Surprisingly, Tsukinoyo did not set our mutual boss on fire. Both of them were also surprised to know that I would not be purchasing a replacement weapon from the Nagumo's stores, though I did get a new shield system; the old one's just not working. Truth is, I've been sitting on a small stash of new guns for awhile now.
My collection of Corsair weapons started, probably obviously, with the two days Juni was my second-seater. I picked up quite a few Angelito Mark I and Mark II weapons that day, and I've been sitting on them; they have similar performance characteristics to my Skyrail/Advanced Skyrail set in everything but damage, but the Crusader's power systems can't handle the Mark II guns. That said, Tuskinoyo was actually quite amused to discover I had a stockpile of Corsair weapons, and seems to have taken it as sign that I am more than some random freelancer. She's downright civil now.
I have a mission to New Toyko with the Corporal and Shinji in three hours; apparently the Corporal is moving documents and files that cannot be transmitted. She didn't actually say that, mind, but unless she's using us to bodyguard for her taking a very short leave I doubt it's anything else. Having examined the Dragon up close and personal, as I was offered one from the Nagumo's stores at a somewhat...inflated price, and seen them in action, I don't think I'll be getting one of those.
Juni's been in touch, and directed me to a ship seller on New Tokyo who should have something that suits my needs. She actually apologized for being under so long, and mentioned she'd be dropping by to see me on New Tokyo if I was around more than a few hours.
Some Farmers' Alliance types were near the gate from Kyushu, but didn't make a move towards us considering the flight was composed of a majority of Kusari craft. I was annoyed to discover the Alliance isn't actually illegal. It is frowned on somewhat, and reprisals are undertaken on occasion when it attacks Kusari citizens, but for the most part despite its violent antipathy to foreigners in general and Synth Foods in particular the Kusari police leave the Alliance alone unless they're dumb enough to do something violent directly in front of the cops. Which they occasionally are.
The Hogosha get roughly the same treatment, although with more foundation. In a society as class-conscious and governed by as strict codes of conduct and obedience as Kusari, the Hogosha provide a necessary service in their activities of influence-peddling and minor criminality. The example Shinji gave me in conversation was that the Hogosha do not typically engage in "hard" crime; murder, drug dealing, or the sale of weapons larger than a pistol. But should a Kusari citizen desperately desire an item he cannot normally obtain or seek to establish a relationship he cannot normally expect to have, the Hogosha provide a means. They provide slack in the system whereby people of exceptional merit may rise within society, rather than against it.
Our trip was otherwise uneventful, aside from that conversation. Shinji was apparently taking pity on an uneducated gaijin to explain such things, but since I genuinely do want to understand and go to some pains to be grateful about it I think that it didn't bother the Corporal. When we landed on New Tokyo, something I got away with because I'm here on business for the KNF direct, I made my excuses.
The ship dealer Juni pointed me to also suggested a Dragon, for a lesser price, but...I've seen them come apart under fire, and I don't really trust them now to be honest. Their wings and tailplanes seem to come off way too easily. There was Rheinland light fighter, a Banshee...I've seen Banshees fight, and they are impressive. They're the heaviest "light" fighters in the Colonies, and a Banshee will probably beat any other light fighter save the Kusari Drake, which will stick to its tail and whittle it down. A few Drakes, and while I like Drakes I've grown accustomed to the having the power of a torpedo launcher in case things go terribly wrong and would rather not part with it.
But there was another ship as well. A Bounty Hunter AP-7031 Barracuda, one of their heavy fighters. I've seen them in action before, around Dublin a few times. This one obviously had history; its former owner had painted an angel with a flame-wreathed sword just behind the cockpit. Something just clicked for me there; I bought the ship on the spot, had it outfitted with my Corsair weapons stash and sold the Bretonian guns I was using before.
The power system is better than Crusader's, so I can mount the Angelitos, four Mark II and two Mark I guns. I'm told there are Corsairs over in Honshu near the Sigma systems, so I might go hunting for spare guns at some point, though I have a couple spare Mark I guns already. The new fighter's a sleek design with its vertical body, large upper and lower tailfins, and sharply forward-swept wings/weapon booms. The pilots I saw flying these in Dublin clearly did not know how to handle their craft, as they showed no special flair over the Armed Forces Crusader flights. Here, now, even on the short atmospheric hop I took it on the Barracuda seems much lighter and more maneuverable than I expected out of a heavy fighter, and miles beyond the Crusader.
So I'm waiting around my new fighter, next to Shinji, who's interested in where I came up with the guns. I was reasonably truthful about it, but attributed it to a slightly different timeframe; I basically replaced the original run with Tristain and used the modern one with Juni, without being very specific about her.
