A QUICK NOTE:
Most of this story was written at my grandparents' former home in
Oxbow, Maine, during the last week of December, 1999, and the first
week of January, 2000 - a good portion while the television in the
background showed CBC's coverage of the worldwide Year 2000
celebrations. It's a memory I wouldn't trade for all the world.
I've been very caught up with the Symphony of the Sword lately, but
Utena, Kate and the gang wanted a day off, so I'm very pleased that
I've finally been able to put the finishing touches on this one and
get it out into the world. :) Hopefully, it can convey some measure of
the contentment I felt, working at creation while nestled warmly in
the North Maine Woods...
Enjoy,
--G.
Waltham, MA
December 3, 2001
--------
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presents
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE
Aegis Florea, Part One:
Commander Moreau
Benjamin D. Hutchins
(c) 2001 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
After Earth's First Contact with Salusia in 1999, and its
subsequent induction into the United Galactica the following year, the
overcrowded planet was the origin point of a virtual explosion in
space colonization. Between 2001 and 2030, over a hundred colonies of
the various nations of Earth were founded on worlds all over the
galaxy. Some of them maintained close ties to their mother planet for
decades, even centuries; others were nearly independent from the
beginning, thanks to their great distance from the homestar.
The farthest-flung colony of the First Wave is Ishiyama, a
temperate Class-M world which orbits a G-class star in the far rimward
reaches of the Outer Rim Territories. Ishiyama is not only far from
Earth, it's far from almost everywhere. This splendid isolation has
caused the culture on Ishiyama - primarily a Japanese colony with a
few European settlers here and there - to develop rather oddly. The
technology base is strange, too, although whether the culture
influenced the technology or the technology a culture is a fruitless
argument to start.
Certainly the technological style of the Ishiyamajin was
influenced by the planet's resource distribution; though lacking in
exotic metals and almost totally devoid of petroleum, it is richly
endowed with iron and a particularly useful form of coal, and has
large oceans not unlike those of Earth. Early on, the Ishiyamajin
had to make a very important choice: use existing oil-dependent
technologies and therefore be all but completely dependent on imports
for their energy and exotic-materials needs, or develop technologies
which they could support with local materials. With that in mind,
Ishiyama's earliest scientists took another look at iron and steam.
Steam power technology had never been developed to anything
like its fullest potential on Earth; it had reached a reliable and
useful level of refinement, stagnated there for a while, and then been
replaced by the internal combustion engine. Indeed, there were power
technologies beyond that by the time Ishiyama was well-established, in
the mid-to-late 21st century, but they required exotic materials not
easily found on Ishiyama. For good or ill, Ishiyama turned its back
on them and looked to steam.
Three hundred years of development brought steam power and
iron-based metallurgy to the zenith of sophistication on Ishiyama,
bringing to the one a compactness, utility and safety never imagined
in the old Earth days, and the other a strength, workability and
durability unrivaled throughout the galaxy. Automobiles, trains,
aircraft, ships, every machine on the planet is made of steel and
driven by steam. Even the local spacecraft get their primary power,
the power that is transformed into electrical energy for plasma drives
and hyperdrive motivators, from steam, and are hulled in the planet's
legendary super-strong steel.
Ishiyama is an interesting experience to the 24th-century
traveler. It is undeniably a part of the galactic community, linked
by traderoutes to Earth and several other of the most important worlds
of the Federation, but its remoteness ensures that news from the
'outside world' is stale by the time it reaches Ishiyama. Walking the
streets of the planet's cosmopolitan capital city, Ohji, is like
stepping back into another time - a time that never was. Buildings
are of masonry and wood; streets are paved with carefully-fitted
stones. Rail travel - steam-driven, of course - is ubiquitous.
People read newspapers and listen to the radio. It's a more tranquil
life, even if there is a spaceport and a local internet.
There are actually two countries on Ishiyama, so referring
to Ohji as the planet's capital is somewhat inaccurate. Certainly it
would offend the people of the other nation, the Kaneko Republic, who
would point out, rather sharply, that Ohji is only the capital of the
tyrannical and pestiferous Empire of Morita. It's Morita that the
outside galaxy recognizes as the political power on Ishiyama, though,
so Kaneko's objections don't amount to much - plus, their
stone-throwing is a bit laughable given the fascist-dictatorship glass
house they live in.
With slightly more than half the planet covered in oceans and
a hostile country on the southern continent, Morita maintains a fairly
extensive surface navy, headquartered at Ohji Naval Station. On this
particular winter's day, most of the fleet was at sea, but from the
higher floors of the bayside Imperial Hotel, a keen observer could see
four battleships, two replenishing stores, one just commissioned and
fitting for first departure, and one laid up in ordinary awaiting
decommissioning. There were also a couple of cruisers, several
submarines and a half-dozen destroyers. A single massive aircraft
carrier was parked at the far end of the Navy dockyards, waiting for
its destroyer escorts to finish re-provisioning so it could return to
patrol.
At the near end of the docks, lying at an awkward angle next
to its pier, was a single light cruiser, smaller than a standard
cruiser but bigger than a destroyer. This cruiser, His Radiant
Majesty's Ship Sendai, was very badly bashed about; its forward gun
turret, where a trio of eight-inchers had once lived, was gone
entirely, and one of the barrels of the matching turret aft of the
superstructure ended in a jagged tangle of steel only a few inches
from the turret body. The cruiser's thin armor was dented and holed,
its superstructure shattered. Where its bridge belonged there was
nothing but a black-edged, gaping hole. It wallowed in the green
water next to its pier at a ten-degree list to starboard, rolling far
enough that its number-one and -two portside torpedo tubes could be
seen.
Lieutenant Peter Moreau stepped down from a steam-driven
streetcar along Embarcation Drive, waved to the conductor, and
straightened the white tunic of his uniform, checking to make sure
that the newly-attached loop of gold braid at his right shoulder was
hanging straight. The braid marked his commission as lieutenant,
giving him the right to push the midshipmen around and generally
delude himself into thinking he might be a real officer someday.
He shouldered his duffel bag - on his left shoulder, so as to
avoid bumping the two swords whose grips jutted up above his right -
and headed for the new battleship's gangway, sparing a glance down the
line at the battered bows of the Sendai. He gave a little shiver,
remembering the four hours of smoke-wreathed, clamorous hell it had
taken the cruiser to be bashed into its current configuration by a
Kaneko battleship. There had been six midshipmen aboard the Sendai
that morning; by evening, there was only himself. His commission and
two months' leave had been waiting for him when the Sendai limped into
port two days later, the captain's action report having preceded it by
radio.
Now he was back in harness, reporting to his new assignment
after spending a pleasant two months rambling around the northern
provinces, enjoying the unusually snowy winter. He'd visited a number
of temples and lodges in the mountainous region near Kohji, talked
with as many people as possible and generally soaked up the quiet
rural atmosphere. Memories of the warmth and hospitality of the
Northerners banished the lingering horror of the Sendai's ordeal and
brought a small smile to Moreau's lips as he paused at the foot of the
battleship's gangway.
He was pausing because this was the first really good look
he'd gotten at his new home, the battleship Colonel Kazuma Shinguuji.
The lead ship of a new class, the Shinguuji was called a 'fast
battleship'. She (though named for a man, the ship was still called
'she' - a good illustration, Moreau thought, of the hazards of naming
ships after war heroes) was supposed to be the fastest ship ever built
on Ishiyama, faster than the Sprinter class of attack submarines and
able to maintain their speed for much, much longer. It showed in her
lines: she was much sleeker than the other battleships parked along
the Navy piers, her cutwater raked sharply forward, superstructure and
twin funnels canted aft at an equivalent angle to provide the eye with
a pleasing balance. As instruments of war went, the battleship
Shinguuji was a good one to look at.
The Officer of the Deck, a middle-aged, skinny fellow with a
lieutenant commander's stripes on his sleeves, eyed Moreau dubiously
as the junior officer stepped off the gangway, dropped his bag neatly
next to his left foot in the prescribed manner, and came to attention.
"Lieutenant Peter Moreau, reporting for duty, sir!" he said,
saluting.
The deck officer returned the salute somewhat sketchily and
asked, "Your orders, Lieutenant?"
Moreau undid his tunic's top button, reached inside, and drew
out the twice-folded sheet of heavy, creamy paper, handing it over.
The deck officer unfolded it and glanced over it. In twenty years of
service he'd seen so many official orders that the phrase "you are
hereby requested and required" had ceased to have any linguistic
meaning for him and was now simply the shape that always headed an
official-looking document. It was the blue-ribboned gold seal at
the bottom he was mainly interested in, after having scanned the text
for the name the officer had given.
It wasn't until he saw the name in print that it occurred to
Lieutenant Commander Oshibori that he'd seen it before. His heavy
gray brows nearly collided as he scowled thoughtfully; then he
remembered and handed the orders back.
"You have new orders, Lieutenant," he said, "delivered by the
Admiralty during your leave in anticipation of your reporting here.
Mr. Edison!" he bellowed.
"Sir!" said the lanky lieutenant who happened to be passing at
that moment as he skidded to a halt and came to attention.
"My compliments to the captain, and Lieutenant Moreau has just
reported for duty."
"Aye aye, sir!" said Edison, and he hustled away. A few
moments later, Captain Kiyone Moriyuuki appeared from somewhere
forward. At thirty-three, Captain Moriyuuki was the youngest captain
of a ship-of-the-line in the Imperial Morita Navy, and the only woman
commanding a capital ship. Elsewhere in the galaxy, men, women and
the various other genders might have attained something like equality,
but on Ishiyama, Captain Moriyuuki was still somewhat unusual for her
force of personality. Her example was inspiring a whole generation of
Ishiyaman girls on both sides of the war, which the old men of both
nations bewailed would cause the collapse of society when those girls
came of age.
Lieutenant Moreau had served under Captain Moriyuuki in the
Sendai. After that ship's vicious clash with the Glorious Kaneko
Republican People's Ship Ironfist, the captain had been rewarded for
her courage and skill with the command of the country's newest, most
powerful ship, and her sole surviving midshipman had been commissioned
thanks largely to the glowing description of his courage and cool-
headedness in her after-action report.
"Welcome aboard, Lieutenant Moreau," said Moriyuuki after the
two officers had exchanged salutes. "Good to see you again. Are you
well?"
"Perfectly fine, ma'am," he replied. "The Officer of the Deck
says I have new orders?"
Moriyuuki nodded. "Come to my cabin," she said, and led the
way below. Moreau followed her, puzzled and slightly excited. He
knew Captain Moriyuuki well enough by now to know that she was only
curt when something important was afoot. In her stateroom, he stood
at attention just inside the door while she went to her desk and got
another of the familiar cream-colored envelopes from the top drawer.
"At ease," she said to him as she handed him the envelope. He
moved his feet sixteen inches apart in the prescribed manner and
relaxed not at all, tucking one hand into the small of his back as
soon as he'd extracted and unfolded the sheet of heavy paper from
inside the envelope.
THE ADMIRALTY AND NAVAL GENERAL STAFF
GOVERNMENT CENTRE
OHJI
17th January, 2353
LIEUTENANT PETER MOREAU
HRMS COLONEL KAZUMA SHINGUUJI
PIER 11, OHJI NAVAL STATION
OHJI
Lieutenant,
Please accept my heartiest congratulations, on behalf of the Admiralty
and General Staff of the Imperial Navy. In recognition of your
exceptional abilities in seamanship and leadership, your unswerving
dedication to duty, and your fearlessness under fire, it is my great
and sincere pleasure to inform you that you are hereby promoted to the
rank of COMMANDER in the Imperial Navy.
I am commanded by the Admiralty to inform you that you have been
specially selected to perform a very important duty for His Most
Radiant Majesty the Emperor, the Navy, and all the people of the
Shining Empire of Morita. You are therefore requested and required to
assume command of the FLOWER DIVISION of the IMPERIAL FLORAL ASSAULT
GROUP, CAPITAL DEFENSE FORCES. You are furthermore requested and
required to report immediately upon receipt of these orders to MAJOR
GENERAL IKKI YONEDA at the Imperial Theater, 112 Fujishima Avenue,
Ohji, to be invested with this command.
With a fervent hope that your courage and skill will serve you well in
this new assignment, I remain,
Your ob't servant,
TOSHIHIRO NOGUCHI,
Sec'y to the Admiralty and
Naval General Staff
Moreau read the orders three times, found that even this level
of repetition could not make them make sense, and looked over them at
his captain.
"Ma'am, I - " he started, but couldn't think what 'he -', and
so skipped it.
Captain Moriyuuki nodded. "I haven't read them, but I can
guess what they say, based on what I was told to expect you to do when
you reported in and received them." She pressed a key on her desk's
built-in intercom set and said, "Haneda, send in the Quartermaster,
please."
"Aye aye, ma'am," said the voice of Haneda, the captain's
coxswain (who hadn't much to do with boats nowadays, but the title
remained, applied to the captain's personal assistant). A few moments
later, Moreau had to move aside as a quartermaster officer entered,
carrying a uniform jacket on a hanger over his shoulder. The captain
took it from him and dismissed him; when the door was closed again,
she turned to Moreau and extended the jacket to him.
"I took the liberty of having it prepared for you," she said.
Moreau took it and looked it over; it was not unlike the one he was
wearing, except it was of slightly heavier material, and it had two
gold braids looped under its right armpit, and two gold stripes
around the cuff of each sleeve - the marks of a commander.
Moreau gazed at it for a moment, then took off the one he was
wearing, put the new one on, and hung the old one on a hanger. He
looked with puzzlement at it for a moment, not sure what to do with it
now, until Captain Moriyuuki gently removed it from his hand and put
it on her bunk.
"I'm sure we'll have a junior officer posted to replace you
who will be able to use it," she said with a smile. Then she saluted
his new rank and said seriously, "Congratulations, Commander Moreau."
He returned the salute and wondered if she might be upset.
Whatever she'd had in mind when she'd praised him to the Admiralty, it
certainly hadn't been his peremptory removal from her ship's company,
leaving her with a hole to fill in the wardroom two days before her
new ship was due at sea.
"Captain, I don't know what this is about," he said honestly,
"but I hate to leave the Shinguuji before she even sails. I was
honored that you requested me for your new crew and looked forward to
serving with you again."
She nodded. "I understand, Commander. The Admiralty works in
strange and mysterious ways. As much as you hate to go, I hate to
lose you." Candidly, she went on, "I had thought to make you gunner
into the No. 1 battery for'rard, after your performance at the aft
guns against Ironfist, but I'll have to do without." Sternly, she
added, "I have one final instruction for you before you leave my
command, though."
"Yes, ma'am?" he inquired.
"The Capital Defense Forces are an important part of our
nation's defenses," she said. "You've heard the rumors that the
Invaders of the last war may be on the verge of returning. Only the
Capital Defense Forces saved Morita from annihilation in the last
war with them. If you can command your new unit with the same
assurance with which you led the Sendai's aft battery, you'll be a lot
more important than this ship when the Invaders return. So I want you
to give this new assignment your absolute best. Understand?"
"Aye aye, ma'am!" said Commander Moreau.
"Well, then, get a move on! Is this what you call reporting
immediately upon receipt of orders? Dismissed!"
