For Author's notes and Disclaimers please see the beginning of Clonefic Part 2.

The Friday night class had been in session for an hour. After the initial half-hour of warm up exercises and stretching, the students had begun practicing the moves their teachers had shown them in their previous class. During the second half-hour, Xena and Gabrielle had moved among their students, making corrections, demonstrating the finer points, and giving individual advice. There was no set progression of lessons because each student's level and experience was so different, and the soulmates weren't teaching a formal system. Each of the six students had been given a different focus, based on the needs that Serena and Gabriella had discerned. The value of having such a small class was that it functioned as a semi-private tutorial. Considering who the teachers were, it would have been a bargain at almost any price. It would have made the multitudes of students in the chain schools and black-belt factories green with envy.

"Keep working for another 15 minutes please," Gabriella requested, getting nods from the sweating group in response, "and leave us the front twenty feet."

Gabriella knelt and opened the hard-shell case containing her paired short swords. She hefted the black blades and spun them, enjoying their familiar weight and balance in her hands. Then the blonde moved to join the Warrior Princess, who stood waiting for her near the front of the space, calmly rotating the broadsword to loosen her right wrist. In her left hand she held the Combined Chakram. Both clones seemed relaxed to the naked eye, but underneath the calm surface lay a hidden tension; tonight the soulmates held an uneasy sense of expectation. They had received a cryptic warning about visitors from Ares. "In battle there is no substitute for being prepared".

Although the students continued with their lessons, their eyes couldn't help but stray to their teachers, who were obviously preparing to spar. So far, this was the first time they'd brought or used their personal weapons during a class. Only Alex Williams had seen them wielding their chosen arms and knew what to expect. Probably the most curious student was Danielle Lefferts, who had snuck a peek into the cases and was still very interested to see how the ring-bladed weapon was used. She watched as Gabriella approached Serena, expecting some sort of warm up or salutation, as would have been normal in a formal contest or a friendly sparring match. At least she figured there would be a face off and a bow. There was none.

The fighting began so abruptly and with such violence that everyone else in the room froze in shock. Gabriella simply attacked Serena at full speed, and with no warning of any sort. One moment she was in mid-stride, the next, she was slashing the paired blades at her partner so fast they could barely be seen. The whistling of her swords as they sliced through the air was eerie, distracting, and terrifying. Serena met her blow for blow, instantly meeting the offensive. The flashes that reflected off her polished broadsword, and the streaking trails of its movements from the overhead lights, were almost hypnotic. She wielded the Combined Chakram in a series of quick parrying movements, both from the arm and the wrist, attacking with it as well, using jabs and short cutting arcs. The clones didn't need to spend time exploring their opponents' abilities. Each knew the other's capabilities as well as their own. Nor did they engage, part, and reengage. The combat was continuous and would run until the clones stopped by mutual consent. The soulmates never repeated a sequence of moves either. This was free sparring, not a form demonstration.

Except for their breathing they were silent, but their blades rang with each clash of steel; the tempered metals shrieked as edge ground against edge. The weapons declaimed in the language of battle, narrating the contest in a chorus of violence. The blows dictated the rhythm, while the harmony lay in the hiss and whistle of swords slicing through air. It was the echo of armed conflicts from an ancient world; a revisited dream drawn into the waking present by the soulmates' combat. Long ago on campaign fields soaked with the blood of bellatoris, the crashing of steel and the squeal of bronze had been called the Hymn of Ares. In deference to the purity of that anthem these warriors voiced no battle cries or taunts, no boasts or threats. The soulmates had trained to kill in silence, to fight using stealth and surprise, and to focus their attention against any distraction. They had also learned that in battle, a cold, impersonal façade chilled their enemies to the core. While an enemy screamed to disguise his fear with pseudoandros, false courage, by their silence, these warriors acknowledged none. It was the ultimate show of confidence.

By far the most unnerving thing about the combat, Danielle realized as she watched spellbound, was how their teachers used their paired weapons. It was as if each of their hands was directed by a separate consciousness, yet in perfect synchronicity with its mate. Gabriella was using two identical blades, and her right and left hands could mirror each other's movements, showing no strong or weak side. Serena was using two dissimilar weapons, and each of her hands displayed a fluent mastery of those weapons' strengths and weaknesses. The actions of their hands were coordinated with the greater movements of their whole bodies. Serena and Gabriella's personal fighting styles were noticeably different as well, optimized to capitalize on their body types. The clones fought relentlessly, tenaciously, and mercilessly, and at the speeds they were moving, their sparring appeared almost inhuman.

Danielle had studied Tae Kwon Do for 30 years, and had long ago ceased to be concerned about her own rank or anyone else's. She was familiar with the traditional weapons of her art and the arts of the Far East, primarily Korea, Okinawa, and Japan. The bo, sai, tonfa, kama, katana, naginata, yari, and nunchaku…she had seen them all demonstrated by masters in her system and others. But never had she seen anything like this. With effort, she tore her eyes away from the combatants' hands and looked closely into their faces. What she saw made her aware of just how serious this sparring was, and nearly made her gasp.

Serena and Gabriella displayed no anger, mania, cruelty, or hatred. They weren't flailing or out of control. Just the opposite; they simply looked as if they were passionately focused and unshakably determined, and each was conducting her assault as if the outcome was preordained. Neither had a doubt in her mind that their enemy would die by their hands. The result was only a matter of time. Their certainty wasn't anything so crass as egotism, self-aggrandizement, or even bloodlust. It simply seemed that they had done this very thing, fighting an enemy to a fatal conclusion, a thousand times. It was as if they were each the hands of death herself…and knew it. She remembered Alexander Williams' words from the first day she'd met him, "They're warriors with the mindset and abilities to match." Now there was no doubt in her mind about those words either. Danielle understood what she was seeing on both the intellectual and visceral levels, and she had never imagined anything so terrifying. And perversely, it was impossible resist the nightmare of imagining herself facing them. She would have doubts, while the soulmates had none. She was fully convinced that to face either of her teachers in this kind of armed combat would be suicidal.

Silence snapped her back from her musings. Serena and Gabriella had stopped abruptly and were standing with intensely focused attention, facing the doorway. They held their weapons at the ready, and they were wary. An icy concentration rolled off of them in waves that chilled Danielle's blood. Beside her she heard Alex trying to take deep calming breaths and she detected the slightest shudder as he inhaled. She realized that she hadn't breathed since the sparring stopped.

Now there was movement in the darkness beyond the school's door; visitors in the night. Even she could see it. The flutter of fabric and the unheard rustle of long dark coats revealed the presence of strangers. They were sinister shadows on the opposite side of the glass, haunting the chilly Columbia night while camouflaged by reflections. From inside it was impossible to discern any details of who they were. Anticipation radiated through the school from the clones. Menace flowed from the two figures that stood for a moment on the threshold, before the door swung open.

Serena moved to stand three feet from Gabriella's left and a fraction of a pace forward. It was a long habituated gesture of protection. The cloned warrior had taken station on her beloved's traditional shield side, something done for the benefit of a comrade in battle in the days of the hoplite infantry of ancient Greece. In their first years together, Xena had guarded Gabrielle's weaker left side, and she had continued to do so even after the decades had rendered the necessity nil. The significance of their positions was lost on their modern students, but it was a familiar telltale to the two blonde women who had entered the school. The slimmer of the two cracked a smile of recognition and cocked her head in acknowledgment.

"But, you're dead…" Danielle whispered, unable to contain her shock. What her eyes were showing her couldn't possibly be true, for one of the women was her deceased teammate, Air Force Staff Sergeant Hudson Lykos. The other woman was a stranger to the CWO, but not to the clones. The soulmates had killed her in combat in 59 BC.

"I killed you," Gabrielle muttered, "I killed you both. By the gods, what madness is this?" Yet even as she spoke the words, she knew there could be only one explanation. Somewhere out there was a lab like the one in which she and Xena had been recreated.

Callisto gave a threatening little chuckle as she shed her overcoat. Underneath it, the "Warrior Queen" wore a form-fitting, segmented corslet and skirt, with matching bracers and greaves, all made of what looked like black silk. The hilt of a broadsword was visible over her right shoulder and the sheath of a large parrying dagger hung from her left hip. Callisto minced a few steps closer to the clones, using her trademark seductive slink. She stopped eight feet in front of them, while her student, Mavican, shed her coat revealing identical gear, with the addition of four throwing knives on her belt instead of a dagger. Their battle dress was a stark contrast to the soulmates in their gym shorts and t-shirts.

"I killed you…you killed me," Callisto teased, her sing-song voice pitched to parody intimacy, but projecting theatrically. She pretended to tally up the fatal incidents in her head before shrugging and happily dismissing the matter with, "but who's counting? Guess we all just keep turning up like bad denarii, eh, Xena? Ahhh, the wonders of modern science." She gave the soulmates a conspiratorial wink.

Alexander Williams softly gasped at the words. Callisto giggled.

"So, you and the Babbling Bard have been playing teacher, I see," she observed, giving the six students a chilling little smile. She lectured the group sarcastically. "Well, isn't that just like the Good Xena…always helping others," then she turned and stage whispered to the cloned warrior. "But I'd bet you've kept the secrets of your dark past to yourselves. Tell me, dear, have you confessed to the slaughters that you committed while you were the Evil Xena? Has your dear little Gabrielle told them the stories of your mass murders and other heinous crimes?"

Mavican had moved to stand beside her teacher, obvious hatred flashing from her eyes as she pinned them on the cloned bard. She was younger, more powerfully built, and more voluptuous than Callisto. Her tangible air of menace however, was eclipsed by the sheer venomous malice of her teacher's madness. Mavican was predictable and understandable in her brutality, while Callisto was the wild card of threat made flesh. Callisto swept the students with her glare, seeing their shock, amazement, confusion, and fear. She drank it in like a prized vintage from Bacchus' own chalice.

"It appears not," she remarked, answering her own question and taunting the Warrior Princess, before addressing the students again. "Your illustrious teacher was a vicious warlord, you see, and her sidekick helped her in the killing of over 86,000 soldiers. Before they met, Xena had already plundered half of our native land, slaying for sport, pillaging and burning and murdering innocent men, women, and children. She was the greatest terrorist that ever lived. She's personally responsible for the deaths of over 100,000 people."

"Ya forgot the 30,000 in Chin," Xena sneered at her, "but I'm sure ya haven't forgotten those paltry 399 at Cirra. That flea-bitten collection of hovels was in my way on the road to Corinth so I plowed it under. It wasn't even a battle…pathetic…the loot was barely worth the bother. Get over it, loser."

Even Gabrielle flinched. It was the voice of the Destroyer of Nations. Xena intended to slay Callisto. For a moment she had uncaged the killer within, the unstoppable warrior that Ares had loved. Only Julius Caesar could have ignited her wrath more intensely.

The words had their desired effect, acting as a goad more inflammatory than anything Xena had ever said to the Cirran. The Warrior Princess had belittled the singular event that had given Callisto's life its direction and purpose. She'd mocked the source of her pain and answered her taunts with derision. Xena had ridiculed the primal trauma that had defined her.

Callisto drew her blades in a blur and attacked with a speed so startling that the first blows were answered before any of the students could even move. Mavican had her sword in her hand a heartbeat later and opened her assault on Gabrielle with a whirlwind series of spinning slashes.

Even as she ducked below the arc of Mavican's sword, the cloned bard called out a warning to her students. "All of you, get back against the far wall…NOW!"

It fell to Alexander Williams to act. He was the first to lose his shocked paralysis and begin shoving the others towards the rear of the school. He snatched a Chinese sabre from the weapons rack on his way.

The fight was more vicious than anything the students could have imagined. Now it wasn't a sparring match between life partners. Unlike the concentrated and effortless mastery they had witnessed only a few minutes before, this was mortal combat, driven by a lifetime of hatred and the bitterest of debts. The fighters not only used their blades, but also their feet and hands, elbows and knees; every aspect of their potential arsenals that they could bring to bear against their enemy. Callisto was as quick as she had been in her prime. Mavican was as brutal and strong as she had ever been. But it was not 59 BC, nor was it 44 BC. This was not the small field just beyond the borders of the Amazon lands, nor was it a back alley in Rome.

When they had first met Mavican, Xena had been 37 and Gabrielle 29. The original Xena had been 11 years older then, Gabrielle was 5 years younger now. The blonde had still been armed with the sai and it had been only 6 months since she'd given birth to Hope. Still, Gabrielle had slammed one of her weapons into the flesh above Mavican's left hip. When she'd kicked her enemy's body off the spike blade it had released a pulsing fountain of blood. The bard had punctured Mavican's abdominal aorta, one of the largest blood vessels in the human body, and she had bled to death in less than three minutes.

The last time the soulmates had fought Callisto they had lost. In 44 BC, Xena had been 53, Gabrielle 45, and Callisto 46. The bard had been recovering from pneumonia. The trip from Thrace in late winter had left them both road weary. Callisto had defeated them and they had been crucified in Caesar's Rome. But now all four fighters were in their twenties, and as fit as they had ever been. It was closer to the earlier battles the partners had fought against Callisto in 71 BC, when they had defeated her twice and sent her to Shark Island. Yet today there were even greater differences. Callisto and Mavican had never fought together against the soulmates. Neither Callisto nor Mavican had fought both Xena and Gabrielle in their prime. By the time Gabrielle had been at her peak, Xena had been past hers. And they had been fighting the original Xena and Gabrielle.

