a/n: Sorry for the delay everyone. The good news is I finally have a beta reader (a thousand thanks, skychan). Many thanks to those of you still reading.
Chapter 7
The vastness of space is as nothing compared to the gulf between "you" and "I."
In her mind, she was lying on the lab floor. Her coat was bundled into a makeshift pillow, maps providing a poor excuse for padding between the concrete and her protesting back. Even so, she felt as though she could sleep for at least another five hours this way. Then someone was shaking her shoulder.
"Kaname, wake up."
She curled in on herself, scrunching her eyes more tightly shut against the possibility of opening, and stolidly ignored the shaking.
"Kaname, you need to wake up now."
Damn voice, damn shaking, damn whoever the hell is trying to wake me up – I just want one more hour. Damn workaholic, morning-person scientists. "Yoshi, if you honestly think I'm going to get up now, after a session like that one, you've got another thing coming," and she pulled the pillow—wait, hadn't that been a coat?--over her face.
"Kaname, it is 0630 and the Captain gave me instructions to see to it that you followed a regular schedule and received plenty of exercise."
"But we don't run until three... the Captain?!" Her eyes snapped open, and she rolled over to see the one and only Sousuke Sagara kneeling beside her sleeping bag, about to shake her shoulder once more. "SOUSUKE?!" Her hand was automatically feeling around for something that should have been close but wasn't. Failing to find the halisen, it reported back odd details to her brain, such as nylon sleeping bag and rough wooden floor.
"Kaname," he acknowledged. "Now that you're awake, I recommend changing into suitable jogging attire and shoes. I believe Kyoko packed some of each," he said, turning to one side a drawing a large duffel bag – her own large duffel bag – from the corner and setting it in front of her. She stared at it uncomprehendingly, then looked at him again, not remotely sure what she wanted to ask first. He spoke before she could decide. "I will wait outside for you for fifteen minutes. If you fail to report in within that time, I will return to assist you." And with that, he turned and exited the room through a door off to her left.
The rough, wooden door had not fully closed before Kaname began digging in the bag for the clothes she'd need. Heaven knew Sousuke would be punctual and she didn't want him catching her half-dressed. Besides that, her pajamas were filthy and clung to her skin with the accumulated salt and sweat of eighteen hours of travel by air and sea. She stripped them off with distaste, hurling them to a far corner of the room. Dumping the duffel out on the sleeping bag, she quickly found shorts, socks, fresh underthings and a T-shirt, which she changed into with alacrity. Then, feeling an odd twinge of contrariness, she sat back on her sleeping bag and made an inventory of the rest of the bag.
Clothes (chosen with taste and practicality, thanks to Kyoko), three pairs of shoes, toiletries (she made quick use of the deodorant), MP3 player, Sousuke's letters and other contents of the "secret" box (what was Kyoko THINKING?!), bikini, towel, sunscreen, cell phone (hmm, I wonder if I should call someone), hair things, and one of Kyoko's many digital cameras. There was a post-it stuck on the camera, but a twinge of uneasiness struck her at what sort of pictures Kyoko might have sent, and she laid it aside, unread.
Kaname had returned everything to the pack and was gingerly brushing her hair when the door opened to admit a charmingly worried-looking Sousuke. Seeing her lingering over her hair, however, the Sergeant's expression hardened.
"There is no need to style your hair. Our first activity is to be a five-K jog."
She neither stopped nor looked in his direction, but he could almost hear a smile in her voice. "If I don't pull it back, it's going to tug on my scalp and endanger my stitches while I'm jogging. I'm almost done, anyway." So saying, she finished re-braiding it, and secured it with a rubber band. "See?"
"Very well," he murmured, holding the door for her as she picked up her shoes and headed for the porch. The structure turned out to be a one-room hut with a straw roof and a porch across the entire front. Inside, it had been fairly dark, but standing on the porch, Kaname could see the sun sparkling on waves a few hundred feet away, across a sandy beach. The morning clouds were gilded pink in the dawn, and behind the hut, tropical vegetation rustled in the island breeze.
"Where are we?" And why don't I already know our exact coordinates? Then again, this is the first morning in three months I haven't woken up to them...
"Na'ui Vavanau: a decommissioned MITHRIL munitions testing facility. The island is currently uninhabited." He chose a spot on the beach and began stretching. Kaname took a moment to admire his flexibility and wonder whether he'd always looked that good in running shorts before beginning her own stretches.
