B                   THE PYRAMID SCHEME: CAPSTONE                       B
 EBU                          #1 - Summer                               EBU
REBUS    copyright 2001 by Dave Van Domelen, Tony Pi, Marc Singer      REBUS
                           and John Scheibeler
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                         An ASH Universe Event!
============================================================================

     [cover shows the Great Pyramid under a hot Summer Sun.  The Sun
      is directly above the pyramid.  Arrayed around the base are
      members of ASH, EUROPA, STRAFE and assorted soldiers.  A lone 
      figure stands at the apex.]

[September 22, 2024, noon - The Great Pyramid]

     "Let me teach you a game."  I hook the glowing loop of optic fiber
between my hands, seamless and perfect.  It is a token of Gimble's genius, a
toy but also much more.
     Mister Strings, alias Burnout, alias C.J. Brown...an enigma in her own
right...sits lotus-legged across from me, the sun behind her, the crown of
the Sphinx beneath us.  "Cat's Cradle?"
     "Ayatori, Bast's Game, Clotho's Web: the ABCs of the Loop of Life.  Or
call it the Bast-in-net of the Sphinx."  Whatever I call it, it all converges
here, my schemes, my desires.  "There are infinite games and infinite
variations, but none so elegant or simple as this ourobouros."
     "The world serpent biting his own tail, consuming itself until nothing
is left."
     I nod.  "But to make infinity from nothingness..." I twist my left hand
downward, so that the single loop becomes a lemniscate, the symbol of
infinity.  "Just a twist of the hand of fate and everything is within my
grasp."
     "But what if I steal destiny's thread from you?"  Her warm fingers
slither against mine, and she plucks a pattern out of the loop, stealing the
string from me.  "It's a game for two, in most cultures.  It is indeed
universal, is it not?  I've collected puppets of all Earth's races, and I
find in their memories a variant of this game.  Koreans, Navajo, Swiss, Zuni,
Chinese, Tlingit...and I hear even the Pranir have a variant."  She licks her
lips.  "Those memories are sweeter than honey."  In her hands now is a
Soldier's Bed, a rectangular shape she creates from my Cat's Cradle.
     "Of course.  Kang Sok, Ssi-teu-ki, whatever we call it, this game is
symbolic of the very purpose of life and death.  Perhaps the Germans named it
best: Hexenspiel, the Witch's Game.  You make choices in this world, shaping
it to your will.  Others try to take it from you, but a sleight-of-hand will
restore your authority."  With a subtle caress that becomes a theft, I take
the string from her.  It is a Pa-tok-hpan, or in Korean, 'chessboard'.
     We play through Candles, Manger, Diamonds, Cat's Eye, Fish in a Dish,
and Clock, before we start the more complex figures.  The cord brightens as
we force it through the Apache Door, Howling Monkey, and Wood Carrier
Configurations.
     "Did you know that some primitive cultures believe the Cat's Cradle game
can control the movements of the sun?" I ask her.  "The Congo tribes believe
the cradle persuades the sun to rest, while the Inuit try to tether the cat
of the sun.  But I have done their shamans one better.  I have snared my Ra
in the perfect balance of light and dark."  For the loop is also a prison for
my latest acquisition liberated from the Astro Spear, the photonic lifeform
known as Doublecross, self-proclaimed Lord of the Living Light.  "Strings
cross, cross, doublecross."
     "You love metaphors, don't you?"
     "Guilty, as charged.  Sometimes it's next to impossible to settle on
just one.  That's the paradox inherent in all games.  You have infinite
dilemmas, but you must choose only one path, one variation."
     I set my path now, weaving the complex pattern called Navajo Lightning
into the string between my hands.  I raise the lightning to the sky,
Doublecross trapped in the optic fibers, my 'sun god' in the net of gold.
Gimble's unique device reads the intricate pattern I have shaped for it and
begins to hum and vibrate.
     "Beautiful harmonics," Tyra purrs.  She cannot resist making it a duet,
adding her voice to the song.
     "But remember, an anagram for 'harmonics' is 'sonic harm'."  She smiles
at my genius, and I crave such adoration.  "Soon it will trigger a cascade of
death and crescendo into a hymn for my apotheosis.  Let this thunder herald
my ascension!"

               *              *              *              *

[September 19, 2024 - New Jerusalem, Cyprus]

     I've made better entrances.
     No sooner had I unfurled my invisibility cloak than two things happened
in rapid succession.
     First, Dan Tracey, the world's most perfect pain in the ass, knocked my
feet out from under me.
     Second, a plasma blast shot overhead, right through where my head had
been.
     "Hold it, Solar Max," Tracey said, in that insufferably calm way of
his.  "Triton is obviously here to help...he's been trying to hide for
several minutes, if he wanted a fight he would have tipped his hand before
now."
     I batted aside the offered hand and stood up.  "I don't need saving,
Nose."  I pretended to ignore the snickering from the peanut gallery.  At
least the mood wasn't quite so tense anymore, though...I had distracted them
from Delta Rose's sentence of planetary destruction.
     Kid Challenger wasn't too happy, of course.
     "If you knew he was there, why didn't you do anything?" Solar Max
demanded. 
     Nose just pushed the door of the command post open, to reveal a trio of
Israeli soldiers outside.  My Hebrew was a bit rusty, but it wasn't hard to
guess that the special symbols on their helmets meant they were Anchors.
     "He wasn't going to be going anywhere.  Besides, he could easily have
eliminated the thirty cycle hum that his armor gives off if he really wanted
to remain hidden," Grindstone-face shrugged.  Frowning behind my faceplate, I
cued up the subsonic sensors...sure enough, my armor hummed.  Something to
put on the repair list assuming anyone survived this mess.
     "Believe it or not, I'm not keen on the idea of the world being
destroyed, either by our alien caretakers or by a mad god.  And I'm *really*
not keen on having to work with you people, but Rebus has left me no viable
choice."  I could see it on their faces, the desire to cut me with a clever
retort, a desire held back because they knew as well as I did that we *had*
to work together.  "I can see that you have most of the puzzle, but not all
of it.  Although I'm impressed that you managed to figure out so much..."
     "Enough smirking, Radner," Solar Max snarled.  Geez, freeze a man's wife
solid and he carries a grudge.  "What do you have to offer?"
     "A time.  Archangeli plans to ascend to godhood at the equinox:
September 22, 2:35 PM local time.  We have three days, gentlemen...the clock
is ticking." 