What the technician in Washington, D.C. had reported but not recognized was also something that the soulmates couldn't know. In 1763, Marielle Covington, one of two sisters from Boston, had eloped with a debonair southern planter, Sherman Ezekiel Pappas. It had been love at first sight and the scandal of the season at the society teas in her hometown. Marielle had born three children, twin boys and a younger daughter. One son would carry forward the Pappas family name, inherit the plantation, and transfer a special gene from his father to the future generations of his family. The other twin would be trapped in his maternal grandparents' home when the War of Independence broke out in 1776. Functionally adopted by his spinster aunt, he would provide the same genetic heritage to the Covington clan, after taking their name to ameliorate the scandal of his mother's marriage. What had begun on a Thracian night, when presumably, a warrior had come home unexpectedly from battle to his waiting wife, had persisted through all the intervening years and created a legacy that would be tested in yet another generation. It had helped make Janice who she'd been, and it had already allowed Gabrielle to kill Callisto once.

Even in their first life, Gabrielle with her present abilities and weapons would have been superior to Mavican. This modern Xena was more than a match for this Callisto. At her best, Xena had been the premier warrior of her age; the unstoppable and unbeatable Favorite of the God of War. Tonight she was meeting her ancient enemy while at the height of her powers. She no longer needed to split her attention by guarding Gabrielle, and Callisto had no hidden Chakram of Night. Now, when the antagonists tried to drive the soulmates apart, a traded glance between them confirmed their agreement on a strategy, and the warrior and the bard moved to confront their enemies one on one.

Nearer the door, Gabrielle fought Mavican, while in the center of the school's floor, Callisto and Xena traded blows. The students watched in horrified fascination from the far rear wall, breathlessly watching the ferocity of ancient warfare reborn in the modern world. It was nothing like what any TV show or movie had depicted. No modern actor had the skill, the stamina, or the knowledge to accurately portray combat at this level. The modern world had transformed swordplay into either stylized martial art or sanitized sport. Mastery in kendo or fencing, even with rapier and dagger rather than the foil, epee, or sabre, would leave a combatant woefully ill prepared and highly vulnerable.

Callisto's fighting style was vicious and flamboyant. She depended on her reflexes and flexibility to recoup any misjudgments her raging passions led her into. Against any normal opponent it would have been more than sufficient. Against the Warrior Princess, the Cirran's tactical errors and less refined technique quickly resulted in a series of minor wounds. Xena had slashed her broadsword across Callisto's left biceps when she'd been a fraction of a second too slow in withdrawing from a parry with her dagger. The blonde hadn't lost her weapon, but the cut visibly angered her and Xena's smirk helped to degrade her concentration further.

A few moments later, the "Warrior Queen" had attempted a spinning roundhouse kick to Xena's exposed left wrist, hoping to disarm her. Instead of knocking the chakram from her grasp, the cloned Warrior Princess had shifted her body in a fluid dip that had brought the round blade up under the blonde warrior's calf, lacerating the gastrocnemius muscle and sundering the straps of her greave. As the shin guard fell to the floor, Callisto had shrieked in rage and withdrawn behind a recovery stroke from her sword. Xena had advanced on her immediately, pressuring her as she kicked the fallen lower leg armor to the side of the room. From low in her throat came an evil chuckle that sounded almost like a growl. Within the clone, the darkness of the Destroyer of Nations reared its head, sensing victory and craving the invigorating blood scent of combat.

Against Mavican, Gabrielle was discovering that her fight was easier than she'd anticipated. Callisto's would be successor wasn't even as fast as she remembered. The powerful woman fought with a single blade against her two, using a combination of easily evaded sweeping slices and even more easily anticipated thrusts. The cloned bard wove and dodged most of her attacks, allowing Mavican to tire, but more importantly, frustrating her. When they actually clashed, Gabrielle found that she could not only parry away her enemy's blow, but usually also apply an added counterstrike with her second sword that left her opponent scrambling backwards. She continued with this strategy as she noticed a trickle of sweat run down from Mavican's hairline. The cloned bard listened to her increasingly labored breathing. It wasn't long before she noted that Mavican's blows were no longer as forceful, and she wasn't attacking as aggressively. Inevitably, she was tiring. It would only be a matter of time before she lay dead at the bard's feet.

Gabrielle heard Callisto's shriek of rage and Xena's deadly mirth. It signaled something familiar to her from another lifetime long ago; the presence of the merciless and unceasing Destroyer of Nations. She sensed Xena anticipating the kill, and so she began to pressure Mavican, capitalizing on her significantly greater speed. She was striking almost two blows against Mavican's one, while closing to the near and middle distances inside her guard without difficulty. Her enemy found herself franticly trying to fend off the paired whistling blurs of the black bladed swords, as the small blonde wove cutting patterns and inflicted flesh wounds almost at will. The damage to Mavican's morale was as severe as to her body, and both classes of injuries degraded her battle capabilities.

Right biceps, left forearm, left oblique, right triceps, left deltoid; Gabrielle was working the sequence of wounds she used in training. Left biceps, right forearm, (almost made her drop her sword), right oblique, left triceps, right deltoid…first sequence complete. Mavican was bleeding from the upper extremities and her sides over her ribs where her body armor showed the slight gaps needed for adjustment. She was in pain, frustrated by her inability to cut the compact warrior, and now she realized her tactical error in facing the blonde with only a single sword. She was also tiring from the sustained effort and the cumulative blood loss. Her opponent's expression showed only a kind of detachment, a silent assurance that the fight's outcome had never been in doubt. Mavican felt the stomach-churning chill of fear. Gabrielle fully expected to kill her; her death, a foregone conclusion. A glance across the room revealed that her teacher was also bleeding, her right greave cut away, and Xena was stalking her, forcing her back with an unceasing onslaught. The glance cost her a slice across her left thigh, as Gabrielle began working the second training sequence, aimed at inflicting damage to the lower body.

A few yards away, Xena was driving Callisto. It was only a matter of time and she knew it. She'd already cut her ancient enemy and good as Callisto was, on this day the Warrior Princess could tell that she was not her equal. Xena was forcing her to withdraw closer and closer to the front of the studio, on the opposite side from where her soulmate was carving at Mavican. She'd kept an awareness of how Gabrielle was doing; it had become second nature to her over the years, and the results of her partner's combat made her feel a wave of pride. Gabrielle was in no significant danger, and so she allowed the Destroyer of Nations to come forward.

Now the speed of Xena's attacks shifted up a crucial but almost imperceptible degree. At the same time, her facial expression reflected her joyful intimidation of her enemy and her celebration of the promised bloodshed. She met Callisto's assaults with an almost negligent ease calculated to belittle her enemy's self respect. It belied the Destroyer of Nation's ability to read an opponent as if foreseeing their movements, and as she always had, she reacted without thought, using the most deadly response. One scene only on the TV show left a hint at what Ares' gift to his Favorite had conferred. In the episode The Ring, Xena had donned the enchanted Rheingold in desperation, and defeated the monster Grinhilda, slaughtered the attacking Valkyrie, and held Odin at bay. She had done it with vicious grace and inimitable skill. This was TV's single brief glimpse at the Destroyer of Nations who had once terrorized the ancient world.

Suddenly Xena shifted to her right and lashed out at Callisto with the Combined Chakram, catching her enemy's left wrist in a move so unexpected that the "Warrior Queen" didn't even see it coming. The ancient round blade bit through the bracer encasing Callisto's forearm and cut her wrist to the bone on the medial side, shearing the blood vessels and flexor tendons. It was a major wound. Now she could grip nothing with her left hand…she could no longer close her fist. Xena heard her enemy's quick hiss of pain as the dagger clattered from her grasp. She moved mercilessly to capitalize on the damage. The clone slashed a quick strike at Callisto's injured left wrist with her broadsword, and then scored a long deep cut across the back of her forearm, from the wrist halfway up to her elbow, with the Chakram. Her weapon shore through Callisto's left bracer, tearing it from her arm, and the blood flowed freely, running down in a rivulet from her fingers. Xena saw the physical shock on Callisto's face and the shadow of her fear, and the Destroyer relished it. She advanced to increase the pressure on her enemy.

Callisto fought back desperately, executing a blinding series of parries and thrusts with her sword, and then gave a piercing two-toned whistle. Across the room, Mavican swung at Gabrielle with every bit of strength she had left, breaking her rhythm. Then she turned and leapt into a somersault, crashing through the glass door. Callisto had taken three running strides and then launched herself through the plate glass window head first, sword still in hand. A trail of blood marked her path, from a recovery roll, back onto her feet, and down the sidewalk, following Mavican into the night.

Xena yearned for the killing blow; she yearned to see Callisto dead at her feet. The cloned warrior had already started towards the broken windows to follow in pursuit, but Gabrielle halted her. Their whole existence was in jeopardy. Not only had Callisto and Mavican revealed their identities to the students, but the school would almost certainly be investigated by the police. The cloned bard had read enough detective novels to be sure of that. If they were to have any chance at continuing their lives as Serena Pappas and Gabriella Covington, they had to forgo the chase and control the damage here and now.

"Xena, no! We have to let them go for now…we have to do something about all this." She gestured to the damage all around them. The school's front window and door were shattered. Glass shards littered the sidewalk, the entrance, and part of the interior. There were bloodstains, two long coats, and Callisto's body armor and dagger lying on the floor. Gabriella half-suspected that the weapon was traceable to previous crimes. And then there were the students. They were witnesses. Somewhere in the distance, she began to hear sirens.

"This isn't over," Xena grimly promised to the night through gritted teeth, "I'll find you…I'll find you both." With effort, the darkness of the Destroyer of Nations was caged by the will of the Warrior Princess. She took a deep breath.

She would see Callisto and Mavican dead once and for all, even if she had to kill them over and over until they were both convinced that it was to their advantage to stay dead. They had cheated her this night, the cowards. For the present, she knew her soulmate was right. They had to deal with the mess. She couldn't restrain a hiss of frustration. Things had been so much easier when they'd just been wandering warriors. Now that they were upstanding citizens and members of a community, they had appearances to maintain. The complications were more vexing to her that the fighting.

Gabrielle turned from another quick survey of the front of the school, the broken glass and the bloodstained floor, and she looked at her soulmate. The Warrior Princess seemed to have calmed herself and accepted the necessity of dealing with the situation at the school. The merciless rage and single-minded focus of the Destroyer of Nations was again submersed somewhere within her partner. Xena was already moving to collect her enemy's fallen weapon and armor. At least they didn't have any bodies to dispose of.

Gabrielle softly sighed with relief and walked towards the mirrors, trying to work out what to tell the students. Witnesses were inconvenient, but at least these witnesses weren't outright hostile. They weren't an enemy's sentries or scouts. It came to her that long ago, a darker Xena would have slain them without a second thought, chalking them onto the roster of collateral damage in a cold calculation of tactical advantage. She herself would have been saddened by the necessity as she applied her blades.

"Here they come," Harry whispered. The transceiver in his ear picked up and relayed his words to the men in the white van, parked down the street in the mouth of an alley.

"Got 'em. We're on it," Albert Gibson answered, turning away from the telescope and shifting to the driver's seat. Next to him, Faisil reacquired their fleeing targets with the night vision equipped digital video recorder.

"Looks like the thin one's bleeding pretty badly," the slender middle-eastern man commented, "I hope they can still lead us somewhere worthwhile."

"Yeah, it'd be a real shame if they died in a back alley, huh?" Harry asked. "Spencer would be very disappointed with us."

"Here we go. Like I said, we're on it," Gib repeated. He covered his headset microphone with one hand as he turned to Faisil and griped, "Eighteen years in this van and he's acting like a mother hen."

"Keep in touch, team," Harry reminded them, "and be careful, there are almost certainly more where they came from."

The van slipped quietly down the street, following the fleeing clones of Mavican and Callisto. Harry stayed where he was, in a second floor apartment across the street from the Columbia School of Martial Science, with his eye pressed to a night vision telescope.

Back inside the school, Xena and Gabrielle were examining the greave and bracer the Warrior Princess had cut from Callisto's body. The material looked like silk. It was light and highly flexible, seemingly providing no protection at all. Xena gave the bracer an experimental poke with her sword and found that she couldn't cut it. Gabrielle tried with one of her swords and had no better luck. Finally, Xena laid it on the floor and ran the Chakram across it. The material parted as if it had been real silk. The soulmates traded astonished glances.

Their preoccupation was broken by the sounds of shuffling from the back of the school. The students were standing in shock, barely moving, and staring at their teachers and the broken glass. Gabrielle groaned. In the distance, they could hear sirens getting louder, and they were definitely approaching. Xena just shook her head in irritation.

Finally the cloned bard addressed the students.

"Okay, folks," she began in a placating tone, "I know you've probably seen some unexpected things here tonight, and I'm sure we can explain everything…maybe tomorrow. Right now, it might be best if all of you gathered your things and went home to relax. Take a warm shower, have dinner, and watch some TV. I know that sometimes an experience can get blown out of proportion if you spend too much time thinking about it without knowing all the facts, so for now, just try to forget what you saw here tonight, and we'll see you in class on Monday, okay?" Gabrielle offered them an apologetic grin before adding, "It would really be a big help if you didn't mention this to anyone. You know how it is…we don't want to confuse our insurance claim adjuster."

She'd sounded so reasonable, and the students were so traumatized, that they just nodded their heads in agreement and began gathering their stuff. Debbie, Owen, and Ronnie seemed as though they couldn't leave fast enough. Alex and Karen gave the teachers a couple of questioning glances as they left, but Gabrielle dispensed smiles and reassuring pats on the shoulder as she herded them out. That left Danielle, who was living at the Pappas house and didn't know what to do. Gabrielle had already returned to a hasty conference with her soulmate. The sirens were already very close.

As the police cars screeched to a halt in front of the school, Xena happened to turn and notice the CWO still standing along the back wall. She'd picked up her gym bag, but hadn't really moved. Now it was too late to leave. Xena urgently gestured her into the dressing room, out of sight, and then turned to await the officers. Danielle noticed that her teachers had somehow hidden their weapons and the other evidence of the combat. They were standing over a pair of swords from the school's weapons rack.

