A Young Girl's Guerilla War

Chapter 28: Grinding Responsibility


(Thank you to Sunny, Restestsest, Mitch H., Adronio, and MetalDragon for beta-reading and editing this chapter. Hope you enjoy this first chapter of 2023.)


JUNE 30, 2016 ATB
SHINJUKU GHETTO, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1015


The sun beat down, the scorching heat undiminished by the tepid breeze rolling off the distant waters of Sagami Bay. Noon was still an hour and a half away and the true heat of the day wouldn’t come until two hours after that, but it was already unbearable.


Spring, I decided, is well and truly dead.


At the very least, I could take solace in the fact that, as the de facto ruler of Shinjuku Ghetto, nobody expected me to haul chunks of broken concrete and twisted rebar to waiting wheelbarrows, as I had done in past summers. Indeed, using my authority, I had done my best to ensure that nobody else was expected to do likewise; all above-ground work had moved to a nocturnal schedule, to the rejoicing of all the work crews toiling within the encircling wall.


There were complaints, of course. No matter how universally approved any given decision might be, there would always be complaints. I was sadly aware that their presence was something of a fundamental axiom of society. There was no such thing as a hundred percent approval rating, not so long as those surveyed were free to speak and their words were accurately recorded.


Mister Nishizumi Tsutsumi, the source of many of those complaints, had managed to draw me out of the coolness of the Rising Sun Headquarters’ basement before the evening hours, out into the unrelenting heat. Mister Nishizumi, or more properly, Councilor Nishizumi, represented almost a third of the northwestern district of Kamiochiai on the Council of Notables, the governing organ Naoto had set up to help him handle the management of Shinjuku. Since the elder Kozuki had left for the countryside, that group had rapidly become my personal nemesis.


Of course, if I were being honest, I really only had myself to blame for that particular metamorphosis.


“There he is, I think,” Masatsugu, the leader of today’s three-man security detail, said. “Looks like he’s got four others with him.”


“Any of them armed?”


The question was mostly pro forma. Of course Nishizumi would have armed bodyguards. Shinjuku had become drastically safer once the Rising Sun took full control over the entire Ghetto, but nobody with property worth stealing would wander around unarmed given any other option. As a Councilor, Nishizumi both had access to enough supplies to make him a potential target and, thanks to my attempt to garner legitimacy, no shortage of people willing to carry arms for him.


“Yeah,” came the laconic reply. “I think two of them that I can see? They just have bats, though. Old baseball bats on their shoulders. The rest could have knives or whatever. You never really know.”


“You never really do,” I agreed, and winced at how tired I sounded. I would have to do a better job at injecting energy in my voice once I got within earshot of the Councilor. The man was a politician and would have no qualms about leveraging any perceived weakness. “Let’s go say hello to the fine Notable, shall we?”


As it turned out, the first greeting came from the Kamiochiai contingent.


“Commander! Welcome to our little slice of heaven!” The Councilor’s greeting boomed out into the street, empty under the baking sun save for our respective parties. According to Nagata, Nishizumi Tsutsumi had been part of Japan’s Merchant Marine before the Conquest. The ex-sailor clearly hadn’t lost any of his capacity for leather-lunged bellowing over the six years he had spent away from the sea. “It’s damn hot today, isn’t it?”


“Truly an excellent reason to spend the next hour in the Meeting House’s basement,” I agreed, returning his quick bow with an abbreviated bob of my own, running my eyes over his party. The two openly-armed men both wore Sun Guard hachimaki and presumably were members of the militia unit drawn from Nishizumi’s constituency. Nominally, they were just as much my men as my security detail. Nominally. “So why are we still out here on this street instead of making our way inside?”


“Hey,” Councilor Nishizumi, a deeply tanned man in his late thirties sporting a prematurely gray beard, replied with a joviality that rang false in my ears, “nothing wrong with the street! The boys have done a fine job with the repaving work!” The former merchantman paused, before adding, “Send my congratulations to young Kozuki, will you?”


“I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear from you, Councilor, as always.” Deciding not to stand on ceremony as I traded barbs with the man, I swept past him and continued on my way towards the newest Rising Sun Meeting House, located only a few blocks away. “You might be happy to hear that I was, in fact, the one who ensured the repaving crews reached as far to the north as Kamiochiai. As such, I am very pleased to hear that you like the new roads.”


The Notable was only a pace behind me, following me just as I had known he would. Behind us, his party - his two militiamen, an aide, and a boy a few years older than me who I assumed to be a message runner - fell into step behind my two trailing guards. A petty power play, admittedly, but so had Councilor Nishizumi’s choice of meeting location. We could have met in the shadowy interior of the Meeting Hall, but that would have started the meeting in “my territory.”


As if this entire city isn’t “my territory,” I thought with a repressed sneer. Some days, it feels like this city and its people are merely the Notables to toy with, to hold hostage to their whims, for all that they acknowledge my position. I swore that I would fight for an independent Japan; I didn’t swear that I’d recreate the Republic of Japan in all of its maladaptive oligarchic glory.


Long ago, in a different life, I had read a line somewhere about how gratitude was the currency with the shortest half-life. Nothing I had seen from the Council of Notables in the two months since I had taken responsibility for Shinjuku and all those who dwelled within it had disproved that forgotten author’s assertion. The gifts I had given and the privileges I had extended had turned into entitlements and sacred rights with remarkable speed. Those first few weeks, when the first and second shipments from Kyoto arrived, had been the good times.


From that highwater mark of cordial relations, my relationship with the Council of Notables had slowly degraded. Their willingness to cooperate had dwindled as the supplies allotted to their districts from the Rising Sun’s stockpiles diminished, as had my willingness to tolerate their incessant wheedling.


I still didn’t think that I had made a mistake when I had given the Council of Notables control over their home detachments of the Sun Guard. In a way, I had just formalized the current situation, while spinning the facts to suit the narrative that I was in full control of Shinjuku.


The Notables had been elected to the Council by the votes of electors, who were in turn nominated by the various tenements, blocks, and streets within each district. The Notables, therefore, were the local magnates, those with sufficient resources or influence to convince or cozen their district electors to vote for them. They were the people who the young men and women who made up the militia would naturally go to for orders or for help.


By recasting their de facto control of their people as the result of procedures and consensus beyond my decisions instead of the usual outcome of the human tendency to form hierarchies, I had turned that potential vulnerability into a tangible sign that I wasn’t a power-hungry lunatic eager to consolidate power in my own hands.


That I was having enough trouble managing my responsibilities as it was without any further consolidation of power was not something I felt the need to share with the Council of Notables. They expected me to seize every scrap of power I could and had prepared to dig in to resist my encroachment once Naoto named me the authority in Shinjuku. They had told each other that my Britannian blood and tender years would make it inevitable that I’d go mad with power, that I’d prove myself just a gangster who had somehow manipulated the softhearted Naoto.


They didn’t understand me, nor did they understand Naoto. Anybody who thought the elder Kozuki was softhearted was a fool; he was simply strong and wise enough to show mercy when he could and should. In truth, I envied his skill at diplomacy and political maneuver. Similarly, they misunderstood me. I had no desire to fight the Notables for power, and so, to their vast surprise, I had simply given it to them, a gift instead of a contest. Entrusting the Notables with their Sun Guard units outside of times of emergency had been the clearest way I could signal that the Rising Sun wasn’t just a gang and I had no desire to be a king.


At the time, I had been hoping that such a clear signal, coupled with the free distribution of the food I had purchased with gang money, would lead to mutual cooperation and understanding. For a while, it had. Then, the first Notable had turned down my request to use their Sun Guard as a labor force for a specific project in another district. Another would only agree to a similar request if their district got an extra meal every day for a week, which would have decreased the amount available in all other districts. Battle lines were drawn in the Council.


Past that point, the rot of factionalism had begun to bite in earnest.


It would have been easy, so easy, to force a solution to this problem. The Rising Sun maintained its monopoly on coilguns and ammunition, radios and medicine, and most crucially, over the majority of the stockpiles of food, clothes, and construction materials. The Council of Notables was riven with internal divisions, and while most continuously connived, a distinct minority were loyalists who never asked for more or quibbled when I requested the use of their young people for the greater good of Shinjuku.


It would have been the Britannian thing to do.


Realizing that had been enough to show me the trap that temptation represented. Even with the best of intentions, coercing support from the people of Shinjuku would forever contaminate the public relations well and tarnish my name. I would set myself and my organizations apart as yet another oppressor in a line of oppressors, come to take and take. Once I crossed that line, even to guarantee unity among the governors of Shinjuku, it would be easier to cross it again in the future.


And once I reached that point, I might as well start dressing like a Britannian, because that’s what I would be.


With that nightmare scenario in mind, I had set myself to a task I was ill-equipped for and heartily disliked: playing politics.


Which isn’t even part of my brief! That was Naoto’s job, his and Ohgi’s, to a lesser extent! The whining was just as self-serving as any of the endless complaints from the Council, but in the private sanctuary of my mind, I had little compunction about delving into selfishness.


“So, Councilor Nishizumi,” I began, slowing slightly to walk beside the man instead of a pace ahead, “what was it exactly that you wanted to inspect at the Meeting House?”


“Your man,” the sailor-turned-politician began, “is being a real pain in my ass, Commander. He just came in here, took over the old Post Office, and started throwing his weight around! Considering how much crap your boys hauled inside, he must be sitting on a whole mountain of resources! As the Councilor for Central Kamiochiai, I wanna see what he’s hoarding!”


By the end of his miniature rant, Nishizumi was practically spitting the words out; the last word, in particular, was like a curse in his mouth, and it was hard not to wince at the accusation. Given how desperate everyone was in the wake of the Conquest, even the mere accusation of hoarding was a matter taken very, very seriously in Shinjuku, both back before the Rising Sun had established hegemony and after.


“I can see that you are quite concerned about this matter,” I began, trying to remember how Naoto had spoken to the Councilors on the handful of times I’d accompanied him to meetings, “but that doesn’t sound like the Nagata Takeshi I know. I trust him and Kozuki Naoto trusts him; they’ve known one another for years, after all. I doubt he’d throw all of that away just to put the screws to you, Councilor Nishizumi.”


To my irritation, only the reminder that Naoto trusted Nagata dented the Notable’s hostile expression even slightly. “Even good men can have bad friends,” Nishizumi rebutted, thankfully lapsing into silence as we approached the Kamiochiai Rising Sun Meeting House, where Nagata stood waiting by the door for us.


It was immediately obvious that there was no love lost between the two men.


“Nagata,” I said, stepping out ahead of Councilor Nishizumi and greeting my lieutenant, “thank you for agreeing to meet with us today. I’m sure you’re quite busy as it is.”


“Commander,” he acknowledged, and I tried not to wince at the title someone in the Rising Sun had slapped onto me. I suspected Inoue was the responsible party, judging by the way her lips twitched whenever someone used the title in her earshot. “I’m always happy to make time for you. I hope the trip all the way out here wasn’t too bad?”


“A little heat won’t stop me,” I replied, full of false heartiness, which fell away as I continued. “Especially considering the… concerns Councilor Nishizumi has raised.”


“Concerns, eh?” Judging by the way the Councilor’s lips twitched, he had clearly intended to punctuate the sentence with a gob of spit but had thought better of it at the last moment. “Yeah, I’ve got some concerns, if that’s how you want to put it. Commander,” his voice rose, full of belligerent certainty, “Like I said, your man here is a hoarder! He’s skimming off the top of the distribution for my district, for Central Kamiochiai, and keeping it squirreled away for his own use! Believe me!”


“I certainly believe that I’ve heard you say all that and more,” I coolly replied, turning to look up at the former sailor, who stood a solid two heads taller than me. “Indeed, I believe that’s why I’m out here this bright and sunny morning. I have heard your concerns and shared them with Nagata here. We three will inspect the measuring devices and the stores here at the Kamiochiai Meeting House and hopefully put your mind at ease in the process.”


“Right,” Nishizumi nodded curtly, his temper, for the moment, back under control. “And in the interest of fairness and transparency and such, you won’t mind if my man Shun here,” he hooked a finger over at the skinny man I had apparently correctly identified as his aide, “tags along as a witness, right?”


“Well,” I said, smiling blandly up at the man, “I can certainly respect your love of transparency, Councilor Nishizumi, and fairness also. So, in the name of fairness, I think Nagata should be allowed to bring along a witness of his own, wouldn’t you agree?”


Before the Notable could protest, I turned to Nagata. “Nagata? Would you kindly find us a witness and lead us to the distribution room, or wherever you’re keeping the cups and the scales? Let’s hurry up and get on with this.”


That conversation more or less set the pace for the next hour and a half. As Masatsugu and my other two guards cooled their heels in the Meeting House’s dining room in the company of Nishizumi’s two guards and his messenger, I did my best to keep the peace between Nagata and Nishizumi as we examined the cups used to dole out rice and flour, the scales that weighed the measure of biscuit, and the larders that provided for the thrice-weekly communal meals.


Throughout the entire ordeal, Nishizumi took every chance he could to snipe at Nagata. The usually quiet and mild mannered Kozuki Organization member was uncharacteristically giving back just as much as he got, once even snarling at the Councilor in reply to some snide comment or another. While the root of their tension was still unknown to me, it was clearly a deeply personal and mutual resentment they shared.


Annoyingly, this was a situation that could have been avoided had I spent more time with the individual Councilors before or, for that matter, if I’d shared more one-on-one time with Nagata in the last several months. In my defense, I had been busy and Nagata had fully capitalized on his return to Shinjuku to spend as much time as he could with his wife and little daughter, Ami and Yukari respectively, and before he had left Naoto had done a fine job managing the Council.


But perhaps if I had shown more interest in the lives of my subordinates and in the network of social grudges and alliances in the Council of Notables, this whole situation could have been avoided!


It was an unhelpful thought, self-castigating and based on speculation about the hypotheticals. Yes, it would have been helpful to know that Nagata had a long-standing grudge against the man who represented a third of the Kamiochiai District before I had put him in charge of the new Meeting House distribution point in that area. Yes, perhaps I should have asked the three Councilors who represented the district for their input on the Meeting House and its staff.


But what was done is done, and I was thoroughly sick of trying to manage the pair of them. But, while neither Nagata nor Nishizumi had endeared themselves to me lately, it rapidly became apparent that Nishizumi had no evidence of any embezzlement from the Rising Sun’s supplies on Nagata’s part beyond vague claims about “what everyone knows”, nor did the inspection of the measuring devices find any indications of tampering.


“You saw it yourself, Councilor,” I said, trying to keep my tone level and my frustration off my face. “We looked all around the Meeting Hall. Every room was made available for your inspection. No signs of any hoarded supplies, no signs of rigged cups or unfair scales. Unless there’s some further evidence you can supply, I will insist that you recant your accusations against Nagata.”


“Like hell I will!” The former merchantman’s stentorian was deafeningly loud in the lobby of the post office turned Rising Sun building. “Mark my words, Commander, that man is a slippery little shit! He’s stealing from you, he’s stealing from me, and more importantly he’s stealing from my people!”


“Don’t blame me for your own failures, Councilor. ” Nagata retorted, his face an ugly mess of blotchy spots, his fists tightly clenched at his sides. “Just because you can’t keep your own house in order doesn’t mean I’m sabotaging you. Unlike some people I could mention, I don’t need to stoop to gangsterism to earn respect!”


“You little shit!”


At Councilor Nishizumi’s bellow of rage, I took the opportunity to physically step between the two men, forcing them to separate or shove me aside.


“Enough!” I barked, all but snarling with barely contained frustration. The voice of authority, honed on the Prussian parade grounds and Alsatian battlefields, effortlessly cut through the chaos of the argument like shrapnel through a teenaged draftee. For a moment I stared down both men, cowing them into silence with the unspoken weight of my displeasure. The armed members of my security detail looming behind me were an unnecessary afterthought as the two squabblers fell silent, neither able to maintain eye contact with me.


“Nagata,” I said, starting with my old ally and friend. The ex-plumber’s arms immediately snapped to his sides as he stood at attention, the lessons from The School making themselves known. “The Rising Sun never lacks work for idle hands. Kindly take this opportunity to start working on preparing your staff for the next distribution. Handling those matters is your responsibility; I will handle things here.”


For a moment, I saw defiance flicker in my subordinate as his eyes darted to the Notable beside me, almost aglow with simmering rage. Thankfully, that rage wasn’t quite enough to make Nagata forget himself; he took a breath, held it, and let it go. “...Yes, Commander.”


Nishizumi looked like he was going to make a parting crack as Nagata left, but thankfully he caught my quelling look and kept his mouth shut. For now, at least.


“Councilor Nishizumi,” I began again, my voice not nearly as level as I would have liked, “I understand that you have personal business with Nagata, and I understand your commendable dedication to the welfare of your district. However, unless you have evidence that he has actually committed some wrong against you or yours, I insist that you cease making accusations against him.”


Before the inevitable angry rejoinder could come, I continued in a more conciliatory tone. “I won’t ask for an apology, as that seems like a bridge too far. And, if you can actually provide evidence,” I spread my hands, as if I was accepting something from him, “I would be more than happy to see it. I think we can all agree that while we struggle under the boot of Britannian oppression, betraying each other for greed and selfishness is among the most intolerable of crimes.


“And you don’t like Nagata? Fine. He is a valued friend of Naoto’s, but I won’t force everyone to bow and scrape to him just because of his personal connections. We’re not Britannians, after all, desperately trying to pad our fragile egos.” I paused as I gave him an opportunity to respond, levelly meeting his hostile gaze. After the Councilor proved himself wise enough to not take the obvious bait, I continued. “If you have a personal problem with Nagata, that’s between the two of you; I’m not your mother and I won’t force you to kiss and make up.


“But,” I growled, “When you make your personal rivalry my problem? When you waste what precious time I have with your nonsense and petty animosity? When you waste all of our time dragging us out to some warehouse in order to grandstand to a captive audience? Well, now you have entirely exceeded my personal capacity for patience. So, I am telling you now to stop making this my problem. Settle matters between yourselves or get over it. If there is actual theft, bring me evidence that I can use. Solve your problem, or I will solve it for you, and I assure you that you will neither like nor enjoy my solution.”


I paused, looking for any sign of give in Councilor Nishizumi’s deeply tanned and lined face. “Am I understood?”


Councilor Nishizumi’s jaw clenched, and for a moment I thought he would actually take a swing at me. The old sailor loomed over me, glaring down and all but demanding that I submit. I refused to look away or step back, and for a long, silent minute, we teetered on the edge of escalation.


Then, the big man subsided. The old merchantman slipped away and the politician swam forwards to take his place. “Oh, I understand you,” he agreed readily, and for all that his voice was level and his volume approximately normal, his tone was only a small step above a growl.


“I thank you very kindly for your wise advice, Commander.” Nishizumi’s expression was closer to a pained grimace than anything recognizable as a smile. “I can see why young Kozuki entrusted his city to your just rule. So, you want evidence, do you? Fine. That’s fine. I’ll make sure you get all the evidence you could possibly need to see your way clear to giving my people what’s theirs and getting that thieving rat well away from me.”


“If such evidence exists,” I confirmed, nodding slightly but not breaking eye contact for an instant, “I will review it objectively and follow up on it if I find any indications of rule-breaking, hoarding, or embezzlement.”


“Good, good.” The Notable’s reply came out in a horrible almost-crooning sing-song, his smile frozen and immobile on his face as if it had disconnected from the mind behind it. “Of course, I never had any doubts that you’d do any less, Commander.”


“I know exactly what my duties are.” I didn’t bother to keep the snap out of my voice. “I know exactly who and what I fight for. The people of Central Kamiochiai are not forgotten. Nor are their interests. I will not stand for anybody in my organization to impede or misrepresent those interests, just as I will not permit any factional division while we live under the Britannian hammer.”


“Of course you wouldn’t,” Councilor Nishizumi cried out, mocking horror at the very idea. “After all, there’s no way that young Kozuki’s substitute would ever stoop to something so unjust as separate standards or crass nepotism! Certainly not. After all,” he continued, a smirk curdling on his lips, “there’s certainly no way a fine young lady like yourself would ever stoop to something so… Britannian, now is there?”


More posturing followed, but I stubbornly refused to rise to the bait or give the Councilor the satisfaction of knowing any of his barbs had found purchase. I kept my eyes fixed on the tiresome old man’s until his bluster finally subsided, when he gathered his small party and at long last made his exit, all the while making none-too-subtle threats about nebulous “evidence” he would present at the next gathering of the Notables.


I waited until Councilor Nishizumi had left the Rising Sun Meeting House before I called for Nagata.


Despite all of the morning’s efforts, the issue of the Kamiochiai Meeting House and its relations with the local Notable remained open. Between the inspection which had turned up nothing of note and the Councilor’s own words, it was abundantly clear that the question of unfair distributions was a mere pretense for a more personal quarrel, one I hadn’t been aware of before I’d blundered into it. Such, I had found out to my great annoyance, were the ways of politics.


No wonder Naoto had been so eager to shift it all onto my shoulders.


And yet, like it or not, it was my mess to clean up as the only meaningful authority in Shinjuku. I would do my best; to do anything less would be to betray myself and all of the work of my comrades and coworkers. But to resolve this irritation, one among many, I needed to learn where its roots were, so I could rip it out entirely.


As it turned out, they lay in infuriatingly shallow soil.


“He was Ami’s boyfriend when I met her four years ago,” Nagata said, answering my question immediately and without further prompting. “They were together when I met her, and she left him for me.”


“I see.” I nodded, grasping for reasonability. “And there wasn’t any overlap, was there, Nagata? No possible reason why any third party might reasonably conclude that either Ami was cheating on Mister Nishizumi or that you stole her from the man? Assure me that much, please.”


“The relationship was all but over already,” he protested, although I saw guilt flash across his face for an instant. “She was already planning to move out before I even met her! She told me that they were through and she was leaving him, so I went ahead and took my chance!”


“...So that’s why he accused you of theft, is it?” I sighed. “This entire mess, all that shouting, all over some stupid soap opera tier relationship drama?”


“To be fair to Mister Nagata,” Masatsugu put in from where he stood by the only door out of Nagata’s office, on the second floor of the Rising Sun Meeting Hall, “Nishizumi’s a piece of shit. He used to be a sub-boss for the Kokuryu-kai, back in the old days. Once the Purist fuckfaces broke them up he spun his group off into their own gang, the Oni. They were bastards then and they’re still bastards now. I don’t blame Miss Ami for ditching his old ass.”


“I didn’t ask for your input, Masatsugu,” I replied, turning on him. Seeing my bodyguard’s scarred face, a thought occurred to me. “Weren’t you in a gang too, Masatsugu? Who was your boss?”


“You killed him,” he replied with a broad grin. “Well, not you personally, but me and my crew were King’s Men.”


I quickly ran the name through my mind, trying to remember where I’d heard it before. “One of the Kawadacho gangs, right? That was the group who used to control the Refrain trade in Shinjuku, wasn’t it?”


“That’s the one,” he confirmed. “But, well… You know how the big boys used to operate, right? The difference between ‘core’ members and the rest of us, yeah?”


In my mind’s eye two groups of gangsters forced their way into a communal dinner, ready to steal our food and anything else that took their fancy. One group was as well fed as any Japanese in the Ghetto, their hair bleached blonde and sporting shoddy imitations of Britannian fashion. The other group was a pack of wretched-looking men: their clothes were almost as ragged as everybody else’s, and only the scarves wound around their arms and the knives and bats in their hands announced their status as gang members.


“Indeed,” I managed a half-smile at the man. “Well, I appreciate your willingness to work for me now. I am sure that, with your help, the Rising Sun will continue to climb ever higher into the heavens. I appreciate you braving the heat and joining me here for the express purpose of wasting your morning.”


“Yes, Commander!” His salute was full of vigor yet sloppy, a gesture he had seen others do and tried his best to emulate. I had selected him for his current duty based on that keenness, and though he didn’t know it yet, his place in one of the upcoming School cohorts was guaranteed. Keenness aside, the glowing respect and pride I saw in his eyes when he looked at me made me uncomfortable.


I was respected by my companions and friends in the Kozuki Organization, both the old Kozuki Cell members and the men and women I’d trained with at The School. They knew I was a capable individual, and treated me as such. That said, they’d also seen me when I screwed up, when I was weak, when I was vulnerable, and so none of them looked at me with the hero worship I could see glowing in Masatsugu’s eyes.


Except for that one evening when Naoto saw my magic… I shuddered and pushed that memory away. It had been profoundly uncomfortable to see adulation on my leader’s face as he gazed upon the fire in my hand.


I turned away from that uncomfortable reverence, back to the familiar territory represented by Nagata’s stoic face. “Let me know if Nishizumi tries anything, Nagata. I’ll send a unit or two of Sun Guard from other districts, just to help out on some projects in the area, for the next few days. That ought to send a message.”


“As you say, Commander,” Nagata nodded attentively, clearly relieved that I wasn’t delving any further into any potential misdeeds he might have committed against Nishizumi.


I was tempted to tell Nagata to knock it off with the title, that he’d known me when I was Tanya and that he’d more than earned the right to call me by name.


And yet, I thought, I’m not just Hajime Tanya now. I’m Commander Hajime, head of the Shinjuku Rising Sun. Cringing away from that helps nobody, and if embracing the title and authority helps keep other parasites like Nishizumi in their place…


I returned his nod. “Best of luck with next week’s distribution, Nagata.”


---------


Back at the Rising Sun Headquarters, the original Meeting House and distribution center in the Waseda District of central Shinjuku, I had another meeting to attend. Thankfully, it was conducted inside and over lunch, a welcome break from the heat of noon.


“Alright,” I said, pushing the empty rice bowl away and bringing the chatter to an immediate halt, “let’s get started. We’re all quite busy these days and we’ve got a lot to get through, so please keep your reports short. If I want further detail, I’ll schedule a follow-up so everybody else won’t need to hang around.”


My six lunchtime companions nodded in a chorus of bobbing heads. This little assembly consisted of an equal number of skilled experts and picked members of the Sun Guard militia whom I felt had shown enough responsibility to shoulder a few of the tasks I could delegate. Much like the Sun Guard, I had fished the experts from the sea of humanity constrained within Shinjuku’s enclosing walls.


Taken together with the currently absent Inoue and Nagata, they constituted my Leadership Commission.


The first to speak was one of the experts, a scrawny man even by the malnourished standards of Shinjuku by the name of Junji. Before the Conquest, he had worked at the Japan Broadcasting Corporations’ FM radio station servicing the western parts of Tokyo Prefecture as a technician, in charge of maintaining and repairing radio equipment. In recent months, he had become the backbone of our expanding pirate radio network.


“The Gunma Relay is up and functional again, as of yesterday,” Junji said, starting the meeting off on a high note. “Seems like it was just a wiring issue, easy enough to fix that I was able to walk your man there through the process via text. I should warn you,” he continued, his tone dipping as he tried to convey the gravity of the matter, “the parts issue still needs to be addressed. We can only stretch what we have so far.”


When the Rising Sun’s activities had been all but entirely confined to Shinjuku, it had been easy to conceal our communications. We had used burner phones and cryptic word choice to reduce the chances that any Britannian intelligence officer monitoring cell traffic in and near the Ghetto would be able to piece our operations together, but that strategy had relied mostly upon the protective camouflage of a city’s worth of communication obscuring our handful of calls and texts.


Now that the Rising Sun had begun to spread out into the rural areas of central Honshu, spearheaded by Naoto and Souichiro as Ohgi and Tamaki kept an eye on The School, relying on luck and Britannian laziness was no longer acceptable. Cell traffic, routed through Britannian telecom companies and their cell towers, was too risky. Which was when Junji had brought himself to my attention.


The former radio technician had heard that I was looking for new routes of communication and had placed his professional experience at my disposal. Indeed, he had been practically giddy to tell me everything he could about operating a radio network, which unfortunately led to a lengthy lecture heavily laden with technical details that were, broadly speaking, entirely lost on me.


But more importantly, Junji had come through with a connection to some shady Honorary Britannians with unspecified access to a warehouse full of last generation radio equipment, all second-hand from various commercial stations upgrading their equipment to the current models provided by some noble monopoly or another. Thankfully, Junji’s connections had been all too eager to sell whatever outdated surplus equipment we needed at very reasonable rates.


And, after the first shipment had arrived, Junji had set to work with gusto. He had been eager to return to indoor work without any heavy lifting after weeks of helping to pack new insulation into the freshly repaired crawlspaces of various tenements around Shinjuku, although he had been less happy when I told him that his technical expertise had landed him a post on the newly-organized Leadership Commission.


Within weeks, antennas began to appear throughout the Shinjuku Ghetto, each connected to concealed receivers. So far, our crude little network was quite small and almost entirely confined to Shinjuku. Five transmitters, each broadcasting on a different frequency, were scattered around Shinjuku, with the nearest located in a building down the street from the Rising Sun’s headquarters.


More recently, Ohgi had managed to get his own receiver/transmitter established in an abandoned farm near The School. Unfortunately, his gear lacked the range to communicate directly with us, so a team had been dispatched to install a relay in a small shack on the slopes of Sakurayama, just over the Gunma-Saitama border.


“Your concerns are noted,” I replied, nodding to Junji. “Money’s tight, but I’ll reach out to my partner to see if he’s got anything in our price range. Feel free to ask around yourself, by the way. Surely someone’s worked as a janitor in one of the Britannian stations or whatever. If they know about anything easily stolen, bring it to me and I’ll see if it’s feasible.”


Junji nodded and sat down, his report apparently completed.


“I suppose if we can talk to Naoto and Ohgi again, we can pick up the pace of the evacuations?” I turned to the woman next to him, one of the Sun Guard militia officers I’d picked out for special attention. “What are your thoughts on the matter, Lieutenant?”


The title sat uneasily on the shoulders of the recently dubbed Lieutenant Ichiya, who very much lacked any sort of military bearing. And yet, I had dropped that title on her anyway; the Kozuki Organization and its appendages had reached the point where a formalized chain of command was necessary. Even though Naoto, Ohgi, and I were handing the ranks out more or less as a matter of fiat, all three of us had agreed to insist they be respected. So far, nobody had pushed back against the rash of sudden promotions.


This lieutenant in particular had the dubious honor to be the point woman for one of the Rising Sun’s most ambitious projects to date: The steady evacuation of as many people out of Shinjuku Ghetto and the Tokyo Settlement as possible.


“It’ll definitely help, being able to talk to Gunma again,” Lieutenant Ichiya said, belatedly rising to her feet as she realized that everybody else in the room had turned to look at her. “I mean, I guess that’s pretty obvious, but it’ll really make things easier, especially when some people get lost or whatever. Which, you know, happens, especially during the night handoffs.”


Five weeks ago, I had sent out several volunteer units of Sun Guard to establish way stations on the route Naoto and I had agreed upon between Shinjuku and his current location in the mountains north of Takasaki. The way stations traced a line from Asaka just over the Tokyo-Saitama prefectural border to the outskirts of Honjo, just south of Takasaki, and each had hiding spots for two or three trucks and up to one hundred tightly packed people.


Ever since the last way station was finally established - at Ogawa, in Saitama Prefecture, after the original station was discovered and destroyed by the local Honorary Britannian auxiliaries - up to a hundred people every night had slipped out of the Ghetto, following paths through derelict subway tunnels and sewers under the Ghetto walls and out into the surrounding Settlement, where waiting trucks carried them to the first way station.


“Broadly speaking,” Lieutenant Ichiya continued, “things are going about as well as we could reasonably ask for. I mean,” she grimaced, “shit happens. Trucks break down, someone has a heart attack, whatever. But, the important part is, there’s no sign that the Brits have realized anything’s up. The only time we’ve run into anything like a patrol was just a pack of traitors, and they were happy enough to take the money once the driver told ‘em a baron up north had bought the cargo.”


She’s getting better, I thought, noting how the lieutenant’s hands barely shook at the mention of traffickers. Hopefully, she continues along that trajectory. A less jumpy officer would be ideal.


Lieutenant Ichiya had earned her promotion by stepping up from Chihiro’s crowd to take her leader’s place in her absence. Almost as soon as Chihiro had left the Ghetto, I had begun working to reintegrate her free company back into the main Rising Sun organization, starting by giving Ichiya her rank and handing her responsibilities that extended past the several hundred freed slaves who had fallen into Chihiro’s orbit.


Now I nodded at my officer’s report, impassive despite my anger. Not at the lie, but rather because the fact that the local Honorary Britannian police had accepted it implied that it hadn’t been the first time they’d stopped a truck loaded with Japanese. And the drivers probably weren’t lying, most of those other times.


Sometimes, it was very difficult to remember why I had continued to lobby against the general desire to kill any Honorary we could reach. Intellectually, I knew that excising however many percent of the Japanese population who had taken up oaths to the invaders was counter-productive, especially in a theoretical post-independence state, even more so when that percentage represented the bulk of the recently educated population. Emotionally, though…


Remember, I told myself, if you could have taken up the oaths and become an Honorary Britannian, if that path had truly represented a better life with upward mobility, you certainly would be on the other side of that line now.


“Very good,” I said, nodding at the lieutenant. “Keep up the good work. Let me know if you need further resources, besides-” I raised a quelling hand, seeing the words already forming in her mouth, “besides the usual rations and such. Inoue said she found a contact who’d recently come into possession of two shipping containers worth of Britannian Army ration packs, so hopefully that will be handled for the next few weeks, at least.”


Lieutenant Ichiya subsided with a curt nod, and I moved on to the next person waiting. “Miss Tsuchiya, do you have anything to report?”


The teacher gave me a wan smile as she stood to address the room. I’d spoken with the woman a handful of times since we’d first met back in April, the latest of which had been when I had requested her presence on this Commission. All of those conversations had unfortunately been quite stilted and awkward for both of us. Miss Tsuchiya clearly didn’t know quite how to interact with me, someone the age of her students yet a major political figure, and speaking with her always reminded me of things and times I’d rather not think about.


Her invitation to sit in on some of her classes with my age-group peers still hung between us. She had reassured me once that the invitation would always be open, should I choose to accept it, but despite thanking her I had never felt the impulse to go. Frankly, I didn’t know how attending a middle school level class could possibly benefit me, considering the memories I carried of my previous lives’ educational experiences.


And besides, I thought as I smiled encouragingly at the former educator, the head of both the embryonic Shinjuku Educational System and the vocational training program, I have no desire to see the children of Shinjuku, or, rather, the other children of Shinjuku. Life in the Ghetto with all of its daily tragedies is depressing enough without seeing all of those too-old faces. I see that enough in the mirror… Or without seeing those children with their parents… With their mothers.


Just brushing up against that word brought a familiar stinging pain and an upsurge of memories. Despite the time, they were still as sharp as always, as difficult to handle.


It’s like a broken tooth, I considered, or some exposed nerve that I just can’t help probing every now and again. Every time I do so, it hurts, but I just can’t quite leave it alone.


Thankfully, despite my earlier admonition, Miss Tsuchiya seemed in no hurry to speak, so I didn’t miss any of her words with my woolgathering. Perhaps she had been waiting for my focus to return to her, some teacher’s instinct informing her that her intended audience wasn’t quite ready yet to learn, but it was only when she saw my infinitesimal nod that she began.


“The recruitment program is outpacing my expectations,” she began, glancing down at her notes to check her figures. “It seems like my fellow educators are quite eager to return to their professions. As of this week, I have managed to secure the services of sixty-four primary school instructors, thirty-five secondary school educators, and seventeen college-level lecturers with varying specialties. I’ve also managed to find fifty-three early learning and childcare specialists who were willing to help run a kindergarten program as well.


