Chapter 14: Descent

Ichijima

"Well!?" Ellie shouted at the open air. "I talked with Greta, and it solved nothing!"

She got no reply, or course, aside from strange looks from a few passing soldiers. She wasn't expecting one. Rory had already shown a preference for showing up when it was convenient for her to do so.

What am I supposed to do with all of this, Ellie wondered, and began to walk aimlessly away from the medical ward. The Americans and Japanese have trapped us here, Greta might never fly again, and I'm being toyed with by a demigoddes. The world gets a say, but I get nothing.

What she wanted most was to take some control of her life back, even if it was something simple and stupid.

I want to fly, her heart cried.

You'll get shot down, her head responded.

Nonetheless, she found herself drawn to the island heliport and dirt airfield. There wasn't any inbound or outbound flights at the moment, and she began to wonder...if I took off here, like the Ospreys, would they still shoot at me?

She unfurled her wings, positioned herself for a running start, and then-

SKREEEEEEE

She ducked at the shrieking roar as an airplane rocketed by overhead. Looking up, she saw the F-35, which ascended and banked left back over the ocean.

Considering the shape of the plane again, she wondered how the heck the thing stayed up in the air. After all the stubby, irregular wings lacked the long design of the MagThrees, the wide sweep of her own wings, or even the distinct, swept shape of the Japanese F-2. Yet, there was the plane, still flying, still capable of all kinds of crazy stunts.

Come to think of it, the design didn't look much more sensible than Greta's, which begged the question...why had the spaceplane failed while the American jet seemed to work just fine?

Looking to the side, she caught sight of the hangar where the remaining spaceplane was stored. No one was there now, of course. They would either be keeping watch over Greta or grieving with the rest of the aircrew. No one would stop her if she decided to go and take a peek for herself.

Minutes later, she was inside the hangar and flipping the switch to turn on the bright white Earth lights.

The remaining spaceplane sat where Ellie had seen it last, gear down, cockpit open. Since the Freedom had crashed, the remaining one, she supposed, must be the Independence. She still had no idea what the English names meant, but snorted at them anyway and walked over for a closer look.

She hadn't paid much attention the first time that Greta had toured her around the spacecraft, but this time Ellie was looking at it with a technical eye, thinking about her own wings and own flight experience.

Whenever she wanted to recover herself from a spin, the trick was always to hold her wings out in a gliding shape, bend her legs away from the spin, and then push herself into a dive to regain controlled motion. As far as she had been able to see, Greta had done all of these things with the control surfaces of her spacecraft, so why hadn't it exited the spin?

She approached one of the wings and followed its delta-shape back to the elevators on the rear. There she reached up and traced a finger along the alternating blue and red dragon scales of the heat shield and wondered at how something with such a shape could stay up in the air. But then, what did she know about proper flight engineering? Greta had told Ellie that she shouldn't have been able to fly at all, due to the fact that her legs alone were too skinny to change the airflow—

Her eyes went up to the rudder.

It was squatter than the large vertical stabilizers she'd seen on the Japanese F-2s, C-1s, or even the MagThrees. This made some sense to Ellie, who was used to tucking in her wings during a dive. For a spacecraft like Greta's, which had a limited supply of exploding-air for propulsion, it was important to minimize the surfaces holding you back from getting up to high speeds.

She tried to envision what was going on by laying herself face-down on the concrete floor of the hanger and unfurling her wings. This would have been the rough aerodynamic situation of the plane on the way down, with the airflow going through the top of her head and down towards her feet. Imagining a right-handed spin, she brought her legs up to bend them, and then stopped.

No, that's not accurate. The smaller vertical stabilizer and rudder would have meant less of it to catch the airflow, so she curled her knees up closer to her body, and imagined coming in for landing in this state.

Except, that would be silly, because when she flared and rotated for landing—

She sat up with a start. When Greta flared the plane to slow it down, the rear rudder would have been blocked by the body of the plane. Because no air could get to it, she had no way to counteract the rotation.

Ellie brought a hand up to her mouth as she realized that she had just figured out the situation that had almost killed Greta… but was it enough? If Greta were to try again, would she meet the same fate? There had to be a way to prevent it!

