excuse my daughter’s exuberance,” Precia said with amused tolerance. “The man she refers to is Primarch Toji Suzuhara, commander of the gods’ forces on this world. He has been very kind to us – I think you’ll like him.”

“Then I look forward to meeting him,” Nanoha replied politely. “Would that be your base, by the way?”

They had reached the edge of a massive indentation in the land. Ahead of them was a network of low, forbidding fortifications, amidst which soldiers and vehicles patrolled with subdued urgency. At the centre of the encampment was a gangling, armoured figure easily forty metres tall that moved like a giant human rather than the war machine it assuredly was.

Alicia nodded. “Yep. We built it around this big ring-shaped thing called a Stargate. Apparently, it can take you to other planets with just a couple of steps, though I’ve been looking at it when the scientists weren’t around, and I think – wait, what’s going on? What’s happening to the sky?”

The two TSAB agents looked up, open-mouthed, as the very heavens split open. The glowing clouds fled unnaturally quickly, only to be replaced by cold, starry darkness. A band of flickering white energy arched from horizon to horizon, providing dim illumination of the surface below.

“What in the name of hell just happened?” Vita shouted.

“I... I think we just dropped into realspace,” Nanoha replied. “Alicia, what does Toji have to say about this?”

After a few seconds of whispered conference, Alicia looked up with a secretive smile. “He says that you should watch the base.”

Below them, the giant at the centre of the camp knelt down and picked up a long, thin grey object. It stood up, took a moment to aim, and then hurled the object skywards. A few moments passed, and then a colossal explosion lit up the sky and the band of light vanished.

Vita’s jaw dropped again.

“Did that thing just use a javelin as an orbital weapon?”

Alicia watched their expressions with delight. “Evangelions are fun, aren’t they?”

Her throat-mike crackled.

“Toji says that we should be expecting more friends to play with soon. I’m supposed to help provide aerial support. Wanna come?”

I doubt that Fate would particularly appreciate her sister getting killed, Nanoha said telepathically.

Damn straight, Vita agreed. I’ve got a really bad feeling about this, though, Nanoha. Like you said, we should keep our eyes open.

As one, they took to the air in pursuit of Alicia.

The first they saw of the ‘friends’ was a curious glittering in the air that gradually resolved itself into a swarm of bulbous dart-like fighters, the dim starlight gleaming off their hulls. As the three mages approached, they opened fire, a storm of energy blasts streaking towards them. Nanoha and Vita activated their wards, both trying to cover Fate’s sister in their radius as well. Alicia, on the other hand...

“Lash of Torment,” she snarled, her childish voice twisted into something inhuman.

A polychromatic energy whip appeared from the head of her scythe, slicing through the fighters with terrifying ease. It did something strange and terrible to the pilots within – their screams of agony were unnaturally loud, audible even over the noise of the dying aircraft.

Alicia giggled happily as the flaming wreckage rained down around her. She looked down, and the giggle turned into a full-fledged, delighted laugh. Several of the fighters were flying low to the ground, dropping what looked like stacks of grey-white rings as they did so. Once they had landed, the rings rose on top of each other and began to emit steady pulses of light, releasing a horde of silver-armoured soldiers onto the battlefield.

“Toji!” she shrieked. “Toji, they’re landing troops!”

A shot from one of the fighters struck her and she snarled like an animal, flying after the offending craft and gracefully landing on its hull. Her scythe flared with unholy energies and she slammed it into the cockpit section, peeling it open. The fighter lurched sideways and the pilot fell out, screaming in terror as he plummeted towards the earth.

Alicia wasn’t done with him, though.

She shot downwards, impaling him in mid-air with a swing of her scythe. Glowing black charging rings etched with unfamiliar runes appeared around her hand, and her voice took on that strange distortion again.

“Soul Stealer.”

She punched her open hand into the pilot’s chest, ripping out his heart in a single fluid motion. A quick shake of the scythe, and the wreckage that had once been his body fell away, but a faint blue outline remained around the gory relic clutched in her hand. There was a crack of bone, and her mouth stretched inhumanly wide. She devoured the heart with a single gulp, smiling in satisfaction as the pilot’s soul howled and vanished.

“Divine Buster.”

A huge beam of pink light slammed into Alicia and she lost consciousness, the scythe shrinking into a tiny pendant around her neck.

“Axel Fin.”

Nanoha sped forwards, catching her as she fell. Come on, Vita, let’s get out of here.

Fate isn’t going to be happy, Vita commented as they flew away from the battle, hugging the ground.

She’ll be even less happy when she finds out what these... people did to her sister, Nanoha replied grimly. Are those fighters still after us?

Nope, they got intercepted, Vita said, sounding shaken. Nanoha, it’s really ugly back there.

The TSAB captain kept flying, not looking back. Vita was a centuries-old sentient combat program who had, until recently, been one of the heralds of an insanely potent magical weapon of mass destruction. If even she was nauseated, Nanoha had no intention of finding out why.

Their escape route was taking them past the main battle. The silver-plated soldiers were opposed by hulking behemoths easily eight feet tall, clad in bulky multicoloured armour. The former had the advantage of numbers, certainly, but the latter had vastly superior equipment, not to mention dark sorcery that crackled across the battlefield like a living creature. In the distance, Nanoha saw that the forces of what Precia had called ‘Chaos’ had set up several curious-looking artillery pieces that arced bulky, strange-looking projectiles towards the enemy. As they grew closer, she saw that said projectiles were in fact more of the giant soldiers, screaming battle-cries as they landed in the midst of their silver-armoured foes.

She shook her head in disbelief. This is madness.

Too right, Vita agreed. Nanoha! Infantry at twelve o’clock! Oh shi-

The photon flash grenade went off at a point precisely between the two mages, overloading their senses with a wall of light and sound. Nanoha screamed and dropped Alicia, desperately trying to raise a ward. A single shot rang out, and Vita fell to the ground, her body nearly bisected.

These soldiers of Chaos were even bigger than their compatriots, wearing ridiculously thick armour that nearly transformed them into self-contained walking tanks. Two of them strode forward to catch Vita and Alicia, and the former had an enormous weapon jammed to her head whose nozzles and fuel tanks identified it as some sort of flamethrower.

A third soldier, his armour more ornately decorated than the others’, stared up at Nanoha, his helmet’s faceplate hiding his expression.

“All right, miss,” he boomed, his voice amplified and tinny. “This is Primarch Toji Suzuhara, commander of the Sons of Toji, funnily enough. Deactivate that staff of yours, or your friend fries.”

Nanoha obliged, the charging rings around Raising Heart’s head vanishing as quickly as they had appeared. “Now what?”

“Now?” Toji replied. “Now, we get these two girls some medical attention, and you leave us alone, miss.”

“You expect me to just stand here while you cart off Vita and Alicia?” Nanoha asked quietly. All she needed was for that one to lower his flamethrower for a moment...

“Oh, not in the slightest. Matter of fact, I think you’ll be departing first.” He nodded to a point somewhere behind the hovering mage. “Ladies? Get her.”

She spun round, raising her staff just in time to deflect a blow from a huge, razor-sharp axe that sent numbing shocks up her arms. Said axe’s wielder was a leather-winged, red-skinned woman clad in dull bronze armour with a belt of skulls around her waist. Behind her, seven identical creatures swooped in for the attack.

They were fast, they were vicious, and they hopelessly outnumbered her. Nanoha beat a hasty retreat, sending a barrage of pink energy blasts behind her as she fled.

***

On the ground, the Terminator holding Vita turned to his Primarch.

“May I ask why you wish this girl spared, Lord Toji?” he asked.

“Do you know many eight-year-olds who could take a direct hit from a bolter and live?” Toji replied. “Me neither. I think the gods will want a look at this one.”

He checked his helmet readouts. The technicians were reporting more activity from the Ori supergate. Tzintchi’s predictions had been accurate as always.

“Commence Operation Leliel,” he ordered. “We’re done here.”

***

The four hoop-ships opened fire, the deadly energy beams appearing from their prow dishes once more. The blocky dreadnoughts moved to intercept them, their shields taking the brunt of the damage.

“Four minutes of power for the Magical Interface System remaining, ma’am,” Lieutenant Rostov reported. “Time until the Arc-en-ciel is recharged... five minutes.”

Hayate nodded. “Understood. Rein, you ready?”

The diminutive Unison Device gave her a thumbs-up. “Ready!”

Clutching the interface pads, she began the incantation. “Come forth, wind of snow, and become the fletching which falls from the heavens.”

Outside the ship, four large white charging rings began to form.

“Eventide, Hræsvelgr!”

A quartet of magical missiles launched from the rings, each half the size of the frigate itself. They slammed into the four remaining defenders in rapid succession, overloading their shields and blasting chunks out of their hulls.

Hayate took a moment to assess the damage, and then commenced a second incantation. “Resound, horn of judgement.”

This time, the charging pattern was a triangle rather than a series of rings, suspended beneath the ship.

“Eventide, Ragnarok!”

The points of the triangle grew into a trio of crackling spheres, before collapsing into a mass of blue beams. They closed in on one of the two central hoop-ships and tore it to pieces, punching through it like wet tissue paper.

“Change in the enemy’s engine profiles,” Sensors announced. “They’re retreating.”

“One minute until the Arc-en-ciel’s ready,” Rostov added.

The colonel lifted her hands from the interface pads, letting them sink back into the command desk.

“Do not pursue,” she ordered. “If they don’t want any more trouble, that’s fine by me.”

As she sat down in her chair again, a thought occurred. Due to the ready availability of extremely potent non-lethal weaponry, battles between mages tended to have a fairly low body-count. People had died before on missions she had commanded, mostly due to some demented Belkan fighting-style, but not very often. Space battles, though... they were different. No matter what effect the weapon you’d been hit with had on living flesh, your ship exploding around you would still be rather difficult to survive. Hayate realised that this was quite possibly the first time she had been directly responsible for the deaths of other people. Likely lots of other people. They had been big ships, after all.

It was... curiously numbing, as feelings went.

“Another energy spike, colonel,” Sensors reported wearily. “Looks like something big’s coming through that gate-thing near the star.”

The new arrival was absolutely enormous, based on the same design principles as the hoop-ships but bigger, bulkier, and generally more intimidating. It approached the planet with disconcerting speed, powerful beam weaponry lancing from its flanks. Those flotilla vessels struck simply exploded, their shields unable to handle an assault of such magnitude.

“We won’t have time to fire the Arc-en-ciel,” Hayate decided. “Helm, let’s move. We’ll use the planet as cover.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am.”

“Are we in transporter range yet?” she asked.

“That we are, ma’am,” one of the technicians replied. “Got the ground team’s marker pinned down, too. Well... one of them, anyway. Can’t find Lieutenant Vita’s signature.”

Please be a glitch, please be a glitch, please be a glitch... “Keep looking. Comms, patch me through to Captain Takamachi.”

“Affirmative, ma’am. Going live... now.”

Hayate, is that you? The TSAB’s Ace of Aces sounded tired, strained, and more than a little frightened.

Nanoha, report.

It’s bad, Hayate. I’m under attack, Vita’s been captured, and Alicia... Hayate, they’ve turned her into a monster. The things I’ve seen... even Scaglietti wasn’t this bad. Not by a long way. This is evil, Hayate. Pure evil.

Wait – Vita’s been captured?

Captured and injured. There was... there was nothing I could do. I think I might be able to get her back, but it’ll take time. Several hours on the inside. What’s the situation in orbit?

As if on cue, the sensors officer piped up. “That big fellow’s taken up position just outside the atmosphere. It’s powering up, and the readings... well, they’re pretty enormous, is all I can say. Colonel, if you want me to keep doing my job, I’m going to need some bigger charts.”

Hayate sighed. I don’t think you have that long, Nanoha. What are they doing down there?

Some sort of ritual. It’s lighting up everything for miles around. Her tone was both disgusted and horrified. Even from this range, I can smell the blood.

Roger that. You think they’re trying to protect themselves?

It seems likely. Precia said some of them can see the future. They must have expected this... whatever it is.

Hayate pinched her temples again. There was no good decision here.

We can’t afford to lose anyone else. Nanoha, we’re pulling you out. Leave Vita where she is. A little piece of her soul died as she said it.

... Affirmative, ma’am.

A few minutes passed, and then the comm-link to the transport chamber crackled.

“Captain Takamachi is back on board, ma’am.”

“Understood. Send her to the infirmary for a check-up, will you? She sounded like she was at the end of her tether.” Her and me both.

“Estimated two minutes until that dreadnought-thing does whatever it’s about to do,” Sensors reported. “Wait, what’s happening down there?”

An odd rippling motion passed across the surface of the planet, before simply disappearing with the same lack of ceremony that had heralded its arrival.

“Colonel, according to these readings,” he said, his voice shaking, “someone just managed to swap that dirty great chunk of rock with its own shadow. What we’re seeing now is a simple illusion while the real thing makes a jump into dimensional space on the sly. Very sneaky, and violating more laws of physics than I care to name, but I’m starting to get used to that.”

A massive flare of light appeared from beyond the horizon.

“... And that, I believe, is our dreadnought friend opening fire,” Sensors continued lightly. “Guess he didn’t get the memo.”

The bridge crew watched in silence as continents cracked and the atmosphere boiled away.

“It’s a very... realistic illusion, isn’t it?” Hayate said at last.

“Oh yeah,” Sensors agreed. “Doubt you could even register it as one without a full dimensional sensor suite. I could try calculating the amount of power it’d take to produce and sustain something like that, but then I’d have to lie down and take my pills, and I hate it when that happens. Speaking of dimensional bullshittery, though, the storms have dissipated. If you want to take another dip in Chaotic Space, now’s the time.”

Hayate nodded in acknowledgement. “Helm, prepare for transit. We’re following that planet.”

The jump in was rather smoother than the one out had been. A perfectly circular portal to dimensional space opened in front of the Eventide, and it glided straight in. The only thing anyone on board who wasn’t paying specific attention would have noticed was a small jolt as they exited realspace.

Ahead of them was the daemon-world, looking positively pristine in comparison to the illusory wreckage in realspace. Hayate grinned wolfishly.

“All hands, finish the safety checks and then prepare for planetary assault. Mission profile is hostage retrieval.”

The bridge crew saluted and returned to their posts. Everyone, that was, except the poor beleaguered sensors officer.

“Ma’am,” he said in a tiny, overly formal voice, as if reading from a manual, “the dimensional storms are rising again. According to my calculations, they will destroy the ship unless we leave for the breach in the Wall within the next six minutes. As an officer of the Time-Space Administration Bureau, I’m afraid I cannot condone military action under these circumstances.”

Hayate stared at him for a moment, and then lowered her gaze. “Very well, I concede to your expertise. Comms, belay that last order. Helm, plot us a course for Wild Space. Lieutenant Rostov, you have the bridge.”

Not waiting for an acknowledgement, she stepped down from the command platform and strode out of the room. She stared straight ahead as she passed through the corridors, the only sounds the rising hum of the engines and the tapping of her shoes on the hard floor. Eventually, she reached her room, inputted the security code, and stepped in. She waited for the door to close behind her, and then collapsed, sobbing, on her bed.

A few minutes, later, the door reopened, and Signum, Shamal, and Zafira filed in. They walked over to where Hayate lay, knelt down, and hugged her wordlessly.

 

[Iaculus]

5. Holiday Plans

It had been a month since the meeting, and Kyon had spent most of it as a veritable heap of anxiety. Nagato had reported more and more troop movements, the visitors had started sending small, inexplicable requests every so often (why did they want the Brigade to play basketball rather than baseball one day?), and the spontaneous tuxedo hadn’t exactly been easy to explain to his parents, either. In fact, it was almost a perverse relief when the second hotel invite came in the post. At least now he had someone to demand answers from.

He couldn’t help noticing that they’d abandoned the pretence of the summoning ritual.

This time, the meeting was in the hotel’s penthouse. No witnesses to shady dealings there, I guess. The porter in the lobby greeted him like an old friend, complimenting him on his suit and effusively ushering him into the main lift, a wood-panelled affair that played the inevitable soft classical music as he ascended.

Said penthouse turned out to be rather different to the rest of the hotel – an airy quasi-Mediterranean affair with lots of colonnades and stained-glass windows. At the centre was an elaborate swimming pool with magnificently-carved marble statuary serving as fountains near the far end. Even discounting other rooms, the place seemed far too large for the rest of the building to support – something he really didn’t want to contemplate too hard.

From a nearby pool chair, Shinji gave him a cheery smile.

“Hey again, Kyon. Got a chair for you over here – sit yourself down. I’m sure you’ve had a busy day.”

The exhausted student nodded his thanks – Haruhi had taken an interest in cross-country running that day, and he’d had to fish poor Miss Asahina out of no less than three impressively tangled masses of thorny vegetation. He wandered over, but stopped abruptly when he rounded the side of Shinji’s chair and saw just why the young god had such a huge grin on his face.

The red-headed girl, Asuka, looked up and gave a nonchalant “Hi there” before going back to work.

Kyon retreated hastily. “Oh, sorry, didn’t realise you were... umm... busy. I can come back later, if you want, or...”

He bumped into something soft and warm, turned around, and saw a very naked Misato Katsuragi regarding him with an amused expression. “Oh, don’t worry, we’re pretty relaxed in terms of the formalities around here. Honestly, you’re a teenager with access to the Internet. It’s not like you’ve never seen breasts before. Now, sit yourself down – you look like you’re about to keel over. I’ll take your jacket.”

The motherly words were delivered in a breathtakingly seductive tone, creating a cognitive dissonance that fused Kyon’s beleaguered brain into an unresponsive mess. He didn’t put up the slightest bit of resistance as the raven-haired woman skilfully peeled off the jacket and then gently but firmly frogmarched him to the pool chair, where a similarly clothing-devoid Rei Ayanami climbed into his lap and promptly fell asleep.

OK, Kyon, he thought to himself as his higher mental functions slowly resurfaced from beneath the sea of hormones, you’ve been in plenty of strange situations before. Being sexually harassed by the astral projections of extradimensional deities, though? Definitely a new one.

“Like the apartment, by the way?” Shinji asked genially. “We decided its existing state just wouldn’t do, so we made a few modifications. The jacuzzi, by the way, will take you to another dimension – figuratively and literally.”

“Very... umm... nice,” Kyon managed. “Look, why did you want me here?”

The god clapped his hands. “Ah, yes, to business! The thing is, Kyon, that one of the missions we’ve been supervising went a bit tits-up. Idiot of a captain decided to play pirate with a transwarp gate. Very messy. Nothing to worry about, really, just a bit of a dimensional shockwave, but we think it’d be best for all concerned if Haruhi was distracted for the next week. Things could get... weird, and that’s coming from a guy who has a few dozen eyeballs in his everyday form.”

“I... see,” he replied, trying to keep focused. Rei apparently liked to wriggle in her sleep, and it was proving most distracting. “What do you suggest?”

“Well, we’ve got several options. Misato, of course, suggested an orgy.”

“A few basic techniques and the right cocktail of drugs, and she won’t even know what planet she’s on, let alone that it’s getting hit by a ripple in the space-time continuum. Neither will you, for that matter.” She studied his expression, and rolled her eyes. “High-schoolers. Spend the majority of their lives fantasising about things like this, but when you actually suggest it to them they look at you like you just asked them to publicly sodomise a chicken. Well, apart from that one guy for whom the situation was sort of reversed, but we don’t like to talk about that. There are some things even the gods were not meant to know.”

“Moving on,” Shinji interjected hastily, “Rei’s plan was to put her out of action with a minor illness. Some strain of the ‘flu, wasn’t it?”

“Influenza-B, to be specific,” she said sleepily, leading Kyon to wonder just how long she had been awake. “Miss Suzumiya’s biological structure indicates a mild immunity to that, which renders the possibility of complications setting in relatively unlikely. If it proves insufficient for our purposes, though, I can easily extend its effect.”

The student nodded slowly. “That... might actually be a good idea. I don’t like the prospect of dealing with Haruhi with cabin fever, but I think we can live with it. Probably. Any other suggestions?”

“Funny you should ask,” Shinji replied, “because I had a little number of my own set up. Congratulations, Kyon, because you and your friends have just won the Canadian Grand Railway Hotels Tour contest, which technically doesn’t exist until you give the go-ahead, but that’s a minor detail. Private jet to Vancouver, and then a luxury train car of your very own all the way to Montreal, stopping off at five-star hotels in Banff and Toronto along the way. Trip of a lifetime, my friend, with opportunities for excitement, adventure, and, dare I say it... romance?”

Kyon’s forehead creased. “We’re still in the middle of the term, though. How are you going to deal with that?”

“Fire extinguisher leak. Should close the school for the appropriate amount of time, I think. Rest assured, I’ve covered all the angles. It’s what I do, after all.”

“Hey!” Asuka objected. “You never told him my plan!”

Shinji gave a tolerant smile. “You’ll have to excuse my wife here. I love her dearly, but she does rather assume that any given problem can be solved by hitting the right person over the head with something metallic.”

“That’s not fair,” she objected. “Sometimes you have to go for the kidneys. People wear helmets, remember?”

He sighed. “See what I mean? Anyway, all that’s needed is for you to give the word, Kyon. Don’t worry about your or Haruhi’s parents, either – we took the liberty of buying up the businesses where they work a while back, and I’m pleased to report that they just won a couple of office lotteries. Paris and Kenya beckon, respectively. You needn’t expect any trouble from the school board, either, for much the same reason.”

“That... was not part of our contract,” Kyon said coldly. Anger was good. Anger helped him concentrate.

“Oh, I’m sorry, do we have to ask permission to give you gifts? That’s what this is, after all. Our way of saying ‘thanks’ for all your help. Where do you think all those bonuses and promotion opportunities were coming from? We’re very generous to our friends, you know. It’s our enemies who have to worry.”

Even through the clouds of fear, exhaustion, and testosterone poisoning, the unspoken message was obvious. Don’t be our enemy.

“Besides,” Shinji continued, “there’s so much more we could offer you. Rei, dear, I think we should give our guest a taster.”

The blue-haired girl smiled, stretched, and changed. Suddenly, Kyon had a naked Mikuru Asahina resting on top of him.

The god sitting opposite him grinned. “Like it? That’s not all.”

He gestured, and Haruhi Suzumiya and Yuki Nagato stood where Asuka and Misato had been a moment before. Neither of them were wearing anything, either.

“Any desire, any fantasy you have can be fulfilled,” Shinji continued. “We’ve seen you, Kyon. How you kept those pictures rather than deleting them. How you hesitate just a moment longer than you should when Haruhi decides to ‘play’ with poor little Mikuru. How you never reported that business with the computer club. You want this, Kyon. You know it, I know it. All you have to do is ally with us. No strings, no small print. That’s it.”

Kyon’s mouth was open. He closed it.

“Anything… I … want?”

The god nodded. “Anything.”

He shook his head. “This is a big decision. I need time to think.”

Shinji smiled obligingly. The goddesses reverted to their original forms and Rei removed herself from his lap.

“Please, feel free. Just don’t take too long – we need to be ready for the shockwave, remember?”

“Right.”

Kyon walked slowly and carefully out of the room, feeling their eyes bore into him. He’d completely forgotten his jacket.

***

Once he was outside the hotel, Kyon hailed the nearest taxi. “North High School, as fast as possible.”

The driver nodded, and he positively dived into the back seat. It took ten minutes to reach the bottom of the long path leading up to the school, and once the car had slowed to a halt, he leapt out, not stopping to pay the fare.

The driver’s angry yells echoing in his ears, he sprinted up the slope, shoulder-barging through a small group of late-departing students. He slammed open the doors to the main building and took the stairs two at a time, hoping against hope that one of the Brigade had decided to stay after school.

Second floor. My stop. He staggered down the corridor, trying to ignore the burning sensation in his legs, shoved open the door to the SOS Brigade’s headquarters, and breathed a sigh of relief. Nagato was sitting by the table, nose in one of her omnipresent books.

“Yuki!” he gasped.

She looked up. It wasn’t often he used her first name.

“Yuki, it’s those visitors. They’ve got my parents – hell, they’ve got half the town under their thumb, and they tried to bribe me. It doesn’t matter how, what’s important is that we have to get rid of them.”

She kept staring at him. Her hair took on a bluish tinge, and her eyes became a deep shade of red.

“That’s very interesting, Kyon,” Rei Ayanami said.

Dark, rusted chains shot out of the ground, fastening themselves around his wrists and ankles. The air shimmered and the other three gods materialised, all of them wearing the expensive-looking formal garb from their first meeting.

Shinji clucked his tongue with disapproval. “Bad call, kid, bad call indeed. It was such a promising offer, too. Matter of fact, I’m rather curious. Why did you turn us down?”

“My friends will-“

“… not be coming,” the god finished for him. “We’ve cut this place off from the rest of your universe, and covered our tracks quite tidily, though I do say so myself. Wasn’t easy, though – your friend Miss Asahina’s organisation in particular has some pretty nifty equipment. Please, answer the question.”

Kyon slumped his shoulders in defeat. “Two reasons, really. First off, I simply didn’t trust you. We allowed you to send out the odd expedition through our universe, and you launched an invasion fleet whilst taking over our city from the inside. With me in your pocket, who knows what you could have done? Subverted the Integrated Data Entity? Weaponised Haruhi? Even your existing foothold is much too large to be safe.”

Shinji nodded to his companions. “Told you he was smart. What was the other reason?”

“The thing was, I knew that there was one thing you were telling the truth about – you could give me anything I wanted. Anyone, too. I’ve seen you in action – you’re big on getting the consent of those you deal with, but you’re not so fussed about how. Any form of manipulation is fair game. With your help, I could have turned any given person into my willing slave, and you would have let me. You were right – I’m no saint. In the past, I’ve acted in ways that I later regretted, and I’ll… I’ll probably do it again. You, though – you would take away every restraint I still have. I’ve seen where that path leads. This world doesn’t need a second Haruhi, especially not one controlled by you.”

His captor considered this. “Well, I’m sorry you think that way. Can’t say I didn’t consider the possibility, though – thought you might be too weak to handle a bit of real power. Kyon, meet your new little brother.”

The air shimmered again, and Kyon found himself looking at… himself, in a slightly battered North High School uniform.

“The wonders of Warp-powered cloning, eh?” Shinji said conversationally. “This charming chap will be filling in for you while we take you back to our place for a bit of… re-education. Kyon Junior, say hi to the nice young man.”

The clone stepped up to him and sank his fingers into his skull. There was no pain – just an odd, tingling sensation. Eventually, the fingers were withdrawn, and the bizarre apparition stared at his progenitor for a moment.

“These memories… what a dull, repressed little child you are, brother,” he said at last. “Such a waste of your true potential.”

Kyon snarled, and was met with a mocking smile.

“You done, kid?” Shinji asked the clone. “Good. Run along and play now. Time’s a-wasting.”

“Of course, Lord Tzintchi.” As he reached the door, he turned back to Kyon. “”Never fear, brother. I shall endeavour to rectify your mistakes.”

The student gazed levelly at his captors. “They’ll know. He won’t be able to hide what he is forever.”

“You’re probably right,” Shinji agreed. “Good thing he won’t have to. Time flows differently between the dimensions – you could spend months as our guest, and only a few days might pass here. Speaking of, let’s get going. No sense in hanging around.”

A choking, invisible pressure wrapped itself around Kyon’s neck, and he was lifted off the ground, the chains shattering beneath him. Darkness closed in around the edges of his vision, and he lost consciousness.

***

The gods gathered around his unconscious body.

“Was the Darth Vader shtick really necessary?” Asukhon asked. “You could have killed him.”

Tzintchi shrugged. “One has to bring a certain measure of style to these matters, yes? Besides, who’s the experienced telekinetic here? He was never in any danger. In fact, given his… special properties, I doubt that he would have died even if I wanted him to.”

Mislaato raised an eyebrow. “It’s confirmed, then?”

“Oh, yes. You saw the readings – Haruhi may be the unquestioned god of this realm, but who do you think created it in the first place? It’s rather unlikely that she imprisoned herself, no? I suspect that our pal Kyon will come in handy for rather more than pacifying some brat of a godling.”

Asukhon perked up. “Does that mean what I think it means?”

He smiled thinly. “Yep. No restraints. Though I dislike unnecessary cruelty-“

She sniggered. “Liar.”

“-the stakes are simply too high for us to worry about the wellbeing of one person,” he finished. “Right. Home we go, then.”

There was one last shimmer, and all four gods and their captive vanished as if they had never existed.

 

[Iaculus]

6. Settling In

Kyon awoke in what he slowly realised was a four-poster bed. There were no windows, but the room was softly-lit by cunningly-concealed lights in the walls and ceiling. The rest of it was similarly opulent – the bedside tables and cabinets were made of ornately carved mahogany, and book-cases lined those walls otherwise unoccupied.

He got up, took a moment to admire the silk pyjamas, and set off to explore the rest of the apartment. It was similarly well-appointed – the bath was huge, with a terrifying array of mysterious nozzles, whilst the sofas in the main lounge looked so comfortable that they practically exerted their own gravitic field. There were only two indicators that this place was a prison – the thick apartment door with the large flap halfway up, and the little spherical drone that he found hovering in the kitchen, which greeted him with a cascade of eye-hurting symbols, and proceeded to follow him around from then onwards.

After a bit more poking around and a couple of fruitless attempts to open the door, he sat back down on the bed and opened one of the books – The Prisoner of Zenda, which someone had obligingly translated into Japanese. It wasn’t as if he had much else to do.

Over the next couple of days, life in the cage developed into a regular routine. Three times a day, the guard outside would open the flap and pass through a tray of food. It was simple stuff, but nourishing, and the waste disposal unit in the kitchen dealt with what was left over. He wasn’t sure he wanted to know how, though – there was a weird chomping noise that came from it whenever he pushed the tray down.

The drone proved to be entirely invulnerable to his assaults – all he got out of it was some bruised knuckles and broken furniture. These vanished the next morning, though – again, he doubted he wanted to know the details of that.

On the third day, he tried to start a conversation with the guard.

“Umm... hi. My name’s Kyon. What’s yours?”

Silence.

“Ah. I see. I’m a student at North High School, in Nishinomiya City, on the shore of Osaka Bay in Japan. Do you have a Nishinomiya here? I would have thought so.”

More silence.

“Well, I suppose Kyon isn’t my real name. More of a nickname. It sort of stuck, though. I really can’t imagine being called anything else.”

The silence continued.

“I wonder how my friends are doing? That is to say, my fellow-supervisors. Dealing with Haruhi is a full-time job. Literally.”

Yet more silence.

“You wouldn’t know about Haruhi, would you? She’s this girl I met... must have been a year ago, now. Roped me into this weird club, the SOS Brigade, along with a couple of others. No, I’m not going to dignify that acronym by explaining what it stands for. She’s... not exactly normal, you see. And by ‘not exactly normal’, I mean ‘borderline-sociopathic’. Sees people as things. At least, she used to. She’s getting a bit better these days. Still not exactly an easy person to be around, though. Of course, I would have dropped the whole thing like a live grenade first chance I got, but joy of joys, it turns out that she’s a deity-level reality-warper. Could rewrite the entire universe without even knowing she was doing it. The Brigade turned into a way to keep her distracted, to prevent her from causing too much damage. We could have told her what she was, I suppose, but well... she’s Haruhi. I don’t think she’s ready for that sort of thing. I don’t think anyone is.”

He wondered if the gods were listening, but decided it didn’t matter. He wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t already know.

“One thing I will say, though – being with Haruhi is never dull.” He smiled. “She’s always cooking up some crazy scheme that’ll likely get some or all of us exhausted, hurt, or otherwise in trouble, but never, ever bored. We may spend our entire lives rigging sports matches, solving staged murder mysteries, and fighting off overgrown virtual camel crickets, but... sometimes, it can be fun. Not that I’d ever let her know that, though. I’d be up to my armpits in physics-violating weirdness in no time flat. More so.”

The drone buzzed a little too close, and he idly swatted it away.

“Then there’s the rest of the Brigade. None of them are exactly normal, either. Haruhi probably had something to do with that, whether she knows it or not. Nagato – Yuki Nagato, to be exact – is an artificial human, a living interface for this alien computer-thing called the Integrated Data Entity. She’s quiet, she hardly ever shows emotion, and she once rebuilt the universe into some sort of present for me (long story), but... I trust her. When Nagato’s around, you know everything’s going to be all right. Stick her in a library, though, and you’d best wave goodbye, because she’s not coming out for several hours. I swear, it’s like an addiction.”

Again, silence.

“Then there’s Miss Asahina. Sweet, innocent, a real angel. She’s a time-traveller, sent from the future as an observer. Unfortunately, Haruhi decided she’d make the perfect club mascot, and has this bad habit of using her as her personal plaything. Honestly, I don’t know how she puts up with it.”

The clock on the mantelpiece, he saw, was slightly out of sync. Sometimes it ticked slightly too slow, sometimes too fast. Now he’d noticed it, it was really rather distracting.

“The last is Itsuki Koizumi. He’s an esper, tasked with defeating the giant monsters Haruhi spawns whenever she’s frustrated, depressed, or just plain bored. Sounds like a superhero, right? Not exactly. You know how it is when someone’s perfectly nice, but just sets your teeth on edge for some reason? That’s Koizumi all over. He always stands a bit too close, smiles a bit too often, and has this weird sense of humour. He’ll talk your ear off about some obscure philosophical concept, then dismiss the entire thing just when you’re starting to get creeped out. Matter of fact, I think he’d get on pretty well with your gods. That, or they’d do the multiverse a favour and pull something horrible on each other.”

He sighed.

“No, no, I suppose he isn’t that bad, really. I just wish he’d back off sometimes, is all. Hah, look at me, rambling on like this. You’re probably not even listening, are you? I’m sure issuing prison guards with earplugs is somewhere on the Evil Overlord List. Guess I’m just compensating for not having Haruhi yapping in my ear twenty-four-seven. Never know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone, huh? Anyway, we should do this again some time. Same time, same place? Think my schedule’s pretty clear for the next couple of days. Or months. See you.”

As he got up from the sofa, he heard a voice from beyond the door.

“My name’s Maria Vargas,” the guard said in heavily-accented Japanese. “Pleased to meet you, Kyon.”

Kyon grinned. “Pleased to meet you too, Maria.”

***

The day after that, Tzintchi paid a visit. He was in his accustomed human form, complete with the omnipresent blue suit. He didn’t bother with the door, instead appearing out of thin air with the now-familiar shimmer.

“Morning, Kyon. Hope you’re enjoying your stay. I apologise for not popping over earlier – pan-universal conquest is pretty time-consuming.”

Kyon’s response was succinct and obscene.

“Oh, don’t be like that. See, I thought that you might want some questions answered. Why we’re doing this, for a start.”

“This is going to be more of that ‘good interdimensional citizens’ bullshit, isn’t it?”

Tzintchi laughed. “Nah, I respect you too much for that, kid. Tell you what; let’s go for eighty percent truth and twenty percent bullshit. I’ll even let you figure out which bits are which. Come on, it’ll be fun!”

“I don’t have much choice in this, do I?”

“Well, I suppose I could just bugger off and practice with the telekinetic one-man orchestra, but that’d be a waste of both our time. Speaking as a surface-level mind-reader, I can see your curiosity bubbling away in that head of yours, and I’m offering you a prime opportunity to let it out. Fire away, kid.”

“Fine, then. What exactly is your goal here? Conquest just for the hell of it seems a little too clichéd.”

Tzintchi nodded. “Sharp as always. I told you that we hijacked Third Impact, the cataclysm that would have wiped out the human race, becoming gods in the process. What I didn’t tell you was how. We had outside help, you see. An entire pantheon of gods from the distant future had travelled back in time and shaped events so that we would succeed. We were the product of an experiment centuries in the making, imbued with their power and their wisdom to rule over humanity. Why, do you ask? Quite simple. The future they had come from was doomed. An ancient threat had arisen, the C’tan. Soul-eaters. Star-vampires. Alien gods with an undying mechanical army at their beck and call. The most terrible threat encountered in this or any other reality. The gods’ plan was to let them win early and prevent the conflict from escalating, whilst forging us into a weapon to strike at their unprotected backs. That’s why we began to explore other universes – we needed equipment and allies with which to oppose the C’tan, wherever they might appear. Quite apart from the literal divine mandate, they’re just too dangerous to ignore. Warp help us if they ever figure out how to traverse dimensions.”