“On the vocational training front,” Miss Tsuchiya flipped to a different page in her notebook and took a second to refresh herself on the figures before looking back up to meet the collective gaze of the room, “it’s been a bit harder going since many of the prospective instructors are otherwise engaged with the construction projects and the like. Still, I managed to find a number of electricians, plumbers, and carpenters willing to teach. I’ve also found a few former nurses who are willing to conduct first aid classes as well.”


“Junji,” I said, turning back to the radio technician, who had been taking the opportunity to make headway into a second helping of beans and rice.


He startled to his feet at the sound of his name, gulping down his mouthful. “Y-yeah?” He got out, licking a few errant grains from his lips to the general amusement of the gathering. “What’s up, Commander?”


“Get in contact with Miss Tsuchiya and get some classes scheduled,” I instructed, ignoring the unprofessional sniggering echoing from certain corners of the room at the radio technician’s expense. “Your skills are too valuable to live solely inside your head. Besides, this way you’ll have other people to foist handling tech support questions off on, not to mention extra hands to help carry the load as the network expands.”


When I’d begun, Junji’d had a distinctly uncooperative expression plastered across his face. At the implication that he’d no longer have to walk unskilled Shinjuku residents turned rural guerrillas through the basics of radio set-up and maintenance, he brightened visibly. Then he paled, as some new and terrible thought dawned on him.


“Wait, but…” I gestured impatiently for him to continue. “Does that mean I’d have to… to teach those classes?”


“Yes,” I said, not entirely without sympathy. “I know, public speaking can be a hassle. But, we all have our sacrifices to make for the Cause.”


He nodded resignedly at that and retook his seat, turning his attention back to his food as I turned my attention back to my very own Minister for Education, if on a tiny scale. “Thank you for your report, Miss Tsuchiya. Please keep up the recruitment efforts. Have you had any success finding usable textbooks in Japanese?”


“Not much,” she admitted, before adding “but I’m still looking, Miss- I mean, Commander Hajime. I’m sure I’ll turn something up eventually. They… They can’t have burnt everything.” Her mouth tightened. “I hope…”


In my mind, Naruko Tenjin Shrine burned again, the last place of worship in Shinjuku gone up in flames as the last doddering priest of the Kami bled out in a gutter two streets away.


They certainly could have, I thought, seeing a similar awareness writ across Miss Tsuchiya’s face, after all, mere Numbers have no need of culture and less need of books and educational materials. And besides, even if the Britannians hadn’t burnt every remnant of Japan in their reach, who would prioritize keeping books safe and dry over six years’ worth of flooding, fire, and rot? Especially when even wood for cooking fuel was so scarce…


“I’m sure you’ll find something eventually,” I said, deciding to outwardly buy into the optimistic dream of some hidden cache of Japanese literature waiting to be rediscovered in the Ghetto, “and I’ll pass a message to Naoto, asking him to keep his eyes peeled for any books he might find out in the rural villages. In the meantime, why don’t you set those professors you dug up to the work of putting something together for use until more books are found?”


The look on Miss Tsuchiya’s face was almost pathetically grateful, and I didn’t know if it came from the understanding and support I’d extended, or if it was because I hadn’t brought the cruel hammer of reality down on her head. Either way, she humbly ducked her head and thanked me before sitting back down.


As with seemingly every interaction I had with the woman, I felt wretched immediately afterwards. Ohgi should have been here; he was a teacher as well and could speak to Miss Tsuchiya as a peer, without all these... complications.


It wasn’t that Miss Tsuchiya was unpleasant, or that I found speaking with her a burden, as much as it was that I had difficulty handling what she represented. With her teachers rested the last hope of saving some part of our fading and torn culture, to preserve what it was to be Japanese in the minds of the young. The hope that the people of Shinjuku would have a future beyond a life of hard work and drudgery, a future that extended past walls pocked with bullet holes, a future where people would have the time and freedom to sit and read, to learn, to develop new ideas that weren’t chiefly concerned with guaranteeing that tomorrow would come.


Sometimes, it was very difficult indeed, to keep that hope alive. The hollows under Miss Tsuchiya’s eyes were a wordless testament to her own private troubles and worries. In her obvious gratitude for even the crumbs of support I could offer, I could plainly see how tenuous her own hopes for the future were.


Pointedly turning my face away from Miss Tsuchiya, I moved on to the first figure seated on the other side of the table.


Asahara Hiyashi was just as I remembered him from our first meeting, in the waning days of last November. The engineer looked like a man from a different world, or perhaps a different time. In his fifties, he was at least ten years older than anybody else in attendance, and his smug, almost haughty expression betrayed no concession to six years of hard living in Shinjuku, nor the loss of the lower half of his left leg. For all that his crutches rested against the wall behind him, his neat button-up shirt and slightly stained tie made it look like he had just stepped out of some pre-Conquest office to join our meeting.


“Mister Hiyashi,” I began, my tone coolly respectful, “how are your projects progressing? Anything to report?”


“Nothing worth my time,” he grumped. “Nothing particularly difficult to manage, except in terms of scale and the need to explain every last thing to the work crews.”


“But you are still making progress despite that impediment, I hope?” I knew the answer already; the stench of new asphalt hung over the length and breadth of Shinjuku like morning fog. Every entrance to old subway tunnels was a hive of activity, and buildings with particularly spacious basements were hubs for foot traffic in and out.


“Yes, yes,” Mister Asahara replied, his wave impatient. “Things are well in hand. Just over half of the old subway tunnels are navigable now, and those should be sealed against the worst of the wet for when the rain comes back. As for the air raid bunkers, we crossed four hundred of them yesterday. Keep in mind, though, that they won’t do a thing against a direct hit.”


“Noted,” I replied in the same desultory tone as he’d spoken in. “We just need places where noncombatants can hide, not a bunker fit for the Prime Minister, if we still had one. How are the nest installations going?”


The “nests” fell into two broad categories, but both referred to specifically strengthened and fortified rooms in the many cadaverous, unevenly canting buildings across the Shinjuku skyline. The nests at or just above street level had been reinforced with concrete slabs and piles of sandbags; if the Britannians pushed into Shinjuku in earnest, each would be manned by Sun Guard or Kozuki Organization rifle units. If I could get crew-served weapons out of the Six Houses, some of those low-altitude strongpoints would become machine-gun nests.


The high-altitude nests were comparatively skimpy, just rooms that had been lined with thermal blankets to baffle the infrared scanners built into Knightmare FactSpheres, with heaps of sandbags at the windows to provide some additional cover for those inside. These locations would, if necessary, become the haunt of smaller kill teams equipped with long-range scoped rifles and any shoulder-launched anti-armor or anti-air weapons I could shake loose from Kyoto’s pockets.


“They’re fine,” Mister Asahara replied shortly. “They’re completely useless at the moment, since you don’t have anything to put in them and your militia are too amateurish to be effective, but at least hauling sandbags up twenty flights of stairs gives the men who aren’t doing anything productive something to do.”


That comment earned a round of angry muttering from the three militia officers present, but a quick glare at the trio brought them back to grudging silence.


“Thank you for your insight, Mister Asahara,” I said, not letting an iota of sarcasm reach my voice. “Now, about the special project…?”


“All handled, don’t worry about it.” For the first time at this meeting, a smile flickered across Mister Asahara’s face. “Anybody stupid enough to pilot a Sutherland in is gonna get what’s coming to them, assuming your boys aren’t asleep on the switch.” For a moment, the old engineer looked almost wistful. “It’s been fun, doing something that actually has a bit of scale for a change. After fiddling with pressure cookers and pipe bombs for years, it’s a nice return to form.”


And what, I wondered, was that form you so clearly long for, if building wire-detonated anti-vehicle mines and carefully setting them in recesses in the roadbed below the fresh pavement represents a return to it?


I didn’t vocalize that question, partially because I knew I wouldn’t get a straight answer, and partially because I could tell he was desperate for someone to ask so he could pointedly not answer.


Damned drama queen.


“I rejoice for you,” I replied, my dry response in lieu of asking the baited question. “Anything else to report?”


“Not in regards to the work,” Mister Asahara replied, elegantly moving on from the unasked question and almost managing to fully conceal the quick flash of disappointment. “But, I do have something else I need to speak to you about. Preferably, alone.”


And there’s my post-meeting appointment, I suppose.


I nodded my assent to his request, and the one-legged engineer relaxed back into his chair. “Nothing further, Commander.”


Ignoring his smirk at my title, I nodded at the militia officer sitting next to Asahara, a lanky specimen with closely cropped hair and a face disfigured by a long, ropy scar that slashed a line from the center of his forehead down along the bridge of his nose and across his lips, terminating at the chin. Even ignoring the badly healed cut that divided his features into two, his face was particularly spare, as if someone had boiled all the fat away from under the skin. Perhaps that had been a further result of his disfiguring injury, some fever melting away at him from the inside.


Without further prompting, Lieutenant Koichi stood. Unlike Lieutenant Ichiya, the man didn’t seem to find his new rank discomforting in the slightest, standing easily in a position approximating parade rest. “Commander,” he acknowledged, lowering his head slightly in a suggestion of a bow. “Nothing extraordinary to report. Of course, should you wish further detail…” His voice trailed off suggestively, hinting at a wealth of data at my disposal.


Very comfortable with his new standing indeed, I mused, meeting Koichi’s eyes. For all that his injury left his face nearly immobile, his eyes were lively, expressive and thoughtful. Perhaps a bit too comfortable, now that I think about it.


Lieutenant Koichi’s special unit of Sun Guard drew from the militia units of several different districts, but most came from the areas of Shinjuku with the longest history with the Rising Sun. In fact, some of his men and women came from the same tenement I’d lived in with Naoto and Ohgi. Many of them had previously assisted Naoto with his “special work”, the details of which had only been made clear to me after Naoto had left for the country.


While the newly formed special unit had the same hachimaki tied around their foreheads as all other Sun Guard units, they also wore navy blue sashes over whatever else they happened to be wearing, setting themselves apart from their comrades. Initially, I had planned to institute an armband, but changed my mind when I remembered that the common way to display gang loyalty had been scarves of the gang’s colors tied around the bicep.


Considering the work the special unit, the Internal Affairs Force, would be handling, anything that spoke of gangsterism had to be avoided to the greatest extent possible.


Especially since the IAF, with the most loyal of the various Sun Guard units in its ranks, is the closest thing Shinjuku has to a police force now. I tried not to frown at the thought. And yet, thief-taking is only their secondary duty. Their main job is to make sure that all of the mutterings don’t turn into action. For that, if for no other reason, Lieutenant Koichi is well placed to act as their chief.


“Let’s schedule a meeting for tomorrow,” I replied, mentally penciling the appointment into my schedule. “We can go over your details in greater length then, without detaining everybody else present.”


The intact corner of Koichi’s mouth flicked up at that, amused by my choice of words. “As you like it, Commander,” the policeman nodded, settling back down into his chair. “Just let me know where and when.”


“I will,” I assured him, before moving my gaze to the last member of the Commission in attendance. “Lieutenant Fumiaki, what news do you have from the missions to Ibaraki and Kanagawa?”


“A mixed bag, Commander.”


Lieutenant Fumiaki was another of the seemingly endless crowd of hardworking men who populated the Ghetto, all callused hands and careworn faces. Unlike most of those hard workers, however, and unlike everybody else in the room with the exception of myself, Lieutenant Fumiaki, also known as Jo-on, was a hafu. Born to a Korean father and a Japanese mother, the lieutenant had the good fortune to look almost entirely Japanese, something that I could have resented him for if it wasn’t for his easy charm and eternally buoyant personality.


“We’ve been hearing daily reports back from Yoshi and the boys you sent to Ibaraki,” he continued, correcting himself by hastily adding “Captain Yoshi, sorry. But,” he continued, “communication with Yokohama’s been decidedly more spotty. I don’t think we’ve heard from Lieutenant Chihiro in at least four days or so. And even before that, we hardly heard at all from her and her lot.”


Well, that has the potential to be quite worrying.


It was difficult to decide what was more likely, that Chihiro had encountered some enemy action or adverse accident that had destroyed her capability to communicate with us via any one of the number of burner phones she’d left Shinjuku with, or if she had simply pitched another temper tantrum. Either way, it was bad news. While I cared little for Chihiro or her welfare, I had sent two of her more vocal allies along with her, and as their leader, I had a duty towards them.


That said, there’s only so much I can do from Shinjuku. I have neither the time nor the freedom to take a day trip down to Yokohama.


I do have the freedom to send someone in my stead, however.


“Someone, find a trustworthy messenger,” I said, scribbling a quick note to Inoue on my notepad to entrust one of our portable receivers to the bearer of the note, “someone who knows how to drive. Tell them to pick up a radio and whatever they need and get out of Shinjuku. Once they’re out, they’re to steal a car and head south, but be careful! The Britannians mustn’t know. Ask Inoue for where she thinks Chihiro set up. If they can’t find the lieutenant in a day or three, they’re to turn around and head back home.”


Lieutenant Ichiya all but snatched the note from my hand and hustled her way out of the room. Considering her personal connection to Chihiro, I was unsurpised that she volunteered for the duty.


Hopefully she doesn’t add a secondary message of her own. The thought was reflexive paranoia. Even if Ichiya was keeping Chihiro privately updated, it didn’t particularly matter. Not yet, at least.


Either way, the matter was settled for now. Putting the issue out of my mind, I turned back to Lieutenant Fumiaki with a polite smile. “So, what does Captain Yoshi have to say for himself? Is he enjoying the fresh salt air?”


“This time of year?” Lieutenant Fumiaki asked with a smile. “I know I sure would, Commander! Beats the Tokyo heat, hands down. But,” he said, sobering back up, “it sounds like he’s made some further progress since his last update. While he’s not exactly been heavy on the details for obvious reasons, he wanted you to know that the ‘fish are in the sea,’ if that means anything.”


Indeed it does, I thought, allowing a smile. It means that Yoshi’s made excellent progress indeed.


I had sent Yoshi and his squad of trained Kozuki Organization soldiers to Ibaraki accompanied by two squads of Rising Sun men for two reasons, three if I included Naoto’s claim that seeking the blessings of the gods enshrined on the coast would bring us good fortune. The first reason was to set up a subsidiary Rising Sun branch in the prefecture north of Chiba and to recruit more soldiers for our cause among the fishing villages and harbor towns there. The second reason was to seek out and contact the smugglers operating out of those same coastal settlements.


The phrase ‘fish are in the sea’ meant that he’d finally come to an agreement with at least one smuggling crew that he felt was reliable enough to be good business partners. Based on his previous reports, the crew in question was probably connected with one of the numerous Triads who worked hand in glove with the Chinese government.


The Chinese represented a sea of opportunities matched only by the net of practically inevitable entanglements those opportunities came with. And like the sea, Chinese politics represented an almost entirely unseen depth of unknown dangers and cold secrets. To say I was hesitant about forming even tentative connections with the Chinese would be an understatement; for all that the remnants of the Republic of Japan’s government had fled to the Chinese Federation and formed a government-in-exile, I was under no illusion that the Chinese would be any more kind to us than the Britannians.


On the other hand, if I’m already willing to go to bed with collaborators, why not foreign powers as well?


“That’s good news indeed, Lieutenant,” I said aloud, nodding at Lieutenant Fumiaki and fully aware of how Lieutenant Koichi was staring fixedly at my face, clearly trying to suss out whatever clues he could about the Ibaraki Operation. It was outside his brief and so he had no real need to know, but that he was curious nonetheless was obvious. “If there isn’t anything else?”


“No, Commander.” With that, Lieutenant Fumiaki dropped back down into his seat, pulling the remains of his lunch back towards him. A practical man, he clearly had no intention of letting anything in his bowl go to waste.


“Well, on that high note,” I rose from my chair, painfully aware that I was the shortest person in the room as I stood at the head of the table and yet remained shorter than everybody else there except for Miss Tsuchiya, “thank you all for attending this meeting. I appreciate all of the hard work you put into your responsibilities, and I expect nothing less than that level of dedication moving forwards. You are all free to go, although I believe you had something we needed to discuss, Mister Asahara?”


Recognizing their cue to leave, the other four men and women said their goodbyes and made their way out of the private room on the second floor of the Rising Sun Headquarters. After Lieutenant Koichi - predictably the last to leave - closed the door behind himself, I turned back to the engineer again, waiting to hear whatever it was he had that required privacy.


“You’ll be having a visitor soon,” said Mister Asahara, his tone brisk and matter-of-fact, stripped of his usual condescension. “In fact,” he continued as he checked his watch, “you can probably expect her to show up at the Yotsuya Gate in thirty minutes.”


“Right,” I said, scanning his face for any subtext that I had overlooked, any nonverbal hints. There was nothing but the usual scowl. “So, let’s skip ahead a bit in this conversation and assume that we’ve done the usual polite conversational dance. I assume that the need for privacy is because you are announcing this guest not as a local engineering expert, but rather because you are the agent of Kyoto House placed closest to me?”


“I wouldn’t know about that,” he demurred, “but you are correct in the basics, Commander Hajime. Your business partners back in the Old Capital requested that I bring this to your personal attention, in large part because you will be held directly responsible for any misfortune your guest might come to.”


Damn that pack of old geezers! Why would they send someone they didn’t consider expendable to a place like Shinjuku? They might as well have sent their precious and uninvited guest into the heart of Niigata! In fact, I snarled to myself, keeping my face as stoically blank as I could manage, sending some hapless old fool into Niigata might have been safer, now that the Purists have broken the spine of the popular uprising!


Wait… An uninvited guest… That could be my way out!


“I don’t accept that responsibility,” I said, speaking just as bluntly as Asahara had when he’d leveled Kyoto’s latest threat. “I did not invite the Six Houses to send an emissary, nor did they send adequate warning for me to even consider guaranteeing security. Besides, we in Shinjuku have precious little, as you well know, Mister Asahara, far too little to provide hospitality to any visiting guest from Kyoto.”


“Don’t bother trying to convince me,” came the unfortunately unsurprising response. “I’m just the messenger; I have absolutely no say in the Houses or their doings. I’m not asking you if you’re willing to accept a guest. I’m telling you that a guest is going to show up on your doorstep any minute now, and if anything happens to her, it’ll be on your head.”


At least he has the grace to not make any pretense of an apology, I thought with an internal grimace. Still, I suppose this isn’t much different than the worthless president of some company demanding a job for his worthless nephew. In fact, if any of Kyoto’s ilk existed back in the Japan of my first life, I would bet anything that they made exactly that sort of demand on a regular basis.


“Fine,” I sighed, giving in to the inevitable with bad grace. “So, I’ve got a guest. Who is he, what does he look like, and how long is he going to be around? Should I set aside a toothbrush for him as well, or was he able to find a place in his bags for his own?”


Suddenly, the image of a fat old man dressed in Britannian finery striding through Shinjuku popped into my mind, followed shortly by the likely reaction of the locals to the appearance of such a fool in their midst.


“Wait,” I said, speaking up just in time to cut off Mister Asahara’s reply, “please, please Hiyashi, tell me that this idiot guest of mine brought their own security. Tell me that they didn’t just walk through the Settlement alone and unarmed, and are even now flashing a large amount of cash in front of the very buyable guards posted at the gate’s checkpoint.”


“I could tell you exactly that,” said Mister Asahara, visibly amused, to my great annoyance, which clearly only amused him still more. “And indeed I will. Your guest has their own security, Commander, and the security will handle the gate negotiations. As for the rest, though?”


Asahara’s lips quirked up into a smile under his salt-and-pepper mustache. “Send one of your fine lieutenants with an honor guard to the gate, Commander. You don’t need any other answer from me; I don’t know what your guest wants or how long they will be here, but I do know that there’s absolutely no way your militia will mistake her for anybody else.”


An angry retort died stillborn on my tongue as I picked up on the subtle emphasis the engineer had placed on that last pronoun. “Her?”


---------


Tea had been procured from somewhere, and likewise a variety of cookies and sweets. The second-hand tea service now sat in pride of place in the center of the same table I’d conducted my recent meeting around, clean enough to shine despite the numerous chips missing from the pot and mis-matched saucers alike.


And now that those minor details had been handled, I had nothing else to distract myself from the nervous energy coursing through me.


Impatiently, I rose to my feet and paced another lap around the room for the fourth time in the last ten minutes, checking my watch as I circled back around behind my chair. Assuming nobody was running late, Lieutenant Koichi and his detachment of picked men from the Internal Affairs Force should be meeting the emissary from Kyoto on our side of the Yotsuya Gate at any minute.


My handheld radio remained stubbornly silent, though, as it had for the last ten minutes since Koichi had relayed the news that he’d taken up a waiting position a block away from the checkpoint.


Why am I wasting my time like this? More to the point, why am I letting myself get so worked up over this?


It was a reasonable question. In my first life, I’d gone into meetings with senior vice presidents and directors free from worry, confident in myself and my place. In my second life, the periodic encounters with the likes of General Zettour had been undeniably stressful, but that stress had stemmed from the awareness that they could order me to the Front or to a prison cell at any moment. While this new stranger from Kyoto undeniably had power over me, it couldn’t match the same level of authority wielded by the Empire’s generals.


And yet, while I am undeniably stressed, I am not afraid… I paused, another lap around the meeting room behind me, and pursued the thought deeper. No, I don’t fear this emissary from the fence riders in Kyoto. She can make any threat she likes, and in doing so will just undermine her position and that of her organization as reliable business partners. No, it isn’t fear…


It was, I realized after a further moment of contemplation, anxiety. While that sensation was a close cousin to fear, it wasn’t quite the same. I didn’t fear angering my unasked-for guest. The prospect of miscarrying my first interaction with a member of the secret cabal’s ranks, of appearing like some foolish, out-of-her-depth child in front of this potentate…


At the mere thought, I wiped my suddenly sweaty palms dry on my pants.


You are worrying about nothing, I scolded myself. You are just engaged in pointless, self-sabotaging behavior. You have negotiated with the Six Houses before and achieved your goals.


…But that was back before Naoto left.


And that was the heart of the matter. Somewhere along the way, I had made an undeniable mistake, and that mistake had continued to tumble down on my head as I made blunder after blunder. The interaction with Councilor Nishizumi this morning would have been unthinkable, were Naoto here; not unthinkable that a politician would use his power to pursue petty grievances, but unthinkable because the noble’s son would have soothed the man weeks ago with a disarming comment and some personal mediation between the Notable and Nagata.


In contrast, my own efforts had been crude, and while I had successfully punted the confrontation off for another week or so, I was under no illusion that I’d heard the last from Councilor Nishizumi. Making matters worse, that confrontation hadn’t happened in a void. I had staggered forwards for the last six weeks, doing my best to hold things together and fully aware that the current state of affairs could only last for so long.


This wasn’t supposed to be my job! The wail sounded pathetic, even inside my own head. Naoto was supposed to be the political leader while Oghi handled the minutiae of internal affairs and administration!


Unfortunately, the triumvirate I had worked out with Naoto and Oghi had of late, for a number of reasons, begun to come apart at the seams.


While my conversations with Ohgi had been short and stilted of late, that had been a function of the radio we were speaking through. Despite the heavy buzz of the static and the constant “overs”, the former teacher was always a joy to speak with, cordial and supportive and willing to listen as I complained about the Council or the other hundred headaches that came from running Shinjuku.


We had fallen into a bit of a routine of trying to find some item of good news we could exchange with the other during each of our conversations. He had been overjoyed to hear that I had reached out to Miss Tsuchiya and never failed to ask how the plans to re-establish the educational system in Shinjuku were progressing. In return, he had passed on the news of how he had prevailed upon Major Onoda to requisition a mortar and sufficient ammunition for training purposes at The School.


Despite this, there was only so much Oghi could really do to help me. He could advise me on particular matters, what benefits modifying some internal policy might secure or how to best satisfy some stubborn faction’s demand, but he couldn’t teach me his skills as a mediator and trusted voice. Not for lack of trying, but the radio and our busy schedules made such lessons impractical. Besides, he’d been away from Shinjuku for long enough that his grasp on the local politics and personalities had slipped.


With Naoto, the conversations had been equally stilted yet entirely free of the easy comfort I felt with Oghi. Naoto was cool and businesslike, his tone clearly audible even over the radio interference. Ohgi called me Tanya; Naoto referred to me as Commander Hajime. He didn’t protest when I referred to him by name, but he never reciprocated.


The reason for the new reserve between us was the furthest thing from a mystery, even though we never addressed it directly. We never spoke about Kallen. She hung heavily in the conversational air between us, her presence glaring in its absence.


Kozuki Naoto, twelve years older than his baby sister, had always been Kallen’s steadfast protector and had always done whatever he could to keep her from harm. I’d overridden him once before on that matter when I had sent Kallen into Shinjuku-gyoemmae Station. He had barely accepted that brief and one-sided engagement. It had only been in the face of my reason and Kallen’s fervent passion that he had caved at all, and even then it had been the one time Naoto had ever threatened me.


And now, I had thrown Kallen into a prolonged deep cover project, seemingly on an impulse, without even consulting him. While I had explained my logic after the fact, once he and his mother Hitomi were well on their way to Gunma, the leader of the Kozuki Organization had acknowledged the logic of my choice over his phone, not bothering to conceal the icy anger he clearly felt. Hitomi had refused to speak with me.


Thankfully, Naoto was enough of a professional to remain in contact, updating me about the progress he had made in establishing hidden enclaves and refuges for the fleeing people of Shinjuku throughout Gunma, Tochigi, and Fukushima. He passed on word of the setbacks he experienced, of the villages discovered by patrolling Honorary Britannians, of the vanloads of refugees ambushed by bandits, of the difficulties of making farmers from ghettoized city dwellers. He accepted my condolences with cool politeness and my advice with demure disinterest.


I had passed on word of my troubles in Shinjuku to him as well, albeit just the bare facts of the matter, stripped of emotion. Naoto had been receptive to my worries, but it had felt like I was speaking to a mere coworker; his suggestions had been vague and half-hearted, his expressions of solidarity mere platitudes.


I worried that I had permanently damaged our relationship.


But it was still the right call to make, I told myself. A chance to infiltrate an agent into a cadre of Knightmare pilots in training would have been difficult to pass up, but a chance to infiltrate an agent into a cadre of Knightmare pilots in training who were also being groomed for leadership was impossible to ignore. Once she returns to us, Kallen will be a precious resource of institutional knowledge and skills, stolen from the classrooms of the strongest military in the world!


And, a colder part of my mind, a segment shaped by cutthroat office politics and sharpened by the dispassionate calculus of the War College, remarked, If all it cost to acquire that edge was a single personal relationship, then I secured a true bargain, cheap at that cost.


Even if the cost is Kallen’s life or the lives of a hundred Kallens… It would still be cheap.


Even though the part of me that had stood watch on the Rhine and had calmly watched Arene burn knew that statement to be true, another part of my mind recoiled against it. It was the part of my mind that had reeled in numb horror when Manabu and Sumire had died, the same part that had mourned the slaves killed in the crossfire back at the club in Shinjuku. The same part of me that had admitted that the members of the Kozuki Cell were my friends in truth, not just useful tools.


Everything had been so simple, back then, I thought, ludicrously nostalgic for the time when I had been near starvation, where seemingly any problem could be resolved with my knife and adequate creativity. Hard, yes, but simple. Fight against the gangs, make new connections, scrounge for food and money and weapons…


Besides, I reminded myself, you knew getting Britannian-trained Japanese soldiers for the Cause would be a fraught business. Sacrifices would have to be made for such momentous gains, that much was never in doubt.


Admittedly, I conceded to myself, I had expected to recruit from the members of the Honorary Britannian Legions, who would recognize their true loyalties and bring their training with them when they crossed the line. I hadn’t anticipated ordering anybody into Britannian service.


A knock at the door returned me to the present. “Commander,” came Lieutenant Koichi’s voice, “are you ready? Your guest is here.”


“Yes,” I replied, internally marveling at how steady my voice was, the anxiety of minutes before dropping away as if it had never been there at all. “Come in, please, Lieutenant. Don’t keep our guest waiting.”


One of the lieutenant’s detachment was the first man through the door, his spotless sash incongruous over his battered and much mended gray t-shirt, a Britannian rifle slung over his shoulder. As he stepped into the meeting room, he turned on his heel with an almost military flair and took up a position by the wall, as smoothly as if he’d practiced that move for a week.


Which, considering how worryingly passionate Lieutenant Koichi is about his newly awarded rank and duties, he might very well have.


The next man through the door was what the Britannian-aping gangsters of the Eleven Lords and the Kokuryu-kai had wanted to be. He wore a tailored suit with a matched tie and pocket square, both in a tasteful mahogany, and only his Japanese features and association with Kyoto House betrayed his Honorary Britannian status. A bulge under his jacket, flattered into near invisibility by clever adjustments to the suit, hinted at a concealed pistol. Following the Internal Affairs Force man, he took up a position by the wall on the opposite side of the door.


An impressive choice of guard, I thought appreciatively, noting the economy of motion and the way the man’s eyes roamed over the room, searching for hidden threats and ways of ingress with a professional’s detachment. I had briefly wondered if Kyoto was really treating this meeting with the gravity Mister Asahara had implied, but the obvious quality of the guard put such thoughts to rest. Anybody they sent this man to watch over is clearly someone of value, someone who can make decisions or can speak directly with those who do.


And then a girl only a few years older than me all but skipped through the door, utterly incongruous compared with the two men who had preceded her. I closed my eyes, but when I opened them, she was still there, neat as a pin in her tweed two-piece suit and smiling at me.


For a moment, I wondered if I’d suffered some sort of mental break. Ah, I thought, my face cracking into a wry smile to answer the girl’s own radiant expression, so this is how it feels to be on the other end of the introductions. I’ve always wondered if it was really that shocking to see a young girl in a leadership role, and, now that I’ve seen it from the other side of the table, I suppose I have my answer.


Then, I remembered how it had felt to always be greeted with incredulity, astonishment, and all too often, a surprising degree of hostility. In my second life, it had been a continued source of private irritation to me, that no matter what I accomplished and no matter what respect my deeds might garner, so few of my fellow Imperial officers would take me seriously in face-to-face meetings.


Looking closer at the girl, apparently Kyoto’s emissary since all I could see behind her were a second suited security man and Lieutenant Koichi, I could see signs of a similar concealed frustration. For all that the energy behind her smile seemed sincere, the expression itself was an unnatural thing, fixed and carefully practiced.


It’s her chosen armor, I realized, just like how my past insistence on Imperial professionalism was mine. Only, for all that my age and gender made me a vulnerable target, my undeniable power as a mage and War College credentials gave me tools to push back instead of just holding the line via personal presentation. That damnable Silver Wings Assault Badge helped too.


“Welcome to Shinjuku,” I said, bowing over the table between me and the visitor in greeting. “On behalf of the Rising Sun, I sincerely hope that you had a safe and easy journey here.”


“It is good to be here,” came the reply, and for a moment, I was back in my first life, visiting the Old Capital in all of its ancient majesty. The Kyoto Dialect, slower than Standard Japanese, harkened back to a different time and a different Japan, just like the city itself did. I hadn’t heard anyone use it in my time in Shinjuku, except perhaps for the call with the Kyoto bigwig.


It was a relic of a past world, a Japan from before the Republic, never mind the Conquest.


“Yes,” she continued, and I realized that she had approached the table without my notice, resting her hands over the back of the nearest chair, “it is indeed good to be here. I have been eagerly awaiting the chance to meet you, Commander Hajime. Although, would you take offense if I called you Miss Tanya? At least,” she giggled, “when it is only us girls talking.”


The moment dragged on for just a bit too long, and I suddenly realized that it was my turn to speak.


Focus, dammit! You’re fucking it up again!


“Excuse me, but,” I coughed, gesturing at the three men lining the walls, and Lieutenant Koichi where he stood in front of the door to the room, “just us girls is a bit of a stretch, wouldn’t you say? But, I’m not one to stand on ceremony. If you want to call me by name, I don’t have any problem with that…?”


I trailed off, leaving the meaningful silence hanging, waiting for her to offer me a name. It would be a false name, almost certainly, as the Six Houses were secretive by necessity and by nature, and I doubted any of their higher-ranking members would give out such information freely, no matter how young they were. Still, I needed something to call this envoy, and I didn’t want to accidentally cause offense by simply assigning her a name.


“Lady Sophie,” the girl promptly replied in Britannian. Despite the fact that her pronunciation of the language was perfect, almost as if she were a native speaker of the tongue of our overlords, it still sounded like an abomination after the smooth tones of her Kyoto-ben. “But,” she continued in our language, “you can call me Kaguya, though! Or Lady Kaguya if you really must. The last name is not important.”


“...Charmed,” I said, gesturing for her to take a seat as my mind whirled. “Lady Kaguya, would you please join me for some light refreshments? I’m certain it won’t live up to your standards, but some tea’s always nice after a journey, no matter how safe and easy it was, yes?”


“Ooh, please!” Kaguya clapped her hands, her expression abruptly joyful as she slid into her seat. “Here’s a real Six Houses secret, Miss Tanya,” Kaguya, smiling slyly, said as her guards tensed. “I have a really huge sweet tooth! Whatcha got, huh?”


I blinked, trying to keep up with the sudden hairpin turns in Kaguya’s presentation. First the shift from Kyoto Dialect straight to Britannian, and now her high diction was abruptly abandoned in favor of a speech pattern that wouldn’t have sounded unnatural among the attendees of Miss Tsuchiya’s classes, all refinement vanishing. As I pushed the tray of sweets over towards Kaguya, I noticed her guards relaxing now that her so-called “secret” had been revealed.


The fact that they tensed up at all over any such revelation is an interesting hint, I considered as Kaguya devoured a third of a cookie in a single ambitious bite. Clearly, even though Kaguya is important, she isn’t the only person these men report to. Equally clearly, someone else gave them orders to intercede if Kaguya crossed certain lines. Interesting indeed.


“So,” I began, trying to take some level of control over the conversation back, “I have no wish to seem ungrateful for your company, Lady Kaguya, but I am very surprised by your presence here. Not that you are unwelcome here in any way,” I quickly added, “but I am accustomed to dealing with your organization through intermediaries and interlocutors.”


“These are some good sweets, Tanya,” Kaguya replied, thankfully after swallowing her current bite. “I’ll have to remember to send you some yatsuhashi once I get back home in thanks!”


“I… would certainly appreciate it,” I said, speaking slowly as I poured over her words, searching for a hidden meaning that I suspected wasn’t there at all. “I haven’t had yatsuhashi in quite a long time.”


Not since my first life, in fact, when someone gave me a box as a souvenir gift.


“Don’t tell Lord Taizo or Lady Annabeth,” Kaguya stage-whispered, leaning in over the table like some conspirator in a play, “but I don’t really like them very much. I know they’re traditional and all, but they’re just not sweet enough to really scratch the itch, you know? Now, these,” she hefted a store-bought chocolate chip cookie, taken from the supplies Inoue bought to distribute among the take-home boxes for families with children, “are really good! Do you have more?”


“...Yes,” I replied, trying to match the two names to anybody I remembered from the news, or from Diethard’s reports. Neither rang any bells. “I’m sure we can find some more for you to take home with you if you so choose.”


“Yay!” Kaguya cheered, reaching for another cookie. “Seriously, Miss Tanya, you’ve got no idea! It’s always ‘look out for your weight, Kaguya,’ or ‘it’s not ladylike to eat cookies, Kaguya’ or something! You’re a real lifesaver!”


“I am, of course, happy to be of service to the Six Houses,” I replied politely, trying to figure out what the point of this baffling visit was. Certainly, it wasn’t just to eat cookies. Surely someone of the young lady’s status and wealth could go to a Britannian store and buy her own if she was so hungry for the damned things, instead of scarfing down the limited quantity we had expended scarce resources to purchase. “Perhaps if you explain more about what brings you to Shinjuku today, I could be of even greater service?”


