B                   THE PYRAMID SCHEME: CAPSTONE                       B
 EBU                         #2 - Equinox                               EBU
REBUS    copyright 2001 by Dave Van Domelen, Tony Pi, Marc Singer      REBUS
============================================================================
                         An ASH Universe Event!
============================================================================

     [cover shows the Great Pyramid at Giza.  The Sun has lowered and
      looks like it rests on the top of the pyramid, casting a single
      figure in silhouette.  Waves of energy lash out from him and 
      hurl heroes down the sides of the pyramid.]

[The Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt.  2:25 PM]

     The others don't see it yet...at least, not the way I do.  Not with a
mage's eyes.  Not through the eyes of the Peregryn.
     Lorenzo Archangeli, former Anchor, former supervillain, former HUMAN,
has become a god.  And not in the more prosaic sense that my teammates in ASH
are like gods among men.
     No, Archangeli is a god in the true sense.  He is no longer subject to
the laws of nature in any significant way.  Time and space are his
playthings.  Logic bends to his whim.  Nothing on this side of the Barrier
has the power to even force him to notice it.  The old tales my father,
Howard Henderson Sr., tells of the Godmarket pale in comparison to what
Archangeli is capable of.  Because there are no other gods here to compete
with him, to keep him in check. 
     The only reason we are not all dead is that it takes time for a man's
mind to truly grasp what it means to be a god.  And, perhaps, because it
takes even longer for a man's mind to transcend the petty, temporal concerns
of its old life.
     Such as revenge.  Savoring it and making it last as long as possible, to
wring every last drop of pain and terror from one's enemies.
     To his allies, at least, he may be quick and merciful.  As I watch in
stunned silence, he strikes off the horned head of Peryton with his bare
hands, permanently removing a member of his mystic Ennead.  The Ennead was
instrumental to the ceremony by which Archangeli attained godhood...and could
have been used to lay him low again, had he allowed it.
     If we cannot stop him, however, his almost offhanded murder of Peryton
will have been a powerful act of mercy and friendship, compared to having to
live through what is to follow.  Perhaps that is what loyalty has secured for
Peryton?  And what of the disloyal?
     Christians talk of tribulations to accompany the end of the world.  They
were correct, it seems, except for the identity of the deity inflicting the
torment....

               *              *              *              *

[2:26 PM]

     The hidden tunnel that led to the top of the pyramid was designed for
the passage of souls, and by some tacit consensus among the ancients, souls
were assumed to be thin, wispy, and gossamer light.  Celestial catwalks for
superthin models, thought Tiara, as she slid her way up the cramped space on
her back.  Though the Santari gravgloves were bulky, and in no way matched
any of her stealthwear, Tiara made good use of them, using micrograv pools on
the fingertips to speed her ascent.  Every second counted.
     After years of training, her mind rarely failed her in counting out her
distance and direction, and she stopped where she had calculated the platform
to be, on the outside.  There should only be a single block between her and
the outside world, here.  She put the palms of the gravgloves against the
block above her.  She could spare only enough energy to pull off one
repulsion blast, and she hoped to Lady Luck that the blast would be enough to
remove the block, and to Dumb Luck that Rebus would have chosen to stand on
that precise spot on the pyramid.  The gloves hummed and triggered the blast.
The ancient stone shuddered and broke free of the pyramid, jumping a few
meters before crashing and rolling down the side of the pyramid.  Tiara
sighed.  It took the likes of Rebus to make her commit vandalism against a
great work of art, a great sacrilege to her beliefs.  Art should be
preserved, even if it meant stealing it for your own private collection.
Already, an idea was creeping into her head: how could she steal an entire
pyramid?  If she wasn't in the middle of a war to end all wars...quite
literally...she might have paused to draft out a few preliminary plans.
     With a graceful leap, Tiara pounced through the hole and rolled as she
landed on the makeshift platform.  A quick glance ascertained that Rebus was
very much distracted by the ritual.  Her former teammates were in no
condition to fight.  They were lying dazed on the platform.  She spied the
object she came to steal, thrust carelessly into the wooden platform by its
butt.
     The AstroSpear.
     If not for the gravgloves, she could not have pulled the collapsiron
spear from the wood, much less carried it.  But there was just enough energy
left in the gloves to pull off the grab-and-run.
     Or...to rescue Sultry?  Tiara knew that even with the stakes being the
world itself, Radner would take his beloved before his weapon.  Of course,
Radner would probably have a way to get both, as Tiara did not.  She had to
make a choice. 
     Of course, since she was not Radner, the choice was easy.  The world or
Sultry?  Not even a question, really.
     So she grabbed the AstroSpear and ran, not at all princess-like.  There
was a time and place for etiquette, and Apocalypse just didn't seem like the
time....

