Human Extinction Agency: Fire From Heaven
By Chris Hoekstra

Giles backed the door open to his makeshift apartment. He carried an armload of miscellaneous groceries in his arms, an additional bag clenched in his muzzle. "T'ank's fer helping me wit dis, guys!" he yelled around the plastic.

"Anytime," replied the wolverine from the other side of the room. Giles only rolled his eyes and walked over to his meagre kitchen. Setting the bags on the counter, he looked over into the adjoining room. Ah yes. They were all there, as usual. But that only made sense; Where else did they have to go?

Giles' current home was a decommissioned chemical plant in the industrial zone of the city. His apartment consisted of one large room -- probably once office space -- moderately redecorated to include a kitchen, small bedroom, and living quarters. There were several reasons of this location. First was that there were almost no neighbours. All those businesses were shut down as well. Next, the place had access to natural gas lines, steady power, and -- most importantly -- a link into an OC-12 line. At 655 Mbps, it was no wonder the Nac's had chosen to base their global network around it.

Best of all, all that stuff was still active. No one had really cared about turning any of it off when the place was decommissioned two years back. All that combined to give them a good set of resources from which to build off of. The massive electrical equipment scattered throughout the plant did a reliable job of deterring the Nacalites from getting too nosy about old buildings. The floating balls of gas didn't have any love for strong electrical fields.

Giles noticed that the paper he had brought earlier had already been divvied up amongst the others. The sports section was the sole providence of Logan Sanders. And anyone willing to argue with a three hundred pound wolverine was either insane, or had something really bad for professional sports. Never mind the fact that Logan was ex-military. Before the Nacalite invasion he had been a munitions expert in an elite Green Beret unit. That was the reason that Logan was on the team that was assembled here today.

His gaze then wandered over to Logan's lover, Jane Wilson. Miss Wilson was an ex-professional just like Logan and Giles. She was currently busy looking over an old, well-worn romance novel and licking her arm. Appropriately enough, this ex- lady cat burglar had chosen a lynx as her transformation. She was curled up at the end of the sofa, her attention divided between the book and grooming her fur.

Giles licked his muzzle to try and relieve the unpleasant taste of plastic as he moved his gaze to the figure hunkered down in front of the computer. Jack Kain was one of Washington's foremost computer hackers. Or at least, he use to be. Now he was just a teenaged red-fox morph who broke into data systems purely to relieve his boredom, instead of doing it for amusement, profit, or malicious intent like he use to. While the youngest of the team, he was also one of the most critical. If it weren't for Kain, they never would have gotten access to GlobalNet, the worldwide Nacalite database. The group's "computer securities specialist" was currently sitting at his console, the discarded comics section lying next to him. He was forking cold macaroni salad into his muzzle with one hand, as he laid waste to computer opponents in some super-violent total conversion of Quake 3.

Giles only shook his head as he threw a six pack into the fridge. It would have to be a bootleg patch. No way the Nac's would have allowed something to come to market that encouraged the player to destroy gaseous enemies using different kinds of high-powered weapons. Giles' ears laid back in puzzlement. With is brow creased in mystery, Giles once again looked at the game. He snorted as he inspected the weapon Jack was using. Pretty accurate conversion, it would seem. That particular weapon had been the project of the designer in the office next to his.

And that's when he came back to himself. He was Giles Ulrich, ex-electrical engineer for Crawford Systems ltd. Crawford use to be the biggest military contractors in that area of the United States. But that had changed drastically when the Nacalites arrived. Before then, Giles had been in charge of doing work on missile guidance systems. It was a good job that paid incredibly well. It had given him a good house, an ex-wife, and a mild ulcer. But how he had loved his job! And now look at him. A raccoon morph, standing in the makeshift kitchen of some shutdown chemical plant, looking over a room of individuals that should have nothing in common.

But they all did, and that was all that mattered. They all hated the Nacalites and everything they stood for. Hated them with a passion.

The last of the food put away, Giles trod over to Logan to see if he could engage the wolverine in some conversation. "So who do you think is going to win the Series?" asked the raccoon as he pulled up a chair. The current, and last ever, World Series of baseball was wrapping up early this year. Not only were there fewer players, but the Nacalites had decreed the disbanment of professional sports as the next item on their itinerary.

Logan grunted and tossed away the paper. "Don't bloody care. Game has gone to pot, as has so much else lately." He picked up the national section. "Perhaps we can find something cheery in here. Like a comet heading for earth, intent on killing us all."
Giles gave an amused grunt as he turned to look over at Jack's game. The fox was remarkably fast with the mouse, despite only being able to fully use one hand. With a few flicks he had torched a blue cloud with his searing plasma beam. 'Too bad we don't have stuff like that here,' the 'coon mused as he watched. 'They can't be invulnerable, they just can't be. But how the hell do you defeat a freaken gas?!'

That was a question that had plagued his mind for ages. Or at least as long as he had known what lay in store for humanity. Sigh. 'What's the use? We can't beat them,' he thought as he turned back to the wolverine and the raised paper. 'We can only see how difficult we can make it for them.'

Giles had just finished reading over a small article on how the crime rate in the US was still through the ceiling, despite Nacalite involvement for the last several months, when something caught his eye. It was a death toll. Or rather it was two death tolls. "Humans dead: 567. Nacalites dead: 15" Giles' muzzle was hanging open as he reached up and pinched the back page of the paper in his claws. With a sharp tug, he yanked the page, sending the rest tumbling to the floor.

"Good one," remarked the wolverine, sitting there as if still holding the paper.

But Giles wasn't paying attention. He was busy scanning the foreign news article. How this one had slipped past the censors completely baffled him, yet it was still here! He managed to reach the halfway point of the article before breaking out in roaring laughter. The other three morphs all turned to stare at the raccoon, as he rocked back and forth in his chair, his muzzle thrown back as he totally lost it. Even Jack had broken his concentration on his game for a few moments to witness the spectacle. 'Oh, have we been so blind all this time?' Giles asked himself.

"Would you please tell us what is so funny?" asked Jane when the 'coon had calmed himself a little.

He gestured emphatically to the paper. "It's here, right here! What we've been looking for all this time. And we were too blind to see it before!"

"What is that? A used time machine for sale, cheap?"

"Noo, no no. Almost as good, though." He picked up the paper, ruffling it in order to straighten it out some. With a light cough to clear his throat he began to read. The news paper article, despite being in the latest edition of the paper, was already out of date. "'Two days ago, October 6th, a terrorist bombing destroyed the nuclear power generating facility at Bratsk. The group was said to be from the radical freedom fighting faction of the Shining Path.

"'Reports state that the group broke into a military armoury the night before, and made away with a truck loaded with all manner of explosive ordinance. They then forced their way into the power plant, wounding three guards in the process.

"'The terrorists took hostage approximately thirty technicians and other workers before sealing the main compound. Hostage rescue units of the Soviet army soon moved in on the plant. After several hours of negotiations, the terrorists still refused to abandon their position.

"'In an act that was designed to demonstrate mankind's defiance to the Nacalite take-over, as was declared in a statement made by the leader of these "freedom fighters", the Bratsk power generating station was destroyed.

"'According to reports received from the aftermath of the detonation, it would appear that the terrorists used their payload of high explosives to blow up critical parts of the reactors. Without these systems operating, the poorly made Soviet reactors overloaded, producing a nuclear meltdown. The uncontrolled fission reaction that followed produced a nuclear explosion approximately the size of Hiroshima.

"'It is fortunate that the power station was situated far from the city of 300 000, as casualties were limited to only those at the plant, the soldiers, and the surrounding populace that had yet to be evacuated. Fifteen Nacalites died as well, of an as yet undetermined cause.'" Giles smiled at the others, his whiskers perking up noticeably. "There you have it! That's not the whole article, but those are the important parts."

The other three shot him incredulous glances for a few moments. Jane just sat there, opened muzzled; Logan simply stared at the 'coon as though Giles had lost whatever marbles he once had; Jack merely turned back to resume his game.

The lynx was the first to break the silence. "Um, Ulrich... what does a nuclear power plant being destroyed in Russia have to do with us?"

"Don't you see it? What I didn't mention was that the Nac's were several miles away from the blast radius, yet they still perished! Now what do you think could do that?"

They sat silent for almost a minute. "No idea," Logan finally admitted.

"What is the one thing almost unique to a nuclear blast, especially an atmospheric one?"

That would have stumped them as well, but Kain spoke up. "EMP."

"Yes!" said Giles, stabbing a finger at the fox's back. "EMP. That's what killed those gaseous bastards!"

"Um, I'm not up on my techno-speak," piped in Jane. "Would you mind telling me what you're talking about?"

"Electro Magnetic Pulse. A rather ugly consequence of nuclear warfare, discovered shortly after the dropping of the first two atomic bombs. When a nuke goes off, it unleashes a massive amount of magnetic energy. This energy has the property of destroying all electrical circuits it comes in contact with, yet is completely harmless to living organisms." The electrical engineer got up and began to pace the room. "Yet it killed the Nac's. How? How could something that burns out electronic circuits kill those pricks?" He already knew how, he just wanted to let the others try and figure it out for themselves.

"It must have scrambled their neural signals," said Logan. "We know that they're held together by some type of bio-electrical field, it's just that no one's ever been able to study them. The EMP from the explosion must have shorted that field."

"Yes, exactly!" shouted Giles as gestured vigorously at the wolverine. "And now that we know that something can kill these bastards, we have a chance to beat them. For the first time we have a real chance!"

Logan and Jane both looked at each other, Jane contorting her face into an expression of disbelief. Neither had seen the raccoon acting like this before. "Um, Giles," said the lynx, "I hate to burst your bubble, but, uh, we... can't go around blowing up nuclear power plants. For starters, it wouldn't to be feasible: Not enough power plants. Secondly, there are only four of us. And if you recall, the terrorists died in the subsequent explosion."

The raccoon let out a rumbling laugh, the guffaw tinged with what could only to be described as a mad joy. "You see, that's where you're wrong. We don't need power plants! We just need nukes!"

The two lovers just looked at each other once more. Jack had long since tuned out of the discussion, more content to lay waste to his electronic Nacalites. The gaze the lynx and the wolverine shared spoke volumes, though. Neither could believe what had come over their friend. Of all of them, Giles had always been the stable one. Even when Leary had killed himself, Giles had managed to keep his head.

Logan stood up and walked over to his friend. He had his paws steepled before him, clicking the claws back and forth. "Um, Giles. There are no more nukes. When the Nac's came they turned them to jello. Remember? The ones in the missile silos, the ones in subs, the bombs, everything. Even the ones that were out on our orbital weapons satellites were rendered inoperable. Remember?"

"Oh, I know. You see, the thing with all those is that they were tactical nukes! Ones used to blow things up. But you see, I know of some that were never designed for that purpose."

Giles sat down on the couch, rubbing his paws together as a frenzied expression came over his face. "You see, Crawford was never just about straight computer systems and military hardware. No, we had our fingers into a little of everything. One of those fields was the next generation of electronic warfare devices. Now all this was way above my pay grade, here. What I heard, I heard for friends at bars when we would all go out drinking, or when I passed by offices, or even at lunch. You see, all that I heard on this topic, was that we had developed the single most dangerous electronic warfare device that could possibly to be dreamt up.

"It was called Fire From Heaven. It consisted of a ring of satellites that encircled the earth. Each satellite had a designated target area, so complete global coverage was afforded that way. On board each of these satellites was a specially made nuclear device, that when detonated would unleash a directable EMP at its target below. Now, about two weeks before the Nac's first showed up, I remember walking through one of the super-high security areas of the company and coming across a room with a small party inside. Before the door closed, I overheard one of them saying something about the chain being complete with the final Titian IV launch that day."

The raccoon turned his frantic gaze to the other two. "Don't you see what this means? If Heaven is still active, and I have all reason to believe it is, then we have a weapon capable of eradicating the entire Nacalite influence on Earth in one single swoop!"

