Jason struggled out of the tangled, sweat-damp sheets without opening his eyes and stumbled across to the bathroom. The metal floor wasn't cold to his bare feet, the thick, moist August air sticking to his skin even as he splashed his face with cold water and rinsed out his mouth. The bracelet beeped again, reminding him what had woken him, and he checked the pattern and groaned. An emergency signal.

In the kitchenette, he dumped two spoonfuls of regular coffee straight into a driving mug, poured water on top, and shoved it into the microwave to heat while he pulled on his clothes, cursing softly under his breath. The man's a sadist. Two drills before 4am in a row?

He'd gotten good at the quick-change, anyway--the Chief had made it clear that if his living off the premises slowed the team down, he'd have to make a choice between the trailer and G-Force. Yeah, and how much do you want to bet Mark didn't get that chat when he decided to move out? The trailer door banged shut behind him as he jumped down off the cinderblock steps.

The track was dark and silent while he drove past, the streets empty until he pulled onto the LIE and joined the other cars on their respective midnight runs. The air was heavy with moisture, blurring the streetlamps and headlights into indistinct circles, shrouding the skyline in murk. When he came out of the tunnel, it was raining. He leaned over at a stoplight and rolled up the passenger-side window, but he left the other one open for the last few blocks to the UN garage. He tossed his driving gloves into the front seat and stripped the raindrops from his left forearm with a swipe of his hand, then jogged across to the elevators.

#

Chief Anderson's face was pale, but it might have been the thin quality of the early-morning light. The maps in his office looked washed-out, green hills and blue oceans reduced to shades of grey, and sweat dried stickily on the back of Jason's neck under the blast of the air-conditioning. He leaned against the wall and didn't bother concealing his irritated expression. The others all looked pretty tired, too, but it looked as though they'd taken time for a shower--a luxury he couldn't afford with the drive to make. Mark, of course, was trying to look perky and succeeding. Jason yawned without bothering to cover his mouth.

And then the Chief cleared his throat and said, "This isn't a drill."

Next thing he knew, he was standing next to Mark without quite having decided to move, his skin prickling. He forgot to be annoyed by the bitter taste of coffee grounds in the back of his mouth. It was for real. His heart started pounding as the Chief went on, giving them a quick run-down of the situation: the mech suddenly appearing, the ominous silence.

"Your first priority on this mission is to find out where they built the mech," he said. "Our satellite network would have picked up something this size coming from space, so they must have a base in the area where they put it together. That's more important than destroying the mech itself--don't engage it unless absolutely necessary."

Great. We haven't even taken off and he's already tying our hands. Jason's hands clenched. "So we're just supposed to hang around and watch it total Japan and hope that it leads us to its base eventually?"

"You're supposed to use your heads," the Chief said flatly. "Finding the base is your priority, not getting into a fight. We have local forces for local defense; your job is to take care of the bigger picture. Is that understood?"

Jason set his jaw and didn't budge, but the Chief was looking at Mark, not him, and Mark was nodding. "Understood, Chief."

A few more details, then the Chief wrapped up the briefing. Jason lifted his arm even as Mark did, hearing the echoes of "transmute" in four other voices as the birdstyle wrapped itself around him. His heartbeat echoed in his ears inside the helmet like the sound of the ocean, and his body tensed, wanting to be in motion, ready.

"We're on our way," Mark said, his eyes bright, a half-eager, half-nervous grin trying to break out past the serious expression he'd probably decided was appropriate to the situation.

Jason barely waited for the Chief's nod, half a step ahead of Mark as they raced down the halls to the elevator, his lungs drawing deep gulps of air as if already preparing for battle. He checked the cable gun and his supply of feather darts as the elevator carried them downstairs, more to give his hands something to do than out of necessity.

The trip went by almost in silence, each of them working steadily on the details: closest medical centers, Spectran naval warfare strategies, the kind of backup they could expect from the local forces. Jason brought up the targeting computer at his station, started checking the data on weather conditions in the area, the wind speed. He worked through trajectories and targets, silver arcs tracing across the sky in his mind's eye.

They caught up to the sun halfway over the Pacific, a white beacon gleaming on the far side of Earth, and chased it the rest of the way to Japan. The sky over the ocean was clear as they came back down into the atmosphere, except for a haze of black smoke rising to the west. Mark tapped the console, and the viewscreen abruptly displayed the scene in close-up: the angry glow of red clouds against the darkening sky, the flash of lasers in the sky from darting fighters, and the answering blasts from the dark hulk in the water.