"Umm, Sousuke, my memory is a little weird this morning, but didn't I shoot you?" Her voice trembled involuntarily and she scowled at herself. After all, he's here talking to you, and ghosts don't have shoulders like that.
"You shot my ear," he turned so she could see the bit of gauze taped there. Then, noting her concern, he clarified, "you changed your aim at the last moment and I was grazed. It is not a problem."
"Not a problem. Right." She stared at her shoes. A face, burning to ash...
"I was impressed by your evasion, however. Have you been studying self-defense long?"
"Huh?" She stood. He began jogging down the beach at what for him must have been a rather slow pace and she matched him easily. "No, only about four months or so. Yoshi can't fight his way out of a paper bag, so Joel and I figured we'd do our best to make up for him. Just in case."
"Chikitaka-san is dead, Kaname." His tone was without inflection, simply a statement of fact. It felt like a hammer to the chest, but Kaname kept jogging, kept her breathing even, and willed herself to let it go. It wasn't as though she didn't know. Still, hearing it aloud and in so matter-of-fact a tone hurt. They jogged in silence for a while.
"When a comrade is lost, it is often difficult to accept. Each person will eventually develop his or her own method of coping, however such methods generally only become clear with repeat exposure to the circumstance." His words were almost too quiet to hear against the surf and the breeze.
"I don't want to talk about it." Her words were clipped with more than shortness of breath, and she suddenly found the pace slow and confining. Driving her feet harder against the sand and stretching her legs, she darted ahead of him. She ran hard, forcing her surprised muscles into a sprint. Her thighs began to ache and her throat rasped with the roughness of her breathing, but she continued to run, until the rhythm of it replaced her memories and the pattern of footfalls obliterated the warnings of her senses. She waited for the Whispers to intrude. But they didn't, and she remembered Tessa. Whispers don't accuse...
Ten minutes later, her legs finally gave out and she hit the sand, gasping. Sousuke was not far behind her, and she listened to his approach through the heaving of her own lungs. Damn him. Admittedly, sprinting had been a dumb thing to do, but so was jogging at dawn on a beach on some deserted island. Come to think of it, it was rather strange to be on a deserted island with only Sousuke. It did not seem like the sort of scenario Tessa would approve. She smiled a little at the thought. Strange how easy it was to ignore the present in favor of rivalries of the past. And then he was jogging past.
"You don't have to talk, but you do have to run," he said, as he continued. "I'd recommend a more reasonable pace." With a growl, she hauled herself up and chased after him.
---
"It's troublesome that the initial run damaged our pilot to such a degree, and cost us as talented an agent as Hoshida-san."
"Regrettable, but hardly an unfair trade. How is the questioning of the lab assistant progressing?"
"Fairly. Mr. Leuyenduyck is quite impressed with the young man's fortitude, but remains confident that he will be able to extract the cypher from him before he expires."
"Interesting, don't you think, that MITHRIL chose to protect the girlfriend?"
"She is clearly the key to a production model."
"Herself, or her notes, yes. In the mean time, however, I believe the information we have and the prototype at our disposal provide us with certain unparalleled resources to exploit."
"Indeed?"
"I've decided to put MITHRIL's flagship on the market, coordinates available to the highest bidder. Saya, that dear A.I., seems to have a certain preoccupation with tracking the ship, and seems more than willing to reveal its location to her newest pilot."
"I'll see to it that Agent Maerek is awakened to consult with her for you. Will we be posting to the usual site?"
"No, I believe this affair should be black-tie. Engraved invitations to our most lucrative clients, coordinates only, capture is up to them."
"I'll arrange it immediately."
---
Sousuke had kept them hard at work all day. The jogging had been followed by a break for energy bars before a thorough round of cleaning the quarters and setting up the station's generator and desalinization tanks . That hadn't taken long (the munitions storage and testing facilities were state-of-the-art, but the living space was tiny and basic), and then he'd taken her on a hike through the jungle. A little after three o'clock in the afternoon, they'd returned to the station for lunch/dinner. It was over too quickly and then Sousuke was inviting Kaname back outside for some tai chi.
"There's nothing wrong with my balance, Sousuke," she commented. It was nearly five and Kaname felt as though her legs were made of rubber. "I'm just tired." She'd made a rather graceless tumble to the ground and hadn't bothered getting back up. Sousuke looked for a moment as though he were going to order her back to her feet, but then seemed to change his mind and sat beside her.