The student processed this. “I... see.”

“You’re wondering why we use the methods we do, aren’t you? Put simply, it’s in our nature. The gods who empowered us were not pleasant beings, Kyon. They were formed from the darkest recesses of the human psyche, and it is that which we wield. Tzintchi, god of ambition. Asukhon, goddess of rage. Reigle, goddess of despair. Mislaato, goddess of lust. Emotion is our medium, and a potent medium it is indeed.”

Kyon shook his head. “Sorry, but I’m not buying it. How is emotion fundamentally evil?”

“It isn’t, in moderation. It’s when it’s pushed to extremes that the fun starts. Love becomes obsession, hope becomes megalomania, righteous fury becomes murderous wrath. The more we exert our powers, the worse things get.”

“So haven’t you considered... I don’t know... limiting yourselves? Letting other people help out?”

“Considered, and rejected. We have been betrayed and manipulated for most of our mortal lives, if not all. Now we have real, world-changing power, we have no intention of subordinating ourselves to others ever again. We do try to exercise a measure of damage-limitation, though – that’s the other reason that we prefer to operate behind the scenes, you see, and we prefer to only unleash our true might in the most exceptional circumstances, or when the targets, frankly, deserve everything coming to them.”

The drone pulled up next to them, and projected what looked like some sort of star-map, along with a series of intelligence articles.

“This is the Federation,” Tzintchi explained. “It’s a reasonably sophisticated galaxy-spanning civilisation in another dimension, most notable for its employment of the so-called ‘Prime Directive’, which forbade interference with the natural development of any species or similar below a certain tech-level. When our scouts discovered one of their outposts, they had condemned millions to death through inaction. They had the technology of hundreds of star systems at their disposal, and they did nothing with it.”

For the first time, Kyon saw real anger in the god’s eyes.

“A few surgical strikes taught them the error of their ways. I believe they are currently undergoing an ideological civil war. Maybe it will wake them up a little – they were far too complacent.”

“So... you attempted to invalidate their non-interference policy by showing them precisely the sort of damage a technologically-superior civilisation could inflict?” Kyon remarked sarcastically. “Genius, Ikari, pure genius.”

Tzintchi said nothing.

“Look, I think I see where you’re coming from. You want to save the multiverse, but your methods are rather limited by personal issues and problems with your abilities. Nevertheless, you’re trying to make the best of it, in your own way. It’s logical. It’s fairly consistent.”

The god smiled. “I’m glad you think so.”

“That still doesn’t change the fact that you have to be stopped, though.”

“Oh?”

“Do you seriously think I’d support a bunch of lying, emotionally-damaged deities as they try to turn reality itself into their personal playground? If there’s one thing I’ve learned from living with Haruhi, it’s that when the gods are assholes, mortals suffer. I’d be fine with you carrying out your juvenile vigilante fantasies if nobody else was affected, but that isn’t the case. Not only are you letting your paranoid delusions affect the fate of trillions, but you’re setting yourselves up as judges, jury and executioners of all you survey, enforcing your twisted ideals no matter how much blood must be spilt. You- mmf!”

Kyon suddenly found that he could no longer open his mouth. Tzintchi checked his watch theatrically.

“Sorry, kid, I’d love to stay, but I’m afraid I’ve got more pressing matters to attend to than listening to a schoolboy rant straight out of an ethics textbook. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you a few friends to play with. Ta-ta.”

He disappeared with a little wave. A moment later, the rest of the SOS Brigade appeared where he had stood. All of them were naked. All of them wore expressions of savage, inhuman delight. Kyon tried to flee to the bathroom, but found the door inexplicably locked. He backed up against a wall, holding a lamp as a weapon, as the simulacra of his friends closed in.

 

[Iaculus]

7. New Friends

Kyon exited the bathroom. He’d washed for over an hour, but still didn’t feel entirely clean. He looked down, and saw that the morning meal had arrived.

“I gave you a little extra,” Maria said apologetically. “Are you all right?”

“As well as could be expected, thanks.” His jaw was still a little stiff.

“What he did was... unnecessary.”

“Yeah, your gods seem to be big fans of ‘unnecessary’,” he replied sourly. “How did you end up working here?”

“It’s a long story.”

“I’ve got time.”

So she told him.

The gods’ ascension had not been unchallenged. Those nations distant from the site of Third Impact had only seen a stain on the surface of the Earth, gradually expanding with a horde of twisted once-humans at its forefront. It was no surprise that some resisted. Maria had been seventeen years old when the legions of the gods attacked her native Brazil, watching with her family as explosions illuminated the landscape and daemons soared across the sky.

After the wars, those people from subjugated countries were formally welcomed into the service of Chaos. Informally, though, they were second-class citizens, and they knew it. Driven by pressures both external and internal, they tended to gravitate towards the dirty, dangerous jobs, particularly those involving the thousands of factories and industrial plants that formed the backbone of the new regime’s mighty war machine. Her parents had died when she was twenty, caught in an accident on one of the new orbitals. An errant piece of space-debris had smashed through a cargo hangar, sucking out the oxygen within and sentencing the workers there to a quick, unpleasant death by asphyxiation.

Maria, meanwhile, had entered the army, which had some of the best opportunities for advancement in the post-Third Impact world. It had taken a phenomenal amount of dedication and willpower, but she had eventually managed to be awarded the honour of a post in the Palace Guard. It had been a good life, good enough to make her forget what the gods had done to her and those around her.

Then the prisoners had started to arrive.

They had come from all walks of life – soldiers, scholars, even ordinary civilians – and the ways in which they had been broken were equally varied. The Palace of the Gods became another factory – one of minds rather than machines, dedicated to producing useful tools for the will of Chaos. Maria had seen dozens pass through the room which Kyon currently inhabited, all of them transformed into loyal servants by rage, pleasure, ambition and despair.

“Do you understand?” she finished. “Your fate was sealed from the moment they took you. All I can do is make your last few days of freedom a little more comfortable.”

“Freedom?” Kyon asked, with less sarcasm and more fear than he’d hoped to muster. “This is freedom?”

“Comparatively, yes. They’ll treat you kindly, in their way, once it’s done, and I’m sure they’ll believe they’re doing you a favour. Make no mistake, though – you’ll simply be a vessel of their will. No more, no less.”

He was silent. There was nothing he really could say.

Eventually, he got up and went to the book-case. Its composers seemed to have a particular fondness for nineteenth-century British novelists for some reason – after a few attempts to get through a particularly intractable Dickens book, he fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

Later, he wondered if Maria had slipped something into his food to facilitate this – if she had, he was grateful.

***

For the next few days, they exchanged stories of their respective lives, not to mention general gossip. Maria, improbably, turned out to be something of a movie buff, if one of rather eclectic taste, defending Citizen Kane and Plan Nine from Outer Space with equal fervour. Something as bad as the latter, she claimed, had to be art.

She seemed just as eager to talk as he was – Kyon doubted that standing guard on the outside of a prison ad infinitum was much more interesting than being on the inside. He did wonder, though, whether this lax discipline was a sign of weakness on the gods’ part or an expression of confidence in their subversive talents. Most likely the latter. It wasn’t an encouraging thought.

Asukhon turned up shortly afterwards. Unlike Tzintchi, she didn’t bother with a human form, instead appearing as a towering, crimson-skinned female figure clad in form-fitting bronze armour that Kyon suspected was rather more practical than it looked. Her hair was of the same colour as said armour, and enormous horns curled from her forehead.

Guess they’ve decided to abandon subtlety, he thought.

“So, to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?” he asked. Still got some fuel left in the sarcasm tanks – good.

She smiled, revealing far too many teeth. “I wanted to go over a few things with you – specifically, how you’re going to get broken.”

“Oh, good. Can we schedule it a bit later? I’ve got a pretty busy timetable – can’t miss my daily staring-at-a-wall session. Very important.” Hey, if they’re going to torture me anyway...

She didn’t respond, but simply gestured the drone over. It flashed up another series of images, this time of a group of serious-looking men. None of them were younger than their mid-forties.

“These are the people responsible for Second and Third Impact.”

Another gesture, and the images changed. A couple of video feeds were added to the mix, as well.

“This is what we did to them.”

Kyon tried not to throw up, and barely succeeded.

“Amongst our secondary objectives when exploring other dimensions,” she continued, “was locating and capturing the various incarnations of these men. Once we had done so, we got... creative.”

The images changed again. And again. He tried to turn away, but something held him in place. He wasn’t sure whether it was the goddess’s deliberate influence or his own fascinated horror.

“As you can see, we learned a lot from these little sessions. We’ll start you off with the basics, then move on to more advanced techniques if you continue to prove intractable. I’ve never worked on someone with your... abilities before, so this should be an interesting experience for me as well.”

Kyon mustered his last few shreds of defiance. “Glad to hear it. Incidentally, how many men, women, and children did it take to perfect those techniques? I mean, if you’re going to pull the whole ‘sadistic torture technician’ shtick, you might as well go all the way.”

It was a cheap shot, but it was hard to worry about the finer feelings of someone who apparently saw peeling off all your skin as a warm-up act, particularly given what her companion had already done. That said, he was surprised at the severity of her reaction. She stared at him silently for a few moments, her expression showing the very particular pain of someone who has just had an old wound reopened.

“No,” she said softly. “No children. We don’t hurt children.”

She turned around and walked out, her face set back in that broad, malicious grin, though now it looked a little strained.

“Best practice your grovelling, Kyon. You’ll need it in the weeks ahead.”

***

Asukhon strode through the palace corridors, quietly seething. Damn that little piece of shit for getting under my skin...

“Opinion?” Tzintchi asked.

“Honestly, I still have difficulty believing that that runt’s a god, even a dormant one,” she replied. “My guess is he’s going to snap like a rotten branch. Speaking of rotten, why isn’t Rei handling this? I’d have thought it was right up her street.”

“Oh, she’s waiting in the wings,” he assured her. “It’s just that if he doesn’t snap, I know few better people for pissing him off. Bribery and appeals to sympathy won’t work anymore – he’s convinced that we’re the bad guys, and we might as well live up to it. More than one way to corrupt someone, right?”

Asukhon smiled. “Well, it is my speciality...”

“Too right. I’ve still got the scars from our first meeting.”

“Hey, you were the one who used your mindsight on me while I was getting changed!”

“Dearest, you asked a teenage boy not to peek. What did you expect?”

“That you’d do it in a way where I could catch you at it! I swear, sorcery sucks the fun out of everything.”

“Ah. My apologies for denying you one of your therapeutic daily rants, then. I promise I’ll make it up to you later.”

“You’d better. Hrm, probably time for a repeat performance of that stunt you pulled with the reshaped daemons. Which one would you suggest?”

“He showed a particular negative reaction to the male last time.” Reigle commented.

“Thanks, Rei. Latent homophobia, eh? Useful. Itsuki Koizumi it is, then.”

She drew a couple of glowing symbols in the air and gave her hearing a quick boost. About a minute later, she detected screams coming from the guest quarter.

***

When Kyon awoke next, it was in a hospital bed. His body ached all over, and a brief spot of probing revealed that his head was thickly wrapped in bandages. He couldn’t remember much of what had happened after Asukhon left, which was something of a relief. The bits he did remember were bad enough.

Another blessing was that he still had control of all his limbs. After a requisite few moments of gloomy, ceiling-gazing contemplation, he awkwardly extricated himself from the bedsheets, glad that whoever had put him here hadn’t felt the need for an intravenous drip or something similarly ghastly. Standing up proved inordinately difficult – sharp twinges of pain coursed through his legs, and he almost fell over twice. Eventually, though, he managed it, thanks largely to the assistance of a bedside table.

He hobbled over to the curtain surrounding the bed and yanked it aside, curious as to his surroundings. The ward turned out to be an enormous ring-shaped affair with curtained beds lining both the outside and inside walls. White-uniformed nurses patrolled in between, some of them moving in ways that suggested something other than standard bipedal locomotion.

There was a series of muffled whumps as some sort of pole impacted against the ‘walls’ of the fabric cubicle next to him, clearly signalling for attention. Curious, he opened that curtain as well and peered inside.

The bed’s resident turned out to be a little girl who couldn’t have had her age measure into anything more than single digits. She was wired up to an impressive collection of monitors, fluid dispensers, and other, stranger medical dispensers, her bright red hair an odd contrast to the clinical sterility all around her. The pole turned out to be a steel crutch which she held with one hand, and lowered as she registered her visitor.

“Oh, hello,” she said with a smile of warm, childish innocence. “Are you one of my new friends’ guests?”

Kyon blinked. “‘New friends’?”

“Papa Tzintchi. Mamas Reigle, Mislaato, and Asukhon, though she’s more of a big sister, really. They’ve been very nice to me – the people here work for them, you see. My name’s Vita. What’s yours?”

“Kyon.” He attempted a formal bow, and nearly had an unscheduled appointment with the floor yet again. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Vita.”

Vita giggled, but it didn’t reach her eyes, which were deep blue, strangely elongated, and positively ancient-looking compared to the rest of her.

“So, how did you end up here?” he asked.

Her forehead crinkled. “They said I was hurt in a big fight a long way away. Hurt badly. I don’t remember it really. What I do remember is that they took me here and put me back together. They talk to me, you know. They tell me all kinds of stories. Soon I’m going to be big and strong just like Asukhon, and I’m going to fight their enemies.”

There was something about the simple pride with which she said it that chilled Kyon to the bone.

“So, what about you, Kyon?”

“Me? Oh, the gods brought me here too,” he said truthfully if not honestly. “I think they thought they were doing the right thing there, too.”

She studied his face. “Are you all right? You look a little bit sad.”

“Oh, it’s nothing. I’m just a long way from my friends, is all, and I’ve had a bad few days.”

“Oh, I see. I miss my friends too, but the gods tell me they’ll come soon enough. Maybe yours will do the same.”

“Maybe so.” Dear Lord, I hope not.

There was the sound of footsteps, plus a bizarre squelching noise. As they faded, Vita turned to Kyon. Her face suddenly didn’t look remotely child-like.

“Are they still watching?” she asked in a low voice.

He sighed. “Probably.”

A sour expression. “Figures. Name’s Lieutenant Vita of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. I’d offer you my service number, but I always did have trouble remembering it. Let me guess – you’re stuck in the same mess as me.”

“If by ‘mess’ you mean ‘capture and torture by insane extradimensional deities’, then I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head.”

“Ugh. Charming. Thought you didn’t look like the type to get those normally.” She indicated the bandages. “No torture here, but they’ve been feeding me these chemicals. Cloud your mind, make you want to give in... and they change you. On the inside. When I came in, I had at least three internal organs missing. Now they’re back, and I should probably be happier than I am. They get you, kid. They get you mind, body, and soul.”

“Yeah, I got the full presentation. Word of advice – if they offer you roast pork, don’t eat it.”

“Pork? If only. Nah – they’ve got me on liquids, and I’m pretty sure it’s not for medical reasons. Not the medical reasons I arrived with, anyway.” She shuddered. “Call me Little Miss Obvious, but this place is fucked up, kid.”

“You seem to be doing all right, though.”

“Only because I’ve had practice. Believe me, getting through the fluffy pink clouds isn’t easy, and it’s getting harder every day. They- shit!”

More footsteps approached. Vita urgently beckoned him closer.

“Stahlwind B-2, got it? That’s my reset code. Stahlwind B-2. If they break me, you’ve got to bring me back. I can’t let Hayate see me as one of these things’ pets...”

Kyon was about to ask for clarification when one of the nurses came through the curtain. She was a large, matronly woman with what Maria had told him was Mislaato’s rune tattooed on her forehead. Her left arm strongly resembled the tentacle of an octopus.

“Vita, dear, it’s time for your lunch, and-” She stopped as she saw Kyon. “Oh, I see you’ve been making friends! What a coincidence – I was intending to pop by your bed as well, Master Kyon. Suppose this saves me a bit of effort, eh? Anyway, you’re clear to leave, though we’ll need you back here in a couple of days to take the bandages off.”

The tentacle reached inside her coat, and retrieved a small card box.

“If the pain bothers you, take a couple of these. Should clear it right up.”

Kyon took the pills, and retreated with as much speed as he could tactfully manage, wiping off the slime on his pyjama leg. He turned round, and saw that the woman was now busy breastfeeding Vita. The rune on her forehead glowed, and unnaturally thick purple veins pulsated across her skin.

Stahlwind B-2. Right. He remembered the look in the girl’s eyes as he had left. They don’t hurt children, huh?

The drone was waiting for him at the entrance to the ward. When he approached it, it began to drift away, the symbols it projected indicating that he should follow in a way that entirely bypassed the language centres of his brain. His legs were already in motion before the rest of his body had a chance to catch up.

At the end of the corridor, he stopped and looked around him. Nothing.

“I know you can hear me,” he said, “so I want to ask you a question. Why didn’t you do that to me? Your current method seems rather crude in comparison. Why sophisticated mind-rape for one and the medieval treatment for the other?”

“You know, that’s a very good question,” Asukhon’s voice replied from nowhere. “Why don’t you see if you can figure it out? Tell you what, we’ll make it a test. You get it right, you get a cookie... No, no, I can’t do this twisty shit. That’s Shinji’s job. Simple answer, Kyon? We do it because it’s fun. Speaking of, the god of your dimension just got laid. Wanna look?”

The drone’s projector opened a new feed, showing a hotel room rather similar in design to the one that Kyon currently inhabited. Clothes were scattered across the floor and two naked bodies moved against each other on the bed, shining dully with sweat.

He closed his eyes. “Turn it off.”

“You sure? I mean, it looks like we’re about to get to the good bit, and-“

“I SAID TURN IT OFF!” It was almost a scream.

“Pff, fine, fine...”

The projection vanished.

“You know, you’re really not that cooperative, Kyon,” Asukhon chided him. “Think it’d help if we brought along Mikuru to encourage you? Or maybe Yuki? I know Rei’s been making some serious advances with biotech computer viruses, and she’s just been itching for a test subject.”

Ice ran down Kyon’s spine. “You will not hurt them.”

“Eh. We’ll see. Sweet dreams, Kyon.”

The drone buzzed away again, and he stumped after it, his shoulders shaking. He tried to forget the look he had seen on Haruhi’s face. He tried to forget the look he had seen on his own face.

***

Far away, in the personal quarters of the gods, Asukhon leaned back in her chair. “Boy, he is steamed.”

“Exemplary work, my dear,” Tzintchi commented. “I knew I could rely on you.”

“Did anyone catch what Vita said to him?” Mislaato asked.

He shook his head. “No. She threw up some sort of interference. Most irritating. Whatever the case, you need to step up the process where she’s concerned. Using her was a calculated risk – we already know that our unconsciously-deific buddy has something of a thing about protecting girls. We can’t afford her to be a potential spanner in our works any longer, though.”

The goddess of lust nodded. “You won’t get any argument from me. Asuka, I might need your help with that – she seems to gravitate most towards your side.”

“On it. Hey, Shinji, wouldn’t it be nice if we actually could carry out that procedure on the runt?”

“It would certainly be easier,” he agreed. “That’s gods for you, I suppose – always making your lives a little bit harder.”

That got a few chuckles.

“We’ll let him stew for a few days, maybe poke him once or twice, and then darling Maria can reel him in. I hate to tempt fate like this, but everything seems to be going according to plan. Orgy at eleven, people – don’t be late.”

“Isn’t it my job to organise those?” Mislaato objected.

“Yes, but you’ve been working yourself to the bone lately. I thought I’d give you a bit of a treat, let you take the load off your feet.”

She smiled. “I knew there was a reason I married you.”

As the others wandered off to engage in their own activities, Tzintchi stared at the ceiling with his many eyes.

He could have played nice and gone along with us, but he didn’t. It’s the little sod’s own silly fault, really.

***

By the time Kyon arrived back at his quarters, his rage had focused into something cold and hard, like a knife in his brain. He wasn’t a naturally violent young man, but if Tzintchi had stood before him at that moment, he would have happily scraped the god’s smug smile off his face. With his thumbs, if necessary.

Maria gave him a concerned look. She was pretty much what he had expected – a scarred, tough-looking woman in her mid-thirties who wore bulky red-and-black body armour that straddled the fine line between decorativeness and functionality.

“What happened?”

“I’d really prefer not to talk about it.” He sighed. “Maria, I don’t know how much more of this I can take.”

She dropped her voice. “I understand. This has gone far too far already. Check your next meal tray – there’ll be something on it I think you’ll find useful.”

“What about your job?”

“Watching students get tortured isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. This place is locked down too tight to escape, but I’d like to express my disapproval to the gods in person – if you’re interested, that is.”

He grinned. “Count me in.”

“Good. Remember – dinner tray, in the dessert bowl.”

The next hour was slow agony. He tried to flick through a few books, but none of them managed to engage him. Instead, he spent most of it fidgeting on the sofa, staring at his watch.

Eventually, the moment he had been waiting for came. The flap on the door rattled, and a simple wooden tray bedecked with dinnerware lowered itself to the floor. He rushed over and eagerly tore open the foil covering on the dessert bowl.

Inside was the tiniest gun he had seen in his life. The grip was barely large enough for him to fit two of his fingers around it, and the barrel was shaped like a miniature syringe. He glared accusingly at the door.

“Is this some sort of joke?”

A laugh from the other side. “Oh yes, but not the sort you’re thinking of. We call it the ‘Noisy Cricket’. Don’t test it out if you value your ceiling – it pulls up a bit. It might take me a little while to arrange a breakout – I’ll contact you in a few days.”

Kyon finished his meal, and went to bed, the miniscule gun tucked under his pillow. It took some time, but eventually he fell into an erratic, troubled sleep.

 

[Iaculus]

8. Breakthrough

The Eventide had been patrolling the outside of the Wall for weeks, its sensors powered up to the limits of their design tolerance. Nobody wanted to suggest to Hayate or Fate that they might be pursuing a fool’s errand.

They had been used – Nanoha saw that now. Precia had told them that the forces of Chaos could control the Warp, but they hadn’t put two and two together. The suspiciously well-timed warp storms couldn’t have been a coincidence; they had been dragooned into participating in a war they had no stake in, and then unceremoniously kicked out once they had outlived their usefulness.

She remembered the last proper conversation she had had with Fate. It had been a day after the disastrous expedition down to the unknown planet, and her partner was still in one of the infirmary beds, groggy from Shamal’s sedatives.

“Nanoha...” she had asked, “where’s Alicia? I want to talk to her.”

Exactly what Nanoha hadn’t wanted to hear.

“Fate,” she said gently, “they did something to her. What we saw wasn’t your sister, not any more. Maybe she’s still in there, buried deep, but Fate... I saw her eat a man’s soul, right in front of my eyes. It was... it was horrible.”

Fate stared at her. “No...”

“I’m sorry, my love. I knocked her out, tried to get her out of there. I thought maybe the TSAB could help – they’ve dealt with this sort of thing before, though rarely this bad. Some soldiers ambushed us, though, and... I dropped her.”

“You dropped her? You left my sister to those creatures?” Nanoha had never seen Fate so angry. Spots of red appeared on her pale face.

“There was nothing I could do!”

“Get out.” It was said quietly, in a voice quavering with emotion.

“Fate, I-“

“Get. Out.”

She had fled. In the past she had faced monsters, dark mages, and diabolical masterminds, but that look on her partner’s face was the one thing she couldn’t stand. Behind her, she heard weeping.

Since then, they had barely exchanged a dozen words with each other, and then mostly just acknowledgements of replacement at posts. Nanoha slept in the main barracks now, along with the rest of the forwards.

She walked onto the bridge. Hayate was there as always, standing atop the command platform like a statue. There were dark rings around her eyes. Everyone else was busy at their stations, very pointedly not making eye contact with each other.

A movement caught her eye. The sensors officer, another Earth-born with a vaguely Eastern European name nobody could pronounce, had raised his head, his face faintly glowing with cagy excitement.

“Colonel, you’re not going to believe this,” he said shakily, “but I think I’ve just found another entrance to the Wall.”

Hayate blinked. “I’m sorry, you what?”

“It’s an old wound,” he explained. “There’s even some stratified scar tissue around it, like it’s been sealed and reopened a couple of times. The dimensional space around it’s pretty calm, too, though I think we won’t be able to get in much further than the first universe inside. Given that that’s where the disturbance seems to be coming from, though, I’d still say it’s worth a look.”

“Understood. Helm, take us in.”

“Aye-aye, ma’am.”

The excitement began to spread. Even Nanoha felt it. The thought that their search might not be in vain...

Hayate stepped down from the platform, almost falling over. Signum rushed to her side, and she draped a grateful arm over her bodyguard’s shoulder.

“Sensors, see if you can pick up any more data. Lieutenant Rostov, you have the bridge again. As for me, I’m getting some rest.”

***

The transition into realspace was pleasingly uneventful. The Eventide slid into orbit around what was clearly a parallel Earth with a minimum of fuss, cut its emissions, and went into low-visibility mode. The bridge was just as crowded as it had been when they discovered the daemon-world, if not more so. Everyone wanted to see this.

“The primary source of the disturbance is Nishinomiya City, on the south coast of Japan.” Hayate explained. “For the record, we tapped into local communications, and that’s what they call it too. Makes things a lot easier for us, I will say. Even the street plans are pretty much the same as our own version. We’ll be sending in a small team to the city perimeter – our objective is North High School, which is... well, pretty much where you’d expect it to be.”

An image flashed up on the main viewer of a large, walled school facility built on a slight rise, a long path leading up to it on one side.

“Signum and Nanoha have volunteered for the mission. You’ll be going in undercover, you two, and we’ll pull you out at even the slightest whiff of trouble. I am not going to have a repeat performance of last time. Is that understood?”

Both women nodded.

“Good. Belay callsign on an evacuation is ‘Reinforce’, but you’d best have a very good reason for using it. Transport in twenty. Dismissed.”

As they headed to the transport chamber, Nanoha turned to Signum.

“How’s she holding up?” she asked quietly.

“Not well. She misses Vita a lot.”

“I think we all do.” She gave an encouraging smile. “Don’t worry – we’ll find her.”

“Of course.” The tall woman lapsed back into her habitual stony silence.

A few moments later, she glanced at Nanoha again. “Nanoha... you’re a good friend to Hayate. Thank you for that.”

The younger captain blushed with embarrassment and slight confusion. Signum wasn’t prone to such outbursts.

“Um... thanks.” She desperately hunted for another discussion topic. “Oh, look, there’s the chamber. Think we should get ready?”

“Indeed.”

***

The transporter deposited them in the middle of a suburban neighbourhood, about half a kilometre from their objective. Hayate had used the MIS to create a temporary barrier around the area which should exclude any normal human witnesses. They deactivated their Barrier Jackets, changing into the ordinary civilian clothes they had elected to wear for the mission. Signum had had to borrow some from one of the galley staff, but neither that nor her bright pink hair managed to do much to prevent her from looking like the very epitome of middle-class respectability.

OK, we’re in, she informed Hayate. You can drop the barrier now.

The sky abruptly went from grey to blue, and people appeared around them. Not many – they were, after all, in a residential area in the middle of the day – but enough to mark a significant change.

Sensors, what does the situation look like from up there?

Pretty calm, he replied, though the frequency of dimensional disturbances has risen over the past week for some reason. Also changed location – there was a big trail across Canada lately. Centred back here now, mind.

Anything more immediate?

No, nothing... wait, yes! Short-range teleport in your vicinity! Holy shit, they’re heading straight for you. Transport, get them out of there n-

The link cut off. Ahead of them, a single figure appeared at the end of the street and walked towards them, a bow wave of silence spreading out before her. Nanoha reactivated her Barrier Jacket, not having to look to know that Signum had done the same. Their visitor was a short, grey-haired girl in a plain school uniform. Somehow, the utter, mundane unmemorability of her appearance made her all the more intimidating.

“Identify yourself!” Signum barked, pointing the tip of Laevantien’s blade at her.

The stranger said nothing, merely regarding them with a level, expressionless gaze. She kept advancing, birdsong dying in the trees as she walked past. Nanoha levelled Raising Heart, mentally calculating range and trajectory.

“Miss, I apologise for my colleague’s rudeness, but we really don’t want any trouble here. Could you at least tell us your name, please?”

No response. The readings from her Intelligent Device spiked; this... person, whoever she was, was the source of a massive disturbance in the space-time continuum, and it was intensifying rapidly.

Just as she was about to open fire, the girl stopped, still calmly staring at them.

“You are not supposed to be here,” she said in a flat monotone, and made a sharp gesture with her hand, muttering in an odd, stuttering voice that sounded very little like human speech.

Then there was only darkness.

***

“... And pop goes the disturbance,” said the sensors officer resignedly. “We’ve lost the ground team’s signals, chief.”

Hayate gripped the edge of the command desk, her knuckles turning white.

Not again...

***

When Nanoha opened her eyes, it was in what looked suspiciously like an ordinary classroom, desks arranged into a single large table. At one end was a separate desk with a fancy-looking laptop and a couple of mysterious and frankly sinister ornaments.

Not exactly standard prison design, is it? she commented to Signum.

You’d be surprised. Two centuries ago, Zafira and I were confined in a magically-reinforced tannery for a week. Not our finest hour.

“I apologise for the nature of your greeting,” said the familiar robotic monotone from behind them, “but we have been given reason in the past to distrust entities from beyond our designated remit, especially in light of recent events. You are currently being stored in a secure artificial closed space whilst we access your vessel’s data to verify your intent.”

“‘Artificial closed space’?” Signum enquired as they turned around.

“Yes. A technically inaccurate but broadly descriptive colloquial term would be ‘pocket dimension’. We estimate this model to be both invisible and unreachable by your associates given their vessel’s tech-level, though I will reiterate that this is a temporary measure pending threat assessment.”

“So we can return to your planet if you decide that we are not a threat?” Nanoha asked.

“No. We will permit you to return to your vessel, but not to set foot on the planetary body designated ‘Earth’. Please be advised that this is not intended as an insult to you and your kind in particular, but rather as an acknowledgement of the uniquely unstable situation on said planet, especially around the area you chose to land in.”

“We detected a significant distortion in the fabric of space-time there,” Nanoha said. “Does that have something to do with what you’re talking about?”

“Yes. For several years now we have been engaged in damage-limitation protocols regarding a powerful unconscious reality-warper there. She is one source of the instability. The other is that our dimension has recently been invaded.”

“Chaos,” Signum growled.

“You are aware of them?” Was that a flicker of curiosity in that emotionless face?

“Yes. We have encountered them before. The encounter was... not friendly.” Internally, Nanoha winced at herself. The girl’s peculiar speech-patterns were infectious.

“Likewise. They are using our dimension as an access route for their armed forces, and have managed to subvert a significant number of key actors, including the reality-warper, Haruhi Suzumiya. This is why we contained you – we do not wish the invaders to gain further allies, and if you are not allies, revealing yourself to their agents would likely be extremely hazardous.”

“Thank you for your concern,” Nanoha replied politely, trying to keep the irony out of her voice. “Incidentally, might I ask who this ‘we’ is? Or are, I suppose.”

“I am Yuki Nagato, a humanoid interface of the Data Integration Thought Entity. My purpose is to gather data on Earth in general and Haruhi Suzumiya in particular.”

A sentient program like me and my fellow knights? Signum wondered.

That’s my guess, Nanoha agreed. Technobabble isn’t exactly my strong suit.

Yuki tilted her head to one side for a moment.

“We have verified that you are not allied with the forces of Chaos,” she said. “I shall provide you with access to your vessel.”

More of that strange, bubbling code, and they felt the link to the Eventide open once more. No sooner had they done so, though, than Hayate’s voice came across. Telepathy made it difficult to hide one’s emotions – she was clearly on the edge of panic.

Nanoha, Signum, thank goodness we’ve found you. Don’t worry – we can extract you at a moment’s notice. What happened down there?

Wait, no! Nanoha yelled desperately. Code Reinforce, I repeat, code Reinforce! They’re not hostile!

Nanoha, Hayate said with strained patience, they just kidnapped and imprisoned you.

It was a misunderstanding! They thought we were agents of Chaos! Hayate, please, when was the last time I was wrong about something like this?

Well, there was that one time you swore blind that Inspector Acous’s chocolate cake was safe to eat...

Oh, come on, how was I to know you were allergic to peanuts?

Wait, you mean you never illegally accessed the Section Six medical records? Arf told me it was an officer’s rite of passage!

I think you’ve been spending far too much time around Arf of late, young lady.

A psychic sigh came from the other end. Nanoha was relieved to note that the panic had disappeared. Fine, fine, I’ll chat to these new friends of yours. I’m keeping the ship on full alert, though, is that understood?

Fine by me. Here’s Raising Heart’s recording, in case you need some time to prepare.

She turned back to Yuki, who regarded her with the same disconcerting patience as always. “My commanding officer wants to talk to you in person. Is that all right?”

“That is acceptable. I will summon emissaries of two other factions on this world. They will likely wish to be informed.”

The ‘emissaries’ turned out to both be in their mid-teens, though this was something that one got used to as a member of the TSAB, particularly if one’s first combat experience had been at age nine against an amorphous, befanged monstrosity trying to eat your face, as Nanoha’s had. They were unceremoniously deposited from glowing portals in the air, and looked just as bemused as the two mages were.

One was a tall, handsome young man whose faint, slightly puzzled smile seemed to be more a permanent fixture of his face than a reaction to the events around him. The other was a short, doe-eyed, and improbably busty girl who gave an overall impression of a rabbit in the proverbial headlights.

Hayate’s arrival was rather more dignified, calmly emerging from the spectacular light-show that was a magical transporter in action. Nanoha couldn’t help noticing, though, that she had her Barrier Jacket activated and a blonde tint to her hair that signified she was interfaced with Rein. Given that her brand of magic was effectively useless in a confined space like this, it was probably just a psychological crutch.

Bringing a nuke to a negotiation? Isn’t that supposed to be my job? she thought with simultaneous amusement and worry. Everybody’s on edge here – probably me as well. No, wait, definitely me as well.

Introductions seemed a good way to break the ice. “Miss Nagato, this is my superior, Colonel Hayate Yagami of the TSAB. I’m Captain Nanoha Takamachi, and my colleague with the big sword is Captain Signum. No surname.”

Hayate attempted an awkward smile, whilst Signum simply provided one of her patented grave nods.

“Hayate, this is Yuki Nagato, representative of the Integrated Data... Data Integration... huge alien computer-thingy, and her associates...?”

“Itsuki Koizumi, of the Organisation,” said the boy smoothly. They could hear the capital ‘O’.

“M-Mikuru Asahina,” the other girl stammered. “I’ll... umm... just go make the tea, shall I?”

To Nanoha’s relief, Hayate’s maternal instinct promptly took over.

“A cup of tea would be lovely, thank you.” Mikuru gave her a grateful smile and scuttled off. “I’m pleased to meet all of you. I understand you’ve been having problems with Chaos?”

“It would be more accurate to say that they’ve taken over,” Itsuki replied. “In Hyogo Prefecture and environs, anyway. They have either compromised or fully subverted a significant number of private companies, as well as much of the local government infrastructure. Particular targets are esper factions like my own – we believe that they are attempting to harvest psychic talent.”

“Espers?” Nanoha asked. “Are they the local equivalent of mages?”

The smile broadened. “In a manner of speaking, I suppose. Their biggest coup, though, was obtaining the co-operation of the god of this world, Haruhi Suzumiya.”

Hayate raised an eyebrow – she’d clearly listened to the recording. “And how did they manage that?”

