To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
-Ecclesiastes 3:1
"Who-who the hell are you?" stuttered Hatakata, reverting to his native tongue in his fright.
A pair of eyes glowed red out of the dark. "Your death," the figure said simply. Then it lifted the AK in its hand and pulled the trigger.
The stranger's grip was strong. Whereas an ordinary mortal would need two hands and a sure grip to even begin controlling the short assault rifle's recoil, the figure dispatched his targets with steady, machine-like precision. The rifle didn't even buck in his grasp as it uttered its metallic roar and its 5.45mm slugs tore through cloth, aluminum, glass and flesh.
The first to go where the two ersatz captains, their brains punched out by pairs of copperclad projectiles. Before their bodies hit the ground the two bridge crew members on the figure's left were also brought down. The navigator and pilot on the right were the last to be killed, as they fumbled for the pistols in their belt holsters.
A deafening silence enveloped the suddenly empty bridge, and the killer surveyed his handiwork. Several bridge windows were cracked; gore decorated the bulkheads, the overhead, and the various consoles. It had to be done, he rationalized to himself. These people represented an unknown quantity that could not be allowed to disrupt his plans. The AK-74 fell from his hand, along with the now-still carcass of the bridge guard.
The merest suggestion of a sound came from behind the open hatch, and the stranger lifted his head and stretched out with his feelings. Yes, there was one more trying to cower behind the door; it was frightened and unarmed. With a slow, grim smile he lifted his right hand, and a strange, bow-like weapon shimmered into existence in it. With a single silent command he willed it into another shape, and a wicked, violet-glowing saber replaced the bow.
The young man stepped out into the corridor he had come from previously, pausing here and there to ascertain his target's location. He stopped at the space just beside the hatch's hinges, drew his blade back, and braced his other hand on the cool steel wall. He held his weapon's grip more tightly and grimaced at the pain that shot up his arm, then drove the saber through the surface with the ease of a matador driving his sword through a tired bull's heart.
He held it there for a second, then slowly drew it out again. He was successful in dispatching his final quarry, judging by the resulting silence and the blood that adorned the blade.
He grimaced again and looked down at his hand. It too bled, red liquid slowly seeping past his fingers to drip silently on the floor, the painful consequence of wielding this very special weapon.
I will kill for you, he remembered the ghostly voice saying in his mind. It had held the promise of power, the lure of being able at last to do what he had been prevented from doing by the fools at SEED. And you will pay the price, in blood.
"Arkady?" The tinny voice issued from the headset he was wearing. "Arkady, is it done? Are you through?"
Arkady Klimov blinked. "Yes, Anna. I'm through," he said into his microphone, fighting off a vision of remorse that threatened to overwhelm him. "Have you secured the trawler?"
"Yes. And I've located the money."
"Good." That meant nothing to him. She could gorge herself all she wanted on the useless bits of colored paper. What he was after was deep in the bowels of this vessel, singing out its song of death to him.
"I'm going to bring the bomb over," he said, walking back into the bridge and looking out of its windows at the smaller vessel alongside. "Throw all the bodies overboard."
"What are you going to do with the freighter?"
Arkady surveyed the carnage he had caused. "Use it to feed some fishes."
The weapon in his hand laughed. Ah, most truly, it is a joy to serve you.
Quiet, Pinaka. I'm not enjoying what I'm doing, he snapped. If I only knew how corrupted you were, I wouldn't have accepted you from Chris.
I? the ghostly voice snorted. Corrupted? Listen, little boy, I only reflect what is in my owner's heart. I am not the one who's corrupted here. You are.
Shut up! Arkady raged. If I, of all people, am corrupted, what does that make the rest of humanity?
Pinaka remained silent, and doubt surged and swirled in the Russian's heart, threatening to drown his convictions. But at length he pushed it away into the recesses of his mind. He would not be gainsaid by a mere tool. He knew what he was doing was going to be right, in the end.
The spirit inhabiting the weapon felt his emotions and laughed inwardly. That was what it had wanted him to do all along. It fed on death and betrayal, gloried in blood and sorrow. It had not been easy to fool Chris Hawken, but Pinaka had managed to squeak by past that sentinel of good by claiming it was driven by a desire to reform and amend its ways. There would be a lot to feast on after Arkady had used the bomb, as much as it could eat and more. With a pleased sigh it drew back into itself and went quiescent. A lot to feast on, indeed.
