Chapter 11: Ascent

The Jade Palace, Sadera

Robert Clayton was halfway through an early evening coffee when the door to his office nearly burst from its hinges. A United States Marine, clad in combat gear, approached his desk while two others took up places by the door.

"Sir, we need to go," the Sergeant before him said. "Now."

Clayton knew better than to delay and, tucking his laptop under one arm, followed the Marines out into the hall. Once they were on their way, Clayton asked, "What's the threat?"

The Sergeant thought about it for a moment, then replied. "Six-seven-two, sir."

The NSA had been fast to come up with this particular code, because most of it was garbage. If the number was an odd number, then it meant human or demihuman combatants. Even numbers were for the reason why the code had developed in the first place—to prevent an all-seeing, all-hearing enemy from listening in.

The Gods of Falmart were making a move.

Clayton felt a gnawing at his gut that he had last felt seven years ago, as he walked Dirrel through proper usage of the Nuclear Football. If the analysis was correct, then he was in very serious danger.

Outside, a V-22 Osprey had already powered up and the LEDs at the end of each rotor blade produced a pair of glowing halos over the vehicle against the dim, early-evening sky. This particular helicraft was his personal transport between Sadera, Alnus, and Ichijima, and was always ready to be airborne at a moment's notice. As he went to board the helicraft, he heard the barest bit of a shout over the rotors and turned to see Empress Pina Co Lada, alone, dashing towards him.

The Marines raised their weapons in warning, but Clayton ignored them, rushed past, and met Pina partway.

"Bad timing, your highness!" he shouted over the rotors. "I need to go!"

"But—!"

"Whatever it is, I'll deal with it when I get back!" he shouted, turned on his heel, and jogged back toward the Osprey. As he did, he thought he heard her shout something that sounded like "Sherry" but the message was lost in the roar of the rotors. The doors were closed, and they were soon airborne.

Once they were up in the air, the Marines aboard began opening the valves on a set of pressurized air tanks bolted to the roof of the cabin. These were filled with Earth air, and were designed to create a positive-pressure environment… hopefully to push any Falmart particles out of the aircraft. It was not a surefire way of clearing all the SR-Phizons from the Osprey, but Giselle and Rory had each independently confirmed that it was harder for their gods to hear them when they were in an environment like this, since there were fewer particles to pick up and relay the conversation, and the vibration of the aircraft made it harder to hear things through the dirt they tracked in on their shoes..

Of course, the best way to avoid being heard by the Gods was to return to Earth, which is why the Osprey was currently bound for Alnus. That said, the planners at STRATCOM that wrote the playbook for this scenario had assumed that the Gods' attack was in progress, which is why five Hardened Mobile Launchers and one F-35B from Ichijima moved into firing position whenever this Osprey was in flight. Three of these were nuclear-armed, and all of them were on orders to launch at Clayton's request, on Presidential command from the far side of the Gate if Clayton were to be neutralized (or made it safely to Tokyo), or thirty minutes after both Clayton's incapacitation, and the two carrier signals from Yokosuka being lost (indicating that the Gate and its network bundle to Earth had been destroyed).

With the nuclear axe in place and ready to swing at the Gods at a moment's notice, Clayton was finally told about the situation.

Ichijima Island

Ellie had grown up on sea air, either wafting in from the coast or surrounding her on ships. Therefore, the beach at sunset was comforting, with the light salty scent and the thrum of the waves in the background. It reminded her of home.

Yet, any nostalgia that Ellie had for the term was washed away by Andromache's ire. Where was she now? Had she gone to the Saderan government, as she'd threatened, or had she flown home? Regardless, Ellie didn't want to go back there.

For that matter, she didn't want to go back to Italica either, nor Alnus with its busy people and strange machines and its airstrip. This island wasn't much better—Greta's brief look of despair was still fixed in her mind, and she had left her quarters for the beach in hopes of clearing her head.

In the dimming light, she could see the first stars starting to appear, and as she watched, the Night Triangle crossed the horizon on its journey through Space. If not for it, she wouldn't have been in this predicament in the first place. She heaved a sigh, picked up a clump of sand and heaved it at the orbiting objects. The sand-clod didn't even get far—it disintegrated inches from her hand as it was picked up by the sea breeze.