“Though Miss Suzumiya is undoubtedly powerful, she is also a teenage girl, if an unusually strong-willed one. There are... methods for dealing with those. Deeply unpleasant methods. They replaced someone she cared about with one of their agents. Frankly, she never stood a chance.”

Signum was studying him closely. “You sound as if you speak from experience,” she stated.

The smile, brittle to begin with, vanished utterly. “I have had... training in such matters. I’ve never had to use it. I never want to.”

A few moments more of that level, searching stare, and the knight lowered her eyes. “Good answer.”

There was a pause in the conversation, and Nanoha mulled over the esper’s words. ‘Someone she cared about’. Was it just me, or was there a bit of hesitation before he used that pronoun?

The tea arrived – it was anyone’s guess where Mikuru had found it – and she sipped it gratefully. It was very good indeed, and certainly a vast improvement on Admiral Lindy’s infamously sugary green tea. By now things had gotten a lot more relaxed; everyone was sitting down at the table, and the TSAB mages had deactivated their Barrier Jackets – except for Signum, who was currently regarding the desk ornaments as if she expected them to go for her vital organs at any moment. Professional paranoia, I suppose.

“Has there been any organised resistance to the invaders?” Hayate asked.

Itsuki nodded. “The Organisation has been engaged in a covert war against them ever since we were alerted to the true extent of their influence. Unfortunately, that was only about a week ago, and we’ve been comprehensively outnumbered, outmanoeuvred, and outmatched. Heads rolled over that one, let me tell you – mine was nearly one of them. Anyway, once they figure out how to use Miss Suzumiya against us, it’s all over. Miss Asahina’s people are even more constrained, for their own reasons.”

“And those are?”

“I’m from a separate time-plane,” Mikuru explained. “The future, specifically. We can’t interfere too much for fear of causing damage to the continuum, and if we ever manage to antagonise them too severely, they can simply alter the course of events so that we are erased from the timeline. We’re restricted to the odd nudge here and there, I’m afraid.”

“On the plus side, though, it sounds like they haven’t managed to irrevocably change anything yet,” the colonel surmised. “Otherwise you wouldn’t exist, right?”

“I’m sorry, but it’s not that simple. We’re detecting closed-space activity in our time-plane in a manner consistent with impending destruction. We may be doomed anyway.” She blushed. “I really shouldn’t be telling you this. It’s classified information.”

“We understand. What about you, Miss Nagato?”

“The Data Integration Thought Entity is undecided on how to act. The invaders are undoubtedly a disruptive influence, but their actions regarding Miss Suzumiya have provided her with a measure of focus, if not in an optimal direction. Consequently, they have created a form of short-term stability. When coupled with their relatively small area of influence, the wide range of countermeasures prepared to deal with the situation, and the fact that hesitation would have little effect other than resulting in the potential corruption or deletion of a few thousand terrestrial life-forms, the prevalent consensus is that detached observation pending further developments would be the wisest course of action at present.”

“And yet you have gone to some effort to arrange a meeting between several enemies of Chaos,” Signum noted.

“We interfaces do not possess a single, monolithic consciousness. There are some of us who believe the potential costs of inaction to be too high. Indeed, I would request that when you leave, you take these two with you. As observers of Miss Suzumiya, they are in immediate peril. The individual already replaced was in a similar situation to us, and I am... concerned for his safety.”

Her face, as always, was expressionless, but those huge grey eyes told Nanoha everything she needed to know. She suddenly felt a tremendous surge of sympathy for this strange, alien girl.

“Don’t worry – we’ll look after them,” she said reassuringly. “Right, Hayate?”

Her commanding officer nodded. “Agreed. Apart from anything else, they should be a useful source of information if we intend a full-scale attack against Chaos. What you three have said, coupled with our own experiences, has convinced me – it’s time to call in the big guns. Mr. Koizumi, Miss Asahina, do you agree to this?”

“I hate to say it, but Nagato’s right,” Itsuki said. “This isn’t a fight we can win on our own, and this seems the best way to shift the balance back in our favour. I’ll need to contact my superiors, though – it wouldn’t look too good if I vanish without saying a word.”

“M-me too,” Mikuru stammered. “Breaching protocol is a very serious offence.”

“I shall provide them with the necessary information, plus a recording of this conversation,” Yuki stated. “It should not present too great an inconvenience.”

“Are we to assume, then, that you will not be accompanying us, Miss Nagato?” Hayate asked.

“That is correct. I shall remain to observe the situation and exert what influence I can on the Data Integration Thought Entity’s decision-making processes. My direct superior, Emiri Kimidori, will join you once you return to your vessel. She is a neutral party, willing to provide information but no further direct assistance. My own presence would be seen by others of my number as... dangerously independent, particularly given past events.”

“Ah, I see. Good luck, then – we’ll try to keep in contact.”

The edge of Yuki’s mouth twitched almost imperceptibly. “I would appreciate that.”

She cocked her head to one side again.

“Your vessel has been detected. If you wish to leave unchallenged, I would recommend that you do so soon.”

“Thanks for the tip,” Hayate replied. She turned back to Itsuki and Mikuru. “Will you two need to collect any personal belongings before we go?”

“Um, yes, that might be a good idea,” the diminutive redhead agreed. “One moment, please.”

There was a brief, eye-hurting flicker, and a large black holdall appeared in her hands. She yelped, and almost lost her balance. Itsuki stared at her.

“How did you do that?”

She smiled sweetly. “That’s classified.”

“How about you, Mr. Koizumi?” Nanoha asked.

“Standard Organisation policy is for compromised agents to destroy any effects that might be traced to them. I think this counts. Nagato, can you open a temporary electronic signal link from here to my house?”

The bizarre mechanical chatter started again. “It is done.”

“Much obliged.” He pulled a squat, cylindrical object out of his pocket, flipped a couple of switches, and pressed the big red button on its top.

“What did that do?” Hayate asked.

“Gutted the place with fire. It should look like an accident with the gas main. Don’t worry – shouldn’t be any collateral.” He looked down at the detonator with a critical eye. “You know, I really wish our gadgets department had less of a flair for the dramatic. A big red button? Really?”

The colonel clapped her hands together. “Right, let’s go. Eventide, pickup for five, please.”

That’s an affirmative, the technician broadcasted. Transport on its way.

The last thing Nanoha saw before the light of the transporter rose up around them was the small, fragile-looking figure of Yuki Nagato, standing alone in the abandoned classroom.

***

Back on board the frigate, they made an immediate beeline for the bridge. Mikuru didn’t have to struggle with the enormous holdall for long – no sooner had they entered one of the more crowded corridors than a small army of male (and some female) crew-members bustled up to help her out with it. Frankly, Nanoha wasn’t sure if the girl was pleased or terrified.

She fell in alongside Itsuki, who was regarding the ship with mild interest.

“You seem to be taking this rather well,” she commented.

The smile twitched. “In the past week, I’ve been fighting off things that look like people, had a friend go missing and get replaced with a monster, been dragged through space/time by an inscrutable alien quasideity, got myself pawned off to an extradimensional organisation I’ve never heard of, and had to blow up my own base of operations. In the circumstances, looking confident and pretending to know what’s going on seems the only reasonable survival strategy.”

Nanoha gave a sympathetic wince. “I see. Please try not to worry unnecessarily, though – we don’t bite.”

“Glad to hear it.” He shook his head. “Even Nagato’s different. That meeting was the most I’ve ever heard her speak. Normally she just sits and stares. Kyon’s pretty much the only person who can get more than three words out of her. Well, he was, anyway.”

“Kyon? Is that the one who went missing?”

“That would be him. Honestly, he was the one who really held the group together, even if he’d never admit it. Maybe that’s why he got targeted first. Or maybe not. Diplomacy was never his strong point.”

The lanky student clenched his fists reflexively, a dim red glow forming around them. “We discovered that several of the enemy’s agents were susceptible to our powers. I would give a great deal to be able to employ them against one of their masters.”

The rest of the walk passed in silence.

They found the sensors officer waiting for them on the bridge, clearly agitated. Beside him stood an unassuming green-haired girl, presumably the prophesied Kimidori.

“Colonel, this young lady just teleported in. Never even saw her coming. More importantly, we’ve got enemy vessels closing on us. Still some way away, but they’re big. Really big.”

“Don’t worry, we were warned,” Hayate replied. “Helm, can we outpace them?”

The helm officer grinned confidently. “They’re fast, but we’re faster. Give the word, ma’am.”

“Good. Prepare to jump to dimensional space, and set a course for the TSAB headquarters on Mid-Childa. We have a war to start.”

The helmsman’s grin was echoed across the room as the grizzled officer saluted.

“Aye-aye, ma’am.”

 

[Iaculus]

9. Networking

The Palace of the Gods was a vast structure built around the ruins of the Tokyo-3 Geofront and extended downwards from there. In fact, it was larger than was physically possible, several parts either partially or fully outside realspace. The Eye of Tzintchi exploited this to its fullest extent.

Despite its name, the room was not Tzintchi’s sole domain. It wasn’t even eye-shaped... at least, not often, and not deliberately. Instead, it was a bubble of artificially-calm warpspace, operating on a similar principle to the Eldar webway. From it, the gods could see (and interact with) every part of their domain, micromanaging their steadily expanding area of influence as only hyperintelligent posthumans with limited precognition could.

For a mortal, even a glance at the Eye would be a one-way ticket to gibbering insanity. The room constantly changed its appearance based on the mood of its occupants, the current situation of what it surveyed, and sheer gleeful whimsy, and never more so than when all four gods were in residence.

Tzintchi made an idle whooshing noise through one of his beaks as the Eventide made its escape. “Bloody hell, but that thing’s fast in the Warp. Maybe we should bring in a few more of those mages from the Bureau – I’d love to see what makes their technology tick.”

Asukhon stroked his hair. “So why not pull the same trick we did on them back at Bloodhaven? Drop ‘em back into realspace, let the response squadron bring them in, and spend a relaxing few hours coaxing out those juicy little secrets of theirs? I’ll even let you wa-atch...” she added teasingly.

“Much as I hate to turn down an afternoon of happy sadism, I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Mislaato replied. “Bloodhaven’s a nexus of power – we don’t have nearly the same amount of control in Haruhi’s universe. Not yet, anyway.”

“Speaking of, what’s keeping K.J.?” Asukhon asked. “Thought he’d have the little bitch wrapped around his finger by now.”

“He does,” her husband replied. “However, he’s been getting... distracted of late. Indulging his own appetites. I suspect that some of his brother’s weakness may have rubbed off on him.”

“Technically speaking, would Kyon not be his father?” Reigle pointed out. “Given that our agent was created from the aforementioned’s DNA-approximate, I mean.”

Tzintchi waved an airy flipper. “Nah, too confusing. We need to preserve our monopoly on Freudian ambiguities – right, Rei?”

His wife/sister/clone-mother inclined her head. “A fair point.”

As a matter of fact, the actions of Kyon’s clone were proving themselves to be something of a concern for the gods. Whilst his primary objectives – corrupting Haruhi and anyone else in the vicinity who might prove useful – were continuing at an acceptable rate, he spent far too much time using both her powers and the girl herself in ways that were unpleasant and, more importantly, unprofessional. He was still too useful and too difficult to replace to discard, but their patience was not infinite.

Tzintchi was the first to break their mutual contemplative silence. “Right – next order of business, the Divine Assassin Program. Asuka, you’ve been keeping tabs on this one. How’s it going?”

“Pretty well,” she replied. “We’ve been getting some good recruits in – very motivated. Think I might refer Vita over there once we’re done with her – I can see her talents proving very useful.”

“Glad to hear it.” The leader of the gods stared at the display again. “I’ve got a feeling that we might be needing them soon.”

***

The USS Enterprise drifted through the outer asteroid belt of the Lakonia system, its sensors probing the space around it with a thousand electronic eyes. There had been reports of pirates in the region, raiding deeper into Federation space from a hidden base. That wasn’t what worried the crew most, though. Pirates were simply no match for one of Starfleet’s most advanced vessels. What worried them was the system’s proximity to the Damocles Nebula, origin point and former base of operations of the extradimensional invaders that had ravaged the Alpha Quadrant.

The so-called ‘Year of Chaos’ had crippled the Federation, and things had only gotten worse after the invaders’ mysterious departure. The proposal to scrap or modify the Prime Directive as a form of appeasement had been predictably controversial; some still believed that the forces of Chaos could be repelled through military might, some doubted they would return at all, and a significant number were simply reluctant to abandon their longest-held tradition at gunpoint.

In the end, the conservatives had won, but at a cost. Several worlds had seceded after the vote was cast, particularly those which had had actual contact with the enemy during the war. In an official statement, they called the Prime Directive ‘the biggest suicide pact in history’, and set about uplifting pre-warp civilisations with a gusto born of desperation.

The remainder of the Federation Council’s collective reaction came as no surprise to anyone. Amidst strident accusations of treason and cowardice, they motioned to reclaim the lost planets and defend the Directive – by force, if necessary. It was a matter of days after that declaration that the first shots were fired, and soon the mightiest interstellar nation in the Quadrant was embroiled in bloody civil war. When combined with the destruction of the Borg in that part of the galaxy, a power vacuum was created that others were quick to exploit – especially the Romulans, who had escaped the Year of Chaos largely intact.

As the reluctant instigator of the motion against the Prime Directive, Captain Jean-Luc Picard had gone from being one of Starfleet’s most respected officers to an abject disgrace almost overnight, reviled by both sides. Now, he and the still-loyal crew aboard the Enterprise were in a form of self-imposed exile, patrolling the borders of their beloved Federation (or whatever it called itself now) against the myriad enemies who now circled it as hyenas would a dying lion.

“Captain, scanners are picking up a subspace anomaly near our position,” Lieutenant Commander Data reported. “Another ship has just arrived, but it doesn’t seem to be using a warp drive. It’s almost as if it... jumped straight out of subspace.”

“Like the Stiletto?” Commander Riker asked, his face pale.

“The precise execution is different, but the underlying principles are indeed analogous to those employed by that ship’s FTL drive,” the android agreed. “Some relation between the two vessels is not outside the limitations of probability.”

“All hands, red alert,” Picard ordered. “If the forces of Chaos have returned, we can’t afford to take any risks. Mr. Data, put that ship on screen.”

“Of course, captain,” Data replied.

The mysterious vessel was... not the Stiletto; that much was immediately obvious. Unlike the vast, cathedral-like affair that the Chaos vessel had been, it was a small, streamlined ship, less than half the size of the Enterprise, though it did retain the sleekly murderous lines that could only designate a dedicated warship. Its prow was split into four huge fins that by their arrangement appeared to form some sort of focusing array, and its silver-and-black bodywork gleamed against the darkness of space.

“They’re hailing us sir,” Lieutenant Daniels said. “Their equipment’s a... bit strange, but broadly compatible with our own comms systems.”

“Very well – patch them through.”

The face that appeared on the main screen was reassuringly human, belonging to a serious-looking young man in a severe black uniform. If he had horns, tentacles, or ominously-glowing eyes, they were not immediately obvious.

“Greetings, Captain Picard of the Federation,” he said formally. “I am Admiral Chrono Harlaown, commander of the Time-Space Administration Bureau heavy cruiser Claudia. We’re currently engaged in an investigative mission, and were wondering if we could borrow a moment of your time.”

“How do you know who I am?” Picard asked.

An apologetic smile. “I’m afraid we took the liberty of listening in on your internal communications for a while before we elected to make contact. I’m very sorry for the intrusion, but when exploring an unknown and potentially hostile universe, a certain measure of paranoia is only sensible.”

“Apology accepted – I’d prefer if you didn’t make a habit of it, though. So what did you wish to talk to us about, admiral?” Admiral? Really? He’s half my age at the very most. For the love of all that’s holy, please don’t tell me that Doctor Crusher’s boy had cousins...

“We have recently been alerted to the existence of a group of entities called the ‘Chaos Gods’ who are believed to represent a threat on a pan-dimensional scale. According to our sources, their agents recently carried out an extended military action against this universe, and we’re looking for first-hand information on that.”

Picard leaned back in his chair. “Then we have much to discuss.”

***

For Master Luke Skywalker, head of the new Jedi Order, life was good. The war with the Empire had finally ended, he’d managed to prevent yet another galactic invasion and, to top it all, he was married to the sort of wife who he had once thought existed only in fantasies. It was thus both annoying and worrying that something still niggled away at the back of his mind, preventing him from providing his spectacular good fortune with the enjoyment that it deserved.

Something dark intruded upon his meditations, a vast, malign presence that was still distant and yet growing stronger every day. When he cast his sight across the galaxy, he very occasionally saw hard, black dots appearing and disappearing within it, never long enough or often enough for him to be sure they were more than illusion, but filled with an ineffable wrongness that he could not ignore.

It hadn’t done his honeymoon any favours, either.

At present, he was sat cross-legged in his spartan quarters in the Jedi Praxeum on Yavin, contemplating life, the universe and everything as only he could. A glittering canvas of stars and nebulae was spread out before his mind’s eye, dancing with slow, ponderous grace. Nothing seemed wrong, and yet... there!

It was another of the intruders, coursing with alien energies that simply did not belong in this galaxy or even this universe, but it was... different, somehow. He sensed none of the malign, predatory intent that the others of its kind had exuded – the dark side didn’t flow nearly as freely around it. Or at all, for that matter.

Curious.

He sent out a subtle nudge, redirecting the alien ship’s course towards Yavin IV. Meeting these... beings (people? Creatures?) might prove very interesting indeed.

***

The psychic signal washed across the light cruiser Charak’s Gift, tugging gently at the minds of the crew. Arf’s tail twitched, and she glanced at Zafira.

“Did you catch that?”

The towering Wolkenritter nodded. “It appears we have been given an invitation.”

***

Hayate walked at the head of the Bureau delegation, flanked on either side by heavily-armed guards. Who they were guarding from whom had yet to be decided – it was just that guards gave a first-contact situation a pleasingly official air. They were on an elevated walkway above a bustling city, golden-walled towers stretching up on either side them and gleaming transit tubes criss-crossing the air above.

After they had arrived back on Mid-Childa, the vast bureaucracy of the planet-sized capital had swung into action. The first stage had been verifying their story – ‘my chief combat instructor had one of her gut feelings’ was not valid grounds for starting an interdimensional war, after all. Their combat logs had been pored over by the Intelligence department (especially Nanoha’s conversation with Precia), and their three passengers from Haruhi’s universe had been personally interrogated by the amiably sinister Inspector Verossa Acous – an experience that they had borne with surprising fortitude.

With the threat verified, the next step was determining its magnitude. Emiri Kimidori had helpfully provided them with a list of the universes the gods had accessed via their territory, and an expedition led by Hayate’s old friend Chrono had been sent to investigate.

The information they had returned with was less than encouraging. A single prototype frigate had engaged a quarter of a galaxy and effectively won. After hours of debate, High Command reached a decision – the Bureau could not deal with this situation on its own. Allies were required. The campaign against the invaders was designated ‘Operation Guardian’, a pleasingly ambiguous title that covered a multitude of sins.

Two universes were immediately obvious as candidates, being both easily-accessible from Bureau-administered territory, and relatively high on the energy gradient, indicating advanced sentient civilisations within (or that several stars had simultaneously gone supernova, which the more cynical technicians noted likely amounted to the same thing anyway). One was on the list of places affected by Chaos, which likely gave them some sort of motive assuming that the gods were using their standard methods of diplomacy. The other had no supposable motive, but such a ridiculously high energy reading that overtures were probably worth a shot anyway.

Personnel from the Eventide were assigned to both missions, those headed for the former led by Nanoha, and those headed for the latter commanded by Hayate herself. At present, though, said ‘command’ merely consisted of the omnipresent Signum, who had no doubt come up with several dozen ways to incapacitate or kill their escort by now (should the situation demand it, of course), and Corporals Nakajima and Lanster, who were busily gawping at their surroundings... especially Corporal Nakajima.

Hayate, on the other hand, was rather bemused. The city was impressive, yes, but not that much more so than the expensive bits of Mid-Childa. She’d seen the readings, and these people were practically living in caves and picking the lice off each others’ backs compared to their full potential.

Ignorance or deliberate limitation, I wonder? If the latter, why?

They approached the entrance to an official-looking building that appeared to be built on a slight rise, letting it overlook the rest of the city. One of the guards peeled off from the group and inputted a code into a panel discreetly hidden in one of the columns flanking the doors. Said doors slid open smoothly, revealing a grandiose, red-carpeted hall beyond. At one end was another set of doors built into a thick vertical cylinder that was presumably some sort of lift. The shining gold of the city extended inside as well, set off nicely by rows of white marble statues depicting heroic-looking figures that lined the walls, many of them wearing frankly improbable sunglasses.

By now, Corporal Nakajima had produced a camera from somewhere within her uniform and started taking pictures, earning a sour look and sharp reprimand from Corporal Lanster.

“Behave, children,” Signum muttered.

The two young mages hastily saluted and attempted to display the lethally alert intelligence befitting Bureau forwards, almost tripping over each other in the process. It took quite a bit of effort for Hayate to keep a straight face.

Remember, ladies, we’re here as ambassadors of the TSAB. Do try to make a good impression, won’t you?

Aye, ma’am.

A-aye, ma’am.

The lift turned out to be a clear-walled affair, offering spectacular views of both the interior of the building and the city beyond. It rose at a faintly terrifying rate – even the guards looked slightly disconcerted. Eventually, it levelled out at around the fiftieth floor, opening into a spacious office which most likely managed to achieve its combination of open-roofed vista and pleasantly warm climate through the judicious use of force-fields.

Two men stood in the office, both in the rather garish neon-trimmed clothing that appeared to be standard issue on this world. One was the sort of unobtrusive clerkish type who was seemingly cloned in vats across the multiverse, and the other was a tall, craggy-featured individual dressed in a predominantly white outfit that looked very much like some sort of military uniform.

“Ah, hello,” the latter said in a deep, smooth voice. “You are Colonel Yagami, yes? A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Hayate replied. “Sir, we approached you because-“

He cut her off with a gesture and an amused smile. “Don’t tell me. You’re having problems with a bunch of well-intentioned extremists who are trying to prevent some vast cosmic catastrophe and inflicting far more harm than good in the process. That about cover it?”

She stared at him. “How did you know?”

“We get a lot of those around here. I used to be one myself, in fact.” He turned to the clerk. “Hoshino, get our guests something to drink, would you?”

“Of course, President Rossiu.”

 

[Iaculus]

10. Hospital Visit

It was in fact almost a week after Asukhon’s visit and the events that had followed that Kyon and Maria’s breakout attempt began. The student’s nightmares had been getting worse and more vivid, not only including what had happened to him so far (which was bad enough), but other things as well. He saw palaces of bones stretching from the ruins of North High School, lines of captured espers being herded into hatchways like yawning mouths, and at the centre of it all, Haruhi screaming into the darkness as a grinning, shadowy figure slowly stripped away everything that made her human. At times, things got so bad and so vivid that he suspected some form of outside influence at work.

They had taken the bandages off halfway through the week, leaving a throbbing, purplish bruise that he dimly recognised as having been received when the Koizumi-thing slammed his head into the coffee table before – no, best not to think about that. It repeated itself often enough in his sleep as it was.

There was a rapping at the door, and Maria’s voice called out softly.

“It’s time, Kyon.”

Finally... “All right – I’ll just get ready, shall I?”

He went to get dressed, pausing at the wardrobe for s moment to decide precisely what one should wear when engaged in a suicidal attack against sadistic gods. In the end, he picked the dinner jacket he had received at his first meeting with them, deciding that the unasked-for gift would provide just the right ‘screw you’ message. The bow tie was fiddly as ever, though.

He retrieved the Noisy Cricket from beneath his pillow and tucked it into his trouser pocket, marvelling yet again at its diminutive size. Not for the first time, he wondered if he was being deliberately set up for failure, but decided it didn’t matter. Whatever the case, he was determined to give a good account of himself before he went, if only to see the expressions on the gods’ faces.

Walking back into the lounge, he checked himself out in the mirror. Pale, nervous, and sweating profusely, but his hands were steady and his eyes calm. Best I can hope for, I suppose. He turned to the door, ignoring the drone as it flashed a few interrogative symbols at him.

“Right then,” he said. “Let’s do this.”

Maria opened said door with one hand. The other held an enormous black rifle. Following Kyon’s gaze, she grinned.

“Hellgun. Basically, a very powerful rapid-firing laser. Borrowed it from a friend in the armoury – he owes me a few favours.”

“How come I don’t get one?”

“Well, I could offer several reasons – training requirements, for a start – but mostly because I couldn’t get the damned thing through the flap, and carrying two at once is a really good way to attract suspicion.” She glanced up and down the corridor. “All clear – let’s go.”

The drone chirped a warning, and buzzed in threateningly. She levelled the hellgun at it, there was a sharp crack, and the little machine fell to the floor in pieces.

“Did I ever mention how much I hate those things?” she asked nobody in particular.

Kyon set off after her. “So, where are we headed?”

“The gods’ private quarters – they’re a little way south of here. They’re changing the guard at the moment, which means lots of coverage of the outside of the Palace, but not much inside. We should be able to get there relatively unopposed, and once we’ve done so, I’ve got a few little surprises prepared for them.” She patted the webbing slung over her armour.

It was at that point, of course, that they rounded a corner and met an entire squad of palace guards going the other way.

Maria didn’t bother trying to talk her way out of the situation. Instead, she simply unslung her rifle and sent a barrage of invisible shots into her erstwhile colleagues. They tried to respond, but she was moving too fast to target, hammering into them in the confined quarters with the force of a freight train. Kyon, meanwhile, could only hide and stare.

She grabbed a guard by the arm and pulled. Kyon had seen this manoeuvre in playground brawls – normally, it either overbalanced your opponent or earned you a punch to the face. He’d never seen it rip a limb off before. He turned around, tried very hard not to get reacquainted with the morning meal, and almost succeeded.

Sometime later, he straightened up, wiped his mouth with his sleeve, and looked back at the corridor. There wasn’t much left of the patrol – just organic debris scattered across the floor. And the walls. And the ceiling. His stomach heaved again.

Maria looked up, idly scraping something sticky and reddish-brown off her gloves. “They know we’re here now. We should get moving.”

Kyon remembered the drone. “I think they already knew. Look, how did you do that?”

She grinned, and broke into a loping run. “Didn’t think the gods would want ordinary humans as guards, did you?”

He struggled after her, trying to ignore the unpleasant squelching sensation under his shoes. “No, I suppose not, but they didn’t seem very-”

“Less talking, more fleeing,” the renegade guard growled. “Do you want to get caught?”

“R-right...” Sense of impending doom... rising.

They actually managed to get quite some distance before they ran into another of the palace’s inhabitants. This one was a solitary guard, who appeared from one of the passageways behind them as they exited a Y-shaped junction. He stared at them for a moment, before taking aim at Maria’s back.

Kyon acted on pure instinct, tugging the Noisy Cricket out of his pocket, pointing it in the general direction of the soldier, and pulling the trigger. The tiny gun let out a deafening roar and he was hurled backwards by the recoil, missing the wall by scant inches. Once he had regained his senses, he got back to his feet and assessed the damage.

It had been intended as a warning shot, more to throw the man’s aim off than anything else. Instead, the roof had collapsed around the area of impact, and everything of the guard above the waist was simply... gone. If he hadn’t already lost his breakfast, he would have done so then.

As he stared blankly at the dainty wisp of smoke coming from the Cricket’s barrel, Maria gave him a thumbs-up. “Nice save, Kyon.”

“Don’t... umm... don’t mention it. Maria, you mentioned fleeing earlier. Fleeing would be a very good idea right now, I think.”

Another grin. “Looks like you’re starting to catch on.”

Kyon said nothing in response – he was too busy remembering the brief spray of red he had seen as the Cricket fired. Something else to haunt my dreams. Lovely.

They continued onwards, more slowly this time, with Maria checking the angles whenever they came to another intersection. Though they all started to look the same after a while, Kyon was pretty sure he recognised this one.

“Maria, would I be right in thinking we’re near the hospital?”

“Yep. Why’d you ask?”

He remembered a child’s face, staring at him with terrified blue eyes. Vita.

“We...need to stop by there. I’ve got a friend-”

“Look, if this is about that kid you met when they were patching you back together, Kyon? It sounded like the gods got their claws pretty deep into her. I’m sorry to say it, I really am, but they’ve probably turned her already. Even if they haven’t she’s too far gone for you to save. Trust me – I’ve seen this a dozen times by now. The toughest of them lasted a couple of weeks. A child? She doesn’t stand a chance. Just think of it as another thing we need to pay those twisted freaks back for, that’s my advice.”

Kyon shook his head. “No. I need to find out for myself. If there’s even a chance-“

“There isn’t! That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! Besides, what would you do even if she is recoverable? We’re in the heart of the gods’ domain – there isn’t any way out. Were you intending to hide her in a closet or something?” She was simmering with barely-controlled anger, the scars on her face turning white.

“Look, if you don’t want to-” Why is she getting so agitated about this?

“I don’t want to see some white-knight teenage idiot dying pointlessly. Is that so hard to understand?”

“We’re going to die anyway, Maria,” he replied with a calm he hadn’t known he possessed. “I thought that was rather the point of this, in fact. Now I’ve been given the option, I’d prefer to go doing something constructive than facing down an eldritch abomination with a high-explosive pea-shooter.”

“You talked to her for five minutes and you’re prepared to throw your life away on some kind of quixotic rescue attempt? Kyon, there’s chivalry, and then there’s flat-out idiocy.”

“They had her strapped to a hospital bed for weeks. Everything they did to me, she got three times over. Nobody deserves that – creepy not-quite-children included.”

Maria’s eyes flared, and it wasn’t just a figure of speech. Her skin reddened, and flickers of motion appeared on her face like worms under her flesh.

“You idiot,” she snarled through rapidly-growing fangs. “You spineless, pathetic moron.”

Kyon backed away, fumbling for his gun. “Maria-“

“Don’t ‘Maria’ me, brat!” Her voice had an animalistic snarl to it. “I spend day after day trying to be your friend, soaking in your pointless, juvenile bullshit, and offering you sweet revenge on a silver platter, and what do you do? Try to crawl out of it at the earliest opportunity just because you can’t bear the thought of getting blood on those lily-white hands of yours, am I right?”

A pair of horns had emerged from her forehead, and there was a deafening crack as two vast, leathery wings smashed their way through her body armour. Kyon could only stare, paralysed.

The thing that had been Maria grinned horribly. “Come on, Kyon – I’ll show you what you’ve been missing out on. You’re far too weak to admit it, I’m sure, but there was a bit of you that enjoyed watching that mortal die, wasn’t there? That sweet, addictive rush of power... me and my sisters feed on it, you know? I felt it bleeding off you. I know what you’re capable of. Let me show you how the experts do things...”

She raised the hellgun... but it wasn’t a gun, not any more. In its place was an enormous, spike-hafted axe, its blades engraved with unholy runes. She took a few experimental swings, the weapon softly moaning as it cleaved the air, and advanced towards him.

Kyon had been in this situation before, when the insane Humanoid Interface Ryoko Asakura had cornered him in a classroom with some precision reality-warping and a very large knife. Maria, though, didn’t need any special powers to immobilise him – those burning yellow eyes did the job quite nicely. She left charred hoof-prints on the carpet as she walked forward, the axe tracing ever-more-complex patterns in front of her.

Yuki, if you’re planning on staging a dramatic rescue, now would be the time...

His fingers brushed against the warm metal grip of the Cricket, jolting him out of his mesmeric trance. He leapt backwards, eliciting an outraged howl from the daemon, and drew the miniature pistol. He fired and turned as he did so, letting the momentum propel him into a running start. Not looking back, he sprinted down the corridor, trying to remember the route to the hospital.

I have to get her out of here. I have to.

***

Tzintchi whistled in appreciation as the daemon who had employed the cover identity of ‘Maria Vargas’ was explosively atomised.

“And that, my dear,” he said smugly to Asukhon, “is why you don’t use daemons with self-control issues for a job like this. You know, I would have happily provided one of my own Black Pharaohs if you’d only asked.”

She snorted. “And have you steal the thunder? Not bloody likely. I wanted a shot at turning the runt myself – would have worked, too, if that digitised whore hadn’t squirreled away sweet little Mikuru before we could get our hands on her. Besides, I figured that you’d have a backup plan anyway – you always do. So what is it?”

Tzintchi leaned back, all four of his current mouths stretched into broad smiles. “Simple. We do nothing.”

The other gods stared at him – except for Reigle, who was busy doing something unpleasant and probably unsanitary in the corner.

“I... don’t follow,” Mislaato said eventually.

“We let him carry on his merry way, think he’s foiled our plot. No need to pull back the guards, either – we need a bit of verisimilitude, after all, and what he did to poor old Maria raises some interesting possibilities; it might be that placing him in mortal peril could trigger an ascension. Asuka, dear, I want you on station in case that happens.”

“On it,” she acknowledged. “You’re not expecting it to, though. Happen, that is.”

“Nope – it’s a possibility, but not a real likelihood. There aren’t that many patrols between buddy Kyon and his objective – he might even get through unopposed. Once that happens, well... how’s Vita doing?”

“Ready to be moved out, last I checked,” Mislaato replied. “We were thinking of having her stationed to the Divine Assassin training camp in Greece. She’s become a lot more tractable of late – think Asuka’s intervention really helped.”

“Glad to hear it. Ladies, grab the popcorn – either we’re about to get a new god on our side, or an entity capable of killing a god. That, I believe, is what’s technically known as a ‘win-win situation’.”

***

Kyon scuttled through the corridors, clutching the Cricket tightly. He’d encountered a few guards since Maria’s attack, but a few shots in their direction had proven an adequate deterrent. He’d mostly tried to aim for walls and ceilings, attempting to block their pursuit, but the little weapon was horribly inaccurate, and it didn’t help that he’d never fired a gun before that day. He hoped he hadn’t hurt too many of them.

Eventually, he turned a corner and saw the sterile whiteness of the hospital ward ahead. He charged in, setting off about a dozen alarms as he did so. Wonderful.

Medical staff closed in from both directions, brandishing either nasty-looking surgical implements or their own natural weaponry, which was generally even worse. He pointed the Cricket at them, fervently wishing that he had been given a more intimidating-looking weapon. Given the way they recoiled from it, though, they had presumably seen one in action before.

“Vita! VITA!”

“Kyon?” The voice was faint and slightly muffled, coming from some way down the left-hand side of the ward.

Kyon rushed towards it, waving the gun at the advancing staff in what he hoped was a threatening manner. He tugged aside the curtain... and saw a girl apparently in her mid-teens, sitting up in bed. She was wearing a standard-issue hospital gown, and her head was shaved. About the only thing he recognised was those strange, elongated eyes.

“... Vita?”

She smiled. “Hello, Kyon. The gods told me you were coming. They’ve done so much for me, you know – let me see the world in a whole new light. I can’t wait to help my friends learn about it, especially Hayate. She won’t like it at first – I certainly didn’t – and I might have to hurt her a little to get the message across, but she’ll come around in the end. Then we’ll be together forever.”

The smile vanished, and her eyes narrowed. “But you don’t want that, do, you, Kyon? You want to take me away, try to ‘save’ me, ruin everything the gods have done. It’s because you’re scared. Scared of what they can do for you. You aren’t worthy of their love. That’s why you have to die – they told me that, too.”

She extended her arm outwards, and a long-handled hammer appeared from it. It seemed to be a product of the same design school as Maria’s axe – lots of dark iron, jagged spikes, and glowing runes.

Kyon backed away. “Vita, seriously, snap out of it. This isn’t funny. Didn’t you say you didn’t want Hayate to see you as a pet?” Christ on a bike, am I some sort of magnet for girls with psycho weapons or something?

She stood up, holding the hammer nonchalantly in one hand. “That’s the thing, though – I’m not a pet. I’m a servant, a worshipper. I was wrong, and I’m going to teach Hayate that as well, even if I have to engrave the truth on her body.”