               *              *              *              *

[September 20, 2024 - High Earth Orbit]

     From his position looking down the well, Scott Ritter, also known as
Star Knight, paused to drink in the view of his world.  Below him, the
blue-green planet swathed in clouds never failed to impress him with its
beauty.  It was because of this planet that he'd agreed to Delta Rose's
proposal.  It was because of his love for his home that he became a member of
the Galactic Warrior Corps.
     It was because of that agreement that he was now committed to destroying
the planet he so loved.
     "Scott, is there something wrong?"  The voice in Star Knight's ears
belonged to Ego, his onboard AI.  A Santari creation, Ego was there to assist
Scott in operating his cybernetically-controlled power armor, as well to
remind Scott of the rules and regulations of the GWC.  The single year of
on-and-off training he'd gotten him might qualify him to be Delta Rose's
lieutenant, but he still knew less about the job than a raw cadet.
     "No, no, nothing wrong, Ego.  Just taking one last look, that's all.
Are we in the clear for a microjump?"  Scott didn't want to reveal his
reluctance to do this.  He'd sworn an oath, and he'd take that oath to the
grave if necessary.  But having to destroy the planet, being the man with his
finger on the button....
     Even now, all Scott had to do was deactivate the armor's drain on his
own abilities, rip loose with his full powers, and he'd be dead...ending his
responsibility to be the one destroying the earth.  But Scott was sure that
if he did that, Delta Rose would activate yet another of her contingency
plans.  And Earth would still die.
     All because of that madman, Rebus.
     "Orbital space cleared, Scott.  Course plotted and hyperspace
coordinates fixed.  Should I initiate the jump?"  Ego's tone of voice was
always calm, always collected.  It betrayed no hint that it acknowledged
Scott's agitated mental state.  And that was itself a balm to Scott's
frazzled nerves.
     "No, Ego, I'll do it.  It's good exercise for me, and it's a short jump
anyway."  Scott concentrated for a moment, and felt the fabric of space and
time distort and twist at his command.  Taking the information downloaded
into his mind by Ego, Star Knight envisioned two points in space and made
them one for a brief instant.  A bit flashier than his normal hyperspace
wormhole, the tesseract allowed Star Knight to reach his destination nearly
instantaneously.  But it was also harder than opening a wormhole, and when
Scott had released his grip on spacetime, he found he was breathing heavily.
A strange gas giant filled most of his field of vision, a small moon orbiting
nearby.
     "Impressive," Ego remarked.  "Your control over your powers grows every
day.  Increasing oxygen supply eight percent.  Breathe slowly, Scott."  Scott
was still gasping for breath, but the additional oxygen would help him
recover more quickly.  "Do you foresee a time when you won't need the suit to
help you control your abilities?"
     The question made Scott think.  With Earth destroyed, where could he go?
Well, with the GWC, of course, and the Santari were genetically identical to
Terrans, so finding a suitable mate would be no problem.  But without his
home, without his friends...Scott realized the while question was intended to
make him think of the future, all it did was make him reflect on the events
of the present.
     He forced his attention back to the task at hand.  "We'll see, Ego.
Lunar orbit achieved."  His breath was under control now.  "Oxy supply to
normal.  There it is, Ego.  I'm glad I saved the time getting here, that
thing's going to be slow going through a wormhole."  He spoke of his target,
a large metal rounded cylinder hanging over the dark side of the gas giant's
moon.  Fully the size of a GWC light cruiser, the doomsday weapon looked
ominous and foreboding. "The Coronal Ejection Driver.  How's it work again?"
Scott knew full well, he just wanted the distraction.
     If Ego had deduced his charge's reason for asking, the AI didn't let it
show.  "Normal stars periodically shed masses of coronal plasma as their
magnetic fields oscillate.  A typical Coronal Mass Ejection, or CME, can be
the size of an Earth-type planet, but is only powerful enough to disrupt
satellites and communication.  The Coronal Ejection Driver forces the target
star to violently eject a larger, hotter and faster mass of plasma than
normal, by a factor of several orders of magnitude.  It also tunes the
disturbance so that the target planet's magnetic field abets in the
destruction, drawing in the plasma rather than deflecting it.  It should be
sufficient to scour the surface of the Earth barren, even the nightside.
     "Additionally," Ego paused, as if taking a breath, "the actual device is
only about a meter long.  The cylinder you see before you is an implosion
bomb designed to destroy the Driver before any potential thief could reach
it.  I am now transmitting the codes that will release the Driver itself to
us."
     The ponderous cylinder glowed a little more brightly in the distant
starlight for a moment, then split in half along a previously invisible seam.
A small sphere drifted out of the implosion bomb and took up station next to
Star Knight using small puffs of reaction mass.
     "Well, we'd best be getting it back," Scott replied.  Latching onto the
object before him, Scott started to manipulate time and space again.  "It'd
be a shame if we were late."

               *              *              *              *

[September 22, 2024 - Giza, Egypt.  Noon.]