As she stood there, in contemplation, she realized that she could hear a voice over the light wind. She turned around, and in the sparse remaining light, she saw a figure kneeling on the beach.

As she approached, she could see that the figure's hands were pressed together, and the words of a prayer floated over to her.

"...my mind to those who wish to teach, and teach me ways to grow—"

Greta looked up and, noticing Ellie nearby, waved her over.

"It's a nice night," she said, once Ellie was in earshot. "It reminds me of Cape Canaveral when it gets like this. I wish you could've seen it, Ellie. We have a handful of hangars, but the Americans have buildings the size of mountains, all to fling objects up into space."

It was also probably a no-fly zone, Ellie reasoned. Even if her wings weren't sore, the Americans had insisted that she stay on the ground while staying on Ichijima unless she asked permission from the base's flight controllers. "We had a wild wyvern try to sneak into our airspace before," McKann had said. "Once the C-RAM was done with him, there wasn't much left to find."

Ellie had no idea what C-RAM was, and had no desire to find out. There were so many strange things on this island that defied simple explanation, the most recent being another Earth airplane, not an Eftoo but a strange American one, that seemed to ascend and descend out of the sky like a spider on a string, and did so without the giant whirling wings of the Osprey. "It's called an EffThirtyFive," Greta had said. "Kamikoda-san said that he wanted to fly one someday, but that the EffTwentyTwo was better. I wonder what he's flying now?"

In the present, Greta was looking up at the sky. As Ellie followed her gaze, she saw that the woman was also looking towards the Night Triangle. "I've always wondered," Ellie said, "The Triangle, what is it, exactly?"

Greta thought about it and said, "The NROL-SR Constellation is a group of three machines—automatons—think of it like a grain mill. It's designed to do a long, hard, boring job on its own with only a few people to look after it. They fly in a ring around the planet that passes over both poles of rotation, and this lets them look down at every part of the planet every two days or so."

"A ring… but I've seen it change direction! Some days it goes North to South, and other days it goes South to North."

"It's about perspective," Greta said, holding up her right hand balled in a fist. "Imagine that my hand is the world—you're familiar with Passol's observations, right? The world is shaped like a ball, just as my fist is. Imagine that you're standing on the joint of my thumb."

Next she held up the pointer finger of her left and traced a vertical circle in the air around her right hand, looping first above the fingers then down below the palm. "The satellites in orbit stay where they are, because there's no air to drag them, or ground to push them anywhere else.

"So when you see the satellites switch direction, its not their orbit that has turned," Greta said, turning the wrist of her right hand. Now her knuckles were facing the opposite direction. "It's the planet itself."

As Ellie watched Greta's finger continue to trace its path, she realized that where before it would have gone from her palm to her fingers, now that the hand was facing the other way, it would be viewed as tracing a path from her fingers to her palm. "Wow," she said. "That's… it's easy to forget that the world is spinning. What does it do up there?"

"It moves three kinds of information around," Greta said, "and each one is important in its own way. The first is called E-mail. It's just like a normal messenger, but instead of carrying a scroll or letter from place to place, it takes a letter, turns the words into energy, throws the energy up to the satellite, and then down again to a receiving station somewhere else, where the words are reassembled by another machine so you can read them."

Delivering messages was sometimes a Monarch duty, so Ellie asked, "How fast does it go? If I wanted to send a letter from Italica to Alnus, how long would it take to get there?"

Greta shrugged. "A few seconds. Maybe a minute if the message is really long, or you included lots of pictures.

"The second kind of information is mapping information," Greta went on. "It uses two more energy tools to find out how far below it the ground is, and what the ground is made of… the names that I heard are 'spectroscopy' and 'radar altimeter.' Using this, they can find out things about our world, like where all the islands are, how high the mountains are, and what kinds of rocks make up each. Before I was taken to this island, the Americans gave Pina a geological survey of the mountains around Sadera for her coronation anniversary. Turned out that there were diamonds sitting in one of the nearby mountains for thousands of years, and no previous Emperor had ever realized it."

