Part 13: Spitfires Taxiing

Lung Cheung Road

Wong Tai Sin District, Hong Kong SAR

March 16th, 2016

"Hnnnnnggg... Nnnnngggh... Nnnnn..!"

Richardson watched the scene in front of her with skyrocketing alarm. "Uncle Roland, what are you doing..?"

"Me?" the man grunted distractedly. "Just trying to – whoops!" Schuhart went over backwards as his crowbar and the lid of the crate he'd been attacking flew away in opposite directions, striking the pavement with a series of resounding clangs.

The gosta were massed around him in a flash: "Uncle Roland, are you all right?"

Schuhart defiantly thrust a fist into the air. "Ore wo dare da to omotte!?" When he didn't get whatever reaction he seemed to expect, he rolled over and gingerly pushed himself up. "Ow-ow-ow..."

Satisfied that Uncle Roland wasn't hurt, Richardson drifted over to the open crate. It contained more old rifles, longer than the ones she and her sisters had trained with thus far, neatly packed in staggered rows. The girl impulsively grasped the straight, stubby handle of the nearest weapon's bolt and opened it to see inside: her fingers came away coated in a thin film of malodorous brown slime. "Uh..."

"Cosmoline," Schuhart explained, proffering a rag for her to wipe the stuff off. "Standard preservative for long-term storage of metal items. If you stay in this line of work, you'll be seeing a lot of it."

"Ah." The gosta looked down at the rifle. "What is this?"

"Vintovka Mosina." The lame man lifted the rifle out, unperturbed by the greasy residue on it. "Soviet issue from the forties, dirt-cheap and rock-solid. These were leftovers from a recent order – we were going to ship them back to one of our depots when the trouble started... Now we're short of small arms and there's nothing else we can give to the Ersatzgruppen."

"The what..?"

"Substitute units." Schuhart cleared his throat. "It seems that word of our exploits has filtered upland to the survivor camp in Yuen Long: last night more than a hundred displaced persons snuck out and slipped back into the destroyed city. Current head count is one-twenty-two, and every one of them volunteered to stand and fight with us. Problem is, none of 'em have a lick of experience and I can't count on them to be speedy learners like you... But if we can at least train them to hit the narrow side of a barn, we'll be able to use them as rearguard troops and free up more of our professional crew for the heavy lifting."

"I understand," Sauer interjected crisply. "How can we help?"

"You can help," Schuhart said, motioning to the still-sealed crates beyond the open one, "by giving me a hand unpacking and cleaning these."

There was a softness in Kang Li's sleeping face which Renaril had never once seen when the temperamental Chinese female was awake. She'd enjoyed the sight only in fleeting snatches before now, indulging in guilty peeks when she was supposed to be doing work. This time, with the colonel lying supine in chemical-controlled hibernation under a shimmering force field, the Arume could take a minute to really absorb the view.

She could have stood there for hours, mesmerized by the subtle rise and fall of the captive's chest, if the guard on duty hadn't cautiously approached. "Can I help you, Group Commander?"

"I need the items the prisoner was carrying," Renaril replied, hoping she sounded sufficiently firm. If you go out of your way to be polite to everyone, they'll think you're a wuss. Such had been Eripol's advice to her boss. Sometimes you just have to walk in like you own the place and hope the underlings fall for it.

The guard looked conflicted by the demand. "Group Commander Benacirael left specific instructions that the objects seized are not to be removed without a signature and her personal – "

"I'm not going to abscond with the evidence," Renaril snorted, putting on an affronted expression. "Now stop wasting my time and let me inspect the material."

The guard decided that obedience was the better part of duty and led the officer to a row of compact lockers. "Here," she said in a meek voice, pressing upon the smart-lock's biometric reader. When the narrow inner drawer extended, the subordinate stepped back respectfully.

Renaril looked over the contents rapidly: a pistol with holster and magazines, a pocket notebook, a mechanical pencil, a ring of keys, a wallet, a much-creased bundle of what looked like administrative paperwork, a chunky satellite communication handset, a pair of candy wrappers – she made a note to look up the brand and flavor, strictly for investigative purposes of course – a postcard depicting Mount Fuji, mailed from Matsumoto in Japan a month prior, and lastly a hard rubber eraser. "This is everything?"

"Yes."

All war is based on deception. Such was Sun Zi's advice. "Are you sure?" Renaril pinned the guard with a steely gaze. "Think carefully."

"Uh, well..." The guard rose to the bait, assuming the probe was some kind of aptitude test. She hastily examined the drawer's contents. "It should all be here... Wait." Nervous fingers quickly turned over some of the larger artifacts. "There was a scrap of loose paper with some numbers on it... Maybe Group Commander Benacirael took it with her?"

