Chapter 14: Cruise to Apogee

The National Diet Building, Tokyo, Japan

The defense council meeting was not open to the public.

Hazama sat before a panel of half a dozen ministers, and behind him he could feel the eyes of another dozen JSDF officers. As the first commander of a Japanese force to conduct an offensive ground campaign since the 1940s, he supposed that these people might think him used to stressful situations… but on the summit of Alnus Hill he had the JSDF backing him up, whether it was against Zorzal's soldiers, fundamentalist rioters, or armored dragons. Here, it was him, and him alone.

The chair of the council was Defense Minister Kano, and he looked as weary as Hazama felt… and he probably didn't want to be here any more than Hazama did. "Lieutenant General Hazama," he said. "This meeting was requested by the Diet Minority coalition in response to the events at the Alnus base East Gate a few days ago, specifically..."

He stopped and looked to his right. At the end of the table, Representative Kouhara Mizuki was giving him a cold smile, and Hazama felt a feeling of ice building up in his chest. Kouhara had been the councilwoman responsible for interviewing Itami, Rory, Tuka, and Lelei during their visit to the Diet several weeks back. At the time, Rory had put the woman firmly in her place. There was no Apostle of Emroy to assist him now, and it was clear that the woman was out for blood.

"...specifically with regards to how six JGSDF soldiers were critically injured—"

"—and may die—" Kouhara added.

"—against a band of rioters from the Alnus Settlement. Kouhara, since you requested this meeting, you may have the floor."

The councilwoman folded her hands and said, "If you don't mind, General, I would like to review the events of that night. It is my understanding that you were returning from the airfield at the time, having seen the Rondel VIPs back to Italica. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"It was then that you were informed of the mob approaching from the settlement?"

"Correct. I was approached by one of my aides after the last helicopter departed."

"It is also my understanding that your first notification was not the first time that the soldiers called requesting instructions. Is that correct?"

"Yes. We have a chain of command, and the officer on duty heard of the connection to Falmart Goddess Hardy and noted that children were present in the mob, which lead him to believe that it was a religious affair. Even so, some time passed before I was informed of the situation."

"And you did not see this as a sign of an imminent threat?"

Hazama stood his ground, and stated, "As signatories to the Geneva Convention, the JSDF does its best to avoid civilian casualties wherever possible. The inclusion of children in the mob made it difficult to establish the adults of the opposing force as hostile actors."

"So you are saying that you would put the lives of civilians from an enemy nation to take priority over the lives of Japanese citizens?"

It was a twisting of facts, and Hazama had expected something like this, so he stated, "The situation with Falmart's empire is Fragile right now, and if the concession deal goes through with Pina, Emperor Mort co Solus, and the cooperative portion of the Imperial Senate, then the people in the settlement are technically Japanese civilians as well."

"Eventually, Hazama, but certainly not yet," Kouhara placed a hand on the table. "They are not Japanese citizens until the land has been formally annexed, a prefecture has been organized, and they have a representative voting on sessions in this building. Until then, they are potential enemies of the state. With this in mind, why didn't you give the order to fire? Why leave it up to the men on the ground?"

"Even if they aren't Japanese civilians, they are still civilians. If they had opened fire, I imagine that we would be having this same session, except that you would be asking me why I ordered my men to open fire on civilians, instead of asking why they did not."

"I'm happy you pointed that out. I would like to add to my earlier question. Why didn't you give the order to fire? Not only did your stalling lead to a situation where the lives of six Japanese men hang in the balance, it resulted in the deaths of sixteen civilian children… children who could have lived if the mob was driven back sooner."

"I took every available precaution—"

"Clearly that is part of the problem, General. If we cannot expect decisive action against an unruly mob, how can we expect decisive action against the remnants of the government that slaughtered innocent people in Ginza?"

At this point Kano spoke up. "If I may, Councilwoman, the procedures being followed by General Hazama are in line with practices followed by most other first-world nations. While I recognize that your party is eager to implement its own policies in the Special Region, Hazama is following as moral a code as combat permits."

Kouhara frowned at him, "We can always do better, Minister."

How the hell do Americans deal with this? Hazama wondered. If it was a serious case of questioning his order, then he would be sitting before a military court, not a civilian one. The reason why he had been summoned here—the only reason he had been summed here—was to allow Kouhara and her party their political grandstanding. Mullan had offered some sympathetic thoughts the day before but, in the end, the US Air Force officer had spent most of his days commanding a desk far away from the closest battlefield. He wasn't the one who had nearly lost men, so what did he know?