Four officers burst into the school with their guns drawn. Their eyes were darting around the space, taking in the broken glass and the blood stains on the floor. Xena and Gabrielle stood looking at them. The police were momentarily indecisive.

"'Bout time ya got here," Xena began, "ya got some real loonies in this neighborhood."

"Look what they did to the window and the door," Gabrielle whined, her voice wavering emotionally, as she shuddered, "they must have been crazy. It was horrible. They came in here bleeding all over like they'd been fighting. They were dirty and threatening, and then they broke the glass and jumped through…they ran off when we met them with our swords." She gestured to the clean weapons lying at their feet and shivered.

"Yeah, they acted like they'd been smoking that PCB stuff," Xena added with certainty.

"I…I think I feel unsafe and upset," the blonde clone haltingly added, as if traumatized and disoriented. She seemed to have surprised herself with the declaration.

After glancing around the school and seeing no one else present, the cops called for a crime scene investigation team and detectives. They'd done a quick search, holstered their weapons, and finally came over to question the clones. By this time, Gabrielle had broken down in tears and was being held by Xena who was stroking her back and whispering soothing words.

"Wha…what if they come back?" Gabrielle tearfully asked a cop. "Sh…should we get a dog?"

"Maybe you'd better come down to the station with us," one of the officers finally offered sympathetically, "it might be easier to talk about all this away from the scene. At least we can get you a cup of coffee and a comfortable place to sit down."

"Sounds good to me," Xena agreed, "let's get out of here. I'll have to call the insurance company too."

They ended up getting into one squad car with two of the officers, while the other pair strung yellow crime scene tape across the front of the school and stood guard outside, waiting for the CSI and the detectives.

After it had been silent inside the school for a few minutes, Danielle Lefferts carefully peeked out of the locker she'd hidden in and made her escape out the back door. As she stood in the dark alley behind the building, she still couldn't believe what had happened. A glance at her watch revealed that class would have just been ending. It had been only 45 minutes since Gabriella had asked them to continue practicing while she and Serena sparred. She shook her head in amazement and started walking home just as a vehicle screeched to a halt out front. Tonight's events were something she'd have to discuss with her father.

Meanwhile, the police car made its way down the street and around the corner. It continued at a steady pace for another mile and a half to the precinct house, where the officers ushered the two women inside. One directed them to a room with a few vending machines and a coffeepot. The other made a preliminary report to the desk sergeant. Eventually, after Gabrielle had calmed down, the soulmates spent another two hours recounting their version of the night's events to a pair of detectives who had just returned from the scene. They were tight lipped and seemed to be slightly resentful about something, but it wasn't the soulmates who were the source of their ire. Believing that the women were the traumatized victims of peculiar but violent drug gang activity, they remained cordial. Xena called their insurance company from the police station, fully aware of the remaining detective listening to every word she said. Eventually they called a cab for a ride home.

After the clones of Callisto and Mavican had fled, Harry continued watching carefully as the police had arrived and escorted Xena and Gabrielle away. Gabrielle's performance as the emotionally distraught partner won his respect immediately; she was a natural-born deep cover operative. The clones were doing a masterful job of maintaining their pretense, and being familiar with police procedures, he knew that they had bought him the time he needed.

On a scanner, he monitored the CSI through the police dispatcher. Harry waited until he knew that the investigators were still engaged with their previous scene, and then he cued his team. The police detectives would arrive first, but he didn't need much time at the school to get what he wanted. A few minutes would do. He walked out the back of the building and stood in the alley. Shortly afterwards, a black van picked him up. It made a quick turn and accelerated onto the street just around the corner from the school, then sped around the corner and pulled up in front, screeching to a halt.

Harry, in his impeccable suit, and six HK MP5 toting operatives in black battle dress uniforms and balaclavas descended on the two policemen. Flashing a Drug Enforcement Agency ID, he commandeered the scene, entered the school, and went directly to the second mirror along the wall. While his men held the front of the building secure and the patrolmen waited in their cruiser, he slipped on latex gloves and deftly opened the hidden cache. The Omega Sector agent guessed he had perhaps two minutes, and so he opened the square hard-shell case and gazed at the Combined Chakram. He had read every word that Drs. Covington and Pappas had written and he'd read the files that had been complied about them, and he believed.

In his era of high tech threats, digital technology, and remote arms systems, the ancient weapon seemed almost quaint. It was an anachronism in a space-age world, yet he knew a few things about it. The Combined Chakram was over 3,000 years old, forged by a god no one now believed had existed, and in the right hands, it was deadlier than a handgun. It was also part of the history of human conflict; conflict that had persisted down through the ages to define his own time. The unending struggle between good and evil had begun before civilization, and it would follow mankind to the stars. Not even the gods had been immune to the partition of darkness and light. That dichotomy was the first principle of creation. Before him lay the proof; opposite forces combined and balanced. He reached down and snapped the ring into its two component halves, hefting the teardrop shaped blades in his hands. Harry Tasker was a modern warrior in the modern world's twilit wars. The ancient weapon impressed on him the philosophical continuity that he shared with the warriors of ages past.

Harry's unarmed combat training gave him an appreciation of the ring-bladed weapon, and he wished for the chance to try it out; to just once, cast it and see if it would strike multiple targets and return to his hand. Through his telescope, he'd seen it cleave what a sword could not. Harry's internal clock told him he was out of time. He quickly rejoined and replaced the Combined Chakram, then removed Callisto's bracer. He sealed it in an evidence bag, and reset the mirrored door. The DEA team left just as quickly as they had arrived, after Harry cordially thanked the Columbia policemen for their cooperation.

Two detectives pulled up at the scene as the black van drove away. The men felt that somehow they'd been had, after the patrolmen reported what had happened. It was a reflex, to resent Federal intrusions in their jurisdiction, but they knew there was nothing they could do about it. They went into the building when the CSI arrived, but, except for some bloodstains and broken glass on the floor, they found no further significant evidence. They were unsettled and in somewhat foul moods when they left to question the proprietresses of the school, back at the station.

When all was said and done, they had a fairly cut and dried case. They'd found no evidence that refuted the events the owners claimed had occurred. The same two people had come in and left injured without causing any further bodily harm to anyone else. There had been menacing and property damage, but there were no potential suspects. The blood would be typed, but unless it matched a local hospital patient admitted with serious lacerations, it was very unlikely that the case would ever be closed. The detectives doubted that anyone would ever be apprehended or prosecuted. Besides, there were much more serious crimes to concentrate on.

Danielle Lefferts walked home in a daze. Upon her arrival, the CWO unlocked the front door and wandered into the empty Pappas house. The soulmates were still at the police station giving their statement, and she had no idea of how long that would take or if they would be held. The whole situation had been nothing short of mind numbing. Danielle took a seat in the parlor but didn't turn on the lights. She desperately needed to think. Her hands were clammy and she was breathing quick and shallow. Sitting alone in the dark, the naval officer found it impossible to concentrate. She was beyond upset and rational thought was defeated by the extreme nature of what she'd witnessed. Her state of mind was one of shellshock, currently known by its the modern diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder. The CWO shook her head, but the images wouldn't go away. Hours of nightmares awaited her if she actually managed to fall asleep. Everything had been real. It had been all too real.

She'd known that Gabriella was an outstanding fighter; she'd seen that in the tournament and at the school. But what she'd seen tonight, first in the sparring and then in combat was leagues beyond anything she'd ever imagined. Gabriella and Serena didn't fight like any martial artists in this world. Neither did the two women who had attacked them. They fought as if all the centuries of firearms had never been; as if guns had been erased from the roster of military history while the blade and the hand that wielded it were still the preeminent weapons of war. It was also plainly obvious to her that her teachers were somehow intimately acquainted with the maniac couple that had invaded the school, and that the two women, Callisto and Mavican, knew her teachers just as well. The four had an extensive and bitter history standing between them from a long time ago. Too long ago, from the sound of it, to possibly make any kind of logical sense. Even more disturbing, if such a thing was possible, was the idea that her teachers answered to the names, Xena and Gabrielle. Gabriella had even called Serena, Xena, and she had all but confessed to having killed both SSgt. Hudson Lykos, (or Callisto…whatever), and Mavican. Xena hadn't even tried to deny being responsible for war crimes. Instead she had reveled in the accusations, taunting her enemy with added details.

The CWO desperately grasped for understanding of what she'd seen. Time travel was out of the question so long as she wanted to continue believing in her own sanity. She really had no framework to solve the dilemma on her own, but she'd grown up understanding that there were many things that were hidden from ordinary people. Danielle had grown up with a father who was career Naval Intelligence, and so to her, the whole situation was reminiscent of subterfuge and espionage. She couldn't even begin to think it through, but her father would know what to do. The CWO walked from the parlor into the study and took a seat at Serena's desk, and then she picked up the phone.

The conversation she had was strange. To Danielle, it seemed as if her dad already had some knowledge of the situation. He had seemed surprised that her teachers had been attacked so visibly and had defended themselves with such a high level of proficiency, but he also seemed to have thought it was all some sort of "drama".

Capt. Lefferts held the opinion that when dealing with covert operatives, one could only believe small portions of what was said, especially in public. They would have attempted to obscure their true histories and intentions when it became impossible to remain invisible. It was SOP, standard operating procedure. Nothing was to be taken at face value. At the levels he suspected these agents were working on, there would be layer upon layer of illusions. They would be involved in creating misinformation for their enemies, while at the same time, misdirecting anyone not involved. Their apparent references to past events probably pointed to mutual Ops the four had been entangled in, just like American and Soviet agents had been during the cold war. Her father assured her that most of what she'd heard was worthless if taken literally, and had caused the desired confusion, if her own response was any indication of how the other students were reacting. Finally, he left her with the knowledge that his people had someone who was secretly investigating the situation, and that she should try to avoid drawing attention to what had occurred. Honey, it would be for the best if our operative had unobstructed access to your teachers for the time being. Please refrain from bringing them under any added scrutiny. From what you've told me, they're both impressive fighters. Be the student and try to learn what you can. You never can tell when it might come in handy.

"They fled six blocks and were picked up by a waiting car that drove them to the Owens Municipal Airport where they boarded a Gulfstream V. SkyEyes tracked them to a site 20 miles outside of Atlanta. On touchdown, Helo Team Eleven picked them up and trailed them to a compound 24 miles southeast of the city. Harry, it's a DOE blackbox installation." Albert Gibson's report was succinct over the COM link. It was 7 am.

"Listen up team," Harry responded from Omega Sector headquarters where he was seated at the conference table with Spencer Trilby, "we've got a report on their armor."

A different technician was ushered in and stood nervously beside the conference table. The early middle-aged woman worked for a covert equivalent of the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, in the Materials Analysis Division. She had never been to this headquarters before, so she'd been blindfolded the entire time she was being admitted, and was thoroughly discomfited now. The technician was present to render a report on a piece of bloodstained body armor that had been brought to her lab in the dead of night. Agents had rousted her from her home and escorted her post haste to her lab to perform the work, at 3am. They had stood by throughout the entire procedure, vigilant as owls, and then repossessed all the samples, data, and notes when she was done. One of them had "borrowed" the hard drive from her computer, though that had been returned to her earlier after being checked for anything related to the tests she'd just completed. She was possessively clutching it in her hands right now. No one she'd come into contact with had been uncivil, but every single agent had been impersonal and professional.

"Please proceed," Director Trilby invited the uncomfortable technician, while offering a welcoming smile of reassurance.

Like everyone else she'd seen here, he hadn't introduced himself, but he was sitting at the head of the table. She had a number of questions, several dozen in fact, but assumed that asking them would be a breach of these people's etiquette. With irritation born of fatigue, she recalled that when she reported to the CIA in Langley, they at least provided her with a chair and a cup of coffee. This bunch was so uptight that they didn't even have coffee for themselves. The table was bare and she had remained standing. Sensing no acceptable alternatives, the technician took a calming breath while summoning her professional demeanor, and began her recitation. The test results were…interesting.

"Ummm, the forearm body armor, also referred to as a bracer, was already damaged upon arrival. After the removal of a small sample and washing off the preexisting blood contamination, the sample was subjected to the standard selective materials assay battery. Qualitative analysis revealed that the material is organic in origin. Spectrographic and chromatographic analysis then determined the molecular constituents…"

"In English, please," Spencer cajoled, before encouraging her with, "I trust you to be thorough and to apply the appropriate testing protocols." He gave her another smile.

"Uh, yes, sir," the chagrined technician responded. Of course they didn't want a comprehensive report, she thought petulantly, they didn't even have time to drink coffee or let her sit down. "The material is spider silk."

"That would be quite a lot of spider silk, wouldn't you say?" Trilby asked.

"It's man-made spider silk."

"Explain, please."

"The process is rather clever. Goats are bio-engineered with arachnid genes so that they produce spider silk proteins in their milk,"* she recited. "The proteins are collected, then spun and woven into material. It is lightweight, five times stronger than steel, and highly flexible, uh, like…silk."

(*This technology is currently under development at Nexia Biotechnologies in Montreal. The goats look normal, and Jeff Turner, the head of the company, makes the point that a goat has 70,000 genes, of which only 1 need be added to produce spider silk proteins. The product will be called BioSteel, and one application could be to substitute spider silk ropes for rockets to lift satellites into orbit.) ~Editor, paraphrasing Nat'l Geog., Jan '03

"How would it compare with synthetics?"

