2005-03-08 - 3:07 p.m.

Actionhero stood on the bridge of the sky dreadnaught Churchill, looming over battle scarred London, watching the battle play out on the holofeeds. There was nothing he wanted more than to take a Spitfire 7 Macross Class Jet Mech and lead Marlborough Squadron on their assault on the Buckingham Hive, but someone had to coordinate the assault.

One of the Ensigns manning a monitor below spoke up. “Sky Marshal, incoming reports from Comstar show that Team: Jade Falcon has just secured Knightsbridge. Fighting was fierce but it seems all Hive Shock Drones in that sector were destroyed. Jade Falcon is in position for artillery barrage on the Palace Hive but requests reinforcements. It seems they lost 6 Madcats and are down to less than 50 percent fighting strength.”

“Re-rout Dropship Squadron Six to Knightsbridge and put some Glitterboys on the ground. And relay this to General Kerensky and tell him to get a dozen Stars of Elementals there for fire support in case the Bugs do a counterattack. They also have a new designation: Team Devastator. We need that West sector locked down at all costs. What else?”

“Marlborough Squadron reports air superiority south of the Thames so support teams in the South are secure. But its still holy hell around the Palace Hive. Colonel Courtney’s Ballantyne Scouts report that the Bugs still have heavy fortifications from Hyde Park to Soho so the North sector is still unsecured. We’ve already lost a battalion of Space Marines in Soho and both Wolf’s Dragoons and Team: Smoke Jaguars took heavy casualties in Covent Garden.”

“Damn it. All right have the Cromwell and the Wellington battle groups to come in to attack from Bloomsbury. I want air superiority all along Piccadilly as far north as Oxford Street. AT LEAST. And remind Admiral Padraig on the Cromwell that those Veritech Fighters can turn into giant robots so once his flyers get my sky clean, they can go on the ground and help the Marines and the Mech. Boys. How the East?”

“Holding. The Exosquads have captured Covent Garden and the Deadboys are working down the Strand, house by house, but it’s still slow going. Especially the closer they get to Tottenham Court Road and the Bug cordon there. Massive Beetle Form Biotanks dug in with at least a battalion of Fleshform shock troopers, the nasty Mosquito blood drainer kind.” The ensign looked down as his screen.

“SIR!! This just in, Colonel Matador and the ‘Suicide Kings’ just took Victoria Station!!!”

“Now some good news. Have Dropship Squad 10 and 11 converge and put every Elemental, every Firewatch team, everything they’ve got on the ground there!! And tell Colonel Holte that I want his goldbricking combat mages in the game there too, damn it!! Helmsman!! Bring us around to Matador’s location!! We’ll give him support ourselves. Recall Marlborough Squadron home and rearm them. And have Orange Squadron, Blenheim Squadron and Savoy Squadron in the air now. Have Firewatch teams Alpha through Epsilon and Seraphim Hit Teams Gabriel, Raphael, Michael, and Uriel at Action Stations and relay our movements to Black Prince and Lord Nelson and have them follow us in!!”

“Goddamn, Wheel” Actionhero growled as he looked at his holofeeds. “All impulse. Attacks the fucking Hive without thinking abut backup, logistics, clean up, or anything else just to force the issue. Now I’ve got to clean up this mess.”

“Sky Marshal!! Communiqué from the Layla!!”

“About damn time! On screen!”

Professor Hephaestus Gryphon appeared on the screen. He did not look happy. “Bad news, Hero. I just spoke to Cammy and the Heroditus Club. They’re monitoring your battle and they think its taking too long. They’re ready to drop the Revision bomb on London just to get rid of the Hive.”

“Damn it Heph, I haven’t spent a subjective year of my life putting this invasion force together just to hear this shit NOW!! I’ve got the West End under control and I just got the South!! I’m boxing them in damn it!! We have time!! The Chrono Barriers are keeping this an isolated event!! We can end this my way!!”

“The Club says it’s too much. The Chrono Barriers won’t hold much longer. Pull out and let them drop the Bomb. We can do a Reweave with Parallel Reality Grafts to clean up the history. It’ll be like it never happened.”

“Yeah except Wheel and every other member of his team in that Palace gets Revised along with it!! And we lose our shot at getting the info inside that Hive Queen’s puss filled brain!! Those things I am not about to compromise to a bunch of Oxford ass rangers for the sake of historical simplicity, especially when I’m cleaning up their mess for them!!! I’ll get them out, cap the Hive Queen and then you can do a Revision!!”

“Damn it, I don’t like this anymore than you do!! But if that Queen is allowed to breed the next generation, especially if they have Invisibles to work into the brood strain,she’ll break though the barriers and we’re going to lose this entire timeline!! We have to make the hard choices when we’re Historians. You know that.”

“Even if Jeannie’s one of those choices?”

“What?!!?!”

“She’s in the hive, man,” Actionhero said, his voice dropping to a dead cold whisper. “She gets Revised along with everything else in this string. But then, we’re Historians. We have to make the hard choices right? Who knows, maybe its better this way. Revisionist Bombs are tricky. She could survive, maybe in another form. Maybe in this one she’s a regular girl, nice little housewife, married to an accountant, likes country music or maybe polka.”

“You bastard!!!! Why didn’t you tell me she’s in that thing?!?!”

“Slipped my mind. Being a Sky Marshal, you’ve got a lot of things to think about. Can’t obsess over the little details when you’ve got the hard choices to make. You know how that goes, right?”

“You smug son of a--“

“Now, you still want to sacrifice our friends or do you want to bring that weird ass airship of yours around and back me up?”

Heph seethed. “You win. We do it your way. But if she’s hurt, I’m holding you responsible and I swear on Hendricks’s guitar I’m going to kill you.”