“Ah…” And suddenly, Kaguya’s eyes had turned unaccountably shifty. “Well, there were several items of business I needed to handle in the Tokyo Settlement, you see, and since I’d be in the area…”


“...You decided to drop by for a social visit?” I asked, finishing my visitor’s explanation for her as it trailed off into silence.


“Absolutely!” And suddenly Kaguya was all smiles again, nodding in energetic affirmation for a moment before catching herself. “I mean,” she said, starting again, “recently, there has been much discussion about the Rising Sun Benevolent Association and its sister organization. As I was in the Tokyo Settlement already, I felt I could improve my understanding of the situation with a private fact-finding trip of my own.” And then, the smile was back. “Surely you don’t mind, Miss Tanya!”


“Not at all,” I replied, the smile tight against my face. “I am, of course, eager to assist the Six Houses in any way possible. After all, we both strive towards a common Cause, don’t we?”


What a disappointment. It’s highly unlikely that this Kaguya has any real responsibilities or input on Kyoto House’s policy if she’s got sufficient freedom and time to swan off to Shinjuku on a whim. Even a treacherous conspiracy apparently has deadweight members. Still, even though impressing or pleasing her will likely gain me nothing, angering her could still shift the Six House’s general estimation of the Kozuki Organization unfavorably.


“In that case,” I said, falling back on old memories from my first life about how to handle important pain-in-the-ass clients, “would you like a tour of Shinjuku? I can’t say that we have a great deal worth seeing, and certainly nothing that could compare to your own lovely city, but if I can assist your fact-finding trip, I would be happy to guide you myself.”


This time, all four of the men lining the walls shifted uneasily, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for their obvious distress. The last thing the Kyoto House personnel wanted was for their principal to just go strolling through the crowded streets of Shinjuku along an unsecured route; it was a security nightmare, especially considering the number of weapons and people accustomed to violence contained within the Ghetto’s walls. For the Internal Affairs Force men, I was sure they were both concerned about my personal security and leery of allowing outsiders to poke and pry into our efforts to rebuild Shinjuku as a fortress.


I crushed that sympathetic impulse relentlessly. Impressing Kaguya is of tantamount importance; the only thing more important is keeping her safe from harm. While keeping her in a locked room would be second only to kicking her out of the Ghetto as far as fulfilling the second condition goes, it would constitute a failure of the first condition. Both security teams will just have to suck it up and do their jobs despite the unreasonable demands.


“Well…” And the wheedling tone was predictably back. “I mean, I am sure it would be lovely to explore your city, but it’s simply too hot for a fair maiden such as I to venture out at the moment… So why don’t I just stay in here with you, Miss Tanya?”


Kaguya smiled like the sly child she was, clearly accustomed to wielding her childishness as a mace whenever it was convenient for her. I smiled back, for lack of anything else to do. It was galling how little control I had over this conversation. Yet, for all that Kaguya was obviously directing this dialogue towards some end, she was still acting cagily, her eyes flickering to the two suits standing by the wall.


Clearly, the girl from Kyoto wanted something and only the presence of her guards, perhaps more accurately described as her minders, and her own sense of propriety was stopping her from voicing her demands. Equally clearly, I would have to be the one to figure out what those demands were and meet them, were I to bring this meeting to anything like a satisfactory close.


“Well, that suits me,” I said, giving conversational ground before her with a smile I hoped was graceful. “I’m not really a fan of going out into the heat of the day myself, not if I can avoid it. But,” I eyed the sweets tray, all but stripped of its load, “I’m not sure what insight you’ll be able to glean about the Benevolent Association or the area it administers from here, especially since I seem to be out of cookies to feed you.”


She giggled at that, a disarming gesture that made me want to smile along with her.


This girl is an obvious politician, I thought from the reservoir of cool reserve behind my pasted-on smile. I know that she’s actively manipulating me towards some end, and yet I still feel the impulse to do whatever I can to make her smile. She must be some favored daughter or niece of one of the Houses, wanting for nothing and spoonfed politics and manipulation from childhood.


“Oh,” Kaguya said, smiling fondly at me from across the table, “I think I can get plenty of insight into your organization from right here, Miss Tanya.” She sipped her tea, smiling with a delight that was surely feigned, considering the fact that the tea was just the bagged stuff the Britannians used, instead of the loose leaves or matcha a scion of the traditional Kyoto elite would prefer. “So, why don’t you tell me about yourself, Miss Commander Hajime Tanya?”


She has, I realized, something like the same charisma that Naoto has. Some benefit of an aristocratic background? But Naoto didn’t have an aristocratic childhood, as he was a bastard officially unrecognized by his father, and he stayed in Japan with his mother. Maybe it’s just the confidence that comes with knowing you are born into a powerful family, then? She doesn’t have the same raw magnetism, but she’s spent a long time honing what advantages she has.


“Well,” I began, my eyes glued to Kaguya’s features, hunting for any minuscule facial movements that might give me some insight into what, exactly, she was fishing for, “you already know my mother’s family name, because I carry it as well. My mother was Hajime Aika, and she…”


I paused, remembering Kaguya’s age. She might have two years on me, but definitely not three.


“...She did as circumstances forced her to preserve both our lives,” I continued. “I never knew my father, except that my mother claimed he was a Britannian sailor.”


“Don’t worry about censoring yourself, Miss Tanya,” Kaguya butted in, and I realized that the flush of interest was mixed with well-hidden irritation. “I shouldn’t really need to tell you, of all people, but being of a young age and of the ‘fairer sex’ doesn’t mean that I can’t handle ugly truths.”


So, I thought, turning that little outburst over in my mind, that’s part of what she’s looking for. She hates being treated as a child, despite her willingness to use her child status to her own advantage. But, “I shouldn’t need to tell you,” hmm? Interesting… If I’m correct, that might partially explain why she’s here taking up my afternoon.


“Fine,” I snapped, letting my control slip just a little bit for added verisimilitude. If she wanted to know ‘me’ and wanted an unvarnished ‘true’ version, I would be happy to cater to her desires. It wouldn’t require any lying, just emphasizing a different part of my life’s story than what I’d usually prioritize in introductions. “Let’s start again, then.”


“My mother, Hajime Aika, was a prostitute before and after the Conquest, selling herself to make ends meet and keep me fed and in school. My father was a worthless Britannian merchant sailor who hopefully died years ago. When the Britannians came, our lives went from bad to worse. I was forced out of school and we were both forced from our homes and into Shinjuku Ghetto before the walls around it were even completed.”


Kaguya’s attention was almost palpable, her eyes rapt and locked onto mine. For a moment, I almost let myself fall into the verdant green of her gaze. I noticed that tiny flecks of gold seemed to float on top of the green as if some mocking creator had set her superior social status and wealth into her very genes in cruel contrast to my own lowly, threadbare existence.


“My mother paid our rent with the only currency she had available,” I continued, “and usually made enough for us to both eat a meal each day. It was barely enough to keep us alive, so I decided to join the workforce as best I could.


“By the age of seven, I was spending the bulk of my days on the work line, trading ten to twelve hours of hard labor for a bowl or two of thin soup and clean water. And even with those mean wages, I had to compete for those jobs with all of the other kids in Shinjuku. Of course, people being people, my hair and eyes guaranteed that I would only get work when no other alternative presented itself.”


A pattern that holds true to today, I thought with an internal chuckle. It wasn’t funny in the least, but it said something unpleasant about my people that it had taken all of my work and sacrifices for them to overlook my mixed heritage. And even now, if they had an alternative, I am sure a fair number of the Sun Guard and most of the Notables would be all too happy to dispose of me and my services.


“Sometimes, some foreman, softhearted or softheaded, would give me an extra ration; sometimes, some kind adult on the line would share their meal with me. Mostly, I did my best to work hard enough to justify my presence there, next to the adults, hauling away rubble and garbage and, when winter came, corpses, all for disposal.”


From the corner of my eye, I noticed the Internal Affairs Force man’s eyes go wide at that little revelation. My seasonal employment on a hauler crew wasn’t something I mentioned very often; while the corpse disposal crews served a necessary and valuable role, transporting the dead from the streets and tenements of Shinjuku to the Ghetto’s dump site near the Kawadacho Gate, nobody liked them for obvious reasons. Nobody wanted to think that their beloved would be buried in a landfill, unburned and disrespectfully interred with the garbage.


“I did what I had to do,” I said, forcefully and entirely unapologetically. “Just like my mother did what she had to do to keep us both alive. And somehow, amazingly, we both managed to remain alive until I was eleven.”


The familiar wave of pain hit just as I had anticipated, but I still managed to keep my face stoically blank. It was one thing to tell my story to amuse some flighty noble girl in search of a taste of authenticity; it was another thing to display my private pain for a stranger’s titillation.


After she left, I would permit myself to feel. Until then, I was on the clock.


“I don’t know who killed my mother,” I admitted, the words cold and sour in my mouth. “She often worked in the brothels frequented by Britannian soldiers, and she was beaten to death in the street outside of one of those establishments. Perhaps it was a dissatisfied customer and his squaddies, perhaps it was just a pack of drunken thugs hunting opportunistically. It could even have been a local group of thugs, angry that she was sleeping with the enemy. I never bothered trying to find out; it didn’t seem to matter. Done is done, and I doubt anybody involved in her murder remembered her face two days later.”


How about that, I thought uncharitably, eyes fixed on Kaguya’s. Is that unvarnished enough for you? Enough of a glimpse at how the rest of us live to scratch your voyeuristic itch?


For her part, Kaguya gave no sign that I should stop, so I obligingly continued to talk. “After that, I was lucky enough to fall in with Kozuki Naoto and Kaname Ohgi. At first, Mister Kozuki wanted to find some other place for me to go, afraid that I would be caught up in their private war against Britannia, but I convinced him to reconsider.”


“How?” I blinked at Kaguya’s sudden interruption. “How did you manage to convince them to let you stay? How did you convince them to take you seriously?”


Ah, I thought, so that’s what you’re after, is it, Lady Kaguya?


I felt like a fool for going into such depth about my childhood. Clearly, it had all rolled off the young mistress’s back, the information irrelevant for her purposes. She wanted respect, and, seeing that I was held in high regard by my friends and associates, wanted to learn my “secret.”


Fine. If that’s what the lady wants, that’s what she’ll get.


“It was a difficult process,” I admitted, leaning back in my chair and feigning relaxation. “My first step was convincing them to not just kick me back out onto the street, or worse, killing me as a suspected Britannian spy.


“Not,” I raised a hand, cutting off the shocked interruption I could tell Kaguya was on the cusp of vocalizing, “that they would have. But I didn’t know that; I was not in exactly a trusting frame of mind. Life is cheap in Shinjuku and who would mourn another orphan gone missing, or some wretched hafu found the next morning by the haulers making their rounds? So, I had to convince them not to kill me.”


I really have been in need of someone to talk to, I mused. What with Kallen and Ohgi elsewhere and Naoto… currently disinterested in a heart-to-heart, it’s been a while since I had the chance to speak to someone who wasn’t a subordinate of mine in some way. That said, Lady Kaguya might be a potential ally, perhaps, but she’s certainly not a friend. So, not too much frankness.


“They thought I was Britannian at first, and that was the first thing I needed to change. I am Japanese, just as much as anyone else in Shinjuku, and I would be damned if I was mistaken for a Brit. I said as much and swore loyalty to Japan. And in that moment… I knew it was true. It hadn’t just been an act of chance that I ended up an orphan in a stranger’s apartment. There had been a purpose after all, because I had come to fight for their Cause if they would have me.” I smiled, nostalgia momentarily taking away the bitterness of dredging up old memories even as I obscured my motives in a fresh layer of deceit. I was, after all, still making a sales pitch; no need for her to learn what my true thoughts had been back then.


“Of course,” I laughed with forced casualness, as if I were some old man spinning a yarn involving some anecdote from the misty past, “I immediately ruined my defiant pitch by breaking down and crying. In retrospect, even if either of them was the kind of man who was willing to kill a child, that definitely put an end to any thoughts along that line. Especially when Naoto hugged me.”


Naoto… For a moment, I smelled the old leather of his jacket and felt his warm arms around my shoulders, pulling me into his chest as I wept. Will you ever forgive me, Naoto? But, I did what I thought I had to do. I knew there would be a price, but…


“So, that’s how I found my way to both a new home and more importantly, a new reason to live. Before, I had worked as hard as I could to keep myself alive and to lift as much of my mother’s burden from her shoulders as I could. Now I had a new family, a family of rebels, fighting for the freedom of our people.” I smiled self-deprecatingly as I spread my arms in a hopeless shrug, inspired by half-remembered TV broadcasts of politicians playing to the crowd. “What else could I do? I set myself to learning how I could help advance the Cause.”


“But you were just eleven,” Kaguya objected, her voice surprisingly soft, lacking any trace of the demanding noble. “How could they possibly have let you join their fight, especially if they were of the moral caliber you ascribe to them? How could you have possibly convinced them to let you join in earnest?”


I shrugged, “As I said, it was a difficult process. I think they decided to keep me on as a charity case, perhaps with some idea of treating me as a mascot or whatnot. That got me a foot in the door, so to speak.”


“Or to put it differently,” Kaguya said in a thoughtful tone, “you played upon their perception of you as a child in need of protection until they brought you in close to their confidences. But then what? How did you take the next step into becoming their leader?”


“Well,” I replied, slightly uncomfortable at how Kaguya had characterized my actions, “to start with, that wasn’t the next step. The next step was proving that I could haul my own weight, just like I had back when I was on the work crews. I had picked up enough survival skills while living in Shinjuku to prove I could hold my own, and at the first chance they gave me, I demonstrated those skills.”


Not entirely true, but there’s no need to bring up any inconvenient past lives or other unnecessary complications.


“And then,” I leaned forwards in my chair towards Kaguya, “then I took the initiative. There was a gang that had been giving the Organization some… trouble. I saw an opportunity while out on reconnaissance, and turned a simple scouting into opportunity.”


I smiled at the Kyoto House member, giving her just a small glimpse into how I had felt that night. “Some gang members were loading a vehicle with… items. I don’t remember what it was now, weapons or drugs, something like that. I slipped into a blind spot and ambushed them while they were driving off. The first sign those poor bastards got that they’d picked up a passenger with their cargo was when I split them open like-”


And for a moment, leaning so far over the table that I was almost touching noses with Kaguya, I was back there in that truck cab. That hapless pair of gangsters had been my first kills in this life, and the smell of their bowels opening in death mixed with the blood soaking my arm to the shoulder had been a ticket back to the trenches west of Kaiserslautern. After years spent in toil, in keeping my head down and avoiding any attention, it had been such a return to form, a return to when I was strong and respected… It had been intoxicating.


Then, I was back in the present, noticing how both of Kaguya’s security were on the brink of reaching for their concealed weapons, how Kaguya’s eyes were wide and dilated with emotion, although to her credit she hadn’t recoiled away from me.


“Well, in any case...” I coughed a bit awkwardly as I slowly sat back down in my chair, the tension in the room dissipating almost all the way back to where it had been moments before.


“Afterwards, we drove that truck to our own safehouse and claimed its cargo for our own. And then the others cleaned the mess out of the cab, as I was pretty much falling asleep on my feet. After that,” I said, speaking in a deliberately nonchalant manner, as if I hadn’t lost myself in remembered emotion for a moment, “I no longer had any worries about not being taken seriously. The key, Lady Kaguya, was proving my competency in an undeniable manner. Of course,” I added, “after that, I had to prove that I was something other than just a lunatic, someone capable of planning, capable of managing details beyond the simplicity of slaughtering our enemies. That took longer, but I had bought adequate breathing space to build that reputation.”


“I understand.” Kaguya’s voice was even and seemingly entirely unruffled, despite my little act out. Reluctantly, my respect for her rose a degree. “You built a reputation as an individual who had useful skills and the necessary will and initiative to deploy them effectively. And from there, you have simply been following that road, I daresay? Proving your competence again and again, and in the process eroding any perception of yourself as a child?”


“As my mother taught me,” I replied, “I am doing what I must to fulfill my goals. However, my goal is no longer just my personal survival; as long as the flag of Britannia flies over the Home Islands, that struggle is pointless - die now or die later. My goal is to see the sun rise over a free Japan once again. To that end, I will do as I must. If that means that I must take up arms to free my country despite the fact that I just turned twelve back in March?” I shrugged. “So be it.”


“I see,” Kaguya said, barely suppressing a sigh as she did so. Despite her attempt to cling to civility, her disappointment was clearly legible, her previous enthusiasm suddenly absent from her face. Clearly, she had hoped for something more, perhaps a step-by-step guide to securing her own influence and power. “Well, thank you for your story, Miss Tanya. I’d… I had heard so much about you, and I thought…”


“You thought that if a girl who was even younger than you could assert herself as a leader in her own right, you could emulate my path to likewise establish yourself as a player in your own organization?” I lifted an inquisitive eyebrow, already knowing myself to be correct before Kaguya nodded. “Lady Kaguya, if I might be so bold, what are you trying to accomplish? Why are you so eager to gain power? Correct me if I’m wrong, but you are from one of the Six Families, aren’t you? Surely your family will educate you and prepare you to become their agent as you mature.”


Kaguya let out a very unladylike snort, openly incredulous and almost smiling at my apparent display of ignorance for a moment before sobering up.


“Miss Tanya,” a ghost of Kaguya’s amusement still hung in her voice, but her eyes were suddenly much older, host to a very adult cynicism, “I admire your optimism, although I suspect that it may be rooted in ignorance.”


“Perhaps so,” I allowed, trying not to take offense at the comment and failing. What could this child know that I didn’t after three lives? “Enlighten me, please.”


“I’m a woman,” Kaguya said as if that explained everything. Considering the expectant pause that followed, perhaps to her it did.


“So am I,” I replied reasonably, “and so are almost a third of the Sun Guard at last count.” My lips twitched at that, a humorless smile squirming across my face. “It seems like women have a better chance of surviving here in Shinjuku, what with the gangs recruiting more heavily from the young men and the Britannians preferring… well, let’s call them less lethal corrective measures with Eleven women who cross them, instead of the simple bullet to the brain most men who cross them get.”


“R-right,” and it was Kaguya’s turn to blink with momentary surprise, momentarily put off her point. “But, you don’t understand, truly you don’t. The people who I work with, the people who run the oth- the people who run the Six Families, they are traditional. They are the last survivors of the old noble lines from the Empire, our empire,” she clarified, “the ones who became the not-so-secret masters of the Republic.”


“Ah,” I replied eloquently, finally understanding what Kaguya was saying. “So, I assume you’re receiving a very full and in-depth education on the intricacies of tea ceremonies, flower arranging, and how to run your husband’s affairs, once you acquire one?”


“Yes!” For a moment, Kaguya almost glowed with happiness, clearly overjoyed to finally meet someone who got her point. “Do you know how it feels, just being seen as an object, some investment just waiting to mature before it can be cashed in on? It’s like they just see me as a bloodline and a womb on legs! My guardian and all the old men are in on it! I’m just as smart as any of them, and I’m not so stupidly tied up in all the old traditions and worries about profitability and all that rot!”


“Indeed, I do know what it’s like to be seen as an object, a vessel transporting tainted blood.” The biting words, dry as a desert, sprang unbidden from my lips. “I’m a hafu, Lady Kaguya, with the bad luck to look as Britannian as one of the Emperor’s spawn. Do you think that was lost on the fine people of Shinjuku? Or, for that matter, on the JLF’s own Major Onoda, whom your agent put me in contact with, knowing full well that he both despises Britannians and holds women in contempt?”


By the time the second sentence had passed my lips, Kaguya’s face had already gone ashen. She was clearly smart enough to realize how foolish and self-absorbed she sounded, complaining about being valued only for her heritage to someone whose heritage was so easily despised.


On the other hand, I did know how it felt to be seen as lesser for reasons beyond my control. Further, I remembered from my first life how often traditionalists had harped on about how women should stay in their place, and that had been in a considerably more liberal Japan, one that hadn’t been subjected by a foreign power governed by an absolute hereditary monarchy of all things. With that knowledge, it was difficult to hold Kaguya’s hasty words against her and easy to let her off the hook. After all, she was still a child.


And a child in truth, not a cuckoo with the memories of two lives crammed into her head. Probably.


“But,” I waved my hand in a conciliatory fashion between us, as if I were literally trying to clear the air, “I do understand, Lady Kaguya. You are clearly intelligent and driven; just marrying you off to secure some alliance or agreement would be a foolish waste of your potential by your family.”


“So, will you help me?” Kaguya asked, her voice low and intense as she leaned forwards over the table, nearly upsetting her half-full teacup as she interrupted me yet again. “Think about it, Miss Tanya! I know that Old Man Munakata’s been playing hardball with you, forcing concessions for every scrap of support he throws your way, even the kind of support we provide the JLF with for free! And I know you’ve got plans and ambitions - did you think we hadn’t heard about your evacuation program? You need support for that, right? I can be that for you! Just help me!”


I leaned back slightly, letting my hands relax on my chest as I met Kaguya’s wide-eyed stare.


So, I thought, the old man on the phone’s name is Munakata, is it? There’s a Munakata on the Numbers Advisory Council, isn’t there? A Lord To-something or another. And how did you know about that, Lady Kaguya? And don’t think I didn’t notice how you just slipped up and referenced “we”. I doubt a mere daughter would say that, even the daughter of a family head.


“And how,” I said, not breaking eye contact, “do you propose that I help you, Lady Kaguya? What leverage can I possibly call upon to help you? Not that I wouldn’t help you if I could,” I added, reading the thought on her face, “but what can I do that would assist you? I don’t see how I could possibly influence the internal politics of the Six Houses.”


“Oh?” Kaguya’s eyes flashed with amusement as she settled back in her chair, once more in control of herself now that we were negotiating terms. “But you already have, Miss Tanya! You see,” she scooted forwards again, probably to the edge of her seat, clearly excited, “by your actions, you’ve shaken everything up! Before you showed up, the JLF had settled into a rut, Prince Clovis was comfortable on his throne, and nothing was happening, but now…”


She held up a hand and started ticking off fingers. “You’ve managed to tilt the balance of power in the JLF strongly towards the more aggressive elements-”


“You mean Lieutenant Colonel Kusakabe,” I noted, taking the opportunity to get some of my own back by interrupting Kaguya for a change.


“That’s right,” she nodded in approval. “The lieutenant colonel managed to net all of the credit for setting Niigata on fire as well as the bulk of the recruits from that province, as well as the credit for securing a supply of Knightmare parts and support materials. He’s been pointing out how it took the Britannians ages to get control of Niigata again when they were just facing peasants with small arms! And that’s just one of the icebergs you’ve thrown into the machine!”


“I think you’re mixing your metaphors,” I remarked, my dry humor covering my private considerations. I remembered Onoda’s news that our actions had set Lieutenant Colonel Kusakabe’s star rising, but the man had clearly capitalized even further on his newfound reputation for action over the intervening months.


“Details!” Kaguya waved an impetuous hand before an enthusiastic grin broke through her huffy mask of noble disdain. “Anyway, remember how a bunch of Honorary Britannian-owned businesses got smashed up and shut down after that Christmas thing your guys touched off? A whole lot of them belonged to Old Man Munakata! It’s kind of a double whammy for him since he’s also one of the most traditionalist of the family heads, but he’s the one who’s supposedly responsible for supporting your organization, which is kinda radical compared to the stodgy old JLF central command! So now the traditionalist bloc in the Six Houses is weakened because Lord Tosei looks like he can’t control his own project!”


That explains the seemingly personal animosity from my previous main contact with Kyoto House if that accidental riot we started destroyed some of the assets of his master. Maybe that’s why I got saddled with Major Onoda. I smiled at the thought. And then I actually got a working relationship established with the major, so instead of him killing me we both ended up benefiting against the personal inclinations of this Munakata Tosei.


“You’ve made your point,” I replied, cutting in before Kaguya could drop another bombshell in my lap. As fascinating as this was, I needed to get to the meat of what Kaguya was asking for before her increasingly twitchy security detail hauled her out of the Rising Sun building by force. “But none of those actions were tailored towards influencing Kyoto House. That was just an apparently happy byproduct of fulfilling other objectives. Also, I should note that I am already stretching the Rising Sun’s resources to the breaking point just to keep my people here in Shinjuku clothed and fed as it is, and that’s not even mentioning how Britannia could attack us at any minute.


“So I repeat: what can I do to help you?”


“Work for me instead!” Kaguya’s eyes gleamed with frenetic energy. “I promise I’ll be a better partner than Old Man Munakata! I’ll give you what you ask for without making you grovel and beg! Just do what I want, attack what I want you to attack, and keep stirring the pot! That way, I can claim the credit for your successes at meetings and stuff, Munakata looks even weaker because he can’t keep his own house in order, and best of all, instead of waiting around forever for the perfect time to throw Britannia back out, we can finally reclaim our land from the invaders!”


It was only at that last sentence that I realized I had once again fallen for Kaguya’s trap, seeing only what I had expected to see and, presumably, what she had wanted me to see. I had seen the power-hungry noble, eager to find her own authority. I had seen the girl who would become a woman, looking for a way to establish some autonomy. I had missed the zealot completely.


She really is just like Naoto, I observed, remembering how he had reacted to my magic, how he had all but declared a holy war when we had bombed the Station. I can work with this. Moreover, if she’s sincere in her willingness to actually provide what I want, when I want… I really can’t refuse to work with her. With her support, feeding Shinjuku might actually become a reality. A winter without hunger, with adequate heat and medicine for the sick…


Still, I had to put up some token objection, if I didn’t want to look like I was being railroaded in front of Lieutenant Koichi and his man. “You paint an appealing picture, Lady Kaguya,” I replied politely, “but, correct me if I’m wrong, wouldn’t that just make the Rising Sun your private army? I’m not entirely certain if I want to simply hand over our autonomy to you. After all, we fight for a free Japan, not for your advantage in your noble intrigues.”


“You’re missing the point, Miss Tanya,” Kaguya replied, dismissing my objection. “I’m not a soldier or a fighter or whatever. I mean,” she gestured at herself, “that’s pretty obvious, right? I’m not going to be bossing you around, but if I can reasonably say that you’re doing what I want, well, that’s just as good for my goals as actually telling you what to do! Besides, unlike some people in the Six Houses, I want what you want! I remember Japan, Miss Tanya! Your goals are mine! Just back me up when I need your support, and I’ll give you my support in exchange.”


“...An alliance, then,” I said aloud. “An alliance between the Rising Sun Benevolent Association and…?”


“An alliance between the Kozuki Organization and the House of Sumeragi,” Kaguya replied firmly. “And between all of our associated groups, of course. Sumeragi Industries, Rising Sun, so on and so forth.”


“I hesitate to ask, this late into our discussion, but…” Kaguya tilted her head inquisitively, waiting for the question. “But do you actually have the authority to make this agreement stand? Or am I going to need to confirm this with whoever the head of the Sumeragi family is?”


“Well,” Kaguya replied, drawing noble arrogance up around her like a cloak, for all that her grin undermined any true haughtiness. “You are of course free to confirm my offer with the head of House Sumeragi. Her name is Sumeragi Kaguya!” She waited for a beat before adding “you can have her number if you like,” with a winking smile, the mock arrogance vanishing like mist.


“You’re the head of House Sumeragi?” I stared at the other girl, who grinned cheekily back. “You are one of the Six, the oligarchs who control Kyoto House? The ones who some say are the greatest batch of traitors in the history of Japan?”


“Yup!” Kaguya chirped back in reply. “Sumeragi Kaguya, also known as Lady Sophie to our Britannian friends. Pleased to make your acquaintance, I’m sure!”


I looked past Kaguya and locked eyes with Lieutenant Koichi. “Not a word of this leaves this room,” I commanded. “Nobody is to know who she is. You both heard her,” I met the other soldier’s gaze before turning back to Koichi, “she’s just some middle-ranking Kyoto House member’s daughter, visiting here on a lark.”


Lieutenant Koichi nodded, his eyes thoughtful in his mangled face. After a moment, he seemed to remember his military rank and saluted me, his subordinate quickly following suit.


“Lady Kaguya,” I turned back to my guest, who was still smiling at me, “you have a deal. Help me and I will do my best to help you in exchange. Help me keep my people alive, and I will do what I can to expand your power and influence in Kyoto House.” I extended my hand across the table.


Suddenly remembering how the previous Kyoto House potentate I had negotiated with had ended our conversation, I awkwardly added, “Long live Japan, and long live the Imperial Family. Revere the Emperor, expel the barbarians.” It had borne ritual weight when I’d heard it, and I had taken it as a quirk of their organization, or of the social class their leadership stemmed from.


“Thanks!” Kaguya chirped, taking my hand and pumping it once, twice, and three times. “That’s probably me! Anyway, pleasure doing business with you! We’re gonna achieve great things together, Miss Tanya!”


---------


JULY 4, 2016 ATB
SHINJUKU GHETTO, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
0700


“-eight cars loaded with barley, and finally, no fewer than ten cars loaded with ‘special goods’ with Kyoto and Tokyo Settlement Assessors stamps already paid for and applied.”


The Sun Guard messenger flipped his notebook closed with a flourish, a broad smile on his face as he did so. He was clearly proud of delivering his report in good time, beating any other competing report of the new delivery to my door.


“Thank you, soldier,” I replied, too drowsy to remember what the man’s name was at the moment. In my defense, I had been asleep five minutes ago. I couldn’t be expected to remember names before I’d had at least half a cup of coffee! “Your prompt report is appreciated. That will be all.”


“Ma’am!” He fired off a truly sloppy salute and strode out of my office, the door swinging shut behind him, leaving me at my desk with my mug and the hand-delivered envelope that the conductor had passed to a Rising Sun member working as a janitor at the station when his train from Kyoto had arrived.


If someone from the Six Houses wanted to kill me, I doubt they’d use ricin or any such nonsense, I reasoned as I cut the envelope open, dumping the single sheet of paper out.


“Dear Commander,” the letter read. “Hi there! I hope you like your surprise gift! Consider it my way of saying thank you for telling me your life story. It was super sad, but also really inspirational. I can see what N. saw in you, and what your people saw in you. Stick with me, and we’ll go far. Let’s be good friends! S.S.”


“Sophie Sumeragi, I assume,” I said to the empty room, wincing at how dry my voice sounded.


Maybe some water before I enjoy the first coffee of the day.


I looked down at the brief letter again. I was confident that the special packages that Kaguya had bribed both ends of the track into sealing without further inspection contained weapons, the weapons I would need to make the lives of any Britannians trying to force their way into Shinjuku utter hell. With those weapons and the huge shipment of food, medicine, clothes, cigarettes and other small luxuries, and toiletries I had just received the kind of material support I needed to strengthen my position in Shinjuku against the discontented Notables as well as the invaders.


And so the deal is fulfilled already… I stood up from the desk and walked over to the window of my office on the second floor of the Rising Sun’s Headquarters, a few rooms down from the room I had met Kaguya in. The window squealed as I forced it open, but it rose nonetheless, letting the breeze still cool with the night into the room. The lighter flicked to life, and soon the letter was just ash.


I was in Kaguya’s debt, and that was an uncomfortable place to be. I had no idea how ruthless she would be as a creditor or how soon she would expect a return on her investment. And yet, no matter how ruthless she might be, Shinjuku will live for another few weeks. If that means putting myself into personal debt, then isn’t that what it means to be a leader?


I wonder if Naoto would be proud of me?

 

An Overview of the Britannian State Security Apparatus


Derived from publicly available information regarding extant Imperial security bodies and their interaction with law enforcement agencies.


Bernhard Mattys
Department of Social and Political Studies
University of Munster, Westphalia Department, European Union

Abstract:

The Holy Britannian Empire is served by a broad variety of security agencies with varying remits, powers, and scopes of operation. In order to provide an introduction to the world of the Britannian state security apparatus, a brief overview of the more prominent agencies and their roles has been assembled from information available to the public. Resources for further research are available at the end of this report.

Introduction:

After the assassination of the 93rd Emperor of Britannian, Ferdinand van Britannia (1919-1953) and the ensuing Emblem of Blood era (1954-1998), the Holy Britannian Empire and newly crowned 98th Emperor Charles zi Britannia (1955-present) inherited a wide range security and law enforcement organs across the breadth of the Britannian Homeland and its then-eight Administrative Areas. In addition to the traditional pre-Emblem of Blood institutions like the Directorate of Imperial Security (DIS), also known as the Imperial Directorate of State Security (IDSS), new agencies founded during the bureaucratic chaos of the Emblem of Blood were also incorporated into the newly reunified state security apparatus.


Even before Charles was crowned as the 98th Emperor of Britannia, turf wars between the feuding agencies of the security state had begun. These security organs’ areas of responsibility frequently overlapped, sparking feuds between the different agencies as each body fought to burnish their own reputations while slighting their competitors, all in the pursuit of larger budgets and expanded powers.


Furthermore, the periods of intense infighting interrupted by intervals of consolidation and alliance building between the feuding claimant factions and various noble potentates of the Emblem of Blood era had led to a certain amount of decentralized authority in some Areas. Local nobles and landowners had taken on the responsibilities of law enforcement and judicial sentencing as the Imperial Family focused on its own disputes. In some cases, Claimant Factions negotiated for the support of powerful nobles by reducing their feudal obligations or by permitting the creation of police agencies under direct noble control.


While much of this chaos was resolved by Emperor Charles and his administration with the reconstruction and reorganization of the Ministries of Justice, Defense, and the Home and Area Offices during the first years of his reign (1999-2006), the security apparatus remains divided against itself to the present. With the total authority of the throne fully restored and the curtailment of many of the special privileges granted to noble cliques during the Emblem of Blood, the continuation of the inter-agency conflict indicates that this state of affairs has become the intentional de facto policy of the Empire.


The reason for this policy is unknown. It could be that Emperor Charles contextualizes competition between the various security agencies as an outgrowth of his own ideology of Social Darwinism and hopes that the end quality is a stronger, smarter intelligence apparatus. It could be that the Emperor learned how a divided enemy is weak during his conflicts with the other claimant factions during the Emblem of Blood and seeks to keep potential rivals in the state security apparatus weakened. Either way, the fact that constituent agencies in the Britannian security apparatus attack one another is plainly apparent even from publicly available materials.

Military Intelligence:
Army Intelligence:

The Intelligence Command of the Britannian Army is broadly subdivided into two constituent corps.


The Signal Corps has the primary assignment to ensure communications between different army detachments and installations and comprises the bulk of the Army’s communications staff. As an intelligence organization, the Signal Corps also has the secondary assignment to gather and analyze intelligence on hostile state and non-state actors using sensory data and data gathering platforms.


The Interrogation Corps has the primary assignment of operating and managing the Army’s network of penal barracks and stockades, and acts as both the jailers and the prosecutorial body for courts martial. As an intelligence organization, the Interrogation Corps extracts human intelligence from hostile state and non-state actors via a number of interrogatory techniques.


Both corps have the power to requisition assistance from the Army’s Military Police units, also known as the ‘redcaps’ for their distinctive red berets or field helmets. The Military Police (MP) are not an intelligence organization in their own capacity, but do have the power to incarcerate suspects wanted for questioning by local representatives of the Army Intelligence Command. At times, MPs may also be suborned by representatives of other intelligence groups for enforcement purposes.

Naval Intelligence:

Unlike the Army, the Office of Naval Intelligence has a single unified intelligence service. Also unlike the Army, the Office of Naval Intelligence directly commands the Navy’s own police force, who take on many of the responsibilities held by the Interrogation Corps including incarceration.


