AN: Okies, final chapter! It's slightly longer than my average chapter, but only slightly....Hope ya enjoy the finale!

Ch24

With a sigh Nila used one forearm to push a few stray strands of hair out of her face, taking great care to avoid those annoying smudges of mechanical oils and grease that colored her hands, arms and clothes.

"Give it another try," she called out as she sat back, gazing up at the Soldier's open center of control. A subtle movement amongst the shadows was all that she received to tell her that she had been heard. An apprehensive moment passed, and then another....Nila was about to utter a few choice phrases--words not suitable for young ears--when another movement demanded her attention. This time it was the Soldier itself that was moving, the giant fingers of one enormous hand clenching and unclenching slowly. Nila grinned, the urge to cuss immediately replaced with the nearly uncontrollable desire to cheer for joy.

"Reaction time's too slow," a voice commented from above.

Nila's exuberance quickly lowered a few notches from overjoyed to merely pleased; nothing could fully erase the happiness she felt--not even Dago's seemingly unappreciative

comments. "Well, at least it's moving," she replied with a smile, looking up at the figure that leaned out from the Soldier's control center. When she had begun working on the mechanical hand countless hours ago it had been completely immobile; now, she was pleased to see, that mobility had at least been restored.

"Hn." Dago quickly retreated back into the shadows, leaving Nila once again staring into uncertain darkness.

She turned her attention to the massive hand, wondering briefly if the problem with the reaction time lay in the mechanics of the hand, in the controls, or somewhere in between. The hands contained some of the most delicate mechanics of the whole Soldier, and subsequently Nila had put off working on them until there was very little else left to be done. It had been the best thing to do, because the more she worked on the Soldier, the more her skills increased, and the more confident she became with her work until even the most difficult mechanics seemed almost second nature.

"Let's call it a night," she called up to Dago. "We can work on the reaction time tomorrow."

After a moment the alien reappeared, making his way slowly down from the control center using conveniently placed notches and grooves in the Soldier's facade. The climb was somewhat more difficult in his human body, the foot and handholds being quite widely spaced, but Dago was highly experienced with the movements and seemed to know instinctively where to step. He climbed without hesitation, and even Nila would be hard-pressed to believe that not so long ago he--well, his body at least--had been shot in the shoulder. The wound itself had healed over, but Nila knew that injuries like that weren't so quickly dismissed--the pain tended to linger long after the wound itself had healed. But Dago, she had learned, was about as tough as they came.

Suddenly a new voice broke the quiet of the hangar, drawing Nila's immediate attention.

"Cyrus told me I'd find you two here," Iye called, raising one hand in greeting as both Nila and Dago turned to look his way. Dago immediately dismissed him, quickly disappearing around one side of the Soldier; Nila, on the other hand, climbed to her feet and headed in his direction.

"Well, long time no see," she responded, her tone that of joking reprimand.

"It's been a few days," Iye admitted. Ever since the Soldier had been taken by the reformists, Iye had in fact been quite busy. The government, of course, hadn't been willing to just sit back and leave things as they were; they were intent on getting the Soldier back, and that meant by any means necessary. The alien had quickly taken control of the situation, assuring Cyrus that, with proper provisions, he could counter anything that the government threw at them. And he had. But he was running out of resources, and his defenses were really little more than tricks and long range 'specialty' weapons. They needed more. "How's the Soldier coming along?"

"Good," Nila replied with a broad smile. "We're very nearly there."

"Well that's good," he responded, perhaps a bit reluctantly, "because I do believe our time is just about up...."

"You mean...?"

Iye nodded slightly. "We have a week, at the most," he told her. "It would be best, of course, if we got a message out to halt the attack some time before that, but...." He shrugged, unable to convey the nonchalance that he wanted. "If things don't work out, we do have the option of making a more conventional attack to get what we want, but the facility that houses the communications devices we need also houses a couple of dangerous implements, and it would be dangerous--many lives would probably be lost. It would be best to have an ace in our hand before we make a move. How long do you think it'll take before the Soldier's ready?"

Nila sighed, silently going through what still needed to be done. There were still quite a few relatively minor tweaks to be made, the reaction time to be sped up, and one or two larger tasks as well. All things considered it could take longer than they had, but if she worked fast enough, and long enough, then maybe.... "Give me four days," she replied, "and I should be able to do everything that needs to be done."

Iye nodded his consent, but Nila had already turned back to the Soldier.

"Hey Dago," she called as she headed back towards the massive machine, "looks like we're going to be working overtime for a few days. Let's get on that reaction time, shall we?"

Iye was slightly surprised to see Dago obediently reappear from where he had disappeared behind the Soldier, and even more surprised that Dago offered not a word of complaint about Nila's orders. The alien climbed back up to the control center of the Soldier--the very place he had just descended from not a few minutes ago--and did it without an outward sign of grievance. Iye, for his part, was impressed. It seemed to him that the Soldier couldn't be in better hands. He left the hangar with a small smile on his face; he would be back in four days time.

---

The Soldier stood motionless in the yard of the government facility, with Dago merely keeping watch from within the machine. The facility had housed only a small number of government troops, and its mass defense weapons were few. None in the facility had truly suspected that it was home to anything that the reformists would want enough to launch an attack for; it had therefore been sorely ill-prepared to defend itself against the attack that had occurred. The Soldier had taken care of the weapons--those that would have decimated a vast number of human troops had been nothing to the alien machine. Once those weapons had been taken care of, the rest of the battle had been superfluous; the reformists had taken control of the building in a surprisingly minimal amount of time.

