Chapter 7: Terminal Count

Later...

Alnus FOB, Alnus

Greta wasn't invited to the festivities either… at least, not until after the planned late-afternoon launch. The Rondel Council had all been transported in by helicopter (which, she had been told, had been met with trepidation at first, but ultimately was well-received) as had several representatives from Italica. They were at the end of the airfield together, gathered around one of the two remaining USAF HMLs which had been set into launch position.

When asked why she hadn't been invited, Carol had told her, "It's a matter of best foot forward. We want to be sure that everyone present can answer any technical questions that the Rondel Council has, whether about rockets, physics, or the United States. You're getting better, but for now you're most valuable as a translator. I need you rested and ready for the presentation tonight so that you can switch off with Takagi if necessary, since I'm anticipating a lot of questions."

But Greta couldn't wait that long so, instead, she strolled along the airfield in the direction of the JSDF hangars. One of the Phantoms was already away on patrol, and the other one sat on the tarmac, canopy open and waiting.

Naturally, JSDF guards politely waved her off before she got too close, but she wasn't planning on leaving. She backed up to an acceptable distance, sat down on the grass, and took time to properly inspect the vehicle once more.

Carol's rockets were easy, the explosion pushed them forward or up or in whichever direction they were pointed. The Phantom was different; it had a rocket-like pair of holes on the back, but would lift up into the sky, even though these rockets were positioned sideways, instead of up and down. The shape of the wing, when she tried it with Lister's rocket, only proved that the rounded leading edge and tapered trailing edge only improved the speed at which an object would move through the air, rather than lifting it. Unlike a bird, the wings didn't flap, so it wasn't pushing air down, so what made it stay up?

As she watched, one of the Japanese soldiers, clad in a curiously blue uniform, left the hangar and jogged over in her direction. He stopped by one of the JSDF guards, chatted with him for a while, then walked over to Greta. He had a lanky build and longer hair than she was used to seeing on any of the soldiers, and looked at her through wide sunglasses. "Hey, you're the girl always hanging around outside the fence," he said, kneeling down next to her. "Greta, right?"

She nodded.

He extended a hand. "Major Kamikoda. Pleased to meet you!"

The act of shaking hands was something she was still getting used to, but she took his hand anyway and said, "The pleasure is mine, Major. I'm surprised, I don't think that I've seen any members of the JSDF in a uniform like that."

He chuckled. "That's because the JGSDF doesn't wear uniforms like this. I'm with the JASDF. G is for Ground, A is for Air. I'm more like one of those US Air Force people than most of these other people."

"But they don't wear this kind of uniform either."

"True, but I'm a pilot, and they aren't."

"Pilot?" She knew the term as it applied to ships and shipping. "Will Japan be running boats here too?"

He outright laughed at that. "No, no! I'm a jet pilot!"

Oh! "You fly one of the Phantoms!?"

"Yes I do!"

"That's… that's amazing," Greta said, looking at the man with a newfound respect. There were only two airplanes flying in the Special Region, and this man flew one of them. "I have so many questions! How do you do it? How does it work?"

It is an instinctive reflex of pilots to tell other people that they are pilots, and to brag about what kind of aircraft they fly. Greta didn't know this, however, and for that moment at least, it was a match made in heaven. Kamikoda wanted to brag about his fighter jet, and Greta wanted to hear more about fighter jets. "Follow me and I'll show you!"

He took her closer, closer than she'd ever been, and she found herself surprised at once how much both larger and smaller it was up close. Larger because she had not anticipated how high it sat off the ground, and how long the aircraft was from nose to tail. Smaller in that she was shocked that anyone could fit into a control space of the size she was witnessing.

"So an airplane is a little different than a rocket," Kamikoda said. "There are two things that let you tell a rocket and airplane apart. First, a rocket carries its own air with it and pushes it out the back in an explosion. An airplane…" he pointed to the big air intake on the Phantom's side. "An Airplane takes the air in front of it, and pulls it into a jet. Think of the spinning things on top of the helicopters. You know those, right? Now imagine if they were tinier, but a whole bunch of them were stacked up one on top of the other. Jets are kind of like that, they take the air out in front and push it out the back really, really, quickly."