     Two old friends streaked overhead, clad in colorful armor so bulky they
looked more like humanoid jet fighters than men.  They lanced towards an
advancing tide of clones, mutations, and other genetic monstrosities from the
black-market laboratories of Khadam's "Vivarium," a tide which was about to
overwhelm Jason Teller and his small unit of STRAFE agents.  Before the
monsters could get there, Solar Max and Scorch fired two streams of plasma,
bathing the creatures in flame.  The monsters howled and screamed, and their
burning flesh emitted a million different kinds of stench.  The two ASH
members saluted their old classmates and flew on to their next engagement.
     Teller let out a low whistle.  It sure was something, watching the big
guns in action.
     He didn't normally get to see his old Academy classmates in the field.
He was usually too busy skulking in the shadows, doing the Combine's dirty
work as an agent of STRAFE.  He still was, leading his teammates in a
commando unit through the cramped streets of Giza...but this time the Academy
of Super-Heroes was working in the same theater of operations.
     While ASH and EUROPA were doing the heavy fighting on the front lines,
STRAFE was acting as a forward-observer unit, scouting out the enemy
concentrations in the tangled mass of buildings.  Teller pressed his team
forward, moving up through an abandoned apartment building, shooting a few
stray Vivarium freaks along the way.  They set up an observation post on its
roof.  From here, Teller could survey the entire battleground...and the
crumbling, looming pyramids that lay beyond it.  They seemed to shimmer,
behind the smoky and superheated air, as if they weren't really there at all.
     This wasn't the straightforward, Patton-versus-the-Desert-Fox kind of
battle Teller had envisioned when he heard they were getting deployed to
Egypt.  Instead of desert spreading for miles around, the Pyramids of Giza
were encroached by urban sprawl on all sides; it was probably all the local
government could do to keep the developments from climbing right up the sides
of the ancient monuments.  Even the actions of the gods a generation ago to
clear away the desert out to the horizon had only lasted a decade or so,
before buildings reclaimed the land, at least on one side.  There was still
desert to the other side, but attacking through the open had been judged
suicidal.  Hence the suburban action.
     Satellite intel said the Conclave of Super-Villains was stationed atop
a dais erected right aside the capstone of the Great Pyramid itself.  Scorch
had gotten greedy and tried to lob a few plasma bolts at them, but between
Burnout's flame-control power and Rebus's Anchor effect, the hothead hadn't
had a prayer of hitting anybody.  And the few Israeli jets that dared strafe
the pyramid were instantly gunned down by Khadamite batteries.
     With the UW's air power basically useless and the desert approach cut
off by spells and robot sandcrabs, the war to retake the pyramids was being
fought in the city, from building to building.  Try as the UW forces might to
hold their lines, every new corner, every new door disgorged some new
monstrosity.  Teller watched through his binoculars as a horde of furred and
tentacled mutations crashed through a souk wall, slavering for a taste of a
nearby Israeli patrol.  Suddenly, the Green Knight, Contact, and Essay were
charging into the midst of them...Essay in a huge, bulldozer-yellow
exoskeleton...tossing the creatures around like softballs.
     Then Teller's earpiece crackled to life with reports of a new
engagement...Arc's EUROPA team was assaulting one of the ack-ack batteries,
meeting heavy resistance from pirated Scytharian cyborgs.  Trying to keep a
cool head, trying not to make it personal, Teller charted out the quickest
route and, sliding down a clothesline, moved in to reinforce her.

               *              *              *              *

[United World Sanction Forces mobile command post.  12:30 PM]

     "EUROPA team reports heavy casualties," the Israeli radio operator said,
in heavily-accented English.  Grind, Triton, and even Peregryn all looked up
from their strategic maps and thaumaturgical circles to gape at the news.
Then the operator corrected himself, adding, "Reports *inflicting* heavy
casualties."  Over his head, a holographic screen showed the battle as seen
through Arc's microtransmitter: the magnetic ghost called Oni was scrambling
the cyborgs' badly pirated software, while the acrobatic Hotspur leaped and
danced between them, melting their metal components to slag.  Suddenly, the
image wobbled and zoomed as Arc built up a kinetic charge and rushed the
antiaircraft battery...  
     "Target destroyed," the operator reported, without much joy.
     "It's that damn language barrier."  The tent flap opened and a
suntanned, bearded man stepped inside.  He wore khaki fatigues with
absolutely no insignia, save a UW badge which read OBSERVER.  Dan Tracey
sighed; it was Bill Cook, a UW spook who was somehow attached to the highest
levels of the operational command structure.  "Wish all the Izzies spoke the
King's bloody English."  With Cook's own thick Australian accent, no doubt,
as the norm.
     Peregryn shook his head and returned to his ritual, conjuring golems
from the sand behind enemy lines.  Cook slouched over to Dan and Triton and
lowered his voice.  "Of course, that ain't the real reason the Izzies are so
angry.  Just between you and me, I think they were hoping they could maybe
make a little land grab once they'd occupied Egypt.  I mean, Cyprus gets
awfully small after twenty-five years, dunnit?"
     Triton didn't look up from his charts.  "And why exactly should I care,
little man?"
     "'Course, the Sword of Gideon is finding a bit more resistance than the
Knesset anticipated, eh?  Hard to hold your turf when you're army's getting
chewed to pieces."  Cook suddenly dropped all pretense of amicability and
stared Triton in the eye.  "You're the Chancellor of Khadam, mate.  Order
your bloody troops to stand down."
     Triton muttered a reply.  
     "What's that?" Cook barked, even though they'd all heard it.
     "I *did*!" Triton shouted.  "Zugmann and Alloy and the rest must have
thrown in with Rebus...and my ground troops aren't responding."
     Dan frowned.  "Maybe that's because you're sitting in a tent, Radner.
You said you could guarantee their loyalty..."
     Triton drew himself up into his full armored might.  "This is *my* plan,
Nose!  Don't tell me how to run it!"
     Cook snorted.  "Your plan is bloody useless if your own army kills
us..."
     Dan held up a hand.  "Shut *up*, Cook.  What's that noise?"
     "I don't hear a..."
     "I've got it, too," Triton said, a little too grateful for the
interruption.  He'd left the subsonics active in his armor.  "Ultra low
frequency sound...not a subliminal or a communications signal...should only
be noticeable at the cellular level.  What purpose could it..."
     Outside, they heard the first screams.