"General Hazama-" Kano started, but Kouhara cut him off.

"Has lead a slow, passive campaign against violent and repugnant forces," the Councilwoman spat. "General Hazama has let a dangerous fire dragon run rampant for weeks, murdering hundreds, and did not act until Itami Youji went AWOL in an attempt to solve the problem. General Hazama failed in his attempt to raid the Imperial Capitol by rescuing only the senators, rather than the figureheads needed to give his replacement governing body legitimacy—again relying on Itami Youji and the members of Recon-3 to do the hard work for him. General Hazama continues to eat through billions of taxpayer Yen while a monster who boasted about beating and raping a Japanese woman not only runs free, but continues to lead raids against Japanese forces operating in the region. Or perhaps, Minister Kano, he is taking every available precaution as he waits for the Hero of Ginza to clean up his mess for him."

Hazama seethed with frustration as she listed each point, but he was not in a position to say anything. This was Japan, and you said nothing to someone above you, even if you disagreed with them. That was how polite society worked, after all.

"There are well and grounded diplomatic reasons why Hazama has acted the way he has to this point," Kano stated. "If anything, it is Itami who has been needlessly reckless. While this council admits that the Lieutenant's actions have been effective, they have more-often-than-not deviated from what the military and world at large finds appropriate."

"And if the Special Region produces a more significant threat than Zorzal?" Kouhara said. "If our forces are demolished because action is not taken, then 'well and grounded reasons' will not protect the citizens of Tokyo from a second attack. Only decisive action-action which the current administration has failed to take-will keep our people safe."

She turned to face Hazama, and the feeling was not unlike staring down a Type 74 tank. "So tell us, General, when can we expect to see decisive action in the face of external threats?"

"My apologies that you feel that way, Councilwoman," Hazama said, "I shall seek to improve Japan's image in the Special Region to the best of my abilities."

"Indeed," Kouhara said, sitting down. "And I should hope so. I cannot imagine the sort of dishonor it would bring on you and the JSDF if you should fail again."

Kano sighed, "Thank you for your time, General Hazama. That will be all for today."

Hazama wished that the Defense Minister would have said more, but as he stood to leave, he felt that pressure of many eyes still on him. This meeting was a bad sign-the Minority representatives were looking to politicize the deployment, while the majority administration would likely be more than willing to pressure the JSDF into forcing him out if things went poorly… better to sacrifice a single man than to lose the populace. And while his own commanding officer, General Nomura, had been supportive on the phone at Alnus, he hadn't said as much as a word here.

The message was clear; demonstrate irrefutable progress in the next Special Region military action or be forced out.

He would need to talk to Princess Pina. The most dangerous element of the conflict for Hazama was no longer Zorzal's sword before him, but Kouhara's pen behind him.

The Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, Washington D.C., United States

The weather was wretched that day, and to Carol the National Mall felt bent and wrong. Dark clouds cast a grim pallor over the stone-faced government buildings and monuments, and what was supposed to have been a park full of cherry blossoms felt half-hearted and stripped from the remnants of a late-winter storm that had killed many of the buds before they could bloom. It was a weekday, and few people were out touring in this weather. Those that did pulled rain jackets about their necks or adjusted the positions of folded umbrellas beneath their arms as they waited for spring struggled to sweep away three months of ice and cold.

When Greta finally appeared, wide hat jammed over her head and demihuman ears, she didn't seem particularly healthy either. Sure, the girl smiled as she greeted Carol, but the smile only reached the lower half of her face. Her eyes weren't in it, and Carol couldn't help but wonder what had gone on between Greta and Teesa.

"Well," Carol said, gesturing to the building behind her. "Here we are. The Air and Space Museum. One hundred years of American aviation in a neat little box."

Greta nodded, the smile dropping away as she took the lead, and Carol struggled to keep up. She only caught up to her at security, where Greta's security handler was in the process of negotiating passage with the museum's Office of Protection Services agents. By the time Carol could talk, Greta was peering through the open hatch of the Gemini IV crew module. "Greta," Carol said, resting a hand on the girl's shoulder, "are you alright? You seem tense."

"I'm fine." She pressed closer to study the controls and asked, "What's the story about this one?"