Inside the building, a small group of the reformists had gathered in a nondescript room. It was the contents of this room that had been the reason behind their attack.

Cyrus watched from the doorway as Iye punched a series of buttons on one of the number of strange machines that lay scattered around the room. The alien was muttering darkly under his breath, and though Cyrus heard few of his words clearly it was obvious that he was cursing the government, amongst other things. Nila, meanwhile, had managed to remove a small panel from the front of the machine and was peering curiously at the mechanics of the thing. Even with the help of the alien mechanical aide that she bore, it seemed that she could find nothing obviously wrong.

"Maybe it's the power source," she suggested when her search turned up nothing mechanically wrong with the device. "Is there another compatible energy source in the room that we can try?"

Iye lifted his gaze from the communications device, glancing around the room at the miscellany of alien machines. "There," he finally replied, gesturing to a small, box-like, metal construction that sat discreetly and seemingly abandoned in one corner of the room. "But it's a small source--little more than en emergency supply," he added as Nila lifted the item. "It won't power this large of a machine for long."

"Well then I guess we'd better hope that the message gets picked up quickly," Nila replied as she set the small box down atop the larger machine.

Opening the box Nila found what appeared to be a number of small, spare parts--various disks and chips and a number of objects that the average human wouldn't recognize at all--and sitting right on top of the variety of items was the energy source that they were after. It was probable, she knew, that the government had no idea what the box contained. The government didn't know what any of the items were or what they did, and so they had simply set the box aside until they could learn more; it was a lucky development, because it meant that the items were likely untampered-with. The same couldn't be said for many of the machines that occupied the room.

The old, expended energy source was removed from the communications device, and replaced with the much smaller one. Nila frowned slightly; physically there wasn't much difference between the two--not on the outside anyway--but she knew that didn't necessarily mean much. She sighed quietly in relief as the formerly silent machine began to emit a low humming--the sound of a machine coming quietly to life. At least it was working now, but for how long?

"Just how much time do you think we'll have?" she questioned.

Iye pressed a quick sequence of buttons before responding. "If the source isn't depleted at all, perhaps an hour."

Nila's frown deepened. That wasn't a lot of time.

---

The moon shed little light on the frost-covered field and dawn was still hours away, but the field was illuminated nonetheless. Two pairs of headlights cast an ill-defined spotlight; the vehicles themselves were shrouded in darkness, almost making it seem as though the light came from some ghostly source. But there was no one there to think such a thing, no unwanted onlookers were there to take in the scene; the area was secluded, and the only people present were the ones that had arrived in the vehicles, the ones who still sat in the dark vans, waiting.

In the dark sky above the field a small speck of light gradually grew larger and larger. It drew nearer the earth at a gradual pace, seeming to exert more caution the nearer it came to the illuminated field. The shape of the object was ill-defined, but as it neared and became larger to the eye, the occupants of the vans were able to make out some features--all of them indistinct. It was strange, sure, but at the same time there didn't seem to be anything about it that was particularly memorable. And that was the way that the ship's occupants liked it.

One ship. Not thousands, not hundreds, not dozens, not even two or three--just one. One ship that was showing great caution in landing. One ship that wasn't about to open fire on a world ill-prepared to defend itself from such an attack. One ship that was going to be gone in as little time as possible, leaving no signs that it had ever been.

The single ship touched down lightly in the center of the field, illuminated by the headlights of the two vans. The relief of the vehicles' occupants could almost be felt on the air. It one had been near enough to the scene, they probably could have heard a collective sigh of relief.

In near silence shadows began to move around the vans. Strange equipment was being unloaded from the backs of the vehicles--equipment that had earlier been housed in two separate facilities of two opposing forces. Alien equipment that was going back to where it came from.

Behind the two vehicles stood a huge, humanoid-shaped machine--a Soldier that would finally be going home. The deadly machine would not be missed. It's value in war was immeasurable, but possessing it was as dangerous as being on the receiving end of its attacks. It was something too much desired to be kept. And though the war between the government and the reformists was not over, it had entered a phase where the use of force and weapons could finally be put aside--hopefully for good. The two opposing sides had finally agreed to negotiate, thanks in part due to the reformists' apprehension of the Soldier; of course, the reformists would see to it that the government wouldn't know that the machine was gone until after an agreement had been settled upon.

From out of the alien ship emerged a number of large, bipedal life forms. The machines that had been taken out of the vans were exchanged, carried into the ship with ease by the much stronger aliens. The transport of the Soldier would have to wait a few moments, until a direct transit to a much larger ship--one that waited out of sight of earthly eyes--could be executed. It was a common maneuver, and never took long. Soon, all that would be left of the massive machine would be two large impressions in the grass where it had stood.

When the aliens left, there would be few who knew that they had been there at all. Those that did know, however, were not apt to ever forget.

-

-

AN: Okay, so it skipped around a bit, but I wanted to cover all the bases without having to go through all the time that passed. Soldier fixed--check. Communications device recovered--check. Aliens come and pick up their stuff (and stranded associates)--check. Earth still intact--check! :) And bonus--I avoided a sappy good-bye scene. Yay!

On another note, as far as the next story to be posted, I've decided that most of mine lack originality. I want to do something that hasn't been done a gazillion times before....I'm on a quest for inspiration! If anyone has even a small inkling--something new that they'd like to see done--I'm open to ideas. In the meantime, the stories that I was going to post here can be found on my website...which can be found in my bio. Happy hunting!

Much Luv, Skip-Bo