She ran for the side of the hangar and grabbed the ladder and platform on wheels. She was surprised by how lightweight it was, but quickly returned her attention to the problem at hand. A few seconds later, she had the cockpit hatch opened, and was sitting in front of the controls.

From the pilot's chair, the vehicle was slightly less cramped than it had appeared from the outside… but only slightly. The seats were more heavily cushioned than the ones on the MagThree or Osprey, and before her was a larger host of controls. She grabbed the control stick first and pulled it all the way to the left, envisioning the rudder moving somewhere behind her… but if that wasn't enough, what would be?

There's no air in space.

Greta had mentioned another way of controlling the yaw of the spacecraft...Arr-see-ess? She looked over the side of the cockpit and found a second, smaller stick, and experimentally moved it slightly to one side…

And gave a startled jump when a port on the nose of the spacecraft emitted a loud hiss.

Up in space, the RCS motors helped to point the spacecraft in the right direction. Could they be used in the air to counter a spin? Perhaps not on their own, but as an addition to the rudder… maybe it would be enough.

But Greta hadn't known any of this. How could she? No one from this planet had ever had to perform control compensation on a rocket-plane with RCS motors before.

She pulled her legs up and stood to get out of the cockpit, only to suddenly find herself eye-level with Rory Mercury.

When? How? Ellie wondered. She hadn't heard the Apostle climbing the steps or jumping on the aircraft. Rory gave her a toothy smile just the same. "Mmmmm," she purred, "That's much better."

"What do you want?"

"The same things I've always wanted: to serve Emroy," the Apostle declared, "and to corner unaware people for fun and games. How about you?"

"Someone already died, and Greta's broken from all of this. I don't call that fun and games."

"Eeeeeh?" Rory cocked an eyebrow. "Greta serves Emroy too, even if she won't say so."

"Greta's a scholar, she's a student of La. There's no way she's interested in a God of darkness."

Rory burst into laughter, flipped over Ellie's head and landed, with perfect balance, atop the vertical stabilizer of the spacecraft. Despite the force of the jump and the weight of her gear, the vehicle didn't move by even a millimeter. Spreading her arms and Halberd, she declared, "On this island, everyone serves Emroy," then, cocking her head, added, "Well, except you. Until a few minutes ago, at least."

"I would never—"

"What is darkness?" Rory asked. "Not the appearance of it, but the nature of it in people. What does it mean?"

"It means evil," Ellie started, "it means-"

"Oh, did you hold evil in your heart when you ran away from your mentor?"

"No, I-" she blinked. "How do you know about that?"

"I hear things," Rory said with a smile, leaving Ellie to wonder if the things she could here were things that were actually said, or things that Emroy had passed along to her. "Tell me about Andromache. Why did you leave?"

"I don't know anymore."

"Silly girl, I'm not asking why you feel that you left now, I want you to say why you left then."

"I left because I felt stuck," Elle said. "Because I couldn't stand being in one place anymore, and I had to go somewhere...so I decided…"

She had decided to go after the Night Triangle no matter what. Regardless of Andromache's orders, and regardless of the defense of the seaside town. Perhaps it wasn't evil, but it was undeniably selfish.

Ellie had then pursued that goal, despite what everyone around her had to say. That Americans were Evil, that Greta had vanished, that gaining an audience with the Earth people was impossible...all because she knew that she had to see it through.

Rory gave a satisfied sigh. "It's not darkness," she said. "Darkness is the part you see. If you think about it, Emroy is a God of conviction."

"Conviction?" Ellie asked.

"When a person is willing to risk blood and limb and sanity in pursuit of a goal. Have you seen it, girl? The cold eyes, the grave voice, the mindless rush forward...that is why Emroy takes in warriors who chases glory, not those who are slain in fear. It's that twisted desire as one swings the sword, pursues the argument, pulls the trigger, or, in the case of the Americans, turns the key...to accomplish, to commit." She giggled at a past memory. "That is true darkness, not this dreary idea of evil you're toying with."

"I don't serve Emroy, I serve Flare."

"Oh, do you?" Rory flipped her Halberd around and pointed the pole end at Ellie. "How does the daily prayer go?"

Ellie hesitated. She had forgotten the exact order when trying to describe it to Greta, and with the end of a death dealing weapon in her face, her mind was racing too quickly to recall.

