A Young Girl's Guerilla War

[Scopas]

Kozuki Organization Member Roll:
-Hajime Tanya
-Kaname Ohgi
-Kozuki Naoto
-Kozuki Kallen
-Tamaki
-Inoue
-Nagata

The first recruits:
-Souichiro
-Chihiro (Ohgi's former student)

The former gangsters: (Under Tamaki's command)
-Hojo (saved Tanya's life, junkie)
-Hina (in a relationship with Inuyama)
-Gin
-Inuyama

The freed slaves:
-Kasumi (non-combatant, hates the former gangsters, Inoue's assistant)
-Aina (Under Chihiro's command)
-Misato (Under Chihiro's command)
-Makoto (Under Chihiro's command)
-Inori (Under Chihiro's command)

 

[Scopas]

Shinjuku Slum (to the tune of "Skibbereen")


Oh Mother dear, I oft times hear you speak of Old Japan,
Her flowering trees, her fresh sea breeze, her mountains holy and pure
You say it was a mighty land where you could stand tall,
Then what happened to that land, where we now live so small?


Oh son, I lived a life of peace, my future was so bright
Til cross the sea came the Brits, with all their cursed might.
We fought on beach and on the street, but could not overcome.
And that's the cruel reason why, we live in this old slum.


Oh, well do I remember, that steamy August day,
We had no hope, nor a chance, not even to flee away
The bombs and shells fell like rain, like sticks upon a drum
And with no house I had no choice but to dwell in this slum.


Your father too, gods rest his soul, fell gurgling to the ground
A splinter of steel found his lungs, in his own blood he drowned
He never rose, but passed away, from life to my bitter dream,
He lies in a mass grave, my son, somewhere outside this slum.


And you were only six years old but ancient were your eyes,
I could not join my husband then, not when I heard your cries.
I filled your randosel with clothes, empty-hearted and numb
And joined the sad procession into Shinjuku Slum.


It's well I do remember, the years of pain and grief.
The Brits butchered and starved us all, as we begged for some relief.
The bastards took a mounting toll, grinding us into chum.
And that's another reason why I'll never leave this slum.


Oh Mother dear, the day will come when vengeance we will call.
The Rising Sun will scorch the land, and burn them one and all.
And I will put the prince up to a wall, and even out the sum
And loud and high we'll raise the cry,
Avenge Shinjuku Slum!

 

[Scopas]

(I adapted another song. This time, "Guns of Brixton" by The Clash.)


"Beams of the Sun"


When they kick at you front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?


When the Brits break in
Are you gonna kneel?
Will you die on your feet
Or broken on the wheel?


You can crush us
You can starve us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the Beams of the Sun.


The struggle is hard
and your life it feels so small.
But surely your time will come
Find your fire, or a wall.


Your folks, they look so hungry
Bones sharp under the waxy skin.
Can yah call this survivin'
When yer loved ones are so thin?


You know they have no mercy
But if you've got a gun.
You can take a Brit with you
So join the Rising Sun.


You can crush us
You can starve us
Yes, even shoot us
But oh- the Rising Sun.


When they kick at you front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun?


You can crush us
You can starve us
Yes, even shoot us
But oh- the Rising Sun.


Will you die on your feet
Or broken on the wheel?
Can yah call this survivin'
When yer loved ones are so thin?


You can crush us
You can starve us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, the Beams of the Sun.

 

[Scopas]

Once to Every Man and Woman (To the tune of "Once to Every Man and Nation")


Once to every man and woman
Comes the moment to decide,
Will you join the fight for our home,
Or under the yoke abide?
The Sun's new dawn is coming soon,
Offering salvation from plight,
And the choice marks you forever
So join us now in that light.


Past the heaps of murdered brothers,
In the face of cruel attack,
For our sons and for our daughters,
We will never now turn back.
For our future and for vengeance,
And for all those made to kneel,
We will tear down every castle
And break the Prince with the wheel!


Though Britannia prospers still,
The Sun's people sing this song.
Though our best fate is a swift death,
Our faith in our cause is strong.
Every martyr inspires another,
And in some time yet unknown,
The Sun will Rise on a Japan
Blood-bought, and again our own.

 

[Scopas]

(Originally posted here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...ya-the-evil-x-code-geass.971950/post-81654659 and reposted with Glacier's explicit permission.)

In which Being X, embarrassed at having to fetch Tanya's soul after she manages to somehow liberate Japan and subsequently take over the entire Britannian Empire, asks for help from a colleague in a dimension a hop, skip, and a jump sideways.

IF IT'S ONLY A QUICK COLLECTION THEN, FINE.

---

Tanya looked around at the gathered friends and family surrounding her on the hospital bed and smiled. It had been a good life, she reflected. Humble beginnings, to say the least; but she had done well with what she had been given, in her opinion.

There was no fanfare, no dramatic exit. In sharp contrast to the life of Hajime Tanya, nee Degurechaff, her death was rather… boring. One moment she was there, and in the next, she found herself in a bland, gloomy room. Black wallpaper, with slightly tasteless skull and crossbones insignia decorating every square millimeter it could get away with, without completely spitting in the face of people with even the slightest sense of style everywhere. If she squinted, she could almost see… different shades of black? At least her eyesight in death seemed to be better than it was towards the end of her life. One hundred and thirty years had been a long time, and while advancements in medicine had certainly increased her quality of life, she had missed the vision she held in her youth.

Tanya's observations about the room ceased after noticing the skeleton sitting in the tall black chair behind the black desk in front of her. Death seemed to have a bit of an obsession with the color black, she mused. With blue fire in place of the usual bit of water, jelly, and protein, and having several inches on her in height despite sitting down, Tanya was rather sure he should've been the first thing she noticed.

GREETINGS

Death's voice was certainly clear. Tanya had the feeling that even had she been in a vacuum, his voice would've been just as understandable.

'Have you ever considered the merits of hiring an interior decorator? Black has to get boring eventually.'

For a skeleton with no muscles, skin, or flesh of any sort, Death pulled off the mien of offended confusion quite well.

BLACK? BORING? HOW CAN BLACK EVER BE BORING? EQUAL AMOUNTS OF COLOR, THE VERY DEFINITION OF EQUITY, THERE IS NO GREATER —

'Well first off, color has a huge impact on the overall productivity, mood, and motivation of both employees and clients. Client meetings are done quicker, which reduces the waste of valuable company resources like time. In a business like afterlife services, you must have tons of interdepartmental meetings. Surely you aren't the only Death running around, there must be some measure of coordination between universal divisions! If there's anything I've learned about managing worldwide resources, good interdepartmental working relationships are crucial to the maintenance of overarching systems! Not to mention—'

And thus, Death finally found a competent employee.
And Tanya finally found her cushy desk job.

Edit:

---

In which Death starts looking to hire more employees:

'It's supposed to go the other way.'

REALLY?

'Yes, the cat is supposed to be underneath the rope. Then below that, you put the second poster that says "Hang in there". It's a metaphor for perseverance and pushing through or something. I'm not sure, I never understood the whole motivational poster thing. It works on some employees, though.'

HOW IS A CAT BARELY HOLDING ONTO A ROPE MOTIVATIONAL?

'Again, not sure. The cat is still holding on to the rope at the beginning and end of their shift, so maybe employees will find the strength of mind to continue? This kind of thing wasn't necessary in Japan; employees would just work themselves to death willingly. Took me a while before I knocked that habit too, societal conditioning is a hard habit to kick, I think.'

HMM. WHERE IS THIS 'JAPAN'?

---

In which Tanya questions why the only ounce of color in Death's domain is in the wheat fields:

'So, is the wheat field symbolic of the harvest of souls? Gold being the infinite, incalculable value of a human life?'

THEY ARE A LEGACY.

'Of what?'

THE FINAL TESTAMENT OF A MAN NAMED BILL DOOR.

'What kind of name is Bill Door?'

…HIS PARENTS WERE DOORMAKERS?

 

[Scopas]

(Originally posted here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...ya-the-evil-x-code-geass.971950/post-82563699. Reposted with ApologeticCanadian's explicit permission.)

Kinda random, but this omake spawned from a throwaway line about Gin loving CD's in Chapter 15, the song omakes Readhead has been posting, and a desire to flesh out one of the more blankslate characters in the story so far.

Not sure where in the timeline this could be, but I hope you enjoy it regardless!

___________________​

Detentions and daydreams, that's the foundation of Gin's childhood before the invasion.

His exact transgressions have faded from his mind, but he still remembers the essence of those afternoons brooding under the watchful eye of a teacher as he fantasized about his future as a musician. Though maybe 'rock star' would be more accurate. After all, it was the glamour, freedom, and, admittedly, the women that lured his teenage self towards the profession.

It's surreal to look back to the ignorant angst of those evenings and compare them to the grasping hunger and ever-present violence that defined his life after the Brit's invasion.

That desire to sing, to make music, was buried during those harsh years, covered by the landslide of shit life decided to deal the Japanese people. Day by day he'd slipped, each desperate decision causing him to spiral further and further into a person his mother—whose cheerful songs still echoed in his ears—would never recognize as her son.

Even now, years past the tipping point, Gin lacks the hindsight to look back and capture that crucial moment he tipped forward off that portentous knife's edge. The point where his motivation shifted from survival to greed and self-satisfaction.

But somehow that seed, that childish dream, had been kept alive. Among the choking weeds of desperation inherent to surviving in the Shinjuku Ghetto it found scraps of tainted sunlight and meagre trickles of silted rainfall. It wasn't the same, of course, nothing could be the same after all he'd been through, but that the seed remained at all sparks an ember of hope within him.

Hope that a part of the old Gin, the younger, more innocent Gin, is still kicking around internally.

Heh, wishful thinking.

Wry smirk still clinging to his lips, Gin shakes away the cobwebs of reminiscence from the corners of his mind. If he loiters any longer someone will pass by and wonder why he's standing frozen outside the door to their pint-sized leader's office.

It's not like stalling further is going to make the upcoming meeting any easier to face.

And it's with this cheery thought that Gin musters up the courage to rap gently on the door in front of him.

"Enter." Comes the half-distracted answer. With permission granted, he pushes through the door. Stepping into the room proper he's assaulted with the smell of fresh paper, coffee, and the common musty scent of water damage most buildings in the ghetto seemed to be afflicted with.

He's at the Rising Sun's main headquarters today. The building is still mostly used to serve the constant trickle of people stopping by for food and basic necessities, but there were a few rooms in the back dedicated to the actual running of the organization. Things like tracking the supplies, cooking the books for the Britannian side of things, and handling the overall logistics necessary for a charity cum terrorist organization were all handled here.

This is why you could almost always find at least one of two people in this building, hard at work filling out forms and keeping things on track. And while a part of him would prefer to be having this meeting with Inoue, Gin knew while not all that serious, this was still a meeting that needed to be done with the big boss.

Though, maybe 'little boss' would be a more appropriate epithet—not that he'd ever utter such a thought aloud.

Hajime Tanya. As she looks up at him, seemingly distracted from the paperwork she'd been diligently working away at, Gin can't help but muse on the tangled ball of threads that is his new boss.

His first impression, one attained through a single contemptuous glance the night he'd stupidly barged into the Rising Sun's community dinner, had been of a skinny half-Brit with more bravado than brains. He'd seen the thin circumference of her arms and legs, the choppy blonde hair of an outsider, and he'd written her off as a threat. Just another fragile obstacle on his way to his goal of indulgent self-satisfaction.

A mistake.

A mistake, standing in front of her again now, he almost can't believe he made. Yes, she was thin, but she was also corded with whip-thin muscle from a life of hard labour in the ghetto. Yes, she was a half-Brit with hair like wheat and eyes like blue gems, but those eyes held so much more. In the short time Gin had known her he'd seen them lit from behind by a blue flame that used the hatred so clearly festering inside her as kindling, but he'd also seen them freeze over into chips of glacial ice devoid of passion. In those moments nothing existed in them but cold, rational logic.

In truth, Tanya frightens Gin. Partly because of the charismatic intensity she carries with her everywhere, but mostly because of what she represents. A generation of children who've known nothing but life under the heel of Britannia.

He shudders at the idea of a whole generation of Tanya's, not that he thinks that's realistic.

Hajime Tanya is one of a kind.

This is why standing in front of her now, looking to make a request of her, Gin feels more intimidated than usual. He'd much prefer to be facing Tamaki—his brand of irreverent machismo is comfortably familiar, but when he'd done so earlier he'd told him this was more Tanya's scene, so here he was.

"Ahh, Gin, Tamaki did mention you might stop by today."

Coughing uncomfortably at the discomforting dichotomy of a child's voice carrying an adult's composure, Gin started into Tanya's expectant gaze and answered. "Yeah, uhh, I ran an idea by Tamaki earlier and he thought it was decent." Shrugging, he continued. "Told me to stop by and see what you think of it."

Admittedly he was borrowing his superior's name a little here, but Gin doubted he'd mind, and from what he'd seen Tamaki and Tanya seemed to get on surprisingly well considering their different personalities.

"Oh?" Sitting up, Tanya properly focused her attention on him. He felt like a particularly juicy mouse before a swaying cobra. "Well let's hear it then."

"Not sure how much you know 'bout me, but I've got a finger on the music scene in the ghetto."

"I'll admit, I wasn't aware there was a music scene in the ghetto."

Gin shrugs again, but there is a noticeable uptick of enthusiasm in his next words. "Music ain't going anywhere." He pauses, reconsidering. "Well, honestly those first couple years after the invasion there wasn't much of it. Too disorganized, and people were too busy survivin' to worry about banging some pots and pans together for entertainment."

Cynical amusement bled into the ancient child's gaze. "But humans adapt, right?"

Gin gives a chagrined nod at the adage. "Ain't that the truth." He runs a hand through his unkempt hair, shifting unconsciously from foot to foot. "It started with the workers. Ya'know, songs to pass the time."

Tanya's eyes glaze over, taking on a faraway cast. "It also helps keep a rhythm."

"Huh?"

"It's hard, aching work sifting through rubble." A muscle in her jaw twitches and those eyes turn glacial. "It didn't take long for people to figure out the work was easier if you set up a chain. One person passes the boulder to the next, and so on down the line. The songs you're talking about did make the day a little less boring, but they also kept the rhythm going, made it so you could turn your brain off and just move without thought."

Gin swallows hard. Suddenly doubly ashamed of himself. He'd been extorting goods from people with nothing while this little slip of a girl had been hauling rocks to survive.

"Yeah, just so." He says, voice rough.

His voice seems to startle her from her reverie, and she looks up, eyes focusing as she drifts back into the present. "Still, you said that was just the beginning?"

Gin nods at her prodding. "Yeah, first time I noticed it was when I saw some old CDs for sale in one of the black markets. Not sure if it'd been happening before that, but once I saw it there, I started seeing it in other places. The workers had their songs, the kids played their games, and I even knew some people making homemade instruments and selling them on the side."

"Interesting." Tanya said the word in a manner that left Gin guessing if it really was interesting, or if he was boring her. "But I assume you're building up to something?"

"Uhh, yeah," he admitted, "I ain't going to pretend to understand everything that's going on here, but Tamaki says you folks—"

"We." Tanya's voice cuts through Gin's words like a sword slashing through the air.

"A-ahh?"

"It's not 'you folks', it's 'we', or 'us'." A thin blonde brow raises in a slow, deliberate arch. "After all, you are part of us now."

"Y-yes, of course!" Gin stammers, correcting himself. "I'm not fully sure what exactly we are doing, but Tamaki tells me part of it is trying to bring people together, ya'know, make Shinjuku more of a community."

Tanya nods slowly. "Yes, if we're going to be fighting Britannia we can't be fighting ourselves; it's a frivolous waste of manpower and resources."

"Right!" Gin says, words picking up speed as he gets closer to his point. "Well I was thinking maybe we could use music to do that. Not in a cheesy we'll all hold hands and get along kinda way, but ya'know, as a way to spread a message and such!"

"Propaganda?" The blonde muses.

Gin winces at the term, something his superior notices. Amused, she reassures him. "It really is a dirty word, isn't it? Still, there's nothing wrong with it in principle; everyone uses and consumes it whether they know it or not, it's more an issue of the connotation being poisoned." Leaning back in her seat, the blonde fixes him with a decidedly interested gaze. "Still, I'm curious how you intend to use music to, as you say, 'spread a message'."

Gin shivers at her tone, but answers anyway. "Didn't have no formal plans or nothing, I was just thinking of starting by getting some people to play at those dinners yo–we hold for the Rising Sun, maybe get some of the artist I know together, share some songs and set up some safe places to play—instruments are a luxury around here."

"And luxuries make others… covetous."

"Ain't that right." Gin agrees gruffly.

"Still, why ask my permission?"

Gin shifts, unsure what the correct answer is. "Umm, figured it's something I should ask." He mumbled before continuing. "'Sides if I want to get people together I'm likely gonna need some free booze and food to bribe them. Seems like something I should ask the boss about before goin' forward, I guess."

Tanya's features seem to freeze for a moment before she barks a somewhat forced laugh. "Ha! Don't let Naoto hear you joke like that; he'll think you're planning a mutiny."

Gin laughed along, but internally he was confused. Did Tanya think people still thought Naoto was in charge? Well, he didn't want to be the one to burst her bubble about their cover being blown.

Calming down, Tanya waved a hand through the air and focused her gaze back onto Gin. "Still, I feel like your stated reasons are not the only reasons you want this."

Gin hesitated, unsurprised at the insight his young leader showed. A battle took place inside him, but it was over shortly. It was a little embarrassing to admit, but he'd been humbled more than a few times in these past few weeks, it made swallowing his pride easier now.

"All I said is true," he begins, "but I'll admit a part of it is simply that I enjoy music. Listening to it and making it. Britannia's taken a lot from me; my family, my peace of mind, my country, my pride." Looking away from the painfully bright eyes of the child behind the desk, Gin continues, his voice thick with emotion. "Maybe it's silly, but I wanna start taking some of what they took from me back, and I figure I can start with music. There was a time I was passionate about it ya'know? A time where I went to bed dreaming 'bout it and I got up in the morning chasin' after it." Something firmed up inside him, an emotion he couldn't name. "I figure if I can help the cause and help myself at the same time… well…" He trails off weakly, suddenly losing steam as the sting of embarrassment creeps back in. "It's selfish, but it's the truth."

Gin might be imagining it, be he figures he sees Tanya's features thaw a little at the admittance. Leaning back in her high-backed chair, she peers up at him, brilliant blue gaze piercing him in a way that feels supernatural.

"People fight for different reasons," she starts, "safety, pride, money, the reasons are endless." She pauses for a lingering moment to let the statement hang. "And that's fine."

The look on Gin's face must reflect his confusion as her lip curls in dry amusement. Taking pity on him, she continues.

"Gin, it's not my place, or any employer's place to dictate your wants or motivations. Indeed, it's a superior's job to identify their workers' wants and find a way to align those desires with the needs of the organization."

Tanya looked at him to see if he was following and Gin nodded, pretending it wasn't extremely weird to see a child, finger laced together on the desk, talking like this about something she really shouldn't know.