     Triton waited for her partway up the side of the pyramid.  She tossed
him the AstroSpear.  "He's still got Doublecross, but I got what you asked.
Batter up, as you would say, Chancellor?  I better watch this from the safety
of a royal box."
     "Yes, your highness.  You may find it safer elsewhere.  Humanity may be
eternally in your debt."
     "That might mean something," she shouted as she raced into the shadows,
"if eternity lasted past the next few minutes.  Good luck, Derek."

               *              *              *              *

[2:27 PM]

     The eye of the hurricane passed, the brief calm swept away by a torrent
of power emanating from a man who had spent his life only able to mute such
an outburst.  He was like a child first discovering he could ride a bicycle
and reveling in the new freedom.  There was no malice or pride or arrogance
in his eyes, only a flash of pure joy burning as brightly as the power
coruscating outward from his body.
     Heroes and villains alike tumbled down the sides of the Great Pyramid,
or flew away outright, to land in crumpled heaps in the sand, their powers
useless against the tide of godly power.
     Rebus laughed.
     "Father, you were right to seek this!" he exulted.
     Then the calculating sneer returned to his eyes as he surveyed his perch
atop the pyramid.  While the remains of his Ennead had scattered along with
the fools attempting to thwart him, he had retained the presence of mind to
keep one of the members close at hand.  After all, there is also a joy in
seeing one's rivals suffer.
     He gently caressed the ankh of solid lambent energy at his side.
Visible inside was a very special member of the Ennead.  Not special because
of power or mythological significance...special because she was the one
person Triton cared about besides himself.
     "Ah, Sultry," he cooed.  "I bear you no personal ill-will, of course.
But your death will be very slow and very painful, so that the good
Chancellor will have the most exquisitely tormented experience before he
follows you into death.  The heavier his heart the better...that one deserves
Amnut's devouring maw."
     Rebus laughed again.  But this was not a joyful shout.  It was the
infernal chuckle of the devil himself....

               *              *              *              *

[2:30 PM]

     This was utter insanity, on a scale that made the worst of Manhattan's
paragang battles tame by comparison.  However, those battles had prepared
Warden for what might happen here.  And this was not the first time he'd
fought a battle atop an imposing structure.
     He moved in darkness at midday, not daring to rely on his ability to see
through the eyes of others while Rebus was still a threat.  Besides, in the
wake of that surge of energy, he doubted he could find a surrogate looking in
the right direction.  All around him he could feel the pain and shock as
enemy and ally alike was swept off the pyramid by the manifestation of
Rebus's godhood.  Warden had felt the pulse building just in time to tuck
himself into the recess of a "step" in the pyramid's face.
     Now he was nearly at the top.  He didn't know what he would do once he
got there...if Rebus was indeed a god now, he didn't stand a chance.  But he
was NOT going to flee or hide.
     Besides...he and Rebus had history together.  He would not have long
been able to hide from a "merely" human Rebus, much less a god.
     Then the darkness became unavoidable as a familiar numbness descended
over the paranormal senses that compensated for Warden's lack of eyes.  He
had felt it mere moments ago as he avoided Rebus's power burst, like
blinking, but now it had settled down like the night.
     "Ah, my young Hoder," called a smug and hated voice.  "Or should I call
you Anubis, given the setting?  I can tell you are puzzled...how can I be a
god AND an Anchor?  Aren't they two sides of a coin, supernature and nature?
But I AM a god, Anubis," Rebus chuckled darkly.  "I am the entire coin.  And
while I will it, none within the shadow of this pyramid will be anything but
human, even those normally exempt from the force of the Anchor.  Of course, I
have allowed a few exceptions, to make things amusing, such as letting you
have the use of your extra senses so you could reach my perch."
     Warden said nothing.  What was there to say?  It was clear Rebus wanted
an audience to gloat over, and he had been allowed to become that audience.
     "Let us dance, Warden.  Finish the business we started in Manhattan and
continued in Japan.  I promise you, I will use no abilities I did not have
when the music first started.  Before I ascend to the heavens, I would like
to show you why you never stood a chance against me, even when I was mortal."
     "Fine," Warden replied.
     The deadly dance began.