Naval Intelligence prides itself on a vast array of specialized sensory units with varied portfolios, including the Office of Meteorology and the Seismological Observatory. Little information is publicly available about the more obscure naval signal units, but historically a great deal of credit for breaches of hostile communications has been attributed to the Office of Naval Intelligence.

Paramilitary Intelligence:
Military Faction Intelligence:

While entirely unofficial and lacking formal recognition, military factions and societies are widespread and powerful in both of the Armed Services. Officers from the same Area frequently band together to produce local factions, while officers of the same political, ideological, or religious affiliation form inter-Area factions. This tradition extends back long before the Emblem of Blood, back at least to the Filibuster Society, founded in 1848 by General William Walker. Currently, the most prominent faction is the so-called “Purist Faction,” founded by the 2nd Lord Lauderdale, Colonel Zebediah Gottwald.


These factions, usually led by cabals of high-ranked military officers and constituting mid- to low-ranked officers along with their commands, often count members of the Army Intelligence Command and the Office of Naval Intelligence among their ranks. As a result, the longer-lived factions will at times develop unofficial yet very active intelligence services dedicated to providing faction leadership with information on rival factions, unaffiliated officers, and the political situations of the Areas in which they are active.


By the nature of their unofficial status and lack of accountability outside of their faction, and considering how many of their members are active members of the official intelligence community, little is known about the workings or the successes of these faction intelligence organizations. Nonetheless, abundant anecdotal evidence of their success exists, with some factions, including the Purist Faction, going so far as to operate internment and interrogation facilities on their own recognizance.

Church Intelligence:
Office of the Inquisition:

Primarily focused on preserving the religious and ideological dominance of the Britannic State Church and the purity and consistency of its mandated canon, the Office of the Inquisition operates as a Church intelligence service with powers to investigate, detain, interrogate, and condemn laymen and clergy alike who are found to have non-standard religious beliefs or practices.


In practice, the Inquisition operates as another arm of the state security apparatus. Information garnered by Inquisition investigations and under Church interrogation is legally admissible in civil and criminal proceedings; likewise, the findings of civil and criminal proceedings can be admitted to canon law trials as evidence against the accused.


The Office of the Inquisition is always headed by a cleric of a bishop’s rank, which grants a noble equivalency of a count or an earl. Only suspects of ducal rank or its equivalent or higher are exempt from detainment and investigation by the Office of the Inquisition. In practice, this means that the high nobility, Area governors, the highest clerical ranks, and the Imperial Family are the only Britannian subjects exempt from arbitrary investigation by the Inquisition.

Civilian Intelligence:
Directorate of Internal Security (DIS):

The oldest of the currently extant security services, the Directorate of Internal Security, also called the Imperial Directorate of State Security, claims an origin in the spy networks first organized by the Duke of Marlborough in the early 18th century. While factually dubious, the DIS has operated in its current form since at least 1854, when DIS agents unearthed the so-called “Santa Fe Ring” and brought the conspirators to Imperial justice.


In the century between the earliest confirmable DIS triumphs and the Emblem of Blood, the Directorate developed into a police force primarily concerned with checking the power of the aristocracy and the rising industrial plutocracy. With their imperial mandate, the DIS could investigate and pursue suspects across Area boundaries and without constraint from local feudal or municipal authorities.


During the Emblem of Blood, the DIS was subjected to the same pressures as the rest of the central government of the Empire; riven by conflicting orders from the claimant factions as well as whoever currently held the throne, the DIS was gradually paralyzed. The resurgence of local magnate and aristocratic powerbases led to the curtailing of the broad powers the DIS had enjoyed in its heyday, and agents were increasingly toothless in the face of highly ranked suspects.


In 1984, Sir Hamish Cole, then the Director of Internal Security, decided to surreptitiously back Charles zi Britannia in his claim upon the Throne of Britannia. Director Cole used his authority to funnel information to the then-Prince Charles as well as access to the vestigial resources of the DIS. In 1989, with the initiation of the last period of open conflict between claimant factions after the assassination of 97th Emperor Baudouin ni Britannia, Director Cole made his allegiance public as he swore loyalty to Charles zi Britannia at his factional headquarters in Halifax.


From that nadir of power, the DIS has risen again as the preeminent tool of the throne to maintain a firm hold over the aristocrats, plutocrats, and bureaucrats that govern his far-flung empire. Operating once again under imperial mandate, the DIS retains its primary mission of policing the representatives of the Emperor and the other powers of Britannian society in addition to a secondary mission to monitor the discontent of the lower classes.

Imperial Bureau of Investigation (IBI):

Founded in 1901, the Imperial Bureau of Investigation (IBI) has always prioritized the suppression of the lower rungs of Britannian society. Originally tasked with the pursuit and detainment of criminal gangs operating out of the mountains of Area 5 and the jungles of the newly declared Area 6, the IBI’s writ expanded over the years as they were tasked with combating a range of political and criminal actors.


Due to their heavy focus on policing the lower classes, the IBI long received the mixed blessing of official inattention. On one hand, as the greatest threats to Britannian monarchs have historically been their extended families and aristocratic cliques, for most of its existence the IBI received little respect and scarce resources, operating on a shoestring budget. On the other hand, the IBI survived the infighting of the Emblem of Blood era almost entirely unscathed, as all claimant factions recognized the shared necessity of suppressing any potential uprisings from beneath.


Emerging from the Emblem of Blood, the IBI benefited immensely from the recentralization of the Britannian government and the subsequent period of rapid Imperial expansion. As the conquests of Emperor Charles rapidly brought Areas 9, 10, 11, 12 and 13 under the Britannian flag, they also brought a vast number of disgruntled and angry Numbers and Honorary Britannians who still remembered what it had been like to be free under that same banner. The IBI expanded rapidly in response, with the newly-inducted IBI inspectors granted the power to issue commands to local and Area-level police forces and military formations commanded by junior-grade officers in the pursuit of their duties.

Imperial Security Agency (ISA):

The Imperial Security Agency (ISA) is the youngest of the “Big Three” civilian security services, and the one with the least amount of information publicly available. Founded after Emperor Charles zi Britannia came to the throne, the ISA is supposedly tasked solely with gathering intelligence on non-Britannian sources, and is nominally a purely foreign oriented intelligence agency.


Despite this outward focus, a great deal of rumor swirls around the ISA, perhaps aggravated by the agency’s closemouthed approach to public relations. Some external sources have postulated that the ISA acts as an internal security force within the broader state security apparatus. Other experts accept the official stance that the ISA focuses on surveilling foreign powers, but claim that the ISA also engages in activities far beyond intelligence collection, including assassination, sabotage, and the destabilization of governments.

Swirling Ambiguity: Cloak and Dagger

While the Big Three civilian security agencies compete against one another for budget and recognition, and while the military agencies defend their areas of responsibility against their competitors, these only represent the largest and most prominent segments of the security apparatus. This report only touches on the agencies best known to the public with the most information published about their operations and histories.


By no means should it be assumed that the groups listed above represent the full extent of Britannia’s covert arsenal. Endless rumors abound about shadowy cabals of intelligencers and manipulators advancing opaque agendas, and while such rumors are impossible to substantiate, it would be far from a surprise if the labyrinthine world of Britannian intelligence concealed entire directories and agencies of spies.

 

MARCH 3, 2014 ATB
BRITANNIAN ARMED SERVICES RECRUITING OFFICE, PORTSMOUTH, DUCHY OF NEW HAMPSHIRE, HOMELAND


“Sorry, Mister Coffin,” the recruiter said with a professional smile, not sounding the least bit apologetic, “but His Majesty has no need of your services at present. Thank you for your interest in national defense.”


“Are…” hearing the tremor in his own voice, Roger Coffin stopped, swallowed, and tried again. “Are you certain? If it’s a matter of seniority, I’d be willing to relinquish any claim to time in grade, and as for physical fitness, well… I could make it work. By the time I’m out of the refresher, I’d be back to fighting trim!”


“Not interested.” The recruiter, by long tradition a sergeant, was unmoved, and indeed seemed well on his way to dismissing Roger entirely as he shuffled the papers on his desk. “If you were five years younger, you might have had a chance. But a re-enlistment at thirty one?” He looked up from his stack of forms to give Roger an incredulous look. “Who do you think you’re fooling, old man?”


The slight twinkle of sympathy in the sergeant’s eyes was the most galling part, far moreso than the “old man” comment. Roger was certain that the recruiter was probably at least his age, if not older, but those years hung far lighter on his shoulders than they did on Roger.


Probably because he’s spent them sitting behind a desk instead of humping a R-4 across three Areas, Roger thought uncharitably, before a nagging internal voice added, not to mention that he’s probably been working out regularly and eating well instead of drinking himself under the table for the last three years.


“Fine,” Roger stood, drawing the tattered shreds of his dignity around him like a coat, sheltering against the winds of time. “Fine. Thank you for your time, Sergeant.”


A different Roger would have stayed and fought it out with the recruiter. Young Roger Coffin had been a pugnacious fighter, hard as nails in his own opinion and eager to prove it. Indeed, that need to prove himself had led a seventeen year old Roger to take up the Oath and to make his mark in the regimental books of the 3rd New Hampshire Fusiliers.


That combative urge, that hunger for the respect and acknowledgement of his peers, hadn’t survived Roger Coffin’s twelve year stint with the 3rd. After seeing all he had seen in Area 5, 10, and most especially 11, and after all that he had done in the course of fulfilling his oath, very little of that young Roger had remained intact when he had finally been honorably discharged from the ranks.


What had remained of that contentious prick of a boy had drowned in the vat of booze the former sergeant had spent his meager pension on.


And now, Roger thought, a sour smile twisting on his lips as he pulled his hat firmly down, anticipating the cold northern air waiting for him outside the warmth of the recruiting office, even the Army’s not willing to take me back… And considering some of the privates I’ve seen…


Roger snorted ruefully. Done was done, and he was done here. Perhaps, he considered, he was done in general; nobody was waiting for him back at his rented rooms, neither of his ex-wives had contacted him in over a year, and in another month his brother would have been interred in the New Haven Military Cemetery for five years.


Go home and relax, he told himself. You’ve still got half of a fifth of Appalachia Farm left. Just… let it all wait for another day.


But, just as Roger reached for the handle to the door out of the office, his moping was disturbed by a cry of “Hey, wait!” from the desks behind him.


Turning, he saw the recruiting sergeant standing behind his desk, his less-than-trim belly pushing against the neat lines of his uniform as he gestured for Roger to come back over.


Not like I’ve got anything else happening today, Roger thought as he dutifully obeyed, sitting back down in the chair he had so recently vacated.


“I just remembered something,” the recruiter said, pawing through a filing cabinet drawer crammed to bursting with swollen folders. “Something that might interest you… Hold on…”


After a moment, the overweight recruiting sergeant dropped back into his desk chair with a folder in hand. He quickly looked down at the file already open in front of him, Roger’s name clearly visible at the top, and then opened his new folder to check some detail.


“You were in Area 11,” the sergeant stated.


“For the initial Conquest, and for a few months afterwards,” Roger agreed, already knowing that his sleep tonight would be even more troubled than usual. The mere mention of his last duty station was already raising a host of unpleasant memories from shallow graves.


There had been a reason he had opted not to extend his term of service for another two years after the stint in His Majesty’s newest Area, and why he had crawled into a bottle as soon as he was back in the Homeland and officially a civilian once more.


“Right,” the recruiter nodded, following a line on Roger’s service record with his finger. “Did you pick up any of the local lingo, by any chance? Even a few words?”


“Enough,” Roger shrugged. “You know, the basics. ‘Stop or I’ll shoot,’ ‘surrender now,’ ‘get me a beer,’ and ‘where are the whores.’ Not much else.”


Not that we bothered using them very much, he added silently, and then forced his treacherous monologue to shut up.


He had heard plenty of Elevenese, and while he hadn’t understood any of it, he hadn’t really needed to.


Some things were universal.


“Good enough,” the recruiter concluded with a shrug. “Got any opinions about Honoraries?”


“Depends on the Honorary,” Roger hedged. “In general? I mean, the ones from the Heartland, the ones that are left, are just as Britannian as you or I. Most of the ones hailing from the Old Areas are more or less decent. A bit lazy, mind you, and prickly at the best of times, but generally decent.”


“Fine.” The recruiting sergeant leaned back in his chair, hands folded across his mildly pudgy midriff. “So, you want back into the old gray and black? And you say you’d be willing to take a pay cut?”


“Yes,” Roger bobbed his head, refusing to acknowledge the frail hope lighting his heart. “If that’s what it takes…”


“Well, in that case, I can give you your rank back, Sergeant Coffin,” the recruiter’s eyes were shrewd and clever. “Your seniority too. You wouldn’t even lose a grade in rank.”


“But I’d be taking a paycut?” Roger frowned, not seeing the connection. Base pay was determined by rank, but the higher your internal grade and time in rank was, the greater the net became. “What’s the catch here?”


“You’d be in an Honorary Legion,” the recruiting sergeant revealed, eyes still glued to Roger as he spoke with the air of a poker player laying his cards down one by one, searching for any hint of a reaction. “They’re raising a few new ones, over in Area 11. Prince Clovis has expanded the intake for Elevens into the ranks, to gain their Honorary Citizenships via service.”


“The Prince is still the governor of Area 11?” Roger asked, and whistled with slight surprise when the recruiter nodded. “Guess it was too much of a sweet plum for him to let go.”


“Well,” the recruiting sergeant shrugged, “maybe the Elevens don’t want to see him go, and that’s why they’re still pitching their tantrums. Doesn’t really matter, but what does matter is that Prince Clovis got permission to commission two new honorary legions, full strength and all, to help maintain order. They probably won’t be filled-out for a few years, but the point remains that there’s going to be a ton of green troops all flooding in.”


Roger whistled again. An honorary legion had the same paper strength as a regular division, fifteen thousand men, and like a division was commanded by a Major General.


“A full corps of vegetables, huh?” He said out loud, marveling at the sheer scale of the probable incompetency of such a formation. “And I’m guessing the command will be the usual for Honorary formations?”


“In all likelihood,” the recruiter said, with an expression that spoke volumes. “Apparently, the lieutenancies are going for a bargain price.”


The tradition of purchased ranks had been quite thoroughly crushed within the regular Army, and among the more elite and longstanding of the Honorary formations. Those were very much the exception, however; in most units drawn from the honorary citizens of the Empire, the old English tradition of selling commissions was alive and well, if entirely unofficial.


In a way, Roger could understand why the tradition had been allowed to continue.


To be a “proper noble”, a scion of an aristocratic family hoping to succeed to their father or mother’s titles had to serve at least a short time in the military. The Army, however, needed competent officers. Moreover, the Commoner Magnate families wouldn’t stand for a noble monopoly of the military; nor, Roger suspected, would the Emperor.


So, there had to be some space made available for young nobles in need of military credentials, some space where they wouldn’t endanger anything or anybody too important. Hence, the quietly brokered sale of commands in Honorary formations. Roger was quite sure that the Army’s clerks were pleased to charge the wealthy noble families trying to spruce up their unimpressive offspring’s resumes for the privilege.


“But,” the recruiter continued, “that means that the Powers That Be have let it be known that experienced noncoms have a place in the new legions, if they want it.”


Roger very much didn’t want that place, certainly not back in Area 11, where the ghosts of the Conquest weren’t even four years buried yet.


But I want to die of exposure or cirrosis even less…


“Cadre duty, huh?” Roger asked rhetorically, buying time as he tried to come to terms with what he had already decided to do. “I guess I could manage that… Someone’s got to ride herd on the produce section, eh… And God knows I’ve had to deal with plenty of troublesome or outright braindead privates over the years…”


“It’s a five year stint,” the recruiter warned, “and the pay’s on the Honorary chart, since you’d be in a legion as an enlisted.”


“That’s…” a part of Roger rebelled at being lumped in with the newly minted Honorary Citizens, but he pushed it down with the ease of long experience. Pride was a luxury he hadn’t been able to afford in years. “...Fine,” he finished. “I’d be able to handle it somehow, I’m sure.”


“Well then,” the recruiter leaned forwards, hand extended, “allow me to be the first to welcome you back to His Majesty’s Army with welcoming arms, Sergeant Coffin.”


MAY 29, 2016 ATB
ALBERT'S TAPHOUSE, KITA WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1305


Roger Coffin, Color Sergeant of His Majesty’s 32nd Honorary Legion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Regiment, 1st Battalion, stared blankly down into the cup of pale yellow liquid sweating on the bar in front of him.


He looked at the drink. He drank the drink. The thankfully quiet bartender poured him another drink as Roger slid another pair of pound coins across the bar’s sticky surface.


He looked at the drink. He drank the drink. He tried to forget.


The bar, located in a working-class Commoner district that reminded Roger of the old industrial town he had grown up in, was all but empty this Sunday afternoon. Only a handful of other derelicts had joined him in escaping the heat of the outside world, a pair of men who both had at least two decades on him worn thin and gray and an equally haggard old woman. Each was slumped over their own table, their faces buried in their beer, leaving Roger alone at the bar with the silent barman.


Alone with his thoughts, with the memories that the weak local beer was doing nothing to soften or blur.


It had been just over two years since Roger had set foot in Area 11 for the second time. After a quick month and a half of hellish physical training to whip him back into shape and a quick two week course on the finer points of his duties as a cadre sergeant, Sergeant Coffin had stepped off a transport plane and onto the tarmac of Tokyo International Airport in the company of thirty other over-age NCOs returning to His Majesty’s colors.


That, in Roger’s opinion, had been when the “good times”, such as they were, ended.


The frustrations had been endless. The captain in command of his new company had served in the regular Army as an infantry lieutenant before “graciously accepting” an offer to transfer to the open captaincy in the newly-formed Honorary legion. The way his new commanding officer had told it, Sergeant Coffin would have thought that he had been handpicked by the Brigadier himself for the assignment. Considering the man’s incompetency, it seemed much more likely that his family had purchased his rank to move their disappointing relative to a place where he could do less damage to their reputation.


The four lieutenants heading up the platoons of 1st Company were marginally better; their chief sin was a degree of inexperience almost incomprehensible to Roger. Not one of them was over the age of twenty and none could so much as grow a decent mustache, to say nothing about leading men effectively.


As for the men themselves, Sergeant Coffin couldn’t remember the last time he had encountered such a dispirited, browbeaten lot. The only thing worse than their morale was their training in the basics of soldiering, which was slapshod at best. There were a few exceptions, a handful of the Honorary citizen-soldiers whose enthusiasm for their newly sworn allegiance was disconcerting in its intensity, but by and large the men of the 32nd Honorary Legion were depressed, sullen, and shiftless.


Roger couldn’t find it in himself to blame the layabouts. The men were obviously aware of how little regard their masters had for them, and just how little faith anybody in the Area Administration had put in their services. It was, after all, hard to feel like a soldier when your superiors didn’t trust you to carry a weapon greater than a knife, and when the MPs at the gate to the barracks were facing inwards instead of out towards the street.


Sergeant Coffin had done his best to fulfill his duty. He had conducted informal “advisory seminars” with the lieutenants, trying to make his wealth of experience available to the teenaged officers. He had taken the captain aside “for a private word” on an almost daily basis, although most of his advice had been waved off. He had gathered the rapidly expanding ranks of newly minted Honorary noncoms in the company around him and had taught them the basic lessons of officer wrangling and in keeping discipline among the men.


All of this had been at his own recognizance. Nobody, it seemed, had cared what the Honorary soldiers or their minders were doing, provided they stayed quiet and kept the Honorary neighborhoods docile. So long as they stayed out of their betters way, and so long as the sectors of the Tokyo Settlement zoned for Honorary families maintained their shows of ardent Britannian patriotism and swallowed the casual abuse with a smile, nobody cared.


Most of Sergeant Coffin’s peers had taken the opportunity presented by that neglect to embrace the same malingering lifestyle as their officers and their men. Sergeant Coffin and a handful of others, men who, like him, had returned to the colors after finding the taste of civilian life bitter, had done their best to actually make the Honoraries into something close to real soldiers.


For a moment, it had seemed like his efforts weren’t entirely in vain. A year into his assignment, Sergeant Coffin had been pleased and gratified to find out that his name had been entered for a promotion. As he had stitched the crown of a Color Sergeant onto his sleeve over the trio of chevrons, Roger had even gone as far as to promise himself that he would start going easy on the bottle.


He didn’t need it anymore, Roger had assured himself. Things had taken a turn, and he had a new lease on life.


And then, Christmas had come, and everything had gone to hell.


“Another one?”


Roger looked up from his contemplation of the bar’s whorled surface to give the bartender a jerky nod. The man’s thick Pendragon accent wasn’t so different from his own Maine accent. “If you’d be so kind,” he croaked, passing over another pair of pound coins. “Just keep ‘em coming, in fact. I’ll settle at the end.”


“...As you say, Sergeant,” the bartender said after a moment, reminding Roger that he had come straight here from Outpost #2 as soon as his shift on duty ended.


He’d even taken a bus to get to this particular bar, although really any in the neighborhood would have done just as well; he had just wanted to drink far enough away from his post in the Chuo Ward that nobody would recognize him.


“Do you… That is to say, would you like some water as well? It’s looking to be quite the scorcher.”


Before Roger could retort that he could hold his beer just fine, he realized how cottony and dry his gums were, how his tongue felt swollen in his mouth, and how he could already feel the first strains of painful tension at his temples. “If you would, please,” he said, trying to sound as gracious as possible. “Thanks.”


The bartender shuffled off without a reply, returning soon after with a pint glass in each hand. Roger barely waited for the man to deposit the cups in front of him before taking a long pull on the water. It tasted delicious in his mouth, new life leaching into sour flesh.


“Good afternoon, Fred. Quite the warm day today, isn’t it?”


A new presence dropped down into the bar stool immediately to Roger’s left, much to his surprise. He’d heard the bar door creak open a moment earlier, but he’d anticipated another shambling shell to shuffle over to claim a table of their own like the rest. Instead, a startlingly young man was sitting next to him, his face alive and animated as he greeted the bartender. Just the momentary glance was enough to send Roger’s eyes darting back into his beer; the boy couldn’t be any older than half the men in his battalion.


“Ah, it certainly is at that, Leland,” came Fred’s rumbling reply. “If you came looking for Old Tim or for some calamari rings, you’ll be disappointed, I’m afraid. Haven’t seen the old man all day and kitchen service ain’t starting until four.”


“No worries,” came the smooth reply, and to Roger’s shock he could hear just the slightest touches of an aristocratic accent in the young man’s voice, wildly out of place here in a Commoner bar. “I’m just here to relax in peace for the day. Busy morning, you know.”


“Oh?” The bartender slid a glass of water in front of the newcomer, “that so? And yer sure that yah aren’t just trying to avoid Miss Milly? She’ll be mad if you are, and so will be Goodwife Hilda.”


“Sufficient unto the day are the troubles thereof,” came Leland’s pious reply, and the young man grinned as the bartender, Fred, rolled his eyes. “In the meantime, can I get a Moxie? I know you’ve still got a few cans back there somewhere, Fred.”


That reminder of home made Roger turn around in his chair to get a good look at Leland for the first time. The new arrival was a sharp-faced boy, with a narrow chin and high cheeks, with a thick mop of black hair barely suppressed under a battered cap. The youth wore the white collared shirt of an office worker under a neat waistcoat, with the sleeves rolled up to his elbows and ink staining the side of his left arm where he’d leaned against some not-quite-dry paper.


Taken together, Leland was almost the picture of a junior clerk or office-drudge, although one that kept odd hours if he was off the clock at three in the afternoon.


A picture that doesn’t match the voice at all, Roger decided.


He blinked and found Leland looking back at him, the young man’s deep purple eyes, the color of the emperor's, a part of Roger noticed, meeting his own over a welcoming smile. “Hello there, Sergeant! Haven’t seen you here before. Just assigned to Area 11?”


“Afraid not,” Roger replied, his voice gruff in his dry throat. He took another sip of water. “Been here for two years now.”


Two long years… Two years on, and I’m just where I started, full of booze and wasting my time.


“You must be almost up for rotation, then,” Leland noted. “Are you eager to leave? I wouldn’t blame you if you are; it seems like the price of living here gets higher each day.”


Fred grunted in sour acknowledgement as he passed by again, leaving a can of Moxie and a glass full of ice in front of Leland. Roger didn’t know if the barman owned the dingy little pub or not, but if he did he could fully understand the man’s irritation. Everything was expensive lately, and the Viceregal Administration’s attempt to rectify the matter by just increasing the supply of money had done nothing but swell the already inflated prices.


Not a good time to rely on customers with fat wallets… Although I guess as long as people have two shillings to rub together, they’ll still be lining up to buy beer.


And besides… Roger’s hand clenched around his cup as he remembered why inflation had jumped so steeply in recent months, there’s steeper prices to pay than a few extra pounds for groceries…


“No such luck,” Roger replied, but somehow felt compelled to add, “I’m with the Honoraries. Full term contract,” to his explanation. Something about Leland’s eyes welcomed the detail. “Signed up for another hitch after I got discharged from the Fusiliers, so I’ll be here for the duration.”


“Ah,” Leland’s expression, suddenly saddened, spoke volumes that Roger couldn’t read, the details lost in the blur. The eyes stayed the same though. “I understand. You chose a hard time to sign up for another tour, Sergeant. First the Purists, then Christmas…” Those eyes sharpened, and Roger suddenly felt like he couldn’t look away. “And then the business up in Niigata. You were dragged into that, weren’t you, Sergeant? What was it like?”


It might have been the beer that loosened his lips, or it might have been the distance from anyone who would know him, or perhaps it was the suddenly inescapable impression that Leland somehow already knew everything he would say, but Roger found himself speaking freely and all together too frankly before he knew it.


“It was bad, real bad. I was in Hanoi back in ‘09, coming ashore in Saigon when we pushed the Chinese back… And I was here back in 2010, back when we first took this place for our own. But…” Roger licked his lips, and took a deep drink off his fresh pint. Even as he wiped the foam away from face, he felt those prying purple eyes upon him, forcing the words out.


“The Conquest was nothing, nothing at all. Walk in the bleedin’ park. At least where I was, since some of the landings down south ran into resistance, but up north of here where my regiment landed, the naval artillery had broken the Elevens up before we set boot on sand. Dead simple. I don’t think more than half of us fired our guns in anger. Indochina was worse, but not by much. The Chinese are only worth half a damn when there’s a whole pack, or when they’ve got a good leader, and the Tens were only too happy to help us kick them out…”


That didn’t last long, though.


Roger slammed another mouthful down, trying to wash away the memories. As soon as he gulped the watery beer down, his tongue was moving again, his sotted ramblings pouring out like a ruptured cask.


“That was all fun and games. The usual stuff, you know. Shoot a few, the noisy ones, have some fun with the girls, leave a few coins for the breakage. You know, the usual. Well… Maybe you don’t; age aside, you don’t look like a man who’s seen a uniform, but take my word for it. But… That was all invasion, you see? Even when we came by here last time. We were taking our claim, making the place ours. But Niigata? That was rebellion. Whole different story.”


The pressure of those eyes was inexorable, and Roger found himself squirming in his chair like he was a fifteen year old delinquent again, powerless in the face of his old grammar school’s headmaster. That old withered stick of a man could silence an assembly of the entire student body with a single sweep of his eyes, and now, two decades on, this youth had somehow taken on the same mien of the long dead teacher.


Master Reynauld had the same cheekbones, a crazy thought spurred through his mind. He was a son of some minor house, wasn’t he? It must be an aristocrat trick, somehow.


“Not that I ever got to Niigata,” Roger admitted, feeling a lunatic need to explain himself, to whom he didn’t really know. “We were on a holding operation in Toyama, at the prefect’s behest. He was shit scared of the refugees coming across the border from the prefecture to the north. Thought they’d bring rebellion with them, and even if they didn’t he was scared all the new Numbers would eat up the food or start robbing the good folk’s houses. He paid someone high up to bring us up to interdict traffic and to weed out any malcontents that might cause trouble in his fief.”


“The filtering operations,” Leland mused, the hint of nobility bleeding over into his voice as he rolled the words over in his mouth.


“Right,” Roger agreed, “that’s what they called them. Pass the refugees through the wringer to weed out any guerrillas slipping in with the swarm, and yank any suspected sympathizers out of the villages and towns near the border so they couldn’t link up with their bastard friends squatting in the mountains.”


His questing hand found a fresh, cold glass of beer sitting where his almost drained pint had been; Fred must have passed by. Sergeant Coffin lifted the frosted glass to his lips and took a long pull, soothing his rasping throat.


“Hard times indeed, Sergeant.” Leland’s voice was sympathetic, full of understanding. “But, I am sure you are proud, proud that you did as you were commanded… Aren’t you?”


“I…” The immediate, instinctual response caught between his teeth, and Roger realized that the kneejerk confirmation had been a lie, even if he hadn’t really known it to be one a moment earlier. “I… wasn’t proud…” he said slowly, thinking out loud as he tried to impose order on his muddled thoughts. He belatedly realized that he was drunk. “I mean… I didn’t… object, not really, but… It seemed… Empty?”


“A curious choice of words, Sergeant,” came Leland’s smooth reply.


“Roger,” Sergeant Coffin corrected. “I’m off duty… And I’m tired of hearing my rank repeated back all day, every day.. ‘Yes sergeant,’ ‘no sergeant…’ It’s all an act… Who gives a shit…”


“Roger then,” Leland agreed easily. “Was it the act that felt empty, handling the dirty work the Prefect was too afraid to deal with himself… Or were you already empty, and it just became impossible to overlook past that point?”


“Both,” Roger replied, suddenly certain of his reply. “There’s… Well, there was a point to what we were doing. Obviously, there was a point! But…” He felt like he was pawing at something he couldn’t quite wrap his hands around. “Why? Why are we here? The Sakuradite? Why the fuck aren’t we just focusing on that? The Elevens were selling it to us! Why is the Administration being so fucking incompetent? We know how to run Areas! The Old Areas are doing great! What the hell is the problem?”


He knew he should shut up, but he couldn’t get his mouth to close. “I spent a decade in the uniform! My little brother died in it! And what the fuck was the point? We keep conquering Areas but we can’t be bothered to manage them worth half a damn! Did the Emperor just get so used to fighting back during the Emblem of Blood that he can’t stop, and since he wheeled everybody in the other factions and gave their fiefs out to his men, nobody wants to say boo to him?”


It was impossible to stop the surge of memories now. Village upon village heaped with the dead and the dying. A woman screaming, broken arms reaching for a child in the arms of a laughing soldier. Endless trenches packed with the dead and the soon to be dead, naked limbs writhing among the blood-laced flesh as the unlucky survivors were crushed under the weight of their relatives. Fiveish militias waging their private wars against the insurrectos and the narcos, the lines between all three vague. The blackened skeleton of Hanoi, incinerated under two days of firebombing.


And over it all, the lion and serpent over Saint George’s Cross as he marched forth with his regiment at Emperor Charles zi Britannia’s merciless command.


“What…” Roger muttered, feeling just as spent and worn out as the handful of derelicts he vaguely remembered were sitting in the shadowed corners of the taphouse, “what was the point, really? What was the point of any of it? Two decades… Two wives… a brother… all for what?”



"Not for anything worth the cost of your service, sergeant," the man said. The lights were somehow dimmer and the taphouse far away, and Roger could barely see the sharp lines of his face through the haze growing in his vision anymore. Nothing but phoenician eyes glinting in darkened hollows... "Not for any Emperor worthy of your loyalty, Roger, astride the Throne of Pendragon. Nor for a House worthy of your worship, sullied as its hands are with all that is unclean."


Roger blinked, thinking, quietly, yes. How long had it been since he'd set foot inside a house of worship? He had never been a patriot; he had made his mark and kissed the flag because he wanted to prove he was more than another lost soul, and had never thought much of the claims of divine right trumpeted from the throne and its servants at the pulpit...


The violet eyes blinked, and before Roger could follow, they were gone, leaving him alone in the blurry haze of confusion and memory. But the voice, its aristocratic notes and Pendragon accent growing more pronounced by the word, continued, urging him on a dark path as he stumbled forwards without ever standing from the barstool.


"The Emblem of Blood. Do you recall?"


“I remember the Emblem of Blood… The last years of it,” Roger rasped, scanning the filmy gray fog, memory thickened with alcohol and filled with past ghosts, desperate to find those imperious, understanding eyes in the miasma, “when Brandon and his faction and Charles and his had it out at last. The Church said that God’s will had been done when it was all over, that it was all God’s will, and that everything would change… From where I’m standing, nothing has. Nothing that matters. The Emperor’s never done shit for me, nor have any of his officers or his priests… And what the fuck do I care if we unite the world but the Emperor can’t be arsed to rule it for shit? No wonder the Elevens rose up, with Clovis in charge.”


"You are a man who needs someone to follow, aren't you, Sergeant? A man who craves authority, who must have a banner to follow, a sigil to guide him through the night..." The voice was suddenly all around him, telling him who he was, and the eyes opened before him, radiant and loving in their purple glory. "A true cause, in the service of the holy and unsullied truth. The princely truth."


“A true prince…” Roger said, remembering as he spoke the hopes people had pinned on Brandon, back in the day, hopes that Brandon would usher in a new age of liberty in Britannia. Hopes that had been crushed once Charles cemented his rule by killing as many of the surviving scions of the Imperial House as he could. “A true cause…” To make the Holy Empire the land of God on Earth as promised. “One worthy of all the blood.”


“And one worthy of your devotion,” Leland added, unobtrusively as Roger nodded, his drunken mind piecing things together bit by bit, slowly arriving at a conclusion as the fog receded before him, leaving only Leland, staring unblinkingly into his soul. “The Church lied to you only in who they claimed God spoke through, Roger. You remember how the true sons of the Church, the ones who actually served, were driven out. You remember how the righteous princes were murdered. Surely no good could come from following a kinslayer.”


Now that Leland had mentioned it, Roger remembered those things. How the old rector at Saint James had always been generous with the aid funds, how so many of the old Imperial Family who had been executed for treason had been so young… It was all so wrong, so monstrously wrong…


“They were his own blood,” Roger mumbled, “and that’s who my brother died for? Who I gave my years for? Who I swore my oath to?”


“Emperor Charles’s name might have filled the space in your oath,” Leland replied, his voice armored in certainty as he shook his head, “but you didn’t really swear your oath to him, did you? How could any oath sworn to a kinslayer, to a heretic who declares himself to be God in all but name, be binding? No, you swore your loyalty to the true ruler of Britannia, didn’t you? The True Prince, no matter who might be on the throne now.”


“Right!” That had been the final piece, the conclusion Roger had been building towards! That had been why he had felt so empty for so long! It all made sense now! It wasn’t that he had done anything wrong, made any mistake! He had followed his orders faithfully and loyally! It was just that those orders had their ultimate source in a serpent undeserving of his imperial robes!


“The True Prince!” he gasped, suddenly armored in conviction, the last vestiges of his old certainties dripping away and the rotten cords of misbegotten oaths falling from his shoulders, “that is who I serve!”


“Then come,” and suddenly Leland was standing, the sunlight streaming through the open door outlining him in a corona of gold, “come with me, brother. Come and hear the word, and then go back to your base a new man. Come and be made new, full of a new purpose. An old bottle refilled with fresh-pressed wine. Come with me.”


And for a moment, it wasn’t Leland guiding Sergeant Roger Coffin to his feet and leading him out the door, but rather Robert, his brother two years his junior, who had always been so eager to do everything Roger had done. His little brother, who had signed up for the Army at sixteen, one year after Roger had taken up the oath.


