DISCLAIMER: This story is based off of the Tenchi Muyo! anime series, produced by AIC and released by Pioneer Anime America. All characters from said series are the property of such. The characters Hikaru Moriyata, and any Argelians (which will be discussed in a later chapter) are the product of the imagination of Dennis Carr, and belong to same. The persons and many events in this fanfic are fictitious. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, or any event other than what has obviously happened, is a coincidence. Any military or police procedure outlined throughout the fic does not necessarily depict any real life procedure or scenario. Any similarity to real life procedure/scenarios is, again, coincidental. Tenchi Muyo!: Unfinished Business A fanfic by Dennis Carr and Karmin St. Jean Chapter 0:2 - Prologue: A Moment of Clarity The EVABS, or Extra Vehicular Activity and Battle Suit, was designed about five years before Mihoshi and Kiyone found themselves in the academy. It was infrequently used, as normally, a first class detective would not have to go out into the vacuum of space to conduct any sort of exercise. Very few people liked to use it, also, since its aesthetics... well, let's just say it wasn't designed to look pretty. It was, in fact, quite ugly. When worn, one looked like a distorted insect with armor plating, save for the helmet, which was a three- piece device that, initially, bore a vague resemblance to any other helmet found on a NASA-issue space suit, including the one- way view on the visor. Add to the fact that the suit is black, and you have one frightening looking piece of armor. Even when not in use, it wasn't pretty. The suit itself is a two-piece unit that folds itself into two vaguely round shapes in front of and behind the user of one of these suits, in such a way that the arms stayed joined. These two packages would sit in a "rack", a storage unit and charging base for the suit, which would further carry whatever add-ons one would need for any given outing. And yet, when used, it was the most powerful armor available to anybody for use. For starters, let's just say the user doesn't put the suit on, the suit puts itself on to the user. The right arm could easily be rearranged to accommodate the standard GP "glove gun", and the suit could be quickly retrofitted to carry three F451 pulse rifles, two BG8 arm-bound missile launchers, and a T3k portable teleporter rack, and had its own on-board thrusters, navigational system, variable energy-based shielding components, gravity compensation systems, atmospheric testing equipment, and long term life support and cryogenic preservation systems. One of the more interesting features was the helmet itself. It was designed to automatically remove itself from around the head at the request of the wearer, placing the mirrored visor over the chest, and the rest of the helmet over the suit's control pack, in two pieces that fit one atop the other. When closed, the visor further had a HUD viewing system - complete with weapons targeting/guidance, system diagnostic lights (or "idiot lights", if you will) and other gauges, and multi-frequency viewing for those moments when one needs an infra-red or X-ray view. The second best part of the suit was that it wasn't simply for battle - the suit could be further used for simple EVA's, and had its own set of tools that could be attached to the suit for just about anything that required one to step into the vacuum of space. Ironically, for this function, it was the butt of a few jokes, and discussion of the KS-1 Kitchen Sink attachment could be heard amongst laughter from anyone who even came in contact with the suits. To top it all off, the suit had a neural interface - all but the entry and exit functions could be controlled by careful thought. It was, for all intents and purposes, a helluva marvel of modern technology that would even make William T. Gates III stand and take notice - even if he were unable to copy the technology. It was a mystery as to how all this was crammed into such a relatively small package, but hey, it worked. At any rate, when Mihoshi Kurumitsu found herself "behind the wheel" of one of these suits, it was considered miraculous that she could maintain the state of mind required to manipulate one of these suits. --- Relative earth time: September 10, 1993 *She's still in the ship.* This was Kiyone's first thought as she returned to Yagami, half expecting to find her ditzy partner on board, and not really surprised that she wasn't. Her first reaction was to almost flip out and strangle her - but this was quickly put to rest as she remembered it wasn't really her fault she was so scatterbrained. In fact, nobody knew for sure why she was this way, but it was more than made up for in that her sharp eye for detail - not to mention her uncanny luck - had more than once solved a case, if not rather destructively. Besides, that was still her partner on that ship. Her friend. Kiyone Makabi paused for a moment longer, and looked out at the three Argelian battle cruisers poised out in front, which were still unaware of Yagami's presence. *I have to get her out of there,* she thought. Then she sat, resigned. *But I can't get her out of there without her key. DAMMIT!