“You say it like there’s a difference,” Kyon replied, trying to play for time. Last time, she mentioned a reset code or something. Come on, what was it again? Think, Kyon!

Vita didn’t take the bait, though, instead simply swinging the hammer at him and forcing him to take a few more steps back. By now, the hospital staff had formed a ring around them, their faces alight with savage anticipation.

He ducked under a second swing, and felt his shoes slip against the vinyl flooring. He fell, and felt hands grab his left arm while a claw closed around his right, causing the Cricket to fall to the ground. Thus immobilised, he could only watch as Vita raised the hammer for the killing blow.

“Stahlwind B-2!” he screamed. “STAHLWIND B-2!”

The effect was instantaneous. Red light poured from the transformed girl’s body, and she let loose an ear-piercing shriek. When it had faded, the red-headed child he had seen on his first trip to the hospital stood in her place, wearing a simple black dress. Even the hammer was different, a gleaming steel affair devoid of its former unsightly decoration.

She looked around, her gaze lashing into the assembled medics like a whip. “What did you do to me?”

They shuffled backwards, gradually picking up speed, until the shuffling developed into a full-scale rout. Kyon, meanwhile, was unceremoniously dumped to the floor. Vita glanced down at him, and the edge of her mouth lifted in a typically un-childlike expression.

“Kyon, right? I owe you one, kid.”

He got up awkwardly, stuffing the Cricket back into his pocket as he did so. “No problem. Umm... are you all right?”

“Been better,” she replied absently, looking around. “That’s the thing I hate about resets – well apart from the potential data corruption, anyway. Hayate spent ages making my clothes, and now they’re likely gone for good. Hospital freaks probably burned the physical copies too, knowing them.”

She tugged the hem of her skirt. “I hate this default design – the shoulder-straps really chafe after a while. S’why it became tradition for our masters to provide their own. Hayate always did the best ones, though.”

Kyon cleared his throat as she continued into a reminiscent grumble, and she gave a guilty start.

“Crap – getting distracted in the middle of enemy territory? Those deific bastards are going to pay for what they did to my head. Come on, kid – let’s go. I don’t want to spend a minute longer in this shithole.”

She stumped off, hammer at the ready. Kyon followed, smiling in relief. He might have still been in the middle of a gigantic, monster-filled stronghold that didn’t obey the laws of reality, but he suddenly felt a whole lot safer.

***

Meanwhile, in the Eye, Tzintchi stared blankly at the display.

“Didn’t see that coming,” he said. “Really should have, but I didn’t.”

“So what do we do now?” Asukhon asked.

“Reinforce the top floors of the Palace, and deploy three air legions into the Geofront. Orders should be to redirect the fugitives downwards if possible, and employ lethal force if not.”

All three of them looked at Reigle. Eventually, Tzintchi shrugged.

“What she said.”

The goddess of despair smiled, revealing row after row of decayed teeth.

 

[Iaculus]

11. Relocation, Relocation, Relocation

Kyon and Vita ran – not in any particular direction, but just generally away. The corridors had changed, going from five-star-hotel luxury to stark, metallic functionality, like what he imagined the inside of a high-tech military base looked like. There were signs at the junctions, but none of them seemed to point anywhere useful. Maybe some people could have constructed an elaborate escape mechanism out of medical supplies and cleaning equipment, but Kyon wasn’t one of them.

“At least they don’t seem to be chasing us anymore,” Vita commented.

There was a series of harsh, metallic clangs from an interconnecting side-passage, and an armoured behemoth hove into view. It was easily eight feet tall and inhumanly broad, holding an enormous, boxy cannon in its gauntleted hands. Its head was obscured by a stylised helmet that vaguely resembled a howling face.

“You... just had... to say... it, didn’t... you?” Kyon wheezed.

The apparition snarled something unintelligible, and levelled its weapon at them. To the student’s terrified eyes, the barrel seemed to stare, becoming large enough to fit his head inside.

Vita brought her hammer into the guard position, and a grating, robotic voice came from it.

“Panzer Hindernis.”

A geometric shell of red light appeared before her, just as the monster opened fire. The corridor was lit by a barrage of detonations that seemed to go on forever... but when the smoke cleared, Vita was still standing, the barrier cracked but unbroken. She held out her hand, and a row of iron spheres appeared from nowhere, suspended above the ground. Kyon, standing behind her, couldn’t see her face, but knew that it was wearing a diabolical grin.

“My turn.”

“Schwalbe Fliegen,” the hammer announced, and she swung it into the waiting balls, surrounding them with ominous red energy and propelling them forwards.

The monster stopped trying to reload and attempted to dive out of the way, but the corridor was simply too narrow. The projectiles turned in midair and slammed into it with the force of cannon-shot, knocking it backwards and cracking its armour.

Vita didn’t give it a moment to recover, charging forwards with her hammer raised.

“Tödliche Strafe!”

The blow landed with an enormous explosion, sending the monster skidding away on its back, trailing bits of armour. It came to rest against the far wall, still smoking slightly.

Kyon peered over her shoulder. “Is it-?”

“Unconscious. Should be out for a few hours, though. Space Marines are tough sons-of-bitches.”

She glanced at the signs on the intersection. “Good news, kid. Observation deck this way. Observation deck means windows. Windows mean a way out.”

“Eh? How? Don’t tell me you’re planning on us jumping out of-”

She indicated downwards, and he saw that she was hovering several inches above the ground. “Next question?”

“Retracted.”

“Good. Let’s get going, shall we? Oh, and if you look up my skirt, I’ll stick Graf Eisen where the sun does not shine.”

“What? Why would I want to?”

“Crap – that reset de-aged me again, didn’t it? I swear, kid, you do not know what frustration truly is until you’ve gone seven hundred years without hitting puberty.”

Kyon had to smile at that. “Trust me – it’s overrated.”

“Given that this one involved me getting turned into a brainwashed, homicidal slave, you might have a point. Like I said, let’s go.”

She floated off in a manner that made Kyon acutely conscious of his aching legs. He staggered after her, wishing for one insane moment that the SOS Brigade’s cross-country session had contained less Mikuru-retrieval and more actual running.

As they approached the observation deck, they heard more heavy footsteps similar to those of the Marine Vita had defeated. She held up a hand.

“Hold it, kid.”

They stood there for a few moments, before she spoke again in a low voice.

“Shit – it’s a full combat squad. No helping it, this is going to get messy. Close your eyes, kid. I don’t want you to see this.”

Kyon did as he was told, and heard the voice of her hammer, Graf Eisen, again.

“Raketenform.”

For good measure, he put his fingers in his ears. That didn’t block out everything, though.

After the commotion had died down, he removed the fingers, opened the eyes, and walked into the room. It was huge, several stories high, with balconies and walkways obscuring much of the ceiling. One wall was entirely comprised of a glass window overlooking n enormous, cavernous space in which distant, winged figures soared with liquid grace. In the middle of the deck Vita was leaning on her hammer, panting. Leaned against the walls were the bodies of five Marines. Two were in good enough repair to presumably be unconscious. The others... weren’t.

“Wh-what did you do to them?” he asked.

Vita looked up, her face grim. “I’m a killer, kid. It’s what I was designed for. Hayate helped me a lot, and I try to avoid it when possible these days, but sometimes... sometimes, you have to go back to your roots.”

She pointed up at the walkways. “Clear a few of those away, would you? I need some elbow room if I’m going to get through that window.”

Oh, right, the Cricket. He opened fire, taking chunks out of the masonry and getting driven to his knees by the recoil in the process. Vita rolled out of the way as a particularly large piece of debris fell dangerously close.

“Not now, you idiot! Wait until I’m clear!”

He winced. “Oh, damn, sorry, I wasn’t thinking...”

“That much is evident,” she grumbled, brushing lint off her shoulder. “Can you try it again, please? Without almost crushing me this time.”

“Got it.”

A few dozen blasts later, and the obstructions were cleared, creating an impressive pile of rubble on the floor. By now, Kyon had seriously started to wonder about the Noisy Cricket. Where does such a tiny gun keep all that ammunition? Does it ever run out?

Beside him, Vita gave a satisfied smile. “That’s better. Stand back, kid – I’m going to make us an exit.”

She climbed to the top of the rubble, absently kicking one of the unconscious Space Marines in the head as she went by. Once she reached the summit, she regarded the window for a few seconds, before swinging Graf Eisen in a wide arc that looped all the way around her body.

“Zerstörungform!” it announced with metallic satisfaction, and its head reshaped itself in a flash of red light.

The new form resembled an enormous, blocky, drill-tipped missile, bigger than Vita herself. Not that that stopped her from carrying it with almost the same ease as when it had been about the size of a croquet mallet, though. She leapt into the air and raised the enormous hammer above her head, its handle stretching and head expanding to an impossible size. Suddenly, Kyon understood very well why she had wanted some space cleared before she tried this.

“Destruction Hammer!” she screamed, and brought the weapon crashing downwards.

The window was clearly made out of something tougher than glass – diamond, perhaps, which would certainly be in-keeping with the gods’ fondness for ostentation. That didn’t save it, though. Engine flaring and drill spinning, the missile-hammer smashed into it, and after a moment’s resistance, it gave way in a rain of broken panes and glittering shards.

Happily for Kyon, he had managed to retrieve his jaw from the floor before she turned around.

“Impressive,” he said with forced nonchalance.

Vita managed a dainty midair bow as Graf Eisen returned to its usual form. “Why, thank you, kind sir.”

She drifted down, turned her back to him, and indicated her waist. “Hold on tight, kid – things are going to get a little bit bumpy.”

Kyon knelt down and put his arms around her, feeling intensely awkward. “Are you sure you’ll be able to lift both of us?”

“Unless you were downing lead weights for breakfast, shouldn’t be a problem,” she replied. “Then again, given the hospital food...”

They lifted off, and the student learned another important lesson – namely, that eight-year-olds, no matter how inhumanly strong they happen to be, are not naturally-suited for having your entire body-weight hanging off them. An intelligent designer, he thought, would have given them handles somewhere around the kidneys. He held on as tight as he could, ignoring the dull pain in his arms, and hoped fervently that he wasn’t doing something ghastly to her internal organs in the process.

As they flew into the cavern, Kyon took the opportunity to look around. There was something weirdly organic about the place, as if they were in the stomach of some leviathan. Structures hung from the ceiling like stalactites, and the walls had an odd, shifting appearance to them, as if they were home to uncounted millions of tiny (or not-so-tiny) creatures. There was a strange, clammy yellow mist in the air that obscured the most distant reaches of the cavern, and he couldn’t help but wonder just how big it was.

You could fit an entire city in here. Another glance at the buildings both above and below. Maybe they did.

“What’s the plan?” he asked.

“The gods told me about this place,” Vita replied. “They called it the Geofront, an enormous artificial cavern under Tokyo-3 that got turned into a military base by the old regime.”

“Tokyo-3?”

“Think they got a bit careless with the first two. Point is, it’s supposedly not that far underground. If we get to the roof, we might be able to either find an exit or make another one of our own.”

“Sounds good to me. Hey, what are those big black clouds up there?”

“They’re... not clouds,” Vita replied slowly. “Holy shit, incoming!”

The nearest ‘cloud’ approached with unnatural speed, resolving itself into a mass of the airborne figures he had seen through the window. Kilted, shadow-faced male figures sent bolts of energy from crackling staves in their direction, whilst red-skinned, leather-winged she-daemons (presumably Maria’s ‘sisters’) and skeletal, mangy crows the size of condors swooped in close, axes and talons at the ready respectively.

Vita dodged, dived, and rolled out of the way, almost dislodging Kyon in the process, as the assembled daemons’ maniacal laughter screeched in their ears.

“Your gun!” she yelled. “Give it to me!”

Don’t ask for much, do you? He reluctantly unwrapped one of his arms from around her, wincing as his abused muscles protested once more, and fumbled in his trouser pocket for the Cricket, praying that it hadn’t fallen out during the flight. Eventually, he managed to grab it, took it out, and placed it in her outstretched hand... just as one of the monstrous crows charged into them.

Kyon lost his grip, tumbling away with a startled curse. He flapped at the air, more to show willing than out of any serious hope that it might prove useful, and managed to end up facing downwards, watching the distant cavern floor rise to meet him.

Not that anyone intended to let him reach it, though.

A cluster of daemons detached themselves from the main swarm, flying beside him with mocking catcalls. One of them circled beneath him, the darkness that obscured its face yawning wide. It rose (or maybe just slowed down), rushing towards Kyon with its taloned hands outstretched as if attempting an embrace.

Desperately, the student punched downwards, his fist striking where the creature’s nose should have been and sinking into the encroaching blackness. It came into contact with... something, and the daemon screamed, falling away with its limbs flailing and its kilt flapping around it.
He stared at his arm, faintly relieved that his hand was still attached to it, as the other daemons closed in, snarling. Of all the ways I expected to go, being torn apart in midair by warped sentient manifestations of human emotion was not one. Funny, that.

Explosions sounded around him, the shockwaves battering every part of his body that wasn’t already sore, as the creatures were plucked away one by one. From behind, he heard Graf Eisen’s mechanical voice.

“Pferde!” it spat, and Vita was there beside him, effortlessly snapping off shots with the Noisy Cricket.

“Can’t leave you to your own devices for one moment, can I, kid?” she asked with a grin. “Grab on now – that face of yours is ugly enough without being splattered across a hundred-metre radius.”

She moved in closer, and Kyon did as was suggested. “Thanks, Vita.” That’s right... mock the guy who’s falling to his death. It’s not as if he minds or anything...

“No problem. Looks like we’re going to have to abandon our plans for the old up-and-out, though; there’s just too many of those daemonic fuckers around the roof. Time to get... creative.”

At that, the student squeezed harder. He would have closed his eyes as well, but fascinated horror and the rushing wind forced them to remain open.

They swooped between two of the ziggurat-like structures rearing from the ground, sparkles on their surface resolving themselves into a barrage of projectiles and energy bolts that streaked past them like horizontal rain. Vita didn’t bother with her shield, evading the defence systems’ attacks with eye-blurring speed as Kyon flopped behind her like a partially-unfastened rear bumper. Gouts of flame appeared on the ziggurats’ upper terraces as the Cricket found its mark.

They descended further, the incoming fire lessening as they left the guns’ field of traverse. Soon, they were skimming barely a couple of metres above the rocky ground, the huge buildings drifting by on either side like mountains overlooking a valley.

“Are we still being followed, kid?” Vita asked.

Kyon looked back. “Yep. Three big swarms, right behind us.”

“Great. What did we do to them?”

“Umm... try to escape from prison, killing, incapacitating, and otherwise injuring several of their compatriots in the process?”

“I mean apart from that!”

“Insult their dress-sense?”

“When did we do that?”

“Right now. Blue-and-gold kilts? Really?”

A snigger. “I could get used to having you around, kid. Hey, is that what I think it is?”

They flew into a depression between four of the smaller buildings that looked to Kyon’s eyes like a gigantic drainage basin. A moment later, he realised that that was precisely what it was. Unpleasant greenish-brown stains streaked the sides, and the grate at the bottom was large and imposing enough to resemble a castle’s portcullis. Vita dove in for a landing, settling down with military precision. Her taller passenger, meanwhile, was deposited in an undignified heap behind her, further ruining his clothes.

Lovely – more bruises, he thought sourly. Amazed she hasn’t used me as living ammunition or something yet.

“Try to get that gate open,” she ordered. “I’ll hold them off.”

The energy shell reappeared, just as the surrounding emplacements opened fire on them. Kyon crawled over to the grate, looking for a handle or pulley system. All he found was an engraving on one side, eroded but still readable.

‘Speak the name of the Queen of Plagues, and enter. Invite her into your heart, and she shall protect you from what lies within.’

And they can’t use normal safety notices because...? “Vita, any idea who the ‘Queen of Plagues’ is?”

Her voice was strained, distracted. “Well, Reigle’s their goddess of disease and despair, right? She’d fit. Make it fast, kid – don’t know how much longer I can keep this shield up.”

“Gotcha. PRAISE REIGLE!”

There was a weird lurching sensation in his stomach as he said it, and the grate began to creak open with glacial slowness, releasing a gust of foul-smelling air.

“We’re clear!”

“Glad to hear it. One sec – I’ll be right with you.”

The daemons had arrived, boiling over the lip of the basin like a tidal wave. The shield vanished, and Vita whipped her hammer to one side.

“Gigantform!” it roared, and the head transformed once more, this time into something as large and blocky as the earlier drill-tipped affair but still recognisably hammer-shaped.

Vita extended a hand, and another iron sphere appeared in front of her, much larger than the ones she had used against the Marine. She drew back Graf Eisen, before slamming it into the projectile with a titanic crash.

“Kometen Fliegen!”

The ball, now a bolt of dull red fire, impacted in the midst of the approaching swarm, creating a huge explosion that blasted bits of daemon all over the place. As the survivors reeled back, stunned, Vita ran towards Kyon, grabbing his wrist and dragging him with her into the waiting darkness of the drainage chute.

Here we go again...

 

[Iaculus]

12. Fireside Chat

The walls of the chute skidded past on either side, details like ladders and maintenance hatches disappearing just as fast as they appeared. Kyon had seldom felt the strange sensation of being tugged upwards by air resistance, and it was not one that he wished to repeat any time soon. The further down they went, the warmer (and more noisome) the surrounding atmosphere became, as if they were diving into the stomach of some huge, alien creature – and given the peculiar architecture that the gods favoured, that might not have been all that far off the mark.

An enormous explosion sounded far behind them, causing the walls to shake and backlighting them with a dull orange glow.

“Pferde!” Graf Eisen announced once more, and Vita accelerated, the chute becoming an indistinct blur around them.

“What just happened?” Kyon asked, having to force his mouth open against the roaring wind.

“Left them a present,” Vita gasped. “Good news is, should block off their pursuit. Bad news – we’ve likely got a whole lot of rubble coming after us. Oh, and I really hope you had that titchy gun of yours insured.”

He looked back, and immediately wished he hadn’t. A wall of dust and assorted debris bore down on them, boiling along the tunnel like steam. Trying to take his mind off it, he turned back to Vita – well, the back of her head, anyway.

“Incidentally, what does ‘pferde’ mean, exactly? Just curious.”

“... ‘Horse Speed’,” she replied grudgingly. “If you wish to make some smartass remark about it, go right ahead. I might even keep holding onto you afterwards.”

“Who, me? Wouldn’t dream of it.”

They emerged into the drainage system’s sump, a huge chamber whose vaulted walls and ceiling had an odd, fleshy appearance to them. Vita veered upwards just in time to avoid both the unhealthy-looking sludge that half-filled the room and the prophesied rubble that had followed them all the way down. Droplets of liquid splattered them as the debris hit the pool, leaving an unpleasant itching, burning sensation where they contacted skin.

The diminutive mage came to a halt near the roof, looking around at the mass of pipes and chutes that fed into the sump. “Which way now, kid?”

“Whichever one looks like it has the least of that gunk flowing through it, I say,” Kyon replied from below, desperately trying not to look up for fear of receiving a hammer-based enema.

“Smart choice. How about... this one?”

The indicated tunnel was cracked and age-worn, bearing little evidence of the strange corruption that had infested the rest of the sewer system – or, at least, not the same kind of evidence. As they flew into it, he saw pallid vegetation that coated significant parts of the walls and seemed to move without the assistance of the wind.

After a few dozen metres, the sewer levelled out to a comfortable walking gradient, which Vita duly took advantage of. Kyon was ready this time, and managed to land mostly on his feet. Pleasingly, the sewer water here was merely foul-smelling rather than actively harmful like the stuff in the main sump, though he didn’t like the brownish stains it left on the knees of his trousers.

“Looks like another room up ahead,” Vita observed.

Said room turned out to be a maintenance station, a brutally functional concrete affair lined with various crude-looking gauges and control systems. There was an enclosed area to one side that presumably contained living quarters for extended stays, and strange-looking runes etched on the floor presumably acted as wards to keep the corruption away. For some reason, said runes reminded Kyon rather of the decoration that had adorned Tzintchi’s clothing when he came to visit. The air was cool, especially when compared to the rest of the sewers.

Beside him, Vita rapped the floor with Eisen’s pommel in a satisfied manner. “Think we just hit the jackpot. We can hold out here, wait until things die down upstairs, and then make a break for it. Easy.”

“Think we might want to check those quarters out, though,” the student replied. “This place seems a little too good to be true – I wouldn’t be surprised if it had a few nasty surprises lying around.”

“Fair point.” A sidelong grin. “I’ll go in first – may not have the shirt for it anymore, but the hair’s about the right colour.”

“You’re a sci-fi fan, then?” he asked as he followed her in.

She shrugged. “Hayate was a good host, but she was still a ten-year-old to start out with, and not a healthy one at that. Sometimes, we had to provide our own entertainment. You would not believe the size of the DVD library I collected.”

They looked around. The little room was dingy, but not uninhabitable. Four folding beds were arranged around the walls, and there was even a primitive-looking radio on one of the raised surfaces. The stove was clearly broken, but there were still a couple of spare tanks of fuel for it. All in all, the place gave the impression of being abandoned, but not too long ago. Perhaps it had been adopted by the new ownership in the earliest days of their stay, before they created their own version to better suit their needs. That would certainly explain the runes.
They opened one of the cupboards, and stared at the food. The food stared back.

It was some time before Kyon spoke. “First order of business, we steal some provisions.”

“Agreed,” Vita responded, sounding shaken. “Before that, though, we need to settle in. You get the beds ready, I’ll secure the site.”

She wandered off, leaving him with the daunting challenge of freeing the bunks from a daunting array of catches and straps. He took a quick inventory – everything ached, his clothes were ruined, his arms were wobbling with exhaustion, and on top of it all, he seemed to have the beginnings of a cold.

He set to work, almost losing a few fingers in the process, and soon the beds were, if not pristine, certainly usable. What do you know – that camping trip Haruhi dragged me along for paid off after all.

With that done, all that remained was leaning back on his own bed, sipping brackish tapwater from a cracked mug, and watching as Vita attempted to start a fire using an empty ration tin, assorted vegetation, a generous helping of stove fuel, and, of course, her hammer. Judging by the steady litany of inventive pseudo-Germanic cursing, it wasn’t going well.

Eventually, through the simple expedient of banging the first and last components together, she managed to generate sufficient sparks to create a small, smoky, noxious, and nevertheless welcome blaze. Job done, she walked a short way from their makeshift camp and extended Graf Eisen in front of her.

“Barrier Field, expand,” she commanded.

“Gefängnis der Magie,” the hammer responded, and a dark sphere pulsed out, giving everything within eyesight a greyish, washed-out tone like an overcast sky minus the sky.

She turned back to Kyon, who had sidled over to the fire and was regarding her with a quizzical look.

“Should keep the little beasties out, and the big ones will make enough noise coming in that we’ll know they’re coming. Always helps to take a few extra precautions.”

She sat next to him, and he passed her a second mug. The light was dim, but he could see that she was trembling ever so slightly.

“Are you all right?”

A rueful smile. “Just remembering, is all. That stuff I said to you, back then... it wasn’t something they put in my head. It came from inside, deep within me. There was a part of me that wanted everything they offered, that wanted to kill for the sake of killing, to take Hayate and...”

She trailed off. Instinctively, Kyon put an arm around her shoulders, and wasn’t sure whether to be relieved or disconcerted that it was not torn off immediately afterwards.

“Look, I know there’s some pretty dark stuff in there. I’ve done some bad, bad things in my time – and when you’ve lived as long as I have, that’s saying something. It’s just that... well, having it all shoved in my face again isn’t the most pleasant of experiences. Especially when I thought I’d put it behind me years ago. Was that all a lie? Pretending to be human, being a good little girl, denying my true nature... have I just been delaying the inevitable?”

Amateur psychology, don’t fail me now... “Look, Vita, you’re not alone with this. Everyone has these dark thoughts – that’s why the gods are so fond of turning people with them. They almost got me that way, too. Several times, in fact. Frankly, I’m surprised that that’s as bad as it got, given what you’ve told me about yourself. They’re just that, though – thoughts. They’re no more your ‘true nature’ than your fondness for dodgy Sixties shows, your memories of your time with Hayate, or, hell, even your habit of verbally abusing poor, blameless high-schoolers. It’s what you act on that matters. That’s what makes you who you are. The fact that you’re so upset about it should be proof that you’re not some sort of monster – I’d be far more worried if you were revelling in the evildoing and complaining about how you had to play nice all the time.”

She looked up at him and smiled. He could see tears glistening on her cheeks, and she suddenly looked very little like the living engine of destruction that had broken them out of the Palace’s prison wing.

“Thanks, Kyon. I don’t know, it’s something I’m going to have to think about, but... thanks.”

After a brief silence, he retracted his arm. Welcome or not, really seven hundred years old or not, he couldn’t help but find something vaguely uncomfortable about hugging an eight-year-old who wasn’t a family member for an extended period of time.

“It was weird, though,” she said eventually. “Despite all the horrible stuff they did, despite what they tried to get me to do... they were almost being, well, kind to me. It was as if they thought-”

“-they were doing you a favour?” Kyon finished for her. “Yeah, I heard that one before. Guess she wasn’t lying about everything, then.”

“Who?”

“Maria Vargas. I’d be surprised if you’d heard of her. Nice lady, right until she tried to decapitate me.”

Another contemplative pause, which Kyon finally decided to break.

“So who’s this Hayate person you keep talking about, then?”

“Long answer or short answer?”

“Short answer.”

“She’s the girl who made me a person.”

“OK, poetic but uninformative. Long answer?”

“Well, you know I mentioned I was a sentient magical program, right?”

“Obliquely, yeah. Hence the centuries-spanning lifespan.”

“Bingo. Thing is, I’m not an independent being – well, not entirely, anyway. I’m a defence subroutine of an extremely powerful artefact called the ‘Tome of the Night Sky’. Think your basic stereotypical magical grimoire, only it operates more like a technosorcerous computer.”

“With you so far.”

“Well, the Tome, like most sophisticated artefacts, is pretty much a living being, and like most creatures, it has a distinct life-cycle. It appears somewhere, binds itself to a master, and sends out its guardian programs, the Wolkenritter – that’s ‘Cloud Knights’, in case you were wondering – to harvest magical energy and fill its pages. Once it’s complete, it tanks its master up to the gills with power, and they get to play around with it until either they die or the link is otherwise severed. Usually the former, though.”

“And Hayate was one of these masters, yes?” Kyon surmised. “Mistresses, I mean.”

“It’s ‘master’, actually. In this case, the term’s gender-neutral.”

“Ah, I see.”

“Anyway, yeah, she was. Still is, in fact. Thing was, though, she was a bit different to most of our masters. Usually we get scholars, aspiring warlords, downtrodden wage-slaves... people with something to gain, basically, who wouldn’t object to having a magical superweapon at their disposal. This time, though, we ended up with a lonely ten-year-old-orphan. She didn’t want us, the Wolkenritter, as spies, bodyguards, or assassins – she just wanted a family. For that matter, so did we. I might say we adopted her, but really it was the other way round. Life was good – for once in our long, long lives, we were happy.”

“It didn’t last, though, I take it?”

Another sad smile. “Nothing that nice ever does. By that point, you see, the Tome’s programming was corrupted. Even its name had changed – we knew it as the Book of Darkness. Instead of empowering Hayate, it slowly drained away her life, manifesting itself as a creeping paralysis of the legs. We grew desperate – we knew she wouldn’t want it, but we saw no choice other than to fill the Book, hoping that the power it would grant her might stave off the corruption that was slowly killing her. So we went harvesting.”

“Harvesting?”

“Stealing the Linker Cores – the magical energy sources – of other living beings. Mostly, it wasn’t fatal, just enough to put them in hospital for a few weeks, but accidents happened. We got careless, attracted the attention of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. They’re this big, nebulous organisation, somewhere between an interdimensional police force, a democratic government, and a technosorcerous military academy, though that makes them sound a bit more sinister than they are. Than most of them are, anyway.”

“Magical Men in Black, gotcha.”

“Something like that. Anyway, they started sending enforcers after us, including a couple of irritating kids called Nanoha Takamachi and Fate Testarossa. We didn’t want to listen at first, but they told us more about the Book. As part of it, we were corrupted too, particularly our memories. Not only had we forgotten the Book of Darkness’s original name, but we didn’t know what it did these days when it was completed. Its secondary self-defence programs had gone into overdrive – once they were fully powered up, they killed our masters, turning them into unstoppable monstrosities that could ravage entire worlds. Even if someone did manage to bring them down, the Book’d just reappear somewhere else, starting the cycle all over again.”

Kyon winced. “Ouch. Can’t imagine you took that well.”

“You can say that again. Anyway, things got complicated. One of the Bureau’s top brass had got it into his head that he’d found a way to stop the Book once and for all, and deliberately triggered its activation to put his plan into action. Luckily for us, their ground crew, particularly the two little punks I mentioned earlier, weren’t exactly sold on the idea. They dealt with the physical aspect, while Hayate – get this – managed to talk the Book down. I’ll repeat that in case you missed it; little orphan girl gets absorbed by centuries-old cosmic horror and persuades it to stop.”

Her face glowed with remembered pride.

“So long story short, we and the TSAB detachment managed to excise the corrupted code, restoring Hayate to full health and granting her the full power of the Tome of the Night Sky. It wasn’t easy, and the Tome’s central personality had to sacrifice herself in order to keep the damned thing from respawning, but it was pretty much a happy ending to the whole mess. Hayate joined the Bureau’s military branch a few years later, and started accruing promotions like nobody’s business. We, of course, were with her every step of the way. Matter of fact, she was running the operation when I got captured. That’s why I need to escape – I know she’ll be coming back for me, and I don’t want these devious bastards luring her into a trap.”

She glanced at Kyon.

“What about you, kid? Got anyone waiting for you back home?”

“Several people, actually,” he replied. “It’s a long story, though, and I’m not really the narrator-type. Tell you what – I’ll give you the whole thing tomorrow.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” she replied mock-seriously. “Come on, then – let’s see what sort of mess you made of the beds.”

“Can’t be any worse than your fire.”

“Hey, I got it lit in the end, didn’t I?”

“If by ‘got it lit’ you mean ‘created the single most reliable source of lung cancer in the hemisphere’, then I’d have to say yes, yes you did. Seriously, what did you put in that thing?”

“Oh, so you think you could do any better?”

“Vita, I think there are species of insect that could do better.”

“Look, do you want this hammer rammed up your ass?”

“Pff, that’s your solution to everything. Indicates deeply-rooted Freudian issues, I’m sure.”

“Oh, shut it.”

They continued bickering amiably all the way back to the living quarters, where no sooner had Vita gone through the door than she dived onto the nearest bed and fell asleep, not even bothering with the sheets.

Kyon studied her a moment. Sleeping, she really did look like a child. He took off his jacket and pulled it over her, creating a makeshift blanket. That done, he returned to his own bed, got in, and closed his eyes. Soon he too was asleep.

The nightmares returned, but he’d been expecting them.

***

Outside the quarters, a slight gust of wind whispered through the maintenance section. It seemed to pause over the runes on the floor, creating an almost-imperceptible flicker of light that left them superficially unchanged, but a hypothetical observer who had been there to watch the transition would have noticed that something was missing from the contorted inscriptions afterwards.

One by one, the wards against entropy and disease were deactivated. The wind departed, carrying the faint echoes of a god’s laughter.

 

[Iaculus]

13. Immigration Duty

In a place that was not a place, home of impossible colours, non-Euclidean geometries, and a dozen other Lovecraftian clichés, the Data Integration Thought Entity resided, observing the universe with dispassionate mechanical curiosity.

The invaders’ area of influence had expanded significantly in a short period of time, making limited use of Haruhi Suzumiya’s powers to affect systems in an ever-widening sphere around Earth. The Sol system itself was almost unrecognisable, a festering sore in the mathematical purity of space. Gigantic, bizarre architecture stretched between its planets, shipyards and war factories built on an unprecedented scale, kept in one piece only by gross violations of the laws of physics.

After much debate, the dispute among the Entity’s Interfaces, Administrators, and other components had concluded. Though it was agreed that expulsion of the invaders and alliance with the TSAB and its associates would be the wisest course of action, the Entity was unwilling to tip its metaphorical hand with an overt assault straight away, instead reporting hostile troop movements to the Bureau and concealing their scout vessels from the enemy.

The thing was, though most simulations the Entity had run indicated a high probability of success when running a deletion operation against the forces of Chaos, such an action would also eliminate their potential usefulness. As things stood, the Bureau had a reliable (and more importantly, secret) source of intelligence around which to prepare their counteroffensive, and the Entity itself had the opportunity to study phenomena far outside its existing knowledge-base. In particular, the ‘warp-energy’ that Chaos was fond of using was proving most interesting.

There had been... resistance, though. Despite the decision being encoded as a behavioural edict, a number of Interfaces tasked with observing Earth had cooperated with Bureau agents to evacuate several thousand humans (primarily espers and stranded time-travellers) from that planet in the few days before it had been completely engulfed.

Such a hostile, overt, and above all premature action was a grievous breach of protocol, a form of treason in fact (insofar as it had a concept of treason). The Entity had been forced to conclude that the Interfaces in question had malfunctioned, and had deleted those it could, erasing their backups as well in case the aberrance had spread. One of the units had presented a problem, though – specifically, the renegade Humanoid Interface Yuki Nagato.

On the one hand, said Interface had been the likely instigator of the rebellion, and had more than enough transgressions to her name to warrant deletion ten times over besides (in fact, even her self-identification with a gender-determinate pronoun was a fairly worrying sign). On the other, she was under the protection of a being who had explained in no uncertain terms that harming her would result in swift and apocalyptic retribution. Faced with this dilemma, the Entity had elected to contain her in a secure data vault pending further developments. So far, this had worked reasonably well, as evidenced by the continued existence of the Entity and, indeed, the universe as a whole.

Its etheric sensors picked up a space-time distortion of a familiar pattern – more ships were arriving from the invaders’ home dimension. There were six of them, smaller, more ungainly, and lighter-armed than the warships that had thus far preceded them. Freighters, perhaps, or survey vessels. They were already recharging their warp-engines, and judging by their trajectory, they were headed for TSAB territory.
After a nanosecond’s deliberation, the Entity alerted its Interfaces on Mid-Childa.

***

The Deep Space Surveillance department of the Navigation Bureau was a fairly small outfit crammed into several of the less desirable compartments of the TSAB’s enormous, spaceborne central office. Its staff were considered an odd bunch even by Bureau standards, spending most of their time wrestling with needlessly complex astrophysical equations and fiddling with their instrumentation, a bizarre hotchpotch of gleaming ultramodern technology, obsolete junk, and barely-understood Ancient Belkan artefacts.

They were not, in short, the sort of people one would expect to become a collective lynchpin of a pan-dimensional war effort, but in the past few weeks, that was exactly what they had become. Their list of duties had expanded rapidly, ranging from skimming energy readings off neighbouring universes to performing long-range surveys of the Great Wall.

In all their time, though, they had never had a request like this.

“I’m sorry, sir, but can you please repeat that?” Dr. Solara Kamri asked, hoping that he’d misheard.

“Six Chaos vessels are either approaching Bureau territory or have already entered it,” the High Command comms officer said again, sounding almost indecently bored given the situation. “We want you to find them. Will that be a problem?”

“Umm... no,” Kamri replied. “It might be a bit difficult, but I think we can manage it. Can I get you an update in the next half-hour, please?”

“That would be acceptable,” the comms officer agreed, severing the link with a haughty disdain that managed to convey itself all the way to the DSS department office.

The scientist sagged back in his chair. Explaining to one’s superiors (particularly the formidable Fleet Admiral Thundra) that what they were asking for was impossible was not a course of action conducive to job security. That said, attempting to produce a miracle in thirty minutes wouldn’t exactly be conducive to his mental wellbeing, either.

Sometimes, Kamri wished he could just fade back into obscurity.