               *              *              *              *

[2:35 PM]

     Conflicto pulled himself up from where he'd landed face-first in the
sand.  He'd tried every trick he knew to slow his fall, or cushion it, or
squirt down the side of the Great Pyramid like it was a giant water-slide.
Nothing worked.  He had been powerless.  In fact, he was pretty amazed that
he'd survived the fall at all, with only a few cuts and scrapes to show for
it.  Glyph was babbling something about the mercy of Rebus.
     She'd said the same thing when he'd killed Viktor.
     That memory alone caused Conflicto to look around and size up the
situation for once, instead of just shooting his mouth off.  Sultry was still
Rebus's prisoner up at the apex, and he had no idea where Doublecross had
disappeared to.  The rest of the Ennead were dusting themselves off and
getting to their feet...except for one.
     He looked down at Myriad.  Back up at the apex, Rebus's anchoring wave
had reverted her to a compact, gelatinous sphere, sort of like a milky white
medicine ball crisscrossed with arteries and veins.  The fall had splattered
that sphere into a viscous, bloodstained mess.  Myriad wouldn't be changing
her shape any more.  Despite the heat, Conflicto shivered.
     Then he noticed Burnout, clutching her head and mumbling to herself.
"So hard...to stay Tyra...if this weren't the host...."  She started
frantically humming to herself as she staggered away from the Pyramid,
towards a battlefield where Israeli troops were fighting what seemed to be a
bunch of heavily-armed mummies.
     Glyph was no help either.  She had traced some kind of symbol into the
sand, and now she was looking at it with a smug little grin.  "I am off to
reward my master's faith in me," she announced.  "Those of you who value your
place in the new cosmos would do well to follow me."  She rose haughtily and
marched towards the heaviest fighting.
     "Screw THAT," Conflicto shouted, suddenly rediscovering his motormouth.
"Hey, Labby, I don't suppose you could 'port us out of here before the Nile
Delta Force notices the fresh meat?  Or did your powers blink out too?"
     Labyrinthe started to answer, but Caryatid cut her brother off.  "Don't
be ridiculous.  Rebus has promised us godhood."
     Conflicto pushed himself up into her face, ignoring the fear she'd
always instilled in him.  "Like he promised Peryton?" he shouted.  Viktor had
been his first friend in this outfit....
     "Peryton offered Rebus nothing, little boy.  I have been his most
invaluable servant.  We are going to find the edge of this Anchor effect and
then place our powers at his service again."
     Conflicto was hopping up and down, genuinely apopleptic.  "We're going
to DIE unless we get the hell out of here!"  He turned to Labyrinthe and
lowered his voice in an appeal to his friend's common sense. "Labby..."
     Caryatid scowled at her brother.  "Yvan...."
     His sister was already marching towards the Cairo suburbs.  He looked to
Conflicto...then started after her...then turned to look at Conflicto again.
     "Eugene..."  His shoulders were slumped and his heart was heavy.  "You
understand...she's my sister."
     Eugene Kwan nodded.  He understood perfectly.  He understood that
Labyrinthe was voluntarily marching off to his death.
     "Take care of yourself, Labby," he said, knowing damned well Caryatid
would do that for him.
     The Quebecois mages ran for the suburbs.  That left Conflicto virtually
alone on the sand, sitting amidst Myriad's remains.
     Until Devlin Marx suddenly came tumbling down the Great Pyramid.  "Get
me out of here!" Rebus's stand-in for Set bellowed.
     And Spiral, her flight suit tattered and burned from the crash of her
aircraft, came running across the sand with a squad of mummies in dogged
pursuit.  "We've got to get out of here!" she screamed.
     "Yeah, like there's anything *I* can do about that."
     Marx looked at Conflicto and Spiral.  "I'll pay you each a million
dollars if you get me out of here alive."
     Spiral gaped at the idiot American.  Conflicto tapped his forefinger
against his chin and said, "I don't know...a million is kind of chump change
these days...what do you say to ten per cent of the stock in your companies?
Each."
     "WHAT?"
     A burst of automatic rifle fire cracked over their heads.
     "What's that, fifteen per cent?"  Conflicto chuckled.  "Well, you drive
a hard bargain, Groucho, but it's a deal."  He reached out and shook the
dazed Marx's hand.  Then he pushed Marx and Spiral ahead of him, and the
three of them ran like hell.

