Bubblegum Crash : Knights' End

A Knight Sabers' fanfic in nine parts
by Mark Latus

Note- Dialogue enclosed in <"  "> is in English.  All other dialogue is in
      in Japanese.

Part 4 : Crash and Burn

     8:30 pm Tuesday October 30 2035 - The Aerie, GENOM Tower, MegaTokyo  
     
     The elevator doors opened and Dumas emerged flanked by Kevin and 
Cynthia2.  "You sent for me sir?"
     Quincy stood by one of the transparent walls staring out over the city.
Though Daniel couldn't see his face he knew that Quincy was smiling.  "You
can see the fires from here.  Rampaging Boomers really light up the night.
I've missed this."  Quincy laughed, "Real power is being able to turn the
world upside down on a whim.  Peace and security only exist as long as I
allow them too!"
     I really hate his megalomaniacal nonsense.  Allowing a little annoyance 
to seep into his voice Daniel said, "Sir I should be downstairs directing the
operation.  If I could have your permission to return ..."
     Quincy cut him off.  Genially he remarked, "If your operation is any good
it should be able to function in your absence.  You've had a month to set
everything in place.  Now your subordinates can handle the execution.  I want
you here with me watching it."
     Daniel's eyes narrowed, "If that's really what you want Mr. Chairman."
     Quincy turned to face him.  "It is.  As you just pointed out I'm the
Chairman, not you."  He turned back to savour the destruction.  "This plan
of yours seems pretty straightforward.  I expected something more intricate."
     "That would have meant lots of places things could go wrong.  The 
straight sledgehammer approach seemed best."
     "Ah yes.  Start a massacre in Sector Five.  It needs tearing down and 
rebuilding anyway.  Anyway the Knight Sabers go in to stop it.  You hit them
with the new ariel units.  If they start beating those you fry the whole
area with an 'accidental' laser satellite burst."  Quincy nodded.  "No reason
it won't work.  It's just ...", he turned back to face his prot‚g‚, "I was 
expecting something more complex."
     Then you won't be disappointed.  Allowing no trace of this thought to
show Dumas began respectfully, "I have every confidence in this plan ... 
JESUS!"
     This uncharacteristic outburst was caused by the sudden appearance of 
the Knight Wing right behind Quincy.  Hovering there it looked very big and 
very menacing.
     Everything seemed to happen at once.  Quincy began turning to see what 
had scared Dumas, his bodyguard Boomers surged forward to put themselves
between Quincy and the threat, one of the Boomers grabbed the Chairman to 
haul him out of danger.  Then the wall exploded.
     The blast threw Dumas backwards.  Momentarily dazed he became aware of
blood running down his face.  Danger flicked him back to full awareness.  
Quincy's Boomers were scattered in various pieces around the Aerie.  Quincy
himself was sprawled in the middle of the floor.  Almost no time had passed.
His own bodyguards reached him as a hatch in the hovering craft opened and 
the White Knight Saber emerged.  The armoured figure leapt from the aircraft 
and landed by the bleeding Quincy.  Things happened very fast.
     Kevin kept himself in the line of fire between the Saber and Dumas.
Cynthia grabbed her master and moved at maximum velocity for the high speed
elevator.  In response to her transmitted command the doors snapped open on  
arrival.  Kevin shed his human shell switching to total battlemode.  He 
didn't attack, just kept himself between the Saber and Dumas.   
     The Knight Saber ignored the bodyguard and extended a blade from her 
right suit-arm.  With her left hand she grabbed Quincy and hauled him to his 
feet.  Just before the elevator doors sealed Dumas saw the Saber plunge her 
blade into Quincy's chest.  Kevin heard the elevator drop and leapt at the
Knight Saber.  Fragments of him sprayed across the floor.
      Cynthia let the elevator drop ten floors, emergency stopped it and
popped the doors.  She practically flung Dumas into the corridor and put as 
much distance between them and the elevator as she could.  Despite her
expectations weapon fire did not pour down the shaft.  As she did this she
continued broadcasting updates to GENOM security.  "What the hell is going
on?"  Dumas muttered.  It was the first time Cynthia could recall him 
sounding uncertain.  The corridor was filling with confused humans demanding
explanations.  Cynthia grabbed one and told him to bring her a first aid kit
before she broke his arms.  The technician came close to breaking Olympic
speed records in his eagerness to comply.
      At 8:40:17 pm Madigan arrived on via the security designated elevator.
The security team with her cleared the corridor of nonessential personal.
Which meant everyone except Dumas and Cynthia.  As far as Cynthia could tell
Dumas was uninjured except for some minor bruising and a scalp wound.  She
swabbed the wound with disinfectant as she told him, "Despite all the blood
it isn't very deep.  With a skinseal(tm) bandage in place you'll be fine.
     Dumas didn't wince at the disinfectant.  All his attention was on
Madigan, "What the hell happened to our air defence net?  How did the Knight
Sabers get that close?"
     Madigan was having difficulty maintaining her professional poise.  
According to the Boomer bandaging Dumas the Chairman might be dead.  "I don't
know.  The network suddenly offlined, they got into the mainframe somehow."
Shit this was a nightmare.  "I sent your ariel units to the summit."  Dumas
looked surprised.  "They were already on standby for engaging the Knight
Sabers."
     "Right.  Good thinking."
     The captain of the Security detail handed a handset to Madigan.  "Ma'am
the coordinator of the linkers is on line."
     "Report."
     "The Knight Sabers have fled.  We're trying to track their aircraft."  A
brief pause.  "I regret to inform you that Chairman Quincy is dead."
     The handset felt a lot heavier.  "I see."
     Dumas stood up and took the handset from Madigan.  "Shimizu, this is
Dumas.  I am taking temporary command of GENOM.  Understand."
     Dumas was Quincy's deputy.  "Ah, yes sir."
     "Good, now is the air defence net back on line?"
     "Yes sir it just came back.  In fact we have a trace ... confirming it's
the Knight Sabers aircraft."
     "Excellent.  We're modifying the plan.  Launch all the ariel units after
them.  Linked and autonomous.  Transmit a general call that we're invoking
article 15 of the Corporate Defence Act.  Understand?"
     "Yes Sir.  We are launching.  Intercept in two minutes."
     "OK, Dumas out."  Dumas broke the connection.
     Madigan still looked stunned.  "Quincy dead ... this is the end of an 
era."
     Dumas looked up from punching a code into the handset.  He chuckled,
"Kate this is GENOM.  Life and death don't mean the same things they do in
the outside world."  Madigan turned to stare at him.  He finished punching
the code.  "Remember all the money he funnelled into the Osiris Project?"
     Madigan felt a surge of both hope and fear.  With the Chairman gone and
another security disaster she'd had it.  However if Quincy came back maybe
she could hang on.  Except she wasn't sure she liked the idea of an immortal 
Quincy.
     "Pick up the phone Hathaway."  Dumas was mumbling to himself.  Another
first.  It seemed his brush with mortality had shaken him.  On the other end
the phone kept beeping.  
     "Hello?"  The voice on the other end was hesitant.
     "Hathaway this is Dumas.  We need Osiris up and running ASAP."
     A pause on the other end.  "We have a ... some problems here Mr. Dumas."
     Madigan's security pager began beeping.  "This better be important."
     "Ma'am we just found the building's been penetrated on the 121st floor.
There was a rogue program feeding false data to the internal sensors.  It's
been purged now by the watchdog systems.  But we figure it hit about the same
time the Knight Sabers hit the Aerie."
     Madigan and Dumas looked at each other.  The Osiris labs were on 121.
"Have a security detachment meet us there."  Madigan nodded and Dumas switched
back to Hathaway.  "Doctor while we're on our way you can define what 
constitutes a little trouble."

