/ @ / Ghosts of the Antipode / @ /



.	.	/ < / << / Darker Sides Maria Delithita slammed her fist into the punching bag, ripping holes in it with the massive, metal glove she war. Lately she had been feeling strange. No, she told herself, scared. Things had been happening. Strange things that she could not understand. Dangerous things, powers being tapped that frightened her. Energies that if not completely controlled could destroy all life on Mercury. Worse were the things going on within the depths of her own mind. Memories, flashes of images, too fast to capture, were frightening in their intensity. And the emotions that went with them: absolute terror, fury, grief. She shook her head, trying to clear the negative thoughts from it. She struck the punching bag, nicking the thick skin and spraying a few grams of sand across the room. She watched one of the grains of sand as it slowly tumbled away from the point of impact, drifted on a stray air current a nearby vent. "Del? Del. Del!" How long had she stood there staring at the air vent? "Yes Ko'ah?" "You're needed in the Herc bay." She blinked. Her head was so fuzzy she couldn't imagine being of any assistance there anyway. "Yeah," she muttered, dropped her gloves on the bench and left. ----- Kym Mee cursed the Ghosts and their stripping of her vehicles. Her eyes narrowed as she watched the tiny shapes approaching on the horizon. The spark of sunlight on metal made the shapes look like little stars, dancing merrily toward her, inviting her to join them. Unfortunately, the dance would be the dance of death. The shapes were Cybrid warforms. They were defenseless. Only the fact they had not been detected saved them. That wouldn't last for long though. Mee cursed the name of the Emperor. "You failed?" he had said in a questioning tone. "Yes, my Lord, I have failed." "Then you will remain on Mercury until you succeed." The channel had then closed and would not reopen. The bastard had left them for dead, which proved to her that she had made the right decision in stripping her rank insignia. She was the Emperor's hatchetman no more. Several of her officers had accepted her decision and joined her, including her husband and first officer. For his sake, at least, she had to get the convoy out of harm's way. She steered eastward, toward the scarp. Several kilometers to the north of Fantasma Colony was a rift, with canyons they could hide in. Unfortunately, the Cybrid patrol pattern would cross that area in several hours anyway, and their sensors might pick them up. If that happened, all two thousand troops would perish. "Hit the gas people," she muttered, driving the transport forward at its top speed of eighty kilometers per hour. Unfortunately, the Cybrids behind them were faster, and if they were detected... "Transport three!" her first officer cried. "Power it down! Now!" It was too late. One weapon apparently remained, and unfortunately, it was one of the energy-hogging fusion cannon. The spike of energy flashed like a beacon on the sensor screens. Immediately, a flood of sensor radiation washed over the convoy, and the computer whistled a warning. "We've been targeted!" "Transports six, seven, and eight, drop your passengers except for a single pilot," she ordered calmly, bringing her own transport to a stop and popping the airlock door. "Everyone, get out. Now." "Kym, you can't--" "It's the only way--" "I will not allow you to sacrifice yourself on some damned-fool blaze-of-glory stunt!" The first took her arms and tried to pull her off the console, but she twisted around and threw him off. She drew a pistol and aimed it at him, her eyes haunted. "Please, love. Go." "You won't shoot me." She sighed, dropped the weapon, and bowed her head. "You're right." She rose to her feet in one smooth motion, and kicked him in the chin. He fell like an axed hog, and she dragged him out of the transport into the airlock. Tears running down her face, she pulled off her helmet, threw it into the corner. She removed his, and kissed his lips. She put the helmet back on him and sealed it, retrieved her own, and replaced it on her head. Trying to control her knotting stomach, she opened the outer door, pulled him out, and laid him on the stone surface. She turned and reentered the vehicle, forcing herself not to look back. The airlock sealed behind her, and she collapsed in the pilot's chair, steeling herself to do what must be done. ----- "Ah damn," Icey said. He and Del were both in Minotaurs, sacrificing strength for speed. Between