               *              *              *              *

[Giza.  12:35 PM]

     Christina "Breaker" Li didn't understand what was going on.  She and Tom
"Lightfoot" Dodson had reached the besieged infantrymen in time; she had
telekinetically grabbed the largest Khadamite monster and was swinging it
around in a circle, while Tom grabbed other mutations and lent speed to them
so that they would slam into each other.  The other abominations were
fleeing...why were the soldiers still screaming?
     Tom ran to their aid...and then pulled back.  Two of the infantrymen
were writhing on the ground, blood streaming from every orifice.  These men
were probably conscripted from the casinos of New Jerusalem, as their helmets
carried the Hebrew character "Tsadeh" that marked them as Anchors.  The other
infantrymen were hastily donning their chemical weapons suits, although
Christina suspected they were in no danger.
     "The Anchor Virus," she muttered.  "It's back."

               *              *              *              *

[September 22, 2024, Too Damn Early - Manhattan, New York Sector]

     Cal hated third shift.  Mornings were meant for sleeping in, not pulling
psycho paragangers off deadbeat reporters.
     One hand on her at all times, to keep her from using her ectoplasmic
tendrils, Lieutenant Cal Stamp frisked the Basilisk Black thoroughly for
weapons.  He found a switchblade strapped to her lower left thigh.  With one
hand, the Anchor cop tossed the knife to his new partner, Rani Chavez.  Ever
since Chavez's old partner Whitman got his leg turned to lead, Chavez had put
in multiple requests for an Anchor partner.  After all, Cal had no chance of
being transmuted, shapeshifted, or otherwise affected by paranormal powers,
right?
     So Cal cuffed himself to the roadrager.  Though he hadn't the range of
some other Anchors, he could still suppress Ghostclaw's powers if she was
just a few inches away.  He shoved her into the back of the squad car and
joined her.  He looked out at the ex-Cybernostra that Ghostie tried to axe.
"Get your cyberass in the car too, Coulter.  Unless you want to be fricasseed
by another paraganger.  What were you doing here, anyway?  Half the city's
got a bounty on you, and the other half's anxious to claim it."
     Coulter put pressure on the small cut on his left cheek.  "Like I said,
I can take care of myself."
     Rani stopped taking the reporter's statement.  "Two inches and she would
have taken off your head.  I know what you want, Coulter.  Still looking for
Cockatrice?"
     "Hey, someone's got to find out the truth.  No way she'd turn her crew
over to Embeth Alloun like that, without good reason."
     "You don't believe she's dead?" Cal asked.  "Word on the street's that
Hellhound buried her like a bone."
     The Basilisk Black sneered.  "CyberNostra propaganda.  The Blues and the
Blacks are as strong as ever.  Cockatrice is *not* dead."
     "Want my theory?  I think she's gone underground, literally."  Cal was
about to spout his opinion on the roadrager situation in the old abandoned
subway tunnels, when he heard a strange thrumming in his ears.
     Then came the pain, and the blood, and suddenly, conspiracy theories
became moot.
     And Calvin Stamp died of massive hemorrhaging, still handcuffed to his
final arrest.

               *              *              *              *

[United World Sanction Forces mobile command post.  12:50 PM]