------oOo------
"Miss Ariyoshi? Are you still awake?"
Juna Ariyoshi turned to the sleeper in the futon beside hers. They were in her room, and out of a sense of misplaced courtesy to one another, had both ended up lying on the floor. The kite Mehve enjoyed the comforts of the bed where Juna had previously slept.
"Yes." She couldn't fall asleep; above all the vague images and quiet voices that invaded her mind hung a specter of uneasiness, as if something bad was happening, somewhere out there. Usually she could block it out: there was always some misfortune occurring somewhere in the world, and it was no use worrying about all of it. But this one was more loud, more insistent than the others that had made themselves known in her mind. "How come you're still awake?"
"I don't know. Maybe it's because of all the strange things I've seen recently." Nausicaä turned to her. "Miss Ariyoshi?"
"I keep telling you, please call me Juna."
"Juna, then. Would you mind if I sing a bit, to calm myself?"
"No, go right ahead."
Her voice rose in quiet song, a dreamy, chantlike melody that lured Juna into its folds. The words were in a language she couldn't understand, but her mind was receptive enough to cause her to be lulled into a sweet, sweet drowsiness that soon turned into a dreamless sleep.
Nausicaä's voice died away, and she saw that her companion's eyes were closed, and her breathing had become more shallow and regular. She smiled, somehow comforted by the sight, and pulled the bedcover over herself. It was already three A.M. Soon she herself was asleep, laughing and running with her friend Asbel through the golden fields in the Valley of Wind.
------oOo------
"Shit, Bobby. I told you this goddamn gizmo's on the fritz."
Brigadier General Robert Dragon, late of the United States Air Force, Air Combat Command, looked up from his seat in the cramped main compartment of the C-130J Hercules and raised his eyebrows. "What's the matter, Don?"
Forty-nine-year-old 'Don' Weasel looked his way. He looked like a reject from some B-grade sci-fi movie, with all the umbilicals, connectors and hoses attached to him. A headset resembling something slapped together from junkyard parts rested on his balding head; his keen gray eyes peered out through see-through LCD screens.
"The sniffer's barking again." He turned a knob on the many-paneled board in front of him, and a synthesized 'arf-arf, arf-arf' sounded in the pilot's headphones.
They were flying over Tokyo that fine morning, on their way back to Kadena AB, after participating in 'Sunrise Shield,' a tri-country air defense exercise hosted by the JASDF at Misawa Air Base. The Cannonball, the ABCCCE Herky Bird whose innards the Weasel Brothers had quite literally put together from two hundred thousand disparate electronic parts, had been used and abused by them in that event. Not only did it serve its usual function as an airborne command, control and communications post, it also flexed several of its recently revamped sensor systems in patently illegal low-level, high-speed runs along the North Korean coast, searching for any indication of the nukes the North Koreans were alleged to have.
Chief of the sensors involved in that search was the sniffer, a Weasel Brothers invention designed to uncover and catalogue abnormal sources of nuclear decay. Nukes made by different countries in the world had distinctive signatures, and the Cannonball crew had been tasked with trying to discover the origin of the North Koreans' nuclear material. It was a matter of the utmost priority: if the source could be revealed, action could be taken against it. Unfortunately, Don had only recently managed to rebuild the sniffer, which had been left lying in the junk pile since a 1995 debacle over Bosnia, so the USAF's pet whiz kids hadn't had a chance to duplicate it yet. It was the only one of its kind. As was the Cannonball itself.
To say that the trips had been interesting was, putting it mildly, the understatement of the new century: twice they had almost been shot down by MiGs, and once the almighty Cannonball--originally built with a penetrating capability, to precede aerial task forces into enemy airspace and defend them by engaging local air defenses like a gigantic Wild Weasel and Raven combo--had even been targeted by a SAM site. It was enough to make one want to pack up and go home, like pilot 'Wally' Weasel said. They weren't too afraid, though: aside from being looney enough to undertake such a dangerous mission, they had enough electronics in the back of the trash-hauler to make any AAMs and SAMs fired at them sit up and beg if they wanted to. To ensure their safety the aircraft carrier America had been unceremoniously turned out from a refit and was positioned just outside North Korean territorial waters, and Cannonball herself was escorted by Bobby's modified F-117 and armed with one Pave Tiger and one U-47 UCAV under her wings.