Ellie recalled the big map that the lady at the Italica Station had shown her. All of her questions about it vanished as the answer clicked into place; it would be easy to make a map like that from high up in the air, and flying over the Great Sea Ice to the far South would be much easier than trying to sail through it, particularly if you could fly above the clouds, and if you were a machine that didn't mind the cold. "And the last piece of information?" Ellie asked.

"Navigation."

"You can already use it for navigation though," Ellie pointed out. "It's already pointing North or South every time you see it."

"It's more complicated than that. It uses the rules of triangles to tell you where you are in the world. And it's not just if you're North or South; it gives you a string of numbers that, when applied to a map, tell you exactly where you're standing. The Americans have devices where you turn it on, and if the satellites are overhead, they tell you exactly where you are."

Ellie grinned at first. With a tool like that, she wouldn't even need to fly scouting flights or do navigation math. Andromache could keep her stupid sun tables; she'd just press a switch and then…

...and then Monarchs as navigators would be worthless.

With machines like that, why would anyone want a Monarch for anything? Machines to do mapping, machines to do scouting, machines to relay messages at great speed and do navigation… what did that leave for Monarchs to do? Even if she did return to the town by the sea and Andromache, the American machines would render her whole species pointless.

The grin faded from her face and she found herself hugging her knees to her chest. "Is that all?" she asked.

"From what I've heard," Greta said, with a shrug. "The Americans hide things sometimes, but they let me see pictures of the satellites before they launched them. Maybe I just didn't know what to look for, but the satellites themselves were pretty small, and they didn't have anything that looked like a weapon mounted on them. The only thing that struck me as strange was how accurate they could be with only three of them… Carol once said that GPS on Earth needs five or six satellites. Maybe they found a better way of doing things?"

Ellie looked up at the odd name. "Who's Carol?"

"She's… a friend of mine. From Earth. She taught me most of what I know. I haven't seen her in a while, though…" a pained expression passed over her face before she added, "But that's okay. I'm going to see her again soon."

"How s—"

"Three months," Greta said, then, noticing the confused expression on Ellie's face, repeated more firmly, "Three months."

Ellie wasn't sure what to make of this. It was clear that something had Greta very upset, something related to this Carol person and the spaceplane project. She remembered Rory's cold smile and a shudder ran through her. What's going on with that?

So she asked, "Is that what you were praying about?"

Greta laughed and fell back on the sand. Tense mood broken, she said, "Nope. I pray because it's comforting… and because sometimes, on rare occasions, it works."

The Monarch gave a curious look back up at the sky, then down again at Greta. "But what about the Godwrecker?"

"What about it?"

"I thought that the deal between Hardy and the Americans was that the Gods weren't supposed to interfere on our world?"

"So?"

"So!? The Gods can't answer prayers, otherwise the Americans would use the Godwrecker again!"

Greta continued to stare up at the sky and brought a hand up to her chin. "I think there's two ways the Gods can communicate with people. One way is the big miracles that you hear stories about. Throwing up mountains, columns of fire, floods, opening Gates… those kinds of things. They're pretty rare to begin with and those are the things that the Americans stopped with their bomb.

"The second way is… I guess you'd call it inspiration? You'll be contemplating the Gods, and all of a sudden an idea will pop into your head. I had it a few times while trying to build the spaceships and carrier, and I watched it happen to Carol, and she hadn't prayed since she was a girl!"

Ellie shook her head. "I don't think Inspiration works that way. After all, you can get it without thinking about Gods, like when you're sitting in the bath or when you have nothing to do on long flights. Maybe it's not the Gods and its something that just...happens?"

"Maybe," Greta said, turning her head to look at Ellie. "Have you tried?"

"Praying?" Ellie shook her head. As the people in her town had pointed out, if the Gods didn't answer, there wasn't much point, was there?

"Don't you have something to pray about?"

The confusion of the past few days, the pain, the tears, her lack of an idea on what to do next all flood into her head. "No," she lied.

