"LUNAR: Tales From Crystal Tokyo"
LUNAR:
Tales From Crystal Tokyo
By
Daryll Pung
Episode
3-09: Winners and Losers
Rated:
R
Polaris
asteroid belt, Polaris system, 17 June 2740
The
Supercruiser
“Man, you have some serious issues,” Wizard Orien said as he took in
the situation: the char marks all over, the barbequed corpses, the stench of
fire and death. Force fields were
extinguishing the remnants of the fiery blast that had moments ago rocked the
hallway, abruptly terminating the battle that had been occurring.
“What?” Sorcerer Derrelli asked, feigning an innocent expression
before turning serious. “Look, if
the fight had continued as it was,” he began, stepping out into the hall and
doing a quick sweep with his eyes, walking to the blinking terminal opposite the
destroyed panel, “then there was a strong chance of damaging this terminal
beyond repair, or of them managing to deactivate the computer, or erase what we
may want.”
Orien, followed by Security Officer Gyari of the DK battleship Wraith,
Subcommander Denthlagh of the HDE battleship Fid’rechel, and Henecht
Kentais of the Zerm battleship Treseey, moved cautiously after Derrelli.
He paused to add more scans of the fried aliens to their data; the other
three, weapons held in a ready posture, followed Derrelli.
Orien spoke up. “And
fireballing the joint wouldn’t damage the computer terminal?”
Derrelli snorted. “The
center of the effect was calculated far enough away.
Based on the damage,” and he paused to run a finger over a char mark;
grit came off, revealing relatively undamaged surface underneath, “we’ve
seen dealt to this ship already, even a direct fireball impact on the terminal
probably wouldn’t have knocked the terminal out.”
“But our weapons?” Gyari spoke up.
Kentais sniffed, and pointed. “The
human doesss have a point.” He
indicated several sections of the bulkhead, cratered from weapon impacts.
Denthlagh grunted, and eyed the blinking terminal.
“Just what are you going to do with this?” He pointed to the angular, alien display; weird, sharp
characters flickering in random locations and patterns.
Derrelli narrowed his eyes, trying to find a pattern, a mathematical
constant. Damned if he could see
one with his naked eye. “Dunno. Let’s get out my hacking stuff and get set up; after we
handle that, you four set up a perimeter, and I’ll do some work; at the very
least, I’ll try and work around the damage and attempt to get a layout of the
ship’s structure. We are time
critical, so let’s hop to it.”
Five packs were suddenly set on the ground, and equipment rapidly
extracted. As they worked, Derrelli
prayed that his sophisticated computer algorithms and equipment could find a
pattern where he could not. This
ship had secrets.
He was determined to find them.
The
SLS Bahumat
Sailor Cygni blinked; almost automatically, her right hand went to her
forehead. She groaned, and opened
her eyes slowly. The smoke-hazed
ceiling spun, cables dangling and sparking, tracers roiling through her vision.
She blinked, attempting to come to grips with the situation.
Her whole left side hurt; burnt smells assaulted her nostrils.
Her mouth was dry. Her ears
were ringing.
She lay for a moment longer; pain intensified as her senses cleared.
Finally, she opened her eyes again, vision approaching normal.
She slowly sat up.
A spontaneous gasp escaped from her; she was unable to stifle it. The bridge lay in ruins; and she was the only thing stirring.
Or was she? There was some
movement up near the front, and a piece of debris was shoved out of the way.
“Shit,” growled a voice. “Double
damn, fuck it all, this hurts.”
That voice sounds familiar, Sailor Cygni thought idly, her mind
still somewhat disjointed. She
managed to get to her feet and stagger to where she could see the person. For some reason, though what it could be momentarily escaped
her through the fog of pain, she was moving awkwardly; as if parts of her body
weren’t responding as they ought.
Blood still seeped from somewhere above the blonde circlet of hair
crowning her head; a burn ran down her right arm and exposed bits of charred
flesh peeked through the right side of her torso where her fuku had been
incinerated, but Sailor Ryujin was very much alive.