Wilson and Sanders could only stare at their comrade. "Giles," asked Sanders, "do you know how big an if that is? I mean if the satellites contain operational nuclear devices, and if the Nac's know that they're vulnerable to the EMPs that those things could generate, why would they not wipe them out like the rest of the nukes?"

"I've thought of that. And my only answer is logistics. They didn't have the resources. Look at the simply massive number of nuclear warheads and bombs that mankind has produced. Hundreds of thousands, at least. Enough to blanket the Earth several times, I've heard it said. That is a lot of well-protected weapons for the Nac's to destroy.

"So what I think they did, was destroy only the ones that we could get at fast enough. All the ICBM's and the like were their top priority. They didn't bother with Heaven for two reasons, I think. One, it wasn't tactical; they didn't want us to just push the button and wipe out everything on earth. Two, if we believed that ALL the nukes were gone, why would we bother with ones that weren't meant to destroy battlefields? Heaven wasn't meant to take lives, it was meant to destroy electronics! I think it's still operational up there, because they made us believe that it's not. If you can convince your enemy that something is true, that's almost as good as having it be true! Sanders, you know the truth of that."

Sanders began to slowly nod. "Okay, Giles, you made your point, but what are we going to do about it?You think that red-tail over there," he nodded in the direction of Jack, "could hack something of that nature?"

"No, he could never do that. For one, it wouldn't have an outside line. At least not a line that we could hack into. It would to be a stand alone terminal, most likely located in some fortified bunker with its own independent power supply and link up." Giles had done a small amount of cross over work with some of the higher ups, and had been to several of the presentations to high-rank military officials. He could make a pretty good guess on how they thought and about the most likely set-up of Heaven's controls.

"Perrrfect," said Jane as she lounged back on the sofa, looking all the more cat-like as her eyes closed to slits. "We have a potential weapon against the Nacalites, we just have no idea where it is, nor if we can even use it. Utterly perfect."

"I have an idea about that part as well." Ulrich turned around to Kain. "Hey, Jack! Get out of that damn game. We need you for something important."

"Not now," replied the fox. His gaze was riveted to the monitor, and his hands were flying across the keys. "This is the Queen. I kick her butt, I win the game. Give me a sec, here..."

"Jack, now! Off!"

"Hold on, hold on..."

"JACK!"

"WHAT?!" he demanded, spinning around in his chair. "Can't you give me a sec here?! Whatever you want will still to be here when I'm done! So keep yer pants on!"

Giles was about to shoot back when Kain let loose with a colorful expletive, grabbing his head with one paw. "ARGH! Forgot to hit pause!" The other three could see a massive, swirling green and white cloud moving around the screen. It was from the point of view of a dead body, and there was a chipmunk running around in front of the body. Also a large cursor asking, "Play again? Y/N?". It would seem that the Queen had gotten Jack, and had changed the human rambo into a fuzzy rodent.

"Now can we get the information?"

"Yeth, Master," replied Jack in a sarcastic, singsong voice. He punched the N key and brought up the main interface. "Where do you want to go today?" he asked, doing a bad impression of the old Microsoft ad.

The other three crowded around the fox. "GlobalNet," said Giles. "I need to find someone."

"Yes, Master. Of course, Master. Your every wish is my command, Master," prattled Jack while doing his best (or perhaps worst) impression of the midget from the old Fantasy Island series. "Shall I also wipe your back si--"

He was sharply cut off as Jane cuffed him upside the back of his head. He hunched down a little, turning to glare at the lynx. "Okay, okay. No need to get violent. Geeze, here you are."

GlobalNet was actually a rather interesting invention. Human beings have always been creatures of the past, keeping all kinds of records. And when you're changing close to five billion (originally six billion, but suicides had taken care of a good number) people into different animals, all in different stages of progress, you need someway to keep track of it all. Hence the 'Net.

In the single, most massive database project ever conceived, the Nacalites ordered that all possible records of every registered human to be placed at their disposal. The records on the 'Net contained all an individual's personal information; name, address, phone number, what they looked like, what stage they were at, what they were turning into, even their full medical and work histories were often in there, along with any police records. This extensive record keeping was done in order to ensure that everyone was changed, and to keep track of progressing changes. The Nacalites needed it for the latter use mostly, as they didn't want to unbalance any ecosystems too terribly.

But the group had found it a useful resource. Through it they kept track of family and friends, as well as other important contacts. It also served as a method of making new contacts. The best part was that humans and not Nac's ran the whole thing. The Nacalites didn't need the system per say, it was just convenient to have. But if they did run it, they might have been a little more concerned about security. As Jack had put it when he first hacked in, "no one gives a damn any more. We're all going to be dead in less then five years anyway. Besides, they're human. They owe the Nac's no elegance, and are probably only doing it in order to get a delayed sentence. They don't care what kind of a half-assed job they do, as long as the system works the way it's suppose to."

And they had never had problems breaking in then or ever since. No tracers, no fire walls, no heavy anti-hack utilities. All those things frustrated Jack to no end. At least tonight was no deviation from the accepted rule, and they were into the main search engine in record time.

"Okay, now we want someone military," said Giles as he leaned on Jack's chair. "Try special warfare for the profession."

"That gives us about one hundred twenty-five thousand applicants in the United States alone."

"All right. Narrow it down to the Washington area."

"Still close to five thousand."

"Narrow it down further. Rank: colonel or general."

"Gives us just under fifty."

Giles let a noisy breath out. "Okay... try marital status as single."

"That drops us down to thirty-eight."

"Last one. Stage of transformation: stage two or less."

They all held their breath as the counter wound down. All the morphs in the room let out a collective sigh of relief when it stopped at one. "Punch it up, let's see who we got."

"All right," said Jack, "we have a one-star general. His name is Terry Hacher. He worked for the electronic surveillance division of the pentagon, from 1973 until the recent disbanment. He lives alone in the southwestern portion of the city, and is currently at stage two of his transformation. A... German Shepherd morph according to this."

Giles clapped his hands and raised them in the air. "All right, that's our guy!"

"Uh, oh."

Giles was immediately back in front of the screen. "'Uh, oh'? What are you doing, saying 'uh, oh.' like that?"

"It says here that our good mister Hacher is scheduled to undergo stage three in the next three days."

Ulrich swore loudly at the pronouncement. "What does that mean?" asked Jane.

"Stage three. That involves more internal changes. The organs become that of the new species almost entirely. Legs are altered to the new form, and the head becomes fully animal. That means that if the general undergoes that procedure, then his retinal scan is useless. Voice is destroyed then as well. I've been inside secure military locations before, and I know that they ALL require a scan for entry, either retinal, vocal, or both. I'm not going to doubt that the Fire facility will to be any different. I would also put good money on there being a retinal scan involved in the arming process for the satellites." His expression was grave as he took in the others. "That means that we have to get to him before then. We need to pull off the entire operation within the next seventy-two hours."

Jane stood up, a sickened expression coming over her face. "I, um, have something to tell all of you," she said, wringing her hands. "It's... about stage three. They called me on it at the beginning of last week. They said that I had been on backlog for so long that they were moving me up. And I have to go, or else they'll forfeit me."

"What?" asked Sanders as he took the lynx in his arms. "Why didn't you tell us this?"

She was near tears as he held her. "I... I didn't want to worry all of you. Besides, it's not like it's something I really want to
discuss. I hate what they're doing to all of us..." she whispered, as she hugged Logan closer.

Sanders held her tight as he whispered into her ear in an effort to calm her. "Don't worry. I'm sure that we can find some way to make you normal once more. After we've gotten rid of those alien bastards."

"It's just that with this, it all seems so close to being over... finally over."

"I know... I know... don't worry about it," he cooed, rubbing her back. "We're going to get them back for this, my dear. All of them."

Jack was checking his watch. "I think we had best get going. Traffic is going to be a bitch at this hour, and we need to take the freeway if we want to get to the general's before long."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Terry Hacher reluctantly answered the door. He wasn't expecting company, and he wasn't sure who would be calling at this time of day.

The German Shepherd's ears perked up as he laid eyes on the unique conglomeration assembled on his front steps. All were stage two transformations, and all had on jackets and other clothes, despite the restrictions. Even with his own layer of fur, Hacher could feel the cold October wind biting into him. He figured that must be the reason. They all had their hands in their pockets, and none looked very concerned.

The middle figure was a raccoon in a finely styled jacket of black leather. He was flanked by a lynx who wore a dark jacket that was cut to accentuate a superb human female figure. On the other side stood a fox in a light, black and white windbreaker. Behind him was a wolverine. The wolverine towered over the rest in his dark green military jacket.

"Can I help you?"

"One would hope so," replied the 'coon. "You see, we're just here to talk a little. Mostly about the future. Some about the past."

"And we're here to talk about heaven," chimed in the fox, as he looked down the rows of houses in the suburb. He turned back to Hacher. "You do know about Heaven, don't you general?"

The German Shepherd's eyes roved the group. "I think you're right, we do need to talk." He held open the door. "Please. Come inside."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"I can't believe you're serious about all of this."

General Hacher was sitting in an easy chair across from the lynx, wolverine, and raccoon. Their fox companion was off in the kitchen raiding the fridge. The group had spent the last hour telling them of what they had found, some of what they knew, and exactly what they had planned. It was all incredible, like some strange sci-fi story. But then again, Hacher's own life had become a "strange sci-fi story" these last four years. Everyone's had.

Terry Hacher had once held a promising military career. Oh, nothing really glamorous, nothing to get him into the history books, but he had liked what he did for a living. He had never had the distinction of working on anything truly big, though. But that had all changed, when he had been brought in to assist on a revolutionary project that would give America the leading edge in the electronic warfare race.

But that changed, too. When the Nacalites had invaded and told humanity that it was sorry, but mankind was being wiped out, his career was wiped out as well. To think that that was almost four years ago now. The worst of that were his comrades. Since the Nacalites figured that any resistance to their plan would most likely come from the military sector, those were the first people ordered changed, a change that he, himself was about to undergo in a few days. And it scared him witless.

But just as he was about to drown his sorrows by wallowing in the bottle that night, along came a very interesting collection of individuals. And when he had invited them in, they had dropped a most incredible story in his lap. A story that he wanted to believe more then almost anything in the world. But even so, he was still having a hard time of accepting it. Well, now was as good a time as any to question his unusual guests.

"Could you please tell me how you knew about Heaven, again? I'm still not clear on that aspect."

"Well, I worked for Crawford systems," said Giles. They had already gone over this, but the general apparently wanted to hear it again. And as Sanders had told him on the way over, what a general wants, a general gets. "We designed the Fire From Heaven system, and actually built some of the components." Giles didn't know this for a fact, but it seemed likely. As was his next bluff. "We handled the target acquisition systems, and probably most of the guidance systems. You guys, the military, would have been responsible for the other parts."

"And you knew about this...?"

"From friends, associates, gossip. Even in high security places like Crawford, people still talk. They bring their work to lunch,
forget things in the photocopy room, talk as they walk down the halls. And I've always been a good listener," he added with a wiggle of his ears.

Terry clicked one of his claws on the armrest as he stroked his muzzle, pondering all this yet again. What they had told him had made perfect sense. Sure, it was almost all guesswork, but what they had deduced about Heaven was so right! Even the part about the pentagon forgetting about it after the invasion. Never mind that only thirty people were even supposed to know of its existence. If only they had remembered and tried to fire it off, then the last three years might not have been wasted, spent in slavery to those murdering gas clouds! It was because of them that he had lost his dear Laura...

"So what do you say, general? Will you now tell us what your part will to be in all of this?" asked the wolverine, Sanders.
Hacher stoked his muzzle a little more. He never liked to think of Laura and what she had done, but this night had brought the pain back with a sorrowful freshness. No, he wanted to hear some more of what these people had to say about themselves before he would tell them what he could do for them.

"You've told me a lot about this operation, and what you think about Heaven and the Nacalites, but you've told me very little about yourselves. I want to hear some of that first, before I decide to trust you with this knowledge." That wasn't the whole reason, in fact. The general also suspected them of being Nac sympathisers, using him to gain access to a previously unknown weapon with the potential to destroy their masters.

"I've talked long enough," said Giles. "You do this part, Jane. You're better at it then me anyway."