"Do you feel at all light-headed? Are you experiencing any auditory hallucinations?" He seemed genuinely concerned, and for a moment, Kaname was strongly reminded of the time he'd been similarly worried about her "circulatory problems." Huh. If only this were that simple.
"I'm okay. The voices aren't back. Whatever Tessa gave me works like a charm." Which reminded her... "How is everybody from the de Danaan, anyway? And why aren't we there?" She smiled thinking of Kurz and Mao and the various friendly crewpeople she'd met once so long ago.
"At last report, they were well, although the current situation is highly changeable," he said, the last part more than half to himself. They both stared out at the ocean in the growing twilight.
"Did Melissa get away okay? I tried to help her, but it can be really rough if you don't know what to expect." Kaname thought of her own experiences jumping and worried a bit more. "Was she injured?"
"Sergeant Major Mao was injured sufficiently that her treatment prevented her from making the rendezvous, however the Captain informed me that she and Sergeant Weber will be joining us here in two days." At which point it clicked. "How did you try to help her?"
"Oh that. Well, somebody brought me the remote access headset, and Saya said that her pilot was Mao and the camera showed her under attack from an M-9, so I freed up the access and helped her escape." She caught his expression and became irritated. "Well, she did get away, right?"
"Mao was pinned under a support column in the lab by heavy gunfire. She sustained injuries to her eye, ribs and limbs. The pilot of your A-S was an enemy agent. The A-S itself is presumed to be in their possession, having mysteriously eluded Kurz's M-9."
It was her second horrible realization of the day, and it hurt almost as much as the first. I helped the enemy. I'm a killer and an idiot. And now they have Saya, and the killing was for nothing and Yoshi died for nothing and there's nothing I can do about anything without screwing it up more and Melissa's hurt and Kurz failed because of me and... and...
She noticed that Sousuke was still speaking, but she didn't hear whatever it was he had to say. In her mind, she was running back over the fight with the M-9, imagining it from Kurz's point of view. Her perceptions were fuzzy, though, as if something in her brain simply wouldn't work. She tried to remember how that evening had ended, and could only slightly recall something about a man with a gun and running in the park and shooting Sousuke. What if she'd killed him too?
But it's not all my fault. If Yoshi were here, it would be at least partly his fault. He shouldn't have helped me and I shouldn't have pushed myself for him and none of this should ever have happened. And if that damn Sousuke hadn't left in the first place...she was getting angry now. The waves seemed impudently lovely and the beach mocked her sense of how the world should look when one is vexed with it. Ignoring Sousuke and the numbness of her knees, Kaname stood and started walking purposefully back towards the station. She didn't want to look at pretty tropical sunsets or listen to quasi-understanding otakus. She wanted food and solitude – and something to hit – and above all, for the world to stop getting worse every time she looked at it. She heard Sousuke following her. She stopped.
"Stay here, Sousuke. I am not exercising any more today." She did not turn to look at him, but she heard his footfalls. "I don't want to talk, and if you come any closer, I swear I'm going to hit you." The footsteps ceased. She continued walking, lost in thought, but came up short when upon reaching the porch of the station, she discovered Sousuke, waiting for her. She glared up at him, but he merely opened the station door and held it in invitation.
She stormed inside and walked to the counter which lined one of the walls. There was a hot plate, and she plugged it in. A quick rummage of the cupboard turned up a kettle, which she filled with water and set to boil. Their food seemed to consist primarily of energy bars and MREs, but there was a small package of tea bags. She set out a cup and then stood watching the kettle, steadfastly ignoring the proverb.
For his part, Sousuke quietly set up a collapsible table in the center of the room and arranged a portable electric lamp on top of it. The sleeping bags were unrolled, folded in half and pressed into service as cushions, finally, he ventured into Kaname's self-claimed kitchen space to dig a pair of bowls from the cupboard. These he placed on the table along with napkins and spoons, before setting two MREs beside the hot plate on the counter. Kaname grabbed both and put them in a pot which she subsequently filled with water. The kettle sang, and was deftly exchanged for the pot. A second cup was set on the counter and two teabags were put to use. The cook of the moment set a steaming cup at each "place" on the table, before sitting before hers.
Sousuke produced some sort of military periodical from his packs and began to read. Kaname debated viewing the images on Kyoko's camera, when her eye spied something else amongst the packs in the corner. In an instant, she was across the room, drawing a paper fan from its resting place. She turned, faced the wall, and with a seeming eternity of pent up frustration, slammed the halisen into the support post of the door.
