16. Transport Arrangements
Yuuno was not having a fun voyage. It had mostly been comprised of half a week's worth of running calculations and compiling data – slightly dull, but the sort of thing a scholar and researcher like himself was generally used to. What he was not used to was the presence of his co-worker. Leeron was a genius, no doubt about that, compensating for his relative lack of knowledge by being a near-inhumanly quick study, but his conduct... well, pretty much the only reason Yuuno hadn't yet reported him for sexual harassment was that then someone might then start looking for the body when the old lecher finally pushed his luck a bit too far.
At present, he was hauling a metre-long sheaf of blueprints through the Eventide's crew quarters. Normally, he would have floated the things over to his study remotely, but on a cramped, crowded military vessel, that tended to have unfortunate and amusing consequences. Things had come to a head when they had hit a dimensional storm halfway through the trip, causing several inanimate objects to spontaneously develop sentience. He had eventually managed to persuade Signum that Jechter's 'Principles of Magical Propulsion' had nothing but gentlemanly intentions towards her, but not before the book in question was a shredded mess strewn across an entire corridor.
Ever since, he had been forced to transport the assorted files, documents, texts, and datapads by hand. If nothing else, it was providing him with some much-needed exercise.
He stopped at a junction, allowing a crowd of personnel to move past. Fate and Nanoha approached from opposite ends of the corridor, acknowledging each other with a faint nod as they passed. Still haven't resolved it yet, eh?
Shaking his head, he ducked into the study. Leeron was there already, reapplying his eyeshadow with the aid of a bright purple hand-mirror. As Yuuno entered, the Spiral glanced up, a look of faint concern on his piscine face.
"Oh, hello, sweetie. I must say, you look a bit down in the dumps today. Did something happen?"
"Apart from seeing the happy smiling face of my favourite creepy old man?" Yuuno asked sourly. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
"Oh, come now, dear boy, you and I both know it's more than that. Can't I be legitimately worried about your wellbeing? It's romance, isn't it? I've never seen that expression on anyone untouched by affairs of the heart. Come now, you can tell Uncle Leeron – a problem shared is a problem halved, after all."
Yuuno stared at him suspiciously. "You're just going to use this to try to get into my pants, aren't you?"
"My word, do you really think so little of me? Sweetie, I am no base seducer, but merely an old romantic. I would not dream of taking advantage of a pure, innocent soul such as yourself – unless you asked me to, of course." He grinned wickedly. "Incidentally, is that a new aftershave? It really suits you."
The librarian sighed and pinched his temples. "All right, but if one word of this ventures outside this room then... you know the rest."
"Yes, yes, combat magic test subject. What exactly were those offensive applications for shielding spells, by the way?"
"Not relevant. Anyway, there's this girl."
"I knew it."
"She's smart, beautiful, and a generally wonderful person. I knew her since we were both kids, and well... pretty much loved her from the start. Problem is, she's already in a relationship. Married, in fact."
"Ah."
"To another woman."
"Ah."
"And... it's pretty much the best thing that ever happened to her. To either of them. They're the perfect couple, they've got a lovely little adopted family, and they're deliriously happy together. Most of the time, anyway. It's just that... yeah."
"Most of the time?"
"They've been having a rough patch lately. A mission went bad, really bad, and her partner's family got involved. It's complicated. Anyway, they'll make up eventually, I'm sure, but in the meantime, things are kind of... strained."
"And have you considered... exploiting the situation for your own ends?" Leeron asked in a low voice, his face unreadable.
"Just what the hell kind of scum do you think I am?" Yuuno snarled.
"And for that answer, sweetie, you get to keep your kidneys. I apologise, but I had to ask. I've seen a few of these situations in my time – you would not believe the kind of emotional hothouse a research facility can turn into when you're working with Spiral Engines. Sometimes, it got very, very messy." His expression was pained – he was clearly reliving an unpleasant memory.
"Fair enough, I suppose," the librarian replied, subsiding a little. "No. No, I haven't. Like I said, it's the best thing that ever happened to her. I wouldn't want to ruin it for the world, or, for that matter, the friendship I've already got – in fact, I'm mostly pretty happy with the situation. It sometimes just gets a little bit too much, though, that's all."