"Aye aye, ma'am!" repeated Moreau; he saluted once more,
about-faced smartly, and left the cabin.
Even in a navy city like Ohji, a naval officer in class-A
whites with a duffel over one shoulder drew the occasional look of
puzzlement or wonder on the streetcars. Moreau noticed with amusement
that, where as a lieutenant he had merited only the odd, idle glance
of a passer-by or fellow passenger wondering where he was going and
what ship he belonged to, as a commander, ten minutes later, he
received long, deeply curious looks, people perhaps wondering which
destroyer or submarine was his command.
It was just as well that none was; if he had been on his way
to take command of a ship, he would have been intolerably nervous. He
had no idea what the hell the 'Flower Division' of the 'Imperial
Floral Assault Group' was, though, and so he had no idea what he was
on his way to take charge of. Maybe somebody at the Admiralty had
taken a dislike to the rather cinematic way in which Captain Moriyuuki
had reported his exploits during the Ironfist engagement and had put
him in charge of a band or something. What sort of military unit was
based at a theater?
He stepped down from the streetcar in front of the theater
just as that thought finished running through his mind, and stood
looking up at the Imperial Theater's facade for a moment before
stepping inside the cool, red-carpeted lobby. There was a pretty girl
with flared brown hair sitting at a table at the end of the hallway
leading back into the theater.
She glanced up curiously at the odd sight of him and asked,
"May I help you, sir?"
He looked at her for a moment, decided there was no one else
around he could ask, and said, "Commander Peter Moreau, reporting as
ordered to Major General Yoneda."
His meeting with Yoneda had done nothing to alleviate Moreau's
utter puzzlement. The general had been positively cheeful, welcoming
Moreau with a smile and a politely-refused offer of a drink. He
hadn't, however, explained what the hell was going on with Moreau's
orders; instead he'd only repeated what Moreau's orders said about the
young officer's having been posted to command of the Flower Division,
congratulated him, and told him to report to a conference room in two
hours to meet his command. He'd been directed to his quarters, a
pleasant bedroom on the third floor of the theater's living wing, and
left alone there to do whatever it was newly-arrived officers did.
Peter Moreau had no better idea than the girl who'd directed
him to his room as to what newly-arrived officers did, so he settled
for unpacking. Sadly, his Navy uniform, new tunic and all, would be
unnecessary; Yoneda had mentioned that he'd find his new uniform in
his closet, and that he (the general) would be obliged if he (the
commander) would be wearing it when he arrived for his introduction to
the unit.
Moreau went to the closet, took out the uniform, and stared at
it for five solid minutes with amusement and horror warring in his
soul. Finally he shook himself from his reverie and, bowing to
inevitability, put it on, then stood before the three-panel mirror
next to the closet to survey himself.
"Oh my God," he murmured, "I look like what if Beethoven was a
Good Humor man."
And indeed he did, for it appeared that the uniform of the
commander of the Flower Division, Imperial Floral Assault Group,
consisted of:
- one white turtleneck shirt, long-sleeved;
- one pair white trousers with pronounced front seams;
- one pair white leather boots, mid-calf, with gold toe-caps
and cavalry heels;
- one pair white leather gloves, fingerless;
- one broad leather belt, brown;
- one notch-waisted, double-breasted, swallow-tailed white
gabardine jacket with gold edging, gold buttons, strange gold bushings
around the shoulders, two gold braid loops hanging down the right
sleeve to the elbow, and two gold commander's stripes on the sleeve
cuffs; and
- one white silk cravat.
The uniform was not just white, it was dazzling, so white it
made his Navy whites look positively dingy. He knew he'd never be
able to keep the damned thing clean. And why did the damned pants
have to be so tight? He'd be in constant fear of pulling a James
West. He fretted with the cuffs of his sleeves and the cravat for a
bit, then gave up with a sigh and wondered what the brass bushings on
the shoulders were for. And now that he looked at it, his commander's
braid wasn't cordage at all, but braided metallic hose. What the hell
was that in aid of? It was quite the weirdest get-up he could ever
remember wearing, at least in a military context.
He arranged his two swords across his back, settling the
straps under the broad collar of the jacket so that the swords' grips
protruded above his right shoulder without disturbing the lines of the
uniform. He'd have to find somebody who could sew decently - if this
place were really a theater, that shouldn't be hard - to modify the
jacket so that the straps passed through the back and thus could be
hidden rather than crossing over the buttons on the front, but that
could wait. The broad belt was actually a narrow belt threaded over a
broad one, so he could hang the swords' companion tanto on it without
difficulty.
He opened his sea chest and took out his sidearm, checked that
it was loaded and secure, and put its holster on his left hip,
opposite the tanto. He looked at himself in the mirror again, trying
to decide if he looked too martial so heavily armed - he was in a
rear-area headquarters, after all - but training and long habit
forbade him to go unarmed, and so he left everything as it was.
Peter Moreau stood in the conference-room equivalent of the
wings, off in the corner behind a filing cabinet, and listened to
Major General Yoneda describing his career to date to the assembled
company. He couldn't see them any more than they could see him, but
the room didn't strike him as all that big, and there wasn't much
noise, so there couldn't be more than a dozen or so of them. He
wished he wasn't so damned nervous, and blamed the pants. This got
his attention back on Yoneda just in time to realize that the general
had said his name, and he stepped out from his concealment to stand
next to the general at the head of the table.
Later, looking back on it, Moreau would be very proud of
himself for not allowing his jaw to drop.
There were six of them, three on each side of the long
conference table, and as he entered their line of sight they all
jumped up and came to attention. All of them wore uniforms like his,
though in different hues, so the little group was an explosion of
color in the drabness of the conference room. All of them were women.
Well, no, now that he looked at them more closely, that wasn't
-quite- true...
"Flower Division, introduce yourselves to Commander Moreau, if
you please."
The first one on Moreau's left took this challenge first. She
was a tall woman and a pretty one, with short ash-blonde hair that
fell heavily over one of her green eyes and an angular, rather sad
face. Her uniform's jacket was black. She was the only other person
in the room wearing a gun; it was some sort of antique revolver, but
Moreau couldn't tell what type in its holster.
"I am Maria Tachibana," she said, saluting. Her voice held a
trace of an accent which Moreau had to think to place - Russian,
perhaps? "I will be your deputy commander," said Maria. "I hope we
will work well together."
"Maria has been interim commander while we awaited your return
from leave," said Yoneda. "She can help you with any questions you
might have while you get settled in."
Moreau nodded. "I'll be grateful for any advice you can offer
me," he said, because it was more diplomatic than grabbing her
by the shoulders and demanding, "What the hell does all this mean?!"
Maria returned the nod. Moreau turned his attention to the
next woman in line -
- and recoiled in sudden fright, letting out an involuntary
yelp of surprise. His hand dropped to his side before he realized he
was being foolish, brought himself under control with an effort of
will, and bowed apologetically.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I thought you were someone else for a
moment." He looked up - and up, and up a bit more - at the woman
second in the row, wondering how he could have managed not to notice
her more than generally before looking straight at her. She was a
giant, six and a half feet tall at least; beside her, tall and slender
Maria looked tiny and fragile. She had thick red hair chopped into a
careless wolf cut, a white headband holding it away from her eyes, and
the bright crimson jacket of her uniform looked as though it had all
it could do to restrain the span of her shoulders. Despite her
powerful build, though, she wasn't unfeminine, nor did she look surly;
her face was set in a quizzical frown over her new commander's odd
behavior.
"Although," Moreau went on, chuckling lamely, "I can see now
that you're much taller than she is."
"Uh... right," she said. "I'm Kanna Kirishima," she went on;
then her face cracked into a grin and she winked a twinkling gray eye
at him. "Don't worry, I don't bite."
Moreau chuckled again, less lamely. He felt a complete idiot,
of course, but at least Kanna was deliberately trying to put him at
his ease. She was doing a pretty good job of it, too. He found
himself liking her instinctively - she had the sort of solid good
cheer that one often found in particularly large, powerful people, the
easiest alternative to such people during their formative years being
a bullying surliness.
From Kanna to the next team member in line was quite a plunge
for his eyes to take; the girl standing next to the brawny redhead was
tiny, not even four feet high, with a mane of streaming golden hair,
big blue eyes, and a bright yellow uniform jacket. Under one arm she
held a fat brown teddy bear. Moreau guessed that she couldn't be
older than ten years, and wondered what the hell she was doing here.
"My name is Iris de Chateaubriand," she said in a piping
little voice. "Everybody calls me Iris." She held up the bear.
"This is my best friend, Jean-Paul!"
Moreau forced his face, which really wanted to grin, into a
somber expression; he could see that this little girl took herself
tremendously seriously, and he didn't want to offend her by failing to
respond in kind. "Bonjour, Mademoiselle la Vicomtesse; bonjour,
Monsieur Jean-Paul. Comment allez-vous aujourd'hui?"
"Don't worry, I can speak Japanese just fine," said Iris;
then, with a faintly patronizing tone, she went on, "Besides, your
French is terrible."
Moreau cleared his throat, which saved him from having to make
any other kind of response, and replied, "Just so. Regretfully,
though my ancestors come from France, I myself have never been there."
"It's all right," said Iris brightly. She beamed at him,
which eliminated any notion that she'd said it to embarrass him; she
was just speaking with the bald-faced truthfulness of the very young.
He smiled and turned his attention to the other side of the table.
Next in line was, surprisingly, a Salusian girl - humanized,
but sporting the telltale primary ears, two pointed, mobile tufts
jutting up from her thick, twin-braided mop of vivid purple hair. She
wore big round spectacles and had a pleasing scattershot of freckles
across the bridge of her little nose, and her uniform jacket was
bottle-green.
"I'm Li Kohran," she said in dreadfully accented Japanese,
every bit as bad as Moreau's French. "I'm the Technical Officer for
the Flower Division, so if you need anything fixed, you be sure and
come to me, OK?" she said with a grin and a wink.
Li, that's a Vindari name, Moreau mused. He made a mental
note to remember that, after the fashion of her people, Kohran gave her
family name first.
"Assuming," said the next girl in line with icy sardony, "that
you don't care if you get it back."
Kohran pouted and looked away. Moreau looked over the girl
who'd spoken, so casually cutting down her colleague. She was quite
beautiful, in a very calculating kind of way, with perfect, regular
features, lovely clear skin, and heavy, straight auburn hair
that hung to her shoulders and framed her face perfectly, divided into
a part and kept back from her face by a ribbon-clad hairbow; when she
tossed her head, the hair swung, then fell immediately back into its
proper place. She had a beauty mark at the corner of one black eye.
Her uniform jacket was a deep shade of purple.
"Surely there's no need to be cruel, Miss... ?" said Moreau.
"Kanzaki," she replied as though just telling him was a great
favor. "Sumire Kanzaki. My family developed the weapons used by this
hapless little band, and I tested them myself. Without me there would
-be- no Flower Division. And I wasn't being cruel; it's well-known
that dear little Kohran is forever blowing her lab up with some
misguided experiment or another."
Kohran flushed and mumbled something about mishaps being
inevitable in truly innovative research.
Moreau cleared his throat again. "Well," he said, fumbling
for a diplomatic way to put his feelings into words, "though I can see
that you have a certain talent for... identifying the shortcomings of
others... in a team there are times when it's better not to dwell on
them."
Sumire tossed her head unconcernedly. "I can see you're going
to be a dreadful bore," she said.
Peter Moreau took a deep breath through his mouth, held it for
a three count, and let it out his nose. Now was not the time to be
getting into a row with one of his new subordinates, however much he
believed she needed a shouting-at. He felt on the edge of panic as it
was; whatever he had expected when he tried to imagine what the Flower
Division, Imperial Floral Assault Group, Capital Defense Forces would
be like, this hadn't been it, and every fiber of his being that wasn't
taking in first impressions of its members and finding polite things
to say was screaming in a horror of indecision, not knowing what to do
next.
He frowned at Kanzaki, trying to convey with his expression
that he was only dropping the subject temporarily, and turned his
attention to the last Flower Division member, standing nearest to him
on the right.
She made for an interesting study in contrast with the girl
next to her. She was also quite beautiful, but her beauty was of a
totally different kind. She was beautiful in the classic Japanese
style, with long, straight, thick black hair that was trimmed around
her oval face and held back in a long ponytail with a wide red ribbon,
tied into a large bow at the back of her head. She had big brown eyes
and a fresh-scrubbed, healthy, plain-living look that was totally at
odds with Sumire Kanzaki's refined delicacy. Her uniform jacket was
pink. She had, Moreau noticed, a katana in her belt, edge back, grip
up at her left hip, in the samurai style.
After taking all this in, he realized that she was staring at
him, and he couldn't quite read the look in her eyes. It was as if
she was looking for something, and wasn't quite sure if she had found
it not, but thought perhaps she had. He wondered with a momentary
thrill of fear if she had recognized him, but decided that was
impossible.
"Miss?" he said, puzzled.
She blinked, then blushed, startled out of her reverie by his
voice. "Oh!" she said. "I-I'm sorry! I'm Sakura Shinguuji. I'm -
I'm the newest one here."
"Sakura, dear, Commander Moreau isn't interested in your
seniority," said Sumire coolly.
"On the contrary," said Moreau. "I'm interested in
everybody's seniority, and many other things besides. It's good to
meet you, Sakura." He indicated her katana. "What style?"
"Hm? Oh! Uh, Shinguuji Hokushin Ittouryuu. My family's
tradition."
Moreau nodded. "I'm Asagiri Shinjinkenryuu myself - two-blade
specialist." He looked around the table. "Have we any other martial
artists?"
Kanna grinned and angled a thumb at herself. "I'm the 28th
generation of the Kirishima Empty-Hand School."
Moreau admonished himself that he should've recognized the
name, coupled with her stature; the Kirishima style, Okinawan karate
adapted for the heavy build of the genetically engineered colonists of
high-gravity Hoffman, was known to him. He restrained a smile as he
realized that, at six feet six or so and perhaps three hundred pounds,
Kanna was a delicate little slip of a girl for a Hoffmanite.
Sumire Kanzaki cocked her chin up and said with exaggerated
airiness, "I have mastered my family's art of the naginata, the
Kanzaki Fuujinryuu."
Moreau smiled. "Perhaps one day we should test ourselves
against one another," he said, letting his voice drip with as much
entendre as he could manage.
He didn't get -much- of a rise out of her - only a slight
pinkening of her cheeks and a derisive sniff - but it was enough to
improve his day considerably. None of the others seemed to have
noticed it. No, wait; Maria was giving him the tiniest of smiles.
Good... it would be useful to have -someone- on this squad who
understood him.
He stopped that train of thought as his doubts cried up from
within him and reminded him not to get too damned comfortable in this
situation. As he was reminded of them, those doubts almost took away
his self-control; only with a great effort did he keep his face
straight as he said,
"Well. It's been good meeting you all. Now, I'm sure that
you all have duties lined up for this afternoon, and I need to review
a great deal of material before I'm ready to step into my new role, so
for now, carry on as before. It's been very nice meeting you all.
Dismissed."
They filed out one by one; at the doorway, Sakura Shinguuji
paused to give him one more searching look, and then she slipped
through the door and was gone.
Moreau wondered what she thought she was seeing when she
looked at him, and went to his room to wrestle with his doubts.