The lynx licked her muzzle a little before beginning. "We're a small group -- very small actually -- formed a few months after the Nacalite invasion. Our original head was Miles Leary. That was until last year. He got caught in an act of sedition, and as punishment was forfeited. They bumped him all the way up to a sixth stage ferret. He couldn't live like that." She blinked and looked away. "We found him a few hours later on the expressway. He had decided to lie down in front of traffic and let that finish the job."

Logan interjected, as it appeared Jane was starting to have some difficulties. "We scraped him off the freeway and gave him a proper burial. Ever since then, it's just been the four of us."

"How did each of you get recruited for this?"

"They found me through GlobalNet," said Jane, clearing away the last few tears form her cheek fur. "Police records. I had gotten busted once for break and enter. Leary was looking for a good cat burglar, and I fit the bill," she said with a forced laugh. "That was one of our first tests of actually using GlobalNet. Jack had hacked it not more then a week before that."
Hacher glanced back to his kitchen. He could still hear the fox rummaging around in there. "How in the world did you get your hands on him in the first place?"

"That was through me," said Giles. "He was a co-op student we took on from a local university. He worked in my department, and I caught him snooping around a secured database one day. Oh, I didn't make a big deal of it, but I never forgot it. So when Leary contacted me, asking if I wanted in, I recommended that we grab Kain as well. He's a little pain in the ass sometimes, but we couldn't function without him. If it's electronic, expect Jack to be able to work it, hack it, or fix it."

Logan picked up his own portion of the narration. "Leary contacted me directly. Apparently we had worked an op together several years back, in northern China. I say apparently, because I had never met him until the day he came to get me. He said that he was organising a tight little resistance cell, and he wanted my expertise. I guess Leary was a spook of some kind, though no one is really sure."

"You didn't look on the 'Net?"

"Oh, of course we tried that. Right after Leary had killed himself we ran his name through. Strange thing was that it was almost all classified or edited out." Logan laughed. "Even with all that went on back then, they were still paranoid about his past."

"So you never found out?"

"Nope. He put it all together, and even got us a nice little place on the east end of town near the river. That was almost two years ago, and we've done almost nothing since. A few random acts, but nothing that ever really made a dent."

"And now you have a plan that will allow you to blow them all to hell," said the German Shepherd. Logan nodded.

'What the hell?' figured Hacher. 'Worst that can happen to me is forfeiture.'

"Okay, I'll tell you what you came here for. And I think you're all going to be very surprised on how things have worked out here."

"Jack!" hollered Logan. "Get you furry butt in here! Show's about to start."

The fox entered the room mumbling something around his muzzle full of snacks. He had a plate full of assorted goodies before him, which he set down in front of him before resuming his snacking. The other three just looked at him, as if to say, "how can you bloody well eat so much?"

General Hacher scratched his nose before starting. "Okay, now you'll be pleased to lean that almost all of what you've told me is accurate. I was party to the project that you know as Fire From Heaven. Its real name is unimportant. But what you have to understand, is that I was on one of the lower pegs in the hierarchy structure of the project."

The other four got panicked expressions on their faces.

"Oh no, it's not what you think. I can still arm the satellites, it's just that I don't have the authorisation required to get all of us into the bunker.

"You see, the Fire facility was designed to accommodate a small team in case of an all out war. It is completely self contained, totally shielded, and can house a half-dozen people for up to six months. Power isn't a problem either, as it has its own personal reactor to provide power to the facility. I doubt that the Nacalites have picked up on that one, either. Virtually no one knows of Heaven, nor of the facility. And the facility is buried under about a quarter mile of earth. All that, plus the reactor shielding should have provided adequate protection."

"Should have?" asked Giles.

"As you yourselves said, no one is totally certain of the Nacalite's capabilities. But while we do know that they can move through porous surfaces, I don't think that they can make it through sixteen feet of steal and concrete. Of course, that's our problem as well. We have to make it past six separate checkpoints before we can descend into the bunker itself, and then another two until we reach the level where my scans will work." He shrugged to the group, his ears moving to accentuate his chagrined expression. "Like I said, I was low level on the project."

Giles folded his paws and placed them under his chin as he leaned forward. He sat and thought for several seconds. "You know how to get us there and into the bunker itself?"

"Yes. All you need to do is to be able to get me there and I can do the rest."

Giles turned to the wolverine. "I was trained to break into secure installations," Sanders told him. "We're going to need some added goodies to do it, though. What we have back at HQ isn't going to suffice for what I expect to run into."
The raccoon was still in his hunched over position as he nodded. "All right. I guess that means that you're going shopping tomorrow night. Do you know a place where you can pick up what you need?"

"I do."

"Good. You, Jane, and Jack will to be in change of getting all that ready. The general and me can provide a distraction if you need it. There is also some other business that the two of us will have to tend to."

"Hold it, why are we bringing along red-tail?" asked Sanders. Jack paused from his snacking, his current morsel inches from his face, to give the ex-green beret a dirty look. He always hated it when they insulted him almost right to his face.

"Because you always told me that munitions facilities have electronic locks on them." The raccoon turned to Hacher. "Am I not right, general?"

"Hold it," said Sanders. "I've broken into those places before. I trust Jane, as she's had experience at this, but not Jack. He could blow everything for us."

"If you remember your experience came from when you had a team member whose job it was to disarm those things. That is why Kain is going with you, whether you like it or not. Besides, I think we'll need all the explosives you can carry for this one."

The wolverine finally relented. "All right, all right. He can go, but he had better not get in my way. The last thing I want is for this mission to go to pot, thrusting forfeiture on the lot of us if we get caught."

"Just see that you don't." Giles turned to Jack. "Think you can crack electronic door codes?"

The fox swallowed his current mouthful. "What brand?"

"Siemens, should be," replied Logan. "Their latest."

Jack nodded. "No worse then your average ATM. Give me tomorrow to put together the hardware and accompanying software, a little time to test it before we leave, and we shouldn't have any problems."

"What do you want me to do?" asked the general.

"Nothing for now. Until we come to get you, you are to lay low and prepare for what's coming. Now, you're absolutely certain you can arm the weapon as long as we get you inside first?"

"Positive. I was one of their back-up selections in case things went to south up top."

"Perfect," mumbled Jack, just under his breath and around his food. "An alternate for electronic warfare. Almost as useless as one for curling."

Hacher shot the fox a smouldering look. He could begin to see why the team loved him as much as they did. "I assure you, I can arm the system. I was drilled several times on the procedure, and even made a half dozen practice runs. I guarantee that it will work. The only way it won't work, is if the satellites have already been destroyed."

"Let's just hope they haven't been," said Giles as he stood. The other three followed suit, the general joining them after several moments. "We have your number from GlobalNet, general. I'll be in touch with you sometime tomorrow to finalise things. Take care until then."

"I will." He waited until the group had donned their jackets at the door. "Do you really think that this will work?"
The raccoon turned back to him. "We hope so general. For all our sakes." They were about to go out the door when Giles turned back. "Oh, general," he said in an absentminded tone. "I forgot to ask something. That reactor in the Fire facility: What kind is it?"

"Um, I'm not exactly sure. It's a small one. I'm pretty sure that it's some kind of variation of the style used on the Los Angles class attack sub. It was modified for our needs of course, but I'm pretty sure that's what it was. I never really paid much attention to that part of the brief."

"Thank you, general Hacher," said the raccoon as he shot the wolverine a veiled glance. "We'll be in touch as soon as we can."

"What was that look for?" asked Sanders as they walked down the drive to Giles' Cherokee Laredo. Jack had already claimed shotgun and had the radio going near full blast.

"Because on the odd chance that we don't succeed, I want us to be able to blow that reactor. Oh, it may be too deep for the EMP to cause any real damage, but if we're lucky the resulting radiation will screw over the Nac's for a while as they try to clean it up again."

Sanders snorted. "Might as well. If we can't use it, why not make something out of it?"

"I'll tell you more about what I want to do when we get back to the apartment. And I don't want any of the others to know about this, understand?"

Jane momentarily wondered why Logan was nodding as him and Giles got into the truck. She quickly dismissed it as Giles threw the massive black vehicle into gear.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"So would you mind telling me where you got that outfit?"

"It's mostly mine, and the good general lent me a few accessories."

"And you're sure this will work?"

"Trust me, it'll work."

"'Trust me,' he says. Don't you know that's how the Irish say 'go and fu--'"

Logan cut Jane off. "We're here."

The pair pulled into the front gate of the military installation. "Ah, hello there gentlemen," Logan said to the pair of gate guards. One of the gate guards, an arctic fox, approached the car.

Sanders then went on to explain to the fox that he was suppose to report to work Tuesday, but had arrived early so that he could check into the BOQ, Barricks Officer Quarters, and enjoy the weekend without paying for a motel room.

"Well, I don't know, Commander..." mumbled the fox as he looked in the car. Seated across from Logan was Jane Wilson, looking quite demure despite her lack of attire that night. The restrictions on clothing for stage twos were quite frustrating. The only reason Logan had anything on was because it was a uniform and those were still permitted.

The pair had actually devised a horrendously simple plan to get into the weapons locker and retrieve the supplies they needed. Since Sanders was an old pro at getting into secure installations, he knew how badly guarded the place would be. Military security, especially that on home soil -- to say nothing of it also being in the capital -- was often very lax at the different installations. Logan's current situation was like that. Here him and Jane were, sitting in the car, feeding the guard some BS cover story. Logan had even borrowed some of the pins from the general's own dress uniform to make his own look a little more impressive.

"Uh, look...." said Logan, giving the fox a knowing expression, "you don't have to worry about her. We're going out right after I check in. I want to get my... things organised." He flicked his brow to further drive home the point.

The guard looked once more at the lynx, then to the wolverine with the knowing grin.

The fox gave Sanders a dismissive grin. "Alright, Commander. Go on inside." And with a wave and a thank-you-very-much, they were inside. The screwup never even asked to see Logan's ID, either.

"That was it?" asked Jane with an incredulous look.

"That's it. Now all we have to do is not run into anyone where we don't want them to be. And since the patrols and the rent-a-cops here work on a fixed schedule, I don't think that will be a problem. In fact this exact same ruse was used by a group of ultra-national terrorists to demolish a military base on the East Coast several years back. It's a good thing for us that the military almost never changes."

Sanders pulled the car into a parking spot under a nearby tree. Even though it was eight at night, he still didn't want and security cameras to pick them up if he could help it. Jane reached into the glove compartment to hit the button for the trunk. Stretching, she got out of the car to release their passenger from his self-declared prison. Logan remained inside to change out of his dress attire.

"About bloody time!" swore Jack as he was hauled from the trunk. "When we leave here, YOU'RE riding in the back!"

"Oh, come on. It couldn't have been that bad," said Jane with a feline smirk.

"You know how Sanders drives. Add that to the fact that this car needs new shocks. Where did you get that thing anyway?" asked the fox as he rubbed his back right over his tail.

"Our fearless leader boosted it."

"You're joking."

"Nope. Giles told me that he use to work for an auto body shop while in college. Hot-wiring was one of the first things he was
taught." She grinned at Kain, her fangs showing a little more. "He apparently worked in a tough part of town."

"We can talk about Ulrich and his past later," said Logan as he came around to the back. He had changed to the basic black that was the motif of the trio that night. "Right now it's time to loot and pillage."

"Arr, pillage. Fun," said Jack as he donned his backpack from the trunk. Jane pulled on a black spandex top and pants, a similar black attire to Logan, and the standard uniform of the cat-burglar.

The three of them never saw a single soul the entire time they were walking over to the ordinance warehouse.

The trio was huddled beside one of the buildings next-door to the warehouse. Logan reached into the small pouch at his waist and pulled out, surprisingly enough, a slingshot.

"What's that for?" asked Jack.

"Watch and learn."

The wolverine fingered a handful of ball bearings out the small pouch, then slid his top half around the corner. Raising his slingshot, he loosed a few of the small metal spheres at the security lights. There was only the slight sound of the slingshot being released, followed by the far off shattering of glass and plastic. Logan loosed several more, knocking out the rest of the lights and plunging the area into darkness.