“All right, people,” he said, turning to his waiting staff, “it’s needle-in-a-haystack time.”

One of the senior techs winced. “Oh, Kaiser’s blood, we’re not going to be enumerating quasars again, are we?”

Kamri grinned mirthlessly. “Nope. Better. We’re going to be tracking fleet movements. Specifically, six ships of indeterminate size which may or may not all be together at the moment.”

The tech’s jaw dropped. “But that’s-”

“Impossible? Welcome to five minutes ago, Touran.” He clapped his hands. “Move it, folks – we have a job to do.”

The DSS team scattered to their posts – all except for Touran, who was still staring at her boss incredulously.

“Chief, do we even have some sort of identifier for these ships? Anything at all that might distinguish them from your average background radiation?”

Kamri pondered this. “Well, I hear their dimensional drives are pretty weird. That might help. One moment – I’ll go make a call. In the meantime, you hold the fort.”

She inclined her head in acquiescence. “You owe me, chief.”

Think I’m going to be hearing a lot of that soon, he thought to himself as he wandered back to his quarters.

Once inside, he opened a link to an old friend now serving on the Eventide.

Fred, you there?

Sol, you old dog! Long time no see! I presume this isn’t a social call?

‘Fraid not – sorry, Fred. Got a bit of a problem over here, and I need the combat logs from your ship. Specifically, any intel you picked up on Chaos warships.

Wait, are you seriously telling me that you want to obtain under-the-counter copies of classified information? Quartermaster Sergeant Jones asked reproachfully. I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that, Sol.

Sorry, Fred, I just thought-

A man could get in a lot of trouble doing that, you know.

Yes, yes, I-

And I obviously can’t get involved – I have a family to consider, after all. We both do.

Look, forget I said-

Which is why I’m going to have to ask you to strenuously avoid your computer’s inbox for the next few minutes. Can’t have you catching a glimpse of something you shouldn’t, after all.

Kamri breathed a sigh of relief. Thanks, Fred.

Don’t mention it. No, seriously, don’t – I’m not too keen on spending the rest of my life in an orbital detention facility, you know.

There was a brief pause.

Does Mrs. Kamri still do those delectable chocolate chip biscuits, though? I ask merely out of curiosity.

The doctor smiled broadly. I’ll have her cook up a batch just for you, Fred.

He cut the link, and checked the inbox. Sure enough, the logs were there. One quick mnemonic charm later, and they were in his head as well. That done, he deleted the electronic copy. One should always cover one’s footprints, after all.

Things had not progressed far when he returned to the DSS office. Touran gave him a weary mock-salute as he entered, the hapless junior tech she’d been berating temporarily forgotten.

“Any pearls of wisdom to dispense on this little conundrum, oh glorious leader?” she asked acidly.

No respect, I tell you... “Actually, yes, I do. I looked over the data – you didn’t hear me say that, by the way – and those ships seem to have a dimensional signature roughly akin to a small, mobile patch of Chaotic Space. You know, like when those moron ecoterrorists on Varduk Prime pressed the wrong button on their shiny new Belkan superweapon.”

Touran brightened up. “A localised breach? That’s actually... kind of feasible. Maybe if we fine-tune a couple of the Farsight relays, wake up the Warped Mirror... yeah, we can do this. We can actually do this!”

The junior tech raised a hand, understandably hesitant to reinvite his superior’s wrath. “Umm... sirs? There might be a bit of a problem if you want to use the Mirror. We ran out of live blowfish yesterday, and I’m not sure where to get more.”

“Try the seafood restaurant on the second deck,” Kamri suggested absently. “They should have something close enough. Ladies and gentlemen, we are back in business!”

***

TSAB Naval Command was a veritable hive of activity, aides, technicians, and flunkies scurrying to and fro with near-panicked urgency as they attempted to coordinate a pan-dimensional mobilisation involving no less than four major interstellar civilisations. In the midst of it all, the desk of Fleet Admiral Sagitar Thundra, commander of Operation Guardian and de facto leader of the entire war effort, was a veritable island of calm, in that only one person was shouting at any one time and he generally knew what he was doing.

“Wilson, have those pasty longhairs in DSS found those bloody ships yet?” he demanded in the strident tone of a man who had never heard of the term ‘indoor voice’.

Commander Albert Wilson polished his monocle nervously. Said monocle wasn’t medically required, strictly speaking, but Wilson felt he had an image to maintain.

“Yes, sir. Four minutes ago, to be exact. At the time of the report, two of them were in dimensional space near Universe Sigma-Nine, and did not appear to be going anywhere soon. The other four remain unaccounted for.”

Thundra shook his leonine head. “Wonderful. Bloody wonderful. We got any ships in that region?”

“I believe the Second and Third Fleets are patrolling in the general area, sir.”

“Good. Send them in to intercept. All of them.”

“... All of them, sir?”

“One ship blasted a quarter of a galaxy into submission. Who knows what two are capable of? No risks, Wilson.”

“Understood, sir.”

As his aide bustled off, Thundra stared at the display. Where did the others go?

***

The Iruel-class transports were decades ahead of their time – literally, in fact, thanks to a cloned workforce and judicious use of warp-magic. They were the heralds of what was to come, a vast armada that would claim the multiverse in the name of Chaos. The gods now faced (or rather, were preparing to face) genuine opposition – no longer could they limit themselves, dealing with threats and opportunities on their own terms.

That wasn’t to say, though, that they had completely abandoned subtlety.

“Release payload,” the commander rasped through his altered voicebox.

He watched in satisfaction as the clone-servitors manning the bridge did as he commanded, their augmented limbs operating the various consoles with mathematical efficiency. This voyage was as much a test for them as it was for the ships they crewed, and so far they were functioning with steady, unimaginative competence – precisely what they had been designed for, in fact.

The transport’s cargo bay opened, revealing row upon row of needle-like craft. One by one, they launched, their thrusters flaring in the silence of dimensional space, and took up formation around their parent vessel.

Antennae extended from the hull, mapping out the surrounding universes. At a gesture from the commander, a string of co-ordinates was downloaded into each of the needle-ships. They set off to their destinations, their null-fields and ECM systems activating to conceal them from sensors both magical and technological.

“Payload deployed,” he reported. “What about you, Kowalski?”

“Sent all mine off as well,” the commander of their sister-vessel responded. “The other ships?”

He checked his console. “One sec... green across the board. Mission success. Time to leave, folks.”

“No argument here,” Kowalski agreed. “Hey, did you get a look inside the cryopods on those things?”

“Nope – fused with the chair a couple of days ago. Kind of restricts my movements. You know how it is. What was in there?”

“Scary stuff, man. Scary stuff. Almost feel sorry for the poor sods we’re unleashing ‘em on.”

“They decided to oppose the gods. Their fault.”

“Right. Jumping in three – you ready?”

“Way ahead of you. As always.”

With that, the two transports left Bureau space as abruptly as they had arrived. A few minutes later, those sent to New Republic and Spiral Nation territory did likewise.

***

“They’re retreating, sir,” Wilson reported.

“Can we catch them?” Thundra asked.

“Our ships are certainly faster, but they have a significant lead. We would be dangerously extending a significant portion of our forces for questionable gain.”

“Fair point – the Eventide reports did say they’re fond of playing it sneaky. Pull the fleets back – no risks. Still no sign of the others?”

“I’m afraid not, sir.”

The admiral growled in frustration as only a military officer pushing retirement could. “Just what the hell were they up to?”

“Hard to be sure, sir. It may have just been a simple scouting mission. DSS observed a small dimensional ripple, but that might have been a side-effect of the drives they’re using. We really don’t know that much about their technology.”

Thundra shook his head. “Too many ‘may’s and ‘might’s, Wilson. Is it too much to ask for a war where I have some idea of the enemy’s motives and capabilities?”

He looked up again, a sour smile on his face.

“What was the next thing on their schedule? Ah, yes, those Spiral maniacs are sending over a techie of their own. Leeron or something. Just file him under ‘big, loud, and unhealthily obsessed with drills’, will you? Covers most of those idiots to a tee. Besides, we have more important things to attend to.”

“Yes, sir.”

***

Luke Skywalker sat up in bed, sweating. He had seen something in his dreams, a dark rain descending upon the galaxy. He looked inside, but it was gone. Beside him, Mara stirred and muttered a sleepy, unintelligible question.

“Nothing, dear. Just a nightmare.”

I hope.

***

In the hills above the Spiral capital, a shadowy figure watched the city through silver-hued, augmented eyes. He was dressed like a hiker, with a long bag slung over his shoulder. This made sense, because the man he had taken the clothes from had been a hiker. Now, though, that man was naked at the bottom of a riverbed, a bullet through his brain. The area’s indigenous carnivores would dispose of him soon enough.

The new arrival wasn’t just admiring the view, though it was no doubt spectacular. Lines, symbols, letters, and numbers danced in front of his vision, mapping out roads, vantage points, and important buildings, which were then stored, pristine, in his eidetic memory. In less than thirty seconds, he had calculated lines of attack and infiltration for anything from a small special-forces team to several armoured regiments.

The gods’ signal had not come yet, but he wanted to be ready when it did.

***

Stella Kei was wandering aimlessly through Mid-Childa’s main shopping district, soaking in the atmosphere of the bustling metropolis. It had been a tough day at the office, and she was in the mood for some nice, soothing retail therapy.

She was walking past one of the district’s innumerable side-alleys when something long, black, and vaguely serpentine shot out, wrapping itself around her nose and mouth and dragging her off the street. She couldn’t fight or scream – in fact, she could barely breathe. Outside the alley, shoppers wandered past, quite unaware of what was going on scant metres away.

A hand plunged into her forehead, creating a strange tingling feeling. After a few moments, it withdrew, and an impossibly sharp blade slashed across her throat.

Her corpse sagged in her captor’s grip, and was dragged back further into the alley. Five minutes and some unpleasantly organic noises later, Stella Kei walked out as if nothing had happened. An attentive observer might have noticed that she’d put on a little weight, but that was about it.

As her victim’s body was rapidly broken down by her powerful stomach acids, the Divine Assassin consulted her stolen memories. Stella had been a junior clerk attached to a unit called the First Expeditionary Force, under one Colonel Hayate Yagami. The ones who made first contact with us... She smiled, silently praising Tzintchi for her good fortune.

This should be very interesting.

 

[Iaculus]

14. Back to Work

The Infinite Library was technically part of the TSAB central office, but in reality quite separate, a relic of Al-Hazard that employed the peculiarities of dimensional space to create an information repository that was a dimension in and of itself. In fact, it used rather similar principles to the Eye of Tzintchi, though neither side of the conflict was aware of this peculiar irony.

It was said that the Library contained all the knowledge in the multiverse, and indeed books, shelves and sometimes even entire sections would simply appear and disappear without warning or even outside intervention. As such, it was theoretically possible to keep reasonably up-to-date with interdimensional events simply by observing shifts in the Library’s structure, provided one knew what one was looking for.

This curious function of the ancient pocket dimension had become particularly important during the preparatory stages of Operation Guardian. It allowed the Bureau to gather information on the enemy’s activities independent of the Integrated Data Entity’s Humanoid Interfaces, who were both limited in usefulness beyond what was going on in their (admittedly strategically-vital) universe and disconcertingly reticent regarding certain subjects. It wasn’t perfect by any means – even if you knew and could find what you sought, information from beyond the Great Wall tended to be garbled, incomplete, or simply non-existent, and besides that there was generally a notable time-gap between an event happening and someone writing something down about it. Nevertheless, it was better than nothing.

At any one point these days, there seemed to be hundreds (if not thousands) of assorted staff from various departments poring through the shelves, their telepathic communications weaving together in such a way as to make specific conversation virtually impossible. It was for this reason that Nanoha and Hayate had decided to visit in person.

The entrance to the Library was clogged with a sea of humanity, almost-humanity, and not-really-humanity-at-all, either staggering under piles of documents, wandering along with the sort of blank expressions that indicated some futile attempt at telepathic communication, or just being generally loud and energetic. As they approached, the two young women activated their Barrier Jackets, illuminating the surrounding area with a quick flash of pink and white light.

A path was immediately cleared. The Bureau’s Ace of Aces tended to get that reaction, and one of the aptly-nicknamed ‘citykiller’ SS+ mages even more so. Both nodded and smiled politely as they walked past, quietly hoping that the crowd’s actions had been motivated by respect more than simple terror. They lifted off the ground just as they passed into the Library, feeling the lurching sensation in their stomachs that indicated the huge station’s artificial gravity had disappeared.

Inside, the pocket dimension resembled a literate hybrid between a beehive and a digestive tract. Shelf-lined tunnels branched and spiralled into the distance, each big enough to fly a light destroyer through. Gleaming white structures like ossified vines occupied the space between the shelves, obscuring the more distant ports of the tunnels. There was no floor, which wasn’t that much of a problem for most given how basic a magical talent flight was, though handholds had been fitted on the walls just in case. Swarms of people crawled across the shelves, dressed in the uniforms of a dozen departments, as well as one large orang-utan who wasn’t wearing a uniform, but was moving so purposefully that they assumed he was supposed to be there.

“How are we going to find him in all this?” Hayate asked.

Nanoha jerked a thumb at a pale green light approaching from one of the tributaries. “There’s your answer, I think.”

The light slowed down, and resolved itself into the smiling form of the Chief Librarian, Yuuno Scrya. A string of hefty-looking volumes orbited him like papery satellites, and lines of verdant text scrolled up the inside of his glasses.

“That was fast,” Hayate commented.

“Upgraded the security systems a few months ago,” he explained. “Bunch of far-right nutjobs broke in to raid the Weaponry section. Almost got away with it, too – we found blueprints for some pretty vicious stuff on them. Anyways, just picked up a couple of massive energy signatures coming through the southern entrance, and decided to pop over and see what was up. We’re not getting many folks above S-rank around here at the moment, you see.”

He gestured, and the books flew back to the shelves in perfect formation.

“Anyway, it’s good to see you two. Sorry I haven’t had much time to chat lately – as you can see, things are rather chaotic around here. Our friends the gods have been up to their old tricks again; we’ve been reading the fluctuations, and it seems they hit another universe about a week ago.”

Nanoha’s stomach lurched again – this time, though, it had nothing to do with abrupt gravity failure. “What happened?”

“Couple of minor skirmishes, plus the terminal destabilisation of a galaxy-spanning empire ruled by a code called the Praxis. Think your basic militaristic dictatorship, only on a grander scale than average. Censorship, slavery, genocide... all the good stuff.”

“So they toppled a nasty government,” Hayate said. “What’s the bad news?”

Yuuno pushed up his glasses with the fussy precision that inevitably heralded a transition into scholar mode. “You never read the books I got you for your birthday, did you? A civilisation like that – and I use the term loosely – never goes down tidily. Too many rivalries, too many people with blood on their hands, something to gain, or both. Your average evil empire isn’t just comprised of sadistic rulers and a noble, downtrodden underclass, not if it survives as long as this one did. As soon as they sparked the fire, the Chaos forces did what they always do, and simply moved on. No picking up of the pieces, no smoothing of the transition, no nothing. Two days later, eighteen billion people were dead. It’s probably far, far more by now.”

Eighteen billion... that’s three Earths. Nanoha tried to imagine it, but couldn’t. Those who started it... they couldn’t have known that would happen. Could they? What would they stand to gain from that sort of slaughter?

Yuuno broke the silence. “I’m sorry – that wasn’t what you came here to discuss, was it? I seem to have picked up a habit of giving lectures at inopportune times – it’s endemic to academia, I’m afraid. May I ask what it actually was?”

Relieved at the change of subject, Nanoha handed him a datapad. “We’ve been having issues with interdimensional travel regarding our new allies – it’s a technology-compatibility thing, from what I hear. High Command thought you could help; the relevant information’s all in the pad.”

The librarian scanned through, his glasses performing the scrolling-text trick again. “Good grief – omega-level clearance? Well, that explains why they sent you two along. It says I’ll be liaising with a Spiral scientist – may I ask who he is?”

“His name’s Leeron,” Hayate explained. “By all accounts, he’s a technological genius, responsible for a frankly disproportionate number of their more exotic innovations. On the other hand, he’s also a little... eccentric. Here’s the photo we got given.”

An image floated in the air, projected from her staff. It showed an ageless, androgynous, and vaguely piscine-looking individual wearing heavy eyeshadow, blowing a kiss towards the camera.

“I... see.” Yuuno said eventually. “Don’t worry, though – I’ve dealt with academics before. As long as this one doesn’t have to be repeatedly convinced that he’s not some form of shellfish, we should be fine.”

He waved to a pair of familiars hovering some distance away. “Lotte, Lieze, I’m heading out for a while. You’re in charge. Please don’t molest too many of the younger visitors, all right?”

They giggled and waved back.

“Is that a serious risk?” Nanoha asked, an eyebrow raised.

“Not really – pays to be careful, though.” He stuffed the datapad into a coat pocket. “All right – where is this Leeron at the moment?”

***

“You know what I love about thish plashe?” the man sitting next to Leeron slurred. “Sh’got everything. Intershtellar capital, all the li’l backwater comfortsh of Earth, an’ nobody makesh fun of my name.”

He was a twitchy, grubby individual with wavy red hair whose face appeared to be swept back from his nose. Empty glasses were crowded in front of him, many of them having contained drinks that the Spiral had never heard of.

“Oh?” he asked, intrigued. “What’s your name, if I may ask?”

The man told him. Leeron crinkled his forehead, bemused.

“What’s so funny about that?”

“You shee? That’sh exshactly what I mean!” He blinked owlishly. “Thish plashe ish gettin’ a good write-up in the Guide, lemme tell ya.”

He fumbled around in his noisome bag, eventually withdrawing a compact, battered object with the words ‘DON’T PANIC’ written on the casing in big, friendly letters. Leeron was about to ask what it was, when the man’s truly monumental alcohol consumption finally caught up with him. He tottered over sideways, falling to the floor with an impressive crash. His head landed on the scientist’s foot, and was pushed away with a dainty kick.

Leeron examined his own glass, and found it disappointingly empty. He withdrew another couple of coins from his wallet, and flipped them onto the bar.

“Bartender, another of those divine mint juleps, if you would?”

“Certainly, sir.”

The man hadn’t asked where his near-infinite supply of money came from, which was probably for the best. Leeron rather doubted that anyone back home would look very kindly on him abusing Spiral Energy to pay for cocktails. For some reason, the prospect of the universe imploding was something they got very uptight about. He took an experimental sip of the proffered drink. As expected, it was worth it.

“So, what unit’re you with?” the bartender asked conversationally.

“Unit?”

“Sorry, I just assumed you were part of one of the military departments. This is a soldiers’ bar, you see, and you’ve got the look about you.”

The lanky androgyne pondered this. Either he’s unusually perceptive, or they have a very unconventional approach to warfare. Whatever the case, I think I’ll fit in here just fine.

“Oh, no, I’ve only just arrived. I am supposed to be linking up with the First Expeditionary Force at some point, though, and I must say, I’m actually looking forward to it quite a bit. All those handsome young military-types in their tight, tight uniforms...” He trailed off dreamily.

“The First Expeditionary Force? You mean Hayate’s Lesbian Army?” a patron called out from another table. “Yeah, don’t think you’re going to have much luck there, mate.”

The others sitting next to him sniggered.

Leeron raised an elegant eyebrow. “Oh?”

“It’s mostly female combat mages,” the first speaker’s equally large and hairy companion explained. “You know how they are – don’t spend so much time diving for cover as they do diving for-”

“Chain Whip!”

A ribbon of pale green light slashed into the table, shattering it and sending its occupants flying backwards. The caster, a bespectacled young man with long blond hair drawn back in a ponytail, wiped his hand on his trouser leg disdainfully.

“I hate that nickname,” he announced to the room in general.

The bartender winced. “Come on, Yuuno, that’s the third time this month. Grow a thicker skin, will you?”

“Oh, just take the repair expenses out of my account, Lagonda,” the new arrival said casually. “You know I’m good for it.”

“Yes, but-”

“All right, fine, it won’t happen again. Probably.” He turned to Leeron, who was watching the proceedings with mild curiosity. “As for you, you’re coming with me. By the way, feel free to crack any off-colour jokes about my friends you’ve got stored up – I’ve been doing some research into offensive applications for shielding spells lately, and I’d just love to have a live test subject.”

The Spiral grinned. “Wouldn’t dream of it, sweetie. I assume you’re my liaison with the First?”

“In a manner of speaking. I’m Yuuno Scrya, head of the Infinite Library. We’ll be working together on that little transport problem Operation Guardian’s been having lately. Sorry about the unfortunate first impression – I’m not usually like that. Those idiots just hit a nerve, is all.”

In their struggle to escape the tangle of broken furniture they had found themselves in, one of Yuuno’s victims accidentally elbowed another patron in the face. This had led to a full scale bar brawl, whilst the poor bartender could only watch and wave around his Armed Device in a vaguely alarming manner. Even the semiconscious travel writer had joined in, employing what appeared to be a weighted towel with devastating effect.

“So I see,” Leeron commented. “Shall we depart? I really didn’t like the look the owner threw at you just then.”

“You’re probably right,” Yuuno agreed. “He’ll get over it eventually – he always does – but I probably shouldn’t be seen around here for a few days. In the meantime, I’ll see you to your quarters. We’ll discuss our objectives in a few hours’ time – I assume you’ve already been briefed, but here’s our take on the situation anyway.”

He passed Leeron a datapad. On examining it, the Spiral saw that it was of the electronic variety, usable by a non-magic-user such as himself. Very considerate of them.

“So, what will you be doing once I’ve been dropped off, sweetie?”

“Heading back to the Library and making sure it hasn’t burned down in my absence. I swear, it’s like herding cats. Well, catgirls, anyway.”

“Ah, I see.”

They walked off in silence, Leeron discreetly checking out his escort’s toned behind in the process. Maybe working with the First won’t be so bad after all...

***

Though Colonel Yagami and the combat mages certainly had plenty to occupy them, life for the rest of the Eventide’s crew was fairly uneventful. Most of their time was spent filling out paperwork, keeping the ship maintained, and meeting friends and family back on Mid-Childa. In particular, Fred Jones had spent the past couple of days engaged in the last of these three.

It had been simply idyllic – his daughter was back from school, and his wife had managed to schedule a completely free weekend. On the first day, they’d gone to one of the new amusement parks, a product of the currently-fashionable Mid-Childan preoccupation with Earth culture. Though it lacked much of the low-tech charm of the genuine articles his own parents had taken him to when he was a child, the park had certainly compensated for it with a plethora of technosorcerous bells and whistles. Little Georgia (she wasn’t so little any more, but that was how he’d always thought of her) had been utterly enamoured, dragging them from ride to show to ride until Fred thought that his joints were about to give in.

The second day had been more sedate. They had stayed at home, playing games with each other and sharing stories of their time apart. Fred had flashed up a few of the images he had captured during the Eventide’s expedition – the scarred face of Bloodhaven, alien ships trading shots between the stars, the gleaming Spiral capital... wonders and terrors of such magnitude that they seemed almost absurd in their cosy, slightly untidy little home. In the evening, he and his wife had left Georgia with the neighbours, heading out to a small restaurant they saved for special occasions. Once they had finished, they returned to the house, he put on some music, and they danced together for the first time in ages. He wasn’t nearly as spry as he had been, and the extra pounds he’d put on in the intervening years didn’t help much either, but somehow that hadn’t seemed to matter. They’d gone to bed afterwards, and he’d been pleased to discover that a certain old nightgown still fitted her very nicely.

Now, though, he was back at the office, and wishing it felt more like a commute than an extended stay. He doubted the current situation would allow that, though – they’d already been assigned a new mission, and the preparations for launch had begun almost immediately.
He knocked on the door to Gunther’s quarters.

“Enter.”

Said door slid open, revealing an immaculate, spartanly-decorated room beyond. Gunther was working at his desk, neat stacks of order forms and cargo authorisation requests on either side.

“Problem?” he asked.

“Good guess, boss. There’s been a mix-up in catering – wrong supplies got sent down. They wanted you to have a look at it.”

“Staff there can’t resolve?”

“’Fraid not – the stuff they got was meant for an entirely different department. Bit outside their jurisdiction.”

“Show me.”

“You got it, boss.”

Gunther got up, grabbing his uniform jacket from where it was folded over the back of the chair. As he did so, Fred took the opportunity to further examine the room. His earlier opinion of ‘sparsely-decorated’ turned out to be something of an understatement; apart from the desk, which had been heavily customised with lots of little ergonomic drawers and stationery-holders, the room was completely devoid of anything that might indicate habitation. No mementos, no personal effects, no nothing. This was a room for sleeping and working in, nothing more. Fred was not in the habit of rifling through the wardrobes of senior officers and old friends, but he suspected that if he had, he would have found the clothes within as tidily folded as if they were still on the shelves they had been bought from.

Not for the first time, he wondered if Gunther had any friends apart from him. If he did, Fred had never met them.

They headed out into the central office’s endless corridors, Fred falling into step beside and slightly behind Gunther as always. A tall, willowy woman passed them by, holding a stack of datapads. Fred gave her a wave, and she waved back, somehow managing not to drop any of the pads in the process.

Gunther shot him a quizzical glance.

“That’s Stella Kei,” he explained. “One of our junior accountants. Doesn’t look like her new diet’s been paying off to well – at least she seems to be over the divorce, though.”

“Divorce?”

“Yeah, a real messy one – her husband took just about everything.” He sighed. “We did warn her that the bastard was a conniving thug. Whole department had a whip-round, got her a nice little hamper full of goodies as commiseration. Anyway, glad to see her looking remotely cheerful again.”

The glance had turned into a full-on bemused stare. “You know everyone?”

“I try, boss.”

Soon, they were on the walkway to the Eventide itself once more. Looking down, Fred saw that the bustling of the ground crew was a bit more precise and organised than last time. Clearly, Gunther had been working his usual magic.

Signum walked past, nodding to her fellow captain.

“Quartermaster.”

“Ma’am.”

Fred couldn’t help but notice the wistful glance his friend directed at the knight’s retreating form.

“Think she’s a bit out of your league, boss.”

A faint grin. “Man can dream.”

By the time they arrived at the galley, it was already busy. Several of the more prescient crewmembers hadn’t even bothered moving out of their quarters on the ship once they got back, and there was usually quite a large queue at mealtimes. Fred noticed a new addition to the catering staff – the time-traveller girl, Mikuru Asahina, who had taken to serving food like the proverbial duck to water. At the moment, she was ladling potatoes onto the plates of two serious-looking thirteen-year-olds in the uniforms of combat mages who he recognised as Erio Mondial and Caro La Rushe, Captain Testarossa-Harlaown’s adoptive children.

The other two representatives they had retrieved on their first visit to the informally-titled ‘Suzumiyaverse’ had gone on to rather more exalted positions. Emiri Kimidori had been attached to High Command along with her fellow Humanoid Interfaces, whilst Itsuki Koizumi had been busy helping out the refugees they’d pulled out in the few days before that universe’s Earth had gone completely to hell.

That had been a bad business – Fred had heard the stories from those who had taken part in the mission. Running silent through a dimensional storm, hoping against hope that the fragile wards they had been given would shield them from the eyes of an enslaved god, had only been the first part. Once they had hit the ground, they had been forced to fight off seemingly endless waves of monsters, daemons, and insane once-humans whilst evacuating crowd upon crowd of soldiers and civilians, many of them mutated, badly injured, or both. Even the terrain itself had assaulted them, trees walking, buildings crushing them with stony fists, and the ground opening up beneath them to swallow them whole. In the end, they had lost three ships and over two hundred combat mages (including several above AA-rank), all to save fifteen thousand people. Fifteen thousand out of six billion. To top it off, the Interface who had organised it all, Yuki Nagato, had turned out to be acting against orders and was effectively sentenced to life imprisonment for her actions, which was generally considered a mild punishment by her compatriots.

All in all, it was no wonder that High Command didn’t fully trust the Integrated Data Entity and its representatives any more.

He’d talked to some of the refugees, too, when Gunther had been sent down to help with housing and supplies. Seeing as the First had been so haphazardly pulled together from all over the Bureau, nobody higher-up felt too much guilt about borrowing some of them from time to time for outside work. It had been... strange. Most of them were specialists; time-travellers, espers, and the like. The sort of people who had been reasonably clued-in about the peculiarities of the local cosmology before the Fall. That was probably why they’d managed to survive so long, in fact. As such, they knew that there were still powers out there that could reverse this, make it all better. The Integrated Data Entity, for instance, which was presumably the reason for its refusal to back the evacuation. Even as they’d told him this, though, Fred had seen the doubt, the dread in their eyes. What if Chaos gets to them first? What if they aren’t as good as we think they are? What if everything comes back... wrong, somehow? Living with gods and god-like beings looming over your head all the time had its advantages and its disadvantages.

The other refugees, the ones from the Federation’s universe, were rather different. They had no gods, no magical reset button in the sky. Their problems would only be resolved by a long, gruelling recovery process (if at all), and they knew it. Understandably, tensions had been a little high between the two fledgling communities. Fred was very, very glad that dealing with it wasn’t his job.

He heard curt orders coming from the rear of the galley – clearly, Gunther had gone into action. He wandered over to see how things were doing, and saw a couple of kitchen staff scurrying off, presumably on some mission or another. The quartermaster was standing alone, regarding their fleeing backs with amused satisfaction.

“Problem solved, boss?”

“For the moment.”

Given that Gunther had not moved on to something else, Fred mentally translated this as ‘there’ll be another one in a minute’. Sure enough, one of the cooks hurried in a second later.

“Second shelf, by walnuts,” he was informed before he had time to open his mouth.

The cook saluted. “Much obliged, sir.”

After a moment’s consideration, Gunther turned to Fred.

“Mission details?”

“You mean the one we’re going on next?” he asked, slightly thrown by the change of subject. “Why would I have those?”

“Always do.”

“OK, fair point. They’re pretty highly-classified, though, so I wasn’t able to catch everything. What I do know is that it’s a tech-retrieval job. We’re headed to a Non-Administered World in Bureau space, another alternate Earth, to pick up some gizmo called a Lambda Driver. No idea what that is, but it’s clearly something important. Omega-level clearance, boss.”

Gunther gave a low whistle. “Impressive.”

“Too right.” At least it can’t help but be better than our maiden voyage. Hope it doesn’t take too long, though. I want to get back to my family as soon as possible.

Another thought occurred to him as they wandered off. What was Stella doing with all those datapads? We have assistants for that sort of thing. Maybe I’ll ask later.

By the time the day was over, though, he’d forgotten all about it.

 

[Iaculus]

15. Organising the Party

The forces of Chaos had been busy since the battle for Bloodhaven. Though the Ori had not returned, presumably believing their mission fulfilled, work on the base around the Stargate had continued apace, turning it into a capacious staging ground and nigh-impregnable fortress. Kilometre-long, gargoyle-encrusted ships hung in the air in contemptuous defiance of gravity, while huge lance-thrower turrets tracked the slightest movement above. A network of trenches and low fortifications extended out from the main encampment, hulking artillery pieces gazing over them with eyes both electronic and organic.

Primarch Toji Suzuhara couldn’t help wondering if the gods knew something he didn’t. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.

At present, he was busy surveying the construction work on the northern defence lines with one half of his brain and calculating the forces under his command with the other. For a Primarch, his flesh reshaped by the gods themselves, this was not nearly as hard as it sounded.

Let’s see now... two battle companies from each of the Chapters except Kensuke’s boys, one infantry regiment, five armoured companies, three thousand gun-servitors, six thousand plague zombies, and the-gods-alone-know-how-many daemons. Have I missed anyone? Ah yes...

The scarred, rocky earth shook as five gaunt, armoured giants strode into view, their myriad weapons tracking to and fro. The encampment had been given ten Evangelions in total – two of the standard Mark Vs, and eight of the new Mark VIs. The latter lacked some of the sophistication and raw firepower of the earlier designs, thanks largely to trained human pilots being replaced with daemonic possessors in an attempt to combat personnel shortages, but they made up for it by both being easier to mass-produce and having several interesting new tricks thanks to their greater connection to the Warp. Besides, they were still Evangelions, and thus pretty much invincible in Toji’s professional opinion.

Then there were the Space Marines. Taken at a young age, subjected into training unmatched in brutality until the launch of the Divine Assassin Program, implanted with augmentations both biological and cybernetic until they were second only in might to the Primarchs themselves, and brainwashed into exemplars of discipline, loyalty, and precisely-applied brutality, they were about as close to the perfect soldiers as it was possible to get. The facts that they wore armour of a durability usually reserved for main battle tanks and that their basic infantry weapon was essentially a compact, fully-automatic rocket launcher were merely the icing on the cake.

The remainder of his forces were less overtly imposing, but still fairly impressive. Much of their equipment had been adapted from the gods’ received memories of the 41st millennium, and applied with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight. Those human infantry not specifically assigned to a heavy weapons team or some other specialist role were equipped with gleaming black carapace armour and hellguns, whilst the clone-bred servitors compensated for their lack of intellect with thick armour, extensive bionics, and a terrifying array of oversized weaponry. When coupled with the tanks, daemons, and zombies, the garrison represented truly ridiculous overkill even by the gods’ relaxed standards.

So who’d they managed to piss off this time? he thought.

Though even someone of his stature tended to get left out of the loop on occasion – Tzintchi in particular loved nothing better than yanking his subordinates’ chains – the current climate of silence was both unusual and worrying. That kind of information lockdown usually meant that something he really wouldn’t like was about to happen.

He wondered what had happened to that girl they’d captured, Vita. The gods hadn’t given him an answer there, either. A small part of him hoped that it had not been the same thing that happened to the other young female mage they had got their hands on.

Rescuing Alicia and her mother from the Warp had been a singular act of mercy. Having her be personally raised by the gods themselves? An unquestioned honour. He just wished the end result had been a little less... well... psychotic.

He knew she looked up to him; saw him as some sort of big-brother figure. Hikari teased him about it mercilessly, alluding in a faux-dramatic voice to his ‘secret admirer’. It was just... how exactly were you supposed to explain to a cheerful, sweet-natured twelve-year-old that casual homicide wasn’t a healthy, constructive hobby to have, especially when it was part of both your and her job descriptions? More to the point, would the gods even want him to?

As if on cue, Alicia swooped in and landed next to him, executing a flawless salute. “Toji, they’ve finished work on the western barricades. Just thought you should know.”

She was beaming happily, her cheeks slightly flushed. At times like this, it was almost possible to think of her as an ordinary child. Instinctively, Toji gave her a gentle pat on the head with his armoured gauntlet, almost driving her to her knees in the process.

“Good to hear it, Ali. How’s your little project with the Stargate going, by the way?”

“Pretty well – just found out that you can transmit psychic signals through them. Papa Tzintchi was very interested in that.” She scraped something red and sticky off her gloves. “You know, I really wish we didn’t have to sacrifice so many clones to do it. I mean, it’s fun for a while, but it always leaves such a mess afterwards.”

Yep. Almost possible.

She glared at him reproachfully. “Anyway, didn’t I tell you to quit with the head-patting? I’m not a little kid any more, you know.”

“Right. I was forgetting. Incidentally, they’re running a fleet exercise up in orbit this afternoon, and I’ve been asked to oversee it. Want to come look? I’m sure a lovely lady like yourself would enliven an otherwise dull procedure.”

A frustrated pout. “I can’t – they’re going to be running some more of those stupid tests on me. Seeing what I can do. You’d have thought they’d figured out most of that already.”

He gave a sympathetic sigh. “Ah well, can’t be helped. These things happen. Tell you what – I’ll take a few snapshots with the helmet-cam while I’m up there. I’m sure Captain Tung would be happy to donate that model of the Stiletto she’s got on her desk to a good cause, too.”

She hugged his leg – it was about as high as she could reach, really. “Thanks, Toji! Well, I suppose I’d best get going, then. See ya!”

