No Carrier

History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-Winston Churchill

Motoko was not the retreating type. Normally, her artificial strength and agility, as well as her battle instincts and bleeding edge firepower, made fighting most opponents an almost relaxing dance of precision and beauty. This battle was different -- with inferior muscle and weapons, being outnumbered, and the added burden of not being able to kill her opponent, no matter how many times she calculated out strategies and probabilities, there was no good outcome.

But Motoko was also not the dying type, so she decided to flee, gritting her teeth and promising herself that she would come back later, with additional firepower or ideas or something that would enable her to break Batou out of his possessed state without killing him. The next time he slashed at her, she sidestepped the blade, then spun around behind him and darted towards a small stand of trees that grew next to the castle. She quickly swung up, and pressed herself to the trunk of the tree, breathing heavily.

"Fleeing to save your own life, rather than completing your mission?," she heard Batou call out below her, searching, "I should have expected it from a dishonorable ninja like yourself, but I find myself amazed at your cowardice!" Additional soldiers arrived, having heard the noises of battle, and Batou sent them out with torches to search the grounds.

"She's in the trees!," Ishikawa yelled, and an arrow suddenly pierced the trunkbelow her. She deftly slid across the branch, closer to the castle roof, and then leapt. As she jumped, she broke off and threw a small branch to the other side of the courtyard, and the noise of its landing distracted the guards from the muffled clink of roof tiles as she landed, and she rounded a corner out of Ishikawa's view. The soft shoes she wore made little noise as she scrambled up the roof and hopped onto the balcony, ducking behind a railing to conceal herself from those below.

Motoko's breathing was muffled by the black cloth wound about her face, but she still made an effort to quiet it, even though the effort stabbed at her lungs as they floundered for air. She realized her hands were shaking.

"Can you see her?," Ishikawa called, "I think she went around to the west side."

"I saw her climb onto the balcony on your level, but I don't see her now -- I'm going to go inside and come up. Wait there." Batou turned to two nearby guards and said, "Keep searching -- make sure she doesn't escape!"

As she climbed up higher, she planned on somehow disabling Ishikawa so she would only have one major opponent to deal with. She couldn't ghost hack him -- she was limited to what the Historical Immersion System allowed in the admin interface. She thought about forcibly terminating his connection to the system, but she wasn't sure where his ghost would go. A sudden break in the flow of memories could cause serious psychological damage, perhaps drowning the user's ego in a brawl of identities.

She stopped for a moment, listening. Had he moved? No -- there, footsteps, he was moving away. If there was an Immersion Mode variable, like the one she had previously used to stop the memories flooding into her own mind, that would break the flow of memories so that she could log him out, but there was no such variable for regular users.

Quiet footsteps beneath her drew closer, and she shifted closer to the roof edge. Listening intently, she suddenly swung down, feet landing squarely onto Ishikawa's armored chest. With a quiet grunt of air he flew backwards, directly into a castle support beam. He slumped forward, unconscious, and she smiled with a sudden revelation. If he's not conscious, the flow of memories stops naturally.

Now she could safely log him out without conflicting with the stream of memories, and his ghost would return to his body. Hopefully. Ghost Theory was still just theory, along with some empirical evidence, but having had extensive field experience in it, Motoko felt confident enough to terminate his connection. There was no obvious visual change -- his body still lay there, motionless -- but through the admin interface she could see that he was indeed disconnected.

"Chiyo" had one good idea -- I need to scope out the castle to find the researchers and come up with a better plan to log them out, too. Slinking along the balcony, she noted the layout and the location of the guards, barracks, and outer ladders and stairways. From the admin interface, she could see that there was one researcher in the barracks, one patrolling the grounds, one on the third floor, and two on the top floor. She also found Batou -- he was on the second floor, headed for the balcony where she sat.

There's no way I'll be able to knock him unconscious, especially from here, she thought, as she slid down the roof and into the courtyard. A small group of soldiers saw her and gave a yell, running towards her.

At least I don't have to be carefull of killing the computer-controlled avatars, she thought grimly, drawing a small knife from a pocket in her sleeve and throwing it in one quick motion. It caught one of them in the neck, and he went down, and suddenly several of his companions went down also.

"Major, do you read me?," Ishikawa's voice came in suddenly through her cyber communications interface.

"I read you, Ishikawa," she replied, relieved but not surprised.

"Thanks for getting me out of there -- though I'm still trying to catch my breath after that kick of yours. Anyway, I patched into your admin link through your dummy barrier, and then took the liberty of hacking the source code to disable the computer-controlled avatars. It was a little tricky to recompile and patch it in while the system was live, but I thought you'd appreciate it," he said, sounding pleased.

"Good," she told him, as she moved over into the shadow of the castle. "I should be able to free the researchers in the same way, but since their bodies aren't connected directly to the system anymore, their ghosts won't know where to go. Chief, can we send in someone to connect the researchers' cyberbrains to the system through the net?" She assumed the Chief was listening as well, and she was right.

"I'm afraid that's too risky. Section 1 currently has jurisdiction on this case -- since they have not finished apprehending the suspects involved, there may still be an operative on Akimoto's payroll among the hospital personnel. We have reason to believe that the researchers are being closely monitored, and any interference would most likely result in a medical 'accident' of some sort. If they were to recover, they would be classified as protected witnesses and immediately discharged to Section 1. At that point, it would be much more difficult for them to meet an untraceable death."

They all thought silently for a moment, and then Ishikawa spoke up, "According to Kawazumi's latest paper on Ghost Theory, ghosts don't necessarily need a physical pathway to travel -- just a logical one."

"A logical pathway?," Togusa asked, "How's that different?"

Ishikawa explained, "Well, it is still theory, but basically it means that ghosts can travel along any route that they can conceive of. The most common routes we think of are the ones through the net, but a wireless connection should also work, or even a carrier pigeon."

"Well, we're not going to use pigeons, but I need you to work on some kind of link that can run undetected from the Historical Immersion System to the researchers in the hospital," the Major said.

"Roger."

"What about Batou?," Togusa asked. Motoko sighed inwardly. If she could catch him by surprise, the way she did Ishikawa, she might be able to knock him unconscious . . . but with his body mass and battle instincts, it would be difficult . . . She glanced up to the balcony where Ishikawa lay, and spied Batou kneeling there, probably checking Ishikawa's avatar's vital signs. She managed to overhear him speaking,

"Kosuke . . . I was too late . . ." For a moment, she heard nothing, and then he vowed, "Your death cries out for justice, and I will answer that call!"

"I'll get him out," Motoko stated over the comlink with determination. Somehow . . . .