Carol wasn't about to argue, and wasn't sure that this was the right time, so she decided to play along, for the moment. "This is Gemini IV. It carried pilot Jim McDivitt and Ed White, who became the first American to venture outside of a capsule in a spacesuit."

"First American…" Greta said. "Not first person?"

"No. Alexi Leonov from the Soviet Union did it ten weeks before him."

"I see." Greta seemed to shrink inward a bit at the news. "Then surely if he is being memorialized here, then Ed White did other amazing things in the years that followed."

Carol shook her head. "He never got the chance. He died a year and a half later in the Apollo 1 fire."

"Let's look at another one," Greta said, crossing the hall to another capsule. "What's this one?"

"Friendship 7. The capsule that made John Glenn the first American in orbit."

"So the Soviet Union beat you that time too."

"Yes, with Yuri Ga—"

But Greta had already moved on, generally ignoring the planes hanging from the ceiling and straying into the next gallery over. An Apollo Lunar Module stood proudly in the middle of the hall, surrounded by other Apollo-era equipment. She brightened more at this one. "So that's a Lunar Module," she said with a small smile, "Like the one David Scott was standing in front of."

Back when Carol was explaining the gravity experiment to Flat and Greta, she had shown them the famous Apollo "Galileo was Correct" video starring David Scott with his feather and hammer. "That's correct," she said. "This particular one was used as a ground test article between the unmanned flight test on Apollo 5, and the crewed test on Apollo 9."

"Do they let you see inside of it?"

"Not this one, unfortunately. If we had a few days, I'd take you down to the Kennedy Space Center and show you the control panel set that we have there. It's really mesmerizing; lots of buttons and switches."

"Kamikoda let me look at the inside of the F4 Phantom, and that one had a lot of buttons and switches too."

"It's interesting that you bring that up. If I remember correctly, the F4 was made only a few years before Grumman started working on the Lunar Lander, so the underlying technology is similar… except that later we added more powerful computers to the F4 because we're still using it to this day. Back during the Constellation Program, I saw plans for the Altair lunar lander, and it would have had modern computers and flight controls to match the aircraft that we use today."

"Oh? Does this museum have an Altair lander too?"

If there was one piece that pained Carol when talking about modern NASA, it was the fact that, if not presented correctly, it came across as a litany of bad news. "Sadly, no," she said. "The program was cancelled before any were built."

Greta had nothing else to say to that and, turning her back on the LM, she wandered over to the Cold War gallery. While most of the moon missions had their own separate section of the museum, this area covered a similar time scale with objects like test capsules, space suits, and even a full-scale test model of the Apollo-Soyuz docked stack. What drew Greta's attention, however, was the collection of full-sized rockets standing proudly in the center of the room.

Before Carol could say anything, Greta rushed over to a plaque beneath one of the rockets and said, "Hey, I recognize this word! But I think they've mislabeled it. Isn't Midgetman smaller?"

Carol looked down at the information placard for the large green rocket.

MINUTEMAN III

"It's a different rocket," Carol said, hoping that Greta would move on.

But she did not. "The HML that launches this must be huge!"

Before Carol could reply, someone next to Greta exclaimed, "Oh, hey! Nihongo wakadimas?"

Carol looked over Greta to see some college-age kid with an obnoxious Anime print splayed over the front of his shirt. She had been banking on drawing Greta away from the awkward locations in the exhibit by exploiting the fact that the cat-girl still lacked a fluent understanding of English, and hadn't counted on running into anyone else who spoke Japanese.

"Oh, of course!" Greta replied. "Dr. Dawson said that most people here didn't speak Japanese."

The guy shrugged. "Most people don't. I grew up for a few years in Japan before moving back here. Is that woman over there your English translator?"

"Yes! She's also an expert in the field. Still, I'm kind of curious about how much regular Americans know about space and NASA… this rocket for example, do you know how often America does space launches with it?"

He looked down at the nameplate, then up at the rocket to make sure that he was understanding her question correctly before giving her an odd look. "Never, it's not that kind of rocket."

Carol looked to her guard and Greta's willing for one of them to intervene, but both stood there, waiting, listening.

"Not a space rocket?"

"No—I mean, it goes into space, but it's not designed for studying space, if that's what you mean. You've never heard of ICBMs before?"

Do something! She willed the guards. She wanted to intervene herself, but was terrified about the consequences of doing so. What if she accidentally let something slip? Didn't Mullan say that she'd go to Federal Prison?

"No?" Greta said.