"Oh, come now." Renaril put her hands on her hips. "Are you suggesting that Benacirael would insist on keeping a record of things taken out and then be so thoughtless as to forget her own order?"

"Um... No, but..."

"But nothing. Where's the deposit manifest?"

"The – the group commander said she didn't need one."

Renaril squinted menacingly. "So you went against regulations and didn't write it."

The guard raised her hands, slipping into blind panic. "No, no! I did write a manifest, it's just not been entered into the system!"

"Then enter it," the senior Arume growled. "And get me a copy, just in case."

"Yes, ma'am!" the guard squeaked. "I'll do it now!"

She fled, leaving Renaril and the drawer alone. Renaril couldn't suppress a triumphant smirk as she resumed her perusal of the articles in question unsupervised. Her parents would have conniptions if they'd caught her doing something like this, and yet she couldn't for a moment deny that she enjoyed bullying the poor woman. The happy feeling fast withered, however, when she realized that Kang would definitely consider her attitude childish and unprofessional. Renaril could perfectly imagine the colonel's voice saying exactly that as she picked up the notebook.

Most of Kang's notes were recorded in what Renaril assumed was Mandarin Chinese – it was unintelligible to her, at any rate. Neat columns of Indo-Arabic numerals denoted some sort of accounting, maybe of unit strengths or logistical matters, and the colonel seemed to prefer transcribing items from other languages in Latin characters: here and there the Arume would spot single words or short phrases, most of them in English and partitioned between quotation marks. A whole thirteen pages were dedicated to a transcript of what Renaril guessed was an American politician's speech on Chinese military spending, which Kang had extensively annotated in miniscule ideographs.

Coming to blank pages without finding obvious evidence of the conspiracy Benacirael alleged, Renaril exchanged the notebook for the loose papers. These looked official: some of the same letterheads had appeared on documents reviewed and signed by Renaril herself before matters turned sour. Unable to glean more from them, she examined the wallet – it contained only Kang's identification cards, some receipts and some Chinese currency – and then the postcard. The writing on the back was more Chinese, and the Arume took it to be a greeting from an expatriate acquaintance. It wasn't much help to her quest, and so it too was discarded.

Curiosity got the better of her, and she next transferred her attention to Kang's weapon. It looked absurdly large in her delicate hand as she ran a fingertip over the words stamped on its roughly machined frame: MADE IN CHINA. Though she knew almost nothing about this aspect of forime technology, she recognized the logo of the North Industries Corporation on the grips and upper flank and deduced that NP28 was a type designation.

The guard's footsteps drew near and Renaril furtively returned the pistol to its place. "All done," the returning sentry announced, plainly hoping for approval. "Did you find the paper?"

"It's not here," the officer answered. "The manifest..?"

The guard produced a data card and proffered it eagerly. "Right here."

Renaril slotted the compact package into her PDA, copied the contents and returned the item. "I think that will be all for now," she said smoothly. "Thanks."

"Not at all," the other protested. "Um..."

"Performance review coming up?" Renaril inquired nonchalantly.

"...Yes."

"I don't think one missing paper will cost you too much standing..." The group commander offered a sly wink. "But I won't say anything if you don't."

"Thank you, ma'am." Relief flooded over the subordinate Arume's face. "I really appreciate it."

"It's the least I can do," said the officer, making ready to leave. "Good luck with the review."

"Here's a bit of historical trivia for you," said Schuhart as he grasped a greasy bolt in his hands. "Back in the old days an insurgent or partisan in desperate need of a half-decent hideaway gun might resort to sawing the barrel and stock off a piece like this." There was a metallic snap as two pieces of the bare steel assembly became detached. After inspecting them critically, the arms dealer passed everything into Carcano's waiting hands and accepted the next complete bolt from Astra. "The Russians called that an 'obrez' and it's the next best thing to having a nuclear warhead under your coat... When this is over I'll have to make one out of a nice ugly beater, so you can see it yourselves."

When this is over. Midway down the second of the group's three assembly lines, Richardson found herself beginning to really look forward to such a time. Moving as quickly as her gloved hands would allow, she picked up the core of another stripped rifle – its barrel and the few parts which were attached directly to that long, heavy tube – and held it muzzle-down while Korth used a long device with a trailing hose to blast jets of steam into the breech. A little puddle of water formed on the cracked tarmac below, oily swirls lazily undulating across its surface.

"Did it work?"

"I played it just as you said." Renaril sank into her seat with a relieved sigh. "I can't believe we pulled that off... I feel so guilty."