"Look at the size of that thing," Tiny muttered, staring.

Jason already had it magnified on his own screen, looking for weak points. The surface was made of overlapping plates of some oddly smooth metal, and as he watched, he could see explosions blasting against the hull without causing so much as a scratch. "Well, so much for lasers," he said. "Why aren't they using missiles?"

"The Chief just sent a message out on the ISO net--the Spectrans are screwing up the missile guidance systems," Princess said. "He suggests manual targeting instead."

"Fuck!" Jason shoved aside his now-useless targeting screen and ran to the backup manual weapons system up at the front, bracing himself against the bank of controls. "I knew it was a bad idea to put this thing here."

Keyop ran up behind Tiny and craned to peer over his shoulder at the mech. "Hey, it's a giant turtle!"

"Dork," Jason said, his eyes fixed on the fighter jets wheeling in circles above the mech and firing their useless lasers, imagining that he could feel their desperation. "Why would they make their ship in the shape of a turtle?"

"No, you know, I think he's right," Princess said.

"Actually, from what we know about Spectran religion, it's based on totem worship, usually animal figures," Mark said. "I wouldn't be surprised if they chose to use an animal shape for the mech."

We're in the middle of a battle, and he's giving us Spectran Religion 101. Jason rolled his eyes, but he looked down at the mech and saw what Keyop was talking about--it had four propellers like flippers, and a head-shaped protrusion in the front. Better yet, there was a large dark hollow around the seam where it joined the main bulk of the ship, as if it were designed to withdraw just like a turtle's head. He brought up the crosshairs, his heart racing. "Bring us around front, Tiny--I think I can get a missile right in there and blow the head off. Maybe they were stupid enough to put the command center where the brain would be." His finger settled on the firing switch.

"Hold it!" Mark grabbed his wrist. "The Chief said we weren't supposed to engage it! We still don't know where it came from."

"You've got to be kidding me," Jason said, yanking his hand away and glaring. "Those fighters are dead in the air! They can't get anything through the hull. If we don't stop that thing, nobody will."

"If we blow it up without finding the base, they'll just make another," Mark said. "Just cool it." He turned to Princess. "Try scanning the communication frequencies--they've got to communicate with their base eventually."

"Sure," Jason said sarcastically, folding his arms over his chest. "Just as soon as they've blown all the fighters out of the air and destroyed Tokyo, they'll phone home to gloat about it. 'Hey, Zoltar, it was a breeze, we'll be home for dinner!'"

Mark shot him an annoyed look but kept his attention on Princess. She fiddled with the equipment, but shook her head. "There's a lot of interference from the communications between the fighters, but I don't think we're picking up any Spectran channels--hang on, there's a broadcast coming from the mech." She listened for a few minutes, then her eyes widened. "It's Zoltar! He's making demands."

"Wait--he's on that ship? Personally?" Mark leaned forward.

"I think so," she said, sounding just as excited. "It doesn't seem to be a recorded message, and it's definitely originating on the mech."

"Come on!" Jason said, grabbing Mark's shoulder. "The Chief couldn't have known Zoltar would be on there! We can take him out right now."

He could feel Mark consider it for just a second, then reject the idea. He glanced down at the button, his hands twitching. If Tiny brought the Phoenix around and he had a clear shot--

Mark broke into his thoughts. "Killing Zoltar won't end the war, not now--the Spectrans have made too much of an investment in the war. We'll have turned him into a martyr, and there'll just be another leader in his place. We've got to stick to our mission."

Outside, a fighter dived dangerously close to the mech, lasers blazing, and barely managed to pull up in time to avoid smashing into the hull. Jason ground his teeth. "May I point out," he said with exaggerated calm, "that we're not accomplishing anything just sitting here? And if they've got their commander-in-chief on board, they have no reason to radio out."

"I know," Mark said unexpectedly, getting to his feet. Jason blinked. "We're going to have to go aboard and get the information out of their systems directly. Prin--get some explosives ready. We can sabotage the mech from inside at the same time." She nodded and ran to the back.

Mark turned to Tiny. "Can you bring the Phoenix in over the mech, low enough for us to jump without them seeing us?"

"Sure," Tiny said, though he sounded uncertain. "Are you all going to go?"