Hajime Tanya is truly one of a kind.

"In your case, what you've done is go above and beyond by identifying your wants, and preemptively aligning them with the needs of the organization." Tanya smiled at him, a real smile, eyes melting like mountain snow in spring and features softening from their usual sharp severity. "That's not being selfish, that's being a model employee."

"R-right!" Gin managed to stammer, feeling for the first time that he fully understood the older members of the group's trust and belief in their leader.

The moment didn't last long, Tanya's countenance easing back to it's usual mien, but Gin knew he wouldn't forget the moment.

"Now," she continued, knocking Gin from his daze, "I have work to get back to, but I'll be sure to make Inoue aware of your request, and ensure she has the resources available for when you need them."

Putting his hand over his heart and bowing sincerely, Gin uttered a heartfelt, "thank you."

Without waiting for a response, feeling the rare electric tingle of motivation shooting through him, Gin turned to the door and exited the room.

Striding down the hallway, Gin grins, feeling genuine excitement bubble up inside. The emotion almost alien to him after such a long time absent. Yet, for the first time in a long time, he feels real hope for the future. With a full belly every day, a sturdy roof over his head each night, and leaders he is actually proud to follow, Gin allows himself to dare that he could do better, be better.

Realistically he's still far off from manifesting such a desire, but half a step is more than he'd ever imagined he'd take. For now though, he has to focus, there is a lot of work to do if he plans on making this work.

___________________​

The ending is a bit abrupt, but I figure it's better than letting it drag on too long.

 

[Scopas]

(Originally posted here: https://forums.spacebattles.com/thr...ya-the-evil-x-code-geass.971950/post-79839022. Reposted with DrawnCord's explicit permission.)

Forgive me, it has been some time since I watched Code Geass and I am writing off the cuff. Also channeling anime Tanya vibes.

Omake: Apathy

Several years in the future (After the destruction of Tokyo)
I don't care. Out of all the statements he had expected, out of all the objections he believed the black knights to have with his revelation, this was not one of them. This brazen statement shocked the black knights out of their stupor. With looks of horror shaded with confusion they all turned their eyes to their most enigmatic member, Tanya.

If confronted privately, Schneizel would confess that he knew little of Tanya beyond scraps and pieces. She was a member of the Kouzuki's group of the Japanese resistance, the same cell that Zero would eventually forge into the Black Knights. A ruthless and determined combatant with the terrifying reputation of somehow taking down Knightmare Frames on foot and earning the moniker "Rising Dawn" amongst her allies and the title "The Demon of Tokyo" by her enemies. After hearing those words, Schneizel was beginning to believe that "Demon" might not have been a strong enough word.

It was Ohgi that broke the haze of incredulity first. "Tanya, the eviden-"

"Oh, I believe him Ohgi," Tanya cutting him off. "In fact, several events that I had questions about now suddenly make sense. Several times we were put into impossible situations that had an unnatural habit of working out to our benefit. People that were inconvenient or obstinate typically became amenable or died quickly. Although, I would have just rigged Tatewaki Katase boat to explode rather than geassing him."

Tamaki slammed his hand to the table. "He used us Tanya, enslaved hundreds and killed thousands! How could you possible stick up for him?!"

"So." Tanya said with a look of boredom. Sighing and pinching her brow Tanya replied "Ok, when we all joined the resistance, we all knew that many of us wouldn't come out the other side. I assumed that everyone also understood that we wouldn't be keeping our hands clean. The enslavement of hundreds and the deaths of thousands is a very small price to pay for victory."

Staring at Cornelia, "But let us turn our attention to the most contentious "Euphemia" issue. Now, I agree with Schneizel that it was most likely a geass command that made Euphemia act that way she did. If her ultimate goal truly was the liquidation of the Japanese people, then a big showy public mass execution would be horribly inefficient and counterproductive. Let us not forget the the Britannian administration didn't try to restrain Euphemia or try to salvage the situation, but went with Euphemia lockstep towards slaughter unless Zero somehow geassed thousand of soldiers."

Tanya smirked at her "joke" and continued. "And can we please stop treating the Special Administrative Zone as some sort of tragic dream. Have we forgotten that Britannia invaded our home and stripped us of our dignity in the first place. Now some princess pities us and gives us the bare minimum of decency and suddenly she is a saint. I'm not even legally an adult and I remember a time that we were called Japanese everywhere! It's just the Shinjuku ghetto all over again. If there was such a place called Hell, then Euphemia would still be there for the sin of unforgivable naivety."

Cornelia raged at Tanya. "You Dare!"

"Cornelia," Tanya grieved with mocking pity. "I understand that you want to restore your sister's memory. I genuinely do. But you at least got to see your sister when she died. I couldn't even see the place where my mother was shot!"

"However, as a thought experiment, let us lay at the feet of Zero the deaths of everyone Euphemia and her men killed and the reprisals thereafter. Those deaths don't even come to a fraction of the murders your butcher committed on Tokyo yesterday."

"And this peace treaty is utterly worthless. Betray Zero, our greatest asset, for an Independent "Neutral" Japan. If Charles zi Britannia was right about one thing then this war is what will decide everything and I don't want it to be the side with Fleija warheads. I would gladly trade millions of more lives to burn Britannia to the ground and put every royals' head on a pike!"

And with that the everyone at the meeting was speechless with dread, staring at a monster in the form of a little girl.

 

[Scopas]

Some freshly commissioned art by MinttSky came in!

 

[Scopas]

Alright, so I commissioned more art, and it didn't turn out great. Or, at least, not great for the purposes of this story. I wanted to get the scene where Kallen and Milly have their little social duel drawn, and I gave instructions for Milly to look smug and assertive and Kallen to look angry and upset but trying to be flirtatious. The artist nailed the flirtatious part, to their credit, but lost the point of the scene, so here we are. I'm not sure that SB would like it, but I want to post this thing since I paid for it.

Spoiler: Kallen & Milly

 

[Scopas]

Sidestory: A Day in the Life of Alicia Stadtfeld


MAY 4, 2016 ATB
ASHFORD ACADEMY, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
1730



Lady Alicia Stadtfeld, née Maplethorpe, narrowed her eyes as she watched the vermin scuttle across the foyer below. The vermin, the Number, wore the same long black dress and white apron as the other female domestics, but to Lady Alicia's trained eye that single surface level commonality was as far as the civilizing touch of Britannia extended.


Though you know that the touch of one Britannian in particular went quite a bit deeper than a mere superficial touch…


With a sneer, Alicia pushed that errant thought to the back of her mind. She had a great deal of practice in that; she'd shoved many similar thoughts back into the darkness over the course of her four year long joke of a marriage.


When her brothers had informed Alicia that they had somehow found a second husband for her, she had been torn by overwhelming relief and gnawing suspicion. Relief that someone, anyone, finally wanted her, and suspicion over why, exactly, he wanted an empty, broken, useless vessel like herself.


Her condition was sadly no secret; her first husband, Justin, had made its existence all but public knowledge when he'd divorced her on the grounds that "their union was not blessed by God, as evident by its unfruitfulness." As a result, she had endured five long years of humiliation as a prematurely dried up old hag at the age of twenty three. Her life was functionally over before it had even begun.


Alicia had spent those years in utter misery. She was useless to her family, because how could they form a marriage alliance using her if she couldn't produce heirs to seal it? Nobody would take her. Nobody wanted her. Not even the commoner magnates her older brother Franklin had approached were interested in taking her, noble blood not outweighing an empty womb. The only thing that had made that long half-decade bearable had been the bottle she'd crawled into.


But then, Franklin had somehow found Baron Alvin of New Leicester, head of House Stadtfeld.


At forty-four when they'd met, Baron Alvin was sixteen years her senior. An unmarried man at that age holding title raised all sorts of questions, but Franklin and Alicia had both been desperate, and so neither asked anything remotely uncomfortable. If Baron Alvin had undignified tastes, they had reasoned, he had done a good enough job concealing them for there to be no whisper of scandal dogging his name.


Yes, you didn't ask a thing, you just praised God for his blessings, the snide voice murmured, returning from its exile. You didn't even bother to ask yourself why a baron without a recognized heir would marry a barren woman from a middling family. You didn't want to risk it all being a dream, did you?


She had not, Alicia could admit to herself. Looking back on it, she probably still would have committed to the marriage even if she had known what role her husband to be had in mind for her. She just would have appreciated some sort of warning. She wished he had bothered to ask. Instead, he'd whisked her off to Area Eleven, to the newly built Stadtfeld Manor.


It had been like her girlhood dreams. Marriage to an older lord, being swept away to a palatial estate in an exotic land, a whole team of servants bowing in unison to greet the new mistress of the house…


Yes, that had been the moment when things had started to go awry, when the servants had been introduced to her. Well, started to go awry in a way she couldn't ignore – Alicia hadn't pushed her new husband when he declined to consummate their marriage, after all, reasoning that it would have been unladylike, even if it had been a very long, very lonely five years.


I could have handled it! She thought furiously as she turned away from the insect dusting the windowsills and retreated to her suite and her liquor cabinet. I could have handled a loveless, sexless marriage! I wouldn't have cared if I had to beard for a sodomite! If he had the discretion to keep it out of my sight, I would have smiled and played the role I was born to! The role I was meant to play!


But no, Baron Alvin hadn't been kind or considerate enough to keep his disgraces out of her sight. Indeed, immediately after she'd been introduced to the servants as the mistress of the house, she'd been introduced to a snot-nosed little brat as her new mother. A brat that Alicia had never so much as heard of, a brat Baron Alvin had never mentioned to Franklin when negotiating the union.


From their first meeting, young Kallen had obviously hated Alicia and had displayed no hesitation in letting her feelings be known. The little bitch had shouted and screamed in both honest Britannian and in her heathen tongue, and to Alicia's astonishment Baron Alvin had replied likewise in both tongues, patiently doting on his rotten brat and allowing her to beat her fists against his shoulders as he wrapped her in an embrace.

And that was when he had offhandedly informed Alicia that she would be listed on Kallen's official documents as her birth mother. The Baron hadn't even looked at her when he'd said this; all of his attention had been focused on his sobbing daughter. He hadn't asked if she was willing to pretend to be the mangy little halfbreed's mother, he'd just informed her that her name had already been appended to the documents.


Never mind that the only way she could have had the girl was if she had cheated on Justin! Never mind that Baron Alvin hadn't even bothered to apologize for springing a bastard he'd whelped with a Number on her! No, she was expected to just stand there and take it and, presumably, to be thankful that the Baron had found a use for something as useless and unwanted as her.


And I could have handled that too! Alicia told herself as she poured four fingers of the tawny brown liquor into her glass without bothering with any ice. I never really wanted children, but I could have been a mother if… if that had been possible! But, no, even that wasn't enough for the great Baron Alvin!


The freshly married Alicia had, it turned out, already had the displeasure of meeting Baron Alvin's whore by that point, not that she'd known. Oh, she'd noticed the lone Asian face in the row of bowing maids, but she'd assumed that the woman, whose graceful bow had been significantly deeper and better practiced than the rest, had been of some Britannian commoner stock, some sailor's child perhaps. Instead, she'd been horrified when Alvin had introduced her to Hitomi.


Just the thought of the wretched woman's name made Alicia's hand spasm around her glass, and she tossed the remaining scotch back in her throat before she could spill the spirit. The burn it left behind helped take her mind off the memory of that first meeting somewhat. Just a bit.


They were obviously in love, Baron Alvin and Hitomi. It had been Alicia's honeymoon, technically, but he and that Elven bitch were all but cooing over each other. The most galling part was that it was the Eleven, Hitomi, who showed a hint of contrition. Only the Eleven, the servant, had apologized for the imposition to Alicia. Baron Alvin hadn't even bothered.


"I paid her for the service," the Baron had explained to his paramore, "or at least I paid her family. They have an alliance with House Stadtfeld and will be a preferred supplier for the family's business interests in Charleston, and I took an unweddable daughter off their hands. For the role she'll be playing, I paid quite handsomely."


The worst part was that Baron Alvin had been absolutely correct in his statement, which had been delivered matter-of-factly. He hadn't tried to be cruel, nor was the arrangement particularly strange, if Alicia was being honest. Many noble families had daughters or sons just appear out of thin air, their birth certificates suspiciously shiny and new, free of any stain of bastardry.


It just hadn't been what Alicia had anticipated, hoped for.


Days later, Baron Alvin had returned to the Homeland, leaving his wife, his secret Number mistress, and his daughter and newly announced heir in Area Eleven. Four years later, he hadn't returned, nor had he summoned her to his side. Hers was a comfortable exile, but an exile it was nonetheless.


Somehow, Alicia had found that she'd exchanged the loneliness of sitting in her brother's house, once her father's house, for the loneliness of sitting in her husband's house. Her bed was just as cold, her life just as empty. All through childhood, she'd been told that her purpose was to give her husband heirs and to raise them while he tended to his family's, or the empire's, affairs. Baron Alvin might very well be doing just that, but she had nothing, would never have anything.


The vermin had fulfilled Alicia's purpose better than the lady of the house ever could. Alicia had very carefully not noticed the Eleven with red hair and her husband's jaw visiting once every few months; her lord husband's instructions on that matter had been very clear on the matter. Alicia was only thankful that he hadn't forced her to pretend that his other bastard, almost as old as she was, had also been hers.


Lonely and abandoned, Alicia had taken her first lover within her first year at Stadtfeld Manor. It had been an act of rebellion, a cry of defiance that she'd perversely hoped that Baron Alvin, her only wedded lord, would hear and heed. She'd hoped he'd fly over the Pacific, come to call her out or divorce her or to make her his own in truth, his passion heated by the flames of jealousy.


He hadn't even asked her about it during their weekly call.


At first, Alicia had wondered if the man was blind, so blind he hadn't noticed her flagrant affair. She knew that he had eyes in the house, at least one pair, because she'd slept with Vernon, the majordomo, in the second year. One night when he was still asleep, she'd checked his archive of reports, and found her indiscretions in black and white. Baron Alvin had known; he just hadn't cared.


And so, she continued her affair with the head butler. The man was happy to serve a Britannian mistress, both in bed and out, and was quite happy with the tacit encouragement she provided in regards to the other servants' treatment of the vermin. After five years of solitude and months of indifference from Alvin, Vernon's devotion to his lady, to her, was intoxicating, almost as intoxicating as the fine scotch and brandy her generous allowance afforded her.


The next two years had continued along the same general trajectory. Alicia had charmed, used, and thrown away more men than she could easily remember, only keeping a few as long-term conquests. The pain of rejection had never fully faded, but the open arms and endless bottles of strong spirits had helped the wound scar over. In a strange, sometimes empty way, Alicia had finally found a measure of happiness, the queen over her little domain.


Now, the only flies in the ointment were "her" daughter and the bitch who had truly whelped the girl. Kallen had only grown worse with age, proving the old adage that blood will always out. She'd grown from a petulant child into a petulant teenager, privately disrespectful and defiant though thankfully subdued in public. What little time she spent at home these days, she spent locked in her room with… with that vermin.


The vermin herself, Kozuki Hitomi, was even more infuriating to Lady Alicia. While Kallen had the utter gall to remark on Alicia's diversions to her face, the quiet smile Hitomi wore as she went about her duties never failed to inspire fury. Up until recently, Alicia had been pleased to see that the whore of a maid's smile grew increasingly strained with each passing month, but even that simple pleasure had been denied her of late.


The scotch bottle tipped over the table and Alicia slurred a curse as it fell to the floor. Thankfully, it was already empty, leaving her fluffy white carpets unstained. A moment later, one of the servants – a good Britannian servant – slid in through her door, smoothly closing it behind him.


"My lady," the underbutler said, smoothly scooping up the fallen bottle as he bowed low, "I heard your cry. Can I assist you with anything?"


"Yes, go to the kitchen and fetch me another bottle," Lady Alicia ordered. "Oh!" She continued when he was halfway out the door, "has the mail arrived yet today? I'm expecting a letter from the Daughtrys this afternoon."


"I will ask the concierge, my lady," the servant assured her, bowing his way out, "and I will return immediately with another bottle of the Halifax '07."

"See that you do," she said dismissively with only the slightest of slurs, and reclined back in her chair. The door swung shut behind the man and Alicia was once again alone in her private lap of luxury.


After a moment, Alicia got to her feet and made her swaying way over to her secretary. It was an antique, just as exquisite as every other stick of furniture in her suite, but unlike most of the chaise lounges and loveseats scattered about, her desk bore the signs of actual use. The built-in shelves were home to a tidy row of ledgers, the household accounts for the last four years.


Those ledgers were just as much another insult in a list of insults from her lord husband as they were a private refuge.


It was, of course, a lady's place to handle the family accounts; everybody knew that while men were better at fighting, their overly emotional brains generally lacked the capacity to understand the more cerebral parts of life, such as math and physics. True, their emotional volatility inspired them to great works of art as well as war, as demonstrated by the Viceregal-Governor Prince Clovis, but science, logic, and mathematics were all inherently feminine pursuits.


And yet, when Alicia had arrived at Stadtfeld Manor, only the ledgers detailing the household accounts waited for her. Over the next four years, not a single page detailing the productivity of the Stadtfeld holdings nor the incomes of the Barony of New Leicester had arrived at the Manor. It was a clear sign that her lord husband didn't trust her to fulfill her wifely duties.


So, Alicia had buried herself in the household books. She wasn't a professional accountant by any measure, but she felt she could congratulate herself on a job well done for managing the house's expenses over the last few years.


Not that he'd ever appreciated it, she thought venomously. At least Vernon is quite appreciative of my abilities. Although, her lip curled contemptuously, he'd be willing to say anything for a few pounds. How very like the help; always willing to sell themselves for a few coins.


Then how much did Alvin spend to buy Hitomi's loyalty? The treacherous thought was like a murky bubble bursting in her consciousness. What coin did he use, and how much of it did he expend to secure her loyalty for years without meeting? Clearly whatever coin he used, he spent it all on her, and didn't save any for you.


A rap came from the door to the hallway.


"My lady?" Alicia blinked; that wasn't the voice of the underbutler she'd sent off for further refreshment. In fact, that was Vernon's voice, the majordomo himself and her lover of the last two and a half years. Unbidden, a smile spread across her pleasantly tingling face. "My lady, are you decent? There's a soldier here to see you. He has a letter for you, my lady."


All thoughts of afternoon fun shattered like spun glass at the announcement. Alicia blinked again, realizing that Vernon's tone had been quite sober – his public tone, with none of the… panache he deployed when they were alone and she had that outfit on.


Wait, she thought as the words finally registered, did he say a soldier is here? What would a soldier be doing here? Maybe… hope rose in her heart, maybe he's here to arrest that bitch Hitomi!


"Send him in, Vernon," Alicia replied as she sauntered back to the table and draped herself back over her chair. "Don't worry, I'm quite decent, I assure you."