[2:34 PM]

     The battle had shifted quickly in the wake of Rebus's apotheosis.
Deprived of their powers, the supernormals were trying to fall back and link
up with the Israeli units that had followed them onto the strip of sand that
surrounded the pyramids.  Unfortunately, many of the mummies had arisen from
the ground behind the superhumans' advance, and ahead of the Israelis'.  Pino
Archangeli rushed from skirmish to skirmish on a mummy-driven jeep, calling
out orders and coordinating assaults, doing an excellent job of cutting off
the superhumans.  Morgan Adams followed the undead commander with a pair of
binoculars, waiting for that one opening that never came.
     Adams and Richard Hendrick were with Jay Teller's tiny STRAFE forward-
observer unit, which had at least managed to hook up with the EUROPA team.
Jay Teller and Claire "Arc" Auger had linked hands for the briefest of
instants and were now trying to punch through to the Israeli lines.
     It wasn't easy with the depowered, demoralized agents.  Some, like Lana
"Fadeaway" Smith or Saori "Oni" Taya, were completely lost without their
powers.  Tony Drake, on the other hand, was phenomenal.  In the face of
certain death, all of his anxieties and self-doubts had dropped away; he was
a one-man army, sheperding his teammates and leading counter-attacks on the
mummies.  Teller actually had to order him to pull back...just because Tony
was used to feeling pain didn't mean he could still shrug off bullets.
     Tony's idea of falling back was to slowly walk backwards while he
sprayed a wide, low burst from his M4A1-X, cutting the mummies' legs out from
under them.  The mummies...being the opposite of Tony's old self in that they
took damage but never felt it...responded by dropping to their backs or
bellies and firing a withering volley at the lone agent.  Teller thought he
was about to watch his best friend get killed, but Hotspur bounded across the
combat lines and tackled Tony to the sand.  "Groovin' voz stile, I est," the
EUROPAn said, "maiz maintenon, c'est nicht th'time t'play johnrambo."  His
Eurolac patois may have been hard to follow, but not his intentions.
     The other STRAFE and EUROPA agents had seized covered positions behind a
couple of overturned APCs and were returning fire.  Teller never thought he'd
be grateful for the Singapore cock-up, but it had given them invaluable
experience fighting under Anchored conditions.  The mummies, although
significantly faster than their Hollywood counterparts, were caught by
surprise; as the first wave was gunned down, the Combine and Eurasian Union
teams let out a cheer.
     Then the undead bodies picked themselves up again....