them, Razorback, Xenogears, and Altas, all in Goads, were trotting steadily along at a hundred forty-five kilometers per hour, their top speed. "Del, some of the transports seem to be heading for a kamikaze run!" Del shook her head, wishing she could just let it happen. Eighty-seven people had been killed in the battle with the TDF invasion force in Fantasma Colony, now the Ghosts had to go rescue said invasion force. Del had nearly refused to participate, but Icey calmly reminded her of some of Maria's instruction: "Never let a life be lost to the Cybrids. There have been too many. I don't care if the person is your worst enemy and you'd flay him alive after you save him, don't let the Cybrids take any more of us." Angrily, she had climbed into her vehicle, powered it up, and stalked out of the bay. "We'll never make it," Icey said. "They'll hit the glitches in sixty seconds, if they don't get shot down before they get there." "Time to intercept?" "Eighty seconds, at this range." "Xeno, Altas, Razor...""Gotcha Del," Razor said. "We'll give the Cybrids something else to shoot at. The Goads accelerated to their top speeds, and pulled ahead of the slightly slower Minotaurs. In seconds, they had entered firing range, at least Altas and Xenogears with their farther-reaching blasters. Razor fell behind the other two as the green energy blobs lashed out and struck the nearest of the enemy vehicles. His ELFs, powerful but short-range electrical arcs, would not come into play until they were nearly at knife range. Blaster bolts splashed sparks off the Adjudicator's central hull. The Adju came around toward the Goads, and quickly the other Cybrids, two more Adjudicators and three Shepards, turned to face the new, more dangerous enemy. Two of the transports continued on their kamikaze run, taking out a Shepard and an Adjudicator as their reactors exploded. Two of the others struck a Shepard's legs but did not detonate. The impact knocked the Shepard off-balance, and all the Goads quickly converged on the thing and shot its leg out from under it. It fell to the ground with a terrible crash, and detonated. The radiation from the reactor explosion probably killed whoever was in the lightly armored transports. Del cursed, hitting the turbine boost to close the remaining gap between her and the other vehicles. Icey, his Minotaur loaded with Shrike missiles, picked a target and began to fire. The first Adjudicator lost its shields and Icey's Shrikes exploded on its hull, blowing a clean hole straight into the Cybrid pilotform. The other Adjudicator and the other Shepard turned tail and tried to run, but the Ghosts weren't hearing that one. Like a pack of angry wolves the Ghosts swarmed the two vehicles and turned them into slag. The Ghosts turned and trotted toward the transports. Del arrived first, crouching her vehicle in front of the ring of vehicles. Xenogears stopped her Goad in front of one of the damaged transports, popped the cockpit, and jumped out into the sunlight. She vanished into it, came out ten seconds later, and called the other Ghosts. "One, male, lieutenant. Dead." She entered the other vehicle, and popped out immediately. "Commander Mee, alive, but not for long." She vanished again, reappeared dragging the unconscious woman behind her. She put the woman inside the Goad, squeezed in with her. "Razor, escort me back, top speed. I can't watch for glitches and give first aid too." The Goad took off, the turbine boost kicking it to a maximum speed of two hundred kilometers per hour. Razor's larger Goad, custom-built with an over clocked engine, chased after her. Del watched the two vehicles disappear over the horizon, then opened a channel. "All TDF forces, follow me. Anyone tries anything when we get there, you'll wish the Cybrids had got you." She paused. "Even if they had tortured you." ----- The two young men were in a section of the colony they shouldn't have been, specifically one of the old Herc bays, where piles of scrap metal and equipment nearly reached the high ceiling. The room was dark, dank, and looked like it had been abandoned for years. It had. The last time the room had seen use was during the initial construction of the colony, when everyone was crammed on Level One and Level Two. The more useful equipment had later been moved to the Herc refit center several hundred meters below, and the rest of Level Two abandoned. Occasionally one of the Ghosts would look through one of the old rooms looking for something, but they usually left as quickly as they entered. Jehrico