* She thought a moment longer, and decided that she should have no problem getting out. If not her luck, she has a way with these things. Having little else in the way of options, she pressed a button on the left arm of her EVABS armor, causing it to unfold from her body and refold into two packages in front of and behind her onto its storage rack, sat down in her pilot's chair, and mumbled a brief prayer to whatever god might be listening. --- Mihoshi, at this moment, was trying desperately to recover from being lost, and having very little luck at such. She was, however, remembering details about the ship that most people would overlook. Finally, after several passes through the corridors, she found what she was looking for. That damned elusive elevator shaft. Mihoshi guided the suit over to the shaft, and drifted down five levels in the ship's lunar gravity to where she recalled the Engineering department being. *Or was it six*? she further thought idly. She then heard something resembling a child crying. Upon turning in the general direction of the sound, she immediately learned she was on the imprisonment level - staring right at the back of the guard. Mihoshi immediately compensated by grabbing a nearby handhold and stopping herself, nearly pulling her right arm out of its socket in the process. The detective winced, and somehow managed to not cry out in pain, as she unsuccessfully attempted to massage the strained muscles through the suit. *OK. Possible hostage situation, and they probably don't know I'm in here.* She then noticed the cries getting louder. The warden on duty, in reaction, quelled the child by pressing a button on his console, which, if Mihoshi were to correctly judge the blue-white light that then emanated from a cell down the block for nary a tenth of a second, sent an electrical arc through the cell. It wasn't enough to kill the child, but enough to elicit a scream from him (her?), and reduce the cries to a low whimper. *Fifteenth one down on the right side*, she thought, shortly before she let her rage take over briefly. Mihoshi pushed herself up from her handhold with her still-fully-functional left arm, and allowed the low gravity in the ship to bring her back down to a location behind the guard. Miraculously, she landed without making so much as a sound. The guard, sensing a minor shift in the air despite the lack of noise, swiveled around in his chair, and found himself staring straight into what could be best described as a blond-haired blue- eyed fire of utter hatred. Only on catching sight of this did an emergency thought process catch on - hit the panic button, and *now*. It was too late though. Mihoshi caught this, and with one swift motion, unclipped her pulse rifle from her back, and slammed the butt of it into the back of the Argelian's head just after he turned around to find the emergency backup call, but before his hand could reach any of the controls of his board. The guard, now unconscious, bounced out of his seat and over the control panel, landing in front of the hallway. Mihoshi surveyed her surroundings, and noted a data pad on the console in front of her. Upon picking it up and manipulating it, she learned three things: there had previously been about four hundred hostages, they were all from her home planet, Kazaki, and all but one - the child in this ship - had been executed by being blown out of an airlock. Mihoshi packed the data pad into "hammerspace" with her control cube, releasing a coffee maker in the process (I could never find that thing when I needed it!), put the coffee maker back into hammerspace, and proceeded down the corridor with a bound, letting the suit's thrusters propel her forward, and touching down only twice - once, on the still unconscious warden's face, and a second time in front of the cell, which she opened immediately upon landing. The child inside, upon seeing the insectile being come in after, screamed, and realized he couldn't move due to electrically- induced paralysis. Mihoshi, being in a stable mindset for the moment, opened the helmet. "Mihoshi," she opened, "GP. I'm here to get you out of here and send you home." The dark haired child stopped screaming upon seeing a face he recognized as one of his own race, but was still frightened. The blonde detective picked him up nonetheless, whispering something in an attempt to calm him down. It seemed to be working. After a few seconds, he finally spoke. "Ev... Ev... Everyone else is dead." "I know, and I wish we would've known sooner. We'll get you out of here alive though." She exited the cell with the child still attached to her, pausing only momentarily to survey outside. It was still empty. But the warden was gone. Mihoshi put up a force field around the recovered hostage, and stepped outside, checking all directions - including up - for any sign of the warden. She then bounced down the hallway into the open. "FREEZE!" Mihoshi was still on one though - get out of the ship, and now! Needless to say, she didn't stop - partly due to the lack of gravity, partly due to an animalistic instinct to recover the hostage. Whatever she figured it was, she spun around, once again unclipped her pulse rifle, and sent a spray of fire through the room, killing the three security officers in the process. She then bumped against the prison warden's console, sending her tumbling into the shaft with a surprised yelp. As soon as she was in the shaft, she used the suit's thrusters to give her a push down to the next level, and pushed herself out. It was engineering. Only a few turns, and she would be at the airlock She and Kiyone had discussed. Then the alarms went off. --- Kiyone looked at her watch. It had been six minutes. A series of bleeps announced a radio hail from her partner. She knocked the mess of junk food wrappers aside and answered. "Mihoshi, is that you?" "Kiyone... hostage situation... one recovered... in trouble... gotta get-!" *Hostage situation?!* "Mihoshi, how many are still in there?" "None, they're all dead-" The link went dead as the Argelians put up an interference field. "Mihoshi?" *Oh, man, why the HELL are we doing this?!