Mark nodded. "I don't want any of us in there without backup on this one. Princess and I will plant the explosives. Jason, you and Keyop find the computer system and download their records--and we're not going to blow the mech until we have that information."

Jason throttled a flash of anger. "Thanks for the motivation, Commander," he said sarcastically. "Grab your stuff, shorty," he told Keyop.

"Don't call me shorty!" Keyop threw it over his shoulder as he ducked down and started grabbing things out of the compartments at his station.

"What am I supposed to do while you guys are down there?" Tiny asked Mark.

"We don't want them to suspect they've been infiltrated until it's too late, so once we're inside, try and make it look like you're attacking with everything you've got. Stick to the lasers, but fly circles around them."

"No problem," Tiny said, grinning.

"We'll detonate the explosives once we're out. When you see them go, come down low enough for us to jump back. Then we can finish them off." Mark turned. "Are we ready?" Jason nodded just as Keyop and Princess did. "Then let's go--bring us over the mech in 60 seconds, Tiny."

"Roger!"

Keyop and Princess took off for the lower hatch, but before Jason could follow, Mark's hand on his shoulder surprised him. "Remember what the Chief said," he said softly. "Keep Keyop out of the line of fire as much as possible."

Jason nodded, and they raced down the hallway together. Mark slid the heavy metal door open, a shrieking wind reaching in to tug at them through the opening. Beneath them, waves blurred into a smooth sheet of blue with the blazing speed of their passage. Anticipation surged in Jason's veins, a drug composed of equal parts terror and exhilaration, and he stood in front of the hatch and whooped at the top of his lungs as the wind blew the wings back from his outstretched arms.

Keyop joined in, and Princess laughed at them, a little color coming into her cheeks, which had gone pale before. "'I'm king of the world!'" she shouted mockingly.

"Damn straight!" Jason yelled. "Let's go kick their asses back to Spectra!"

Eyes sparkling, Mark grinned at him, his seriousness cracking, and Jason grinned back, all his earlier irritation gone. Tiny's voice came over the intercom, "10 seconds!"

They counted down the last seconds together, screaming to hear each other over the wind, and leaped at the same time. Jason angled his wings and swept low over the surface, seeing the others beside him out of the corner of his eyes, and snapped up his wings to land as Mark did. They landed safely on the turtle mech's main body, small shadows against the bulk of the thing, their ears already ringing with the churning sound of the propellers.

Jason darted forward to the opening around the neck, careful not to slip on the domed surface. Mark was already there, motioning him in. The cable gun leaped into his hand, and he ducked inside, minimizing the amount of time he stood silhouetted against the light. The visor adjusted almost instantly to the dim light--he was standing in a large metal chamber, empty except for sloshing water, and he hissed an all-clear. Keyop and Princess slipped inside, then Mark. A small door set in the wall yielded easily to Princess' yo-yo, opening on an empty corridor that turned out of sight to left and right, following the curvature of the hull.

"Looks like they aren't expecting company," Jason said, smirking.

"We're in," Mark whispered into his wristband, then lowered his arm and looked over at him. "If this follows the standard floor plan, the central computer systems will be in a shielded area in the interior," he said softly. "Move towards the center of the mech and look for them. Don't move in until Prin and I are in position--I'll call for a sound-off when we're ready. Maintain radio silence unless you run into trouble or to let us know when you've found the computer room. When we're done, we rendezvous back here as fast as possible."

Jason nodded, then glanced at Keyop and jerked his head towards the left hallway. "Let's go."

The dull metal of the corridor rang softly beneath their feet as they ran, and Jason concentrated on landing gently. Lighter, Keyop barely made a sound, and when the clang of an opening door sounded further down, he leapt into a niche in the ceiling without missing a beat, even as Jason tucked himself between the wall and a bank of thick pipes running from floor to ceiling.

The footsteps came on quickly, and Jason felt the blood pounding through his veins in time. More than one. Silently, he holstered the cable gun and pulled out five of the feather shuriken, one held ready and the other four tucked between the fingers of his left hand. Almost here...

Four Spectrans jogged around the corner, carrying rifles, so close that Jason could see a shaving cut on one man's neck and smell the faintly licorice tang of Spectran body odor. But none of them even glanced his way, continuing steadily down the corridor and out of sight. His muscles eased as even the sound of their heavy footsteps faded, and after a moment they slipped out of their hiding places and continued on.