He started to wave as she skipped away, only to see her stop next to a passing servitor, rip its heart out in a spray of gore, and gulp it down on the spot.

Toji had always wondered if the clones had souls. Now he knew. That revelation, though, was secondary to something else, something he now desperately tried to blot out as only a Primarch could.

As Alicia had devoured the dripping organ, he had heard her mother’s disembodied voice scream out in horror and grief.

***

The Hellhounds were lined up in perfect ranks, their matte-black bodysuits seeming to suck in light from the surrounding air. Not one of them spoke, and even visible breathing had been eliminated by their bionic respiratory systems. The only indication that they were alive at all was the way their heads had swivelled to look at Tzintchi as he entered the chamber, their expressions hidden behind their scorpion-like helmets.

He’d been having a bad day. They’d had to exert more and more power to support the war effort, slowing time to a crawl where required to ensure the prompt completion of important projects, and investing warp-energy in the mass-production of clones as servants, soldiers, and occasionally sacrifices. Though both had been undoubtedly useful – the Divine Assassin project had managed to compress four years of training into a single month, and the clones had gone a long way to helping with their critical manpower shortage – they had considerable limitations and active disadvantages.

For a start, there were the clone instability issues. The more sophisticated the intellect they created for any given clone, the more violent, irrational, and generally sociopathic they became. The shining example was the posthuman Kyon Junior, who was an active liability (if still too much trouble to warrant replacing). Reigle had posited that this was for much the same reason as the increased negative effects whenever they made greater use of their powers, but whatever the case, it had effectively stymied their plans to repopulate the Earth using warp-born clones. Even introducing them to state-sponsored breeding projects had been a failure – clone-created sperm resulted in unacceptable rates of mutation and birth defects, whilst their attempts to artificially inseminate cloned females... didn’t really bear thinking about.

The time-distortion had been even worse, creating the sort of tangles in the space-time continuum that would have given Albert Einstein a migraine. People, objects, and even places had occasionally vanished, falling into the gaps, and when coupled with the weird side-effects that resulted from any major use of the gods’ powers, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep the Earth habitable, let alone the happily anarchic utopia they had once intended it as.

The most subtle and troubling effects, though, had been on the gods’ own personalities. Asukhon, never the calmest of individuals, had become increasingly snappish and irritable, whilst Reigle grew more and more withdrawn, eternally preoccupied with her bizarre ‘experiments’ and answering his requests with the sort of robotic obedience that reminded Tzintchi unpleasantly of her time as his father’s puppet.

And then there was Mislaato. She’d always been the most fragile of them – such was to be expected when one was mind-raped over several months by a greater daemon of the Old Gods, killed messily, and finally resurrected by the power of the Warp. Consequently, she had been affected the most, to the point where a significant part of the cloning project was now devoted to slaking her ever-increasing appetites.

Nevertheless, Tzintchi was largely unconcerned. They were the Old Gods’ chosen weapons, not the Old Gods themselves. They need not share their weaknesses – and even if they did, the current situation was only temporary. Once they had defeated those who dared to oppose them, they could go back to their saner, more measured approach to pan-dimensional conquest.

In the meantime, though, they had the Hellhounds.

“I think you’ll be pleased with the results, my lord,” Fleshcrafter Allard said confidently. “The cybernetics make them considerably stronger and faster than an ordinary human, not to mention a whole lot quieter. The armour on their bodysuits can shrug off a direct hit from a bolt round without crippling damage, and we even managed to replicate the splinter pistol design you gave us. I must say, those Commoragh Eldar you spoke of had some really nifty equipment.”

He handed the god a sheaf of documents, which he duly flicked through. Tzintchi was wearing his human guise for this visit – personal inspections always added that much-appreciated impression that your bosses cared what you were doing, but Allard and his staff were accredited geniuses, so searing out their minds by revealing his true form probably wouldn’t be the best of plans.

“The really important bit, though,” the scientist continued, “is how we set up their minds. They aren’t as sophisticated as a fully-developed human – we’re not stupid – but they’re smart, they’re resourceful, and they’re vicious. Hunter-killer, infiltrator... they can do it all. Might not want to let them near civilians, though – once their blood’s up, they can get a bit... indiscriminate. Finally, we took a look at the readings you sent us on those two mages you picked up, and we taught them a few tricks in that department.”

“Really? Interesting.”

Tzintchi raised his hand, and sent a gout of indigo fire washing across the assembled ranks. As one, the Hellhounds moved to respond, and two hundred reddish-purple shields appeared from their outstretched fingers, staving off the assault.

“Very interesting. How about melee weaponry? Anything there?”

“Naturally, my lord. We assumed that that would be the range at which most combat would occur, and concentrated much of our attention upon it. Each Hound has a pair of Angel Cutter phase blades, the kind the Callidus-pattern Divine Assassins employ, built into them. One in each retractable forearm-sheath. I spent ages getting the ‘snikt’ sound when they pop out just right.”

Allard was a comic fan, the god remembered. There was something about building an army of killer cyborgs that couldn’t help but bring out your inner teenager. Even their name had been a topic of minor debate – Asukhon had wanted to save it for the flamethrower-tanks it had originally applied to until he had gently reminded her that tanks still required human personnel, and sending valuable troops into battle riding a giant, self-propelled napalm bomb would likely not be beneficial to their current manpower problem.

“So how many do we have now?” he asked.

“Over two thousand, with more to come. That’s the great thing about cloned soldiers – they’re so easy to mass-produce. Matter of fact, some of their equipment, especially the Angel Cutters, is taking longer to make than the bodies we’re fitting it on. We should be able to get the full consignment done on schedule without any more time-distortion.”

“Excellent.” Tzintchi turned to the rest of the assembled staff. “Ladies and gentlemen, you have pleased your gods greatly. I’ll go chat to Mislaato and see if she can rustle up some kind of suitable reward for you. And no, that wasn’t intended to come out as sinister as it did – I’m just naturally like that.”

That got a few nervous laughs. He turned around, his jacket flaring out dramatically, and vanished in a cloud of multicoloured lights.

“And now,” his disembodied voice said with a little extra reverb for added effect, “I bid you adieu.”

Showing off in front of one’s followers was always such fun.

***

When he rematerialised, it was back in the Eye. Mislaato wasn’t there, unfortunately, but Reigle and Asukhon were. They’d clearly been having an argument – much of the ever-shifting furniture lay broken and shattered on the temporary floor, and the former’s decaying flesh bore several rapidly-reknitting wounds. Tzintchi decided it would be impolitic to bring this up, though, especially since there’d apparently been no lasting damage.

“So, my dears, it appears the Hellhounds are almost ready, and you know what this means.”

“Planning session?” Reigle asked flatly.

“Yep. Planning session. Now, to the best of my knowledge, we have no less than five universes opposing us. The first, that of the Federation, Borg, and associates, is no real threat. The Stiletto broke their backs quite comprehensively – in fact, the Bureau’s overtures are likely to do little more than exacerbate an already-chaotic situation. Equally, Haruhi’s little prison has been effectively neutered by K.J.’s depredations. The Integrated Data Entity still represents a potential spanner in the works, but it’s mostly a known threat, and an exploitable one at that. It’s always nice to know where the opposition’s getting most of their intel from.”

A wave of his hand, and three large dimensional maps appeared in the centre of the room.

“The other three, though, are a bit more... problematic. The TSAB are relatively low-tech compared to the others, but their magic means they can punch way above their weight, and the fact that they’re organising the whole thing instantly elevates their dangerousness. As for the Spirals, I’d hoped to avoid them for decades to come. At present they’re a relatively peaceful bunch with gadgetry they barely understand, but their potential is utterly terrifying, and if the reports are correct then they’ve managed to live up to it in the past. Worse, both sides are ideologically opposed to us to such an extent that employing peaceful overtures as a delaying tactic likely wouldn’t work. We’re going to have to hit them, and hit them hard.”

“I am developing a countermeasure against the Spirals,” Reigle stated, “though it may take some time to perfect. Meanwhile, however, I have a suggestion regarding the final universe, that of the New Republic.”

“Go on,” Tzintchi said encouragingly. Good old Rei – nice to see that her brain cells haven’t rotted as well.

“You mentioned that diplomatic channels would be ineffective in dealing with the Time-Space Administrative Bureau and Spiral Nation, but the New Republic is run by an overstretched, inefficient, and highly factionalised government with a history of internal strife.”

“A typical democracy, basically,” Asukhon commented. The gods tended to harbour a fairly dim view of rule by committee. Given that a particularly well-organised one had almost turned the planet’s entire population into semi-sentient orange juice eighteen years before, this was perhaps understandable.

The goddess of despair acknowledged this with a faint smile, their earlier dispute apparently forgotten. “Furthermore, the one faction who would most likely be opposed to us on an ideological basis, the Jedi, have faced frequent criticism and occasionally been overruled entirely. Given that our activities in that universe have given its residents little reason to harbour a personal grudge, approaching them and casting ourselves in a sympathetic light has a high probability of preventing them from acting against us until it is far too late.”

“Fair point, Rei. I think we can go with that. Anything you’d like to add, Asuka?”

She gave one of her trademark many-toothed grins. “Indeed there is. In fact, I’d like to replace that suggestion with one of my own. It’s a nice idea, Rei, but it’s far too conservative as always. With my plan we can destroy the Republic rather than temporarily distracting it, plunge their entire galaxy into a state of exploitable chaos, and, best of all, avoid having to suck up to a bunch of self-centred, self-righteous politicians.”

Tzintchi raised three of his eyebrows. “And how, my dear, do you intend that we do that?”

The grin widened to a quite impossible extent, and she indicated a cluster of symbols some way outside the Republic’s galaxy. “Simple. We use these guys.”

***

Supreme Commander Varak Shaar was in something of an awkward situation. This displeased him. Awkward situations were something he liked to inflict on other people. There was no avoiding this one, though – he was clearly the only one on the ship even remotely approaching the appropriate rank to deal with it.

On the one hand, he was naturally disinclined to trust axe-wielding aliens who materialised on the bridge of his prized vessel without so much as a by-your-leave, particularly when they were quite obviously unintimidated by the magnificence of the mighty Miid Ro’ik dreadnought. In fact, this particular one had asked him for interior decoration tips.

On the other, she (it was hard to tell with aliens, but she had introduced herself as such) offered a truly unrivalled opportunity to him and the entire Chosen Race. Specifically, the chance to assault their target galaxy six years ahead of schedule with outside assistance, no strings attached.

“And what,” he asked, “do you get out of this, infidel?”

Given that she apparently used technology no more sophisticated than primitive bronze armour and the aforementioned axe, whether or not she was an infidel was pure guesswork. He felt confident in his assumption, though – nobody who looked like that could possibly be holy.

“The elimination of a potential threat,” she replied. “One of their civilisations, the New Republic, has been contacted by an alliance opposed to us. We would prefer that said alliance does not gain their strength. This galaxy is irrelevant so long as its inhabitants do not present a threat to us, and I intend no insult to the Chosen Race when I say that you do not.”

Cocky little tsup, isn’t she? He decided not to make an issue of the fact that she could speak their language so perfectly.

“And why is that?”

“Because I very much doubt that our enemies would get along as well with you as with them.”

Shaar grunted. “Very well. I shall inform the Warmaster of your proposition. Remain where you are, infidel, until my return. If you do not, I shall devour your heart and wear your wings as a cape.”

She made a strange snorting noise that he eventually recognised as indicating amusement. “Supreme Commander, I believe I am starting to like you.”

Several hours later, the endless fleet of the Yuuzhan Vong changed course. They had new orders.

 

[Iaculus]

16. Transport Arrangements

Yuuno was not having a fun voyage. It had mostly been comprised of half a week’s worth of running calculations and compiling data – slightly dull, but the sort of thing a scholar and researcher like himself was generally used to. What he was not used to was the presence of his co-worker. Leeron was a genius, no doubt about that, compensating for his relative lack of knowledge by being a near-inhumanly quick study, but his conduct... well, pretty much the only reason Yuuno hadn’t yet reported him for sexual harassment was that then someone might then start looking for the body when the old lecher finally pushed his luck a bit too far.

At present, he was hauling a metre-long sheaf of blueprints through the Eventide’s crew quarters. Normally, he would have floated the things over to his study remotely, but on a cramped, crowded military vessel, that tended to have unfortunate and amusing consequences. Things had come to a head when they had hit a dimensional storm halfway through the trip, causing several inanimate objects to spontaneously develop sentience. He had eventually managed to persuade Signum that Jechter’s ‘Principles of Magical Propulsion’ had nothing but gentlemanly intentions towards her, but not before the book in question was a shredded mess strewn across an entire corridor.

Ever since, he had been forced to transport the assorted files, documents, texts, and datapads by hand. If nothing else, it was providing him with some much-needed exercise.

He stopped at a junction, allowing a crowd of personnel to move past. Fate and Nanoha approached from opposite ends of the corridor, acknowledging each other with a faint nod as they passed. Still haven’t resolved it yet, eh?

Shaking his head, he ducked into the study. Leeron was there already, reapplying his eyeshadow with the aid of a bright purple hand-mirror. As Yuuno entered, the Spiral glanced up, a look of faint concern on his piscine face.

“Oh, hello, sweetie. I must say, you look a bit down in the dumps today. Did something happen?”

“Apart from seeing the happy smiling face of my favourite creepy old man?” Yuuno asked sourly. “Whatever gave you that idea?”

“Oh, come now, dear boy, you and I both know it’s more than that. Can’t I be legitimately worried about your wellbeing? It’s romance, isn’t it? I’ve never seen that expression on anyone untouched by affairs of the heart. Come now, you can tell Uncle Leeron – a problem shared is a problem halved, after all.”

Yuuno stared at him suspiciously. “You’re just going to use this to try to get into my pants, aren’t you?”

“My word, do you really think so little of me? Sweetie, I am no base seducer, but merely an old romantic. I would not dream of taking advantage of a pure, innocent soul such as yourself – unless you asked me to, of course.” He grinned wickedly. “Incidentally, is that a new aftershave? It really suits you.”

The librarian sighed and pinched his temples. “All right, but if one word of this ventures outside this room then... you know the rest.”

“Yes, yes, combat magic test subject. What exactly were those offensive applications for shielding spells, by the way?”

“Not relevant. Anyway, there’s this girl.”

“I knew it.”

“She’s smart, beautiful, and a generally wonderful person. I knew her since we were both kids, and well... pretty much loved her from the start. Problem is, she’s already in a relationship. Married, in fact.”

“Ah.”

“To another woman.”

“Ah.”

“And... it’s pretty much the best thing that ever happened to her. To either of them. They’re the perfect couple, they’ve got a lovely little adopted family, and they’re deliriously happy together. Most of the time, anyway. It’s just that... yeah.”

“Most of the time?”

“They’ve been having a rough patch lately. A mission went bad, really bad, and her partner’s family got involved. It’s complicated. Anyway, they’ll make up eventually, I’m sure, but in the meantime, things are kind of... strained.”

“And have you considered... exploiting the situation for your own ends?” Leeron asked in a low voice, his face unreadable.

“Just what the hell kind of scum do you think I am?” Yuuno snarled.

“And for that answer, sweetie, you get to keep your kidneys. I apologise, but I had to ask. I’ve seen a few of these situations in my time – you would not believe the kind of emotional hothouse a research facility can turn into when you’re working with Spiral Engines. Sometimes, it got very, very messy.” His expression was pained – he was clearly reliving an unpleasant memory.

“Fair enough, I suppose,” the librarian replied, subsiding a little. “No. No, I haven’t. Like I said, it’s the best thing that ever happened to her. I wouldn’t want to ruin it for the world, or, for that matter, the friendship I’ve already got – in fact, I’m mostly pretty happy with the situation. It sometimes just gets a little bit too much, though, that’s all.”

Leeron gazed at him sympathetically. “I quite understand. Unrequited love is never fun – believe me, I know. Just remember, if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I’m right here.”

Yuuno grinned. “Not that I’d take you up on it in a million years, but... thanks for the offer, Leeron. Now, speaking of Spiral Engine side-effects, I believe that was what we were going to be covering today. Shall we begin?”

“Let’s.”

***

Two days later, they were in orbit above the parallel Earth.

The Eventide’s briefing room was rather quieter this time around, containing Hayate, Nanoha, Fate, Leeron, Yuuno, the Wolkenritter, and nobody else except a couple of the more reliable technicians.

“So why the secrecy?” Nanoha asked.

“Well, everyone knows by now that this mission is for tech-retrieval, yes?” Hayate asked.

They all nodded.

“The thing is, the technology in question is vital to the entire war-effort, and we know from the Suzumiyaverse reports that the forces of Chaos are very fond of infiltrating the ranks of potential threats. Given that we still don’t know what was up with those scouts they sent in a couple of weeks back, I would say it pays not to advertise.”

The combat instructor nodded. “That’s reasonable. So what exactly is this tech?”

“Well, let me put it this way,” Yuuno began. “At present, only two factions in our putative alliance have access to interdimensional travel – us, and the Spiral Nation. Unfortunately, most of our more sophisticated technology depends a bit too much on the operator’s magical talents to be very useful to anyone else. Put simply, we can use their gear, but they can’t use ours.”

“Which leaves the Spirals,” Fate surmised.

“Precisely,” Leeron acknowledged. “Now, Spiral Engines have considerable potential as both weapons and general tools – they are effectively powered by the user’s courage, determination, and will to win against the odds, and the results can be truly spectacular. Though I doubt that anyone today – including myself – could or would replicate it, during the final battle of the War of Liberation, we used several Lagann-pattern Spiral Engines to create a warrior construct that dwarfed galaxies.”

He noted the assembled mages’ expressions.

“Oh come now, I’m on a ship powered by magic discussing devices that are driven by sheer mule-headed willpower, and this is where your suspension of disbelief ends?”

“Speaking as one who has seen a planet feign its own death, I would like to state that the existence of absurdity does not mandate the existence of further absurdity,” Zafira commented drily. “Regardless, you mentioned that nobody would replicate this feat, implying some disadvantage. Could you please elaborate?”

“Certainly. The problem is that overuse of Spiral Energy has some very nasty side-effects on the space-time continuum, not least because it ignores conservation of matter. In fact, if you push things too far, you run the risk of imploding the universe. The phenomenon is called the Spiral Nemesis, and it’s one of the reasons that our civilisation has not fully exploited its potential.”

“And the other?” Signum asked.

Leeron spread his hands. “We simply don’t understand everything about our own technology. The first Lagann-pattern Engine was dug out of the ground by a bunch of primitive miners, and most of our advancement in the few decades since then has been based on imitation, bodge-jobs, and guesswork. Though it is theoretically possible to turn a Spiral Engine into a reliable, mass-producible weapon and dimensional drive, the how continues to elude us. Simply bolting cheap copies of the Gurren-Lagann into our allies’ ships seems not only inelegant, but an active invitation to disaster.”

“Which is why we’re on this mission,” Yuuno concluded. “After learning about the Spiral Engine, I took a look through the Infinite Library. What I found was scattered, but useful. Apparently, the people on this dimension’s Earth have a fairly schizophrenic tech-level thanks largely to a group called the ‘Whispered’. Most of their stuff’s late twentieth-century, early twenty-first – when you compare it to our Earth, that is – but they’ve got some seriously exotic gear as well, hundreds of years in advance. Among the more interesting pieces of so-called ‘black technology’ is a device called the ‘Lambda Driver’, which sounds very much like a primitive version of a Spiral Engine.”

“And you want to reverse-engineer it?” Fate guessed.

“Got it in one. If we can take it apart and compare it with Leeron’s knowledge of Spiral tech, we may be able to get a better idea of the basic principles that the more advanced model operates on, and more importantly learn how to produce our own without simply copying everything we can of a Spiral Energy-powered mech and hoping we haven’t missed out any essential components.”

“So where are we going to find this thing?” Nanoha asked.

“I’ll field this,” Hayate said. “I gave some of the signal readings Leeron and Yuuno provided to Sensors, and they found several hits across the globe. We hacked their internal communications, and found that though most of the sites belonged to an organisation called ‘Amalgam’, some were under the ownership of a rival group called ‘Mithril’. Seeing as the latter’s been getting better press in the intelligence communities that have heard of them, we decided we’d call them first. In fact, that was the secondary purpose of this meeting. Their primary base of operations for activities involving the Lambda Driver appears to be a small island in the south Pacific. Let’s see if they’re in at the moment.”

She indicated the technicians.

“Gentlemen, if you would?”

They made a few adjustments, and the faint hiss of an audio feed emerged from the theatre’s central projector column.

“This is the Pacific Fleet Battle Group Tuatha de Danaan headquarters,” an uncertain-sounding voice said. “You are not authorised to use this channel. State your business, please.”

“I am Colonel Hayate Yagami of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. May I talk to your superior officer?”

There was an awkward pause, accompanied by some frantically whispered discussion on the other end of the line.

“Umm... I apologise, ma’am, but we don’t have that organisation on file,” the unfortunate comms officer responded. “One moment, please...”

More frantic whispering, and a deeper, older voice spoke from the other end of the line. “Colonel Yagami, this is our most securely-encrypted channel. Our head of communications – who is now crouched in the bathroom gibbering, I might add – has repeatedly assured me that it is undecipherable – indeed, unreachable – by any agency in the world today. You broke in with scarcely an effort. Would you care to explain how before I have to refer any more of my men to the base psychiatrist?”

“Sorry, who am I speaking to?”

“Lieutenant Commander Andrei Sergeivich Kalinin, head of the Battle Group’s ground forces. The captain and her XO are otherwise occupied. Answer the question, please.”

“Well... let me put it this way, commander. Do you have an Arthur C. Clarke on this planet?”

“The science-fiction author?” Kalinin sounded completely nonplussed.

“That’s the one. Anyway, you remember his Third Law? ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’? We approach that from the other direction.”

“Ah. Magic. I see. Goes well with the grandiose title of your organisation, I suppose. Colonel, if this is a hoax, it is in very poor taste.”

“No hoax, I assure you. In fact, I would be quite willing to send down a couple of my officers to negotiate in person. Twenty minutes from now, say? On the beach?”

“Colonel, I have so many questions I barely know where to start. For one, what exactly do you mean by ‘send down’?”

“From orbit. Our ship, more specifically.”

“You have a spacecraft?”

“Would certainly explain why you’ve never heard of us, yes? Commander, I know for a fact that the encryption programs this channel uses are centuries in advance of most other technology on your world, and we still managed to breach them with ease. Given that, is the fact that we are capable of space travel really so incredible?”

Kalinin laughed. “All right, you’ve convinced me. Twenty minutes from now, on the beach. If nothing else, I’m rather interested to find out what could warrant pulling such an elaborate hoax without taking the quicker and easier option of turning our entire base into smoking wreckage.”

Hayate grinned. “Don’t worry – you won’t be disappointed.”

She looked around, and saw that several of those assembled were trying very, very hard to keep their faces straight.

She sighed. “That poor man. I do hope we didn’t give them too much of a scare.”

“So who will be the ground team?” Signum asked, all business as always.

“Fate and Nanoha. Ladies, this little spat of yours has been going on far too long. I want to be sure that my two best combat mages can still work as a team if the situation requires it.”

Both women blinked in surprise. “Ma’am?”

“That is an order, captains.”

They saluted hastily, and left for the transporters. Shamal stared after them with a concerned expression.

“Are you sure they’ll be alright?”

Hayate shrugged. “They’re professionals. Besides, it was high time someone did something about it – they’ve been creeping around each other for weeks. Honestly, you’d think we didn’t have a trained counsellor on board this ship, the way people keep avoiding you. Wait – don’t tell me, you’ve been offering patients your homemade snacks, haven’t you?”

“I just thought it would establish a friendly atmosphere!” the Chief Medical Officer wailed.

“Right. Food poisoning generally does. Shamal, dear, you’re a wonderful person, and one of the best medics in the fleet. I’d hate to have to ask Zafira to mine the galley again.”

“Sorry, Hayate. It won’t happen again.”

“Glad to hear it. Leave the culinary experimentation to me and Catering, all right? Now, where are the readouts on that island? I want to be sure I’m not getting another ground team kidnapped here...”

***

Sergeant-Major Melissa Mao had just had the third-most-eventful twenty minutes of her life, during which she had been hurriedly relocated from an intimate date with a few dozen cans of beer at the base’s main bar to the inside of her M9’s cockpit overlooking the beach. It was scant comfort to know that she wasn’t the only one – Mithril was pointing enough firepower at said beach to drop the Behemoth, and even Captain Testarossa and the Tuatha’s skeleton crew had cancelled the huge submarine’s post-refit shakedown exercises in order to hurry back to land. That said, dumping a bucket of cold water over Sergeant Weber to wake him up had been very therapeutic.

The worst thing was, they didn’t even know what they were waiting for, and the rumours among the troops had been even more exotic than usual. Aliens, wizards, black-ops agencies even more secret than them and Amalgam – the tales seemed to get wilder with every minute that passed, and the massive response from the higher-ups only gave them added legitimacy.

The Arm Slave’s comms system crackled, and she heard the voice of one of the Intel techs. Clearly, one of their Black Technology-enhanced sensor arrays had found something.

“All units, this is TDD Ogma Central. We’re picking up some weird readings all over the EM spectrum at co-ordinates 2194/8063. No idea what’s causing them, but whatever it is, it’s pumping out a lot of power. Recommend you target that location, over.”

Frantically, Melissa inputted the co-ordinates to her mech’s nav-computer. Holy shit, it’s right on top of us!

“Kurz, you got it covered?”

“Same as always, babe.” Her subordinate’s voice was as obscenely cheerful as ever.

“A simple ‘yes, ma’am’ would have sufficed,” she grumbled. “Get ready – here it comes...”

A column of light emerged from the sand before them, dancing in place for a moment before collapsing into a bright flash that almost overloaded their Arm Slaves’ optic sensors. When it cleared, two female figures had appeared on the beach, hovering slightly above the ground.

They were human, at least, which was a definite plus. One was blonde, the other auburn-haired. They carried gleaming metallic staves with large, glowing gems set in their heads, and wore curious outfits which seemed halfway between elaborate dresses and alien military uniforms. The blonde was dressed in black with a white mantle, the redhead in white with blue trim. Despite their curious appearance, they scanned their surroundings with the practiced efficiency of trained soldiers, and seemed largely unfazed about having a small army of infantry, helicopters, walking tanks, and actual tanks pointing guns at them.

The auburn-haired one raised her staff in greeting, a mischievous smile playing across her face.

“Greetings, Earthlings. We come in peace. Take us to your leader.”

All those present – including her comrade – stared at her incredulously.

“What? What?”

 

[Espy]

Wow... did you write this?

 

[Hylian]

tl;dr

 

[Iaculus]

As mentioned in the Discussion thread, yes.

Was a bit surprised it ended up in the General section after the move, though.

 

[Espy]

Well, then I guess I'm your white knight.

 

[Iaculus]

Much obleejed, chiefy.

 

[Iaculus]

17. School Trip

The two TSAB officers were being escorted through the Mithril base by Lieutenant Commander Kalinin and a quartet of military-types with very big guns. So far things had been going well, in that nobody had started shooting at them. Not that Nanoha could persuade Fate to adopt such a sanguine attitude, though.

You know, Hayate said we were professionals. Her best combat mages. Remember that? her partner asked acidly.

Look, I’ve been the Bureau poster-girl ever since I was ten. Am I not allowed a little levity in my life?

Was that an invitation to compare traumatic pasts? Please tell me it wasn’t an invitation to compare traumatic pasts. I’ve got a list, Nanoha. A long list.

OK, bad choice of words there. I’m sorry. It’s just that all I did was fulfil the dreams of every Earthborn human since the golden age of Fifties B-movies.

And people wonder why Earth’s considered a primitive backwater? Honestly, Hayate’s going to blow a fuse.

Hayate? She was the one who first suggested it! Admittedly, we were both twelve at the time, but still...

Nanoha, sometimes I really, really have difficulty believing you’re two months older than me. Let’s get back to business, all right? Try not to embarrass us any further, please.

They entered a large office, presumably that of the base’s commander. Sitting at the desk was a girl with silver hair who couldn’t have been more than seventeen years old. Neither of these facts were particularly odd to Bureau mages, but they did seem a bit out-of-place in the relative mundanity of the Mithril base.

She looked up at them and smiled. Her hair was ruffled, and she looked just as flustered as everyone else on the base. I really wish the TSAB would formalise a standard first-contact protocol, Nanoha thought. It would save us no end of trouble.

“Ah, good afternoon. I’m Captain Tessa Testarossa, commander of the TDD-1 and, by extension, the Battle Group as a whole. I believe you wished to speak with me?”

Nanoha smiled back. “We did indeed. I’m Captain Nanoha Takamachi, and this is my partner Captain Fate Testarossa-Harlaown.”

“Pleased to meet you. Another Testarossa? I wasn’t aware there were that many of us around. Do you think we could be related?”

“Unless your family hails from another planet and has a history of producing mad scientists, it seems unlikely,” Fate replied blandly.

Tessa giggled in a very un-captainly manner. “Well, I’m pretty sure we’re all from Earth, but we certainly have the mad scientists. I dabble in a little bit of it myself, actually. Most of my family’s gone by now, though – well, except for my older brother, but he’s a senior member of a high-tech international terrorist organisation, so I suppose he doesn’t really count.”

“Oh, I’ve only got a sister myself. Well, sort of a sister. She fell ill when she was young, went into a coma, and our mother cloned me as a replacement. Then things got very, very complicated and unpleasant. Um.”

There was a long, awkward pause.

“Ah.,” said Tessa finally. “Right. Now, weren’t we discussing your reason for coming here?”

Nanoha’s knees almost buckled with relief. “Yes. Yes we were. It’s about the Lambda Driver – we wanted to have a look at it, see how we could integrate it with existing technology. Obviously, we wouldn’t be asking you to do this for free – we’d be happy to share our findings, suggest improvements for the design, et cetera.”

Tessa nodded. “That seems reasonable. I’ll have to run it past the General Council, but I doubt they’ll object too much. Can I assume you’ll be sending down further personnel to help with the analysis?”

“That was the general plan, if you’ll permit it. Same place?”

“I see no problem with that. Sergeant Weber, Sergeant-Major Mao, would you please go greet our second set of visitors?”

Two of the soldiers saluted and hurried off.

She leaned back in her chair. “While we’re waiting, would you mind explaining more about your organisation? It’s not every day I get to meet passing spacefarers.”

“We’d be delighted to,” Nanoha replied.

***

Melissa shook her head. “I really don’t see what the captain thinks she’s doing. We’ve only known about these people for about five minutes, and already she’s inviting them to take a look at one of our most advanced pieces of equipment?”

They were driving back to the beach in one of the base’s jeeps – they’d decided that getting back in their M9s just for a pickup would be far too fiddly and time-consuming. More accurately, Melissa was driving, whilst Kurz was attempting to salvage his expensive haircut from the ravages of the bucket of water.

The sergeant snorted. “Come on, Melissa, you really think those two looked like alien-invader material? You worry way too much about these things. Besides, the decision isn’t in Tessa’s hands. It’ll be up to the Council to figure out whether we want to help or not, and if these Bureau ladies can talk their way past that bunch of geriatric paranoids, then we know they’re harmless. She loses nothing by being nice to them – if the Council gives the go-ahead, then everything’s fine and dandy, and if they don’t, well... she tried to help, right? Not her fault that her superiors weren’t so understanding.”

She glanced at him in surprise, almost hitting an unfortunate PRT squaddie in the process. “That’s... actually pretty intelligent, sergeant.”

“Hey, babe, I’m not just a pretty face. Speaking of, did you see the pair on that blonde one? I wouldn’t mind initiating first contact with her over a plate of oysters.”

“Hah. I knew it couldn’t last.”

“Look, it’s our mandate as human beings to explore the unknown and open up exciting new relationships with the rest of the galaxy. Future generations will thank me.”

“That, or point and laugh at the smoking crater that’s your sole mortal legacy. Anyway, chit-chat’s over – this is our stop.”

They got out, Melissa taking point. Unfortunately, Kurz apparently hadn’t got the memo about shutting up and concentrating on the mission.

“Hey, I wonder if they’re all like that? An entire shipful of hot alien girls... well, that’s one more item ticked off my list of things to do before I die.” He s******ed. “In more ways than one. I mean, this next lot are scientists – I bet there are a few things I could show them. In the name of research, of course.”

The light flared before them in much the same way as before, and two more figures were deposited onto the sand.

“My, but aren’t you a handsome one?”

In no time flat the taller of the two, a wiry, vaguely fishlike individual with impressively lurid eyeshadow, was beside them, an arm draped over Kurz’s shoulders.

“Why don’t you tell me your name, darling? No? The strong, silent type, eh? I can work with that. See, I’m new to this place, innocent as a lamb, and was wondering if a big, brave soldier like yourself could provide me with an escort, maybe show me the sights. Come along now – I can’t wait.”

Kurz threw her a pleading glance as he was frogmarched away, and the second of the new arrivals shrugged helplessly. She suddenly felt a great deal of fellow-feeling for him.

Reluctantly, they set out after their respective charges.

***

A day had passed, and Mithril’s General Council had given their assent. After their slightly awkward introduction, the two organisations and their representatives had got on surprisingly well. Mithril, as far as Nanoha understood it, was a bit like a shadow UN, using its technological superiority and superbly-trained troops to topple dictators, resolve regional disputes, and generally work towards international peace and stability with efficiency, flair, and a pleasing unwillingness to overly abuse its authority.

Tessa Testarossa had effectively adopted Fate as an older sister, which her partner had been surprised but far from displeased about, and she was only too happy to help when Leeron and Yuuno had requested an interview with the Lambda Driver’s operator to supplement their research. Said operator was currently stationed at Jindai High School in Japan, protecting one of the living Black Technology repositories called the Whispered, which was why they, the two captains, Tessa, and Kalinin had just employed the Eventide’s transporters to jump to a concealed position just outside said school.

The three mages deactivated their Barrier Jackets and waited patiently for their new guests to get their bearings back. One’s first jump was always a bit disorienting, and they’d been given a quick guided tour of the Eventide on their way. That had been the General Council’s price for the Lambda Driver information, a naked attempt to covertly study the Bureau’s technology, and the mages had happily let it go ahead. It wasn’t as if their guests could replicate the stuff anyway, not without magic of their own. All of them were dressed in civilian clothes, either their own or borrowed from someone else, and they’d alerted those on their payroll at the school in advance, which should prevent too many awkward questions.

“So just what is it with Japanese students and the paranormal?” Fate asked. “I mean, there’s you, Hayate, the SOS Brigade, and now this. It can’t be a coincidence.”

Nanoha smiled. “Sorry, I forgot – you were a mid-term transfer, weren’t you? Must have missed the Tuesday morning lessons on ‘Superpowers and How to Deal with Them’. Very comprehensive – the department got several commendations for it.”

Her partner adopted an expression of exaggerated realisation, playing along. “Oh, right, yes! Just before Maths, wasn’t it? Didn’t the teacher retire after those allegations about her and the tentacle monster in Class 3-C?”

They continued to banter back and forth with an ease and familiarity that Nanoha had been missing for weeks, exaggerating the exploits of the fictitious class to quite thoroughly absurd levels until they could both barely speak for giggling. Beside them, Leeron checked out his makeup for the umpteenth time in his omnipresent hand-mirror.

“Why so fussy about your appearance?” Yuuno asked. “We’re just visiting a school, you know.”

“Correction – a high school, full of teenagers deliciously full of the bloom of youth. Though I am not so degenerate as to seriously pursue them, I can at least grant them a vision of beauty that shall last them to the end of their days. It seems a reasonable gift.”

“Amazing. Just when I think you can’t possibly get any more disturbing, you somehow prove me wrong.”

“I am full of surprises, sweetie.”

“You’re full of something, I know that. Remember – cross the line, and I’ll demonstrate exactly what non-lethal energy attacks can do to a person.”

“You keep saying that. Frankly, I’m starting to get a little intrigued.”