“Well, shit, babe, did we just get ourselves fucked without a kiss or
what?” Sailor Ryujin said, noticing Sailor Cygni.
“Wow, are we in a world of hurt.”
“You okay? You look like
hell,” Sailor Cygni managed to say.
Sailor Ryujin laughed hollowly and humorlessly.
“Haven’t looked in a mirror lately, have ya, chica?
You look a lot worse than I feel… which ain’t saying much.
Ouch; oh, shit.”
Sailor Cygni paused long enough to look down at herself, noting burns,
cuts, abrasions… and her left arm, hanging loose; her left foot didn’t look
right and hurt like hell.
“Oh, shit, indeed,” she echoed.
“Okay, so I can’t be dead; not with all of you around.
This sure as hell ain’t heaven,” groaned the Wizard Duke.
He sat up, pushing himself upright and glancing around.
“Damn.” Blood trickled
steadily from his forehead and right arm. At
least it wasn’t gushing. And as
the room spun wildly, he lowered himself back down.
“Whoa.”
“That pretty much clinches it,” agreed Sailor Cygni, lurching to the
comm panel. She gratefully lowered
herself into the seat, fighting against the agony.
Parts of the panel were flickering; she pushed the brightest spot, the
upgraded emergency backup system. “Bahumat
to any friendly ships…”
She
sighed as she fought to stay conscious.
“Badly
damaged, lots of casualties… H-
help.”
Polaris
asteroid belt, Polaris system, 18 June 2740
Shuttle-5
from the SLS Bahumat
“Well, the first day went well,” commented Harry Shuley.
“I am, however, just a little worried; is it safe for us to be up here
right now? I mean, I recognize the
need for consultation, but…”
“We would not have been cleared to the starship Molly Osaka if
there were any foreseeable danger,” said T’mal calmly.
“Foreseeable being the operative word,” commented Moira Benson dryly.
“One thing,” spoke up a brooding Juanita Flores.
“Why the Molly Osaka? Why
not the Bahumat?”
No one spoke the obvious; they were diplomatic enough to avoid that. They settled for an uneasy silence, at least until Moira
gasped as the shuttle angled down into the asteroid field, affording them a
view.
“By the Crystal,” Harry managed to say.
The vista that lay before them included lots of rock debris mixed with
ship debris and plasma traces, centered on a massive, pocked and cratered ship.
The DK, HDE, and Zerm battleships had focused tractor beams and were
holding the big ship in position; shuttle traffic could be seen, of all four
races.
But what really drew their attention was the cluster of RSN ships. Three of the destroyers held the Bahumat in tractor
beams; the Molly Osaka was apparently serving as the relay ship,
directing both salvage operations. There
was also extensive shuttle traffic between the destroyers and the battleship.
The Bahumat itself was a wreck.
A massive cloud of debris also surrounded the battlewagon; much of the
external structure was ravaged. No
plasma streamed from it, however; repair crews were already apparently busy, as
the occasional blink and flicker of engineers at work bore testament to. Whole spherical sections of the ship were simply gone; what
was left was barely identifiable as a starship.
The hulk appeared to have no power; it was dark and foreboding.
Nobody else could say anything as the shuttle began its approach to the Molly
Osaka.
The
SLS Molly Osaka
As the four diplomats entered the bridge of the RSN destroyer, they
paused just inside bridge territory, just enough to allow the lift doors to hiss
shut behind them. Their eyes took
in the busy scene; the two port viewscreens were packed with information of the Bahumat
salvage operation; the two starboard of the supercruiser.
Crewmembers were working at a frenzied pace.
The noise pitch was high, with the buzz of many conversations and
reports. And the Molly Osaka’s
captain was standing in front of the center screen, in earnest conversation with
none other than Sailor Neptune.
The diplomats shared a glance, and worked their way closer.
“-and Sailor Cygni, who suffered the worst of the injuries of the trio,
will be clearing sickbay tomorrow at this time.
As it is, the med staff on the Bahumat has been supplemented by
med teams from all four of us destroyers, and they’re still overworked; we
lost a lot of good people on that ship, and a lot more are heavily injured,”
reported the captain.