Leeron gazed at him sympathetically. "I quite understand. Unrequited love is never fun – believe me, I know. Just remember, if you ever need a shoulder to cry on, I'm right here."
Yuuno grinned. "Not that I'd take you up on it in a million years, but... thanks for the offer, Leeron. Now, speaking of Spiral Engine side-effects, I believe that was what we were going to be covering today. Shall we begin?"
"Let's."
Two days later, they were in orbit above the parallel Earth.
The Eventide's briefing room was rather quieter this time around, containing Hayate, Nanoha, Fate, Leeron, Yuuno, the Wolkenritter, and nobody else except a couple of the more reliable technicians.
"So why the secrecy?" Nanoha asked.
"Well, everyone knows by now that this mission is for tech-retrieval, yes?" Hayate asked.
They all nodded.
"The thing is, the technology in question is vital to the entire war-effort, and we know from the Suzumiyaverse reports that the forces of Chaos are very fond of infiltrating the ranks of potential threats. Given that we still don't know what was up with those scouts they sent in a couple of weeks back, I would say it pays not to advertise."
The 'war effort'. It was funny how quickly they had stopped calling it an 'intervention'. The Suzumiyaverse evacuation, the refugees from the Federation, and the reports from the universes of the Praxis and the Stargates had probably had something to do with that. There was nothing like casually triggering genocidal slaughter wherever you went to turn an uppity wannabe empire into a serious threat.
The combat instructor nodded. "That's reasonable. So what exactly is this tech?"
"Well, let me put it this way," Yuuno began. "At present, only two factions in our putative alliance have access to interdimensional travel – us, and the Spiral Nation. Unfortunately, most of our more sophisticated technology depends a bit too much on the operator's magical talents to be very useful to anyone else. Put simply, we can use their gear, but they can't use ours without a quite impractical amount of training."
"Which leaves the Spirals," Fate surmised.
"Precisely," Leeron acknowledged. "Now, Spiral Engines have considerable potential as both weapons and general tools – they are effectively powered by the user's courage, determination, and will to win against the odds, and the results can be truly spectacular. Though I doubt that anyone today – including myself – could or would replicate it, during the final battle of the War of Liberation, we used several Lagann-pattern Spiral Engines to create a warrior construct that dwarfed galaxies."
He noted the assembled mages' expressions.
"Oh come now, I'm on a ship powered by magic discussing devices that are driven by sheer mule-headed willpower, and this is where your suspension of disbelief ends?"
"Speaking as one who has seen a planet feign its own death, I would like to state that the existence of absurdity does not mandate the existence of further absurdity," Zafira commented drily. "Regardless, you mentioned that nobody would replicate this feat, implying some disadvantage. Could you please elaborate?"
"Certainly. The problem is that overuse of Spiral Energy has some very nasty side-effects on the space-time continuum, not least because it ignores conservation of matter. In fact, if you push things too far, you run the risk of imploding the universe. The phenomenon is called the Spiral Nemesis, and it's one of the reasons that our civilisation has not fully exploited its potential."
"And the other?" Signum asked.
Leeron spread his hands. "We simply don't understand everything about our own technology. The first Lagann-pattern Engine was dug out of the ground by a bunch of primitive miners, and most of our advancement in the few decades since then has been based on imitation, bodge-jobs, and guesswork. Though it is theoretically possible to turn a Spiral Engine into a reliable, mass-producible weapon and dimensional drive, the how continues to elude us. Simply bolting cheap copies of the Gurren-Lagann into our allies' ships seems not only inelegant, but an active invitation to disaster."
"Which is why we're on this mission," Yuuno concluded. "After learning about the Spiral Engine, I took a look through the Infinite Library. What I found was scattered, but useful. Apparently, the people on this dimension's Earth have a fairly schizophrenic tech-level, thanks largely to a group called the 'Whispered'. Most of their stuff's late twentieth-century, early twenty-first – when you compare it to our Earth, that is – but they've got some seriously exotic gear as well, hundreds of years in advance. Among the more interesting pieces of so-called 'black technology' is a device called the 'Lambda Driver', which sounds very much like a primitive version of a Spiral Engine."