     Dan Tracey, Triton, Peregryn, and Bill Cook all huddled around the
screens, gasping or wincing at each new revelation.  Despite Peregryn's best
efforts to destroy it, the Anchor Virus had returned.
     "A two-stage virus," Triton said, nodding with cold appreciation.
"After the first exposure it simply waits for the subsonic trigger.  Rebus
must have built transmitters all around the world."  He shook his head in
awe.  "Genius."
     Peregryn scowled.  "This is no time for congratulations, Radner.  This
is the first stage of the ritual...Rebus believes that by slaying all the
other Anchors, he'll boost his own power."
     "Now, now, Howie, you wouldn't be pissed because you failed to catch
this, would you?"
     Dan shoved between the mage and the would-be conqueror.  "Okay, Triton,
play-time's over.  Cook's right; we need you to face your troops and get us
through those lines.  The equinox happens at 2:35, giving us just barely one
hour and forty-five minutes."  He didn't check his watch; he never needed to
check his watch.
     "Do you think I don't know that, Nose?  Do you have *anything* to offer
this plan other than a really good body clock?"
     Dan sighed.  "Why do you despise me, Radner?" he asked, suddenly.
Triton started to answer, but he'd barely opened his mouth before Dan cut him
off.  "Don't claim this is some sort of competiton.  You took over your own
country, Radner.  You *won*."
     Triton didn't know what stung more...that Grind had conceded him victory
so easily, or that his spoils were now virtually meaningless.  Both leached
out any joy he might have felt.
     "Ours is an intellectual competition, Nose."  Derek turned towards the
holoscreens, their reflected images turning his faceplate opaque.  "Ruling
Khadam is meaningless," he watched the mutations of the Vivarium throw
themselves up against EUROPA and STRAFE, "next to outwitting you."
     "But why do you *care*?"  Dan paced around to face Triton, refusing to
be screened out by the reflected glare.  "This isn't about some stupid heists
I foiled four years ago!  Radner, your troops are in open revolt, your rival
is about to elevate himself to godhood, your lover is being held prisoner,"
Triton gaped at Grind's deduction, "and all you can think about is being
*smarter* than me?"
     "Don't you *dare* bring Angeline into this!" Triton snarled, throwing a
little bass and reverb into his speakers for some extra menace.  "If you had
saved my love the *first* time we wouldn't be in this mess!"
     Dan reeled backwards a few steps.  "Save Sultry from...?"  His rare look
of puzzlement quickly shifted into his much more common one of keen insight.
"Cassandra.  Your girlfriend at the Academy."  He didn't need to add that
she'd been killed by a shapeshifting assassin from Khadam...the same country
the CSV had brutally seized as their first act under Triton's leadership.
     For one instant the tent seemed to spin, the battlefield and its
combatants all revolving around one angry young man who had sealed himself up
in a suit of vintage villain's armor.  Dan steadied himself and said, "All
because of her...."
     Triton pressed forward, shoving his helmed face in front of Dan's.  "Why
couldn't you have caught St. James *before* she died, Tracey?"
     "Derek, I wasn't even at the Academy when she died!"
     "*Exactly*.  The Combine scouts hadn't found you yet, because you were
too damned *normal*.  And while you were frittering away your freshman year
with the weaklings and the mundanes, my Cassie was killed!"
     "Derek..."
     "And THEN you had the gall to CATCH St. James, after you'd already put
me in PRISON!  Bad enough that Mister Perfect couldn't even save Cassie...
you also denied me my REVENGE!"  Triton waved his gauntlets high above his
head, ripping the tent canvas apart with raw bioelectrical energy.  "That's
why I have to humiliate you, Tracey!  Because the whole world has to know
that you're NOT brilliant!  That you're NOT perfect!  That when it counted
most, you were nothing but a FAILURE!!!"
     Spent, his energies temporarily wasted, he lowered his arms and leaned
menacingly over Dan.  "That answer your question?" he rasped.
     The others were watching him.  Dan considered his next move, very
carefully, for two and one-half seconds.
     Then he said, "You're timing's a little off, Derek.  Cassandra's death
initially looked like a standard case of power burnout.  No one even
suspected there was a killer at the Academy until *long* after you'd begun
your crime spree and landed in prison.  You wouldn't have known Cassie
could've been saved until after we'd already unmasked and destroyed
St. James."
     Triton blurted something angry and unintelligible, but Dan wouldn't let
him get a complete word in.  "And I didn't catch him alone, either; JakZak
did most of the work, as I'm sure you took the time to learn.  I'm sorry your
lover died, Derek, and I'm sorry I wasn't there to save her.  But how much of
this is *real* grief, and how much of this is just using her death to excuse
your own crimes?  Your own failures?"
     Triton lumbered towards Dan.  His speakers thrummed with a low bass
rumble, which quickly grew to an agonized scream.  He raised one arm, his
gauntleted fingers curling into a fist.  Peregryn was hastily preparing an
attack spell and Cook was shouting for Dan to run, but Dan Tracey held his
ground.  If Triton was going to snap, it would be now or never.
     Triton slowly unclenched his hand.  His voice was a plaintive, exhausted
gasp.  "I could have been a hero if she hadn't died.  The greatest one of
all."
     Dan pointed to the battlefield.  "Then prove it."

               *              *              *              *

[The Great Pyramid.  12:25 PM]

     I stand on the bottom step of the pyramid, resplendent in my golden
Horus raiment, my hands outstretched to the sky.  Forming an avenue on the
side of the south side of the Great Pyramid are the rest of my Ennead, the
eight thralls who form the key to the grand puzzle of Eternity.  A numerical
pyramid: five plus three plus one.
     Five allies who serve me out of greed or fear or manipulated loyalties.
A solid base for my pyramid.  Claudette Viau, my Nephthys, bound to me by the
desire for power.  Her brother Yvan, the wise fool Thoth, tied to his sister
by filial bonds and thus to me.  Myriad, the chimaerical Eater Amnut, made to
serve and serving whoever is most powerful.  Apis the bull, the strong back
of my pyramid, is the man-beast Peryton.  I rescued him from his fate when
others had seemingly abandoned him, and so he serves me.  Finally fear.  The
jester Bes in the person of Conflicto serves me because he fears me more than
he fears Radner...for now.  A weak link, but too weak to break free of his
fear.  
     Three rivals who unwillingly lift me to the heavens.  Victim, uncle and
demigod.  The beautiful nature goddess Nut is my captive Sultry, who would
rip the flesh from my bones with a scirocco if she could break free for even
an instant.  If I had any pity in me I might pity her role as the victim in
this piece, for she could never be coerced into an alliance as Kwan was.
"Uncle" Devlin always knew the two of us were destined to be rivals, but he
never guessed the depths of my despite for him and his weak-kneed perversion
of the true faith we seemingly shared.  And bound within the glowing cords
that encircled them all?  A man once known as Bennett Rush, once known as
Doublecross, but now a living avatar to the Sun, Ra.
     And one man who will become a god.
     I smile behind the headdress as I start to walk up the terraced side of
the Great Pyramid.  "It is time, Glyph."
     Despite my near-total control of the Anchor that is my gift and my
curse, I still cannot perform the ceremony myself.  For that I need a mage,
and fortunately I have three.  Glyph is ideal for the purpose, however.  Her
strong ties to the letter of the rituals she uses make it difficult for her
to even contemplate treachery, for she would be unable to carry it out.
Claudette might try wild magic to draw the power into herself, and poor
ethical Yvan might try to simply make the spell fail so that no one becomes a
god this day.  But to Glyph, the spell is the spell, and she will cast it.
     This spell, however, is not a direct part of the main ritual.  No, it
will be many long minutes before the stars are right for that.  But why
ascend to godhead if your proud parents cannot be there to witness it?
     Glyph chants the ancient words written on the modern computer, a spell
left behind by my father a generation ago.  
     The sands start to shift, and I momentarily wish my mother had not been
drawn bodily into the essence of Hathor during the Great Leaving of 1998.
True, she had betrayed father to "Morgan Adams," but she was still my mother.
     Of course, within a short span of time I will be able to meet Hathor on
equal terms and demand my mother's freedom, so she will see my triumph soon
enough.  
     A figure rises from the sands, shedding constricting bits of natron-
soaked linen as he flexes his dried muscles for the first time in decades.
Wizened by mummification, but no less vital than I remembered him, Pino
Archangeli turns to look upon my works as dozens of loyal soldiers rise
alongside him, willingly buried to act as his personal guard on the day I
brought his Ba and Ka back together with his body.
     He cannot speak yet...his tongue is a dried mass, his throat brittle and
his lungs removed.  It will take time for the spell to finish restoring his
body to life.
     But I bask in the obvious pride my father has in his son.
     Soon we will be gods together.