"It's designed to throw a nuclear weapon halfway around the planet and blow someone up."

"Oh, like a hand grenade?" Greta had seen the demonstration for the Rondel academics at Alnus, and it was the only context she had seen of something 'blowing up.'

The guy gave her a confused look. "You speak Japanese, and you really don't know what a nuke is?"

"Greta, I don't think—" Carol began, but the girl said, "I'm from a rural place, so no, what is it?"

"Imagine that you could take the fire from the center of the sun and open it up here on Earth," the guy said. "That's what a nuke is, it sets off a huge explosion. Just one can destroy an entire city, and every man woman and child living there."

Carol suddenly felt woozy, like she had on seeing the Midgetman's payload for the first time. She opened her mouth to speak, but found that she couldn't.

Greta's eyes widened in shock. "Who in their right mind would create something like that?"

"Well… we did. America, I mean. We used two of them to end World War II."

"And the country America used them on doesn't hate them for it?"

"Apparently not, considering that they're borrowing NASA and the USAF to launch rockets for them on the far side of the Gate."

If Carol had the ability to look up, she would have seen the horror seeping into Greta's face. "But…" Greta said, "That's…"

"Japan, of course."

Carol couldn't take it anymore. She rushed out of the hall, her security handler in close pursuit, pushed out of the building exit, and collapsed against the wall of the building, grasping.

It was raining now, and the National Mall had emptied out as people ran into buildings or beneath overhangs. Carol didn't care. She whirled around to face her handler and cried, "How can you just stand there? You should have said something."

"That America has nuclear weapons, and that such weapons exist is publicly available knowledge," the handler stated, as impassive as ever. "My orders are to defend knowledge of the location of such weapons."

Before Carol could say anything else, she noticed Greta making her way out the museum doors as well. The girl still looked stunned beyond understanding, and Carol found herself buried under a pile of intrusive thoughts.

You did this to her. You filled her head with pretty little lies about what was going on in the Special Region, and now she knows the truth about the history of rocketry. Not peace or hope or scientific interest, just men looking for a better way to deliver a bomb. Truly, nothing has changed.

At first she couldn't meet the girl's eyes. Eventually, Greta asked, her voice barely above a whisper, "The man in the exhibit… was he telling the truth?"

Carol nodded. You should tell her the rest too, she chided herself, how the rockets that launched Mercury and Gemini were originally built to level St. Petersburg and Moscow. How the hands that designed Americas first moon rocket were dipped in the blood of over a thousand London civilians. How the Space Shuttle was designed to meet Air Force specifications for a program to make Space into the next warzone through high-energy lasers and orbital-reentry tungsten poles. How even today the X-37B—

But Greta didn't ask, and when Carol finally looked up, she saw that the girl had her arms wrapped about herself, and was fighting back tears.

"Teesa and I had a fight," she said. "I wasn't even in there for a minute, and we were fighting. I—I don't understand. I wanted to impress her, to show her that I was still learning. She didn't care. She said that it was all stupid, and that it didn't have any meaning.

"I yelled at her, and I walked out, and as I went through the museum today, I felt like I was looking for something, anything to prove her wrong, to prove that the time that we spent on rockets and airplanes and orbits was worthwhile.

"I've never asked you this, Carol, but I need to know. If so much is going wrong for you and NASA, why do it? Why bother?"

Dawson had been considering the same question. Why did I even bother in the first place?

So, she thought back. Before the Nuke and the lecture and the rocket launches, before Greta and Takagi and the Gate, all the way back to the shadow of Launch Complex 41.

And there she found the Senator's kid looking up at the Atlas V rocket, eyes big and shining and full of "What if…"

She remembered her line to Kosinski at the end of the Phizon lecture. Their last names wouldn't happen to begin with B, M, and B respectively, would they?

"It's… a story, Greta, and it's still being written, but I think it begins on February 1st, 2003. Six Americans and an Israeli, while returning from space aboard the shuttle Columbia, died when their spacecraft spun itself to pieces after their heat protection failed. I remember it clearly; no one was sure what would happen to NASA or the space program, and there were talks about cancelling the Space Shuttle program entirely, which they eventually did. Lots of people were ridiculing the idea of sending people into space at all, saying things like what your sister must've said. Why bother? Why try?