Seconds later, a fine young man of obviously solid Britannian stock was saluting her with one hand, proffering a letter with the other. "Message for you, Lady Stadtfeld," the youngster announced, "courtesy of Major Pitt, of the Recruitment Command!"


"Major Pitt?" She repeated, turning the name over in her mouth. Her lips felt unaccountably dry, so she licked them, and then, noticing the effect on the young soldier, licked them again. "I don't believe I know of any Major Pitt, certainly not any recruiters… Vernon, dear? Do I know of any Pitts?"


"No, my lady," Vernon replied from his post by the door. "As far as your registry goes, you haven't exchanged any correspondence with anybody named Pitt, certainly not a major."


"Well then… Sergeant," Alicia hazarded, regarding the fine young man through heavily lidded eyes, "what does this Major Pitt have to say to me?"


"It's, ahh, it's private, my lady," the young man gulped nervously, and Alicia couldn't help but notice how lovely his chestnut hair looked under the soft light of her lamps.


"The message is, Sergeant?" She asked, raising an eyebrow. "What, you didn't want to take a look at my… private matters?"


"Ah, no, my lady," the soldier said with a delightful blush, "I mean, my rank is private. Private Jenkins. And, no, my lady, I did not look at your letter."


"How dutiful of you," she murmured, finally accepting the letter from the boy's hand, laughing internally at the slight tremor she felt as she accidentally ghosted her fingers over his. "Well, let's see what this Major Pitt has to say…"


The adhesive paper seal, a nod to the old fashioned wax seals now used only for formal or royal correspondence, tore easily beneath her nail. The letter itself was hand-written in a fine copperplate, the handwriting inked across a fine plush paper of the highest quality. Alicia again raised an eyebrow; whoever this Major Pitt was, he was truly pushing out all the stops, doing everything in his power to make an excellent first impression.


How long has it been since someone was quite this desperate to get on my good side? Alicia wondered to herself.


The buzz of pleasure from the gesture lasted almost until the end of the first line. The first minute wrinkles spread across Alicia's forehead as she read the rest of the opening paragraph and realized the letter was about Baron Alvin's hoyden of a daughter. By the time she was through the second paragraph, the roses left on her cheeks by the scotch had blossomed as angry red spread across her face.


By the time Alicia had finished the letter, she was furious, and the drink wasn't helping. She glared balefully at the young soldier, at Private Jenkins. To his credit, the boy didn't flee immediately; in a different time and mood, she would have found that delightful. Now, it only made her angrier.


"Get out," she demanded, barely holding her composure together, "get out and tell your Major," her lip curled like it was a pejorative, "to never contact me or send postage to this house again!"


"M-my lady," Private Jenkins tried to fit a word in edgeways even as Vernon tried to usher him out of the room, "I was instructed to wait for a reply…"


"Get out!" Alicia shrieked, her temper's fragile leash snapping at last as the drink brought out what her little brother had once jokingly named Dark Alicia after a night spent in her cups. "Get out, and don't you ever dare come back, you odious little man! And Vernon, if I don't see a bottle of Halifax in front of me in the next two minutes, I will peel the hide away from your fat backside! Go!"


Half an hour and two mellowing glasses of scotch later, Alicia smoothed the crumpled letter back out on the table and reread the second and final paragraphs. Their contents were just as inadvertently cruel as they had been on the initial read.


"That damned brat," Alicia muttered to herself, sipping at her third glass of ten year old scotch. "Kallen, Kallen, Kallen! Everything is *always* about Kallen! At least when it isn't about that woman!"


It was… so infuriating, to the point that Alicia was having trouble putting it to words even inside of her mind. Although that might be the scotch. But it was only in these moments, when she'd already put a bottle of Nova Scotia's finest behind her, that she could ever find those words in the first place. Those heretical words that went against everything she'd been taught she should want.


Alicia had been raised to be a wife and a mother. She had been educated enough to fulfill her wifely duties and to entertain guests for her husband. She had been steeped in the values of post-Emblem of Blood Britannia. She had done everything right, but all of that work had been slapped aside by an accident of birth that left her dead inside, in the one place it really counted for a woman of her rank and birth.


But she'd never had the chance to go beyond that set of expectations, even when motherhood had forever been barred to her, even when Justin had sent her back to her father's house in disgrace. She'd never had a chance to decide if she wanted to be a wife or, indeed, a mother; it had simply been put on her shoulders, just like how Baron Alvin had never asked her if she would be Kallen's stepmother and the aristocratic cover for his halfbreed heir.


Alicia had never been asked for anything, because Alicia's opinion had never mattered. Not once in her thirty two years had she ever truly had a grain of independence. Even her flings with soldiers, with gardeners, with deliverymen, with Vernon had a taste of the expected, of the typical behavior of a neglected noble wife. Her minor rebellions had been just as pre-planned as every other part of her life, it seemed.


She hated Hitomi Kozuki, and she hated Kallen Stadtfeld. Partially, it was because they represented the life that she should have had, could have had if God hadn't blighted her body for some strange reason. Partially, it was because he so obviously cared about them, showering them with love in the letters she'd intercepted, a love that he'd never offered to her. Mostly, it was because both Hitomi and Kallen had tasted, at one point or another, independence.


The letters had made references to a different Hitomi, one from before the Conquest. A professional businesswoman and executive who had met Baron Alvin when he'd still been Alvin Stadtfeld, the unwed second son unlikely to inherit from his elder married brother. They had met when Alvin had come to negotiate some deal for the Imperial Fruit Company, his employer at the time, and the two had apparently met as equals.


All of that had come to a well-deserved end in the fires of the Conquest, thankfully, but for a time Hitomi had been free to make her own decisions, to live her own life, and Alicia would never forgive her for it.


Now, her dirty tomboy of a daughter was walking down a similar path. Keeping Kallen in the Manor and paying attention to her etiquette and mathematics tutors had never been easy; she'd always tried to run away, to escape from the Manor. Alicia knew she'd always tried to run away to the ghettos where her kind truly belonged. Alicia would have encouraged it if she didn't know that her comfortable life depended, in part, on Kallen Stadtfeld.


"Let her," Alicia said, finally breaking her silence even if there wasn't anybody else present to hear. "If she wants to spread her wings? Risk her neck? Let her. Not like I can stop her anyway… Not if her father already gave her permission…"


It was only seven and dusk had yet to even touch the spring sky, but Alicia already felt done with the day. She just wanted to sleep, to just put an end to the day and all thoughts of young girls going off to become heroes of the empire.


At least I'm not going to have any dreams tonight, she thought as she pulled on her nightgown. Not after a bottle and a half of scotch. Small mercies…


"M-my lady," Vernon's diffident voice came from the door, accompanied by a light rap. "My lady, are… Are you decent?"


"Nothing you haven't seen before," Alicia replied, just as done with formalities as she was with the rest of the day. Besides, it was only the truth, at least as long as Vernon was alone. "Come in, Vernon. What's the matter?"


"Well, my lady," Alicia grimaced in response to Vernon's pained expression as he came through the door, closing it behind him, "I've got some news that I'm not quite sure whether to call good or bad."


"Out with it, Vernon," Alicia waved impatiently. "I'm too… too tired to be patient. What's wrong?"


"My lady," the majordomo began, smoothing his mustache, "it's Hitomi. She's… She's left."


"What?" Alicia frowned at her servant, trying to make sense of his words. "My husband's whore ran away? Why? Err… Why now?"


"I haven't the haziest, my lady," Vernon said apologetically. "Marcus, the inside dogsbody, noticed her carrying a heavy bag out the door and ran to tell me. I followed her out to the street, but just as I approached her an unmarked truck of the sort used for grocery deliveries pulled up and she climbed inside. It pulled away and the driver ignored my signs to stop completely!"


"Oh…" Alicia tried to turn the thought over in her head, trying to figure out how this fit into the puzzle of the day. She found that she couldn't, and that she didn't care to try. "Well, she left of her own will, clearly. So, she's not my problem anymore. I didn't beat her away nor fire her, so my husband will have nothing to complain about, I suppose."


She smiled. "If she ran away to die in a gutter with the rest of her kind, who am I to stand in the way of Baron Alvin's chosen woman?"


"Quite so, my lady," Vernon replied with a chuckle. "Should I go ahead and order her room be cleaned out? I doubt we'll be seeing her back again, and if she does return…"


"If she does return, she won't find a job," Alicia snapped peevishly, and smiled again at Vernon. "Yes, clean the room out. Have it fumigated as well; no telling what vermin the vermin might have left behind, after all."


"As you wish, my lady," Vernon bowed and left the room. As the door closed behind him, Alicia could hear him yelling orders at some servant or another.


And then, Alicia was once again left alone. Strangely enough, she didn't feel any happier, now that her least favorite servant had exited Stadtfeld Manor. Hitomi would never darken her door again, and for that Alicia was thankful, but…


But Alvin still won't love you, Kallen still won't be the daughter you never had, especially with her running off to be a Knight, and Vernon will do anything for a few pounds, her treacherous distillate-soaked mind supplied. You are alone, just as alone as ever, and just as alone as you will ever be. Now you've even lost your whipping girl. Can't even keep a reliable victim around.


Her bed looked so inviting, so comfortable, but when Alicia crawled between the sheets they were just as cold and lonely as the rest of her luxurious suite. Just as empty as her womb. Just as abandoned as Alicia was, stuck here in a savage land far from her only wedded lord, who wanted nothing to do with her.


Just another day in the life of Lady Alicia Stadtfeld.

 

[Scopas]

 

[Scopas]

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.

 

[Scopas]

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.

 

[Daemon Targaryen]

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.

 

[Scopas]

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.

 

[Scopas]

JULY 2, 2016 ATB
STRATFORD PLACE, HONORARY DISTRICT #2, TOKYO SETTLEMENT
2200

"-ings a final end to the Yokohama Sniper's reign of terror." The newscaster concluded. "Now, fo-"

The next item in the bulletin fizzled out as the screen died. Keith Forester slumped back into the couch, hand still loosely grasped around the remote. It had been the third time he'd seen that particular "special bulletin" over the last two days; seemingly, the death of the feared Yokohama Sniper at the hands of the heroic agents of the Imperial Bureau of Investigation was all anybody could talk about. It was as if nothing else of any note was happening.

If only God were so merciful.

Keith closed his eyes, letting the cynical thought flow out and away through his nostrils along with his breath as he exhaled. Keith, he reminded himself, wouldn't think that anything else of note was going on. Keith wouldn't think of anything that he had not been directly ordered to think.

Keith, he thought as a cry from Hannah cut through the apartment from the bedroom, quickly hushed by Emily, is a father now. And all that matters is making sure that Keith doesn't stop being a father because he thought too much and did too little to remain Keith.

From the other room of the small two-room apartment, Keith heard Emily cooing something to their five year old, suffering from a bad case of strep throat. He didn't know what tune she was humming, what words might be carried on her breath too low to be heard through the wall.

He only hoped those words were Britannian. They'd agreed years ago to not speak Japanese – Elevenese – around Hannah.

It would be, they fervently hoped, easier that way. They couldn't do anything about the hair or the eyes, but they could make sure that Hannah would be as Britannian as any Honorary Britannian could be.

It was better than the alternative. Better an Honorary Britannian than a Number. Better to live than to be a corpse.

Better to be a traitor to thousands of years of dusty ancestors and useless traditions than to be a corpse.

Even if it was hard to remember that sometimes.

With another sigh, Keith allowed his eyes to flicker open. The half-remembered meditation exercises from… from before would not be bringing him any peace tonight, he could tell as much already. He was too agitated, too uneasy; his mind might be sick and tired with unease and neverending stress, but his body was full of nervous energy.

Keith walked over to the window, sliding it open with difficulty. The low-rise apartment building, one of hundreds like it originally thrown up for temporary worker accommodations in the burgeoning Tokyo Settlement before gradually gaining an aura of permanency as the land was zoned for Honoraries, was less than four years old and already home to a host of tiny problems. Fortunately, he'd fixed the window's slide with a bit of judicious banging with his hammer, so he could enjoy the summer breeze, cool this late at night.

Five kilome- three miles away to the southwest, the walls surrounding the open-air prison called Shinjuku Ghetto rose, the flat gray concrete blanched by the moonlight from above on all sides save that facing the Britannian Concession. There, the reflections of gaudy red, green, and golden lights mottled the walls like some strange pox.

Unbidden, a cool can of beer slipped into his right hand as Emily came up from behind him, tucking herself against his back. Without looking away from those distant walls, barely a hump on the horizon at this distance, he slipped an arm around her shoulders, pulling her close.

Hannah's throat must be doing better, Keith thought as he hugged his wife, if she went back to sleep so easily. Good girl, giving her mom a break.

"What're you thinking about, Kei…?" Emily's voice was husky in his ear, and for all that she spoke in the Britannic their status legally compelled them to use, he could still hear the voice of the same girl he had met years ago, back in a different Shinjuku. The girl he had married, in the dust of that Shinjuku as the walls went up and the dispossessed of Tokyo were herded inside. The girl he had married, almost five years ago now. The girl who had joined him in turning his back on Japan and had signed up for the Citizenship Classes, their baby daughter in her arms.

Despite her best efforts to cultivate first a Tokyo accent and then a Homelander accent, Emily still had the faintest touches of Osaka on her tongue. Even if it hadn't been just the two of them and their daughter in this apartment, that lingering accent meant that Keith could always pick her out of even the noisest of crowds.

"Just…" He swallowed, his throat dry and stuffy. A sip of the cold beer helped loosen it back up. "Just thinking about the old man again."

"Ah…" Her arms tightened around him just slightly, and Keith reciprocated the embrace as he stared out across the nightscape.

"I miss him." The words hung in the air, hideously underwhelming and entirely incapable of carrying the emotion welling up from deep inside Keith's heart, from a place that had once been the younger son, proud of his policeman father, full of irritated admiration for his naturally achieving older brother. A place that had once gone by a different name, in a different country. In a different life. In a different world. "I miss my father."

Emily was silent, her face tucked against his chest. Her warmth, the pressure of her arms, surrounded him, contrasting with the cool wind on his face, the cold beer in his hand. "Father was proud," he said, "always so proud… Proud of his uniform, proud of his country, proud of his sons…" Keith swallowed.

"I really loved my father."

In his mind, he could dimly see that colossus of childhood gain, that bushy mustache under the thick-rimmed glasses, that prematurely gray streak through his hair, and the tie pin his mother had once given Officer Matsumoto Souichiro of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police department always glimmering against the breast of his dress shirt when he wore a suit. He could see that same colossus crumble as they wandered Shinjuku, freshly returned from a trip to visit Grandpa's farm and finding the world had shifted on its axis while they were away.

He remembered the fury in his father's eyes when Keith, hand in hand with Emily, had told him their new names and that they had become Honorary Citizens, their applications approved and tests complete. The Oath sworn.

At least the Yokohama Sniper ended up being a woman… It had been all too easy to imagine a familiar face, worn down by years of privation and twisted with hate, glaring down the barrel of a rifle. At least… At least I don't have to wonder if the Yokohama Sniper had been thinking about Hannah when she shot that kid…

"I really loved my father…" There was still a part of the boy he had once been who cried when he remembered that rejection. "I wish…" He trailed off. What did he wish? That his father had been less proud, less stiff-necked, more willing to adjust to the changing times? That wouldn't have been Matsumoto Souichiro.

"I wish he could be here with us… That he could watch his granddaughter grow up… Could help you take care of her…"

Even if his father was still alive somehow, even if he had somehow found a way to beat the odds and survive as a Number, Keith knew that dream was dead. Souichiro, his father, would never accept that the mother of his only grandchild was an Honorary Britannian, and that his granddaughter would be raised to be an Honorary Britannian, completely cut off from anything Japanese if Keith had his way. The knowledge that his father would never, could never be part of his daughter's life gnawed at him. Who was he to cut Hannah away from her grandfather? How could he?

"My son is dead! You killed him, you bastard!"


Because, Keith answered his own question, it's the only way for Hannah to have a long life, if not a happy one. To be Japanese is to be vermin, utterly disposable. I'll do anything to keep her alive.

"But… as long as you're Emily, and as long as she's Hannah… And as long as I'm not who I was… He won't… I can't…"

He could never go home again. But what was home, if not this apartment? It wasn't much, but it was where his wife lived, where their child lived.

The thought of his old bastard of a father's reaction to Emily, not Ami, and to their daughter curdled the old grief into anger again, just like it always did when thoughts of what could have been bothered him.

"Fuck him!" The can crumpled in Keith's fist, and he pressed Emily close to him, trying to ignore the way the wind chilled the wetness on his face. "What did he want me to do? Curl up and die with him in the ashes of our old home? Lay down next to Mom and Kotaro's bones and join them? Fuck him and his pride! Pride wouldn't fill our bellies! Being Jap- being Elevens wouldn't keep my daughter alive, it would only trap her in the same misery he was too proud to turn away from! He didn't even try! He just wanted to die, and hated that I wanted to live!"

He didn't know who he was trying to convince. Souichiro, if he was still alive, was miles away and no doubt hated him still. Hannah was still too young to understand, or at least he fervently hoped that five was too young to understand hatred, and thankfully still asleep despite his outburst. Emily had heard it all before.

Emily…

Abruptly, Keith felt ashamed. Emily's parents were both dead, and she'd been an only child. She had no family other than him and Hannah.

In his darker moments, he couldn't help but envy his wife, just a bit. It would have been easier if Souichiro really was dead, as dead as the Japan he represented. It would have made it easier to keep Kenji buried.

"I miss your father too…" With a start, Keith realized that it was Emily who had said that, talking into his chest.

"You never liked him," he mumbled back, letting the can drop from his fingers and turning away from the window, wrapping his freed arm around his wife, running his fingers through her short hair. "He was always stiff around you… He never welcomed you in…"

"I know, but…" Emily tilted her head back, looking up at him. Her eyes glimmered, wet with moonlight and pooling tears. "I miss what he could have been. What he should have been. He should have been proud of his son. Proud of what his son managed to accomplish. Made a life for himself."

"He said the wrong son died." The old hurt coated his tongue like the scum after a night's hard drinking, and Keith, realizing he was lashing out at the image of the Souichiro that could have been in his wife's eyes, moderated his tone. "When I told him what I was doing… He said he wished he had taken Kotaro with him to Grandpa's place, that I'd stayed behind in Shinjuku with Mom…"

"That was wrong of him to say, to think," Emily replied, heat touching her voice. "He had a wonderful son in you. And now you're mine, and you're my wonderful husband. You've got a good job and career in the Honorary Legion, and the pay's enough for the rent and food, so I can stay home with our daughter. It's your hard work. He didn't deserve a son like you."

"It didn't need to be this way…" And now the anger was gone, cycling back to grief. "Plenty of cops just changed what laws they were enforcing… Swore new oaths…"

"If he had been as good of a man as his son," Emily insisted, no hint of compromise in her voice, "that's what he'd have done. Instead of making you work your own way through Citizenship, he could have given himself and his son a new life, a better life than what he settled for. So he lost his son and the chance to have a family with us." She stood on her toes and touched her nose to Keith's, forcing a reluctant smile to his lips. "His loss."