"You mean like Kevlar? Sir, a spider's web only appears fragile because of the extreme thinness of its strands. Compared to Kevlar, the material itself is stronger in tension and against impact, is more cut resistant, more flexible and stretchable, and it's lighter. On the body it is breathable, increasing wearer comfort. It's the perfect material for this application. This bracer…I couldn't remove the sample with a scalpel…I had to fray off several fibers from an already damaged area by repeatedly sectioning it with a microtome. I'd like to know what caused the original damage. The fibers were cleanly sheared, even when examined at 100X magnification. Spider-silk production has been in development for a decade; the cutting tool interests me more. Do you think I could witness the next test?"

Spencer Trilby sighed as if he was actually tired, before responding to the technician's request. In fact, the genetically engineered goat silk fell in line with technologies that were capable of cloning and arming artificially recreated warriors.

"I don't think that will be possible for the near future. Regrettably, the process is still highly classified. I appreciate the discomfort you've suffered, resulting from the required haste of this analysis, and I thank you for providing your results and insights." He gave her a friendly smile of dismissal before cueing his personal assistant. "Francis, would you please show the lady out? Take her by the cafeteria on the way if she's interested in breakfast, would you? The eggs benedict is quite satisfying and the coffee's superb."

In disbelief, the technician turned to the African-American woman who'd appeared beside her and was gesturing her forward with one hand. The personal assistant didn't speak a word as she escorted the technician out of the room and handed her a blindfold. Almost as soon as they were out of sight, Spencer picked up a report from the DNA lab.

"Blood analysis from the bracer," he declared, waving the sheaf of papers. "Another clone. Similar ladder banding marking the genes, every 1,000 base pairs again, but this time using different bases. More clones, different source?"

"Sounds like a reasonable assumption," Harry agreed, "supported by the differences in their equipment, motives, and conduct."

"Harry, you know I can't easily authorize a full tactical strike against a government installation. I'd need presidential authorization and the President needs to maintain credible deniability."

"It's probably just as well, sir. I believe that a small supported infiltration team would be more appropriate. Of course we want to stop this, but what's more important is to capture those responsible. I think I'll need to bring in outside assets this time."

"I'll trust your judgement. How long would it take you to be ready?"

While Harry was organizing his thoughts, Al Gibson's muffled griping could be heard over the COM link. "…gets eggs benedict and we have 7-11 pastries. …this coffee sucks. …years in this fucking van…" Spencer Trilby chuckled.

"We'll need thermal and satellite images of the target, operative recruitment, general surveillance and information gathering, target acquisition, asset and material prep, and a favorable lunar phase," Harry finally reported. "Four days."

"Proceed then…and Harry?" The director gave his agent a focused look. 18 years before, Harry Tasker had borne a different name. He'd been among the best covert rescue commandos the US Army had bankrolled during the cold war. Then there had been the "incident". Though his team was under the command of Maj. Gen. Philips, the mission had been under the control of his old comrade, CIA agent Dillon. In a nameless Latin American jungle, "Dutch" and his team had encountered a hostile xenomorph. Everyone else on the mission had died horribly. "Dutch" had only survived by applying extraordinary measures. He had improvised, gone beyond the scope of his training, and escaped with his life. He'd been hell to recruit, but Spencer Trilby had made him disappear, even to the CIA who had dogged him for months after his return. He'd begun a new life as a covert operative for Omega Sector, gotten married, and was raising a daughter. For the last 17 years he'd proved to be dedicated, reliable, and unfailingly capable. He had earned Director Trilby's respect. The old man wished him well. "Good luck."

Danielle Lefferts heard the doorbell ring, and since she was closest, sitting in front of the TV in the parlor, she tore herself away from Days of Our Lives and got up to answered the door. It was their next door neighbor, Harry Tasker, standing on the porch. Because of his briefcase, she guessed that he was probably stopping by on his way home from work. He certainly looked different now from when she'd last seen him, in his Terminator costume on Halloween. This afternoon he was wearing a tasteful business suit and he gave her a warm smile in greeting.

"Hello, Danielle, I was wondering if Serena and Gabriella are in, I was hoping to speak with them both."

"Hi, Harry," Danielle said, sniffling slightly. "They're around here somewhere. I think they're in the study. Why don't you wait here for a moment and I'll go see?"

"Thanks." He noted that the woman's eyes had been red and a box of Kleenex sat on the sofa. The soap opera was still playing on the large screen TV.

Shortly later, Harry was seated in the study, facing the clones across their desks. He'd noticed that the three hard-shell cases were lined up against the wall behind them. The two women regarded him, Gabriella with curiosity over a heap of papers, Serena with calculated neutrality across her bare desk. Harry opted for openness and candor.

"This is supposed to be a secret, but I need to convince you of something…"

"Let me guess," Gabrielle replied, cutting him off. "You're a compulsive thief and you'll steal anything not nailed down unless Helen ties you up…that's probably why you swiped our hairbrushes. It's definitely why you took the bracer."

Harry could only stare at her in astonishment. The conversation wasn't going as well as he'd hoped, or at least it wasn't off to a very good start. They'd skipped over about three dozen topics.

"No. That's not it at all," he sputtered. Xena looked disappointed. "You have to swear that you won't tell anyone what I'm going to tell you. You see, I'm a spy."

"Of course you are, Harry," Gabrielle told him agreeably. "We know all about that. Actually, we thought there might be something amiss from the very beginning, though we weren't going to hold it against you unless you mentioned it. Well, everyone has their secrets. We figured it out eventually. At first though, I thought it might be a body chemistry thing, or maybe a brain tumor…I'm just glad you aren't really a Terminator."

"It's not a tumor," Harry muttered defensively.

The conversation had taken a turn towards the absurd. This wouldn't do. Harry needed to get things back on track. Candor, he reminded himself. He decided to present his appeal in a straightforward manner.

"I need your help," he told them, looking with a clear and unblinking gaze into their eyes, one after the other, trying to recapture a serious mood. "We have mutual enemies. They're the enemies of this country too, but more importantly, they are a threat to all the good people of the world. I know this sounds crazy, but you two may be the only ones who can help."

"Ya don't say?" Was Xena's first comment. She seemed to harbor doubts.

Gabrielle couldn't help but roll her eyes in reaction to her neighbor's somewhat bombastic appeal. It sounded melodramatic and apocalyptic…quite overdone, in fact. She assigned it all the gravity of one of Danielle's daytime dramas.

"Harry, I'd really like to believe you, but this sounds like something from a movie or maybe a TV show. In fact, I think I've read similar things in some of those books." The cloned bard waved a hand over her shoulder, vaguely indicating the book club offerings she'd collected during the last year. "Let me guess. There's a secret plot by a secret arm of the government to build a secret weapon and secretly take over the country, right?"

Harry looked at the blonde clone in dumbfounded silence. For a moment he wondered if Omega Sector really was still the last line of defense. Maybe now there was another even more covert agency…populated by cloned idiot savants. Xena chuckled. Gabrielle cocked an eyebrow and revised her statement.

"No? Okay, they want to secretly take over the world." She offered him a warm smile.

The little scamp's humoring me, Harry fumed to himself. She thinks I'm crazy!

"Actually, you're right about most of that, Gabriella. I have information proving that a secret Dept. of Energy installation is really a front for a lab that's creating evil clones. They may be trying to destabilize the United States. Maybe they're plotting to take over the world too. I don't know about that yet. The thing is, I need your help to stop them."

At the mention of evil clones, the soulmates became more serious. They began looking at Harry very closely, weighing just how much of a threat he might be to them. Their best bet was to ferret out more information…keep him talking. They could kill him later.

"We know all about the cloned tyrannosaurus, Harry. We even saw one attackin' San Diego a year and a half ago, while we were at the Jack in the Box," Xena related without much enthusiasm. "It was INGEN doin' the clonin'…it's a common knowledge type secret. So are ya goin' to Costa Rica to stop the dinosaurs?"

"INGEN? Dinosaurs? Costa Rica? No, no, no, that's not it at all. They were trying to build a theme park and they screwed it all up. That whole thing was a morality play about corporate greed, glory hungry John Hammond's hubris, and science playing god. This is different."

"Sure it is. This time it's about government greed, their power hungry leader's hubris, and science playin' god, right? We got that," Xena said, just to clarify the situation.

"Yes, no…well, maybe," Harry spluttered. He decided to forge ahead. "Someone is cloning sociopaths from the Hellenistic era, and I need your help to destroy them. So far I've seen Callisto and Mavican, and they looked just like they did on that TV show, Xena Warrior Princess. You two look just like Xena and Gabrielle, but more importantly, you can fight like them. I don't think anyone else stands a chance and there might be more of them that we haven't seen. That's why I need your help."

Xena groaned and Gabrielle sighed. Their next door neighbor really was a spy.

"So if we help ya, are we gonna end up in a theme park when this is all over?"

"Not unless Universal Studios buys out Renaissance Pictures," Harry reassured them. "I was hoping that you two might want to work with me from time to time. It's exciting, it pays well, and you'd be doing the right thing. You could be heroes. Trust me."

After reading the work of Drs. Covington and Pappas, he knew enough to frame his request as an appeal to the Greater Good. It was still important to the soulmates.

"Why don't you tell us what you know, Harry," Gabrielle asked, "and we'll tell you what we can. We do believe you. I've seen two Callistos, and I killed one of them in San Francisco in September. We killed Alti a year and a half ago. There could be more."

"Yeah, we were never lackin' for enemies," Xena added, "but ya can't tell anybody about us. Ya see, we're clones too…and it's a secret." She winked at him and displayed a feral grin. "We'd have to kill ya if it got around."

So, while Danielle sat in the parlor sobbing over the tribulations of the characters in General Hospital, Harry Tasker snapped open his briefcase and shared highly classified government information with a pair of cloned warriors from the ancient world. They spoke for a couple of hours, in the study decorated like a campaign tent from the Roman Empire, and it was as serious a strategy session as anything the soulmates had been involved with in their original lives. Harry was delighted to learn that they could handle firearms. They were delighted to learn that he had access to a private plane and they wouldn't have to walk to Georgia. (Their car burned too much gas). Cloned Xena was already plotting on how to wheedle a chance to work the controls. Cloned Gabrielle was trying to figure out how to change the mission specifics enough to be able to publish an account of the adventure as her first novel. They only ended the session when Danielle came in, offering to go for fried chicken if she could use the car. Xena had never trusted the CWO with her classic '69 Z-28 Camaro yet, and she enjoyed driving too much to pass up an opportunity to go out and contest with other drivers during rush hour.

Harry Tasker was counting off the minutes until they reached the short, straight section of rural blacktop his ground team had secured. Their small black Piper Navajo carried a pilot, copilot, three passengers, (Harry, Xena, and Gabrielle), and a bomb. Gabrielle was pressing her face against the glass, desperately trying to see out of the window next to her seat. Outside, it was pitch black. The raid had been scheduled for a moonless night, favoring the dark just as the Amazons had. Xena was sitting in the rearmost seats, her back to the window, legs stretched across the aisle, sulking because the flight crew hadn't allowed her anywhere near the controls. She hadn't said a word since discovering that she couldn't intimidate the old pilot with her glare. The man had survived almost two years in a Viet Cong POW camp. A thirty-five year marriage and the subsequent divorce had been worse, and nothing much in the way of threats impressed him anymore. The copilot was his eldest son. Like the commercial copilot on the flight from New Zealand back in May, he'd started off by recommending a flight simulator program for her computer. Xena had actually growled at him before stalking back to the rear of the plane, thinking that it had been typical of her luck. She'd also been irritated because, unlike the big commercial jet, she hadn't even been able to stand fully upright in the Piper's cabin.* Her only bit of satisfaction had been kicking the torpedo-shaped metal thing, that had been sitting in the middle of the aisle over the trap doors, and watching Harry blanch.

(*Gabrielle had grinned at her and received a dark look, daring her to laugh. The blonde had refrained from exhibiting her mirth in the most obvious fashion, instead bouncing on her toes. Gabrielle wasn't without her own difficulties though. The bard was very uncomfortable at heights between 10 and 1,000 feet, especially if her own feet weren't on the ground. Horseback riding was acceptable; climbing a ship's rigging intolerable. Her own uneasiness encompassed boarding, takeoff, landing, and deplaning. The cruising altitudes of commercial jets simply didn't register as real and therefore didn't trigger her phobia as badly as staring down out the windows of a stationary jet at the runway 20 feet below. Once in the air, it was so dark on this flight that she was mostly disoriented and had no sense of height at all.) ~Editor

It was a mercifully short flight. The roughly 175 miles between Columbia, S.C. and the deserted road southeast of Atlanta, Ga. was about three-quarters of an hour's flying time in the small, twin engine, piston prop aircraft. The pilot practically hugged the treetops the whole way, the altitude allowing them to remain below commercial radar, comfortably inconspicuous.

The landing was the worst part. For a horrifying minute, Gabrielle suffered the sensations of both speed and height. Approaching a two-lane stretch of rural macadam lit only by the headlights of a pair of vans, the pilot nearly tagged one van's roof with the landing gear as he throttled down and applied the flaps, barely retaining enough lift to avert a nosedive. The landing gear touched down with a screech at 95 mph and the Piper taxied to a halt with the engine at idle. Immediately, the hatch popped open, and Harry, Xena, and an unsteady Gabrielle lurched out onto the road. The three were escorted into a black van by two men in black BDUs, while a waiting team turned the plane by literally lifting the tail and walking it around until the craft was pointing back the way it had come. The pilot revved up and took off back down the road, again clearing the van at the end of the strip by a foot as the landing gear retracted. The endangered van had immediately driven off in the opposite direction to get in position to create a diversion. Three minutes after they had landed, the road was deserted and the sound of the small plane's engine was rapidly fading in the distance.