“Leeron,” Fate said wearily, “please stop antagonising the Bureau’s leading expert on applied magical theory. I doubt anyone would appreciate a school and its environs getting turned into molten slag.”

“Ah. Curiosity satisfied. My apologies, dear boy – hold on, you can do that?”

“Not as well as a dedicated combat mage like Fate or Nanoha, I’ll admit,” Yuuno replied, his irritation derailed by the opportunity to discuss a subject he loved. “Most of my abilities are centred around defence, utility, and support; binds, shields, teleportation, et cetera. That said, I’m very good at repurposing spells for unconventional means. A bind can cut or even become an energy whip, a shield can be slammed into someone as a blunt instrument or charged to serve as a proximity mine, and as for teleportation... well, it’s easier to list the things you can’t do with it, really. It isn’t as versatile as using a shipboard transporter – you need to be fairly close to whatever you’re about to teleport, and accuracy is greatly improved if you travel with them as well – but that still grants you a lot of leeway.”

“Fascinating. Once all this is over, I should really write a paper about you people.”

Tessa cleared her throat demurely. “I’m sure it is, but could we please save that discussion for when we’re not in the middle of a crowded urban area? Just for the sake of my mental equilibrium, you understand.”

Yuuno gave a guilty start. “Right, sorry. Let’s head off to the interview, then.”

***

As it turned out, the school had already cleared a room for them – the nurse’s office, to be exact. Their interviewee, a quiet, serious-looking young man named Sousuke Sagara, was waiting for them there, and saluted with the sort of crisp precision that would have made a drill instructor weep tears of joy as they arrived.

“Sir. Ma’am. Are these the TSAB personnel you mentioned?”

As Kalinin made the introductions with his typical brisk efficiency, Yuuno mentally reviewed the information Tessa had given them on Sergeant Sagara. Aged seventeen or thereabouts, a former child soldier, and owner of an exemplary combat record that placed him as one of Mithril’s finest Arm Slave pilots. He had been on his current bodyguard mission for several months, and a not-insignificant part of the organisation’s budget had been spent on compensating for his myriad well-intentioned indiscretions in the furtherance of said mission. The young submarine captain had spoken of him with no little concern, and Yuuno couldn’t help but wonder if her feelings towards her subordinate were entirely professional.

Nevertheless, everyone there was at present a very model of stiff, formal military discipline. Further salutes were exchanged, the room was checked for bugs with quite unnecessary gusto, and eventually he, Leeron, and Sousuke were marched into the infirmary. They found seating where they could, and he gave the sergeant a businesslike nod.

“Right then, Mr. Sagara, we’re going to be discussing your experiences using the Lambda Driver. How you made it work, its effects and side-effects, that sort of thing. Incidentally, please don’t be too alarmed if my associate here starts hitting on you – he does that to everyone, and I mean everyone.”

Leeron dismissed him with an airy wave. “Oh, ignore him, honey. For the record, I love what you did with your hair. That half-feral look? Very in at the moment. May I enquire as to who did it?”

Sousuke gazed at the Spiral levelly. “On my person at the moment I have one blackjack, two tasers, a telescoping baton, a garrotte, a holdout pistol, and four concussion grenades. How many of them am I going to have to use?”

“Orrr... we could talk about the Lambda Driver. I’m flexible.”

“That’s no problem.”

***

In the waiting room, things were fairly uneventful. Nanoha was chatting animatedly with Tessa and Lieutenant Commander Kalinin about the workings of Mithril’s Arm Slaves, but Fate couldn’t really summon much enthusiasm for the subject. The hulking mechs reminded her just a little too much of the silent, murderous guardians that had patrolled the corridors of her mother’s fortress, the Garden of Time. That left her with little to do but talk to the other person in the room.

She was a girl of about the same age as Sousuke and Tessa, dressed in the Jindai High School uniform. Fate wasn’t quite sure how she had found her way into an area supposedly reserved entirely for them, but seeing as nobody else seemed to be objecting to it, she supposed that it wasn’t anything to worry about. Maybe she’s that Whispered Sergeant Sagara’s supposed to be protecting? That would certainly explain the blue hair.

She leaned over. “Hello. My name’s Fate. May I ask what yours is, please?”

The girl looked up from what appeared to be Japanese Literature homework. “Oh, hi. It’s Kaname. Kaname Chidori. You’re with Mithril, right?”

“Well, sort of. An affiliated organisation, anyway. You know about them?”

“Hey, it was pretty hard for me not to find out, what with the world’s most obvious undercover agent hanging over my shoulder all the time. In fact, that’s the main reason I’m here – I already had to stop Sergeant Clueless from evacuating everything within a five-block radius to keep the meeting secure, and I wanted to make sure that he wasn’t going to have another lapse of common sense halfway through. Seriously, sometimes I have to wonder who’s supervising who.”

“Oh? All we’d heard said that Mr. Sagara was quite the professional.”

“Hey, don’t get me wrong, he’s good at the whole soldiering business. If you want someone to take an enemy position, pilot a giant battle-robot, or resolve a hostage situation, there’s none better. It’s just that he sees everything as a military problem. Civilian lives may factor in, but civilian life doesn’t, if you follow me. The stories I could tell you...”

Fate smiled. “Well, why not? They’re likely to be in there for a while, and it isn’t as if there’s much else to keep us occupied. Except your work, anyway.”

“Doubt I’m going to get much more done of that anyway – it’s like walking through a tar pit. Tell you what – I tell you some of mine, and you tell me some of yours. Sousuke isn’t exactly the most communicative of people; I rarely get much in the way of stories from the other side of the fence.”

“Fine by me. I warn you, though, it might get a little... strange.”

“Stranger than a schoolwide biochemical weapon threat caused by clothes-dissolving bacteria?”

“Depends on how you class discovering that your and your long-term girlfriend’s new adoptive daughter is in fact a six-year-old custom-made clone of the local religion’s male Messiah-figure created to power an invincible, semi-sentient space-battleship.”

“Wow, this I have got to hear. Who’s first, then?”

***

Nanoha walked back into the waiting room, accompanied by the two Mithril officers. They’d headed out to Sousuke’s safehouse to use the wireless there, reporting on their status and reassuring Commander Mardukas, the Tuatha de Danaan’s Executive Officer, that his captain had not been (a) injured, (b) kidnapped, or (c) eaten by feral high-schoolers. Though Nanoha understood the merits of professional paranoia, she couldn’t help but feel that sometimes it could be taken a bit too far.

Fate and Kaname were still talking to each other, she saw, though the subject of the conversation had changed rather.

“... so I just don’t understand,” the blue-haired girl said. “I mean, I know he likes me – the way he accepted half-pay just so he could stay at Jindai High rather than being reassigned was a bit of a hint – but he hasn’t acted on it in the slightest, and I can’t for the life of me figure out why. It’s not as if he’s devoid of initiative, after all. Believe me, my life would be a whole lot easier if he was. So that leaves... what?”

“Well,” Fate mused, “you did say that he’s very focused on protecting you. Maybe that’s it?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“Maybe he thinks his feelings are secondary to your safety? That pursuing a relationship might get in the way of doing his job?”

“Secondary... to... my... safety?” Kaname asked slowly, a vein twitching in her forehead. “Oh, that is IT! WHERE IS HE?”

It was Sousuke’s grave misfortune that his interview with the two scientists ended at that point. No sooner had they exited the infirmary than he was beset by a horribly-grinning high-schooler.

“Come on, mister. We are going to talk.”

The young sergeant was dragged out of the room at lightning speed, his normally-stoic face wearing an expression of utter panic. After a moment of exchanging bemused glances, everyone else decided to follow.

They caught up with them in the school’s main yard, where Kaname was busily berating her bodyguard at maximum volume.

“... And then you set yourself up as some shining, chivalrous knight, standing guard for some fair maiden who is of course far too feeble to do it herself, suffering nobly all the while. Is that it? IS IT?”

Sousuke attempted a faint, futile protest.

“I mean, hello? I took out a trained assassin with a taser and a bathrobe! Does that sound feeble to you, huh? Does it? How many times am I going to have to tell you that I can look after myself? That I don’t need some thick-skulled guard dog shielding me twenty-four-seven, but maybe, just maybe, something else?”

She rolled up her sleeves, her expression changing from anger to iron determination.

“Right then, Sergeant Sagara, we are going to resolve this once and for all.”

He started to back away, but Kaname was faster. Her arms shot out and grabbed the front of his shirt. There was a brief, frozen moment, and then she kissed him. Hard.

The silence that followed was interrupted by the click of a camera shutter, as a gaggle of students lurking around the corner gave Sousuke’s expression the immortality it deserved.

Tessa, meanwhile, was not taking the situation well.

“Blowing his cover, fraternising with the mission objective... oh, he hasn’t heard the last of this, not by a long shot. I’m going to bust him so low that he’d going to have to say ‘sir’ to a private. To the bar staff, even. Then, then I’m going to...” She trailed off into incoherent, outraged mumbling.

Nanoha glanced at Fate. “Tell me, wasn’t this precisely the sort of external upset we were supposed to be preventing?”

Behind them, Kalinin laughed. “Oh, don’t worry. Most of us were expecting something like this to happen sooner or later anyway. I believe Sergeant Weber was running a betting pool on the subject, in fact.”

He leaned in closer, keeping his voice low. “On an unrelated topic, when were you and your ship intending to leave?”

“Quite soon, actually,” Fate replied. “A couple of days at most. Our research department is very efficient, you see. Why did you ask?”

“Well, I know that you’re considerably in advance of us technologically. More importantly, I know that you can process and collate a planet’s worth of information in very little time, and that you can break just about any cipher on the planet.”

“This is about Amalgam, isn’t it?” Nanoha asked.

“Precisely. I quite realise that you are under no obligation to help us, but we’re up against significant opposition with very unsavoury practices, and while we aren’t losing yet, we aren’t winning either. The data from your ship’s scanners could very well turn the tide.”

Nanoha considered this. “The Bureau generally prefers not to get embroiled in planetary politics. There are just too many things that can go wrong.”

“Of course. I understand entirely – please forget I mentioned it.”

“Wait – I didn’t say that we couldn’t help you, did I? Frankly, we’ve been rather impressed with how your organisation operates – a high-tech, unaccountable, and heavily-armed secret society staying on the straight-and-narrow for more than an hour or two is practically unheard-of. I would say that if you haven’t gone all ‘shadow world government’ yet, you’re unlikely to no matter what we do. The thing is, though, such assistance would have a price. You would have to agree to have your planet relabelled as what we call an ‘administered world’, granting us the freedom to monitor it and ensure that our intervention hasn’t had any unintended consequences. We’re fairly hands-off mostly, but it’s definitely something to consider.”

He grunted. “Hrm. The Council won’t like that. I have to admit, it does sound a bit like a deal with the devil.”

“Oh, we’re perfectly happy to explain what we can, can’t and probably will do. We could even provide the legal documents if you so wish. Good communication’s important in any diplomatic relationship, after all. Don’t worry, though – there’s no stigma for turning the offer down. Several worlds have in the past, and it just means less paperwork for us. It’s entirely your decision, and we’ll do everything we can to make it an informed one.”

“Fair enough. I’ll run it past the captain and see what she thinks. After she’s entirely recovered, of course – I wasn’t even aware that she knew about that sort of language.”

He started to walk off, but turned around again after a few steps.

“For the record, Captain Takamachi, we don’t think of ourselves as being ‘unaccountable’ as much as ‘accountable to ourselves’. It helps, I find.”

“Ah? I’ll have to remember that one. It’ll definitely help with those recruits who think just because they’ve got an A-rank and an Intelligent Device they’re gods among mortals. Whatever you decide, commander, I wish you and your organisation all the best. Incidentally, is Mr. Sagara supposed to be turning that particular shade of purple?”

Kalinin cursed under his breath, and waded away through the gathering crowd to rescue his sergeant.

***

The Eventide’s barracks was a small, cramped space, really more of a glorified dormitory for those ground personnel not high-ranking enough to have separate quarters of their own. At this point in the evening it was fairly crowded with combat mages trawling through their washing, gulping down pilfered snacks from the galley, and doing all the other things soldiers did when they weren’t being required to either shoot at things or fill out the omnipresent paperwork.

For Nanoha, it was quite pleasantly nostalgic, bringing back memories of the days when she, Fate, and Hayate were simply green NCOs finding their place in the service. She’d made an impromptu chair out of her bedclothes and several pillows liberated from empty berths on either side, and was currently reading an enjoyably trashy Mid-Childan romance novel whilst reflecting on the events of the remainder of their visit to the parallel Earth.

It had all gone rather smoothly – Leeron’s mental agility and Yuuno’s breadth of knowledge had enabled them to gain a great deal of information from the Lambda Driver (most of which they had shared with the Mithril techs), whilst the organisation’s Intelligence branch had managed to tidy up the Jindai High School mess with their usual aplomb. Apparently, working with Sergeant Sagara had given them a great deal of experience in such matters. Hayate, meanwhile, had been discussing with the General Council whether or not they wanted to make their planet an Administered World; in the end, they had decided to defer the decision pending further debate and discussion with those few trusted politicians privy to their existence. For her part, the Bureau colonel had agreed to have another ship sent to check up on them in a week’s time – or two, if they decided more elbow room was needed.

The door slid open, and Fate walked in, glancing around the room for a second before making a beeline to Nanoha. Everyone else present suddenly took a considerably more pressing interest in whatever they were doing at the moment, Corporal Nakajima in particular sorting her socks with a diligence more suited to open-heart surgery.

Nanoha adopted an expression of forced casualness as her partner approached. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was even remotely convincing – it wasn’t something she did very often.

“Evening, Fate. How did saying goodbye to Tessa go?”

The blonde captain spread her hands. “Better than it might have. The whole ‘sorry I ruined your chances with that boy you liked’ thing was a bit awkward, of course, but suddenly-discovered family’s a nice thing to have, even if you’re probably not even slightly related and one of you just arbitrarily decided that you are in fact family. We’ve agreed to keep in touch – even if they don’t agree to Hayate’s proposal, I can still send letters.”

“Good to hear. Think we were that bad at her age?”

“I rather doubt that, but it was most likely due to lack of opportunity. Having a stable relationship will do that, after... all...” She trailed off awkwardly.

Before she could open her mouth again, Nanoha held up a hand. “Fate, I know what you’re going to say, and you don’t have to. You’re still the girl I married, and nothing is going to change that, all right?”

Fate shook her head. “Even if I don’t have to, I want to anyway. I was upset about what happened with my mother and sister, and I dumped it all on you even though you didn’t deserve it. I’m sorry.”

“And I forgive you. After all, if you can tolerate me piling on the life-threatening upgrades, trying to solve every other problem by blowing it up, and generally being an overly aggressive, workaholic ingrate, then I think I can deal with one little row, eh?”

She stood up, put her arms around her partner, and kissed her lightly on the forehead.

“Come on – let’s go to bed.”

***

Yuuno and Hayate watched on the hall monitors as the door to Nanoha and Fate’s room went from the ‘Occupied’ to ‘Sleeping’ privacy setting.

She turned to him and grinned. “Mission accomplished.”

His answering smile was genuine, but she could still see the distant pain in his eyes. “Right. Mission accomplished.”

She walked out of the security centre, giving him a gentle peck on the cheek as she went without being entirely sure why.

“You should get some rest too, Yuuno. I think you need it.”

***

In the space above Bloodhaven, the armada of Iruel-class transports began to move, their collective mission finally authorised by their commanders and gods. Deep in their bellies, one hundred and twenty thousand forearm-blades went snikt simultaneously.

Fleshcrafter Allard would have been delighted.

 

[Iaculus]

18. Unexpected Guests

Normally, New Kamina City was a noisy, bustling place, as one would expect for the capital of the galaxy-spanning Spiral Nation. Today, though, there was a stillness to it, a sense of quiet reverence. Crowds of citizens, human and beastman alike, had flooded the upper walkways, all jostling for the best view. The Chouginga Dai-Gurren had arrived in the system a day ago, and it seemed that there were two moons in the sky, the mighty Spiral flagship being kept at a safe distance to avoid untoward effects from its gravitic field on the planet’s surface.

Teppelin Square had been cleared, the usually-crowded public space now serving as a giant parade ground to display those warriors being prepared for their mission beyond the stars. Rank upon rank of Grappal war-mechs stood immobile, headed by the gleaming red, yellow, and black Gurren-Lagann. Small groups of dignitaries walked between the sleeping giants, inspecting them and their pilots with fascinated awe.

Admiral Viral allowed himself a smile of quiet pride. They had come a long way in the decades since the War of Liberation, growing into a mature, peaceful civilisation where once they had been scattered, desperate refugees, living in fear of what loomed above. The fact that he had once been part of ‘what loomed above’ was something he dismissed as largely irrelevant these days – a cushy job, a few dozen medals, and a well-deserved reputation as a war hero trumped getting repeatedly beaten up by his superiors for looking at them funny any day.

He glanced around, looking for familiar faces. President Rossiu was gazing down from one of the balconies overlooking the square like a benevolent elder deity, occasionally saluting the crowd with grave majesty. Viral’s inhumanly sharp eyes could detect a faint bluish glow around said balcony, presumably generated by a force field. The man was a populist, not an idiot.

Just as the Gurren-Lagann was at the forefront of the Grappals, so were its pilots, Lieutenant-Colonels Gimmy and Darry, leading the assembled flight personnel, their uniforms pristine and almost as decorated as Viral’s own. They had grown too – he remembered back in the Liberation War when they had been just a couple of scared, unusually lucky teenagers who had required constant bailing-out. Now, though, they were respected across the galaxy as peacekeepers and crusaders against injustice – neither was Kamina the Enkindler or Simon the Digger, certainly, but they were most definitely good enough.

All in all, the admiral was feeling fairly confident about the coming conflict. For all that the years of peace might have softened them, the Spiral Nation still had the courage, the power, and the technology to face any conceivable threat. He took a deep breath, stepped up to the podium at the head of the square, and began to deliver his prepared speech.

“Citizens of the Spiral Nation-”

He got no further. There was a horrible, viscous sound, and Gimmy’s head came apart, spraying pink mist across the hull of his mech and the uniform of his co-pilot. She had no time to react, no time to even open her mouth, before the second shot punched straight through her heart.

The third hit Viral right between the eyes.

He toppled backwards, his flesh beginning to knit itself together again even before he hit the ground. The back of his head slammed into the flagstones of the plaza, causing his vision to blur and a sharp, throbbing pain in the back of his head as his fractured skull repaired itself. He dived behind the nearest piece of cover, silently giving thanks for the immortal body that the dead Spiral King Lordgenome had given him, and attempted to take stock of the situation.

More shots were pouring in, eliminating scientists, politicians, and pilots with gleeful impunity. Some of the last tried to get into their mechs, either for protection or vengeance, but with little success. One bullet headed straight for the President, passing through the force field as if it wasn’t even there. One of his bodyguards shoved him to the ground and the shot went wide, tearing off Rossiu’s arm at the shoulder and going straight through his unfortunate guardian.

Viral tried to assess trajectory and fire patterns in an attempt to figure out where the sudden assault was coming from, but the closest vantage point in the most likely direction was a hill all the way outside the city. So accurate at such a range... not even Yoko could manage that.

He scampered on all fours towards the nearest Grappal, using the available cover as best he could. The crowds had begun to panic, undulating like a sea as they attempted to escape from what they had originally considered a safe haven. Flailing bodies fell from the walkways, pushed over the edge by the terrified mass of people.

His oversized paw-hand grabbed the back of the Grappal pilot’s uniform, dragging him behind the huge mech. Ignoring the bloody ruin that was the dead man’s lower body, he rifled through his jacket pockets. At last he found the activation key, a crude imitation of the Gurren-Lagann’s Core Drill, and held its strap between his fangs as he scaled the war machine. A stray shot took off his foot at the ankle and he almost fell, instead relying on his three functional limbs as the appendage regrew.

Once inside, he quickly closed the cockpit, inserting the key and placing his hands on the grips with practiced familiarity. He was no Spiral, certainly, but he still knew his way around a Ganmen if required. He powered up the flight-sphere and took off, weaving through the convoluted tangle of New Kamina City’s skyline.

Explosions mushroomed in the distance, toppling towers, blocking roads, and collapsing walkways. The attack on Teppelin Square was clearly not an isolated incident. Viral patched into the military comm-net, and found total anarchy.

“... some sort of commando teams... small but tough... Lagann’s bolts, they’re tough... Stop them, stop them before they...”

“There’s monsters in the streets, going after the civilians... Shit, it’s a massacre down here.”

“Air Marshal Shiki’s down! I say again, Air Marshal Shiki is down! One of his aides turned into... something, I don’t know what, and...”

“They’re on the Chouginga, hell, I think they were here all along... planting bombs... some sort of bioweapon... so many dead...”

“Where did they come from? In Kamina’s name, where did they come from?”

He cut across the chatter, attempting to stave off a total breakdown. “All units, this is Admiral Viral. Initiate Defence Plan 36B – we are under assault by a large-scale guerrilla operation. Remember your training, remember those we are sworn to protect, and above all remember that we are the Spiral Nation! Nothing is impossible to us! No enemy is undefeatable! Together, we shall pierce the heavens themselves!”

A ragged cheer echoed from the net, and Viral grinned a toothy grin. That was how it went, wasn’t it? What I wouldn’t give to have a few more members of the Dai-Gurren Brigade at my back...

That was then, though, and this was now. He had to make do with what he had – the true test of a leader was how they could adapt, whether to new situations, new assets, or, most importantly, new enemies.

They had never faced foes like this before – the Dai-Gurren Brigade had been created to fight robotic colossi in honourable combat, and that was what they had mostly ended up dealing with, plus the occasional swarm of lice-ridden bandits during the rebuilding after the War of Liberation. These... creatures were different. Ganmen you could see coming, and bandits were never this well-equipped, this well-organised, or even this creatively vicious. He very much looked forward to administering a little payback.

Another detonation blossomed from the upper storeys of a nearby tower, and he rolled the Grappal to avoid it, his eyes still set on the high, rocky hill ahead.

***

The assassin leaned back, and watched the Spiral capital burn. It had been a textbook operation – send in the Divines to eliminate the sensitive targets whilst the Hellhounds tore apart the military and the daemons spread general chaos. The transports were still in the Warp, Divine Assassins summoning Hellhounds from them to attack precise locations as required. Though they were still somewhat vulnerable there, he had formulated a plan to deal with that problem that had been cheerfully authorised by the gods.

Looking up, he maximised the zoom on his mechanical eyes and was pleased to see explosions rippling across the surface of the Chouginga Dai-Gurren like pinpricks of sickly yellow light. Lady Reigle’s plague bombs were working as advertised. Well, that should keep them from achieving space superiority any time soon.

All in all, everything was going according to plan. Everything, that was, except whatever maniac was trying to fly a building-sized war robot into him.

He took stock of his equipment. One Exitus-pattern rail rifle, accurate at ranges of up to ten kilometres with the appropriate training (which he had), plus five clips of regular ammunition and one of the special phased penetrator rounds, adapted from the ancient Lance of Longinus in much the same way as the Angel Cutter blades popular with both his fellow-assassins and the Hellhounds. One standard-pattern bolt pistol. A full belt of Warp-powered grenade dispensers. More than enough.

He levelled the rail rifle, slapping in the clip of PP rounds as he did so. The Grappal had opened fire, high-explosive shells chewing up the ground around him. None of them came particularly close, and all lacked the telltale greenish tinge that indicated Spiral Energy use – the pilot was obviously emotionally-compromised by the destruction of his home. Makes my job much easier, I must say.

His first shot went straight up the barrel of the mech’s enormous machine-gun, detonating it from the inside in a fireball that reduced its forearms to molten slag and scored deep rents across its chest. His second punched through its head into the flight-sphere on its back, shattering it and sending the Grappal crashing to the ground. His last two hit its exposed leg joints, immobilising it where it lay.

He ejected the clip, swapping it for one of regular rounds. No sense in wasting the rest of the phased penetrators if he didn’t have to.

The crippled mech’s cockpit-hatch creaked open, and the pilot staggered out. For the first time that day, the assassin knew uncertainty.

Hold on, didn’t I kill you once already?

The pilot was a tall, rangy creature dressed in the medal-bedecked blue uniform of a senior officer who could almost have passed for human if it were not for the oversized, clawed hands and the fang-filled mouth that twisted into a feral snarl as he regarded his assailant. A mutant? No – must be one of those chimerical constructs the Spirals have living with them. Beastmen, I think they’re called. That explains why he wasn’t using the Grappal to its full potential, anyway.

All in all, he looked a great deal healthier than when the assassin had last seen him with bits of his head splattered across Teppelin Square.

He didn’t waste time trying to figure out his foe’s miraculous resurrection, though, instead taking aim with the rail rifle once more and shredding the beastman’s torso with a full clip of high-velocity rounds. His target collapsed to the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs... before starting to get right back up again, his body regenerating with impressive speed.

The assassin started to fall back, firing off shot after shot at the advancing beastman. All of them hit, and none had any permanent effect other than further ruining his target’s uniform. Slowly but surely, he was losing ground. Time for a change of tactics.

He dropped the rail rifle, reasoning that he could retrieve it later, and pulled out his bolt pistol. This proved rather more effective, the miniature rockets lifting his pursuer off his feet and sending him tumbling down the slope, chunks of flesh flying in every direction. The assassin nonchalantly holstered the weapon and held out his hand beneath one of the grenade dispensers on his waist, allowing himself a satisfied nod as something heavy, round, and metallic dropped into it. He thumbed the arming stud, calculated the trajectory, and threw the fragmentation grenade down after the beastman, setting off after it a moment later. He didn’t need to check to see if it had hit – he knew it had.

“Exitus acta probat,” he muttered to himself.

He drew his pistol again as he approached his enemy’s last resting place, but soon saw that it wouldn’t be necessary. The grenade had done its work above and beyond his expectations, leaving nothing but a scattered mess of viscera and...

An inhumanly long arm shot upwards from behind a rock, its huge, gnarled fist hammering into his groin. His legs turned to water and he collapsed to the ground, the beastman looming in front of him. Its (he could no longer reasonably call it a ‘he’) flesh was reknitting with horrifying speed as it rained down blow after blow into his armoured bodysuit. He tried to bring his bolt pistol to bear, but it was snatched from his grasp, crushed into mangled wreckage, and dismissively thrown to one side. The creature was roaring, reciting name after name as it pounded him.

He kicked out, catching it in the knee and causing it to crumple over beside him. As he tried to get away, though, it caught his leg and squeezed, crushing flesh, bone, and cybernetics with equal ease.

The assassin was dragged backwards, scrabbling desperately at the surrounding rocks, and the beating began once more.

***

Eventually, the red mist rose from his eyes. Viral stood up, gave the assassin’s mutilated corpse a disdainful kick with his one remaining boot, and limped back down the hill.

He had a city to save.

***

The Grand Convocation Chamber of the New Republic Senate was in turmoil. As a central parliament for over a thousand star systems it could be said that this was its natural state of being, but it was especially pronounced today.

“So allow me to summarise,” Senator Borsk Fey’lya said, his deep, rich voice dripping with disdain. “Peace has returned after the longest period of political turmoil in living memory, we have finally begun to heal our wounds and restore order to the galaxy, and our children once more have the opportunity to grow and prosper in freedom. So what is the honourable Jedi Order’s response to this? What do the self-appointed guardians of said peace and stability will? Why, nothing other than a return to conflict against an unspecified, supposedly terrible foe on the word of some shadowy order of self-described magicians who claim to come from another universe! Noble senators, does that sound sane to you? Does that sound reasonable?”

There was a ripple of discontented mutters and calls of “Hear, hear!” from the floor.

“Even assuming that these extradimensional bogeymen, these ‘Chaos Gods’, do in fact exist, have we attempted to meet with them? To reason with them? Of course not! We are glibly assured that they are wicked, deceitful manipulators, that no word they utter can be trusted. Do the Jedi have so little faith in our skills as negotiators that they must coddle us against the horrors of the universe at large, letting us play our own games while the grown-ups work elsewhere? I am sure I need not remind you, noble senators, of the consequences that arose when we last placed so much faith in the reasoning of a Force-user.”

“Did he just play the Palpatine card?” Senator Ferron Hykso muttered to his neighbour. “Please tell me he didn’t just play the Palpatine card.”

“I’m afraid so,” Senator Val Wrynn replied, idly scratching at the eyepieces of his mask.

“Well, there goes his credibility.”

“I’m not so sure,” the Kel Dor politician replied slowly. “He’s making some good arguments. Master Skywalker’s faction may face some genuine opposition here.”

Hykso stared at him, and he threw up his three-fingered hands in surrender. “Well, apart from playing the Palpatine card, of course.”

Meanwhile, Fey’lya was winding up to the end of his speech. “And so, ladies, gentlemen, and indeterminates of the Senate, I say to you... WHAT IN BOTHAWUI’S NAME IS THAT THING?”

The indicated creature stood calmly in the upper tiers of the chamber. It was dressed in a matte-black armoured bodysuit with a white, skull-shaped mask concealing its face. The fingers of one hand were tipped with long, metallic talons wreathed in crackling energy, whilst the other held an enormous, brutal-looking sword that was toothed like a chainsaw. The dismembered bodies of three senators and their staff were strewn around it – Hykso could only assume that the Senate’s chaotic floor-plan and general hubbub had kept the murders undetected.

The creature spoke in a quiet, emotionless voice that nevertheless managed to carry to every part of the chamber.

“Fear me, for I am your apocalypse.”

That was when the screaming started.

The assassin vaulted down into the mass of terrified politicians, carving a bloody trail through them. The chamber’s inhabitants scattered like herd animals before a predator, but the intricate, symbolic seating arrangements conspired against them, creating natural chokepoints wherever those attempting to escape were not becoming hopelessly lost. In those first few minutes of the attack, more were trampled to death than caught on the assassin’s blades.

Hykso dragged Val Wrynn through the crowd, yelling into his headset for his bodyguards to attend him. His only response was an ominous silence. Why didn’t we see this coming? Why weren’t we warned?

They exited the chamber, swept along by the living tide through the maze of passageways beneath. It was only once they had almost reached the main foyer that said tide began to slow, and they heard more screaming from up ahead. They rounded a corner, and saw the cause.

The assassin’s attack had not been without purpose – it had been intended to frighten its prey, driving them down into a trap. They attempted to turn, to run back the way they came, but the stampeding crowd blocked their escape.

The last thing Senator Hykso saw was the second assassin’s goggles, burning with a hellish red glow as the creature closed in.

***

Two floors above, Luke Skywalker was attempting to shape the Senate Building’s defences into some resemblance of order. He had borrowed a comlink from an injured Republic soldier, and was employing it to get a feel for the situation. Meditation might have proven more effective, but meditating while a berserk killing machine was firing off what appeared to be directed fusion blasts at you and your troops was not what he deemed to be the wisest course of action.

He had directed several squads towards the lower floors to deal with the second assassin, but the sheer congestion meant that they probably wouldn’t arrive there for another ten minutes, and he was uncomfortably aware that every second might cost another life. In the meantime, though, he had other things to deal with.

One squad had set up an E-WEB repeating blaster on one of the upper balconies, pouring down fire on the assassin. Despite its best efforts, several shots hit, gouging molten craters in its armour, and it snarled, slagging the gunners’ position with a shot of its fusion pistol and leaping into the remainder, chainsword roaring. It was then that the heavy blaster’s power packs cooked off, going up in an explosion that hurled the assassin to the chamber floor. The remaining soldiers wasted no time in taking advantage of its temporary incapacitation, rushing out of cover and firing shot after shot into it until it finally stopped moving. Luke had just started to breathe a sigh of relief when the creature started to twitch and writhe once more, before exploding in a shower of acidic bile that melted holes in the tiles for fifty metres around it.

“Primary target has been eliminated,” he reported through the comlink. “What about the secondary, lieutenant?”

“No longer a problem,” the Senate Guard officer replied shakily. “Senator Kerrithrarr got ‘im before we could arrive. Tore him apart.”

Luke winced. Death by angry wookiee – not a pleasant way to go.

“How is the senator?”

“Dead, sir. That assassin-freak exploded when he died – turned most of the corridor into steaming goop. There were at least a dozen casualties just from that.”

“... I understand. How is the evacuation going?”

“Most of the surviving civvies are out – Senator Fey’lya was surprisingly helpful with co-ordinating that mess – but we still haven’t heard from the Chief of State or his staff. They headed for the roof, towards his private craft.”

“Thank you, lieutenant. I’ll check that out.” He turned back to the soldiers accompanying him. “Stay here for the moment. Sergeant Garlak, you have command.”

Not waiting for a reply, he sprinted away towards the rooftop landing bays, leaping between the tiers and balconies of the Grand Convocation Chamber with precise applications of the Force. He drew on it further, feeling its power infuse his limbs, and accelerated, igniting his lightsabre as he went.

For a moment he wondered how the assassins had managed to bypass the guards so easily, but dismissed it. We can figure that out once everybody’s safe.

Even before he entered the Senate Building’s departure lounge, he knew something was wrong. The smell of blood and other unnameable things hung thick and heavy in the air, and waves of darkness seemed to pulsate from the room. Something terrible happened here.

He slid open the door, and entered hell.

There were over twenty people in the room – bodyguards, senators, clerks, and diplomats. Not a single one was alive. Each had been killed in a different way – decapitation, strangulation, and evisceration were amongst the least creative. Chief of State Ponc Gavrisom had been plucked, dismembered, and sculpted into a twisted imitation of a gamebird at a banquet, placed on the table in the middle of the room like a grotesque offering.

The third assassin unfolded himself from the shadows in the corner, his artificial eyes glowing with giggling insanity.

“Hello, Master Skywalker. Do you like my little arrangement? Don’t be shy now – I’m sure there’s room for one more.”

An ordinary human might have felt rage, terror, or some similarly strong emotion at that point. Luke, however, simply felt... calm. Tranquil. The complexity of his life seemed to fade away, collapsing into a simple tunnel with him at one end and this grinning butcher at the other. He rushed forwards, lightsabre raised, without saying a single word. The assassin shrieked in delight and moved to intercept him.

They exchanged a single blow each, and a body fell to the floor.

Luke sheathed his weapon and walked away. He had no desire to stay in this place any longer than was necessary.

Behind him, the assassin exploded in the same manner as its colleagues, filling the room with cleansing acid and taking away just a little of its horror.

***

Across the New Republic, garrisons and listening posts fell silent, overwhelmed by a tide of hideous monsters and shadow-skinned infiltrators that seemingly came out of nowhere. Galactic communications collapsed, plunging entire systems into isolation, and entire fleets vanished, swallowed by nameless predators. Through it all came the Yuuzhan Vong, burning everything in their path with fanatical glee.

Rudely awoken from its dreams of peace, the galaxy screamed into the long night that crept over it like a shroud.

 

[Iaculus]

19. Moving In

Almost as soon as they arrived back at the central office, the Eventide’s crew were abruptly turfed off the ship pending an extensive refit. No-one questioned this – they all knew what was coming. The initial offensive was soon to begin, and the First Expeditionary Force would be at its forefront.

Everyone who had shore leave booked headed to the surface of Mid-Childa immediately, there to meet friends and family, grab a moment’s relaxation, and generally enjoy the comforts of civilian life one last time. By the end of the day, though, most of them had returned to settle into their new quarters. The entrance lobby was crowded with mages of all shapes and sizes, uniformed or otherwise.

The first order of business was allocating rooms. The whole point of the change, after all, was giving the First more spacious quarters in deference to its pivotal role in the war effort, and Hayate, Fate, and Nanoha had spent most of the afternoon figuring out who would go where. Before heading off to check on his beloved library, Yuuno had conjured an interactive table detailing the arrangements onto one of the lobby walls, and it was this that most of the crew were gathered around. Mostly, they seemed to be satisfied, though there were questions here and there.

“Umm... excuse me,” Erio said, “but why are Caro and I sharing a room, please?”