was intrigued by the masses of junk lying around. His years as a pirate taught him that anything even partially functional was valuable if it could be used on a war machine, and he had never had the opportunity to examine Cybrid components. So he had asked one of the engineers to show him a place where he might find some to study. The room's single, flickering light didn't do good things for his adrenaline level. Parts of the colony seemed dangerously underpowered, and he kept expecting the air circulators to just short out and suffocate everyone. Icey was right: the place had an ambiance. Not a pleasant one either. He climbed atop one pile of junk and withdrew what seemed to be a primary power tap. He brought it back down and set it on the workbench, which was hammered out of an Executioner's bottom footplate. He dropped the metal device on the metal table, hearing the loud ringing noise. "What was that?" the other man said, jumping, looking around the chamber with wild eyes. "Dropped a power tap on the table," Jehrico said. Why did everyone here always seem on edge? "No, not that-- Christ and Hunter!" He backed away, terror in his eyes, banging into the pile of junk and knocking some equipment over on top of himself. "What is it?" Jehrico demanded, looking around. Nothing was in the room besides some junk and themselves. He turned back to the man as he felt a cold chill running down his spine. Horror lit his eyes as he saw the other man. He was screaming, silently. His eyes were filled with the fear of imminent death. His hands went to his neck, his eyes bulging. He kept screaming, but no sound came out. After a moment, he collapsed to his knees, visibly choking. Jehrico ran to him, pulled the man's hands away from his neck. A silent scream was the man's last act, as he collapsed and fell against Jehrico, dead. Ice brushed Jehrico's heart, and he turned. Close behind him, blackness loomed over him. He cowered, throwing up his arms as if to defend himself from the beast. There was nothing there. He felt his pulse quickening. It had to be in the one-eighty range. He turned, looking all around the room. The door had not opened. Whatever was there had not left! It was still in there with him! He looked down at the corpse at his feet. He would be next. He backed into the debris pile. A massive chunk of metallic debris dislodged itself, falling right in front of him. A sharp pain lanced his back. The creature's claws, ripping his lungs out-- He tripped, fell, reached behind himself. His hand came back bloody. The creature had slashed him with venomous fangs. He could feel it now. Death, rising to claim him. Darkness at the edge of his vision. Vomit welled up from the back of his throat. The creature's deadly poison was fast acting. He threw up, felt pains in his stomach and chest. His heart was stopping, paralyzed, He was-- he was-- ----- "What the hell are we going to do with these people?" Del growled. Fury at the situation filled her. First they attacked and killed her people, now she had to house and feed them. What justice was there in that? Damn the rules of war, and damn Maria, for not allowing her to just throw them back outside, with or without suits. "We'd have to convert Level One into makeshift quarters," Xenogears said. "Commander Mee will be out of commission for a few days. She took a vicious radiation burn from the reactor explosion, and lost quite a bit of hair, among more important things, like cells..." "Get her patched up so I can kill her fairly," Del muttered. "Del..." "I have declared Vengeance on her and intend to fulfill it." "Del..." "WHAT?" "Her husband wishes to speak to you." "Tough." Xenogears took her arm and pushed her back into the wall. Reacting blindly, Del picked the woman off the ground and hurled her against the opposite wall. The sickening thud of bone on skill sounded in the small briefing room. Horrified, Del went to her, checked her pulse. She was alive, only knocked out. She wouldn't have a concussion; Immortals were immune to them. That was one advantage of a metal brain. A blow on the head could shock the person into automatically losing consciousness, or damage the brain and kill the person, but there was no middle ground. Del picked the other woman up and carried her to the table. She set her down, and noticed her hands were bloody. Del fled the briefing room. She collided with someone just outside the door, pushed. A man with the bars of a TDF commander stumbled and bumped into the wall behind her. "Who the hell are