The unendangered van sped through the night towards the DOE installation. Inside, under a dim red light that was not the Eye of Hephaestus, Harry and his teammates were going over their mission checklists. The clones sat in silence, (Xena checking her weapons, Gabrielle nervously pulling at a thread on her BDU pants), watching as night vision goggles and communications gear were tested, maps consulted, and information shared.

In the middle of the country road, Albert Gibson suddenly jerked the wheel hard to the right sending the van off the pavement and into open woods. Their vehicle had suddenly joined the other van on the endangered list. Its tortured suspension revolted, jarring and slamming the occupants into the steel side walls. Xena cursed under her breath. They were going off-road and the driving might have been fun, but Al was no more likely to share the wheel than their pilot had been.

"Are you crazy? What do you think you're doing?" An upset Harry Tasker yelled.

"I've got it. I've got it," Al claimed, before narrowly dodging a tree, "woah!"

The clones braced themselves with their shoulders and legs, expecting a crash. The van was bucking like a runaway dogcart headed down a steep hill on a rutted backroad in the Thracian uplands…with Aphrodite at the reins.

"Are you even looking where you're going?" The other agent asked, having barely secured his MP5SD submachine gun after the second lurch. He was a wiry man with straight brown hair, somewhat younger than Harry Tasker, and remarkably good looking.

"I said I've got it, geezus. It's called 'driving dark'…no headlights, no streetlights, and yup, no road." Agent Gibson brought the vehicle to an abrupt halt and triumphantly announced, "right on schedule at the insertion point."

Al was actually checking his watch as he set the parking brake. He looked over his seat back at the occupants in the rear and gave them a wide grin. Harry groaned. Xena gave him a chilling look, which the other agent noticed. He grinned at her.

"I'll shoot him myself after we get back," he offered gallantly, "then someone else can drive. We'll call it a friendly fire accident in the report, okay?" The agent suggested agreeably, before introducing himself. "Ethan Hunt, IMF, pleased to meet you."

"Xena," the cloned Warrior Princess responded, momentarily confusing him by clasping his forearm in a warrior's greeting. Being as they were all secret agent types now she figured that Ethan could keep a secret and she saw no reason not to give their real names. She nodded to her partner, "this is Gabrielle."

"Hey," the bard said, giving Ethan a warm smile, "have you been a spy very long?"

"Gabrielle…you can get his story later, if we survive," Xena told her as Harry popped open the van's rear doors and hopped out. "Time to go save the world," she muttered.

"That sounds so grandiose, Xena," the bard complained testily. She was curious, as usual, and felt miffed at losing an opportunity to do some background research on a new acquaintance. To Ethan she said, "I really do hope you live through this because I've got a few questions about what it's like to be a spy nowadays. Harry might want to employ us sometime and I want to get another opinion on the job. It'll help us get up to speed…see, it's been quite a while since the last time we saved the world."

Xena rolled her eyes, and then allowed herself to fall into warrior mode; acute senses sampling the surroundings, mind alert to her companions, and body poised for action. She followed Harry and Al around the front of the van in complete silence, startling the latter by being right behind him when he turned to gesture the others forward. Jumpy goat's gonna shoot himself in the foot, flinchin' like that, she thought with annoyance. Behind her she sensed the equally silent bard, and heard the soft breathing of agent Hunt.

Al and Harry led them stealthily through a scant fifty feet of woods, and then instructed them to crawl forward to the edge of the undergrowth. They moved on their bellies, silent as snakes in the grass, very mindful that the brightness they were approaching would cast harsh shadows whose movement would betray them. They'd be illuminated as if they were on an old Vaudeville stage, but they'd get no laughs from this audience…only bullets. Finally, Harry ordered them to stop.

Up ahead Xena saw a tall perimeter fence of chain link topped with razor wire, standing about eight feet from where they hid in the cover of underbrush. Beyond it she saw a no man's land, carpeted in short mown grass like the fairways on a golf course, that she estimated was twenty-five yards wide, and then an inner fence identical to the first. From within the inner fence, spotlights illuminated the area from the tops of steel poles about three stories high. Beyond these outer defenses lay a wider lawn, lacking only the headstones to make a cemetery. The warrior recognized that it provided clear lines of fire for the roaming patrols, which were made up of either paired men or a single man with an attack dog. They were US Army Military Police, and all of them carried assault rifles. Unwavering sodium vapor yellow lit the space. It was set up as a killing ground; as functional and deadly as any the Warrior Princess had ever seen. The clone shook her head. Their target was far more like a military base than a civilian government agency installation. That is unless one counted this agency's history of involvement with the US nuclear arsenal; atomic and hydrogen bomb development, testing, and production, which was done under the auspices of the DOE in it's former incarnation as the Atomic Energy Commission.

(The 1st and 3rd stated aims of the Department of Energy are: Defense Strategic Goal: To protect our national security by applying advanced science and nuclear technology to the Nation's defense. Science Strategic Goal: To protect our national and economic security by providing world-class scientific research capacity and advancing scientific knowledge. © US Government DOE. Needless to say, this mandate covers quite a range of projects that fall into the categories of advanced science and world-class research. Within the Dept. of Energy is the Office of Science, the Federal government's largest funder of research, whose manifest includes biological science and genomics.) ~Editor

Inside the guarded compound the team noted a series of low, nondescript buildings, each one of them identical to the next. The abundant and unsympathetic lighting rendered their unremarkable architecture dismal. The only details missing from a genuine Stalag 13 atmosphere were the guard towers and the crowds of starving prisoners.

"Gotta plan to get in there?" Xena asked Harry Tasker in a whisper as they stared through the fence. "In the old days, I woulda' had an artillery company create a diversion at the gate, add to the confusion with a secondary siege assault on a flanking wall, and then move in on foot with my best fighters from a third direction, closer to the objective."

"Well, we're the third team," Harry replied, squinting through a pair of binoculars at the buildings, "the flanking assault will come from the gate," he pulled the field glasses away from his eyes and checked his watch. "Cover your eyes," he advised everyone, "and the primary diversion is going to drop on them right about…now."

The team members had barely wrapped their arms over their heads when a blinding flash lit the compound. It was a brilliant blue-white, but the accompanying report was surprisingly muffled and didn't carry. They felt the concussion more as a thump in the ground than a bang in the air. The lights went dead.

"High energy electromagnetic pulse bomb from the plane we flew in on," Harry hastily explained. "It'll disable their electrical circuits…primary, backup, and even battery-powered emergency systems. Very comprehensive…very effective."

Xena gulped. She realized that earlier, on the plane, she'd kicked the bomb. She also realized just how closely timed their operation was. No wonder Al had driven like a lunatic to get to the insertion point on time. He'd had one eye on his watch with good reason. Everything was coordinated to a timetable.

By the time the five had reached the outer fence, they could hear a fusillade of small arms fire erupting in the distance from somewhere on their right. The second van, Xena realized; the diversion had started and the bomb had been their signal.

The response to it within the compound was almost immediate, if a bit confused. On the grounds inside the fences, the guards were shouting orders and running towards the disturbance. Even in the blackout, the clones could tell that the troop movements were chaotic. The soldiers couldn't communicate to coordinate their deployment now that the EMP bomb had knocked out their radios. The diversion was proving highly effective.

Harry and Al leapt to their feet. They set a black self-adhesive ribbon in an arc on the fence and then stepped back a couple paces. A fuse at one end of the ribbon disappeared into a striker pack. As Gabrielle, Xena, and Ethan watched, Al abruptly ripped the striker off the fuse, lighting it like a match. The fuse was fast burn. It hissed and spat sparks then quickly disappeared into the self-adhesive ribbon. They heard a soft crackling, saw the ribbon incandesce with a dull reddish glow that was accompanied by a metallic burning smell, and after half a minute, the section of chain link inside the ribbon fell out of the fence and onto the ground. Al kicked the sizzling mesh out of the way. It had left a neat arch shaped cutout in the fence that they could crawl in through. Harry took a second ribbon pack and crawled through the outer fence. When Xena and Gabrielle moved to follow him, he motioned for them to stay put.

"Wait until I breach the inner fence, then all of you move in quick," Harry instructed. He'd pulled on a pair of night vision goggles, and Xena raised an eyebrow, giving him a questioning glance. Understanding it he answered, "Our electronics are made differently. The circuits are hardened against EMP by using gallium arsinide instead of silicon. They're also a bit different in the way they're physically constructed. What's important is that the few things we need to have working will work. Trust me."

To the naked eye, he was soon swallowed up in the black shroud of the night. Beyond six yards it was too dark to even mark his passage by a rustle in the grass. Albert Gibson and Ethan Hunt followed Harry's progress with their own night vision goggles as he quickly wormed his way across the killing ground and silently burned an opening in the inner fence. The gunfire in the distance had escalated, joined by the whizzing rounds and belching rattle of a mini-gun. The installation's gate was under a heavy assault while the premises remained in total darkness. Finally Harry waved the team forward before moving a few yards inside the compound and off to the right, where he hunkered down and swung his HK53 in short arcs, searching for any threatening targets.

"Everybody move, now!" Al hissed to the others before leading the way.

Al, Gabrielle, and Xena crawled quickly through the fences, with Ethan bringing up the rear. Once inside the compound, they regrouped and raced towards the buildings in a running crouch. Ethan had sprinted to the nearest light pole and placed a charge a few feet above the ground on its side, before rejoining them along the wall of the first building.

The five infiltrators slipped along the side of the building with rapid stealth, their ears straining to hear any hostile parties nearby. It was so pitch black that they had to feel the wall at their sides. At the end of the wall, Harry carefully set a Sure-Fire Z-2 Light with a special beam filter for use as an infrared illuminator on the ground just past the wall. When it drew no attention, he slowly extended an inspection mirror around the building's corner. The Omega Sector agent observed the image for a few moments with his night vision goggles and then pulled back a few feet, having reclaimed his light. Facing his teammates, he first pointed to his chest with his thumb, pointed to his eye with a finger, held up three fingers, held his hands a foot apart, and then flashed ten fingers twice. Next, he drew his index finger across his throat and then held it vertically across his lips.

("I see three enemies around the corner twenty feet away. We need to kill them in silence.") ~Editor

Xena gave him a feral grin. As the others watched, she closed her eyes and unclipped the Combined Chakram, and for a moment she stood still in concentration. Then she moved, stepping away from the wall with one foot and launching the weapon out from the building and up over the lawn. The ring whistled slightly as it rose, reached the apex of its arc, and then dove back towards the building while gaining speed. It passed out of sight around the corner as a blur fifteen feet above the ground while splitting into halves. There was a muffled sequence of thuds and a ping as the halves rejoined. The Chakram reappeared in one piece, arcing upwards again over the lawn before slowing to a stop and finally reversing its course. Xena held out her hand as the deadly ring sliced down through the air to find her. As she clipped it back at her waist, Harry peeked around the corner and saw the three guards lying still on the ground. He motioned the team forward.

They came around the corner and hustled down the front of the building, bypassing the fallen guards. Gabrielle guessed that, as in the old days, the men's throats had been cut before they'd even known they were under attack. Not a one had raised a weapon or called out. With the targets out of sight around a corner, knocking them out instead of killing them would never be certain; it wasn't an option. For a brief moment the ghosts of Praetorians, slain outside Caesar's palace in Rome on a warm night in 46 BC, haunted the bard's vision, before she banished them and moved on. Some things in war didn't change.

The team gained the building entrance unobserved and Harry stopped them just out of sight beside the glass doors. The agent didn't trust the inspection mirror and IR illuminator when possible reflections off the glass could confuse him. He had no intention of showing even half his face at head height either, where it could be most expected, easily seen, and shot off by a guard waiting inside. This time Harry lay on the ground before peeking around the corner. When he pulled back and faced his teammates again, he just whispered, "all clear."

Albert Gibson immediately stepped around Harry, slipped the blades of a lock-picking gun into the door's keyhole, and pilled the trigger several times. With a satisfied grunt, he pulled open the door and knelt out of the way. The other four charged around him and entered, then spread out in the lobby, covering the inside approaches, doors, stairs, and hallways. Al pivoted himself through the door and pulled it shut behind him, making sure the lock clicked as it engaged. After a few seconds, they heard Ethan snap his fingers to get their attention. With their night vision goggles, Al and Harry saw his index finger trace an arc in the darkness, indicating the way to a stairwell leading down below ground. Al whispered to the soulmates and they followed him as the team converged.

Once in the stairwell, it was virtually pitch black. With no available light for amplification, Harry led the way using the IR illuminator as an invisible flashlight, and seeing their surroundings in ghostly green with his night vision goggles. Behind him, Xena and Gabrielle were completely blind, and relied on their hearing and their finely honed subtler senses to gauge their surroundings, direction, and the locations of their companions. Al and Ethan, both wearing goggles, brought up the rear. They were moving quickly but remained wary of any sounds that would signal hostile pursuit.

This is just like some cave or mineshaft, Gabrielle thought, but without the dampness and rough-hewn floor. She'd noted the hard echoes and dusty trace scent of concrete walls. It's as dark as a dungeon at midnight in here, but thankfully the smell is nowhere near as stomach turning. I guess it's really more like a tomb…without any fresh bodies.

Judging from the outside, I'm sure we've moved further than the length of the building, Xena decided after tallying up her strides, so this tunnel must connect more than one building. That explains why Harry could choose the end building instead of having to pick one in the middle of the compound. Sure made infiltratin' easier. It beats havin' to fight our way in. Wonder how far we have to go?