Sailor Neptune sighed. “Well,
I just received word from Her Majesty; evacuate all remaining crew on the Bahumat,
and prep that ship for RIFT-towing.”
The captain blinked. “Ma’am?”
“The Bahumat’s going to be scrapped; she’s too heavily
damaged to bother repairing her. At
this point, with even the partial damage report, it’s cheaper to build a new
battleship in terms of both time and money,” Sailor Neptune replied evenly.
“What news about Sorcerer Derrelli and his little band of marauders?”
“At last report, they’d gotten enough computer control to reroute all
command functions to their location near the only operable computer core;
they’ve cut off all other access to that ship’s computer.
Additional security forces from our four destroyers and our three
erstwhile allies have bolstered their defensive situation; we’ve even captured
a few live examples of the invaders and our holding them here on Miss Molly.
The last estimate, after nearly twenty-four hours of work, is that we
have roughly fifty percent of the habitable areas of that ship under our
control; we can’t expand any further without additional troops.
However, that does include all of the vital areas, as we are able to
interpret them; there are a lot of unknowns about that ship,” the captain
responded.
“Well. That young man has
done a hell of a job. At any rate,
additional ships are enroute yours: the
Unicorn, two light cruisers, and three additional destroyers, as well as
tugs and salvagers. They should all
arrive within the next twelve hours. How
go the diplomatic efforts?” Sailor Neptune wanted to know.
“Well, ma’am, the shuttles just docked; I expect an update any
moment,” the captain began.
T’mal stepped forward. “Lady
Neptune, I am pleased to report that the negotiations are proceeding well. All parties agreed to a need for consultations, and we will
resume at eleven hundred hours tomorrow; however, I do not foresee any major
hurdles. Thus far, all parties have
been extremely cooperative and pleasant. An
agreement may possibly be reached as early as tomorrow evening.”
Sailor Neptune smiled slightly, and nodded, her sea-green hair rippling. “Their
Highnesses will be pleased to hear that.”
T’mal nodded apologetically to the captain of the Molly Osaka
for his interruption. “Not half
as pleased as I am to deliver such news.”
“Excellent,” Sailor Neptune said.
“Keep us apprised of all salvage efforts and the continuing diplomatic
progress. We’ll be in touch. Sailor Neptune, out.”
As the main screen reverted to a view of the belt, panning between both
wrecked starships, the captain ran his hand over his face.
Before he could speak, Harry did.
“Captain, what happened up here? The
Bahumat’s being scrapped?”
He nodded. “The survivors
aboard the Bahumat now number about six hundred; still quite a few
MIA’s. The ship is powerless; all power generation is utterly gone,
as is most major systems. All cores
at least partially damaged, and Neo himself has been erased, numbering the AI
among the dead; it’s a hell of a task just to be aboard that ship and conduct
a search for survivors, much less try to get the most basic of life support
systems online. We have restored,
via portable generators, partial emergency power to sickbay, the bridge, and a
few other areas. Wizard Duke,
Sailor Cygni, and Sailor Ryujin were the only survivors on the bridge, albeit
heavily injured; most of the med staff survived, but a majority of the rest of
the crew is either dead or disabled due to injury; I don’t think there’s a
single uninjured member of that crew.”
“Mother of Serenity,” gasped Moira.
“And this is a victory?”
T’mal raised an eyebrow. “Precisely
how many of these victories can we afford to withstand?
We still have no knowledge of the exact numbers our enemy possesses; and
at this rate, we shall run out of battleships.
There will not always be an asteroid belt spatially convenient,
either.”
“Which is why we’re all praying this diplomatic effort works out,”
nodded the captain.
“We shall endeavor to ensure that it does just that,” T’mal
responded calmly.
“Captain! Latest report
from Sorcerer Derrelli! They’re
under attack!”
The
Supercruiser
Derrelli ducked, a bolt of energy just missing him, showering sparks and
debris down around him; the reek of fried ozone assaulted his nostrils, mixed
with sweat and the acrid tang of blood. He
rolled behind an already dead console, where Gyari was crouched. She grinned.