you--" "Commander Mee." "What do you want?" Fool, didn't he realize his life was in danger? Just being near her was enough to risk a horrible death at her hands. "I had to let you know, my wife has resigned from the TDF. She didn't want to attack you, and when she saw the damage she had done, she--" "Then she should have resigned first!" Del snapped, and stalked off. Curses in various languages filled her mind, but she didn't verbalize any. She was just too mad. Blackness startled her, and she nearly walked into a wall. A light panel had blown out. No, a whole corridor of light panels had blown out. "Damnit! Del to Ops, we have a power outage on One. Fix it." She threw the communicator at the wall with all her strength. It crashed with a satisfying crunch. Then a damned beeping sound began, as the critical-damage alarm went off. She kicked the thing, somehow hitting it precisely despite the darkness. The infernal beeping receded as it skidded off into the black corridor. ----- Jehrico crawled into the corridor, blinking at the sudden brightness. His body ached, as if he had been repeatedly beaten with a blunt object. The sensation came from a pile of Cybrid vehicle parts falling on him, he supposed. His legs were both broken, and he couldn't even get up to reach the damned intercom on the wall. His personal communicator had been buried under the rubble, along with the corpse of the unfortunate engineer. "Someone, help me!" he cried, gasping as the vocalization tore at his burning throat. Water. He had to get some water. His voice was gone, and he couldn't have been heard even if he'd had his communicator right in front of his nose anyway. The corridor was empty, except for the Presence. If he'd had any doubt in his mind before, now he was certain. The thing was evil. It hadn't killed him before, only put him into agony. Now it let him suffer, let him humiliate himself. He knew that if he someone reached up and accessed one of the intercoms, it would short out, and the creature would watch, laughing, as he collapsed, his leg bones splintering at the break points. "Do it," he snarled. "Kill me. Make it quick, you monster." He couldn't even hear his own voice. "Oh God," the beast said, as he felt his consciousness slipping away. He covered his ears, cowering into himself, as he felt the beast's touch on his arm. "Damn, what happened to you?" Vicious, vicious. Mocking him in his agony. His vision went black. ----- "The monster's back," Icey said quietly to Razorback. "I found him like this in the corridor on Two. Guy's in there, dead from apparent strangulation." "Where's Xena?" "I was about to call her." Icey got his communicator out and touched the button. "Icey to Xenogears, medical emergency in the infirmary." He put his communicator back in his pocket and was already almost out the door before he realized Xenogears had not answered. "Xenogears, respond." He looked over at Razorback. "Call Del." "Yeah. Icey to Del, medical emergency. Xeno's not answering." And neither was Del, he decided after thirty seconds had gone by. "Razor, can you do anything?" "He's not in life-threatening condition. He's stable. I can help. God only knows I know enough about the workings of the human body," he added bitterly, images of torture chambers running cackling through his head. "Go to it. I'm going to see if I can make contact with Maria." "Damnit, Maria IS the monster!" "No! It can't be! Maria would never do this!" "Who knows what she has become! You can't know!" Icey stared at him, indecision evident on his face. "What're you saying?" "Maria's got some kind of powers now. You don't know what they are or where they came from. She's not even human anymore. You have no idea what she's capable of!" "It isn't Maria!" he said angrily, wishing he were as certain as he pretended. ----- Icey went behind the bar with a quick nod to the bartender. He dropped down to the sanctum, feeling as if he were falling down some monster's esophagus. He struck bottom with a thud, barely noticing the strange arrangement of the chessboard on the way through the outer room. The queen was pinned between a diagonal of pawns and a pair of rooks. The queen seemed to be trembling with restrained energy, as if desperate to make its move and escape its deadly trap. He passed the airlock and entered the inner room, whereupon he was immediately attacked. Cat claws hooked into his face, barely missing his eyes. He cried out with pain and shock, batting blindly at the enraged creature. It hissed and spit, ripping bloody rents in his