His little brother, who had died in the Cambodian jungle while his elder brother had lived it up in the newly established Saigon Settlement on a rec leave pass, all because that bastard Charles could never be satisfied, would never be satisfied. The Man of Blood had taken Robert away, had sown the seeds that led to his wives leaving him, who had left Roger with nothing but the bottle.


Nothing but an empty bottle, to be filled with new and consecrated wine.


Squinting against the blinding light and the purifying heat, a scorcher just as Fred had said, Roger Coffin followed Leland out of the bar, eager for purpose and ready to be made into a new man.

 

Chapter 29: A Snipe Hunt, Part 1


(Thank you to Aminta Defender, Sunny, Restestsest, Mitch H., Adronio, WrandmWaffles, Rakkis157 and MetalDragon for beta-reading and editing this chapter. A bit shorter than normal, but Chapter 30 will hopefully arrive sooner than normal as a result.)


MAY 16, 2016 ATB
OUTPOST #2, CHUO WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1600


Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia took a long pull from the paper cup of mediocre office coffee sitting on his temporary desk. The awful brew was lukewarm and a trial upon his tongue, but he needed the caffeine desperately. Anything to keep the jet-lagged exhaustion at bay for a few hours more, until he could sleep, was welcome.


He sighed with boredom as he flipped through the personnel files of the supposed “cream of the regiment.” Garcia, better known as Gus to his friends and colleagues back at the Pleasanton Field Office due to some long-forgotten incident at an office Christmas party and alternatingly called “Nelito” or “You Bastard” by a string of ex-lovers across the New Areas, was having a devil of a time keeping his eyes from crossing as he took in the bland details.


Unfortunately, he had already cut all the corners he could with this task. Some things a man just had to handle himself, and choosing a local guide wasn’t something Nelson was willing to delegate. Recommendations were all well and good, but he wouldn’t be able to rely on the guide in the slightest if he didn’t have at least some hand in the selection.


Bureau policy called for agents abroad from their Area of assignment or the Homeland to use local Honoraries as ciphers whenever possible, even when the agent in question had a strong command of the local language. The locals, even those who had put aside old loyalties for their new Empire, would always have a better grasp on the peculiarities of the Area. Even the most ardent Honorary Citizen who had shared every detail he thought would be useful to Britannia benefitted from the half-dozen details he hadn’t thought to share. From such nuances success or failure could grow in equal measure.


Even if the Bureau hadn’t mandated the use of Honorary Britannians when possible, Nelson still would have sought out local help of his own initiative. As an Honorary Citizen himself, albeit one descended from latifundiários who had seen which way the wind was blowing four generations ago and who had pledged their allegiance accordingly, Nelson fully appreciated the advantages that Honoraries brought to the table. More to the point, he understood what drove them to work harder and take more risks than Britannian commoners; above all else, every Honorary strove to be useful. If you were useful to the right person in just the right way…


Well, Honorary Citizens had become Britannians before, typically via the fiat of some noble potentate or highly placed governmental officer, who imparted the grand reward of Citizenship as thanks for some great or long service. Failing that, it was far from unheard of for an ambitious commoner family to bring a skilled Honorary into the fold via matrimony; while that Honorary might never enjoy the status of full citizenship in the Empire, their children would.


And so, with at least five hours to go before he could surrender to his body’s demands for sleep, Inspector Garcia forced himself to concentrate on the files in front of him, always on the quest for diligence in the execution of his duties.


True to form, most of the Honorary soldiers recommended to him by their officers were stolid, seemingly uninspired men. No doubt they were all strong, neat, and obedient, as only a fool would recommend the dross for duty with a Bureau agent for fear of their name appearing in his report, but Nelson had little doubt that the officers would likewise only recommend their safest bets for the same reason. Their reliable men, and the handful of women, were certain to be all but oxen in human form, dull and unimaginative as they were uncomplaining.


Nelson blinked and turned back to the last profile he had looked at. His eyes had filmed over with exhaustion as he had skimmed its contents and, while he couldn’t remember what he had read, something had seemed off…


A moment later, his eyes widened, all fatigue dropping away. It was inconceivable, an almost unimaginably stupid blunder, but… He scanned the page again, carefully searching for inconsistencies, for hints of misdirection or omission, but found nothing.


Moving carefully, as if any sudden jerking motion might send the impossible document spiraling away into the ether once again, Inspector Garcia carefully entered the relevant name and rank into the pre-written standard personnel requisition and printed the completed form on Bureau letterhead. A quick phone call to the staff sergeant on duty sent a messenger to the Inspector’s temporary office, and after a few words, back away again.


The two military policemen whom Colonel Prescott had assigned to nursemaid him around the outpost fell into step behind him as Nelson strode past, just as he knew they would. He had worked with their brothers in arms many times before, most recently in the round-up of a ring of subversives smuggling banned literature across prefectural borders.


The redcaps had never given Inspector Garcia any cause to doubt their loyalty or willingness to dole out violence on a moment’s notice. But, if the military police force had a weakness, it was a crippling lack of imagination, both in terms of investigation and in the interrogation room.


Fortunately, Nelson thought, no hint of smirk showing under his habitually broad and friendly smile, the Bureau is here to provide plenty of both on their behalf. Which makes my arrival here before they realized who they had tucked behind a clerical error so serendipitous; I would hate to have seen the Military Police try to co-opt such a resource without breaking it!


“Stand by the wall at parade rest,” Garcia directed as the small entourage arrived at Conference Room C. “I need you to look as bored as possible while still looking professional.”


“We can manage that,” the MP with sergeant’s stripes acknowledged with a wry smile. “Least I can’t fall asleep on my feet.”


“Sure you can,” Nelson continued briskly, “I have faith in your abilities, Sergeant. Now, when the mark gets here, I need scary faces, but I need you to make a show of focusing on me. As soon as I give an order, jump to it. No need to ham it up, but if it looks a bit dramatic, that’s fine.”


“Building you a pedestal, eh, Inspector?” The redcap private nodded knowingly. “As you say, Sir.”


“Get in place, then,” Nelson said dismissively. “The boy’s file said that he’s quite keen, so he’ll probably be here soon. Remember, as soon as he gets here, you’re terrifying and bored, and when I speak, professional but terrified. And,” he smiled knowingly, feeling the scar pulling at his lip, “I’ll make sure Colonel Prescott knows how helpful you were.”


“Right you are, Sir,” the sergeant agreed, before tapping his subordinate on the shoulder and leading him to the wall. For his part, Garcia artlessly arranged himself in the chair at the head of the table, striving to look as stern as possible without being unapproachably formal.


First impressions mattered, after all. Especially when an asset like the son of the last Prime Minister of Japan fell into your lap.


MAY 16, 2016 ATB
OUTPOST #2, CHUO WARD, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1630


“Sir!” Corporal Kururugi came to attention, clicking his heels as his fist thudded into his breastplate directly over his heart, the very model of military professionalism. He hoped. “Corporal Kururugi, reporting as ordered!”


“At ease, Corporal,” came the disinterested reply from the officer seated at the immaculately neat desk in front of him, barren of any paperwork save for the single document said officer was theatrically perusing. “Do you know why I’ve called you here today?”


There were many possible replies Corporal Kururugi could have offered up to answer that leading question, ranging from attempts to curry favor to self-incriminating confessions for crimes imagined or real. After just over a year of service under the command of Captain Collins, commanding officer of His Majesty’s 32nd Honorary Legion, 1st Brigade, 3rd Regiment, 1st Battalion, he had learned better than to volunteer any of those possible answers.


The battalion’s commander didn’t appreciate “lip” from the Honoraries who served under him.


“No Sir,” Corporal Kururugi said, following the script with as much enthusiasm as he could muster as he settled into parade rest. As the silence lingered just a bit too long, he elaborated with a “Couldn’t hazard a guess, Sir.”


Behind the seated officer, Color Sergeant Coffin, the battalion’s senior NCO, gave a minute headshake, discouraging any further additions.


The sergeant’s blotchy face was impassive beneath the florid blooms on his cheeks, and Corporal Kururugi fervently hoped that the man was sober. When sober, the middle-aged Britannian was the only soldier in the battalion capable of putting a check on the captain’s youthful impetuosity. When drunk though, his help was… dubious at best.


“I called you here today to bid you farewell,” Captain Collins said, looking up from the desk for the first time since Corporal Kururugi entered the office. His burgundy mustache, elaborately waxed, arched with aristocratic disdain as he deigned to make eye contact. “Farewell for now, at least. You are being detached for temporary duty as a local guide. Do thank Rockwell before you go, Corporal; he’s the one who recommended you.”


As he spoke, the captain spun the single sheet of paper towards Corporal Kururugi and, with an elegant flick, sent it skimming across the polished mahogany surface. Instinctively, Kururugi left his position of parade rest to catch the paper as it slid off the desk. Judging by the contemptuous sneer on Collin’s face, that had somehow been the wrong move.


Fail if you try and fail if you succeed, Suzaku murmured. And all for an audience of two. How petty…


“Yes Sir,” Corporal Kururugi responded smartly, quickly skimming the document. “I will, Sir!”


Printed upon the document under an unfamiliar letterhead were his orders. Apparently, Corporal Kururugi was to render all due assistance to one Police Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia, of the Pleasanton Office of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation, out of New Wales, Area 7. His orders particularly emphasized his duty to provide the inspector with interpretation, translation, and local knowledge on demand, as well as “handling any and all miscellaneous tasks delegated upon him.”


“I would hurry if I were you, Corporal,” Captain Collins drawled, amusement that tried for sardonic and settled for jeering on his face. “The Inspector has already arrived. He’s waiting for you. Full kit, I’d say; no idea when you’ll be back to trouble our halls again.”


Ten frantic minutes later, Corporal Kururugi was in the Administrative Office’s lobby, greeting the Britannian duty sergeant. “Corporal Kururugi, 1st Battalion 2nd Company, reporting to a summons from Inspector Garcia.”


“He’s waiting for you in Conference Room C, Corporal, along with a couple of redcaps” the sergeant replied in the distinctive accent of central Area 1, using the nickname of the Army’s Military Police Corps. “Bit early, aren’t you? Good man. Haven’t seen much of that from your lot. That’ll keep ‘em happy.”


“Thank you, Sergeant,” Corporal Kururugi nodded, taking pride in the compliment even as he tried to quash his sudden spike of anger at Captain Collins. “Have a good shift.”


It’s always good to excel in the little things, Kururugi told himself as he made his way down the hall to Room C. Take their spite and turn it into a step upwards. Captain Collins had his fun sending me scrambling, but I just impressed a sergeant working in the major’s office thanks to him. And now… Now I have to impress a police inspector.


The door to Room C was open and unguarded, so Corporal Kururugi walked straight in, his pack still slung over his shoulders and his helmet tucked under his arm. He immediately spotted the redcaps, where the pair of military policemen waited by the far wall at parade rest, their faces flat and hard. To his eyes, they had the mien of bored men who were attending to a pointless task out of rote professionalism.


Good Britannian soldiers, he decided approvingly.


The seat at the head of the table was occupied by an apparent civilian in a tailored suit. Corporal Kururugi was immediately suspicious; in his experience, a civilian whom the military and especially the military police showed deference towards was likely either a noble, a representative of one of the myriad of competing intelligence agencies, or perhaps both. The quality of the man’s charcoal three-piece ensemble indicated the sort of wealth established money brought, but the white scar lancing across his dusky cheek indicated a bit more of a rough and tumble life than Corporal Kururugi typically attached to the Britannian upper crust.


After all, Suzaku remembered, Lelouch could hardly lift a practice sword when he first arrived, much less knife-fight.


“Sir!” Corporal Kururugi barked, coming to attention as he saluted the suited man. For all that he wasn’t in uniform, the man’s presence was enough to announce his dominance over the room. “Corporal Kururugi, reporting as ordered, Sir!”


“Take a seat, Corporal,” the inspector replied, his voice coolly melodic with an accent Corporal Kururugi had never heard before. “I will deal with you shortly.”


Then, as Corporal Kururugi negotiated his heavy pack down to the floor and gingerly sat down in the finely cushioned chairs, desperate to not hurt the leather upholstery, Inspector Garcia turned to the brace of policemen, who remained poised like unlovely statues save for their eyes, which had fixed on the Bureau man.


“Kindly pass my regards and thanks onto Colonel Prescott for me, gentleman,” Garcia began, “and reassure him that I will not forget his name when I next report in. I will, of course, be anticipating the friendly cooperation and hospitality of your counterparts in the Navy this evening. Your office will make the necessary arrangements, I am sure.”


“Yes, Sir!” came the crisp reply in two-part harmony.


“Wonderful!” Said the inspector with a genial smile that somehow contrived to only make his words all the more menacing as he dismissed the men with a nod. “Carry on then.”


Corporal Kururugi could only watch in amazement as the two redcaps, clear Britannians and hardened fighters both, almost fell over themselves to acknowledge the Inspector’s orders and to awkwardly mumble the requisite pleasantries as they beat a hasty retreat out and away.


As the door to the conference room closed behind the MPs, the Inspector stood up from his chair and stretched with a theatrical yawn, the brooding aura of potent menace immediately dissipating at the casual motion.


“Finally!” Inspector Garcia exclaimed with a sudden, almost boyish burst of energy as he circled the table, stopping beside Corporal Kururugi’s chair. “I thought they would never leave! Corporal Kururugi, eh? I’m Nelson, or Inspector Garcia in public. It’s very good to meet you!”


He extended a hand, which Corporal Kururugi shook automatically, a mechanical smile hoisted up on his face as he struggled for the correct reaction. “It’s… good to meet you too, Sir. I hope to be of service to you.”


“None of that formality,” Inspect- Nelson insisted with a dismissive wave. “Nelson, please. I’m no military man, nor am I some Britannian blueblood who takes offense at familiarity, Corporal. In fact, I’m an Honorary Citizen of our glorious Empire, just as you are, so there’s no need to stand on ceremony.”


Corporal Kururugi blinked.


Sure you are, he thought dismissively, which is why you just gave an order to a pair of Brit redcaps with the full expectation that it would be obeyed.


Still, I suppose it doesn’t matter who he is; all that matters is that he’s in charge and I’ve been ordered to assist and obey him.


“As you say, Sir,” Corporal Kururugi said agreeably. “I look forward to assisting you with your business here in Area 11.”


“...Please, Corporal Kururugi, call me Nelson,” Inspector Garcia insisted, before smiling and adding, “I am far too young and handsome to be called sir! The day people start ‘sirring’ me is the day I know I have been trapped behind a desk at last!”


The man’s smile was infectious, and Corporal Kururugi found himself automatically returning it. Whatever doubts he might have about the idea that he and Inspector Garcia were on the same social level were swiftly being eroded in the face of that apparently sincere charm. Some part of him that had been tightly clenched since Christmas had begun to relax without him noticing it.


“As you say, Nelson,” Corporal Kururugi replied, deadpan but with a ghost of a younger Suzaku’s humor, and felt his nascent smile broaden as Nelson chuckled warmly in response. “So… Sorry for asking, but you really are an Honorary Britannian too…? I mean,” he gestured vaguely at the inspector’s tailored suit, “begging your pardon, but I don’t think I’ve seen many Honoraries wearing Schulster Row.”


“Ah, you have a good eye, Corporal!” Inspector Garcia exclaimed, straightening his lapels. “And to answer your question, yes, I am an Honorary Citizen of the Empire.”


He paused, clearly anticipating some sort of reaction, but Corporal Kururugi kept quiet. What would be the point in mentioning how life for Honorary Britannians in Area 11 was scarcely better than it was for their recalcitrant Number cousins?


Clearly, his silence had spoken loudly enough, as a hint of strain entered the older man’s smile. “Ah, well… I understand that things are still quite rough here in the New Areas, and in Area 11 in particular, but these things take time, Corporal. Don’t worry, soon you and your fellow Honorary Citizens of Eleven heritage will enjoy the same quality of life as we do in the more civilized Areas. Why, Area 9, New Mann, was only proclaimed seventeen years ago, and already the Honorary Citizens there enjoy the same privileges as we from the Old Areas, if not the Heartland.”


He’s right, Kururugi told himself, it takes time for the system to work. If I can just get my people to put down their weapons and give the Britannians some time, I’m sure they’ll see the wisdom of it soon enough. Area 11 is too valuable to ever be independent, but its Sakuradite makes it too important to neglect. If the fools would stop running around and getting people caught up in dreams, surely they’d all understand it!


Area 9 had a population of fifteen million after they were conquered by the Britannians, Suzaku whispered from his cloister, and Japan had over a hundred and twenty million citizens. Area 9 didn’t offer any significant resistance after they were taken over too, I remember that from Instructor Tohdoh’s lessons. Japan hasn’t known peace in a decade. If it took the Empire almost two decades to handle a complacent population an eighth the size of ours, how long will the Elevens have to wait?


That’s where we come in, Kururugi reminded himself. If our people want to fight, we should fight for the Empire, so they will understand what valuable contributions we can make.


“I’m certain that you’re right, Inspector,” Corporal Kururugi said out loud, slamming the mental door on Suzaku. “Anyway, I’ve been commanded to give you all the help I can offer, so… How can I help you?”


“To business, eh?” Inspector Garcia returned to his chair and took his seat again. “You’re a keen one. I like it! Very well, Corporal, if you’re going to be my native guide as well as my translator, let’s see what you know.”


I wonder if this was all some extended trick, to see if I had any personal affinity or connections with the insurgents? Corporal Kururugi turned the thought around in his mind for a moment, before discarding it. No, that’s stupid. Why would they bother with such a convoluted plan when the redcaps would have happily beaten a confession out of me? So, if he’s not trying to entrap me, I wonder what it is he wants to hear?


“For starters,” Inspector Garcia began, fidgeting with his cuffs for a moment and loosening his tie before leaning in over the table, eyes alight. “Tell me… what do you know about Yokohama?”


As Corporal Kururugi began to talk, regurgitating everything he had ever heard about the vast port city and the naval base to its south at Yokosuka, he was gratified to see that Inspector Garcia was listening to him. He was paying attention, and not just the minimal consideration of bored officers or the sullen wariness of beaten soldiers, but close attention. The inspector never looked away from him and never looked bored, but nodded attentively as Corporal Kururugi added detail after half-remembered detail, jotting down notes on a pad every now and again.


The sensation of someone voluntarily heeding his words and listening to him scratched another itch deep inside Corporal Kururugi, inside Suzaku, just as their friendly conversation had. And over the course of the next two hours, he told Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia everything he could about Yokohama, Area 11, and the fight to once and for all put an end to the intransigent Number resistance in the eastern gem in Britannia’s crown.


JUNE 22, 2016 ATB
POLICE STATION, FUNAKOSHICHO WARD, PORT YOKOSUKA IMPERIAL NAVAL BASE
1630


“Thank you very much for your time, Mister Eisaku,” Inspector Garcia said as he flipped his notebook closed. “My partner and I will pay this mushroom farm you’ve brought to our attention a visit very soon.”


From his seat at the table next to Inspector Garcia, Corporal Kururugi kept his expression blankly emotionless. There was, he reasoned, no point in giving the criminal seated across from them any cause to believe that his offenses had been forgotten or forgiven.


Just because he’s willing to throw his former friends under the bus to save his skin doesn’t make him a law-abiding citizen again. Corporal Kururugi felt his jaw clench at the thought and tried not to glare too openly at the informant. Transactional loyalty is no loyalty at all.


“Just think,” the police inspector added with a friendly enthusiasm Corporal Kururugi felt was wasted on the pathetic wretch, “if we recover any of the stolen property or catch the perpetrators at their stash spot, you could be a free man again by this time next week!”


“Ah…” The informant sagged slightly. “So… You won’t be letting me go, then?”


Corporal Kururugi glowered at the fool until he quickly added “Inspector?”


The corporal hadn’t been brought into this interrogation to intimidate the witness; he had taken that particular responsibility on his own initiative. While he was officially in attendance as the official translator, this particular informant spoke Britannian fluently, rendering his presence redundant. All the same, Nelson claimed to value his perspective and insisted that he attend all interrogations, and dutifully Kururugi had complied.


“I am afraid not,” Inspector Garcia replied, shooting a quelling look at Corporal Kururugi. “While I have complete confidence in the information you have provided, I will of course need to keep you in custody until I can act on it. Way of the world, I fear.”


Somehow, the Eleven managed to sag even further in his straight-backed chair, prompting the inspector to hastily add, “Think of it this way; if your information proves useful, your reward will come that much sooner if I know where to find you.”


It was difficult for Corporal Kururugi to hide his scorn at the softhearted display; only his habitual deference to authority allowed him to suppress his instinctive sneer.


He’s far too soft on them, the corporal thought, not for the first time. Always the soft touch. Always babying them and rarely pressuring them. And never allowing even a little bit of persuasion… And yet, he was forced to conclude, again, he gets results. And he’s in charge.


The middle-aged Number found the temerity to look back up at the inspector. “...My reward?”


“What,” Inspector Garcia asked, “did you think I would be so ingracious as to not compensate you for your time and your information beyond restoring your freedom?”


Judging by the Elevenese snitch’s expression of wide-eyed shock, he would have counted himself extremely lucky to leave the police station under his own power with all of his fingers unbroken.


“No, my friend,” Inspector Garcia continued expansively, “I will see to it that, if we recover the stolen shipment, you will be rewarded appropriately. A finder’s fee is the traditional expression of gratitude for the restoration of missing property, after all!”


And to Corporal Kururugi’s disgust, the Eleven practically came to life at the mention of a monetary reward. Further details fled from the man’s lips, describing hidden rooms and even offering up the address of a Britannian-owned garage that doubled as a chopshop for a local gang.


Once again, he gets results through dishonorable means. Corporal Kururugi grimaced. It was galling to see what could only be described as a corruption of the system in action, and worse still to know that Inspector Garcia’s bribery would almost certainly yield fruit. The results speak for themselves, but… Rewarding any criminal for defying the system, for reaching beyond their place… It’s wrong.


Over the month and week he had spent trailing after Inspector Garcia, Corporal Kururugi had seen an unfamiliar side of the Britannian justice system, a softer, more decadent side.


Inspector Garcia never asked for him to administer a corrective beating to a mouthy prisoner, nor had he ever so much as threatened any of his interviewees with such measures. That had been a relief to Corporal Kururugi; extrajudicial violence was against the law and indicated a misunderstanding of how justice should work.


Of course, had the inspector ever bothered to submit the necessary paperwork for active interrogations, Corporal Kururugi wouldn’t have had a problem assisting him, once approval was given. One of the earliest of the few lessons Kururugi Genbuu had taught a young Corporal Kururugi was just how effective a good beating could be when it came to convincing someone to change their behavior. So, in the spirit of helpfulness, he had even approached Nelson about it on his own initiative, offering him a copy of the form on the off-chance that he was unfamiliar with the Area Administration’s particular paperwork.


The inspector had just thanked him for his offered assistance before waving the proffered form away.


Instead, the inspector just… talked to the men and women who he requested be hauled up from the cells. He asked for their stories, for their recommendations of good local restaurants, for what the names of their children and parents were. He put them at ease, brought smiles to their faces, and somehow parlayed those good feelings into actionable intelligence through a process that remained inexplicable to Corporal Kururugi, even though he had seen it over and over.


Somehow, Inspector Garcia could just charm the details of criminal operations and the personalities of the crooks behind them out of the mouths of their imprisoned associates. Even through Corporal Kururugi’s translation, which he kept completely faithful to the inspector’s word and intent, the man was able to work his magic.


And whenever his charm wasn’t able to fully extract all the details, Inspector Garcia would resort to bribery. He never called it as such, always dressing it up as rewards or incentives, but Corporal Kururugi knew what he was seeing.


And yet, Suzaku noted as he stood beside Inspector Garcia at the gate to the farm, leaning against the boundary fence as they watched the police officers lead a line of shackled Numbers from the main building of the mushroom farm, he got results. Again.


“Inspector?” Corporal Kururugi asked after the coffle made its way to the truck that would haul them back to the police station, “if you don’t mind my curiosity, why are you bothering yourself with all of this… petty small-time crime?”


“Because I’m part of His Imperial Majesty’s police force, Corporal,” Inspector Garcia murmured, watching as the prisoners were loaded into the armored truck one by one. “It’s my job to track down and detain those responsible for acts against the Empire.”


“Yes, of course,” Corporal Kururugi agreed with a quick nod, “but that’s… Not really what I meant. I mean, you’re supposed to be some sort of famous rebel hunter and an expert at dealing with bandits, but you’ve spent the last month here in Yokohama just going after… small fry stuff. And… it’s not like there aren’t bigger problems going on around here, work that’s more fitting your talents...”


Seeing a trace of disappointment cross the foreign Honorary Britannian’s face, he hastily added, “not that it isn’t important to deal with petty criminals; all crime must be rigorously prosecuted, of course! It just seems like the local police should be handling this sort of thing, so you can focus on dealing with the insurgents!”


“Oh, but I am,” Inspector Garcia replied, smiling now that he had the chance to indulge himself by explaining something. “So, let me ask you, Corporal… What was the stolen property that led me to this farm?”


“One of the trucks that transports fuel out to the stations went missing, right?” Corporal Kururugi frowned, trying to remember the details. “A tanker full of diesel, if I’m remembering correctly.”


“Right,” Inspector Garcia nodded. “Someone slid behind the wheel and drove the truck off the yard, tank and all. And they drove it to this farm.”


“...I’m not seeing the connection to terrorism, Nelson,” Corporal Kururugi admitted, irritated by his failure. “They stole some fuel; fuel’s expensive, though. They were probably going to siphon the tank off into multiple containers and sell it to their friends.” Corporal Kururugi frowned. “What even uses diesel, though? Just trucks, right?”


“Farm equipment too. But yes, the resale idea is entirely possible,” Inspector Garcia acknowledged with a nod. “And it’s entirely possible that the tanker truck would simply be processed through that chopshop and resold once all identifying markers were removed. Perhaps the crooks running the ring would have even found the balls to sell our truck back to us!”


The inspector laughed at the theoretical audacity of the thieves and Corporal Kururugi dutifully chuckled along in response.


“However,” continued Inspector Garcia after the moment of ritual amusement passed, “the other possibility is that the thieves would have sold the truck and its fuel to an insurgent group. It’s even possible that some of those even now being loaded onto the wagon as we speak are actually more rebel than criminal, although that distinction is often meaningless. In which case, that truckload of diesel could be a formidable weapon, especially when combined with another ingredient this mushroom farm has in abundance?”


He trailed off, his tone turning the statement into a leading question, clearly testing Corporal Kururugi’s knowledge. To his immense frustration, Kururugi still couldn’t quite figure out where the inspector was headed. “I’m sorry, Sir. I don’t understand.”


“Nelson, man, Nelson!” Inspector Garcia reminded him, before sighing. “Not one for chemistry are you, Corporal?”


“I wouldn’t know,” Corporal Kururugi said apologetically. “I never quite got that far before… Well, before things changed and my instructor went away.”


“Ah.” Inspector Garcia nodded and sighed again. This time, the exhalation sounded like it came from an older man, a man who had years stacked on his shoulders. “I’m sorry, I forgot. You are just so competent, Corporal, that it’s difficult to remember that you are only fifteen.”


I should still be in school, not in the military, Suzaku agreed. If only things were different… If only Lelouch had been able to somehow negotiate peace, or if Lelouch had been appointed the Viceregal-Governor…


“Actually, Sir,” he corrected, “I’m sixteen now. My birthday was a few weeks ago, on the tenth.”


“Ah, yes,” the Inspector’s expression grew tight across his face. “My apologies, Corporal.”


“...Don’t worry about it, Sir,” Corporal Kururugi replied, at a loss for how else to reply. “But, can you tell me what you were getting at with the diesel, though?”


“Certainly, Corporal.” Inspector Garcia favored him with another smile, commending him for his focus or perhaps simply happy with the change in topic. “Simply put, the farm has an abundance of fertilizer, and in particular a stockpile of ammonium nitrate. It’s already a very dangerous substance, prone to detonation when mishandled or stored incorrectly. Combined with diesel, however, the fertilizer is highly explosive.”


“So that’s why we’re here,” Corporal Kururugi breathed, in awe all over again with the inspector’s results. “You realized that they were making a bomb here!”


“I considered it a possibility,” Inspector Garcia gently corrected. “Or perhaps they were selling materials that could be used to make improvised explosives for their guerrilla friends. Fertilizer bombs are hardly a revolutionary technology, and I’m sure that many in the local insurgent groups know how to put something worrying together. If the criminals resold the truck, perhaps the insurgents would have even driven our own truck back onto the yard before flicking the switch.”


“I understand,” Corporal Kururugi nodded along, finally getting the connections. “The rebels do business with the criminals; it’s how they get money, materials, and access. Sometimes, they’re even the same people. By cleaning up the local criminal groups who steal from His Majesty or from regular Britannians, you’re cutting off the local rebels from those citizens!”


“That’s right,” Nelson grinned at him, clearly pleased. “Trying to hunt down each individual insurgent is a fool’s game; you’ll always miss some. But, if you cut down on their ability to arm themselves and attack anything important, you can render the actual fighters practically impotent.”


“And once you manage that, you can just start detaining everybody connected to those you picked up in the sweeps,” Corporal Kururugi continued. “You can rip out the criminal networks and in the process tear the rebels out of the community!”


“Precisely!”


This is so much better than the filtration camps! Corporal Kururugi felt almost drunk on the knowledge. This was a better way! A way to deal with the malcontents that poisoned all of the good people around them without having to kill all of the civilians. Of course, Inspector Garcia is still being needlessly nice to the criminals – I’m sure they’d talk just as readily after some rigorous interrogation. It’s not like anyone would care, after all. Nobody cares about criminals and rebels. My people will thank me for ridding them of such parasites!


“So,” Corporal Kururugi pressed, fascinated by his new discovery, “is this what you were doing against the ungrateful rebels back in your own area? Back in New Wales? Deprive them of the support of the criminal element and then rolling up their social networks?”


“At times,” Inspector Garcia replied with a vague hand gesture. “That’s almost in the rearview mirror these days, back at home. The work of the previous generation, of my predecessors. Most of the remaining guerrillas have been driven back into the jungle, up into the highlands and the mountains. They’re still out there, squatting in the mud and the muck and the mosquitos, but far away from the Settlements, where the people who matter live.”


“It must be nice,” Suzaku said, “to have all of the violence so far away from everybody’s homes… To have all of the rebels separated out from the innocents…”


“It does make the cleanup easier, whenever we do find one of their Maroon communities,” agreed Inspector Garcia. “Sadly though, we have yet to fully push all of the violence out into the countryside. There are still plenty of criminal gangs operating in the favelas, and plenty of angry young people who go on individual rampages. They are pathetic, lashing out without any hope of truly achieving anything, but they are a persistent nuisance. I am sorry to say that we have yet to become a worthy Area, like those of the Homeland.”


Corporal Kururugi felt a great rush of respect for the inspector. The man was a tireless warrior, striving towards a worthy goal; despite his own people’s stubbornness, he and those before him had managed to find a place within the Britannian hierarchy and had found purposes worthy of respect, even from their overlords.


He wondered if he was seeing his future incarnate before him.


“Someday, Nelson,” Corporal Kururugi said, entirely certain in his assurance, “I am sure you will make your people Britannian in every way that matters.”


“Hopefully,” Nelson responded, “and hopefully, you will convince your people of the wisdom of extending their submission to Britannia into their hearts and minds. If any Honorary of this Area can accomplish it, I suspect it might be you, Kururugi.”


At the inspector’s knowing look, Corporal Kururugi felt his heart sink all the way down to his boots. “So… You know, I take it? Sir?”


“Nelson,” Inspector Garcia gently reminded him, “just Nelson. And of course I know. You didn’t bother to change your personal name, much less your surname. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who you are.”


“Then…” Suzaku gulped, “do they know? I mean… About…”


If they know that I’m the son of the last Prime Minister of Japan, why are they letting me walk around free? Unless… do they also know that I am the reason why the Japanese surrendered so soon…?


“As far as I know, they do not,” Inspector Garcia asserted firmly. “The Britannians are many things, Corporal, but subtle is not one of them. I am fairly confident that, had they known that Kururugi Genbuu’s only son had enlisted in an Honorary Legion, they would be trumpeting the news from every rooftop.”


Suzaku couldn’t help but agree. The Britannians were anything but subtle; one only needed to look upon the ever-climbing towers of the Settlement to realize that their culture was one of great dramatic gestures and flashy exhortations to conquer new domains.


“But… How can they not know?” He hated how plaintive the question sounded, but he had lived under the shadow of this particular sword for almost a year and a half, since his enlistment. Every day, he had dreaded discovery just as he had secretly longed for it. “I mean…” he continued, “I’ve never hidden my background, not really… I just never really brought it up. How can they not know who I am? I put my name down on the form when I took up the Oath.”


“It’s quite simple, Corporal,” Inspector Garcia sighed. “They misspelled your name. Someone misspelled your name in the official files when they were entering the data from your enlistment papers, and nobody has noticed the error as of yet.”


“That’s…” Corporal Kururugi didn’t know quite how to respond to such a mundane explanation.


That was it? That was all? He raged in the confines of his head. Weeks and months of wondering when the axe would fall, when the DIS would haul me away, and I never had to worry because of a random clerical error?!


A shudder passed through him as Suzaku suddenly realized that the day of his discovery had, in fact, finally come. After all, no matter how pleasant Inspector Garcia was, no matter how willing to answer questions and explain himself Nelson could be, he was still a police officer.


“...Are you going to tell them?” Suzaku didn’t know what answer he was hoping to hear. “About who my father was?”


“...I think you’re a good soldier, Corporal Kururugi,” Nelson said after a moment of silent contemplation, “and I think that you will do great things for the Empire. I don’t think that depriving the Empire of a good soldier out of a fit of unjustified paranoia serves His Majesty’s interests. And besides,” he smiled, “who am I to second guess the fine employees of the local Administration?”


I should protest against this, Corporal Kururugi knew. Purposefully hiding a fugitive from the Security Services is a crime, and even though I don’t know if I was ever listed as a fugitive, if DIS or any of the other spooks knew I was still alive, surely they would want me. I should turn myself in, now that I know they aren’t aware of me.


But what about the plan? Suzaku asked. If I get taken away or killed by the police, I won’t be able to help my people build enough strength and respect to find security within the system. We will never be anything more than disposable, second-class citizens. My father was the one who doomed Japan, so don’t I have a responsibility to give my people the best lives possible?


And besides, his inner voice added, my orders told me to do whatever Inspector Garcia decided. He’s decided to conceal my identity, so who am I to go against him?


“Thank you, Inspector Garcia,” Corporal Kururugi finally got out. “I’ll keep your words in mind.”


“I’m sure you will, Corporal,” Inspector Garcia said with a nod, turning back to the farm, where a second team of police officers was inventorying the contents of the storage sheds and outbuildings. “In fact-”


Before the inspector could finish his thought, he was cut off by the shrill wailing of his phone, a sound that Corporal Kururugi had come to detest over the last five weeks. When he had asked Inspector Garcia why he had chosen such an offensive ringtone, the Seven Honorary had explained that he’d wanted a ringtone that was utterly impossible to ignore. The annoyance, it appeared, was both shared and entirely intentional.


“Ah, duty calls,” Nelson quipped as he slid the phone open and put the mobile to his ear. “Inspector Garcia here.”


The other half of the conversation was almost inaudible to Corporal Kururugi, but the news conveyed by the urgent murmurs was clearly dire. All sense of levity fled from Inspector Garcia, and it was very clearly Inspector Garcia once again, no longer Nelson.