The door the Spectrans had come through had an electronic lock on it. Keyop dropped into a crouch in front of it. "I think I can get us in," he said, looking up.

Jason hesitated, consulting the blueprints in his memory. They were exposed here, but the corridor wasn't turning into the interior, and he was pretty sure they were about halfway between the two propellers on this side. If the Spectrans had stuck to the spoked-wheel design they typically used for domed buildings, there might be a passage on the other side that would lead them straight to the middle of the ship. "Do it."

While Keyop plugged in his palmtop and started working, he crept a little further down the corridor. Still nothing, and no signs of the Spectrans they'd seen returning. He thought about the rifles they'd been carrying and mentally matched them to one of the designs he'd studied. SP-104--semi-automatic, recoil-operated, 20-bullet clip. He could almost hear Major Grant in his head, the firearms instructor's drawling voice playing back like a tape: "No major fuck-ups in the design, but if you're not ready for it, the recoil will knock you on your ass. And it's a bitch to reload because the clips are smooth as a baby's behind--I guarantee you'll drop 'em all over the place the first twenty times you try it." Not the worst weapons to be facing--most of their evasive techniques were designed precisely to force enemies to spend excessive amounts of ammo in insufficient amounts of time.

"Got it!" Keyop was grinning like he'd won the lottery.

Jason smacked him upside the helmet, lightly. "Don't get cocky." But he said it with a return grin, and Keyop didn't stop beaming. Jason took up a position behind the door, his left hand lightly on the knob. "Move back around the corner," he whispered to Keyop. Seeing the light of protest in the kid's eyes, he added, "If anyone's behind door number one and I need backup, I want you to have the edge of surprise when you join in." Mollified, Keyop retreated, and Jason slammed the door open.

There were guards, but only two of them, and the surprise never had a chance to fade from their expressions before they toppled, white feathers poking stiffly out of their jugulars. Breathing hard, Jason stared down at the two bodies, another pair of shuriken ready in his hand. There had been no thought involved, his muscles in automatic motion as soon as he'd taken in the scene, an involuntary and perfect conjunction between eye and hand and weapon.

He didn't feel anything except the sense that he should be feeling something. The two Spectrans didn't even look dead, really, their eyes closed and mouths hanging slack as if they'd start snoring in a second.

Keyop ran through the door. "What was--oh." He stopped abruptly, looking down. "Are they--"

"They're dead," Jason said. His voice sounded a little strange to his own ears. "Come on, we don't have time to sit around--close the door and fry that lock so it stays shut. I don't want to worry about someone coming up behind us." While Keyop obeyed, he shoved the bodies under the low bench the guards had been sitting on--a halfway competent search would turn them up right away, of course, but a cursory glance might miss them.

The corridor was poorly lit, but what he could see of it ran straight from the door into the depths of the mech, with no ceiling except a latticework of pipes and cables. Jason motioned Keyop up into the pipes, then crept down the passageway, counting paces to try and keep track of their position within the mech. Greenish-yellow light splashed his boots from small squares set directly in the floor, the only illumination. He wondered if they were going the right way. We should be seeing more Spectrans if we're really getting close to the central systems area. He checked the time on his wristband, trying to remember what the mech's ETA to Tokyo was.

"Jase!" He looked up at the hiss. "Someone's coming," Keyop said, so faintly he was almost just mouthing the words. "I can hear their voices along the pipes."

There was nowhere to hide in the corridor except above, and the pipes wouldn't take his weight. Fuck. "You have to scout ahead--no arguments!" he snapped, harshly enough to shut Keyop up preemptively. "We don't have enough time to fight our way through every corridor. You can stay out of sight up there, and I can't. Just stay in shouting range and find that computer room."

Keyop nodded and pulled his head back out of sight. Jason pulled his wings close around him, glad once again that he'd chosen dark colors for his birdstyle, then pressed himself flat against the wall as the Spectrans approached, tucking his chin to his chest. His Spectran was pretty threadbare, and they were talking fast--he couldn't make out what they were saying. No way of knowing if they were looking for an intruder or just on a routine patrol--but they held their guns as if they were ready to use them.

Try to stay hidden or just take them out? He still didn't like the idea of a bunch of armed soldiers somewhere behind him, but the noise of a fight might attract others.

As it happened, he didn't end up having a choice in the matter. There were eight of them, walking down the hallway in a loose group. They'd almost all gone past him when the last man stopped not two feet away to light a cigarette and turned to discard the match.