“Kinda determined, are they?” she shouted over the din of combat.
“Yeah, well, of the counterattacks we’ve fended off so far, this one
is certainly the most bold. They
gotta know they’re trapped; that our forces are closing behind them.
It’s a suicide mission to try and retake the core, so they must be
getting desperate!” he yelled in reply. He
prepped his Pythons. “I’m gonna
try and get to the terminal over there,” he continued, waving his gun in the
direction he intended to move. “Cover
me?”
“Got your back,” Gyari nodded. “Count
of three. One, two…”
He tensed.
“Three!” As she said
that, she popped up over the console, a blast striking it in front of her,
creating yet another crater in it, and causing her to blink before she could
spray the enemies with tunneling beam fire.
At the same time, Derrelli leapt to the right, leveling his pythons at
the massive alien attackers; thunder and fire echoed in his ears as he pulled
both triggers and controlled the kick, leveling both guns again and firing a
second time even before his first shots nailed the alien in the head, spraying
ichor all over its fellows. Derrelli
spun and ducked behind the terminal even as his second shots nailed two other
targets… but doing little more than pissing them off.
Derrelli took a breath, prepared to leap out again, when one of the
injured aliens whipped around to where he was, and leveled its weapon. He crouched, prepared to throw himself to the side, when a
whitish blast struck the alien in the head, blowing its head out of existence.
Derrelli smirked, and waved his thanks to where Orien was perched, in the
core access proper. His smirk
abruptly disappeared as the other injured alien headed right for Orien.
No way they’re reaching the core! Derrelli snarled mentally; his
staff was out and extended within a millisecond, and he jumped, swinging his
staff in a tight spiral above his head. He
brought it down on the alien with every ounce of strength he could muster; the
alien reeled from the impact, attempting to turn and face the attack.
Derrelli swung again as he landed, catching the alien in the jaw and
slamming it senseless into the nearby wall.
Four other aliens were approaching from the rear; Derrelli half-turned,
ready to deal with them. Simultaneously,
the one in the middle lost its head to another shot from Orien’s sniper rifle,
the one on the left was stitched from top to bottom, and back, with tunneling
beam fire courtesy of Gyari, who was standing and yelling as she unloaded the
remainder of her power cell into it; the one just behind the now headless alien
was devastated from point-blank disrupter fire as Denthlagh charged; and the
last one to the far right crumpled under a barrage of red laser fire from
Kentais, who was standing in the now clear hall, set against his massive weapon
and supporting it as a tripod. Behind
them, allied troops were mopping up.
Derrelli turned back to his target, and realized he had some ichor on
him; he shrugged, and extended his hand to the stunned alien, pointing at its
head. “Fuck off and die,” he
said coldly. “Ember Bolt!”
The refined fiery blast charred the alien’s head beyond recognition,
and it jerked once before going limp in death.
It was now quiet; the troops were moving about, confirming that all
enemies were dead. The silence was
finally broken as Gyari pranced over to Derrelli, grinning from ear to ear. “That was fun, huh?”
Derrelli turned, his expression changing to a slight smile.
“And you thought humans were bad,” he quipped to Denthlagh and
Kentais as they neared.
Denthlagh merely snorted, and Kentais shook his head.
“Man, you all right?” Orien broke in, coming up behind Derrelli. “We coulda taken that one prisoner.”
“Probably should have,” nodded Derrelli.
“But I lost my temper… and it’s not like the bastard was
surrendering.”
“Lossst your temper?” Kentais inquired.
“A curiousss expressssion.”
“We are taking over their ship,” Orien pointed out.
“You’ve got to expect attacks like this.”
“Yeah, well, I’m tired, haven’t had a chance to rest.
They FUBARed the Bahumat; they’re threatening our homelands…
and maybe I’m just getting sick of these pricks,” Derrelli shrugged.
“FUBARed?” Denthlagh asked.
