Part 24: The Boundary of Maiden and Mother, Phase A

Kamov Ka-50G (construction number 3537053103005, property of Eto Delo Group)

Altitude 34 meters, 70km SW of Shanghai, China

April 29th, 2016

The real thing handled even better than the simulation, and under other circumstances Azanael would feel elated at the privilege of sitting at its controls. There was scant time for joy now, however, as the stream of voices crackling in her ears reminded her.

"Time to target, six minutes... Buster wing, weapon readiness."

The first reply came from Anastasiya, the Arume's wingmate. "Buster One, armed and ready."

Now it was her own turn. She quickly scanned her heads-up display. "Buster Two, weapons armed."

"Readiness confirmed... Ramrod Three, watch your spacing."

Under the Kamov's pointed black snout, the winding Qiantang River emptied into the sea. Above it stretched a heavy overcast sky. Hangzhou Xiaoshan International Airport, where Azanael might have to land for refueling, was coming up on the right. Glancing to the left, the pilot could see Anastasiya's green Mi-28 tank hunter with its goofy shark face, and beyond it the mammoth gray silhouette of Keiko's Ka-77. The other members of the air assault group, three hulking Mi-24 gunships in mottled camouflage and a horde of Mi-6, Mi-8 and Mi-17 transports, were arrayed further to the rear.

Keiko came on the air. "By now I'm sure you've all heard that Colonel Kang and Group Commander Renaril are expecting a baby, and I shouldn't have to remind you that stress is bad for a pregnant woman... So let's keep this quick and tidy, and give the colonel a peaceful first trimester!"

There was a low-key cheer from the other pilots and crews. It wasn't the kind of thing that was allowed in the Arumic naval aviation service, and Azanael didn't participate. Better to stay alive and congratulate the parents-to-be in person, she felt.

"And remember, people," the giantess added, "your opponents are some of the most vicious fanatics on the planet... If you bail out, don't surrender. If you surrender, don't expect to be taken alive. If you're taken alive, don't expect to be treated nicely."

That applied doubly to Azanael herself. Her presence was a provocation of the warlord cliques' adamant refusal to grant passage to Liaison forces, something her nominal status as a mercenary-for-a-day probably didn't cancel out. Her pale lips compressed into a thin line as she braced herself for contact with the enemy and the old familiar adrenaline rush.

"You okay over there, sky eyes?"

It took the alien a second to realize Keiko was addressing her. "No problems, Ramrod Leader."

There was a soft laugh. "Still worried about flying with us barbarians? Don't be – all these men and women either survived the Afghan war or learned from someone who did."

"Noted," Azanael replied curtly.

"Okey-dokey... Ramrod Leader to all units, enemy air contact at eleven o'clock. Profile matches anticipated."

"Copy, we see them."

"Buster wing, start your run. We'll go say hi to the Fokker-fodder."

"Roger."

It wasn't going to be an even fight, regardless of whether Azanael and Anastasiya bypassed it or not. They came to the engagement equipped with the best in forime combat electronics and armed with state of the art firepower. Her Kamov alone boasted eight examples of third-layer Russia's newest anti-tank missile system, known to its makers as the 9K137 'Vorobey' and to their rivals as the AT-19 'Sparkler'. It was a laser-guided, beam-riding, user-friendly weapon capable of permanently decommissioning the opposition from fifteen kilometers' distance. The best her prey could muster, monkey model Mi-35s nearly ten years overdue for heavy maintenance, seemed a laughable threat.

"Hey, otherworlder." That cheeky voice belonged to Anastasiya's navigator, Maksim. "Do your kind keep score?"

"Sometimes." As her machine banked to the right and pulled away from the main formation, Azanael reminded herself that she couldn't let her guard down. These enemies had startled the world once already, and she could ill afford to be caught off guard a second time.

Sino-Arumic Liaison PHQ

Four days earlier

"Do you call that standing at attention?" Roland Schuhart wrinkled his nose. "'Cause I don't call that standing at attention."

Colonel Kang didn't think much of the performance either, though she said nothing. The Chinese soldier simply watched from a distance, arms folded, as the one-eyed man walked down the line of fresh meat: twelve Arume officers, all of the stunted variety.