"Yeah…" Not his loss; Keith hadn't been the one to push his father away, to reject him. To choose to cling onto a rapidly dying past instead of finding the courage to reach out to a new life. All he had done was keep his family alive and fed, and damned the costs to himself. "Yeah, you're right. His loss." As he repeated his wife's words, Keith felt certainty creep into him. "I loved my father. I miss my father. But, if my father was more willing to see me dead instead of dishonored, instead of an Honorary… If he'd rather Hannah be dead than speaking Britannian…"

It was only a quarter turn, only a slight shuffling of his feet, Emily obligingly following him into the darkness of the apartment. Only a small adjustment, only a minor change, but Keith's back was to the open window, to Shinjuku.

"If he wants to lie down and die with Japan, with Mom and Big Bro…" It hurt, saying it out loud, but in that hurt was the first seed of catharsis. "If he wants death, then let him die. I am not my father. I chose life, and I'll choose my family." Emily was radiant in that pale light, her smile and eyes loving and beautiful, for all that her face was unwashed and drawn with the exhaustion of a young parent tending to a robust if occasionally ill daughter. "And if the price of that is kissing Britannian feet, well…" The smile felt crooked and forced on Keith's face, but he thought it could feel natural someday.

"Pride is death; if nothing else, that's my father's lesson."

 

[Scopas]

Another commission handled by Scitty Kitty, this time a simple headshot of Tanaka Chihiro, once of Shinjuku, also known as the Yokohama Sniper.

 

[Scopas]

FishTheTaco/Silencio finished another commission for me, this one depicting the recruitment of Diethard Reid in Chapter 21.

 

[Scopas]

(Thank you to Sunny, Restestsest, Rakkis157, and MetalDragon for beta-reading and editing this sidestory.)


A Voice for the Future: A Spot of Golf


JULY 7, 2016 ATB
FILLMORE COUNTRY CLUB, JUST OUTSIDE THE KYOTO HONORARY SETTLEMENT
1230


"Oh… Oh… C'mon…" The ball trembled on the lip of the hole, perfectly balanced on the brink. The suspense of the moment was heady as Bradley, Bradley's unnamed caddy, and Lady Sophie Sumeragi, also called Kaguya, waited with bated breath. Or, in Kaguya's case and quite possibly that of the caddy's, waited behind expressions which were very convincing facsimiles of the eager tension written across Bradley's face.


Finally, with a desultory thump, gravity passed its verdict and the ball tumbled out of sight and went to its destiny in the depths of the hole.


"Huzzah!" Bradley's broad, pink face flushed with passion as he pumped his fist exultantly. "A birdie! I got a birdie!"


He actually said 'huzzah,' Kaguya marveled from the sanctuary of her mind. What century does this boy live in?


"Is that very good?" Kaguya asked with cloying sweetness, playing dumb and making a show of listening attentively as Bradley, the third son of a noble unimportant save for his post as the vice-president of the second largest trans-Pacific shipping concern, took the opportunity to "educate" her once again on the finer points of golf scoring, tooting his horn as he did so.


"Splendid showing, milord," the caddy said after Bradley finished explaining the difference between an eagle and an albatross, perhaps taking pity on Kaguya by cutting his noble master off before he could ramble any further. "That makes eight holes straight where you have come under par. Very well done, if I do say so myself. What a way to end this morning's game!"


"Thank you, Alex," Bradley, an overweight boy two years her senior, replied offhandedly, not even looking at the man. "Yes, a fine morning if I do say so myself." Seemingly remembering some scrap of his etiquette training, Bradley turned what he probably thought was a charming smile on Kaguya. "You did quite well yourself, Lady Sophie. At least, quite well for a… beginner."


Ah, what a graceful last-minute correction. And the man's name is Alex? Good to know.


It was always a good idea to learn small but important details like the names of the servants, at least in Kaguya's experience, even though she would never call the man by name, at least not anywhere his employer could hear her. It was also an excellent idea to politely ignore any peculiar gaps in sentences where a slur or a comment on her status or personal history might have been barely excised from the printer's tray of the speaker's mind just before publication.


To effectively play a role, the minor details were just as important as the broad sweeps. A poor performance of a "civilized" Britannian noble at one of these "encounters" could do greater damage to her acceptance in the Area's upper crust than showing up at tee time, or heaven forbid tea time, wearing a kimono.


After all, a full and public embrace of her native culture would convey the impression of perceived strength, even if it also conveyed temerity of the highest degree. Likewise, an excellent impression of a Britannian noble communicated an embrace of the Britannian way of life, as well as a certain willingness to "play ball", as it were, and to make sacrifices to meet the Britannians on their own terms.


A poor performance, on the other hand, only conveyed incompetence and weakness. Kaguya could afford neither.


"Thank you, my lord," Kaguya smiled sweetly at her suitor for the day. "Perhaps I will be able to impose on you again next weekend for another lesson? The Fillmore is such a beautiful course, after all… But good company makes it all the more enjoyable."


"Ah…" Somehow, Bradley found some way to become even more floridly pink, the color of his cheeks darkening to a shade that made Kaguya think of freshly sliced ham. It was an unfortunate shade, considering the boy's porcine face and the way his fair hair made him look all the pinker. "I… Umm… I'd like that…?"


The caddy, Alex, coughed lightly and Bradley's features firmed up.


"That is," the noble boy continued, his voice much firmer, "I would be willing to spare some time to help you improve your game, Lady Sophie. I am sure that, with my help, your handicap will drop to scratch in no time."


So not just a golfing caddy from the Club, hmm? Kaguya bobbed her head eagerly as she eyed the servant from the corner of her eye. A family servant, certainly. Perhaps Bradley's personal valet? Certainly a chaperone, sent to keep youthful hijinks in line and to make sure that the boy doesn't get too friendly with the Honorary, I'm sure. Pity that.


It came naturally to Kaguya to think of Bradley Dean as "the boy" despite him having two years on her. It was clear that Thaddeus Dean had not passed down much in the way of his business acumen to his third son, which was probably the reason the Britannian magnate was willing to consider even in passing a match between his boy and an Honorary Britannian. No matter that she was brilliant, that Sumeragi Industries was far more successful than Pacific Shipping Solutions ever could be, and no matter that the blood of emperors ran in her veins, while the Deans were mere lesser nobles with good business sense.


A third son was all an Honorary Britannian could rate, no matter how noble the Honorary was.


If Kaguya Sumeragi had truly been a social climbing Honorary eager for her children to be full Britannian nobles, she would have rejoiced to even get that sort of consideration, leaving Kaguya little choice in how to play her role.


And even that would be far too straightforward, now wouldn't it? If I play the "eager would-be Britannian" role too well, the Old Men might start getting tetchy again like the hypocrites they are. Kaguya sighed to herself, indulging in a moment of self-pity. Guess it's time to play the "demure maiden" card.


Kaguya carefully blushed and made a show of fiddling with the baggy fabric of her golfing trousers, the already voluminous garment made moreso after she bloused the legs into the high argyll-patterned socks. A touch of feigned embarrassment also gave her a fantastic excuse to look away from Bradley. He truly did resemble a pig, and not even a bristly boar brimming with bombast; indeed, Bradley looked fit to wallow in a sty, his mouth in the trough, and it was difficult not to mess up her poise and snicker at that mental image.


"I am honored you think so highly of me," she said, brushing an errant lock of her hair back behind her ear in a carefully calculated 'spontaneous' act of maidenly demurity. An old reliable, that, according to her official Britannian guardian, Lady Annabeth. "I am very thankful for your time. I am sure you are in high demand, and I appreciate your personal, undivided attention."


It was a bit of a dangerous move and not one that strictly fit with Lady Annabeth's lengthy lessons on Britannian courting etiquette, but Kaguya had always found it best to follow her instincts at times like this. She knew full well that Bradley was emphatically not in high demand, after all, evidenced by the way his father had instructed the boy to begin his attempt to court "a girl below his station."


She also knew that Bradley very much wanted to be wanted, and as he swelled up with self-importance before her, Kaguya knew that she had been right to trust her instincts.


He's barely even a Britannian, Kaguya thought with a trace of pity. Real Britannians lust for power and strive endlessly for it. I've met real Britannians. Bradley, though… Bradley just wants to be liked.


Tanya was more of a Britannian than him.


It was amazing the difference a little time could make. Just a week ago, Kaguya had felt all but helpless in the course of her life, her attempts to carve her own way frustrated by the accident of her birth and her desires to improve the lot of her people hobbled by the cautious conservatism of the Old Men.


And as far as anybody else outside of a chosen handful of close collaborators would know, none of that had changed.


Just another role to play, Kaguya mused as she burbled something simpering and enthusiastic as she followed Bradley towards the next hole. Honestly, it's starting to get a bit hard to keep them all straight.


The other Houses knew, of course, that the House of Sumeragi had contracted with the Kozuki Organization. Concealing the purchase and transportation of the supplies she had already shipped to Shinjuku would have been all but impossible, with the quantities to follow unmissable by any save the blind and fatally concussed. Instead, Kaguya had seized the initiative and brought the matter up at the last meeting of the house heads. Lord Tossei had been most displeased, but Lord Taizo had run interference on her behalf. The other three members of the Numbers Advisory Council were thankfully too absorbed with their own scheming to care, especially not after Lord Taizo had claimed that it was "important for the young lady to learn the importance of safe and sensible investments."


Which, if they were as canny as they think themselves to be, should have only served to heighten their suspicions. They are fully aware that Lord Taizo is my actual guardian, Lady Annabeth be damned, so what reason would he have to downplay my intelligence at a meeting save to obfuscate my goals?


"You know, Lady Sophie," Bradley said as he stumped up the hill to the next hole's teeing area, wiping the beading sweat from his brow with a monogrammed kerchief as he went, "there's no reason for us to be out in the heat of the day. The course isn't going anywhere, you know! Why don't we break for lunch at the Clubhouse?"


Cool and comfortable in her lightweight argyll-patterned golfing outfit, Kaguya didn't feel any particular need to retreat from the fairly mild noonday sun and she wasn't hungry either. On the other hand, she didn't care about golf and Bradley looked like he might actually melt if he was left outside for much longer.


Besides, I hear that the Fillmore has a complete dessert buffet on offer!


"Certainly, my lord," she said with a sweet smile, peering up at the Britannian from under her white flat-cap. "I could do with some refreshments myself!"


"Very good!" Bradley replied with poorly hidden relief. "Alex, tend to our clubs."


"Very good, milord." The caddy sketched a slight bow to Bradley before turning to Kaguya. "Lady Sophie, shall I take your clubs as well?"


The man's smile was appropriately servile, but his eyes were cold and assessing. Kaguya met them with the smoothly bland expression of disinterest reserved by Britannian noble etiquette for furniture and the help. It was a subtle test that Alex, if that was the servant's name, had sprung on her, but Kaguya already knew the correct response.


On one hand, a lady of her true rank did not speak directly to a mere valet, especially not one in the service of a club or another noble. Etiquette dictated that a lady of royal lineage only spoke to her handmaids, the ranking maid in charge of the household, and if she must, the butler, when in public. On the other hand, while Kaguya was the descendent of a cadet branch of an old imperial family, that family was no more and the empire they had ruled had not been Britannian and thus inferior. Claiming the same rights as a lady of the Britannian royal family could be a sign of disloyalty on her part.


So, instead of standing pointedly still and quiet or responding to the man's barb, she channeled just a touch of the fire she had seen glowing in Tanya's eyes as she recounted her first kill.


"The key, Lady Kaguya, was proving my competency in an undeniable manner."


The breath wooshed out of Alex's mouth as the 35 pound bag slammed into him like an inelegant sledgehammer, his knees thudding into the green as his strength left him.


"Oops!" Kaguya tittered behind a raised hand, coyly covering her mouth as she sought out Bradley's eyes. "I think your caddy's got butterfingers, Bradley!"


She pointed at her golf bag where it lay at the servant's feet, her drivers spilling out of the unzipped mouth. He had tried to grab the bag even as she'd rammed it into his gut, an impressive display of dedication considering how he had still scrambled for the handle as he wheezed for breath.


"He fumbled his catch… Wait," she put a finger to her chin, turning her face up in thought, "does this mean I got a hole in one?"


Bradley stared blankly at her for a moment, before snorting with laughter as he came back to himself. "For taking down Alex? Not hardly, Lady Sophie! Good show, though. Can't take lip from the help, eh?"


"Too true!" Kaguya agreed happily as she linked her arm around Bradley's in the prescribed manner for a young lady escorted on promenade.


All the while quashing the discomfort in her belly. Abusing the servants was a time-honored Britannian tradition, a casual reminder of noble privilege and might and thus beloved by the aristocracy, and so her role forced her to go along with the practice. Bleeding hearts stood out in Britannia, especially if they had Japanese faces.


She still hated the pointless cruelty of the culture of abuse, not to mention the waste. Kaguya had no issue with pointed and useful cruelty – no daughter of Kyoto who sought to maintain her position in a man's world could afford to be squeamish – but cruelty for its own petty sake did nothing but make more enemies.


And isn't that just Britannian culture in a nutshell, she thought wryly. Utter swine, greedy and bullying, power-hungry and always, always so desperate to show how dominant they are of everything around them. To them, the only unforgivable crime is that of weakness… Funny how they never realize how that constant clamoring for strength only makes them look weaker in everybody else's eyes.


One day, Kaguya promised herself once more, I will reveal their weakness for all to see. I think I have already found my best tool towards that goal… But for today, I must still play along.


"They're all the same, you know," she confided to Bradley as they strolled off down the hill, leaving Alex to handle both sets of clubs behind them, "all of the lower sorts. You wouldn't believe how much trouble my own Honorary housestaff gave me before I finally drove some manners into their heads."


"Oh?" Bradley chuckled, wiping his moist brow again with his handkerchief. "You know, hearing that from you should come as more of a surprise than it is. You really do have some teeth, Lady Sophie. No wonder my father's so impressed."


And there's that weakness, noted Kaguya with distaste. Bowing to the opinion of your father instead of drawing your own, only seeing a sweet face and finding that a tongue that can drizzle honied words can be bitter and venomous as well… And did you think I didn't hear the slightest hint of unease in your laugh, Bradley-boy? Time to set you back at your ease, I think.


"I will defer to your father's wisdom on that score," Kaguya demurred, smiling up at her companion again at just the right angle for her bright green eyes to peep out from under the brim of her cap, a practiced look of playful cuteness. "He's so smart! I'm really impressed with how well your family has done, Lord Bradley! A vice-president must be so busy all the time! I could never keep up with all of that!"


She was laying it on a bit thick, but Bradley was a bit thick too. No reason to risk him drawing the wrong conclusions.


"But you own your own company, don't you?" Bradley's big, stupid face creased in a frown of honest puzzlement. "Don't you know all of that… business stuff too?"


"Me?" Kaguya adopted an expression of artful surprise. "Lord Bradley, I have people for that! After all," she sniffed, "a lady doesn't dirty her hands with business outside of the household books, of course… Especially not when there's sweets to be had! I have heard so much about the Fillmore, but I have never been here before! Is it true that they have an entire kitchen devoted to the dessert menu?"


"It's true," Bradley acknowledged, before adding with a sniff, "although the food is, in my opinion, barely adequate. Let me assure you, Lady Sophie, that the chefs back at the Dean Estate in the Homeland are far finer."


Before Kaguya could follow that comment up with the usual round of giggled flattery, an almost furtive look passed over Bradley's face. When her golfing companion spoke again, his voice lacked the usual noble oiliness; for the second time that day, Kaguya felt like she was seeing a shy boy glancing out from around the edges of the edifice of the scion.


"That's what Dad says, at least. But, between you and me…" Bradley was muttering, and were they not all but alone, the heavily laden Alex trailing behind them on the hill, Kaguya would have thought he was trying to avoid being overheard, "the Crème brûlée is really, really good. I'm not really supposed to like it, since it's European and all, but…"


Well, well, what do you know? It looks like there might be a real person somewhere inside the Brit pig after all.


"If what you say is true…" Kaguya replied, voice solemn and grim… "then your secret will be safe with me, Lord Bradley." The mock seriousness slid from her tongue like a viper's molt, leaving an impish smile behind. "Us sugar lovers gotta stick together, eh?"


As Bradley beamed down at her, his smile far less stiff and uneasy than before, Kaguya pressed her advantage and wrapped her hand around his. "Come on! Why are we standing around in the heat when there's desserts with our names on them waiting for us? Come on!"


It turned out that, no matter Bradley's numerous other faults, chief among them the bad taste displayed by being born Britannian, he had an excellent taste in food extending beyond a keen eye for sweets. Over their extravagant lunch, thankfully free of the usual protocols in the designated informal space of the clubhouse dining room, the third son spoke knowledgably and at great length about all of the dishes Kaguya chose to sample. From the selection of vinaigrettes that arrived with the salad starter to a step by step explanation of how the much-vaunted Crème brûlée was prepared, the teen was a practical font of knowledge.


Incidentally, the Crème brûlée was indeed just as wonderful as Bradley had promised.


I wonder if Tanya would like to try some, Kaguya mused as she stared at her empty dish, only the remnant of the crust left behind. She ate almost as many cookies as me, after all…


As the after-lunch conversation began to wind down, Alex the caddy discreetly slipped up to their table and, with a quick bow, knelt by Bradley's chair to murmur something into his ear. Bradley's spoon, still laden with a last bite of his pudding, paused in mid-air as the young noble listened intently to his servant before turning to Kaguya, a broad smile worming its way across his face.


Something about that smile made Kaguya's gut clench with unease. It's the gloating, she decided. He's pleased, very pleased, about something.


"Well, Lady Sophie," Bradley began before pausing to take the last bite of his pudding, relishing the taste as he replaced his spoon by his plate, "there's one less troublemaker in the world now."


"Oh?" Kaguya blinked guilelessly at the Britannian from across the table, her eyes wide with clearly telegraphed interested innocence. "Well, that sounds delightful! But… I must ask, which troublemaker are you referring to now, Lord Bradley? Sometimes, it seems like the whole Area is full of nothing but troublemakers. It's so hard to keep track of them all!""


"Oh," Bradly blinked, surprise at her question momentarily displacing the smug satisfaction from his face. The surprise in turn firmed into a frown of patrician disapproval that sat ill at ease on his flabby features. Indeed, the expression was so clearly unnatural and practiced that Kaguya was forced to assume that the boy had practiced it at length in a mirror, presumably trying to imitate one of his betters, most likely his father. "Yes… yes, I see your point. The Empire is truly vexed with an abundance of rats scurrying underfoot these days, isn't it? Sad that such a state is practically taken as a given now… Not that a lady in your position would need to burden herself with the specifics."