"I… I don't know the exact—"

Rory slammed the halberd into the ground of the hanger with a mighty crunch that shattered the concrete. "Commit!" She shouted.

So Ellie began, unsure if the words were correct, throwing out the first verse like her life depended on it.

"From horizon to horizon

From the dawn unto midday

Praise to Flare and all the heavens

Ev'ry hour, ev'ry day."

It was shaky, but with each line, she found herself feeling more comfortable. Perhaps it didn't feel like the words had come back to her, but they were still unconsciously there. How many times had she repeated them as a young child?

"See the seasons see the changes

As the world goes on its way

Pass from night unto the morning

And each hour and each day."

It was a scenic sort of prayer, and as Ellie thought it over, it occurred to her that it was sort of like watching the passing of the day itself.

"Tarry not upon the morning

Else the daylight slips away

Ev'ry second passed is precious

Ev'ry hour, ev'ry day."

Ellie stopped, and Rory raised an eyebrow at her. What have I been doing the past few days? She wondered. Sure, she'd spent a great deal of time worrying about what she ought to be doing, but she'd actually done very little.

She took a deep breath and continued,

"In the brightness of the moment

Feel the warmth and don't delay

As the sun grants you its blessing

Of each hour and each day."

She'd forgotten about that stanza. As a child, it had barely registered with her. She'd thought that, as a poem towards a sun god should be, it was about the sun.

But that wasn't true at all, she realized. The prayer was about time. How much you had, how it was spent, and a plea to do something with it all, and wonder at the fact that you had some ability to act upon the world...

...or, perhaps, to change it.

The last stanza came out as a whisper.

"From horizon to horizon

'Til the twilight's on its way

Praise to Flare and all the heavens

Ev'ry hour, ev'ry day."

The night before, on the beach, she had dismissed the idea of prayers and inspiration, but now, standing aboard the spaceplane, she wondered if the feeling in her gut came from herself, or if it really was some kind of divine intervention.

It didn't matter. She jumped back onto the scaffolding, raced down the steps to the floor, and rushed for the hangar doors. She didn't care if it was Emroy, or Flare, or Rory's delighted peal of laughter driving her forward at that point.

She knew what she had to do.

Conference Room, Ichijima

It was a meeting long due, Kengun reflected as he watched the commotion on the far side of the room.

"Awww, he's adorable!" Pina squealed as she wiggled a finger at the baby in Arpeggio's arms.

As the baby cooed up at her, his mother added, "Of course. Itsuki doesn't take after his father at all. He's a good deal louder too," and sent Flat a teasing smirk.

By Pina, Itami's eyebrows went up in surprise. "Itsuki? You chose a Japanese name?"

"Of course!" Flat said, "When we move to Japan, we want to make sure that he fits in with his classmates once he's old enough for schooling."

"Schooling would be good," Lelei said simply. "That way, he can be smarter than Arpeggio too."

Arpeggio huffed, "Well, at least I found a man and started a family. That puts me squarely ahead of you, sister!"

Kengun had raced to the island the moment that Clayton's message with the details had arrived. Sure, he had expected Sherry to make a move at some point, but to hear that Pina had gone so overboard because of it… he was happy that she was here under Itami's eye than in Sadera commanding armies. That wasn't to say that Sherry was much better, but at least she was free of the stupidity that seemed inherent in Emperor Molt Sol Augustus and his children.

Clayton himself was leaning against a wall next to him, scrolling through emails on a tablet computer and paying very little mind to the reunion, nor did he look up as Greta enetered, trailed closely by Hector. "You're here!?" Greta cried upon seeing Pina. "Empress, I—"

"Whatever you're worried about, it's in the past," Pina promised. "I was worried that you wouldn't accept my invitation. When I heard you were here, I just had to know what had become of you." She looked down at Greta's right arm, which was immobilized in a sling. "Are you—"

"It's nothing," Greta lied. "It just means another year for me to redesign the cockpit so that the controls are on the other side of the vehicle, that's all."

"So your metal flyer, you actually built it!"

"I have! If they let me, I'll show you later..." she drifted off, then said, "I wish I could show it to Cicero. He would have been so excited."

"You heard, then?"

Greta nodded, her original smile drooping. "I can't believe Rondel would do that, after all we did for them."