“At 605 Cartwright?” Inspector Garcia confirmed, turning on his heel and beckoning to Corporal Kururugi as he started to briskly walk back to the car they had borrowed from the Navy’s motor pool. “Fine. Tell whoever gets there first to set up a perimeter and to keep everybody there. Honoraries, Numbers, Britannians, whoever – we need witness statements, and I don’t care what else they had planned for the evening.”


Further inaudible murmurs issued from the phone as Corporal Kururugi clambered into the driver’s seat, Inspector Garcia circling around to the passenger side door.


“If he can find a tarp or some sheeting, he can cover the body, if he thinks it will help keep the civilians calm,” Inspector Garcia allowed, clearly in response to some query. “Otherwise, no. Nobody should touch the body. Don’t let the medics haul it away; she’s already dead, there’s no point.”


Corporal Kururugi turned the key and the car’s electric motor hummed to life.


“Fine,” Inspector Garcia said, “I’ll be there in…” He covered the phone’s speaker. “How long will it take to get to the intersection of Cartwright and Margaret? It’s just south of the main gate.”


“Twenty minutes,” Corporal Kururugi replied immediately, easing the car onto the road, “assuming traffic’s not too bad.”


“Throw on the sirens,” Inspector Garcia directed, before uncovering the phone. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. Don’t let anybody leave, don’t let anybody touch the body or anything around it. And tell whoever takes charge of the scene to get everybody inside, preferably behind a thick wall. Garcia out.”


The phone slid shut with a clack, and Inspector Garcia sagged back into his chair. From the corner of his eye, Corporal Kururugi saw him run a hand along the scar puckering his cheek, a gesture he had learned the older man used as a soothing motion when he was stressed.


After a quiet moment, the police inspector collected himself and sat upright in the passenger seat. “Well,” he sighed, “it seems like our mysterious sniper is back at it again.”


“Damn them,” Corporal Kururugi muttered, his good mood rapidly descending into black anger. “I guess it was too much to hope that they’d been swept up with the gangs or whatever.”


“Too much to hope for indeed,” Inspector Garcia agreed with bleak humor. “Personally, I doubt that our friend the Sniper has any association with the gangs. Everything about the attacks screams ‘lone gunman’, except for his ability to flee the scene without anybody even noticing their departure.”


The killings had begun a week before the inspector had arrived in Yokohama with Corporal Kururugi in tow. Despite a total lack of any suspects or leads, it was a practical certainty that the same person or group was behind all of the murders to date; each had been carried out with a high-powered rifle with sufficient strength to punch cleanly through the victim and often the wall behind them, and each victim had seemingly been shot at great range, judging by the complete lack of any sightings of the shooter.


“They’re coming closer and closer together,” Corporal Kururugi remarked as the car skidded around a corner, siren blaring, channeling his frustration through the pedal under his boot. “At first it was once a week, but the last one was only three days ago.”


“The cool-down time is shortening,” nodded Inspector Garcia. “Although it’s probably too early to guess why. Perhaps they want more blood, perhaps they have a quota they need to hit before a certain time. Maybe they’re just frustrated with the lack of any significant reaction on our part.”


“They’re not the only ones,” Corporal Kururugi groused. While he was well aware that Inspector Garcia had been alluding to the media blackout regarding the sniper attacks, or what the police had taken to calling the Yokohama Sniper Attacks, he was more frustrated by the lack of any retaliation.


But who would we be retaliating against?


The thought was just as galling now as it had ever been, but the point remained. There was no sign that the local Numbers were concealing the elusive marksman in their ghettos, nor had any of the informers among the ranks of the Honorary Britannians overheard any gossip about any disgruntled janitors getting their hands on a rifle or whatever.


And if the DIS or the IBI have any Britannians under suspicion, they’re not telling us anything about it.


“Have patience, Corporal,” Inspector Garcia said encouragingly. “Sooner or later, they will slip up. Someone will see something or they will get sloppy, and then it will only be a matter of time before justice is served.”


“You’re right, Inspector,” Corporal Kururugi acknowledged, “but how many innocent people will they kill before that happens?”


And, Suzaku added, how many of our people will pay the price when the retaliatory executions are mandated? Doesn’t this terrorist understand what will happen? Don’t they know what blood price the Britannians will demand? If only they would just… Just wait for me to get the system to work for the betterment of us all, instead of this… this stupidity!


Inspector Garcia had no response, and they drove the rest of the way to the scene of the Yokohama Sniper’s latest attack in silence.


JUNE 23, 2016 ATB
POLICE STATION, FUNAKOSHICHO WARD, PORT YOKOSUKA IMPERIAL NAVAL BASE
1020


On the other side of the large one-way window, Corporal Kururugi was putting on a very credible performance of a reasonable officer willing to make a deal. It was abundantly clear, at least to Nelson Garcia, that it was not a role that came naturally to the young man. While Corporal Kururugi had been blessed with a deceptively open face and a veneer of friendliness, he had a troubling tendency to resort to forceful coercion at the drop of a hat whenever his inflexible inner world was challenged in the slightest.


But if I can convince him that simply beating down all of your challengers isn’t the end-all to maintaining order, he has such potential…


And Area 11 desperately needs men who are more than just hammers.


Nelson sighed and returned to his own paperwork, periodically looking up to check in on the young corporal’s progress. His own duties had kept him constantly busy since he had arrived in Area 11 five weeks ago and he couldn’t spare the time to truly give the younger Honorary the quality instruction he needed, so Nelson had been forced to squeeze lessons into any available scrap of time, like now.


And with this ‘Yokohama Sniper’ business kicking off, I doubt my availability will improve in the foreseeable future.


It was a deeply frustrating situation; by prioritizing Corporal Kururugi’s training as a beginner counter-insurgency specialist, Nelson would by necessity be sacrificing his own time-sensitive workload, but conversely emphasizing the backlog of old business would undercut Corporal Kururugi’s development, leaving him just as focused on short-term gains as seemingly everybody else in this cursed Area. For a man who prided himself on competency and delivering quality work that could stand the test of time, both choices seemed like bad options.


Which, he concluded with a sip of bitter coffee, the Yokosuka station’s brew no better than that offered by the Chuo outpost, is just Area 11 in a nutshell, isn’t it?


In all of his time in His Majesty’s service, Nelson Dutra Garcia had never had the misfortune to set foot in such a poorly administered Area as Area 11. Worse, the only time he had ever encountered such poor governance before had been at the sub-prefectural level, typically when the local intendant succumbed to flattery or gifts from the counts, earls, or estate-holding barons of his intendancy. In those cases, when the usual corruption had grown into an active detriment to the function of the state, it was an easy matter of replacing the intendant.


But who had the authority to remove a viceregal-governor? The hint was in the name: Such men ruled with viceregal power and reigned directly in His Majesty’s name. Consequently, only the Emperor or his Chancellor could remove viceroys from their offices.


And considering that Area 11’s viceregal-governor is fifth in line to the throne and liable to throw his support behind the Chancellor, the only way His Highness will be removed is in the course of a major power struggle inside the Imperial Household, something the current Emperor took considerable pains to ensure would not happen given his own rise to the Throne.


Which meant Area 11 was stuck with the leadership of Clovis la Britannia, the utmost source of almost all of its current woes.


Profoundly frustrating didn’t even begin to cover Nelson’s thoughts on the matter.


Every Area had its problems. For example, the hinterlands of Areas 5 and 6 were ravaged by Catholic and Gracchite insurgencies and by the endlessly inventive narco gangs who somehow managed to smuggle their wares into the EU, the Heartland, and even the Homeland itself.


Area 7 likewise had remnant Papist rebels squatting among the maroon communities of the jungles, not to mention its own criminal gangs among the destitute urban Number populations.


Area 8 was a smuggler’s paradise, and keeping order on its far-flung islands was a Sisyphean task.


Areas 9, 10, and 12 had rebel movements as well, discontented Numbers backed by foreign sponsors; New Zealander and Papuan rebels backed by the nominally neutral Kingdom of Australia in Area 9, a swarm of Indochinese groups taking money from the Chinese whenever they weren’t launching raids into Federation territory, and the same damned Catholics in Area 12 backed by the papal wealth from the far away EU.


None of these Areas had problems on the same scale as Area 11, however, and none were so crippled by deep-seated problems in the Administration itself. Indeed, in Nelson’s opinion, the Administration was its own worst enemy.


It was a baffling situation: By dint of its massive Sakuradite lodes, Area 11 was the most important overseas possession in the Britannian Empire, the gem in the crown of the New Areas. Its proximity to both of the other Great Powers should have only accentuated the importance of good administration in the face of the circling Chinese and Europeans.


Perhaps it was that natural prosperity and proximity to the corrupting factor of foreigners, far from the eyes of Pendragon, that had attracted the worst of Britannia to the Area? Idealogues, lickspittles, and the brazenly corrupt… All flourishing at the expense of every part of the Area not directly involved in the Sakuradite industry.


In most Areas, his own homeland included, the Honorary Citizen system was used to give the cream of the Numbers, local elites and promising prospects, a stake in the Empire. In Area 11, it was a cruel parody, where the newly fledged Honorary Britannians were treated worse than the Numbers of most other Areas.


In regards to the Numbers themselves, the Empire had historically worked to steadily integrate Number populations into itself over time. When the Crown had first flown from the Isles to the Homeland, a general proclamation of emancipation in exchange for service had simultaneously replenished the depleted ranks of the Royal Army and had broken the back of the rival power bloc of the planter aristocracy. Then, the Empire had set to the task of rooting out any foes within its borders with ruthless expediency, killing entire tribes of natives to the last adult man and distributing the women and children to guardians willing to enlighten and elevate those fortunates to a Britannian level of understanding.


Those early years had imparted key lessons on dealing with subjugated populations to the Imperial Family. Bread had to be offered as well as the stick, and stinting on either only diminished the total returns. Rebellion had to be punished harshly, as it was when the Quebecois and Acadians had risen, but cooperation had to be rewarded as well, as the Cherokee had been rewarded en masse with Honorary Citizenship.


Which made the treatment of the Elevens all the more baffling to Inspector Garcia. Herding the rump urban populations into the shattered districts and walling them off with only the most basic of services available for use as unskilled labor pools, forcing rural populations onto estate villages or into company towns, deliberately leaving the Numbers uneducated and unable to participate in the economy beyond the most base level, and practicing collective punishment on a scale not seen since the end of the last Plains War against the Comanche Lords…


It’s almost as if the Viceregal-Governor and his advisors want the Elevens to rebel. Honestly, if I were deliberately trying to set the conditions to make Number rebellion all but inevitable, I’d be hard-pressed to come up with something better than the official policy of Area 11…


Which, in a roundabout way, led Inspector Garcia to the matter of the so-called “Yokohama Sniper.”


So far, the Sniper had claimed seven victims, taking their first Britannian only the day before, while he and Corporal Kururugi had been out overseeing the bust at the mushroom farm. Nelson had little doubt that the death toll would be significantly higher by the time the Sniper was brought down; past experience coupled with the complete lack of any leads so far told him as much.


It was a bit early in the investigation to come to conclusions, but the inspector had already begun to put together a profile based on the little evidence he had available.


Until yesterday, all of the victims had been Honorary Britannians, but their ages and gender had varied greatly. None of the victims had been killed by accident; each had been shot through the neck or the head. Several had been shot outside of charging stations, while two had been shot coming out of restaurants or stores. Of the victims, only one was a soldier or policeman, as one of the Honorary victims had been an off-duty policeman. The sole Britannian victim had been a sailor’s wife.


All of the attacks had occurred in either the districts of the Yokohama Settlement zoned for Honorary Citizens, or in close proximity to Yokosuka Naval Base. The attacks took place at all hours of the day, with little preference for morning, afternoon, or evening, but so far none had taken place at night.


The same rifle had been used in each attack, as far as the forensics team could determine, based on their analysis of the rounds recovered from the scene of the last three attacks. The Sniper was apparently using either R-11M, the standard Army designated squad marksman rifle, or a similar civilian model with the same round.


Which is interesting, because an R-11M isn’t exactly a small weapon, nor one built to be concealed. Anybody carrying one would be very obviously armed.


“Taken together,” the conclusion to the report Nelson was finishing began, “it is almost certain that the Yokohama Sniper is an Eleven or a small group of Elevens engaged in an individual rampage against opportunistic targets. While a Britannian malcontent could execute a similar series of attacks on Honorary Citizens, motivated by similar factors as the Christmas Incident, the presence of a Britannian in Honorary districts populated predominantly by ethnic Elevens would have been noticed. The death of Mrs. Nora Evans further reduces the chances of a Britannian culprit.”


And this is the reason why the Numbers aren’t simply hammered into submission in a well run Area, Nelson thought, looking up from the keyboard to check on Corporal Kururugi again. The subject of the interrogation was scribbling away and chatting with the corporal, apparently on friendly terms. While the subject was clearly wary, he was still freely cooperating. We want them to fear us, not hate us. When they hate us, when they feel they have nothing to lose…


He glanced back over at the pile of incident reports. Six dead Honorary Citizens so far and one dead Britannian. A paltry butcher’s bill so far, compared to the only recently suppressed rural rebellion in Niigata Prefecture but made far more ominous by its proximity to the second largest Settlement in Area 11.


When Numbers feel like they have nothing to lose, it’s only a matter of time before rebellion breaks out. Even if we do catch this sniper, ten more will be ready to rise in his place. This isn’t an isolated incident; it’s a sign of the times.


It was painfully clear to Inspector Nelson Garcia, Imperial Bureau of Investigation, that only through a change of leadership in the Area paired with a thorough-going reform of its Administration could a Number rebellion, likely aided and abetted by dissident Honorary Citizens, be averted.


It was equally clear that no such change would be made. So long as the Purist Faction held sway over Prince Clovis, no reform would come. So long as Prince Clovis backed Prince Schneizel as the next true emperor, once Prince Odysseus stepped back as everybody expected, the Third Prince would retain his viceroyalty.


In that light, his duty was clear. The line had to be held until Prince Schniezel took the throne, until the Empire got the new and vigorous Emperor it deserved. As a genius and a statesman, surely the current Second Prince would understand the necessity for reform, and once Prince Clovis’s support was no longer needed, he would clean house in Area 11. Until then, it was the duty of every loyal citizen and subject of the Empire, Britannian and Honorary alike, to keep the machine of state functional.


Hence his own service.


Hence his training of Corporal Kururugi.


Hence his eagerness to bring this case and all others like it to a rapid close.


The Empire had to hold until the next generation could take the mantle of leadership. Repeating the destruction of the Emblem of Blood could not be allowed, nor could dissension in the face of the Empire’s many enemies, within and without.


Because if the Empire fractures, came the grim thought, it won’t be the Britannians who see the worst of it. It will be the Honorary Citizens who will be caught up in the jaws of internecine war and ground to dust. Men like me, like Corporal Kururugi… If only the Britannians understood their Empire as well as we do. Perhaps then they wouldn’t treat it with such contempt.


JUNE 28, 2016 ATB
ROYAL ELECTRIC REFUEL STATION, KONAN WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1314


I never should have left Shinjuku.


A bead of sweat rolled down Kanae’s cheek as the familiar, panicky refrain passed through her mind for what must have been the fortieth time so far that day. She liked to think that she hadn’t made many mistakes in her twenty years of life, but she had surely made up for that surplus of temperance and good sense when she had volunteered to accompany Tanaka Chihiro on her mission to Yokohama.


It hadn’t been a carefully considered choice. Obviously it hadn’t been a considered choice in the slightest, otherwise she would have stayed back where it was relatively safe in Shinjuku.


And wasn’t that a crazy thing to think?


But Kanae had never been able to resist Chihiro’s persuasion, not since she’d attended middle school with the other woman back before the Conquest. For all that Chihiro had changed over the years, going from the smiley, happy-go-lucky schoolgirl Kanae could barely remember to… Well, to Chihiro as she was now, she had always been incredibly convincing.


And when Chihiro had stormed back into the hotel, spitting nails after being “sent away” to Yokohama, Kanae had been one of the handful to step up when her leader had asked for volunteers. The fiery passion in Chihiro’s eyes had been enough for Kanae to overlook the stench of moonshine on her breath; her call to spread the war against the raping Britannians beyond Shinjuku’s walls enough to let her awareness of Tanaka’s unpredictable rage slip from her mind at the worst possible moment.


After two months spent in Chihiro’s constant company, the shine had well and truly worn off. The drinking, once reserved for nighttime or company, had overtaken her leader, and now Chihiro was almost constantly drunk. The rage, loosely collared at the best of times, was a constant lurking menace.


Away from Shinjuku and the Commander’s watchful eyes, Chihiro had gone feral.


And she had dragged Kanae and Sui, the third member of their little trio, down with her.


I never should have left Shinjuku.


Outside, the intersection’s traffic signal flashed green, and Kanae mechanically sent the stolen van, full to the brim with hidden modifications and armed militants, trundling forwards. From behind her, the sound of one of those modifications sliding open sent her heart lurching in her chest, but Kanae didn’t dare let her spiking adrenaline floor the accelerator or, even better yet, send her scrambling from the van entirely, oncoming traffic be damned.


Any outside observer could be a plainclothes policeman, ready to arrest any apparent Honorary stepping out of line and subject their unfortunate prey to the full rigors of Britannian “justice”. Worse yet, any sign of disloyalty to the supine woman stretched across the floor of the van would lead to a brief yet painful existence as an object lesson about the wages of treachery.


Having borne witness to several of Chihiro’s previous examples, Kanae almost preferred her chances in the hands of Britannia’s dogs.


Ahead of the van, almost at the next intersection, the familiar neon crown of a Royal Electric refuel station glowed. Even though it was far from peak hours, there were still a few cars parked at the charger stations, their ports open and their drivers idling nearby or darting inside to grab a quick snack as their batteries topped off.


Behind Kanae, the distinctive sound of a coilgun’s motor whirring to life cut through the sweat- and whiskey-laden air of the van’s interior.


Another bead of sweat rolled down Kanae’s cheek.


There aren’t any police cars at the station, a part of her wailed, the words trapped behind her lips, and we’re nowhere close to any Brit outpost!


But they were passing through the streets of the Settlement, down a road that skirted between a Britannian commoner district and one of the more upscale Honorary districts. According to Chihiro’s drunken rantings, that made everybody here an enemy, uniformed or not, combatant or not. Either they were a Britannian and damned by virtue of blood, or an Honorary and damned by the oaths they had sworn.


Or they’re Japanese and doing their best to work whatever sucky job they can find to make ends meet, just like most of the people back in Shinjuku. Just like me, and just like Chihiro, once upon a time.


Chihiro hadn’t mentioned their people during those rants, and Kanae hadn’t seen any reason to draw the woman’s quicksilver temper her way by bringing herself to her leader’s attention.


There hadn’t seemed like there was any point to it.


Kanae felt differently now.


Just as the stolen white van came abreast of the refueling station, the car just ahead and to her left began flashing its turn signals. Kanae obligingly slowed down, waving to the other driver to scoot in ahead of her. With her dyed red hair and fake glasses, Kanae must have looked like a Britannian, as the other driver gave her a grateful wave before accelerating forwards, right through the light of the next intersection as it changed from yellow to red.


Kanae slowed to a halt, her heart in her mouth. Any moment now…


As soon as that light turns green, she knew, as soon as we start moving forwards, past that charging station… Another life will end.


She wondered who it would be, whether it would be a Britannian family or a Japanese one that would have an empty spot at their table starting from tonight’s dinner and stretching on forever.


I should say something, do something…


The mere thought made her flinch as Kanae imagined Chihiro’s furious glare, remembered the wet sound of bones popping out of joints.


Do something! Kanae castigated herself. Say something!


But the words wouldn’t come. Her throat had closed up as her hands, wet with sweat, clenched down on the steering wheel. Time seemed to flatten out as Kanae fought for breath. This wasn’t what she had signed up to fight for. This wasn’t where she wanted to be, who she wanted to be, the getaway driver for a murderer who had dropped the pretense of fighting for anything beyond revenge when her little sister, her last surviving family member, had rejected her by choosing a life of pacifism.


But it was too late to back out. Too late to turn back.


You coward… Kanae cringed, whimpering as she tried to escape her own thoughts, knowing without any doubt that it was true, that she was a coward. Stuck between a devil pocked with burn scars and a sea of terror and pain, she was scared, too scared to do anything to help anybody.


I never should have left Shinjuku…


The light turned green.

 

Chapter 30: A Snipe Hunt, Part 2


(Thank you to Aminta Defender, Sunny, Restestsest, Mitch H., Adronio, WrandmWaffles, Rakkis157, Aemon and MetalDragon for beta-reading and editing this chapter.)


JUNE 30, 2016 ATB
ROYAL ELECTRIC REFUEL STATION, KONAN WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1326


As he pulled the car up to the cordoned-off recharging station, Corporal Kururugi cut the siren off in mid-wail. For a moment, all he could do was sit in the driver's seat, eyes pressed shut and exhausted. The oppressive summer heat had seemingly conspired with the week's stress, and the young soldier's limbs felt leaden and unresponsive.


He didn't want to step out of the car and onto the scene of yet another seemingly unsolvable crime. It was demoralizing.


Not as demoralizing as filtration work, though, he reminded himself. Besides, I need to keep up with Inspector Garcia!


That exhortation fell flat, however, as Inspector Garcia had yet to make any move to get out of the car either. Dark rings had appeared under his brown eyes, and the normally immaculate counterinsurgency specialist had two days' worth of five o'clock shadow crusting his face.


This was the twenty-seventh Yokohama Sniper attack they had been called to in a week since that first urgent call that had sent them racing away from the farm. Twenty-seven attacks and twenty-nine bodies in only eight days.


It was enough to tire anybody out.


Of the twenty-nine victims to date, only twelve had been Britannians from the Homeland or the Settlements in other Areas. Of those twelve, only four had been soldiers, all of whom had been off-duty when they were shot.


One had been a child, shot while making his way from his mother's parked car to the front door of his elementary school.


And seventeen of my people, Corporal Kururugi thought with a smoldering resentment. Seventeen men and women who were just trying to live their lives, trying to prove to the Empire that we are just as loyal as the Honorary Britannians in any other Area.


With every new body, the pressure from on high to find the culprit had ratcheted up. Worse still, after a month of suppressing the story and thirty-eight bodies so far, the Yokohama Settlement's Municipal Administration and the Commandant of the Yokosuka Naval Base had finally decided that the public had the right to know that a lunatic with a sniper rifle was out in the Settlement somewhere. Predictably, reporters from every major publication in the Area and even a few from periodicals back in the Homeland had descended on Yokohama like camera-wielding sharks.


This had done nothing to reduce the crushing pressure on Inspector Garcia's shoulders, and by proxy, on Corporal Kururugi.


From his seat behind the wheel, he could see a small crowd of the bastards mobbing a beleaguered police lieutenant, his gas mask slung across his chest and his face visible as he tried to field the insatiable questions.


"Better him than us," Inspector Garcia remarked, clearly following Corporal Kururugi's gaze. "We might be able to get some actual work done while he's holding the gutter press at bay."


"I hope you're right, Nelson," Corporal Kururugi said without much hope. "How much do you want to bet that they've already frightened off anybody who might've seen something?"


"I'm not much of a gambler," Inspector Garcia demurred, "it's a bad habit to get into. Either way," he popped open his door, "we won't find any leads sitting here. Up and at them, Corporal."


"As you say, Inspector."


A squad of Honorary Britannian police stood guard around the chargers, but their sergeant waved the inspector and the corporal through. The same squad seemed to have drawn some sort of short straw, that or they were the "usual detail" for standing guard around public crime scenes; Corporal Kururugi recognized the men present from the last two attacks. He tapped his fist against his breastplate to the sergeant, before following Inspector Garcia over to the tarp-covered body.


Inspector Garcia was already kneeling by the corpse, an active recorder sitting next to him. Corporal Kururugi dutifully pulled out a pocket notebook, ready to copy down anything Inspector Garcia wanted in writing or to record his own thoughts.


By now, they had worked out something of a routine.


"Victim was a light-skinned Britannian woman in her late thirties," Inspector Garcia began, flipping the tarp back. "The victim has been identified as Joceline Tennyson by her driver's license and was the wife of Captain Steward Tennyson and mother to Joshua and Alice. The victim was five foot five inches and just over a hundred and fifty pounds. Victim has medium-length auburn hair and was wearing a yellow and white sundress.


"Victim was shot through the neck from behind while recharging her minivan's battery," Inspector Garcia continued, his voice clinical and emotionless. "I am not a medical professional, but judging by the wound and the state of her neck, I think the bullet passed straight through her spinal column before exiting through her throat."


That, Suzaku thought, was a very fair assessment, considering that the "state of her neck" is practically severed.


"After exiting the victim's body, the round continued through the window of her minivan, and…" Inspector Garcia stood back up and squinted through the holed window, "out through the window on the other side of the minivan. Trajectory looks close to flat, but it might be proceeding at a slight uphill angle."


Corporal Kururugi made a note to point this out to the crime scene techs, once they showed up.


"Considering that the round still had sufficient velocity to pass through the minivan and probably on into the recharging station itself after passing through the victim's neck, it seems reasonable to conclude that a high-powered rifle was used for this attack." The inspector scooped the recorder up from the pavement and flipped the tarp back down over the late Mrs. Tennyson. "Unless this was a copycat, the use of a high-powered rifle on a seemingly random housewife indicates that this is another Yokohama Sniper attack."


Corporal Kururugi followed Inspector Garcia past the other chargers and into the recharging station. The two clerks unlucky enough to be on duty at the time were standing awkwardly behind the counter, another Honorary policeman keeping an eye on the pair.


Inspector Garcia ignored all three in favor of the fresh bullet hole in the front window.


"The bullet penetrated the window and," he craned his head up and around, "lodged…" he tilted his head down slightly, "just above the beverage coolers. A height of probably six and a half feet, definitely not more than seven feet. As Mrs. Tennyson was five foot five according to her license, this definitely represents an upward trajectory."


A note of excitement had crept into the Inspector's voice; Corporal Kururugi felt a similar excitement welling up inside. That angle said something very interesting about the shooter's location when he had fired the shot – namely, that the shot had to have been fired from a very low elevation and from a location very close to the target.


"So," Inspector Garcia continued into the recorder, "this shot rules out the idea that the perpetrator is firing from an elevated position, at least in some cases. I will have to check back over the scene records from previous locations, but in this particular instance, the upward trajectory is unmistakable. However, this raises further questions. If the shooter is at or below ground level, how are they escaping notice?


"Corporal," Inspector Garcia said, turning to Kururugi, "please go ask the clerks for their security cameras' recordings. Also, ask if they remember seeing or hearing anything. I doubt they will, but the formalities must be observed."


Corporal Kururugi sketched a salute and ambled over to the clerks, who gazed suspiciously at him. He smiled blandly back at the two Britannians. While they might be full citizens of the Empire and his superiors, he was vested in the borrowed authority of an Inspector of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation, his own Honorary status and Eleven features be damned.


"Where do you keep your cameras' recordings?" He asked, purposefully blunt and enjoying a slight thrill at their clear distaste at his presumption. "Do the street-side cameras record to the same computer or whatever as the ones inside the store?"


"There's only one camera in the store," the older of the two replied, "it's behind the counter, looking over the cash register. There's one camera looking at the chargers, and one focused on the exit."


Corporal Kururugi waited patiently, his bland smile as immovable as granite.


A moment later, the clerk grudgingly added "...Corporal."


"So where're the recordings?" Corporal Kururugi asked, reiterating his question. "Hurry up, I don't have all day."


The younger clerk looked like he was about to say something, looked from Corporal Kururugi to the other uniformed Honorary Britannian standing by and over at the suited Inspector Garcia, and thought better of it.


"They're in the back office," the older clerk said, rising from his stool. "Here, I'll show you."


A few minutes of scanning fast-forwarded footage later, Corporal Kururugi reported back to the Inspector. "Bad news, Inspector. The cameras aren't pointed toward anything off the recharging station's grounds. There's some good footage of Mrs. Tennyson getting hit, and there's a few frames of the clerks cowering behind the counter once the bullet went through the window, but nothing else."


"That," Inspector Garcia frowned, "is unfortunate."


"It is," Corporal Kururugi agreed, "but when I asked that gentleman about other cameras," he jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the older clerk, who had returned his place behind the counter, "he said that there's a camera on the traffic light down the street. If the shooter was firing from street level, we might see something."


"Good thinking, Corporal!" The Inspector grinned, the expression boyish on his tired, unshaven face.


"As you say, Inspector," Kururugi agreed, his tone easy and bland.


For a moment, Inspector Garcia stood still and looked off into the distance, clearly mulling over his options. Then, his eyes refocused on Corporal Kururugi and the familiar smile bobbed back into place. "Well, go ahead and help hold the press off, and for God's sake don't say anything they could quote. The forensic lads should be arriving soon to make an official report of the scene and I need to call and get some sergeant assigned to prying that traffic camera footage out of Public Works' sticky hands."


With a smart salute, Corporal Kururugi turned on his heel and started heading for the door, reinvigorated by the sense of progress being made. Before he got more than a few steps away, he heard Inspector Garcia behind him.


"Oh, and Corporal?" Kururugi turned. "Good work, finding an alternative source of footage. Let's hope that it has our Sniper in it, yes?"


"Yes, Inspector!" Corporal Kururugi replied with an answering grin, thrilled by Nelson's approval. "The sooner we can find him, the sooner justice will be done!"


JULY 5, 2016 ATB
POLICE STATION, FUNAKOSHICHO WARD, PORT YOKOSUKA IMPERIAL NAVAL BASE
0637


To the gratified surprise of Corporal Kururugi, it took very little investigation to solve the twin mysteries of the shooter's placement and their amazing ability to escape from the crime scene without detection. With the benefit of hindsight, as he stood in front of Inspector Nelson's desk, he supposed the answer should have been obvious.


Obvious, sure, but there's no way I would've ever come up with it!


"Well done, Corporal," Inspector Garcia murmured as he flipped through frame after grainy frame of traffic camera footage. "Very well spotted."


"It didn't take much…" Corporal Kururugi began before pausing to stifle a yawn. He'd managed to catch a few hours of sleep early in the morning as he'd waited for the labyrinthine police bureaucracy to spit out the information he'd needed. "Just had to spot the pattern."


He had found the first piece of that pattern in the topmost picture of the stack on Nelson's desk. Timestamped seconds after the frame of the recharging station surveillance footage of the bullet smashing through the window, the traffic camera mounted on the stoplight at the nearby intersection had caught a white panel van in mid-turn, its rear oriented directly towards the station.


The van's plates had unfortunately been outside of the frame, the car turned at just the wrong angle, but the vehicle had stood out to Corporal Kururugi when he had first reviewed the footage while Inspector Garcia had immersed himself in the forensic report.


For the first time in his short career as a counter-insurgency agent, Corporal Kururugi Suzaku had a hunch.


Following this hunch, he had filed further requests with the Directorates of Public Works managing several different Settlement wards for any camera footage they possessed near the locations of previous Yokohama Sniper attacks. In most of those cases, the footage of the days of the attacks had no van to be seen. But after hours and hours of searching, Corporal Kururugi had found vans of the same apparent make and model lingering near the scenes of four different attacks throughout the month of June.


And in one of those scenes, Corporal Kururugi found a frame where half the van's license plate had been captured. Between that half of a plate number and the description of the van, and with the increasing pressure of the Prefect of Yokohama and the Commandant of Yokosuka Naval Base behind the investigation, records of a van recently stolen from a landscaping business in Kanagawa turned up with remarkable rapidity.


"That's really all it takes sometimes," Inspector Garcia replied, already reaching for the phone. "Honestly, finding these patterns among the chaos and following up on them, pursuing the niggling little leads down… That's what makes a good investigator, Suzaku."


The Seven Honorary paused mid-dial to shoot Corporal Kururugi a proud smile. "You did very good work this time, Corporal. Very good work indeed."


Jerkily, Corporal Kururugi nodded a reply, trying not to let the sudden spiking pride burst across his face. Thankfully, Inspector Garcia seemed satisfied by that mute response, as he turned his attention back to his call. Corporal Kururugi vaguely listened in as Nelson passed on his discovery to the Naval Base's Commandant and soon to the head of the MP force garrisoned at Yokosuka, but only a fragment of his mind was oriented towards the call.


The rest of his sleepless focus was directed inwards, on that swelling pride and satisfaction.


The long hours spent searching grainy footage, the wheedling negotiations with petty Public Works officials and archivists, that sense of recognition for a job well done made all of it worth it. Inspector Garcia was proud of him, and more than that, was listening to him! The Bureau man put enough stock in his words to immediately put out an all-points bulletin on the stolen van.


It was an almost overwhelmingly-complete vote of confidence. Suzaku found that he wasn't sure how he felt about anybody, especially an authority figure, having such faith in his words, in him, when he had so little faith at times in his own decisions.


But that just goes to show that I need to have more faith in myself, and in the Plan, Corporal Kururugi thought as he dropped into the comfy chair across the desk from Nelson. If I have confidence in Nelson's understanding of how to succeed in Britannia as an Honorary and if he has faith in my ability to deliver the results the Britannians want to see, doesn't that indicate that I'm on the right path and I can act more confidently moving forwards?


He paused and tried to turn that tangled chain of thought over in his head. I really need to get more sleep…


"And that's that," Nelson said jubilantly as the phone rattled down into its cradle. "Every patrolling officer and camera-minder knows that finding this van is the new top priority. The Prefect is activating every officer available and the Commandant is turfing all of the redcaps out of their bunks and onto standby! As soon as we lay eyes on that van, we'll be coming down on them like a pile of bricks!"


"So…" Corporal Kururugi hesitated, "what do we do now? I mean… We can't do much until they find the van, right?"


"Well, you can go find some coffee, first and foremost." Nelson softened the barb with a smile, but nevertheless waved towards the door; with every muscle in his body screaming reluctance, Corporal Kururugi forced himself to his feet. "Neither of us have time for sleep tonight, I'm afraid. So, caffeinate yourself and splash some cold water on your face, whatever you need to get some pep in your step, because as soon as someone radios in a sighting, we need to be on-site as soon as possible."


"As you say," Corporal Kururugi nodded, reverting for a moment back into the unthinking submission that his officers in the Legion had demanded, before suddenly remembering the standing order to ask for clarification when he didn't understand Nelson's reasoning. "Why do we need to be there? Surely any prisoners will be available for interrogation, right?"


"Oh, absolutely," Inspector Garcia nodded, the scar puckering his lip twisting the cynical smile up into a sneering grimace of disgust. "That's the problem. They'll be available for interrogation by any fool of a redcap officer who wants to earn a feather in his cap by 'breaking the rebels.' God forbid the DIS bastards up in Tokyo hear about the arrest either, or we'll lose access entirely."


"You think they'll steal the credit for taking down the Sniper," Corporal Kururugi asked, his mind still slow and bloated as he fumbled to make the connection. "That they'll swoop in to take the credit…?"


"That too," Nelson admitted. "Make no mistake, Corporal; now that the news has heard about this lunatic and given him a name, made him a story, whoever is responsible for writing the coda to that story will have considerable, if short-lived, influence in Area 11. But," he added, "that's only one of two broad reasons why we need to be on hand to see this whole scenario through."


"Can you think of the other? Think about what I just said," he urged, "think about how I conduct my interrogations. Can you see it?"


"If the police or the DIS interrogate the prisoners," Corporal Kururugi said, speaking his thoughts aloud, "they'll want results and want them soon. The police in particular just want this all over as soon as possible… They've been humiliated by not being able to stop the attacks. So if they get their hands on the prisoners, they'll just force a confession…"


"And…?" Nelson prompted, leading him on.