"Not for the most part," Kaguya agreed with a careless shrug that, while equally as practiced as Bradley's disapproving frown, suited her role as Lady Sophie, wide-eyed gadabout. "That's really what the help is for, isn't it? I'm not really much for the news myself, I'm afraid. It's far too dull and always so depressing, except when Prince Clovis is giving a speech! Honestly," she rolled her eyes theatrically, eliciting an appreciative chuckle from her companion, "it's enough of a bore keeping up with all of the reports my company's directors insist I read, not to mention all of the household accounts Lady Annabeth forces me to slave over!"


"Quite understandable," Bradley nodded understandingly. "You bear a heavy cross indeed, Lady Sophie. It's no fault of your own that your lessons were… delayed, and it's commendable how hard you have worked to master them."


The happy smile on Kaguya's face was not at all forced. Indeed, it was sweet as honey, as elegantly manicured as any hedgerow and, indeed, just as naturally occuring. "Thank you so much for your understanding, Lord Bradley."


"Not to worry," he replied, magnanimous in his dismissal. "But… Where were we… Oh, yes, in any case, this particular troublemaker is the infamous Yokohoma Sniper! Surely," he implored, "you have heard the name, at least? That's all any of the news stations have talked about for a week now!'


"Ah, yes," Kaguya smiled as the knot in her stomach cinched itself tight. "I think I've heard about him, but I more or less tuned it out. I'm not much of a newshound, remember? So I don't really know all the unpleasant details, but… well, the name is quite self-explanatory, isn't it? Almost on the nose."


"Heard of her!" Bradley corrected triumphantly. "They just got her! And not a day too soon."


"A… woman?" Kaguya blinked, momentarily taken aback. "I… can't say I was expecting that." Remembering herself, she quickly added, "I mean, aren't men supposed to be the ones who are all about passion and the hot blood of battle and all that? Flying off the handle like this Sniper presumably did seems like a very… masculine thing."


That's it, Kaguya told herself as she carefully deflected the lordling's attention away from her gender, play into the Britannian norms and use them to your advantage… The girl sitting across the table from you definitely has no stomach for the fight. And another girl commanding a city from a bunker doesn't have passion enough to rekindle a nation's fiery heart. Just a pair of harmless girls, nothing to see here…


And as 'Lady Sophie' deflected and disarmed, the rest of Sumeragi Kaguya smoldered with fury. Damn that bitch of a sniper! She'll blow the cover for the rest of us!


"Well," replied Bradley dismissively, resettling himself in his chair as Kaguya's stomach dropped through the floor, "what can you expect from the Elevens, Lady Sophie? Unlike yourself, they're hardly… Civilized."


She nodded along, her tongue heavy and still behind her lips. It was, a distant corner of Kaguya noted, almost sweet how he made exceptions for present company without having to be reminded. By Britannian standards, that's positively cosmopolitan.


"Yes," Kaguya heard herself say, "they're so childlike sometimes. I mean, you wouldn't believe how much trouble I've had with even the newer Honoraries, to say nothing about the outright Numbers. It's like they don't want to understand."


It was her voice, but those weren't her words. Kaguya was busy, a cascade of possibilities running through her head as the lessons and propaganda her Britannian tutor had hammered into Lady Sophie operated autonomously.


"Exactly!" Bradley agreed vigorously, his eyes alight with interest and misplaced sympathy. "They just don't seem to understand their place! You would think after six years the lesson would have seeped into their thick heads, but…" He shrugged. "Maybe this time, they'll learn. His Highness the Viceregal Governor did up the punitive quota, after all, and if a thousand to one doesn't send a message, nothing will."


It will send a message indeed. Kaguya felt cold with the certainty, all ice and cut-glass clarity. Oh yes, it will send a message indeed. Lord Tossei and his faction have just lost once and for all as soon as that message is made. If the Britannians seriously carry out the full penalty set forth in Proclamation Nine in a city, not just out in the Niigata countryside, it means that it will only be a matter of time before there are no Elevens left, and quite likely no Eleven-descended Honoraries either. The conservative "wait and see" approach is doomed.


By sending this message, the Britannians have only guaranteed that the Day of Liberation will soon dawn. And I have secured the sun in my camp and given her as many bright beams as I could to scour the barbarians away.


"Quite right," Kaguya agreed aloud, directing a fraction of her attention at Bradley as her mind whirred. As soon as the news broke, events would begin to unfurl at breakneck speed. She wouldn't be the one to set the tinder ablaze, of course, but she wasn't going to stand around waiting to be burnt either. Timetables would have to be accelerated, shipments of weapons and supplies in and people out would have to be accelerated… "And if they won't learn this time, won't understand the course history has plotted for them now… Then they will never understand."


And if that's the case, then we truly are dead as a people. If a mass sacrifice of ten thousand, even twenty thousand, isn't enough to breathe renewed life into the Yamato-damashii, then it matters little how many bodies the Britannians stack, for we will already be as corpses.


"Quite right!" Bradley nodded, his budding double-chin bobbing slightly as the servant Alex stood at his back, thoughtful eyes nestled in a bland, empty face. "But for now… I think the rest of our game awaits. Nine more holes, eh?"


"Then by all means," Kaguya replied, rising to her feet in a single graceful movement, an almost burning energy suffusing her limbs in a desperate need to move, "I'm ready for the next round if you are!"


A Voice for the Past: A Warrior Without a War

JULY 7, 2016 ATB
KAWAKAMI, NARA PREFECTURE
1900


As the sun slipped away beyond the broad shoulders of Mount Sanjo, Tohdoh Kyoshiro settled down on the cracked old foundation stones that marked the place where Obatani Hamlet had once stood.


Once of the Republican Japanese Army, for a time the personal armsmaster of the Kururugi Household, now of the Japan Liberation Front, many miles had passed below Kyoshiro's boots since his childhood, much of which had been spent at his grandfather's home in Kawakami Village, or at the Kendo dojo the old warhorse had devoted himself to in his retirement.


Tohdoh Koichiro, like his son and his grandson, had been a military man for the bulk of his adult life. Unlike his son, Koichiro had seen combat under the last Emperor of Japan, during the failed attempt to expand the Empire of Japan onto the Asian mainland. The scars the great undertaking had left on his grandfather had been clearly visible to the young Kyoshiro, for all that his body had survived the trials of Khabarovsk, Vladivostok, and Karafuto intact.


The stories the old man would tell when the snow fell over the Omine Mountains left an indelible mark on Kyoshiro. Stories of dedication to the Emperor and the Land of the Rising Sun, of the devotion forged between comrades in untenable situations, of ingenuity in the face of overwhelming might. Stories of the loss of comrades and the loss of hope, the suffering of the wounded, and of how the dedication to something greater than oneself became a shield against the pain and the despair.


All of these stories, Kyoshiro Tohdoh had carried with him when he followed in his father and grandfather's footsteps. Like his father and grandfather, he had enrolled at the Republican Japanese Army Academy, and like his father and grandfather, had graduated with honors, whereupon he had taken the oath of service to Japan and her government.


He had been commissioned as a Lieutenant of the Artillery.


Between his excellent grades, his father and grandfather's networks of contacts in the Army bureaucracy, and the Tohdoh family's history of military service dating back to the Bafuku, he had risen rapidly through the peacetime RJA. His superiors were impressed by his stoic demeanor and sincere devotion to the ideals he had learned from his grandfather's stories. His non-coms were impressed by his willingness to get his hands dirty in the pursuit of deepening his proficiency as an artillery commander.


That last aspect of Kyoshiro's command style had been taken directly from his grandfather's stories. Although his grandfather had served as an infantry officer, he had always emphasized how important it was to prove to the men that you understood exactly what they were doing, and that you could hold your own in any one of their tasks.


"That," Koichiro told his attentive grandson, "is how you get more than just respect for your rank. That's how you get their loyalty. Prove that you know what they're doing, what they're feeling. Show that you're not afraid of an honest day's work."


Consequently, Kyoshiro had always made a point to serve on one of his battalion's self-propelled howitzers at some point during every field exercise, not as a battery commander or even displacing the sergeant commanding the howitzer's crew, but rather as a mere loader or a gunner. His grandfather's wisdom had paid off; in every command Kyoshiro held on his way up the ranks, his men consistently outperformed every other artillery formation in every metric assessed.


Oh, how they had cheered…


Kyoshiro sighed, brought back to the present with the echoes of his long-dead 2nd Battalion still ringing in his ears. It was, he noted, a beautiful night. The moon was already out, hanging brilliantly in the sky in the last rays of sunlight, and the cicadas were out in force.


Here, a kilometer and a half away from the nearest access point into the JLF tunnel system radiating out from below the sacred mountain to his west, he was thankfully alone. Only here, in a village that had already been dying when he was a boy, was Kyoshiro free, free from his subordinates in the Knightmare Corps, free of General Katase's endless need for advice and support, and most of all, freed from the damnable "Tohdoh of Miracles."


Miracles… How grotesque.


Intellectually, Kyoshiro understood the name he had been given by some propagandist in the dying Kururugi Administration. It was important to give the people hope that the Britannians could be defeated, and symbols were crucial in inspiring and preserving hope. It was that cold understanding that had kept his grief-stricken temper and shattered nerves intact during that meeting with the remnants of the General Staff, where they had congratulated him for his victory and had addressed him by that nickname in a speech broadcast via radio to all of Japan, immediately making him a living symbol of hope.


His stoic demeanor had held fast until he found his way to the quarters assigned to "Tohdoh of Miracles." Being the man of the hour, he had been given a private room, a reprieve from the crowded barracks bunkers the surviving rank and file had been crammed into. As soon as the door had closed behind him, once he was confident that he was alone, Kyoshiro had finally allowed himself to grieve for the lost 1st Battalion, 7th Heavy Artillery Regiment, the sister formation of his own 2nd Battalion.


No miracle had been enough to save them, to save the city that they had died to a man to protect…


Kyoshiro sighed again, and closed his eyes, focusing on his breathing. In and out, in and out…


And as his breathing calmed and his heart rate slowed, Kyoshiro allowed himself to remember Itsukushima.


It was August 13th, 2010. The Britannians had made landfall three days earlier, and Japan hadn't been anywhere near ready to receive them. The Navy, somehow caught flat-footed by the massive Britannian armadas approaching the Republic from three directions, was for the most part caught in their berths, the handful of vessels who managed to put to sea sent below the waves in hours. The Air Force was similarly under-prepared, and by the time the Britannians advanced on Hiroshima, they had enjoyed air supremacy for days.


Despite enjoying an uncontested sky and control of the waves beyond the coastal artillery guarding the harbor's mouth, the Britannians had still managed to bungle the assault on the city. It was the first piece of luck Lieutenant Colonel Tohdoh had enjoyed that day.


From his post at the Takanosu Battery on Itsukushima, Kyoshiro had watched as the Britannians attacked Hiroshima from the east the day before, following National Route 2 and the Sanyo Expressway in a baffling line of advance from Fukuyama. The fighting in the city had been intense, if tragically short. The city's garrison had done their best to hold their position but over the course of the day and the night the Britannians had steadily forced their way through the dense suburbs and urban core, driving the Japanese Army back.


The stand of the Hiroshima Garrison would have been over much more quickly if the Britannians hadn't somehow miscoordinated the second mandible of their pincer, the seaborne force arriving only after everything east of the Ota River had already fallen to the Britannian landward forces. But somehow, whether it had been poor communication or some bizarre interservice rivalry, the Royal Britannian Navy only arrived in Hiroshima Bay after the fall of Hiroshima City was all but assured.


If that mistiming of the two assault wings had been Kyoshiro's first piece of luck, the second must have been whatever failing led to the initial Britannian disregard for his Takanosu Battery, and for its sister battery across the harbor, the Mitakayama Battery.


Oh, how arrogant the Britannian sailors and marines had been in their approach! Kyoshiro could still see the pale gray profiles of the destroyer escort, the two warships carelessly shepherding the four slab-sided amphibious assault vessels directly into the mouth of Hiroshima Bay. Those assault vessels were already deploying a swarm of tiny landing craft by the time the approaching flotilla advanced to Onasabi Island, each carrying a squad or so of Britannian Marines, or else one of the at the time newly revealed Knightmares.


He and Lieutenant Colonel Ienaga, in command of the 1st Battalion of the same 7th Heavy Artillery Regiment that was the parent formation of Kyoshiro's own 2nd Battalion, had frantically coordinated as they realized that the Britannians would motor right past their positions without so much as an attempt at suppressing fire. Kyoshiro, by dint of having a commission three months senior of Ienaga's, had the dubious honor of deciding the moment to fire.


It had been glorious.


The Britannian destroyers sweeping into Hiroshima Bay had been grand vessels, all clean steel lines and bristling spires, standing as tall and proud in the water as the Britannian emperor's own household guard on their parade ground. Both ships were stuffed from stem to stern with the most advanced sensors and missile systems the arrogant superpower could boast and carried enough ordinance to level a city while hiding behind the horizon, all protected by teeming point defense cannons.


Even an army officer with multiple generations of antipathy for any naval force such as Tohdoh would freely admit that the destroyers of His Imperial Majesty's fleet were impressive, true knights of the waves in all of their menacing glory.


But so close to shore, under the twenty four total howitzers of Tohdoh's two artillery battalions, all of the flotilla's might meant nothing. Their point defense cannons, designed to fend off aircraft or intercept air-to-surface missiles, were hopelessly overwhelmed, drowned under the iron rain of eight batteries. Their gleaming steel hulls, triumphs of technology each, were ripped asunder by the merciless 15cm high explosive shells that fell as swift and true as the gods' own vengeance. Trapped in the Bay between Kyoshiro's battalion to their west and Ienaga's battalion to their east, all the Britannian naval detachment could do was die.


Within four minutes of Kyoshiro's order to fire, the once pristine ships were almost unrecognizable, smoke belching from their ravaged hulls as a terrible blaze consumed them. One destroyer was halfway submerged, sailors launching lifeboats as the stern sank below the surface of Hiroshima Bay. Her sister, holed below the waterline by a lucky shot, was already capsizing, her crew desperately throwing themselves into the sea as the unlucky were sucked down into the depths along with their ship.


The transport ships loaded with Britannian marines, their supplies, and their vehicles, most especially including the complement of Portmans, had likewise met their doom.


The battalion had been elated, and Kyoshiro, knowing even then that the Britannians would not allow their defiance to remain unpunished, hadn't the heart to quash their enthusiastic cheers. Instead, he'd radioed his compliments to Ienaga and set to work coordinating with the battalion of infantry attached to his 2nd Battalion as guards; the Britannian transports had managed to offload many of their soldiers and even some Knightmares into their landing craft, and those survivors would be out for revenge.


As it turned out, Lieutenant Colonel Ienaga and his unlucky 1st Battalion would be the recipients of that vengeance. The Britannians spurned the high cliffs and densely forested slopes of Itsukushima in favor of the lower-lying Etajima Island, where Ienaga commanded the Mitakayama Battery. Kyoshiro could do nothing but silently watch the ensuing slaughter, gripping his binoculars with white-knuckled fury. Could do nothing but watch, and make adjustments.


Before the Conquest had begun, before Britannia had come to Hiroshima's shores, when they had first been assigned to coastal guard duty, Kyoshiro had sat down with his fellow officer of the 7th Artillery. As their colonel would be otherwise engaged with personally directing the 3rd and 4th Battalions in their defense of the landward approaches into Hiroshima Prefecture, it would be up to the pair of them to direct their own efforts to keep the seaward approach to the city clear.


Among the many plans and contingencies he and Ienada had worked out, Kyoshiro had suggested a last, desperate fall-back, for use in the event that troops had already landed on the beaches and it was too late to attempt a retreat. In such an occasion, each battery would sight on the other's position and wait until the enemy broke through the defensive perimeter and into the cleared ground of the Battery itself, a prepared killing ground conveniently stocked with sensitive ordnance primed to provide secondary detonations.


Kyoshiro had passed the order himself, breaking radio silence to give the codeword. "Gyokusai," he had stated into the radio's receiver, the taste of the word cold and revolting in his mouth. The long arms of his howitzers had risen as one, battery commanders passing down pre-planned firing solutions and gun lieutenants making hurried adjustments before all twelve guns of the battalion spoke as one.


The resulting sea of explosions had washed over the northern reaches of Etajima Island, the munitions in the Mitakayama Battery's bunkers detonating in sympathy with the bombardment Kyoshiro had ordered on his sister unit. While the view through his binoculars was obscured behind thick, burning smoke and plumes of debris during the shelling itself, Kyoshiro had no difficulty imagining the shrapnel scything through friend and foe alike, nor the bleeding eyes and ears ruptured from overblast.


When the smoke finally cleared, Kyoshiro kept himself steelly calm as the concussed remnants of the Britannian assault staggered back down to the beaches where their landing craft waited. As the invaders pulled themselves back together, Kyoshiro kept himself calm, issuing new orders as he shoved the horror at what he had done away.


There was still, after all, much to do.


The next set of targeting solutions were distributed among the grimly waiting men of his batteries by runners, the radio shunned on the off-chance that the Britannians were listening in. The battery commanders and gun lieutenants again made adjustments until Kyoshiro was satisfied that the entirety of the channel between Itsukushima and Onasabi Island was blanketed in overlapping fields of fire.


The Britannians, Kyoshiro had known with bleak certainty, would be frustrated that their revenge had been spoiled and infuriated at the fresh insult. Their renewed assault was never in question.


He had also known that he had no intention of allowing his battalion to follow Ienaga's into the afterlife. Admittedly, there was little risk of that now, not until the Britannians managed to muster reinforcements, but going to war with only a single arrow in the quiver was foolish. He had summoned the major commanding the infantry battalion guarding his artillery to him and had brought the man in on his plans.


Unsurprisingly, the infantry major was all to eager to collaborate, his awe at the destruction Kyoshiro had wrought written plainly across his face. Soon, the infantrymen had joined his artillerymen in making their own hasty preparations. Though both worked frantically with shovels and entrenching tools, the infantrymen's rifles were never far from their hands.


They needn't have hurried; by the time the Britannian officers had finished licking their wounds and reimposing some measure of order on their surviving forces, all was in order.


When the Britannian marines and sailors set back out to sea in their landing vessels, they had been like some awful oil slick spreading across Japanese waters. Among the swarming flotilla of ships overly-burdened with blood-mad sailors and marines, a handful of Knightmares had stood like demons among the churning mortals, their giant frames haughty and unmoving among the onslaught. Despite their reduced numbers, the Britannians were still clearly spoiling for a fight.


Their pride remained unchallenged until the survivors of the naval invasion of Hiroshima were more than halfway to Itsukushima, too far to easily turn back to the shelter of Etajima or Onasabi's coasts.


For a second time, as Hiroshima burned behind them, Kyoshiro's guns bellowed their fury. This time, his howitzers were joined in their chorus by the infantry battalion's 81mm mortars as the first Britannian marines and sailors stumbled onto Itsukushima's shores. The infantry, dug into shallow foxholes between the trees on the slopes overlooking the lower firing positions of Takanosu Battery, did their best to throw the intruders back into the bay as the artillery company assigned to the beachside position retreated up the hill to rejoin the rest of Kyoshiro's 2nd Battalion.