She'd no sooner wondered it than the group came to a T-shaped intersection. Again, Harry lay on the floor and checked around the corner. Seeing the passageway empty, he unhesitatingly led them down the left-hand branch. Above ground they would have been crossing a street. After sixty feet they came to a stainless steel door that sealed the tunnel from wall to wall. It was wholly smooth and featureless, without knob, lock, or handle. He began to examine the walls and door with the IR illuminator, searching for a passcard slot, call button, intercom panel, or any hidden switches that might activate the door. Finally, he placed his hands flat on the metal and pushed, straight in, and then as if to slide it in either direction. It didn't budge.

"So what now?" Xena asked in a soft whisper.

"There's nothing here to make it open," Harry answered, "so we blow the door."

He began by pulling some wrapped parcels out of a stuff sack on his back, stripping paper from one side of each and firmly pressing them onto the center of the door where they stuck fast. He made sure that the individual parcels overlapped each other, creating a single mass. Al and Ethan had backed off when he'd started working, and they'd led Xena and Gabrielle back to the intersection of the hallways. They took a position around the corner and waited.

"I miss the peace and quiet already. Ah well…earplugs, ladies?" In the glow of his Sure Fire light, Al held out a palmful of small rubber cones to the soulmates, and demonstrated by slipping a pair of them into his own ears. Xena and Gabrielle followed his example, then tried removing them and putting them back in several times before finally settling the plugs into their ears.

"Sure beats stuffin' in wax," Xena commented appreciatively, "easier to take out too."

"I always hated that," Gabrielle added, "it made my ears itch for days afterwards."

After a few minutes, Harry rejoined them and inserted a pair of earplugs of his own.

"Charges are set," he announced. He traded weapons with Ethan, took careful aim at the explosive mass with the MP5SD* and warned, "fire in the hold."

(*Heckler and Koch produces their world class submachine gun, the MP5, in a number of configurations. The designation SD stands for Sound Dampened, and the weapon is supplied with an HK factory sound suppressor. While the report is still clearly audible, it is significantly reduced in volume from an unsuppressed discharge. The MP5 fires 9mm x 19 pistol ammunition, while the HK53 uses 5.56mm x 45 rifle cartridges.) ~Editor

He depressed the trigger and there was a single abrupt thump from the weapon, then a minimal flash of light down the tunnel, and a strong concussion in the air. With the earplugs in place, the blast caused minimal ringing of the ears even in the enclosed space. Dust sifted to their nostrils and a burned smell filled the air. For a short span of heartbeats, silence was restored, and then there was a flurry of cursing, yelled orders, tromping footsteps, and heavy breathing. Whatever lay on the far side of the steel door, it was defended, and now they'd stirred up the den of snakes. Harry and Ethan exchanged weapons again.

"No more free ride," Albert Gibson muttered. "Stay behind me, and when we get to the door be sure to duck and cover," he warned. He switched off the safety on his HK53 before following Harry back around the corner and into the tunnel. Ethan was already moving forward as well.

"Time to go save the world, huh?" Gabrielle asked Xena.

"Let's just move out, shall we?" The Warrior Princess replied, focusing grimly. She had acquired a definite sense of foreboding. There was danger ahead; she felt it with every pulse of her finely honed senses and every tensing of her battle-sharpened instincts.

They were running flat out towards where the steel door had been, and where the enemy's voices were coming from now. Having lost the advantage of stealth, they had to capitalize on the advantage of surprise and attack immediately while their enemies were still in confusion. The cloned soulmates could hear a lot of voices up the passage. The advantage of superior force was almost certainly not in their favor. Still, the assault team had another tactic to aid in maximizing the element of surprise they did have. Harry, Al, and Ethan flipped their night vision goggles up, off of their eyes, and tossed flash-bang grenades ahead of them through the gaping hole in the door.

In the darkness, the magnesium bright bursts were blinding to the naked eyes. The concussions in the enclosed space were even worse. It was stunning. Despite their earplugs and partial shielding from the door, the soulmates' hearing was temporarily reduced to nothing and their heads rang. At least they'd followed Al's advice and covered their eyes. They'd felt the power of the blasts striking their bodies like strong blows. At close range beyond the door it would have been like a kick from a mad horse. For their enemies, searching the darkness with dilated pupils and straining their bare ears, the flash-bang grenades were completely incapacitating. The defenders were too debilitated to even begin screaming before a count of ten had passed. By then, the three agents had their goggles back on and were carefully assessing the remaining threat from the dozen troops writhing on the floor. The soulmates had followed the agents through the door and into the midst of the incapacitated defenders. The agents doubted that the fallen guards were even aware that their invaders were moving among them. It would be a long time before they recovered enough to be battle worthy.

In the dark, they heard the hiss of Xena's sword leaving its scabbard.

"I'll start finishin' 'em off while you check the perimeter," she offered to Harry. It was, after all his operation, and she was willing to defer to him and do the dirty work this time.

The agent shuddered, realizing just how little different a campaign would have been in her time. She would never have chosen to leave a living enemy at her back while inside an enemy stronghold. Years ago the rules had been the same for him on search and destroy missions, but these were American soldiers; regular enlisted men. They had only been assigned to this installation as guards. They were in no way responsible for what was going on here. With a groan, he turned to the Warrior Princess.

"No. We hold them hostage. Nowadays their lives are valuable. Besides, they're just stationed here on guard duty…they probably don't even know what's really going on." In the dark, he could see Xena shrug and sheath her weapon. She hadn't been bloodthirsty, just pragmatic. It was a relief.

They settled for collecting the soldiers' weapons while Gabrielle volunteered to restrain them with plastic wire ties. The others heard her giggling in the dark as she bound each of the guards' elbows behind their backs, and then their wrists to their opposite ankles as they knelt. In fact the blonde was good at it, even when operating only by feel. The Warrior Princess rolled her eyes in the dark. Her soulmate was getting artistic, having had a lot of practice binding captives during her original life. She'd taken out sentries and left them gagged and hanging in trees, like spiders in the dead of night, never betraying their presence to their enemies. It had been either that or slit their throats if there wasn't time. Creative restraint had been Gabrielle's solution to avoiding killing. Xena recalled that Gabrielle's penchant for bondage had surfaced early on in their adventures.

The blonde had "restrained" the misguided Melas during the opening days of their battles against Callisto. After foiling his clumsy attempt at an ambush on the road to Corinth, Xena had been set to disembowel him. Instead, Gabrielle had tied him to a tree. She'd rigged him with his wrists bound together between his legs, the rope passing up his back to loop around his neck, while his spread legs had been immobilized, knees bent, in a posture reminiscent of a frog grabbing its crotch. The bard had used the handle of his own dagger as his gag. Xena figured that her "talent" had probably originated with the roping of rams and pigs for castration on her father's farm. She shook her head. Her young sidekick had used up such yardage of thongs and cord. Now at least the cloned bard was happy for the time being.

Eventually Gabrielle had the prisoners all lined up in a double row blocking the doorway, as a sort of human barricade. They were positioned to take the brunt of the next assault if one materialized. Neither Gabrielle nor Xena had given it a second thought, but Harry was horrified when he realized what they'd done.

"You're using them as a living shield," he protested. "We don't do that."

"Why ever not?" the Warrior Princess asked him seriously, "ya said they'd be valuable as hostages. What else are we supposed to do with 'em?"

Harry stared at her through his goggles in the dark. "If more guards show up they'd be right in the line of fire," Harry told her.

The captives added their panicked agreement, their muffled voices gagged by their own rifle magazines firmly clenched in their mouths and held in place with wire ties passing from the magazines' ends around behind their heads.

"Better them than us," Gabrielle declared reasonably. It was tactically sound as far as she was concerned, at least it always had been in the past. She remembered many times when they'd rigged captives' bodies to swing down on anyone who'd forced open a door…much like the log-drop traps of the Amazons. They either bowled over the intruder or took a quick slash depending on the person's reaction time.

"Just put them against the wall," Harry ordered, pointing to one side of the room. War must have been a lot more brutal in their time, he decided.

Xena shrugged. It was Harry's operation. She helped her soulmate drag the bound captives out of the way. Maybe he intends to ransom them or sell them as slaves later on, she guessed. She recalled the slaves he'd had working on the day he'd moved in. Of course. He doesn't want to waste a potential resource. Xena found her respect for the agent rising. War's no more brutal now than it was in our time, she decided.

"Guess they've reported us by now, huh?" Xena asked Ethan with resignation as she moved from the captives to where he was experimentally jabbing at the buttons on a console. There was no response from the machines. All the readouts and displays remained dark.

"No," the agent answered with obvious satisfaction, "even down here, the EMP bomb disabled all electronics. All their radios are dead too. They couldn't report anything to anyone. We still have the element of surprise."

Harry and Al had been searching the area outside a broken window with their night vision goggles but had discovered no other hostile forces. It seemed that they were still safely alone. Harry hissed, "Clear," then added a muttered, "for now."

"I suppose we can have some light in here then," Ethan said to Xena, as Gabrielle joined them.

Ethan bent a handful of Cyalume sticks to break the capsules inside them, then shook them to mix the chemicals that would cause them to glow. He tossed the sticks around the room, allowing the clones to dimly see their surroundings. They were encircled by sophisticated equipment that the clones couldn't begin to identify, as well as more familiar looking computer terminals and monitors. It was a control room, adjacent to a much larger space. A wide glass window had originally separated the two areas, but it had been shattered by the flash-bang grenades, and now just a gaping frame looked out into the darkness. The space beyond was too dim to really make out any details clearly. Ethan bent another handful of light sticks and tossed them through the window frame. They lit up the nearest part of what was recognizable as a very large laboratory.

In the dim glow of the light sticks, the team could discern banks of equipment, rolling gurneys, large numbers of clear cylindrical tanks, and further away, barely revealed, partitioned stations set up like emergency room examination suites. The clones took it all in with a slow sweep of their eyes. Inside the nearest tanks, it was just possible to make out the silhouettes of human figures. Past the first row it was still too dark to discern much in detail, but there were more tanks looming up behind them; just ranks and files of shadowy shapes. The impression was of a sinister army of silent armored statues. Within their geometric bodies lay twisted creatures that would issue the commands to animate their threatening potential and trigger their latent hostility. Now they rested silent as Talos. It was a stillness that offered no comfort, for it was the silence of a battlefield before, rather than after the fighting.

"I've got a really bad feeling about this," Gabrielle whispered.

Next to her, Xena's skin was tingling and her hair-trigger reactions were primed for combat. Some aspects of this lab recalled the lab in which Alti had recreated them. Callisto and Mavican had been tracked here and must be lurking somewhere on the premises. The clones had no idea what stimulus would escalate the tension to violence.

A memory of confronting a forest in Germania in 55 BC came to the cloned Warrior Princess. Within that silent stretch of pines, the Legio XXIX Ulpia Victrix of Germania Inferior lay hidden. Half a mile behind them stood the course of the Rhenus River. Spread out in the hills behind her lay a force of 2,000 free Suevians, and 30 catapults. She had shown herself earlier, accompanied by the 2,000 filthy screaming barbarians, knowing this challenge would be reported to the Roman Legatus Legionis. Thinking that they outnumbered her four to one, they would offer battle the next morning. The original Warrior Princess had sat on a stump, as the sun was setting and the evening's peace settled on the valley and the forest. A league to the north, 2,000 Suevians were moving into position under Gabrielle's command. Near the third candlemark of the third watch the bombardment had begun. The Roman camp had been fired; legionnaires had been paralyzed in confusion, trying to muster as their centurions cursed, as horses panicked, and as tents burned. Guards had rushed to reinforce the porta praetoria, the gate facing the enemy. After the slaughter it had been almost the only remnant of the palisade left standing. The second wave had hit the castra, or camp, from the north, smashing through the porta principalis sinistra, the left side gate, while Xena's troops followed with an assault on the porta decumana, the proverbial "backdoor". When morning came, 4,600 Roman troops lay dead. The remainder had fled, only to be cut down in the forest or drown in the Rhenus River. The Suevians had spared none. And the signal for the catapult attack had been a cock crowing at midnight. What would it be today?

Now the silent darkness left the clones' imaginations to supply furtive movements among the shadows, seen only from the corner of the eye. Their minds provided the rumors of stealthy sounds, suggested at a level below the actual hearing of their ears. The situation bred Frankensteinian fantasies of monstrosities cobbled together by unethical creators who were compelled to play god. Forget the dinosaurs. It felt akin to the madness and hate that had created them. Daydreams of mythical creatures had awakened to populate this nightmare, as legendary horrors from their own time fleshed out the roles of modern threats they couldn't imagine.

"Gods, Xena, I'm expecting the Kaken, or maybe Medusa, to come slithering out of the shadows here any moment," Gabrielle whispered to her soulmate. "I can almost hear them breathing down my neck."

"Know what ya mean," Xena whispered back. "Usually darkness is our friend, but there could be anything hidin' in here." She'd drawn her sword and laid her left hand on the bard's shoulder, reassuring herself as much as the blonde with the contact. "Just hope it's something that can die…you know, somethin' with a body."

The confrontation with so much cryptic technology under such dangerous conditions ignited a visceral uneasiness in the agents and the clones, but for the clones, it was almost painfully intense. They were not 21st century souls, and they were still not wholly at ease in their relationship with technology. They would probably never take modern science for granted like those born into this time. This was still not their world, and the realization of that screamed in their blood. Here was science run amok, a cold and calculated threat to every living being, and the product of a heartless intelligence unwilling to set limits. Here was knowledge without wisdom, compulsively seeking what could be done, not what should be done. There was no restraint. The results inspired not awe, but condemnation.

"Time to take a look around," Harry said as he carefully opened the door between the control room and the lab, "defensive positions, compass points, no sound."