“Acronym. Means Fucked Up
Beyond All Repair,” Orien explained. “Third
and worst stage of events, after SNAFU- which means Situation Normal, All Fucked
Up- and TARFU, which stands for Things Are Really Fucked Up.
C’mon, Derrelli… the Big B will be all right.”
Derrelli sighed. “No, it
won’t,” he said. “Hundred to
one, that ship is going to be scrapped, and you don’t have to be an engineer
to figure that one out.”
“What aren’t you telling me?” demanded Orien.
“I got some sensors back just before these boneheads hit us,”
Derrelli said, leading the way into the secluded alcove where he had set up
shop. Blinking on one of the
screens he had set up was a translated image of the Bahumat, coupled with
translated information. Orien took
a look at the scan results.
“Holy shit,” he whispered. “Over
twelve hundred dead? All power
gone?”
“Orien,” Derrelli said quietly.
“The Bahumat’s down to roughly half of what its mass
should be. I can pretty much
guarantee that it’s scrap city for the Big B.”
The three non-humans shared a look, as Orien snarled.
“Bastards.”
Polaris
asteroid belt, Polaris system, 19 June 2740
The
SLS Molly Osaka
Sailor Ryujin stared blankly out of the window, not acknowledging
anything, in the now-packed lounge aboard the destroyer.
She had an uninterrupted view of the Bahumat, where RIFT-capable
tugs were getting set up to RIFT the hulk to the Sol system.
She knew what that had meant even before the Molly Osaka’s
captain had broke the news to her; RIFT towing via tugs, which didn't bother to
synchronize fields, therefore causing additional stress to the
object being towed, was only performed on ships where further damage was
irrelevant.
“Hey,” a quiet voice said near her.
“I know you’re practically radiating ‘leave me the hell alone with
my misery’ but…”
“Go away,” snarled Sailor Ryujin, even though the voice was familiar.
She paused to take a long swallow from the bottle in her hand; she no
longer remembered what it was she was even drinking.
“Is that any way to speak to your former commanding officer?” came
the measured, quiet reply.
Sailor Ryujin blinked, and slowly turned to see an exhausted-looking
Sailor Cygni regarding her. “Hoshi?”
“Yeah, cleared sickbay, finally… still sore, but there’s people in
there a lot worse off than me.” She
turned her brown eyes to look out the window, before closing them and slumping
wearily against the transparent crystal window, resting her head against it.
“Wanna drink?” Sailor Ryujin asked, extending the bottle; after a
minute, as Sailor Cygni made no attempt to take it, she pulled it back and
shrugged. “Suit yourself.”
Sailor Cygni slowly raised her head, tears running down her cheeks.
“Twelve hundred people, Kis. Twelve
hundred. I failed them; I was too cocky.
There were better ways, other ways.
Twelve hundred didn’t have to die.”
Sailor Ryujin, paused, lowering the bottle just as she was about to take
a drink. She capped it, and closed
her eyes for a moment, allowing her metabolism to rid the synthetic alcohol’s
effects from her; she wasn’t yet cleared from the med staff to hit the real
stuff. She finally opened her eyes.
“You can’t dwell on it, Hoshi.”
“Wanna bet!?” Sailor Cygni almost snarled.
“Let’s face it, Kis; it’s a good thing I’m not in command any
more. I’m just not cut out for it!
Twelve hundred people! And
the Bahumat was trashed again, and is now getting scrapped.
All because of me!”
“Hey!” snapped Sailor Ryujin. “Dammit,
girl, we’re extremely lucky that was the worst it got!
You know the power of these ships; we all do! It could have been worse, a lot worse. So snap out of it! You
were a good skipper, and the troops respected and loved ya.
The plan itself was brilliant. And
there was no way of knowing that they would still have that much weapons
capability at that point, or that they’d fire everything at us!”
“That doesn’t excuse-“ Sailor Cygni began.
“Oh, horseshit, Hoshi! Look,
you want to wallow in self-pity and dishonor the dead, go right ahead,” Sailor
Ryujin snapped, deliberately and callously.
Sailor Cygni winced.