They all waited several minutes to ensure that none of the rent-a-cops had noticed the sudden disappearance of the lights. Satisfied that they could proceed unmolested, they advanced on the building.

When the trio reached the entrance to the ammo depot, Jack hunched down in front of the lock while Jane and Logan stood guard. The fox unslung his backpack, squinting at the lock on the door. From the backpack he pulled a small palm-top computer with a serial cable running from it to a small unit of Jack's own creation. The unit looked like a standard magnetic card, only with the added ability to vary its signature based on input from the computer. It was inspired by a fantastic movie that Jack had seen a few years back.

Clicking the card into the reader, Jack started punching keys on the palm-top. The fox just sat silently there, his face glowing in the pale blue of the display screen.

"What's taking so long?" growled Sanders. Never on all his previous recons had he waited this long for a simple door to be opened.

"This isn't an exact science, you know. Give me a minute here. I'm getting some strange responses." The three animal morphs stood clustered outside the door, looking both pensive and venerable. Jack ran the entrance sequence several more times, slapping the computer more then once. After several more cycles the fox started getting a hostile snarl on his muzzle. Moving his head a few inches towards the screen, he reached up with one hand to grab the door lever. Not even looking at the door, he gave the handle a click.

Surprisingly enough, it opened with no resistance or alarms.

Jack looked up at the others. "Don't you just love it when they have these places unlocked for you?"

Sanders grumbled as he made his way past the fox. Never in his whole career had he seen security as sloppy as this. Jack was right, people really didn't care anymore.

With the door open, Sanders had the show. Drawing his Glock 9mm, he swung in through the doorframe, slamming the heavy steal door behind him. Searching out the surveillance camera, he gave the gun a quick double-tap. The camera exploded into a sparking wreck of plastic and glass. The wolverine was very pleased to find that this was one of the many installations that hadn't wired their cameras into their alarm system. Now as long as the lazy rent-a-cops were paying more attention to their coffees and TVs instead of the monitors, and they didn't notice that one went black for the next several minutes, they would all be fine. He then turned back to the door to let his friends inside. The walls of the warehouse would have done a sufficient job of muffling the shots.

"All right, let's go hunting," he said, as he ushered the others inside.

"Hey, look at this!" Logan and his feline lover turned back to Jack who was standing next to the door. The fox was waving a piece of paper he had pulled off the inner door lock. It had "Out of Order" printed in bold black letters. "This just keeps getting better and better," said the fox with a mile wide grin on his muzzle.

Despite what many people think, military installations aren't as secure as one would expect of them. The open door was proof enough of that. The guards and the broken lock only beat the point home with a sledge. At least Logan was mildly more pleased that the inner locks were working. He was also very pleased that Jack's little door cracker worked as advertised. The fox made short work of the next three doors they encountered. Jane also took care of a pair of inner cameras, wiring them up with dummy video recorders. She was even ingenious enough to re-wire the line to the one that Logan had shot out. God, how he loved that lady. Logan reflected that it was a good thing that almost all the hallways in these places looked the same. The trio was now standing around the weapons lockers. Since they were only secured with simple key locks, Jane was taking care of them. She was very good at her craft and already had the first two lockers open.

Kain had halted in his grabbing and bagging to look at a brick of what they were stowing. "So what is this stuff anyway?"

"That's C4," replied Logan. "Some of the others are semtex, and I think one of the canisters Jane got was thremite. Other explosives in here, too."

Jack swore appropriately as he placed the brick gently in his pack next to its brethren.

Sanders could only laugh as he watched the fox resume his work with carefully monitored timidness. "Jack, unless you arm that stuff with a detonator, it's completely harmless. Hell, you can even set it on fire and it won't go off. Just don't try and put it out by stomping on it with your foot."

The three quickly finished packing their backpacks to capacity. After they had all strapped them on and ensured that the loads were comfortable -- Jack bitched over the fact that Logan's "dumb idea" was going to give him a hernia -- they headed back to the car. That was when they made their first mistake.

Like many military personal, Logan Sanders is a good friend of the notorious Mister Murphy of Murphy's Law fame. And it would seem that Mr. Murphy was currently patrolling the grounds, for he appeared unexpectedly in the form of a pair of MPs. It was only due to her excellent night vision that Jane was able to yank Logan back in time. It was only luck that Logan managed to latch onto the back of Jack's pack as he himself was pulled.

"Hold up a minute."

"What is it, Ray?" asked his companion, a prairie dog morph.

"Not a clue," replied the skunk, still walking towards the building. "I thought I heard something."

"Think we should report it?"

"Have to see what it is first."

The skunk moved around to the side of the building, unslinging his shotgun in the process. For a fleeting moment he wished to God that the regulations allowed him to carry it with a round in the chamber. Damn, the military was an insufferable pain.

"What do you see?" hollered the prairie dog after his comrade had disappeared around the corner for several moments. The MP waited several more in the eerie silence.

"Nothing." The skunk came out from behind the warehouse, looking rather annoyed that his noise turned out to be nothing. "I checked along the length, there's nothing there."

"Smell anything?"

"Hey, I'm stage two, not three."

"What do you think happened to the lights around here?"

"How the hell do I know that, either? Do I look like maintenance? Probably just blew a fuse." He rejoined his companion. "Come on, let's get this over with. I want to get back to shack, get some coffee. These night shifts are killing me."

"Well you ARE a nocturnal animal now..."

The pair withdrew, their chatter growing fainter to the ears of the three trespasses. Jack let out a small sigh of relief. "That was close."

"Too close," agreed Jane.

The trio had used a rather cheesy escape manoeuvre to elude their pursuers. They had ducked around the far corner of the building and prayed to hell that the sunk didn't think to make a full circuit of the premises.

"And they could have had us, had it been for you, Jack," charged Sanders.

The fox looked up at his wolverine accuser with disbelief. "Me?! What did I do? It's not like any of us saw him coming until the last second!"

"It's incompetence like yours that's going to get us all forfeited!" growled Sanders. He wasn't really angry at the fox, more at the situation. Jack was simply a convenient target for his ire rage. Jack's ears wilted a little under the onslaught, his tail going between his legs.

"Geeze, why don't you just beat me to death with a plastic spork?" muttered the fox.

Logan turned around, holding a razor sharp claw a few centimetres from the fox's nose. "Don't tempt me!" Jack opened his muzzle as if to say something. "Ah, ah. Not one word, or I make fox filet, comprendé?" Jack's mouth snapped shut. He knew better then to argue with Sanders when he was in one of his moods.

"All right, let's stop this arguing," said Jane. "Let's just get back to the car so we can get the hell out of here."

Fortunately Mr. Murphy had chosen to follow the two guards, and the trio made their way back to the BOQ parking lot unmolested. After much complaining, whining, and bitching on the part of Jack, the fox was stuffed in the trunk again and they made their way off the base. The duty sergeant, the same one they had seen when they were coming in, winked at Sanders as he waved the wolverine through the front gate.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"So in walks this lady with a poodle under one arm, and a salami under the other. Oh, did I mention that she was naked?"

McLeod's was quite packed that night. Giles and the general had shared a few pitchers that evening, and the German Shepherd was really getting tipsy. Terry had been telling the raccoon bad jokes for the better part of an hour that evening. If it weren't for the fact that McLeod's was where they had agreed to meet Logan, Jane, and Kain, Giles wouldn't even be there. He had never been much of a drinker.

"So what are you two laughing so hard over here?"

The pair turned to the voice behind them.

"Logan!" welcomed the general. The wolverine was smiling at his friends, Jane simply wearing a demure smile as she stood beside him. "Have a seat you two. Tell me how it went."

"Walk in the park." Logan took up a chair close to Jane, pouring some of the cold brew into a pair of the already waiting glasses. "In and out, no hassles. Never even checked the cards."

Hacher slammed his near empty glass down. "Bloody hell! You think they would have learned by now. Did that Shining Path raid teach them nothing?"

"I guess what Jack is always saying is true. People really don't care anymore."

"Hey, where is our vulpine hacker anyway?" asked Giles as he cradled his muzzle in one paw.

"Oh, we had to leave him in the car."

Giles gave Sanders a scrutinising yet unbelieving look. "You didn't..."

"They never would have let him in here anyway. Too young."

"You did let him out, right?"

The wolverine only flashed a toothy grin as he took a pull on his beer.

"Oh, God. He's going to be royally pissed at both of you." Giles got up from the table. "I had better let him out. No telling what
an angry vulpine would do with a trunk full of explosives. And you all know Jack." The table all murmured their agreement as the raccoon walked out to the car and its probably highly irate passenger.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"So what's the plan?" asked the general as him and Giles stood together on the general's porch.

"Well, it appears that me and the rest of us are going to get some sleep now, then spend the rest of tomorrow creating what we need. Jack said he had some heavy code breaker algorithms compiling when we left tonight, and Logan will need the time to dig through what we purloined from the depot. And then there's Jane.... We'll call you when we're ready. Just make sure that you're ready to go at a moment's notice, okay? Anyone you want to say good bye to, do it now. You know, stuff like that. In case we don't come back."

"I'm a soldier, Giles. I understand. Tomorrow then."

"Tomorrow."

Logan met up with the raccoon as he was making his way back to Giles' large truck. Jane was over with Jack, who was currently standing with his hands on his knees as he vomited all over some neighbour's lawn. It would seem that the fox couldn't hold his liquor. Earlier Giles had managed to convince the bouncer at McLeod's to let Jack slide. The fox had decided to drink to that. And a good many other things as well.

"Um, Giles? Can I ask you a favour?"

"Sure, Sanders. Name it."

"Um, can me and Jane spend the night at your place? I don't really want to go back to her's, and you know what mine looks like. I want our last night together to be... special. You know, just the two of us. Nothing to remind us of what's coming with the dawn."

"Hey, me causa, sous causa. You want to crash at the apartment, by all means go for it. I'll just take the couch."

"Um, Giles. I'm... not the most silent lover in the world."

"Think nothing of it. I'll just put on some headphones, a recording of Mozart or something. Besides, I sleep like the dead." The wolverine clasped him on the shoulder and gave him a very warm smile, one that conveyed all meaning in a single glance.

"Thank you," he whispered.

Giles could only smile in return. It was the least he could do, especially with what was coming. The pair then walked back to the truck and piled in. Jack rode shotgun, his head held between his legs. Logan was in the back, already starting a little foreplay with his lynx lover.

After they had dropped Jack off at his apartment, they then drove back to their little makeshift head quarters. Jane was too engrossed with Sanders to notice that they had missed her stop until Ulrich parked the massive black vehicle and turned off the engine.

"What are we doing here?" asked Jane in a puzzled tone.

"I wanted to do something for you on this last day, Jane," said Giles as he turned to face the pair in the back. "So tonight you two have complete privacy, and you can do whatever you want. It's not a fancy hotel room, I know, but it's all I have to offer."

The lynx looked at Logan. "Did you know about this?"

"I asked him to do it. I felt you deserved a night where you could forget about the Nac's."

"Oh, thank you," she said, hugging Logan's neck.

The trio ascended the stair, making their way deep through the maze of machinery that once made up the plant. The lovers thanked their friend once more before retiring.

Giles only smiled at how they looked as they entered the bedroom, clinging to each other in such a display of affection. He was kind of reminded him of his ex-wife. The raccoon let a few of those bitter memories float through his mind as he went over to his stereo system. Those were such good times. He briefly wondered how it all went wrong.

But then he had a CD of Bach in his paw and was placing it in the tray for the CD player. As he slipped on his modified earphones, he could just detect the faint noises of the couple in the next room. Then the cords of the classical music washed all that away.

Giles stretched out on the couch, his tail hanging off the end, and let the beautiful music carry him off to sleep.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"If you ever take me out drinking again Sanders, I will kill you. Okay?"

"Hey, it's not my fault you can't handle your liquor," replied the wolverine. His young red fox companion was looking quite nauseous that afternoon. Then again, he had drank quite a bit the night before at McLeod's. "You should remember your first hang over, Jack. While you still can, that is."