     About thirty yards away the members of ASH found themselves similarly
pinned down, with one exception.  Sara Ana "Essay" Rodriguez had known Rebus
would try to Anchor them...although she hadn't foreseen it happening on this
scale...and she'd planned accordingly.  Her exosuit had a series of auxiliary
systems that operated solely through normaltech, meaning she could still move
and fight.  While the mummies' bullets ricocheted off the dermal plating, she
was grabbing them with forklift claws and punching them with industrial-
strength piledrivers.  They made sickening crunching noises that she tried
not to think about.  With the rest of ASH taking cover and returning fire
from behind her, she was putting a serious dent in the mummies' front lines.
     Naturally, the exosuit also made her a conspicuous target.  At Pino's
command several mummies tried to lob grenades inside it, but Essay had sealed
it well.  A few more jabs of her piledrivers...Essay closed her eyes and
ignored the sound...and those soldiers were too devastated to maintain even
the semblance of life.
     Suddenly Essay's teammates were scattering away from her and Aaron was
shouting for her to take cover.  She was absolutely certain she was being
'painted' with some sort of laser sight.
     Then she looked down at the glowing icon on her chestplate.  It wasn't
the telltale red pinprick she'd been expecting.  It was some kind of
Kabbalistic sigil.
     Glyph popped up from behind a squad of mummies, seated on a floating
chair.  Rebus had allowed his favorite turncoat to keep her powers.  She
smiled, and released a searing bolt of flame that zeroed in on the targeting
sigil, cascading over the exosuit.
     Essay's fire-protection systems kicked in immediately, but without
supertech she had only a limited supply of flame retardant.  It was only a
matter of time before Glyph melted the suit...or cooked her alive inside it.

               *              *              *              *

[2:35 PM]

     "Sister, this is madness," Yvan insisted as the two Quebecois mages
entered the maze of shattered houses and stores where the suburbs of Cairo
abutted the Pyramids.
     "It is madness that is *working*, brother," Claudette replied.  "Rebus
has attained his godhood, all we need do is survive the battle and we will
reap the rewards of standing by his side.  If not godly powers of our own,
then free domain over any part of the world we desire.  Liberation for our
people."
     Yvan kept silent, but he couldn't help but wonder if the yoke of the
Combine was not preferable to rule by what his sister had become.  Even by
what he had become.  Had he drifted so far from his ideals that he could
accept this situation?  Had he really had any ideals to begin with, rather
than just a blind love for his sister and her causes?
     "Hold," came a voice from all around them.
     "Peregryn!" Claudette hissed.  "Show yourself!"  Her hands glowed with
elemental power.
     One of the few remaining doors on the street opened, and the mage
stepped out, surrounded in a nimbus of protective energies.  "Rebus will
reward you only with death or at best subjugation, Caryatid," he said in an
even, emotionless voice.  "Join us and we may be able to beat back this mad
god before he destroys all that lives free.  Or worse, before he calls down
the war of the gods on the world again."
     "Claudette, I think we should..." 
     She savagely cut Yvan off.  "No, brother.  We will not surrender after
the war has been won.  If you cannot see the truth of the situation, you can
go crawl into a hole until the storm has passed.  I will destroy this fool
myself!"
     Bolts of flame and wind lashed out at Peregryn, who stood passively as
they wrapped around him and dissipated.
     "Your shields will not last forever, p'tit aigle!"
     "They do not have to, Caryatid.  I had hoped not to need to resort to
this, but you...and circumstances...leave me no choice."
     Claudette merely sneered and threw golden arcs of lightning, laughing as
Peregryn rocked slightly under the impact.
     "I call upon the earth, the wind, the sea and the sky.  I call upon the
stones in the mountains and the trees in the forest and the flames of the
heart of the world," Peregryn intoned.  "I draw upon all I have done for this
world and ask of all its spirits one boon..."
     "What is he doing?" Yvan asked, feeling the power grow.     
     "DYING!" Claudette shouted, raising her arms to deliver a bolt of
unfettered darkness that now writhed around her fingers.
     Unfazed, Peregryn finished his incantation.  "Banish this one's spirit
from this world...FOREVER!"
     There was a blaze of power as Claudette's darkness was batted aside by
the elemental fury of an entire world.
     When it subsided, Claudette Viau was no longer present anywhere on
Earth.
     Nor was Yvan....