“Lesser men have said the same things. Now follow my lead you whining bastard.”

Actionhero turned to his crew. “Commander Shacklebolt, you have the bridge. Tell me when we’re in shooting sight of the Hive. I’ve got to go prepare our secret weapon.”

***

Carrying a bundled package, Actionhero walked into the shuttle bay of the Churchill and smiled. “All right lads?”

In the center of the room, surrounded by a small army of armorers and technicians, Achlis, the heavy artillery of the Invisible College stood getting dressed.

“Damn it, ‘Hero," he growled. How many times do I have to tell you I don’t need this crap. Just give me a gun and my halberd and I’ll end this shit. You always have to turn everything into a big production.”

“Complain complain. Okay, Quartermaster, tell me what your dressing him in and for God's sake, don’t tell me this is the second string crap you pawn off on bastards like Doctor Curare.”

Gonzalvo “Gonzo” Chang, the best weaponsmith on the Pacific Rim looked up from the armor he was adjusting. “None of my shit is second string asshole. But I have admit this is my best work so far. I’ve adapted those schematics for CyberWear armor you stole and it works really nice. Almost as good as implanted weaponry but it won’t fuck up his Bio-Essence. The armor plate is laminated Kevlar over a Promethium/Titanium alloy with a Dikote diamond glaze for extra hardness. I was thinking of a Holtzman style Kinetic Body Shield but….”

“Screw that,” Achlis grumbled. “These bugs don’t use hyper ballistic weaponry.”

“Yeah, I know!” Gonzo said smacking the armored beast upside his head. “So that’s why you get this instead, even if it is clunkier than a Catholic's sense of fatih!!!! I’ve also put an anticorrosive treatment on your gear good for all known kinds of Xenomorphic acid. It’s untested so don’t go dipping your shit in any goo you find but it might just give you a couple of extra seconds of protection.”

“Weapons?” Actionhero asked, inspecting the armor closely.

“Twin Predator cannons on his shoulders firing a hot micro ER-PPC plasma projectile, slaved to the targeting Smartlinks in his helmet. I also put monoblade crysknives on his gauntlets but that’s all he wanted.”

“Integrated weapon shit just slows me down.” Achlis said.

“See what I have to work with?” Gonzo said, shaking his head and lighting a slim cigar. “So I also gave him the fulltime killer package. Twin HK MP 5-K modified machine pistols with neural triggers and smartlink. Bullets are tungsten alloy APDS but I put some ‘I-can’t-believe-it’s-not-napalm’ in the tip for a sure kill. If that’s not good enough, he’s packing twin Desert Eagles fifty cals with thirty or so Hail Mary clips. For hand-to-hand, if the glove knives aren’t good enough, his halberd’s on a speed delivery rig on his back. I had one of the mages charm it so the haft can shirk or grow to whatever size he needs for maneuverability. The combat vest and web belts are BPRD extra evil Monster Hunter issue and rigged Hellboy style with enough charms, amulets, and assorted crap to handle any arcane shit he manages to run into. I figure with all the crap the Royals have been hording in Buckingham Palace that might be a good idea. The helmet’s also got about 100 gigs of spells loaded on a computerized grimore.”

“Sounds good,” Actionhero said, as he watched the last of the weapons and armor being locked into place. If anything it made Achlis seemed even less human. Actionhero unwrapped the bundle he was holding. Inside was an ornate sword, something like rapier but with a slightly thicker blade and radiating an aura of palpable power. “Here Gonzo, strap this on him somewhere.”

“You could have given me this earlier,” Gonzo said sourly as he adjusted the armor and looked for a place for the sword.

“What the hell?” Achlis said, his voice somewhat muffled under the evil looking helmet.

“The Harlequin sword. I figured if you’re going to fight these Horror pieces of shit you’re going to need the sword of the Last Knight of the Crying Spire. Gonzo, how’s the jet pack?”

“Jet pack?” Achlis said in surprise.

A tech walked up holding a nasty looking rocket encrusted with other inds of strange looking technology and helped Gonzo attach it to the back of the CyberWear armor.

“Yeah. It’s a Seacord 7 Rocketeer with inertial control, force fields and—this is the best part—a portal generator. When you’re close enough to the Hive, you can bamf in, at least to the entrance chamber where the Hive ‘port scramblers are weakest. Hell at the very least this should jam the scramblers long enough for you to cast a Dimension Door or some other eldritch shit. And the rocket pack is fast enough and maneuverable enough to get close, without worrying about taking too much fire from the Bugs. Okay Gonzo, get him to the drop hatch.”

“Tell me again,” Achlis said as the techs brought him over to a drop hatch in the shuttle bay. “Why am I the one who has to go inside the goddamn place?”

“Well first, your astral tracking is better than anyone else's, especially with a Background Count that high inside the Hive. So if anyone can lock onto Wheel’s Telluric Aura and find him the others inside that goddamn shit pile, it’s you.”

Actionhero walked over to the control panel. “Second, you’re the only bastard who’s tough enough to actually survive going inside siad shit pile. You know more ways of killing these things and anyone else I know and you can arm that mini nuke Lady J should be carrying.

“And three, since you’re such a tough motherfucker, if that untested rocket pack explodes, you’ve got the best chance of surviving it and getting to the Hive to complete the mission.” Actionhero smiled and pulled a lever. The hatch opened beneath Achlis’ feet.

“Wait!! This thing might explode?!?! Actionheroooooooooo!!!!!”

Gonzo walked over to Actionhero as the bay doors closed.

“You didn’t tell him that rocket pack might explode?”

“Slipped my mind. Being a Sky Marshal, you’ve got a lot of things to think about. Can’t obsess on all the little details. Have to make the hard choices. Now come on. I’ve got a Xenocide to plan."

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