     8:37 pm Tuesday October 30 2035 - The Knight Wing (approaching Sector 5)

     Linna tried to ignore the cold feeling in her stomach.  It had been
nearly twenty minutes since Priss's emergency signal.  A lot could have 
happened in that much time.  Things were a lot simpler in the movies.  The
heroines didn't need time to suit up and get to where the action was, they
were always in the right place with the right equipment.  But she lived in
the real world and that meant things took time.
     Sylia was flying the Knight Wing at a speed that would have been 
terrifying if anyone else was piloting.  But no one else had Sylia's reflexes,
except perhaps Mackie.  Linna kept monitoring the ADPolice bands, normally 
Nene's job but someone had to do it until they picked her up.  The last 
thing they needed was to be identified as a hostile aircraft and shot down
by a trigger happy ADP copter jockey.
     From the sound of it Sector 5 was going wild.  There were hostile Boomers
everywhere firing on anything that moved.  ADPolice was pouring everything 
they had into the area.  The only good news was that these were old model
boomers and seemed to be far slower than normal.  
     Sylia jinxed the Knight Wing as ground fire ripped past them.  It seemed
the Boomers on the ground had instructions to prioritise ariel targets.  Too
many of them to ignore.  "Linna, take the right cannon.  I'll handle the left
one from here."
     "Roger I ... what the fuck!"
     Linna didn't get rattled easily so something had to be very wrong.  
"What is it?"
     "GENOM's broadcasting on all police frequencies that we just assaulted
the tower and assassinated Quincy."
     "A disinformation ploy.  They're trying to get the ADP to do their dirty
work for them."  A pretty stupid tactic, afterwards when Quincy turned up
alive GENOM would have a lot of explaining to do.  Except ... Daniel wouldn't
try anything that clumsy.  This whole boomer rampage didn't fit in with
Daniel's style either.  Which meant he'd lost his control of GENOM from 
behind the scenes.  Was someone on the board launching a coup against him?
There had been other assassination attempts in the past against him.  Sylia
felt a rising fear.  She blocked it.  Right now Priss and Nene were the
priorities.  Afterwards she'd find out what was happening at the Tower and 
mourn if she had too.
     As she put Knight Wing into an attack run Linna's voice came through the
hardsuit link.  "Sylia I'm patching this through, you need to hear this.  
It's going out on all frequencies."
     The voice boomed through her helmet phones.  "Attention ADPolice, USSD
and citizens of MegaTokyo.  The GENOM building has been attacked by the 
terrorists known as the Knight Sabers.  In accordance with article 15 of the
Corporate Defence Act, duly ratified by the Diet, GENOM is invoking its
right to retaliate privately against incursion of our air space.  To this end
we have dispatched an air defence force to pursue and destroy the terrorists.
You are warned that these units have the right to use lethal force to defend
themselves.  To repeat ..."
     Linna cut the signal, "A private company with the right to shoot down
trespassers over MegaTokyo!  How'd the government pass that?"
     "GENOM owns them."  The radar was reporting they had company.  "We have
bogeys closing fast.  Prepare for evasive action!"

     8:50 pm Tuesday October 30 2035 - GENOM Tower, 121st Floor, Osiris lab.