               *              *              *              *

[2:40 PM]

     Now I understand why the old gods would so often take on human guise and
walk among mortals.  The exhiliration of accepting finite limits while
retaining the perspective of the infinite is a pleasure unique to we gods.
     I remain true to my word, using no ability that I did not have prior to
this day of my ascension.  It gives the dance with young Thomas Malfeas an
edge to it, a spice that simply annihilating him with my godly powers would
never give me.
     "Do not dance too near to the edge, Anubis," I taunt, briefly stealing
his powers and forcing him off balance to avoid my savage roundhouse kick.
Then I restore his powers to him before he can fall and end the deadly
dance.  I am immortal, I can prolong this as long as I desire, yes?
     Above it all is a very simple riddle.  What does Warden need to do in
order to survive?  He knows the answer, for I have told him many times.  But
he is too proud to take it, and he will die for his pride.  A pity, such
talent squandered.  A newborn god such as myself would find an avatar quite
useful. 
     Perhaps I could restore his sight if he stooped to serve me?  Not both
eyes, of course.  It wouldn't do to have him possess more eyes than his
master.  But in the land of the blind, the one eyed man...well, you know the
rest.  Yet, he does not show any signs he will agree to be my agent among the
living, although he may yet serve me among the dead.
     And so we dance.

               *              *              *              *

[2:53 PM]

     Even though they were wedged between the Israeli and superhuman forces,
the mummies seemed to be flanking the U.N. and not the other way around.  A
third of the undead troops were circling around behind the pinned
superhumans, ready to close in a pincer and massacre them.  Pino Archangeli
was so confident of victory that he had abandoned his mobile command post for
the pomp and circumstance of a litter.  Borne by embalmed attendants who were
dressed not as soldiers but as priests, Pino swayed gracefully towards the
front lines, basking in a triumph that had been more than twenty-five years
in the making.  Before his own elevation to godhood, he thought, he would
savor putting Morgan Adams's head on a pike.
     That plan was disrupted by a disturbance on the encircling flank.  A
swarm of Vivarium mutations, who had been wandering aimlessly across the
battlefield, were suddenly attacking Pino's soldiers.  Crocodiles with the
hands of children, octopoidal machine-gunners, wolfpacks sprouting from a
single canine torso, kamikaze ape-men...some of the creatures could barely
move through the quasi-Anchoring field, and were decimated by the mummies'
bullets.  Those that could speak howled the name of their leader, Chancellor
Triton.
     Triton rode behind his motley troops, standing and brandishing the
Astro-Spear from the back of a jeep driven by Dan Tracey.  The inactive
'Spear clutched in a Santari grav-glove was mostly just symbolic now, but it
seemed to rally his horde.  They pounced on the mummies, teeth angrily
searching for flesh that was still living.  Triton rolled off the back of the
jeep and waded through the fighting to the dune where Essay was rapidly being
roasted by Glyph.
     He moved slowly and clumsily; his suit wasn't as normaltech-compliant as
Essay's, despite his extensive recent refits.  "Glyph!" Triton shouted.  "Are
you going to attack the Israelis after you've reduced the Combine to ASHes?
How many more of your own people can you betray?"
     The treacherous mage rotated her chair to face Triton.  "You should be
thankful that the Master wishes to spare you for further torture," she
laughed.  "Otherwise this would be your fate rather than hers."  She spun
around and projected her fiery red sigil...the Hebrew letter Shin,
symbolizing the Day of Judgment...on Essay's exosuit one final time.
     Beneath his faceplate, Triton smiled.
     He activated a small device he'd attached to the head of the Astro
Spear, a piece of purloined technology from Doublecross's archives.  Two of
the tines of the 'Spear flared to borrowed life.  The left one threw a
cone of bright red light over Essay, drowning out the sigil.  The right one
moved with far greater precision, tracing an identical one on the back of
Glyph's chair.  The mage watched in confusion as the spell leaped from her
hands and circled around, searching for its target.  She dove off the chair
just as the flames of Judgment turned back and washed over her.
     Screaming, Glyph flailed about in the sand, trying to extinguish her
burning robes and hair.  Triton lumbered towards the traitor, ready to skewer
her.  Glyph begged for mercy as he raised the 'Spear above her heart, then
drove it down...
     Only to check it at the last instant, and kneel beside the still-
burning woman.  "This is only because I may need a mage to disrupt his
ritual," Triton said.  "And because I *will* run the Conclave again."  He
pressed a finger to her neck, subcutaneously injecting a stream of remote-
controlled microflechette grenades into her jugular.  "You just became my
first recruit."
     Essay ran past him, leading the rest of ASH in a charge against the
mummies, and only then did Triton realize what he'd done.  He'd just spared
the life of one dangerous enemy and saved the life of another...of three
entire *groups* of them.  This could only come back to haunt him later.
     It didn't save Sultry.  It didn't stop Rebus.  It did almost nothing for
him.
     But it felt *good*.