He got a glimmer in his eye. "Of course, if you really want to go fast, you dump rocket fuel into the back and burn it. If you use that, this plane moves so fast, it's on you before the sound of it coming ever reaches you!"

Greta could see that. Sometimes she would look up and notice the airplanes before she heard the sound, but often the plane was already very high above her, like a silver speck hidden in the blue. "And this keeps it up?" she asked.

"Ah, now that's something completely different." He pointed back to the wings. "These keep the plane up."

She gave him a confused look. "But they don't flap."

"You should see them in a storm! Really though, the secret is that we discovered that if you take this shape and throw it through the air at the right angle, it makes it so that there's more air pressure underneath the wing than above the wing. The pressure difference pulls the plane up into the air." He reached into the cockpit and pulled out a piece of paper of the cockpit, put the edge up to his lips, and blew.

Geta was shocked when the piece of paper, originally limp, sprang up into a horizontal position, then fell back down once the air stopped. She looked from it, back to the plane's wings, to the paper again…

Of course! Suddenly, it all made sense. The airplane used the jets to get up to speed, and then the air moving over the wings did the rest. That was why they had the long runway. "The people who figured this out must have been brilliant."

Kamikoda shrugged. "Their names were Orville and Wilbur Wright, and they made bicycles for a living."

Greta thought about how the names sounded and asked, "Were they American?"

The Japanese pilot gave a grim smile. "Sure were. When it comes to flying things, America comes up with all the best toys. I hear that, in a few years, they'll sell Japan some of those F-35s they've been working on. I'd kill for an F-22 myself, but hey, fifth-gen anything would be awesome."

Having no idea what half of those terms meant, Greta tried asking, "What's better about the F-22?"

At this, Kamikoda launched into an explanation that made her even more confused. If nothing else, it made her appreciate the simple explanations that Carol took time to prepare. From what she could understand, the airplane could turn invisible, had a complicated mechanical brain, included rocket engines that could be pointed mid-flight, and could move faster than thunder without using rocket power at all. "But the Americans would never sell them to us," he concluded. "The F-35 does most of that though, so that alone would be nice."

After a pause, Greta said, "F-22 must be the fastest airplane ever."

Kamikoda shook his head. "No, there are things that go faster still. In fact, since you like space so much… no, I almost forgot, they don't fly those anymore."

"What?"

He leaned back against the side of his plane and stared off into the sky. "For any pilot, it's always about going the highest and the fastest. But if you wanted to be the highest and fastest, there was only one plane… if you could call it that."

The pilot looked at her dead in the eye and said, "The Space Shuttle."

Greta smiled. "I think I know what you're talking about. I saw a picture while helping Carol prepare last night. It's an airplane attached to the side of a rocket, right?"

"You sure are!" He nodded. "It'd be a privilege to even ride on one of those things."

"You should speak to Colonel Mullan, maybe they'd let you!"

Kamikoda sighed. "It doesn't work like that. The only Japanese people who go into space are Engineers, like Dr. Dawson, or important scientists like Shirai-hakase. Even if you have those qualifications, they don't let everyone up because it's expensive."

"Expensive?" Greta hadn't thought much about how things must cost for the Japanese or Americans. She recalled Carol being surprised over the price of the books and asked for the price of the shuttle.

"Let's see…" he thought aloud, "It's 40,000 yen to one Sinku, right? So about a hundred yen to the dollar… or a little over that… hmmm…"

He tapped on the hull of his plane twice, then waved a finger in the air, seeming as if trying to carry the numbers around, then eventually said, "Hang on," reached back into the airplane and pulled out a compact device that looked like one of Carol's computers… except it had fewer buttons, the screen was tiny, and it only displayed certain symbols. After pressing several buttons, he declared, "Right. That's four-hundred and fifty million dollars, or twelve hundred-thousand Sinku."

Greta tried to grasp the amount of money involved, and couldn't do it. She simply couldn't. Ten Sinku could sustain the poorest families for a whole year. The price that Kamikoda had cited could probably feed every man, woman, and child in Italica. "S-surely they must get many launches f-from that," Greta stammered.

The pilot held up one finger.

"You're joking."