               *              *              *              *

[Earth Orbit.  1:00 PM]

     Delta Rose looked down on the planet turning slowly below her.  She'd
called that world home on and off for most of her life.  Despite never really
understanding the way the natives thought or acted, she'd found a place for
herself on the placid world.  Not like the wind-torn peaks of her homeworld,
where she had always been something of an outcast for wanting to see other
worlds.  The lightning-bearers were always somewhat a breed apart, but she
had been more alone than most.  Earth had given her a place to fit in, even
if she fit into an odd place.
     And now the world was doomed.  Doomed by its own strengths, by the
strange power that only its natives seemed to possess.  A new god was about
to be born, and she could not allow that to come to pass.
     If she'd been human, and not just a surgically reconstructed simulation
of one, she might have shed a tear as she opened the comm channel.  But her
tear ducts were merely functional, not emotional.
     "Activate the Coronal Ejection Driver," she said, in clipped and
unemotional tones.  Then she waited for the response.  A full light-minute
separated her from her lieutenant.  Perhaps her reluctance to order the
death of what had become her second home explained why she'd used lightspeed
comm and not hypercomm...give the world one more minute of life.
     "Acknowledged," came the sad reply.  While Earth had been an adopted
home for Delta Rose, it was Scott Ritter's birth home.  But he knew his duty,
he was capable of making the hard decisions.  Rebus had already started his
ceremony by killing most of the world's Anchors, and if not prevented from
reaching godhood, he wouldn't stop with Earth.
     Several tense minutes passed.  The artificially induced Coronal Mass
Ejection, once generated, would cross the relative void of space in
approximately thirty minutes, give or take a few minutes.  Its strength was
such that all life would be scoured from the surface of the planet, all the
seas boiled away, leaving Earth a barren rock devoid of life or even the
potential for it.  Such weapons had been entrusted to tbe Galactic Warrior
Corps for centuries, and in recent years they'd found themselves using the
planetkillers more and more often.
     Always to prevent a greater danger.
     Always, she told herself.
     The hypercomm flashed.  "Yes?" she opened the channel.
     "It's not working," was Ritter's tense report.  "Something's blocking
the effect.  I can feel the gravitational shifts in the Sun even from here,
so the CME is trying to launch...but it's not being...allowed?"
     "Acknowledged," she curtly replied, then signaled the ground command
post in the suburbs of Cairo.  "Agent Tracey, this is Delta Rose.  We have a
situation."
     "Indeed we do," Tracey replied.  "I assume you mean we have a new one?"
     "Exactly.  Seven minutes ago, Star Knight activated the Coronal Ejection
Driver."
     "I...see."
     "No, you don't.  It's not working.  Something is keeping the prominence
contained."
     There was a brief pause.  "It must be sympathetic magic.  Rebus has
bound stand-ins for eight gods of the Egyptian mythos, including one for Ra,
the Sun god.  As 'Ra' is bound, so must the Sun be."
     "I don't like what that says about the power of his spell," Delta Rose
muttered darkly.
     "Nor do I.  Nor do I...."

               *              *              *              *

[Giza Plateau.  1:10 PM]