"It could have ended there, I guess. People could have waited as the space shuttle ended its run, and the NASA facilities shuttered their doors as politicians fell into an endless squabble on what to replace it with, but that's not what happened. An aerospace engineer named Burt Rutan decided that then and there would be an excellent time to show off a project he'd been working on, and a year and a half after the Columbia disaster, Rutan's SpaceShipOne made history by being the first manned private vehicle to make it into space, even if only for a little while. Greta, while you were looking down at the insides of the Mercury and Gemini capsules, you missed SpaceShipOne hanging right over your head.

"Eventually Rutan decided to retire his new spaceplane, but it didn't stop there. An entrepreneur named Richard Branson decided, 'hell, why not', and started an entire company, Virgin Galactic, devoted to making a large-scale version of SpaceShipOne.

"And even as Virgin Galactic began to fade from the public eye, another man named Elon Musk took this as a signal and started a company that began putting things into orbit… and kept going. The company, SpaceX, continues to lead the charge with rocket boosters that land themselves, capsules for sending people and parts to orbital space stations, and now they say that they'll send people around the Moon soon, and maybe even send something to Mars.

"And as Musk's SpaceX and Shuttle-builder Boeing get ready to send Americans back into orbit on NASA missions to the space station, yet another company called Blue Origin plans to beat both to the punch with another suborbital rocket. Its founder, Jeff Bezos, has already flown the entire stack unmanned, and in a few months the trip will open to anyone who can afford it."

Carol brushed a wet strand of hair from her face and sighed. "If you had told me in February 2003 that we were standing on the edge of a renaissance in spaceflight, I wouldn't have believed you, yet here we are. It's because people like Branson, Musk, and Bezos, people who believed in a future for spaceflight, were willing to stare down the people who asked 'why bother' and shout back 'because I think it's worth it, and I'm going to do everything in my power to make it happen anyway!'

"There's a famous speech by President John F. Kennedy where he tells an audience that America will "Choose to go to the Moon." Everyone remembers the first line of its most famous paragraph, but I like the rest of it too. He says that we should go because it 'will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.' To me, at the end of the day, that's what space is about, regardless of if you're getting there through the Air Force, or NASA, or a private company. It's about people looking at their universe, even in the face of failure, and then trying harder and doing better. Not because there's any obligation to do so, but simply because we, as people, know that we can do better if we try for it, and we owe it to ourselves and no one else to prove ourselves right."

Carol placed her hands on Greta's shoulders. "Greta," she said. "I understand what it's like to question your self-worth, to wonder why you're doing what you're doing. It's frustrating, it hurts. You have every right to be upset, both at yourself and the people who you're up against, but if you hold yourself against someone else's standards, you'll never be happy. I don't know what you think about yourself, but I know what I've seen; you're driven, you're a quick learner, and you have a love for the topics you invest yourself into. You endured awful conditions at the bookstore so you could keep learning, and you braved men with guns over things because you thought that I was in danger. You're an amazing person, Greta, and the only person you need to convince of that fact is yourself."

At that point Greta began to sob, so Carol pulled her closer and let the girl burry her face in her shoulder. In all honestly, Carol thought, the speech had been just as much of a reminder to herself as it had been to Greta, and it felt good to speak her mind. After a minute or so, Greta said something, but her voice was muffled by the fabric of Carol's jacket. "What was that?"

"I wanted to apologize to you, Carol. Ever since we got on the plane, I knew you were struggling with something. I was so wrapped up in myself that I completely missed it. If you want to talk about it, I'd be willing to listen."

"To be honest, you've already done that. It made me rethink something that's been messing with me for a while, and I think I can live with it."

Greta looked away, thoughtful, and recited, "Open my mind to those who wish to teach, / and show me ways to grow from what I learn. It's from the daily prayer to La. I'd always thought about it as learning from other people, but I guess that we can each apply it to ourselves too."

"It's cleverly written. Since La is a goddess of wisdom, then it would make sense for it to have a double-interpretation like that." She patted Greta on the back and said, "I feel like I should have asked this ages ago, but would you be willing to tell me more about the Gods and Goddesses of Falmart… what they're like and what they do? There's a decent restaurant a few blocks north of here… over dinner, maybe?"

"Gladly."

As they started towards Jefferson Drive, Carol looked back to see one of their handlers radioing for a car and called back to him, "Oh, and call Colonel Mullan. Tell him that I'm willing to go back to the Special Region. JAXA's about to launch an orbital-class rocket over there and I wouldn't want to miss out on any of it!"