A blow to the throat sent the man down with only a faint gargle, but that was enough to turn the two Spectrans at the rear. A couple of feather shuriken took care of them, but by then the others were raising the guns, and Jason leaped forward, throwing shuriken on instinct alone, getting right in the middle of them. Two more of them fell away around him as he drove a stiffened hand into the face of the one right ahead of him, his left leg snapping back into another man's neck with a cracking sound. He whirled, looking for the last one, and saw him fleeing down the corridor, weaponless. He grabbed one of the Spectran guns off the floor and put a bullet into the back of the man's head.

The sound of the gunshot reverberated inside his helmet for a moment, then his breathing was the only sound in the corridor. Bending to set down the rifle, he glanced to the side and jerked back from the red ruin of the face by his foot, almost falling on his ass. He staggered upright, unable to tear his eyes away. I did that. He stared at his hand, the glove closer to violet than indigo now, green threads clinging to the fingers that had driven into a man's brain.

He felt nauseous and invincible all at the same time, and he had to choke down a laugh that he knew would have panicked the Chief if he'd heard it. Get it together, he told himself. You don't have time to freak out.

Swallowing hard, he knelt and wiped his hand off on a Spectran's jacket. There was nowhere to hide the bodies--nothing to do but leave them where they lay. He stood up and stared down at the lumps of flesh that had until recently been men.

"This is war," he remembered the Chief saying, "an unprovoked war of aggression, with the goal nothing less but the extermination or enslavement of every man, woman, and child on Earth. If you need to use deadly force against those who are perpetrating this war to protect yourselves or others, do it, and don't look back."

He lifted his head and started jogging down the corridor, leaping over the sprawled body of the last soldier. He didn't look back.

#

Holding a rifle taken from another downed Spectran, Jason crouched in the shadows of a staircase opposite the door into the main systems room, watching Keyop make his way over the pipes to the far side of the chamber, where the operators sat in front of consoles that looked comfortably familiar from their lessons on Spectran computer technology. A half-dozen guards stood in the near end of the room, their guns in ready positions, all of them shifting from foot to foot and glancing at the door regularly.

Word had evidently gotten around. He smiled a little grimly. Made you bastards nervous, have we? It was going to make this part harder, though, and Mark and Princess were waiting on them now. His hands flexed around the gun, opening and closing. Wait until Keyop's in position, he told himself. Wait.

A white feather waved in the darkness above the far end--Keyop's signal. He settled one hand on the rifle, took a breath, then tossed an empty rifle clip to one side of the doorway. It clattered against the floor noisily, but instead of coming out to investigate as he'd expected, the guards instead drew into a tight cluster opposite the door, all aiming for the doorway.

You play the hand you're dealt, he thought, raising the rifle to his shoulder, and dropped three of them, barely having to adjust his aim between shots. Letting the rifle fall, he jumped halfway up the staircase as the remaining guards started firing back, then jumped back down to a spot out of view of the doorway and pulled his cable gun. The gunshots stopped just after the coughing started, and he clapped his gas mask on and dived into the room low, firing the cable before he'd even rolled to his feet. The harpoon end plunged into one guard's leg, and Jason yanked him forward to send the remaining two toppling, then put three shuriken into their necks before they could get back to their feet.

He dashed to the other end of the room--the computer operators had gotten a stronger dose of the sleeping gas, and they were slumped unconscious on the floor, neatly trussed. Keyop was already working on the computer.

"Are you in?" Jason asked.

Keyop looked up from the console. "Yeah--I didn't even have to hack it, since they were already logged in, and I found some stuff on the mech's construction. It looks like a lot of the files are encrypted, though."

"Let the ISO number-crunchers worry about that. Just copy anything that looks good." He headed back to the door, taking a minute to roll the bodies off to the side so Keyop wouldn't see them up close. "You need the lights?" he called back, one eye on the door.

"Nah, the screens are bright enough," Keyop said.

Jason picked up a rifle and shot out the overheads, then crouched in the doorway to watch for anyone coming to investigate the noise. With a moment to think about it, he was surprised that more Spectrans hadn't shown up--he'd traded gunfire with two or three groups now, hardly a quiet activity, but no one had come running. If this was an ISO ship, half the personnel would be on our tail by now. Maybe they didn't think they needed to run patrols inside the mech?

"All set!" Keyop said it into the wristband even as he ran to Jason's side.

"Let's go!" came Mark's voice.