The fox just groaned and looked like he was going to lose it once more. Both parties hoped he didn't choose to do so over the delicate electronic equipment.

Sanders went back to his own work, shaking his head in dismay. He was still just a kid. Sure, Jack may know electronics and computers backwards and forwards, but he was still just some teenaged kid. He had no business running around with a bunch of resistance fighters like he was. He should still be out on the college campus' hustling the girls, drinking the beers. Not working on some electronic system to crack secured door codes, not building bombs, not planning some strategic strike designed to commit genocide on an entire species.

But then again, they had no choice. "Sorry Virginia, there won't be a tomorrow," he thought. The clock is ticking, and in three years time, the three thousand year recorded history of man won't amount to a hill of beans. All because some interplanetary gas clouds have declared mankind an undesirable in their grand scheme of things.

Jack would never get the chance to finish university. He would never get another opportunity to be with a girl, if he even had already. He would never live to marry, never have kids to call his own. Never even see another ball game, for Christ's sake.
Unless they succeeded tonight. Their victory tonight was the only thing that would give him those chances that should have been his by right.

Logan carefully slid the detonator home into another of his IDEs, Improvised Explosive Devices. With that one, it made a total of thirty. That was five apiece for each of the doors that they would have to bypass. With the eight extra bricks they had, he hoped that it was enough. Especially with what Giles had planned.

Jack was just, if not more, apprehensive about the whole situation as Logan. Unlike the wolverine, he didn't have the training required for this. As an ex-green beret, Logan was trained to do this kind of thing. Jack's professional knowledge was all self taught, or picked up from other hackers. He didn't do this kind of stuff for a living! He was just a university student! His life was cyber space, the electron and the switch. He didn't care about what was done in the past, wasn't responsible for the rape of the planet. He was just a kid whose gift was computers.

And now here he was, half changed into a fox, and doing things that seemed right out of some warped science-fiction novel. Electronic warfare satellites, beings from space, breaking into government installations to steal high-power explosives. When would it all end? When would he just wake up and have it be over? When could he just get back to being a kid? When would they all wake up?

But Sanders calling the fox over to his workbench interrupted Kain's revere.

"Hey, Jack. I, uh, want to show you something." The wolverine picked up an odd looking cylinder off a shelf.

"What is that?" It almost looked something like a normal smoke grenade, just a straight cylinder with a pin and spoon arrangement on the top. But it was still very different. For one, the canister was wrapped in some kind of plastique, vials of different colored liquids spread throughout it at different intervals. Actually, the cylinder looked a bit fatter and longer then normal for a smoke grenade. The electrical tape entwining it bespoke better then anything else of its homemade nature.

"This is a little something that I put together about a month back. I designed it to kill Nacalites. The plastic vials on the sides hold various noxious chemicals. I doubt that the Nac's would care to have them rendered aerosol, as we know that they're vulnerable to these particular ones. The rest is just very high quality explosives. Massive detonation, complete with horrendous concussive force. If the chemicals or the heat don't kill them, the explosion itself will disperse their ugly behinds all over the place. Be a while before they can reconstitute." He slid a protective sheath around the exposed innards of the miniature bomb and passed it over.

Jack hefted the device a little. "Nice. What's the explosion radius?"

"With what I used," Sanders looked around the apartment a little, "I think we could safely say it would take out this entire room, probably blowing out the walls with it." Jack reiterated how nice it was, then tried to pass the device back. "Nah, keep it. Never know, you might get the chance to use it on one of those bastards before this is all over."

Jack's tail wagged some as he grinned a little at Logan's smile. "All right, I'll keep it for now. But when this is all over, can I still have it? I think I can find a very creative use for it, too." Logan had to chuckle at the various ideas of where the fox would stick it too. But at least he had managed to lighten Jack's mood, and perhaps his own as well. It was never a good idea to think morbid thoughts before a mission, especially one of this nature.

The pair returned to their work, Jack having deposited the grenade securely in the bottom of his backpack, were it wasn't likely to get damaged. They remained engrossed in their individual tasks for some time more. Both the wolverine and the fox turned as the German shepherd and the raccoon entered the apartment. Giles had left a few hours ago to pick up the general, so that they would all have time for a quick brief before going.

All of them except Jane, of course. Miss. Wilson was currently at the HEA, undergoing her stage three.

"So how are things?" asked Giles.

"Things are good," replied Logan. "We got all the charges ready. All we have to do is pack them away. But before that, I want to make a few extra detonators. You never know when Mr. Murphy is going to show up. Redundancy is one thing that all my military training was good for, I guess." Both Giles and the general concurred before turning their attention to Jack.

"Well, I have my very best toys assembled. I even made a supply run to my buddy, Big Mike. He hooked me up with some of the latest. If those code breakers won't work... well, I don't think that we'll be worrying about that much when we're hunting for our breakfast next week."

The general got a grave look upon hearing Kain's statement. "What do you mean? You're not positive you can crack those locks?"

Kain only shook his head, his tail wagging in agitation. "Not a clue. I assume that they'll be more state of the art then the stuff at the depot. As I said, I'm packing my best. Though if I knew my best was enough, we wouldn't be needing Sanders."

That seemed to sate the general, and he commenced helping Jack pack. The fox had a surprising amount of equipment with him that day. As Giles walked over to Logan, he could overhear Jack trying to explain some of it to Hacher. What did what, what went where, what not to touch!

"So how's this end, Logan?" Giles inquired as he rested his elbows on the brightly-lit workbench. He lowed his voice several notches. "Is our little surprise all in order?"

"It is," replied the wolverine in the same hushed tone. "I hope to God that we don't have to use it, though. The very idea of setting this stuff to blow the reactor is enough to give me nightmares."

"Speaking of which, did you get the plans?"

"Yes, I got them. Be thankful that Hutchinson still owed me. Also be damn thankful that the man is a veritable packrat and never throws anything out. Even with all the decommissions, he still managed to scrounge up a set."

"Show me."

"Show you?"

"Yes. Show me. I'll also need you to show me where to place the charges."

"You?"

"Yes. I want you to stay with Jack, Terry, and Jane. Make sure that end all works out. Even if this takes longer then we expect, I should be back before you start the fireworks."

Logan mulled it over in his mind, scratching his claws slowly through his facial fur. "Any particular reason why you want to that yourself, Giles? I'm the weapons expert here."

"Call it a hunch," he said. "Call it paranoia, call it fear of things going too well. I just want to have all the bases covered. And all you would have to do is tell me where to put them, right? You got them all rigged up the way you want?"

"Yeah." The munitions expert angrily tossed a pair of wire cutters against the table. "Yeah. Come on, I'll show you what to do."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

They were all packed. They were ready to go. One large, nylon backpack for each of them. Jack Kain had his electronic equipment; Logan Sanders had the main share of the explosives; and Giles Ulrich was playing candy man, holding the remainders of the lethal charges. Plus his own personal ones, of course.

All they needed was one more person.

Jack was on his computer when she walked in. Logan was in the kitchen. Giles and Terry were standing next to the stereo discussing events long past. All of them looked up when they heard the distinctive squeak of metal on metal that singled the arrival of a guest at the door.

None except the general had seen a stage three close up before. Quite frankly, Terry didn't want to see it again. And one look at the shattered expression on the lynx's face was enough to convince him of that.

The three others had turned their attention to her as well, all staring as though their good friend was just some kind of carnival freak, instead of the person they had cared for all those years. A freak, not a friend. Someone who was changed, while they were still human.

Then the realisation dawned on them all, really hit home for the first time. This was what was in store for them, all of them, should they fail. Perhaps not forfeiture, but stage three. It was only a matter of time. And when that was over, stage four. Then five. Then six. Then a brief burst of life spent in the woods, living like the animals they were being forced to transform into.

Jane moved her gaze from the floor to meet the gaping stares of her friends, her hand going over her furry chest. She hadn't taken any clothes when she had gone to be changed. All present could clearly make out the wetness at her cheekfur. She had spent much of the trip over crying over her fate. The looks that she was getting from those that were her friends, those she loved, only reinforced the feeling and brought it fresh to the surface.

Logan stood on the edge of the kitchen, looking at the woman he had cared so much for. The words "oh, my God," was the only thing that came to his lips.

That did it for her, that sent her over the edge once more. Jane stumbled fully into the room on her newly acquired digitrade feet, her paw catching the door level to brace herself on. And that was the true irony of the whole situation. At stage two, you still LOOKED normal, still had a good part of your humanity left to you. Not at three. At three the balance was tilted to the other side, and you began to look more of an animal. You were still predominately human, but you lost the great majority of what was required to APPEAR human. Jane turned her new cat eyes up to her friends, a sorrowful mewl escaping her lips.

Sanders quickly rushed up and took her in his arms. While being a soldier had robbed him of the ability to express emotions as readily as most people, what he saw in Jane was enough to melt even the coldest heart. His empathy went out to her, as he enfolded her in his massive arms.

"Oh, my dear. I'm so sorry that they did this to you. I'm so sorry..." he cooed.

The lynx slid her arms up behind him, laid her head against his shoulder, and cried her heart out.

"I'm sorry I said that, love," said Sanders. "It was just such a shock to see you like this. I want you to know that I still love you, and that I'm going to see that they do everything they can to reverse the when it's all over. Okay?" He stroked the fur on her back a little more.

Jane wanted to say "okay" as she looked into Sanders deep brown eyes, but it only came out as a mewling rasp. She quickly averted her eyes from his once more. She felt like she was going to be sick.

They had stolen her humanity. Stolen what made her, her. And they would regret doing so.

While the two lovers had been consoling each other, Giles had walked up to them, standing and waiting a little off to one side. He had remained until they were done, as he knew what he would be asking would be difficult enough. Finally he saw Jane pull away and wipe the last remaining tears from her face. She smiled up at Logan, and Giles took that to mean that she was finally ready.

"Jane, I, uh, need to know some things before we go. I need to make sure you can still do what we need you to." The lynx looked once back at the wolverine, then nodded to the raccoon. Giles could see the steely determination coming into her eyes. Good, she was going to need it.

"Jane, I need to know if you can still hold up your end. Can you still work a gun?"

The lynx opened her mouth to say something, thought better of it, and went over to the computer where Jack sat. Leaning over him, she grabbed the controls and cracked open a word processor.

"Yes," she wrote.

Giles flipped around the MP5 he had picked up on his way to the computer. The female cat burglar took the gun with a slightly apprehensive look. It had been ages since Leary had equipped them with those little sweethearts, and almost as long since Jane had used one.

But it was like riding a bike; one never forgot. Really.

It took Jane but a few moments to locate the eject button for the magazine, and to pop the clip. She made a quick inspection to determine that it was a full one -- humm, hollow points. Excellent -- and then slammed it home. Giving the bolt a quick rack, a loud *rattchet* rewarding their ears, Jane dropped the gun to her hip and pointed it at Giles. She gave him a predatory smile and a deep purring sound to demonstrate her readiness to get going.

Giles threw his head back a little and laughed. The old Jane was back, at least in part. It was nice to see she could come around so quick. It was also nice to see that the transformation hadn't altered her hands in any serious way, and she was still able to do whatever they might need her talents for.

"Nice to see, Jane. Now let me have it back."

The lynx backed off a little, the predatory grin still on her face and the machine gun still trained on the raccoon. Something didn't seem quite right to Giles...

Then Jane relented. She abruptly clicked on the safety, then reversed the gun handing it over stock first. She typed the words "only playing with you" on the computer screen. Giles snickered and suggested her and Logan get all ready, as he wanted to get going post haste.

As Terry Hacher watched the wolverine and the lynx worked closely together, he couldn't help but remember. The image of them together like this reminded him of Laura and himself. Initially they had both been rather resigned to their fates. They had both chosen the same form, intending to spend their last few years together.

But then the depression had set in. With him away, tending to all kinds of matters relating to the decommissioning of the military, he hadn't been around as much as he should have been. Perhaps if he was, he might have been able to see something that would have prevented her from sticking his nickel-plated .45 in her mouth that day, blowing the back of her head off. She didn't know it, but she had killed more then herself that morning.