"No. And that's the other reason why I couldn't fly on a space shuttle. America stopped using them. Partially because they were so expensive, and partially because they had safety problems. They haven't sent anyone into space for years."

This surprised Greta. With Carol's optimism, she'd thought that the Americans had been generally successful at rocket-flight. This was the first she was hearing of a problem. She would need to ask about it sometime.

She was also sorry to see Kamikoda's reaction too. The frustrated lines on his forehead, the way he looked away from her and back up at the sky. "Maybe, when they start flying again, it won't be as expensive!" Greta said, "We'll go up together!"

The pilot laughed. "Of course! And maybe they will promote me to Prime Minister!"

If one were to examine NASA personnel for long enough, they would begin to notice two 'uniforms'. One, reserved for Astronauts, was a blue jumpsuit based off of those traditionally issued to air force pilots. The other, was a far less involved combination of khaki pants and a black polo shirt with the NASA logo stamped prominently over the left breast. Today Carol Dawson was wearing the latter, and as a result she felt goofy standing next to Colonel Mullan who had broken out his service dress uniform and all the medals and campaign ribbons that went with it.

Fortunately, their guests didn't seem to mind. The members of the Rondel Council approached first and were quick to identify Carol as a fellow academic. "It's very rigorous," she explained when asked about her education. "Four years for the Bachelors, two years for the Masters, and eight years for my Doctorate."

"Oh, and what was your Doctoral Thesis about?"

"Astronavigation to the inner planets. It's a complex topic, and we'll be discussing it a little during the presentation after the launch tonight." The members of the Council didn't seem to understand what she meant by this, but nodded anyway.

"And how long is your organization's astronomy record?"

"We have detailed records going back at least five hundred years, and other records of variable quality going back nearly three thousand...but the important part is that these records were collected and placed into a mathematics automaton that we call a computer. This allows us to predict the positions of all objects in our night sky long into the past, and far into the future. We actually have a team at NASA-Goddard who is working closely with JAXA to put together a similar prediction model for Falmart's skies."

"The large section on the back of this vehicle, how was it pulled up into that position?"

This one, Mullan answered. "It's a Hydraulic Drive system," he said. "It lets us create massive amounts of force by moving a liquid around."

As the Council went off to debate these early observations, the next group slid into place; a group of Pina-aligned Senators lead by a man who introduced himself as Cicero La Moltose. After giving a curt nod to Carol, he gladly shook Mullan's hand and said, "It is most pleasant to meet new allies. It is both calming and gratifying to know that we have not one, but two countries on Earth who support our cause."

"On behalf of President Dirrel, Congress, and the citizens of the United States, we are glad to make your acquaintance," Mullan replied. "And we are more than happy to help. The United States has a proud history of fighting tyranny, so we take great pride in helping the Japanese in whatever way we can. I regret, however, that we weren't allowed to commit significant combat forces to the campaign."

"We will take whatever help we can get," Cicero said, placing a hand on Mullan's shoulder. "Say, I heard that Japan buys many of their weapons from your country. Could we, perhaps, strike a deal?"

Mullan smiled back at him, "Maybe someday. Japan controls all exports to Falmart right now. I am sure some nice gentlemen from Colt and Remington will magically appear on your doorstep if that ever changes."

Carol shot him a look. Guns were the last thing that the Special Region needed now. The Colonel took no notice, however, shaking hands with each Senator in turn. It wasn't until they were out of earshot that he whispered to her in English, "Fat chance of that. By the time they're done paying reparations to Japan, I'd be amazed if they have enough for a single bullet casing, to say nothing of a rifle."

The next group was the most confounding of all but at the same time familiar; she had seen each member on TV before. A curiously shy elf named Tuka had nothing to say, and was quick to dart back behind the remaining JSDF officers coming up the slope. A quiet mage named Lelei asked one or two brief questions about the "alchemy" used to move the HML, and Carol gave her a few basics on solid fuel combustion.

And the third one…

Rory Mercury was mercifully shorter in person than she'd appeared on television, which meant that she was looking up at Carol as she approached. Still, the giant halberd leaning on the girl's shoulder hovered like a dark cloud over her, and the conversation. "I am Rory Mercury," she said, "An Apostle of Emroy, the God of Darkness."