To their dismay they hadn't found any nukes then, and now, over Tokyo of all places, the sniffer was going wild. Don had built a synthesizer chip into it to make it bark when it found traces of weapon-type nuclear radiation.
Bobby Dragon turned up the volume in his headset. "Are you sure it's broken, Don?"
"Sure I'm sure. Except for the breeder reactors the Japanese have at Monju and Joyo, plus the various reprocessing facilities like Tokai-mura, there aren't any sources of strong nuclear radiation within a thousand miles of here. Jeez, I knew I shouldn't even have bothered fixing that dumb gadget."
The general listened some more to the noise in his headphones, then frowned. "I dunno, Don. I'm going to log this to play it safe. When we get to Kadena I want someone else to go over the sniffer's data with you."
Don sighed. "Whatever you say, boss." Much as he liked the Master of Aerial Combat, he found Bobby resembling the usual specimen of brass-butted flag-level autocrat more and more. Still, Air Combat Command's only regularly flying general was nice to have around if there were any airborne meanies in the vicinity.
Bobby keyed the sniffer's auxiliary recorder and left it on. Then he unbuckled his straps and rose. "I'm going forward for a while," he said. Don nodded and went back to surveying his panel, changing the 'arf-arf, arf-arf' warning's pitch up and down for his own amusement.
Emerging into the blinding brightness of the sun-lit cockpit, Bobby was greeted by a cheery "Hey, flugmeister! Come in, come in." Shaggy-haired Wally Weasel toggled the C-130's autopilot, then lifted the life-size cardboard cutout of Marie Matiko from the copilot's seat and carefully folded it up. She had replaced the usual Elle MacPherson that sat there; Wally thought it only appropriate, considering the location of their current assignment.
"What's up?" the other half of the Weasel Brothers asked as Bobby sat down in the copilot's seat. "Getting claustrophobic back there?"
"Nah. Just wanted some sunshine. Say, Wally, would you mind doing something for me?"
"What?"
"Do a once-around of Tokyo for me, okay?"
"What for? Are we going sightseeing today, daddy?"
"No. It's nothing much, but..." Bobby told him about the sniffer, then said, "It's just a gut feeling of mine."
"No problem, Bobby. We've got plenty of fuel, but I seriously doubt that hunch of yours is true. Don's right: the sniffer's busted."
"I know, I know. But all the same, just do it, will ya?"
"Roger." Wally tilted the sea-blue Hercules ever so slightly, and it began to circle the outskirts of Japan's capital.
------oOo------
That morning Juna went missing from the apartment, along with Yuuki.
Her expression had turned sour during their noisy breakfast, and without warning she had stood up and run out the front door. An alarmed Katsunari, knowing her friend's bizarre actions often meant something, had Yuuki follow her. She had gone up to the roof deck and stood there looking out at Tokyo's environs for five minutes or so, then turned into Arjuna and was about to fly away when Yuuki's exasperated cry stopped her long enough for him to suggest taking him along. She carried him with her, and Yuuki SMSed Katsunari about what their Avatar friend was up to. Raaja again. Never a moment's rest. Powerful as Juna was, though, she always needed someone to look out for her, as her frequent visions and subsequent incapacity to distinguish between illusion and reality made her peculiarly vulnerable to mishaps ordinary mortals avoided with ease, like getting hit by vehicles while crossing the street and such.
Katsunari was left alone with Nausicaä, who seemed somewhat subdued that morning. They finished their breakfast, then fell to talking again about various things, including the differences between the her society and Nausicaä's.
"You know," she said as they cleared the dishes from the table, "I personally think we've been showing you too much of only one side of the whole thing."
"What do you mean?" asked Nausicaä.
"It isn't all about self-seeking and nihilism, you know," replied Katsunari, her eyes hidden by the golden frame of her eyeglasses. Her tone was serious. "If you'd like, I could show you a side of this world that few know about, or care."
Nausicaä thought about it, nodded and said. "You'll have to try pretty hard to top what I've seen so far, Katsunari."
Katsunari turned the tap on rather abruptly and began soaking the dishes. "I'm not going to try to 'top' anything, Princess from another world. I'm going to show you a little slice of Heaven. And a little patch of Hell."
(Posted Tue, 29 Mar 2005 19:44)
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