"Try it anyway, you might be surprised. Your middle marker is Fe, right? How does the prayer to Flare go?"

Ellie wracked her brains to try and remember the lines. "From horizon to horizon, to the—" she pressed a palm against her forehead. "Or was it from the? I think it was from, so why did I think to… no, it's 'til, and that's the last...right, from is the—'till is the last verse, from is the first verse. Actually, what are we doing? You're supposed to say this one at the start of the day, not the middle of the night! Not much point in praising a Sun god after the Sun has gone down, right?"

Greta sighed and shook her head. "Never mind, I shouldn't have pushed at you like that. You've given me a lot of useful insight this afternoon, and I think that it should be enough for the flight tomorrow."

Ellie pointed up at the stars. "You're going into space?"

"Not quite. It's going to be a high-altitude test flight… I want to get at least 270,000ft this time. Space is 60,000 feet beyond that. I've done lots of lower altitude flights… but I won't know for sure if everything works until we're all the way up there, where the air is thin. The RCS thrusters, for example. You can't get a feel for them on the ground. If everything's successful, I'll try for Space in a few weeks."

She stood, brushed off the sand, and said, "If my flight changes your mind about flying, let me know!"

As Ellie watched her go, she didn't feel much more of a sense of direction than she had before. If anything, she felt more lost. Prayer, orbiting automatons, whomever Carol was…

She watched the Night Triangle disappear over the horizon and wondered if the American navigation machines were smart enough to tell her where she ought to go next.

Shirai's Observatory, Outskirts of Rondel

Arpeggio was in the middle of cooking dinner when Flat burst into the observatory, short on breath and about to collapse, and she was the first to rush over to him, followed quickly after by Dr. Shirai. "They're onto us," Flat gasped. "We need to leave, now!"

Shirai nodded and ran back to get his laptop. After sending the initial evacuation request, he listened in as Flat outlined the details of what he heard. The astronomer sat with him the whole time, dutifully transcribing Flat's observations and sending them in a series of rapid-fire emails to Sugawara and Kengun. Fortunately, the American satellites were above the horizon, so the reply was fast.

We're sending the best we have.

Shirai didn't know what that meant, and was terrified at the prospect of getting caught in a massive firefight. After all, he was a civilian, not a soldier, and he still had awful memories of cowering in the barracks years ago as the JSDF fought Hardy's armies outside. Here, there were no soldiers standing between him and Rondel's guards.

As if to prove a point, he heard heavy knocking at the observatory door, and a gruff, unrecognizable voice shouting, "Open up!"

Shirai looked at Flat and his wife, who were in the process of hastily packing their things, then back to the door. He had put the two in enough danger already, and while the dogfight over Italica reflected poorly on Japan's current relationship with Rondel, it was better than nothing. Everyone knew how Japan had reacted to Japanese civilian POWs during the first war. Perhaps the people from Rondel would be more cautious. "Get ready," Shirai said. "I am going to stall them. Hopefully our help will arrive in time. If it sounds like they have attacked me, do not come to my aid. Run."

That said, with the observatory positioned on the side of a hill, it would be hard to run, and nearly impossible to escape, but they had to try.

Shirai forced his way out of the door, yanking it shut after him, and found himself nearly nose to nose with members of the Rondel Council Honor Guard. It was a mixed group, covered in varying degrees of armor, some wielding magic staffs, others holding the new musket weapons. Was Nguyen responsible for those too? Shirai wondered.

"Can I help you?" Shirai asked the soldiers.

"We are here to arrest Flat El Coda on suspicion of high treason against the Council," the lead soldier stated. "Is he in there?"

"Ah, no, I'm afraid he isn't," Shirai said, and immediately began to doubt himself. He was a researcher, not a salesman, and he would normally send someone else to petition for grants. Surely the guard would see through him in seconds. "I'm in the middle of important observations, so…"

The guard dipped an eyebrow. "May we take a look inside?"

"No! No, there's...a chance that you'll mess up the observations!"

"Why?"

"The target I'm looking at must be recorded over a period of time… and if the telescope is jostled, even slightly, then I will be forced to wait until the next clear night to try again."

