10: Joe

I heard a commotion down the hall, and I leapt to my feet. The silence was driving me mad; I rarely heard more than the sounds of those gates going up and down, and the sounds of life that accompanied my few brief visits. This was too much sound, like the Jigokiller attack, but this time the shouts were not Ken and Jun’s.

Galactor had finally infiltrated the base.

The lock on my cell snapped open, startling me, and I heard Jun shout my name. I pushed on the door, and it opened. The gates rose, one after the other, and I ducked under them without waiting for them to go all the way up, running toward the sounds.

The glass doors were open, and I saw one of the MPs slam into the wall. I grabbed him to keep him from falling, and then realized that Jun had been the one to kick him. He’d been the last; the rest were already out cold on the floor.

I gaped at her. “Jun!”

“Come on, we have to go. They’ve called for reinforcements.”

“Jun, they’ll court-martial you for this! Dr. Nambu--“

“Is the one who told me to get you out. Talk later, Joe. We have to get out of here.” She tossed me my bracelet and led the way.

Ryu and Jinpei were waiting for us on the Phoenix. Jinpei came at me full-bore and hit me with enough force to knock the air out of me, and then clung hard with both arms. I hugged him back, staring at Jun as she leaned one knee in Ken’s chair and gazed at me over the back.

“Thanks for breaking me out, guys, but… Did Nambu seriously tell you to do that, Jun? What the hell is going on?”

Jun explained the EMP to me very simply: an electromagnetic pulse would instantaneously fuse the power lines and circuits of every electronic device that was operating when it hit. Anything made of metal would act as a conductor, from railroad tracks to power cabling to car antennae. She explained that Galactor had most likely “hardened” or protected their essential electronic systems so they could continue to function in spite of the EMP, but the rest of the world was not prepared. In an instant, we would be thrown back to a time without electricity, electronics, or any kind of technology. And Galactor would inherit the earth.

The mecha that had fled from us the day I was arrested exploded out of the ocean, shedding millions of gallons of water. An enormous red serpentine thing with black wings, it shot toward the clouds.

“Go after it,” I said to Ryu, but I needn’t have bothered. We were hot on its barbed tail. I touched the control to remove the glass covering the red firing button, and leaned my free hand on the console. It was amazing how easily it came back, feeling for the perfect shot.

“What if Ken’s alive?” Jun said behind me. “What if he’s on that ship?”

“You can’t think like that,” I said. And I fired.

The bird missile went right up under the wing, where I’d aimed it, and exploded.

The mecha didn’t even falter. No holes in the wing, no smoke from the body. I swore.

“I’ll take us up near the head,” Ryu said, reading my mind.

I just nodded, already feeling for the next shot. But it was as futile as the first. All of the weak spots I’d learned to look for -- air vents, control decks, exhaust fans, airfoils -- all of them had been reinforced and protected, and the missiles exploded uselessly.

And the mecha kept climbing.

“Get us close,” I said to Ryu. “I’m going to have to get inside of it.”

I felt Jun and Jinpei move up behind me, but I shook my head at them. “You’re staying here.”

Jinpei started to protest at the same time Jun started trying to reason with me, but I just pushed past them both on my way to the lift. “Look,” I said, stabbing a hand toward the view panel. “Look how high we are. It’s going to be cold, and there won’t be enough air. And that thing’s just going to keep climbing. And Egobossler doesn’t keep escape pods on every mecha like Katse did; he lets his captains die.”

“I’m the wirehead,“ Jun said. “You need me to help you deactivate the EMP.”

“It has to be a nuclear warhead of some type, attached to the Hypersuit technology, right? I can deal with that.” I hoped I could deal with that. I’d defused a few bombs in my time; assuming they hadn’t done anything special to it, I was confident I could defuse one more. And if I couldn’t…well, at least it would just be me.

“We’ll find another way,” Jun said.

“What the hell do I have to go back to? A maximum security cell and a sentence of execution. And Jun -- if we don’t stop this thing and they set off that EMP, it will kill me. It will fuse all my circuits.”

Her green eyes went enormous behind her visor. She had forgotten what I was, that the EMP would do to me what it would do to her toaster, and I’d be nothing but melted wires in a flesh wrapper.