"Tomorrow your training begins in earnest... But before you can train, you need to know some rules." The arms dealer faced the line, resting the weapon of the day on his shoulder like a trooper on parade. "In this place you have no value until you prove it. Leadership skills are not enough: before you've learned to clean a rifle, dig a trench and bandage a wound, you are useless to the Liaison. We have a lot to teach you and very little time to teach it – that means you mind your manners and do as the instructors tell you at all times." He resumed his patrol, keeping the rifle where it was. "There is no room for arrogant little twits here... If any of you persist in being arrogant little twits, we have a twelve-step program which can help you." The man pivoted on his heel. "You will not enjoy it."

None of them requested clarification. Kang didn't feel like asking either.

"That's all for today. Any questions? No questions? Right, report to your barrack – dismissed!"

The trainees' marching was no more disciplined than their position of attention, but it went without reprimand for now. "Sorry to make you wait," Schuhart said as the aliens departed.

"I just arrived," the colonel replied modestly. She nodded in the direction of the parade ground. "What do you think?"

"I think you're in trouble," the man replied candidly, "if those vapor-brained pukes are the best the sky eyes' officer corps will give you. Can't even have the satisfaction of calling this bunch 'primitive screw-heads'."

Kang shrugged. "I wasn't expecting the Arume to entrust me with quality material."

"Me neither."

"Never the less," the short-haired woman remarked curiously, following the scarred dealer back towards the entrance to the grounds, "you look happy."

"I am happy," said Schuhart cheerfully. "Work on the Spug continues apace, all's quiet on the western front and I am about to ruin somebody's day." He stopped, holding out the rifle. "Take a look at this."

Kang's first assumption, that the Mauser was part of yesterday's collection, was dispelled when she saw the crown on the receiver ring and the legend stamped below it: DANZIG 1912. It wouldn't make a pretty display piece, not with its metal surfaces bearing a coarse blue-black finish and its gouged and dented stock covered in a heavy varnish that felt like slick plastic under the colonel's fingers. "This is..?"

"It was originally issued to a Landser in the service of Kaiser Wilhelm. A couple of decades later it got chopped down and dumped into the dirty hands of Hitler's vanguards of racial purity. Then it went to the Soviets as a battlefield pickup or via confiscation from a POW, or was surrendered following war's end. Its new masters eventually overhauled it and threw it into a crate, where it lay until yesterday afternoon."

"This is from the Kharkov depot?"

Schuhart nodded. "I asked a couple of guys at the Kiev office to check out the goods. They sent me a sample assortment by overnight air." He laughed briefly. "Perks of having an in-house freight service."

"Mm." Kang returned the weapon. "You were speaking of ruin."

"So I was." Schuhart pointed to the exposed flank of the barrel, behind the rear sight. Peering at it, Kang saw a skull and crossbones among the alphanumeric proof stamps. "This is worth fifteen hundred on the American collector market," the man told her. "Without the Totenkopf it'd fetch three-fifty, maybe four hundred." He resumed his walk abruptly, slinging the gun across his back. "There are some greedy sons-of-bitches over there who buy these mismatched beaters wholesale, grind and re-stamp their numbers, pretty them up and add skulls and runes in the obvious places. Then they offer them as 'mint all-matching relics' to people with first-edition copies of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS at eight thousand bucks apiece."

His evident disgust at the practice found total sympathy on Kang's part. "And you have deprived them of fresh stock," she concluded.

"Bingo," Schuhart cackled. "If the Ukrainians are amenable, I'm gonna deprive those bastards of a few thousand more while I'm at it – German, Czech, the works."

"Leaving you with a pile of obsolete fascist ordnance on your hands," the Chinese female pointed out. "What then?"

"Good question," said the monocular man airily. "That's one of the things I wanted to talk to you about."

"I can't use them."

"Maybe not." Schuhart stretched his arms over his head. "But General Jiang can."

Somehow Kang wasn't particularly surprised to hear it. "You're making deals with him now."

"Working on one," her companion replied mildly. "We'd like to establish a facility in Shanxi."

"I'm not surprised." Not surprised but maybe a little bit saddened, even though she'd assumed from the beginning that business concerns would eventually trump personal feelings. "Would the general want me to know about this?" she inquired pointedly.

"If he didn't want you to know about it, he wouldn't have asked me to tell you about it." Schuhart glanced at Kang. "Would he?"

Maybe she was too hasty in assuming her mangled friend was leaving her behind. "He wanted me to know?"

"Under the table." The pair came to a fountain, recently installed and stylistically jarring in Kang's eyes. "I think he wants us to be the link between Guangzhou and Taiyuan," the arms dealer continued, looking up at the bronze effigy of Lin Zexu perched atop the water-spouting fixture. "The hotline, even."