Which was when a soft voice said "Edison-san," at my shoulder and I turned to find Juni. She was dressed in Kusari traditional, a kimono that was completely proper and showed very little skin. It was still...I think my mouth may have fallen open. It was very flattering on her. She had this lavender lipstick and eyeshadow on too, the current style in Kusari for women, but Juni was getting more out of it than most. She gave me a smile, and I could see the mirth in her eyes, but she didn't actually laugh at me making a fool of myself.
"Jun'ko." I replied. I think I managed to not sound like a teenager at that point, but I'm not really sure. "This is an unexpected pleasure."
"Remember to write, Edison-san," she replied, and walked away, with a smile over her shoulder. I'm pretty sure anyone else would just assume it's friendly, but I know Juni too well. She's going to have fun with my reaction somehow, and it will be fun only for her.
"Who was that, Trent?" Shinji looks a little starstruck himself, despite the fact he's gotta be about forty. Good to know it's not just me.
It also just now occurs to me that Juni is the first Kusari to address me with an honorific, despite the fact they readily use them with each other. I wonder if I'm just assumed to be too dumb to get them in a not-subtle insult, or if the insult is actually supposed to be subtle. "That copilot I mentioned, Matsumoto? That was her." He looked mildly impressed.
I've been bumped. Three new Kusari-born freelancers came in. The Corporal incorporated them into Fuji and told me and Tsukinoyo that as the most recent hires that were first off the team. The KNF would not be forming another freelancer flight aboard the Nagumo. However, we would not be left out in the cold. The KNF said that should we wish to remain in its employ, the battleship KNFS Matsumoto was looking for new recruits.
Tsukinoyo Higoshi responded with a rapid-fire burst of native Kusari that I am fairly sure was a string of curses upon the Corporal as a coward, a fool, and someone who fornicated with her father and her family pets. I was more controlled, simply informing her that my letter of introduction meant the commander of the Nagumo and certain parties in Samura would find her decision interesting. The Corporal hadn't realized I was connected, I guess; she must have assumed that I'd somehow gotten in mistakenly or something. But it was too late to take her mistake back.
The Matsumoto is in Hokkaido, defending the Chugoku Jump Gate construction site. Everyone knows the Chugoku Gate will never be completed, it's an elaborate bluff to put pressure on the the Blood Dragons in their base in the Chugoku system. As a bluff, it's succeeded; the Dragons attack the gate construction often and damage it badly most of the time.
The other problem is that the Chugoku gate site is on the wrong side of the "Gap" in the Hokkaido system. On one side is the Shiden Cloud, a legitimate source of H-Fuel for Samura. On the other side are the Unyo and Kayo Clouds with the Chugoku gate site in the open between them. Permeating the Gap between the sides, and much of the upper clouds, is a massively radioactive area known as the Kyofu. Despite the best efforts to construct a Trade Lane to the worksite, it doesn't work yet. That means that getting to the worksite and the Matsumoto involves making what local pilots refer to as "the Kyofu Run"; a long run through the clouds and open space at cruise speed, mostly through radiation levels high enough to actually degrade your ship's hull.
And hoping the Blood Dragons and Golden Chrysanthemum don't attack you while you do it.
Talked to Tsukinoyo into actually trying to make the Kyofu Run with me tomorrow. We're bunked out on the Narita Outpost in the New Tokyo system; as the cargo transshipment point for New Tokyo the planet, it's one of the few places an outsider like me can sleep over in the system.
Have to share a two-person bunking compartment with Tsukinoyo here, for the record. I just climbed into bed fully clothed, faced the wall, and stayed that way. I think that actually disappointed her slightly, if anything. When I left a message for Juni before I went to sleep, Tsukinoyo wanted to know if I was calling my girl. I told her, honestly, that I wasn't. Her "such a shame, Trent-sama" was the first time she'd used an honorific and sounded a little bit breathier than normal to my ears. Granted I'm trying to interpret her tone since I didn't look but she did sound a little like she was flirting there, and then a little disappointed I didn't even turn over when I replied.
Woke up unmolested, I think. Still in all my clothes, so that's a plus. We're going in thirty minutes. No point showering here when we'll have to shower again for decon on the Matsumoto.
Past Yokohama Shipyards and the gas giant Kitadake. No Blood Dragons, which Tsukinoyo was thankful for; in her words "the Kyofu Run starts at Yokohama, but most pilots don't realize it." We jumped to Hokkaido, and immediately got embroiled in a fight between two wings of KSP Drakes and a wing of Golden Chrysanthemum Hawks. The cops probably had it well in hand, but they seemed oddly grateful for the help. We landed at Sapporo Station near the jump gate; we're going to wait for a convoy making the run and just tag along. It didn't take long to figure out why the cops seemed so happy to see us; morale here is about ready to crack. People come in from their patrols, go directly to the bar, get drunk, and cry their eyes out. Tsukinoyo tried to cover it but she's pretty shocked. She looked at a flight about to leave the station as we dismounted from our ships and said something about "swallowing their tears".