"Then you can record it later." The guard moved to go past the Professor, but Shirai blocked his way.

"Don't do that! I might not have a good view later! This might be a one-time event!"

"The Astronomy Council made no announcements. What could possibly be so important?"

Shirai blanked for a moment and heard the whistle of steam escaping the tea kettle that Arpeggio had left on the stove. If I don't act quickly…

An idea popped into his head.

"You know my name, right?" Shirai said.

"Yes."

"And you've heard of the Shirai moons, yes?"

"Around the White Planet, yes, we've all heard."

"Did you know that one has an ocean?"

The guard frowned. "An ocean?"

"Not like the ocean here or on Earth, of course," Shirai clarified. "Using long distance, spectroscopy, I have determined that one of the moons is covered in a coating of ice. Now, one of the interesting features of this moon is that its orbit takes it close to the host planet, and this creates tidal forces on the planet itself. When that happens, you get earthquakes, volcanoes, internal heating… do you know what that means?"

The guards were all looking at him at this point with dumb expressions on their faces. Clearly they did not.

"It means," Shirai went on, "That the ice is being heated from underneath! This produces a liquid ocean, which may sometimes erupt as geysers through the icy crust. This is important, as water and an energy source are all that are required for the evolution of life—at least microbial life—on other worlds. Indeed, on Earth were are currently investigating two such moons, one around Jupiter and another around Saturn, and the Americans recently launched a probe called the Europa Clipper—"

While the part about Europa and Enceladus was true, the part about the Shirai moons was completely made up. Taking observations of the moons had been difficult, and his ground telescope was nowhere near powerful enough to resolve surface features or geysers on any of them. What he wouldn't give for a Hubble-sized telescope in Falmart's skies… but that was highly unlikely to ever happen. The guard seemed to think so too, for he said, "Enough, get out of my way."

"But my observations!"

"I said—"

The guard's head exploded.

Shirai stood there, mouth agape and splattered with gore as he tried to figure out what had just happened. The other guards were in a similar state, as they raised their staves and readied their firearms, pointing them out in all directions.

It was not enough. Shirai heard what sounded like a series of loud snapping noises, and the Rondel guards fell around him, blood flying everywhere. One single survivor dropped his musket and turned to run, but there was a loud hiss and an arrow appeared, as if by magic, through his throat, and he fell as well.

Shirai looked around again, trying to locate the assailants, and was shocked to hear a low, feminine, "Clear" from up the steep hill.

Standing there, one hand on a rappelling line, the other on a suppressed Heckler & Koch MP7, was a woman Shirai hadn't seen in years. Even after she lifted her night vision goggles, her dark features were still hard to make out in the dim light, and Shirai wouldn't have known who it was, save for the ears. Yao Ro Dushi reengaged the safety on her weapon and said, "Shirai-hakase, are you alright?"

The professor nodded and took a few steps back to lean on the observatory wall. Some distant part of his brain noted that he was probably in shock, which wasn't being helped by the elf with a machine gun that was now securing a perimeter. "I don't see anyone else," she whispered into a field radio, "but I wouldn't be surprised if they send more guards once these fail to report back."

"Ugh, so stiff," came another voice from up the slope. This time, Tuka Luna Marceau, clad in digital camouflage and with a compound bow strapped to her back descended. "Noisy too. I thought these guns were supposed to be quiet?"

"It was quiet," Yao pointed out. "It was much quieter than when we practiced with the suppressors off."

"Not as quiet as a bow."

"Your bow hasn't killed anyone yet," the dark elf pointed out. "The guard is still alive."

Tuka looked over to the guard with the arrow through his neck, who was still gurgling and thrashing on the ground. Shirai followed her gaze, only to see a member of the Japan SFG pull out a suppressed USP and finish the job. More Special Forces soldiers appeared, until Shirai was finally approached by their leader. "They said they were sending the best," Shirai told him, bowing. "And they were right."

"I hate having that kind of reputation," Captain Itami Youji said with a half-grin. "I'm missing an episode of Symphogear for this, you know!"

"I'm sorry for your loss."