Giles was thinking thoughts along a similar line to the general. He was remembering his ex-wife. It had seemed so good at the start of it all. They had both loved each other passionately. There was no doubt of that. But somewhere along the way things went awry. It was like trying to look back on evolution and pinpoint the first moment of true intelligence; you couldn't do it. Perhaps if he had been there more, perhaps if he had worked less...

But it didn't really matter now. The raccoon's eyes glazed over a little as he ran over a few pleasant memories. To think, he hadn't even bothered to look her up on the Net. He idly wondered what she was doing at this particular moment. Probably making love to her boss, or someone like that, like a crazed weasel. That thought brought a smile to his muzzle, his whiskers perking up a little. It wasn't difficult to picture her as a weasel. Why, it even fit her character.

Jack was thinking no such thoughts, for he had no one to think them about. An only child whose parents had been killed in a car wreck four years past, he was never one with a lot of ties. Some friend, yes. But not anyone like that. There was once a girl, but her parents had been of the ultra-religions persuasion. She had committed suicide shortly after the Nacalites first invaded.

Well, perhaps she hadn't done it. She had never really shared her family's strict views. Probably her father did it for her, before ending it all himself. Like some of the other factions that had cropped up during that time, they were probably fearful of losing their souls, should their bodies be changed.

She was the only one he had ever felt anything for. And now Jack looked with envy at the forms and faces of his friends. He could only guess at what was going through their heads at a time like this. He only hoped that they would succeed, perhaps giving him a chance to find out.

With a sad shake of his head, Jack turned back to his screen to finish what he was doing. Maybe he didn't have anyone like they did, but he still had friends.

The team finished the few preparations quickly. Each had on jackets and pants of basic black. Each shouldered their own backpack, with the exception of Jane who couldn't due to her change. All were ready except Jack. His pack lay next to his terminal, where he sat furiously typing.

"Come on Jack, we've got to get a move on," called Giles as he was about to head out the door.

"Give me a moment here. I just have to finish something."

"Well make it fast. The others are waiting." The raccoon left only enough lights on for the fox to find his way to the door, before he set the security system and walked out. Giles didn't know what the fox was working on, but it wasn't encrypting the files. He knew what that display looked like, and the one Jack had been in wasn't it.

Back in the apartment, Jack was typing out the last few lines of his e-mail. He gave it a swift once over, making sure that it said all that he wanted it to. Giving the ends of his fingers a quick kiss, he pressed them to the screen. He waited until it was fully sent before he powered off the computer. As he clicked off the remaining lights, he prayed to God that it all worked out.

Jack reached the truck quick enough, sliding into his reserved spot at shotgun. He threw on the seat belt, then reached over and clicked on the radio. His hand froze a few scant inches from the knob. The other occupants all slowly turned to gaze at the glowing readout of the Laredo's digital radio. All of them were wide eyed and open muzzled.

"It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it.

It's the end of the world as we know it... and I feel fine."

The fox violently cranked off the stereo. They all sat in silence for several minutes more as the song by REM went through their heads. Jack was the first to speak. "Now that... that was bad mojo if I've ever seen it."

The rest of the drive was spent mostly in silence. Jack rested his muzzle in his palm, his elbow on the edge of the widow that he stared out of. Jane looked out the driver's side from her seat in the back. The general had the other side, sharing the same view as Jack. Logan was in the middle, occasionally breaking his view out the windshield to look over at his love.

He still cared for her, despite what had been done. Jane looked so miserable in her current state. But she was a survivor, and would do what it took to keep going on. That was what attracted him so much. He loved her spirit, in addition to her demanding personality. He just hoped that they she was ready for it. As he tightened his hand into a fist, feeling his claws dig in lightly, he hoped that they all were.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"Fire in the hole!!"

The figures huddled around the corner covered their heads as the wolverine pushed the button on his detonator. The earth shook as the charge went off, completely blowing the door from its track.

The general picked himself off the floor and looked around the corner. "Well, that's the last of them. We're in green sector now, my codes will work from now on."

"Nice to know," said Giles as he wriggled one of his fingers in his left ear in an attempt to clear the ringing that was there. "I think one or two more of those could have done some real damage."

The five of them had been lucky that night. That was only the second door they had to blow. The bad news on that front was that it had required far more of their explosives then they had anticipated. They were down to only a third of their main supplies. It was a good thing that Big Mike's code breakers had worked as Jack had promised. It had taken close to two and a half hours to get past the initial checkpoint, but once Jack had determined the encryption sequence that the Fire facility had based its locks on, the next three fell within fifteen minutes apiece.

That was when the problem started. Either the main computer controlling the locks had gotten wise, or the ones on the fourth level were of a different sequence. After close to two hours of Jack working fruitlessly to open it, Giles had ordered that the door be blown. The truly ugly part of that was that the door didn't want to give, even with several bricks of C4 packed onto it. Logan had tripled the charge, reshaping them for a different detonation pattern, and had tried again. That one worked, and they were in.

But, as Murphy's sixth law says: Nothing is as easy as it looks. The automated defence systems were the proof of that. Each was essentially a machine gun mounted along side a motion sensor. It fired when it sensed anything within range. They were probably tied to the door codes, which was why they were still active. Hacher had been grazed by the first one they ran across, pulled back just in time by Logan. When asked about the guns he denied even knowing of the ones on that floor, claiming that they must have been installed since he was last at the facility.

Their solution was inelegant, yet simple. Logan had a few flash-bang concussion grenades with him that he had taken from HQ. The team just guessed the most likely elevation of the gun, rolled one of the grenades down the hall, waited for it to go off, then gave a continuous spray in the direction of the gun. If several moments of silence followed, then they knew it had worked.

They had taken down three of them so far. Hopefully, they wouldn't have to be taking out any more.

"All right, let's get this over with," muttered Jack as he got to his feet.

Him and the general took the lead, followed by Logan, then Jane. Giles took up the rear. The five of them hustled down the halls quickly, going past darkened rooms with glowing, electronic keypads. It seemed that the Fire facility housed more then just the systems controls for Fire From Heaven. It was a veritable warehouse of electronic warfare equipment. Heaven just looked to be the icing on the cake.

The all came to a stop at one of the by now familiar checkpoints. The general stood on the UV lighted authorization area. It was done in the standard motif of diagonal black and yellow striping all around.

"I sure hope this work," Hacher muttered as he ran his ID card through the scanner slot and began to type a complex code into the gate's electronic display keypad. The numbers faded and were replaced by the outline of a human hand, instructions for the general to place his palm on the imprint scrolling across the top. Hacher did so and was rewarded with a pleasant beep. At least it hadn't killed him on the spot.

Next, a panel level with his head slid up, and a pleasant voice told him to hold still for a rental scan which would be followed by a voice print. A dead pair of rotating sirens activated, bathing the alcove in rotating yellow light. The pleasant voice informed him that if his prints did not match those on file, the metal plate he was standing on would be electrified. Thank you.

"Don't worry, this is all standard," the general informed the rest of the team, which had gotten quite nervous at what was happening. None of them heard the German shepherd mutter "God I hope this works," under his breath as he reached for the mike switch.

"General Terry Hacher, password Abraccus 9-9-7-4-6-alpha-4."

"Please wait while your rental scan is verified... general Terry Hacher."

The general held still as the bar of red light scrolled across his right eye, reading his unique scan into the machine. There was a pause that seemed to last forever, the entire team holding its collective breath.

"Welcome to facility 265, general Hacher," said the pleasant voice as the massive door slid open beside the German shepherd. He turned to the applause behind him, a wave of relief washing over his features.

With a yip of enthusiasm, Jack took the lead, the smiling general trailing behind him. Jane and Logan had to hustle to keep up to the duo as they jogged down the corridors. Giles vaguely wished that he could be as optimistic as the fox, as he went at a light jog with his MP5 clutched in both his hands and his backpack bouncing around a little.

He caught up with them at the bottom of the staircase to the lowest level, just as the general was finishing his entry procedures for the next area. The final gate hissed open smoothly, revealing the dim corridor beyond it. Lights flickered on in procession to remedy that situation.

For some reason they were all quiet as the walked the final stretch to the vault where the control system was housed. It was an odd feeling, as though any noise would somehow shatter the reality as though it were a dream. The experience held an odd, almost religious feeling to it.

They all stopped at the massive vault door. Hacher took his place at the access panel near the wall, the other four encircling him a few feet behind. Now was the end game, the final rush. Yes the doors had been important, yes they had needed him to guild them to the bunker in the first place. Yes, they had even needed him to tell them what to expect. But this is where they truly needed him. He was the only one that had even a prayer of doing this.

General Hacher loosened the top of his jacket a little more to retrieve an odd shaped key. It was solid metal, except for two glossy black plates. The rest looked like something a blind modern artist on a bad acid trip created. It was one strange twisty shape, plates and ridges sticking out at odd angles. Wasn't a chance in hell that you could pick a lock with a key like that, that was for sure.

But, oddly enough it clicked smoothly into the hole that was the lock. The general gave the key a turn, his biosigniture, which the computer had read through the metal plates, permitting the lock to work. Had it been anyone else, the lock wouldn't even have budged.

That brought open the access panel embedded in the door. It opened with a muted hiss, then asked for his identification code, or it would trigger the electrified plate in the floor, thank you. God, Hacher was really beginning to hate that voice.

Terry Hacher stood before the thirty-six digit keypad (the alphabet and numbers zero through nine) and cupped his hands over muzzle, breathing deeply. His pulse was racing, and he needed to calm himself for this. He needed to be calm and clear-headed. He needed to remember what the code was.

In his mind he placed himself back at the beginning of the project. It was a private briefing, where he was given his codes. The numeric one was huge -- eighty characters -- and the spoken one was so obscure that no one in their right mind could ever hope to guess it. Now what was that first sequence?

It came to him like a piece of music came to a great pianist after they had not touched an instrument for many years. Like a maestro at the ivories, the general's fingers seemed to move of their own vocation over the keypad. "1-6-9-S-6-F-4-G-7-L-E..." and so on, and so forth until all the characters were entered.

The rest of the party was watching in grim silence. They knew that if the general screwed up any part of the code the defence system would activate and reduce him to smoked canine, extra crispy. That had been one of the precautions he had told them about on the way over.

The locking computer made a pleasant beep. "Please enter vocal password now."

Despite the situation, Hacher had to grin. "Laura Croft has a nice set of tits."

"Thank you," replied the computer. That was one thing that the tech-heads who had designed the system had been right about. There wasn't a chance in hell he could ever forget that password. Not only was it obscure, but it had been so true.

"' Laura Croft has a nice set of tits'?" quoted Jack. "Your password is a lecherous remark about a video game character?"

"No, it's a lecherous remark about my wife. Her maiden name was Croft."

"Ahh..." Jack remembered now. It was noted in his file. Single; the cause of suicide on the part of his wife. Jack had never
bothered to look up her name before this, though.

But Terry had other things to concentrate on for the moment. The general was still smiling, his tail even wagging a little, when the machine requested the final stage, his rental scan. After the small red bar had scrolled over his eye for the third time that night, he stepped back to rejoin the rest of the team. Each listened with rapt attention as the door clicked and clunked, withdrawing its massive internal locks. Then with a hiss that wouldn't be the least out of place on the stage of some sci-fi thriller, the portal swung open to greet them.

"Gentlemen, lady, welcome to Heaven," said Terry as the lights inside the vault clicked on with that flickering luminance particular to all fluoresce lights.

Jack's loud and exuberant "woo hoo!" was like a gunshot in the silence of the hallway, causing everyone but Hacher to visibly startled.

"Geeze! Don't do that!" yelled Giles. "Are you trying to give me a heart attack or something!"

The rest of them all kind of smiled at the raccoon's overwrought antics. Even though they were all nervous, all on edge, Giles seemed more so then any of them. It was nice to laugh though, to break the ice a little.

The vault that housed the controls was a smallish affair. There were a few shelves and a cot on one wall. Terry explained that this was so that they could have someone in there at all times should the situation warrant. After all, it was a complicated affair to get in there in the first place. The other walls were all a featureless, sterile white, except for the large console set into the wall opposite the cot.