Here we go. Greta had often talked about the Apostles with a sense of awe, and while the girl herself didn't look so dangerous, the weapon she carried with her certainly was, and the ease that she seemed to heft it hinted at strength beyond reason. Best be polite then. "It's a rare privilege to meet a religious leader of—"

The Apostle laughed once, almost a bark, and said, "The weapon behind you, what do you call it?"

"This?" Carol said, pointing a thumb back at the HML. "Technically, it's a scientific—"

Rory rolled her eyes and addressed Mullan instead. "You. Soldier. What do you call a weapon of this type?"

Mullan didn't answer at first, regarding Rory with a steely-eyed stare. Carol knew that Rory had already pushed one of his buttons by calling the airman a soldier, but most servicemen seemed to brush such mistakes off when civilians confused the branches. This seemed to be something else, though. Does he know something about her already? Carol wondered.

"It's a missile," he said, his voice low and firm. "We call it a missile."

"And what does it do exactly?"

"It goes up, and it comes back down."

"That's all?"

"That's all."

"No explosion at the end? A bit of an anticlimax for an Earth weapon."

Mullan slowly progressed to a thin smile. "It's like Dr. Dawson said. These carry scientific payloads. The worst they could do is bust a hole in someone's roof."

"Even if it's military hardware, it's a civilian space program," Carol said. "There's no reason to—"

Rory turned back to her and said, "You don't believe in a god, do you?"

It wasn't just the tone she used, but that she said it in English that shocked Carol the most. "H-how—"

"Of course you don't. Because you don't have anything to fear. You live in a world of books and tools, where you understand everything you know… and where everything you don't know can be explained by someone else or chased away by men with guns."

The Apostle leaned closer, "You're living a lie. Any sane man will tell you that there is a darkness to the world; things worth being afraid of, things you have little or no control over. To some, things worth praying to a god about. Without some of that fear, a person loses awareness of the world around them… drifts… and is more likely to miss the smaller things that can and will hurt them.

"Perhaps if you had a bit more fear in your life, you would understand why I am so curious about your missile."

She backed off, and Carol felt like she was coming out of a shadow—impossible, since Rory was shorter than her—and blinked as the rest of the world came back into focus. Now at a more casual distance, Rory added with a wry smile, "Perhaps that's why I like Itami so much. The man's overly cautious, and it forces him to make careful decisions, even if they don't seem obvious at the time."

A hand appeared on Rory's shoulder, and Carol looked up to see a Japanese soldier sporting the rank insignia of a 1st Lieutenant standing above her. It took a moment, but Carol eventually recognized the black spiky hair from the television reports. "Don't scare the Americans, Rory," Itami said, offering an amused grin. "They have powerful technology, but weak constitutions. I hear that most of them run away screaming at some of Japan's tamest Anime."

"Japan has in interesting definition of Tame, Lt. Itami," Mullan said, matching the smile. "When they told me that we were deploying to the Special Region, I wondered if we would ever run into the Hero of Ginza. It's nice to finally meet you in person."

"Likewise." The men shook hands, and for a moment Carol assumed that all was fine between them.

That impression was dispelled as Itami added, "and Colonel? My superiors may wish to forget Hakone, but I haven't. Stay away from my friends."

Before Carol or Mullan could get another word in, Hazama approached and declared, "A superb start to the day. The Rondel Council seems very impressed with what we've shown them so far, and I am hopeful that we will have them on our side by the time they leave. Dr. Dawson, are we ready to begin?"

"If Mullan thinks we're ready to fly, I'm happy to start the presentations," she said. "Oh, I'll need someone to go get Greta-"

"I'll have Foster and Schumer go find her," Mullan said.

As Carol followed Hazama, she peeked over at Rory again, and was startled at how, after a mere few seconds, the girl seemed to automatically notice and look back. "Just curious," Carol said. "Surely you don't think me more fearless than Air Force Colonel Mullan."

Rory laughed. "That man has fear enough for both of you."

This made Carol glance back in the direction of the HML trailer. The Colonel was still there, staring up at the vertical launch container, seemingly lost in thought.

Author's Note: And that finishes the setup portion of the story. Thanks for your patience! Next three chapters were the reason I wanted to write this fic in the first place, and I look forward to sharing them with you!