Eripol grinned. "Told you she was a pushover."

"Pushover or not," Negadael cut in, "this had better have been worth it. Did you get anything, ma'am?"

"Not really," Renaril admitted. "But it seems that Colonel Kang had a scrap of paper which has gone missing. Luckily the guard was diligent enough to record it in the deposit list, which gives us..." She copied the string of digits from her PDA to the main screen.

"Looks like a forime telephone number," Eripol noted. "I don't recognize the country code, though." The aide's fingers danced across her keyboard. "Aha – it's a satellite network."

"Satellite," Renaril repeated. "Kang had a satellite phone herself... Those things work with regular phones, don't they?"

"Satphones are tied into the landline and cellular nets, yeah."

"So she wouldn't absolutely need it just to call someone else who has one..." Renaril's brow furrowed. "Satellite phones are meant for use in remote areas without land infrastructure, right?"

Eripol nodded. "And areas where conventional communications systems are damaged or compromised..."

"I see," Renaril said slowly. "But then who does this number belong to?"

Eripol and Negadael looked at one another. "I think," the latter opined, "that if you dialed it now, a certain arms dealer would pick up."

"Wha..? How do you figure that?"

"I see the logic," said Eripol. "Right now Hong Kong would be a perfect place to have a satphone... But obviously the easiest way to find out is to do just what my colleague suggests."

Renaril blinked. "Call and see who answers? Can we really do that?"

"Sure," the tech wiz answered cheerfully. "I can route it through our provisional link to the planetary networks. Can't guarantee it'll be a secure connection, though."

"And if this works and if Roland Schuhart answers, what then?"

"The customer is always right." Eripol shrugged. "Extend a laurel branch, pretend you want to buy something, whatever you like."

"Olive branch," Negadael corrected. "A gesture of peace used by the ancient forime cultures of the southern Balkans, its specific origin – "

"Yeah, yeah," the other subordinate retorted, "close enough... Gimme a half-cycle to set up the proxy."

"...And he says, 'Watson, you fool, it means someone has stolen our tent!'"

There was laughter all around, and Richardson was able to ignore the burn on her forearm for a little while. Though she hadn't understood most of Schuhart's jokes, she appreciated that he was trying to lift the girls' spirits as they worked. "Tell us another one, please."

"Well, let's see... Ahem... Once, there was an old man – eh?" Schuhart broke off to unclip his chirping satphone. "Hello?"

Renaril took a deep breath and tried one last time to assure herself that this was a legit tactic. "Uh, hello," she began hesitantly. "I'm, ah, trying to reach Roland Schuhart."

"Well, you've reached me... So what can I do for you, Group Commander Renaril?"

The Arume gasped. "H-how did you – ?"

"Clairvoyance." Schuhart rolled his solitary eye. "I don't give my number out to just anyone, and you don't sound like you're calling about the clearance sale on Tupolevs... Anyway, you sure took your sweet time getting in contact." The eyes of all the gosta were on him as he frowned. "What do you mean, how much?"

"I mean..." Realizing she was getting flustered, Renaril took a moment to compose herself. "How much were you paid for this job?"

"And by extension, how much more would you have to pay me to do things your way?" There was a sardonic laugh of wince-inducing proportions. "Who do you think I'm working for?"

Renaril had a feeling she was being made fun of, and she didn't like it. "You're working for dissidents in the Chinese government," she accused, "trying to disrupt Beijing's negotiations with us by engineering false acts of terrorism!"

"You're not the sharpest bayonet on the rack," the man retorted irritably. "D'you actually know what my job is?"

"An arms dealer buys up obsolete or unwanted weapons and resells them without regard for laws or customs."

"Textbook answer," Schuhart snorted. "Too bad the textbook was written by world-class hypocrites... That aside, don't you notice what's missing from the answer?" He rolled his eye again. "I buy and sell arms, exactly as it says. My job is to supply hardware to other people – they do the fighting, not me."

Richardson wished she could hear the other side of the conversation: even by itself the half she picked up sounded quite important.

Renaril thought she could see where her opponent was trying to steer this exchange, and wanted no part of it. "Enough of your excuses," she snapped. "Colonel Kang confessed everything!"

"Really?" Schuhart sounded neither surprised nor impressed by the name-dropping. "If you say that, you're either a liar or a fool, which I find quite plausible, or else Kang is a liar, which I find less plausible... Why should I believe you?"

"That – that's what I'm supposed to say," the Arume complained. "Anyway, she had your number! She was arrested after secretly meeting with you! You can't deny that!"