Maria Tachibana hesitated outside the new commander's door for
a moment, wondering if she should disturb him. He'd been upset about
something when he'd dismissed their meeting half an hour before, that
had been clear. At first Maria had figured that he was annoyed at
Sumire's attitude and had gone to be annoyed in private, but the way
he'd handled her moments before dismissing the meeting made that seem
unlikely in retrospect. Something else had been eating him, and after
thinking about it for a while Maria thought she might know what, but
she was still reluctant to bother him.
She raised a hand to knock at his door, but it wasn't closed
all the way, and her touch swung it further open. Her apology died on
her lips when she saw that he hadn't noticed her; he was instead
pacing up and down the room, furiously, his hands folded behind his
back, the swallow tails of his uniform jacket whipping the air behind
him. Whenever he approached the door, Maria could see his face, set
in a scowl of concentration, his eyes looking down at the floor.
"Ha - h'm," said Maria.
Moreau stopped in his tracks, halfway back to the windows,
turned, and then smiled faintly. "Ah. Miss, uh, Tachibana, wasn't
it?"
"Please, Commander. This unit is fairly informal. You may
call me Maria."
"All right, Maria... what's on your mind?"
"I was just about to ask you that same thing, sir."
He looked at her uncomprehending for a moment, then chuckled,
a trifle bitterly. "It showed, eh?" She nodded; he sighed.
"Well... to be frank with you, Maria, I don't know if I've got what it
takes to do this job."
"You'll be trained on the special equipment," said Maria. She
knew that wasn't what he meant; she'd said it only to provide him with
an opportunity to correct her.
"No, that's not it," he said. "I can fight. There's no
difficulty there. It's command I'm not sure I'm up to. Especially
command of this group. I don't know if I can reliably lead the
Hanagumi."
Maria made a disgusted sound. "Because we are all women? You
have served under Kiyone Moriyuuki. I would have expected you to be a
bit more enlightened than your brother officers."
"No!" said Moreau, his face alight with indignation. "Not
because you're women. But... you're all so -young-! Why, the de
Chateaubriand girl, she can't be more than ten."
"Iris is nine years old," said Maria calmly.
"You see!"
"And she has more raw courage than many men I have met who are
three times her age. You need have no worries on her account."
"I'm not concerned about her bravery, Maria. But if this
turns into a war... one of a commander's jobs, sometimes, is to send
his subordinates out to die. I don't think I can send a nine-year-old
girl to her death, however bravely she goes."
Maria gave that a moment's thought and nodded gravely. "Iris
chose to be here," she said. "We all did. We are not conscripts,
Commander. We understand the risks."
"How the hell can a nine-year-old girl understand the risks of
war?" Moreau demanded.
Maria's eyes narrowed. "What was your assignment aboard the
cruiser Sendai, Commander?" she asked coolly.
"I was midshipman in charge of the for'rard magazine," he
replied, puzzled at the question's relevance.
"And how old," Maria continued remorselessly, "was the
youngest powder-boy under your command?"
Moreau closed his eyes as though he'd been stabbed, sucking in
a breath through his teeth, as a memory of young Kenichi Tanaka being
blown to bits with the forward main turret streaked bloodily across
his mind's eye.
"Eight," he said through his teeth.
"And did -he- understand the risks of war?" asked Maria
mockingly.
Moreau clenched his fists at his sides, a tear leaking down
from one tight-closed eye, and did not reply.
"So. An eight-year-old boy can understand his position well
enough to be sent to his death, but not a girl a whole year older, but
yet your reluctance is not gender-based."
"It's -different-!" Moreau insisted, his eyes snapping open.
"I don't doubt your ability or your courage... I... damn," he said,
his shoulders slumping.
"You do us no favors by trying to shelter us, Commander," said
Maria, her tone of voice a little warmer. "Where would Captain
Moriyuuki be if the Admiralty had 'excused' her from the 'danger' of
command?"
Moreau seemed to gather himself, then stood up straighter and
looked her in the eye.
"All right," he said. "You've caught me. It's a double
standard. I'm a hypocrite."
Maria smiled a tiny smile. "We all have our crosses to bear,
Commander."
Bong! said the little clock on the stand next to Moreau's
bed. He glanced at it, made a mental note to figure out how to keep
it from sounding the quarter hours, and turned his attention back to
Maria.
"Can I trust you to help me curb my unfortunate handicap if
the need arises?" he asked briskly.
"You may depend on it, Commander," she said formally.
"Anyway, while you're here, have you a minute? I was hoping I
could get some of your time to fill me in on the personnel."
Moreau liked the Equipment Section workshop as soon as he
entered it. It occupied most of the Imperial Theater subbasement and
was all one great big concrete-floored room, jammed from end to end
with oddments, most of them large, metallic, and of no readily
discernible function. It smelled of machine oil and hot metal.
White-coated techs moved here and there on unfathomable errands,
bustling with the purposefulness of Science. Moreau picked his way
through it until he reached a workbench at the other end. Li Kohran
was sitting on a tall stool next to that bench, a heavy gray mask over
her face, welding something with a torch. He watched out of the
corner of his eye, his hand blocking the direct glare of the torch,
and when she paused he said her name.
She gave a little jump, shut off the torch, and knocked the
mask back on her forehead. "Oh, Commander! Hello! You startled me."
Now that he wasn't being blinded by the glare, Moreau could
see that Kohran had changed her clothes since the meeting. She was
wearing a simple Chinese-style red silk dress - why, in a workshop, he
couldn't imagine - under a lab coat. He hoped she didn't dress like
that often - it so happened that he found that particular sort of
garment (the dress, not the lab coat) extremely distracting.
"Sorry," he said. "What are you working on?"
She told him, but he couldn't understand a word of what she
said. He wondered if that were because it was over his head, or just
because her accent was impenetrable, shrugged, and said that was very
interesting. He was saved from having to make further comment by
noticing something that looked suspiciously like a wheel sticking out
from under a tarp in the corner.
"What's this?" he said.
"Oh, that... a project of mine," she said, a note of regret in
her voice. "I could never get it to work, so I abandoned it."
"May I?" he asked, taking hold of a corner of the tarp.
"Sure, go ahead," she said.
He pulled the tarp off, took a step back, and looked down at
the item with his hands on his hips and a smile on his face. It was a
motorcycle, or it had been once, a heavy-framed and sturdy-looking
affair with a single-place saddle, its frame and tank painted a flat
Army green. Moreau thought he detected one of the heavy Harley-
Davidson military models in its lines, but what lay in the belly of
its frame was not and had never been a V-twin engine.
In fact, as he squatted next to the cycle and looked closely
at the intricate arrangement of brass and steel under its tank, he
realized it was powered by a tiny steam engine, the smallest he'd ever
seen. It had a single cylinder, a radiator-type condenser, a tiny
enclosed firebox, and a throw-off gear that drove a miniature dynamo
to power the lights. Where the sprockets and chain ought to have been
to drive the rear wheel, there was instead a beautifully crafted,
miniature, locomotive-style sun-and-planet drive.
The craftsmanship in the engine and drive were of breathtaking
quality, from the intricate brass tubing around the firebox to the
gleaming steel cylinder. It wasn't flawless, though; there was an
ugly rupture in the tiny transverse boiler tank topping the assembly,
the front forks were bent, and the front tire was flat on its bent
wheel.
"This is beautiful," said Moreau anyway, because it was, even
if it had been crashed.
"You really think so?" asked Kohran dubiously.
"I do," he replied. "What happened?"
"Oh, I, uh... " She looked at her hands. "I wrecked it."
Having admitted her clumsiness, the next part, hastily added, came
easier: "But the boiler split when I crashed, not the other way
around!"
Moreau grinned. "Can you fix it?" he asked.
"Sure, but what's the point? Everybody's afraid of it since
that first test." She gave it a rueful look. "It -is- a lot harder
to control than I'd hoped... "
"Well, if you have some time to spare sometime, I'd like to
give it a try."
Kohran gave him a sidelong, disbelieving look. "... You
would?"
"Sure!" Moreau replied brightly. "I love a challenge.
Besides - it's much too neat to molder away under a tarp in a corner."
Kohran stared down at the damaged steamcycle for a moment.
A bell rang brightly somewhere off in another corner of the workshop;
the sound seemed to make up Kohran's mind for her, because as it rang
she squared her shoulders and looked up at Moreau with cheerful
determination.
"Right!" she declared, saluting. "I'll get right on it,
Chief! It'll be good as new by morning!"
Moreau would have told her not to put herself out, that
anytime it was convenient for her would be fine, but he decided it
would be criminal to throw water on the fire of motivation in her
eyes, so he grinned, returned her salute, told her to carry on, and
left her humming cheerfully and hunting for tools.
He was unconsciously making a concerted effort at getting to
know his new subordinates better that afternoon, seeking out each one
in turn and playing by ear the situations that followed. It probably
would have struck him as rather silly and contrived if he had realized
he was doing it, but his subconscious had become adept at fooling him
into thinking he wasn't doing things on purpose that he was, and so he
proceeded happily down the first-floor hall of the Imperial Theater,
looking into doors and reflecting that it hardly seemed possible that
he'd been gripped by such desperate unhappiness only an hour before.
The third room he looked into was, unlike the first two, not
empty. It had the look of being perhaps a large dining room, but it
had no furniture, and the chandelier mount on the ceiling was vacant.
Kanna Kirishima was there, dressed in a karate gi and practicing
katas. Moreau stood leaning on the doorframe and watched her for a
while.
What he saw impressed him. She was obviously well-trained,
-very- well-trained, and she moved with a grace and speed that
completely belied her size. If she really were a Hoffmanite, she'd be
heavier than even her massive frame indicated, from the denser bone
and muscle structure of the people of Hoffman, and yet she was so
light on her feet that the room's hardwood floor barely creaked. The
loudest sounds were the dull "whap" sounds of her fists and feet
smashing through the air, and always stopping just where she wanted
them.
After a few minutes of that, she stopped concentrating on her
immediate surroundings enough to realize that someone was watching
her; she slowed down, then stopped, turning toward the door.
"Oh, hi, Commander," she said. "What's up?"
Moreau wondered what the hell to say. "You have beautiful
form" was correct and even accurate, but if it were misinterpreted
he'd probably get his head imploded. He tossed around different
versions of it in his head for a second, couldn't find one that worked
any better, realized that in another second he was officially going to
look like an idiot, and just went ahead and said it anyway.
She grinned. "Thanks. My dad taught me - he was the best
there ever was." She ripped off a quick punch combo. "These
exercises get awful boring after a while, though. Man, they told me I
was gonna have tough opponents to fight if I took this job, but most
of the time it's all hurry up and wait."
Moreau heard himself offering to provide some live opposition
and wondered who the hell was imitating his voice and trying to get
him killed. But no, it must have been he himself who spoke, because
here he was taking off his swords, jacket and sidearm and leaving them
in a tidy pile next to the door, here he was squaring off and bowing,
here he was putting himself in the path of those wrecking balls Kanna
called hands...
"Thanks, Chief!" said Kanna cheerfully as she left the room
twenty minutes later. "Best workout I've had in weeks. Sure you're
OK?"
"Fine," said Moreau, a trifle dazed. He wondered if that was
a windchime he heard, or if it was just his skull resonating.
"All right, if you're sure," she said, and clapped him
companionably on the shoulder as she walked past him up the hall,
whistling a cheery tune.
Moreau shook his head, blinked a couple of times, then
picked up his things and wandered off to the wardroom. The rest of
the afternoon was a bit of a blur; he remembered having made it a
point to seek out the rest of the Hanagumi, one by one, and make their
acquaintance in a more personal fashion, and he seemed to recall most
of those efforts having gone fairly well - except it seemed to him
that one of them had perhaps slapped him.
To the complete amazement of everyone involved with the
Imperial Theater Company, Commander Moreau was not killed in action
the following morning.
"Did you hear?" Yuri Sakakibara, the girl who had been on duty
in the lobby when Moreau had arrived the day before, asked her
colleague, Kasumi Fujii, during breakfast.
"Hear what?" Kasumi replied.
"The new commander's going to try to ride Kohran's steamcycle
today!" said Yuri excitedly.
"What?!" the third member of their little administrative
troupe, Tsubaki Takamura, demanded as she slipped into her own seat.
Known collectively as the "three daughters of the Imperial Theater
Company", these three girls handled the administrative duties involved
in running the theater, from handling the gate receipts to ushering,
promotional materials, and catering supervision.
"Wow," Kasumi mused, stirring some more brown sugar into her
oatmeal. "Doesn't he realize he'll probably be killed?"
"I hear Kohran stayed up all night working on it," Yuri
continued.
"Huh," said Tsubaki. "He'll definitely be killed."
Yuri scowled. "You guys are mean! Kohran's really proud of
that bike. She's just not a skilled enough rider to handle it."
"Nobody's skilled enough to ride a live bomb without it going
off," Tsubaki replied.
"You'll see. He's going to be just fine."
"You want to bet?"
"I'll take that action," said Major General Yoneda from behind
Tsubaki with a grin.
By the end of breakfast, General Yoneda was giving Moreau 2:1
odds against surviving the afternoon and 15:1 against escaping
unscathed. That he might actually master the steamcycle was not even
considered a remote possibility, so bets against that outcome were not
accepted. Almost everyone in the theater had a piece of the action by
ten o'clock. At ten-thirty, Moreau was standing in the courtyard in
front of the theater. The staff of the Imperial Theater crowded into
all the building's front windows, while the Hanagumi themselves were
assembling expectantly on the steps of the theater behind him.
Moreau looked up and down the street, then bent and
double-checked the buckles on the sturdy boots he'd originally bought
for shore-party operations. He had on a heavy brown leather jacket
(Imperial Army Flying Corps standard issue, obtained by a friend in
the Quartermaster Service), his sturdiest canvas trousers (bought for
hiking in the mountains near Sendai during his leave), leather gloves
(ditto), and a leather flying helmet and goggles he'd borrowed from
the wardrobe shop. A white silk aviator's scarf, filched from the
same costume, was knotted rakishly around his neck.
Around the corner came Li Kohran, laboriously pushing the bulk
of the steamcycle along; a couple of the guys from the Weapons Shop
had helped her heave it up the ramp from the basement and were now
behind the bike shoving it along as Kohran did her part from the
handlebars and steered. They stopped in front of Moreau; Kohran
knocked the kickstand down with her heel and leaned the bike over on
it, then straightened and turned to face him.
Her eyes were rimmed with lack of sleep, her face and lab coat
smudged with soot, and the tousle of hair on the top of her head,
beyond the reach of her two braids, was a tangled mess, but she was
chipper and enthusiastic as she greeted him and indicated the bike
with a dramatic gesture.
"Here it is, sir," she said. "The new and improved Li
Steam-Driven Auto-Cycle, Mark II!"
She'd put in a lot of work on it in the twenty-odd hours since
Moreau had left her shop, that was quite evident. Not only had its
forks been straightened, its front rim and tire repaired, and its
running gear overhauled, she'd polished up its chrome and brass parts,
applied steel-bluing compound to its steel parts and painted the frame
and tank a beautiful glossy black. Her name was written in bold red
slashes, the Old Vindari script from her homeland on Salusia, on the
sides of the tank. Even the faces and needles of the gauges under
their protective glass glittered with a fine layer of shine.