That battalion of infantry had fought like lions as Kyoshiro again ordered his section chiefs to make adjustments. As rifles blazed and mortars thumped on the beach below, the howitzers' barrels had climbed towards the sky until they had practically reached their maximum elevation. Then, once the word was passed down the line once more, Lieutenant Colonel Tohdoh Kyoshiro had commanded them to fire as one.


The last of their explosive shells rose in high arcs into the skies over the shrine island before descending almost straight down like the lightning of Susanoo himself, and like the kami's wrath, the howitzers smote the Britannians as they huddled on the beach, the infantry pinned in place for just long enough to bog down the Portmans wading ashore through the sticky mud of the tidal flats. And, while the armored Knightmares could withstand the light shells of the infantry mortars with ease, the ship-killing artillery under Kyoshiro's command was a different matter.


Even as the last survivors of the Britannian flotilla meant to take Hiroshima by sea died on the beach below him, Kyoshiro had given the order to prepare to retreat. The Fall of Hiroshima was already an inevitability, and even then Kyoshiro had known that the fight for Japan was only just begun. But as his men scrambled around him, he had thought of nothing but the shelling he had ordered on the 1st Battalion's position.


He had been watching through his binoculars as his order was executed. He had seen figures in the olive green of the Republic's army still fighting the gray-clad invaders, before both had vanished under fire and steel.


Such was the cost of victory.


Ultimately, the "Miracle of Itsukushima" had been a tactical victory at best, from where Kyoshiro had stood at his island command post six years ago, and from where he knelt in the ruins of the present it hardly looked like a victory at all. His battalion had retreated in good order, their self-propelled howitzers, their personnel carriers, their ammunition trucks, and their headquarters vehicles accompanied by the jeeps and the trucks of the infantry battalion on a convoy west into the mountains of Shimane Prefecture, but they left Hiroshima burning behind them, the last stalwarts of the doomed garrison succumbing to the Britannian advance.


But, tactical victory or not, it had been the only victory of any note won by the Republic's forces during the Conquest. To a people desperate for hope, and to a leadership hungry for symbols, that had been all that mattered. Even as he led his convoy up into the mountains, the shattered remains of other RJA units joining his column as he retreated to the prepared positions in his nation's spine, every radio broadcast spoke of "Tohdoh of Miracles" and "the Miracle of Itsukushima."


Even the men who had fought under his command, infantrymen and his own artillerymen alike, parroted those stupid phrases, preferring the propaganda over the contents of their own memories. Kyoshiro's stoic resolve, modeled after that of his Imperial grandfather, had saved him from despairing as all of those hopeful eyes turned towards him. Carrying the weight of their hopes was another duty, he had recognized, and Tohdoh Kyoshiro had never backed down from duty.


Which was why he had left his column under the command of his second, Major Urabe, to bring the men the rest of the way. Lieutenant Colonel Tohdoh Kyoshiro had been Instructor Tohdoh during peacetime, and he had a duty to his student. He had left to find the young Kururugi, the young man who bore the ancient blood and the name of the last ruler on his strong shoulders, and in that duty Kyoshiro had failed. The Britannian advance swept over Kururugi Shrine long before he got anywhere close to the Prime Minister's residence, and Kyoshiro had been forced to return to the Matsumoto Headquarters empty-handed.


Only to learn that Urabe, doing his best to advance his commanding officer's glory and honor, had heavily stressed how Kyoshiro had bested the naval Portmans during the battle, taking advantage of the environmental factors to slow the highly mobile armored units before bombarding them into burning wrecks.


General Katase, Kyoshiro learned, had been most impressed, saying that "any man who understands the enemy so well must surely be able to imitate them! When the Day of Liberation comes, we will need our greatest warrior to turn the Britannians finest blades back against them! upon themselves!"


The words had stoked the fires of his hidden rage to an even greater inferno. It had been a great trial over all of these years, holding his composure together in the face of similar comments. General Katase and the rest of the JLF's staff had, Kyoshiro feared, drawn entirely the wrong lessons from the Conquest. As if the Knightmare is truly the reason Britannia won. As if an artillery officer could hope to turn the tide of war commanding such an entirely different beast. As if a coward of a man could be called a great warrior while the true heroes lay dead and forgotten.


He was a coward. If Kyoshiro had truly been brave, he would have forced those lessons down Katase's gullet, decorum and the protocols of rank be damned. Instead, he had hidden behind his stoicism and avoided that fight, his emotions far too tender and raw for the confrontation. He had swallowed his words, grudgingly accepted the praise, and set to work learning how to pilot the enemy's weapon as best he could without a Knightmare to call his own, hiding in his work both from his own pain and from "Tohdoh of Miracles."


And now, it was far too late to say what should have been said then. It had been six long years since the Battle of Itsukushima. Six long years since he had fought and failed to save the burning city behind him, and over those six years Kyoshiro still had yet to save anybody from the same devouring maw that had fed upon Lieutenant Colonel Ienada, his colleague, and his command.


And yet, they still look to me, look to "Tohdoh the Miracleworker." Even now, as Yokohama bleeds, they look to me. What can I say to them? What can I do for them? How can a second-rate artillery officer become the knight in shining armor they so desire? With a sword sharp enough to avenge a million wrongs and a shield to ward away all blows?


The moon, waxing gibbous overhead, kept her secrets and gave no relief.


Tiredly, Kyoshiro got to his feet once more. It was time to return, time to put together some sort of response to Yokohama. Time to become "Tohdoh of Miracles" once more.


That was duty, and that was all that Japan had ever demanded of him. He had never measured up to his duty as he saw it, not to his student Suzaku, not to his battalion, all gone now save for himself and Urabe, and not to his nation. But the demand still went forth, and there was nothing Kyoshiro could do to answer it but be another man.


A Voice for the Present: A Voice from Yokohama


JULY 7, 2016 ATB
KONAN WARD, YOKOHAMA GHETTO, YOKOHAMA SETTLEMENT
2100


They came at sundown.


Nobody was surprised.


The entirety of the Yokohama Ghetto had been waiting for the hammer to fall for days. As soon as the Sniper had begun to target Britannians in the nearby Settlement, an inescapable gloom had fallen across the Ghetto.


Everybody knew what was coming. It had been six years since the Conquest, six years of unremitting random cruelty periodically punctuated by outbreaks of utter mercilessness. The walls of Yokohama Ghetto bore the silent scars of past acts of retribution, lines of bullet holes at chest height, with occasional pitting lower down, where the Britannians had aimed low enough to hit the children.


Back before the Conquest, Sayuri had been a proud wife and mother, a happy sister and daughter. Now, she was only a wife, though she had woken up this morning a mother.


Beside her, Susumu lurched forwards, his left arm hanging limply at his side, the crude bandage on his shoulder doing little to immobilize the useless appendage. Dried blood caked his fingers and the leg of his worn trousers. Though she hadn't looked at him in over an hour, she was certain that his face was still gray with pain and streaked with tears, his eyes fixed on some point down the tightly packed road.


His lips still fluttering in mute apology to Kazuha.


Just like Sayuri's were.


"Kazu…" Her throat was dry, so dry. Her eyes hurt. That was good. They should hurt, for what they had seen. "Kazu… I'm sorry, baby… I've been a bad mother to you…"


Behind her and off to the side of the road, Sayuri heard a shot. Someone had fallen out of line.


"Kazu…"

Her husband had always had a nice, deep voice, good for singing the dirty drinking songs he'd always break into when he and her brother would get together to "play cards." Now, it was barely a croak.


"Kazuha…"


The sticky summer heat was almost intolerable, but Sayuri could feel her skin prickling, clammy and inexplicably cold despite the night's sultry summer heat.


"Hurry up! Keep moving!" The barked order came from somewhere up ahead, and Sayuri momentarily shied away from that horrible voice, so much like the one that had said "that one" over a finger pointed straight at her six-year-old daughter.


Sayuri stumbled on. What else could she do? The time to stand and fight was over, long since over. If the time to stand and fight hadn't ended with the Conquest, it had certainly ended when the gray-clad soldiers had pulled Kazuha from her arms, when she had let them take her away.


"Momma! Momma, help!" She could still hear her daughter's voice in her ears. "I'm scared, Momma! It hurts!"


"Kazu…" She swallowed, her throat tight, her eyes painfully dry. "I'm sorry… I'm a bad mother to you… Please forgive me… But…"


Susumu stirred beside her, and she saw his head start to turn towards her in her peripheral vision. She hoped he would be angry, that he would strike her, beat her, kill her for daring to be alive and unwounded while their last child was heaped up in a pile at the foot of the wall outside their apartment building, while his bones were shattered from a stray bullet slashing through his shoulder.


Instead, Susumu only sighed, his head slumped forwards as he trudged on. Where were the Britannians taking them? It didn't matter.


"But…" Sayuri continued, still seeing her daughter standing right before her eyes, her arms pinned to her sides by a towering giant in a faceless mask, as real as her half-visible neighbors, her comrades on this nighttime march. "But… I realized I'm scared to die, Kazu… I'm scared… I'm sorry… I know you don't want to die either… But Momma is scared, Kazu… Forgive me…"


Ahead, the crowd was slowing, halting. Bellowed orders drifted from the front. Something was happening.


"Get in line!" A rough hand shoved her, shoved her away from Susumu, who stood silent, his face exhausted and grief-stricken. "Get in line, bitch!"


A gloved hand grabbed Sayuri's hair, still tied back in its usual ponytail, dragging her face forwards and down. She staggered forwards, into whatever queue the soldier had put her into, and when she turned back around she couldn't see Susumu through the milling press. Somewhere behind her, someone screamed. There was another gunshot, then another two, and then hard-edged laughter mixed in with something in Britannian she couldn't quite understand.


An overwhelming fear struck Sayuri, the first thing she had felt, truly felt, since she watched Kazuha crumple to the blood-streaked concrete. Where was Susumu? Where was her husband, her last link to the life she'd once had, to the time of family dinners after long work days, to picking out baby names, and to dates in college?


"Kazu…" She croaked, fear bubbling in her chest. "Is this you…? Did… Did you take Daddy, because I left you… Because I let them take you…?"


More screams came over the crowd, followed by more shots. Suddenly, with a lurch, the group Sayuri had been herded into was starting forwards, gloved hands shoving her into motion. She scanned the seething crowds around her as she moved, desperately looking for any familiar faces and finding nothing but strangers and darkness all around her.


Before her, a truck loomed, its open back gaping like some terrible maw. Sayuri tripped and almost fell as the crush of bodies slammed into her, first from before her as the people ahead stalled in the face of that terrible mouth, and then from behind her as the soldiers shoved them forward. Step by step, Sayuri staggered up the plank ramp leading up and into the truck, feeling the boards creaking below her feet.


Darkness surrounded her for an instant as wood disappeared in place of steel. The back was still open and only an arms-length behind her, but already the heat was sweltering and the claustrophobia was overwhelming. The truck was packed with people, forced shoulder to shoulder with no room to sit, barely any room to breathe. Fighting to turn, Sayuri saw the soldiers behind them, two of them training their rifles on the crowd while their comrades forced another few women, and they were all women being forced into this truck, up the ramp with the help of batons.


"Susumu!" Her voice was suddenly so loud, the croaking grief wiped away by animal terror. Where was she? Where were they taking her? Why were they only putting women into this truck? "Susumu! Susumu!"


The crowd heaved forwards again, and Sayuri almost lost her footing. Terrified at the idea of stumbling, of being trampled underfoot, she grabbed for the women around her, seizing their clothes, their shoulders, trying to fight off the hands she could feel scrambling for her shoulders, her hair, as the others around her struggled to find their balance.


Suddenly, everything went pitch dark as the doors to the truck slammed closed, the sound of steel on steel deafeningly loud in the unlit metal box. An instant later, a collective howl of terror, of grief, almost primal went up, filling the truck with the sound of human fear. Despite the din, Sayuri could clearly hear the sound of a bolt slamming home.


We're locked in! They locked us in!


"Susumu!" Sayuri cried out, more by instinct than by any hope that her poor shattered husband could do anything to help her! "Susumu!" Another name came to her lips and caught there, in the back of her throat, almost choking her. For a moment, she saw her daughter reaching out for her again, felt herself shying away from the soldier behind her daughter's tiny form…


And then the truck lurched forwards, sending the entire crowd scrambling again as they were forced backward, bloody hands clawing at the unforgiving rivets and sheets of the shipping container's interior, and Sayuri lost herself entirely to her terror and her grief.


"Kazuha! Kazuhaaa!"

 

[Scopas]

JULY 25, 2011 ATB
MORIGUCHI GHETTO, OSAKA SETTLEMENT, AREA 11


The outbreak began in the usual fashion.


Too many unwashed bodies had been crammed into filthy, overcrowded tenements and the shattered remains of office buildings, shops, and subway stations, few of which had functional plumbing. Of those structures that were fortunate enough to retain relatively intact interior plumbing, still fewer were close enough to the freshly built walls surrounding the newly designated Moriguchi Ghetto to benefit from the potable water flowing to the sectors designated for Britannian use.


As summer sweltered and the ranks of the new Britannian residents swelled with each shipload arriving from the Old Areas, that minimal flow of water leaking over into the Moriguchi Ghetto had dwindled still further. In desperation, the ghetto's thirsty residents had turned to whatever liquids they could find to soothe their dry tongues, including the contents of storm drains, the condensation budding off the cracked cement walls of defunct subway tunnels, and of course, the turgid waters of the Yodo River itself.


First had come the bouts of nausea and vomiting, but the first spasms of uncontrollable, milky white diarrhea had followed close behind. With water already vanishingly rare inside the reinforced concrete partitions, thorough cleanup was entirely out of the question.


By the time any of this came to the attention of Doctor Harlan de Veers of the Osaka Administration's Ministry of Health, the disease was spreading with wildfire speed.


Well, thought de Veers, flipping the stapled report back to the front page and noting the time and date of its receipt in the margins, it was never really a question of if cholera would come, but only when. And it seems like that question's finally been answered as well. Sunken skin, extreme thirst, low blood pressure, and of course, pale but copious diarrhea? Can't be anything else.


Man, what a way to start a Monday.


With a sigh, he reached for the telephone receiver and punched in his supervisor's number. The secretary picked up two rings later.


"Good morning, Doctor de Veers," said John, his voice rich with the accent of the Pacific reaches of Area 2. "What can I be doing for yah today, sir?"

"Good morning, John," Harlan replied, minding the pleasantries as a wise man always did when talking with the gatekeeper to his boss's scheduling book. "It's looking to be a warm one, isn't it? I'll be needing to see Doctor Bozeman sometime today though, and preferably sooner rather than later. Something important's come up."


"That so?" There was a brief rattle of typing on the other end of the line. "Looks like his morning's already full, but he's got some time right after lunch. Does one sound good?"


"Umm…" Harlan hesitated for a moment, glancing back down at the brief report from the medic stationed at one of the perimeter checkpoints. "Best not to discuss this on a full stomach. Is he free at two thirty?"


"You betcha!" John replied exuberantly over the sound of more rapid-fire typing. "He'll be expecting you then. Have a good morning, Doctor de Veers!"

---

"Harlan!" Doctor Jessup Bozeman, head of the Ministry of Health's division in the Prefecture of Osaka, half-stood from his comfortable chair to reach across his desk to shake Doctor de Veers' hand. "How've you been? How was your weekend?"


"Pretty good," Harlan replied as he settled into the visitor chair across the desk from his boss. "Can't complain. I managed to get to the Blackhorse on Saturday."


"Oh?" Bozeman raised an interested eyebrow. "How did you do?"


"Above my handicap," Harlan admitted sheepishly. "Not one of my finest showings, sad to say."


"Ah, you'll get 'em next time," Bozeman said encouragingly. "But, that's not why you're here though, is it? Not unless you thought some sub-par putting was bad enough to put me off lunch?"


"Afraid not." Without further ado, Harlan dropped his lightly annotated copy of the report on Bozeman's desk and pushed it across the glass surface. As he continued speaking, Bozeman picked up the document and began leafing through its pages. "Looks like the Numbers couldn't figure out how not to shit in their drinking water, and now cholera's come out to play in a big way."


"Dammit…" Bozeman muttered without much emotion. "Well… Yup, looks like cholera to me. Give it a week and it'll run its course."


"Maybe." Harlan was less sanguine, but didn't see any reason to directly contradict his boss. That was rarely a good idea. "I'm a bit concerned about the potential for the Numbers to spread their disease to the slum commons, though. Enough of the Numbers have jobs outside of the ghetto that at least some won't be showing symptoms when going through the checkpoints, so a partial quarantine isn't really going to work."


"We could just cut off traffic to the ghetto for a week or two," Bozeman pointed out, before immediately shooting down his own idea. "Ugh, no… Who else is going to keep the construction going in this heat? Not to mention mop the floors and scrub the toilets…"


"My thoughts exactly," agreed Harlan. "Fortunately, it shouldn't be too hard to keep the worst of this under control. Move some of the Elevens out into temporary quarters outside the ghetto, send in cleaning teams to reduce the filth a bit, rig some public faucets so they stop drinking out of their own shit-stinking puddles or the river…"


"But who's going to pay for all that?" Bozeman interrupted, shaking his head. "No way the Prefect's going to be allocating discretionary funds towards any of that, especially not secondary quarters for Elevens. If we do any of this, the Ministry of Health's going to get stuck with the entirety of the bill, and if I agree to that, Gwen's going to bite my head off."


Harlan nodded in sober appreciation of that threat. Gwendolyn Hereford, Countess of Guernsey in Area 8 and Minister of Health in the Administration of Area 11, was known far and wide for her complete lack of humor and her tendency to shoot the bearers of bad news.


"Perhaps see if the Ministry of Economic Development or maybe Farms and Fisheries would be willing to step in?" he offered, fully aware that it was a long-shot either way. "I mean, if all of the Numbers are too busy shitting themselves to work, that's going to impact the available labor pool, which could slow down the construction of the Settlement here or divert labor away from paddies and the boats."


"Not a chance," Bozeman scoffed. "No way in hell is that fat prick Pulst going to spare a shilling. Not for a bunch of Numbers."


"What about for the commons?" Harlan shrugged as Bozeman turned a gimlet eye on him. "It's going to spread sooner rather than later. We can either deal with it now while it's only a Numbers issue, or we can wait until we start losing Britannians."


"You're missing the point, Harlan," Bozeman replied, folding his hands over his belly. "The issue is, all of this is preventative measures. Nobody likes to spend money on preventative measures, man! Especially not ministers. If they work, nobody knows about it, and if they don't, then they're a waste of money. Curatives are far easier to pitch since you can tell if the damned things are working."


"I don't know if I'd say it's preventative at this point," Harlan pointed out. "I mean, the ghetto's been ravaged already and it's only going to get worse."


"I meant preventative in that it's preventing this from becoming a problem to someone who actually matters," said Bozeman, rolling his eyes.