Kang frowned. "You told me he didn't want relations with the Liaison."

"He doesn't want relations with the Arume," Schuhart corrected. "Public opinion in Shanxi isn't exactly favorable towards you right now, but he'd like to keep the door open."

"Through Eto Delo."

"Right... I'm sure he's also pursuing it as insurance in case the sky eyes get belligerent. Whatever the case, having a base up there would be really convenient for us."

The colonel leaned back briefly, eying the Mauser. "You intend to deliver these weapons to Shanxi to be refurbished," she deduced, "and issued to... a civil militia, perhaps?"

"Perhaps." Schuhart started to walk around the fountain. "I understand the general is also interested in acquiring them to extend the engagement range of his mountain troops. Strictly to protect his territory, of course."

"Of course."

There was a knowing chuckle at her sarcasm. "As my esteemed predecessor said, all weapons are defensive and all spare parts are non-lethal." The man smiled faintly as he limped along. "If anyone should be afraid of General Jiang, it's that whiskery noodle who runs the Shaanxi clique. I think Jiang's got a cooler head than Lin Qinsong, but he doesn't want anybody threatening his access to the Mongolian border."

"I agree." Kang checked her watch, discovering she'd lost track of time. "I'm sorry," she said, hoping she didn't sound abrupt or evasive, "I need to get back to the office. Was there anything else you wanted?"

"I did have a sales pitch," Schuhart admitted, "but I wrote all that down, so it's okay." He took out a folded bundle of papers and handed it to the colonel. "Something to help with your own shortage."

Kang scanned the document's header: Project proposal: modification of the Mosin rifle for individual marksman use, it read in crisp black letters. "I'll get back to you as soon as I can," she promised, pocketing the papers. "Goodbye for now."

"I'll see myself out... One last thing – any news on your, uh, other problem?"

"If you mean the paintings, I am drafting a response."

"Glad to hear it." Schuhart waved over his shoulder as he ambled away. "When you get back, I've also got a deal on some lightly used MiGs that might interest you... Take care, Colonel."

"What did he want?"

"Hm?"

"You were talking to that man again," Renaril pressed. "What did he want this time?"

Must we discuss this now? Kang thought irritably as the shuttle's liftoff acceleration petered out and left her weightless, held in place only by a strap across her hips. "He wanted to sell things," she said curtly, thrusting the proposal at her companion. The artificial gravity came online a few moments later, drawing both of them back into their seats. Another few minutes and the vehicle would dock with Magnanimous Hyacinth, bringing the colonel back to the orbiting platform for the first time in more than a month. It wasn't a reunion she anticipated warmly.

"Wow," Renaril breathed, her nose buried in the sheaf of schematics and isometric sketches. "I can actually understand some of this... What does 'polish sear' mean?"

The proposal turned out, once Kang found the time to read it thoroughly, to be better than she'd expected. Scrawling a mark of approval on the first page, she pushed it to the side of her desk and reviewed her work for the evening. There were only a few outstanding problems left, the precarious situation of the Shanghai Nerv facility topping the list. The organization's Beijing branch, which housed a Magi supercomputer and Evangelion production facilities, was gone: self-destructed and buried under ton upon ton of rubble by its own staff during the most violent hours of the Chinese breakup.

For the better, perhaps...

Nerv Shanghai was merely a data processing center, inherited from its predecessor Gehirn and thinly defended by a detachment of the ex-PLA garrison which protected the Free City from its warlord neighbors. The information held within it was threatened not only by outside attack, but also by the risk that Shanghai's governors might use it as a bargaining chip. Would the staff, Kang wondered, go as far as their Beijing colleagues to protect their secrets? They were a secretive bunch, a sinkhole in the noosphere, and she couldn't predict their moves.

"Eyepatch."

Kang twisted in her chair, looking warily at Renaril's desk on her right. "What?"

The Arume's clouded blue orbs left her terminal only for a second. "Why doesn't he wear one?"

She was talking about Schuhart again, Kang realized. "Visibility," the Chinese woman replied. "He feels it attracts excessive attention."

"Oh..."

It took Kang a couple of seconds to realize Renaril must still be reviewing the Chinese navy's anti-piracy operations in the Indian Ocean. The majority of ships involved had come under Hainan's command when the central government fell, meaning they were now part of the Liaison's forces. The train of thought from 'pirate' to 'Roland Schuhart' wasn't hard to follow.