     Dan Tracey drove through the increasingly confusing battleground.  He
swung past STRAFE and EUROPA, first cutting them off from their undead
opponents, then wrenching the wheel hard to the left and slamming into the
startled mummies.  Dan downshifted, slowing the jeep and allowing the STRAFE
and EUROPA teams to follow him through the hole he'd made.
     He was breathing calmly the whole time, trying to ignore his slowed
reflexes and dulled perceptions, telling himself the Anchor field should
affect him less than anybody because he was only human.  He only did the
things anyone could do, if they'd had the will; and his will, he'd decided,
could not be Anchored.
     Dan gunned for the Israeli lines, visible now on the other side of the
undead phalanx.  He could see Pino Archangeli off to his right, waving for
something to be passed up to his raised throne, some kind of scepter.  Dan
forced himself to focus on clearing a path for the others, only vaguely heard
Teller shouting something in his earpiece.  Saw Pino raising the scepter to
his shoulder and ignored it.  He could do this; he was only human....
     He'd just shifted into top gear when the thunderclap of an igniting
rocket told him that was no scepter.  Dan leaped off the jeep as the LAW
slammed into its side, flinging it into the air before depositing it in a
flaming heap.  He'd jumped towards the rocket, so the jeep didn't crush him,
but the shockwave tossed him into the sand like a rag doll.  He didn't get
up.
     Tony Drake and Jen Kleinvogel pressed forward, surrounding their fallen
friend before the mummies could reach him.  The other agents followed,
forming a small island in the middle of Pino's forces.  The elder Archangeli
parted his dried lips into a deathly smile and waved his litter forward.
     The entourage halted as two gunshots turned the forward bearers' chests
into explosions of dried flesh.  The entire litter pitched forward, tumbling
Pino into the sand; the rear acolytes were briefly pinned under the falling
throne, until two more shots vaporized their heads.
     Richard Hendrick and Morgan Adams stood over Pino, reloading their pump
shotguns.  Pino rose with a sang-froid that was astonishing even for the
dead; surveying Adams's long white djellaba, he greeted his old foe with a
sneer.  "Finally come back to Africa, I see.  Rather fitting that you should
die here."
     "At least I'll see you go ahead of me," Adams said, pumping the shotgun
and leveling it at Archangeli's face.  "For the second time."
     "You'll not have long to savor it."  Already, his followers were
surrounding the two aging fighters, unperturbed by Hendrick's frantic shotgun
blasts.  The sound of safeties being unlatched echoed across the sand.  Pino
let out a satisfied, almost nostalgic sigh.  "We've danced this pavane
before, have we not?"
     "We both walked away then," Adams said.  "And you gave birth to all of
this."  The screams of howling creatures and dying men filled the desert.
His finger tightened on the trigger...
     "Nevertheless," Pino said, "this isn't how either one of us wishes to
end our acquaintance, is it?"  He glanced at Hendrick, his troops, the
encircled STRAFE and EUROPA agents.
     Adams nodded coolly with understanding, acceptance...maybe even a twinge
of respect.  "Get them out of here, Richard."
     "What?"  Hendrick spun to face his current partner and longtime idol.
"But..."
     "Just do it.  Your men too, Pino."  Archangeli nodded regally and his
men fell back.  Hendrick still didn't budge, until Adams shouted, "DO IT!"
     Hendrick took the opening and ran to collect his agents.  Once Adams was
satisfied that the undead soldiers were pulling back, he dropped the shotgun.
Sliding back his djellaba, the adventurer reached for his belt and drew a
long combat knife.  It had a freshly-painted Utchat, the Eye of Ra, on its
hilt.
     Smiling, Pino drew his own knife, a far more ritualistic number with a
pommel shaped like a pyramid.  The living man and the dead one began circling
one another.
     They could both just make out the dais at the top of the Great Pyramid,
where Lorenzo was sparring with the Warden kid.  Both battles were acts of
madness and hubris in the midst of the larger war.  Adams growled, "Like
father, like son."
     Pino raised what would have been his eyebrows, had the embalming and
burial left him with any hair.  "Far better that he should take after
me...than his dear mother."  He twirled the weapon in his hands.  "You know,
this is the very knife I used to kill her."
     Finally losing his cool, Morgan Adams snarled and lunged.