* --- Mihoshi was quick to pick up on the dead link, and proceeded to where she remembered engineering to be. She then realized she had no idea how to get out. And her charge had started to hyperventilate due to carbon dioxide build-up. She released the field, allowing fresh air into his lungs, and resealed it. He would need it for what they were about to do. Mihoshi ran over to the airlock, noted the outside door was still open, and started pressing several buttons at once, setting off the last thing she wanted to hear - a computerized monotone voice, preceded by an urgent bleep of the alarm. "Warning. Engine cooling system off line. Core breach in one minute. Warning. Core dump mechanisms locked. Unable to eject core. Abandon ship now." "NO!" She tried desperately to reverse the process she had inadvertently started - and popped open a small panel next to the airlock in the process. *OK, forget it. I gotta get us out of here.* Inside the panel was a handle attached to what appeared to be a hydraulic arm. She pulled this out, turned it 90 degrees to the right, and pushed it back in. This caused a red "paddle" to pop out from next to the plunger, accompanied by an explosive bolt warning light. Mihoshi re-helmeted, made *damn* sure the air shield around the boy was still functional, moved in front of the airlock door, and hit the paddle with her laser rifle just as several armed troops made their way around the corner. As a myriad of sparks punctuated the ejection of the hatch, Mihoshi opened fire on the troops before they could even think of grabbing something to keep from being pulled out with the atmosphere. The boy screamed as they were blown out into the void, and was surprised to find himself breathing, let alone intact, as they cleared the ship. --- A burst of light caught Kiyone's attention, and she watched as she saw an armored body fly out of the hole left as the hatch was blown clear of the ship. She watched the body turn toward Yagami to fly toward the ship, and noticed an unsuited humanoid attached to the front of her partner. She ran to the back of the ship to open the airlock for them just as three Argelian bodies were blown into space. --- Mihoshi slowed slightly, and guided herself into the open door. As soon as she was in, the outer door closed, and the repressurization cycle began. Meanwhile, she continued to absentmindedly stroke the now hyperventilating boy behind the ears to calm him - and perhaps herself. After about fifteen seconds, the inner door opened. Mihoshi quickly ran out of the room, popped her helmet, inhaled, and somehow crammed all Kiyone need to know into one word before she could even speak as she ran toward the bridge, the child still holding her. "KiyoneIaccidentallykilledthecoolingsystemontheargelianshipit's gonnablowinfifteensecondsandtakethesectorwithitit'samatterantimatter drivesystemIhaveahostagewithmeGETUSTHEHELL OUT OF HERE!" "You WHAT?!" "JUST GO OR WE'RE DEAD!" she cried, as she planted herself at her station, rescuee still attached, and started frantically working controls. Kiyone took one good look at the three ships, one of which was discharging escape pods, and followed suit. The Yagami entered hyperspace with no time to spare. The second the wormhole opened, all hell broke loose. One cruiser violently exploded into a ball of white light, which sent a shockwave out that would cover an entire sector. The adjacent ships, sturdy though they were, couldn't take the shock in stride, and collided with each other. Several more of the life boats discharged themselves from the two ships before they started to disintegrate in short-lived flames, as oxygen seeped out through newly found breaches. The shockwave passed the former location of the Yagami the second the portal closed. --- Once the course was set, Mihoshi sat back for a moment with her eyes closed, and after a minute, proceeded to explain what she saw to Kiyone. "There were four hundred eight hostages. All but the one I had recovered were blown out of the airlock as to be executed. All of them were from my home planet." She paused, grabbed her cube, brought out the data pad she collected and the coffee maker, and handed the pad to Kiyone. "All of them were orphaned children." She then looked at the coffee maker, which had fallen on the floor, and decided to take some adhesive and attach it to her console somewhere Kiyone looked at her in disbelief, then looked at the pad - and nearly dropped it as she confirmed what Mihoshi had said. While Mihoshi placed the now sleeping child in her seat and left the bridge to de-suit, Kiyone read on the pad of the details of this. One of the three Kazakian moons was to become a mining colony at the hands of the Argelians - however, something in the deal went wrong. The Argelians had picked up 408 children off of the surface of her partner's home planet as what they referred to as a "bargaining chip" to lower the sale price of the satellite. The Kazakian government, in turn, refused to lower their demands. And yet, the miners were very quiet in their operation - they collected the children from three orphanages scattered about the northern continent of the planet. They had killed the attendants at each orphanage, taken the children, and methodically discharged them from an airlock. And despite all of this, Kazaki would not budge. All this over a rock orbiting that planet. Kiyone sat a moment, sipped on some cold tea that was sitting at her console, and stared out the window in disbelief. *Sometimes*, she thought, *life brings on such misfortune. But if something could have been done, why was nothing done?