"And they'll confess to whatever they're told to confess, or they'll die under interrogation," Corporal Kururugi concluded. "Which means that if they've got any friends, or if the Yokohama Sniper just handed their van over to one of their buddies, we'll lose the lead and the Sniper could just lay low for a few weeks and then start killing again."


"Exactly!" Nelson rose halfway out of his seat, leaning on his knuckles as he thrust his face forwards over his desk, towards Kururugi. "If I, if we, aren't on hand to keep the police at bay, they'll stomp all over this case with their ham-handed techniques, just so the Prefect can announce that all's well again! If the DIS gets their hands on the prisoners, God alone knows what they'll do, but if it means sabotaging a Bureau operation, they might just let them go! Credit aside, if we want to end Number terrorism in Yokohama, we need the Sniper once and for all!"


"...I'll get the coffee," Corporal Kururugi nodded, suddenly alert as a fresh wave of energy flowed through him. The stakes were too high to give in to his exhaustion now, and sleep's siren call suddenly seemed all but muted. "I'll even use the machine in the officer's mess so I can add a few shots of espresso to each. That lock can't keep me out."


"Make mine a double," Inspector Garcia instructed with a smile as he dropped back down into his chair. "But for God's sake man, hurry back. As soon as you're here with the coffee, we're checking a car out from the motor pool. Tonight, the speed limits won't matter - as soon as the call comes in, we'll be there."


JULY 5, 2016 ATB
HIGHWAY POLICE STATION, TOTSUKA WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1023


"Hey there," Corporal Kururugi said with a practiced smile, speaking in Elevenese as he slid himself down onto the unyielding planes of the steel chair, the match of the straight-backed seat on the other side of the interrogation table, "I'm Suzaku. It's good to meet you, even under such unpleasant circumstances."


The first step, Nelson had taught him, is to establish rapport. Figure out who they are and what they need, and you'll be halfway done.


"Man," Kururugi continued with a sympathetic wince, sucking at his teeth as he looked down at the mangled hand spread flat on the dented metal surface, "they really did a number on you, didn't they? Fucking Britannians… Don't worry," he added with another smile, more comforting and soft, "you're safe now. We've got you."


The woman, fettered to the chair across from him, remained silent, but that was fine. Corporal Kururugi didn't need her to say anything; after months in the care of Inspector Garcia, it was easy to read everything he needed to know at the moment on her face.


Search for tells, for signs of emotional insecurity. A clammy brow, clenching hands, facial twitches, all indicate nerves and a sense of insecurity. A clenched jaw or a red face probably means they're angry, but could be a cover for nervous anxiety too.


"I know, I know," Kururugi waved a dismissive hand, smiling conspiratorially at the subject as if he were sharing a joke, "an Eleven in Britannian uniform? I'm a traitor to our people, our gods, and the Yamato Spirit. I've heard it all before, but believe it or not, I just want what's best for our people. Just like you, right?"


Almost involuntarily, the woman opened her mouth and seemed on the cusp of speaking, but then she shot a frightened look at the broad expanse of opaque glass that made up one of the walls of the room.


"Don't worry," Corporal Kururugi soothed, plastering a smile he certainly didn't feel on his face. While his smile was only skin-deep, he would privately admit to feeling a spark of anticipation; she was about to speak! Already, a crack had appeared in her facade! "There's only another Honorary behind that glass. He's making sure the local cops don't try to sneak back in."


Don't lie if you can avoid it; cultivate a sense of trust with the subject, to encourage a spirit of reciprocity.


He carefully let the smile lapse into a perturbed frown, shaking his head as he gazed down at the woman's left hand again, letting his eyes linger on the twisted fingers and the mangled joints. "That must really hurt. We'd better get you to a doctor soon; I can't promise anything, but if they can at least get everything pointed the right way again, you should make a full recovery… Oh," Kururugi added offhandedly, "and give you something for the pain too."


Left unsaid was the implication that not seeing a doctor soon could lead to lasting damage and greater pain, along with the corollary that only cooperation could purchase access to medical assistance. Nelson had taken great pains to point out that pain perceived was pain received. This woman already knew what could happen if she didn't cooperate, it was up to him to show her that she had choices.


"I…" For the first time since Corporal Kururugi entered the overly bright room, the Eleven spoke. "I… I'm not going to say anything… There's no point."


Her voice was raw and brutalized, presumably as a result of the screams the prefectural Britannian highway police had ripped from her throat when they'd broken her hand and twisted her fingers out of their sockets. Coupled with the obvious bend in her leg, a product of the highway crash that had ended her frantic escape, the Eleven was in bad condition. Honestly, the fetters to the chair were redundant; it's not like the suspect could have walked out under her own power.


Corporal Kururugi found it difficult to care, although he did his best to pretend otherwise. Indeed, the only outrage he felt over the clear torture the prisoner had sustained before Inspector Garcia had arrived to put an end to it was the clear illegality of the Highway Police's actions.


Still, it's hard to blame them… he mused behind his sympathetic smile, carefully modeled after Nelson's own. She didn't pull the trigger, but she was the driver for the bastard who put one of their buddies in the hospital this morning, and another in the morgue.


It had been a very busy morning. Shortly after the all points bulletin had gone out on the van, a spectacularly unlucky patrol unit had noticed the stolen vehicle trundling along down a frontage road. The two-man patrol had tried to pull the van over, but as soon as they'd turned on their flashing red and blues, a hail of gunfire had smashed through their windshield, killing the driver and sending the police car off into an uncontrolled crash trajectory with a telephone pole.


All units in the district, including the borrowed car with Corporal Kururugi behind the wheel and two VTOLs launched from Yokosuka, had converged on the Britannian suburb on the southern edge of the Yokohama Settlement. Amazingly, the van had been quickly cornered and, after a brief pursuit, ran into an unyielding brick wall by the panicking driver, who now sat across the table from Corporal Kururugi.


But, he knew, she isn't the Sniper. Or, at least, she's not the triggerman in the group of people we called the Yokohama Sniper.


The search of the van had turned up three sleeping bags and an abundance of detritus, more than enough to suggest that multiple people - multiple women, judging by the abandoned clothes - had been living in that van over the last few weeks.


Of whom only one, the driver, had been caught.


And by the time Inspector Garcia and I finally caught up, the cops had already dragged her back and begun their own little amateur interrogation. And that's not even getting into what else we found in the van…


"What makes you say that," asked Corporal Kururugi with a quizzical frown. "You're not the one we want, are you?"


"When's that ever mattered?" came the instinctual bitter response, exhausted emotion dripping from every word. "When the hell has that ever mattered, Brit? We both know what happens to anybody your side doesn't like, and anyone next to them too. No matter what I say, it's all gonna end the same way."


Long trenches full of bodies, disappearing under shovelload after shovelload of soil… What would happen once word of those long scars in the earth leaked out? The whole street reeked of an unholy mixture of burning garbage and overcooked pork… "I swear... Suzaku, I swear! I'm going to obliterate Britannia!"


"That's not always the case," Corporal Kururugi replied with easy reassurance, cramming the memories of Toyama and Christmas back into the vast mental storehouse that was always under lock and key. "There's plenty of leeway, depending on the circumstances of the matter. Not to put too fine of a point on it, but… there's lots of people who want all of this 'Sniper' business to end sooner rather than later. They're willing to make significant concessions to make that happen."


The anxious, self-centered character, Nelson had advised him after the interrogation of a previous subject equally concerned with their own self-preservation, is fearful, although they constantly try to conceal their fears, often by presentations of bravado. Don't push back on these displays, but instead try to reward their "courage" by soothing their fears. If pressed for time, offer them a way out with an obvious catch.


"Uh huh…" The subject didn't seem convinced, but Kururugi felt like she really wanted to be convinced. In his estimation, she didn't want to die, but didn't see a way out of her situation. "That's why your thugs fucked up my hand, right?"


"They're not my thugs!" Kururugi let a bit of "Suzaku" slip into his voice, along with a taste of his very real disgust at the unsanctioned violence. "I am truly sorry for the way they treated you, Miss…?"


"Kanae," the subject muttered, prompted by his pointed silence. Her reply was reflexive; the fatigue and fear inspired by her situation were undermining her focus and will to resist. For the first time, she had answered one of his questions. He felt a slight thrill at the petty but important triumph; Nelson had taught him that the first answer was always the most difficult, and that the next answer would always come easier.


"I am truly sorry for your treatment, Miss Kanae," Kururugi repeated, "and believe me, I want to get you to the hospital as soon as possible to get that hand looked at, and your leg. It's amazing that you're still able to hold yourself together after so much pain! But…" he shrugged apologetically, "I don't have that much say, you see? I need something to convince the police to release you to my custody."


It's working.


Kururugi could see it in Kanae's eyes, the way her walls were crumbling. Her hand must be a mass of pain, and her leg little better; beyond that, she was sitting in an interrogation room in a police station basement, the worst nightmare for any Number terrorist. And, Kururugi was increasingly certain, Kanae had never been strong, but preferred instead to follow the strong.


And here in this little room, even though he wore the uniform of her enemies, he was strong.


And that means I can protect you, Kururugi thought, keeping his face earnest and open, shamelessly using his youthful and seemingly guileless features to his advantage, I can get rid of your pain, get your hand splinted and leg treated, and best of all, I can keep the cops and the executioner's wheel away from you…


"I need something," he reiterated, catching Kanae's eyes and holding them with his own, "something that I can send them off on, something to distract them. They're angry, you see? Someone shot their buddies this morning. But it wasn't you, right? They don't need to have any interest in you… especially not if they know who they should be interested in instead."


A dry tongue flicked nervously across split lips. Kanae was wavering.


"I…" She swallowed convulsively. "I didn't shoot anyone… Not here. Not Britannians."


"I know that," Kururugi replied with a supportive nod and a smile. "You were the driver, weren't you? We found the hole in the back of the van, by the way. That was a really clever idea, concealing a firing hole just above the license plate! And that sliding panel was some good work too. But there's no way you could have shot a gun out that hole while you were driving… And we didn't find the gun either."


Kururugi paused for a moment, letting Kanae simmer, before asking, "Where is the rifle, Kanae? Where are the other two girls who were riding around with you?"


Kanae wavered.


Kanae fell.


"I…" she licked her lips again, "I don't know… One of them's been gone for weeks… She was smart enough to see how things were going… I… I think that's what made… Made her go nuts. And… Once we knew the van was made… She said we should split up, and meet back at…"


The words caught in the injured woman's throat.


"Do you need some water?" Kururugi asked, all solicitous concern. "I'll get you some, and I'll get the key to unlock your wrists so you can drink… But first, tell me about her."


And so, haltingly at first but with increasing fluidity and detail as she fully collapsed, Kanae told Corporal Kururugi about the Yokohama Sniper.


JULY 5, 2016 ATB
TOTSUKA WARD, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
1147


An hour and a half later, Kururugi Suzaku left the Totsuka Ward Highway Police Station, ready to join the urgent efforts to hunt down Tanaka Chihiro and her remaining accomplice and bring them to justice, assuming said accomplice hadn't skipped town already.


Behind him, a squad of Honorary Britannian police trailed out from the station with all the fearsome certainty of a gaggle of ducklings. They seemed almost terrified of the freshly issued pistols hanging at their hips, jerking their hands away from the weapons whenever their hands accidentally brushed up against the stiff leather holsters.


This is probably the first time most of them have even touched a pistol since their training ended, Suzaku thought glumly, letting a hand drift down to his own sidearm. Not exactly the team I'd want backing me up on the hunt for a dangerous terrorist, but needs must and all that.


For his part, Corporal Kururugi had redonned the familiar charcoal body armor and helmet of His Majesty's Armed Services, freed from his footlocker for the first time since he'd come to Yokohama. The perennially useless gas mask hung loosely around his neck; now freed from the 32nd Honorary Britannian Legion's command structure, he would have left the cursed thing behind entirely, were it not for the thermal imaging capacities of the built-in goggles.


And if I were still just Corporal Kururugi of the 1st Battalion, 2nd Company, I'd never have drawn my last piece of equipment from the stores… But the Bureau of Investigation and its auxiliaries are beholden to different rules.


Indeed, while the leadership of the Armed Services in Area 11 had seen fit to prohibit their Honorary soldiers from using any weapon more deadly than a pistol, and even that in only the most dire of circumstances, the Bureau leadership in Area 11 consisted solely of Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia at this point, which meant that Nelson had a practical monopoly on the Bureau's fearsome reputation. A reputation he had already drawn on three times this morning.


First by seizing custody of Morita Kanae and ordering, as soon as Corporal Kururugi completed his interrogation, her immediate transfer to the Richard Hector Memorial Hospital in the Yokohama Settlement for medical treatment. Inspector Garcia had gone to the hospital with the prisoner to both keep her under his supervision and to continue the interrogation where Corporal Kururugi had left off, but before he had left, he had commanded the Highway Police to give Corporal Kururugi command over a draft of Honorary Britannian officers to assist him with his mission, and that this draft and Corporal Kururugi be armed from the station's stocks.


The second and third uses of the Bureau's authority, respectively.


"I've given you the tools you'll need, Suzaku," Nelson had said once the police lieutenant in charge of the station had left the observation gallery behind the interrogation room's one-way window. "Now, it will be up to you to use them to deliver results. You've done magnificently so far; keep it up. Make the Bureau proud. Make me proud."


That was a mission Corporal Kururugi Suzaku was determined to complete. It was the chance he had dreamt about for months. Ever since Christmas.


And if I can capture Tanaka Chihiro in my capacity as a deputized Bureau agent after extracting the information leading to her in that same role, then the entire operation will suddenly become a Bureau operation. A successful, clean-cut operation in Area 11 will give Nelson an opportunity to request further support and a longer-term assignment here…


Corporal Kururugi very carefully didn't notice Suzaku's enthusiasm at the prospect of Inspector Garcia's deployment to Area 11 extending.


A Bureau field office here in the Area will make everything better, Suzaku explained, the thought curiously tense. The Bureau will keep a closer eye and a tighter hold on the Purists, putting an end to any further "Incidents" like back in Tokyo, which will benefit all Honoraries. The Numbers will benefit too, if the counter-insurgency tactics that Inspector Garcia's predecessors used in the Old Areas replace the wasteful and indiscriminate slaughter of the filtration operations or the retaliatory quotas!


"Alright," Corporal Kururugi turned back to his little knot of Honorary Britannians, who clustered warily in front of him. "Listen up, boys and girls. We've got a job to do."


The ten men, all older than him by at least five years, let the remark pass without challenge. He was a stranger to them, but his military gray uniform and the familiarity the man from the Bureau had shown him, clapping him on the shoulder and shaking his hand before hopping aboard the ambulance taking the prisoner to the hospital, made the pecking order abundantly clear.


"The Yokohama Sniper is out there, somewhere in the Totsuka Ward. We're going to find her."


That little revelation sent a shiver of unease through the cluster of police officers, but none of them spoke up. None of them wanted to mark themselves out as weak, as lazy, as fearful cowards.


And in doing so, they only prove how frightened they really are. But if they fear the system, they'll be happy to make sure everybody else is just as afraid as they are.


"She's just one woman, far from home and all alone," Corporal Kururugi went on, his tone deliberately casual as he addressed the men in a way his old fireteam would have been shocked to hear, "although admittedly a dangerous one. But," he patted the butt of the rifle slung over his shoulder, "we're dangerous too, aren't we?"


I need to relate myself to them; if I'm a stranger, they won't trust me and will be slower to take my orders. Use inclusive language.


"I won't lie to you," Corporal Kururugi continued, pointedly making eye contact with policeman after policeman, holding their gaze for a moment before moving on. "This isn't going to be easy. Someone could get hurt. I can't promise everything will be all nice and safe. If I could, well…" he shrugged and leaned back against the nearest police car, "do you think they would have sent us out?"


That brought a light wave of feeble smiles, and Corporal Kururugi smiled back, sharing the common experience of Honorary soldiers given an unpleasant and dangerous task.


"This is how the Britannians think this is going to go," Kururugi continued, theatrically lowering his voice and prompting his audience to lean in almost conspiratorially. "They think we're bait. The Sniper is a rabid bitch, and as soon as she sees our uniforms, she's going to start shooting. We'll cower and hide, but most importantly we'll hold her in place while our betters swoop in to make the arrest and claim all the credit."


Grimaces and nods, but no trace of surprise or dismay appeared on the faces of his fellow Honoraries. These men knew the score; they, Kururugi was bitterly certain, had never bought into the Britannian propaganda the way a younger Suzaku had. Just like his former comrades in the 32nd Legion, their low expectations prevented any disappointment.


On the other hand, expecting nothing makes any sign of something better welcome.


"That's not how this is going to go." The change of tone was textbook Nelson; Corporal Kururugi even heard a faint touch of the melodic accent of Area Seven7 in his voice as it strengthened with conviction and certainty. "Not this time. This time, we will take the credit along with the danger, for both ourselves and for the Bureau of Investigation, who Inspector Garcia has pledged will reward us if we bring the Sniper down."


There were no cheers, no smiles, no signs of enthusiasm, but Corporal Kururugi hadn't expected any. These were disillusioned men, working for a paycheck and the vague hope that things wouldn't get any worse. But none of them stepped back, none of them looked outwardly skeptical or incredulous.


It will have to do.


"Load up, men," Corporal Kururugi directed, straightening up from the police car and stepping aside. "The Sniper's gone to ground, and she's had two hours to dig herself in. Time to pull her back out and show the world what happens to those who would raise a hand against His Majesty's citizens, Honorary or not!"


Minutes later, the two overloaded squad cars were rolling out through the web of secondary roads surrounding the Totsuka Station, making their way towards the High Street central artery.


The miniature convoy was slow going without the flashing lights and sirens; it was almost lunchtime, and traffic thickened with every minute. With five men packed in one car built for four and six in the other, and with the heat of a summer's noon beating down, it was a claustrophobic, stuffy trip across town. Behind the wheel of the lead car, Corporal Kururugi tried to ignore the sweat rolling down his spine, infuriatingly difficult to scratch under his body armor.


A constant stream of updates drizzled from the dashboard radio. Corporal Kururugi kept half an ear open for anything pertinent; mixed into the usual police chatter were the occasional updates from the units still patrolling the ward hunting the Sniper. The VTOLs had gone home, but the local police force was still out and about, making their presence known.


And no doubt drawing all kinds of cushy overtime, Corporal Kururugi thought sourly. Still, if I can complete this mission… I'll get payment in a far more valuable coin.


Smiling at the thought in a conscious attempt to cheer himself up, Corporal Kururugi idled up to the next traffic light. As he waited, he scanned the surrounding crowd of mostly Commoner Britannians, noting the industrious way they scurried from place to place, many with beverages or wrapped sandwiches in hand. It almost seemed dreamlike, how ordinary it all was. So divorced from the chaos of the morning, or from the shameful horror of Toyama…


"All units! All units!" Suddenly, the radio dispatcher's urgent tone had Corporal Kururugi's full attention, everything else fading into irrelevance. "Gunfire reported on Charleston Square. Civilian casualties reported. All units, standby for situation updates and dispatch."


Before the dispatcher was done with her update, Corporal Kururugi was already flicking on the lights and sirens. Trusting the squad car behind him to follow suit, he floored the accelerator and squealed out into the intersection.


Charleston Square is just a few blocks ahead, straight down High Street, Corporal Kururugi thought, remembering the map of the Yokohama Settlement he'd committed to memory a few weeks earlier in the course of his chauffeur duties. A big open field, surrounded by trees and a few paths. Lots of community events happen there. The place is surrounded by plenty of tall buildings… hotels and the like, along with the Angels Triumphant Britannic Church. A perfect killing ground for a sniper. Why the hell didn't I think to go there immediately?


"Uhh, Corporal?" Kururugi spared a look over at the man sitting in the passenger seat, who swallowed nervously but pressed on. "Didn't the dispatcher tell us to standby and wait for orders?"


"She told the police to standby," Corporal Kururugi corrected. "We're not 'all units'. We're Bureau, and we don't answer to them."


Not unless we screw up, that is, he silently added as he turned his eyes forwards once more. Best not to fail, then.


From his driver's seat, Corporal Kururugi watched as the normal run of daily life disintegrated before his eyes. As he raced closer and closer to Charleston Square, the sidewalk-bound crowds of pedestrians scrambled for cover, or otherwise stampeded back the way he'd come. Most drivers had the sense of mind to likewise turn back the way they had come, but some lost their heads completely and lept from their cars for cover, leaving abandoned cars cluttering the road.


Unfortunately, a delivery truck driver appeared to have split the difference by trying to turn in the middle of the intersection at the southeast corner of Charleston Square, where High Street met Elizabeth Avenue, before giving it up as a bad job and running away, leaving his truck in the middle of the intersection.


"Son of a bitch!" The curse came involuntarily to Corporal Kururugi's lips, and he winced at the knowledge that Inspector Garcia would disapprove of such a display in front of the men. "Alright," he continued, slamming the car into park, "end of the ride. Everyone out!"


The fire team crammed into his car didn't need to be told twice. The five other men packed into the cruiser boiled out immediately; nobody wanted to be a stationary target in the parked cruiser, even with the truck separating them from the open air of the Square.


As the second cruiser emptied, Corporal Kururugi cautiously peered out from around the boxy frame, ears straining for the distinctive cracking hiss of rifle fire. It was a fool's errand: any such warnings would be drowned out by the cacophony all around him. Down the street, cars screeched and swerved. Civilians sheltering behind any scrap of cover available yelled at one another, voices angry and hysterical. Others whimpered into their cellphones, making calls home or to the police to tell them what they already knew.


Somewhere out on the broad expanse of green, someone screamed in agonized pain.


Turning back to his borrowed squad, Corporal Kururugi found ten pairs of eyes fixed on him, waiting for instructions. Waiting for him to tell them what to do. Looking past the Honorary policeman, he saw still more eyes fixed on him, as civilians took the cue and looked to him as a leader.


The rush of emotion at the awareness, at how all of these people, his nominal social superiors were begging for his protection, beseeching him to tell them how to escape, how to survive, was intense.


"All civilians," he called out, doing his best to project authority by speaking loudly without shouting, deeply conscious of just how good it felt to give orders, "stay under cover, and stay off your phones. The police are aware of the situation, and help is already on its way. Please keep calm, and keep your heads down."


Amazingly, none of his Britannian audience questioned why an apparent Eleven, even with a rifle and uniform, was giving them orders. More than the panicked flight, that spoke volumes about their fear.


"Now," Corporal Kururugi continued, his eyes jumping from civilian to civilian in the shelter of the truck, still trying his best to channel Nelson's unflappable charm and aura of natural command, "did any of you see anything? Did you see anybody go down, or see the shooter?"


Mute gazes and silent headshakes met him. One man wrapped his arms around himself, trying to resist the wracking shakes.


All useless…


Corporal Kururugi stuck his head back out around the truck. One side of the square, proceeding north along High Street, was lined with a multitude of two- and three-story buildings. Shops on the ground floor and presumably apartments on the subsequent stories. To his west, along Elizabeth Avenue, stood a tall hotel, somewhere between ten and twenty stories. He couldn't see past it, nor through the trees that lined the Square to the other side, but he could see a tall steeple reaching skyward over the foliage. Presumably, the church itself stood at the north end of Charleston Square.


Nothing but vantage points for a lunatic bitch and her rifle… And, Suzaku added, no shortage of targets either.


There had been some kind of open-air market happening in the Square, Corporal Kururugi saw. That, or perhaps the food trucks were always set up out in the grass at this time of day to feed the crowds of workers who needed a cheap meal on the go. Either way, while some of the market's patrons and sellers had managed to scramble to the shops or the streets leading away from Charleston Square, many were stuck behind the pitiful shelter afforded by garbage cans, trees, and benches.


At least one was down, and judging by the blood oozing from his holed head, already dead.


"Alright," he began, turning back to his men, "we're going to be as careful about this as possible, but we're going to do our duty. Our first job is to evacuate the civilians as best as we can. Split up into pairs; one of you will talk to the civvie, try to keep them calm, the other keeps their eyes up. If someone can't move under their own power, carry them over here to this truck, you hear?"


Among the chorus of "yessirs," one of the policemen asked, in Elevenese, "What about you, Corporal? What are you going to be doing?"


…Save it for later, Suzaku decided. It's a stressful time. Whatever it takes to get them moving.


"I'll be keeping a lookout for the Sniper," Corporal Kururugi replied, pointedly in Britannian, shrugging his rifle off his shoulder and into his hands. "As soon as I see something, anything… I'll let you know. If you hear the shout, drop whatever you're doing and follow me. Clear?"


It apparently was clear, and seconds later the squad started moving out. The five pairs of policemen, Honorary Citizens all, warily fanned out across the intersection, keeping one eye on their surroundings and one eye on their leader. Corporal Kururugi sidled out behind the last pair, eyes scanning the crowded sidewalks and Square.


It was a bright day, sunny without a cloud in the sky. The heat, already sultry, became oppressive as Corporal Kururugi focused on the now, putting everything else away. Nelson, Toyama, his men, the ever-watching ghost of Kururugi Genbuu, none of it mattered. None of it was real.


Only he was real. Only he mattered. He and the Sniper.


He and Chihiro.


Dazzling sunlight glinted off the windows of the hotel to this left. Minor mineral imperfections in the marble facade glittered in flecks of gold, each of which could be a glint off the lens of a scope. The branches, heavy with vibrant green foliage, swayed in the desultory breeze, and above them the distant steeple-top cross of the Britannic Church reared proud against the azure sky.


Corporal Kururugi swallowed heavily, his tongue swelling in his throat as he padded forwards. The rifle's unfamiliar weight was heavy in his hands, the metal and plastic unaccountably bulky, as if the weapon was trying to escape from his hands to join the civilians in pressing their faces into the sod and cement.


Eyes open, eyes open, eyes open…


From the trees, a crow cawed. A woman moaned. One of his pairs was darting back from the tree line, a civilian's arm over each man. The girl's yellow blouse was vibrant against the sanguine blotch in her abdomen. A gut shot.


Eyes open…


Kururugi was suddenly on the ground, his chin, unprotected by the facemask, scratching painfully against the rough grains of the cement sidewalk. Belatedly, he realized that he'd heard the crack-hissss of a round slashing through the air and had hurled himself to the ground by pure force of instinct. The injured woman screamed; her two escorts had likewise plunged away from the deadly wasp-sting of rifle fire and had dropped their cargo in the process.


Her wound torn open by the fall, the blotch began to spread across her blouse anew.


Corporal Kururugi climbed to his feet, his jaw sore and wet. He felt something trickle down his chin, running down his neck. Sweat or blood, he couldn't tell. His gloves were full of sweat. Belatedly, he realized that his rifle's safety was still engaged, and flicked it away.


Where had that shot come from? He cursed the senselessness of it, and his own failure to get a direction from the shot.


He was certain the Sniper would give him another hint soon.


His whole body felt tense, heavy with electric energy that Corporal Kururugi had to struggle to control. Muscles were locked tight as his fingers clasped down on fore- and hand-grips. The heat was unbearable, now that the breeze had gone. A policeman was leading a trio of Britannians in suits back towards the truck, his almond eyes almost bulging from his face with nerves. His partner brought up the rear, his pistol in his hands and pointed skyward as he walked backwards, his sidearm held aloft like some protective charm and about as useful as an ofuda in warding off a sniper's shot.


From up ahead, to Corporal Kururugi's northwest, out on the green of the Square, a man screamed in sudden agony. An aproned man, still absurdly wearing the paper dixie hat of a food server, stood up from his worthless shelter behind a park bench, blood streaming from his mouth and from the hole in his neck. One of his policemen, only feet away from the unfortunate man, reeled away from the dying man, his hands darting to his holstered pistol. His partner, who had been trying to coax another man up from behind a mobile grill, dove for cover next to the civilian, his face a pale streak in Kururugi's adrenaline-blurred vision.


It was a perversion, how relieved Corporal Kururugi was that a man was dying, his last breaths drowned in his own lifeblood. And yet, to see it happen, to finally bring the anticipation to an end… To finally feel that tension snap, to know that the time of waiting was over, and the moments of action had begun?


Freedom.


"To the north!" Corporal Kururugi bellowed, already running. "The bitch is to the north! Follow me, men!"


The blood was pounding in his ears as he ran, the adrenaline that had jangled every nerve and constricted his vision to a hyper-sensitive pinpoint finally given reign to send him flying like an arrow across the pavement and grass. He couldn't hear his men behind him, but Corporal Kururugi couldn't hear anything over the heaving in his ears, nothing except for the crack-hisss of another bullet flying overhead, and the distant, irrelevant scream of a man down. Irrelevant, because it was not him, and he was running, charging.


Above him and before him towered the church, a massive building of dusty red and creamy white, with a steeple as supremely proud as the man who ruled the Holy Empire. Tall windows in iridescent blues, greens, and imperial purple suggested at the divine mysteries of royalty, of power. High above in the steeple, through a yellow-tinged window, Corporal Kururugi could dimly see a suggestion of a massive bell… And could see a shadow darting from window to window.


"The church!" He yelled again, his wind coming deep and strong as he ran. The rifle, previously so heavy in his hands, had all the mass of his childhood training sword, practically a stick. "The bitch is in the church!"


Grass turned to pavement once again as Corporal Kururugi hurdled over the ornamental hedge separating the Square from the perimeter sidewalk. He was so close to the church now, so close! Only a handful of parked cars, a stretch of asphalt turned sticky and soft under the summer heat, and the flight of stairs rising up to the edifice separated him from the door leading into the vestibule, painted red and banded with black iron in the old style.


He felt, rather than heard, the shot.


Standing in the shadow of the steeple, the Yokohama Sniper had snapped off a shot at the last possible second, just before he lunged under her line of sight. He had no idea how she could have overlooked him during his charge down the length of the Square. Maybe she hadn't. Maybe she shot at him, but he simply hadn't noticed, his whole world reduced down to the tunnel stretched ahead of him.


He didn't know. An overwhelming explosion of pain as his vision disintegrated into a momentary flash of searing white light was all he knew. Immediately matched with the fiery coal under his helmet burning a hole straight down through his scalp.


Stumbling steps carried him forward into the side of a parked car. The velocity of his running leap exhausted, he reeled back from the unexpected obstacle. The urge to slump down behind the pitiful shelter of the sedan, to collapse onto the hard, hot asphalt, and to claw at his aching head, was almost overwhelming.


If I stop and sit down here, Suzaku thought, ludicrously calm in the near-blind chaos as Corporal Kururugi desperately blinked the starbursts out of his vision, she will kill me. She can still shoot me from here, and the car isn't tall enough to block her vision.


I can't die yet; I can't let myself die yet! Not with a chance to start the Plan in earnest just within my grasp!


With renewed energy, Corporal Kururugi half slid, half skidded around the car's trunk. One hand braced against the shining silver surface whose reflected light made his blurry eyes weep, the other holding fast to his rifle. Another crack-hisss slashed down from above, and off to his left where one of the cobblestone paths through the park led out onto the street, he heard a gurgling scream.


He didn't give himself time to think about who that could have been, or how close it was to his own fate. He needed to push on, to bury the fear, the pain, and keep moving. Don't think, just move. Move. Move, move, move!


The sun-softened asphalt sucked at his boots as he sprinted madly across the road, rifle clasped to his chest as he dashed for the shelter of the monolith rising before him. The stairs, broad and gentle, suddenly loomed up like the very stones of some vast mountain, rising to the heavens or at least to the promise of sanctuary and salvation behind a red-painted door. Pushing through the sudden vertigo, he flew up the steps in an almost uncontrollable wave of energy and threw his body, all of its armored weight and frantic, desperate energy, against the door.


The door flew open, bouncing of the wall behind it with a protesting groan echoed by Corporal Kururugi as he flung himself around the corner and into the vestibule of Angels Triumphant. It was like stepping into another world. The noon heat and bright, eye-searing light of the world outside vanished as he stepped into the twilight of the manmade vault. Sunlight poured in through the open doors behind him, along with the huffing, panting remnants of his squad.


Seven of the Honorary Britannian police, he saw, had survived the run. Of the other three, there was no sign. Perhaps they were still alive and well, and had just been too cowardly or smart to charge straight at a sniper's nest. Maybe they were wounded, bleeding out on the sidewalk or the Square behind him. They were most probably dead.


At least these seven are okay, Suzaku considered, running his eyes over the group as they slumped against walls and fought to reclaim their breath. To his pride, two of the men already had their pistols drawn and pointed at the door labeled 'to the belfry.' No signs of any injury. Good… That's good…


At the thought of injuries, Corporal Kururugi suddenly remembered that he'd been shot only a minute before. Shot in the head, no less, for all that he was still ambulatory and, apparently, alive.


Swaying slightly under a sudden spike of nauseous vertigo, he fumbled with the strap's buckle, pulling the helmet from his head. For a moment, Corporal Kururugi couldn't bring himself to glance down at the protective equipment; the sudden, irrational fear that if he did, he would find a hole clean through the ballistic fibers stained red with his lifeblood, or worse still gaze upon wet pieces of his head enmeshed in the torn fibers. In an effort of will, he forced himself to look down at the helmet.


To his great relief, it was instantly obvious that the hit had been glancing at best, presumably the result of Chihiro firing too rapidly to place the shot with the same level of precision she'd demonstrated during the Yokohama Sniper Attacks. The ballistic fibers were torn in a line from the crown of the helmet halfway down to the base, before the tangential trajectory had taken the round down past his back and into the ground behind him.


If I hadn't been wearing this helmet…


Pushing the thought and the shiver such a brush with death evoked aside, Corporal Kururugi slapped the helmet back into place, wincing as the weight settled back onto his sensitive scalp and bruised skull. While the helmet had saved his life, it hadn't managed to negate all of the bullet's kinetic energy.


Could've been much worse… My sight's even coming back. Only some floaters now. And the nausea… I think… I think I've got a concussion…


"Alrigh-," he started, only to be cut off by a rasping cough. Abraded from shouted exhortations and orders to his men, his throat registered its cracked dryness. One of the policemen passed him a canteen, which he took gratefully and drank from before passing it back with a nod of thanks.


"Alright," he began again, trying to focus through a sudden wave of wooziness "we've got her cornered up in that steeple. Only one way down, but that also means there's only one way up. We can't leave her just sitting up there taking potshots at the public."


Nobody spoke up. Most looked resigned. The one officer without a partner, who Corporal Kururugi thought he recognized as one of the pair who he had seen carrying the injured girl, looked angry.


They're just as silently obedient as the men back in the Legion were, Suzaku noted. It wasn't a happy thought. Silently obedient doesn't mean much if they drag their feet or only follow my orders if I'm standing behind them with my finger on the trigger. Sullen obedience isn't good, not good enough. Not for an elite group. That was my mistake last time.


Nelson would want me to lead them, not just drive them.


"Did anyone see what happened to the other three?" Kururugi asked, trying to control the ache in his head as he attempted, at this late juncture, to show concern for the strangers put into his care. "I was a bit too focused on the run to look around."


A few men smiled at the lame comment, and one or two even snorted slightly. It wasn't funny, but everybody present was tense enough to laugh at anything.


Nobody relaxed. The door to the belfry seemed to loom in the corner of the collective eye.


"I saw Yasu… I mean, James, go down," one of the officers finally offered, the man who had lent Corporal Kururugi his canteen. "Took one to the shoulder, I think. He… I think he got behind a tree…?"


The officer's voice trailed off into a question Corporal Kururugi didn't know how to answer.