I spent some time talking with the drunk and morose; they're here, stuck in a patrol area that's got poor sight and sensor ranges, fighting the Golden Chrysanthemums. That'd be hard enough, but their Drakes and skills are actually suited to fighting the GC and their Hawks. It is a rather more difficult campaign than normally given to the police, but it is one that, given time, they could win. Then, add the Blood Dragons, and the Kusari State Police are not skilled or armed to be facing off with the Blood Dragons. Their pilot attrition rate is something like 15% per week. One of them told me "Shinanakute wa kaeshite moraenai.", which my somewhat poor Kusari language skills translate to something like "They won't let you go home unless you die."
I hope the Matsumoto isn't like this.
A Deep Space Engineering convoy is stopping off briefly to top their fuel tanks and run final checks on their guns before making their run to the construction site. I mentioned my work with Ageira Tech and they hired me and Tsukinoyo on the spot for extra escort. We made it out of the Shiden Cloud safely and almost instantly the rad alarms go off. I'm sitting there staring at my hull integrity gauge almost neurotically. This is probably a good way to eat a missile, in retrospect, but you would have to be a madman to fight inside the Kyofu. And as I'm staring at it...the damn things starts dropping. The fighter is being exposed to radiation worse than the inside of a nuclear reactor, enough to alter the atomic bonds of the armor materials and make it brittle. The ships in the convoy are leaving a visible blue glowing wake; Cherenkov radiation.
It's so bad that there's enough here to be a detectable physical force. The formation-keeping autopilot has to apply RCS thrust occasionally to hold station on the DSE supertransport I'm flying next to, because of the radiation pouring out of the system's star. It was a long five minutes in the open before we hit the Unyo cloud, and my hull integrity had actually dropped by about 30% during the exposure. The moment we hit the cloud I deployed nanobots, which was just as well.
Because it was there that the Blood Dragons pounced. The first we knew of it was when the supertransport's cruise engines died. A half-second later one of the two DSE Hawk escorts blew up under concentrated laserfire. Tsukinoyo damned the nebula out loud for ruining sensors and vision. The supertransport crew lost their damn minds, turrets firing in all directions at enemies that probably weren't anywhere close to the aiming points. The other Hawk did some very impressive evasive maneuvers to avoid the transport gunners. I launched a torpedo blind based on where the fire had come from, and pilot's instinct.
A Dragon came roaring out of the clouds, and flew straight into the torpedo. The torp warhead blew it into a spray of briefly glowing gas. "THREE AND LOW!"
That one call, the lucky torpedo hit, seemed to turn things around abruptly. Three more Dragons came in hard and fast, firing at the supertransport, but the gunners were focused on their vector and made their attack plenty bumpy. The DSE Hawk dropped in behind one that broke off his run and started pouring fire into it. Tsukinoyo spiraled down on the other two before they reached the transport and forced them to break formation or be rammed. One of them went to help his buddy against the Hawk, and I was on him in an instant; pouring neutron weapon fire into his shields and then his unshielded hull in under a second. His tailplane and left wing came off and he tried to jink and break into a scissors with his unengaged friend, but his ship just wasn't maneuverable enough. My reticule might as well have been painted on his cockpit, and the next salvo blew through it, killed the pilot, and blasted out of the bottom of the ship. The one the Hawk was chasing came apart, and the pilot ejected. The last Dragon turned, tractored his buddy, and managed to avoid Tsukinoyo's fire long enough to disappear back into the nebula.
"Cowards." Tsukinoyo observed.
"They have a saying in Liberty," I replied, "that any fool can die for a cause. The job is to make the other side's fools die for their cause."
Tsukinoyo chuckled, once. It's not like Juni's laugh, a harsh noise. "But you are Bretonian. And is not your saying that a cowards die a thousand times before their actual death, and the valiant taste of death but once?"
"A man who throws away his life for his own honor ignores his duty as much as a coward does." I replied. "Death is lighter than a feather. Duty is weightier than a mountain."
"Hagekure!" She was actually impressed. "There's hope for you yet, Trent-sama."
We made it to the gate construction site without incident from there, and then doubled back towards the system star, and the Matsumoto. The battleship's sensor crew was sharp, and its guns tracked us all the way into the docking bay. It's a disconcerting experience to see a barrel bigger than your body following you as you dock. Corporal Sachiko Kondo runs the only freelancer flight of the Matsumoto, Hiei, and she was almost pathetically grateful to see us. I get the sense she doesn't get many freelancers out here, considering that Hiei only had two members before me and Tsukinoyo showed up. She arranged quarters and a quick decon and a-rad pill for both of us, and told us that she would brief us in eight hours.