A murmur went through the crowd gathering behind Moreau;
whether it was delight, approval, or suppressed fear was hard to
tell. Moreau, though, was impressed, and he let it show.
"Wow! Fantastic!" he said.
"Do you really like it?" Kohran asked.
"I do!" he assured her. "And what a beautiful job you did
dressing it up, too!" He walked around the bike, admiring its lines
and the glittering black, chrome and golden brass of its surfaces.
"Will you show me how it works?"
"Gladly!" Kohran replied. She pointed to the three gauges
clustered between the handlebars. "This is your temperature and
pressure gauge; the steam reservoir is automatically vented and the
firebox thermostatically regulates the temperature, so you shouldn't
need to make any adjustments - the gauges will just let you know if
anything goes wrong. The middle gauge shows your speed and the
revolutions on your main drive. On the right are your water and fuel
gauges."
"What does it use for fuel?" he asked.
"Coal dust," she said. She opened the small hatch on the back
of the tank, just in front of the seat; inside were several fist-sized
lumps of coal. "There's a grinder at the bottom of the coal bin that
pulverizes your coal supply and feeds it to the firebox as needed.
You should be able to get about sixty miles to the pound on best
coal. The front half of the tank," she went on, pointing to the
silver cap further forward, where the gas cap would be on a regular
bike, "is your water reservoir. Five gallons, that's good for about
two hundred and fifty miles."
"Wow," said Moreau, and he meant it.
"To start it," Kohran went on, "first, get on."
Moreau obligingly swung himself into the saddle.
"Now hold the throttle open about an eighth of a turn," she
said, pointing to the right handlebar grip. "That will give the
firebox enough air to start the fire." Moreau complied. "Now kick
down on that lever behind your right foot."
This Moreau did; he was immediately rewarded by a bright,
sharp SNAP from somewhere under his right buttock, followed by a
subdued rumbling.
"The kick lever advances the coal grinder enough to prime the
firebox," said Kohran, "and strikes a spark inside the firebox to
start the fire going. You can let the throttle out now." Moreau
complied; the rumbling dropped a little bit in frequency, then
stabilized.
"Watch your temperature and pressure gauges until they're in
the green area," said Kohran, pointing. The temperature gauge got
there almost immediately, and pressure followed swiftly; in less than
ten seconds the needle was hovering firmly in the middle of the
green.
"You're all set!" Kohran said. "The little lever by your left
toe controls the drive engagement. Push it down to engage, or up to
disengage the main drive and let it freewheel. It's vacuum-operated.
The brakes are controlled by those levers in front of your hands -
front on the left, rear on the right. You get most of your braking
from the front."
He nodded and grinned. "OK! Anything else?"
"No, I think that's all." Kohran allowed a trace of worry to
penetrate her cheerful demeanor for a fleeting instant; she suddenly
leaned close, as if to point out some other feature of the
instruments, and kissed him fleetingly on the cheek.
"Good luck, sir," she said softly, and then ducked back and
stood aside.
Moreau's grin widened a little bit as he pushed the cycle
vertical and stood with his feet on the ground; then he put his left
foot up on its footpeg and prepared to engage the drive.
"Commander! Sir! Wait!" came a voice; he paused, putting his
left foot down again, and turned with some puzzlement toward the
theater. Tsubaki Takamura shoved her way with much apology through
the crowd and ran to the side of the bike, a streamer of white
fluttering from one of her fists.
"Take this, sir!" she said breathlessly, leaning her hands on
her knees and trying to catch her breath. She thrust her left fist at
him, the white streamer fluttering in the breeze.
Puzzled, he took it and unfurled it to look at it; then he
laughed. It was a hachimaki, a white cotton headband with a rising
sun printed on it, of a sort often worn by samurai, fighter pilots and
other warriors before plunging into a difficult and dangerous combat.
He ceremoniously knotted it around his forehead over the flying
helmet, then settled his goggles over his eyes and gave her a
thumbs-up. Bowing, she stepped back; he turned the thumbs-up and the
grin to Kohran, who returned it with some faint trepidation.
Then he toed the steamcycle into gear. He felt the faint
'clunk' as the vacuum actuator drew the front end of the
sun-and-planet gear into battery against the piston, and the mild
tension in his right leg as the cycle leaned forward a little, anxious
to be on its way. Kohran bit her knuckles as he released the brakes
and twisted the throttle open.
With a pleasant rising hiss and a puff of gray smoke from the
tailpipe, the cycle accelerated smoothly off down the street. For a
long moment, everyone stood frozen, not daring to believe that the
test was going well. Any moment now, most of them thought, it's going
to explode, or leap out of his control and crash into the river and
-then- explode, or go charging off uncontrollably at full throttle and
crash into a streetcar and they'll -both- explode...
The cycle gave a little bit of a lurch as he handled the
throttle too roughly; it coughed, banged, and spat some black smoke,
and everybody sucked in a breath and held it.
Then the gray-white smoke billowed up again, the putter of the
single cylinder settled down into a pleasant growl, and off he buzzed,
smooth, collected, and in control. The steamcycle and its rider
banked low and swept around the corner from Fujishima Avenue to
Matsubara Drive and disappeared, the last sight of him being a flicker
of white from the trailing ends of his headband and a final puff of
gray-white smoke.
The tension settled down into puzzlement; where had he gone?
Would he wreck or explode while out of sight? It had looked like it
was going pretty well until he'd disappeared...
Four minutes later, the steamcycle emerged at the other end of
the block, making a high-speed left so sharp that the left footpeg
sparked off the cobbles as the bike charged out of Kuroda Street and
back up Fujishima. Moreau raised his right fist in salute as he toed
the cycle out of gear and brought it to a smooth halt at the exact
spot where he'd departed from. As it rolled to a stop and he put down
his feet, the steam reservoir vented with a mighty whoosh and a great
cloud of white steam out the exhaust pipe; the collected observers
would later agree that this was quite dramatic indeed.
A cheer burst out. Quite unable to contain herself, Li Kohran
jumped for joy, threw her arms around her commander's neck and gave
him a kiss that, while not particularly passionate, was so
enthusiastic it almost knocked him off the far side of the cycle.
Then she seemed to realize what she was doing and backed away, cheeks
glowing with embarrassment.
Moreau, unflapped, kicked down the stand, twisted the throttle
-back- past its natural stop position to choke out the fire, then
leaned the bike on its stand and dismounted, his grin broad as he
swung himself out of the saddle.
"That," he said to the general assembly, "was terrific!"
(The ride, wondered Sumire Kanzaki irritably, or the kiss?)
"Did... did you really like it?" Kohran asked, her joy at her
invention's successful test warring with her shyness in front of this
cheering crowd and her lingering embarrassment over her rather
precipitous treatment of the commander.
"Like it? Hell, I loved it! This thing's the most fun I've
had since... " He frowned thoughtfully for a moment, then grinned
again and said, "Come to think of it, I think it's the most fun I've
-ever- had. If it wouldn't be so much of a bother to you, I'd be
tempted to ask you to make -me- one of them."
Kohran blushed again and did not respond; Moreau caught her up
in a one-armed hug, ruffled her hair affectionately, and said upon
releasing her, "But right now, you get to bed! I never meant for you
to stay up all night working."
"But sir, I have to - "
"No buts! I'm in charge here - report to your rack or I'll
put you on kitchen patrol."
"I - aye aye, sir." She bowed, unable to keep the grin of
triumph off her face, her embarrassment washed away by success.
"Thank you, sir!" she said, turned, and ran into the building.
"What are you all staring at?" Moreau wondered of the rest of
the Hanagumi. "You'd think nobody had any work to do around here!"
There was, indeed, plenty of work to be done. Moreau was
trained, as Maria had promised, on the special equipment.
Steam-powered robotic armor was a new experience for him, but he
adapted fairly well, and surprised all the Hanagumi with the strength
of his esper abilities. But then, he would have to be fairly
powerful, to be the first man ever found who could make one of the
temperamental Kohbu -move-, let alone fight. The Hanagumi were all
women, after all, because only women had previously been found to be
capable of activating the machines.
They trained together intensively, deploying under all
conditions and in all weathers, learning cooperative tactics and
mastering various weapons. Sometimes things went well; sometimes they
went... not so well... and sometimes they failed disastrously. (The
disasters, at least, were usually funny in retrospect.) After each
exercise, they reviewed the films and discussed the ways in which they
could improve their collective performance.
Off-duty, the Imperial Floral Assault Group were still -on-
duty, as they became the Imperial Theater Company (a clever pun,
Moreau thought, even if it did only work in Japanese). It was odd,
really, but rehearsing stage plays, mostly musicals, was a lot like
tempering combat skills. Moreau had never really thought about it
that way before - when the cover concept had been explained to him by
its inventor, General Yoneda, he had been rather skeptical. In
practice, though, it worked out quite well, even if they were rather
limited in the number of plays they could perform with a cast of five
women, one man and one little girl.
Relations within the group were, for the most part, good.
Moreau walked the tightrope of keeping the organization focused and
internal morale high, approaching the task rather differently than he
would have approached, say, motivating a group of battle-seasoned
sailors, but using similar principles. The only real problem, as the
months melted away and springtime exploded in the capital, that Moreau
had on his to-watch list was the growing tension between Shinguuji and
Kanzaki.
There were friendships to be had within the Hanagumi, and good
ones. Kanna Kirishima and Maria Tachibana were devoted companions,
military "buddies" in the finest tradition; Iris de Chateaubriand was
a ray of sunshine in everyone's life, and had adopted Moreau as her
honorary Big Brother; and almost everyone liked Kohran. But Sakura
Shinguuji and Sumire Kanzaki, quite simply, loathed each other.
It was more obvious in Sumire's case; she was never
particularly diplomatic about her feelings about -anyone-, and she
didn't seem particularly fond of anyone, except possibly Iris. She
wasn't the type to suffer fools gladly, and, unfortunately, she seemed
to regard everyone around her as a fool - but Sakura, who was from the
countryside of Sendai and approached everything with a rural
earnestness which Moreau found quite charming, really got on the
socialite's nerves, and Kanzaki made no secret of the fact.
Sakura, for her part, had borne up under Sumire's continual
scorn with considerable bravura, quietly remaining optimistic and
friendly, as if convinced that, in time, she would win over even this,
her harshest critic. Only after months of sustained harassment did
she begin to strike back... and when she did, it was so quiet, so
subtle, and so devastatingly effective that it left Moreau in awe.
They were eating dinner in the dining hall (which Moreau, with
his sailor's mindset, kept calling "the wardroom") one fine spring
evening, on the eve of another major equipment test. As usual, Sumire
was going on and on in that I'm-sure-you-all-find-this-very-
fascinating tone of voice about how important she and her family
were. As usual, most of the Hanagumi had her tuned out, nodding
politely every now and then but not really listening, but Sakura was
too polite for that and had every appearance of deep interest.
"... And of course someday soon I'll have to meet the Emperor;
it's just inevitable in our circle. Probably when Daddy names me to
the board of Kanzaki Heavy Industries... "
Sakura nodded appreciatively and took another spoonful of
soup. "You'll like the Emperor," she said pleasantly, reaching for a
roll. "He's such a sweet old man."
Sumire paused in the middle of a sip of tea, but to her credit
did not actually choke. The tension in the room became palpable,
though Sakura continued with her soup and salad as though unaware that
everyone in the room was staring at her. Eyes narrowed to slits,
Sumire carefully and deliberately put down her teacup before saying
between gritted teeth,
"You... have -met-... the -Emperor-?!"
Sakura glanced up at her with innocent eyes and nodded as if
surprised Sumire would have to ask. "Of course! The first time was
when Dad confirmed me as the heir of the house of Shinguuji, and then
I used to tag along whenever Dad had to go see him - you know, for
dinner, and things like that." She smiled fondly. "I like him. He's
a dear, dear man, and he tells funny stories."
A vein in Sumire's forehead was beginning to throb, and the
corner of one eye twitched as she stared laser beams at Sakura and
said,
"You... have -dined-... with the -Emperor-?!"
"Well, sure," Sakura said, buttering the other half of her
roll. "He has to eat just like everybody else, you know... "
Iris wondered if she should point out to Sumire that she'd
bent her fork almost double in her left fist, then decided against it.
"Would you like to meet him?" Sakura asked artlessly. "I
could present you at the next reception."
Sumire made a series of small choking sounds, her fists
vibrating on the tabletop. Sakura didn't appear to notice as she went
on, "Or we could all go over for dinner some night. He gets so
lonely, poor man, all alone in that drafty old palace all the time.
His wife died years ago, you know, and his sons are all away in the
military... why, Sumire, whatever's the matter?" Sakura broke off, her
face suddenly full of guileless concern for her apparently stricken
teammate.
Sumire fixed Sakura with a look of pure loathing and snarled,
"You... will -pay-... for this."
Sakura blinked, utterly astonished at this behavior, and said
nothing as Sumire abruptly stood up, dropping her mangled fork to the
table with a clang. She gathered her composure with an obvious effort
of will.
"I am no longer hungry," she declared haughtily. "I am going
to my room." Then she turned, giving Sakura one more dagger glance in
the process, and swept out of the room in a huff.
"Goodness," Sakura mused, wide-eyed, watching her go. "I hope
she's not feeling ill," she said, and returned her attention calmly to
her soup. "We have an important test tomorrow, after all."
At the other end of the table, Kanna Kirishima leaned toward
Maria Tachibana and muttered, "(Damn, that was brutal.)"
Maria nodded thoughtfully. "(Indeed,)" she replied. "(I do
not believe I would wish to have Sakura for an enemy.)"
"Sumire-oneesama, wait up!" cried Iris, jumping up and
trotting off in pursuit.
Moreau watched the whole exchange from the end of the table,
watched Sumire go, looked back at Sakura (unconcernedly finishing her
salad), and mused to himself: Yep... this is gonna be trouble.
Spring turned to summer, and the sniping continued. Moreau
kept a nervous eye on it, but it hadn't, so far as he could tell,
started cutting into the Assault Group's effectiveness, so he kept
himself mostly out of it, hoping that it would settle down of its own
accord. Then, in early July, he got something else to worry about.
One fine, warm evening, the Invaders returned.
No one was sure where they came from, what they were, or even
what they wanted. They merely appeared, wreaking havoc, heading for
the center of the city, and they had to be stopped; and it fell to the
Teikokukagekidan Hanagumi to stop them.
And stop them the Hanagumi did - a bit clumsily at first, but
then with increasing proficiency as all the training and testing that
Moreau and Yoneda had had them doing over the spring proved its
worth. With experience, the Hanagumi became a well-tuned fighting
force, opposing the incomprehensible Invaders as though they were one
machine rather than seven. By day they fought off the aliens; by
night, they kept the worried public entertained and allowed the
beleaguered citizens of Ohji the luxury of putting their worries aside
for a while.
All in all, as fall approached, Moreau was extremely pleased
with his unit's performance... but behind the scenes, the tensions
between the country mouse and the city mouse built, and built, until
one day, during set construction for the Imperial Theater Group's
late-summer production of the 22nd-century standby "Knights of the
Salusian Crown", they boiled over. Moreau was in his office, working
on an after-action report from the previous day's rout of the Invaders
near the Bayside Bridge, when Iris de Chateaubriand pelted into his
office and informed him that Sakura and Sumire were trying to kill
each other.