The trio quickly took up their positions in the room. Jane had the door, Logan was on explosives duty, and the general and Jack had the console.

"Okay, now let's see if I can remember how to do this..." mumbled Hacher as he looked over the gloss black of the control panel. "Ah, yes. It was biosigniture first." The German shepherd placed his right hand on the appropriate part of the gloss black. Both him and Jack were rewarded when it glowed a pale blue then turned to green. The rest of the console lit up, the large monitor flickering to life as the system came on-line.

"Well, that was a pleasant surprise. Let's hope that the rest of it goes as well."

"Yes, let's," agreed his red-tailed companion.

While the computer hacker and electronics warfare general were busy at the system, Giles discretely went over to Sanders, who was tending to their stuff and seeing how much of what kinds of explosives they had left to them.

"Which one is Jack's?" he whispered.

Logan gestured to one of the near full packs. "The one closest to the computer, what else? What do you want with it?"

"I need his lock pick," replied the raccoon as he started rummaging through it, trying not to act so that Jack might notice him. He had no fear of that, as Jack was totally engrossed in the weapons system.

"I still think that it's a bad idea. You don't need to do it now. If he can't get in, or if the sat's aren't there, THEN we can plant the bombs. If we're right, all we're going to end up doing is be forced to disarm them later. Why are you even bothering?"

Giles came up with the mini-computer and its companion connectors. "You're always saying how we need back-ups, Sanders," he explained, stuffing the device into his jacket. "I just want us to be able to blow that thing at a moments notice."

Giles stood up, rolling his shoulders to readjust his pack. His voice was back up to the normal level. "I'm going to make a quick circuit of this level, okay? Jane, watch the door here, Logan keep an eye on things, and as for the rest of you, get those satellites armed, okay?"

Before anyone could protest, the raccoon was out the door.

This worried Jane a little, producing a low growl from her throat as she ran a finger over the stock of her machine gun. It wasn't like Giles to do something like this. In fact, Giles hadn't been acting normal for a little while now. Talking in private with Logan like he just had been, then going off who-knows-where to do who-knows-what, with only a few casual words to try and cover it up. It was all very disturbing to her. She briefly considered going after him, but quickly decided against that. She had to be here for this. They would be needing her.

But the pair at the computer terminal cared not for such things. They were engaged in other activities of more importance. Most notably going over the verification procedures to access Fire From Heaven, and doing it all on the single most powerful set-up Jack had ever had the pleasure of laying paws or eyes on.

"This is sweet I say!"

"You mentioned that several times," said Hacher as he continued the weapon initialisation procedure. It was surprisingly complicated. But then again, it's not like it would be prudent to have it so that you can just throw a switch and demolish all the electronics of some poor country, or even the entire globe. But still, this number of safeguards seemed a little excessive, even to an old electronic warfare pro like Hacher.

"Yes, but just look at it," said Jack with an imploring expression. He was leaning his elbows on the console, his hands held in reverence, and his tail wagging swiftly back and forth.

"We have a thirty-two inch monitor. We have a touch screen console for a keyboard. We have voice recognition. We have massive processing power. We have a satellite up-link to a global killer class weapons system. I'm sorry... I... I... it's just that this is practically every hackers wet dream come true. It's a cyberpunk thriller made real. I'm sorry, I have to love this."

Hacher turned his disturbed expression back to the computer. "You are one seriously demented individual, Jack."

Jack's eyes were riveted to the intricate display. "Thank you."

Teens. As long as Terry Hacher would live, he would never understand them.

The control screens were of a remarkable design. Very high detail, very intricate in their design. The central displays were of gold and chrome, with black backgrounds and white letters. It was all set over a deep green gridded background. Very futuristic. A fleeting thought across Jack's mind was that it looked like something made by a person who had spent too many hours playing real-time strategy sims.

But such meaningless thoughts were wiped away with the display when the next screen came up. Finally they had reached the heart of the beast. A chrome oval with a red spike down the middle and flanked by a pair of matching white spikes with the words Fire From Heaven superimposed above it all, appeared on the screen.

"Please provide key word," beeped the computer.

"Oppenheimer."

The console made a few grinding noises, like a personal computer's hard drive crunching over some large chunk of data.

"Please enter password for global satellite grid activation."

"I think that I would have been great for this job," commented Jack upon seeing what the general had entered. "Like the people who apparently made this, I have a great sense of irony."

The letters filling the main screen spelt out the phrase "Now I become Death, the destroyer of worlds".

The general went back to the keys after the words had cleared themselves. "Well, Jack, if we make it through all this, I'll personally see that you get your very own military contract firm, okay?"

It was now the eleventh hour. Time to do or die.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Giles didn't really care about computer interfaces, or remembering passcodes. His head was currently swivelling around, a flashlight sticking out of his muzzle. The electrical engineer was holding the blueprints in his paws and becoming very frustrated over his inability to read them. He was used to circuit plans, not structural blueprints.

At least it had only three more charges to go. 'Now where is the flow turbine?' Giles wondered as he turned over the already heavily creased blueprints. 'I need to find that before I know where the reduction gearing is.'

He had already rigged the control rods, the main coolant pump, the back-up pump, the central turbine, and the heat exchanger. All he needed to set were a few on the central generator itself, and one on central axis from the turbine to the generator. Giles was hunting for the axis and the gear box that drove the generator now.

'Where the hell is that damn gearing?' he wondered again as he popped the flashlight out of his muzzle and folded the plans over once more.

He wasn't sure what he had been expecting when he heard this place was powered by its own reactor, but this wasn't it. The reactor room was dark and dank. The lighting was piss-poor, and the power plant itself kept reminding him of an old boiler in some deserted factory. And to make a good day even better, he had managed to mildly burn his hand when he had been crawling over the top of the stupid thing, trying to locate the spot Logan had marked for him to set the charge for the control rods. The burn smarted, but it didn't need medical attention. At least not right away. In fact, it had already started to dull.

"Ah, okay, there we go," cried the raccoon as he finally located the stupid reduction gearing on the plans again. He fluffed the paper once more to get a clear look at the spot his flashlight and the poor overhead light illuminated.

"So if that's the main monitoring panel," he said pointing at the bank of dials and switches on the nearby wall, "then I completely missed it," he concluded, swinging his hand behind him to point back at the tangle of conduits and pipes. Damn.

Bloody hell! He was really starting to think Sanders was right. What did they need with this reactor anyway?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The hacker and the officer were huddled over the computer watching the diagnostic display for one of Heaven's thirty-seven satellites. It was showing a graphic illustration of one of the satellites, different parts highlighting as columns of numbers sped by.

"I can't believe that you even managed to get these things working, let alone build them."

"They look far more complicated then they really are," dissuaded the general. "They're basically just specialized nuclear bombs floating around in orbit."

Actually that wasn't quit the truth. He wouldn't be running a diagnostic program to make sure that it was all good, as Jack would phrase it, if things were really that simple. He had to check the receiver first, then the primary detonators, then the backup systems for all of it. It was a horribly complicated affair that at the time of his training he believed was an insufferable pain. But now that he was doing it for real he was glad they had thought of it.

"Good, the key satellite checked out," reported Hacher. "Now we repeat." When the German Shepard pressed the button the satellite miniaturized and split into thirty-six identical representations. The diagnostic procedure repeated itself simultaneously for each. It took close to three minutes to complete for all of them, but to the people waiting it felt like three hours.

"YES!" shouted the general as he threw his hands up in the air. All the satellites were pulsing with green highlights and the computer was asking him if he wanted to proceed with detonation. Both Jack and Logan, who had been virtually hanging on the back of the general during the whole diagnostic procedure, joined in his joyous exclamation. Logan even went so far as to pick up Jack in an exuberant bear hug, swinging the fox around and away from the terminal.

Terry Hacher was wearing a muzzle splitting grin as he followed the instructions on the screen. It was all over, the home stretch. With a muted hiss, part of the panel slid back and up popped a retinal scanner in a head brace. One more scan, then nighty-night Nacalites!

"All right, guys," said the general as he tried to work his canine head into the correct position in the reader. "I am entering the global code. It has to be simultaneous with the retinal scan, or else the bombs won't work."

"Sounds good," said Logan, as the general finally found a good position and prepared himself to activate the weapon.

"Fire it up!" shouted Jack, still holding an arm around the wolverine's waist.

"Perrfect," purred Jane.

Now that statement by Jane might have gotten the attention of the other three, but they never got the chance. The next sound to split the control vault was the explosive roar of an MP5 machine gun.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Giles hugged the corner, his backpack held close to him. He still couldn't believe what he had seen around the corner. He never would have believed that the they could have gotten there so fast! It was inconceivable. The only possible way it could have happened was...

But he banished that thought as quickly as it came. It was too incomprehensible. They were all still human, and they were all against the Nac's. None of them would ever do something like this, ever.

Just the same, he stuck his hear around the corner for another quick peek. Sure enough, three of the glowing gas balls were floating their way down the hall. One a blue-white combination, the other two a yellow-green.

Giles swiftly pulled back, on the off chance that he might be seen looking at the "backs" of the clouds -- as if they even had real backs. He tried to slow his breathing as he considered what to do next. First was to warn his friends. Yes, that is what he needed to do. Next was to see if they could set off the satellites before they were found. If that couldn't be done, they could try and make it out before blowing the reactor and sending everyone to hell.

'Yes, that's what we'll do,' thought Giles as he made sure that the Nac's had indeed turned off where he thought they might. It was a blessing that they didn't know the exact location of the control room, or they all probably would have all been dead by now. Well, forfeited which was almost as good as dead.

With a final deep breath, Giles Ulrich started to silently sprint down the hallways. He needed to get to the others, needed to warn them. Before it was too late.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Jack had fallen over when the gun had gone off. He had swiftly scooted into the corner, only being stopped by the wall and the backpacks, when he had seen the results of the gunfire. His ragged panting was about all that was keeping his stomach from erupting right then and there.

It would seem that general Terry Hacher wouldn't be getting the chance to avenge his wife. Terry was the reason Jack was in the profound state he was. The machine gun had completely blown off the German Shepard's head, along with some of his upper torso. The rest of the shells had sliced into the mainframe, reducing it to a smoldering, sparking, wreck of silicon and plastic.

Logan wasn't really looking at the general. His gaze had initially flicked back between the Terry's ruined body and Jane, but now it focused solely on the lynx. She was standing in the door, holding the gun at her hip, level with the pair on the other side of the room.

"Jane..."

"Shut up, Logan," she barked. "I don't want to kill you, but I will if I have to." The lynx kept a wary eye on the pair as she backed up a little to the vault door. "It's in here! Hurry, up!"

Jack stood up next to the supplies. The fox had managed to avert his eyes and get his stomach back under control while Logan had moved up some. Jane's steely gaze and the threat of the machine gun stopped him in his tracks. His mind was racing as he tried to figure out what the hell had happened.

In through the door floated a pair of Nacalites. One blue-orange, the second green and black. They floated on either side of Jane Wilson, both looking like silent executioners.

Logan decided to try it again. He swallowed deeply. "Jane, love, what have you done?"

Her gaze held a kind of cold iciness the likes of which Logan had never seen. "They offered me what no one else could." Her eyes flashed panic for a second. "I can't live like this."

"Jane, we would have helped you, everyone, become normal again. And even if we couldn't reverse it, I would still love you. Even though you look like this, I still love you."

"You may love me Logan, but I don't. Now shut up." She turned to the Nacalites. "Well, what are you waiting for? You have access to the system, and you have them. Finish this then change me back."

What the Nacalites might have responded with will never be known, for Logan Sanders took the chance to make a lunge for the machine gun. He counted on Jane's love for him to prevent her from reacting fast enough.

Whoever said you could count on love was a never more wrong then at that moment. While they had left Jane's voice intact, the Nacalites had given her the reflexes of the cat she had chosen to become.