"AAAAAAAH!" and she proceeded to give the post the beating of its life, yelling and hitting and cursing unintelligibly until at long last the river of anger and stress drained to a trickle and she was left sitting on the floor, leaning against the post, facing the wall. Her breath came in the curious hiccups of one somewhere between sobs and exhaustion. The halisen lay on the ground beside her hand, where she'd dropped it.
Sousuke didn't say a word, but stood before her, holding out her teacup. When she accepted it, he cautiously picked up the halisen and replaced it in the corner.
"I'm sorry." Her voice was soft, but steady. She gazed into the teacup.
"Understood."
---
"Sergeant Lewis reporting from the galley: area clear. We've found no transmitters, active or passive, and are now in the process of reassembling our ovens," there was a pause on the line, "lunch for B shift might be a little late, though..."
Tessa shifted uncomfortably in her captain's chair. "Thank you, Mr. Lewis. Please make an announcement about lunch for the shift, and resume your regular duties." Dammit. Then again, it seemed unlikely the galley would be chosen to hide a transmitter. Still, Kaname had spent a lot of time there during her visit, and it was such an easy place to search. Oh well.
Scanning the rest of the ship was already under way. Engineering and the hangar would likely take at least another four hours, and the crew was grumbling about the quarters' search, which would likely increase the amount of time to complete that assignment as well. The search of the ship had begun the moment Tessa had returned aboard with Kurz and Melissa. The common opinion was that it was some sort of drill, but while there was some grousing about the inconvenience, the invasion of privacy, and the apparent futility, no one was about to gainsay the Captain to her face.
Commander Mardukas and Lt. Commander Kalinin had both agreed that there had to be a transmitter somewhere aboard, after seeing the chart. While neither could think of a way that Kaname or anyone else could have planted one in the time frame indicated by the locations, both were certain it was the only reasonable explanation. A submarine's concealment was its greatest advantage, and if that had been compromised, the de Danaan was in serious jeopardy.
What kind of transmitter would Kaname have used? Tessa found her mind unconsciously reaching out toward the girl's as the hours stretched on with no success and her worry mounted. She stopped before contact was made. After all, that part of Kaname's brain was pretty much out of commission until the drugs wore off, and it wouldn't do to risk immersion. She hoped the lack of REM sleep and other side-effects of the drugs didn't do too much harm. Still, she almost wished that resonance were an option. She had to know how Kaname had been tracking them, and more importantly, whether others could do the same.
It was twenty minutes into her nineteenth consecutive hour at the conn when Tessa felt a tap on her shoulder. Commander Mardukas was standing behind her and slightly to the right, with an expectant look on his face. Had he said something?
"Commander?" She truly hoped he hadn't said anything yet. It was difficult maintaining a proper aura of command when one was the youngest person aboard, especially if one lost one's concentration and started missing reports.
"If I may make a recommendation?" She nodded her permission, and he continued. "Given the likelihood of enemy engagements in the near future, it might be best for you to rest now."
Tessa smiled; an overly cheerful turn of the lips and eyes to hide the embarrassment at having to have such an obvious thing pointed out to her. "You're right, Commander, I probably should get some sle--" The crackle of the intercom interrupted her.
"Conn: Sonar. New contact bearing one-eight-five. Range, 150 meters and closing fast. It sounds like a torpedo."
Tessa and Mardukas exchanged a look. So much for sleep. "Firing control, ready countermeasures. All hands to battle stations. Helm, increase to twenty-six naughts, maintain current heading." Mardukas was already pulling up the displays of the ocean in the immediate vicinity and Tessa moved to join him in determining the best place for a dogfight. "Sonar, any additional contacts?"
"Negative; no subs or ships – it could have been a flyover, but we're not detecting any carriers in the area." Fantastic. "Target is at 85 meters and still closing."
"Mardukas, have the torpedo room flood the number four tube and see if they can knock the target out of the water, countermeasures to be deployed the moment it misses."
"Aye, Ma'am." He relayed the orders.
Tessa felt the slightest shudder through the deck plating as their torpedo fired. Ten seconds later, a similar ripple warned her that countermeasures had been fired. The bridge crew waited in tense silence, and then Sonar was calling again: enemy torpedo's course had been effected, but was still active.
"Ten meters and closing."
"Crew brace for impact!"