"I wasn't planning to." The arms dealer's voice softened. "Kang was supposed to tell you what's been going on, but it doesn't sound as if she gave you the real story at all."

The change in tone was a sucker punch to Renaril. Why did the man suddenly sound so disappointed? "I... didn't hear it directly from her," she hedged, hoping to draw him out. "She was carefully questioned with, um, chemical aids, but I wasn't there for it personally... I was given a transcript afterward."

"A transcript... Text, not an audio or video record? So all you actually have is somebody else's word that the colonel said what you think she said? Where is she now?"

The barrage of questions knocked Renaril off balance again. "She's a prisoner here... In an induced sleep, I mean."

"So wake her up."

"I..." Renaril hesitated momentarily, then plowed on. "I can't," she said softly. "Because of all this trouble, the Hong Kong area has been transferred to another commander. I can't summon Kang without her permission."

"Hoo boy... Sounds to me like it's the worst case scenario after all. Before I say anything else, Group Commander, who else is listening in on this?"

A glance to either side revealed Negadael and Eripol listening raptly. "Uh... Just my assistants."

"Are they trustworthy?"

"...Yes."

"Fine. You got a gun?"

"Er, no."

"Get one," Schuhart ordered. "Learn to use it and keep it with you." He suddenly turned around and motioned for Richardson to bring him the barrel she still held. "Because your life won't be worth much if the real plotters catch on to you, that's why... Now listen carefully – you've been told this is a conspiracy, directed by the Chinese and employing myself, for the purpose of making your job difficult, is that right? ...Uh-huh." Leaning forward, he inspected the Russian steel with a critical eye. "Now I'm telling you this is really a conspiracy, directed by your own comrades and employing Japanese hitmen, for the purpose of fabricating a pretext for you Arume to seize control of China while the government in Beijing has its collective pants around its knees. Can you wrap your head around that?"

"But... But..." Her aides probably thought Renaril looked like a stranded fish. "I'm in charge of the Sino-Arumic liaison and I don't want to seize control of anything..."

"Doesn't matter. If I'm right, you were supposed to be a convenient casualty of that first attack in Shenzhen... It was just your good luck that the flunkies missed."

"Luck?" the officer pondered aloud. "No... It wasn't luck, it was the colonel. She protected me."

"That sounds more like the Kang I know... Now listen, I don't have concrete proof for all of this. I can prove the Japanese connection – they attacked us as well as you, and we've got their papers, their guns and their corpses – but the rest is one part conjecture and two parts suspicious overlap. I could still be wrong, but it's looking more and more like I'm not."

"Wait," Renaril pleaded, struggling to match the other's rapid revelations. "You talk as if you were just a, uh, an innocent bystander in all this, even when you have armed men on the ground, and you seriously want me to believe all the attacks on us were someone else's doing, while you haven't fired a shot? If you weren't involved in this before, why are you part of it now?"

"It's not true that we haven't fired any shots," Schuhart corrected. "That air patrol you lost after the bombardment, that was us – pure self-defense, mind you... As for your second question, I'm part of it now because I had offices and staff in the city. We stayed behind when the civilians fled, so we're all that's left down here."

"And... what about Colonel Kang?"

"After the dust settled, we began evacuating the remaining survivors. I wasn't sure I could count on you sky eyes to leave well enough alone, so I gave my number and a spare satphone to one of them as insurance... When Kang went to Yuen Long, he passed them on to her and she called me. I hadn't heard from her in months, and I gather my presence was a bit of a rude surprise. We met briefly to compare notes – that's all."

Time for another deep breath. "You've told me a very disturbing story," Renaril conceded, "but if it's true, who is the mastermind? Who is really directing this?"

"I don't know and I'm not in a position to find out. Who's nominally in charge of our miserable patch of turf now? ...Be-na-ci-rael, what a name... Yeah, I'd say she's a suspect – and to judge by the posturing of the troops at the perimeter, she's itching for a fight. I reckon you've got maybe a few days at best to turn up solid gold, otherwise somebody up there will be signing a lot of bereavement letters."

At Schuhart's nod, Richardson passed the barrel along and picked up another. That name, Benacirael, was fixed in her mind – the name of the enemy.

"Bereavement? I don't understand."

"You don't have such a custom? 'Dear Missus and Missus So-and-so, it is with the deepest regret that I inform you of the untimely death of your daughter,' et cetera."

Renaril suddenly remembered a scene from a forime war film which Elaqebil had badgered her into watching. "You can't..." Her throat was suddenly dry. "You can't stay there and fight against Arume, it's impossible..!"