"How goes the war?" Flat asked, overhearing the conversation.

Pina sighed and dropped into a chair. "Miserably. Sherry seems to think we'll lose."

That was an interesting perspective to Kengun, who was aware of the fighter aircraft situation above Alnus. He had been ordered to allot the Saderan forces regular air coverage of at least two fighters at all times. With eight fighters available at Alnus it was certainly doable...but it was wearing on the pilots and aircrews. More frustrating still, airborne reconnaissance was suggesting that Rondel was in the process of constructing a massive airfleet, and the topic of 'efficient combat' and 'best use of munitions' had come up several times in conversations with Kamikoda and his squadron mates. That said, even if the aircraft were limited solely by the number of bullets and missiles they carried, Kengun felt fairly confident that they could maintain a proper defense, even if Pina and Sherry doubted him.

Flat, at least, seemed surprised by Pina's answer. "Why?"

"They seem to have mastered air power, and have already attacked Italica from the sky by using Magic from MagThrees. It makes me wish that I'd asked the Imperial Aviation Group to invest more—don't say anything," she pointed at Greta, who, from the smirk on her face, looked like she was gearing up to declare, 'told you so.'

"Then force them out of the air," Lelei said, as if nothing could be simpler.

Pina shook her head. "Not possible."

"Ellie did," Hector pointed out, drawing everyone's attention. He introduced himself to Pina-name only-and said, "She managed to knock a Rondel airplane out of the sky by throwing its Focus Crystal overboard."

"We can't climb aboard each airplane and do that," Pina argued.

By this point, Clayton finally seemed to have picked up on what was going on and lowered his tablet. He and Kengun had jointly explained to Pina that commanding Imperials on the Island would result in imprisonment, and the conversation was getting dangerously close to that.

Then why allow this meeting to begin with? Kengun wondered. Surely, piing this many innovators in one room was bound to result in a conversation about the war, and the best weapons to fight it with. Did Clayton know and have a plan, or had he gotten tired from the busy past few days and failed to consider it?

"If only there was a way of doing it remotely," Greta pondered aloud. "But I'm an aerospace engineer, magic isn't my best subject. Lelei?"

The blue-haired mage gave no reply, obviously deep in thought. "Well," Arpeggio said with a huff. "If only there was an expert on Alchemy and Magical Minerals at the table."

Flat gave a despondent nod that was interrupted by a loud thwack. The astronomer gave a shrill cry and looked under the table, then back up at his wife before going, "What was that f-"

"Use that flimsy elf brain of yours before I kick you again, dear."

"Oh… OH!" Flat shot up out of his seat. "Alfie's area of study is magical minerals!"

Now Kengun was interested, not just in terms of deterring danger, but because Japan was still struggling with building a comprehensive Theory of Magic. He had attended a closed lecture on the mysterious SR-Phizons, a mysterious particle that allowed a person to influence materials on a subatomic level from a distance. Supposedly it was the driving force behind all magic, but they were incredibly hard to come by on Earth. Samples from the Special Region had to be transported in lead-lined cases out of fear of them being dispersed or decomposed by radiation sources. Actually controlling them was even more complicated, and while a classified group at Tokyo University had supposedly gotten a machine to produce a floating inch-wide ice crystal, they were a long way from perfecting the technology. It was impossible to determine if the Americans had gotten much further, and Kengun's attempts to wrestle details from Clayton had been as effective as conversing with a brick wall.

As such, he was interested to hear what the story was behind these Focus Crystals. Maybe it would help reveal the nature of magic and how to control it? Pina waved for Arpeggio to continue.

After handing her baby son to Flat, Arpeggio stood and said, "I don't like Focus Crystals. I didn't like them from the beginning, and I still don't like them now, and with good reason. Focus Crystals don't make a magician more powerful because they give them more magic. That's not how magic works. You can't just make more magical energy from nowhere."

Lelei nodded as if this made perfect sense. "Earth physics say that energy cannot be made or destroyed, only transferred."

"The extra magic has to be coming from somewhere else, right?" Greta asked.

"The Focus Crystals are attuned to pool the magic power across a wide group of magicians," she explained. "This power cycles back and forth between all the users very quickly, so that it gives the appearance that any one of them is a great magician, but the truth is that they are just sharing the greater whole. Just as a hundred men working as one could flip a hundred wagons, a hundred weak magicians working through attuned focus crystals can keep a fleet of magic gliders aloft."