The colonel returned to her own task with reluctance. She hated this business – Nerv, Gehirn, the Evangelions, Seele, the Human Instrumentality Project... It was so odious that she, for whom shirking responsibility was anathema, caught herself wishing someone would come along and relieve her of the burden. Closing the folder with a sigh, she made a note to try contacting Nerv's Japanese headquarters again in the morning. Colonel Katsuragi was no doubt legitimately occupied with preparations for the upcoming UN summit in Tokyo-2, an event momentous enough that Commander Ikari himself was rumored to be planning a personal appearance, but Kang hoped she might receive at least a short reply. Otherwise she'd have to try and buttonhole Ikari at the summit itself.

Or maybe I should just ask Schuhart?

The idea made her feel a little guilty. Every errand he privately undertook for her, whether in Shanghai or Vladivostok, in New Delhi or Hai Phong, came out of his own time and his own pocket. He never complained, and she knew perfectly well that the arms dealer probably found plenty of side business during these trips, but his standing in the market would be irreparably tarnished if he appeared to favor the Liaison over his other clients.

"How long do we have to wait before we can request another transfer from the arbiter corps?"

The unfortunate truth was that neither Kang nor Renaril were particularly effective diplomats. Kang's reputation as a short-tempered and uncompromising table-thumper preceded her everywhere, while Renaril simply lacked the self-assurance required to maintain a charming yet persuasive demeanor in the face of any audience more formidable than a washroom mirror. Weisheng Ying had proved to be a competent negotiator, but she was too valuable as a civil administrator to be given full-time emissary duties. Quite bluntly, they needed someone else who could sugar-coat the Liaison.

"Renaril?" Was the group commander spacing out again? When Kang turned to look, she was startled by the sight of the other woman hunched forward in her chair, eyes squeezed shut, visibly shivering. "Renaril!" she gasped, leaping up from her own seat. "Are you all... right..?"

Renaril turned her face away, her cheeks flushing as the shiver diminished to a tremble. Standing beside her, Kang now saw that the Arume had her right hand wedged between her pale thighs. "Are you all right?" the colonel repeated.

Renaril nodded: a jerky, fearful motion. Very slowly, as if still trying to be inconspicuous, she withdrew her fingers from inside her uniform. They came out covered in a wet, sticky sheen, and an unmistakable scent wafted past Kang's nose.

I see, the soldier thought wearily. Perhaps it was just as well – Renaril's behavior was number two on her list of problems, and this confirmed that she couldn't afford to put off confronting it. "We need to talk," she told the Arume, "after you're finished with that report... Would you prefer your quarters, or mine?"

It was a trivial question. The cabins were effectively identical, and the pair would only be using them for one night. "M-mine," Renaril whimpered.

"As you like." Kang went back to her desk and began to collect her papers. "I will see you at... twenty-one-thirty, then?"

The force of Renaril's thumping heart pulsed through her entire body. It was now, if she remembered her time conversion table, 21:28. Two minutes, she thought. Two minutes and it's all over. Part of her wanted to run, to spring up from the bed and bolt out the door and fly away to some place where she couldn't be found. Another part, knowing that Kang's room was just down the same corridor that lay between her and freedom, cravenly held her fast.

The seconds ticked by, as inexorable as the grains of sand falling through the ornate hourglass on the table close at hand. The hourglass was Italian, supposedly dating from the middle Renaissance, and had been brought back from the second layer as a war trophy by one of Renaril's upperclasswomen at the academy. It was the only object she brought along purely for sentimental reasons.

The door chime sounded at 21:30:07, just as Renaril was inverting the timekeeping artifact. "Enter," the Arume said flatly, trying to ignore the way her pulse spiked at the noise.

Kang's appearance had changed subtly yet unmistakably in the interval since she departed their shared office. She'd left her gun and holster in her own cabin, and her clothes were... looser, somehow. The Chinese female looked down at Renaril in silence for a few moments, then went to the single chair, turned it towards the bed and sat down. "Well..?" she prompted, her face offering no clues to her mood.

Renaril stared at her own bare feet. "You must think it's disgusting."

"The problem is not what you were doing," the colonel replied evenly, "but where you were doing it. What were you thinking?"

"I – I..."

"Were you thinking about me?"

"..!"

"It's all right," Kang declared softly. "You aren't the first."

"I'm sorry," Renaril whispered. "I just couldn't stop..."