“I don’t want to die like that, Jun, and I don’t want to die of a lethal injection. If I have to go, I’d rather go like this.”

“You’re not planning to come back,” Jun whispered. Jinpei was clinging to her hand.

I refused to meet her eyes. “Take good care of her, kid,” I said to Jinpei. To Ryu, I added, “Take it down, land it, and turn everything off. Everything. Just in case.”

Jun grabbed my arm as I stepped onto the lift, clinging; I shook her off, shoving her a bit to get her out of the lift. I heard her shout after me as the doors closed; I didn’t stop.

The cold was worse than I’d told them; in fact, without the birdstyle and the cybernetics, it would have killed me. I went into the mecha through an air vent, a space so narrow I had to squeeze to fit. My ears kept popping, and my head began to ring with the lack of air.

I had to break out a series of metal panels to reach the inside of the mecha; again, without the cybernetics, I wouldn’t have been able to do it before I’d have suffocated. I hated being half-human, but at times the cybernetics had their benefits.

I seized the first goon I saw and slammed him into the wall. He turned parchment white and pissed himself, choking on his fear. I shifted my feet to miss the spreading puddle. “Where’s the core they’re going to detonate?”

He told me, and I hit him hard enough that he wasn’t going to wake up before I blew the mecha. I saw few other people. A suicide mission; of course there would be few aboard. I started planting detonators. I didn’t know exactly how much time I had, so I put them all on a remote I could control with my bracelet and moved as fast as I could.

I found the control room at the center of the mecha, where the heart would have been in a real animal. It was not a large room, and it was cramped with gray machinery. I recognized some of the circuitry patterns built into the white walls; they were familiar from the Hypersuit. In the center of the room was a fat vertical silver tube; that would be where the core was housed. I slapped a detonator on the back and walked around it, searching for the actual control panel.

Instead, I found Ken.

He had been strapped to a tilted table inside the central structure, and he looked like he was dead. His skin was the same dull gray as the metal surrounding him, and his eyes were closed.

I moved forward to get a better look at the contraption into which he’d been secured.

The broad column surrounded the table, and a much smaller, transparent cylinder, tilted at the same angle as the table, was open along the length of his body. Each side curved above him like a wave about to break. I could see filaments of circuitry inside the glass, already glowing faintly with energy.

Ken’s hands and feet were locked down with steel cuffs, padded on the insides so he couldn’t move. I automatically reached down to remove them, but they had been secured. When I leaned to the side, I could see a pair of keyholes on each cuff.

“Ken?” I said.

He stirred a little, and I released the breath I’d been holding. He was alive.

His eyes fluttered open, the irises looking washed out, nearly transparent. “Now I know I’m hallucinating,” he murmured. His eyes began to slide closed again.

“Ken,” I said again, sharply this time so I wouldn’t lose him.

One side of his mouth quirked up into a weak smile. “Planned to kill Egobossler, but he’s gone, I failed,” he murmured. “But glad you’re here. Didn’t really want to be alone at the end.”

His gaze slid to something behind me, and I turned. There was a digital readout on the wall, and my heart slammed against my ribs when I saw it. A minute. We had a minute, sixty seconds, fifty-nine, fifty-eight, and I hadn’t found the actual nuclear device yet.

“Ken,” I said. “Ken! Look at me!”

He looked.

“There’s a nuclear bomb in here somewhere. To create the EMP. Where is it?”

His brows came together in confusion. “Nuclear bomb?”

“Yes, dammit! A nuclear bomb. Where is it?”

Ken shook his head. “Me.”

Forty-five seconds.

“You know what warheads look like, Ken. I have to defuse it.” I was already fumbling for the tools I’d brought. “We’ve got half a minute to do this. Tell me where it is!”

“I’m it. The Hypersuit. Core is attached to this thing.” He jerked once, hard, against his bonds. “There isn’t a normal bomb.”

I closed my eyes, but I could see the red numbers counting down just as clearly as if I’d been looking at them: twenty seconds.

I touched my bracelet with my right hand, pulling out the pin that would let me detonate all the charges I’d set. I’d come to destroy the technology. Then there could be no EMP.

But I hesitated.

Fifteen.

It was one thing to kill myself to save the world. To carry out my inevitable death sentence. To make the loss of the Hypersuit technology and even Ken’s death -- since Jun and Nambu had believed him dead -- mean something.