Interestingly, it was Itami who seemed to pick up on it first. "That sounds like an Insurance plan," he said, then further elaborated. "On Earth, we have this thing called Insurance. Each person who uses Insurance pays a small amount of money, but in exchange the pot of money pays out a much larger amount if one of the insurance payers needs money to fix a big problem, like a crashed car, flooded house, or broken bone."

"It's close enough," Arpeggio said. "Anyway, the only reason why this relay works is because all the Focus Crystals are attuned to each other through the Aether. The right kind of spell can be used to break the connection, but..."

She balled both hands into fists, and stacked one atop the other. "Focus crystals are attenuated and disattenuated by a second, already-attuned crystal sitting above it. This is great, because it lets you attune an entire cart of crystals at the same time… but it won't help you here because Rondel will be above you, in airplanes. More importantly, the space beneath a Focus Crystal where this can occur is a cone, so even if you were to take the focus Crystal up on an Earth fighter jet, you would be limited by range. Also, there's an ongoing debate as to how well it works through metal."

Greta snapped the fingers of her good hand. "I'll take it to space!"

Everyone at the table shot her a bewildered look, so she ran over to a whiteboard, pulled the cap off a marker with her teeth, and drew a large upside-down U-shape. "I'll launch my spaceplane from here, traveling north towards Italica and Rondel."

Next, she pointed at the top of the U. "At apogee, I'll have the flight engineer use the onboard Focus Crystal to break attunement for the whole continent down below. What's the math for the cone? How much of an angle is the tip?"

Arpeggio held up her hands in a V-shape. After considering it for a moment, Greta said, "We'll call it 60 degrees. The edge of space is up at one hundred kilometers. That gives us…" she did some quick math calculations, "A one hundred sixteen kilometer cone base diameter. That's half the distance from Italica to Rondel."

"Isn't your spaceship made of metal though?" Pina asked.

Greta shrugged. "I'll flip the ship upside-down with the RCS thrusters and put the Focus Crystal next to a window." As if to illustrate the point, she dramatically scribbled down from the top of the U to the bottom of the board. "From there, it's just a question of timing the attack correctly. Since your army is on foot, we can calculate their rough position, and ask the Japanese to let us know when Rondel is attacking. That's your solution, right there, Empress. See? It's not as impossible as your advisor thinks!"

Pina's face lit up, then faltered as she said, "So it will be ready in a year or two."

"What do you—" it took Greta a moment to notice that the Empress's gaze had dropped to her dead forearm. "I... I guess you're right." She dropped into a chair, next to Pina.

"Then… we'll just have to do it some other way!" Flat declared. "We could hang it out of the back of a Japanese-"

"Denied," Kengun said. "Defense Minister Nomura has instructed me to keep this from getting any further out of hand. We will permit use of our equipment for transport and logistics, and allow use of fighter jets as far as it has been finagled out of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs."

Of course, the JSDF General didn't want this to be the case. He had always been an all-or-nothing person, and he recalled cheering in delight when the Americans had finally committed to the decapitation strike against Zorzal. If Japan wanted to, the fight vs Rondel could have ended as soon as it began… it still could, if they let him commit the remaining forces at Alnus to the campaign, and yet, again...

"Can America help us, then?" Flat asked.

Clayton gave a rueful grin. "Japan hasn't asked for our involvement outside of maintaining force parity with the Gods…so my position from the last time Pina and I negotiated this remains unchanged."

The room went very silent, and Kengun shot the American a dirty look. If the Americans wanted to, they didn't need to ask Japan to go intervene. They were waiting… probably so they could negotiate for the one thing they always wanted: unrestricted access to Falmart. In his peripheral vision, he could see Hector turn towards the American ambassador, suddenly attentive. Did Clayton know? He wondered.

"It has to be my ship," Greta concluded. "It's the only way."

"You can't fly," Hector pointed out.

"I'll make do."

"You don't know what caused you to crash last time!"

Greta was about to rebuke him when a new, quiet voice said, "I'll do it."

Standing in the doorway to the conference room, looking nervous, but adamant, was Ellie.

"I'll fly your spaceship," she said.