“Most of the officers’ rooms were doubles,” Hayate explained. “We put several people in those – Fate and Nanoha, me and the Wolkenritter, and a few others – but we still had one left over, and we reasoned that we might as well give our two youngest recruits an alternative to the main dormitory. You don’t object, do you?”

“No, no, it should be fine.” He saluted, his young face as comically serious as ever. “Thank you for your consideration, ma’am.”

Hayate saluted back, struggling to keep the smile off her face. “Not a problem, private.”

She turned to the assembled crew. “Starting tomorrow, we will be going into full war footing. All leave is cancelled, and you will be embarking on a comprehensive program designed to prepare you for your first direct confrontation with the enemy. Said program will involve combat simulations and weapons training supervised by Captains Signum and Takamachi, as well as full briefings on Chaos’s known equipment, troop dispositions and capabilities administered by Captain Testarossa-Harlaown and Chief Librarian Scrya. Attendance is mandatory. Dismissed.”

The crowd dispersed with varying levels of enthusiasm – Hayate noted with amusement that Corporal Nakajima was practically dragging a reluctant Corporal Lanster off to see their new quarters. Once they had left, she nudged Fate in the ribs.

“Did you see that look Caro was giving Erio?”

“No – why?”

“That young man had best watch his back, that’s all I’m saying. Or other body parts, as the case may be.”

The blonde captain sighed. “They grow up so fast, don’t they? Maybe we’d best give them the Talk sooner rather than later.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to leave that one to you, Fate,” Nanoha said wryly. “Giving it to Vivio was traumatic enough.”

“Vivio?” Hayate exclaimed. “Nanoha, she’s ten years old!”

“And has a combat form that looks about twenty. Worse, she’s picked up a bad habit of changing into it and sneaking out of school. I had to spend an entire weekend getting every bar in the catchment area to put her on their ‘evict and report’ list, and that’s only a stop-gap measure until I can convince Shamal to plant a tracker on her Intelligent Device. At least I know where she got that language from now.”

The colonel winced. “Ouch. And here I thought the theological implications of adopting the Sankt Kaiser’s reincarnation would be bad enough. Has the school found out yet?”

“No, but it’s only a matter of time, I suppose. It’s a pity – Sister Hilda is such a nice old lady. She really doesn’t deserve that sort of shock.”

“She’s caused a lot of inconvenience, hasn’t she?” Hayate mused. “Vivio, that is.”

“Oh yes. Tonnes.” Nanoha smiled. “And we still wouldn’t give her up for the world. Erio or Caro either. I imagine it’s the same for you and the Wolkenritter.”

“Hah – you have no idea. For all your kids have put you through, at least they never came up with some cack-handed scheme to restore you to health that involved magical muggings, conjuring the forces of darkness, and endangering an entire planet. Shamal was coming up with excuses for that for weeks afterwards, you know.”

They were quiet for a moment, reminiscing.

“When was the last time the TSAB engaged in all-out war, do you think?” Nanoha asked finally.

“As opposed to just a heavily-armed police action?” Hayate replied. “I don’t know. Not in our lifetimes, certainly.”

“And now we’re responsible,” Fate concluded. “Hayate, do you think we’re doing the right thing?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I really don’t. If only we had time to deliberate, to negotiate... but we’ve seen that they view overtures of peace as an exploitable weakness, and every day we waste puts another universe in peril. Things are what they are, I suppose. All we can do is try to make the best of whatever hand we’ve been dealt, and right now that means ensuring the kids we’re responsible for don’t end up getting themselves killed in their first real fight.”

Nanoha smiled. “You are aware that quite a few of those ‘kids’ are older than us, right?”

“Commander’s privilege. Anyone lower-ranking than yourself is de facto younger. Well, except for Signum. And a couple of the support staff. That’s pretty much it, though. Oh, and for God’s sake don’t tell Signum I said that.”

“Is this the same ‘commander’s privilege’ that allowed you to access our medical records?” Fate asked, an eyebrow raised.

Aghast, Hayate turned to Nanoha. “You told her about that?”

“And followed your example, Miss Easily-Dehydrated. Don’t forget to be nicely-rested for tomorrow’s training, and try not to inhale any peanuts during the night, hmm?”

With that the two captains departed, giggling like teenagers. Hayate stared after them, speechless, before turning round and stumping off to her office.

Signum was waiting for her there, a faint smile on her habitually stern face. “I did warn you that that was a mistake.”

“Look, can we please not talk about it? How’s our security, by the way?”

“The technology is good – the design, not so much. I made some temporary patches to the holes that should see us through for the moment, but I will be requisitioning a full refit as soon as is convenient.”

“How big are the holes?”

“Significant. To use an Earth-specific comparison, I believe that an intruder up to and including the size of a cockroach could gain entrance with little inconvenience.”

“A cockroach? Signum, don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?”

“Not at all. As we saw during the Scaglietti Incident, that is not an unfeasible size for a surveillance or assassination drone, and we can only assume that technology has advanced in those areas in the years since then.”

“Fair enough. Just try not to wreck the entire department, all right? We only just moved in, after-”

Colonel! It was one of the perimeter guards, almost shouting down the link. Colonel, they-

His panicked voice was cut off abruptly. Hayate tried to regain contact, but the link was dead. So was every other she tried. She relayed this information to Signum.

“Nothing for me either.” Does the Tome of the Night Sky’s internal network still function?

Bit choppy, but it’s working. “An attack?”

“That seems the most likely option. By whom, though, and from what direction?”

“I’ll check with Shamal – maybe she can help.”

Shamal, this is Hayate. Comms are down, and we think we’ve got intruders – might have taken out a few of our people already. Mind having Klarer Wind take a look?

Of course. Shamal didn’t question the orders – they both knew that if Hayate was asking, she had good reason. There was a brief silence. You’re right, Hayate. It’ll take me some time to figure out precise location and numbers, but we have unknowns inside the perimeter. Human-sized, and moving fast. Shall I prepare the infirmary to receive casualties?

Good idea. Zafira, warn the rest of the crew.

At once, Mistress Hayate.

She turned back to Signum. “Shall we-”

“No. Your magic is not suited for a fight like this – wide-area bombardment will not help us on board a space station. You coordinate the defence while I ensure your safety, is that understood?”

Hayate nodded in acquiescence to her bodyguard. “Understood. Good luck, Signum.”

The Wolkenritter simply smiled and walked out.

Mistress Hayate, Zafira’s voice said, I am under assault. My previous mission is now impossible. I am retreating to the infirmary – I shall help Shamal set up a fortified position there. My apologies.

Not your fault, Zafira. Did you get a visual on the enemy?

Negative – it was an ambush. I had to retreat in some haste. I can say, though, that they are using both exotic projectile weapons and magic. Assuming that they are working for Chaos, it seems most likely that they learned the latter from Alicia and...

Both knew what other name he had been thinking of. Neither wanted to say it. Understood. Transfer the data you obtained to the other Wolkenritter and keep me updated on further developments.

As you wish.

Hayate stared at the door where Signum had been a moment earlier, feeling the creeping helplessness that was every commander’s worst nightmare.

At the moment, I can only speak to three people. Two are trapped, and one is fighting to protect me. What am I supposed to coordinate here? What am I supposed to do?

***

In the corridor, Signum heard the automatic door close behind her. She stood at a T-shaped intersection, one passageway in front of her and two to her sides. Closing her eyes, she touched the pendant at her throat.

“Laevantien, Knight Armour.”

There was a curious flowing sensation as the Ancient Belkan equivalent of the Mid-Childan Barrier Jacket slid over her body, and she drew her sword, swiping it experimentally in the air a couple of times before breaking open the hilt and flipping in a pair of cartridges. It snapped back into shape with a satisfying click and she held it in front of her in the guard position. Whatever threatened her mistress, she would be ready for it.

She didn’t have to wait long. Four lithe, black-clad figures appeared, two from the central corridor and one from each flank. They wore scorpion-like helmets and each had a pair of long, dull grey blades protruding from their forearms, flat across the backs of their hands. None of them said a word, simply advancing with inhuman speed across the floor, the walls, and in one case, the ceiling.

She regarded them calmly, mentally calculating distance and timing. “Unknown intruders, you have entered a restricted area. Surrender now and you shall be arrested as criminals against the Time-Space Administration Bureau, with all the legal rights that entails. If you do not, I shall be forced to apprehend you, and the current situation means that I may have to employ lethal force. Which do you choose?”

Their only answer was a barrage of crystalline projectiles and magical blasts.

***

Fleet Admiral Thundra’s first clue that not all was right with the world was when an explosion flowered from the enormous Government Tower that dominated the city landscape, lighting up the dimming evening sky and obliterating Mid-Childa’s parliamentary chambers. He stared in horror at Naval Command’s external monitors, watching as the tower bent in half with slow, terrible grace before the top part detached and fell into the city below.

“Wilson!” he yelled. “WILSON!”

“Sir?” his normally-unflappable aide replied, looking decidedly flapped.

“Get me Disaster Planning and Rescue. Not the main branch – that’s in GovCentral. Was, anyway. Try one of the district offices and work from there. We need to clear up that mess, organise an evacuation. Jechter, find out what caused that blast. I’m betting it wasn’t an accident.”

“You’d win that bet, sir,” one of the comms officers replied. “We’re getting reports of a full-scale raid. Creatures matching the description of ‘daemons’ from the Bloodhaven and Suzumiyaverse files, plus high-tech special-ops backup. They’re all over the city, hitting civilian and military targets alike.”

Shitfire. “Contact High Command – no, wait, they were in the tower too. What about Army HQ?”

“No response, sir. The wreckage fell right on top of their position. We’re trying to patch together some sort of command structure involving the local garrisons and law-enforcement, but it’ll take a while. Hours, maybe. The link to Air Command is still operational, but it’s patchy. They were amongst the first places the invaders hit, and it sounds like they’re barely holding them off.”

“Screw patchy. Punch me through, Rodriguez.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“...miral? ...at you?” The voice of the Air Force comms officer was faint and laced with static. They could hear screams, explosions, and the myriad other sounds of magical combat in the background.

Thundra grinned. “Damn right it is. Heard you could use some-”

“Naval Headquarters, come in!” It was another voice on another channel, panicky and desperate.

“What?” the admiral growled, annoyed at the interruption.

“It’s Corporal Merak, sir. Perimeter security. We’ve got an intruder – no, more like a fucking juggernaut. Went straight through my squad – weapons did nothing. Absolutely fucking nothing. Headed your way, sir, if he doesn’t- gyaaah!”

There was a horrible, fleshy sound, and the feed cut off.

Thundra mentally enumerated every oath, curse, and obscenity he could recall. “Sorry, AirCom, but you’re going to have to wait a little longer. Do we have this... whatever-it-is on the cameras?”

“That’s a negative, sir,” one of the security techs replied. “Wait – it’s more than that. The security cameras are shutting down – at least, the ones on the most direct route to us are. It’s like it’s draining the power from them.”

“A localised anti-magic field?”

“That’s my guess. Powerful one, too. Don’t think our patrols have the firepower to punch through it.”

“Understood. Pull back everyone with combat training to here. We’ll try a concerted assault. I am not retreating from our last operational command post, understand?”

The headquarters swung into action, clerks, technicians, and combat mages alike fine-tuning the security systems, assembling makeshift barricades, and checking their Devices. There was only one person who was not engaged in some sort of frenetic activity, and that was their liaison with the Integrated Data Entity, Emiri Kimidori. She simply stood in a corner, her mild blue eyes watching the proceedings with impassive curiosity.

Knew we couldn’t rely on that bloody machine to help us, Thundra thought sourly.

The intruder arrived later than he’d anticipated but sooner than he’d hoped, kicking apart the reinforced steel door with no more than a couple of blows. Immediately, all within opened fire, unleashing a dizzying array of magical blasts, bolts, and other projectiles. Even Wilson had joined in, unleashing massive arcs of lightning from a delicate-looking cane. Thundra had to close his eyes to prevent himself from being blinded by the lightshow.

Not a single one reached its target.

The creature was swathed in darkness, revealing only the occasional, contradictory glimpse of what lay within. All they could tell was that it was tall and humanoid, with an enormously large, asymmetrical head of which one feature was prominently visible, though whether it was an oversized eye, mouth, or some bizarre combination of the two was hard to discern. Every attack was absorbed, dissipated, or diverted by the darkness, gouging a plethora of holes out of the already-abused walls and doorway behind it.

Thundra poked his head out of cover, his eyes widening in astonishment. “What are you?”

It grinned a disturbingly perfect grin, pearly-white teeth gleaming against the shadows. “That which is unknown and unseen always commands the greatest fear.”

There was a scream from the forward barricades, and a combat mage charged at it, raising his axe-shaped Intelligent Device above his head. He brought it down onto the assassin... which caught it with one shadowy appendage. The axe shattered, rust crawling across it with impossible speed, and the mage fell to the floor, overbalanced. The assassin picked him up and punched an arm straight through him, before tossing his mangled carcass aside and turning back to the command room’s remaining defenders.

Its eye-mouth expanded, and bolts of darkness lanced from it, turning those it hit into withered, desiccated corpses. They scuttled for cover, firing shot after ineffectual shot at the apparition as it inexorably advanced.

Everyone, that was, except Kimidori.

Thundra hadn’t even seen her move – one moment she was in her favourite staring corner, the next she was standing in front of the assassin, arms akimbo.

“I apologise, agent of Chaos,” she said softly, “but I cannot allow you to continue.”

It launched an experimental blast at her, but it passed straight through, impacting on the base of Thundra’s podium. She made a strange chattering, bubbling noise, and the darkness vanished, revealing a slim, almost androgynous figure in a black armoured bodysuit. He wore a massive, skull faced helmet, one eye replaced with an enormous, stubby cannon that seemed to be wired directly into his brain.

He cocked his head to one side. “You are no mage.”

“I am Emiri Kimidori, a Humanoid Interface of the Data Integration Thought Entity. And I have chosen my side.”

She raised her hands, unleashing a wall of flame that hurtled into the assassin. When it dissipated, there was nothing left but twisted, charred wreckage.

She looked back over her shoulder, still calm as ever. “There is still much to do, Fleet Admiral Sagitar Thundra. I would advise that you make haste.”

Thundra nodded stoically, refusing to be upstaged by a machine. “Not a problem. What’s the situation?”

“Bad, and getting worse,” Rodriguez replied once he had returned to his station. “It’s not just the city – we’re getting distress calls from all over Bureau space, and we’ve lost contact with several facilities and outposts including the central office itself.”

“Understood. Direct nearby patrols to assist the worst hotspots. Are the troops in the city taking and holding ground?”

“Negative, sir – just attacking and moving on.”

“Then it’s a raid. Good. All we need to do is run damage-prevention until the enemy are exhausted. How are the DPR folks doing?”

“They’re badly overstretched. Too few people, too much damage. Hell, they’re getting into front-line combat more than our actual soldiers. On the plus side, we’re getting reports of survivors from GovCentral – even some of the parliament managed to make it out alive. The Chief Administrator’s gone, though, and so are most of the cabinet. It was a full-house session when the bomb went off.” Rodriguez’s face was grey. His brother worked on the Agriculture Minister’s staff, Thundra remembered.

“Message coming in from orbit,” Wilson reported. “It’s Admiral Harlaown, sir.”

“Patch him through,” his superior replied wearily. What is it now?

Chrono Harlaown’s youthful face appeared on the main screen, looking as professional as ever. “Sir, we have detected a small fleet in the dimensional space near our position. Around a dozen ships of the same configuration as the transports from the scouting mission from a few weeks ago. We believe that they are the source of the invaders, and are moving to engage.”

“Roger that, Harlaown. Will you be needing backup?”

“Should be fine, sir, but more ships are always welcome.”

“Hrm – you listened during my lectures. Good. I’m sending elements from the Second Fleet to support you. No risks.”

“Aye-aye, sir.”

“Jechter, bring up a display of the space around Mid-Childa.”

“Sir.”

A dimensional map appeared, and he watched intently as the symbols representing Chrono’s forces crept towards the enemy. Time crawled by, seconds seeming like hours, until the admiral’s voice spoke again.

“Sir, we have made contact. Resistance is greater than anticipated – we’ve already lost the Helena, the Morning Star, and the Charak’s Gift. We believe they’re employing two or more Q-ships.”

“Q-ships?”

“Freighters or transports with their cargo bays replaced by additional weapons and shields – warships in sheep’s clothing, so to speak,” Wilson explained.

“Ah, I see. Harlaown, what did I tell you about borrowing Earthborn naval terminology? It’s habit-forming.”

“Sorry, sir. Enemy vessels are well-shielded – point-defence systems and MIS are proving ineffective.” There was a telltale flare of green light, and he turned away from the screen.

“The Arc-en-ciel is working as well as ever, though,” he added with satisfaction a moment later.

Another few minutes passed, during which the remainder of the command centre’s staff returned to their stations. They could clean up the mess from the attack later.

“Enemy forces are retreating,” Chrono reported. “We haven’t inflicted that much damage on them yet – presumably they have fulfilled their mission objectives.”

“Understood. Second Fleet will pursue and intercept. Relay your logs to them, and return to Mid-Childa. Do you have combat mages on board?”

“Armed and ready, sir.”

“Glad to hear it. Prepare for immediate ground assault – first objective is to reinforce Air Command, but we’ll be providing more as the situation develops. You’ll be heading into a populated urban area, so watch your fire.”

“Aye-aye, sir. Admiral Harlaown out.”

Thundra sat back, allowing himself a moment to gather his thoughts. “Kimidori, you Interfaces seem reasonably effective against those assassin-creatures. Can we rely on you to eliminate the remainder inside the city?”

“Of course, Fleet Admiral Sagitar Thundra.”

“Anything more from the central office, Rodriguez?”

“No, sir. Still not responding. Do you think...?”

“I think, lieutenant, that we have an invasion to repel. Get a hold of yourself, and do your job. Is that understood?”

“S-sir.”

Thundra went back to surveying the monitors. We can survive this, I know it. But at what cost?

 

[Iaculus]

20. Office Politics

Nanoha was sitting up in bed, scheduling the next day’s training with the aid of a datapad and stylus, when the door exploded inwards, obscuring the entrance to her and Fate’s apartment in a billowing cloud of smoke. She was already rolling to one side, scrabbling for Raising Heart’s pendant on the bedside table, when two small, round objects bounced and rolled into the room.

The pair of photon flash grenades detonated simultaneously, blinding and deafening her, and she curled into a foetal ball, panicky animal instinct overcoming training for one precious moment. As she recovered, blinking her eyes dazedly, she saw a black-clad figure striding through the door, extending two long blades across the backs of its hands with a menacing snikt.

“You not move,” it commanded in a harsh, tinny voice clearly unused to human speech, firing a stream of jagged, evil-looking crystals from its helmet-gun for emphasis.

The tiny pendant had fallen to the floor less than a metre away, but it might as well have been light-years. Nanoha slowly raised her hands above her head, knowing she wouldn’t have time to charge an attack... and realised that the bathroom shower had stopped.

“Plasma Smasher,” Fate’s voice said quietly, and a massive beam of pale yellow light slammed into the Hellhound, demolishing the dividing wall in the process.

Her partner was already in her Barrier Jacket, hair still wet from the shower. She strode out of the wreckage of the bathroom, Bardiche’s head still levelled at the enemy’s unmoving form.

“Think insurance will cover that?” Nanoha asked lightly. Leaping out of bed and grabbing Fate in a flying hug, she decided, would not be the most tactically viable decision in a combat situation.

“They decided to berth combat mages here. They knew the risks.” Fate scooped up the pendant and threw it over to her partner. “Wonder why we weren’t warned about this? Security should have picked him up on the way in.”

“Comms are down, maybe?”

“Seems that way.”

Nanoha stood up, triggered her own Barrier Jacket, and slapped a full clip of cartridges into Raising Heart.

“Right,” she said. “Let’s get to work.”

***

Fred and Gunther were unhurriedly wandering back to their respective rooms when they heard the sounds of battle ahead. They exchanged a wordless glance and picked up the pace, hurrying towards the commotion, though Fred would have personally preferred heading away.

As they turned the corner, they saw the cause. Signum was locked in combat with two Hellhounds, dancing out of the way of their attacks and countering with lightning-quick ripostes of her own. Though she was covered with cuts and bruises, her enemies had fared worse. A third cyborg lay at her feet, very obviously dead, whilst a fourth was attached to the ceiling some distance away by a gleaming, blade-tipped arrow almost as long as he was tall.

As they watched, she brought her sword down in a diagonal slash, ethereal flames rippling along its length, and neatly bisected one of the remaining two. No sooner had she done so, though, than she had to duck a blow from the final Hellhound’s forearm-blade. The warrior-cyborg had been expecting that, though – indeed, relying on it. A reddish-purple magical blast lanced out from its other hand, striking the Wolkenritter at point-blank range and hurling her backwards.

Fred heard footsteps beside him, and saw that Gunther had broken into a run, popping his Jacket with a flash of emerald light. You old idiot... He tried to follow, to catch up, but soon fell behind, cursing his lack of exercise.

Boss, you’re pushing retirement age, you’re using a standard-issue Armed Device that I know you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with, and you’re going up against something that just defeated a centuries-old sentient killing machine. Just what are you planning to do here?

A moment later, he found out.

Gunther didn’t bother opening fire – he simply charged in and hit the Hellhound over the head with his staff, crumpling the scorpion-tail gun on its helmet with the sheer force of the blow and stunning it for a few vital seconds. He followed up with a few heavy swings to the midriff, driving it further and further back, and for one glorious moment, Fred thought he was going to win.

Then the Hellhound lashed out with one of its blades, passing through the quartermaster’s wards as if they didn’t exist, slicing his weapon in half, and gouging a shallow cut across his chest. He staggered backwards, almost falling over, and the cyborg was on him in an instant, unleashing a flurry of blows that he barely managed to avoid. Blood spattered the floor, and Fred tried to take aim, but the two combatants were simply too close together for him to be sure he’d hit the right one.

“Schlangenform,” said Laevantien’s metallic voice from near the floor.

Fred glanced down and saw the sword lengthen and spread out into a long, bladed whip. Signum flicked her wrist, and it coiled around the Hellhound’s legs, causing the creature to stumble. She tugged, hard, and the stumble turned into an awkward, tangled fall.

Gunther wasted no time taking advantage of the situation, holding the broken halves of his staff like daggers and plunging them into his foe’s back again and again. Once he was sure that it was dead, he straightened up, offering a bloodstained hand to Signum which she took gratefully.

“Quartermaster.”

“Ma’am.”

Fred, meanwhile, was staring at the deceased Hellhound, which still had the two staves buried somewhere in the region of its kidneys. Gunther, he recalled, was not terribly good at using magic without a functioning Device.

“We need to get you two to an infirmary,” he decided. “Is ours still open?”

“Indeed,” Signum replied. “Shamal and Zafira have it secured for now. Sergeant-major, you will need to alert the non-combatants – we have lost communications. We should be able to proceed on our own.”

Fred saluted. “Aye-aye, ma’am. May I ask what’s happening?”

“Chaos has arrived. Move, sergeant-major. We have little time.”

Another salute, and he hurried away. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Gunther and Signum hobbling off towards the infirmary, both attempting to keep the other upright. Fred couldn’t see his old friend’s face, but knew it was wearing an enormous, foolish grin. Lucky for some, eh?

He ducked into the nearest alcove he could find, reactivating his own Intelligent Device. His wrist-watch took on a golden sheen, the casing expanding and reshaping itself into a simple, elegant console.

Sol, this is Fred. You there?

No response. He muttered a spell, boosting the signal, and a series of deep blue casting rings appeared around his wrist. That done, he attempted to contact Deep Space Surveillance again. This time, he got through.

Fred, good to hear from you! Dr. Kamri exclaimed, sounding even more flustered than usual. Two of them attacked us. We suffered casualties – lots of casualties – but we managed to take them down. I didn’t know Touran used a Modern Belkan style, though. The things she did with that wrench... I’d prefer not to think about them. What are you calling about?

It’s the communications blackout, Sol. I think you can help. Remember that project you told me about? That collaboration with Comms to boost the range of their network? Do you still have the hardened line to their office?

That we do, Fred. I’ll patch you through – do you want a three-way link?

Would certainly help. Thanks, Sol. I owe you one.

Enough to replace the cookies?

Not on your life.

A third voice entered the conversation. This is Sergeant Picanto of the central office’s Communications Department. Kaiser’s blood, but it’s good to hear a friendly voice. They killed everyone over here. Everyone. I hid, but... I don’t know if they’re coming back.

Stay frosty, Picanto, Fred replied, trying to sound calm and authoritative. I think I’ve got an idea on how to turn the tables on them. Did you figure out how they’re jamming us?

It’s not an anti-magic field, that’s for sure. Way too specific. It’s only hurting the telepathic network, and it’s especially targeting military channels. That’s probably why we can talk in the first place.

A tailored curse? Kamri surmised.

Most likely, but it’s more than that. It’s learning, adapting. We’re losing channels all the time. It’s like they let a living creature loose inside the station’s systems, a predator. I saw the ritual when they summoned it – hell, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forget it. They took a few alive in the initial attack, used them as sacrifices. The screaming... sweet hellfire, the screaming. There’s blood all over the consoles, forming this network of runes. I try to clean it away, but it keeps coming back. It keeps coming back!

He was losing his grip again, Fred realised. Picanto, listen to me. How do we stop it? How do we kill this thing?

The comms officer’s voice steadied, though it was still faint and uncertain. Well... it’s a spell. It’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before, but it’s a spell nonetheless. Dispelling it should work, but I don’t know where you’re going to find a mage powerful enough.

Fred grinned. Perfect. That’s where you come in, Sol.

Me?

Yep. It’s that collaborative project again. Most of your gear works as a sort of magical radar, sending out powerful signals that get bounced back in a way that tells you what’s out there, right?

You were paying attention when I told you about that? Kamri sounded utterly stunned.

Not just a pretty face, Sol. Anyways, from what I know about the project, you were trying to diversify the signals sent, turning your sensor arrays into a crude but powerful Magical Interface System. How’m I doing so far?

Pretty good. It would have worked, too, if we’d had the funding. Still have the plans somewhere, but I don’t see what this has to do with... ohhh, right. We’ll still need someone skilled in dispel magic, though. The system magnifies, it doesn’t create. A familiar, maybe?

Way ahead of you, Sol. One of Colonel Yagami’s bodyguards is an Ancient Belkan Guardian Beast – pretty much the same thing. Better, I know where he is. Getting him to your office might be a bit trickier, though – I’ll see what I can do. You two hold the fort in the meantime, got it?

Got it, Kamri said.

Just be quick, Picanto advised. No telling which system it’ll go after next. Things could get real ugly, real fast – and that’s coming from the guy who just saw his supervisor’s guts dangling from the ceiling.

Fred cut the link, stepping out into the hallway once more. So this is what command feels like? They can keep it.

A gurgling roar sounded from behind him and he spun around, seeing a decaying, vaguely female form charging at him with yellowing claws extended. He acted purely on instinct, raising his Intelligent Device and taking careful aim.

“Chronal Shift!”

A cone of fine blue mist billowed out from the Device’s front, clinging to the daemon’s body. Its charge was slowed to the point where it appeared to be moving through treacle. A tortoise could have outpaced it, let alone a slightly overweight quartermaster sergeant.

Fred ran for the catering section, horribly aware that the spell could disperse at any moment. It was crowded when he got there – they’d been cleaning up after the evening meal when the attack started. Now most of the staff were huddled behind counters and overturned tables, pointing an impressive array of weaponry at the entrance.

He clambered over the salad counter with an agility born of adrenaline and terror, feeling his abused limbs complain vociferously as he did so.

“Daemon-freak on her way, boys and girls,” he gasped. “Show me you remember Captain Takamachi’s training.”

This was met with an enthusiastic cheer, and Devices of all shapes, sizes and classifications were brandished in anticipation. The daemon entered shortly after, still shaking off the lingering after-effects of Fred’s spell, and promptly vanished in a barrage of multicoloured explosions.

He grinned. “Nice work, people, nice work. Anyone up for a little escort mission? Think it’s time we show the combat mages exactly what we support staff can do.”

***

The Hellhound crept through the sleeping quarters, his bionics ensuring silence and his enhanced senses scanning the area around him for potential victims.

The powers of the Warp were not well-suited for uniformity, and soon after their conception the clones had amassed a collection of quirks and oddities that could generously be called ‘personalities’. Personality implied hierarchy, and ever since they had been herded onto the transports, this particular Hellhound had been on the bottom of the pile. As a result, he had little incentive to assist his pack-mates in charging to their doom when he could just as easily slope off and find someone (or several someones if he was lucky) to play with until the shooting stopped.

He had been especially interested in some of the things he had seen on the indoctrination tapes provided by Mislaato. He would have to give that a go if he got the opportunity.

He heard voices from further along the corridor and advanced towards them, listening intently.

“A double-bed. Great. Wonderful. I specifically asked for twins, and do they listen? Do they hell.”

“Aww, c’mon, Tea, there’s nothing we can do about it now. Let’s just get to sleep.”

“Oh no no no. You, missy, are sleeping on the floor.”

“But Tea...”

“But me no buts, Subaru. I know you, and I know that you would take the opportunity for a quick bit of groping faster than I could say ‘harassment’. Seriously, I could have reported you five times over by now. Be grateful with what you’ve got.”

There was a brief silence.

“Oh, you are so not using the puppy-dog-eyes. We formally agreed that those are dirty fighting, remember? Completely unfair. Well, forget it. It’s the floor for you, and that’s final.”

Another pause.

“OK, maybe the settee.”

Yet another pause.

“All right, all right, you can use the bed too for just this one night. The slightest hint of wandering hands, though, and you’re out on your ear, and let the record show that I was coerced into this against my will.”

As the Hellhound came closer, he saw that the door was open. Too easy. He strolled through it, still as silent as ever, and saw two girls in their late teens standing by the bed, dressed in rather utilitarian-looking pyjamas. Both were definitely attractive, though he still felt that having them naked, screaming, and covered in blood would be a significant improvement.

The scene was frozen like that for a few seconds, none of the three moving, and then his forearm-blades went snikt and everything exploded into movement.

He charged forward, spraying the walls around them with shots from his splinter pistol, and they moved as one, grabbing a pair of small, innocuous-looking objects from their respective bags and swinging them up to take aim at him. He suddenly found himself gazing at the business ends of an armoured gauntlet and an enormous pistol, and felt a ghastly sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.

“Divine Buster.”

“Crossfire Shoot.”

He was unconscious before he even hit the ground.

***

Corporal Teana Lanster snapped a pair of handcuffs onto the comatose Hellhound, firing another low-powered blast into his head to ensure he wasn’t playing possum. Meanwhile, her squad-mate, Corporal Subaru Nakajima, was watching with interest.

“Where did you get those, Tea?” she asked.

“Standard-issue for the Capital Defence Forces’ Investigative Branch,” Teana explained. “Not all of us are good at binds, you know.”

“Those don’t look very standard-issue, though. What’s the label say? ‘Berlinetta’s Marital Aids and...’”

“We’ve got armed infiltrators in the central office and you want to discuss my personal life? Priorities, Subaru.”

“Right, sorry. But what do handcuffs have to do with-”

“Subaru!”

“Coming, coming... No need to get so cranky, Tea.”

Teana pressed her fingers to her temples until the urge to murder her best friend went away, and stepped out to confront the invaders.

***

Erio Mondial was sprawled in an agreeably oversized armchair, flicking through the yellowed pages of an Ancient Belkan combat manual. He wasn’t sure quite what he could gain from the archaic language and faded illustrations, but Captain Signum had said it might prove useful when she lent it to him, so he’d resolved to read through it to the end. If there was one person who knew about those sorts of things, it was the Wolkenritter’s Knight of the Sword, after all. Even Fate said she’d learned a few things from her.

He heard the bathroom door open, and the First Expeditionary Force’s resident summoner, Caro La Rushe, walked out. He very pointedly didn’t turn around as she got dressed – though he had the funny feeling that she wouldn’t mind all that much, that wasn’t really the point. Things had changed in the past few years – once, Caro had just been there, a good friend and someone useful to have at your back during Bureau business, but nothing special. Now, though, she was... well, he wasn’t sure what, exactly, but he was always uncomfortably aware of her presence.

He felt something small and hard butt against his leg, and looked down to see the third resident of their room, Caro’s pet dragon Friedrich, sitting up and begging, his horned head tilted appealingly to one side. There was a collar around his neck, etched with runes of restraint. Though Fried was well-trained, a creature who could switch from the size of a small dog to the size of a bus was something that nobody wanted to take any chances with aboard a relatively cramped space station.

Another gentle headbutt, and he sighed, reaching down into his pocket and retrieving a dog-treat he’d bought earlier that day from a Mid-Childan pet store. He tossed it over to the little dragon, who caught it in midair, swallowing it in a single gulp, and fluttered over to land in Erio’s lap, chirping delightedly. He absent-mindedly stroked his head, trying to ignore the various fabric-related sounds coming from behind him. Do dragons have these sorts of problems, boy? No, didn’t think so.

Eventually said noises ceased, and Caro leaned over his shoulder (fortunately fully-dressed by now). “Hi, Erio. Anything on summoner tactics in that?”

Her damp hair brushed his face, and he attempted to keep his voice from turning into a high-pitched squeak. “N-no, sorry. I did ask Captain Signum about that, though, and she gave me another book all about it. It’s over there, on the pile.”

She favoured him with a bright, sunny smile that made his internal organs turn a somersault, before running over to the indicated stack of young-teenager miscellanea. “Thanks – you’re the best!”

Erio was still attempting to restore his mental equilibrium when the door to their quarters shot off its hinges, propelled though the room by a carmine magical blast. A small, metallic sphere followed it, and his combat instincts kicked into action.

“Sonic Move!”

He leapt forward with eye-blurring speed, activating his Barrier Jacket as he did so, and caught the grenade, throwing it back the way it had come. No sooner had it left his hand, though, than it exploded, hurling him backwards and overloading all relevant senses.

When he came to, it was in a pile of rubble. He sat up groggily, probing himself for injuries, and was relieved to note that his Jacket had taken most of the damage. Three tall, black-clad figures had entered the room, moving with a speed that almost equalled his own. Friedrich lay in the middle of the floor, his head severed from his neck. The cluster of scorch-marks on the attackers’ bodysuits and around the ruined entrance bore mute testament to his final stand. Caro was sobbing in the corner, the psychic backlash of her pet’s death searing her mind.

Detecting movement, one of the Hellhounds began to turn towards him, but not nearly fast enough. Filled with a quiet, cold rage quite alien to his usual personality, Erio pointed Strada’s tip at the creature’s chest, activating the spear’s jets and letting it drag his battered body behind it. The impact pinned his foe to the wall, but the young mage wasn’t done. He drew back a fist, surrounding it with a sphere of crackling yellow lightning.

“Shiden Issen,” he snarled, and punched the Hellhound in the face, allowing the force of the explosion to push him back, unsheathing his weapon from its body in the process and leaving the creature to slump to the ground, immobile.

He spun round, leaping over a low slice from the second assailant and slamming Strada’s oversized head into its helmet, activating the lateral jets to give the impact just a little more force. It staggered backwards, dazed, and he took the opportunity to look around.

Where did the third one go?

A fist smashed into the back of his skull and he saw stars, dropping his spear and almost falling over. The third Hellhound wrapped an arm around him, immobilising him and lifting him off the ground. He felt the edge of an impossibly sharp blade against his neck, and smelled the stink of blood, presumably Fried’s.

The second Hellhound had done the same with Caro, he saw. He attempted a brave smile, which she returned through her tears. We can get out of this, I know it. Fate and the others will rescue us. You’ll see.

“W-what are you going to do with us?” he asked his captor aloud, feeling the blade nick his throat.

It gave a rasping, mechanical chuckle. “Make you useful.”