     Solar Max performed another low sweep over the battlefield, trying to
break up the enemy formations where possible.  Unfortunately, the Khadamite
forces relied far more on numbers and raw power than coordination.  Even the
sandcrab robots seemed relatively autonomous...perhaps in order to keep
Radner from controlling them himself, Rebus had severed all their external
communications.
     Some desultory fire came his way, but the augmented armor deflected the
shots that he didn't warp away himself.  It turned out that the refitting
period earlier in the month hadn't all been smokescreen to keep him grounded.
He could hardly walk with the added bulk, but what one tech had called "God
Armor" turned him into a flying arsenal.  Still, while the added power was
damn useful, he didn't delude himself into thinking it made him a match for
the sort of god Rebus was planning to become.
     "Solar Max, we have a problem," Grind's voice came over the comm.  "The
doomsday weapon isn't working.  We have no fallback.  Understand?"
     He looked at the tornado weaving towards the lines, created by Spiral
with the help of a twisted piece of biotech that let her pretend to be
Sultry.  "Understood.  Open channel," he keyed the comm to general frequency.
"The fan has been buried, people.  We need to get through these lines.
Everyone form on me, we're slamming through!"
     A yellow blur signaled the arrival of Essay's exosuit with Lightfoot
clinging onto the back.  Scorch angled in from the south, his sleeker "God
Armor" providing its own thrust since Scorch's newfound flight power couldn't
bear the weight of the systems.  Green Knight and Breaker were still tied up
with mutations, but they weren't too mobile under the best circumstances.  He
could just make out Contact running at top speed through the ruined streets
of Giza, he'd arrive in time to join the punch.
     Time to clear a path.
     "Hey, 'Sultry,' I have a job for you!" Solar Max shouted as he reached
out with his gravitic powers.  Her own torque powers were more specialized
than his own, and he could no more stop her from spinning than he could halt
the rotation of the Earth.  But he COULD redirect her.
     Suddenly the sand-filled tornado whipsawed sideways, slashing a ragged
tear in the Khadamite forces which Spiral had been carefully avoiding until
that point.  Only a handful of sandcrabs and mutations were actually flung
into the dusty sky, but the panic caused by the unnatural disaster sent most
of the enemy scattering to either side for a few precious seconds.  
     Her mech's speed amplified by Lightfoot, Essay was a golden streak as
she upended sandcrabs and smashed mutations in a straight line towards the
Great Pyramid.  Scorch melted projectiles from beyond the panicked area
before they could strike any of the Combine forces, while Contact took care
of Essay's leftovers.
     A handful of Israeli troops raced into the path ASH had cleared, and in
minutes they'd made it inside the outer perimeter.  Solar Max could see Sal
and Breaker coming in late, fighting to hold the corridor open long enough
for some of the heavier weapons to be brought inside.  Now they needed to get
to the pyramid itself, without the supernaturals getting within Rebus's
Anchor range.
     The sand erupted under Essay, sending her mech flying and causing
Lightfoot to take to the air to avoid being caught under it.
     As the dust cleared, Solar Max could see a new threat.  The mummies Pino
Archangeli had left behind in preparation for his return had not all been on
the other side of the pyramid.
     And from the way this group was tossing Essay around, these servants had
apparently been paranorms before they volunteered to die for their master...
     Contact rescued Essay from the mummies, but the advance was pretty much
stalled by this new force, powerful and coordinated.
     Damn.

               *              *              *              *

[The Great Pyramid.  2:04 PM]

     In his sleek powered armor, Triton waded through the narrow strip of
sand like a king in some medieval battle, doing combat with a parade of
grotesques from the worst nightmares of Hieronymous Bosch.  The Khadamite
lines had been routed...some of the Vivarium abominations even switching
allegiance to their erstwhile Chancellor...but Rebus had replaced them with
even more deadly troops.  The reanimated corpses, dressed in '90s militia
fatigues rather than Hollywood mummy bandages, were pinning down the
conventional forces before they could reach the Great Pyramid.  That left Dan
and Triton, and the STRAFE unit that was covering them, stranded well behind
enemy lines.
     That didn't slow down Triton in the least.  He cut a swath through the
unliving soldiers, swinging his crackling energy trident like a scythe.
Tailing close behind him, picking off the stragglers with a normaltech
assault rifle, Dan Tracey thought that Derek Radner had become a man
possessed.  He wasn't fighting for glory or revenge any more.  He was
fighting for his lover's life...or maybe something more.
     "Nose."  Triton's voice sounded cool and distant.  Not at all like a man
who was spearing a mummy paranorm through its mouldering ribcage.  "You
didn't sound terribly disappointed when Rose said the planet-killer wasn't
working."
     "I wasn't.  I'd rather we stop him ourselves."  He crouched behind
Triton as Teller saturated the area in covering fire.  Triton spotted an
opening and charged for the base of the Great Pyramid; Dan bolted after him.
     "It's a big risk," Triton commented, almost abstractly.  "The smart odds
say we should hustle off-planet, let the Space Fascists take out Rebus, lay
up somewhere else.  It's the surest way to win..."
     Dan instantly knew that Triton had some kind of escape vessel stashed
somewhere.  "This isn't a game any more.  Three billion lives are at stake."
     "To you, maybe.  Only one of them matters to me."  Reaching the base,
Triton swiveled his helm and visor upwards.  He could just barely make out
the dais which held Rebus and his Ennead.  Then, activating his jets, he flew
majestically up the face of the pyramid.
     Dan radioed for Jen Kleinvogel to pick him up and follow, hoping that
the one life that mattered to Radner was at least Sultry's, and not his own.

[2:10 PM]