Both Jack and Logan hit the floor almost at the same time, though Jack hadn't been hit. Whatever Logan Sanders tried to say in the last few moments as he lay there writhing on the ground will also never be known. His final breath frothed a mouthful of blood on his muzzle, then he lay still.

Jack, on the other hand, was in total panic. Hell, he had surpassed panic long ago. When the general had been killed, gunned down right before him, it had pushed him to the edge. When the Nac's had shown up it had sent him reeling over. And when Logan had been killed, stitched right along his chest, it had completely devastated him. He was wining and writhing on the packs, totally overwhelmed.

'Logan, Jane, Logan, Logan, Hacher, Nacalites, Giles, Logan... Oh God!!' were the chaotic thoughts in the vulpine's brain. 'Hacher, satellites, Logan, explosives... explosives!'

Finally something clicked, be it a survival mechanism or something like it, but either way Jack had regained some coherent thought. He peeked out from behind his clutched arms and saw Jane arguing with the two Nacalites. It seemed that she wasn't happy about the fulfillment of some deal she must have cut earlier. She was at least half turned away from him, her gun pointed even further. Hell, he decided to chance it and go for it.

Fortunately he had landed in a good position, and his open bag was right within his reach. Funny, he remembered closing it before he had set it down. He thrust his hand deep into the backpack and groped around for what he knew was there.
"What are you doing there?" said the voice of one of the Nac's.

Kain was up on his feet in a flash, the grenade already prepared to drop, the pin half-way pulled. "Don't... don't do it..." said the fox in a shaky voice.

Jane turned back, he gun lowered. "Jack... Jack, put it down."

"Jane," said Jack in a scared and puzzled tone. "How? How could you do it?"

The lynx let the gun swing from its strap and held both hands out to Jack in an emploring manner. "Look, Jack I don't have time to explain. Now just put it down."

"Jane, how can you trust them! They're not even human!"

She took a few steps towards the traumatized fox. "Just give me the grenade, Jack. You don't have to die here. They can do for you what they're going to do for me. For them it's easy."

The Nacalites had decided to let Jane do the talking. Why risk giving such an individual as Jack more reason to pull the pin? Also, they had no fear of such things. They couldn't be killed by such pathetic devices.

Jack Kain's mouth was dry and his panting was very ragged. His head dipped and swiveled around the vault. It touched briefly on Logan, cut down by the lady he loved. He looked at general Hacher; a man he had only know for a few days, but who he considered a friend. Terry had never even gotten a look at his killer. And because of her, it was all over. For everyone.

Jack blinked over the room once more, taking in the images of death. When his eyes met those of Jane all panic, hesitation, and uncertainty had vanished. There was actually nothing there to see. His eyes were the void that they had all been consigned to.

"Jack, no!" Jane shrieked.

"Long live the human race," quoth the fox as he pulled the pin.

"NNNOOO!!" screamed the lynx as the spoon popped off, and Kain let the grenade fall to the floor.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Giles turned the corner to the hall leading up to the vault in a quick jog. He needed to tell them what was happening, that it had to be now!

The explosion lifted the raccoon clear off his feet, sending him skidding down the tiled hall. He had his hands clapped over his ears as he struggled to his feet to gaze down the now blackened corridor. The explosion had knocked out the majority of the lights, and what ones there were there, flickered spasmatically. Looking at the smoke, at the fire, somehow it didn't quite seem real to him.

He took three gasping, ragged breaths, and then he was running. The part of him that was still sane warned the raccoon that he had to get away from there because the Nacalites would be coming. The rest of him just screamed to run, run far away, from this place of death.

Giles only stopped running after having ascended several levels and winding himself to the point where he couldn't go anymore. The raccoon panted as he looked around for a place to rest a moment. There across the hall not more then ten paces down the hall was a bathroom. Giles made his way quickly there, shouldering open the door and ducking into the first empty stall. He slammed up against the wall, then slumped down to catch his breath. His breathing was choaked and he sounded very near tears.

He couldn't believe that they were all dead. Logan, Jack, Terry, Jane, all of them. Giles didn't know if they had succeeded, but somehow, some feeling in his gut, said that they hadn't. The Nacalites were still in control, humanity was still screwed, and he... he had just lost the last friends he was ever likely to have.

Giles Ulrich wasn't thinking when he reached into his jacket, didn't realise when he pulled the detonation unit out. He actually sat there for several long moments with the remote in his hand as he went over the memories of his friends. The raccoon couldn't even fathom what had happened to them. He looked down at the pad. How could things have gone so wrong?
His thumb was slow on the keypad. The code for this one was simple; only five digits long. It was the date that the Nacalites had first announced their intentions to the world. The dull beep at the end seemed to ring of irony as he pressed the send button and gave himself five more minutes until oblivion. He just sat there, his knees up and one hand against his forehead. The shock of it all had incapacitated his very mind.

But he started moving again soon, going upwards, towards the open air and the world beyond. Even though everything he had lived for had been taken away, he didn't want to die. Not yet, not here.

The raccoon managed to negotiate the complex in his half aware stupor, his natural survival instincts helping him avoid the Nacalites. Unfortunately his instincts were never good at keeping track of time.

He had just managed to make it outside the main door of the bunker when the charges blew. It was a horrific explosion in the reactor room, and Logan would have been proud at how well it all went off. The reactor housing cracked right down the middle, and the nuclear fuel that it contained went off in an uncontrolled fission reaction.

Between that, and the escape of super-heated steam, the resulting explosion was enough to completely tear through all of the levels of the bunker, erupting in a radioactive geyser. Giles was perhaps one hundred yards away when the ground collapsed out from under him, the structure below having given way. Then all was blackness.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

How he got home, Giles would never know. The drive back was a blur, all pain and memories, each washing the other into obscurity. About the only thing that was clear in his mind was the cold porcelain of the toilet bowl. He had stumbled into the apartment, and made a beeline for the bathroom. That part was also a little clearer then most of the others.

He had spent the better part of the next hour or more throwing up. Radiation poisoning probably. Even when Giles was convinced that he had nothing left to give, his innards were of a different opinion. Towards the end it had gotten quite ugly, as he had begun to vomit a good deal of blood, and little meaty bits that were not food. When he wasn't throwing up he was laying his furry head against the cool edge of the bowl, revelling in the calming effect it seemed to have, as he both tried to catch his breath and calm his tortured mind. He couldn't help going over and over in his mind how it was suppose to be, how they were all suppose to be alive and celebrating. He couldn't believe they were all dead.

But Giles didn't stay in his little closet of a bathroom for too long. The raccoon eventually wiped the bile and blood from his lips, and pulled himself to his feet. They would be coming for him, and probably sooner then he would like.

And come they did. Giles Ulrich was lounging in his favorite recliner when the Nacalite entered his apartment. It floated right in through the crack in the steel door that Giles had left for it.

The raccoon host had his stereo turned up far louder then he remembered setting it at for the level of volume he was hearing. One of the many explosions must have damaged his hearing. But the soft strings of Beethoven, and the warm tingle of brandy he had been sipping from the highball in one hand had washed away all of those concerns. Or at least most of them.

"It's really beautiful music, you know," said Giles.

The Nacalite looked over the apartment. Fairly appointed, even for a human and even for its location in an abandoned chemical plant. It had all that these creatures deemed necessities. Kitchen, food, entertainment system, and a computer with an axe sticking out of it.

Giles had "decommissioned" the computer just before preparing to wait. He didn't want anything recovered from it. And besides, it had given him an outlet for his rage. His mask was still a little wet from the tears of grief and frustration. Frankly that was the last thing he really cared about doing right. Well, there was one more thing, but that was still to come.

"My name is %(&^," said the Nacalite. "You have been found guilty of crimes of sedition against the Human Extinction Agency. I am here to carry out your forfeiture."

Giles slowly stood up from his chair, the blood rushing from his head. Boy, he really didn't feel all that good. "It has been said that this is some of the most beautiful music ever made. Beethoven was a master, despite his going deaf in later years.

"But you wouldn't know anything about that would you? You're not concerned with remembering our history, only with destroying it." He took a sip of his drink. "Brandy. Bottled in 1783. 1783 was a very good year. Mozart wrote his great mass. The Montgolfier brothers went up in their first hot air balloon. And England recognized the independance of the United States." He turned a cold expression to the Nacalite. "But you care nothing about this. You only want to see it all wiped out."

"I am not--"

"I WASN'T FINISHED YET!" roared Giles in a drunken rage. He could feel his hatred for a creature such as %(&^ envelop his being like some dark shadow. "You... you have the tenacity to call us murderers, yet you are committing an act of genocide unprecedented in this planet's history, even by our own standards. You have decreed that in five years all that man once was must be destroyed. And you are eradicating the lives of some six billion sentient beings in doing so!

"But of course that's not the worst of it..." Giles had started to pace. "You are also eradicating the billions and billions of lives that have come before us. You're destroying six thousand years of history, art, literature, architecture, CIVILIZATION! And it is not just the people now that will die. Einstein, Sophocles, Socratese, Aristotle, Plato, Hawking, Galileo, Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Shakespear, Mozart, Bach, Brams, Strauss and the multitude of great minds who have influenced mankind through out the ages, all will be gone. Because you decree it to be, because you say that we are wrong. And on all this you feel nothing," he spat at the Nacalite, waving his arm in a gesture of finality.

"You could have come here to help us. We had realised we screwed up the planet, we were trying to fix that. Sure, we weren't making the best progress, but it was progress. But did it matter to you? No, of course not." Giles took a long pull of his glass, feeling the brandy burn as it went down his raw throat. "You... you could have helped us achieve what was needed. Instead of saying that we're all to be changed, you could have done it for the staving and the homeless. You could have asked for people who wanted to be changed. You...you could have repopulated the species that we had pushed to extinction out of the areas of our own population that would have no other chance for survival. It didn't have to be like this!

"But did you do that? No. You said all for one, one for all, everyone dies for the mistakes of their fathers. And in doing so you are completely eradicating everything that makes us, us. I don't think it's an accident that most lose their job at stage two. That is where you first begin to strip us of our humanity. You take our very looks, and you take our livelihoods. All in the name of what you call progress, of doing what you deem as 'right'."

"We are not killing you, despite what you may say. We only want to help--"

"You ARE killing us!" screamed Giles. This was the reason that he didn't drink often. The alcohol really went to his head. "Look at me: Raccoon. Life expectancy in captivity; fifteen years. Life expectancy in the wild; less then five. As a human I had a life expectancy of at least forty more years, yet I have been sentenced to die anywhere between five and fifteen."

Giles finished the highball, snarling as he felt the alcohol burn. "Do you know what I wish for you? What I wish for above all else? I wish for justice. I want you, your entire kind, to one day come across a species exactly like yourselves. One that eradicates others based one their own criteria. And I want that species to look at all you've done, on this world and all the countless others you've done this to." He lowered his voice to an angry hiss. "And I want them to judge you as you have judged us. I don't care if it comes in the next ten years or on the next hundred, or even the next thousand, as long as it does come. As long as your kind receives a punishment befitting its heinous crimes. I only wish I could be around to see it."

Well, Giles had said it all. He didn't think it was going to matter to the damn cloud either way. He had just needed to say it. Hell, it was the last chance he would ever get to speak again. "Will you grant me one last request? One sentient being to another?"

%(&^ was moved by the raccoon's speech. Despite what Giles thought, the Nacalite wasn't totally heartless. %(&^ could almost understand how it was like, to loose your very existence like this. He felt a twinge of sympathy. "What is your request?"

Giles gestured back to his stereo. "I wish to be permitted to listen to this piece of music once more before you take me away. It is Beethoven's fifth symphony, and as you can see by the display, I only have a little more left of it. You can transform me before going, but I wish to finish my listening before I accompany you. And I wish to do that alone."

%(&^ once again looked at the miserable specimen before him. It seemed so important to this individual that he be allowed to do this... Ah, why not? There were four more Nacalites outside, and he had nowhere to go. "Request granted."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

"So where is he?" asked $%#, when %(&^ came out some time later.

"Um, he made a last request, sir. And since it is in the custom of his species..."

"IDIOT!" roared $%#. "Don't you know you never let them out of