Jason gripped Keyop's shoulder. "Stay twenty paces behind me and yell if you see anyone. Your job's to keep that data safe--got it?"

Keyop looked mulish, but he nodded.

Jason took a deep breath and moved, holding the gun low and braced against his waist. The corridors were no longer empty as they ran: five soldiers here, a half-dozen there, all with trigger fingers made itchy with fear. Jason's arms ached with the recoil, his ears ached with the noise, and still more Spectrans appeared, seemingly for the sole purpose of being mowed down. Rounding a corner at top speed, Jason nearly ran into seven more soldiers--too close to shoot. He screamed at the top of his lungs, smashed the butt of the rifle into one man's face like a club, broke another's neck with an elbow jab, and came down with a fistful of shuriken ready to throw, only to see five men running away like all the demons of hell were behind them.

Keyop skidded to a wide-eyed stop next to him. Jason ignored his stare and grabbed another gun. "Keep moving," he said, and took off again.

By the time they had reached the outer corridor again, the Spectrans weren't waiting for him to attack before they started fleeing. Jason could feel a savage grin baring his teeth as he ran, remembering the fighters with their useless lasers struggling against the invincible mech. Now you know what it feels like! He hurled the thought after the Spectrans like a bullet, hurled himself after them. The whole world seemed to be in sync with him, the gunshots falling into the rhythm of his footsteps, his heartbeat, his pounding head.

Someone had opened the door at the end of the corridor already, and Jason blazed down the hallway and dived through it, rolling to his feet with his back to the far wall. He blew away the four men standing to either side of the doorway with one bullet apiece, tossed aside the rifle, and waited for Keyop to catch up. They ran for the rendezvous together, and when they turned the last curve, Mark and Princess were standing by the door, waiting for them.

Mark led the way back out to the hull and back to the highest point of the turtle's domed surface. As soon as they were in place, Princess warned them, "Hang on, I'm going to set off the explosives." Jason flattened himself on the hull, gripping one of the enormous bolts that protruded from the plates of the mech's armor. His fingers were aching and oddly weak: he'd fired more rounds than he usually did in a week's worth of practice sessions. I don't give a fuck what the Chief wants anymore. When I get back, I'm dumping the flying lessons and adding another five hours of firearms.

Then the mech bucked underneath him like a wild horse, and his hands slipped. He flailed desperately, sliding down towards the churning ocean, then Mark's hand was gripping his forearm like iron, and Jason managed to close his tingling hand around Mark's arm and get some purchase on the surface. Acrid and bitter, smoke drifted to his mouth.

"Get ready!" Mark yelled. "Tiny's coming around!" They all managed to stagger onto unsteady feet as the Phoenix swept down and hovered over their heads, engines roaring.

One jump brought Jason onto the wing, another to the open bubble. Mark and Keyop were already there, Princess just an instant behind. It sealed over them and brought them down into the ship, and they ran for the cockpit side-by-side. Jason went right past his station to join Mark at the front.

"What's the damage?" Mark was asking, and Tiny cut the Phoenix sharply over the mech so they could see the smoking holes perforating its side.

Jason whistled appreciatively, then winked at Princess over Mark's head. "You know, Mark, I think you guys were five inches off planting that third one from the left, it doesn't look perfectly spaced."

She giggled, and Mark punched him in the arm, grinning. "That should end their trip pretty quickly," he said.

"Uh, guys," Tiny interrupted, his voice panicky. "It's still going."

Jason looked back at the screen--the mech was rolling, the perforated area rising up and above the water line, and it was still churning ahead. The skyline of Tokyo was visible in the distance. "Fuck! What's the ETA?"

"Oh God--they're in range now!" Princess said. "And they're opening missile bays!"

"We've only got one shot to stop it," Mark said, his fingers digging into Jason's upper arm. "Can you hit it right along the stress fracture where all the damage is?"

"Without the targeting computer?" Jason stared, then turned to Tiny, swallowing. "Bring us straight down at it," he said, flipping the cover off the firing trigger.

"Hang on," Tiny said, his hands dancing over the controls, and the sky spun crazily across the viewscreen as the Phoenix looped up, over the clouds, and knifed down again.

The mech loomed beneath them, smoke still drifting from the holes. Mark twitched next to him but said nothing, and the world narrowed to metal and smoke and the blazing red of the button beneath his finger--and then Tiny was pulling away and two explosions were blooming on the dark metal of the surface and Mark was pounding his shoulder and yelling, "You did it! You did it! That was beautiful!" and he thought he might never stop grinning.