Moreau threw down his pen and bolted out the door on the
little blonde's heels, following her through the Imperial Theater's
corridors and into the auditorium itself. There, just as Iris had
said, the two pilots had downed their tools and were rolling across
the stage, doing their level best to strangle each other.
His eyes going icy, the commander strode up onto the stage,
folded his arms, and barked in his very best quarterdeck voice,
"ATTENTION ON DECK!"
As if spring-loaded, the combatants came up from the floor and
into disheveled, slightly bruised and red-faced attention. For that
matter, the other four, though they hadn't been doing anything but
standing by in various emotional states (horror for Iris and Kohran,
resigned disgust for Maria, something suspiciously like glee for
Kanna), snapped to as well, just because of the whiplike snap in the
unamused officer's voice.
Commander Peter Moreau stood with his arms folded on the
proscenium, his face set in an expressionless mask that was, now that
his subordinates had gotten to know his moods, one of his most
frightening looks. The two girls stood before him, one cowed, the
other haughty, while the rest hovered in the wings, not daring to
intervene but not willing to leave either.
Finally, Moreau spoke, his voice exaggeratedly calm:
"All right, you two. I've been trying to turn a blind eye to
your little personality conflict for a while now, because it hasn't
been hurting your performance in the field and I've been hoping that
you'd be grown-up and professional enough to get over it on your own.
But that hasn't happened, and now I see that I'm going to have to do
something about it."
With studied nonchalance, he circled the two of them once, his
eyes bright and intent; then he stopped in front of Sakura, looked her
in the eye, and said,
"Shinguuji, I'm disappointed in you."
Sakura looked up from the floor, surprise and hurt in her
eyes; Sumire snorted triumphantly.
"Yes, I am," Moreau continues. "Very disappointed." He
turned away, his hands folded behind his back, and started pacing away
from them on the stage apron. "From Kanzaki," he went on, "I expect
this kind of behavior."
"WHAAAAAT?!" Sumire burst out.
"After all," went on Moreau conversationally, wheeling on his
heel and walking back toward them with his eyes on Sakura, "she's a
socialite, one of the urban elite - rich, powerful, dissipated,
decadent, weak, parasitic - the scum of society."
Sakura's eyes got even wider with puzzlement and disbelief;
beside her, Sumire Kanzaki sputtered with inarticulate rage, her face
slowly purpling.
"But you, Shinguuji - you're from the countryside, from
Sendai! Warmth, strength, forbearance and kindness are supposed to be
the hallmarks of the rural character. I expected you to show more
tolerance for Kanzaki's whining. After all, you know she can't help
it."
Sakura's look of hurt bewilderment had long since lost its
component of hurt and become simple but total bewilderment. She
stared at her commander as though she thought he had utterly lost his
mind. Beside her, Sumire practically panted with rage, her blood
boiling. In the back of the theater, a timer buzzed. Moreau ignored
it.
Forcing her wrath back down her throat, Sumire gritted her
teeth and said in a travesty of a composed tone, "I consider that an
offensive set of remarks, sir."
Moreau's eyebrows shot up in a mockingly impressed look and he
replied, "I congratulate you on your perspicacity, miss!"
Her bunched fists vibrating at her sides, Sumire continued a
bit more evenly, "Will you apologize?"
"I will not," Moreau replied with exaggerated courtliness.
"Then I can see only one path to satisfaction," said Sumire,
and she slapped him full across the face.
Moreau suppressed the temptation to finger his stinging cheek,
fixed her with his blandest look and said, "It is contrary to the
Articles of War for a subordinate to challenge a superior officer -
but in this case, I shall accept. As the injured party, you may
choose the venue."
"Right here. Right now."
"Fine. For my weapon, I shall use my long blade,
Ryuu-no-tsume. You may choose any weapon you like."
Sumire gritted her teeth and forced out the reply prescribed
by formality: "Sir is far too kind."
Major General Yoneda had almost finished the report he'd been
working on, and was just about to apply his signature, when the door
to his office burst open and a blur of panicked yellow and blue dashed
in, yelling at the top of her lungs.
"General Yoneda! General Yoneda!" Iris de Chateaubriand
shrilled, running up to his desk and panting for breath, her eyes
huge. "Big trouble!!"
Yoneda looked ruefully at the black smear his signature had
become, sighed, and said, "What's the matter, Iris?"
"Big Brother and Sumire are fighting!"
Yoneda sighed. "Commander Moreau and Miss Kanzaki fight all
the time, Iris. Why is that an emergency?"
"No! I mean -really- fighting! I think she wants to kill
him!"
Yoneda frowned. "Oh, dear."
Iris reflected, as she led the general toward the auditorium,
that this day was becoming slightly repetitive.
By the time the general and Iris arrived in the auditorium,
the two combatants had cleared the stage and were standing at opposite
sides preparing themselves, while their teammates sat a few rows back
in the seats, watching with avid, horrified fascination.
/* Seat Belts "Tank!" _Cowboy Bebop_ */
She was good, she was fast, and she was even more beautiful
when she was angry. Those were the three most salient facts Peter
Moreau filed away in his mind concerning Sumire Kanzaki in the opening
moments of their duel. He let her come to him; as the injured party
she had the reason to strike first.
As always when faced with a truly talented opponent, Moreau
had to keep reminding himself that he was, after all, IN this fight,
and it wouldn't do just to stand there admiring the grace and the
geometry. He suspected he'd be a better combatant if he didn't -like-
martial arts so much.
He jumped back from a whistling cut that would have opened him
straight abeam midway between belt and necktie knot, slipped a little,
went down on one knee, and barely knocked aside Sumire's followup
stroke as he turned the slip into a roll and came up standing near the
edge of the stage. She cut at his legs; he jumped over, striking at
her unprotected right, but she reversed her grip and caught his blade
on her naginata's shaft, a few inches from the butt. Her eyes flashed
at him with an odd mixture of fury and amusement - thought you had me,
didn't you?
Moreau was aware that this combat was deadly serious. He had
insulted Sumire gravely, and she was quite formally bent on ending his
life for it. If he slipped up too many times, she'd kill him.
Nevertheless, he found it hard to keep a serious expression on his
face; a smile kept tugging at the corners of his mouth and he could
feel his eyes twinkling. A fierce exultation rushed through him as he
twisted away from a whirling chop, dropped below a high slash, and
swept her feet from under her with his own right leg. She fell
through the sweep, tumbled in a swirl of purple silk and came out with
her blade searching for his throat.
He flowed out of the path of the strike with a fluidity that
seemed impossible given his stocky frame; her blade crashed into the
floor, carving a deep gouge in the wood. She whipped it up and
around, neatly parrying the counterstrike she knew what was coming;
she was learning his rhythms just as he was learning hers.
Their weapons locked momentarily, Sumire and Moreau had their
first opportunity of meaningful eye contact since the duel had
started. A light sweat had broken out on her forehead, and her breath
was starting to come harder with the exertion; a flush was starting to
work its way up her slender throat from the notch of her collarbone.
To Moreau's surprise, she was fighting back a smile too.
"You're not bad," she said breathlessly.
"Neither are you," he replied, his own breath a little
shortened too.
She let her smile partway out, quirking up one corner of her
mouth, and broke the deadlock by kicking him in the ribs. He hadn't
been expecting that, and stumbled back with a tremendous outrush of
breath, staggering at the edge of the orchestra pit.
Sumire took two steps and struck; Moreau controlled his wobble
just in time and ducked under, rolling forward at a tangent to her
sweep and coming up a bit behind her on her left. He wasn't even
bothering to control his grin any more; it would have taken too much
concentration. His face was lit with delight, which struck all the
duel's spectators as odd; so was Sumire's, which struck the spectators
as very odd indeed.
Sumire drove him back a couple of paces, holding him at long
reach with her naginata, and then whirled it in one hand until its
shaft blurred into a propeller-like disc, her other hand raised above
her head like a symphony conductor's. She began to glow with a bright
purple aura.
"Kanzaki Fuujinryuu - KOCHOU NO MAI!"
Moreau dropped to one knee and crossed his arms in front of
his face as Sumire drove the point of her naginata into the stage and
the wave of fire rushed forth and slammed into him. Its impact drove
him sliding back, several inches on the polished wood, his clothes
whipping around him as in a heavy wind; when it passed he was a bit
soot-blackened and his eyebrows felt crispy, but he was substantially
unharmed.
He sprang to his feet and dug for every ounce of acceleration
he could muster, using the half-second of vulnerability the Butterfly
Dance cost its user to launch his own counterattack.
"HYAKKEN - NO - ARASHI!"
Before Sumire could completely recover, she was surrounded by
a welter of glittering razor edges, whicking in and out around her in
a continuous motion, making a noise rather like the burring of a
hummingbird's wings. The Storm of a Hundred Blades was well-named,
for it was like being surrounded by a swirling mass of a hundred
swords where really there was only one. A single bright arc of pain
flared on her left shoulder; she glanced down to see the fabric of her
dress parted along her upper arm, and beneath it a swatch of white
skin with a thin crimson line drawn on it. A sparkling bead of blood
accumulated at the end of the line and ran slowly down as she looked.
Widening the scope of her glance brought to her attention the fact
that there were many such rents in her clothing, scattered all along
the silhouette edges of her body, but in only that one place was there
that bright red line.
The small part of Sumire's mind that remained dispassionately
observing throughout this battle found it quite remarkable that this
injury, to her clothes and to the flesh beneath, shouldn't fill her
with even further rage against her tormentor; but the truth of the
matter was, she hadn't any rage left by this time anyway, and the
minor wound only caused a further leap of exultation in her spirit.
This was a worthy opponent! He had survived the Butterfly Dance and
his counterattack had drawn first blood. She wondered if he had
goaded her into challenging him solely because he wanted to test her
strength. She wouldn't have put it past him.
All this introspection took her perhaps a quarter-second; then
she set herself and drove her blade against his defenses again, the
fierce joy of battle lighting her face. It occurred to Moreau as he
parried and counterstruck that this made her lovelier still. His
heart was hammering behind his ribs and he could feel his blood racing
through his veins. His life burned bright just beneath the surface of
his skin, pounded in his temples. He wondered when the last time had
been that he had felt so totally involved and alive, and couldn't
remember. It probably hadn't happened since Before.
He stepped through her guard with a half-kneeling step and
brought his blade up in the curious-looking uppercut strike peculiar
to his ryu; she moved aside as he had known she would, avoiding what
would have been a disemboweling blow. Ryuu-no-tsume whispered along
her flank, parting the obi-like belt that held her kimono-style dress
in place. He hadn't known -that- would happen, but he certainly
couldn't argue with the result.
She laid the butt end of her naginata across his jaw, stunning
him for an instant; the next, her right knee was between his, her
right elbow slamming his left arm to the proscenium wall, her hips
pinning him bodily against the wall. Her right fist held her dress
together at her throat; in her left she gripped her naginata, just
below its head. The cold steel blade kissed the skin of his throat.
Her black eyes glittered like opals as she gave him a fierce,
victorious smirk.
Moreau's grin was undamaged by his apparently dire position;
he gave the smirk right back, opening his left hand and letting
Ryuu-no-tsume clatter to the stage.
His voice thick with emotion, he said, "It appears that you
have me at a distinct disadvantage."
"Apologize," Sumire replied huskily, "and I may yet spare your
life."
"All right," he replied equably. "All right, I apologize.
I'm really, really sorry," he went on, his voice dropping into a lower
register; his eyelids drooped as though he were tired. The glitter in
Sumire's eyes banked into a smolder. Across the street, the Ohji
Consolidated Church's steeple bell tolled out 1 PM.
"I apologize unreservedly," Moreau added softly. Sumire's
smirk softened into a smile, and her own eyelids began to slip as her
flushed and sweat-dewed face moved slowly, almost imperceptibly,
closer to his.
The rest of the Hanagumi and Major General Yoneda, too far away to
hear what was being said, stared in confusion. The fight appeared to
be over, and yet as they waited, frozen in terror, for Moreau's blood
to spray the curtains, the two of them just stood there in their
tableau, mumbling to each other. What the hell was this?
Negotiations?
"I offer a complete and utter retraction," Moreau continued
implacably. His voice slowly dropped away, until by the end of the
next long sentence it was barely more than a whisper. "The imputation
was totally without basis in fact and was in no way fair comment, and
was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that
my comments may have caused you and your family, and I hereby
undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the
future... "
In another microsecond their lips would have touched; but just
then, on the other side of the stage, a set flat slowly toppled away
from the wall where it had been leaned when the last play's set was
struck, tipped by some unseen force. It slammed flat onto the stage
with a titanic nerve-shattering BANG! that made both former combatants
and everyone else in the auditorium jump halfway out of their socks.
Luckily for Moreau, Sumire reacted to the noise by jumping
back from him, whirling on the ball of her foot and bringing her
naginata to bear in its direction. Moreau, who hadn't been able to
see the flat falling because Sumire was blocking his line of sight,
ducked instinctively and rolled to his left, picking up Ryuu-no-tsume
as he tumbled over it, and came up in a half-kneel with the blade
presented.
They remained frozen that way for a moment, then burst out in
nervous laughter, looked at each other, and immediately looked at the
others. Moreau felt his first real fear of the afternoon - my God,
how would the others react to what they had nearly done?
To his relief, they were just looking confused, and he
realized that they'd been too far away to realize that Sumire was
doing anything other than leaning closer in an attempt to hear what
he'd been mumbling. In another second it would've been obvious, but
the falling flat had saved them from enormous awkwardness.
He looked at Sumire and saw from her face that she'd had the
same stab of fear and the same understanding and relief. They smiled
at each other momentarily; the heady spell was broken, but her eyes
had a light they'd lacked before, and it pleased Moreau to see it.
She drew herself up into her usual poise and dignity, tucked
the naginata under her arm, knotted the tattered remains of her obi at
her waist to keep what was left of her dress together, and said
haughtily,
"Very well, I accept your apology."
Moreau sheathed his blade and bowed deeply. "Thank you, Miss
Kanzaki. May I say also that you are an excellent combatant?"
"You also are not without skill," she replied magnanimously,
"though your technique is of course very raw."
"Of course," said Moreau with great and entirely mock
humility; he glanced at her under his brows, his head still bowed, and
flashed her a grin.
"Well, what are all you people staring at?" Sumire demanded of
their audience. "Don't any of you have duties to perform?"
Moreau cleared his throat and stepped to the stage apron,
reasserting his command prerogative with his voice. "Kanzaki!" he
said sharply.
"Yes?" she replied, smothering her startled reaction well.
"You still haven't been disciplined for your original
infraction - fighting with Shinguuji."
Sumire blinked at him, considered telling him he couldn't be
serious, realized that he was, and then stiffened to attention.
"Fighting among ourselves is unacceptable," said Moreau
flatly. "We're this city's first and last line of defense against the
Invaders - we must function as a team at all times. Trust and
discipline in combat cannot be built on a fractious foundation. So, I
intend to deal harshly with any infractions of this type. Kanzaki,
you're on kitchen patrol for the next three weeks."
"WHAAAAT?!"
"I could make it four," said Moreau with a tiny smile.