     Two-thirds of the way up the pyramid, the corpses' sniper attacks
finally stopped.  Dan hoped that was because the rest of STRAFE had succeeded
in repelling the mummies who were trying to stop their climb.  But it might
have been for the same reason that Jen had dropped him off on the pyramid,
and that he and Triton were now climbing the rough, eroded stones.  They were
nearing the radius of Rebus's Anchoring effect.  If Dan tuned out the sounds
of battle, he could almost hear a hypnotic chanting....
     The chanting was suddenly drowned out by the spine-rattling grate of
stone against stone.  Dan and Triton both leveled their weapons at a large
block that was slowly forcing its way out of the pyramid.
     The block popped all the way out, tumbling past them and ending its
4,600-year history by smashing against two mummies near the base.  Two dusty
white hands clutched the sides of the aperture, pulling hard to exhume a
lithe young man from a dark, musty tunnel.  Dan would have normally expected
him to blink for a few seconds in the harsh desert sun, but this boy's eyes
simply did not exist...his upper face was blank.  Somewhere, he had lost the
bandana that normally concealed this fact.
     "Warden," Dan said, not as surprised as he probably should have been.
     Warden dropped into a battle stance as soon as he saw Triton (probably
borrowing Dan's own vision to do so), and Dan shouted for them to stand down.
Before the tensions could escalate, however, two more bodies extracted
themselves from the tunnel.  Two men who were both far too old to be there:
Colonel Richard Hendrick, skin still bright pink from his recent grafts.
And, for once discarding his black leather trenchcoat for a more seasonable
Egyptian djellaba, the fin-de-siecle adventurer Morgan Adams.
     "Colonel," Dan said, "we'd heard you were in the area, but this is both
an unexpected and dangerous place for you to be."
     "There was no time to call you, Tracey."  Hendrick was panting and
sweating, and hating himself for it.  "We took the long way around the world
to get here.  It looked like Rebus was trying to kidnap the kid to play his
Anubis, but that was all an elaborate decoy.  He's bagged Devlin Marx
instead.  We tried to stop him, but you wouldn't *believe* what the inside of
that place is crawling with."
     "It's 'Thriller' all over again," Adams snarled.
     Hendrick squinted over at Triton.  "We ran into your little friend
Tiara, too.  No telling where she's disappeared to."  Triton nodded with
silent satisfaction.
     Dan didn't like it when so many events were happening just outside his
awareness...he'd planted Hendrick with Adams and Warden precisely to keep an
eye on that facet of Rebus's operation, in fact...but there was no time to
dwell on it now.  "We've got to keep climbing," he said.  "Less than half an
hour to go."
     "I'm going with you," Warden insisted.  "I've gone toe-to-toe with Rebus
in the past."
     "Fine," Dan said.  Then he fixed Hendrick and Adams in a harsh stare.
"But you two are climbing back down and rendezvousing with the STRAFE team.
In fact, I'll radio Jen to fly you down."
     Adams would have none of it.  "The Combine doesn't give orders to me,
junior," he shouted.  "I've come to far to..."
     "We've heard reports that Pino Archangeli is down there."
     Adams paused.  "Take me to him," he said, much more softly but with no
less determination.
     Hendrick and Adams settled in for their airlift.  Dan, Triton, and
Warden continued to climb.


               *              *              *              *

[Giza Plateau.  2:20 PM]

     Peregryn fingered a small, silk-wrapped bundle as he watched the power
rise and take form around the Great Pyramid.  His breathing slowed as he
finished the ritual and cleared his mind.  Emotion receded from the shining
landscape of his soul as he had taught it to do.  He had no space for it now,
no room for fear.  Or love.  Either could be disastrous right now.
     As the concerns of the flesh dropped away, the aetherial realm that
suffused all prosaic reality came into focus.  The pyramid glowed as brightly
as the Sun itself with all the power being drawn into it.
     But like the Sun, it had a dark spot on it.
     Rebus.
     He wielded his Anchor like a whip, lashing out at selected enemies and
robbing them of their glow, yet not disrupting the shining locus behind him.
     It was nearly time for the ritual to reach its climax.  A climax that
would doom the world.  A climax the rest of the assembled heroes had not been
able to avert.
     And so it fell to him, Peregryn.  Howard Henderson Jr.  Born twenty-odd
years ago for this moment, to be the fulcrum on which the world would turn.
     He was a mystic gun right now, loaded with two potent bullets, either of
which could be blocked by the man he needed to stop.  He had to fire soon,
but either choice would bring potentially horrible consequences.  Did he dare
risk the lesser of two evils and have it be insufficient to carry the day?
     No.
     He unwrapped the silken package, revealing a ring of purest blackness.
The Ebon Band.  A repository of Lord Ebon's power, created as a hedge against
setbacks thirty years ago, then abandoned in the waning days of the
Godmarket.
     The greater of two evils.
     Peregryn slipped the Ebon Band onto his hand, and it was like plunging
his arm into icewater...and then falling in and drowning in it.  Darkness
suffused him as power reached out and sought a master who had left this plane
a generation ago.  Finding none, it decided to master its wearer.
     "Darkness strike the Sun!" Peregryn gasped, stretching forth his hands
and forcing the power outward, ravening forth to find a new target.  To
strike the imprisoned Doublecross, using one great evil to destroy another
and thwart a third.
     It took only a fraction of a second, but the battle on the ground
stopped as all stood transfixed by the dark power unleashed.  A thrill of
horror made the strongest mutations and stoutest heroes pause.
     Rebus laughed, and Peregryn felt even colder as the vile power met a
lash of darkness and was consumed.
     He sank to his knees, weak and trembling from the effort of controlling
the last vestiges of Lord Ebon's essence.  He had lost, and the world was
doomed.  Even if he could get past Rebus's defenses, he lacked the strength
to use his other "bullet" now.
     Even through closed eyes, he could see the power flare brighter than the
Sun as Glyph reached the end of the written ceremony.
     The darkness surrounding Rebus was replaced by the incandescent glow of
godlike power.  Lost within that blaze was the snuffing of a single life as
Rebus ensured that his Ennead could never be used against him.

     "I AM BECOME GOD!" Rebus bellowed across the sands as summer passed into
autumn....


============================================================================

Next Issue:

     Rebus now has the power of a god!  Can even Earth's mightest heroes
stand against him?  Be here for "Equinox"!

============================================================================

Authors' Notes:

     Matt Rossi has been incommunicado for some time now, unfortunately.
Before he went silent, we worked out a rough idea for what Warden's role in
this crossover would be.  Hopefully he will return and be able to write his
part, which will for now remain an "untold adventure."
     There's some pretty heavy-duty vocabulary tossed around here, but most
of it should have been clear from context.  www.dictionary.com should help
you figure out any that's still stumping you.
     Finally, in case there was any confusion, all of the first person
narration scenes were from Rebus's point of view.  He will continue to have
the occasional first person narration in the two remaining issues.  When
others have first person narration duties, we'll try to make it immediately
clear that it's not Rebus.