#

The shower was hot enough to scald, but he barely felt it through the birdstyle. Dried blood sluiced away, dyeing the water with deep red trailers as it swirled around his boots and down the drain. He heard the door to the locker room open, footsteps that suddenly started running, and Mark, back in his own civvies, yanked open the shower curtain with frightened eyes that turned puzzled as they raked Jason up and down, seeing the absence of injuries.

"None of it's mine," Jason said before he could ask. He bore up under Mark's shocked gaze for a moment, then turned into the spray, tilting his face down so the water ran over the helmet and splashed against his chest. He'd typed the numbers into the mission log without thinking about them. 45 kills. 10 disabled. He closed his eyes and saw four bodies sliding down a gunmetal-grey wall, leaving red stains on the wall where their heads had been.

"Wholesale slaughter," the Chief had said.

And I'm the one who blew it up at the end, so I guess I really killed all of them. However many of them there were.

His right hand ached with muscle strain, and he opened his eyes to look at it, remembering it bloody to the wrist. The shudder that went through him was involuntary and total, and then Mark was standing in the shower with him, gripping his shoulders, holding him, whispering, "You did what you had to, you kept Keyop safe, you stopped them," and Jason clenched his hands and leaned his head against the wall of the shower and shook in silence, knowing that if he let one sob out, he'd never stop.

He managed to still the trembling and turn off the shower after what felt like forever but was probably only a few minutes. Mark was already soaked anyway, hair and clothing plastered down, and Jason forced his head up and tried to smirk. "You look like a drowned rat." A faint tremor in his voice made it less-than-successful, and he looked away.

Mark's hands just tightened on him, their warmth penetrating the uniform where the heat of the water hadn't, and he finally brought his eyes up again. "Thanks," he said roughly, twitching his shoulders slightly, and Mark finally let go.

"Are you okay?" he asked softly.

"I'd better be, since we're going out again in twenty minutes," Jason shot back. "Don't worry, I'm fine--just strained my hand a little, that's all." He climbed out of the shower and transmuted. "I still need a shower without the birdstyle, though."

Mark got out of the shower, still dripping, and propped himself up over one of the sinks. "I'm sorry."

Jason paused, his hands on his waistband, then finished pushing the jeans down over his hips. "For what?"

Mark didn't meet his eyes in the mirror. "Princess and I barely saw anyone in there, and you had to fight for every inch--I should have known you would be running into more of them in the middle of the mech. And I told you to keep Keyop out of it, just when you needed someone at your back."

"What else were you going to do? Keyop's the one with the computer specialization, and Prin's the explosives expert, and we all want to keep him out of the fighting as much as we can."

"We could have stayed together--done all of it as a team."

"Sure, if you like your Tokyo extra-crispy," Jason said dryly. "We barely stopped them in time as it was, remember?"

Mark shrugged with one shoulder, still not looking into the mirror. "I should've found a way."

Jason rolled his eyes. "Look, as happy as I'd normally be to help you beat yourself up, right now I'd rather have a shower, so I'm just going to say this once--you did find a way. Tokyo made it, we made it, and the Spectrans didn't. Anything else is just window dressing."

"But--"

Jason grabbed Mark's arm and tugged him around. "No buts!" He squared his shoulders. "Look, I'm fine. Yeah, I freaked out a little just now, but that's probably because I skipped half of those shrink sessions that you guys all went to. It just got to me for a second. It doesn't mean that I couldn't handle the situation while I was in it--it wasn't all that tough, frankly. We've had practice sessions that were miles worse." He listened to his own words, tried to convince himself they were true. He hoped they were. "Got it?"

Mark rubbed his hands over his face. "Got it," he said, a little muffled, then looked up and finally met Jason's eyes. "Thanks."

Suddenly self-conscious, Jason dropped his arm and shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "How much time do I have left?"

Mark checked the wristband. "Fifteen minutes."

"Great. I'm going to get a gold medal in speed-showering at this rate." Jason turned the shower back on and ducked inside, scrubbing his hair vigorously, then soaping up and rinsing off so quickly he didn't really feel clean afterwards. Mark was still toweling off his wet hair when he climbed out, and the two of them transmuted and left the locker room together, a brief and silent harmony humming between them.

- End Part II -