Sumire sputtered for a moment, gathered her dignity back
together, and said, "Aye aye, Commander."
"Shinguuji!" Moreau went on.
"Sir!" said Sakura.
"You're on watch-and-watch for the next four days. You're to
report to me, in my office, at the top of every other watch, and
you're to be fully awake and properly uniformed when you do so.
Understood?"
That buzzer sounded again, somewhere backstage; Moreau ignored
it again, except to register it with faint irritation.
"Aye aye, sir!" she said; her upbringing would not allow her
to make any other response to a direct order of that kind.
"That's all," said Moreau. "Dismissed!"
As they all left the auditorium, Sakura looked calm, but
inwardly, she was seething. How dare he issue such a harsh punishment
to her! All she had done was decide not to take any more of Sumire's
constant abuse. For that she had to spend four hours on duty, four
hours off, for the next four days? And to have to report fully awake
and fully dressed for every on-duty watch, that would eat into her
off-duty stints until she'd be lucky to get three hours' sleep per.
She'd be a complete wreck within forty-eight hours! And that pompous
speech about not tolerating fighting - what had -he- just been doing,
dancing? She didn't see him punishing -himself- for fighting.
Then she stopped short in the hallway, halfway to her
quarters, as it hit her that he was doing just that. She had to report
-to him- every other watch, -in his office-. He wouldn't be in his
office without being properly uniformed himself. That meant he'd put
-himself- on watch-and-watch for the next four days -too-!
Sakura turned in time to see Moreau walk past the end of the
hall on the way to his own room, and smiled.
On his way to his own quarters to change his clothes, Peter
Moreau wondered why the hell there were so damn many bells around this
place.
After that, things were quieter. Sumire and Sakura didn't
exactly become friends, but they at least made an effort to get
along. On the whole, it seemed as if the experience had mellowed the
socialite somewhat; and both former combatants seemed to have a new
regard for the commander, which didn't hurt morale or performance
any.
The fall passed in a smooth series of battles, performances,
rehearsals and drills, studded with social activities packed into the
few and precious bits of free time they could grab. Some, like
Commander Moreau's expedition on a commandeered patrol-torpedo boat to
Kyoudai Island for a week's R&R in the tropical paradise, were big
successes; others, like General Yoneda's attempt to establish Karaoke
Night at the Imperial Theater, were somewhat less so.
When the first snow came, the invasion fell into a lull.
Intelligence on the Invaders being as patchy as it was, no one could
say for certain exactly what was happening, if the invasion were
breaking off again or if this was just a temporary pause, but after
two weeks of nothing, Moreau proposed to General Yoneda that the
Imperial Theater Company ought, perhaps, to do a holiday tour of the
northern provinces.
"I don't know," mused Yoneda thoughtfully, looking at the
bottom of his glass and swirling his half-melted ice around a bit. "A
tour? Take the whole group away from the capital?"
"We haven't heard anything from the Invaders in weeks. The
troops are getting restless, and a tour would be a good way to keep
them occupied," Moreau said. "Besides, 'Chess' is our biggest hit
yet; people in the north country ought to get a chance to see it.
They're frightened too, you know. By staying in the capital all the
time, we're neglecting the provinces, and that can't reflect well on
the Imperial government."
"And if the Invaders return?" asked Yoneda speculatively.
"Then the Mikasa keeps them busy and you send Goraigoh to
get us. With the rail lines cleared by Imperial order and that
monster at full speed, we're only a few hours out no matter -where- we
go up there."
Yoneda considered this, looking thoughtfully out the window.
"You think the girls would mind going on the road for the
holiday season?" he asked.
"I've already talked to them about it," said Moreau
immediately. "They think it's a terrific idea. Even Kanzaki."
Yoneda arched an eyebrow.
"Well," he said with a dry grin, "who am I to argue with
-that- kind of omen? Very well, Commander. Get ready for your tour;
I'll get the Three Daughters started arranging and promoting it."
Moreau came to attention and saluted. "Aye aye, sir! Thank
you, sir!"
Yoneda saluted rather carelessly and gestured the young man
out with a shooing motion. "You're welcome, Peter," he said with a
fond smile. "Here's hoping the Invaders don't show their ugly faces
while you're away," he added, and tossed back the rest of his drink.
The Imperial Theater Company's six-week Northern Holiday Tour
was a huge success, and an exhilarating triumph for the group as well;
but all too soon, after swinging in a great arc through the beautiful,
snowy north country and performing sold-out shows of 'Chess'
throughout the northern provinces, they played the last of their
ten-show stands in Sendai and prepared to head home.
"It's too bad we have to go back so soon," Sakura said
wistfully as they entered the train station. "I haven't been home in
eighteen months, and we're so close."
Moreau almost gave in to the request Sakura had almost made,
but the thought of the schedule awaiting them in Ohji, packed tight
and made all the more urgent by their long time off-station on this
tour, made him choke it off.
"Yes, it's too bad," he agreed instead, keeping his tone
neutral. "I spent a month in this area... oh, almost a year ago, just
before I joined the Hanagumi. It was very pleasant. I like it up
here... " He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "The air is
so much cleaner than in Ohji."
Sakura smiled. "Yes, I was just thinking that." She sighed.
"And it would have been nice to see Mother and Grandma again."
Moreau glanced sidelong at her, grumbled at himself for a
moment, and then stopped in front of the kinetiscope announcement
board carrying arrival and departure times, making a show of his
puzzlement as he dropped his duffel bag and scratched his head in
irritation.
"Damn it, how the heck do they ever expect anyone to read
these damn things?" he said in a louder-than-natural tone.
"Excuse me, Commander?" asked Sakura, a bit confused.
"These schedules!" Moreau replied. "I can't make any sense
out of it. Which of these trains is the one for Ohji?"
Sakura blinked, then smiled. "I think it's this one," she
said, pointing.
"Are you sure? I thought it might be this one."
"No, I don't think so, sir," Kohran interjected. "I think
that one goes to Ichijo."
"Ichijo?! Where the hell's that?"
"You remember, sir," Maria tried to help. "We finished our
stand there three nights ago."
"What -is- going on?" Sumire wondered, confused.
"We've been on this tour so long I can't remember where I've
been," he replied with mock irascibility. "What about that one?"
"That one's already left, Chief," said Kanna. "It's the one
Major General Yoneda took back this afternoon."
"Well, then why is it still on the board? Argh!" Moreau
threw up his hands in disgust and marched to the ticket window. "Give
me seven first-class tickets on the first train to leave for Ohji
tomorrow," he said.
"But sir, there's still - " the ticket vendor tried to say.
"No, no, we're in a hopeless muddle here," Moreau cut her
off. "We'll never pull ourselves together in time to make it. In the
morning." Dropping the irritated mask from his features, he winked
and grinned at the ticket agent; she caught on, smiled back, and gave
him the tickets.
"Your train leaves from Platform 3 at 9:15 in the morning,"
she said. "Have a pleasant day."
"Thank you," said Moreau, composing his face back into a stern
mask with an effort. He marched back to the Hangumi, who stood by their
bags with a range of expression running the gamut from puzzlement,
annoyance, amusement and childlike wonder.
"Well, Miss Shinguuji," Moreau said gruffly. "Thanks to your
inability to get our timetables straight, we've missed our train. Now
we're all stranded in Sendai for the night."
Sakura tried valiantly to keep the smile off her face and look
properly contrite as she folded her hands together in the sleeves of
her uwagi and bowed her head. "I'm sorry, sir. I made a mistake. I
will try to do better."
Sumire, scowling mightily, glanced repeatedly from Sakura to
Moreau wondering what the hell the subtext was, while the rest of the
Flower Division looked anywhere but at any of them and tried on their
I Am Not Concerned With This expressions.
Moreau similarly tried but only partially succeeded in keeping
the grin off his face as he grumbled, "Well, see that you do. Now
we'll have to try to find somewhere to stay. At the height of the ski
season, I don't know where we'll end up at this hour... "
"May I make a suggestion, sir?"
Moreau tried to frown, but it ended up looking like a wry
grimace, which made Sakura's facade crack as she giggled at it. "Very
well," he said, fighting back the laughter that threatened to break
free in response to hers.
"My family lives near here," said Sakura as solemnly as she
could manage, and as though she were telling him something he didn't
know. "Since all this is my fault, please permit me to offer you the
hospitality of my family's home for the evening."
"Oh -no-," Sumire groaned. "Roughing it at the provincial
princess's homestead."
Moreau abandoned the pose with the abruptness of a man hanging
up the telephone. "Actually, I was going to send you guys on and camp
out here," he said, scratching awkwardly at the back of his neck.
"I'm sure your mother and grandmother don't need me hanging around."
"Oh no, please," said Sakura, also abandoning the charade.
"I'm sure they'd love to meet you. I've told them so much about you
in my letters home," she said, and then blushed a little.
He grinned nervously. "And you -still- think they'll want to
meet me?"
The introductions actually went quite well. It wasn't without
its awkward moments - the Shinguuji household was an extremely
traditional one, with all the outmoded formality that such tradition
brought with it, and some of them hadn't quite known all the steps in
the dance, but they'd done well and been good sports. Moreau had been
as polite as Sakura might have hoped, and had managed to charm Grandma,
which was quite an achievement. Even dinner, which could be an
excruciating ordeal for anyone not accustomed to the old-world habits
of the house of Shinguuji, went smoothly, and Sakura felt a new pride
in her commander for his performance - and in certain of her
teammates, too. Kanna had acquitted herself well, given her usual
cheerful coarseness, and Sumire had been letter-perfect in her polite
circumspection. Sakura had even caught her checking out the house
with something akin to surprised awe a couple of times, which had
given her a private giggle.
When it was over, and the elders and most of the Hanagumi had
retired for the night, Sakura asked Moreau if he would like to go for
a walk in the gardens. It was a beautiful, cold, clear night, with a
full moon and thousands of stars, so that it was hardly dark out.
Bundled in his well-traveled sailor's pea-jacket, Moreau didn't mind
the cold, and though she didn't seem as warmly dressed, Sakura
insisted that she didn't feel it either, so off they went.
"You have a beautiful home," Moreau said as they crunched
through the fresh snow down the path behind the house. "I love this
part of the country. One day I'd like to have a home of my own in
these parts."
"Most people think that until winter comes," Sakura replied,
"and then they decide they'd prefer someplace warmer."
"Not me," Moreau said. "I love snow and I don't mind cold
weather. Only a cold winter night can be as beautiful as this," he
added, gesturing to the gleaming blue-white shapes of snow mounds,
rocks and trees around them, all bathed in the silver winter
moonlight.
Sakura nodded. "I know, there's nothing quite like it."
Taking his arm seemed the natural thing to do, given that they -were-
walking together, so she did. He didn't seem to notice, except that
he could now only gesture with one hand. "I think Grandmother likes
you."
"You misspelled 'intimidates'," he said dryly. "Hope that
helps."
She laughed. "No, I mean it. I know she's a terribly serious
person, but you made a good impression. You're very polite - " She
stopped herself just short of inadvertently insulting him, with a
small gasp.
" - for a sailor?" he finished for her, a tone of amusement in
his voice. "Well, don't forget - I'm an -officer-," he said, raising
an admonishing finger.
She laughed again, forgiven, and held his arm a little
tighter. They walked in silence over a ridge and down a short hill,
silence but for the crunch of their feet in the snow and the whisper
of a breeze across the drifts. Moreau was looking up at the stars,
his face thoughtful and quiet, and Sakura felt a surge of affection
for him - not affection of a particularly romantic sort, but a sense
of being pleased to know him. She felt many kinds of fellowship with
him: they were fellow soldiers, fellow samurai, and fellow actors. He
was a good commander, fair and kind by turns, and he could hold a
tune on stage. He told funny stories of boyhood and the sea. She was
glad to be with him on this cold and sparkling night.
She was jostled from her reverie when Moreau suddenly stopped
walking; blinking about herself in puzzlement, she pulled herself back
to the here and now and realized that the commander had stopped in
front of the huge, ancient cherry tree at the end of the field where
she had practiced her sword techniques for so long. He was standing
looking at it reverently, his hand against the scarred bark of its
trunk.
When he felt her eyes on him, he looked at her, a touch of awe
showing in his eyes in the moonlight, and he said softly,
"There is power here."
She gazed at him for a moment in wonder, amazed that he had
felt the tree's significance so quickly and clearly, and nodded; all
she could say in response was, "Um."
"This tree... " Moreau mused, moving his hand slowly over its
battered, barrel-thick trunk. "This tree is a sentinel. It stands
guard over your family; it has done for a very long time." Moreau
gently disengaged his arm from hers, stepped back from the tree,
clapped his hands smartly together, and bowed his head.
"Thank you, old tree," he said politely. "This world needs
this family as this family needs you. Thank you."
Then he smiled rather sadly at Sakura and offered her his arm
again. Slightly surprised, she realized she'd been holding it before,
and hesitantly took it again; they walked back up the hill away from
the old tree and back to the house in a pleasant silence.
Inside the door they took off their shoes, and Moreau doffed
his coat; Sakura went with him as far as the end of the corridor that
led to the room he'd been given and bade him a slightly breathless
goodnight.
"Goodnight, Sakura," he said with a slow, rather sad smile; he
took both her hands in his, held them briefly to his chest, then let
them go, turned and walked away.
She stared after him for a long moment, then turned and went
to her own room.
Sakura couldn't sleep. That strangely wistful look on Peter
Moreau's face haunted her. What had it meant? The whole evening,
culminating in their arrival at the tree, had seen him sliding into a
slowly more reflective mood, a happiness tinged with a curious
sadness. She'd felt it from the start and not known what to make of
it. Could - goodness! Could he be... well, -pining- for her? Was it
possible that Commander Moreau was - was in -love- with her?
... No, flattering as the notion was, she didn't think so
after reflecting on it for a minute. There had been a wistfulness in
his eyes that went a lot deeper than an unrequited crush. He'd looked
as though his heart were crying for something lost, not never
attained. He'd looked...
He'd looked -old-, old and mourning all the lost years.
But that was impossible. He was twenty-two, what history did
he have to mourn? Did he miss the Navy that much? Absurd. He hadn't
been a sailor long enough to feel that kind of agony over leaving the
sea, and anyway, he could always go back if he really wanted to,
demand a transfer from the Hanagumi that Major General Yoneda would almost
certainly grant, though reluctantly. The way he had looked, it was as
if he'd lost something that he felt no hope of ever regaining...
She shook her head. She couldn't figure it out, and thinking
about it was making -her- nostalgic. She sighed, got up, and went to
her bookshelf, running a thumb slowly across all the well-worn spines,
looking for an old favorite to while away the minutes with until sleep
came.
She smiled as the colorful spine of a picture book caught her
eye. She was far too old for it, of course, as she was for most of
the books in this shelf, but she'd had it since infancy and it gave
her comfort to keep it. It had been in the family for centuries; the
story went that it had been brought to Ishiyama by the first
Shinguuji, Tochiro, among the effects of his infant son. Still, it
had held up well; the spine was a bit fragile and it had to be handled
with care, but the pages were still bright and colorful and the
illustrations still clear. The bright colors and bold heroes of that
book had been her favorites as a tiny child, and now she drew the book
out of the shelf and looked at the cover.