The team moved into the larger space with careful stealth. They spread out and passed quickly from cover to cover, trying to minimize their exposure. No more than two moved at a time. The agents and the clones kept to the deepest shadows despite the low light levels from the Cyalume sticks. They constantly checked their surroundings in all directions, their gun barrels following their eyes, careful not to sweep each other with their lines of fire. The surrounding darkness and silence was more menacing than facing a known and visible enemy. Once they'd created a perimeter, Ethan signaled Harry. From ten feet away, Xena could barely hear his whispered question.

"Want to light this place up now? I've got the sticky phosphor."

"Have to…we'll run out of time before we clear this space. It's too big, too dark, and there could be too many surprises." There could be a second entrance and more troops on the way. They raised their goggles and Harry signaled to Al to do the same.

The IMF agent produced a foot long tube about an inch and a half in diameter and held it pointing upwards, out over the space ahead. He and Harry shaded their eyes with their hands. The clones followed their example. There was a soft thump and a trail of sparks leaped from the tube. They heard a thud as the projectile struck the roof right before the flash of a bright white nova lit the lab. The light level dropped off slightly and then stabilized; a pocket of starlight on the ceiling that banished the shadows. The interior of the lab leapt into stark focus as the team members blinked. They had a view of Tartarus, and it was not a pretty sight either.

Like Alti, whoever ran this lab had kept their failures on display. The large cylindrical containers held adult and near adult monstrosities. The embryos, infants, and kids were in smaller jars and cylinders on benches along a wall. Next to Gabrielle was a botched Callisto with an extra leg stub…growing from her shoulder. Her face was misshapen by the aberrant skull beneath her flesh, and extra fingers graced a clenched hand. Past her stood a cylinder in which another Callisto floated, her legs twisted and froglike, her hands and feet webbed between the digits. A frill of bone had erupted from the back of her neck. Yet another teratoform showed parasite twinning; a diminutive torso with arms and legs was protruding from her abdomen where it was attached by the neck. The cloned bard wanted to throw up as she gazed at the manmade deformities. Here was her enemy who had once held the potential to be human. These Callistos were victims of an atrocity far more evil than Xena's sack of Cirra. They'd never even had a chance to taste the bitterness of life.

Cloned Gabrielle sadly gazed ahead. There were more cylinders and jars. It looked like the pitiful remnants of the bungled attempts to recreate Valesca. Where had they gotten the DNA? In 68 BC the Amazon renegade had been captured, subjected to a trial by fire, and then burned alive as the tribe's justice demanded for those convicted of regicide. Valesca had never been a goddess, but she had allied herself with Alti and poisoned Queen Melosa with hellbore root. She had been sent on her way with curses. Her ashes had even been mixed into a ball with urine, (then sewn into a dog's bladder), and thrown into the "bottomless" sinkhole at the far end of the Amazon lands. Everyone knew that hole led right past Tartarus and straight to limbo. A pebble dropped in never hit bottom. Valesca would never join her sisters in the Amazon's afterlife. Not a chance. Could she have been recreated in the 21st century? The blonde felt numb with shock.

Off to her left, Xena was examining a similar group of Mavicans. They were quite a collection, some with truncated supernumerary limbs, boviform breasts, distorted skulls, or anencephaly. She had just begun to move forward when Harry quickly intercepted her. He'd been scouting further ahead of the rest of the team, checking behind the drapes of an examination suite, and now he tried to steer the Warrior Princess away, guiding her towards Gabrielle with a hand at her elbow.

"What is it that you don't want me to see, Harry?" The cloned warrior asked, raising an eyebrow in her trademark expression. She was way to sharp to be fooled, and the Omega Sector agent didn't try to lie to her as she stared him down.

"You don't need to look, Xena. There's nothing to be gained by it. C'mon," Harry said as he tried again to lead her away. He couldn't have incited her interest more efficiently.

Xena shook herself free of his grasp and strode purposefully towards the exam suite. She was pulling back the curtain even as the agent started to ask her again not to. For another moment there was silence, and then the Warrior Princess screamed.

Across the room, Gabrielle's head whipped around at the sound. Xena's cry of anguish raised the hairs at the back of her neck and chilled her to the bone. The warrior could take an arrow with little more than a grunt and it required a lot of pain to make her scream. The blonde had only heard that level of heart rending pain from her soulmate once before. In 70 BC, mercenaries under the command of the warlord Krykus had attacked the Amazon village and slain Xena's son, Solon, during the fighting. It had broken Xena's heart and insured that twelve years later, she would bathe the Roman Empire in blood after Caesar kidnapped her second child, Eve.

Solon's death had unleashed the darkness. It had not been the Xena they knew who had raced the Amazons for Krykus' head. Two days after the killing, the Destroyer of Nations had entered the warlord's camp with the rising sun. The sentries and scouts already lay dead in the woods. The living faced, not a mortal warrior, but a Fury. She'd slaughtered over three dozen of the warlord's men, captured Krykus, and taken her time chopping him into little bloody pieces. It had already been mid-afternoon when the Destroyer of Nations had dumped the bag of his body parts in the village square so the Amazons could be assured that they had been avenged. Even Queen Melosa had cringed at the results of Xena's wrath. Gabrielle couldn't imagine what had wrung such a cry from her soulmate now, but she ached for her pain and dreaded what would follow.

The bard ran to where Xena stood with one hand still holding back the forgotten curtain, the other covering her mouth in a gesture of horrified shock. Her whole body shook with tremors. Tears had seeped from her eyes, but the cloned warrior didn't notice them or anything else. She was so focused that she didn't even notice Gabrielle's hand gently laid on the small of her back or the soft gasp that escaped the blonde as she looked past her shaking soulmate. There was a body lying on the gurney…a body that the bard had helped rescue in another life. Somehow, the monsters had cloned Eve.

A grim Harry Tasker slipped around the soulmates and into the examination suite. He moved with deliberation to the rack of equipment next to the gurney and with his gunstock, smashed a DVD-ROM deck to the floor. From the wreckage he extracted a silvery disc. "Livia 3.1" was carefully written in Sharpie marker on its face. He slipped it into a pocket of his BDU jacket and then slowly turned to face the clones.

"They were trying to recreate the Champion of Rome," he told them. "Maybe they were even programming her as the bomb went off. When their equipment died with the power it stopped the life support machines too. Xena, she's dead. She'll never be a threat." The agent sighed and looked at her. "There's nothing you can do."

Xena was silent and it was Gabrielle who answered in a small shaky voice.

"We saved her when she was the Bitch of Rome. We could have done it again."

The cloned Warrior Princess said nothing. She didn't visibly react to the words, but Harry's terse report had struck a blow against her heart. Wasn't it just typical for the inherent bitterness of the world to have arranged this? Now fate had served her up yet another dose of poison. She could practically taste it scorching her tongue. Surely she was cursed in this life, just as her original life had so often seemed to be. Their bomb had stopped the machines that had been keeping Eve alive. Their assault had caused her daughter's death. Accompanying the hurt came self-condemnation and guilt, harsh and unforgiving. It had always been her nature to take the blame, even when there was no possible way that she could have foreseen the consequences. It was the dark side of the impulse that had driven her all her life to be the best. Under stress she reverted to this simple belief. That in life as in war there was no substitute for being prepared.

Though it was irrational, all Xena's clone could feel of through her pain was that she'd missed seeing her daughter growing up again. Again she'd lost Eve to evil and found her corrupted by darkness. Again she'd failed at being a mother. The limp cadaver with the electrodes on its head wasn't just another clone; a stranger's body she'd not even known existed until seconds ago. In her rightful place and time, that body had once been a baby girl, warm and helpless, who'd grown within her own body…not a scrap of tissue nurtured in a jar. How could she possibly not have known, not have felt that she existed? It was her daughter lying dead on that gurney.

Once she'd had such hopes. On the day Eve was born the Warrior Princess had dared to dream that maybe there could be a degree of normalcy in her life; that something could exist for her beyond the fighting. She was 29 and had been at war for a dozen years. She'd tried to retire to her hometown to raise her second child, but Caesar and Pompey had followed. Even after the solstice battle of the best day, she'd nurtured her hope of raising her daughter. For a decade things had seemed as though they could work. Though it hadn't been easy, at least it had seemed possible. Xena, Gabrielle, and Eve. Next, Hope had been born and a new addition had joined the family they were creating among the Amazons. Life had been sweet; almost too good for the ex-warlord. Then Brutus had kidnapped her daughter and her life had been consumed by the Bloody Years. She'd lost her daughter and the quest to win her back had drawn the soulmates away from Hope too. Her family had been splintered and in her heart of hearts, Xena had come to believe that she'd never deserved anything better. For a dozen years of darkness the only bright thing in her life had been Gabrielle. Still she'd fought on. She didn't really know how to do anything else. If only she could take Eve back from Caesar, maybe there could be a second chance. She'd spent a dozen years trying and after she'd finally succeeded, she'd spent the last two years of her life trying to undo the damage of Rome. This time her daughter was dead, not a captive. Now she'd lost a chance that she hadn't even known she had, and it hurt. And behind the hurt came the black flames of rage. The dream of two millennia ago was dead. There would be no more chances. The tears stopped and the anguish disappeared from her face as a deeper part of herself took over.

"First my daughter will have a warrior's pyre," the cloned warrior stated in a deathly calm, "and then I will have my revenge. I will find them and I will kill them all."

Xena moved to the gurney and began peeling off the wires. She wrenched down a curtain and draped her daughter's body. With Gabrielle's help she bound the fabric with strips ripped from the curtain's end. Then she hoisted Eve's cadaver over her shoulder and paced back out to the lab. Harry and Gabrielle could only follow in silence.

Ethan and Al had overheard most of what had happened, but had kept their distance. They'd made a quick circuit of the space and discovered neither a second entrance nor any other occupants. They reported this to Harry in hushed tones as they watched Xena walking back to the control room with her daughter's shrouded body.

"She's going to walk out of here with Eve's body," the cloned bard informed the agents with grim certainty, "and may the gods have mercy on anyone who gets in her way. Everything is different now." She drew her twin swords and hastened to join her soulmate.

"Place the charges and prepare to withdraw," Harry ordered.

The cloned Warrior Princess was no longer concerned with the lab or the mission. That would wait. It had all been superseded by the fate of a doomed family. Her focus had completely shifted. In her mind's eye she was already in the backyard of her house in Columbia, stacking the wood for the funeral pyre; preparing to sing the requiem. And afterwards she would plan. She would return here one day soon with Ares' blessing, and when she left, not a single thing would still be standing. Not a single soul would still draw breath. They had crossed a line of blood. Alti had cloned the Warrior Princess, but they had recreated the Destroyer of Nations.

Phantom Bard, Brooklyn, N.Y.
December 19, 2003

100 BC Gaius Julius Caesar is born in Rome.

97 BC Xena is born in Amphipolis on the border of Thrace and Macedonia.

90 BC Callisto is born in Cirra, on the coast of the Gulf of Corinth, near Delphi, in Phocis.

89 BC Gabrielle is born in Potidaea, at the narrows of the neck of the western most peninsula of Chalcidice.

80 BC The warlord Cortese's army attacks Amphipolis. After their defeat, Xena is driven from her home, estranged from her mother, and blamed for the death of her brother.

78 BC Xena takes command of an outlaw army, having deposed the leader, and transforms them into a pirate force. She sacks Cirra and many other coastal towns on her way towards Corinth, where she is forced to withdraw after a protracted stalemate.

77-73 BC Xena encounters Caesar for the first time, holding him hostage during the sack of Thasos. The Roman navy rescues him and Xena rues the decision to stay her hand and not execute him when she had the chance. Caesar defeats Xena's pirates. They become enemies for life. With her forces in shambles, she accepts patronage from the God of War, becoming known as the Favorite of Ares. During this period, Xena is first called the Destroyer of Nations. She travels through the eastern steppes, as far as Chin, regrouping and forging a new army. For another three years, she leads her growing forces in mayhem, eventually becoming such a threat that she is finally defeated by an uneasy coalition of Athenians, Corinthians, and Greek and Roman mercenaries.

"Sins of the Past" (72 BC) The meeting of soulmates, Xena is 25 and had already been a warrior for over 7 years, the last 5 as a warlord commander. It had been about a month since she'd left her defeated army when she rescued Gabrielle, who had barely turned 17. She was ignorant, idealistic, but also loyal, feisty, and most surprisingly, literate. Within a year, Xena teaches her the nerve pinch and basic staff techniques.

"Chariots of War"

"The Reckoning"

"The Greater Good"

"Callisto's Predations" (71 BC) This scroll became two episodes, "Callisto" and "Return of Callisto". It should be noted that Perdicus was Gabrielle's cousin, NOT her husband, and that at Gabrielle's urging, Xena spared Callisto's life an unprecedented second time. Callisto was tried and imprisoned for 20 years on Shark Island.

"Is There A Physician in the Stockade?" This scroll was originally a manual of Xena's battlefield medical techniques, and was written during the Mitoan-Thessalian Conflict. Sections detail first aid, triage, surgery, bone setting, and herbology. In addition to giving rise to the episode, "Is There A Doctor In The House?", the scroll included an anecdotal story became the core of "In Sickness and In Hell".

"Hooves and Harlots" (70 BC) Note that the actual scroll was as much a history of the Amazon and Centaur cultures as a chronicle of a dispute with a neighboring warlord. It was during this dispute that Xena's son, Solon, (age 5), was actually killed. We are given a rare account of the rage of the Destroyer of Nations. Elements of this history appear as background in several TV episodes, including, "Hooves and Harlots", "Adventures in the Sin Trade 1 & 2", "Lifeblood", and "Orphan of War". For her defense of a wounded Princess Terreis, Gabrielle is made an honorary friend of the Amazons.