               *              *              *              *

[2:56 PM]

     Dan Tracey stopped for a moment to catch his breath and take a sip from
his canteen.  Morgan was being a suicidal idiot, taking on a reanimated
corpse that was getting stronger every minute, but he'd taken Pino out of the
picture for now.  The undead forces Pino had been commanding were still
fighting intelligently, but no longer being commanded brilliantly, and that
made all the difference.  The good guys were back on the offensive, and that
gave Dan time to think.
     While his ego screamed that he was just a human, and the "superAnchor"
effect shouldn't bother him, an antitank weapon had gone a long way towards
shoving his ego back in its place.  He needed the edge that the Magene gave
him, as much as he disliked admitting it.  He quickly sprinted for the
suburbs, where Peregryn had reported the superAnchor effect to be absent,
motioning for Jen to follow him.  The others were doing a good job of driving
back the mummies, and Hendrick was keeping an eye on Pino to keep the fight
"honest," but Jen would do more good up in the air with Solar Max and Scorch,
skirting the zone of dampening and keeping the battle contained.
     Besides, he needed the computers back in the field HQ to check out the
ramifications of the plan that was starting to bubble up from the back of his
head.
     How to attack a god?  Aim for his hubris.  The fact that Rebus and
Warden were still sparring atop the Great Pyramid told Dan that Lorenzo's
pride was more than intact, it was overweening.  Like father, like son.  Both
too proud, both too clever for their own good, both too cruel to avoid
taunting and tormenting an enemy that he should just kill.  And something
Pino had said to Morgan clinched it.  Dan had his plan.
     "Captain Tracey," buzzed a slightly distorted voice in his comm unit.
     "Yes, Delta?" Dan answered as he entered the field HQ and transferred
the call to the more powerful comm system there.  The static and distortion
from the distant signal cleared up, and Delta Rose's face appeared on the
screen.  
     "The Coronal Mass Ejection has started...the ceremony may have
interfered with the planetkiller's operation, but it only delayed the
effect.  Readings show that this CME is moving at high relativistic speeds,
and will arrive in under two hours, perhaps under one hour.  Readings show
it's easily strong enough to scour the planet of life.  I'm...sorry."
     Dan Tracey smiled, for a moment evoking the look of some of the more
horrific Vivarium warriors.  "Don't be.  This is PERFECT."

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

Next Issue:

     Grind hopes to give Rebus enough rope to hang himself with...but what
happens when your enemy already has infinite rope and seems to be doing fine?
Be here for the final chapter of the Pyramid Scheme, "Fall!"

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

Author's Notes:

     The "Singapore cock-up" Teller refers to is the opening arc of STRAFE's
title, involving a mission in Chinese-controlled Singapore that goes wrong in
almost every way imaginable.