"The commons-"


"Matter almost as little as the Numbers do," Bozeman interrupted. "Look, there's already way too many Elevens crawling around here for anybody's comfort, including the Prefect and the Viceregal-Governor. A little bit of thinning out would do everybody, the Numbers included, a world of good. As for the commons? If we lose a handful or two, nobody cares. If we lose more than that, we'll just shake out every slum between St. John's Red Zone and Vancouver's Hastings. Anybody too stupid to avoid recruitment can explore what Area 11 has to offer for them."


Harlan considered arguing the staggering inefficiency of that last point, but decided against it. "If you think that's best, sir," he said instead, conceding the argument.


"Look," replied Bozeman, gracious in his victory. "I'll grant you that keeping track of this thing could be important. The boys at the Census will appreciate the numbers at least. The death counts, I mean, not the Elevens." He smiled at his joke for a moment. "So, how about you take that on as your project? You can take full credit on behalf of the Osaka Office. Hell, you might get a promotion out of it, how does that sound?"

---

Keeping count of Moriguchi's dead was surprisingly easy, Doctor de Veers soon found. Several groups of enterprising Elevens had already set up networks of "haulers," who transported the feces-smeared corpses from their place of death to the fresh plague pits dug into the old football pitch by Yodogawa Kasen Park. The newly minted businessmen kept close count of their profits and expenditures, and thus kept a good count of the number of trips they had made from various stops to the park and back.


They were, of course, all too happy to let the "good doctor" take a look at their scroungy, sloppy records, especially with the squad of Royal Marines he had borrowed from the garrison standing at his back. Together with Henry, his manservant and orderly, Harlan had managed to put together a solid list of daily losses along with a general demographic breakdown.


Keeping that initial dataset updated was, of course, a daily undertaking, one that Harlan was all too aware that he frankly didn't need to bother himself with. The demographics were exactly as he expected, with children, the elderly, and the weak making up the bulk of the deaths, and he was well aware that nobody save for himself and maybe a clerk or two at the Ministry of Health office at the Viceregal Palace back in the Tokyo Settlement would ever care about this data.


But, I'd know if I did a bad job, and that's just not my style. Harlan stifled a groan as he sat up straight in his chair and stretched, feeling his vertebrae pop in his stiff back. Dammit, why am I the one stuck handling this bullshit? I'm a general practitioner, not an epidemiologist! And besides, Jessup straight up said that nobody's going to care about any of this. Not until it affects someone who matters.


Not until it affects someone who matters…


The thought lingered in Harlan de Veers mind for the remainder of the day as he finished updating the daily count with the numbers Henry reported back to him before continuing on with the rest of his business. His work so far on the budding epidemic was entirely futile, entirely passive, and of no help to anybody. Not to the Numbers, of whom some thirteen thousand had already died, not to the Commoners, of whom fifty seven had died so far and over three hundred were currently hospitalized, and least of all to himself and his career.


Not until it affects someone who matters…


"Henry," he greeted his servant the next morning, "I have a special task for you today."


"Yes, Doctor de Veers?" A pen was already hovering over the tiny notebook Henry kept with him, always ready to jot down a grocery list or a phone number. "What can I help you with?"


"When you go to the ghetto to collect the latest butcher's bill, collect some samples of whatever water the Numbers are currently drinking," de Veers directed, setting foot on the path he had mapped out the night before. "Take samples of their stool as well. Be careful about it, use the necessary protective gear, and sterilize the exteriors of the containers before you come back."


"As you say, Doctor," Henry confirmed with a bow, clicking his pen closed. "I will have those samples on your desk by ten."

---

The only difficulty in the whole affair was, as it turned out, securing a social invitation to luncheon with "the right sort". The people who mattered. Harlan was technically nobility, but only barely; the pettiest of the Petty Nobility, whose only connection to the gentry was a third son of a Lesser house for a great-grandfather. Moreover, he hadn't been particularly social since coming to Osaka, preferring the comforts of his labs to forced small-talk at soirees or formal dinners.


But, petty though his lineage was, he was still a noble, and introverted though he might be, he was still a doctor with nothing but solid prospects in his future. A quiet word here, a meaningful glance there, and the invitations began to arrive.


Including, after several tedious social engagements and eighty dead commoners as well as three thousand Numbers, an invitation for an after church lunch with the Laffey family. Of the Lesser Nobility, Sir Bedevere Laffey was a second-cousin of the Count of Saint John, a vassal of the Duke of Palm Coast in Area 4, and thus very much someone who mattered. His wife, Helena, came from much humbler stock, but their daughter Abigail had tutored the Prefect of Osaka's fourth son over the summer, and so by proxy they both mattered as well.


It had been the work of an instant to slip the contents of the vial hidden in his cuff into the Laffey patriarch's limoncello as de Veers had graciously offered to pour another drink for his kind host. The elder Laffeys had both been too inebriated to notice and Abigail had slipped away from the table to "powder her nose," perhaps literally, for the third time. The private nature of the luncheon meant that no other witnesses had been present, especially since Henry had played his role to a tee and had taken the Laffey's help aside for a quick game of cards back in the kitchen.


The results had been everything Harlan de Veers could have hoped for and more. It was shocking, he had noted in the privacy of his mind, how much greater the sickness of a family of three seemed in the eyes of the Ministry of Health then the sickness of three thousand commoner Britannians, to say nothing of the Numbers.


Startled into action, Old Ironpants herself, the Countess of Guernsey, had come roaring down on Osaka demanding to know why quarantine and mitigation efforts hadn't been in place weeks earlier, before a family of quality had come down with the cholera. Doctor de Veers had stepped in and smoothly saved his valued colleague Doctor Bozeman's career by presenting a fully updated account of the outbreak so far, complete with daily casualties, as well as a developed plan of action informed by the current demographics of the afflicted. With the Minister of Economic Development and first Bishop of Tokyo Lazaro Pulst coming to Osaka personally to pray over the afflicted Sir Bedevere, the coffers had opened.


Almost overnight, the fevers both metaphorical and literal that gripped Osaka broke. And, just as Doctor Jessup Bozeman had promised, Doctor Harlan de Veers received the lion's share of the credit. After Countess Gwendolyn had caught him with his pants so thoroughly down, the Prefectural Head of the Ministry of Health really hadn't had any choice but to keep his word.


And so, his star on the rise and exciting new vistas of opportunity opening up before him, de Veers was extremely surprised to find an unannounced guest waiting for him in his very own bedroom one evening when he returned home from work.

---

"Don't bother yelling," the seated man said, his voice flatly matter of fact. "Nobody's going to come. You can keep your phone in your pocket as well, Doctor de Veers. Kindly take a seat and let's get down to brass tacks."


Harlan looked from the man to the door and back again, weighing his chances. He was unarmed, but so was the stranger. Or, at least, the man's hands were empty and his suit was absent any suspicious bulges that would hint at a hidden pistol.


And Henry should still be within earshot… and whoever this is, he must have at least two decades, maybe three on me…


"I said sit down, Doctor de Veers," the man repeated, a hint of steel in his voice. "Believe it or not, I just want a short, simple chat. Play your cards right and this will be a doorway to all kinds of opportunities that a career minded man such as yourself would hate to miss. Conversely, act a fool and you will be treated as much."


The man gestured towards the bed, inviting Harlan to sit down on his own furnishings.


"Who are you?" Harlan asked instead, ignoring the invitation. "Who sent you, and what do you want?"


"Linus Porterfield, the Directorate of Internal Security, and a moment of your time, Doctor de Veers, in that order," replied the apparent Agent Porterfield. "Now, if you are disinclined to give me that moment I will simply leave."


The urge to demand just that was on Harlan's tongue in an instant, but he held it back. His mind, stunned into inert stupor by the shock of finding a stranger in his bedroom, whirled to action at last, and Harlan actually thought about his situation.


They probably know about my infection of the Laffey family, but that isn't a certainty. If they do know, then I could be arrested at any time for attempted murder of a noble; there would be no need to break into my bedroom for that. If they don't, then presumably my handling of the outbreak is what drew their attention. And if they aren't here to arrest me…


"I am always eager to assist the Directorate with its mission," Harlan replied, crossing from the doorway to sit on the edge of his bed, facing Agent Porterfield where he sat at the small secretary desk Harlan kept in the corner of his room. "What can I do for you tonight, Agent Porterfield?"


"Your eagerness is greatly appreciated," Porterfield replied, angling his face towards Harlan. It had been mashed at some point in the past, Harlan noted, the nose almost flat from multiple breaks and the lines of the cheekbones jagged and uneven under the blotchy red skin.


A brawler's face, Harlan decided, noting the cauliflower ears.


It matched the rest of Porterfield, who now that Harlan inspected him gave off the air of a powerful man gone slightly to seed. He looked as if he might have played rugby when he was younger; he certainly had a forward's frame and the bulk necessary to dominate a scrum, even though the muscles under that neatly tailored suit had begun to be replaced by fat. His hair was still thick but had silvered completely.


For all that, Porterfield's eyes were still intent and focused, if chillingly blank.


"To brass tacks," Porterfield continued briskly. "Your actions here in Osaka have not gone unnoticed. We wanted to ask a few questions in regards to your motives and decision making process." Another smile quirked across his lips. "For our files, you see."


"Ask away," Harlan replied, gesturing broadly. "I'm an open book for an agent such as yourself, I'm sure."


Porterfield made a strange motion with his head, half an affirming nod and half an inquisitive turn of his head. Taken together, the gesture was disturbingly avian.


"Why did you continue to push for an active intervention plan for the Moriguchi Outbreak even after Doctor Bozeman rejected your initial request for funding?"


"I pressed forwards on the grounds of public health and efficiency," Harlan replied immediately, having been asked this question before. "Disease outbreaks may subside over time, but without a change in the sanitation standards for the afflicted area a recurrence is only a matter of time. Chronic outbreaks of sickness among the Number and commoner populations would adversely impact the efficiency of their work, lengthening the timelines of their assigned projects."


"And besides the obvious reasons?" Porterfield pressed. "Consider all of the answers you gave to your superiors at the Ministry of Health known to me."


"I…" Harlan hesitated, wondering how he should reply, then. If not with the same answer he gave Countess Gwendolyn when she had asked…


They want to know about my motives, eh?


Taking his courage in both hands, Harlan answered again. "Put plainly, at that point promotion didn't particularly feature in my future. I mean, Area 11? If it doesn't relate to the Sakuradite mines, nobody cares. And while Doctor Bozeman is getting up in years, he won't be retiring for at least a decade, by which point some fresh graduate with a better family name will make themselves available to fill his shoes. I needed leverage."


"Understandable," Porterfield made the nodding gesture again. "Successfully alerting the Administration to a public health issue of this scale would guarantee a smooth career progression from then-on. When did you decide to help the spread of the outbreak along?"


In for a penny…


"Doctor Bozeman was quite clear in his warning that sufficient resources wouldn't be invested in managing the spread until members of polite society began coming down with the cholera," Harlan explained, forcing his voice to remain level and his diction to remain slow and unhurried. "In light of that instruction and after it became clear that Doctor Bozeman's categorization of commoners as unimportant became self-evident as the outbreak made inroads into their population, the way forward rapidly grew clear."


"Why the Laffeys?" inquired Porterfield. "As far as we can tell, you had no previous dealings with Sir Bedevere or his family."


"That's correct," Harlan confirmed, nodding. "I'd never met them before. As far as the selection went, well… The who didn't really matter, beyond being of the requisite class. I just needed an opportunity to interact with the family in a situation where I could likely operate without notice. Getting caught would have ruined things completely."


"Clearly." Porterfield's voice was desert dry. "What would have happened if any of the Laffeys died?"


Harlan shrugged, not seeing any point in pretending to care. "Probably the same thing that happened when a few hundred commoners died. Ship in another aristocratic branch family and call it good. Besides," he caveated, "it was vanishingly unlikely any of them would die. They had access to quality medical care and all the fluids they could drink. Honestly, if they had died, it just would've gone to show that they really didn't need to keep living."


"Pretty cold of you, Doctor," Porterfield replied. He didn't sound shocked or upset though; he didn't sound much of anything. Just a statement of fact.


"Just doing my part as a loyal subject to act in the best interests of the Empire," Harlan replied piously, before gesturing with his hands, rolling them upwards in a brief "what can you do" motion. "I won't pretend to have a heart. The problem needed solving and the results speak for themselves."


"That they do," Porterfield acknowledged, "which is the reason you aren't currently dangling from a short rope as a poisoner." Noticing Harlan's suddenly wooden expression, the agent waved his hand dismissively. "You don't need to worry about that. As you said, the results speak for themselves. Besides, you didn't get caught. Why would we hang you when you've aptly proven your intelligence and discretion?"


"...Well, thanks for that," said Harlan, trying to calm his racing heartbeat. "I'm glad I passed muster." He paused, waiting for Porterfield to reply. "Was that all you needed?"


"How attached are you to a career in the Ministry of Health?"


"Umm…" Harlan blinked at the abrupt nonsequitur. "Well… Not very? I only really considered the Ministry as a first step to begin with. With some ministerial experience under my belt along with my medical credentials, I would be a strong contender for a head of staff position at most small to medium sized hospitals, which was my next step in a decade or so."


"I see." Porterfield seemed to turn something over in his mind for a moment before arriving at a conclusion. "Well, Doctor de Veers, from where I'm sitting, it seems like you have your pick of three options. The first," he held up a single, sausage-like finger, "is that you stay the course. As a doctor in his mid-thirties with a feather in his cap and his superior deeply in his debt, I predict that you'll go quite far at the Ministry. You can probably name your price wherever else you might end up."


"Gratitude's a pretty short-lived coin," Harlan noted, "and Doctor Bozeman's not going to like being in debt."


"I'm sure you'd find a way to handle the matter," Porterfield said with the confidence of a man who doesn't really care. "Regardless, that's option one. Option two," a second sausage link joined the first, "is much like option one. You remain at the Ministry of Health and continue to work your way up, but you take on something of a side job at the same time. The DIS could always use more eyes and more ears. Not," Porterfield added, "that we don't already have plenty in your office already; after all, how do you think we found out about you?"


"...I'm listening," Harlan replied carefully. "I wouldn't be against the idea…"


"Good," Porterfield nodded, raising a third finger. "Hopefully you are equally as positively disposed towards the third option. Tender your resignation to the Ministry of Health and begin a new career with the Directorate."


"In what capacity?"


"Most likely research and in-house medical staffing," said Porterfield, returning his hand to its fellow in resting on his lap. "DIS has excellent coverage for its staff, of course, and I can assure you a more than competitive salary, scaling with time in grade and so on. I can also assure you multiple fringe benefits as well, including a great deal of latitude when it comes to independent research and…" he hesitated, gunbarrel eyes darting from Harlan's eyes to his bare fingers, "your pick of spouses. I couldn't help but notice that you aren't married yet; a bit of an oversight for such a committed practitioner of Britannia's greatest traditions. Male, female, old, young… The DIS looks after its own, Doctor."


"I… see." Harlan licked his lips. "What would the consequences of declining this generous offer be, Agent Porterfield?"


"I bid you a good evening and walk out of that door and out of your life, Doctor de Veers," the DIS man replied, "and you remain content with your lot. Make no mistake," he said, leaning forwards slightly, "I am not attempting to strong-arm you. We do not conscript into the Directorate; we do not want coerced agents or employees working under duress. If you become one of us, we will trust you with our own and with our secrets. But tell me this, Doctor; would a man as ambitious as yourself be willing to settle for simple contentment? Or would you rather see just how far His Imperial Majesty's government can carry you?"


Well, Harlan thought, standing to extend his hand towards Porterfield's waiting grip, when they put it like that, there really wasn't any choice at all.

 

[Scopas]

(Thank you to KoreanWriter, Sunny, and MetalDragon for their ideas and edits.)

Excerpts from "Captive Voices Set Free: Britannians in the European Union, 208 - 224 RC."

(Republished by Dogshead Publishers with permission. Dogshead Publishers, York, Republic of England.)​

A Legacy of Dispossession: Jane Salter


"For four generations," Petty Officer Jane Salter recalls, sitting at her usual table in Madame's Teahouse, a favorite haunt for the Britannian community in Dover, "my family had lived and worked on the estates outside of Davenport, generally as husbandmen or drovers. Anything to do with livestock, though not with poultry. Swine were our trade, mostlike, save for a few sons from every generation who would join the Army instead.


"At least, that's how my gran told me, when she told stories of when the Salters owned their own patch. Before the Emblem of Blood began, before the princes began to fight for the throne, and the lords fought one another for anything under the sun."


Jane's mouth tightens, as if she had bitten into something sour. She is in her early forties, too young to remember anything except the last decade of the period of internecine violence stretching from 172 to 207 RC which the Britannians call the "Emblem of Blood."


"First they took the young and the strong for their armies and their militias," Jane says, her voice flinty with ancestral pain. "Then they took money and produce, first through tax and then through requisition. Who it was who was doing the taxing could change week to week, depending on which lord had fallen to an assassin, or if the local battlelines had shifted. There was no consistency, nothing to rely upon. Especially not the Church, the useless buggers.


"We had to flee. The soil was rich and fertile, but what was the point of sowing crops whose harvest would only feed soldiers? What was the point in fattening up a fine sow, if the lord could always claim it for himself? The damn war would steal the hard-earned dinner right off our plates before we'd even managed to take a bite for ourselves! You tell me, how the blaze's a family supposed to make a living like that?


"You can't, so we didn't try and stick it out. We sold our farm for enough money to book passage aboard a ship to Lewiston, and then all the Salters fled.


"Lewiston was safe, of course, being the seat of the Duke of Lewiston and all, but it was packed to the gills with other families, hungry and desperate for work. Davey, John, and Josiah, my Ma's brothers and nephew, all managed to find places on the Armorer line, at the meatpackery. My Da went to work at a corder making ropes and hawsage for the rivertrade."


Jane is again silent, her eyes distant. When at last she begins to speak once more, her voice is soft, but emphatic.


"Here in Europa, in the Commonwealth, it's… hard to truly describe for you what it meant, living in Lewiston. Living in any Britannian city, I should say, and I mean in the city, not in the districts where the yeomanry and gentry live, and most certainly not in the districts where the lords and ladies keep their estates, is an experience that I daresay few in Europa will understand. Not because you don't have your poor, of course, and not because you don't have crowded neighborhoods packed with refugees neither, but…


"You just don't get what it is like to be poor in Britannia. To be truly poor… It's about as bad as being a Number, nevermind an Honorary. It is wretched, sir, and made all the more wretched by how merciless, how cruel, Britannia is, cruel to its very core. Here in Europa, you have your regulations – so many regulations! – guaranteeing this and prohibiting that and mandating the other, and you even enforce most of 'em. You have provisions for the sick, for the crippled, for the destitute…


"There is no provision for man or for beast in Britannia, not for clean water, not for clean food, nor for enough of either to keep a single beggar alive, to say nothing of a family driven from their farm by war. The Church tells us that we were chosen to conquer the world, and failure to do so only arises from personal weakness. The strong dominate, and the weak take what they must. So it is with the world, so it is at home.