Itami sighed and asked, "Are Flat and Arpeggio still in there?"

Shirai opened the door for him, and just as Itami was about to walk inside, he ducked, barely avoiding a bolt of yellow magical energy. "Watch it!" he shouted.

"Oh! Sorry!" Arpeggio said from inside. Glancing over Itami's shoulder, Shirai saw Flat's wife putting her magic bead weapon away. He had completely forgotten about its existence, and realized that it would have been better to ask her to offer magic support in the event of a conflict, pregnant or not.

Tuka poked her head in under Shirai's arm and cried, "Arpeggio! You've gotten so big; Lelei will be amazed!"

"Don't say it like that!"

"Itami," Yao said, joining them, "I think—"

"Okay, okay! Everyone, out of the doorway!" Itami said. "Flat, Arpeggio, grab your things and get outside. Professor, get your laptop and other stuff, then follow them. Saber, Lancer, I want thermite on the telescope, satellite relay, and anything we aren't taking that has a computer chip in it. Caster, you're on C-4 duty. Move."

From there, the Japanese strike team moved with near-mechanical precision, making Shirai wonder how often this Special Forces unit had practiced the destruction of his observatory. He felt a pang in his heart as he watched one of the JGSDF soldiers toss a remote-activated thermite device into the lower aperture of the telescope tube, and an actual shiver as it struck the mirror inside with a dull clunk.

He returned outside to find Flat and Arpeggio talking with Yao, who was showing them the MP7 with pride. "...looking to learn if demihumans and elves can be used for a future Alnus SWAT team," she was explaining. "I am one of three dark elves in a pilot program that trains us in Earth weapons… and the only one who has had a chance to use them in field operations so far. I have also been training with the Type 89 Assault rifle, the Remington M24 Sniper, and the SIG Sauer P220."

"But not the Panzerfaust," Tuka teased. "The Japanese are convinced the dark elves would blow themselves up again."

"That was against a dragon, and we had minimal training," Yao insisted, but the other elf merely stuck out her tongue in reply.

Itami placed a hand on Arpeggio's shoulder and said, "We're going back up the hill. I take it that you can't climb?"

Arpeggio nodded and Itami keyed his radio. "Rider, Berserker, we have one to three civilians that might need to be hauled up the hill. Archer, maintain overwatch."

Minutes later, they had harnesses on around Flat and Arpeggio, and were guiding them up the hill when Shirai approached Itami and asked, "Where are we headed?"

"Over the hill, and a Kilometer west to wait for pickup. After that? To Alnus, then we're moving three of you to Ichijima until everything blows over."

"Not to Tokyo?"

"Not now. A certain country is making claims about the Senkaku Islands again. If Flat and Arpeggio go there now, it gives them an excuse to escalate, like what happened at Hakone." Itami stifled a yawn and added. "One Hakone incident is enough for me, thanks."

"What about Nguyen?"

Itami hesitated, then said, "Not our problem. This is an extraction, not an invasion. Dr. Nguyen's location is too well defended to go after with a small force. The Brass said that they'd handle it, so, for now, let it go."

At the top of the hill, two more Special Forces soldiers greeted Shirai, taking his laptop and belongings as he passed them up, while a third soldier remained perched atop a large boulder, scanning the city below through the scope of his sniper rifle. Flat was in the middle of a hushed conversation with Arpeggio who insisted, "I'm okay!"

Once Itami and the others were up, most of them proceeded some distance into the woods before Itami held up a hand and said, "Hang on."

Shirai looked around, and then…

BANG

That would be the C-4 and thermite. In his mind's eye, Shirai pictured his beautiful telescope, now melted, shattered, and scattered to the wind like the silicate sand much of the instrument had been forged from. "Such a waste," he muttered. Seven million yen up in flames… and his source of additional academic papers along with it.

Itami and the others pushed them on for what felt like far longer than the suggested Kilometer before, at the edge of a clearing, he pulled out an infrared beacon, casually switched it on, strapped it to the side of his helmet, then thumped on his radio set again. "Come get us, it's cold out here."