     Dumas and Madigan surveyed the destruction with disbelief.  The support
tubes holding the Chairman's Boomer lookalikes were shattered.  The floor 
was awash with bits of Quincys.  The door on the safe that had protected the 
memory storage units was gone.  The computer units that had held the download
of Quincy ready (in case emergency replacement became necessary) had been
trashed.  Whoever hit here had known what they needed to destroy.
     Hathaway was babbling his version of what had happened.  "The first we 
knew about it was when she kicked in the door."
     "And you say it was the Green Knight Saber?"
     "Yes.  Well she told us to freeze and no one would get hurt.  So we
froze."  He noticed the look Madigan was giving him.  "Well what were we
supposed to do?  She had power armour, lasers, all that shit.  All we had were
light pens.  Besides defending this place is supposed to be your job."
     Before Kate could explode Dumas broke in, "So what did she do?"
     "Well first she blew apart the memory stack on the computer.  She had a 
palm-mounted laser of some sort.  While she was doing that these whip things 
that were trailing behind her slashed around.  They cut through the support
tubes holding the Boomers.  Helluva mess."
     "Go on."
     "Well then she ordered us to the back of the lab and stuck some things 
on the safe door.  We figured they were bombs and backed away in a hurry.
There were these flares of light, I think she melted the lock and the hinges.
Then she grabbed the door, pulled it loose and tossed it behind her.  After
that she fired into the safe and wrecked everything in there.  She told us
to stay quiet for the next ten minutes and we'd stay alive.  And she left."
Hathaway paused and calculated something.  "She can't have been here even
five minutes."
     Madigan tried to work out the sequence.  The Knight Sabers broke into 
the aerie at just after 8:33 pm.  While the White Saber's killing Quincy
the Green Saber drops down to the 121st floor ... maybe she drops from the
Knight Wing while it's still on its way up to the Aerie.  She knows what
she's looking for, trashes Osiris and heads back up.  Then the Knight Sabers
head off counting on the blindness of our radar network to protect them.
     Dumas stared around the wrecked lab.  "Doctor do we have any other
backups?"
     "I'm afraid not.  The Chairman doesn't ... didn't want to risk copies of
his mind getting into the hands of enemies so he kept the downloads very
tightly controlled."
     Dumas snarled in frustration.  "How'd they even know about Osiris?  And
why kill Quincy now?"
     "Because he was trying to kill them."
     Dumas turned to look at her.  "But it was my plan.  I should have been 
target."
     Madigan nodded.  "Except you went to extraordinary lengths to keep the
operation secret.  Quincy might not have been so careful."
     "What?"
     For once she was one up on Dumas.  "You've been afraid our main network
is compromised.  Obviously you were right from tonight's intrusions.  The
Knight Sabers must have learned about Osiris some time ago."  She paused to
collect her thoughts.  "Quincy always took credit for your work.  He also
isn't ... wasn't as careful as you."
     "Meaning?"
     "Meaning I will bet he boasted to some crony that he was going to wipe
out the Knight Sabers tonight.  They must have decided with their informal
truce with you over it was time to settle things with Quincy."  Another
thought struck her, "Maybe they let you live because they think they can
coexist with you.  They don't suspect you're the one planning to destroy 
them."
     "On Quincy's orders."  Dumas's voice was flat.
     "You're not planning on calling back the interceptors and cancelling 
Knightfall?"
     "No, and don't call it that."  Dumas's voice had gone very cold.  "We
can't let them get away with this.  Chairman Quincy is now irreversibly
dead.  No one can be allowed to do that and walk away from us alive."
     Dumas's priority beeper went.  The display screen said it was Ota in 
satellite control.  "Make it good."
     Ota didn't sound like the bearer of good news.  "Sir, we have a problem 
the laser satellite."
     "What."
     "The recent computer incursion seems to have prematurely triggered the
"accidental activation" program.  It'll fire at 9:00 pm precisely.
     Madigan glanced at her watch.  "So we have under two minutes before