* As Kiyone looked over at the restlessly sleeping child, Mihoshi returned to the bridge, wearing her standard uniform, wet hair from her brief shower, and a very pained expression. At this point, Kiyone realized she was still not in uniform - she hadn't bothered changing out of the bodysuit one was required to wear under the EVABS if they intended to keep from getting friction burns - or for that matter, if they wanted to interface with the suit. Kiyone traded places with her partner, walked to the back of the ship, stripped, and showered for about two minutes. It did much from what stress she had acquired from worrying about her partner, not to mention cleaning the residue of dried perspiration from her body, but did little to dissipate her rage toward her partner's home planet's government. Kiyone further reflected that her own home planet was in partnership with these monsters, as she climbed into her own uniform. After dressing, she turned off the water recovery unit, and returned to the bridge of the ship, where she found both the boy, who couldn't be any older than what a human would consider fourteen, and her partner, embracing and weeping. Kiyone knelt down next to the chair and put her arms around both of them, and did something that would normally be considered very out of character for her. Kiyone Makabi wept. Bitterly. --- Five hours later.... Kiyone finally stood up, hands on the desk in front of her, and looked at Saarnd incredulously. "WHAT?!" The leonid looked back at her. "Makabi, I'm sorry, but there's nothing I can do. There is one ship remaining, and it, in theory, contains the last of this race. To destroy this ship would be genocide, and further, we have no evidence that what Argelians are on this ship-" "-have committed any crimes," she completed dejectedly, sitting down with a scowl on her face. Saarnd leaned forward in his seat and looked at the two detectives. "Listen. We all know that the Argelians are all for slave labor, not to mention terrorism, but we have no evidence against them." It was Mihoshi's turn to interject. "What about my partner's home planet? What about Praxis? What about this latest incident?" "Kurumitsu, when our guys get to the site, they've already cleared out. We just have no evidence against them." Mihoshi stood up, now enraged, spilling her coffee on the floor. "Four hundred seven innocent children are now dead because we had no evidence against them!" she hollered, now drawing the attention of other officers milling about nearby. "Each of these arrests attempts we make result in the loss of I don't know how many civilian lives, and it's because we have no evidence against them!" She pointed at the brief report her partner made, and the adjacent pilfered data pad, now sealed in an evidence bag, tears once again welling up in her eyes. "Just what the hell do you call this?" "DETECTIVE, SIT DOWN NOW!" Mihoshi caught herself, and took two deep breaths. "I'm sorry, sir," she said, slowly sitting, and forcing herself to be calm. "I was out of line." Saarnd continued to wait a moment, and allow his detective to cool off. As he stared at the material before him, he realized that Mihoshi was never known to be like this. After a minute, Saarnd had decided that Mihoshi had calmed down enough. "Kurumitsu, what we have here is evidence enough to convict the Argelians that were on the T'sunor of slave labor, and attempted genocide. But note that I said `were' on the T'sunor. Might I remind you that, somehow, you managed to destroy T'sunor, along with two other ships - with most of the respective crew." He stood up, and proceeded to close the blinds that were on the windows of his office. "Their computer core was very possibly destroyed, and even our best hackers could not have cracked that thing without being inside. And, to get inside, we need a warrant. If we serve them with a warrant, they can simply blot out evidence." The commander finished closing the blinds, and sat back down at his desk. "Mihoshi, Kiyone, considering what happened, I would've done the same thing. I've had friends killed at the hands of the Argelians. I've seen entire worlds ravaged by these people - and I say `people' reluctantly." He paused a moment, thinking, and continued. "Under the circumstances, I cannot officially commend you for your actions in this matter. However, I can unofficially do so. You both did well under the circumstances. Nevertheless, I have no choice. "Detective Kurumitsu, Detective Makabi, I am ordering both of you off of this case. I'm certain you know my reasons." The two detectives nodded their acknowledgement. "The two of you will be on separate traffic details for the next year. Do you have any questions?" Silence. "Very well. Makabi, you're dismissed. Kurumitsu, remain seated." Kiyone stood and left the room. When the door closed, Saarnd continued. "Mihoshi, you know damn well that your actions could very easily have gotten you canned. But, I can't." He stood up, and peered out through the blinds. "Much as I hate to admit it, you're one of the better officers I have on the force. Besides," he added, with a note of cynicism, "the commissioner would kill me." Mihoshi let off a quick half-smile, despite her anger. The commander turned to face her, a *very* rare soft look on his face. "At any rate, let me be the first to say that I am sorry for what happened. I'm putting some of my best out there, and we're posting guards at the sanctuaries." He sat down. "I want these jackasses behind bars as much as you do, but we still have to get something on them. Either way, you are forbidden to work on this case for the next five years. I want to give you time to cool off because of this. Is this understood?" She managed a weak smile. "Yes, sir." "Good. Dispatch will have your next assignment. Dismissed." Mihoshi walked out of the office, a little perplexed. She wasn't sure if this was a punishment or not. --- The next day, Mihoshi was back to her normal self, and showed no evidence that she even remembered the incident. The Kazakian boy she rescued, Soize Sabishii, on the other hand, did remember, and would remember as he went into a special training group with the Galaxy Police.