In the distance, Shirai could hear the sound of bells as Rondel raised an alarm, following the explosion which surely must have been visible to everyone below. Though Itami's men had taken care to place the dead guards in the observatory before blowing it up, it wouldn't be long before someone put the pieces together and scouts were sent after them. As a result, it came as a relief to Shirai to hear the thrumming of the Chinook helicopter as it approached, ramp lowered and ready to take passengers.

But it wasn't fast enough. Shirai looked over his shoulder, and noticed torches and magical light advancing through the woods. "Uh, Itami-san—"

"Everyone, to the other side of the clearing. Keep Low," Itami said, and the Captain readied his own weapon. It was clear that the unknowns in the woods could hear the helicopter too, as they were speeding up, the torches bobbing up and down as they ran. Once the Rondel guards were actually in sight, Itami shouted at them in Imperial, "Stay back! Stay back or you will be fired upon!"

But the guards were already forming up into a skirmishing block, muskets out and ready. "Ready!" Their lead officer shouted, and a dozen weapons came up. "Aim!"

But the only one to actually 'fire' was the ramp gunner of the Chinook, whose M240 traced a line of burning death through the tightly-packed Rondel guards. After all, while Napoleonic fighting methods were a definite improvement over Roman swords and shields, it was still a severe mismatch against an enemy armed with heavy machine guns.

The helicopter touched down and Flat, Arpeggio, Shirai, and the Special Forces team scrambled aboard, just as another block of soldiers was starting to appear at the edge of the woods. Noticing the threat, the pilot pulled away, the ramp was closed, and the only indicator of counter-fire was a loud ping as the volley of musket balls bounced harmlessly off of the CH-47JA's armor. In minutes, Rondel was far behind them.

"We're under air cover from Alnus," the copilot called back, and turned on the cabin lights. In the comparatively brighter lights, everyone looked exhausted to Shirai, but the important thing was that everyone was here and the mission had been accomplished successfully. Itami took off his helmet, winced at the lights, then patted Shirai on the shoulder. "A bit more hectic than Knappnai and Tanska, eh?"

"They only had arrows at Tanska," Shirai muttered, then, looking down at the laptop in his hands, realized that he'd been holding the machine in a death grip the whole time, and that the case was starting to warp. His father had been part of the Imperial Japanese Army during the last war, and Shirai had never been able to comprehend how the old man had put up with such stress on a regular basis. "Still, thank you for getting us out of there safely."

Nearby, Flat was about to add something when Arpeggio suddenly grabbed him by the shoulder, eyes wide. "Did you forget something?" Flat asked, but his wife shook her head and placed a hand on her belly.

"Ummm…" she started.

"Don't you dare!" Itami said, catching on immediately.

"I think—"

"Don't say it!"

"I think...the baby's coming now."

The color drained from Flat's face, and he produced a choked, "Now!?"

Arpeggio nodded.

Flat immediately looked to the Japanese Special Forces soldiers, his eyes full of alarm and begging for help, but as Shirai assessed the soldiers, they looked as panicked as Flat. These were men that could HALO jump into an ocean target in the dead of night, could haul 70 pounds for twelve miles in three hours without resting, and could blast the cranium off of an enemy over a mile away… but delivering a baby?

Eventually, all of them looked to Itami for instructions, causing him to throw up his hands, "What are you looking at me for!? Tuka, Yao, please tell me that one of you—"

"Of course," Yao said, passing her MP7 to one of the other soldiers. "Tuka, start preparing the mother. The rest of you, I need whatever medical supplies we have on hand."

Meanwhile, Itami rushed to the cockpit, shouting, "Change of plans! JSDF Hospital in Italica, as fast as you can!"

Left alone, Shirai leaned his head back against the bulkhead and covered his face with his hands. So much for this being an easy extraction!

Author's Note

A combination of personal life items and the easy-to-misread planned ending for Chapter 12 means that there's going to be a significant delay between this chapter and the next one. Rest assured that I am continuing to work on the series (the draft for 12 is almost done, actually!) and I will be posting Chapters 12 and 13 within hours of each other to make up for the lost time.