"When In Rome" This scroll tells of the origins of the struggle between Julius Caesar and the Warrior Princess. Julius Caesar's ransom and defeat of Xena's pirate army is included as background, while her revenge, achieved by freeing Vercinix and arranging the execution of Crassus, is presented as current. It gave rise to the episodes, "Destiny", "The Quest", and "When In Rome".

"The Kingdom of Lao" (70-69 BC) This scroll became the episodes, "The Debt 1 & 2". Xena assassinates Ming Tsu to honor an old alliance, securing the rule of the House of Lao. Gabrielle first uses the Sai in battle and they become one of her favorite weapons.

"Bad Rye" (69 BC) This scroll was greatly dramatized and became "The Furies". Xena and Gabrielle had been back in Greece for barely 2 moons, and Xena was still suffering debilitation from ergotism, when they were recalled to Chin. (Ergot poisoning, caused by a fungus growing on rye because of wet weather, was relatively common in their time).

"The Dragon and the Phoenix" (68 BC) This scroll gave rise to the episodes, "Purity", and "Back in the Bottle". Recalled to Chin, Xena captures Ming Tsu's son, Ming Tien, the "Green Dragon", (age 22), and turns him over to the Laos, who execute him for breaking the peace with his black powder army. The restored peace of Chin is the reborn "Phoenix".

"Giant Killer" (68 BC) Written on the road, this scroll begins with a short history of giants, during which Gabrielle recounts a legend that became the episode "Giant Killer", and continues with an adventure that became "A Day in the Life". It probably also inspired the anecdotal scene with Gabrielle and the blind giant that was inserted into "Sins of the Past".

"The Blood Shamaness" (late 68 BC) Immediately follows the soulmates' return from Chin. This scroll tells of Alti's reappearance after 8 years, again threatening the Amazon nation. Still obsessed with forcing Xena to assist in her plans for destroying the Amazons, she attempted to steal Eve's soul during Xena's pregnancy. The episode, "Them Bones, Them Bones" was based on this scroll. It was left to Gabrielle to actually defeat Alti, after Queen Melosa was mortally poisoned by the renegade, Valesca. At this time, Gabrielle was named a full sister and Amazon Warrior, by the newly crowned Queen Terreis.

"The Dirty Half Dozen" (67 BC)

"Forgiven"

"In Sickness and In Hell" (66 BC) Gabrielle writes of the plagues and diseases the soulmates had encountered during their travels. Among these we can recognize malaria, yellow fever, small pox, dysentery, leprosy, influenza, bubonic plague, tin and lead poisoning, acromegaly, chrondistrophic dwarfism, Siamese and parasite twinning, tuberculosis, gonorrhea, typhus, cholera, and several types of food poisoning.

"Past Imperfect"

"Paradise Found" (65 BC) Gabrielle and Xena learn yoga techniques and a new system of pressure point attacks from the Tibetan mystic and holy man, Ai-den.

"Karma" (64 BC) The events of this scroll, actually a travelogue of the journey to Indus and a record of the philosophies they encountered, became, after great embellishment, the episodes "Devi", and "Between the Lines". Xena and Gabrielle meet Eli and again defeat Alti, this time in spirit form.

"The Way" (64-63 BC) Xena is purified by her acceptance of the Way of the Warrior, under the guidance of a spiritual teacher in Indus. It is during their return to Greece that she is able to take possession of the Chakram of Light and combine it with the Chakram of Darkness. This material, much modified, is the basis for the episodes, "The Way", and "Chakram".

"The Best Day" (Summer Solstice, 63 BC) This scroll includes the material that became both "A Good Day" and "Amphipolis Under Siege". Xena engineers the destruction of Caesar and Pompey's eastern armies outside of Amphipolis. The combined Roman casualties are estimated at over 40,000. Xena had returned home with Gabrielle and 4 year old Eve, hoping for a semi-retirement in which to raise her daughter.

"The Play's the Thing" A self-deprecatory piece by Gabrielle, telling of the fiasco arising from her attempt at theater production.

"Crusader" (61-60 BC ?) This scroll tells of the warrior Najara, seducer of the Roman Governor of Pergamum. She had so bewitched the weak willed governor with her ambition and delusions of supernatural invincibility, that he had begun the secession of Pergamum from the Roman Empire. Her crusade was to supplant the Roman pantheon through forced conversion, and create an empire dedicated to an ancient and bloodthirsty monotheistic faith, the worship of Ba'al. It was her use of captured Greek sailors, (fishermen and traders from Thracian coastal villages in particular), as human sacrifices, which prompted the soulmates to become involved. Staying ahead of soldiers dispatched by Pompey the Magnus to depose the governor, Xena and Gabrielle track down and battle Najara. After finally dealing Najara an incapacitating wound, the soulmates left her in local custody for the arriving legions. Charged with sedition, piracy, and heresy, Najara was executed for her crimes following her trial and conviction by a Roman court in early 59 BC.

"Lifeblood" (60 BC) Xena and Gabrielle return to the Amazon Village for the birth and christening of Gabrielle's daughter, Hope, who receives her Right of Caste. They find that Queen Ephiny had succeeded Queen Terreis in 62 BC.

"Succession" (59 BC) Xena and Gabrielle confront and kill Mavican, Callisto's would-be successor, sparring partner, and disciple, who had escaped from Shark Island in 60 BC after studying there under the "Warrior Queen" for 10 years. It should be noted that for several years, Gabrielle had been as deadly a fighter as Xena, and inflicted Mavican's fatal wound with her sai.

"Endgame" (Vernal Equinox, 58 BC) This scroll tells of Caesar's revenge. On his orders, Brutus attacks the Amazons, knowing Pompey is nearby. Queen Ephiny is killed, and Eve, (age 10), is kidnapped. In the power gulf, Xena takes temporary command of the Amazon army, slaughters Pompey's legions, and personally beheads him, believing that he, not Caesar, was responsible for Eve's abduction. At the same time, Gabrielle leads a war party to recover Ephiny's body and rescue Amazons taken prisoner by Brutus. She was almost successful in killing Brutus as well, a lost opportunity the soulmates would be thankful for years later on the Ides of March. Only weeks later, Caesar sends a gloating message explaining how Brutus' troops had dressed in Pompey's uniforms for the kidnapping, and that Xena's rage had removed his greatest rival for power in Rome.

It is during this time that Gabrielle trades her sais for a pair of Amazon short swords, the blades of which she has lightened by "ventilation", removing windows of metal to leave the blades "skeletonized". The resulting whistle when slicing through the air becomes a fearsome trademark of the "Amazon Bard".

"One Against an Army" (58-47 BC) Xena declares war on the Roman Empire with the objective of recovering her daughter from Caesar. Although this scroll contains the story of Xena's defense of a high pass, that battle was only one of many, fought over a dozen years, against the Roman army, not the Persians. Over the years, Xena was credited with causing destruction equivalent to over five Roman legions in Greece, two in Italia, one in Gallia, and one in Germania; including auxiliaries and mercenaries, a total of over 86,000 soldiers. This includes the Roman casualties of "Endgame", but not those of "The Best Day". (The Battle of Thermopylae was fought in 480 BC, over 400 years before Xena's time).

"Queen Marga" (58 BC) Documents the short reign of the Amazon Queen Marga, and provided material that became "Coming Home" and "Dangerous Prey". Note that Prince Morloch was the leader of the hostile army, while Ares and the Erinyes never appear.

"Queen Varia" (57-54 BC and 46 BC) Documents the beginning of the reign of the hotheaded Amazon Queen Varia, and the 3-year war against Helicon. It provides material that became "To Helicon and Back", as well as relating Varia's later "Oath of Blood", the Amazon Nation's vendetta against Livia, that served as the background for "Path of Vengeance", which occurred after the rescue of Eve.



*Note 1: (52 BC) Callisto escapes from Shark Island Penal Colony and temporarily disappears. At some point after this time, it is suspected that Callisto made her way to Asia Minor and took possession of the Chakram of Night, which she used in her attack on Xena in Rome. This weapon turned up millennia later in Ares' tomb and was seen there by Janice Covington and Melinda Pappas. It was the rumor of Callisto in Rome that had brought Xena and Gabrielle out of semi-retirement for their last adventure).



"The Abyss" (48 BC) The events of this scroll were probably also dramatized to become "The Price" and "Daughter of Pomira", as well as the episode, "The Abyss".

"The Eternal City" (46 BC) Regarded by scholars as the continuation and culmination of "One Against An Army", it contains the story of the rescue of Eve, now known as Livia. To free her, the soulmates infiltrated Caesar's Palace in Rome and arranged the destruction of three cohorts of Praetorians within the city. Xena and Gabrielle spent almost all of their remaining lives on the run, undoing Caesar's influence on Xena's daughter. By this time, Xena had been named First Enemy of the Imperium, with the price on her head growing to 6 million denarii.

"The Ides of March" (44 BC) Begun by Gabrielle in a Roman prison, and completed by an unknown author after the crucifixion. Xena was 53, Gabrielle was 45, Callisto was 46, and Caesar was 56, on the Ides of March, 44 BC. Xena and Gabrielle were executed on the same day as the assassination of their archenemy Gaius Julius Caesar. The unknown author attempts to claim that they all died within moments of each other, in different parts of the city of Rome. Only Callisto survived, and her fate is not recorded.



*Note 2: Eve and Hope both survived their mothers' deaths. Eve lived in Amphipolis while not on the road continuing Xena and Gabrielle's work. In 39 BC she was able to avenge herself by killing Brutus. She became a well-known warrior and hero, hunted by Rome, until she was granted amnesty and banished from Italia by Augustus Caesar, in 27 BC. In return, she foreswore carrying on her mother's war against the Empire. The agreement was one of mutual convenience, as she was 41 and had two children by that time, and Augustus was in the process of securing his rule. Unlike Xena, Eve lived to retire and raise her family at her grandmother's inn. Eve and Hope were never more than acquaintances, as Hope was only 2 when Eve was kidnapped, and 14 when she was freed. By that time, Livia/Eve was regarded as an enemy of the Amazon Nation. Hope exceeded Gabrielle's status as an Amazon Warrior, while living fulltime with her tribe. At the age of 18, she earned the grade of Master Warrior, upon achieving her 25th kill in battle. At the age of 19, Hope became War Queen of the Greek Amazons, following her challenge and defeat of Queen Varia on the summer solstice in 40 BC. Using that position to honor the relationship between her own mother and Eve's, she declined to prosecute Varia's "Oath of Blood", and the Nation's vendetta against Livia/Eve was laid to rest. Almost nothing further is known about her.



*Note 3: Deadly Xena and Gabrielle were both hunted by Rome, but because of the personal enmity between Xena and Caesar, it was always the Warrior Princess for whom the Empire reserved its greatest hatred. Over the years, (with Gabrielle's help), Xena was involved in the deaths of something in the neighborhood of 156,000 enemy troops, 40,000 in "The Best Day", 86,000 during "One Against an Army", and 30,000 in Chin, primarily in "The Dragon and the Phoenix". Figures on deaths during her years as a warlord are sketchy, however best estimates place the total at something in the neighborhood of 12,000 to 15,000. A conservative total would count 170,000 dead over the course of her career. For purposes of comparison, Hannibal Barca is credited with the destruction of about 85,000 legionnaires and allies in three major battles, (Trebbia River, Lake Trasimeno, and the Plain of Cannae), within three years. In the American Civil War, about 185,000 men were killed in action or died of wounds. Another 186,000 died of diseases associated with the war. Civilian casualties are unrecorded.



April 27, 2000 (AD) Cloned Xena and Gabrielle escape from the clandestine lab of Alexis Los Alamos, (Alti), in City of Industry, California.

September 21, 2000 (AD) Dr. Janice Covington, Ph.D., Professor Emeritus of Archeology at the University of S.C. passes away after a third stroke. Ray, her colleague and one-time graduate teaching assistant had introduced the soulmates to her on June 2. She had used her old contacts in the underworld to provide personal identities for the clones, who settle down with her in Columbia S.C., in the old Pappas family house. Janice makes Serena Pappas and Gabriella Covington her heirs, and the inheritors of the Pappas estate. The clones learn the truth of their origin.

April 30, 2001 (AD) The cloned soulmates travel to New Zealand and confront Lucy, Renee, and Rob on the set of the final episode of the TV show, Xena Warrior Princess. They learn the secret of how the show was conceived and confirm their suspicions that an old influence is again active in the modern world.

June 1, 2001 (AD) The clones open the Columbia School of Martial Science. Their first students are the Columbia, S.C. police officers, Marcus Lewis and Alexander Williams.

September 13, 2001 (AD) Gabrielle wins the Women's Division of the 23rd National Open Full Contact Martial Arts Championships, to honor the soulmates' fallen student, Marcus Lewis, who was killed in a hijacked plane on Sept. 11, in Stony Creek Township, Pennsylvania. On the same day, Xena foils a bio-terrorist hostage situation in Quantico, Va., which initiates the clones' contact with the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team.

September 16 to October 14, 2001 (AD) The soulmates serve as guest instructors in unarmed combat to the FBI's Hostage Rescue Team, at the FBI compound in the Quantico Marine Base, Quantico, Virginia. They have also drawn the interest of a covert government agency, the shadow organization, Omega Sector. A team led by agent Harry Tasker investigates them, while at the same time forestalling investigation by other government intelligence agencies.

November 2, 2001 (AD) The Columbia School of Martial science is attacked by clones of Callisto and her disciple, Mavican. They are defeated by Xena and Gabrielle and then tracked when they flee by agents of Omega Sector, who subsequently contact the soulmates about a covert mission.

November 7, 2001 (AD) The clones are recruited by Harry Tasker to join in a mission against a secret DOE cloning facility near Atlanta, Ga. and during that mission the Destroyer of Nations is reborn.