Sector 5 goes up in smoke."
     "Unfortunately the targeting program was slightly scrambled.  The 
satellite will fire on Sector 8."
     Rich, upscale neighbourhood, upgraded in the past few years. 
     Dumas seemed back in control.  "Can we abort?"
     "Not without making clear that the satellite's under external control."
     "Shit."  A moment's pause.  "Is it set for widebeam?"
     "No sir, still on precision targeting."
     "OK, no choice.  We let it continue."  Madigan stared at him.  "We'll
just have to hope the ariel units can finish the Sabers.  Dumas out."
     He made eye contact with Madigan.  "We're already killing civilians
Kate.  We'll just have to accept a few more casualties."  He paused for a
moment, sorting possibilities.  "By now rumours about Quincy's death and 
GENOM Tokyo will have spread worldwide.  I imagine the stock market will be 
going mad again.  I'll head to the Chairman's office and try to get control 
of the situation from there."  He glanced around the destruction again and 
shook his head.  "Kate head down to the linkage centre and take control.  
Ensure that the Knight Sabers are eliminated."  He smiled, "If you really 
want to you can call the operation 'Knightfall'".
     Dumas headed for Quincy's personal elevator.  The coded door opened
without hesitation.  "The old man never gave me a code key", Madigan thought.
No time to get petty.  She headed for the Executive elevator using a security
override to summon a car.  As the doors closed and she headed for her new
post she realized it had just turned nine pm.  Overhead a satellite in 
geosynchronous orbit was torching part of the city.
     The doors opened and she strode into the linkage centre.  The room was
filled with what appeared to be high tech dentists chairs.  There were thirty
chairs in all, twenty five of them held occupants.  Seventeen men, eight 
women, all held in place by soft restraints.  Each wore a body hugging  
sensor skinsuit.  Their heads were covered by helmets that enclosed everything
except the area from nose to chin.  Most were smiling, though a few scowled 
and one cursed and demanded someone unhook him.  
     GENOM's latest triumph.  If you can't give a Boomer the combat experience 
of a top mercenary you find a way to put the mercenary in the Boomer.  This
group had been training for nearly a month.  Brazil offered an excellent area 
for field trials.  The neural linkage suits allowed the test pilots to feel 
as if the Boomers they controlled were their bodies.  Feedback from the 
boomers was interpreted as sensory data.  Unlike risking their own bodies if 
their puppet got damaged they could simply disconnect.  If it was destroyed
they could switch to another unit.  Theoretically anyway.  All the link 
capable units had been deployed tonight.  The first virtual army, where 
getting shot down simply meant "game over, play again Y/N?"
     Twenty five linkers, as many autonomous Boomers.  The casualty rate 
should determine if linkers were more efficient that combat programmed Boomers.
Fifty SK-3s, the latest Boomers, plus the old mechs on the ground in Sector 
Five.  That had to be enough to handle the Knight Sabers.
     Didn't it?
     As she'd entered Shimizu, Dumas's candidate for running this part of 
Knightfall,  headed over.  She expected a power struggle and was pleasantly
surprised.  "Mr. Dumas called ahead and said you'd be taking over."  He
sounded relieved.  He'd been hoping Dumas would handle matters personally
in case things didn't work out.  Handing over control was fine with him as it
sounded like everything was going crazy tonight.
     This could mean trouble, Madigan thought.  Out loud she snapped, "What's
our status?"
     "Good.  We've lost fifteen units in all, four linked, eleven autonomous 
..."
     "That's good?"
     "Combat losses are expected.  The good news is we've disabled the Knight
Sabers aircraft.  It's going down.  And we can confirm the elimination of
one of them."
     "Excellent."  She felt relieved, everything was working out.  All she
could think of adding was, "Pursue and destroy them."
     The mercenary nearest Madigan startled her by saying, "That's the idea.
Assuming the crash doesn't do the job for us."
     She'd thought they weren't aware of anything happening this end of the
link.  "Have to watch what I say around them", Madigan thought.