"I'm not proud of what I did to survive. The only thing I am proud about is that, after I took His Imperial Majesty's coin and joined the Royal Navy, and after I seized my chance to desert and flee to Europa aboard the whaler I'd thieved, I took the Oath to the Commonwealth as soon as I could. And I say, may God curse Britannia, for I've had enough of that poisoned land."


Bond to Bond: Rifleman James Barclay


While unremarkable in appearance, the path James took from the plains of his native Area 2, Canada, to the sanctuary of Vladivostok and Europa is remarkable both for its near-circumnavigation of the globe and for the insight it offers into the tenant sharecropper class of rural Britannia.


"2nd Army, 1st Corps, 17th Infantry Division, 1st Regiment."


Almost before I have turned the recorder on, James is talking.


"We were called Prince Edward's Own Islanders, on account of how the regiment was headquartered out of Charlottetown and how the bulk of the old men had all come from Prince Edward Island. By my time, the regiment'd become informally known as the Brunswick Poor Boys, as the ranks were filled with conscripts from all across the Duchy of New Brunswick. Which," James adds, shrugging, "included Prince Edward Island, so I guess the name still fit. Kinda."


James waves his hand, dismissing the detail like an irritating gnat.


"That's not important. The point is, pretty much everybody in that formation started off their life in His Majesty's Armed Services as a conscript, pulled straight off the farm or the docks with mud and fishguts still on his hands. Most go back to the mud or the boats, once the term of service is up, but some stay on. They become sergeants, sometimes, or corporals… The old bastards.


"Point is, most go back. Most conscripts end up mustering out at first opportunity. Sometimes it isn't up to them, of course – death in the family and someone needs to keep up the plot so the local lord gets his due, or sometimes a lord will petition for the early release of the conscripts from his fief if there aren't enough hands to work – but for the most part, if a conscript can leave, they do."


For a moment, James falls silent, eyes closed as he breathes steadily; a self calming mechanism, clearly. I take the opportunity to observe him. He is in his late twenties, with a tired face. His blond hair is worn long and tied back; combined with his heavily tattooed arms, bared by his rolled up sleeves, he has a vaguely nautical air, despite having spent his childhood on a tenant farm and his adulthood in two armies.


"I get why they leave," James continues, eyes still tightly closed. "Make no mistake, life is hard out in the estates, on the tenancies. I should know; I grew up on one. My father inherited the lease on the patch from his father, and with it the debt we owed to the Baron of Bathurst. My older brother inherited both a year into my mandatory service, after a thresher got Da's arm.


"I'm sure that when people hear of sharecroppers, they'll immediately think of barefoot kiddos scraping up weeds from the dust, as thin as a bundle of stakes. You'uns wouldn't even be necessarily wrong; that was what sharecropping looked like, back in the hard times of the Emblem, or when times got hard again.


"Not that times were ever necessarily good, of course – the landlord would tell you what you could plant, and the landlord reserved the right to buy half the crop for a price he deemed 'fair', so there was never that much money coming in, especially since we had to buy seeds from him too, or more like from the estate store. Times was always difficult, and with five kiddos running around needing clothes and food, things were lean too.


"But Da was a good farmer and the ground was good. Nice wet soil, full of loam and sand, that, and so perfect for the cranberries that were the main crop in the farms around Bathurst. We had enough cash to keep clothes on our backs, and with the small plot reserved for potatoes, enough to keep more or less fed. Even if the debt to the estate store, and to the baron's castellon, grew each year."


James pauses, eyes popping open again, clearly confused.


"Where was I going, again?"


"You understood why most conscripts returned home when they could."


"Oh, that's right. Well, yeah, nobody will ever say that working as a sharecropper is easy or fun. It's dirty, it's wretchedly tiresome, and you'll damned never turn a profit. Even if you do, it'll only go towards paying down the family debt just a bit.


"But it's still better than life in the ranks as a conscript. Believe me.


"Anyone who talks to you about brothers in arms, about comradeship, about any of that crap is lying to you. At least when it comes to Britannia's arms, I'll say; the Union's army is much less prone to all'ah this shit that I'm about to say. Make that clear since I'm still in service, you hear?"


After I assured him that the text would be clear that his criticism is leveled solely at the Britannian military, James continued his story.


"They call it the 'Old Bastards' Reign.' Anybody who's gone through it calls it hell."


James's tone is flat, matter of fact, and almost casual.


"On my fourth night in the depot, newly arrived for basic training, the first night visit came. Three of the 'Old Men' held my arms and legs down, pinning me against the bunk, while the fourth worked me over. When I saw other night visits arriving for other fresh meat, I saw that the instrument they used to bludgeon us was a short whip the length of a man's forearm, the kind drovers use to goad cattle forwards into slaughter pens.


"That was my welcoming ceremony, of sorts, but that wasn't neither the pinnacle of it, nor the end. A bastard named Stewart took particular interest in me, made me his while we were at the depot still. Most days, he made me do his chores for him – polishing his boots and such, or taking his slot to scrub the shitters – but some days…"


James snorts.


"Well, there's a reason they say that two wives are allowed in the army. No need to say more.


"The beatings continued, of course. Sometimes as punishment, for a screwed up chore or, more seriously, for attempts to fight back or rebel, but sometimes for no reason at all. Fist, whip, bar of soap in a sock, all or none of it. Sometimes it was a group affair – once, the Old Bastards, including my squad leader and his corporal, rousted my entire squad out and forced us to walk in circles for hours, stark naked, hitting us with the drover whips when we slowed. Other times, it was a private thing, you and your owner or the bastard and eight of his buddies…


"Anybody with half a brain and the eyes the Lord gave him could tell why this all happened, of course. I've got no idea what it was like back before Old Ferdy kicked it in '53, but all throughout Britannia's history, we've been told that we were the strongest, chosen by God to dominate the world. That some men are just born stronger by divine favor, and that's that. All throughout the Emblem, when we spent years clawing at our own throats… Of course that same perspective got turned against the man next to you.


"If you could dominate him, beat him down… Well, that was just divine will. The Emperor's will too, once Charles took the throne and remade both this world and the next into all 'steel sharpens steel'. If the handicapped were terminally weak and could be disposed of, what about the only sort-of weak? The weaker than you?


"The ranks knew the answer to that question.


"When I got my orders, I was more than happy to leave the depot behind, as that meant leaving some of the Old Bastards behind, namely the drill instructors. The rest came with me, of course, the noncoms of the Prince Edward's Own Islanders heading across the Empire to the newly conquered Area 11. And it was newly conquered – the Elevens hadn't even fully surrendered yet, by the time we set foot on the islands."


At last, James' almost placid disconnection frays. Something like yearning fills his voice, his tone almost wheedling with need.


"We were ecstatic, the new guys. I was ecstatic. At long last, we had the opportunity to take everything that we'd taken on ourselves out on someone else. Which, if I'm being honest, is probably a big part of why nobody who could do anything about the Old Bastards's Reign lifts a finger about it; they think it makes the rankers harder, merciless, willing to get tougher on the enemy.


"Thing is, they're probably right. I mean, it's not like any man among us gave a shit about the Elevens regardless of whatever, but at the same time, not a man of us was really profiting from the new conquest. We weren't getting new estates like the nobles, nor were we promised plots of our own or brand new apartments and paying jobs in the settlements, once they were built. But, and this took me some time to figure out, giving us all an opportunity to get our own back at the expense of the Elevens… That gave us, gave me, a sense of ownership. A stake in the Empire.


"Because, while I was the son of a poor sharecropper, without a foot of land to call my own, I was an overseer now of sorts, just as much as the baron's castellon was back home. And when I heard that my Da died and my brother had taken over the patch… Well, that feelin' of ownership was enough to convince me to go professional. To stay in after my conscript period ended. To become an Old Bastard myself."


"Why did you desert, then? Once you were no longer at the bottom of the heap, once you decided to remain in the Britannian Army as a professional soldier?


"The leash was longer, but I was still collared," James replies, smiling grimly. "Okay, I could fuck with the fresh meat, just like the bastards had fucked with me. Okay, I could do whatever I wanted to the Numbers, and believe me, I did whatever I wanted. Great. Great! But that didn't make my blood one bit more blue, nor did it mean that I was suddenly immune to getting the sergeant's fist or the lieutenant's cane if I pissed them off. It didn't mean I had to stop watching my back at all times, both from the other bastards and from the fresh meat. Who knew if one of them would decide that the best way to sharpen his steel would be sinking a knife between my ribs?


"At the end of the day, I was still a sharecropper, still plugging away in the mud for the benefit of men who wouldn't piss on me if I were on fire. 'Where the hell is the point in all that?' I asked myself. 'How is this strength, to just live in fear all the time?'


"That last question was what really got me thinking. If we were the strongest, our divine favor made clear by the Numbers huddling at our feet… Why was I still so afraid? How is that strength, if you can't sleep in peace, can't live in peace, can't stop kissing the feet of the bastard on the next rung up on the ladder?


"It isn't strength. It's just a different kind of weakness, one that makes it impossible to ever trust anybody to the fullest. Funny, how the fear of looking weak is so obviously a weakness itself, once you look at it square in the face for long enough.


"And if that's not strength, being part of the Holy Britannian Empire… Well, perhaps the best way to find strength is in standing up to the damned place, to drive them away. And only one army has ever driven the Britannians back for good."


Beaming with pride, James turns on the bench so I can get a good view of the European flag sewn onto the shoulder of his jacket. He's not in his uniform, but rather his civilian clothes, making the military-style addition somewhat peculiar. Still, that pride sticks with me when I thank Rifleman Barclay for his time.


You can take the Britannian out of Britannia easily enough, but removing Britannia from the Britannian is clearly far more different, at least in James's case. Is that a strength or a weakness? In my opinion, the fact that his cruel empire could impart its "strength" to James without fostering a grain of loyalty is indictment enough of both the empire, and its strength.


The Music Shall Set You Free: Daniel Owens


In his mid-thirties, Danny Owens is a handsome man originally hailing from the Duchy of Lower Cascadia, in Britannian Area 3. Though a tailor by profession, Danny is a lifelong musician and an avid collector of folk tunes from throughout Britannia. His interest in music led him to the Leveller movement, and to official attention. An early warning from a musician friend led to his escape via Iceland to the European Union, where he began a radio station specializing in the music of the Britannian Diaspora.


"Not much of a shocker, but the Holy Empire's just full of places you don't want to be," Danny says, grinning broadly. Danny is almost always grinning, a man who chooses happiness whenever possible, but there's no joy in this particular smile. "The factories, the slaughterhouses, the prisons, of course… But there's no place I'd less rather be in all the Empire than any given orphanage.


"I was born in 1981 ATB, 189 RC for you. Deep in the heart of the Emblem of Blood. Old Ferdy has been moldering for the last twenty-eight years, and Emperor Chuck wouldn't be crowned in Pendragon for another eighteen.


"It really is impossible to understate just how badly things were falling apart by this point. Whole regions of the Heartland and the Old Areas were effectively autonomous, answering only as far as the Area's governor at most, and sometimes not beyond the local count or margrave. Traveling on the imperial highways was a difficult proposition; the roads hadn't been consistently maintained in years, and every lord who bothered so much as filling in a pothole seized the opportunity to establish tolls on their tiny stretch of the old network.


"And that's not even getting into the actual, no shit bandits that turned up in some parts."


Danny shakes his head wonderingly, his bald pate gleaming in the sun's reflected light. Ever the outdoorsman, he'd asked to meet at Conham River Park, intent on enjoying every halfway sunny day that makes itself available. A holdover from a life spent on Britannia's northern Pacific coast.


"Sorry, I wandered there. What was I talking about?"


"The orphanages."


"Oh yeah, that's right. The orphanages." Danny purses his lips. "Right, yeah… Okay, so, the central creed of Britannia has always been that strength forgives all else, right? Right. It's a stupid belief to base a complex society upon, which is why, for all that Britannia and Britannians love to talk about how strength justifies all, and our strength stems from God and that's why we have the right to fuck everything up, we also spend a bunch of time dreaming up exceptions to that whole strength rule. Justifications for why we shouldn't just solve everything with a knifefight or, heck, even a good old bare knuckle brawl."


"Which it still often is. Dueling is a leading cause of death for Britannian youth."


"Nah, that's just the kids being idiots too hyped up on hormones and tales of "honor and blood" to have any good sense," Dany replies, waving his hand dismissively. "It isn't a leading cause for anybody who lives long enough to develop a cool head. It also isn't a significant issue in the military, which is one of those cutouts.


"You can't have soldiers challenging their commanders, leastways not the common dog-soldiers, the nobles are a whole nother story, of course, but what do you do if a captain is obviously weaker than a sergeant? Or if you have some big brawler of a commoner, or even worse, an Honorary, come under the command of some prissy twig of a blueblood officer barely capable of holding a blade? If might truly makes right, shouldn't the officer, however rich their lineage, submit to whoever can decorate the floor with their noble blood? That would be plenty Darwinian now, wouldn't it? So, what's to be done, eh?"


Danny leans back, a broad smirk on his face.


"Simplicity itself! Just make it clear that the higher ranked officer acts and speaks with the Army's strength! You see, that way we can still chalk it all up to 'only the strong survive, and we are the strongest!'"


"But what about orphans, huh?" Danny asks, unsmiling again as he leans back in. "Cripples now, they're pretty easy to discard as weaklings, defectives, and can be gassed just as easily as the lunatics. Easy peasey, no great reach there. The failures are thrown away.


"But what about the kids? They're weak by nature, and so should just be sacrificed on the altar of Social Darwinism along with the clubfoots and the hunchbacks, yeah? Ehh!"


Danny makes a sound like a buzzer, and holds his hands up over his chest, crossed in an "X" pattern like a referee calling a foul.


"Can't do that if you want a functioning society. You need kids to have more kids, unless you don't want an empire at all in two generations. And in the Emblem of Blood, when walking down the road could be a death sentence, nobles periodically went to war with each other, Area governors periodically went to war with uppity nobles, and nobody was spending money to handle minor details like maintaining sewage treatment plants, every kid was valuable. A resource."


"And so, the orphanages."


"And so, the orphanages!" Danny throws his hands up in the air, grinning toothily again, but with no sign of joy. "Praise God for his mercy." He lowers his hands. "Yup, the single greatest expansion of the child welfare system in Britannian history happened during the Emblem of Blood, and if that doesn't get a chuckle out of you, you're probably not Britannian. Anyway, it should come as no great surprise that the whole thing was an absolute shitshow. Absolutely nothing systematic about it at all, for a start – calling it a child welfare system is a total misnomer. Just all at once and out of the blue, every lord and bishop seemed to realize that someone should do something about all of these damned kids roaming the streets.


"'But by damn,' those worthies probably all told each other, 'once those kids are off the street, they'll be good and productive members of Britannian society!' Or they would be beaten until they were."


Danny stands up, turns around, and rolls his shirt up, exposing his back for me. Under the sun's clean light, numerous silvery scars glisten on his dark brown back, along with raised weals made permanent by repeated beatings.


"Let me tell you, as a beneficiary of the Lady Catherine House of Foundlings, we were generally considered some of the lucky ones," Danny says, lowering his shirt and sitting back down across the picnic table from me. "We were fed twice daily, with real meat at least twice a week and also on Sunday. We were taught our lessons, and also a trade. I left the House of Foundlings at sixteen as a fully qualified electrician. We were only beaten with the official 'incher' instead of any of the other more inventive punishments dreamt up in other orphanages."


An 'incher' is a one-inch thick rod of firm wood or hard plastic, commonly between a half to three quarters of a meter in length. Per Britannian statute, no servant or child may be beaten with a rod of greater than an inch's width.


"Shockingly," Danny drawls, "the proctors failed entirely in their quest to beat a love of Emperor and Church into my ass. It couldn't have helped that three different emperors came and went just in the time that I was at Lady Catherine's. Hard to develop a love for the monarch when the proctor keeps forgetting his name. But that didn't stop them from beating the shite clear out of me.


"Of course, with all that aforementioned shite being beaten out of me, well… I needed a refuge. A way to stay sane."


"That's when you became interested in music?"


"Yeah, the music." Danny nods, somewhat absently. His eyes are fixed on the past. "I had a good voice, so I was allowed to join the Church Choir. It was a start. Frankie, one of the others at Lady Catherine's, had a crank-up radio he'd gotten from somewhere, and we used to listen to it after lights out, when the proctor was asleep in his cups. That was another start.


"But I tell you what, after I left Lady Catherine's, back still stinging, and after I had spent a year scraping pennies as an apprentice electrician… The first big purchase I made for me, for Danny, was a second-hand fiddle, bought from a pawnshop down the way. It took a long time to learn how to play – no money for lessons, y'know – and I'm sure my neighbors hated me for the squalling and the squawking… But when I put bow to string, it all came out. For my parents, dead on the road, for the people lost and abandoned by the system as the lords and ladies fought themselves, for me…"


Danny pauses, and I look casually away as he rubs fisted hands against his watering eyes. When I look back, he's grinning again.


"It was in the Wolf and Hound that I first met Stan," he says, picking the story back up without any trace of the encroaching shakiness. "Stan was a known commodity in the Portland bars by this point, and he was good enough to take a rookie fiddler under his wing. He finally got my fiddle to stop shrieking and start singing, which, I'll say, makes the tips come way easier.


"He also taught me far more than that…"


Danny smiles to himself, privately.


"But more relevantly, he was a Leveller, not that I knew as much when I first met him."


The Levellers, or the Society of Equals, are a rumored underground movement in Britannia. While variations in Leveller ideology exist, most self-professed Levellers describe their aims as broadly republican, pointing towards Locke, Lafayette, and the luminaries of Washington's Rebellion as the intellectual founders of their programme.


"Honestly, it took me an embarrassingly long time to figure it out," Danny confesses, and now his grin is happy. "I thought he was a guy with a love for all of the old blue-collar standards, y'know? The ones the boss's hate to hear. 'Process Man,' 'Sixteen Tons,' 'Soyer's Soup…' One and all enough to get you kicked off the assembly line by any foreman who hears your hum, and some enough to earn a beating in a certain sort of bar.


"But then he started teaching me other songs… 'Song of the Leaders,' 'Give and Take,' 'Which Side are You On,' and of course, 'The Digger's Song.'"


Danny begins to hum.


"To conquer them by Land, come in now, come in now… To conquer them by Love, come in now… To conquer them by Love, as it does you behoove… For he is King above, and no power like to Love… Glory here Diggers all!"


With a sigh, Danny stills his hands, which had been tapping out a beat on the table.


"I wasn't there when Stan died. I was already in Saint Lawrence City, searching for work at the shipyard hiring hall, looking for passage aboard the few light cargo ships that somehow end up in European ports. There really wasn't much choice about it – a man's got to live, after all – but… I do regret that I wasn't there, that I couldn't make his last hours on the scaffold, out in front of everybody, a bit shorter, somehow… It's been done before, you know. Someone's buddy finds a rifle and gets upon a roof, and before the executioner gets a chance to savage him, he just pops the poor bastard in the head…


"But that's a short road to death, and I wanted to live."