“You know, Hoshi, sometimes your upbringing shows through; your unease
in social situations, your loneliness, your aloofness, your lack of
self-confidence. Sometimes it’s
cute; sometimes, like now, it’s downright exasperating,” Sailor Ryujin said.
Sailor Cygni’s eyes narrowed. “I
beg your pardon?” she growled, her fists balling.
Sailor Ryujin snorted. “I
didn’t say that’s how you are now, Hoshi.
Several hundred years of being a Senshi will change a lot about a girl. All I’m saying is you occasionally get too introspective;
you’re too damn hard on yourself.”
Sailor Cygni relaxed her hands. “That
doesn’t excuse- or change- what’s happened, or the fact that as ship’s
captain, I’m ultimately responsible.”
“Maybe not,” allowed Sailor Ryujin.
“Look, being a captain is never easy.
Never. I’d say you did
better than most; look at everything we’ve accomplished.
And those twelve hundred people didn’t die in vain; they died defending
their homes, their freedoms. Their
deaths mean something; so don’t demean them by giving up now.
We’re all exhausted, beat up; and sometimes, you just think too damn
much. You can’t win ‘em all,
you know.”
Sailor Cygni relaxed, quiet for a moment.
“Yeah. You can’t win
them all. Small consolation.
You’re right, though; it’s so much easier being a scientist, doing
research or digging up the past and putting the pieces together, coming up with
theories.” She paused, and a wry
expression came over her face. “So tell me, oh wise one, what would you do if you were
me?”
Sailor Ryujin grinned slightly at the sarcasm.
“Use a holosuite and let some steam off, like with your man-toy.
‘Course, he’s a bit busy at the moment.”
“One up on us,” came a third voice; the pair turned to see Duke. “But I have a suggestion for the two of you that can change
that.”
“Oh?” Sailor Cygni said.
“Yeah. Captain Hardy just
asked me to talk to you; it seems that HQ would like to take that supercruiser
home and tear it apart and study it; to do so, though, we need to scour it of
enemies,” Duke explained.
“You know, that might be just what the doctor ordered,” Sailor Ryujin
mused.
“Revenge,” Sailor Cygni began. The
three were silent for a moment; they’d seen the prisoners, the aliens captured
alive from the supercruiser. Sailor
Cygni shook her head, a hard expression in her eyes.
“What’s to think about? Let’s
go slaughter some of the bastards who killed so many of our own.”
She started for the exit.
Duke snorted. “Is it me,
or is she going nuts? It’s been
nothing but an erratic, emotional roller-coaster with her lately.”
Sailor Ryujin set the bottle down. “Burn-out…
that or post-traumatic stress disorder. She’s
getting too into it, letting it get to her, the pressure, the worry.
She’s gonna snap soon unless we do something drastic.”
“Like?” Duke asked.
“Like get her and her man together and force a couple of months of
R&R on them,” Sailor Ryujin said. “And
Doc Willows will back me up on that. Meantime,
though, we have a mission to finish; and to be honest, I’d like to crack some
skulls myself.”
“You two coming?” called Sailor Cygni impatiently.
“Bet your cute ass, Hoshi,” Sailor Ryujin responded, starting toward
her.
“Damn straight,” agreed Duke.
Somewhere
in Dark Kingdom border space, 20 June 2740
The
SLS Orion
“Ma’am? The supercruiser
is changing course again,” reported the Vegan tactical officer, turning away
from his screens.
“What is their heading now?” Sailor Vulcan asked, standing up.
“This one’s a bit drastic; it’s like they were just killing time or
something, and that’s over now,” tactical replied.
“They just made a two hundred and thirty degree adjustment; and
they’re accelerating. Calculating
now…”
Sailor Vulcan pointed at screen two; the screen abruptly changed to
reveal a spatial map, with red lines spiraling in as their target’s course was
projected.
She frowned briefly, and then schooled her expression into her normal
neutrality. She knew the
destination, even as her tactical officer reported it.
“Looks like they’re headed straight into the heart of the GM,
ma’am. Projected course leads
right to…”
Sailor Vulcan finished it for him.