     8:45 pm Tuesday October 30 2035 - The Knight Wing (Over Sector 5)

     Radar was reporting a lot of interceptors approaching.  Too small to be
planes and not behaving like missiles.  That left Boomers.  
     Lots of Boomers.
     The count had just reached fifty and they were coming in fast.
     They were finally close enough to get a good look at them through the
cameras.  A good brief look as Sylia was throwing the Knight Wing through 
every evasive manoeuvre she could think of.  Stay steady long enough to lock 
a camera on them and they can lock a weapon on you.  The design was unfamiliar
to Sylia.  All the other flying Boomers she'd seen were ground combat units 
with wings grafted on.  These were different.  
     Aerodynamic design indicating a biomech built for ariel combat.  While
humanoid in form the arms and legs seemed locked into a swept back position.
These sported extended fins.  The main weapons seemed to be mounted on the 
back, placed over the wings and extending past the head.  A rack of missiles,
a 50 caliber (estimated) gun and a launcher (type unknown).  They seemed to
be operating in two groups.  One following a calculated englobement plan, the
other hotdogging and filling the sky with shells.
      Outrunning them wasn't an option, which meant turning to fight before
they were shot down.  Which meant more delays in rescuing Priss and Nene.
"Linna we're going in.  If you're not aiming toward the ground fire anytime     
you think you have a target."  With GENOM's threat still being broadcast
civilian and ADPolice aircraft were keeping well out of the way.  A somewhat
incredulous ADPolice dispatcher had told their copter pilots that GENOM did 
have the right to pursue the Sabers.  As well as the right to shoot down 
anyone who interfered.
     "Roger."  Linna ignored the queasy feeling in her stomach and narrowed
the world to the space in her gunsite.  Ignore the explosions bursting around
the hull, you can't do anything about those.  Trust Sylia to handle it.
     Knight Wing screamed into a dive, there was a burst of fire from the 
cannon under Sylia's control and two explosions.  A near miss rattled the 
hull and a Boomer appeared in front of her.  Reflexes thumbed the trigger and 
the Boomer dissolved in a spray of fletchettes.  
     Fletchettes were lousy for long range strikes but minimized the risk to
civilians.  They lost speed and lethality very quickly.  Right now they 
weren't getting enough space to worry about distance.  The Boomers couldn't 
lock on to the wildly gyrating aircraft from a distance.  Which meant they 
were trying to get up close and personal.  
     Something punched several coin sized holes through the aft section.  The
whole plane lurched as a shockwave hit it.  Was it her imagination or had 
Sylia just said, "too damn many."  She searched for a target as she called
"How're we doing?"  
     Sounding calm, not at all like someone surrounded by heavily armed
enemies, Sylia responded.  "Seven down.  With your one we have eight."
     "Nine!"  A wing appeared in her sight and Linna sawed it off with the 
hypersonic particles.  The Boomer fell towards Sector five.  Linna uttered a
quick prayer that it not land on anyone as she searched for another target.
Sylia blew another Boomer apart.  There were still plenty of them left and 
a lot were falling back.  Confident they could take her from a distance now.
     Something shook the Knight Wing.  It dropped like a stone for a second 
then surged upwards again.  Explosions blossomed around them.  Knight Wing
was slowing down as it exceeded its design limits.  There were limits to what
Sylia could put the battered aircraft through without breaking it apart from
the stresses.  Thirteen boomers gone, thirty seven left.  
     She zeroed another one as the collision alarm screamed.  The missile 
ripped the right wing pod open spilling Linna into the empty air.  As she
flew out Linna grabbed hold of one of the jagged edges of the hole.  Her
suit amplified grip tore through the metal with a tortured shriek.  Linna
became aware she was in free fall.  Higher up than she'd thought.
     All right, don't panic.  The hardsuit's boosters should enable her to 
slow to a survivable speed before impact.  Her helmet scanner was picking up
multiple signals, the really big one had to be Knight Wing.  It was circling 
as it dropped below her.  "Grab hold as you pass."  Sylia's voice echoed 
through Linna's helmet.  Everything seemed to be happening so slowly.  She 
could see the bulk of Knight Wing approach.
     An explosion lit up the sky and the Knight Wing swerved away, smoke
pouring from the damaged wing.  Linna felt the shockwave hit.  Proximity fuses 
rather than impact.  Strange thing to think while falling to your death.  It 
felt like she'd been falling for minutes.  Everything was moving so slowly.  
She seemed to be encircled by lots of Boomers, falling at about the same pace 
as her.  New images appeared on the helmet display, they were launching 
missiles at her.  
     The images fragmented, each missile had become a cloud of dozens.  Not
missiles after all.  Target seeking antipersonnel bomblets, all closing on 
her.  She cut in the suit boosters, her descent rate slowed.  Some of the 
bomblets would miss but the Boomers were launching more.  They filled her
suit display.  Too many to avoid.  No way to blast enough of them make a
difference.  Damn!
     "Sylia it's been fun.  Make them pay."  No time to consider other last 
words.  She put her suit in a spin, spraying laser bursts in all directions.  
Bomblets exploded all around her.  They were too numerous to miss.  Her combat 
ribbons slashed around, detonating bomblets early until they fragmented 
themselves.  Maybe she could get a few more Boomers.
     Aboard the stricken Knight Wing Sylia saw Linna become the center of
hundreds of small explosions.  Fragments of bomblet and bloody armour rained 
down on the city.
     Deep inside her mind something screamed.  Sylia squashed it as her 
combat persona calculated the odds.  Thirty five Boomers left, and an 
aircraft that was going down.  The smart thing to do was aim the Knight Wing
at Tokyo Bay, eject when she had a good chance of escaping detection (use a
skyscraper for cover) and hope the plane didn't crash before it got over the
ocean.  
     Except she couldn't risk letting the plane crash into the city. The 
damaged aircraft might well not make it as far as the sea.  No choice but to
find an uninhabited area to crash it.  Since the quake there was no shortage
of those.  The Knight Wing screamed through the night belching smoke.  Behind
it the Boomers followed.  No sense getting close enough to be shot down when
it was obviously about to smear itself over MegaTokyo.  They'd follow and
blow it apart once it was down.
      