"And you want to reverse-engineer it?" Fate guessed.
"Got it in one. If we can take it apart and compare it with Leeron's knowledge of Spiral tech, we may be able to get a better idea of the basic principles that the more advanced model operates on, and more importantly learn how to produce our own without simply copying everything we can of a Spiral Energy-powered mech and hoping we haven't missed out any essential components."
"So where are we going to find this thing?" Nanoha asked.
"I'll field this," Hayate said. "I gave some of the signal readings Leeron and Yuuno provided to Sensors, and they found several hits across the globe. We hacked their internal communications, and found that though most of the sites belonged to an organisation called 'Amalgam', some were under the ownership of a rival group called 'Mithril'. Seeing as the latter's been getting better press in the intelligence communities that have heard of them, we decided we'd call them first. In fact, that was the secondary purpose of this meeting. Their primary base of operations for activities involving the Lambda Driver appears to be a small island in the south Pacific. Let's see if they're in at the moment."
She indicated the technicians.
"Gentlemen, if you would?"
They made a few adjustments, and the faint hiss of an audio feed emerged from the theatre's central projector column.
"This is the Pacific Fleet Battle Group Tuatha de Danaan headquarters," an uncertain-sounding voice said. "You are not authorised to use this channel. State your business, please."
"I am Colonel Hayate Yagami of the Time-Space Administration Bureau. May I talk to your superior officer?"
There was an awkward pause, accompanied by some frantically whispered discussion on the other end of the line.
"Umm... I apologise, ma'am, but we don't have that organisation on file," the unfortunate comms officer responded. "One moment, please..."
More frantic whispering, and a deeper, older voice spoke from the other end of the line. "Colonel Yagami, this is our most securely-encrypted channel. Our head of communications – who is now crouched in the bathroom gibbering, I might add – has repeatedly assured me that it is undecipherable – indeed, unreachable – by any agency in the world today. You broke in with scarcely an effort. Would you care to explain how before I have to refer any more of my men to the base psychiatrist?"
"Sorry, who am I speaking to?"
"Lieutenant Commander Andrei Sergeivich Kalinin, head of the Battle Group's ground forces. The captain and her XO are otherwise occupied. Answer the question, please."
"Well... let me put it this way, commander. Do you have an Arthur C. Clarke on this planet?"
"The science-fiction author?" Kalinin sounded completely nonplussed.
"That's the one. Anyway, you remember his Third Law? 'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic'? We approach that from the other direction."
"Ah. Magic. I see. Goes well with the grandiose title of your organisation, I suppose. Colonel, if this is a hoax, it is in very poor taste."
"No hoax, I assure you. In fact, I would be quite willing to send down a couple of my officers to negotiate in person. Twenty minutes from now, say? On the beach?"
"Colonel, I have so many questions I barely know where to start. For one, what exactly do you mean by 'send down'?"
"From orbit. Our ship, more specifically."
"You have a spacecraft?"
"Would certainly explain why you've never heard of us, yes? Commander, I know for a fact that the encryption programs this channel uses are centuries in advance of most other technology on your world, and we still managed to breach them with ease. Given that, is the fact that we are capable of space travel really so incredible?"
Kalinin laughed. "All right, you've convinced me. Twenty minutes from now, on the beach. If nothing else, I'm rather interested to find out what could warrant pulling such an elaborate hoax without taking the quicker and easier option of turning our entire base into smoking wreckage."
Hayate grinned. "Don't worry – you won't be disappointed."
She looked around, and saw that several of those assembled were trying very, very hard to keep their faces straight.
She sighed. "That poor man. I do hope we didn't give them too much of a scare."
"So who will be the ground team?" Signum asked, all business as always.
"Fate and Nanoha. Ladies, this little spat of yours has been going on far too long. I want to be sure that my two best combat mages can still work as a team if the situation requires it."