The realization exploded in her brain like a firework, almost
blinding her mind's eye with its intensity.
The cover of the book showed five people, three men and two
women, standing in an 'action group', two of each faced out to each
side and the third man in the middle grinning out at the reader. That
one was a shortish, clean-shaven fellow with a poorboy cap. On his
right were a beautiful Asian woman and a very tall, sturdily built man
with long, dark hair. On his left were an equally gorgeous redhead
and...
... Peter Moreau.
But no. No, that was absolutely impossible.
Sakura trembled, dropped the ancient book, and crumpled to her
knees beside it as the strength of her legs deserted her. Her hands
lay slack at her sides as she stared unseeing at the bookcase.
Peter Clair Moreau was Gryphon.
Gryphon - Benjamin Hutchins - one of the founders of the Wedge
Defense Force.
Gryphon, the Butcher of Musashi.
The most infamous criminal, the most vicious murderer, in the
entire galaxy.
It couldn't be true. It absolutely could not be true!
Could it? Moreau had always been evasive about his past,
saying only that his parents were from offworld and had died many
years ago, and that he'd gone to the sea late in life. The Hanagumi
had always assumed he'd been born and orphaned locally. She had
figured his age as twenty-two, which was logical given three years as
a midshipman - you had to be eighteen to get the Emperor's warrant
aboard ship, before that age you were just a volunteer - and one with
the Hanagumi, but he'd never actually said how old he was. He said
his fighting style was the Asagiri Shinjinkenryuu, but some of his
forms were archaic and the overall style didn't quite match - as
though it were related. Sakura had ignored these inconsistencies at
first because she had never had any reason to doubt him, and then in
the name of their friendship and comradeship.
But now they allowed doubt to form. She shook herself free
from her horrified reflection and picked up the book again. She
opened it and turned to the page that told about Gryphon, and had a
better picture of him, supposedly drawn from life by the book's
artist, another early WDF officer.
There were the same ice-blue eyes, the same unruly dark-brown
hair, the same bearded jawline, the same small, warm smile, as of
amusement in some private joke. He wore eyeglasses even though he
didn't need them, because before joining the WDF he had. The
simplistic prose of a children's book described him as honest, loyal,
and brave, the moral anchor of the Wedge Defense Force's first
officers.
Though somewhat idealized, that fit in perfectly well with
what she knew of Peter Moreau... but for the horrible inconsistency in
between. Everyone, even in a place like Ishiyama, knew of the Butcher
of Musashi. He was the most infamous mass killer of the post-colonial
age; sixty-odd years ago, during a military operation on the planet
Musashi against an unknown attacking force, this kind and upright
warrior had suddenly and inexplicably murdered several dozen
defenseless schoolchildren, then escaped from WDF arrest and vanished
into the galaxy. Since then, he'd been spotted here and there, and
had always managed to elude the authorities and vanish again. The
last time he'd disappeared had been in 2350, from Earth...
... only a little while before Peter Moreau must have received
his warrant as midshipman aboard the Sendai.
It fit.
Oh, God, it fit.
Sakura didn't know how long she sat, her mind spinning, on the
floor of her bedroom; she only knew the thought that kept racing
through her anguished brain:
What should I do? What should I do?
She stayed there, tears tracking her face, miserably posing
that question to herself, until she suddenly felt a presence behind
her; gasping, she turned on her knees to see her grandmother standing
in the doorway to her room.
"What's the matter, Sakura?" asked the old woman softly.
Sakura gasped. Her grandmother rarely spoke to her directly; the old
woman preferred to address her remarks to her granddaughter by way of
Sakura's mother.
"Grandmother... I think I've done a terrible thing," said
Sakura.
Grandmother Shinguuji walked slowly into the room - she was so
tiny and bent with age that her face was almost even with Sakura's
even as Sakura sat on the floor - and put her hand on her
granddaughter's shoulder.
Without a word, Sakura handed the old woman the ancient
picture book. Grandmother looked at the book, then nodded gravely.
"Oh, Grandmother - what shall I do?" Sakura asked.
Her grandmother regarded the heir of the Shinguuji for a
moment; then she handed the book back, put her wizened hand back on
the girl's shoulder, and said quietly,
"What you must."
The old woman turned and shuffled out of the room.
Sakura stared after her for a few moments; then she wiped her
eyes with the sleeve of her kimono, stood up with the energy of sudden
resolution, and strode out of the room. She went straight to the door
across the hall and slid it unhesitatingly open.
"Wha - ?" wondered Maria Tachibana, sitting up and blinking
blearily into the light streaming across her sleeping mat from the
hallway.
Moreau was almost asleep when the soft knock came at his
door. Surprised, he got up, yawning, and belted a robe around
himself, then shuffled to the door and slid it open.
POW!
As he was catapulted backward, he wondered what had possessed
someone to knock on his door, then fire a cannon into his face. It
seemed a hell of a long way to go for a prank. Surely a cream pie
would have been sufficient.
He crashed into the far wall, which was quite remarkable
considering it had been about thirty feet away a moment ago, bounced
off, and fetched up face-down on the floor. Something grated where
his nose belonged, but he was too busy being interested in the grain
of the wooden floor to bother himself about it.
"Kanna, wait!" he heard a distant voice call. He wondered who
wanted Kanna to wait for what. A steel-clawed crane such as was used
in junkyards to heave old cars into the crusher clamped onto his
shoulder and dragged him vaguely to his feet; then someone fired that
cannon at him again, this time hitting him mid-body, and he went down
to his hands and knees, gagging but too constricted with pain to
actually come up with anything.
"Damn you, I said -wait-!" the voice barked, and as the pain
in his midsection cleared his head, Moreau realized it was Maria
Tachibana. He looked up, blinking away tears of pain, to see the
blonde woman standing in front of Kanna Kirishima, somehow holding the
raging Hoffmanite back away from him, perhaps through sheer force
of will. Kanna's face was twisted into a mask of hate that frightened
Moreau all the more when he realized it had to be for him. Behind
them crowded the rest of the Hanagumi; Kohran was trying to keep Iris
from seeing what was going on, but the little blonde kept fighting
past her.
"Let me go, Maria! I'll kill him, I swear I will!" Kanna
bellowed so that they must have been able to hear her in the city,
twenty miles away. "Miserable, murdering son of a bitch! We trusted
you!"
Moreau shook his head, felt at his nose, and pulled it
straight, biting out a grunt of pain; then he tried again to focus on
the group.
"I knew you looked familiar," Sakura said through her teeth,
her eyes burning. "How long did you think you could keep it from us?"
She threw down the book next to him, so he had only to turn his head a
little to look at it; he did so, then closed his eyes, a look of
nothing but resignation on his face.
"Ishiyama may be the sticks," Sumire hissed, "but we're not
all ignorant savages."
Gryphon drew in a long, slow breath, held it for a few
seconds, and let it just as slowly out again. Then he opened his
eyes, met hers again, and said, "I... I have no answer for your
question."
"Then maybe you can answer this one," she replied, drawing her
katana from its scabbard and leveling it at him. "What reason have I
not to kill you right here and now?"
Gryphon looked back at her with an expression of pained
frankness and said softly, "I didn't do what they say I did."
"What's going on?!" Iris demanded. "Why is Kanna beating up
Big Brother?"
"Because he's the fucking Butcher of Musashi, you little
idiot, that's why!" Kanna yelled.
"Kanna!" said Maria sharply; this time her tone seemed to
penetrate, for Kanna's massive frame sagged a little.
Then she said petulantly, "Let me -go-, damn it!" before
wresting herself away from Maria and folding her arms. "He's not
going anywhere anyway," she said grudgingly.
Iris looked from Kanna's rage-darkened face to Gryphon's
battered one and back, her eyes full of tears. Not knowing what to
do, she wrung her hands and whimpered. Maria stepped around Kanna,
waved Kohran back, and knelt down before the little girl, taking
Iris's shoulders in her hands and looking her in the eyes.
"Iris, Commander Moreau isn't who he told us he is," she said
gently. "He's... he's really a very bad man, a man who hurt a lot of
children once."
Iris blinked, then frowned. "I don't believe it."
"I don't want to believe it either, Iris, but it's true."
"No!" Iris shouted, stamping her foot. "I didn't say I don't
-want- to believe it, I said I -don't- believe it! Don't assume I
don't know what I mean just because I'm little!"
"Oh, Iris," said Maria sadly, enfolding the little girl in a
hug despite her indignant struggles. "I'm sorry, little one.
Sometimes we have to face things that we cannot stand to believe, but
that doesn't make them any less true."
"NO!" Iris repeated angrily, pulling herself out of Maria's
embrace.
"Iris, do you even know who the Butcher of Musashi is, what he
did?" asked Sumire irritatedly. Her black eyes glittered as she
sneered at Gryphon. "I should have killed you when I had the chance,"
she said, "if I had only known."
"By God, I'll do it now," Kanna said, and took a step toward
the crumpled ex-commander.
"-NO-!" Iris shrieked, and she jumped nimbly past Maria to
stand, arms outflung, between her teammates and Gryphon. Her clear
blue eyes crackled with anger; a wall of yellow light sprang up and
divided the five from the two. Iris was floating a good six inches
off the floor.
"Iris, this is a mistake," said Sakura, fighting to keep her
voice from trembling. "We all... " She swallowed and tried again.
"We all loved Commander Moreau, but he wasn't a real person. He was
just an act."
"ARE YOU ALL STUPID?!" Iris demanded. "What's the MATTER with
you? Big Brother is kind and good! He could never hurt an innocent
child!"
"He killed dozens of them," Kanna snarled. "Little kids who
thought he was the greatest hero in the galaxy. They crowded around
him like he was Santa Claus and he killed them all."
Iris was getting tired of saying it, but for her friends she
suffered herself to have the patience to repeat it once more: "NO!"
Sumire looked irritated. "Oh, I suppose you know what really
happened that day. Sixty years before you were born, you know what
happened to those children."
"That's right," Iris said fiercely. She nodded sharply,
decisively, once.
"Sure," Kanna snorted. "And how do you know that?"
"I know it in my heart," Iris replied. "An evil man who stole
his face took away everything he ever loved that day. I know it -
I've seen it." She fixed Kanna on her fierce blue glare. "The same
way I know about the snake that bit you when you were little, and how
your father saved you." Kanna gasped, recoiling as if struck, but
Iris wasn't paying her any more attention; she'd turned to Maria.
"The same way I know how your brother died." Addressing each of the
Flowers in turn, she went on, "The same way I know about Sakura's
friend who was killed by lightning and the professor Kohran wouldn't
do 'extra credit work' for and the way Sumire used to cry every night
because she thought no one would ever really love her."
All six stared at her in utter dumbfounded disbelief, tears
rolling down all six faces.
"I know it," said Iris softly, her anger spent. The yellow
glow faded as she settled back to the floor, hugging Jean-Paul to her
chest. "I know it," she repeated once more, her voice dropping to a
mere whisper.
They all stood in silence for a few moments, brittle, raw
silence, none of them knowing what to do next.
Falling back on old habit, Kanna looked to Maria.
"Well?" she asked, her voice hoarse with emotion. "Do you
believe it?"
Maria frowned. "I don't know, Kanna," she said. "I... I
-want- to believe it. But... Iris could be wrong."
"I'm not wrong," Iris said, her tone not now argumentative but
rather calmly assured.
"There must be some way we can be certain," Kohran murmured,
wringing her hands; her eyes were huge behind her glasses.
Sakura swiped at her tears with her sleeve for the second time
that night, squared herself up, and said flatly, "There is."
They were all outside under the blazing moonlight; it was
colder still than it had been when Sakura and 'Commander Moreau' had
taken their walk, but none had bothered to change, and most were still
wearing their nightclothes. Maria, Kanna, Sumire, Iris and Kohran
were grouped at the base of the hill out back in a nervous, tense,
silent group, watching with morbid fascination the preparations being
made at the ancient tree.
Gryphon stood with his back to the tree, hands at his sides.
Sakura was fussing with the details of his positioning. There wasn't
really anything wrong with it, but fussing allowed her to delay her
inevitable responsibility for a few moments more.
Finally she realized she could hold it off no longer; she
stepped back and looked him in the eyes. He looked back, untroubled,
apparently at peace.
"This will hurt," she told him.
He smiled. "I supposed it would," he said.
"The Sacred Spirit Sword Arataka was forged to destroy
wickedness," she explained. "When I unleash its power on you, it
will tear at the dark places in your soul. No one's spirit is pure,
not even mine, as hard as I've tried to make it so. That is why it
will hurt." He nodded. "But if you are closer to light than to
dark," Sakura went on, "you will not die. There is no way you can
have done what they say you did and survive this. You may just be
able to deceive even Iris, but you cannot deceive Arataka. Do you
understand?"
He nodded again. "I understand," he said gravely.
She gave him one long searching look, didn't trust herself to
say anything further, turned and marched away, to the position at
which she had practiced the Cherry Blossom maneuver all those hundreds
of times. She'd learned this maneuver in the same place, had tested
it once, and had been so terrified by its power that she'd never
attempted it again; now she was going to unleash it against a living
being, one who, until just a half-hour ago, she had been quite
convinced she'd cared a great deal about.
Perhaps she'd get the chance to do so again.
She took a deep breath and dropped her hand to her side,
tearing the Spirit Sword from its scabbard and holding it vertical in
front of her face.
"Sacred Spirit Sword Arataka!" she said forcefully, drawing
a geometric design in the air in front of her with straight and
powerful slashes that whistled through the air, a pink-white glow
suffusing the air around her. "Let us hear your voice! Speak in
judgment of this man, that we shall know if he is worthy of our love!
OHKA - SEISHIN - KYUURYUU - KIRU!!"
As she belted out the last word, she swept the blade in a
great arc and stopped it so that its tip was aimed directly at
Gryphon's heart. The glow built to a fever pitch, little dots and
rivulets of hard pink light seeming to streak the air and gather at
the tip of the blade for an eternal heartbeat.
Then the Spirit Sword Arataka spoke.
For five seconds, a thick bar of brilliant white-pink light
connected the tip of the blade with Gryphon's heart, and pinioned on
the light, he threw back his head and screamed and screamed. The
light built to a blinding intensity, a roar like a freight train
almost drowning out Gryphon's agonized shrieking. At the other end of
the sword, Sakura stood like a figure of stone, only her blazing eyes
betraying the life in her slender frame. Iris cried out and buried
her face in Sumire's skirts. Sumire tried to shield her eyes enough
to see what was happening. Kanna stood rock-still, her fists clenched
so hard the muscles in her forearms writhed under the skin, her jaw
muscles bunched. Maria, arms folded, was impassive. Kohran stared
with open-jawed astonishment.
As suddenly as it began, it was over; the light vanished, the
roar ended as if a switch had been thrown. Everyone reeled a little,
their eyes trying to readjust to the sudden darkness.
Sakura remained frozen in her position for a second longer;
then she closed her eyes, drew herself up to a straight standing
position, raised the blade vertical, reversed it, wiped it against her
hakama and returned it to its scabbard.
Gryphon stood where he had been speared by the light, a wisp
of smoke rising from the charred spot on his nightshirt, for a long,
long moment, his eyes staring.