     8:55 pm. Tuesday October 30th 2035 - Phoenix Warehouse, Sector 3

     Mackie activated the stealth program and Knight Shadow seemed to be
replaced by an SK-2.  He'd only learned about this type a few weeks ago.  To 
impress his sister that he was keeping up on GENOM's Boomer research he'd
programmed it into Knight Shadow.  He never had got the chance to show it 
off.  It had been less than fifteen minutes since GENOM issued their 
threat.  Several stations had caught glimpses of the Boomers flying overhead.
The dogfight over Sector five was being shown from a distance as police were
keeping civilians from entering the area.  As Sector five was overrun with
rampaging Boomers there were few reporters suicidal enough to enter.
     The flying mechs shown seemed to be SK-2's or something similar.  
Hopefully he was close enough to pass as one of them.  The suitjets had 
warmed up and the wings were extended.  Frank had opened the skylight so he 
was ready to launch.  Both Frank and Ilsa were in their own suits.  He was 
really regretting not giving them extended flight capability.  But at the 
time having less bulky suits for fighting in tight quarters had seemed a 
priority.
     The media was screaming but didn't have any more idea what was going on
than he did.  One thing was clear, the Knight Sabers were in trouble.  First
step was to rendezvous with them, taking care not to be shot down by them.
Then figure out what he could do to help.
     If there was anything.
     Mackie roared upwards and flew off into the darkness.  Sonya watched him
go and wondered if she'd ever see him again.

End of part 4

Next: Three down, one to go

Part 5 : Scorched Earth.

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