Both women blinked in surprise. "Ma'am?"
"That is an order, captains."
They saluted hastily, and left for the transporters. Shamal stared after them with a concerned expression.
"Are you sure they'll be alright?"
Hayate shrugged. "They're professionals. Besides, it was high time someone did something about it – they've been creeping around each other for weeks. Honestly, you'd think we didn't have a trained counsellor on board this ship, the way people keep avoiding you. Wait – don't tell me, you've been offering patients your homemade snacks, haven't you?"
"I just thought it would establish a friendly atmosphere!" the Chief Medical Officer wailed.
"Right. Food poisoning generally does. Shamal, dear, you're a wonderful person, and one of the best medics in the fleet. I'd hate to have to ask Zafira to mine the galley again."
"Sorry, Hayate. It won't happen again."
"Glad to hear it. Leave the culinary experimentation to me and Catering, all right? Now, where are the readouts on that island? I want to be sure I'm not getting another ground team kidnapped here..."
Sergeant-Major Melissa Mao had just had the third-most-eventful twenty minutes of her life, during which she had been hurriedly relocated from an intimate date with a few dozen cans of beer at the base's main bar to the inside of her M9's cockpit overlooking the beach. It was scant comfort to know that she wasn't the only one – Mithril was pointing enough firepower at said beach to drop the Behemoth, and even Captain Testarossa and the Tuatha's skeleton crew had cancelled the huge submarine's post-refit shakedown exercises in order to hurry back to land. That said, dumping a bucket of cold water over Sergeant Weber to wake him up had been very therapeutic.
The worst thing was, they didn't even know what they were waiting for, and the rumours among the troops had been even more exotic than usual. Aliens, wizards, black-ops agencies even more secret than them and Amalgam – the tales seemed to get wilder with every minute that passed, and the massive response the higher-ups had ordered only gave them added legitimacy.
The Arm Slave's comms system crackled, and she heard the voice of one of the Intel techs. Clearly, one of their Black Technology-enhanced sensor arrays had found something.
"All units, this is TDD Ogma Central. We're picking up some weird readings all over the EM spectrum at co-ordinates 2194/8063. No idea what's causing them, but whatever it is, it's pumping out a lot of power. Recommend you target that location, over."
Frantically, Melissa inputted the co-ordinates to her mech's nav-computer. Holy shit, it's right on top of us!
"Kurz, you got it covered?"
"Same as always, babe." Her subordinate's voice was as obscenely cheerful as ever.
"A simple 'yes, ma'am' would have sufficed," she grumbled. "Get ready – here it comes..."
A column of light emerged from the sand before them, dancing in place for a moment before collapsing into a bright flash that almost overloaded their Arm Slaves' optic sensors. When it cleared, two female figures had appeared on the beach, hovering slightly above the ground.
They were human, at least, which was a definite plus. One was blonde, the other auburn-haired. They carried gleaming metallic staves with large, glowing gems set in their heads, and wore curious outfits which seemed halfway between elaborate dresses and alien military uniforms. The blonde was dressed in black with a white mantle, the redhead in white with blue trim. Despite their curious appearance, they scanned their surroundings with the practiced efficiency of trained soldiers, and seemed largely unfazed about having a small army of infantry, helicopters, walking tanks, and actual tanks pointing guns at them.
The auburn-haired one raised her staff in greeting, a mischievous smile playing across her face.
"Greetings, Earthlings. We come in peace. Take us to your leader."
All those present – including her comrade – stared at her incredulously.
"What? What?"
Author's Notes: Well, another week, another update. A big 'thanks' to all the betas who have helped me out thus far - you were a tremendous help.
One thing that always bemused me was how so many fanficcers refer to Nanoha as a brunette. In the anime, she's almost as red as Teana, and that's what came first after all. Most puzzling.
The universe they're visiting this time, in case you missed it, is that of Full Metal Panic, a very entertaining hybrid of high-school comedy and gritty near-future military sc-fi. Highly recommended, with one of the best dubs I've yet encountered.