I wish Lelouch was here… Or Nelson. Lelouch would say something asinine but profound, and Nelson would just figure out what they needed to hear to keep them moving…


"I'm sure he'll be fine," Corporal Kururugi replied gruffly, knowing as he said it that it was probably a lie. Even if James hadn't bled out, he doubted that the Highway Police had much use for an Honorary officer with a useless arm. "What's your name, officer?"


"Eugene, sir." The name was stiff and unnatural in the officer's mouth, the reply stilted. "Eugene Araki."


Nelson would say something about a mutual bond or whatever…


"Good to meet you, Eugene…" Corporal Kururugi said, the words dropping from his mouth like leaden weights. Exhaustion crested over him, the tiredness of sleepless nights held at bay by first coffee and more recently adrenaline suddenly, inexorably returning as his surge began to recede.


It's time to move, before I fall asleep standing up… Wait, you're not supposed to sleep with a concussion, right…? I think Instructor Tohdoh told me that once… I'm so tired…


Pushing himself back up off the wall took Herculean effort. His helmet straps hung freely; he'd forgotten to rebuckle them after he put the scored thing back on. Suddenly, he realized that his rifle was still active, the safety very much unengaged.


So tired…


"Well boys," said Corporal Kururugi, then laughed at the silliness of the statement when everybody else was at least in their twenties and wondered why the men looked alarmed. "She's not coming down, so we're gonna have to go on up." He paused. "I'll go first. I've got the big gun."


He gestured with it, swinging it up at the roof of the vestibule. Every eye present followed it.


Def… Definitely a concussion. Woopie.


"She's had some time to dig in up there, so who the fuck knows what she's done with the stairs? Our source said that the Sniper's got a thing for grenades and knives, as well as rifles…" Corporal Kururugi's mouth was dry again, and he wished he had something stronger than lukewarm water to quench his thirst.


"I'll go first," he repeated, "so… If you see something, let me know."


And on that muddled note, Suzaku decided that the moment of action could no longer be put off. Crossing the vestibule to the neat little door with its neat little sign, printed in faux cursive felt dream-like. With each sleepwalking step across the plush carpeting, the door grew larger and larger. His neck, unaccountably stiff, wouldn't let him swivel his head away, wouldn't let him break his focus on the door.


Lulu could play chess in his sleep… He hated it when I called him that…


He barked another laugh.


He's probably been dead for years now… Two Britannians, one a blind paraplegic, alone in the wake of the Conquest? Well… Don't worry, Lelouch… I was supposed to die today, I think, but Chihiro fucked up her first chance. She'll get another…


The doorknob turned easily in his hand; despite the visible keyhole, it was unlocked. Corporal Kururugi hesitated, and pulled his combat knife out of his belt.


The first and only weapon most Honorary soldiers get… Well, unless you count the truncheon, I guess. And if I was chasing Lelouch through the woods near Kururugi Shrine, he'd set up a tripwire to snare me up.


Carefully, he cracked the door open just wide enough to smoothly slide the blade, sharpened to a razor-edge every morning, up and down the height of the door. At chest-height, he encountered just a trace of resistance that parted under his descending blade.


Gotcha.


Stepping back, Corporal Kururugi let the door quietly glide open on its well-maintained hinges. The same deep plush carpet that blanketed the vestibule's floor extended into the tiny room housing the staircase and up the stairs at least to the first switchback. Looking up, Corporal Kururugi noted that the stairs met a longer balcony-like structure a floor up; presumably there was an exit onto the sanctuary's upper gallery there, and then the stairs up into the steeple proper would begin.


More importantly, a grenade, Britannian Army-issue, was securely taped to the wall to his right, just beside the staircase door. A string dangled from its ring-pull pin, the other end hanging limp and impotent. If Corporal Kururugi had opened the door with any more force, he would have ripped the pin from the device and blown himself up.


"A classic…" Suzaku said happily to himself, remembering a pepper bomb Lelouch had set up just outside of his room one happy spring morning. "Didn't get the scent out of my hair for two whole showers!"


By the time he was halfway up the first flight of stairs, the first man, Private Eugene – Officer Eugene, he corrected himself – had entered the stairwell after him. To Corporal Kururugi's disapproval, it wasn't until the third man had entered the room that someone else noticed the live grenade still taped to the wall beside them.


"Yes, be careful," Corporal Kururugi muttered at the shocked curse. "And keep your voice down. No need to give the Sniper precise updates on our progress…"


Chastened, the men began slowly ascending the stairs behind him, and Corporal Kururugi resumed his trudging progress; trudging, because he was, as best as he was able, eyeballing every inch of banister, runner, carpet, and creaking pine-wood step, scanning for more improvised bombs or spring-loaded knives connected to tripwires or whatever other nonsense Chihiro had managed to cook up during her hours of preparation for her final stand. It was infuriating how his addled mind simply refused to focus, eyes turning and swiveling seemingly at their own pleasure. Every motion, intentional or not, gave him a fresh twinge of vertigo.


The next hurdle, such as it was, came not at the balcony door, but at the base of the wrought iron staircase spiraling upwards at least sixty feet, towards a trapdoor in the floor high above. A second tripwire stretched across the skeletal base, and worryingly Corporal Kururugi couldn't see what exactly it was supposed to activate. One end was firmly bound to the side of the stairs at mid-boot height, perfectly placed for an unwary soldier to activate, but the other wound around the other side of the stairs before simply going… up. Up, somewhere, to some higher turn in the stairs.


Or up all the way up, Suzaku added. The exact purpose of the trap was a mystery, either way. Even more mysterious was where Chihiro had gotten so much material to go to ground with; Kanae had referenced some sort of rebel organization, but in Corporal Kururugi's experience most Eleven insurgents had very limited resources. If an operative working independently like the Yokohama Sniper enjoyed such a wealth of explosives, that spoke volumes about the dangers of this mystery organization.


There were charges leveled against a pair of corrupt lords several months ago, Corporal Kururugi dimly remembered, trying to remember the almost forgotten news item. And something about the theft of explosives from a warehouse… Last summer?


A chill washed over him, the sweltering heat of the steeple momentarily forgotten. My outpost… It was only three kilometers away from the Shinjuku Ghetto… How long has this pack of terrorists been lurking, right under my nose? A year? Two years…?


Why am I standing around and staring at a flight of stairs? Worry about this later.


"Mind your step," Corporal Kururugi grunted as he carefully stepped over the thin wire. "There's something here."


Indeed, it wasn't until Corporal Kururugi was ten feet and two twists of the spiral staircase up in the air that someone, some idiot of an Honorary, some uniformed fool, fucked up and stepped on the line. Suddenly, the wire, heretofore invisible where it stretched up through the central axis of the spiral, thrummed into visibility as high above a bell tolled loudly.


Not a trap, he thought frantically, already running as his adrenaline surged at the memory of hissing rounds streaking from above, but an alarm! She knows where we are now!


Resisting the urge to crane his head up towards the trap door high above, Corporal Kururugi focused on nothing but running up the steps. He couldn't afford to look away from the stairs, to look up as the memory became reality with a thunderously echoing crack that put her shots under the open sky to shame. The stairs provided minimal cover, and he was in the lead. If he lost focus now, if he let his feet get caught under the iron stairs' treads, he would be horribly vulnerable to Chihiro's fire and a simultaneous obstacle to his men's advance on the madwoman's elevated position.


They might not even stop running. They might just trample over me and smash me between the stairs and down to the floorboards below.


Below him, a few of his officers were returning fire. He caught sight of Eugene through a gap between the stairs, two turns below with his face and sidearm craned almost straight up, firing away at something Corporal Kururugi wouldn't let himself be distracted by. The crack of rifle fire continued to lash down from above, and he fancied that he could almost hear the sound of the piston motor working as it propelled round after round into the accelerator coils.


How many stairs are left? How high up am I? Suzaku asked both questions before pushing the wonderings aside. No past. No future. Only the present.


Up and up, the rifle swinging side to side in his arms, a stitch growing under his ribs, under his body armor. He had lost his helmet at some point, he blearily realized, the air flowing through his sweat-damp hair pleasantly cool.


Up and up and up, until suddenly there wasn't an up anymore, only the tight confines of the clock room, a nest of gears and shafts against one wall and a vast glass clockface studded with yet more gearwork on another. And, in the center of the room, rising from the floor next to the trap door, was another, shorter staircase, practically just a canted ladder, rising to a second trap door. Presumably, the belfry was above their heads, through that second door.


Chihiro was nowhere to be seen in the clock room, although Corporal Kururugi vaguely noted a bullet hole in the ceiling just over his head, where one of his men had made a lucky shot up through the first trap door, presumably narrowly missing the Sniper.


Corporal Kururugi kept his rifle warily trained on the opening in the ceiling as he side-stepped clear of the entrance to the room, allowing the men on his heels to stumble up the last few steps after him. Five men made it, the last Eugene, who turned a sweat-soaked face towards him as the officer slapped a fresh magazine into his pistol.


"Report, Eugene," Kururugi said around his thick tongue, his saliva syrupy thick in his parched throat. "Where's the rest?"


"Dead, sir," came the expected reply. "Eddie overbalanced and fell over the railing… He might still be alive. Andrew isn't. She got him right in the fu- sorry, right in the face, Sir."


"Oh."


There didn't seem to be anything else he could say in that moment. He'd never heard either man's Britannian name before that moment, and wouldn't have been able to pick them out of the squad's initial lineup if his life was on the line.


He'd only paid attention to the uniforms, not to the men wearing them.


Mistake, mistake, mistake, muttered a voice that sounded old and fat, yet pathetically proud. No end to your mistakes, no pause in your endless betrayals. First your country, then your family, then your own command. Mistake, mistake, mistake.


"Shut up, Father."


Eugene blinked, and Corporal Kururugi realized he'd said that out loud.


"Up!" He snapped, and before he could think twice about it, Corporal Kururugi was in motion once more, pushing his flagging body for everything it could give him.


And there she was, appearing at the head of that last flight of stairs as if in answer to his call, a twisted thing that barely seemed human, much less female, down on one knee. For all that Tanaka Chihiro's face was locked in a grimace of demonic, tooth-baring hatred, her rifle was stone-steady as it pointed down at him like the accusing finger of a judgmental god.


Or the sternly unwavering disapproval of a father whose demands he could never quite appease.


His finger twitched, hours of training under first Kyoshiro Tohdoh and then under the merciless hand of Britannian drill sergeants taking over where his mind faltered. The butt of the rifle, pressed tightly against his shoulder, kicked back and tried to rear, but Corporal Kururugi's grip was iron tight and unyielding.


It was kill or be killed, and he would be damned if he died here, his work unfulfilled and the vast debt he had amassed unpaid.


But, some seductive corner of his mind murmured, what better absolution could there be for a murderer like you than dying in the pursuit of another murderer? Dying a hero has its upsides, you know…


Nelson can use your sacrifice almost as well as he could use you. Perhaps even better – after all, you wouldn't be around to fail him like you failed everyone else.


Dimly, Suzaku felt something hot pass through his hair, leaving a curiously-numb line tracing behind it that he knew intellectually would soon scream with burning pain, and he knew that for the third time that day, Tanaka Chihiro had failed to kill him.


Damn her.


He didn't fail. When it came to killing, Kururugi Suzaku had never failed.


In that way, he was not his father's son.


The first rosette bloomed on Chihiro's bracing arm, the limb inconsiderately placed between her breast and the bullet's trajectory. The second and third shots lanced over the Sniper's stolen rifle and slashed into her chest, just under the shoulder, just under the neck.


Another shot lashed past him, and Kururugi Suzaku could have wept with the misery of the moment. Killing himself for his crimes would be far too easy, his life worth far less than the debt he owed. But surely, nobody would begrudge him a death in combat at the hands of an enemy…


Kill me! Kill me, you murderous bitch!


And yet, violence had always come so easily to the only son of Kururugi Genbuu. Even as a boy, he had sparred with a proficiency that old Tohdoh had praised, naming him the most promising student he had ever taught. That training-ground violence, so intense and exhausting and artificially constrained, had been a pale shadow of this moment.


All of it, all of the beatings of criminals and dissident soldiers with fist and truncheon, even the ghostly memory of a sword stabbing into muscle gone soft and fatty with age, all had been just a pale shadow of this moment. For the first time, Kururugi Suzaku found himself in a fight to the death with another killer, and found himself utterly at home in the confrontation.


Always the traitor, even to myself…


Abruptly angry at himself for finding even a moment of comfort, he fired another burst with a quick-pull clench of his finger, squeezing not jerking.


The rage in Chihiro's eyes slipped into the shocked agony and awareness of her death as his bullets pulped her face, reeling back as cheeks and jaw vanishing in an explosion of splintered teeth and pulped meat. Charging into the cloud of aspirated blood, carried by an unstoppable momentum, Suzaku caught a last moment of awareness from Chihiro in an instant of fragmentary eye contact as he slammed into her at full speed.


For the second time that day, Corporal Kururugi's vision disappeared in a starburst of white light as his head slammed forehead-first into Chihiro's. He was yelling, but he didn't know what he was saying, what he was doing, just that there was an enemy before him and she needed to die for her failure to kill him. Was dying. Had died. Died in his arms, died in his hands, died under his croaking screams and incoherent demands, shouted down into her wide brown eyes, pretty eyes, dead eyes absurdly untouched in the intact upper half of her face.


Hands were on his shoulders, lifting him up, pulling him back, and almost sending him toppling to the ground as wave after wave of deferred agony assailed him. His whole head was a a burning star with three hateful poles, the two head wound joined by his forehead aching from the impact, but some part of him recognized that the hands were those of his men, his comrades if he dared, and that he was safe.


Corporal Kururugi Suzaku sagged, almost collapsing to his knees as the last of his adrenaline spike ebbed into nothing before his men, Eugene at his right, hauled him back to his feet.


"Someone…" His voice was a ghost, thin and reedy and whistling. "Someone get my phone… It's in my left pocket…" A searching hand thrust in, withdrawing a moment later with the cell phone in hand. Corporal Kururugi grunted out the passcode, and then added, "call Inspector Garcia. His contact is listed as 'Nelson'. Call him, and tell him…"


He looked down at his feet, at the suddenly all-too-human corpse of Tanaka Chihiro. Her eyes, a warm chocolatey brown already glazing over in death, smiled back up into his from the remaining half of her face. Dimly, he noticed that she'd had more grenades, a whole belt of them, with the pins tied together with a daisy chain of wires, the braided cord of which hung to the side, ready to be pulled.


If I had been just a bit slower… If she had been just a bit further back inside the belfry…


"Call him and tell him the Yokohama Sniper is dead." Corporal Kururugi… No, Suzaku commanded, pushing the sense of overwhelming longing and keening despair down with the dead woman as he turned to grin Nelson's smile at Eugene. "We did it… We got her. Sti…" he swallowed. "Stick with me… I'll need you. We'll need you."


Not the end, not a beginning… Just another step of the Plan.


JULY 20, 2016 ATB
NAKA WARD, HIROSHIMA SETTLEMENT
1000


Inspector Garcia had moved mountains in weeks, and the Area Administration still didn't know what hit it. In June, Area 11 had been an exclusive fiefdom of the secretive and moribund DIS, the great traditional rival to the Bureau of Investigation through the long years of the Emblem of Blood.


No more.


One of the first lessons on the art of the interrogation Inspector Garcia had taught Corporal Kururugi was the importance of information and the appearance of information.


"A suspect who thinks you know everything already will be much less cautious than a suspect who knows you're just groping around in the dark," the Bureau man had instructed. "If you don't know anything, come in with a thick file of blank paper, just as a prop. But, if you know one thing, make sure to capitalize on it. As soon as the suspect gets confident about your ignorance, spring it on them. Once their illusion of invincibility falls apart, they'll panic."


Corporal Kururugi had, from his convalescent bed, watched Inspector Garcia pull the same trick on the entirety of the Area Administration, most especially on its leader, the Viceregal-Governor Clovis la Britannia, Third Prince of the Empire. Unlike the other officials who had consented to media interviews during the height of the Yokohama Sniper attacks, Nelson had known exactly how to handle the aftermath.


He had, after all, always been convinced that between his counterinsurgent experience and Suzaku's own abilities, bringing an end to the Sniper's reign of terror was only a matter of time. He had told Suzaku as much on his hospital bed on the first day he was allowed visitors.


When the news of the Sniper's death had broken, it was Inspector Garcia informing the media of that development in the name of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation scarcely minutes after he had informed the Administration itself, thereby guaranteeing that the Bureau's narrative would get a running start. When other officials had been asked for comment, they had barely been able to splutter general assurances and tritely arrogant soundbites. When the press had called on Nelson, he'd freely offered plenty of juicy details about both the "incredible actions of our dutiful Honorary brothers" and the "badly mishandled investigation conducted by the Directorate."


When the announcement had come that Inspector Nelson Dutra Garcia, Agent of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation, would be promoted to Special Agent Garcia and put in charge of the embryonic Area 11 Field Office, everybody seemed to just accept it as the natural conclusion.


Of course the Bureau should open its first office in the New Areas in Area 11 – the Sakuradite reserves made it the newest and grandest gem in Britannia's imperial diadem! Of course they should be put in charge of anti-insurgency operations – wasn't that what the Bureau had mostly handled, over the long years of the Emblem of Blood, and hadn't they proven their competency time and time again in the Old Areas?


Information and the appearance of information…


Special Agent Garcia had even displayed magnanimity in victory, or so the public might believe. Instead of insisting that the new field office be headquartered out of the Area capitol in Tokyo, right on the doorstep of the DIS branch installed in the Viceregal Palace, he had accepted a location in the Hiroshima Settlement, at the extreme southern end of the central island of Honshu.


The general public might take this as a sign that the new darling of the Area was trying to reduce the DIS's embarrassment by giving the senior intelligence service some room to breathe. Corporal Kururugi knew better.


And, true to his promises, vocalized and implied, Special Agent Garcia had not forgotten about him. The paperwork permanently transferring him to a newly established militia unit under the authority of the IBI went through with incredible speed. Never mind that the Bureau hadn't had such units since the worst of the Emblem of Blood, when insurgencies had raged across the Old Areas as the Britannians fought amongst themselves. No less a seal than that of the Office of the Prime Minister adorned the charter of the new unit.


Command was still sadly unthinkable. A unit made up purely of Honorary soldiers and police would have represented a massive political vulnerability for the fledgling Bureau field office.


"Besides," Special Agent Garcia explained during a subsequent hospital visit, "you almost never want to be the nominal commander, Suzaku. Yes, you get the recognition, but you also lose a great deal of your freedom to operate on your own initiative. The real trick is to have someone who can misdirect attention be the public face, while the real operators handle the serious issues from a position safely out of sight among the ranks."


"But you're in charge of the field office now," Suzaku had retorted. "Where does that leave you?"


"When you're as handsome and capable as I am," Garcia smiled charmingly, an expression Suzaku now recognized as his 'reporter smile', "a cipher would simply be gilding the lily! But, alas, despite your new scar, you're not pretty enough to manage that. So, congratulations, Sergeant Kururugi, on embarking on your fresh new career of puppeteering gullible officers!"


"'I've already got some experience with that," Suzaku confessed, remembering how easy it had been to play on Lieutenant Rockwell's ethical misgivings. "Have you seen the kind of officers who get sent to Honorary Legions?"


Nelson had laughed at that, and promised more of the same, but with "lieutenants who have a greater understanding of their place in the pecking order."


Which was how Sergeant Kururugi Suzaku had found himself meeting Captain Edwin Dreyer, the newly appointed commander of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation's Counter-Insurgent Branch Area 11, IBI-COIN-11.


And, also known as the Yokohama Scouts, thanks to Nelson's "accidental" use of that name in an interview.


"Ah, Kururugi," Captain Dreyer greeted him as he knocked and entered the office, "what's the word from the Special Agent?"


"Approval came in from Pendragon, Sir," Sergeant Kururugi replied, handing the printout over, along with the envelope it had arrived in. "We're to fly out on the 20th from Tokyo. Once we hit Newcastle, there will be buses waiting to take us to the school in Guayaquil. Expected start of training is listed as the 22nd, so it looks like we'll have a day to recover from the flight."


"Capital!" The Britannian replied with a hardiness that Kururugi could hardly tell was forced. The watchfulness in the man's eyes gave him away. Dreyer knew his place indeed. "And just on time too! You've finished with your recruiting, haven't you, Sergeant? All twenty-five of your lads, ready to be all they can be?"


"As you say, Sir," Kururugi replied, following his steps in the charade. "We're all very eager to learn as much as we can, and to demonstrate our proficiency here in Area 11, Sir."


After all, Suzaku thought, Nelson is an alumnus of the Guayaquil Counterinsurgent School. He's setting me to walk in his shoes and to give me the tools I'll need to walk where only an Eleven, where only a Japanese man, can go.


"Well… good." Captain Dreyer's waxed mustache, twenty years out of style despite his middling age, twitched uncertainly. "Pass the word onto the men, would you, Sergeant?"


"Yes, Sir." Kururugi nodded dutifully, as if he hadn't already told Corporal Araki, Eugene, the news an hour earlier when he'd first gone through the Captain's mail. "I'll do that."


"Good, good… Dismissed."


With a parting salute, Suzaku left the rubberstamp behind and descended down through the Bureau's new field office, a typically overblown example of Britannian architectural sensibilities. There was so much to do to prepare, to account for, to learn… And he wouldn't waste this second chance as a leader. He'd sworn as much, first to himself, and then to Nelson.


He had a people to save and an Area to secure. If the rebels in Shinjuku that Kanae had told Special Agent Garcia about were all like Chihiro, as murderous and dead-set on a war to the knife as the Yokohama Sniper had been…


Then by the time the Britannians are finished exacting their retaliation, all of Area 11 will be just as desolate as the Yokohama Ghetto is now.


He stopped for a moment, halfway down the hallway to the stairs, and shivered at the thought. Once the Britannians' initial wave of relief at the end of the Sniper had subsided, their rage at ever being threatened had boiled up with a bloody froth the likes of which Suzaku had only ever seen before on a much smaller scale, back on Christmas…


At least this time they spared the Honorary districts, he told himself. It meant something, that Honorary soldiers bagged the Sniper. I meant something.


And bad enough that the terrorist forced the Britannians to practically depopulate an entire ghetto! If there's a whole nest of them sitting on the very steps of the Viceroy's palace, on the steps of a prince's palace, this needs to be handled very carefully indeed. Otherwise, there won't be a Japan left for me to save.


The last time the Japanese were accused of killing a prince, we lost our freedom. If another prince dies here…


Sergeant Kururugi shivered at the thought and resumed his walk towards the barracks at double speed. He couldn't let that happen. He'd come too far to let it all fall apart now.

 

My father told me "son you will be soldier.
You will bring glory to Emperor and Fatherland.
Wether in the western Sea or against Old Europe
You will fight, for our Great Britannia."
My mother told me "we are a holy land, and our sons and daughters must convert the heathens"
"So fight my son, for this is holy war, for Church and Emperor a soldier give his life. "
So full of hope and the most holy fervor, I marched on to become a fighter.

For years I fought, under heroes and monsters, I saw my brothers slaughtered by the thousands, I burned, killed and raped, convinced I was righteous, yet my soul burned from my guilt and sorrow.
As I marched on, in the ruins of old Japan, oh so battered and bruised.
I saw true horror, such a vile nightmare
From elderly to children, their corpses were now trophies, and finally my illusions were broken.


My comrade told me "Imperial glory? That's a farce, a tragedy, look here brother do you think it worthwhile? For this Monster who sit on a throne of lies, Britannia bleed while his filthy kind thrive"
And my soul told me "How could it be holy? Our Lord in Heaven told us to love our peers.
Look at this Madness, this Hell on Earth we made.
So leave now for this land isn't ours to take"

Poem/song by an unknown soldier opposing Britannia's wars of expansion and racial and religious policies, used by the pacifist anti colonial organization.

 

Governance and Industries of Area 11: An Overview




Area 11 operates on a mixed centralized-feudal government model. With the exception of the Sakuradite industry, including the mines, the refineries, the dedicated port at Sawadacho, and the dedicated network of roads and rails connecting these elements, the whole of Area 11 is under the care of the Governor, or in the case of Prince Clovis la Britannia, the Viceregal-Governor, and his Administration. Said Administration is the centralized portion of the government, with regional deputy Prefects administering the various Settlements and the surrounding lands in the name of the Administration. Beside these Prefects are the estate-holding nobles who comprise the feudal portion of the government.


The Prefects & Civil Service


The prefects are the regional administrators of the various prefectures of Area 11. The Britannian Administration uses more or less the same prefectural boundaries inherited from the defunct Republic of Japan, although some prefectures might be administered by the same prefect in regions with low Britannian settlement. For example, the Prefect of Koichi also administers the other three prefectures on Shikaku, being Ehime, Kagawa, and Tokushima, as none of these three has a Settlement of its own.


Prefects are generally landed nobles, who in most cases have been awarded estates within their prefectures as both incentives to work for the profit of their prefectures and to provide them with personal income and a labor force to supplement their government subsidies and employees. The heads of the Area Administrations ministries and key offices are likewise enfiefed. Apart from the Prefects, the Ministers, and key departmental heads, most Administration civil servants are either of the lesser nobility, nobles with a fief or a personal connection to an enfiefed noble, or independently wealthy commoners.


The Area Administration has the following ministries:

• The Ministry of War
  • Which contains His Imperial Majesty’s Armed Service, Area 11 Command,, and His Imperial Majesty’s Naval Service, Area 11 Command.
• The Ministry of Justice
  • Which concerns itself with the law, the judiciary, and the application of judicial punishment.
• The Ministry of Internal Affairs
  • Which concerns itself with Number issues, Honorary issues, and the tracking and apprehension of Britannian traitors to the state.
  • The local branch of the Directorate of Internal Security/Imperial Directorate of State Security is subordinated to the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
• The Ministry of the Exchequer
  • Which concerns itself with the collection of taxes, the issue of state bonds, and the settling of the Administration’s debts.
• The Ministry of Economic Development
  • Which concerns itself with the continued construction of Settlements in Area 11 and the expansion of the Britannian Concession, as well as the development of and investment in new economic opportunities in Area 11. Economic Development also produces regulations and requirements for businesses operating in Area 11, and provides operation licenses and inspections.
• The Ministry of Farms and Fisheries
  • Which concerns itself with the agricultural production of the Area, the management of labor to safeguard the same, and the eradication of blights and the propagation of best agricultural practices.
• The Ministry of Education
  • Which concerns itself with the establishment, management, staffing, and funding of public schools for commoners, noble academies, Honorary schools, and Number schools. Education also establishes the curricula for each category of school and determines the materials allowable to each.
• The Ministry of Transportation
  • Which concerns itself with the administration, expansion, and maintenance of the highway system as well as the rail system. The Ministry of Transportation also provides vehicle operator licenses, vehicle registry, and operates the Area Rail and Settlement mass transit systems.
• The Bishopric of Tokyo
  • Who concerns himself with the moral rectitude of the Area and its Administration, and also provides missionaries to instruct Honoraries in the correct applications of the Britannic Church.
  • Also oversees the Area’s branch of the Office of the Inquisition.
• The Minister for Sakuradite Interests*

With the notable exception of the Minister for Sakuradite Interests, all of the ministers are both full Britannians and of comital rank. Even Lazaro Pulst, 1st Bishop of Tokyo as well as Minister for Economic Development and chaplain to the Viceregal-Governor, privately holds multiple counties. The Minister for Sakuradite Interests, by special Imperial appointment, is Lord Taizo Kirihara, who is also the head of the Numbers’ Advisory Council and the CEO and chief shareholder in Kirihara Industries. Lord Taizo, titled Baron Fuji by Imperial order, is an Honorary Britannian. While he too is a land-owner, he is accorded only the rank of Baron due to his inferior blood and due to the majority of his holdings being in truth Imperial possessions, held in trust by the baron to promote efficient extraction of Sakuradite.


The Nobility


Akin to their cousins in the Homeland, the Heartland, and the Old Areas, the nobles of the New Areas can be broadly divided into three categories:

• The Greater Nobility
  • Greater Nobility includes enfiefed nobles, their heirs, their close family, and their dynastic bonds. For example, Kallen Stadtfeld is the heir to the Barony of New Leicester, which makes her a member of the lowest rung of the Greater Nobility as the heir to a fiefdom.
• The Lesser Nobility
  • Lesser Nobility includes the extended families of Greater Nobility, noble families with considerable holdings or wealth without title, nobles with considerable records of service to the Crown, and nobles with considerable military accolades. Unlanded knights from established Petty Nobility are considered Lesser Nobles.
• The Petty Nobility
  • Petty Nobility are the lowest rung of nobles, and are generally obscure, far from power, and the descendants of second and third sons. The Petty Nobility also includes recently ennobled commoners who were not granted a title along with their patent of nobility. Any unlanded knight from commoner stock is considered a Petty Noble, and thus eligible for the privileges of nobility.

In the Holy Britannian Empire, nobility has a number of privileges, chief among them the application of “Noble Law” instead of “Common Law” as well as the application of a different tax schedule and numerous social benefits. The privileges of nobility are a mix between explicit and implicit benefits, with some being directly embedded in the patent of nobility, such as the application of Noble Law, while others simply being “the way things are done,” like the marital preference for nobility. Generally speaking, however, the only way to achieve significant rank in either the civil or armed services is by holding a title of nobility as well as proving yourself sufficiently competent.


In Area 11, most of the land is held by a variety of noble estates. An “estate” is a short-hand for a grant of land, which generally includes the inhabitants of said land and the facilities thereon. An “estate” of sufficient size can be recognized as a noble title.


The noble titles of Britannia are, in descending order:

• Crown Prince/Princess - the title for the current heir to the Empire
• Prince/Princess - the title for a recognized son or daughter of the Emperor or Empress.
• Duke/Duchess - holder of a duchy (for reference, New Hampshire is a duchy.)
• Count/Countess - holder of a county (for reference, Baron Alvin/Lord Stadfeld is a vassal of the Count of Lewiston, north-central Kentucky in our timeline)
  • Margrave/Marchioness - holder of a county currently in military service
• Baron/Baroness - holder of a barony, which is typically a small- to medium-sized city with the surrounding lands. (Baron Alvin holds New Leicester, which includes Radcliffe, Elizabethtown, and Fort Knox, Kentucky, in our timeline)
• Knight/Knightess - An unlanded and non-inheritable noble title endowed at the pleasure of the Emperor or one of his authorized deputies, typically in recognition of military service and typically attached to an allowance.

In the example above, a common estate, a barony, and a county within the Prefecture of Toyama are identified. The Prefect of Toyama is also the Count of Toyama, who holds the property in red. The orange patch details a “common” estate, the like of which was distributed to Lesser and Petty Nobility after the Conquest, as well as some favored commoners.


The exact amount of control an Administration can exert over the estates of the nobility varies based on the authority and strength of the Emperor, the authority and strength of his local deputies, the strength of the various lords, and the exact diplomacy between local potentates and the Administration. In Area 11, characterized by the leadership of Clovis la Britannia, a comfortable detente has set in due to the mutual weakness of both sides. On one hand, Clovis is far from a dynamic or indomitable leader, happier in his studio or at a party than attending to the affairs of state. On the other hand, many of the nobles enfiefed after the Conquest are the second sons and cousins of noble houses more firmly established back in the Heartland or Old Areas, which is to say, second stringers. The general character of their relationship is consequently that the lords won’t deny Clovis’s inspectors access, provided they don’t make a bother of themselves.


In terms of the relationship between the local Numbers and their noble landlords, there is a range of variety. At best, the Numbers are generally ignored so long as taxes are paid, quotas are met, and criminal behavior is self-policed without the lord having to lift a finger. At worst, the Numbers are mistreated and abused mercilessly.


Economics of Area 11


Extraction


Mining

• Sakuradite is placed in a separate bucket, due to its status as an Imperial protected industry and the monopoly granted to the Numbers’ Advisory Committee headed by Baron Fuji/Lord Taizo Kirihara
• Area 11 has numerous deposits of gold, silver, magnesium, iodine, sulfur, gypsum, coal, zinc, titanium (in Hokkaido), and off-shore deposits of rare earths and petroleum, all but the latter two of which are extracted with the use of Number workers generally overseen by Honorary supervisors and managers.

Forestry

• Timber production and the extraction and processing of forestry products are significant industries on inland estates. While the native Numbers left 80% of Area 11’s forests untapped due to their cultural and religious inclinations, this has presented a wealth of old-growth and well-managed trees available for harvest. However, the steep slopes and the possibility of mudslides necessitates an active program of regenerative forestry to maintain water supplies for agricultural and municipal use.
• Main tree crops include cedar, cypress, and pine.

Agriculture

• Area 11 produces a vast quantity of rice (~9 million tons per year), the majority of which is exported to the Homeland and Heartland Areas, as well as to the densely packed metropolitan hearts of Areas 5, 6, and 7. The residue is mainly produced by local Number farmers for subsistence purposes
• Secondary agricultural moneymakers for estate owners include sugar cane and sugar beets, persimmons, strawberries, melons, and limited quantities of coffee in some volcanic soils.
• Secondary food crops harvested on estate farms by tenant farming communities include cabbage, potatoes, onions, carrots, barley, pumpkins, and soy.
• Actual caloric income and diet of Number communities vary depending on the policy and economic stability of their local noble. Honorary communities, who tend to be more concentrated in urban areas or in mid-sized towns and who provide a great deal of the coercive and administrative manpower on an estate level, almost universally have a greater caloric income and a more varied diet than the local Numbers.

Fisheries

• In keeping with the defunct Republic of Japan, Area 11 has a highly robust fishing industry, with numerous active fisheries producing over 2 million tons of fish per year.
• There are large salmon aqua-farms located off the coasts of most maritime prefectures, especially off the sheltered western coast. There are also substantial coastal aqua-farms of shellfish of varying breeds.
• Area 11 is also host to a large fishing fleet that conducts operations in the North and South Pacific regions and includes the exploitation of tuna, sardine, anchovy, whale, and seabass fisheries.
• There is also a small recreational fishing industry aimed at the Britannian nobility, which prioritizes sport fishes such as swordfish and marlin.

Labor

• In the immediate months post-Conquest, three different and distinct diasporas of Elevens occurred. The first and second consisted of refugee Elevens fleeing across the Sea of Japan to the Chinese Federation and European Union respectively. The third diaspora consisted of the harvesting of choice Numbers for distribution to various industries and interests across the Empire.
  • Exports included trained engineers and chemists, computer and software developers, and scientists and researchers of all descriptions. These were offered employment with a number of governmental institutions and corporations.
  • Exports also included a pick of young men and women.
• While the former export has been all but expended in Area 11, the harvest of the latter remains common, as it does across all Number populations. In addition to domestic employment, further drafts have been conducted in Area 11 for unskilled and semi-skilled labor. Due to the high pre-Conquest population density, extensive labor drafts were conducted during the initial years, with the product exported for employment in the other new Areas, particularly as support staff in Areas 10 and 13.

Manufacture


Semi-Finished Goods

• Area 11 has a number of steel plants, primarily around the Osaka and Sapporo Settlements.
• Area 11 also manufactures a large number of semiconductors, some of which are manufactured by the Sumeragi Industries conglomerate, which is also a member of the NAC and thus a participant in the walled garden Sakuradite industry

Finished Goods

• Area 11 has a significant shipbuilding industry, with significant shipyards in Yokohama, Osaka, and Sendai.
• Area 11 also manufactures a significant number of consumer-grade vehicles for export to other Areas, with a particular hub located in Sendai.
• All rails used in Area 11’s transportation network are manufactured within the Area.