"You can't go on like this," said Kang, making a visible effort to be firm without sounding judgmental. "Your discipline is slipping. You get distracted or forget things. I understand that you're lonely and you aren't in a setting where you can... go out and pick up girls – "

"I don't – !" Renaril cut the rebuttal short before she could give herself a proper chance to install foot wholly in mouth, and took a deep breath before resuming. "I don't want to pick up girls," she finished in a lowered voice.

"Then what do you want?"

"I... You..." The Arume's composure started to slip once more. "You know what I want."

"I think I do." Kang crossed her arms. "But what if I'm wrong?"

"How can you be wrong?" Renaril countered resentfully. "You can see it... Everyone can see it... Why won't you admit it?"

"Because that's your responsibility," the colonel declared. "How can you hope to get what you want if you're too timid even to ask for it?"

"I..." The alien swallowed, eyes darting about in search of a fixture that was neither Kang nor the floor. They settled on the hourglass, running unattended behind the other woman's elbow. The pinched shape of its glass core appeared to her now as a caricature of the female form, mocking her hesitance. Summoning every grain of courage she had left, she inhaled deeply. "I want you!"

"...Why?"

After a few seconds, Renaril realized it was probably a good idea to stop holding her breath. "Huh?"

"Why me?" Kang didn't look angry or revolted, but she didn't seem happy either. "There are prettier women... Kinder, also."

"I don't care." Now that she'd cleared the main hurdle, Renaril found it a little easier to express herself. "You're the only one who makes me feel this way. You're strong and brave and really kind to me and..."

The Chinese soldier was now definitely bemused. "And that's why you want to have sex with me?"

Renaril nodded, feeling herself blush as an errant erotic thought surfaced in her mind.

"What if I say yes?"

The Arume couldn't quite believe her heart hadn't stopped. "Huh?"

"I'm... not opposed to it." Kang seemed to be losing her own composure a little, as though she hadn't planned this far ahead. "I mean, we're effectively living together already and I... I don't dislike you."

Of all the possible outcomes to this nocturnal conversation, Renaril somehow hadn't anticipated actually receiving the answer she'd fervently hoped for. "Really?" she asked, not daring to believe her ears. "We could... do it?"

"If that would make you happy." The dark-haired officer leaned forward in her seat. "But there are conditions. One, this is strictly a private matter between ourselves. Two, you behave yourself when you're on duty. Three, this ends if you can't pull yourself together during work hours. Do you understand?"

Right now Kang could demand the moon on a platinum hubcap garnished with fresh trilobites and Renaril would agree to such a price. "I do," she breathed, her fear morphing into eager interest. "I do, I promise."

"Good."

The petite woman had expected her opposite to say something more. "So, um," she fumbled, "can – can we do anything now?"

"If you wish." Kang said that, but her confidence seemed to take another dip as she did so. "What would you like?"

"Um, I'd..." The blush ramped up to full throttle. "I'd like to be pushed down."

Kang's brow furrowed. "...What kind of fantasies were you having?"

Oops. Renaril floundered for a moment, then rallied under the banner of honesty and pressed onward. "Uh, the last one was... You were an amazon and I was a girl you kidnapped from a village." Her blush ignited its afterburners. "You took me into your tent and, er..."

"Had my way with you?" Kang finished critically. When the Arume nodded again, she let out a long sigh. "That's a fantasy I can't indulge."

Renaril promptly suffered a flameout in both engines. If the colonel didn't like that scenario, odds were that she wouldn't like anything else the alien's imagination had come up with. "Why not?"

"Call it... personal distaste."

The slender woman on the bed couldn't fend off an unwanted feeling of betrayal. After the nerve-wracking wait, after finally confessing her desires and after finally attaining her coveted goal, was it really fair to be expected to give up now? "What's wrong with it?" she protested. "That kind of play won't hurt me – "

"No." Kang shook her head. "I'm sorry, Renaril, but I can't act out a rape."

"But – "

"It hurts me."

The veteran's vehemence finally broke through the Arume's stubborn, selfish shell. "What?" Renaril mumbled, blinking in confusion. "Why would it..." Her eyes widened. "You... witnessed something?" A visual cue told her she was still off the mark, but the only other possibility that occurred to her – surely it couldn't be true for the tough, fearless colonel of all people? A great dread, heavier even than that of her lonely wait, gripped the alien. "What happened to you?"

Kang shrugged. "What has always happened to women in war?"

The hourglass ran out.