Then he closed his eyes, collapsed on his face in the cool,
fresh snow, and let out a long, wavering groan.
All the Hanagumi burst out talking at once, crowding around
him;
Except for Sakura, who remained where she stood for a moment
longer, eyes closed, head bowed.
Thank you, Arataka, she said silently.
Up on the hill at the temple, a bell bonged in slow and
stately cadence, once, twice, three, four, five, six times.
Gryphon picked up his head from the snow and said weakly, "six
bells... time for breakfast."
Then he passed out.
When he awoke, it was night again. He was lying on a floor
with a sleeping mat under him, his head on two pillows, bundled up to
his neck in heavy, soft blankets. This struck him as unusual - the
air against his face was warm enough - until a chill struck him and he
realized he was freezing. Blue-white moonlight slanted across the
wall to his left, coming in through the slats of a half-blinded window
behind him. Its glow lit the room well enough that he could make out
Kanna Kirishima sitting cross-legged next to his mat, her hands folded
on her knees. Her eyes were closed. He wondered if she were
sleeping.
"You're awake," she said softly, without opening her eyes.
"Yes," he replied, his voice a rasp in his dry throat.
"I heard your breathing change," she explained, then asked,
"How do you feel?"
"I'm cold," he said.
Kanna nodded. "Sakura said you would be." She still didn't
look at him, her face a study in neutrality as she told him, "You
should go back to sleep. When you wake in the morning you'll feel
stronger."
He chuckled weakly, trying to make a joke of it, and said,
"You might as well go to bed - I'm not going anywhere."
Kanna finally opened her eyes and looked at him; in the
moonlight her eyes were liquid and sad.
"I'm not here to keep you prisoner," she said.
He looked back at her for a moment, then replied only, "Oh."
They sat in silence for several minutes; Kanna seemed to be
waiting for him to go back to sleep, but he couldn't, not right away.
Too much was tumbling through his mind.
"I'm an idiot," Kanna said suddenly.
"... Huh?" Gryphon replied, having been thinking about
something else.
"Did I -think-?" Kanna demanded, of herself more than of him.
"Did I bother to consider any explanation but the obvious one? No, of
course I didn't. I just wanted to smash something, preferably your
head. Damn me! Dad tried and tried and -tried- to warn me... " She
hung her head, miserably furious with herself. "It's just like Sumire
always says," she muttered. "I'm a stupid, clumsy, blundering ox."
"Kanna... " Gryphon said, but he couldn't think of anything to
add to it. She shook her head. Sighing inwardly, Gryphon gathered
his strength and sat up; he would have felt stupid trying to have a
conversation with somebody who was sitting up while he was flat on his
back, no matter how much he wanted to shiver once the covers had
fallen to his lap.
"Kanna," he said again. The change in the position of his
voice caught her attention; she turned to look at him.
"Hey!" she protested. "Get back under those covers! You'll
freeze your ass off."
"I'm fine," he lied. "Kanna, acting on bad information when
there was no way you could've had the -right- information is no
crime. I know how much you like kids. What you thought I had done
must have hit you pretty hard."
She nodded, eyes squeezed shut again. "When I was a young
girl I used to dream of one day going out and finding you - I mean the
Butcher - and punishing him for his terrible crime. I used to pretend
that the training dummy in our dojo was you - him - and work harder,
because I'd heard of how dangerous he was supposed to be. I broke
dozens of those damn things. Dad never did figure out why." She
pounded a fist against her thigh. "So when Sakura told us that you
were him, all I could think of was that."
"And as far as you could know, you were right."
"I should've trusted you. You're our commander! I've seen
the things you've done for all of us. And I don't mean what you do in
combat, anybody can be brave with a battle to fight. I mean the
little things you do for us. Hanging all our pictures on your wall.
Learning Russian so you can understand Maria when she gets agitated.
Asking Kohran to fix your things even when they aren't really broken.
Talking to Iris like she's a grown-up. Sparring with me when you know
that if I screw up I'll probably kill you. Working so hard to make
Sakura feel at home in the city. Putting up with Sumire at all. I
mean, you're a friggin' saint. Why would a man like the Butcher do
those kinds of things? Answer: Obviously, he wouldn't. But did I
bother to think about that? Nooooo."
Gryphon made an exasperated noise. "Kanna, quit it. You're
not a whiner, so stop whining. OK, so, in hindsight, you fucked up.
What, you never fucked up before? This is your very first fuckup?
Congratulations! You're what, twenty? You made it about eighteen
years longer than I did."
She stared at him in open disbelief for a second; then what he
was saying sank in. Her mouth quirked, then twitched. She let out a
sound that sounded like a cough, then another, then gave up, threw
back her head and laughed until it hurt. Gryphon couldn't help it, it
was infectious - he started laughing too, and given his condition, it
didn't take him nearly as long to start hurting. The tears on -his-
face weren't solely from laughter when they both came down a few
moments later.
"Thanks, Chief, I needed a kick in the ass," she said, and
slapped him on the shoulder.
He felt something grind against something else and stifled a
yelp, managing to grit out a weak, "You're welcome... "
"Hey, my shift's up," she said, her good humor totally
restored. She got up and brushed off her pants legs. "I gotta get
some shut-eye. I'll send in the next victim. Why don't you try and
get some more rest?"
"... good idea... "
The little bell hanging on the door jangled cheerfully as she
slid open the door and went out, calling brightly, "Next!" Gryphon
fell back to the pillow and gingerly pulled the covers back up to his
chin, grudging the bell its simple, happy existence.
He lay there for a few dark and silent moments, the covers
snugged into his chin and elbows, his hands clasped on his chest,
readjusting himself to the peacefulness of the room after the brief
storm of Kanna's returned bonhomie. The door was gently closed after
a moment, gently enough that the bell didn't sound again, and a
near-silent tread crossed the room and stopped on his left where Kanna
had been. There was a whisper of fabric as whoever it was sat down.
Now that the quiet had returned, he felt a wave of unbearable
tiredness. He didn't even want to open his eyes and see who Kanna's
replacement was, though he was curious. Jacking his eyelids up again
just seemed like too much bother. So did putting his voice back in
gear to ask. Instead he concentrated on the senses he didn't have to
work to use. His hearing didn't tell him enough for him to make a
positive ID, just narrow down the list. Neither Iris nor Maria could
walk so quietly on a wooden floor. He hadn't heard the tap of a
scabbard's tip against the floor when the person sat down, so it
probably wasn't Sakura. That still left two possibilities.
He had just had the thought that he was probably going to be
forced to look or speak despite his best efforts when he caught a very
faint whiff of a familiar scent. It struck him as notable in some
way, so he concentrated on his nose instead of his ears and took
another careful sniff. Not a perfume or the smell of an expensive
bath soap, but not unpleasant, either; a light and honest-smelling
combination of coal dust and Three-in-One oil.
"Hello, Kohran," he said.
"Sorry, Commander," she replied. "I didn't want to disturb
you."
"It's all right, I wasn't asleep," he said.
"I was going to try to make an energy drink for you, but
Sakura was afraid I would explode her mother's kitchen," said Kohran
apologetically.
"That's OK," said Gryphon. "I just need to rest a while
longer. I don't feel as cold as I did when I woke up. By the way,
what day is it?"
"Sunday," Kohran replied. "You slept all day."
"Sunday," repeated Gryphon thoughtfully. "Has anybody told HQ
where we are?"
"Yes, Maria cabled Major General Yoneda in the morning. She
said you fell into the stream and caught a chill."
He chuckled. "Ah, good, my reputation as a clumsy oaf is
secure."
"Well, actually," Kohran elaborated, "she said Sumire -threw-
you in the the stream, and you caught a chill."
"Well, that's a little more plausible," he admitted.
"The rest of us are going back to Ohji in the morning in case
there's an alert. Sakura volunteered to stay with you until you're
well enough to travel. Actually, we all voluntered, but this is
Sakura's house," Kohran added sheepishly.
The bell tinkled as someone opened the door; Gryphon sighed
inwardly and resigned himself to opening his eyes, but before he
could, something small and light took three running steps and launched
itself onto him.
"Big Brother, you're all right!" Iris declared, doing her best
to hug the prostrate man.
Gryphon grinned and did his own best to return the embrace.
"I wouldn't go that far," he said, "but I'm mending." His face became
serious as he said, "I have a lot to thank you for, Iris."
She shrugged it off. "I just did what I had to do," she said;
then she shot Kohran a dirty look and added, "Because -some- people
were being -idiots-."
Kohran scowled and stuck her tongue out at Iris, which started
a brief but devastating funny-face contest.
"What's all the laughing about?" Sumire Kanzaki whispered
angrily as she entered the room, belting her nightdress around her.
"Some of us are trying to sleep!" And obviously she had been, because
her hair, for the first time Gryphon could remember, was in disarray,
sticking up a bit on one side and flattened on the other. She saw him
looking at it, tried to look up as she followed his line of sight,
then blanched and patted at it with her hands.
"Um, how are you?" she asked, not quite sure what to call him,
as she tried vainly to arrange her hair.
"Feeling better, thank you. I should be up and around
tomorrow, I hope."
"I'm glad to hear that," she said, abandoning the attempt at
hairstyling with an irritated sound and a shrug. "Iris, stop
bothering him, now. He has to rest."
"I just wanted to say I was glad he's all right," said Iris
indignantly, climbing off her hapless commander.
"Well, you've said it - now off to bed with you," Sumire
said. "It's the middle of the night."
"Would you please keep it down?" Maria Tachibana inquired
sleepily from the doorway. "It is the middle of the night!"
"I was just saying that," Sumire muttered, annoyed.
"Bozhe moi!" Maria gasped, raising a hand to her lips in mock
astonishment as she stepped further into the room, toward the foot of
Gryphon's sleeping mat. "Sumire, what has happened to your hair?"
"This may come as a shock to you, Maria," said Sumire
sarcastically, "but I sleep with my head touching my pillow just like
everybody else."
"Oh, I wish I had a camera," said Maria.
"Smile, everybody!" Kanna's voice cried from the doorway. As
everybody turned to look, a blinding flash filled the room, followed
immediately by an outraged shriek from Sumire.
"Kirishima," Sumire yelled, "give me that camera!"
"Never!" Kanna replied, dodging away from Sumire's attempt at
grabbing the camera, then ducking around Maria.
"I'll kill you!" Sumire cried, half-serious, as she chased
Kanna around Gryphon's feet and past a still-blinking, blinded
Kohran. "I swear I will!"
"Have to catch me first, rich girl!" Kanna crowed. "Think
fast, Maria!" she called, and tossed the camera over Gryphon into
Maria's hands. Iris squealed with pleasure and clapped her hands at
the show as Sumire diverted from her pursuit of Kanna to jump over the
prone commander's body and make a grab for the camera, which Maria
then tossed back to Kanna.
"Maria, how can you abet this indignity?" Sumire demanded,
fighting to keep a grin off her face as she made a fast turn and went
after Kanna again. Kanna ducked behind Kohran, who had just begun to
recover her sight, and passed the camera to her behind her back;
Kohran blinked at it as if unsure how she'd come to possess it, and
Sumire actually caught Kanna, then realized it was useless because she
didn't have the camera. She wrestled the Hoffmanite down anyway,
which would have been impressive if Kanna hadn't been letting her win,
and cackled with evil glee as she launched a ticklish assault on
Kanna's ribs.
"Kohran, throw the camera back to Maria!" Iris cried, clapping
her hands and jumping up and down in sheer delight. "I want to see
Sumire jump over Big Brother again!"
"WHAT IS GOING ON IN HERE?!"
The indignant bellow froze everybody in their tracks; they all
turned their heads, faces locked in expressions of dread, to see
Sakura Shinguuji standing foursquare in the doorway, her hands on her
hips, her face like thunderclouds.
"All of you, go back to bed this instant!" Sakura commanded.
"Kanna, what are you doing on the floor? Sumire, stop trying to give
Kanna an Indian burn and go to bed! Kohran, give me that camera."
"Uh, Sakura - " Sumire started tentatively.
"NO, Sumire, whatever it is," Sakura replied briskly, taking
the camera from Kohran. "Go to bed!"
Sumire considered objecting further, saw the indignation in
Sakura's big brown eyes, and gave it up as a lost cause.
"But... oh, all right," she muttered. "Good night, everybody.
Killjoy," she grumbled on her way out.
"Yeah, jeez, try to have a little fun around here," Kanna was
mumbling as she slunk out, shamefaced.
"Hmph. I wasn't doing anything bad, was I, Jean-Paul?" Iris
said loftily.
"I never said you were, Iris," said Sakura a little more
gently, "but Commander Moreau needs to rest. Please go to bed."
Iris sighed theatrically. "Very well, I will," she said with
an elaborate put-upon air; then she brightened to her usual demeanor
and chirped, "Good night, Big Brother!"
"'Night, Iris," said Gryphon weakly, returning her wave as she
bounced out of the room.
"Maria, I'm surprised that you would let that kind of
horseplay go on in the Commander's sickroom," said Sakura
reproachfully. "And Kohran, you were supposed to be watching to make
sure nothing disturbed him!"
"But I - " Kohran started.
"We just - " Maria added.
"I don't want to hear it, just go to bed," Sakura ordered.
The two looked at each other and shrugged.
"Yes, ma'am," said Maria with slightly amused meekness. "Good
night, Commander."
"Good night, Maria," said Gryphon. "Kohran."
"Night, sir," said Kohran with a grin.
"There," said Sakura, the bell on the door jangling fiercely
as she slapped the sliding panel shut. "I'm sorry about that," she
said, turning to Gryphon. "They ought to know better. It's
shameful." She fussed with his covers for a few moments, then sat
down in seiza next to his bed. "You can go to sleep now. I'll make
sure nobody comes back to bother you."
He smiled. "Thank you," he said. He closed his eyes and
tried to sleep; something nagged at him, and he chased it for a couple
of minutes.
"Say," he observed as he caught it. "You called me 'Commander
Moreau'."
Sakura smiled. "Of course!" she replied. "That's who you
are, isn't it?"
Gryphon absorbed that for a moment; then he smiled and let his
head drop back against the pillow, eyes closing.
"Thank you, Sakura," said Peter Moreau.
"You're welcome, Commander," she replied, and he felt the cool
touch of her hand on his forehead before he drifted off to sleep.
/* Seat Belts "Waltz for Zizi" _Cowboy Bebop_ */
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
presented
UNDOCUMENTED FEATURES EXILE
Aegis Florea, Part 1:
Commander Moreau
The Cast
(in order of appearance)
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Gendou Oshibori
John Edison
Kiyone Moriyuuki
Yuri Sakakibara
Ikki Yoneda
Maria Tachibana
Kanna Kirishima
Vicomtesse Iris de Chateaubriand
Jean-Paul
Li Kohran, Ph.D.
Sumire Kanzaki
Sakura Shinguuji
Kasumi Fujii
Tsubaki Takamura
Grandmother Shinguuji
Director
Benjamin D. Hutchins
Sakura Taisen Fanboy/
Giant Japanese Dictionary Owner
Rob Shannon
Set Ninja
Kelly St. Clair
Crew
The Usual Suspects
Ever-Gracious Hosts
Leonard W. Hutchins, Jr.
Phyllis Hutchins
2001
E P U (colour)
Peter Moreau will return