neck, and sank its teeth solidly into his chin. He yelped, grabbed the cat's arms and threw it against the wall. It bounced off, leapt at him, ripping his clothes, biting at his face again. He drew his pistol and was about to kill the rampaging creature, when it let him go and ran howling into the airlock. He wiped the blood from a dozen deep slashes with his shirt, making a note to see the creature destroyed as soon as possible. He entered the small, rocket-powered lift that would take him to the world's core. Two hours later, the lift struck bottom. Restless, he had paced the small cube to the point of exhaustion, then sat on the floor of the conveyance until it reached bottom. Now he leapt up and practically threw himself out of the lift to the airlock. He stepped through to see a black sky, a shimmering lake, and a terrible trembling in the air. Blackness, liquid in its movements, filled the air. It was like watching blood spraying into a container of water, mixing and diffusing with the liquid. A negative-image reflection of light on a metal surface, a surface being twisted and shredded at by a powerful beast, like the rippling muscle of a tiger's body in an unholy ultraviolet light, as another tiger with the same power and fury attacked it, tumbled end-over-end with it, ripping, slashing-- Icey turned away from the terrible spectacle, toward the airlock, about to flee the awful apparition. For the twisting, churning air was attacking him too, twisting his body and mind, searing him with pain and terror-- Maria's voice, frantic, terrified: "No! Stop! He's your friend; leave him alone! Don't you see? You must control! You must!" "Maria?" he said weakly, collapsing to the ground. "What--" "NO! STOP IT NOW!" He felt a force pulling on his arm, a terrible force more than capable of ripping the limb clean off, and apparently more than willing as well. "I am still the stronger, and I will not allow this! Stop, or I will have to destroy you. I beg you, stop. Don't make me do this!" Maria, or at least that portion of the air that Maria was a part of, was crying. "Please, my friend. Fight it. Stop what you are doing, or if you cannot, take me instead. Don't do this. You'll kill him, destroy me, destroy us all. And I cannot bring myself to destroy you, no matter the cost--" Icey blacked out. ----- Flash: Jehrico, unconscious from his injuries, crying out in his sleep-- -- Flash: Xenogears, awakening to see a figure in black looming over her, bloody knife about to strike, as another, similar figure knelt, begging for her life, between her and the phantom-- -- Flash: Razorback, frozen in horror as the woman he had seen thrown into the incinerator interposed herself between him and a leering figure of Navarre, candlegun drawn-- -- Flash: Tycho, working on his Basilisk, crying out as a short spat electricity into his arm, searing his skin, melting his shirt into the very flesh of his arm. A computer readout flashing a single word, gold-on-black, as the scream of a reactor meltdown warning shot terror through his veins. NO! it said-- -- Flash: Ko'ah, in bed, in the throes of a terrible nightmare. A ship loomed above the blue skies of his home world, spitting beams of death downward, destroying whole cities. A single battle moon moving into position in front of the beam, sacrificing itself so that just a few more evacuation ships could launch-- -- Flash: Altas, running a simulation with Ajax. Unprogrammed Executioners loomed on the horizon, dozens of them. Gyl, unbidden, streaking out of the bay toward them, buying him time to get away-- -- Flash: Icey, lying in front of the airlock, feeling a deadly blackness infusing him, ripping at him, atom by atom, as Maria cried out his name, and for the blackness to stop-- -- Flash: Delithita, collapsed in the corridor, dreaming, striking viciously at anything that moved, confidant in her power. The most deadly of her threats cowering before her, begging for mercy-- Not for itself-- Del stopped for a moment, gathering her powers for a final blow. She stared at the figure kneeling before her-- "Maria?" She looked up at the targets that she had been about to destroy. Cybrid warforms, leveling weapons of mass destruction at the colony? TDF troops cutting down innocent residents? Imperial Knights, murdering her parents like insects? "No..." she whispered. "Oh God, no..." Collapsing, sobbing, on the floor, begging for forgiveness, from anyone, anything that would listen. "Oh God, what have I done? What have I done?" / < / << /

Darker Sides

Maria