"You think your colleague is going to just let us leave?" Schuhart's voice had gone cold again. "The world is watching, Group Commander. If you don't want to see us clear an exit in the bloodiest way possible, you'd better get cracking. I have my own people to look out for, and after what you've done to this city I'm under no obligation to go out of my way for you... Now I've used up enough minutes holding your hand, and it's time to get back to work. Do you want these prisoners back or don't you?"

The officer swallowed. "I... didn't realize you had any."

"Figures... One of your squads crossed the perimeter yesterday and fired on us, disguised as Russian soldiers. We're holding one Arume and four second-layer grunts. If you don't want them, we'll turn them over to the Russian navy."

"...Can I call you back? Please?"

"You know where to reach me, but don't take too long... And don't let anything happen to Kang, you hear?"

The connection broke off, leaving Renaril to quietly bury her face in her hands. "Whyyyyyyyyyy..?"

"That didn't go so well," Eripol remarked, evidently angling for a stating-the-obvious award. "I guess we'll just – ack!"

"What..?"

"Someone's tapping my proxy!"

If Azanael wasn't careful, these impulsive actions would be the death of her: while her scheme was plenty harebrained in itself, the fact that she barely knew the ins and outs of Hyacinth's engineering section didn't help. She already knew how to perform most single-person checks and repairs by the time she'd reached the rank of crew chief – and when a pilot couldn't fix something, an engineer was called straight to the hangar. On the other hand, getting lost might actually work in her favor this time: right now the tall Arume wasn't just looking for two hands and a wrench, she was looking for two hands in particular.

Wandering through long halls lined with power conduits, past towering junction boxes and over suspended catwalks, she must have encountered dozens of engineers by now... And yet the one she wanted still eluded her. Discouragement had firmly established itself in her mind by the time she had nearly completed her circumnavigation of the behemoth's belly.

And then, almost within sight of the exit, Azanael found her: the tall Arume with the braid and the chief engineer's bars. She was leaning against a bulkhead, a portable terminal balanced on her upturned palm. A thick cable, the shielded type used when working in high-radiation environments, ran from the computer to a wall socket. Another shielded cable ran to the heavy earphones which dangled by the woman's knee.

"Excuse me," Azanael called, "I need some help with my cooling manifolds."

The engineer raised an eyebrow. "Was that a come-on?"

"No," the pilot replied bluntly. "I've got a Type Forty-Eight scouter that's giving me a lot of vibration on startup."

"Same old problem?" The other woman folded the terminal and pulled the plug. "That's not my specialty, but I guess I can take a look at it."

"Thanks," Azanael said, leading the way to the nearest elevator. "Central dispatching said they'd send someone up, but nothing happened."

"Not the first time," said the engineer sympathetically as the elevator doors closed. "Nothing seems to happen quickly on the lower decks... Your manifolds, it's the same with them. They wouldn't crack if the U-bend arc were widened, but that would require a redesign of the entire block – and good luck getting that approved by the cheapskates running everything these days."

"Yes..." Azanael waited a few moments, then began her attack. "By the way, er..?"

"...Kataphel." The engineer sounded almost as if she'd been hoping the pilot wouldn't ask.

"By the way, Kataphel, what can you tell me about Roland Schuhart?"

There was a long silence. "That's not a name you should be throwing around casually."

"So you do know something."

"I can't talk about it. The penalties wouldn't apply only to myself." Kataphel glanced sideways. "You of all Arume should appreciate the risks of indiscretion, Flight Chief."

So word of Azanael's checkered past was still making the rounds. "Then you're content to merely sit back and watch?"

"We have no right to stay aloof." The engineer's voice was at once bitter and sorrowful. "We broke a promise and cannot be absolved."

"Uncle Roland?"

"Yes, Borchardt?"

"Why do you think the Arume came to this world?"

"Didn't someone already ask me that?" Schuhart carefully guided a bolt into its channel and slid it home. "It's not like I have any special insights on hormone-addled space invader psychology."

The gosta looked disappointed, as did most of her sisters. "Can you guess?"

"Sure I can." Tipping the rifle upwards, the arms dealer slipped the socket of a bayonet over its muzzle and locked the long spike in place with a flick of his wrist. "If you ask me," he went on, retracting the bolt and inserting a stripper clip, "the Arume want what the United States wants." He tossed the clip aside, chambering a round with cool precision. "They want what Russia wants. They want what China and India want." The Mosin-Nagant's full length seemed to extend in a straight line from his shoulder as he raised it. "They want to be the first to resurrect the Evangelions."

The harsh sound of defiance rebounded off the faces of surviving buildings and steep hills alike, its echoes cascading until they were the thunder of the very storm which the shot portended.