Ten.

But the ISO’s greatest weapon was not the Hypersuit. It was the Science Ninja Team. It was Gatchaman. It was Ken. And I couldn’t be responsible for destroying him.

I was back in the darkness in front of his shack, knowing he was going to die if I didn’t do something, holding him, kissing him, wanting him like I’d never wanted anyone in my life.

Five.

And I couldn’t kill him. I couldn’t be the one.

Four.

I had offered to use the Hypersuit so he wouldn’t have to, and he had only sighed. “You’ll overload the circuitry, Joe. Or it will overload yours.”

Three.

You’ll overload the circuitry, Joe.

I prayed he was right.

Two.

I lay down against him, on top of him, wrapping my arms around the table, behind him. He sighed, leaning his head against mine.

One.

For an instant nothing happened, and then I felt the energy surge around me, us, filling us. For an instant it was only the energy that facilitated the change into or out of birdstyle, and then it flared into something far worse. It took everything I had to hang on and stay in place as all my cybernetics began firing. The pain was bad, so bad I was afraid I was going to lose consciousness.

But the machine wasn’t shorting out, my stupid desperate last-minute plan wasn’t working. I reached again for my bracelet, to detonate all my plants before the core blew.

Fresh pain exploded through my body, making my muscles spasm, stripping me of voluntary motor control.

And then the glass surrounding us shattered, pelting us as solidly as ball bearings, and the lights died. Something behind the table exploded in a shower of sparks.

Darkness.

I lay against Ken, holding my breath, even as the pain receded.

Silence.

Triumph surged through my veins. I wanted to cheer. I’d shorted the damned thing out.

I pressed against the edge of the table to lever myself to my feet, but my arm collapsed beneath me. I swore softly and tried again, but the arm was useless.

I leaned backward, and my legs weren’t much better. I swore again, with more enthusiasm now, wobbling like a newborn fawn.

“Joe,” Ken said, his voice sounding almost normal in the perfect darkness.

“I can’t use my arm, and my legs are…dammit.” I had had to learn to function with the cybernetics weakened while I’d been in the cell at the base, but this was far worse. I concentrated on locking my knees to keep myself upright. It was like working with a numb limb.

“Is this real?” Ken said vaguely.

“Yes, it’s real,” I snarled, leaning my good hand on something I couldn’t see.

Lights flickered around us, the faint glow of an emergency generator. Ken was looking at me. I realized that he was no longer in birdstyle, and neither was I.

“They let you go?” he said.

“No, Jun and the others broke me out to save your sorry ass.”

Which reminded me that he was still locked down. I started forward, only to have my legs fail me again. I let myself go to my knees, pretending I had meant to do it, and fumbled with my good hand for a pair of shuriken.

It took a long time to pick the first lock, especially because lockpicking is a task best done with two good hands. But I finally released the first cuff, and the second seemed to go more quickly.

Ken touched my shoulder then, and I glanced up. He curled his fingers into my shirt, pulling. I rose, bracing myself on the table, and he yanked me close, lifting his face to meet mine and kissing me. I sank into the length of his body, tangling the fingers of my good hand in his hair. I tasted salt and realized that I was crying. A part of me had believed Jun when she told me he was dead, but he was alive, in my arms, weak but warm and alive.

I pulled away and turned my back, swiping hard at my face. “Don’t do that, it’s distracting,” I said.

The other two cuffs took almost as long as the first, because now my hands were shaking, but I managed. I had to help him to his feet, and then we leaned heavily on each other, neither of us quite able to walk alone.

I lifted my bracelet to my mouth. “Hey Jun,” I said. “Are you guys there?”

“Joe?” she replied immediately.

“I told you to turn everything off,” I snapped.

“You’re not the only one who doesn’t follow every instruction you’re given,” she snapped back. “Where are you?”

“I’m still on this thing, but I’m going to turn it upside down and bring it back down. I have Ken with me, Jun.”

“You do?”

I could hear Jinpei shouting excitedly in the background, and even Ryu’s voice was audible under the clamour.

“I’m going to blow the mecha before it hits the ocean, so you’re going to have to pick us up as we come down, okay?

“We’ll be there,” Ryu said.